# pov: you have $10k to build a $1M startup

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSCTqEDiv2I
Duration: 33 min
Language: English
Words: 5506
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/QSCTqEDiv2I

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[0:00] have you seen this dude Martin Reese he's the water Somalia he worked in a restaurant or like in the restaurant industry for like 20 years he's blown up on socials now so I've actually seen this guy on Tik Tok I saw him like go into a Costco like review different Waters and that just goes to show you like you can be whoever you want to be yeah that's why branding and naming is so important is you want to brand and name yourself something that people think of you and they're like oh I need a water so I need a sleep so and we're live but we're actually not live on the

[0:34] where it happens podcast are we not R rip the where it happens podcast we have a new name let's hear it the startup ideas podcast wow now I know you're thinking you're like you couldn't come up with a better name than that and that's the whole point of the name there's a million podcast out there talking interviews interviewing entrepreneurs but I noticed that we just kept talking about startup ideas on this podcast so I figured let's name it when you think of startup ideas when you think about getting your creative juices flowing you're going to come to the startup ideas podcast and uh Jordan it's great to have

[1:20] you here chatting some ideas with me today it's great to be here startup ideas podcast take a sip take a sip yeah I mean I want these these conversations to be more like jams like startup idea jams like we have the them all the time where we're kind of like hey I saw this thing on Twitter uh this huge opportunity in XYZ what do you think about that or you know just these random ideas you and I are both startup idea junkies so this podcast is for people like us and uh My Hope Is that people take these ideas and run with them that's the beauty of it one idea will trigger the

[2:01] other ideas too you know um exactly yeah there's a big Trend that I'm noticing just in Social content and across the board people's desires to just be a fly on the wall and where it happens how to that uh feel of being in a room where you're not supposed to be but being a fly on the wall for jams ideas sparking ideas I'm excited to uh see where this goes and have the conversations continue in the comments sections on YouTube and maybe success stories people starting ideas from the startup ideas podcast all right so cheers to you got I got a coffee or something a bottle of water plastic

[2:46] water Mr microplastics himself Jordan mix on the Pod I didn't want to be this guy but saratogo was all sold out because the microplastics are too trendy so I'm a microplastic man today unfortunately did you see live oasis.com live- Oasis oh what is this so I think it was s par who tweeted it um it's a directory of water so I just I pulled up the website do you know what's in your water 90% of your water contains toxins microplastics and other contaminants and then you can go and see like there's AOW on Spring Water Castle Rock Water you know you can click into it there's my

[3:32] Saratoga boom Oh know but it it'll tell you like how much you know the microplastics what are the contaminantes and how to buy it what do you think about this business yeah I I'm checking out my Saratoga spring water which I've been on recently and I'm sad that it's it's all locked behind payal content but I don't think this is the best way to monetize this business but I really like what they're doing here it's really clean clean directory and they have the tap water ratings too yeah so for $10 a month you can unlock all the data the ratings the research there's AI search search

[4:07] personalized recommendations so these are one of these like I I I I'm happy that this exists but it should be unpay walded because I just think that it's not like you're switching water that often right like you're you're a Saratoga person or you're a what is it Mountain Valley Water Spring Water person so you want to know what what your contaminants are in your in your daily water but you know you're not going to keep it for 5 years so my question to you is if you were running this how would you monetize it yeah let's jam on that so this is a Sprint to monetization but

[4:51] there's a bunch of there's a bunch of things you can do here I mean an affiliate is is one way to do it which is pretty obvious but another thing you can do is upsell a report based on your water resour like I know that the like the tap water locally um you could get a a lead magnet report and then match someone to come out and test your water at your house so I was at Costco once and these guys were like basically trying to get me to bring tap water back to them to Costco to like show me that like there was a bunch of hard medals

[5:32] and stuff in the tap water and they they basically sold a $9,000 like water softening system that they put into your house and that was an ey openening experience it was like a $300 test test report and then a $9,000 like system and I think that would be a really use this site as the top of funnel and monetize it with backend Services based B on the information that you provide what do you think about that yeah I mean the problem with water is you're not spending a lot of money on water you know if you go to the website it shows like different filters that you

