The Co-Founder Of A $75M+ Company Gave Me His BEST Business Ideas

0:00I believe that curation is like a superpower in today's internet for most people creating content is actually not the best service that they can provide to society it is curating the best ideas from the top 1% creators there are certain creators who I really respect and follow like for example I read everything that Ben Thompson writes I read everything that Matt LaVine writes as interesting to me what I'm listening to is the thought I have in my head of like what is going into their body what is informing their views what are the interesting things they're reading and consuming such that they're outputting these ideas and so like this is like a

0:35bigger swing that's like an idea I haven't seen but I would love a world where basically curation as a service becomes a thing Alex liberman co-founder morning Brew lover of ideas lover of business ideas so you're in the right place welcome to the show thanks I am quite the the Hopeless Romantic around business ideas but I'm excited to be jamming with another hopeless romantic about business ideas yes so one of your ideas really got me thinking Sports Illustrated I had heard that name in a while tell me tell me your Sports Illustrated idea yeah so Sports Illustrated has um unfortunately like a a checkered recent history um Sports

1:19Illustrated I believe is owned by I always get it wrong because there's so many companies involved in this but there's basically Arena group and there's authentic Brands and authentic Brands I believe owned Sports Illustrated and they had given the license to Arena group for some period of time to use the Sports Illustrated name and and build the company and long story short things broke down and Sports illustrated's in entire staff was laid off so the entire staff of sports illustrator was laid off so which to me tells me there's now this entire repository of content created over the years from Sports Illustrated there's a [ __ ] ton of emails of people

2:05who clearly have opted into caring about sports and sports information and so you know I am sure right now that the owners of Sports Illustrated authentic are probably shopping Sports Illustrated shopping the license to the highest bidder but I think it's going to take a very specific type of company to kind of revive the brand cuz like to me Sports Illustrated peaked in the 9s maybe the 2000s and it's kind of lost relevancy in the internet age and I just think there's such a massive opportunity to build like the great daily Sports newsletter right like this was something that Kendall Baker had um first with sports internet

2:47then he sold to axios he had axio sports for a while he just left and he's running Yahoo sports's newsletter but I don't think there's like the goto daily Sports newsletter and I think to have a head start with sports illustrated's list whether or not I would even have to use the brand like it's actually kind of irrelevant to me like if I could just get the list by the list even if it's not tied to the Sports Illustrated name and I don't have to pay a ton for the license I think there's just a great morning Brew for sports that can be built especially if you have a head

3:21start with a massive Corpus of emails for people who care about following Sports on a daily basis so I'm surprised you said that so I'm surprised that you you just buy the list like you're open to buying the list why I don't know to me you seem like a a brand guy and I could see I could see how you would be kind of like a hopeless romantic also for Brands and I could I could have the conversation could have gone like this could have been like you know I remember when I was 12 years old and I used to be you know I was in my childhood bedroom

3:57yeah and I'd be reading Sports Illustrated and I had such a connection with the brand and it was you know the beacon of the beacon of sports and I I'm missing that feeling and the brands diluted yeah it's it's funny uh now you're now you're having my brain go about how for the longest time I wanted to bring back dunkaroos uh because dunkaroos were not for a long time the product wasn't being created and if you wanted to buy dunar I remember this in college um my mom literally had to order boxes of dun from Canada because it was the only place in the world that you

4:32could buy dunkaroo from and I had massive boxes in my ding room and I always thought about what if I bought dunar and just brought back the brand look I think that there is absolutely value 100% there's a ton of brand Equity to the Sports Illustrated name I'm also just I guess trying to be realistic about what you probably have to pay for the license for that brand like I would assume it's a non uh nominal amount of money so if money wasn't a factor of course I'd love to have something that is like the daily newsletter from Sports Illustrated because you can kind of draft off the brand Equity but I guess

5:08let's just assume I had to pay Seven figures for an annual license for the Sports Illustrated name to be able to use their list or let's say I could spend $50,000 to buy their emails I feel way better about being able to build uh convince an email list of qualified Sports Junkies about the quality of a product I put out by hiring a badass newsletter writer than I do about having to in a year basically from scratch build a business that's doing at least seven figures just to cover the cost of the license so I in theory I I like it I just feel like it

5:47would cost a lot more to have to license it out but I could be wrong because I haven't done a licensing deal before so if I were to if I were to do that deal if I what I would do would be I would come up with a pitch called Sports really ill sportsillustrated.com and I would knowing that there's so much turmoil in this asset I would contact someone on authentic Brands I would cold DM them get a meeting and I would say yeah I'll pay you x amount of dollars for this license for this newsletter and it's it's the concept is it's kind of like what pom's doing with Bay Area

