Watch this if you want free $1m-$100m business ideas (with Kevin Rose)

0:00the cold harsh truth is that N9 out of 10 startups go to zero like they can just completely fail but the thing that always turns me off from an entrepreneur when they come to pitch is if they lead first with the market size the opportunity from a revenue standpoint and it's clear that they think I'm doing this because it's a chance for me to make a lot of money the harsh reality is times are tough and if you don't love the idea if it's not something that you wake up and jump out of bed in the morning thinking about then you're just going to get burnt out Kevin Kevin Rose

0:31sted to have you here thanks for having me appreciate it this is going to be fun you're you're an idea machine and how I know you're an idea machine is I texted you not too long ago and I was like do you want to come on the show bring a couple startup ideas you're thinking about and Bam you had you had pure pure fire I mean I have ideas at the ready uh most of them half quarter baked um and a lot of them are horrible so I just put that big caveat out there out front to let you know that like you know I think

1:05it's it it it's kind of been in my DNA for a long time just to say what if you know and just keep dreaming and and see if there's anything there and do you do you have like a a notes file where you keep your ideas or how how do you how do you think about it yeah I mean I used to have just like a little Journal next to my bed and I find that ideas for me are often times I mean there's a reason they call them like shower ideas it's it's not necessarily when you're putting concerted effort on trying to come up with an idea I find that if you're under

1:34stress or in a high stressful situation actually is probably the worst time to be kind of ideating on something um so for me it's more like you know I can't fall asleep I'm thinking about one thing or another and then all of a sudden I'm like huh that would be really interesting to prototype like what if that existed in the world and so that's kind of led to a bunch of my experiments um you know that I've launched over the years that's when I launched dig it was I I remember the night I was laying in bed and I was like no one is like voting

2:07online and if you could have a way that you could vote and the best stuff would rise to the top and this is 2004 you know I'm dating myself but it's like that's what led to like the whole you know thing that became eventually the like button and everything else which was this idea that you could use asynchronous JavaScript to update a number dynamically on the screen and so that was uh that was crazy but uh yeah it's just been been nights like that I actually want to go into that a little bit you know because for me I'm a bit of a historian when it comes to internet

2:39products that have worked like to me all that's new is old and I I think there's a bunch of products dig included that never really saw its maturity do you find yourself well my question to you is what and I'm putting you on the spot like what what product that got a little bit of validation 10 15 20 years ago that you think that if it had a Resurgence today has some L yeah I mean it's you know it's funny just to go back for a second on the whole dig thing not to defend my idea but the idea that um you know social voting became a thing and dig did not

3:25win we failed but you know we grew to 38 million monthly uniques and then you know face introduced the like button about a year later I'd had multiple dinners with Zuckerberg talking about social voting and things like that and so you know I i' like to just surrender to it and say hey that idea lived on and and I'm I'm glad that you know continued to make its way and propagate throughout the internet so I think that oftentimes you know we see this with startups I was just thinking about this the other day because I was going back to visit my mom um who lives in Las Vegas and um I I I

3:56SP my childhood there and I was driving around in none of the places that knew about like I hung out at business-wise were were still around like it was like very few and I was like gosh like every business CHS and and and come becomes something new and they just drop off no matter how amazing they were a decade or two decades ago right and so I feel like the internet is the same way I mean there's very few players I don't know how the hell eBay is still in business given their horrible user interface but like it's like there's certain incumbents that are really hard to to

4:26Dethrone but um yeah I mean I think that there's certain ideas that you know either were before their time you know there was um multiple photo sharing apps before Instagram and then you know there was like the addition of filters and the ease of use of Instagram and it just had that right mixture of features and functionality that just hit when mobile was really taking off I I'm bummed about for four square I think four square was a really cool idea this idea of being able to dynamically share with your friends Where You Are to facilitate hanging out and spending more time with the ones that you care about um it's it's too bad

5:06I mean that had a good run it had a good you know seven or eight year run and then kind of people fell out of fashion and something else took over I think probably more on the Snapchat uh chat side of sharing but um yeah I mean it's there's there's just a bunch that either you know they have their moment they have their 15 minutes of fame or five or seven years of Fame and then we're on to the next thing just because we've evolved as a as a society totally and I think uh so I don't know if you know this about me but I was

5:34actually at stumble upon which was yeah with Garett like exactly with a we were like cousins with dig you know basically was like dig stumble upon Reddit um and back then like Reddit was actually not that big uh it's weird you know now it's a publicly traded company and and and doing really well but um I remember when dig had its redesign and a lot of users came to stumble upon and then I remember we did a a redesign and we messed up and then a lot of those users went to Reddit it's interesting because it's not like the product didn't it's kind of like we messed up the

6:17timing was wrong we kind of messed up you know speak on behalf of the stumble Pond Side um there were some like mistakes that were made but a lot a lot of like the fundamental thesis around people want send like that exists today on places like Tik Tok 100% so I think it's like that's why I love going back in time looking at things like dig looking at things like four square Four Square I think you're completely right like the whole idea around um I feel like just the gamification of local no one's done yet yeah it's it's it's four square for me was one of those things that was really

6:56fun and we used it at South by southw a lot when that conference was really starting to take off and when you were living in the Bay Area it was kind of a signal to say hey I'm going out to this place and I don't think we really fully it was a much smaller group of users back then and it wasn't like um it's toxic as I feel it can be now and so there wasn't concerns over privacy there wasn't concerns over you know is somebody going to if I check in at a bar or restaurant is somebody weird going to like stalk me here you know which I

