4 Startup Ideas Around Dating, Status, and AI

0:00I just brainstormed with one of the smartest people I know about 20 plus dating app ideas it was a live brainstorm she had this Insight I opened up a Google doc all of a sudden one idea three ideas seven ideas this is a playbook for how to come up with 20 plus dating app ideas one of the most proven ways to make money on the internet think you'll enjoy this episode start [Music] lovely to have you here you are probably you're probably one of my favorite follows on Twitter because you're always putting out creative ideas so I had to have you for the startup podcast it was

0:45only right I appreciate the sentiment um it's always nice to hear positive things about Twitter and not like terrible things about Twitter um and obviously you're a great follow I mean these days you're doing a lot of interesting stuff won't like give away the hacks of what I've observed that you're doing um but yeah always like Curious what you're thinking about love your letter love when my tweets show up in your letter so a lot of a lot of crossover very cool so let's start with ideas okay let's start with ideas all right so I always have like a bunch of ideas so I kind of like

1:23paired down a few today that I think probably relate to things that people know that I think about as opposed to like the completely off-the-wall things and maybe that like anybody could really like take a crack at versus like things that would be hard to do so okay start with a fun one which is basically like you know the league the dating app I do was started like 10 plus years ago at this point so I mean I don't think everything has to be like super novel I kind of think that someone should just like make another the league okay for for people who don't know what the

1:54league is maybe explain what it is okay so the league is basically it's like a dating app and it I think it was started around 2012 or 2013 and the premise is like okay if you're a woman who's kind of like ambitious and you want to get a significant other who is similarly ambitious and also wants to be with a ambitious accomplished partner like where can you actually find that I think the kind of filter underlying the premise when it started was a bit around like okay if I go to an Ivy League school or have like a ivy league esque job like I want to meet people who are

2:30similarly you know pedigreed in a sense so that was like the original premise and obviously like whenever one of these networks gets bigger and bigger it gets a bit more diluted they start kind of like expanding the criteria and like this actually was pretty successful and then they ultimately actually sold a match group I think like a couple of years ago and they did some really Innovative stuff with pricing too which is kind of another tangent but they started like charging like hundreds of dollars which was kind of unknown for for dating apps and actually were successful with it so hundreds of dollars a month I think they

3:02tested that if I'm not mistaken like I don't want to misquote it so I should probably research it but I think that's one of the reason that match was particularly interested in them as well because they started doing really Innovative stuff with pricing and like it's a little bit like this is in a sense like you know people are price and sensitive for some of these types of products okay this is crazy so I just Googled how much does The League membership cost you'll pay anywhere from $99 a week to $24 999 that's $2,499 a month for membership of the league yep wow so you could buy a

3:37pelaton forever or you could get a you know a membership for a month to the leak that's crazy yeah I think uh one of the from what I remember one of the interesting things that the league did was they did connect with your LinkedIn yeah I think they like I don't really know what the interface was like I I actually never used it but I do think they were like instead of going for socials linking they were going for like LinkedIn and you know now they've obvious obviously expanded a bit more but I I don't know if that's like an important part of it to be honest but I

4:09think what's interesting if I were to think about a 2.0 now is like and you talk about the sum too or we all I think anybody who's spending time online is like what are the new status markers or like how has status markers evolved and so I don't think it's like as simple as like I had an IV League education anymore or I have this like job at this like consulting firm or Investment Bank I think that's kind of opened up a bit so you could do like interesting things with like honestly you could make probably like a dating app just for people who are YC Founders like you know

4:40YC would obviously never do that but like somebody who's in it could probably try to do it and like that's obviously like one like status filter in the tech startup Community now um obviously there's like Rya which I think is like a bit more General like celebrity or adjacent to celebrity I don't think it's like specific enough on what they're actually trying to filter for so I think like a lot of people could actually do this in a bunch of different like modern High status niches I guess so because I have you here and because I know you know a lot about status symbols and internet status

5:18symbols oh boy yeah it's coming this is coming can you list four five six seven 8 nine 10 status symbols that are more modern internet culture types data symbols and the reason I say this is because I think people can actually go and create the league for ins they could um well you can do like the hard organizational filters which is like okay I why see as an example you could go like bigger orgs or smaller orgs like I think like the Theo Fellowship would be too small probably because probably like only like 100 people or something in there I don't know but I think there's organizations

