#60: Cody Schneider — 10 Dumbest Startup Ideas

You dropped some epic startup ideas on Greg Eisenberg's Startup Ideas podcast. Now it's time to talk about some silly ideas, some dumb startup ideas. What do you got for me, Cody?

Yeah, the first one. Okay, so a phone app that looks at Google Maps data for places that are like busier than usual. So Google Maps, like you can get all this data publicly through their API for free, which is crazy to me that they offer this. But I'm just imagining like you're in like New York or LA. Specifically like a more dense city. And like, you just like open the app and it just like almost points in a direction of like where you should walk to like a place that is like popping off more than usual. So I feel like there's like honestly like a viral app somewhere around in this to just like kind of discover things that are happening like right around where you are at that moment in time. But yeah, man, that's, that's kind of the initial one. And then how I would grow this is I would do just like hire like TikTok influencers to basically go and promote this across their accounts. And then I think that like the whole direction and then you probably get it with just use like Nikita Beer's tactic when they upload or basically they connect, you prompt them to connect their whole address book. And so then it creates this like, you know, I'm going to this place, right? And then it like texts everybody that you're like going to that destination. So it just even makes it like go more viral in like a physical sense. So anyway, yeah, that's the first one I got for you.

Dude, I like that. And I also think what would be interesting is using it if you run a food truck. And you're like trying to drive around, find the hottest spots. Also, if you're somebody like me who goes out and interviews people in the streets and you want to like find the hottest spots, right? Something like that. And similar business idea, which is genius, not genius, but a lot of people were talking about it recently is like, why does Google Maps not show crime? Like, I just want to know, am I driving through a sketchy area? Am I walking through a sketchy area of New York? That's all I want to know.

Like, what's crazy too is that data is so easy to get. If you just go look up, uh, crime by zip code data, it's all public, like all of it's published. And so all you'd have to do is just do like a map overlay. I'm imagining, imagining like hood maps, but just like crime maps. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, it's, it's all on Citizen too. So like shows the number of crimes and stuff on there, but it's not connected. All right, here's my startup idea for you. It is called Nature as a Service. Tech bros don't go outside and we want to, you know, get them outside. And so we go into different startups and bring tech bros like ourselves into nature. And so they pay $3,000 for the day to bring the whole team on a park and platinum version. We give them LSD so they bond and, and have deep talks. I kind of think this would work. As like, maybe it's a ZERP. It might be a ZERP, but like a Launch House-y ZERP, you know what I'm saying? Of like going in and like retreats for startups and stuff. I think it could work.

1,000%. I think that like, I don't know, we, when I, especially in the remote world where it's like everybody shows up and they just like, you know, end up at a single spot. I feel like you could even do it like a higher tier, like $20K. You come out to this like middle of nowhere place and then everybody just does mushrooms in the woods. I feel like it'd have to be early stage and it would get so weird, man. Like it would have to— like if you were too large, if you had HR, this would never fly. But something like this could totally work. Like come out to Colorado, middle of nowhere type of thing. It's got to—

I think it would be really good. I mean, VCs already do that with Burning Man, so why not like capitalize on it, right? And maybe, you know, a hackathon on shrooms or LSD, you know, make some money.

I love it.

All right.

What's the next idea? Riffing off of this. So it's ayahuasca as a service. So I met this random couple when I was in like Sun Valley, Idaho that invited me to this like session. So then people already do these. It's like these like lead things. I didn't go to it because we were like traveling at the time. I was living out of like a van chasing snow all winter. And anyways, long story short, we didn't end up there. I'm still on their email newsletter. It's epic. And they like every like couple months they just send like, we're doing another retreat at this location. And like, you got to like, you know, basically send this dude like Venmo to this dude $2,000 to show up and do this. But it's like, you know, the whole thing that's like traditional, etc. But I think that you could probably like turn this into like as a service, right? And then the angle that you go after is do programmatic SEO. There's 2, there's 2,200 keywords related to ayahuasca, like question-related keywords. So all your inbound is basically just like people searching for like the questions, land on a landing page, turn it into an email newsletter, you know, have some type of ebook download or whatever. And then that just like goes in because you couldn't like, you're going to promote this in any other way. And then you partner with like a shaman and you do like lead gen for the shaman to get people into this. And I feel like that's the angle that you could go after.

You've heard of influencer marketing. Well, here is shaman marketing. You heard it here first. Dude, just get a bunch of shamans. Have shamans, basically what Dupe did, have 30 different shamans running 30 different TikToks, you know, and just pay each shaman maybe 2, 3 grand. That's got to be more than the average shaman. I don't know the average salary of a shaman, but like, I feel like 3 grand a month.

I feel like it's only a side gig, but there's probably, you know, yeah, it's probably like top 1% is making 300K a year. Right. And then like the rest of them are all, it's like maybe like 20 grand, but yeah. I don't know. I mean, this dude, they had like, it was like 50 slots that they would do. And then, I mean, sell it for 2 grand and he did like 4 sessions a year. So just breaking that down. I mean, it's good money, right? It's just this Native American guy that ran it. So.