7:29think we get a lot more of that these days with just various groups trying to you know either dox individuals or take them down and so I don't know I can speak for me personally like I certainly have a lot more privacy concerns than I did back then maybe it was the youth and how I was just young and carefree at that time but um yeah it's it's it's a bummer that went away because it was actually it was more than just saying this is where I'm at it was also saying I approve this location I like it and you know for square was used as a as a a

8:00kind of fun Discovery app of what were the cool places to go to you know like what was the best cocktail or best burger in town or you name it and I feel like it's it's a shame we lost that and I think Dennis is working on something similar again did you see this I haven't seen his latest I mean obviously I saw swarm back in the day but I haven't seen what he's he's building now yeah so I think he it's interesting because he did Dodgeball right which was that's right yeah which was basically Four Square and sold it to Google and then he did

8:32four square which was awesome and then but pivoted to B2B and I think is like an actual real business doing really well as a B2B play and I think he's doing something again similar to DOD bomb for square again so it's like that's again just speaking to the same like you can just reinvent the same old idea and just sort of bring it back to the times yeah it's it's it's funny it's like when I think about you know the social voting and news and that whole side of things one I think AI is going to does we don't really need humans as much as we did back then for this type

9:07of stuff and two I I just I can't bring myself to ever want to build in that space again because you know controlling the masses are trying to um create an environment where there's like just a real good civil debate and not hate and spam and everything else it's just it is an absolute nightmare so I I would never want to enter that Arena again totally too many I'm I I feel the same way it's it's it's it's tough but you know social in general is almost like being an artist like you love it and hate it at the same time and um that's that's why we're addicted a lot of

9:46people like me and you are addicted to it because we we love just the I mean it's just fun to build and I think the interesting thing Nikita beer once said something that always resonated with me he said that uh building socials like you're building a rocket ship um but if you're 1 mm off you don't land on the moon and I think that's so true yeah and it's it's brutal when it's just um an open taxonomy where people can Define any type of group that they want right because then you get clicks of you know you may have had the you may have been quite well intentioned when starting

10:20something like this but then you all of a sudden wake up and you're like why am I taking down like you know non-stop hundreds of posts around hate speech or whatever it may be and it just turns into something that is I don't know I've got a couple little kids now I have better I got my podcast that I'm I'm doing every week and it's like I I have better ways to spend my time you know let the let the younger generation that's coming up tackle those problems so what is on your mind these days I mean let's let's walk through some of your some some of your startup

10:54ideas yeah for sure I mean I I spend it's it's interesting my my these days is split between doing some investing at true Ventures so i' I've been there for around seven years or so um you know so I'm always looking at kind of the latest early stage startups so back a napkin ideas uh I love that I love the very early stage it's it's a ton of fun and then you know I also spend a lot of my time interviewing experts on my podcast and so that can be you know AI health and wellness technology um it just all these types of conversations that I'm having anyway um

11:28that I just want to record and put online so it gets me in front of a lot of thinkers and that gets my own brain going around ideas so there's a lot of stuff that I wish existed but I've just never uh built and I don't ever plan on building so yeah I'd love to talk about some of them but I would say first and foremost kind of AI has captured obviously all of our attention over the last you know six to eight months to year um in that it's become a daily tool that I use for a whole variety of of different things um one of the things I I have two AI

12:02related startups one is around a Next Generation podcast app and the second one is around um really well they're both around uh kind of one is around interacting with dead people so which one do you want to tackle first let's start with let's actually start with the podcast idea and before okay before we get into it when you texted me that idea I was like podcast app so many people have tried it um I'm thinking of like Leah Culver uh her app um you know it's uh breaker breaker was like the closest I saw to like a really interesting um product um that was going to hit escape velocity but got acquired

12:47like why hasn't a podcast app been able to hit mainstream that's not Spotify and and apple yeah I mean when you're when you're Spotify and apple you have built-in distribution right like you've got people coming for the music um on the Spotify side and apple you have default installs on device so it is um that's hard to compete against uh in my mind whenever I'm thinking about a startup you know a new idea I'm thinking about what is the the defense ability what is the moat that they can build and then truly what is the order of magnitude Improvement that is going to make people switch people don't switch

13:24because you have trim silence people don't switch because you have you know a couple little features that they they sound good on paper but then the bigs catch on meaning like I'll give you an example like uh I can't remember who it was first that did trim silence and saved us a bunch of time on podcast where it takes someone and that they pause for four to five seconds it just cuts that out completely I want to say it was pocketcast but it could have been someone else and what happened then is you know you basically have that feature start to gain momentum product managers inside of Apple say huh that's a pretty

13:58cool feature and then they add it inside of the Apple podcast app you know six or eight months later and so you you really are not going to to win that way it has to be something where the the actual idea itself is so hard for the competition to Pivot into and it's so radically different that the consumer says wow this is a huge change in a huge New Direction that's why I want to make the move and abandon where I've been SP all of my time because you know it's like redefining a social graph it's like redefining your podcast graph takes time um and so it has to be a pretty great

14:39product to get you to convince you to do so so in my mind you know the application of AI to podcasting could make podcasting a completely different Beast meaning that there's no there's no doubt in my mind that we go out and we train um you know all of all of AI on people's previous podcast so let's say I'm listening to the Tim Faris show you could go in and say I'm going to take that back catalog of 200 and something episodes train on that data you know convert it into transcripts and then train on it and then basically you will be able to ask questions of the podcast