5:57like that so you could do it that way where you're looking for something that's already defined um or you could obviously do like platforms so you know you have some number of hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter or you know you're you're trying to get to that on YouTube so I think you could also do like all right obvious status symbol these days is like what's your follower account like on Instagram or Tik Tok or YouTube or Twitter and you know it's like kind of funny I feel like these days people are like I have a combined 250,000 followers across all platforms so like I don't know there's

6:28some interesting ways to think about it that way I think those are probably like the ones that would be easiest to filter for but to be honest I think there's like you know a lot more things where you could be somewhat subjective about your criteria which is just like what influence level do you have or like what circles are you in like even like looking at the who else follows this person would be like such an interesting metric to figure out like how much clout they essentially have or how much status they essentially have even if they only have like 5K followers or 10K followers so I mean I'm not going to list like 10

7:03or 20 that are strictly visible online but you kind of get the gist of like where you could actually parse it out and find those Lanes shh don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free these aren't just random guesses they're validated Concepts from entrepreneurs who built 100 million ion Dollar Plus businesses I've compiled them into one simple database compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast but the main thing is most of these ideas don't need a single investor some cost nothing to start I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet the idea bank is your

7:54startup shortcut just click below to get access your next cash flowing business is waiting for you I want to try something new I've never done this on the show ever and I don't know why I want to you're making me want to do it right now okay but I am going to share my screen you have to tell me what you think your like top one or two status status symbols are that you're seeing these days too yeah we'll jam on that so what I want to do here is I want to create like a mini one pager for this idea so basically I I buy your Insight so your

8:32in what is the Insight um and by the way if you're listening to this on audio like check it out on video I'll try to on YouTube I'll try to explain it I'll try to say what I'm typing out so the Insight is basically the league was dope there was something that was working with the league they ended up selling uh for Millions I don't know if we know the 30ish 30 I think yeah yeah I'm pretty sure they didn't raise a lot of money yeah I don't think so I mean I know for sure they raised like a seed at the beginning and I'm sure they did like

9:06another round but um you know I'm sure they also got a bunch of equity in match when they sold their Insight at the time I think was go Niche Go [Music] premium and I really do think that LinkedIn connect was an interesting filter yeah ended up charging what did we say like 20 like hundreds a month up to a couple of thousand a month hundreds a month up to go $24.99 a month so completely Zapped the business model so this is really interesting so like if your match group and you have a competitor charging this amount of money per month you might want to acquire this

10:01because there whenever whenever you completely change the business model that um that's interesting to someone who does Acquisitions yeah I'm pretty sure they like started testing some version of this like on Tinder or you know whatever their other apps are like somewhat soon after this okay interesting yeah so then it's like okay so here's the idea I can't write here we go here's the idea so what other okay what is a list of status symbols that exists today in 2024 and Beyond YC you mentioned I think it's interesting um it's so one reason why I say that and why I think it's interesting it's like okay obviously

10:54with a lot of these products part of the game is like how can you actually like get people to be talking about it like you could argue that maybe if it's super high status luxury like you know Velvet Rope stuff you actually don't want a lot of people talking about it but I don't know I kind of think the name of the game these days is you kind of do want it to have some you know hanger appeal or whatnot so like I think the more specific you make it and the more like remarkable in the sense that people want to talk about it you make it like the

11:23more interesting your early traction will be I wouldn't necessarily say like in the long term just YC is an amazing like you know dating app but I think there's something something to thinking about like not just like okay this is a like dating app for pedigree people like that's like okay cool you know but it doesn't like quite have the same hook totally okay so I think there there there might be you know these are things that might work right like when you're creating an idea dock like the idea you know what you really want to say is just like I think these are hypotheses this

11:57might work it might not work this this is the Insight you know so I I do I do think that that's it's worth it's worth putting in there and it's like a TBD you know in the future we'll we'll go explore you had a really really really good Insight which is people who how did you describe it people who follow oh like yeah I think so there's like status where it's like I can wear the status myself or their status like who's in who am I in the room with right and so you're like looking at the people who I'm in the room with and implicitly

