# $1M Startup Trends For 2024, With Michael Karnjanaprakorn

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w__bIJNafTs
Duration: 47 min
Language: English
Words: 8563
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/w__bIJNafTs

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[0:00] so I I've always wanted to build a holding company for productivity apps and I understand that productivity apps the propensity to pay is very low I could give you all the reasons not to do it but I just like productivity apps and a lot of those apps have also just kind of been dormant and they're probably making millions of dollars you got to think about like what works on YouTube it's always like lifestyle Health Fitness making money and productivity and I think from Like A playbook standpoint making sure that either you're the content creator or there a content creator you can partner with for distribution and then if it's digital

[0:29] businesses is having some natural knack for product because that's going to be where a lot of the value ad is going to be Mike is back on the show you're one of my favorite people and you uh you brought some ideas on this doc so we're going to go through it and I'm just reading through this and it's just it's getting me stoked um you brought some heat I appreciate it so let's start with this viral tweet that you had yeah let's do it I thought I thought it'd be fun you know it's it's the new year and your last newsletter was on Trends or anti-trends so thought it would be fun

[1:06] to just throw some of those out there I was I've been thinking through a few just kind of Riff on them so I wrote this tweet about a month ago and I wrote it on a whim so I I I took most of the Year Off from Twitter and around near November December I was like maybe I should open up the app and you know just see what's going on and this idea that I was kind of percolating was around living your friends and I wrote in on a whim I was you know I was going to delete it after a minute because it didn't get any likes and I was like you

[1:35] know what let's just leave it up and then I came back a few hours later I was like whoa and the Tweet reads I noticed a trend where friends are moving next to each other it can be the same apartment floor neighborhood block or 100 acre rural area dividing into Lots weekly dinners and impromptu walks are more of the norm we used to prioritized finding the perfect house but now we're prioritizing being close to her friends and curating her own community and I think the reason it took off from reading all the comments obviously I got trolled any anytime anything goes viral I think the counterintuitive idea in

[2:04] there is that most people as they get older when they start having a family they move near their family and this is kind of like a a counter Trend to that which is moving as close as possible to your friends so I started to see this happening in Austin San Francisco even where I live so that was pretty interesting so Adam Newman we Works bankrupt and yeah yeah and Adam Newman of course raised $300 million to go build a business called Flo and they're opening their first building I think in Fort Lauderdale around here soon and it's basically the same concept as we work like this idea around like communal

[2:47] space you get like free coffee like amenities like that but around uh residential living also he's no longer doing long-term leases he's buying the buildings got it obviously he's learned from his mistakes um and we actually had at wew work we had a version of this um it was called we live and there was about four or five different buildings where people would come in and you'd pay rent let's say it was $4,000 a month this is in New York City um $4,000 a month and you got access to like a bunch of community activities you get access to a co-working space you got you know within

[3:28] the building you got access to food like you know and it was this it was it's it was this sort of product for like 20 something people moving to a new city where they had like a community in it what do you think of that idea where do you think that will go I think that's I think that's a little different because it's a company curating the community for you and I think what's happening now is people are be are being a lot more intentional so I was chatting with my friend safan and he said in San Francisco his group of friends are literally taking over a whole floor in

[4:02] in an apartment building so as soon as like an apartment frees up they they hop on it and they have like a whole list a waiting list of people that are trying to move in and it's about curating your own Community versus having other people curate it for you so I think that's what's happening um or it could be something as small as you know like splitting a a town Brooklyn town home where you live on the bottom floor and your best friend lives on the top floor and something nice about the impromptu going for a walk or just running to each other um you know when you have kids if

[4:33] you need to run somewhere they can watch your kids for an hour just having that Prime you know what community like literally pre- internet or hundred centuries ago what it was kind of like and I think there's a whole trend of people moving towards it and I saw I start seeing different variations of this right so there's weekly dinners so people just host weekly dinners which is kind of straightforward and then the the easier version next to that is live next door to your best friend like literally you you pick a neighborhood together you just do it you become roommates or you live next to each other and then there's