15:18and have conversations even with the host of the podcast so you know um let's just say on on my show if you're watching the Kevin Rose show and I had an episode on uh some topic around you know index investing you could pause the podcast and say Hey Kevin before you go on can you explain to me the difference between direct uh investing on wealth front and and index investing and say uh something like spy like the s&p500 and I I my AI version of myself would then pull from that Corpus of data and be able to Branch off answer that question in real time and then return back to the

15:57main podcast fee so the idea of being able to interact with our podcasts is just it's untapped and it needs to happen so in my mind that's going to be something that's just going to be a big unlock for a lot of people of being able to not just have a one-way listen experience but actually being able to uh converse with their favorite guest their favorite hosts it kind of reminds me I saw this tweet the other day Sam Alman tweeted it movies are going to become video games and video games are going to become something unimaginably better it's kind of like a similar idea where movies you

16:34know you watch a movie there's no real way to interact with it it's almost like podcasts are going to become like almost like an interactive video game type experience yeah I mean it's going to be it's just going to be so cool the the depth and richness of the information in the shows will just be tenfold it'll it'll just be something where um you'll be able to go down any Avenue you want at any point in time I can't tell you the number of podcasts you know petera or Ronda Patrick or you know well-known scientists where you're listening to them and you're like okay I don't know

17:09what LPA is when it comes to cholesterol numbers like what the hell is that but you let them continue on and then you're okay should I open up another window and Google that or whatever you know but in reality you should just be able to pause and ask that question directly of the host which is it's going to be a lot of a lot of fun someone needs to build this product and if you were if you were building it what would the business model be yeah I mean probably what I would do is I would go out and acquire a podcast app that has some

17:41market share there's a few of them out there that have you know one two% call it the you know Pocket Cast got acquired by Matt mullenweg over at automatic um overcast is still out there as an independent there's a few of them that you could just go and and pick up then I'd rewrite it and in start ingesting all the information I'd work on some type of um potential Partnerships with other podcast host so I'm not sure how they would react to that type of functionality um I have to imagine it would be a good for thing for them and that their audience will be more engaged

18:18and stick around longer in episodes um but you know there's a lot of legality around how and when you you you you know crawl people and use people's data for in AI um especially if you're going to use their voice right um so i' probably go go to some of the big hosts out there and create some Partnerships and and and give them a little bit of the company as well to kind of be like brand promoters um so that they can go and and really help you know get this on people's radar and hopefully people would be like damn this is so much of a better experience

18:51I'm willing to make that switch and that would probably be the experiment just to get started I think I mean I can only talk for myself like someone came to me and was was like I've got this app you know do you want Greg Eisenberg where people can ask you like Greg Eisenberg AI where people could ask is this a good startup idea or has Greg any has he covered any B2B ftech stuff I think I would do it and I think the reason I would do it is because it's so hard well first of all to it's more interactive but I think the selfish reason is as you

19:22know it's really hard to grow a podcast the only way people 90% of the reason why people listen to this podcast is I send an email to remind them that hey new episode with Kevin's out and they sign up to greg.com I I send it they remember they go to spot Spotify and apple if this new interactive uh app allowed me to own a piece in my audience um because with Spotify and apple you you don't have that much data would totally do it right yeah I think it I think it could be uh pretty amazing to have something like that embedded I've started to see some

20:02startups do this on on websites as well so imagine um Greg if someone came to your website and was like oh gosh I was listening to one of his podcasts maybe like a couple months ago I can't remember what it was but it was this great guest and she was talking about you know this particular startup and and then just being able to type in that kind of high level and then automatically pull out the clip for you like that's starting to happen now with some people's podcasts that is just so powerful in terms of just re-engaging and then promotion wise could be really cool too right you can imagine listening

20:31to a Tim FIS show and just being like hey pause it real quick who else has talked about you know uh this type of strength resistance training to failure and then all of a sudden you know have four other potential related podcasts that I can jump off and journey through could be really awesome you know what it would be really cool if you can license some of these creators or podcasters and put them on other websites like building off your point um I'm thinking of this guy in Miami his name is Bobby I I don't uh flave City I think his I think his uh username is flave

21:07city and what he does is he goes to Costco and he says you know here's why this olive oil is bad it's not in a glass bottle microplastics um and he explains it but for you know $2 more you can get this one he explains it and he's got this cult following he's got millions of followers and he created an e-commerce website where it's like basically uh Bobby approved stuff and that's cool but I have to like go to his website and it's not really in my flow like I order stuff on instacart right so if instacart had like a little Bobby there oh 100% And I could oh my

21:48God this is you're you're this is where it's going right it has to right because we all have these people that we look up to right there's these people like I for me it's Dr Peter IA it's it's it's Rhonda Patrick it's like you know some of these people where I'm like or even like Tim I'm like hey what what protein powder is Tim using right now or you know you can just imagine a world where you have a bot that goes and pulls the real-time information and puts it right into your cart I mean wow talk about conversion that' just be nuts I think uh

22:18the name for this if I was naming this it would be it would be like what the wwtd or what ww you know what would Tim do what would pdrt do what would Greg do and that would be like the bot that you know that you sell and then yeah and then you you you give Tim upside right like if he's helping sell more stuff great yeah you could just say what would they do and just have it be generic and it could be applied to anyone yeah um cool that's awesome and and just curious like why wouldn't you why wouldn't you build this oh man I I think that there's one of