6:29times like the visual newsletter it's a it's a visual newsletter for sports junkies I I like that by the way where I see another opportunity here is I think a lot of people in like old media don't understand the kind of the value of attaching a media brand to um a non-media company to provide top of funnel for it so like I'd also if I wanted like a quick way to monetize this I'd hit up someone I would hit up companies that I think would benefit a ton from the Sports Illustrated list and their top of funnel whether it's a sports betting company whether it's a

7:07sports memorabilia company Etc I'd get them interested and then I would try to help broker the deal between basically what happened between HubSpot and the hustle uh or you know bar stool and Pen what does that look like in the context of Sports Illustrated and how can I broker this in a way where like maybe authentic isn't thinking about positioning the brand in this way what do you think's going through authentic Authentics mine right now cuz for folks who don't know like authentic Brands is is huge I just checked their revenue they do 21 billion a year Revenue I didn't realize this but they own Reebok

7:41they own Forever 21 they massive they're massive so it's a conglomerate um and they're probably looking at this and this just being like this is a thorn in side that's what I was goingon to say I think they're just like this is I think this is the equivalent of a VC who invests in a business that uh at some point you realize the business is not going to be their fund returner and they're like [ __ ] now I need to sit attend their board meetings do all these things and it's never going to be the thing that's actually worth my time I think that is probably how

8:14they're looking at it which actually to that point means there could be an opportunity just like to to be a headache remover for them and going back to you know acquiring newsletters you obviously have a lot of experience in this space how do you go about you know thinking about framework for what's the right price for a newsletter yeah by the way one just thing I would say here is like this I'm using the example of Sports Illustrated but but there's a similar kind of approach I would take with other companies and the approach here is like I always talk about this idea of the Hub and spoke model of just

8:48like latching onto hubs that already have access to built-in distribution so you don't have to start from day one right that's what you would do with latching onto Sports Illustrated email list but I think there are so many companies that don't re still it's crazy to me but still don't realize the value of email and even if they do realize the value of email they they have not taken the step of putting a ton of work into making email a true destination product and monetizing it effectively so I'll just use an example for you like um epic gardening have you heard of Epic gardening of course okay so I was

9:23talking to Kevin from epic gardening and epic like they yeah explain explain what it is explain what is yeah yeah so epic gardening is basically like the go-to YouTube channel for green thumbs for people who are into gardening and learning everything about uh the process of gardening techniques products right like the what's really interesting about epic gardening's business is I I don't know if their numbers are public so I'm not going to say them but basically it's a you know uh multi-million dooll business that does monetize through advertising and the way they monetize through ads is the Epic Garden website uh the Youtube channel um and

10:05but so like it's all through like they have sponsored content uh through the media asset but actually the way they make the majority of their money is through product sales Uh Kevin and epic gardening bought a seed company that they sell through their channels and so they do both direct to Consumer but they also sell their Seeds Wholesale and that was part of kind of like the thesis that churnin who's invested in a lot of these right like kind of Niche passion area media companies goes into the deal with which is like you have a passionate audience how do we build kind of like this content to Commerce model so anyway

10:38that's epic gardening their YouTube channel has um three million subscribers I believe and there by the way there's another kind of like side lesson we can or side quest we can go down of Kevin just launched a new YouTube channel and it is super uh on notal like super low edit him just talking to camera and it's grown to 15,000 followers in a few weeks and so it's interesting to see why like that is doing well but anyway epic gardening has 3 million subscribers and from talking to Kevin they have an email newsletter but I would say because they have a lot of other things going on um

11:12because email Isn't their expertise there's a ton of untapped potential in having a great daily or three times a week newsletter for the modern Gardener and I would love to explore a deal maybe epic is not the right brand to do it with because they've gone kind of the Venture route but what would it look like to re relaunch their newsletter as a daily newsletter for gardeners hire a great writer use the organic distribution strategies we use to grow morning Bruce they have three million YouTube subscribers like you should be able to get that list to 500,000 subscribers quickly and what would it look like to do a revenue share deal

11:50where I we basically are the ones driving the newsletter and we make money through some rev share that we drive on all ads or Commerce that comes from the newsletter like why aren't you doing this you know this sounds this is this to me this sounds like such a no-brainer it's like you're what you're talking about is morning Brew for X but partnering with a Creator and doing rev share um you know you did such hard work to as you know like the struggles of going zero to one and and it's like with the Creator in mind like this you it's easier the hard part is the Fulfillment

12:26which is how do you write the content how but like you know that like you know and and to me that's actually like that's that is where I could bring Advantage because I would say like it there was so much like Blood Sweat and Tears to figure out what makes a great newsletter writer what great makes a great newsletter in the early days but it's like you know I kind of understand the process now yeah so it's I think that's another interesting path as well say less say less my guy all right um we'll uh we'll table that one for bit authentic Brands let's see what happens there Canadian company