[5:06] like taking over a floor which is a little bit more organized and then I'm starting to seeing people like building a village where you know they take over neighborhood they take a house and they make that into the communal space kind of similar to we live has like a community garden a spa you know like a you know um they have meetings they vote you know there's dues so it becomes more organized they vote on who comes in and who's out so there's different levels and I'm starting to see that happening more and more and I find that pretty interesting so I agree with this trend I

[5:36] think it's happening and it's only going to get bigger and bigger if you're you know listening to this and you want to start a business based on this trend what sort of how do you how do you how do you build something in this space H that's a good question I mean I thought about approaching it less as a startup or business but running a neighborhood Village as a business right so I thought it' be F fun to play it as like a mini developer right so rather than building these track homes of cookie cutter you kind of go in and you take over a block and you you become

[6:11] really intentional about it um and I thought that would be fun but it would require a lot of work you would have to be super passionate about it and you would have to have a huge group of friends that would want to do it and Etc and but that's I feel like a more natural way to do it I feel like if it turns into a business kind of like a we live it becomes a little forced and then appeals to like the 20s something year olds and um but if I were to start a business I would run it kind of like a nonprofit type of vibe where you know I

[6:39] would be super intentional would have all the cool things that I would curate I would have like-minded people in that community and I don't know sounds kind of idealistic but you walking down the street you bump into your friends and their friends and you have these weekly dinners and things along those lines but I do value privacy too so I wouldn't personally do it but I would probably opt for weekly monthly dinner and live next to my best friend versus The Village but that could be a cool business like SL you know side hustle like project for for most people if they wanted to to to approach that I was with

[7:11] a well-known entrepreneur a few weeks ago and he shockingly it the first time I I had met him he's a tech entrepreneur yeah and I was like what's interesting you these days and he said Real Estate I was shocked I was shocked I was like what's his reason it's like what he so he's just like cash flow he's like 2024 year of cash flow um so I think he he's raised a lot of money building Venture back stuff and he's just like a bit jaded a little bit of it and he's he recently got married and and he's having kids and so I think he he got really

[7:49] into real estate so he asked me he said if you were to start a real estate business um what what would you do and I was off the top of my head and this is what I told him I said said cuz we're in Miami I said there's this thing called the bright line the bright line is this highspeed train that just came out here and what that does is it opens up a bunch of like you can get from Miami to Orlando in like three hours where you can get from you know my my place to Palm Beach in like 50 minutes yeah and there's probably an opportunity to build

[8:25] a new town oh love that idea yeah and my thesis is there's only one like cool this is can get me in trouble but there's only one real cool city in Florida and it's [Laughter] Miami so I'm sorry but you know I I would actually argue there are zero cool cities in Florida there's between zero and one Co in Florida exactly so I think that There's an opportunity to build like an art sort of inspired creative town you know that isn't that's kind of like Marfa Texas oh I think I think that is a great idea you think about the ultimate business is is taxes you know like tax

[9:18] citizens and then funnel that into some cool infrastructure that you would build ex I think I read that it's not I mean I might be wrong about this we should hit up chat GPT to ask this but I don't think it's that difficult to start a town in the middle of nowhere I think you just need a small critical mass of a few hundred people and boom you can literally create a town exactly and for those for those of you don't know Mara uh Marfa Texas I've never been there but basically they've got this really cool prod store in the middle of nowhere have you been there I haven't but I've seen a

[9:56] lot of people visit it and it just seem so Random to me why this town in Texas is a huge art destination yeah it's an art destination and a lot of people or people are trying to move there and um I think there's an opportunity like you you know he was like so so this founder is like so how would you actually do it and I was like well the first thing is I would start by building the community online so I would create content around it and there would have to be like some you know Museum or some like Prest store in the middle of nowhere like some art

[10:31] piece that like would attract this group of people but the beauty is you don't need to start a town and spend millions of dollars on the town initially you can just use the internet to build demand uh initially yeah I like that idea and then you can attract like-minded people that share the same values or principles and then you can kind of search for where this destination is going to be I would imagine most people would probably either live there or co-own a vacation home there right exactly that's the other benefit of it being in Florida is like you know northeasterners love coming down here during the winter yeah so if you can