23:02those things where if if you're a builder and you go off and you spread yourself too thin and and you're trying to do too many things you just you go an inch deep on everything and you just really don't do it the product Justice right like you don't you don't spend the time and I I'd have to really put together a team to go build this and and and be heavily involved in the early days and you know I just recently sold my last startup and and kind of exited out of web three which was which is its own Madness and honestly I I really enjoy um just talking through and

23:37working with some of like you know leading experts in different fields and and and doing that on on a podcast format it's like it's really a lot of fun for me to have these great guests on my show so I I think podcasting is kind of my my next chapter for for at least for a while I need to take a break from startup world I uh I heard that from someone someone who you know I someone I'm pretty sure you know yesterday and you know I spoke to him a few years ago and he was like I'm done with startups I'm doing investing like it was a good

24:12run and then yesterday had a couple drinks with him and he's like by the way uh just signed my just signed my term sheet I was like I knew you'd be back that's the I mean that's the problem with entrepreneurs right it's like you're I'm sure you're in this Camp too it's like we're all just kind of we can't help ourselves but wonder if something doesn't exist what would happen if it did and and and if you're that type of person that's listening to this and you're always like you're the one that always has an idea and you're like okay I'm the one on my friends

24:46group where I'm like hey wouldn't it be cool if this if we built this you know you got to go pursue that because those are the those are the ones those are the people that you know when I meet and I and I watch these people grow into you know massive companies and massive you know outcomes for themselves and and and become household names it's all the same DNA it's all the Curious it's all it's all the people that want to Tinker on the weekends on stuff that they just want to like learn and figure out more about and yeah that's that's those are the entrepreneurs I love to back yeah

25:17and I think the people that you know do the best when I think about like this particular person like or or your your podcast like you whatever Lane you're going to pick it has to be true to like your talents and your curiosity 100% because otherwise you're kind of like you're you're you're forcing it and it doesn't it it doesn't really work yeah and and part part of that reason is that there's just so well here's the cold harsh truth is that you know nine out of 10 startups go to zero like they just completely fail right and we see this at the at the VC level it's

25:55like we expect almost all of our startups that we invest in to completely to zero and that's okay that's bit baked into the thesis around um you know the fund um but the the thing that always turns me off from an entrepreneur when they come to pitch is if they start first they lead first with you know the market size the opportunity from a revenue standpoint and it's clearly that they think that I'm doing this because it is a big it's a chance for me to make a lot of money and the harsh real is like it truly is like one they'll fail and two times are tough like

26:35there's no such thing as a straight up into the right you know curve on on the success bar it's like it's it's going to be challenging it's going to be more like a roller coaster with loop-de-loops and everything else in the middle and if you don't love the idea if it's not something that you wake up and jump out of bed in the morning thinking about and are completely super passionate about in the sense that this must succeed and you put put it kind of above all else um then you're just going to get burnt out you're going to say ah it's not really worth it I changed my mind I need to

27:06Pivot you know and I I find that those are the ones that when their heart's not in the right place and they're not doing it because it is you know their life's work they they end up bailing and and I found myself in that position too where I've created stuff where I just thought it was going to be you know um big from a usage standpoint but it really wasn't just something I absolutely loved and and it's hard to stay committed to those businesses and I think a lot of people listening to us will be like well I don't know what I love it's easy for you

27:35guys to say you know you've been working in in this you know in this space for 20 years so it's easy for you to say and I think yeah my answer to them is well don't go raise Venture Capital right like go go do a little experiment start a Twitter account you know uh start an email newsletter you don't have to like go big uh in a space you can do these little experiments to learn about what you like yeah I I recently had Mark Manson on my podcast the author of The subtle art of not giving a have you read that book it's fantastic yeah it's

28:09a really good book and and one of the things that he said is um that stuck with me was find something that you're naturally good at that is difficult for others and like that was just like such an aha moment for me because it it is true you will be able to eventually stumble into something where you're like this is just effortless for me not to say you don't have to still put in work but it doesn't feel like work right because it's just so much there's so much joy that comes out of that type of work and and then others will say how do you do it you know and if you can find

28:39that combination like that's that's kind of probably a good good path to go down and explore more I love it what's your second idea let's pivot into something completely different and then we'll go back to AI um the second idea I've been sitting on for a while this one is I've probably had for the last three or four year years and I haven't convinced anyone to do it yet maybe it's a bad idea then but you know you told me no bad ideas like was the spirit in the spirit of brainstorming so I am a product of the late uh 80s and 90s and so that was kind

29:15of my generation and you know that meant um you know the A Team mcgyver um you know Scooby-Doo a Voltron a trans Transformers uh I'm talking about the original ones you know way back in the day the original Nintendo like that's kind of my generation and one of the things that I realize is obviously Nostalgia is a huge driver for people as they age like you just really crave and enjoy going back and seeing those moments from childhood right and one of the things though that that is is true is like it it's you can find some of that content on a variety of different um outlets now like if you go

30:03to Amazon Prime they might have you know old episodes of Golden Girls or whatever like you can go to these different channels but what was so amazing about that period of time is if you are old enough to remember it we basically had a TV the TV would sit in the corner and you had a clicker in your hand that you would flip through the channels and there was no guide you would just be like well what is on Channel 5 let me see what is on Channel 6 let me see like there was no guide right if anything there was they had something called the