[6:12] can buy that are hundreds of dollars and doing affiliate to that like that's obviously where more of the money is I actually get have you heard of a live a live water uh so alive waters.com so I get this delivered to my house in Miami and they've got a whole good stick with like it's alive water and I don't even know what that means like there's some like I honestly have no idea like I'm trying to read like what you know certain water is dead certain I don't know apparently like the alive water is good for you I don't know if I'm getting fleeced or whatever but yeah

[6:54] probably I think it's like from a spring it looks like like from living you know moving I guess exactly so that's that's the thing and you get these really cool looking jugs they kind of look like Crystal jugs do you see them yeah I'm in and they have these trucks that deliver it and there's these like guys who deliver it they look like they're from they all look like they're from Venice California they're like wearing like fedoras and and uh like ponchos and stuff like that like they're they're very like in touch with themselves they're like these good-looking guys and they come and they put you know do the water delivery

[7:39] anyways that's my life now and we spend a lot of money on it so I wonder if you can just sell the you can sell those those leads basically to Someone Like A Live Water you could also make products that I mean these got they've got these Crystal jugs but there's other form factors that you could you could make and cell as well or partner with like some artist or something and do some like collab vessels and make your water feel like art and have it be a talking piece in the home I think that's I'm big into those things right now yeah it is it is a talking piece like

[8:15] people people show up to my apartment and they're like whoa what is that like weird looking Crystal water thing oh let me tell you about alive water yeah you know so uh let me tell you why I'm an idiot for hundreds of a month on water is your water dead what do you mean your water's dead bro yeah have you seen this dude Martin's uh Martin Reese no he's the water somala no who where's this guy been my whole life I know he worked in a restaurant or like in the restaurant industry for like 20 years he's blowing up on socials now and I guess he has a

[8:58] film I'm looking at right now but he literally is a Somalia of water I didn't know that this was a thing until I saw Martin the water somier so I've actually seen this guy on Tik Tok so I think he I saw him like go into a Costco and like review different Waters I didn't know he's a water soier and that just goes to show you like you can be whoever you want to be um you so I guess the trend that you know people can take away from here is soier for X like what's something that requires some curation and expertise but that you can be that SoMo so that people

[9:40] can come to you the carbon monoxide SoMo exactly do you sleep with the your door closed in your room I'll give you sleep somea is just like a no-brainer huge idea lay up like are you kidding me I can't even believe we're giving that away for free tap tap in birdie for the Masters this week totally like if I'm eight sleep like I'm creating an Instagram Twitter account I'm hiring a Creator in house it's the Sleep SOA brought to you by a s like come on I mean is this is this pot over yeah it's it's we're done here like that idea is just too good cuz there's

[10:26] there's the all these baby sleep coaches you know like when new parents get baby sleep coaches there's no adult sleep coaches like someone that could analyze I guess there is but I don't know about them well I think it's it's just about branding yourself as that person I mean even what I'm doing with this pod it's like okay the startup ideas pod I want people to think I need creative my Creative Juice is Flowing bam I'm going to go like listen you know I'm I'm commuting for 30 minutes I'm going to go put on Greg for a bit that's why branding and naming is so important is

[10:55] you want to brand and name yourself something that people think of you when they when they have the need and they're like oh I need a water some I need to sleep some and podcasts don't really do that like they all have cute really cute names yeah well it's all like The Joe Rogan Experience Lex Friedman podcast it's very personal brand driven right um you're starting to see a few like Diary of a CEO I mean that's just like I don't I don't love that name personally put there like yeah it just seems so I I I love I I think he does an incredible job

[11:37] on his pod like incredible and he's an amazing interviewer and his sets are amazing and he's a he's a professional versus like someone like me who's an amateur um but I will say like just diary of the CEO does not connect with me at all I just very much like people trying to figure out routines and processes in the story behind diary like when I think of diary I think of like dear diary yeah I don't want to write the diary yeah I'm not dear diary like I interviewed Jordan today and he didn't laugh at my joke so yes going going back to it I think like yes having the name owning

[12:20] that expertise uh really important and thinking about like as a framework soia FR I think with going back to live Oasis I think it's on one hand I I don't like the business because when you start a business you like this you don't want to be selling $20 or $40 a month worth of product you want High ticket stuff so I don't love that but I think it could transition into more High ticket stuff like if they do more high-end subscriptions if they do more high-end water products but if I was running this here's how I would change it I think the bigger Trend in movement is around clean