12:35thinking I have high status so online you know that'll be like who's follow who else is following me on Twitter if you know like you're following me on Twitter or Paul Graham's following me on Twitter or like Elon Musk is following me on Twitter it's like okay even if I only have like tens of thousands of followers maybe I actually am a high status or accomplished like upand cominging person that is worthy of being included in some pool yeah that would be and you maybe you can play like a make a game of that too you know it's like I only want to date people who you know Elon M follows or

13:08something like that yeah this is already sounding like super like super like game the system like I'm looking what is it like the trust fund 65 like blue eyes Finance honestly you probably make an app like for that if you actually wanted to um but at the same time I don't know there's like something between this being crazy and something like also to say that there is a lot of pragmatism in like some of these things that people are actually like subconsciously if not consciously caring about so yes I think that's right I think that's right um what other you know I'm married by the way so I don't know I've

13:46been I'm not on the dating scene either but like I don't know enough people are especially like if you're doing anything in Social or if you're online it's just like you can't avoid being kind of like slapped in the face with This and like loneliness and dating and how to meet people so I think it's interesting like it's like a giant social experiment so I mean minim amount of followers like that was supposed to be Rya in the beginning um whereas like you needed a certain amount of followers basically and you connected with your Instagram like what was what was Rya Rya was basically the league but for like

14:21more celebrity yeah esque like more la like Hollywood adjacent yeah I would say and obviously I feel like a lot of people have been trying to get onto it and maybe have succeeded or maybe have not succeeded um yeah Ian you could do levels you could do like you know 10K followers I feel like was a thing for a while and then it's like 100k followers and you know now it's probably like a million depending on how you slice it totally um why now why why should this business be created now well it's easier it's easier than ever to create software so it's basically cheap to launch a dating

15:03app whereas it used to cost a couple million bucks yeah cheap to launch like so many distribution channels you can try to hack to get users like although that's you know they talk about retention of those users but in general I think there's like a lot more ways to try to get people to use your products um and I think like you know like probably the top in the top five topics for people between like ages 18 and like 40 is like how to find a partner so I think people are like okay like all the Legacy like wave of dating apps that have been around for the last

15:40like 10 to 20 years are feeling like increasingly like desperate and inefficient so I think people are looking for new things I think like the we want to do it completely on like offline IRL thing is cool but I don't think like 100% practical I do think there's going to continue to be like you know an in at least doing both things like looking on apps or online and then also doing a lot of the IRL stuff yeah I think that's I think that's right I think that's right so here here's like here's this is what I start with by the way when I come up

16:16with an idea it's literally this what would you add to it or or change change up about it as a married man [Music] um have you seen this I'm in okay now I can locks Club I have not so locks Club is interesting it's basically Rya or the league but for Jewish people okay so more of a high-end um more of like a high-end version like a premium version and I believe they also launched uh recently one for Asians so they're basically owned by the same company parent that's cool yeah I think that's pretty smart yeah and is it like in person online both I think it's I

17:08think it's online but they I think they must do a lot of events yeah but I think just going premium like looking at basically going through so going back to our our document it's like what's the Insight here it's like go through match.com and I IAC which is a a huge multi-billion conglomerate yeah that owns a lot of in dating apps um ic's portfolio and just create premium versions of what you see on their

17:47website so if we pull up match.com portfolio match group

17:59okay you see did you see my screen yep it's like a through z literally A through Z Asian people meet baby boomer people meet black people meet Catholic people meet divorc people meet India meet Italian people meet J people meet etc etc you get the idea oh my god do you see this veggie people meet I don't know honestly that's probably like I don't know how I feel about the name like we can talk about names I think names are pretty important but I think it's actually a pretty good idea to be honest just go through this and just build premium versions of this charge like do the do the league pricing and

18:44and C so and just cash flow don't raise money yeah I think that's the big thing now too which is like a lot of the bigger ones they obviously like went the like raise a bunch of venture money route and so they're kind of like locked into that path for the most most part so you can like start again and obviously choose a path that is more sustainable and more profitable earlier on and then you like don't even really have to get that big to actually make it a good business for yourselfa still sell it to somebody later totally and the beauty about some of these businesses is they

19:16know how much they'll pay per user uh per per you know multiple Revenue so it's like when you're ready to sell this business it's not oh my God I got to go like run this crazy process it's like no you're doing 2 million air R they pay 8X whatever I'm making this up um and you just call them up you meet them in their office in New York you get an offer you you take it and you that's it yeah and there's like always buyers I feel like because the base for the existing products is going to continue to turn out they're going to become irrelevant