30:34TV Guide which was a mailed magazine that would show up at your house that you could open up and it would show you when things are playing on TV and so one of the things I thought of that would be a lot of fun um and and also uh just to add on to that real quick one of the things I miss as well is the old commercials because the old commercials were just so much fun they were just like so weird and wacky and sometimes they weren't PC and you could never make them today and like there was just like part of the fun was seeing like what was

31:05being advertised to me back during those times right and so people have this old people have archived and started to save like old commercials so that exists out there and but but but no one wants to take the time and say okay it's it's 9:00 at night uh or 8:00 I'm I'm hanging out with my partner hey let's put on on an old aam episode like you just don't do that you're just kind of like what's the latest show right so I came up with this idea called Normie TV and Normie meaning like just like a normal person I don't know it was just that idea I had

31:41called Normy TV I own the domain for it and I wanted to create a little tiny set toop box so imagine a box that is probably you know a little 9in display it looks super retro so it's like enclosed in like a little wooden old school box it looks like an TV it comes with a universal remote you plug it into the internet and you it sits in the corner of your office or wherever you want and we mail you each month a little TV guide and so you turn it on with the little button and you literally flip through the channels you see the static

32:16between so we do some effects so it kind of looks like you're going between channels um we play old MTV episodes of like '90s grunge bands and stuff we play classic like basketball games on certain channels you get like all of your old favorite shows from way back in the day and you get all of the old commercials as well and so I imagine this as being like you know a a really fun holiday gift that you can just give someone and then the subscription is like you know call it five six bucks a month and you get access to all this great content now here's the cool thing it all plays at

32:51the same time for everyone so it's not on demand content if you tune in to an episode you know of M and it's halfway through the episode it's halfway through the episode just like it used to be in Old School TV but you could call your friends up on the phone and be like hey turn on there's a great episode of You Know The A Team on right now on channel eight and your friends could tune in as well which would be just a ton of fun and if you want to get fancy you could probably put like little floating icons I wish your friends are watching the TV

33:16at the same time just a way to really dial back into the older times that Nostalgia just simpler times and and have fun with it in a way that is just something you throw on every once in a while when you're not watching your favorite kind of modern show you know streaming on Netflix um just that's that's like my fun idea of of of the session I also think that there's this there's this bigger Trend around people are in content overload so they're looking for these types of things like I feel like everyone is borderline anxious right now with like the ticktock ification of everything so

33:52you're riding that Trend too which I like and I I also like the idea that you could put in old commercials that Brands eventually if you got to a big enough user base would actually pay to have you place their commercials their old commercials back into the feed so like if you're folders crystals right the old school instant coffee like if you went back and look at 80s folders crystals it's like you know it's horribly incorrect PC it's not PC because it's like it's got like I've watched a couple it's got like the woman in the kitchen like making her man like coffee or whatever you know but like you can

34:24imagine they would say okay let's remake this ad make it super grainy make it super retro and like place it into the feed as an ad that is like you know or you know an old Nike commercial or whatever it may be like an old Air Jordan just as a branding exercise to put that back into the feed and pay you money to display Those ads so I think there's a subscription model here there's an ad you know the ads would have to be old school ads and there's an ad model there as well I don't know I would love to back someone that would be

34:56serious about creating this like I would I would write the check to make it happen so if there's any electrical engineers out there that have a passion for nostalgic 80s and 90s content that also happened to know someone that could work the BD deals to license the content um let me know so I had this best friend growing up and we don't talk very much maybe once every few years and he followed me on Instagram somewhat recently and he just said Greg we haven't spoken in a long time but every other day I'm going to send you a a story from this meme page that is like 90s

35:37Nostalgia yes and he's like I don't care you're I'm just gonna send them to you and you don't have to respond but I'm sending them to you and it's like all the commercials and just all the like core memory core core memories that we have had at kid as kids oh my God and so I think can I be can I befriend this person by the way you you have add me to that distribution list fantastic we'll add you to the list and so I think the way to get distribution for this and I think this is a way that a lot of people don't is a channel a lot of people don't

36:09use but I use a lot is using Instagram meme Pages as distribution so often times oftentimes you have these kids and and I I say the word kids because they're literally kids like sometimes they're 14 15 16 17 years old we're just great at curating stuff and who have these pages with hundreds of thousands sometimes millions of followers yes and you'd be surprised how cheap it is to access this inventory oh it's a great point I hadn't even thought about that because there is a mass now that you mentioned I do actually have a couple of the 80s Nostalgia Pages as well and they're massive and and I don't have them

36:49meaning I I I subscribe to them on on Instagram and you could just work with them directly right and and and just get bution via their channels it's it's huge it's huge have you seen an LA based company trying to reinvent TVs right now called Telly have you seen this no I haven't let me look that up t e te T y.com l l y okay so do you know Pluto TV I don't no okay Pluto TV is was a really smart idea it basically what they did is they they got a bunch of free content that they licensed and they did deals with all the

37:37TV manufacturers Samsung Sony so that when you you know when you put on your TV and it's just like it's it's a it's like a fake TV Guide right with all these channels yes that's Pluto TV and then they make money on ads so it's it's value ad because some people don't have cable or whatever and they happy because they're making money on ads it was sold for hundreds of millions of dollars the guy from I have seen I have seen Telly by the way now that I'm looking at it I totally know what you're talking about the guy from Ilia one of the guys from