[13:01] everyone talks about clean clean is our generation's version of low fat in the 80s and 90s everyone was talking about low fat low fat this low fat that that's why diet cola got so big then there was just lowfat sections within grocery stores but then we realized that turns out a lot of that stuff was not good for us aspartame not that good for us sucralose not that good not not that good for us so now we're in this conscious world where clean things are good for us and you're either clean or you're dirty if I was live Oasis I would be building the directory of clean

[13:40] that's the huge opportunity and I would never have a pay wall like build that SEO juice I love it yeah run the ACP framework on it just and just explain what the ACP framework is for people who don't know audience Community product so building a build the audience the directory of clean people can see the directory of clean and subscribe to the directory of clean and then maybe there's like a clean badge or like a clean coin um or some momentum that you get or momentto that you get and you get involved in this like community and then the products can be all the things that

[14:19] we talked about Affiliates and selling services or upselling other people's uh leads or systems so but yeah I'm frustrated at this pay wall like I checked out it and I was like immediately I'm a I churned so I'm just mad yeah totally um cool so what I what startup ideas are on your mind right now we got a couple got a couple simple ones uh around uh productivity some low hanging fruit uh Mac OS apps I'm really frustrated with notion and it's just very big and clunky and I don't enjoy opening it do you like notion i i i sigh because I'm I wish I want to like it like notion is like

[15:08] WhatsApp for me you know like I I log on to WhatsApp and I'm like I want to like this but feels like Android it's the best way to describe it and what I don't like about notion is for me it's like slow and I need fast so I use notion to write uh startup ideas I have and content ideas I have so I have this running these two running lists that are super super long and when I open it up it's just slow so and then it just like ruins my flow so I've been actually using more of Google docs Apple notes and then I use notion just because L

[15:46] checkout uses notion and I want to see everything but yeah we pay we pay thousands of dollars a month for notion like two three I don't know thousand a month it's crazy yeah I just wish I liked using it more I did use to love it and then yeah slow clunky the formatting and stuff and then I've started using Apple notes as well cuz it's so quick fast but the thing about notes is they need to be readable and digestible so you can reference them and that's my gripe with Apple notes is it takes like 20 clicks to format something so I really want there to be an Apple

[16:20] notes version that is lightweight notion like if notion and Apple notes got together and like basically created an MVP to make beautiful readable notes nothing more I would use that in a heartbeat and I think a lot of people would use that as well I think having like an AI piece to that where it just takes your notes like notion could build this where it just takes your notes and just puts it in a Zone with a lot less clutter and just like formats it but like they're probably not going to build it yeah so I think what James Clear just put out with his Adams habit app I think

[16:58] there could be this lightweight flexible app that basically just had toggles some headings and maybe even like AI for formatting too so like TR you you can kind of train the the app on how you format your notes and you could basically have these things shorthand formatted like how you do headings how you do bullets Etc I just love my notes to be really dialed and have pictures and colors and things because that makes me actually go back to read them yeah exactly I go into notion and it's just like it's like a wall of text and ites me like some anxiety so and and the

[17:36] thing about notion in a lot of these tools is that it puts the onus on the on the user to create the headlines to bold certain things and I think the future of content creation tools and productivity tools is the machine should know what you're thinking and should automatically format things like formatting will be a thing of the past it'll autof format things for you and then you you can just edit and realize oh hey you know I wanted to make this bold and it was italicized yeah it'd be beautiful that' be beautiful right I'd get fired up by that I would love opening that and I

[18:17] think that's what I'm that's how I'm judging products these days it's like do I love opening them like I love opening figma why it just fires me up it's just beautiful I see other people's Creations in there when I'm reviewing work you can the infinite the infinite canvas you can just buzz around it and yeah just it It's associated with creativity and productivity together so I just love opening figma well so it's it's bottling up that feeling so if if the go if if the what was his name the water suier guy yeah like you're bottling up this idea around this person who's like dressed in formal and who knows

[18:59] everything and you're getting this High touch experience in the same way that figma even the word figma and you think of spatial and moving around in a BL in a blank canvas and colors like it it feels like this fun creative zone so whenever you're creating a product you have to think about what feeling I want to give to people and I think that's that's a that's what you're picking up on yeah so that's that's one that's if anyone wants to do that let me know I'll beta test it for sure um uh and then another one is just my desktop's always messy and I hate