[11:10] sell them culture plus a curated Community plus you know vitamin D you're looking good yeah that's like just a traditional commercial real estate developer in in a way it kind of reminds me of Windwood walls where that was all created I think I read on the wall there by a developer that wanted to revitalize that neighborhood and bring art and culture into it and that's right yeah so you can kind of I would imagine if you own hundreds or thousands of Acres of the mil I I don't even know if that exists in Florida but yeah you can make anything into a destination that people would travel to and yeah own all the

[11:48] land and start selling that off and if you wanted to really be ambitious you could you know turn it into a real town with with a government and mayor and city council members and whatnot yeah I think uh it's like a startup right like you don't know where it could really go but I think the beauty is and and bology talks about this too right he calls it the network State yeah um I haven't read the book but the concept around it is similar where you you know you do attract you can attract people online you bring them to a place um and it it could grow from there I think this is a

[12:25] great idea somebody should totally I I bet you someone's already doing this somewhere I don't know I don't I honestly don't know I don't know and I think the other thing that I like about this idea like the why now of it is the bright line has just opened up so oh for Florida yeah for Florida specifically well also the loneliness P epidemic or P you know where that's that's turning into a big a bigger and bigger thing where people are becoming more and lonely and they're craving these IRL interactions um so I think that's probably another why now which is people are getting addicted to their phones

[13:03] they're not they're lonely and they're looking for a community either friends or people that are like-minded yeah you know I think what you're seeing with what safon is seeing in San Francisco where all their friends are grabbing a floor and this you know that's a trend but also this trend around like um I want to feel more connected yeah to you know the city I live in the you know the community I live in I think you're going to see like my prediction is you're going to see a lot of new towns and new Cultural Center centers being created over the next 10 years oh I think that

[13:42] would be sick I would totally buy real estate there I mean look at look at what happened with um Summit Series like the story of Summit Series that's a great one started you know they didn't they buy like a ski resort and then sold off off each lot for whatever a million bucks yeah so the story there was it started off as they used to throw these events with like well-known people and they were like young 20s somethings at the time they'd like cold call Richard Branson and all these people and and somehow convinc some of them to come and join them in uh Park City Utah for these

[14:21] events and then they that they outgrew that and then they got a cruise ship and they invited people um and then eventually they were like let's get into the real estate business cuz the founders mom I think ran bisn now started bisn now media which was a network of Real Estate websites and from that they decided to buy I think it was like 40 or $50 million they bought a mountain Powder Mountain in Utah and they sold uh plots of land yeah there's something so simple about this business right it's just real estate and Community it's yeah kind of like the oldest playbook for business so t Circle

[15:02] back Tain question if someone wanted to do side hustle project they could do a smaller version of this within their own Community but if they want to tackle it as a business it's like the old tried and true tested business model that has existed since since the beginning of time which is developing land so but within that I think the other counter Trend was what you were saying around a lot of entrepreneur are kind of burned out from the startup cycle and moving towards new types of businesses so I'm starting to seeing that happen um as well so what what are your thoughts on that I mean what do you what type of

[15:40] businesses are you seeing well like real estate is a great example but um I think what will happen is the thought that comes to mind for me is that a lot of new fun funding mechanisms are going to start popping up and I think we'll start seeing the oneand done round and I think I think we'll start seeing dividend issuing start you know startups that pay dividend because not every company is going to break out so I think we'll start seeing a lot of people taking swings and if it doesn't really if it takes off for whatever reason they they can go to the chur around if it doesn't

[16:14] they could go the the alternative route so I think that will be an alternative path that I think a lot more Founders will kind of embark on especially as they hear stories from you know found entrepreneurs that are kind of trying something different that have done that path but and I think with the ra rise of AI and hard tech I think a lot of funding will go towards really hard tech problems and then there'll be this kind of like middle zone for everything else yeah so the dividends thing is real I think startups plus dividends like never you know that was then that was like oil