13:03so I have some I'm connection you know some connection there but I think I think someone is going to buy this and uh someone is going to do really well and and let's just end it with there's going to be a bunch of these opportunities um I've talked about on the show BuzzFeed is kind of a similar opportunity I'm curious before we end on this note what other similar type of companies have you seen where there's an opportunity to to get involved to be honest with you like it sounds bad but I think any Legacy Media brand that stands for something uh that is cutting head

13:41counter staff at bare minimum and closing their doors at maximum is an opportunity for this because I still have yet to meet a Legacy Media company that truly thinks about their newsletter as a destination because it was always an afterthought to driving site content or driving social views so like if it's actually like to me the exception to the rule would be some old school media company that's great with newsletter but I can't think of an example so whether it's rolling stone or uh you know what's the the name of the uh newspaper like Good Housekeeping or like like I think like actually Niche Legacy Brands could be as if not more

14:18interesting as like Creator Brands today because I think creators actually are like kind of more with it and understand the value of email I think Legacy Brands like actually still don't understand the value of email but they're just looking to get anything for their business right now because they're struggling so much and and I ALS and you know just to say I think there's a few reasons that like it's an interesting time to pick up undervalued Assets in media I think one is you have a number of and this has been happening for the last few years but still happening another a number of venture back media companies that were

14:53great businesses if they weren't venture-backed and are horrible businesses if they are venture-backed and I I think we've seen some of those already either have down rounds layoff staff shutdown Etc and I think you'll see more of those but then I think you're just also at an interesting time in kind of what I would call like traditional or mainstream media where there's less trust than ever before in mainstream monolithic uh media Brands uh the advertising market for the last year and a half has been absolute dog [ __ ] uh the to run one of these businesses they're so cost intensive they they run these businesses so fat and so I think

15:29you're just going to kind of continue to see this wave of businesses either cutting staff or closing doors altogether so basically put a Google alert for you know different media companies and layoffs and 100% And you know reach out to these people you'd be surprised like people are going to listen to this and be like no they're you easy for them to say you know they he started morning Brew of course they're going to open their email but like I don't know 15 years ago when I or 10 years ago when no one knew my name at all either and I would reach out to people and I would be surprised it's a

16:06numbers game yeah and by the way what I would say is like okay maybe for me it's going to a business and it's rejuvenating rejuvenating their email newsletter and doing a REV share on it by the way the way I think about this model is like it's basically the digital version of sushi BYU do you know do you know Sushi BYU's model no oh Su it's the most genius model so Sushi B that we have one there's a few in New York City uh it's it's like a high-end Omas chain um we have a few in New York City uh my wife and I live in Hoboken they just

16:40open one in Hoboken and their model is genius every Sushi B Bo is in a hotel and they go to a hotel and they say hey Hotel let's say your lobby is 3,000 F feet see the see those 250t in the corner of your lobby that right now has a chair and maybe a chest table let us let us build a sushi bar right there and what we're going to do is you're not going to charge us rent on it because you'd be doing nothing with that space as it is we're going to open the sushi bar we're going to mark it because we already have locations all over the

17:12country and we're going to do a REV share you're going to keep 20% of all revenue that we generate for the sushi bar we keep 80% and if it doesn't work out we leave your hotel and you have the unused Lobby that you had before if it does work out you've just automatically opened up a revenue stream you never had with your business and forget about the revenue stream it the cache that it adds exactly you have like an OM in your exact in your hotel I'm sure part of their pitch is yeah like look at what happens to your hotel prices when we put this in exactly so I think damn that's

17:44really good yeah that's really good and it's also just a reminder that you you know you you don't necessarily need to get inspiration from Twitter or podcast like the real world oh to yeah I like I mean this is talked about ad nauseum but I like I just just generally think the best inspiration is drawn not from the industry that you're in or the bubble that you're in it's like just literally pattern matching from another industry where something has worked and that was the thing I was going to say is like okay sure for Me Maybe I I have an unfair advantage to approach a business

18:13and relaunch their newsletter and open up a new Revenue stream for them but like that doesn't have to be the thing uh you know your thing is community you could go to a business and do the same thing of like let me assemble a community around your hardcore fans and we'll do rev share there it's like what is your core competency that can open up a new Revenue stream for a hurting business and approach them with an already existing plan what the Rev share is and I guaranteeing you they'll listen because they are desperate to listen yeah and basically everyone is hurting like if you're unless you're like an

