5 Businesses I'd Start If I Was 22 Again ($500 → $100k/Month)

0:00Today we're going to talk about five startups I would build if I were in my 20s today for under $500. Now I built and sold three venturebacked startups in my 20s. It absolutely changed my life. So, you know, hopefully someone listens to some of these ideas. It gets their creative juices flowing. I think this is particularly valuable for people in their 20s, but if you're 35 or 48 or or 15, I still think that this is uh these are ideas that you can go ahead

0:31and and do. [Music] So, the first idea is a a first job rejection tracker. So, uh, the idea is log all your job applications, track response rates by company enroll, get insight on what's working, and connect with others who got rejected from the same place. Now, if you're in college or you just graduated college, you you know, you know a lot of people who are just trying to get their first jobs, but I don't think that there's like a levels. FYI for college. Now, if you don't know levels.fyi, FYI, it shows how much people get paid at all these different tech companies. So, it basically, you know, if you're a product

1:18manager at Amazon, uh based on, you know, certain uh levels like a senior PM, you know, you're going to get $37,000 Canadian dollars, for example. So, it breaks it all it all down and it basically gives transparency to something that, you know, not a lot of people talked about. It was it was behind closed doors. Now I think that there's an opportunity to do a similar thing around first jobs. So it's sort of a niche of this um and and you know you being in your 20s you understand uh you know these people going through these first jobs uh you know first job applications and stuff like that. So I

1:58think that the you know why it's easy to get started. You can start with something like a notion template, a Zapier automation. You can use a Discord Circle or school community to bring people together. But your first steps are going to be crowdsource the data. Start with one company, expand from there. Use short form bids to drive awareness. So, um yeah, when I mean by start with one company, I mean like you know maybe you just start with people applying at um you know Proctor and Gamble, people who want to work at Goldman Sachs. Uh and then you start

2:29from there. So that's idea number one. Uh let's go to idea number two. So uh this one is called takeyou headphones off.com and this is just a paid community idea. I think a lot of people in your 20s it's easy to start a paid community, right? because, you know, you can go and sign up to school and and uh and circle. I'll include links to those in in the show notes. Um, and you can just you just need to come up with a unique niche that's super valuable. So, you know, takeyouphones off.com is a paid community for people addicted to tech and screens. And who's addicted to

3:04tech and screens? You know, you know, a lot. It's young people, right? I mean, we're all addicted, let's be real. But, uh, you get it, right? So, um, daily get offline text reminders, weekly IRL meetups in major cities, accountability partners, digital detox challenge. I think that there's a mega opportunity to to own the brand around taking your headphones off. Um, why it's easy to get started, you can start with a circle or school community. You can use a Twilio for text. You can use Eventbrite or Participle probably uh for, you know, meetups. Um, you know, you can start a free Discord group. Um, you know, tweet

3:44who else feels like their phones own them. I just think that what I'm seeing from a content perspective is there's tons of people uh who feel like their uh phones own them. And I think you can charge a monthly fee, $9, $12, $19 a month um and and sort of host these meetups in a bunch of different cities. So, really easy to get started, you know, really doesn't cost you a lot of money and you could get a nice monthly recurring 10K a month uh from something like that. The third idea uh is an agency. Now, agencies are are just they're just easier to start than, you

4:21know, tech companies. Um so, I included a couple ideas here. So, uh it's a creator and residence agency. So, basically brands that suck at social, connect them with micro creators. You know them. you're in your 20s, you know, people who are who are creators who need steady pay and take 20% of the contract. So, you're basically like a recruiting firm, but uh you're placing micro creators and and creators, basically your friends who know how to create Tik Toks, know, you know, understand cap cut. That's uh I think this is a mega opportunity. I I don't see why this can't be a 1 2 3 $5 million year

4:57opportunity. Um it's pretty easy to get started. You can lean on DMing creators. If you don't know the creators, you can use an air table to store uh who these creators are. Um, you know, list willing creators, list brands. You can just play a matchmaker via Zoom. You don't need to build or code. Uh, you don't need to

5:16build an app. You don't need a code. Like, you can just use that. Um, and it's good for someone who's kind of a hustler who's going to go and like convince these creators to sign on and convince these brands that they need to hire a uh creator in residence. And I I I'm giving away this I don't think this exists like this name creator and residence agency. I think that is you know a good name because you know people are looking for these creators and residents. So you know the first step is if you're trying to create uh if you're go if you're trying to create um this