[16:49] and water right so that didn't exist and you know in the vocabulary of a startup uh up until you know you know who's really doing a good job at professing this is sahill from gumroad yeah that's where I first read about it I thought it was brilliant yeah so what's his do you know his startup that he has let's see in the dividend space gumroad no he has uh he's involved in flexile that's what it is flexi.com scale your business without full-time commitments I'm on the website right now so it's kind of it's not just dividends but basically flexile lets you on board and pay qualified

[17:30] contractors to help grow your business but it allows you to offer dividends as a part of that yeah like you said cash flow I think 2024 and Beyond is going to be cash is going to be what people want yeah so I think there's a ton of opportunity so okay so let's look at that so that's the trend right dividends is the trend cash flow is the trend for startups you know you could go and build a startup that does really well and offers dividends or you can do pixon pix and shovels for the space like sth Hill's doing yeah I think there'll be a lot of startups that are probably in the

[18:09] 100K to10 million Revenue range that where this would work really well for them you know like maybe they hit a ceiling maybe they can't grow maybe the founders are tired and they want to move on so I could see a lot of Acquisitions um a lot of I think 2023 was boring businesses was kind of like the thing with boomers are to be retiring so they need to transfer their businesses to the younger generation and if you Tech enable it you know you can make a lot of money doing that and rolling them up and I think that will work that will start happening and I think 2024 will be

[18:40] digital businesses so SAS content software apps I think that range between 100K and 10 million in Revenue I think it's going to be a huge AC like huge m&a activity I think we'll we'll see a lot more of that in 2024 yeah my take on the boring businesses like uh laundromats and um Self Storage is yeah the idea of the cash flow of those businesses are great but like the actual running of those businesses is not so great yes and I think a lot of people have learned that in in this year or last year yeah yeah so just in terms of like if I were

[19:20] to start a digital business versus a sweaty business let's say a boring business like from a from a time commitment and from a lever leverage and scale perspective much prefer digital business um and so I think what you're going to start to see is like I mean I guess the price for an acquisition might go up on the small scale right on places like acquire. comom yeah I think we'll start seeing that I think we'll start seeing some new financing that'll go into it a lot of activity I mean prices will probably go up I think we'll start seeing Founders going back in and buying companies because they realize how hard

[20:00] it is to go from Z to one and how much luck and timing factor into it but I think we'll just start seeing a lot more activity I think we'll start seeing um you know not just within those businesses but startups that are kind of failing merging with other startups that are failing to to survive I think we'll just see a lot of m&a activity and not and it won't be big tech company buying small startup it will be a lot of smaller businesses selling or merging together I think we'll just see a lot more activity there so you know what what ideas do you have

[20:31] if you were going to start one of these digital businesses in 2024 okay what would I'll throw this out there yeah so if I I've always wanted to build like a holding company for productivity apps and I understand that productivity apps the the the propensity pay is very low you know I could give you all the reasons not to do it but I just like productivity apps so you know how Microsoft Office has one subscription and you can access all their tools yeah I kind of want to do that for productivity app so I would go off and buy I would start rolling up like a

[21:04] habits app or a journaling app and then you just have this whole portfolio of apps and charge one subscription so hopefully the turn would be low because you get access to all the apps in the ecosystem but I think you could do this for any vertical and I think if you think about productivity apps when I look at them like oh I could build that but then I started thinking oh man going from 0o to one to like break out and get all the reviews and I like that's G to take forever so you know I think they're just something fun about going and buying buying up a lot of these apps and

[21:33] a lot of those apps have also just kind of been dormant you know they get updated once or twice you know a few times a year and they're probably making millions of dollars so that's one idea that I kind of pursued another one was wait on that so just on that like literally a few minutes ago I got a Tweet someone replied to me saying how in my newsletter my end of 2023 newsletter I recommended an app called clack it's like a paid app it's $5 and it turns your keyboard into like a mechanical keyboard via software yeah so that when you like type on your keyboard