Alright, here's another business idea for you. So this is actually one that I have a prototype for. So, you know, when you're like on a hike and you're eating trail mix, right? And you kind of just have it in your pocket, maybe, maybe you're doing some ayahuasca.

I don't know.

Well, wouldn't it be nice if you had a sack for your nuts, right? So a nut sack, right? So I worked with Alibaba. I, you know, talked to a man or woman, I'm not sure. I think it was a man pretending to be a woman actually overseas and got this designed. So I have a Nutsack prototype, but I do think, you know, I'm working right now to get it a little smaller because it's a little big, you know, it's a little big and I can't pull that off. But I think it's definitely got viral potential. Like imagine walking around New York or SF or something, just, just eating pistachios out of there. What do you think?

100%, man. I feel like you could like do a, like a mock like a mock ad, how the pistachios ads are like wonderful pistachios. And it's just like literally like nutsack and then you're pulling them out of this. It'd be absolutely ridiculous, but you could lean into the social play.

I wanted that.

And then TikTok shopping, that would probably be the angle. Yes.

Yes. I want to do it the style of the AI friend. And it's just like, instead of an AI friend ad, like that viral ad, it's just, you make friends because you have a cool nutsack, you know, pretty simple. Like that's how you make friends. Walk around eating pistachios, sharing.

Ridiculous. So there we go.

I do like the TikTok Shop angle. I, I have not used TikTok Shop too much. I don't know.

Yeah, I know it's ripping, uh, I mean, it's basically what dropshipping was in like 2014 is now TikTok Shop. I know kids that are just absolutely printing money on it, which is insane. Um, there's actually a huge company probably in this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I won't digress into good ideas. Uh, my next bad idea is dog flights. Um, so like for people that like make, you know, whatever, we'll say like $400 grand a year and they want to go like LA to New York or like New York to London, but they don't want to put their larger dog like in the bottom of the plane. It's like, imagine it's like you basically like book private flights like as a collective and then you have like, you know, a charter that once a week is just like goes back and forth between like LA, New York as an example. Like I think This is like, this is one of those like dumb, probably good ideas that you could do. And then, you know, just take that, take that cost and split it up over a, you know, a group of people going and buying. What is that? I think it's like $15 grand to charter that. Um, that like, I mean, if you get 6 people, right? That's game over. Easy, dude.

This is so smart. I mean, I feel like it starts as a group chat, right? Just like some friends who are bicoastal, maybe they're like VCs or something. Actually, so I have a dog. and I don't want to put him in the bottom of the plane because dogs die sometimes.

And dude, it's so fucking scary.

He's my best bud. Yeah, it's so scary. And so totally, I hit up some dude who, you know, does private flights. You've probably seen him on Twitter. And I was like, you know, I was like, you know, I don't have to pay anything. Why don't I hop on a phone call, find out? And it's like, yeah, $10,000 to $20,000 to like New York to Florida. And I don't have that kind of bread, but I do love the idea of sharing that.

Yeah, I think you could do it. I think there's this subset of people because there's no other option, right? It's like either I put them under, which nobody's going to do, or they drive, which nobody's going to do. Or you like hire like a pet transport person, which drives the dog and then you fly. But people get freaked out by that because they're like, oh, you know, it's my, my homie going with this random. Um, so I feel like you could do— yeah, like exactly, like New York, Miami. It's like a once a week flight that happens. And then you just, you know, it's like 6 people charter and you fly with your big dogs on it. And I think that would rip. I think you could get a group chat ripping with, um, just, uh, Facebook ads targeting people that own a dog. Uh, super easy to do. And then just do like top 5% of income. And like, that's honestly probably a huge business right there that you could go just like build an email mailing list. And then every time a new charter flight drops, you just like email that list out. Right.

So yeah, the logistics of it seem intimidating to me of that.

Totally.

But like the getting the email list, getting the audience, I feel like would be no problem, especially if you just partner with a dog creator of some sort. Like, there's so many dog creators, like, who are, you know, probably down, and maybe they have, like, a luxury audience. Like, a lot of people follow those Golden Retriever public—

100%, you know, 100%.

Crazy.

I know, um, like, for people who buy, like, fractional, uh, like, Jets, like, they, they resell that time a lot of the times, and there's, like, resellers of this. So you could probably go to them and be like, hey, if I get, you know, 6 people to lock into this, like, well, you know, can you find inventory for me? And they'll be like, hell yeah. And then if it's— especially if it's on a recurring basis, So I think you could do this without putting up like capital upfront, like basically get people to like prepay, you know, just say they do a deposit or something like that and then go find it after. But yeah, anyways, just dumb idea that would probably work actually.

I think, I think we need to test this one. I don't know if you have a dog, but I, I'm, I want to test this one out. All right. I got an idea for you. So you've heard of Joey Chestnut, Joey Chestnut, right? The hot dog eater.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of lot of diet subscriptions out there, but what about a Joey Chestnut diet subscription? So every day, you know, or every week, 100 hot dogs mailed to you. That way you could train and become like Joey Chestnut.