5:48this startup is you know post just looking for brands. I want a creator on payroll on LinkedIn um and then you can source creators from X Instagram that sort of thing. So, um, this whole idea around creators on payroll, I think it's new. I think someone who's young could start an agency around this is probably best, uh, suited for it. The fourth idea is uh, the 2K vibe coding agency. So, basically doing two week sprints um, building micro SAS using chat, GBT, Bolt, Lovable, Replet, and Cursor. So, you basically go and you just you have one product. You're a productized service. you sell, you sell these

6:28sprints for $2,000, basically products for $2,000. Um, and you know, they're, you know, they're teaching you you these, you're you're getting these clients and they're teaching you to become better and better, you know, prompt engineers and also just vibe coders. So, I think that, you know, just an, you know, a great way to learn how to become incredible at vibe coding is to just get paid to do it. So, yes, you're not getting paid 20K or 25K or whatever, but um you know, you're spending uh you know, a couple weeks building these MVPs for people, giving

7:06them value, you're getting 2K in return. And I think just this idea around branding it around and again, like I don't know if it's $2,000 or a,000 or or 3500 or if it's two weeks or one week sprints. Um but the idea is owning that productized service around vibe coding. huge opportunity and will take you from, you know, an okay vibe coder to an incredible vibe coder. And you're going

7:27to learn from that whole experience. You're actually going to learn about, you know, maybe there's a micro SAS that you end up wanting to create. Maybe there's a um a full-on SAS that you want to create. So I think that you spend one year, two years doing this, maybe it makes 300k a year, 500k a year of revenue, but the big insights is what you're going to learn from uh building these products for other people, SAS products for other people. And uh you know, it's going to it's going to get your creative juices flowing. The fifth idea is um just, you know, I called it hookline studio. So basically, you paste

8:04a video idea and you get 10 catchy Tik Tok hook lines in 30 seconds. So, you know, this does require you to be somewhat of a vibe coder. You would have to use something like cursor, but you know, you basically create this single text bomb box. It goes to a GPT prompt. It lists the hooks. You can embed it on Typedream. And if you, you know, if you wanted to actually get this, you know, the first steps that I would do if I was trying to build something like this is I screen record the flow. I'd say, you know, steal these hooks for free. And then I would upsell to a $9 a month

8:35unlimited hook uh, you know, product. So, I think that there's there's an opportunity to build a product around hooks, Tik Tok hooks, and you obviously, you know, being young, understand what hooks are good, what hooks aren't good. Um, and you could just curate that database over time. Uh, curate those prompts over time. And I bet you that there's a few hundred, you know, K ARR business probably, you know, behind something like that. And the last idea which came to me um but I I I preface it with like I don't know if it's legal but it's basically I think that it would be cool if this existed. So I'm not I don't

9:16know if anyone should do this because I don't know if it's legal. It it operates under the gray area. Uh this isn't you know financial advice. This isn't legal advice but wouldn't you know I've been looking at Poly Market. I'm sure a lot of you have seen this um where people basically use crypto crypto to predict

9:34where uh where the world is going to go. So for example, you know, people say Zoran Madi 72% chance of him winning the New York uh mayor election or there there you know how many Fed cut rates in 2025 and 26% of people say one. So I think there's an opportunity to create like poly market for uh college campuses or just you know young people you know six uh 18 call it to 22. So I think there's an opportunity there. I did a little bit of research before this. I I just asked perplexity to say like is this legal and it said it operates in a gray area. Um, so I don't

10:15know, but I I I think that this idea around students basically betting on the deans list, which couples break up, who gets kicked out of Greek life, class curve predictions, um, would be kind of an interesting model. And then you would obviously take, uh, a 5% rate uh, rate in it. So these are just a few, you know, that's why I include that one as a bonus. By the way, um these are just a few, you know, a few ideas that I would do if I were in my 20s. Um you know, they don't cost a lot to get going. I think my probably my favorite one is is

10:50the first one, the first job rejection tracker. Um because I think it's it's tiny, but it could actually end up becoming quite big. Um but all of these, you know, five ideas you're going to learn you're going to learn something from. You're going to learn something from and they don't cost a lot to get going. Um, and I think there they are ideas that could expand from there. So, hope this has been helpful. Um, you know, I'm trying to do, you know, more idea episodes on the Startup Ideas podcast to get your creative juices flowing. If you're looking for more ideas, uh, you can always go to

11:24ideabrowser.com. This is something that I created to give people startup ideas every single day. So, I literally built this for myself and now I'm sharing it with you. Um, I can't wait to see what you build and just comment uh on the YouTube video. I read every single comment just what you're thinking about the first thing that comes to your mind

11:44and then hit that like button as well. Um, so I know to keep creating videos. It just gives me an idea around uh if you're liking this or you're not liking this or what you want to see. So, hope this has been helpful. Have a creative day, my friends, and I'll see you on the

11:59internet.