[22:10] clock clock clock clock clock it makes that noise and you can like change you can make it go click click click click or clack CL clack and I just love the satisfying uh sound of it yeah um and I I mentioned I think I mentioned that the app isn't perfect but I just still enjoyed it and was the best I can found someone tweeted just now saying clack app is outdated and there's no sign of De however it feels good to trick my brain into having a mechanical keyboard rocket ship emoji and that's like a great example of like someone should buy this app yeah I mean that

[22:49] that is a great example right it someone should buy it maintain it improve it and I would imagine like you don't need to update it all the time but just make sure you maintain it and then that could be a great entry point for someone and then they see this whole ecosystem of other apps and then you can centralize the development especially with AI now like um to always go for the whole ecosystem of apps versus forcing the team to always be improving one when that one might not even need to be updated so and partner with a Creator on the distribution like partner like someone like me like I probably sent

[23:24] thousands of sales to this random guy who probably is not even checking his stripe account or whatever you got think about like what works on YouTube it's always like lifestyle Health Fitness making money and productivity you know productivity is probably one the like self-improvement productivity is a huge bucket so yeah partner with the Creator and you can either buy or build but buying probably makes the most sense because you could probably get a lot of apps and and if you were going to buy like let's just say you weren't you and you didn't have some a nest de to go and buy some of these apps like how would

[24:00] you how would you go about starting this if you didn't have a lot of money in your bank account could you I would probably build I I would probably take that route yeah I would probably build because that's probably more within one's control because raising money is going to be very difficult if you don't have like a reputation or track record um your email is probably going to get ignored if you kind of just ping them because they'll just be like who's this random person so I would probably start off trying to build cool and then do you think about you know if you are going to

[24:30] go build like a holding company for X like holding company for productivity or something how do you think about what makes a good uh Niche to go after that's a good question I think the thought that comes to mind I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this too um is the other so the other thread that's kind of tied to this and they do overlap a little bit which is Extreme product Market fit with a super passionate Community people that are into producct ity a really into productivity you could tie this to any hobby you know like fishing or golfing or whatever and I think they very

[25:07] specific Niche products are built for those super super passionate communities and that's kind of how I I I would think about it so I think one is there needs to be deep deep hold co founder fit meaning like you're obviously into productivity and you're a productivity nerd and and and you're one of them you know I'm one of them too I'm also a productivity nerd um so that wasn't like a dis or anything um but like very difficult to go and build a holding company for AI products if you're just an outsider you need to be an Insider I yeah and then I think the second thing it's your your point is

[25:52] around like is this is this community the type of community that goes on the top of rooftops and screams that they love you know love trying these apps and then I think the third thing is do these people have disposable income I think yeah disposable income and yeah I I would agree with that the other thought that comes to mind is um as a if you're a Creator kind of similar to what you're doing is just screaming at the rooftop say you're buying X in y category I I'm still kind of surprised that no one bought mint you know if the company's going to shut it down like

[26:32] somebody I'm assuming somebody could have raised their hand and said hey I'll buy it from you don't shut it down and you know I would assume those users are super valuable and passionate I've been using mint for over a decade that was surprising but I think it's it was owned by into it right and I think sometimes these big companies it's like they'd rather just shut it down than yeah um but that was a huge opportunity like I don't know you're right like I don't know that's that's a whole other opportunity which is like reaching out to big companies and their like their m&a departments being like hey my name

[27:09] is Greg Eisenberg I run m&a at XYZ Ventures GRE Greg Eisenberg Ventures at Greg Eisenberg decom um you're gonna love it um you know would love to chat with you about you know ways to work together and you hop on a call and you're like okay like we're buying companies and you know even even if you aren't buying hundred million doll companies you're buying a million dollar companies or something saying that you you know if you had mint like if you were if you were able to say I got mint for $25 million or 50 million do and you went to Twitter like and other places like you probably could

[27:48] have raised that money to buy it yeah probably but circling back to saying I think having some passion in the category a passionate Community there willing to pay and I think from Like A playbook standpoint making sure that either you're the content creator or there are content creators you could partner with for distribution and then if it's digital businesses having some natural knack for product because that's going to be where a lot of the value ad is going to be added so I think it's a great opportunity for repeat Founders I know that's a small subset really really really small subset but um but I would

