Startup ideas brainstorm (steal this $130k/month idea)

The next idea, Shopify for X. I think Shopify is an $80k company. When you have an $80k company, there's just opportunities to unbundle it. So what is Danny's idea? So she says, there are all these no-code tools, they're either too limited or too complex. What you need is a product-specific tool. Shopify is no-code e-commerce, then you would also build no-code marketplaces. This is such a good idea. This is such a good idea. Something like this

needs to exist, should exist, will exist, how would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I'd build that. Okay, so a few weeks ago I had Danny Grant on the podcast. She's someone who I really respect. Sometimes you meet someone or you're listening to someone's podcast or you're watching them and you just know that this person's got it. They've got the sauce, they know where the world is going, and she had a few ideas that she shared.

But afterwards, she sent me a list of 139 different startup ideas. And we never got a chance to go through them. So I figured I'd hop on here real quick, go through some of these ideas. Some of them are kind of big venture-backed ideas. Some of them are profitable startups. And some of them will just get your creative juices flowing. And I'll tell you how I feel about these ideas.

What would I do? How would I start them? And if I just think that they're playing garbage, you know, some of these ideas I might be like, you know what? I wouldn't, maybe it's a good idea, but it's one of those ideas I wouldn't do. Too much work. So without further ado, let's go into Danny Grant's 139 ideas. Let's pick the most interesting ones or the ones that just speak to me. And let's go through this together and see what we got.

All right. So this idea, idea number one, is there a product doc format just for writing product specs? So you can create jira's in line, you can have common threads in line, etc. This is pretty darn good idea. You know, there is Google Docs, of course. But there, there's nothing specific for product specs. So I can imagine a Google Docs for product specs for PMs that people would be willing to pay $20 a month for.

So I actually think that there's something here. I really like this idea. It's not one of the simplest idea to do. Like you actually, you have to create software. I don't think really anything like this exists. I mean, of course you have product templates, but you don't really have a whole experience dedicated to writing product specs.

How would I actually go and build something like this? Well, I build the MVP, probably outsource it to an agency to get the MVP up. And I'd partner with a creator. I mean, Lenny Richitsky would be the dream. So Lenny Richitsky, I think at this point has the biggest podcast and newsletters for product managers.

But, you know, who are the aspiring Lenny Richitskis? So I'd make a list. I'd go to perplexity.ai. And I'd say, you know, who are the up and coming 20, 20 Lenny Richitskis? And I would go and reach out to them. So I think this is a good idea. Pretty straightforward software, catchy, catchy name. You know, I wouldn't probably wouldn't do this idea if I didn't have the buy-in from two to three or four creators.

So I would create the name. I'd create the mock up first. And then I would actually go and see if I want to build it. All right. So that's that's idea number one. Idea number two, developer portfolio sites. So she says, help every developer create their own Danny town. I assume Danny town is her own portfolio website.

So there's a company called format.com. And what they do is they're the portfolio builder for creative professionals. So basically what Danny suggesting is build the format.com but for developers. Now, I know someone's listening to this and being like, well, that's GitHub GitHub already exists. Yes, but it's not as beautiful as a format. And I do think that there's an opportunity to build that for developers.

And formats actually massive. They've got 50,000 plus people who pay to use it. And what do they pay to use it pricing was pulled up. They pay $11 a month annually or $24 a month. Monthly. So this is a huge business. If you assume that 50, you know, the average is let's say $15 a month. You know, it's huge. You know, we're talking 750,000 in monthly recurring revenue for something that doesn't cost a lot of money. And why I love websites, website builders is once you build it.

Chances are you are not going to turn. So these are beautiful businesses that don't turn very well. I think Danny's onto something with developer portfolio sites. I do think it makes sense. And you can probably take again, you can take that Lenny Richittiki strategy, you know, creator led. There are a bunch of developers who have a lot of followers and I'd work with them to create something that would be really cool. So I think the way I would actually build something like this is.

I would start by building one really awesome developer portfolio site. So I would reach out to some of these developers and say, hey, I'm a designer. I'd really love to design you your own developer for a whole site and create something unique, interesting. Hopefully, I've never seen before. Get them super stoked about it. And once you refine that, you know, maybe you do it for a few people, then that's when you have the product.

And then, you know, that's when you get some of these influencer developers on board. And that's when you can actually go and build out an MVP, minimal viable product and start charging for this. So I really love this idea. These are one of the great cash flow ideas. I remember meeting the founder of card, C-A-R-R-D.co, I think. He had a great business. There are one page websites. He doesn't, he charges very little. I think it's like nine bucks a year or something.

But he had a great business. He bootstrapped it one guy, one guy, living in Tennessee, developer, and millions of people use this. It's crazy. So website builders, I know you must be thinking like, oh, my God, that's so 1999. But it works. It really works. And it works really well for different niches. So really good idea on that one. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boring marketing.com.

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So if you know, no, a VC.com. It's a blog slash newsletter by Fred Wilson, who's a VC in New York City. He's been doing this for like at least 15, 20 years. It's super, super simple. I think originally his blog was on Tumblr. Not sure where it is today. But yeah, you know, the idea around with someone, you know, to someone want to blog in a newsletter in a box.

I mean, there is substack. But it's, you know, substack feels very newsletter first. I do think that there's probably an opportunity to build something like this and make it easy for people. Like maybe there's just a night. Maybe the idea is just like you're an agency and you work on top of all these different services and you just set it up for them. You know, you use existing services. But I'm not a big fan of like, okay, let's go and create the next substack. But like make it more blog first.

Because I think that's really hard and you're competing against people who've raised hands if not hundreds of millions of dollars. So don't like that idea. But do like the idea around, you know, we work with beehive, we work with substack, we work with WordPress. We charge a very small one time fee to help you get set up for it. And you probably do cold outbound to to get people to do this.