I think you'd have to go like premium, so it's like all, you know, all-American beef, organic, you know, grass-fed, like a higher— like that higher tier. I wonder how big— like, there's probably any, you know, like esports, there's probably like a play for that, but for like like food, like, you know, like food competition eating.

It's very niche.

Super niche. But I think there's probably an angle where you like just go out and get into that sport.

Like your friends are just like, bro, you could eat. And then you're just like, okay, I'm going to do it competitively.

Like, how do you even choose to get into that? You just face an XXL pie and they're like, yo, you got to try this whole thing. Like, go eat 100 hot dogs. Or you do like 50 nugget challenge at McDonald's and they're like, what the fuck? That was way too easy for you.

So yeah, I was watching the Olympics last night. You see artistic swimming. I did not know that was a sport. I don't know how somebody finds out about that, but like, looks like they're just dancing underwater and stuff.

I don't know.

Yeah, I just do autistic swimming, you know, but all right, hit me. What you got?

Cool. Uh, next one is also like probably a legit one, but kind of whack. So birdwatching is like going crazy in millennials right now. Yes. And so like, I think you could sell, like, imagine it's just like a camera that's by your feeder and it like, like identifies the bird and then like posts it to social. And then that like people, like, you know, you basically build like a social app into this so that people can like see videos of like, it would be like a micro, you know, community thing. But I think that something like this could actually like rip. I could just see like people getting into like like arguments on it already of like, well, that's not, you know, that's not this bird. That's this bird. Right. Or like we got all the robins just came in. Like the people that are into this are like obsessed with it. And so, yeah, just another like random, random thing that's based off of like a larger trend that's happening.

I agree with that. I also think there'd be one for just like wild animals in general with that. Like now that we have AI that could totally just track an image and upload it automatically, just throw a Zapier in there. You're all good.

My friend's sister has one of these, like the cameras and it like pings her every time that bird shows up and she's like addicted to it, you know, it's like this like basically dopamine hit every time that one lands by it.

So yeah, I mean, why not just, yeah, attach it to Zapier and boom, you got it.

Totally.

All right. Another business idea for you. So startups have runway, right? That is the total amount of runway they have. And however it's tracked, maybe it's on Mercury, maybe on, you know, runway.com, that new app. What about a runway clone? That you clone your competitor's runway amount and then like, you know, basically somehow like set it up on a similar website. I don't know. I don't have this fully baked out, but basically try to show them that they have way more runway than they actually do and just like, like, if they just like cut costs.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, like they start, they start like bootstrap runway.

And so it's like, it's like their, their model, but like the bootstrap version of it, of like how they could just print money if they didn't. Weren't just like burning like VC cash.

Yes, I like that. I like that. And just totally, totally lie. Like completely, completely.

Totally, totally. Okay, I got one for you. AI horse betting coach app. So you like, my brother's like a degenerate gambler and he's into horse betting right now, but he's also like a data scientist. So he goes like deep on this shit. So anyways, there's all of these models to like do horse betting, but the whole thing with it is that the data is like happening in real time. It's one of the few like things that based off of what the betting is currently, like there's spreads that you can hit. So I'm just imagining this is like a Chrome extension that's like just like an eBay snipe tool, but it's like telling you, okay, snipe this horse bet at this moment in time. And I think you could just like have it where it's like all these different models are built into it and then AI is analyzing the data and being like, yeah, like you know, bet this horse right now. And then as the odds adjust, it's like telling you, okay, actually bet this horse now, or like shift the bets over. And so another just degenerate angle, but I think it probably actually could work. Another, another one.

I like it. I like it. Similar front. I was actually— I made a, you know, joke around prototype on, on, on Vercel v0, which is like Claude. You could just tell it what to code and it codes it, like the front end. So a Product Hunt gambling website, gamble on what products are going to win, right? We are not going to add this to Product Hunt, but it'd be kind of fun, not gonna lie. Or add Polymarket, you know, section where like predict the odds.

Why doesn't Product Hunt do that? Where it's like, you know, every person that hits it on a daily, there's like a, you know how Coinbase does a, it's like a bounty. It's like a monthly whatever that I'm just imagining, like, you know, there's a whatever, $10,000 a month or $20,000 a month that's allocated to something like this. And then the top 10 companies from that, they like all get— it's like a seed check or whatever, or just like, you know, a grant that happens. Like, I feel if you added a monetary component, like, people would get so gnarly with it. Like, just, it would— I feel like it would create so much like, uh, off-platform conversation. Like, Twitter in particular, I could see this going like stupid viral.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great idea, and I will talk to our CEO about that because we could, we could definitely do it. We could afford we have, you know, enough revenue coming in, we could do that like a product on almost like a— yeah, totally.

I love that.

I also think it'd be nice to do one like, you know, a VC one and an indie one maybe, or, or like for different products, something like that. We're talking about doing that. So like, you know, OpenAI takeover day, something like that, where OpenAI gives credits to the winners. But I feel like these are too good of ideas. What are some bad ones? Hit me with some bad ones.