[28:25] definitely start with one and kind of grow from your your background you know skillshare so education online education and Otis which was fintech uh acquired by public.com so you you know your backgrounds in education and fintech like in those two industries like are you where do you see the opportunity in those two spaces specifically and why aren't you why aren't you doing it I'm not doing it because I'm similar to what you write about you know like I don't want to jump on that treadmill again um but within education I think there's a huge opportunity for AI tutoring and it do also overlaps with fintech too with

[29:09] education I think there there's going to be a new wave I don't know like edtech 5.0 but I I do think everyone is going to have kind of like a like an assistant or an agent is I guess what they're calling the AI Community but like for AI tutoring for example like I just want to learn video editing but I don't want you know I I start skill Tri I don't sit through a 50-hour course and I don't want to sit on these nightly course cohort I just want to pingstone like Hey how do I do this I want them to hit me back really quickly I want to upload the

[29:38] video clip I edited and I want them to analyze it and then send me to the right places to to improve it or tell me how to do it exactly so instant feedback I think is going to be a huge thing I think it's very difficult to probably pull that off but you could either do like a more General one you could do it for verticals like skill based l learning or language learning um I could see that being a thing I I think that overlaps also with therapy like I think it would be really cool to just talk you know I got I got triggered by this

[30:08] moment here's what happened here's what I was thinking and it would ask me questions back and it would like kind of help me rethink about how he reacted and then also overlaps with like work assistant um so I think there's just going to be a whole Trend around assistance but within education I think like a tutoring coach or you know something like that is like I would love to just have one for all the things I'm working on yeah so yeah I'm hearing people talk about it as assistants agents characters is is has been the recent one um and so I do think that there's a there's going to be a huge

[30:43] opportunity to create characters or agents or assistants and I also think that doing deals with creators so being like like for video let's say uh video editing like how do you do a deal with Casey nayat so you can like license his name for that I think is an interesting idea that's GNA be pretty cool especially if you can if it is him that you're getting tutored from yeah and it's like his brain or his technique or his philosophy that got uploaded exactly so I could the new thing creators do instead of like courses like asynchronous courses or cohort courses it's hey for $10 a month like you can

[31:23] learn from me and I'm constantly updating the model and and fine-tuning it and and you can learn directly from me and the best part about learning from a character like that is you actually have to do the work to learn meaning like you're actually video editing in real time you've got the software up and when you have a problem that's when you hit them up so I think it's probably I would bet that it's probably like a really effective way of learning because it's learning by doing not learning by watching viewing watching learning by doing I think you're right is the most effective way to learn especially if you

[32:01] could do it and learn from others too in real time what are the other Trends are you seeing within AI that you find interesting right now it's really this characters like if if um how does that manifest you know well I think okay what is a character what could a character do it could either entertain you or could teach you yeah so if you if we believe that characters are going to be a big part of how people consume media and and education 10% 20% 30% then there's going to be tons of paid monthly memberships essentially to these characters that I'm going to have in my pocket similar to

[32:46] how we had when the App Store was created so my brain power right now is thinking about you know in the AI space at least if I want to create like which characters make the most sense to be created and how do they manifest itself and then when does it make most sense to go prime time also like are we ready for that or does it make sense to like kind of be you know be behind the curtains and just iterating on it iterating on it my gut says that like we're we're pretty close to prime time but we're not there yet what do you think is the like the

[33:20] use case that most people would want when the time is right or like well a good example I think AI girlfriends obviously are going to be you know I think uh I think there's no question that so the trends that I'm seeing are like yeah girlfriends education and entertainment and then the other AI Trend that I think will be big in 2024 is just interfaces so if you look at um like pdf. so you can like basically if you

[33:55] check pdf. chat with any PDF document from legal agreements to financial reports pdf. brings all your documents to life you can ask questions get summaries find info and more that's pretty cool exactly so the dude who started this actually is is really cool he he talks about like everything he builds in public and he talks about all his revenue and how he's doing and couple months ago chat GPT uh allowed the ability to talk with a PDF so you think that it was done for this guy but it wasn't because the search traffic for PDF and AI is probably still pretty high and it's purpose-built for chatting with