18:47unless you're open AI you're you're looking for new Revenue sources y um so people are pretty uh open to these opportunities right now so and I don't know how you know interest rates might go down lower cheap money might come you know this might not be forever so I would suggest like Now's the Time totally um I want to move on to your Weight Watchers idea they're actually a a past client of our Innovation agency so uh there's only so much I could say but um yeah I'll I'll do the talking here and you can just react so I was just in Florida uh with my grandparents

19:29and they have done Weight Watchers for the last like 5 years and I asked them why do they do it by the way explain Weight Watchers because Americans know what Weight Watchers is but actually the vast majority of non-americans don't know what it is and explain why it's genius totally and and by the way you you may be able to fill in the gaps here because I just know it's secondhand for my grandparents I've never done Weight Watchers myself so my understanding is Weight Watchers is a dieting program that involves a combination of like uh an actual like program and system and the way the Sy the the Weight Watcher

20:08system is basically that if you want to lose weight you have a certain amount of points of food a day and basically every food has a different point value associated with it so I can't remember what my grandparents are but let's just say it's like they could have 30 points a day you know when you're thinking about having food you look up on the weight watch site how many points that food is associated with and you know that you will lose weight if you hit your 30 point total uh intake per day and so there's this system that you have to follow that um if you're part of

20:41Weight Watchers on top of that there are weekly meetings so my grandma and grandpa attend a weekly meeting every Saturday morning where they go they weigh in so they they see how they are tracking on their weight relative to the last meeting but it's everyone else in their area that's part of Weight Watchers and it almost feels like the way they described it is like AA where the group is congregated and talking about what is working for them what is not and any new recipes or Foods they have that they recommend to the group because there's like a low point value but like it's a really hearty or tasty

21:14meal did I did I hit generally what it is or is there anything I'm missing there's all so yes you're you're you you nailed it except for one little thing that has sent the stock up like 100% this year or last year this the investment in like the company the the weight loss drugs yes so know yeah basically OIC and the like have obviously taken the World by storm Weight Watchers is a community- based program that works like the system works like people go to these meetings they follow the system and there's some amazing results some people don't want to put in the work your grandparents

21:53want to put in the work some people don't and especially the younger generation so they actually uh invested in I think it's a gp1 drug and uh so it's kind of like hey do you want to lose weight this way do you want to lose that weight weight that way so they're giving more options to folks to lose weight yep and specifically the company was sequence yes that they bought I think it was in March of last year and basically my understanding is it's a tella health obesity treatment platform and so it's basically if you're exploring weight loss via one of these drugs whether it's OIC or wovi it's a

22:33platform where you talk to an expert and then you end up getting uh basically recommended or prescribed one of these drugs exactly yeah and and just to go to the idea for a second basically there's just like a few interesting trends that I think line up to to have an interesting business for 20 to 30 something who are looking to lose weight the first is like I think weight loss has been important for a long time to people um in kind of the Modern Age where like Health has been emphasized but I feel like we we are in kind of like a hyperdrive period around body and

23:09health optimization and I think like you're seeing interesting things pop up like what you know Brian Johnson AK Zer is doing with uh I think blueprint is the name of it right where like Brian Johnson is literally created this blueprint for trying to extend his age and never die and I think that is going to resonate with people I think it's especially going to resonate with like startup like kind of like super early adopter uh folks who are like kind of in a good way extremists about going all out on a certain goal of longevity and health but I think for the average person like the average Millennial like

23:46that's going to feel too intense it's going to feel too intense to think about the idea of doing a blood transfusion in order to save a few years of your life and so and at the same time right like this post covid age I think has just created this constant reminder of the importance of community community and the importance of like iners Gathering it's like why I'm sitting in morning Brew's office right now is like I realized how much much I miss that and so I think you know it's a definitely a good thing for Greg Eisenberg like there's never been more emphasis or value placed on community and so I think

24:21this idea of like Community accountability and like emphasis on a health program that helps you lose weight and I think especially at a time where like OIC and wovi are be being talked about but I think for every like story about it there's going to be like a negative story about how this is like not a sustainable way to be healthy and it's not it's not for everyone I think this kind of model of diet program with accountability group I haven't seen it exist for our age like there's some like new modalities like I think n has been very successful but like I tried n it

24:58wasn't successful for me I I think pure accountability or group accountability with di program can be really interesting so I agree with you I agree with you but I want to say a few things so one is what's interesting is if you look at the Google Trends data like the search search interest data over the last 11 years for weight loss it's actually gone down so interesting so interesting and why do you think that is and spoil spoiler alert it's not cuz everyone's fit now you know it's not like people are magically way more fit in 2024 than they were in 2013 I think that when I think

25:40about okay so I think this idea could work if you Rebrand weight loss to this generation um I think the reason why people are not searching weight loss anymore is because weight loss to me feels like a term that was very popular in the 80s and 90s it's like when Diet Coke was everywhere and like the diet phenomenon you know aspartame got really popular so I think people a lot of people tried to diet and realize dieting is just difficult you know it's a lot of work you have to put in your work and let's be real people don't want to put in the work that's why they're taking a