19:47but like this is a perennial thing and I don't think the online or digital version of it's going to go away so I don't even feel like it's like it's it's not super like seasonal or trendy in anyway it's just like I kind of feel like it's like a little bit like you know restaurants are cool for like 2 or three years and then they're like you kind of need a new one to try and like maybe this is a little bit longer than two to three years because like to build up the network and then have the network effects it's like valuable for longer but I do feel like it's probably not

20:11that much more than like five or 10 years you know so I Like It Cool this idea I think it's a good one to me like we have a thing on the show is it a is it a sip or a spit and uh sip means good and spit means not good and it's a huge it's it's a sip this is like it's validated it's worked um I think the timing is good um the other idea okay can I can I make this idea even crazier yeah of course you don't make you're people are going to hate this one but I it's an opportunity for someone to do

20:49okay you just go through like that list that we sh showed uh on on Match.com and instead of creating a dating app which is is a bit more complex you have to create liquidity right Network effects right and you you know you target locally first it's just a bit more complex in terms of the user profiles up I'm GNA I think the idea is you create uh don't give away all my thoughts but okay good it's basically like ai ai girlfriends and boyfriends but in those niches so oh boy okay yeah I know I know I had to say it I to say it's okay it'll

21:29probably happen if it's like I mean I don't know can't you just like use a generic app and make a character but I guess it's like I guess like wanting a therapist that like fits your you know preferences similarly yeah I think uh quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help

22:09you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com let's just use locks Club as an example or or the Jewish Niche it's like if you're if if we believe that AI girlfriends and AI

22:48boyfriends are going to be a thing and we don't have to believe it like I can pull it up on Google Trends right now I believe that it is going to be an economic thing I'm not sure Me by that well I believe that people are going to use it and a lot of money is going to be made with it I don't know if it's going to be like a human Improvement right engine I I agree with you I agree and and that's why maybe you you know people listening like don't like don't work on it you know you don't have to I I wouldn't I would personally wouldn't

23:20want to work on this but I do I do think that there's a Hu huge financial opportunity yeah to go and make millions of dollars doing this do I want to do it absolutely not here's the Google Trends data for AI boyfriend and it's you know charts don't are not nicer than this what is this tool you're using Glimpse yeah I use Glimpse it's just it's like a layer on top of I'm not affiliated or anything like that it's just a layer on top of Google Trends that adds like a few more like related Trends or what are people talking about on different channels um it also just has these like

23:58topics related topics and it gets you in these like I'll just like click into you know oh what I know what character AI is but let's say I didn't I'd click into character Ai and then and then it would bring me in this rabbit hole and it just allows me to get really smart about a topic that uh I'm trying to learn about nice um and I'm always like surprised when I mean I'm not surprised but I don't think like my approach to ever making things is like look at the trends and the search and like you know like it's like that's super diligent which will definitely lead to

24:34outcomes but I think it's like it's kind of the opposite of getting inspiration from something you're observing or thinking or feeling or involved in and I think for better or worse I struggle to be inspired Enough by data that I find alone yeah well I think uh it's you know you have amazing insights like you go in the world you get these insights and I think a lot of people get these insights um wouldn't it be cool if there was a league 2.0 I'm sure a lot of people think about things like that whenever I come up with an Insight my next step is I I start writing it down like I showed

25:10on the one pager I just get all my ideas out as quick as possible and then I I you know I'll look in Trends I'll I'll look at Reddit I'll look at Social to validate my my what I what I'm trying to build here because uh the way I think about is I don't want to waste like a year of my life or of course or hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars uh building something and this this is really helpful so Point here AI boyfriend trending AI girlfriend I don't even need to to type it I know it's going to be um what are you suggesting

25:46are you suggesting it's going to be even more popular that's the tone of your I think it's gonna be as as popular all right fair enough I I actually think it might who knows let's check I think it's going to be I think it's going to be as popular what what's the discourse the discourse is that it's probably supposed to be more popular because there's this like commentary that there's a lot of men spending time on the internet um so I can't I actually don't have the paid Glimpse tool but I mean it looks pretty they're both spiking they're both spiking they're both similar they're both