[34:42] PDFs like there's certain things that chat GPT will not be able to be amazing at so the interface for chatting with the PDF is is specific to to this use case so I think more niche specific use cases interfaces are really interesting and from like we're doing a lot of that work with you know our Innovation agency where we're designing a lot of these interfaces um Prett cool and thinking about it and that's sort of a bonus of running a design agency is yeah you you basically you learn a lot about you know okay how do I design AI interfaces and and uh you learn those problems and uh

[35:27] so that's that's sort of another reason why I like being in the space yeah I I could see I could see that happening and then the obvious company that could be built around that is kind of like a Shopify for creating your own character or I'm just thinking from a crater use case it's like being able to upload all my videos everything I've ever written and basically create my own character and charge for that and have this app or software just make that dead simple where like drag and drop yeah and I think in the past I would be like I want to create the Shopify but now I'm kind

[36:04] of like no no I just want to create the like the clavio um I want to build the app on top of that you know I think why what change your thinking from building this SAS business towards building something because that that's counter to what was like the 22010 like don't build on other people's yeah platforms build the platform that's right I know and but at the same at the same time I've changed man I've changed yeah at the same time it's like there's not that much Venture funding happening right now but it feels to me at least 90% of it's going to AI yeah and most of

[36:47] it is going to platforms like this so I just feel like I won't be able to compete in that space but where I can compete is in uh what I C you know what I do best which is like build you know building Community picking niches uh building great interfaces and coming up with things that are going to spread among people is where I want to focus my energy and yes could I get shut down by any of these platforms at any given time absolutely um that's the problem with being dependent on on any platform but if you don't take any outside funding and you build it to generate cash flow from day

[37:28] one it's just a risk yeah I think it also ties to what you're saying about sty points too yeah exactly like just building something cool with cool people and having fun and making money while you're doing it it's all it's like it's like 100x points versus the the alternative exactly so I think there's going to be I think some people are going to have portfolios at you know portfolios of these characters um just like how you saw people having portfolios of apps and software that is going to extend to characters that's gonna be pretty cool yeah scary but cool scary but cool scary coming from the old

[38:09] you know like the old dude the grayhair dude anything else off the list you want to cover okay so I had one one last thing I wanted to get your feedback on it's an idea let do it so it's related to AI it's haggle doai that's what call it okay and it's basically a character doesn't exist yet but that's what I'd call it okay and I'm and I'm really into domains now like I really feel like yeah you gotta I'm really into buying buy the domain you know haggle doai and it's worth it and it's basically no one likes to haggle with their vendors you know we have vendors

[38:52] that we pay thousands of dollars a month software I'm talking about specifically specifically and we're not going to have like we just like add to cart and it scales as our team grows but now our team is like 60 plus people and all of a sudden we're paying thousands of dollars a month and we probably should renegotiate it but we don't what if there was a character that you know did the haggling for you powered by AI I would say powered by like X FBI negotiators that have trained this model to be the best negotiation negotiators of all time and get smarter as the other side gets

[39:29] smarter with you know like and it just gets smarter and smarter and smarter so I think it could negotiate anything but you could wedge into well one I like the idea a lot but you could definitely wedge into renegotiating your software we we often forget about it but do not pay is like the OG it's like the OG AI software company do you know do you know do not pay yeah do not pay uses AI to help you fight B corpse corporations protect your privacy find hidden money and beat bureaucracy so it could fight parking tickets customer service Bank fees government uh money you're owed um

[40:09] car repossession City I mean I the lesses hundreds of things that they can help you with last I heard they were doing around $5 million a month of Mr wow so this is a uh and I don't think they raise much money yeah I like the idea of being able to negotiate or haggle anything like haggle X yeah you know I like that idea a lot and I would assume that it would come up with a set of like a process for how it do how it would do each one yes and you can just kind of pick and as long as you're saving people making people money or