26:20drug literally a drug to to lose weight to shortcut and if I was trying to create something in this space what I would do is I would brand it as like the drugs are bad for you.com yeah yeah yeah you counterposition it against drugs yeah exactly and I would make it a challenge like join the challenge a free challenge that people can join kind of like um I really like uh small bets. Co have you seen that no it's like if you go to their website interested in entrepreneurship forget about starting a company try making $1,000 with a small project first so it's basically a bunch

27:02it's like events plus Community around people who are this is cool yeah trying to try new things and just the idea like the brand around small bets is really interesting I would do a challenge basically my point is I would do a challenge email based maybe text based even yeah yeah it's it's almost kind of like it's like a modern version of or like there's aspects of it that remind me of like orange theory like I don't know you know the orange theory model but like basically called hundreds of Orange Theory locations around the US every day Orange Theory has the same workout in every single studio so every

27:38Studio on that day has everyone doing the same workout and they're basically leaderboards of and and when you go to Orange Theory they have like their proprietary scores which are like kind of like how long you're in the orange Zone how many like Splat points you earned and every day there's a leaderboard for the people who earn the most Splat points points or we're in the orange Zone the longest and so I can imagine a world in in which like kind of there's the same challenges that exist across all groups within this program and there's both short-term goals and long-term goals or challenges that people are competing against and there's

28:13fun and interesting prizes around it yeah and I think what's so brilliant about that Splat points I never heard heard about that is like you can only get your Splat points in one place you know exactly it's a it's a when you own these terms it's a mo that is very very defensible yeah and by the way one thing I'll also to say here is beyond just like the let's call it like the modern day Weight Watchers I think there's like a broader thing that's interesting which is seeing more and more businesses this is more of a trend that are like capitalizing on the idea of peer groups

28:46I don't know exactly where like the most interesting opportunity is yet but like I think you have everything from like peer groups on the fringes to like peer groups that are more mainstream so like what I consider to be like Fringe peer groups is like men's groups like men's groups feel very much still like they're this thing that exists for like you know super liberal people living in Brooklyn or like uh startup Founders for a group of 8 to 10 men to talk about to have vulnerable conversations with each other but I it still doesn't feel like it has gotten to mass Market um with then you

29:19have like peer groups in the form of um AA which has been around for ever and I think honestly AA is just a model for anyone who is interested in community building and group dynamics like should just read the big book and study a aa's history but I think there's an interesting model of what does AA look like for Tech addiction I would join that because I'm so addicted to my technology but then you have like more mainstream applications that are popping up like I don't know if you saw the founders of Soul cycle just launched a peer Group business where like they were basically like what would Soul cycle

29:55look like if we launched the Business Without The Bicycle that was like their whole thing we launch the business without the B bicycle and it's like basically it's a a space it's a they do virtual and iners in person they launched a studio in New York City where a group of strangers come in and they have deep meaningful conversations that almost acts as like their spiritual Rejuvenation or workout on a weekly basis I don't know what the right entry point is here but to me there's a reason that all this is happening do you remember the name of the Soul cycle experience peoplehood peoplehood so I

30:29was a part of I think the first or second or one of the first peoplehood inperson meetups in 2019 are you serious yeah um so I was invited and it's really interesting because they basically I forget the name of the author but they they they worked with some well-known author in the space who has a system for uh having good relation reltionship with people Y and so they basically in in a way they license this system and they're product they productized it via peerto peer group and Via an app and it's brilliant and it's a similar it's the similar concept to like the weight you know the

31:16Weight Watchers point system or the orange the like it's always start with the system build you know actually what is it let's break it down it's category of one how do you build a category of one it's how do you build a system that is super scalable yep and what else am I missing uh well and to me it's like I mean this is the obvious one but like how do you hit on like a um an acute need that it's that's most needed right now yeah um and and that's where I'll say like I both understand it but I also think it's a hard business so like what

31:50people is doing to me is capitalizing on this you know kind of like all of this narrative around loneliness right like you see all these studies around loneliness in society and I do believe it but I also think it's way harder to build a great business off of that because it's always less tangible it feels more ephemeral you want to join a dieting program you very clearly know if you're losing 10 pounds and other people very clearly know if you're losing 10 pounds whether you feel less lonely or not it feels like a squishier problem to solve for someone yeah unless unless it's improving you know I think they

32:25call it relation Rel ship Fitness or so it's improving a relationship so unless you're going with you know your your partner totally and that's like to me that's um that's why I always wonder like even as I was talking about like the AA for Tech addiction and by the way the reason I have that idea is because I think for me to be less addicted to my technology I need accountability built in because when I've tried different apps I just don't follow the rules and I stay addicted but I will say the reason I think even that business is harder to build is because while I really want to change that