26:29similar um myout out to shout out to I think it's Amanda Bradford who made the Le yes she is shout out to Mana she's awesome yeah yeah she is awesome so um point is AI girlfriends AI boyfriends for Italians Indians Jewish people huge opportunity we don't want to do it but someone could do it somebody could do it I'm sure they will'll do it yeah um and please don't shout me out when you do yeah me either um um okay so is that a wrap on the league 2.0 that's a wrap on that let's do one more idea that's it one more idea my God okay all right that was

27:16like 30 30 minute idea okay all right I'll run through a couple quickly okay so this is since we're on the AI topic this is like a really small idea okay so I don't think we need to dive into this one that much but do you know this app looks maxing that whole like looks maxing I that's not the name of the app I think it was like umax or something like that that happened for a while like covered you Max on the show okay so you definitely know it like I'm like there's probably a version you could do with AI That's like like RIS maxing or like

27:46Charisma maxing which is like the product would be that instead of like you taking a picture of yourself it would be like the AI is listening to conversations that you have which I know it's like we've been talking about that for like friend companionship apps and stuff like that but this is more like as if it was like looking at your text but it's actually listening to your conversation and then it'll like score you on all these different like dimensions of social competence basically and it'll like it'll say like are are you being awkward are like were you being charismatic like you reacted like this odd way and like I haven't

28:20figured out what are all the different metrics but basically like I feel like people want social feedback a lot but they don't always get the honest feedback and I wouldn't say this is a durable product to be honest but I do think it's like the type of product that could have a moment around this like you know Charisma or social skills awareness rating like Trifecta which I think does play well as far as like people sharing stuff like this and is would it be like something like a a pendant where you you wear it and it's listening or what are you thinking not I mean I think that's like

28:59a whole another it's not like this is not in my opinion serious enough to like Merit a hardware product that goes along with it I think it's more just like oh it's like an app maybe you can like make it background listen like for some certain conversations obviously like all privacy disclosures like that's not part of this ideation process but I think it's just like okay let's say I was even having an interview or something or I was like meeting somebody new for a date I could be like how did I perform on this date like which obviously the date is not going to tell you how you

29:31performed so I I'm a little like not sure if it's again the human Improvement scale I don't know how it would rate this idea but I do feel like it could work if you if you made it the right way so I think there are people who are interested in like experiments that they think could work for short periods of time so this would be one of those I mean maybe maybe it is helpful in the human Improvement because the alternative is nothing or the alternative is you know anonymous apps like that are very hurtful to people you know people put up you know these polls and they get sometimes

30:09really really stuff I think it's helpful like short term but I guess my comment is like I do think like social interaction is the thing that will long-term help you actually improve upon those things so it's not like you can just constantly be getting a report C card on every conversation you're having in the me like oh I'm going to like look in the mirror and get better at this thing so maybe it's like good for some social awareness I don't know if it's good for like actually putting that into action long term so yeah I do like the Insight around report cards for Riz basically that's the idea yeah um I

30:42think report cards for XYZ in general is like a huge opportunity um people people constantly want to know are they doing good are they doing bad you know we we spend the first 21 years of Our Lives if we go to university 18 years of Our Lives let's say going to school getting Rapport cards did you do good did you do bad and then yes we do have performance reviews at work and stuff like that but I think people love report cards I like to know how they're do people like report cards they like like astrology esque things they like personality test oriented things they kind of like IQ test oriented things I

31:20feel like there's probably like some like cool horizontal here that's like related to all these like it's somewhere between a game and like some tangible information yeah I like it and if you're let's say you had this Insight I know you don't go to like dat look at data and Trends but like where do you go from here from idea to actually taking it to the next level well it's probably not like I don't know my answer would be just make the thing which is not an answer that invol a lot of other like research and stuff like that or validation necessarily but I also don't think it

32:04would be that hard to make I mean obviously you need to have like some ability to like build the thing but I don't know I think that most of it is just like building the interface that you actually want people to see so like most of it is thinking through what we're talking about which is like what is a report card going to look like what are like the five or six or 10 dimensions on which I'm going to give feedback and then maybe it would be thinking about like what are the use cases so maybe you'd make it easier for someone to use this by saying oh this is

32:37for an interview this is for a date this is for like a party this is you know like give them use cases so they don't feel like this is not normal for them to use it for a particular situation and then I think you could easily then like give examples of someone using it for each of those use cases and what that report card looked like and then create a bunch of content on the basis of of all those use cases and obviously that requires a lot of iteration but then you know put it on Tik Tok put it on reals probably like however you can get it out there