[40:46] saving people money they'll always pay for it exactly yeah and do not pay I think is the validation for this so they've raised $10 million and and doing at least $5 million a month in Revenue um and I think the market for this as people get just more comfortable with AI characters and AI doing tasks is only going to get bigger yeah what are your thoughts on current companies moving into AI to defend against new companies that are trying to use AI to do what they're doing I'm trying to wrap my head around like that Turf battle that's about to emerge where like do not pay maybe didn't raise a lot

[41:27] of money they make a lot of money they probably have a great team great culture you know they could probably move pretty quickly into the space and defend I guess their territory if you want to use like a war analogy but what what are your thoughts on how that's going to play out I was talking to Eric ree about this from the Lan startup on one of my recent pods if you haven't if people haven't heard that that episode check it out we were talking about um this idea around May in terms of m&a maybe the move is you actually buy an existing company that doesn't have a lot of AI

[41:58] and then you just AI ify them and you create like a like that's the roll up strategy I think that's pretty smart I like that a lot yeah so I think that yeah I mean it's you know Facebook wasn't a mobile company it was a desktop company and now now they do now it's mobile right like I think there's AI is going to be ubiquitous just like cloud is is ubiquitous and social is ubiquitous so if it's going to be ubiquitous then everyone's going to go and it's just cuz you know it'll make the experience better then I think there's tons of opportunity to to partner with existing platforms yeah I I

[42:39] think that makes a lot of sense like this use case has a clear like AI strategy whereas maybe some other apps don't but this one has a has a clear clear one for sure would you buy or build this idea if you had to start you know because there are probably companies that are just human driven that just do this manually where they call and do it you know through the phone or email and then there's software like this and then there's like just building it I think I would prefer to buy it yeah because of all the data like that's the other thing is like the

[43:12] existing companies have a lot of data um and ultimately like the most valuable AI companies are going to be the ones with the most valuable data and they're just using AI to use that data and charge for it so what you know would love to buy it but I also think that there's I mean there's there's an opportunity to go from the ground up as well but I if I were to do it just like how do not pay started with just parking tickets do not pay parking tickets and now have expanded to like 30 different product offerings I would think about what is something small enough that I can do to

[43:49] learn in the space and get really and train the model to get really good at it that's also very viral do not pay parking tickets is a very viral idea that can get a lot of coverage people don't like paying who who likes seeing a parking ticket it's the worst right so what is the equivalent in in ha you know in haggle doai this fictitious idea what's what's what's a a service that people um or what's something that a toll or a fine or taxes maybe it's taxes um yeah yeah I like your approach with haggle around comp and paying for software I think there's nothing more

[44:30] annoying than when you get when you check your credit card statement in your company you're like who signed up for this app or where do this huge um invoice come from and then just like oh it's the app that we use but because we're bigger now they just start charging us Enterprise so there's also this really interesting shift happening in AI with pricing models so intercom has this product called Finn and Finn's usage is measured in resolutions this ensures what this ensures that only that you only pay when Finn does what you care about most resolving a customer's question a resolution is counted when following the last AI answer or custom

[45:16] answer in a conversation the C the customer confirms the answer provided is satisfactory or exits the conversation without requesting further exist so basically each resolution they charge 99 Cents for so I love that right it's like aligning your incentives imediately with haggle if you haggle the I mean you could even do it like per resolution or just a percentage of the money you save the other percentage of the money saved oh yeah that's so simple Nob brainer yeah someone likes this idea holler at your boy um Mike where can people find you learn more about your great ideas Mike car on Twitter Mike car.com for website I I just launched a podcast a

[46:01] few months ago you can search TKS or the K apricorn show on Spotify Apple Etc I I listen to it I love it and uh I was I was doing a workout today and watching you on my elliptical on on video same yeah I listened to your 2023 review which was pretty good I appreciate it man all right you're welcome back anytime um thanks for having me if if people like this episode uh tag us on Twitter and uh tell us what you liked what you didn't like um and uh thanks for tuning in to where it happens this is where this is where the ideas happen

[46:39] so we love to see it peace

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