[19:34] cleaning it but I love seeing everything on like a big desktop style view it just it feels good and um so I have this little idea that someone probably could build in a weekend so do this it's called the upside down uh little little nod to stranger things but basically it's a alternative desktop that's behind the scenes that it's basically just a file folder but looks like a desktop so you can save things to the upside down but it's not your actual desktop so your performance will increase and your computer will perform better and then you can have a clean desktop but when you want to see that messy desktop you

[20:13] just go to the upside down and all your files are are everywhere would you use that I would use that I I feel like my flow is I wait until I get 12 files on my desktop and then I'm like I'm an adult I can't have 12 files on my desktop this needs to go and like I'll I'll look at it just like quickly and be like yeah I don't think I need any of these things and I just throw them all in the trash yeah um and I do this every 10 days so yes I would love I would love that and sometimes I like seeing yeah to

[20:47] your point I like kind of I like seeing everything just in one place even if it's chaos yeah um because it Sparks ideas and reminds me of certain things and then you can flip it back yeah with a background too that doesn't look like a file folder like it's got a beautiful picture you could even have multiple upside Downs you can have your personal upside down work upside you know uh but they're basically just folders but it just feels psychologically different than searching things in a folder I like this idea it reminds me a little bit of the Clack app basically what the Clack app is is it's a Mac app that

[21:27] turns your keyboard into like High Fidelity sounds like a mechanical keyboard so it turns your regular keyboard into a mechanical keyboard um just with software so and you can like change the volume and change the switches and how it sounds and everything which is really cool and it's like $5 I bought it Nob brainer it like breaks half the time which sucks um but I imagine like they even with like a half working app it still probably generates hundreds of thousands of dollars a year of Revenue and uh I think we're going to see a lot more of these simple mac apps yes I was just thinking I don't know if it's

[22:15] economically makes that much sense but it would be so cool if these were rolled into like a holding company or like an app Sumo type marketplace where you could get the Clack you could get screenshot X which I use for screenshot I just saw this girl like basically made like a loom kind of screen recording competitor that looks beautiful I forget the name of it um I'll have to I'll have to find it we can put it in the show notes for people I think it was like screen ify um I would love to plug her because she's just an incredible maker but um like rolling these things into

[22:51] like helping them get discovered helping them monetize selling them as a bundle I I just love these like beautifully done productivity apps that make work life so much better totally yeah there's definitely a hold Co opportunity there and you know if you can buy some of these smaller apps like clack put them under um maybe give them some Capital to make it work better and add more Engineers a lot of these people are just Solo solo people so yeah I think there's a huge opportunity there and like the way to do it is you scour you scour product hunt and you don't scour today's product hunt but you scour like six 12

[23:34] 18 months ago and certain things lose Steam and then you reach out and you see if you can make a deal yeah that's good I think that would that' be really cool that would be cool that would be cool um what else you got for me what else we got um swag up for premium blanks like basically I've been trying to do for my little brand do within make a couple sample hats and I'm just frustrated with the whole process of making a hat that is not just a print on demand or embroidery on demand type of thing but I also don't want to start a hat company and like don't want to be

[24:18] in like a direct consumer merch situation and we think about this a lot with late checkout too and how can we have highquality products that we can give our customers team members you know future partners and I think there's a big opportunity for a brand in a box for gear that feels really cut and sew high quality but isn't a print on demand type you know churn and Burn System so I think you layer on 3pl like in fulfillment on the back end of that warehousing Etc and you could basically build like a Marketplace if you have the um the suppliers and the production you could facilitate these like brand in a

[25:03] box experiences for companies that are not traditionally doing things like IRL or with physical products so I saw notion a couple weeks ago launch these like really beautiful chore jackets and it just had the like the little notion icon and I don't like using notion but I would wear the mess out of that thing it was so cool and the photo shoot was amazing and I I think there's just these internet-based businesses are going to want to close the loop on IRL and have provide real life experiences real life gear tangible things and it's not easy to do that right now it's dealing with factories dealing with Logistics all of

[25:45] the things so I think there's a big opportunity to make like a gear brand in a box for internet native companies and highend highend right so I think one of the cut and so yeah one of the insights there is that most tech companies and a lot of companies now just have swag but it's the same Gilden t-shirt or whatever hat and you're trying to stand out you know so how do you even if the cost is 2x or 3x like happy to pay that if it's 3x word of mouth or 4X or 5x Word of Mouth like I'd rather produce less but have higher word of mouth so I'll tell