This is like, you know, definitely a cold outbound, cold email, cold DM to get people and say like, hey, notice that you don't have a blog set up. I know you don't have a newsletter. You're missing out. I think you talk about, you use a lot of social, social credibility around, you know, so and so Lenny Ritchitsky didn't have a blog and newsletter. And now he's making $5 million a year with his blog and newsletter. And he does it running on a, you know, a free substack and you can do the same.

So I think you, the way to do it is you do a mix of the cold, cold DM and then you use your content. Like how do you build an audience and you talk about these stories and then you, you follow them to a really cheap offer, one time offer, why one time over monthly for something like this. I just think that it's going to be a no brainer for people. This is a, this is a business that you might be able to start on your side.

The starting costs are quite small. So, so cheers, Danny for giving us this idea. All right, let's talk about some ideas. I don't really love so virtual workspace compete with tandem, which is a tandem is a virtual is just tandem real quick. So I just took a tandem. I'm pretty sure tandem was like one of those apps that you can see other teammates in like a third space. And they've like come seems like they come, they pivoted to more of like a slack plus video conferencing.

So it's hard, you know, to build with with Danny's, you know, suggesting is quite hard. You know, a social app basically making slack more social. First of all, you have to like build slack. So that's step one. And then so you know step one is building all the primitives what people are used to. And then step two is like, okay, now I got to figure out how can I make this different and interesting in a social experience.

So this is, this is one of those ideas where I think, you know, they call it tarp it idea. It's an idea that seems good on paper. But like once you actually go and go into it, it's actually a bad idea. Because there's so much investment that you need to put into something like this. And then you have to get people off slack, you have to get people off Microsoft team. So don't love this idea at all.

Other idea, whole world is a silent disco. The problems with turntable FM is it was too early turntable FM was was it was an idea where people create these like virtual rooms and you play music and you can like chat with other people who are in these virtual rooms.

You have like your own avatar. It almost felt like a game. So she says now everyone is walking around listening to music everywhere and someone is going to build a network DJ station where the whole world is one big silent disco. I just think this is a cool idea. It's a really cool idea. I hope someone does something like this. I actually don't think it's that hard to do something like this.

But getting people it's not hard to build the thing getting you know the whole world to get off their current platforms is hard and getting people to pay for it and dealing with the licenses in the music industry. Not so easy. So cool idea. Hard to execute. Okay, another technical idea JS fiddle meets Twitter so. JS fiddle is basically you can right click code online. JavaScript pulls in different libraries and you can run it.

All online you don't need it's on ID or anything like that. So it's very popular millions of people use it. But when you look at it it's it's really focused just on developers to compile their code. It's not social at all and you're starting to see a common denominator with a lot of. Danny's ideas to be like technical and social and she ended up building something in that space jam.dev which is around bug tracking that's social and hundreds of thousands of people I think use it.

But there's an opportunity here to basically take JS fiddle and make it more like Twitter so it's half writing code and half me mean and remixing I think that there's something here I think developers love memes they love remixing so I think the idea around compiling code and. Having a place where people can talk meme and remix some of that software is very compelling the next idea shopify for X I think shopifies an 80 billion dollar company and when you have an 80 billion dollar company.

Yeah, there's just opportunities to unbundle it so what is Danny what's Danny's idea so she says shopify for making an Airbnb style marketplace shopify for making a messaging app shopify for making an Instagram like that. There are all these no code tools they're either too limited or too complex what you need is a product specific tool like shopify is no code e commerce then you would also build no code marketplaces no code messaging app no code Instagram this is such a good idea.

You know this idea around marketplace for no code apps that if you listen to you know this idea on this podcast or one of these ideas you can just like go to the marketplace duplicate the idea and then you know just pay let's say monthly fee or one time fee for a license to it I love that now I think bubble is doing pieces of that. So maybe you just build on top of bubble but something like this needs to exist should exist will exist so I think this is definitely the direction things are going.

Okay, next idea HQ trivia for dating live dating show mobile HQ style HQ trivia I think it was like 2018 19 literally everyone was playing it if you don't remember it it was this guy Steve red a gauzki I think.

Every single day you get a push notification and he would do live trivia and it give away money and millions of people played it daily it was an incredible experience and it ended up crashing and burning in a large part because of it was like a crazy story actually the found this the founder. Unfortunately died and they had growing pains to and it was there drugs involved it was just crazy so I don't think the point is I don't think the reason why HQ trivia.

Died is because the format didn't work and I think someone my prediction is someone's going to bring back the HQ trivia format and apply it to a new niche maybe it's dating and it's going to work in 24 25 25 26. So HQ dating you know I think that live dating like this is interesting to so many people I love this idea.

And yeah you got to come up with a catchy name you gotta make it interesting like I think you start in like a Los Angeles or New York like it has to feel almost like a reality TV show because you have to want to you know get to know the characters but I think.

This idea HQ dating is a great idea and I think like the bigger idea of HQ trivia for X is a trend that I'm certainly paying attention attention to and that's about it that's about it so those are you know those are some of the more interesting ideas on the list on clue the list in the in the YouTube bio. Sorry in the YouTube description these are a few ideas that are just really really good Danny like I said Danny knows what you know she knows. She's got that juice she's got that juice so.

If you enjoyed that like this YouTube video comment on the YouTube video. I read every single comment and the likes actually likes and comments actually make a difference so I know it's crazy to say but people are not able to see this video if you don't like in comment so I appreciate every single one of them I'll see you in the YouTube comment section. And please subscribe for for more of these videos for more of these startup ideas podcast I hope you loved it I had fun recording this.

I'm going to go and open up a figman just start jamming on some some of these ideas so I have a good one and I'll see you on the next one later.