32:59behavior it doesn't feel like the same level of desperation to someone who is in you know the throws of addiction and it's ruining every aspect of their life yeah I agree I mean maybe there's an opportunity to go to AA and just be like hey like you know cell phone addiction is the new so they La so they launched their their own group that's uh ITA it's internet and Technology uh addicts anonymous and I attended a and how was it it was fascinating um Were You live streaming it I didn't live stream it no but it was on Zoom it was virtual um are you serious

33:38yeah I know pretty antithetical right um I will say that that makes you realize how that makes no sense right that's like having a Weight Watchers meeting at like at a McDonald's yeah it's so true um yeah take it up with AA um but yeah I think it was uh really interesting for a few reasons I think one of the values of AA and just these groups in general is it makes you feel uh less isolated like I always thought I was really addicted to my phone but then when you hear some of these people share their stories about how they say for the last decade

34:16once a week they pull an all nighter because they are on their phone literally through 24 hours straight and it's gotten to the point of suicidal ideation you're like holy [ __ ] like there there's another level of this I think the other interesting thing is I had a certain image in my head of who is the person that's addicted to their technology and while let's say there are 20 people in this meeting while say five of the people in the meeting lined up with my vision 15 of them did not at all like I can't tell you how many middle-aged moms who are addicted to

34:47playing Candy Crush on their home uh on their phone when they're at home for hours a day were in this meeting as well and so I think it that for me actually there wasn't so much like programming or educ in it there was this feeling of uh you're not alone and it sounds so obvious but when you experience that feeling it it really is kind of infectious to want to keep experiencing it I it like I I I just love it amazing yeah yeah all right let's uh let's move to a new idea uh okay G2 personality driven G2 what do you mean by that okay

35:23so you know G2 is like the software review site yeah which is really big it's huge it's huge um it's huge yet in some way I've never gone to G2 to make software choices yeah and why do you think that's the cas no and I and I buy tons of software yeah I'm Conant buying I bought software today and like isn't that crazy isn't that crazy though yeah so I I mean I think the reason is one is like the the business model is inherently broken like because it thrives off of like sponsored post and sponsored list listings there's just this inherent question about the authenticity of the recommendations and

36:02I think this is like a question that kind of like any uh sponsored content driven site goes through I also think G2 is for a certain demographic that really isn't like in my mind focused on cult like the like new age businesses or Venture back Founders or internet companies like it feels like it's more focused on older School larger corporations I could be wrong but I'm just going off with the fact of none of my friends have ever used G2 and so I think there is an interesting way to help Founders and Executives make smarter decisions around their software in a more scalable way than Greg texting

36:42one of his friends to ask them what hey what do you use for video editing because that friend could be the right person to give you the recommendation but they also may not be the right person to give you the recommendation so pin that idea for a second have you heard of a a business called kit. Co no I have not oh yes so go to I've been here but I haven't used it yeah okay so kit. Co is a place where content creators can share their gear stack so for example right now I'm on Marquez brownley you know one of the big YouTubers MKBHD his setup so I'm on his page right

37:19now it's kit. cmk MKBHD myy uh setup and it shows me exactly what his setup is so I see he has a Yamaha studio monitor or Herman Miller EMB body chair very fancy Marquez uh next desk airpro seiser headphones Etc basically my view is combine kit. Co and G2 what if there was a place where Entre entrepreneurs and Executives cre can create their software stack where they list out all of the tools they use to run their business or their part of their business they can review the tool they can provide some notes so there's Nuance so people can understand like is this right for me in the context of my

38:02business and you can actually do Revenue shares with the people that create their Stacks so all of a sudden you as a platform you can set up affiliate deals with say the 250 most commonly um referenced software uh companies on the platform by your creators and you get Affiliates when anyone signs up through your platform and that affiliate is shared with all of the creators who have list did their stack so there's an incentive for them to have a stack and continue updating their stack I'm just looking at this like this seems like a no-brainer idea yeah you know um and by the way one reason I say this is there's an

38:42entrepreneur I know and I don't know if he wants people to know this so I'm not going to say who it is who built a popular directed consumer company sold this company and he has found a way he he has manually built his stack so he created a Google doc that has all the software and the agencies that he used to build his company it's a Google doc it's in his linkoln bio when someone follows him on Twitter he they get an auto DM from him saying hello as well as if they're interested in the tools he's used to build his company they get access to the Google Doc he's currently