[26:27] you story I don't think I've ever told you this so in 201 178 uh with Islands which was like a Discord startup I was running and it was like a Discord that became popular on college campuses we wanted to get College we wanted to grow more on college campuses so what did we do we hired you know an amazing fashion designer her name is Melissa gross she's done she's designed stuff for like the weekend and did stuff with Justin Bieber and like OVO like all like cool stuff and she had she had a factory in Downtown LA through her company gross garments and we produce like really cool

[27:09] hoodies really cool creu sweatshirts and just like everything like beautifully done and then we did a photo shoot in LA with like aspirational college models basically um guys and girls who like if you were in college at the time you would look up to them and what we did is we created a shop if I store and on islands's website and it would be $100 $150 for a sweatshirt $80 for a hat $70 for a T-shirt and it all said sold out so we use that to give to people on college campuses because they wanted it so badly because it's sold out and then all of a sudden like the word of mouth

[27:49] train begins so that was like a really really easy way for us to create a lot of word of mouth on a bunch of college campuses as a company um by not spending a lot of money really so smart word of mouth Arbitrage word about Arbitrage what you're saying is basically that in a box yeah yeah yeah to the tune of like aund yeah it's like if I want 100 custom hats I can get them and it's like yeah I'm paying double the price or maybe triple but it's a loss leader for what you're actually trying to do you're not trying to profit off of these things like I

[28:27] think hats are Billboards like I'm rep repping the Masters right now for free you know pay me up Masters um but yeah like I think the movement and the the word of mouth Arbitrage that's the ticket right there um so just making that really easy to do and if it goes well then maybe it does become like a e d Toc Ecommerce Tycoon um but the master the Master's hat is an interesting example because where did you get that hat at the Masters exactly so and how do you is it correct me if I'm wrong it's not easy to get a ticket to the Masters no my

[29:04] brother-in-law won a lottery so what you're saying is you either need to be extremely connected have a lot of money or win a lottery to get access to buy that hat and people who see that hat know that like people who know the Masters know that yeah so that's another way to think about merch is is it's almost like a check you you you know you've been here right like you you've done this thing so it's like for notion for example like if you you know write 100,000 words or whatever it is you you get the notion hat or something like that so that's another way to think about like it's not

[29:48] just about giving out merch it's like how do you layer on yeah levels and gamification and that's where this whole like you know Community B based approach I think is is to it is you create these layers and you create you don't just create one merch item you create eight merch items and you don't just create one level you create eight levels yeah and make it aspirational like the play button for YouTube you know like people drive for the play button on YouTube like they're like that's their main goal uh I love that totally I mean literally 36 minutes ago I got an email just pulled it up I just got a invited to

[30:22] join the top voice program on LinkedIn wow congrats top boly screens shot what a legend call my mom gotta call my mom yeah but like little things like that thank you uh to God for uh the top voice badge um but yeah things like that right like doesn't cost them anything LinkedIn anything to create to create that bad but a lot of people want it and I got that email I was like cool like great great start to on Monday let's let's let's rip yeah let me post more on LinkedIn yeah even if it's subconsciously right and the same thing with your hat it's like oh yeah I'll

[31:08] watch I'll watch the Masters it's like of course I'll watch the Masters I have the Hat yeah I might take a nap during it you know Jim n's smooth voice in the background too good too good all right man this has been fun inaugural episode the startup ideas podcast if you're listening to this you got to share the podcast this is you know if you're an idea junkie it's time to share the podcast post it on Twitter subscribe on YouTube comment on YouTube I literally read every single comment and I reply to a bunch of them uh so you'll see me there uh review the podcast on

[31:50] Spotify and apple and I know you're probably like zoning out of this because so many people say this but it does matter a lot um and uh welcome to the journey and I want to thank Jordan for for coming on thanks buddy pleasure who comment who should be on the next episodes true yeah yeah I want to bring on who who you want me to bring on and who you think are interesting and if you like Jordan he can come on again too he works at late checkout operating partner and uh so he works with me across the portfolio um and and you can follow him

[32:30] on TW on X uh jordanmx jrdn miix we'll see you there see you there later peace

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