Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)

0:00The next idea, Shopify for X. I think Shopify's an 80 billion dollar company. And when you have an 80 billion dollar company, there's just opportunities to unbundle it. So, what is Danny, what's Danny's idea? So, she says, "There are all these no-code tools. They're either too limited or too complex. What you need is a product-specific tool. Like Shopify is no-code e-commerce. Then you would also build no-code marketplaces." This is

0:28such a good idea. This is such a good idea. Something like this needs to exist, should exist, will exist. How would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I'd build the [Music] Okay, so a few weeks ago I had Danny Grant on the podcast. And she's someone who I really respect. Sometimes you meet someone or you're listening to someone podcast or you're watching them and you you you just know that this person's got it. They've got the sauce. They know where the world is going. And she had a few ideas that she shared. But afterwards, she sent me a list of 139

1:12different startup ideas. And we never got a chance to go through them. So, I figured I'd hop on here real quick, go through some of these ideas. Some of them are kind of big venture-backed ideas. Some of them are profitable startups. And some of them will just get get your creative juices flowing. And I will tell you how I feel about these ideas, what would I do, how would I start them, and if I just think that they're plain garbage. You know, some of these ideas I might be like, "You know what? I wouldn't Maybe maybe it's a good idea, but it's one of those ideas I wouldn't do. Too much

1:46work." So, without further ado, let's go into Danny Grant's 139 ideas. Let's pick the most interesting ones or the ones that just speak to me. And let's go through this together. And let's see what we what we got. All right. So, this idea, idea number one. Is there a product doc format just for writing product specs? So, you can create Jira's inline. You

2:15can have comment threads inline, etc. This is pretty darn good idea. You know, there is Google Docs, of course. Um but there it's there's nothing specific for product specs. So, I can I can imagine a Google Docs for product specs, for PMs, that people would be willing to pay $20 a month for. So, I actually think that there's

2:39something here. I really like this idea. Uh it's not one it's not the simplest idea to do. Like you actually you have to create software. Um I don't think really anything like this exist. I mean, of course you have product templates. Um but you don't really have a whole experience dedicated to writing product specs. And how would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I'd build the MVP. Probably outsource it to an agency to get the MVP up. And I'd partner with a creator. I mean, Lenny Rachitsky would be the dream. So, Lenny Rachitsky I think at this point has the biggest podcast and newsletter for product

3:17managers. But, you know, who are the aspiring Lenny Rachitskys? So, I'd make a list. I'd go to perplexity.ai and I'd say, you know, who are the up-and-coming 20 um 20 Lenny Rachitskys? And uh And I would go and reach out to them. So, uh I think this is a good idea. Pretty straightforward software.

3:44Uh catchy catchy name. Uh you know, I wouldn't I probably wouldn't do this idea if I didn't have the buy-on buy-in from two to three or four creators. So, I would I would create the name. I'd create the mock-up first. And then I would actually go and see if I want to build it. All right. So, that's that's idea number one. Idea

4:05number two, developer portfolio sites. So, she says, "Help every developer create their own Danny Town." I assume Danny Town is her own portfolio website. So, there's a company called format.com. [Music] And what they do is they're the portfolio builder for creative professionals. Um so, basically what Danny's suggesting is build the format.com but for developers. Now, I know someone's listening to this and being like, "Well, that's GitHub. GitHub already exists." Um yes, but it's not as beautiful as a format. And I do think that there's an opportunity to build

4:42that for developers. And format's actually massive. They've got 50,000 plus people who pay to use it. And what do they pay to use it? Pricing was pulled up. They pay $11 a month annually or $24 a month uh monthly. So, this is a huge business. If you assume that um 50 you know, the average is let's say $15 a month, you know, that's huge. You know, we're talking $750,000 in monthly recurring revenue for something that, you know, doesn't cost a lot of money. And why I love websites, website builders, is once you build it,

5:22chances are you are not going to churn. So, these are beautiful businesses that don't churn very well. I think Danny's onto something with developer portfolio sites. I do think it makes sense. And you can probably take again, you can take that Lenny Rachitsky strategy, you know, creator-led. There are a bunch of developers who have a lot of followers. And I'd work with them to create something that would be really cool. So, I think the way I would actually build something like this is I would start by building one really awesome developer portfolio site. So, I would reach out to some of these developers and say, "Hey,

6:00I'm a designer. I'd really love to design you your own developer portfolio site." And uh and create something unique, interesting, um that they've hopefully never seen before. Get them super stoked about it. And once you refine that, you know, maybe you do it for a few people, then that's when you have the product. And then, you know, that's when you uh get some of these influencer developers on board. And that's when you can actually go and build out an MVP, minimum viable product, and start charging for this. So, I

6:37really love this idea. These are one of the a great cash flow ideas. I remember meeting the founder of Card, c a r r d.co, I think. He has he had a great business. They're one-page websites. He doesn't He charges very little. I think it's like nine bucks a year or something. But he had a great business.