39:16doing $40,000 a month in affiliate fees from this Doc and by the way a huge value of this platform to creators is it is an absolute pain in the ass to set up all these affiliate deals I have I'm setting this up for myself right now and I'm going Company by company by company some of which have affiliate deals some of which I'm having create affiliate deals for the first time it's a nightmare yeah and kit. Co really isn't geared towards us like the sort of the B2B Creator like this feels this feels very like consumer it feels YouTu yeah exactly which is great for them I actually think

39:53that they pck the wrong Market but you know this is this is the right Market this is the right Market the market where the average deal size is 250k is the right market right meanwhile Mr Beast is like gloating about getting 250k for like what a 100 million views on YouTube exactly that's a hard that's a hard game I don't want to play totally I'm like wow that was a lot of work my friend yeah um cool let's uh let's do a couple more um Pinterest for knowledge my wife works at Pinterest so you know don't don't displace her yet no no I I like I

40:29like Pinterest so basically I mean this is like an idea that I have been so passionate about since launching the brew and I haven't seen a great solution for this is I believe um I believe that curation is like a superpower in today's internet and the reason I believe that is because it's never been easier to create content more content is being created than ever before and my belief on all this where this kind of ends up netting out 5 to 10 years from now is you just have this messy middle of a ton of regurgitated mediocre content that's put out onto the internet and you just

41:08still have this small band of the top 0.1% to 1% ideas that doesn't really get that much larger because there aren't that many of those people that have truly novel or like um best-in-class ideas and so my view is like for most people creating content is actually not the best service that they can provide to society it is curating the best ideas from the top 1% creators and I've had this idea because like there are certain creators who I really respect and follow like for example I read everything that Ben Thompson writes I read everything that Matt LaVine writes um I listen to Andrew huberman's podcasts um I listen

41:49to Patrick oas's podcasts as interesting to me as what I'm listening to is the thought I have in my head of like what is going into their body what is informing their views what are the interesting things they're reading and consuming such that they're outputting these ideas and so and and uh like I don't know if you saw like there's a lot of people who already curate what they're consuming just in this manual way like chth chth comes out with a newsletter every week that's what I read this week and it's like a link dump of seven URLs to me I would love a platform where I can follow the I can basically

42:27go down the rabbit hole of individual's brains so I can follow the people whose brains I admire most and I can see exactly what is the [ __ ] that they're putting into their brains and not only can I follow them but I see an interesting where way where like ultimately you can create Stacks you can create stacks of the stuff you consume around Fitness the stuff you consume around uh like the world of Frontier Tech or Hardware whatever it may be and I see a world in which you can actually have premium subscription to people's curated content where you not only get the curation you get the notes and the

43:00annotations people's analysis of the stuff that they're reading within their curated stacks and so like I again this is like a bigger swing that's like an idea I haven't seen but I would love a world where basically curation as a service becomes a thing this is one of those ideas which is like I don't want to do at all but someone do it so we you know I I was at I worked at a company called stumble upon which was like an OG content Discovery app you'd press a button the stumble button and it would bring on a web page and you were able to like it and dislike it one of the most

43:39interesting features was stumbling other people's likes exactly so you know gck Camp who's the co-founder of uber he's also the co-founder of stumble Pon you can go and he's got amazing taste and you you'd be able to go on to his likes and just see what's what is he putting into his brain I think uh I agree that that that that stumble likes needs to be reincarnated in some new exactly it's like what if I could see Greg eisenberg's bookmarks on Twitter yeah and and I think you just brought up a word that to me is like becoming more and more it's being more and more

44:17emphasized than ever before which is taste in a world of hyper commoditization where software is commoditized where uh content's being commoditized where like many things are becoming um where we are being displaced by technology I think taste like having being an incredible taste maker is actually one of the greatest advantages you can have like to me when I think about people who have individuals who have unfair advantage in different Industries whether it's music agents who find talent super early whether it's uh media entrepreneurs who find writers early in their career um whether it's podcasters who decide the topics or the guests that are worth surfacing I

44:59actually think taste is like it it's only the early days of taste being one of the more important things or skills that the best let's call it professionals or entrepreneurs will have so I got a text today from a creator that you know millions of followers and she says random question she doesn't text me a lot so I saw she texted me I'm like whoa let me open this up random question hiring those who have quote unquote taste how do you define taste visual editorial for instance my head of HR does not have taste AKA his dress style his word choice but how do I screen that and Define taste so I

45:41responded I don't know if this is right but this is what I said I just wrote in quotation marks who do you follow on Instagram what are your favorite Brands what was the last concert you went to what is your favorite drink can you make a mood board on Pinterest on XYZ topic dot dot dot yeah basically what you're saying is you use specific examples to basically say have the person show you their taste and then it's in a in a meta way you have to in a meta way it's almost like a kind of like a like an overconfidence thing of to to assess this you have to assume you have good