I don't know, man. I got a, I got a gnarly, weird, bad one if you want it. So imagine.

Yes.

I call it, call it motherly figure AI. And it's like, just like, it's like basically a mom that like agrees to everything that you say. You don't feel uncomfortable with it. It does like, you know, basically there's like kind and caring. So like it's this app that basically like mimics how a mom would talk to you.

I like it.

I was just, I stumbled on this data today that was like AI mom and the search volume per month. And it's growing like exponentially, which is ridiculous. So anyways, yeah, I feel like there's another one that's just fucked up that you could ride.

How did you stumble upon that data? Cause I didn't see that data, Cody.

No, I like just constantly, I don't know. I see a ton of companies on a daily basis. And then from that I was looking at, it was like AI boyfriend, AI girlfriend. And then in the long tail keyword data, I saw AI mom, AI dad, cause it looked like similar within the search data. And I was like, what the fuck is this? And so then went down that rabbit hole and found all these apps that basically like act as a mom is the idea. So that's wild.

I remember like early in AI GF, AI BF era, I was talking to a VC. I'm having him on the pod soon, Sasha Kolesky. He's at Creator Ventures. Awesome dude. He was telling me, he was, you know, I was finding out like women spend a lot more time and money on AI boyfriends than men do on AI girlfriends. And basically, like, interesting. Yeah, because girls love the, the texting romance of it. Like, you think about, like, a fiction.

Yeah, like the worst piece.

Like, yeah, you know, girls read smut or whatever, and guys just, you know, you get a picture and you're, you're done in 10 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever, you know. And it's like the time piece, like the, the amount of time people are spending on Character AI is actually kind of scary.

Like, yeah, do you know Wattpad? Yeah.

Yeah. It's similar. Yeah.

It's, it's, yeah. So like imagine Wattpad, but with like a chat app, like Character AI. I'm just like, I feel like there's something in there. Like it's like this, uh, anyway. Yeah. I don't know. Like I, like Fifty Shades of Grey was spun out of Wattpad, right? Or like out of like fanfic. And I feel like there's a whole angle like within that, but like make it more interactive.

It's definitely happening already where like people are talking to characters on Character AI and Who knows what they're talking about. All right. Another idea, which I think is really good and slightly evil is competitor Calendly booking. So find all of my competitors' Calendly links across the internet and just book all of them with fake email addresses.

Oh my God, dude. I know a kid that could build this.

Yeah, it's pretty dirty and think it would go high.

100%. I bet there's a whole angle with it. And it just like cleans it all the way up. Like, yeah.

And so also you could have multiple plans, right? So you got the solo plan. You just book like your arch nemesis. Say, say you're just a solo creator, right? And you have an arch enemy. But if you're Enterprise, that's where the real money is. It books every single salesperson out for 100%. And then they just show up and nothing. It's just no-show after no-show.

Totally. Totally. So what would that turn into? They'd have to go like validate, like, are these people real or not? And then you could have like a whole other thing where where it's like fake LinkedIn, fake companies. You can just go like deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.

You could do that as well. There could be like that service aspect of it. Or actually, you know what, you could use the same fake LinkedIn for like a bunch of companies, right? So like say fake LinkedIn Jimmy, Jimmy Dean or whatever, right? He is booking at your competitor, my competitor, Greg Eisenberg's competitor, all of our competitors. Totally. Just, you don't even need to create that many fake LinkedIn, you know?

Totally, totally. You probably use real people, which would even be more interesting. So like who their actual target ICP is. And then you do fake emails like from the companies. I don't know. That'd be fun.

That'd be dirty.

Yeah.

I like it.

It'd be, I mean, use their names and then it's a variation. Right. And so then they look the person up and it goes like, I'm just imagining it's like, I mean, you could probably do that too, where you just like confirm that this actually isn't their email with like an email validation. I mean, it could get real technical real quick.

But yeah, I, yeah, I like it. Offensive Calendly. Like, you know, Calendly is very like defensive. It's like you're receiving, but like we should go on the offense. Like you put your Calendly link in your email. Like, oh, I'm booking that shit up, dude. I'm going to go.

I love it. That's amazing. All right.

I guess we got to do it.

All right. I got one for you. Uh, AI typebeat generator. Uh, do you know what typebeats are?

Like DJ Mustard type beat.

Like Drake type beat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. So thousands of search volume for this. Again, one of these like dumb, actually, probably there's a huge company in this ideas, but I'm just imagining. So you can rent these type beats or buy them, like buy the license. That's how it functions. But I'm just imagining like AI makes just like thousands of these type beats, like for each of them. Whole play is just like product. You basically make a massive site that's just like landing pages of like every type beat. Query. And then on each of those type beats, it's just like, it's just like new content is dropping daily. And then you, uh, I would have it be like to even hear the beats, uh, it's, it's email gated. And then every time that you do a new drop, uh, you like email that whole list, like a new, you know, new Drake type beat dropped, boom. And then it's just like, I mean, you sell out instantly basically. And then how you're doing this at scale on the production side is you basically, I mean, just think how many like, you know, wannabe rappers are from your high school, right? And like, that's who you're selling to on this type of shit.