33:07and if you can make these like compelling little vignettes basically I think that's probably how I would think about actually getting people to use it and then obviously you you probably want to make it a like low price one time paid app if you want to make some money off of it how low price what are you thinking top know like less than five bucks yeah I think by the way like under $5 apps and stuff like that like there's a huge I think so too it's like a game you know it's just like a game basically you have to like obviously you got to like hook people to want to use it at

33:38least for a couple times but totally yeah so that's it's not the type of thing that I generally would spend my time doing but I think there are a lot of people who are really good at this and like really enjoy doing this and would be better than me at doing this and like you said I think there's like a lot of versions of this that could be done before we end do you have a question for me do I have a question for you yeah yeah um well you tell me all the secretive stuff that you're working on right now that you don't want to tell

34:08tell anybody that you're working on why I mean that's that's the question I would ask you if we weren't recording the the podcast that's okay no that's I like that that's the perfect you know um I can answer I can answer here's how I'll answer it okay so we've been building audiences and communities in a bunch of different verticals and I practice what I preach you know I really really do I am trying to figure out how which tools can I build for these individual audiences that ideally I can get some SAS level multiple for some of these businesses and and and and just be in

34:57the work of people uh be in the daily lives of people um you know I don't love monthly recurring Revenue in the I have a whole thing on this by the way yeah I mean I mean I love multi recurring Revenue no for yourself but I don't love it like to to actually ask a user to do this exactly okay so so yeah expand on that tell tell me more I just I think this like I think the subscription fatigue thing is real like and I think that is Prim merely about monthly subscriptions I think that like I kind I think I made some tweet about this or

35:33whatever like I usually like say one sentence things about things that I'm like thinking a lot more about and then later we'll probably write something longer about or do something with but I said something like monthly subscriptions are like situation ships basically and like a lot of users that are signing up for monthly subscriptions are just like okay I want to try this thing I don't really know if I want to commit to it like either they're trying to kind of do a free trial and cancel it right away or they're like don't end up doing that and later they're like oh man I didn't mean to like actually be

36:03subscribed like it's just like really irritating I think for people and they're kind of in a limbo state so I do kind of feel like things are going to be pushing towards like either obviously free people love free but I think like one-time payments which I think you've talked about before like is like a very appealing option I think lifetime like subscriptions which basically is a onetime payment is like another way to Market that which is very appealing I think annual subscriptions are fine too like I would love to not even have a monthly option like if I were like selling something on a subscription basis I'd be like it's annual or nothing

36:42basically and I think a lot of people are going to start doing that more I think there's also this like pay what you want Trend that's been happening as well and I think it's like all from the root of the fact that monthly subscriptions are just like don't feel good to users anymore and you want people to like still be uncommitted entirely or committed entirely in some way and then obviously ideally you want them to feel like they got a lot more value than they actually paid so yeah I have this like any product that I'm pricing I would not be at all interested in doing a monthly

37:18subscription like if I could avoid it and I think that's a bit of like a an unfair Advantage is if you create a product and you just shift the business model you know people are doing subscription you're now pay what you want now there's certain businesses that of course there's monthly costs so it might not make sense for every business and that's fine but I I do think you know going back to prioritizing tools I'm kind of like what are tools that I can prioritize that I don't have to do monthly recurring because I think that they're more interesting to people so that's my is there an example of that it doesn't have

37:54to be a tool you're making but like what do you think would be a tool that would fit that business model pricing model I mean Ben Ben tosel from Ben's bites yeah he I just want to pull it up real quick so he has a AI tutorial learn AI basically community and and content course thing he could have easily charged I don't know 50 bucks a month but I'm pretty sure it's like one time payment um yeah it's $250 one time that sounds sass right it's not exactly software is it more like content or it's it's content it is content so it's not SAS yeah um I don't have a SAS one on

38:42top of my head but they do exist someone in the comment section throw some throw some some of those um but they they're out there and they're coming more and more every day yeah um selfishly I have like I want people to make a lot more interesting content like than just new podcasts like yours is at least like a new format but I feel like most people are just doing like let's try to recreate the all-in podcast or let's try to like so you've been doing a lot more live stuff or you were which is very cool I think live is actually still very underdone like in particular for growing