46:11taste and you're assessing someone else's taste based on your taste of their taste exactly I mean we used to have technology assessments it's like hey can you like write this program now we're going to have taste taste assessments yeah I think um yeah I think uh what's like the famous definition of product Market fit it's like how do you know when you see product Market fit it's you don't like it's like hardcore porn you just know it when you see it it's like um you just know the people on the internet that have great taste and you know the people that don't like uh H one like Shawn Pur I would say sha Pur

46:47has great taste like he has great taste in what entrepreneurs are going to naturally feel a a magnetic pull towards could I write a a presentation defining the taste of Shawn Pur I think it'd be really [ __ ] difficult because there's 15 years of context of PR uh career context that has led him to using his gut a lot and his gut is this incredible uh amalgamation of data data points over many years so like he has taste but it would be very hard for me to Define what his taste is totally and I and I want to say you can be older and have taste but

47:24you can also be young and have Great Taste yeah and actually I'd argue one of the most impressive things to me is when you're a generation different than like you have great let's just use it an example of like Matt LaVine Matt LaVine I think has great taste on what he talks about for like Millennials or young professionals but I think he wouldn't I don't think he's considered a millennial I think he's considered like a generation older and I I would say that's actually sometimes what's most impressive to me me is when people are able to basically straddle generations with quality taste because I'm even seeing for myself when I look at like my

48:03younger cousin who's still in high school and what is deemed as good taste for her friend group and people of her age it's super difficult because you basically have to immerse yourself in living in the way that her friend group lives while also living in your age group so if we think that the the world is going to appreciate taste more I mean if we're hiring for Taste I'm sure and I'm sure there's others how do you monetize taste like besides getting a job with and besides creating a a Pinterest for knowledge yeah what's a what's an easier way to monetize your taste without raising a bunch of venture

48:38capital and and going crazy uh I mean you know what one way is uh is what's the name of the one second I want to find the name of this one isn't there a website called like really good sites or really good designs yes really good emails I yeah really good emails like I'm like what does really good emails look like in a different vertical for people who need inspiration to do their job basically I don't know how really good emails monetizes but basically it's like I'm on their website right now and it's very clearly for email marketers and really good emails has basically used their taste and their judgment and

49:16people come to really good emails because they trust their judgment to look at a collection of different email newsletter designs that they deem to be high quality I think it's interesting to think about like and I know there's another uh website that does this for ad creative I can't remember what they're called but there's like an inspiration site for if you're a paid marketer and you want to look at great creative to run on Facebook or Instagram whatever I'd think about what is another vertical where a B2B professional needs great inspiration to do their job effectively yeah and they do really good emails on looking right now they've got like 100

49:52169,000 uh subscribers to their email they charge $9 a month and you get unlimited collections you can sort you can filter there's a Chrome extension I'm sure they I'm sure they do quite well uh and if you're yeah by the way another example of this is like what does really good emails look like for written content like what does it actually look like to create an inspiration Board of the best Twitter LinkedIn like written text content for people who are copywriters or uh text like just writers on the internet yeah yeah I think uh with your taste right with some context um exactly marketing examples you know that one yep similar

50:37idea where they have a bunch of different categories acquisition conversion retention brand and so I'm looking like right now like go ahead by the way the other way to do it is through content like if you want to do this as a Creator do what if you're willing to dedicate your entire life to it do what David cenro did with Founders right this guy has picked a vertical and he's curating the best biographies and audio autobiographies in the world about the greatest Founders yeah and he has the taste to pick the best books and then it's this combination of curation and then remixing he's remixing it by

51:15basically redelivering you what's most important and why you should care so think about like what's a vertical where it takes a lot of work to do the curation but that curation and that analysis is really important to the people that this is for I like that Founders for X is is a big idea yeah um amazing dude this is this has been awesome I actually have to run to I a haircut I actually just got a haircut before I joined here but I walked into my apartment and my wife was like what happened to your hair and I was like what do you mean it looks great I looked

51:48at I looked in the mirror she's like so mean she's like the back the back is like they [ __ ] up the back I mean I'll show it for for the people I I mean I can't believe I'm doing this but hold on let me see can you see that it's like curv yeah it's not a straight it's not a straight line no so yeah your wife did you your wife did you a solid it it's it's like calling someone out when they have something stuck in their tooth it's the equivalent of that so I'm gonna go for a a little even out yeah and um

52:19where could uh where could folks find you in the projects you're working on um can find me on Twitter at business Barista my podcast is Founders Journal where I'm curating the best uh startup content on the internet and then synthesizing it so you don't have to do the searching or the reading um and then my new business story ARB which helps uh Executives build their brands on social I love it check them out come back anytime Alex this is this is obviously so fun later this was fun