So anyway, and I think it's, I think it's really smart. And you, beats are like a lot easier to create with, with lyrics. I think, I think it'd be 100% very easy. Um, yeah.

And also do like melody packs too. That's like another thing where it's like they just like want the, they want the, you know, whatever the chord is or that type of deal.

So dude, I'm also thinking like you could create these fake producers who are the producers behind it, right? And nobody has to know. And then they have social media channels where like videos of their beats are going out all the time. Um, dude, I've been playing around with HeyGen a lot. Oh dude, that's crazy. Have you used it for any—

I haven't like posted anything with it yet, but did you see my tweet with this?

No, no, what was it?

Okay, so we've been building this like TikTok cloud network is what I'm calling it. So imagine like we make all these virtual machines and then proxy networks and then we like post across them daily. So like 10 accounts, uh, the average views that we see across, you know, for 10 accounts in a month is like 300,000. Um, but the challenge is that like we have people that want this, but they're like, I don't have any content. So I'm selling it to podcasters right now. But like the idea was like, okay, can we just go to SaaS and do it? So the, over the weekend I built this whole workflow that basically like writes. So AI writes scripts. You take the scripts, you make a digital avatar with HeyGen. You take that digital avatar, you do a background, like a BG remover with AI, and then you just like do a product video in the background that's like somebody clicking through the products, right? So there's like movement and shit. I spun up 15 of these like clips in like 30 minutes and then posted them across all of these. But it's like, dude, it's one of the most insane, like people are like, this is fucking fake. They're giving like you know, 700 views per video. So in the aggregate, it gets insane, right? And we saw signups happen from it for like to our software, Swell AI. So, oh my God. Anyway, yeah, just a random, random thing.

So dude, we're, I'm trying the exact same thing. So I actually was testing out, we had a similar weekend where, you know, every time my newsletter goes out, I have it go into Zapier and then it summarizes, uh, you know, and then turns it into a script using an OpenAI assistant, then to HeyGen creates a video with me. And I haven't. Published, you know, the videos yet because I'm still like tweaking it. But we're also actually going to be doing this for Product Hunt too. So like when there's a product of the day, dude, every time there's a product of the day, there is a video that should be made. Like 100%, right?

100% explaining what it does and Akhmed.

Exactly, dude. Exactly.

Yeah, it's going to be my God.

So right now, like we're getting, getting ready to launch that stuff. It's going to be sick. It's going to be really cool. That is nuts. That is nuts.

And you, I mean, you just do the top 5 every day, right? Yeah. Oh my God. That's, that's an awesome idea. Like across all these like for you page type contents. No, I love that, man. It's an unreal idea.

Yeah. I'm definitely really excited for it. So I also run this thing called Meme Alerts, meme-alerts.com, where I send viral memes and basically the same thing. So every day there is, you know, a bunch of new viral memes, right? And I'm just going to turn the email that we send into videos every day explaining what these memes are. Right. And so, like, you know, you think of somebody who doesn't know what a meme is or what the meme is, you know, they want to understand it. And so here's the Wolverine meme and we could have fun with it. And so, you know, we've been working on this as well. It's, it's been pretty fun, dude.

My—

I have— I told you about Meme Alerts, this stupid business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, I I think it was probably at like $200 or $300 MRR last time we talked. It is at $640 MRR and it is just daily memes, daily templates. It is so dumb, but it's so dumb, but it's helpful and people find it helpful. And like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who cares?

Are you building it into a web app? So it's like a template generator, like a meme template generator. It's brilliant.

Yeah.

Yeah. I love it.

Yeah. So building it into like a database and generator, everything.

Just cold email every social media manager. And be like, yo, we have a daily meme template generator so you don't have to think about social ever again. Exactly. Exactly. And then I connect to Hootsuite so it automatically makes the memes about their company using AI. And then like it just schedules it as a draft and they go in and they basically like, you know, they just hit go with it or whatever. They okay the draft.

Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking.

So I was saying, sorry about it. I'm like looking, I'm going viral. This tweet's going viral right now. I made for my friend's company called create.xyz. Basically they like it'll one-shot make apps, like whatever you prompt. So you can prompt it like, make me an Instagram tool caption generator. And it's like, use the Anthropic API to like generate the caption. And it like builds the web app.

That's actually sick. I would love that. I would love to talk to him because I literally, we have a video going out tomorrow for Product Hunt. I'm comparing Claude, Sonnet, uh, with the similar thing and Vercel v0. And yeah, I would love to do that sometime.

It's one of the most insane things I've seen. Like, so you can link the components. So like you can actually like build, like, it's like basically a no-code solution, but you just like describe the thing and then you can iterate on it as well. And then it like lives demos right in it.

Dudes like me will hear that and be like, hell yeah, that's, that's sick.

I love it.

I, I definitely love it. There's, what was it? Have you seen Wordware or Glyph? Like, just the AI workflow world right now is really cool. Like, there's seriously crazy cool shit coming out. Like, I think the future is like—

Gumloop is in that category, right?