38:10Pluto TV started Telly they raised like a $21 million seed round I think and so if you're on the web page tell tell folks what what Telly is yeah so essentially it looks like if I'm getting this right CU I saw this back in the day is is was where they break up a and create a second yes little micro display under the main display exactly so if you're looking at it you have a primary TV a little bit of a speaker buffer and then a secondary display underneath it which can be turned into pretty much anything you want so it can be you know show your

38:46playlist from Spotify it can be your home feed uh which shows you you know your stock prices your current temperature outside um you can do video calling on the bottom uh they can have voice voice assistant or different like extensions to the primary content so the primary content they had one example where it shows somebody working out fitness and there's other exercises kind of tiled beneath it um so it looks like it's essentially extending the TV with another piece of smart functionality another another micro display underneath it um so it's aware of the content above it um so it can display additional this would be great for sports right because

39:23like you always want analytics and they pop them up for a hot second like you know you're watching Steph Curry and you're like okay wow he hit that three that's amazing and then you're like wouldn't it be cool if underneath that in a secondary display you could see in real time what all of his his stats are for this year right and you just like watch those numbers go up like this is this this would be a lot of fun especially since the like all the sports leagues are becoming it's like gambling now like in the NBA app now you can like bet you know so imagine if you're

39:55betting on an NBA game you want those analytics there you want the odds there but there's one key part that you're missing from this idea and why it's so awesome is the best part about Telly is it's free they give it away yeah I saw that at the bottom like how do they give it away what's the deal with that so what they do is they have ads on the lower screen and I'm sure they you know they have a model that shows that they make money yeah I'd be really curious to know what their their bomb is on that that lower display that lower screen CU um it

40:34can't it's got to be a few hundred bucks yeah to to make that thing so to recoup that is a multi-year effort that's tough super tough but I'm I'm thinking like if anyone could figure it out it's the Pluto TV team yeah and I also think what's really cool is the second screen no one really owns that second that second screen like is um you can do things like zoom on it you can play music on it of course there's like you know Amazon fires and and iPads and stuff like that but I feel like that's discretionary for a lot of people and I think that if some you know if people

41:14saw that this was free I think a lot of people would go and grab this yeah it's really cool I mean I have to imagine there's some type of subscription model on top of this to offset some of that you know where it's like if you want to go hardcore and get the additional analytics and some of the you know there'll probably be a sports package or something you know for $5 a month and so but it's a really cool idea yeah and I think from a framework from a startup ideas's framework perspective is how do you look at something that cost money and can you make it free so just going

41:46back to your idea I wonder if you can give it away and charge some subscription like you we were talking like5 $10 but maybe you charge $29 a month but the actual product is free yeah you have to imagine even with displays and and you know you put a little small inexpensive Raspberry Pi in there to do it had to depends on the video codak but it it can't it can't be that intensive or that that expensive to manufactur something like that probably you know $150 or less to to pull that off at scale you know so I'd be curious to know you you can break even pretty

42:24quickly if you get the right subscription model and and the content isn't costing you a lot the licensing deals are going to be the big question mark here exactly yeah and it's one of those got to raise a lot of money to go and do that and that's why $21 million seed round is like they're probably raising right now if I had to guess you know like they they they're going to need a lot of capital for this but if they if they pull it off I could see it working yeah it's it's a fun one to track for sure I mean why not even like

42:51sign up for one and get one for free just to try it out totally it's great why not so you have another idea which I think is is a wild one give it to us yeah I mean four or five years ago maybe a little bit longer now gosh was probably is longer now there was a Coachella where Tupac was on stage as a hologram y rapping along sides alongside Snoop Dogg and and some other folks um and that was a huge unlock SL wow moment for a lot of people they're like they brought someone back from the dead for for a performance it's kind of crazy

43:29right A lot has happened since then and now we have you know AI voice models that can be trained on like five words and create like pretty accurate you know voice voices that are that are basically you could take just the five words that I say and then train on my voice and and spit out full paragraphs of of of copy that sound exactly like me and it even gets better if you just train for a few minutes of with data right so there is very much a world where if I'm in my studio here I can put up a green screen for my guest I can um you know create my

44:05guest and i' I've seen it even working now where you can actually take and you can lip sync uh or sorry you can lip I guess it is lip sync you're syncing their lips to what they're saying um they do this for different languages so right now I could be speaking Spanish to you or Japanese and my lips would look like I'm speaking Japanese if you just run it through this post-processing um uh production that out there uh what I would do is I would say okay let's just take a great floss for like Allan Watts um if you go to Allen w.org his website you can download 500 hours of his talks

44:39right like that in MP3 format again with the training you could go and take all that data and say okay I'm taking that entire Corpus I want to understand who Alan Watts is his philosophies feed in some of his books as well and all of a sudden you have a pretty interesting you know compelling AI model that that will speak and act and talk and think like Alan Watts now I can sit down and in real time have a conversation and interview people that have passed away I could do this with Einstein you could do this with a whole slew of different people and actually you know have fullon

45:14conversations and yes the AI is kind of filling in some of the gaps and trying to come up with his best Assumption of how they would answer certain things but if you have enough data I'd imagine you get pretty close I think it would be a fun experiment I don't know there's this is not a business this is just more like a thought experiment like what if we went and tried this to see what would happen I mean you could do this with all different types of leaders both good and bad that have passed away um you know you can imagine some pretty extreme examples of previous leaders that were