7:00He bootstrapped it. One guy. One guy living in Tennessee, developer, and millions of people use this. It's crazy. So, website builders, I know you must be thinking like, "Oh my god, that's so 1999." But it works. It really works. And it works really well for different niches. So, really good idea on that one. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called

7:31boringmarketing.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 can help you 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 on Google. That's why I like SEO. And

8:04that's why I use boringmarketing.com. And that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with a 100% money-back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So, check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. So, the next idea she has is a blog and a newsletter in a box. So, help everyone

8:26set up their own avc.com. So, if you don't know avc.com, it's a blog/newsletter by Fred Wilson, who's a VC in New York City. He's been doing this for like at least 15, 20 years. It's super super simple. I think originally his blog was on Tumblr. Um not sure where it is today. But yeah, you know, the idea around would someone you know, does someone want a blog and a newsletter in a box? I mean, there is Substack, but it's, you know, Substack feels very newsletter first. I do think that there's probably an opportunity to

9:01build something like this. And and make it easy for for people. Like maybe there's just an maybe the idea is just like you're an agency and you work on top of all these different services and you just set it up for them. You know, you use existing services. But I'm not I'm not a big fan of like, "Okay, let's go and create the next Substack." But like make it more blog first. Cuz I think that's really hard. And you're competing against people who've raised tens, if

9:27not hundreds of millions of dollars. So, uh don't like that idea. But uh do like the idea around, you know, we work with Beehiiv, we work with Substack, we work with WordPress. Uh we charge a very small one-time fee to help you get set up for it. And you'd probably do cold outbound to to get people to to do this. This is like you know, definitely a cold outbound cold email cold DM to get people and say like, "Hey, notice that you don't have a blog set up. I notice you don't have a newsletter. You're missing out. I think you talk about use a lot of social

10:14social credibility around, you know, so-and-so Lenny Rachitsky didn't have a blog and newsletter and now he's making $5 million a year with his blog and newsletter. And he does it running on a, you know, nine, you know, a free Substack and you can do the same. So, I think you the way to do it is you do a mix of the cold cold DM and then you use your your content. Like how do you build an audience and you talk about these stories and then you you follow them to a really cheap offer, one-time offer. Why one-time over monthly for something like this? I just think that it's going to be

10:49a no-brainer for people. This is a This is a business that you might be able to start on your side. The starting costs are are quite small. So, so cheers Danny for giving us this idea. All right, let's talk about some ideas I don't really love. So, virtual workspace compete with Tandem. Which is a Tandem is a virtual Let's

11:15check Tandem real quick. So, I just checked out Tandem. I'm pretty sure Tandem was like one of those apps that you can see other teammates in like a third space. And they've like comp Seems like they they pivoted to more of like a Slack plus video conferencing. So, it's hard, you know, to build what what Danny is, you know, suggesting is quite hard. You know, a social app

11:44basically making Slack more social. First of all, you have to like build Slack. So, that's step one. And then, so you you know, step one is building all the primitives what people are used to. And then step two is like, "Okay, now I got to figure out how can I make this different and and interesting in a social experience?" So, this is This is one of those ideas where I think, you know, they call it a tarpit idea. It's an idea that seems good on paper, but like once you actually go and go into it, it's actually a bad idea because there's so much investment that

12:17you need to put into something like this. And then you have to get people off Slack. You have to get people off Microsoft Teams. So, don't love this idea at all. Other idea, whole world is a silent disco. The problems with Turntable FM is is it was too early. Turntable FM was was a was an idea where people create these like virtual rooms and you'd play music and you can like chat with other people who are in these