Dude, Gumloop. What are you using Gumloop for, by the way? Like, I haven't experimented a little.

Okay.

All right. I need to spend some more time on, cause I got stuck and was like, ah, I'll just use Zapier. I'll just do something else. But I think there's like. A lot more there that I need to discover. So totally, I think that's really good things.

I feel like YouTube channels that just walk through like all these workflows like would absolutely crush right now. Like you could just make so much money off of just making these types of channels that are, here's this tool, I'm going to automate this whole thing.

So I think so too. I have a couple of my listeners and community members who are in the AI workflow space and they'd probably love that. By the way, dude, you were highly requested. Like you were, you were requested in the last—

Oh no, wow, man, I'm just shitposting, so.

Yeah, but we're having fun. All right. Another business idea for you. So medieval torture, right? You know, imagine getting like, you know, stretched out on that rack. That probably feels pretty good. Like it's got to feel like kind of good. And also like the spikes, like probably feels good on the back too. So like, I think there should be a medieval torture spa. Where like you don't get the full torture, but you get some of the, the experience. And it's, it's not relaxing like a spa. So if you're like an anxious guy like me and you can't relax, like you actually get to like have kind of, you know, this chaotic thing too. It's a really bad idea, but I think it could work with like—

I don't, I don't think it is because like, have you seen those running groups? It's like the like pain running groups or whatever, like the all-black pain running groups. I only run from here. That's category. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. The prolific or whatever, the excitement of run clubs in New York is really weird. And it's been insane. Just like, I feel like I don't know why. Yeah. I'm definitely impressed. It's what?

It's like replaced church. I feel like it's like they need a community event that's on a weekly bat, like a weekly cadence. And like, I think people are hungry for that. And so if you just make that, like, I'm just imagining this torture company, but it's like you do it with a group of people. It's like 50 people getting tortured at once.

Dude, I mean, people are already like paying to go to these like torture houses or whatever and like these like boot camps or whatever. Like, you know, founders go to boot camps where they get yelled at. Like maybe they would pay for a torture chamber. I don't know.

Totally.

You'd have to get some— the people who would apply for those jobs, gonna be some freaks though. Like, you gotta be pretty sadistic to want to be the torturer, right? For as a living.

Totally, totally. Yeah, yeah. I think— I gotta say, so segue from this into this next idea. So like, awkward situations as a service. So I think, I think people like want to just do new things, and I'm just imagining like you tell them nothing and just like with no context drop them into situations like they're just like suddenly like at like a goth rave or they're at like a, like a LARPing event or they're at like, they're working a shift at like a donut place, you know? And like their, their coworkers just like talking shit about them the whole time. Like, I think people would just to like have new, like a new experience, like get out of this monotony. I think that there's something like in that, that would be like, probably, I don't know, like I would, I would buy that. It's like, hey, you pay us $200 and we set up this like ridiculous, like, thing that you're gonna do, and you go do it with, like, a group of friends or something.

It could even be cohort-based. Like, I thought about this a while ago. I would love to see what it's like in certain jobs, almost like the, that Undercover Boss, like that, but it's just, you know, me. I'm bored for a day. I want to take a day off from work, go spend 8 hours as a, you know, as a construction worker.

I pay, I pay the salary, you know, or they like dress you up as like a mime, you know, and like you like have to like Like, do the whole, like, you're a street performer and you're just terrible at it, you know? Yeah, but it just kind of like gets you out of your daily routine and like puts you in that weird awkward situation. I think, I don't know, I think it'd be so fun.

I think it's, dude, I think I would definitely do that. Maybe we have a little too much time and money, but I would do that. It sounds fun.

Like, totally.

It's almost like an Airbnb experience, um, but it's totally work experiences.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not for Instagram. It's like just for like you and the people you're with. Like, I'm imagining, I don't know, like you work as like a Barney for a day, or like, you know, just like whack shit.

All right, here's another idea for you. Um, JD Vance couches. So couches, just say Vance on it. It's called the Vance Couch. And but the thing is, they are really good couches. Like, I want, I want to make the best couch brand ever and call them Vance Couches to commemorate.

Dude, somebody owns VanceCouch.com. Somebody already hit forwards to an Imgur photo, dude. What the fuck?

Oh, an image. That's wild. What is it? What is the photo? Do I want to hear?

I'll screen share. It's just like this, like, like, it's like a sexy couch. I don't know how else to describe it. That's so good.

I love that.

Here, I'll show you. I'll show you. Do you see this?

Oh my God, that's what Vans— ah, I wonder how much they paid for that.

That's so funny.

That's Incredible.

I have no idea. You could probably look it up what they paid for it, but that's hilarious. It was 7 days ago.

Yeah, I feel like if that man wins VP, uh, he, you know, I think there would be a really good opportunity. If he loses, the business is bust though. Like, I don't think we're gonna hear about him for a while. But no, for sure, for sure.

I mean, you could ride that wave though. You could just Alibaba it, you know, make it a little too big.