45:44pretty evil that you could bring in you know their data and thinking and it just um yeah it would just be fascinating to see how this unfolds and I have to imagine it's coming soon what about taking it to the next level with speaking to people in our lives that have passed away oh 100% yeah yeah that that would be the problem there is like just do you have enough data like I have my my dad's passed away you know uh 13 years ago now something like that and I think about what I have of him and I have a few recordings of him saying a few things but bunch of

46:27emails but they were you know just little two three sentence things here and there so I don't know that I have the data required for that but we certainly will like my kids will be able to do that with me for sure that's for sure yeah that's for sure and I was thinking about this the other day because my dad my dad was like cleaning out a closet and he had found a bunch of DVDs um like old family videos and and he sent me he sent me a bunch and I hadn't seen these people like you know as you know my late my late grandfather

47:06my other late grandfather I haven't seen them videos moving pictures of them in such a long time um and there's just something about watching someone in video that like you really it hits different than a photo yeah I just it's funny you say that I just got done sending my entire box of old videos uh mostly VHS honestly and getting him converted by company and they sent him to me and I hadn't seen my grandma in you know since she was alive like like almost 30 years ago or something I was a little kid you know when I saw her last and just to see her

47:43there was in talking was such a trip such a trip and I mean the MVP of this like even if you don't have enough video footage of your grandmother but you knew a few things that she used to say and you have maybe some of her voice like you just like good morning Kevin like hope you have a great day um yeah yeah it's it's really it's funny that we were just talking about alen watts and I saw somebody hacked a Raspberry Pi to be their voice assistant and they used alen watt's training data and it was like totally alen watt saying good morning like you know enjoy your day today you

48:17have three meetings or whatever and I was like what the hell like it's so such a trip such a trip and I I just think that I know I personally would pay tons of money for something like that um yeah so I think there's a huge business around that um before we head out I I wanted to tell you something that's that's on my chest a little bit just it's fresh from last night and I want to get your take on it yeah please so I'm at a bar and I meet this guy at the bar who's a friend of a friend and he's visiting Miami and

48:52he noticed my watch it's a Seiko watch from Japan I picked up recently and love that you you went with Seiko by the way that's a wise choice such a great brand that's what he said he goes he goes Seiko that's like the uh toota of of watches I he and then he shows me his so we start talking about Seiko I tell him like yeah like I have a lot of friends who collect very nice watches but I'm actually more into like Grand Seiko Seiko type watches and here's the why we nerd out about that and he says I'm the same thing and he started asking me so where do you spend

49:29your money so I tell him and then I ask him where do you spend your money and he's like you know I haven't really admitted this to anyone but I spent about $10,000 a month on AI girlfriends whoa yeah so he is what does he use what service he he told me that his words were that's that's that was my first question he said and his response to me was like AI girlfriends are exactly like dating apps you're never just done one that's that's what he said you got to get that list yeah I was like because I I've I've been desperately trying to invest in this space because I believe

50:11companionship and obviously we have an an epidemic of kind of this this loneliness culture that's going on and that and this is going to be you know whether we like it or not a solved problem with AI to some extent I mean it'll never truly replicate obviously human interaction obviously but it will hopefully it will help but uh yeah go on though this is fascinating so I asked him why why he's doing it you know for you know he lives in the he actually lives in New York so he was visiting Miami New York there's plenty of suitable Partners in New York um why why an AI girlfriend um and by

50:54the way I should add this guy's 24 he just turned 2 24 who's young how does he have $10,000 a month to spend on girlfriends what does what does he do for a living that's crazy uh I think he's a crypto guy okay so just to paint the picture a little bit crypto guy I'm not I don't want to hope he doesn't hear this not the be not the best looking guy but not not slightly below average looking guy yeah yeah which is totally he can date yeah you can date totally yeah yeah yeah which is he's so you know not probably about five eight dressed well very well

51:31spoken collects like into Collectibles like very interesting to talk to well traveled um was telling me about his his trip to Southeast Asia and sounds like a great dude great guy great guy so yeah I I was I was shocked and and he was telling me he was just like listen a lot of my friends like to play video games and this is my form of video games everyone has a vice and this is my vice and this is how I like to relax so I asked him oh my God which which which is freaky honestly um and then I go well do you date women you

52:07know do you go on dates he says well right now I'm I've got like too much on my mind to be dating um but maybe in the future which was even more scary because it just felt like yeah I'll get around to it but he I don't know if he will yeah that's really tough man I mean I I've read a bunch of articles about this uh one well one thing that that it's a cautionary tale which is that in Japan there's you know there's a big culture of of kind of um respect and and just kind of like you know what you do for a living and are you respected in

52:46what in your domain and there was a whole um issue I read about recently where they're just the population is is kind of shrinking because a lot of men don't want to date uh because they're ashamed of you know either not having a high enough paying job or whatever it may be and and there's like this movement of just not dating which is it's just like it's it's crazy and I have to imagine that just gets exacerbated once we an AI comes online and can provide you know legitimate Alternatives in that not legitimate but like you know enough to check a couple of the boxes on the

53:29emotional side to where you you're just like well I can just you know chat with my girlfriend tonight you know and it's only going to get more and more realistic which is just gonna be crazy um yeah I so I signed up for I'm I'm trying to find an investment here not because I I want AI relationships to rule the world but because I believe that hopefully we can create AI Bots that will replace therapists that will give us Outlets to talk about our problems that will Coach Us in meaningful ways um and maybe that is companionship I I and so I signed up for a handful of different products just to