39:20channels like and then obviously you can start doing a lot more asynchronous content as well um but I want people like do more novel formats and that could either be like towards live and like much more unscripted which I think you're doing or it can be like more produced and like more High Fidelity to some extent which I don't think people are really touching because it requires a lot I don't know kind of like requires you to like put your heart on the sleeve a little bit more and like put your taste on the line like if you're doing something that's like more produced I feel like people feel more like they're

39:55trying and so like it feels like bad if people don't like it but like I really want somebody to do like The Daily Show but for like Tech SL culture you know like Tech meets cultur I me like the B real like spot on SNL that like they did I feel like that's like you could do a bajillion of those like if you created your own or I don't know just like I think there's like so many even like um like architectural digest like home tours you could totally take that and do it but but like where startup Founders live or like you know I don't know if

40:30investors or like Founders who are actually rich would want to like show you that they have money if they were willing to that would be cool but I just feel like there's so many different spins that like you could do with different parts of like the culture that are still very resonant and it doesn't just need to be like you know a group async podcast basically yes yeah so I think really smart growth tactic and insight which is live is pretty untapped um obviously it's tapped in some niches like gaming and stuff like that but there's whatever it is you're doing whatever it is you're working on think

41:07about exploring new novel formats live is is is really interesting um and there's kind there is like a way that you can like I was doing lives before I did a bunch of lives um where people would come on to my show and I'd be like tell me your business and let me like break it down for you and really fun and I'm G to I I I will do do that again um but my point is it it isn't easy to get started but once I started doing it like four or five times I I you know it got a lot easier so don't give up in the first

41:44time um one of the big things too which you kind of probably figured out is like I feel like people latch onto a format they think they should do and then that format probably does not fit their emotional Center or like their natural aptitude like whether it's video or audio or async or live or like short form or long form or group or individual like whatever the combinations are and like I think you need to iterate a lot more on that to find where your emotional like Center actually is yes and pro like presumably I think like live and unscripted and like a little more of that I think through observation

42:21ended up fitting you better than previous iterations of things you had been doing which you could do but I don't think probably was emotionally the right fit for you and I think people make like they don't spend enough time iterating on formats to find the thing that they're actually better at and can do more sustainably and then like I think people stay too much in the like middle of the bell curve which is like okay what are people generally doing and I think most of the time you should push to some extreme like okay everybody's doing group like aing okay I should do like live and like try to solo stream or

42:56do one on or like some interesting format or I should like go more produced higher Fidelity like less often like I think that's also good too like to try those things where like people haven't really done a lot yet couldn't agree more if you go back to old episodes of this podcast I'm in the first episode please don't because they you can see how unhappy I am you can see that I'm just trying to make it work and sometimes you have to do that yeah because because on the other side of it could be something amazing but you know the podcast it was called where it

43:34happens it was like highly produced which is like not my vibe at all yeah um you know I literally just pulled out like a Google doc and we just started like jamming like that to me was like that's fun to me um so I think asking yourself like what what would this look like if it were to be fun in terms of content creation is a really important question that people don't ask themselves enough yeah I agree I feel like for the most part should be fun you know we don't need to like go do a tear down of Paul Graham's like latest essay or whatever founder mode not that one you

44:11didn't know he put out another essay like yesterday or the day before yeah it's like when to I don't even know what it's called something like when to do what you love or something like that so yeah you know there's like some meme about it it's like the bell curve and it's like oh like do what you love on this end and do what you love on this end and in the middle it's like basically like figure out what works you know or something like that so totally I think that applies to this too you know it's not like an unheard Insight but I think it's probably like pretty

44:40consistent it's a great place to end uh thank you for spending time with us today where could people follow your thoughts on the internet they can follow me where you spend a lot of time on Twitter um and I write long form essays like on my blog or whatever you want to call it it's at working theories t h e o r Ys misspelled intentionally. comom um but I mean yeah just go to my Twitter you can like find my website and all my links and yeah my DMs are open we'll put the links in the YouTube description cool and uh thanks for having me on this was

45:20fun um I didn't get to the back half of my ideas doc so you know for another time but if anybody ends up doing like the leag 2.0 and derivatives thereof I'm sure we would be curious to know 100% um let's make that comment section on YouTube thriving thanks again for coming on and I'll see you later okay thanks for having me Greg [Music]