I feel like, you know, Trump's put his name on everything. It worked for him. So why not Vance Couches?

You know, I mean, it's his next career, probably.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Any more ideas? What you got?

Dude, I'm dry, man. I don't know. That was it. You took everything I had in the chamber.

I got one more. And I posted this on LinkedIn and ended up on Maniacs of LinkedIn or Lunatics of LinkedIn subreddit.

Amazing.

Yeah, people don't like it. Anti-capitalists don't like it. Basically, like, all right, you're in New York, you're in Miami, you can't find a bathroom, right? Because the government has done such a bad job putting public restrooms. So why don't we privatize the restrooms? So basically just rent out a bunch of tiny real estate for restrooms and then you get a membership pass to the restrooms. Like I'm talking Soho House of restrooms. That is all I want.

Would rip. It would absolutely rip. Are you kidding me? Like, have you seen, uh, I mean, so it's funny, the Dutch do this really well. They have their toilets, like their public toilets are like iconic. They're just like beautiful. And I'm just imagining that's like new wave, like design, basically modern contemporary. And then you get in there and there's like just a fuck ton of plants and it's like, oh, it's clean.

And there's, yeah, I'm, I'm so down for that. Like, I think you do it for $20 a month, $30 a month. Like, I think that's very reasonable in New York. Like, 100%.

Totally.

Totally. Yeah. I'm in for it. Um, all right. While I got you on, I want to ask you a question. LinkedIn video. What's the deal?

Yeah.

Are you bullish?

Yeah.

Um, I heard, I heard you were very bullish. So talk to me.

I'm very bullish.

Yeah.

So they just released, they're basically slow betaing a for you page type content, infinite scroll feed. In the US you have it, looks like UK, most English-speaking countries, and then some of Europe already. I get this question all the time, like, where's, you know, where's the, where's the tab? Where's the tab on like mobile? So there isn't a tab. If you upload a vertical video, right, that's in like a 19 by 6 portrait aspect ratio, it automatically goes into this feed. The thing that we're seeing though is that like, so if somebody's on mobile, basically they hit, they click into a video and then it like prompts them to like scroll, right? And so it just like infinitely goes. So a couple things are happening simultaneously. One, there's nobody posting there. So if you create content, it just gets insane distribution because they're pushing this, right? Because they see that, oh, this creates more engagement on the platform. So I have a friend as an example, he's posting like 6 to 7 videos a day and he has 7 a day. He has 7,500 followers on LinkedIn, but last month he did 3.2 or sorry, he did 2.7 million views across the platform. And so, and they're just talking head style videos, just talking head style, like the same stuff. He's, he's Instagram famous already. So he like, he knows the, he knows the game, right? Of like how to make good content. Um, but this is basically the angle. So it's basically blue ocean in the sense of like they have all this inventory and they like need content for it. And so what I've seen with my own data is that Um, like whenever I post a video, all of the back catalog content gets like an immediate bump. I see it within the views data. And so what's happening is basically like somebody views your video, they swipe through 3 more and then they show you another video from that person. Numbers are super small in comparison to what other people are seeing. But like, I think I'm doing around, uh, like 40 followers a day from this. I'm posting like maybe 3 times a week on this. I just, you know, it's just a time thing. I'm over here and I'm like, yo, how do you. How do you spin up 5 videos a day for this and then try to provide some type of value? So we just built social scheduling into Swell AI, which is one of the companies I own. We're doing an experiment right now where we just take like podcast content, like interview style content, and then just like chop it up into highlights just to see what happens on LinkedIn. So I'll report back once I have the data on it, but like early data looks insane with it. But the idea is like you could basically, you probably build an entire company if you're in the B2B world, just off of the short form content. And the reach that LinkedIn is giving you organically.

So yes, I agree with that. Actually, Justin Feinberg, who you talked to earlier, who I had on the pod years ago and one of my, one of my closest friends, honestly said that originally it was like, uh, like 2 or 3 years ago was like the next wave of unicorn B2B founders will be creators. And, you know, he is trying to build that himself. You know, he built 400K on TikTok, 300K, and now building an AI company. Dude, it's totally a B2B creator wave. I, I was thinking about this other day. I was like, you know, I like building prosumer SaaS and like B2B SaaS. I could not imagine building B2C like that. A, it's obviously super hard. It's just so hard.

Totally.

I'm also just like working all the time that like, this is the person I understand is like the entrepreneur, the marketer, like the grinder. Like I can't, I couldn't build like a Partyful personally. Like I do go to parties every now and then, but like it's I couldn't, I couldn't do that. I don't know. I like making content that is beatable.

Totally. If you want to get just a fucking, I mean, Nikita Beer's most recent talk, like he's been talking about how they're using TikTok to systematically take over college campuses for app downloads. So they basically go and they do influencers at each of these like sorority houses, from my understanding. This is just like through somebody backchanneling this information to me. And then they like buy, they go basically campus by campus and make these apps go viral. And like in the last like I think 90 days he's had 3 of his app investments go to top 10s in their categories on the app download store, you know, the iOS.