12:47virtual rooms. You had like your own avatar. It almost felt like a game. So, she says, "Now everyone is walking around listening to music every everywhere and someone is going to build a network DJ station where the whole world is one big silent disco." I just think this is is a cool idea. It's a really cool idea. I hope someone

13:07does something like this. I actually don't think it's that hard to do something like this. But getting people It's not hard to build the thing. Getting, you know, the whole world to get off their current platforms is hard and getting people to pay for it and dealing with the licenses of the music industry not so easy. So,

13:28cool idea, hard to execute. Okay, another technical idea, JSFiddle meets Twitter. So, JSFiddle is basically you can write code online, JavaScript, pulls in different libraries and you can run it all online. You don't need an It's an IDE or anything like that. So, it's very popular. Millions of people use it. But when you look at it, it's it's really focused just on developers to compile their code. It's not social at all and you're starting to see common denominator with a lot of Danny's ideas to be like technical and social and she ended up building something in that space, jam.dev, which is around bug track tracking that's social and hundreds of thousands

14:16of people I think use it. But there's an opportunity here to basically take JSFiddle and make it more like Twitter. So, it's half writing code and half memeing and remixing. I think that there's something here. I think developers love memes. They love remixing. So, I think the idea around compiling code and having a place where people can talk, meme and remix some of

14:42that software is very compelling. The next idea, Shopify for X. I think Shopify is an $80 billion company. And when you have an $80 billion company, there's just opportunities to unbundle it. So, what is Danny What's Danny's idea? So, she says, "Shopify for making an Airbnb style marketplace. Shopify for making a messaging app. Shopify for

15:05making an Instagram like app." There are all these no-code tools. They're either too limited or too complex. What you need is a product-specific tool. Like Shopify is no-code e-commerce. Then you would also build no-code marketplaces. No-code messaging app. No-code Instagram. This is such a good idea. This is such a good idea. You know, this idea around marketplace for no-code apps that if you listen to, you know, this idea on on this podcast or one of these ideas, you can just like, "Oh, go to the marketplace, duplicate the idea and then, you know, just pay, let's say, a monthly fee or one-time fee for a license to it." I

15:49love that. Now, I think Bubble is doing pieces of that. So, maybe you just build on top of Bubble. But something like this needs to exist, should exist, will exist. So, I think this is definitely the direction things are going. Okay, next idea, HQ Trivia for dating. Live dating show mobile HQ style. HQ Trivia, I think it was like 2018-19, literally everyone was playing it. If you don't remember it, it was this guy

16:20Steve Redd It Gawski, I think. Every single day you get a push notification and he would do live trivia and they'd give away money. And millions of people played it daily. It It was an incredible experience and it ended up uh crashing and burning in a in a large part because of It was like a crazy story actually. Like the found this the founder unfortunately died and they had growing pains, too, and it was there were drugs involved. It was just crazy. So, I don't think the The point is I don't think the reason why HQ Trivia died is because the format didn't work. And I

17:02think someone My prediction is someone's going to bring back the HQ Trivia format and apply it to a new niche. Maybe it's dating and it's going to work in 2024-25 2026. So, HQ Dating, you know, I I think that live dating like this is interesting to so many people. I love this idea. And yeah, you got to come up with a catchy name. You got to make it interesting. Like I think you start in like a Los Angeles or New York. Like it has to feel almost like a reality TV show because you have to want to, you know, get to know the characters. But I

17:36think this idea HQ Dating is a great idea. And I think like the bigger idea of HQ Trivia for X is a trend that I'm certainly paying attention attention to. And that's about it. That's about it. So, those are, you know, those are the some of the more interesting ideas on the list. I'll include the list in the in the YouTube bio. Sorry, in the

18:00YouTube description. These are a few ideas that are just really really good. Danny, like I said, Danny knows what, you know, she knows uh She's got that juice. She's got that juice. So, if you enjoyed that, like this YouTube video, comment on the YouTube video. I read every single comment and the likes actually likes and comments actually make a difference. So, I know it's crazy to say, but people don't are not able to see this video if you don't like and comment. So, I

18:31appreciate every single one of them. I'll see you in the YouTube comment section. And please subscribe for for more of these videos, for more of these startup ideas podcast. I hope you loved it. I had fun recording this. I'm going to go and open up a Figma and just start jamming on some some of these ideas. So, have a good one and I'll see you in the

18:55next one. Later. [Music]