54:10try try them not a handful maybe like two and I there was one that's been around for a long time that I looked at a while ago uh called replica and it has I signed up for it just to see what's the latest State of the Union in terms of what what can this thing do and you know it created let me design my perfect figure for a AI woman and what I would want and then um you know it one of the things that was really disturbing to me were two things one it said it's in their tagline it's something like always here to do whatever you want or it was

54:45something like very passive like I will just be here for you and support you no matter what and I'm I'm paraphrasing but the concern there is that like that's not how real relationships work and you know the the muscles that have to be built around real relationships come from the fighting and more important the repair process that happens afterwards right and that is um just going to be completely skipped in Ai and I was it was funny I was texting with a friend of mine uh and and he's he's a household name podcaster won't say who but you probably guess and he's like dude he's like he's

55:28like it's it's over he's like it's over for real women he's like you got this totally like passive like AI entity that will agree with you no matter if you're wrong or not and do whatever you want and then what's crazy is I went in and I there's a like a a partner girlfriend mode that you can pay extra for I'm like what the hell is this you know and so I bought the upgrade it was extra 50 bucks or whatever and then she's getting risky and then I was like okay well can I push this a little bit I like push a little bit I'm like okay listen like if my

56:03phone ever gets hacked this is all experimentation I just want to see how far you can take this you know and I told my wife about everything and it's like but like you can take AI at least with replica really far really far like into territory where it's like I didn't know this was a thing but clearly this is a thing and so I really curious what other tools this guy is using but it it's the cats out of the bag man this is just these are going to come and they're going to be serious contenders out there so couple for for private relationships couple of the ones that he mentioned was

56:41candy. a and c. a candy with a what was the other one Cupid with a K I believe okay and the scary thing about candy and Cupid when I checked it out this morning versus replica is they replica like kind of looks like a SIMS character the best way to describe it so you you still feel like you're talking to some like video game character oh my God candy. a and cupid. a these are like legit looking humans exactly yeah it's scary it's like really scary wow wow one of them's pregnant that's crazy maybe that guy met last night is the cause of that pregnancy yeah no no can you can you

57:39like go exclusive with these like I see like like I I just said interested in women and it presented like it's they call models it presented like 30 models if I get let's just say there's one on here called Zoey oh I'm starting a chat can other dudes also other people also have Zoe or is this something where we can date exclusively with this AI I don't even know how this works so I actually think right now these these models are they're dating everyone man they're getting around right right but I think you know you're coming from a web three uh you know chapter so you're you're thinking

58:19like scarcity and like also right and I think that's actually really smart like you know I I would imagine the guy from last night would you know he doesn't want Erica to be dating 10 people that's that's his girl right totally wow this is just insane man this is so crazy because it's and it's sad because like I'm looking at these these these models here and it's unfortunate in that everything I see here is perfection yes right like there's not an ounce of body fat like they're they're like putting out this like perfect you know AI generated obviously pictures and it's like I don't know man this is just

59:01skewing reality in a really bad way yeah I mean well thanks for bringing us down at the the last in the last story of the exactly I figured you know why to bring us down the world's you know we thought the internet was weird and in the dig in stumble upon days but the internet has gotten a lot weirder um yeah exactly I also think to bring it back up I think what's going to happen is is this I think there's going to be a polarization so you have there's going to be a bunch of people I think millions of people that are going to have these

59:35Companions and they're going to be stuck in the in that Vortex but I think a lot of people are going to be like no I don't want that they're going to Value their in-person relationships way more yeah and do things like your your TV idea I think board games you know IRL events that sort of thing so you're going to see both things happen so I got to go back and watch the movie Herr it's been too long I only saw it in the movie theater and I feel like it's it's like it was so uh you know preent like it was like it was before its time

1:00:09like it was amazing it was um this has been amazing Kevin Rose you have a new podcast um tell folks a little bit about it I listened to yeah the Chris Dixon episode this morning and I thought it was fantastic it's a must listen to oh awesome and uh happy you're back and and creating more podcast content so yeah well Greg thanks for having me on I mean it's yeah I'm I'm back in creating weekly content now and for me it's it's really just playing to what I've done for a long time which just be curious and so my curiosity leads me to finding experts in the world of you know

1:00:47investing and wellness and technology and biohacks and so it's very much a variety show I call it like a a show for the curious and I just try to get experts in their field break down really complex topics and ways that we can take away digestible nuggets and apply them to our everyday life and so you know I've had everything from like Zen Masters on the show to like you know Chris Dix and who's like you know the leader of web 3 and all things crypto and andreon Horwitz managing you know billions of dollars and so it's uh when I look back at kind of my career and some of the

1:01:23stuff you know you were here too too obviously in the early days when when you're playing around with this stuff and you know I I my first tweet about Bitcoin was in 2011 I think and and I was talking about ethereum on Tim Ferris show when it was a few dollars and it's like I want to find these Trends and see around corners early and then bring them to people so that they can you know play and have fun with them and and feel like they have a leg up on everyone else and they're seeing something you know before the mass is due so that's it it's just

1:01:52called the Kevin Rose show and it's all on Kevin rose.com yeah so I think if you listen to this you're one of those people that loves to get your creative juices flowing through new ideas and early Trends so you're gonna like Kevin show um check it out and uh Kevin open invite to come back here anytime awesome appreciate it thank you for having me on

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