Dude. And so it's funny how it always starts with the college sororities from Tinder to Bumble, whatever. It always starts with the sorority girls. We'll consume that down to pass it to the guys, pass it down to the younger girls at high school, look up to them. It always starts with the girls. You know, Tinder started with a giant frat party. Like it's the same thing.

The creators thing, though, I think that like I'm really, everybody I talk to, I'm challenging them to think about this. You're no longer a product company that makes media. You're a media company that makes product. And you have to like change your mindset on this because product is becoming a commodity with AI. Like even talking about like Create.xyz, right? Like I can, you can go spin up a product in 48 hours without even knowing how to code now. It's, I mean, it's insane. So the only thing that's going to become the differentiator and a moat for you is your own media channel. So like I'm over here and I'm like, yo, how do I build up? Email newsletter with like a million subs on it. So that's like what I'm pacing for to do by the end of 2025. And then like build a podcast out, build a YouTube out, build all of these own channels out. And then also what it allows for, especially if you're a repeat founder, is like you get like overnight, you can zero to one a company because you already have this immediate distribution. You get it to a level that it's sustainable. And then you could just go flip that and move on to the next one or whatever you want to do. But I think that's going to be the only way to win in the future, just based off of everything that I'm seeing, like. Especially with global talent and like how good, like, you know, engineers all over the world are becoming. I think it's just going to be easier and cheaper than ever to make product. And so this is going to be the only way that you're going to be able to win.

So, dude, you're preaching, preaching to my choir. That's the whole thesis of my book, Memes Make Millions, is it is easier and easier to make products and harder and harder to get attention. So you better be funny, you better have fun, you better like have a good time here because that's the people who win and stay in it forever and stay in it for the long haul.

Totally.

Peter Thiel has a good quote, which is like, basically most businesses don't die because of bad product. They die because they can't get one distribution channel to work. Right. And, you know, totally.

They run out of money.

I mean, yeah, exactly. Every startup is a media company. Every founder is an influencer. So totally better start.

Yeah. Another way to think about it. I mean, it's just, it's just mimicking biology too, right? A species doesn't like, you don't, when you survive, right? Like you, You didn't win, you just didn't die. And it's the same thing when it comes to startups. It's actually who wins is who can survive the longest. And so it's like, if you just don't die, then you have a company. Like it's, it's one of those ideas that it's so basic, so simple, it's deceptive. But anyway, yeah, just it's that same idea, just remixed in a different form.

It'll be even more deceptive when we make our Runway clone to screw with people. So let's go fuck some people up.

Runway clone. That's shilled by a HeyGen avatar across a TikTok cloud.

Shows you, yeah. Oh dude, that's like, uh, people posting their fake Stripe screenshots.

Dude, it kills me. I don't know. Just personally, I, I don't know why you'd ever blow the spot like that. Like if you're making money, why would you ever want to tell people you're making, just printing cash in that area?

Personally, I have a friend doing like 120K MRR bootstrapped and No Twitter, maybe 100 followers. All he does is like my stuff. Like he just, I love it. Lives in silence and just like pays influencers.

And I have a friend in the e-com space. Same, same thing. Like literally pays influencers. They're, I think they're at like $6.7 million when I talked to him last ARR. It's 2 and a half years old. Uh, it's bootstrapped. He basically like spun it, like used cash flow from his e-com business to build this product. And again, nobody knows who he is. Like he just called me and he's like my accountant. Told me that like I need to get a jet for tax reasons. He kind of comes from nothing. So he's like, I don't know what the fuck to do, how to think about this. So we were just like laughing about how ridiculous it sounds. But yeah, man, it's, uh, I, there's, I think killer, there's way more killers than people, you know, we talk about shit in public. And so I just look at, again, my, my angle is like, this is just a media leverage. Like I wouldn't be doing that unless there was a distribution play, but in all reality, I'll probably go ghost at some point, just like one day, just stop everything. And you know, once, once once the bag is secured.

Yeah, yeah. I, I've talked to Greg about this, like, you know, building in public is really good when you're first starting out, but then like once you hit a certain point, it just creates envy and, uh, and also creates a lot of copycats. So like, it's really good to get the early momentum, but then you just like go ghost, build in private.

I think, dude, it's why all of them do it. Yeah, that's why all of them do it. I mean, even with like Swell, like what's hilarious is we got cloned, uh, like 9 times in the beginning. So I had like Like literally I have all these companies that are our competitors that like signed up for us, bought a domain, like product ships 4 to 6 weeks like after that. And it's just like, I mean, that's the game anymore, right? Especially when you're doing this. And so I think it's way more gangster if you can figure out distribution that isn't in money Twitter, right? You're playing a blue ocean game rather than something else.

100%, man. Dude, this was a lot of fun.

Yeah, same, man. Thanks for having me.

We should do this regularly. Dumb startup ideas. I, this is, this is my passion. Stupid startup ideas. Like, dude, I'm trying to, I just want to be the Nathan Fielder of Silicon Valley. I'm gonna die happy. That's all.

Amazing. Amazing. Thanks for having me, man. It was great.