IDEA #1 | STARTUP

Go all-in, or go bust

What do hyper successful people have in common? At first glance, not much. They come in all shapes and sizes, from different backgrounds, and think about the world very differently.

But there’s one thing many ultra successful people have in common: they play poker.

Take AI optimist and board overreach expert Sam Altman. Sam played poker at a high level in college and learned a lot from it:

Similarly, professional “man in the arena” Chamath Palihapitiya has learned a lot from playing poker:

Today poker is the new sport of choice for business minds and as such has seen a surge in its popularity in recent years, even though it’s been around for decades. The first game of online poker was played in 1998 but here’s the problem…online poker hasn’t really moved on since the 90s.

Which is why we think there’s a massive opportunity to innovate in this space and create something totally new.

Here’s the big idea…create a business which offers high-end virtual poker nights and fantasy poker leagues for small groups and teams.

Groups of 5 - 10 people join a call where they can play any type of poker they want, well…maybe not any type they want.

Games are hosted by a professional live dealer who deals with real cards on a real poker table, making the experience as immersive as possible. Players could play for real or fake money, it’s up to them.

To make the experience even more high-end you could send players out a box with cards, poker chips, some drinks and even a little bowtie to make sure all players look their best and you maximise your revenue.

Poker nights would be a great way for friends to catch up, or teams to get some downtime. But the product could also be used for networking, where players are put together at random for one-off games or in tournaments, where friendships or business alliances could be forged.

Cloud poker night offers a product in this space, but there’s plenty of room for more entrants in the market.

Go-to-market: Executives at startups and scaleups are likely to be your early customers. Embed yourself in online poker communities and get your customers that way.

Monetisation: The business would charge a fee to customers for poker nights, an entry fee for tournaments and could also charge extra for any add-ons, such as the poker boxes mentioned above.

Startup Costs: There’s very little spend needed to get this off the ground, particularly if you could act as the dealer yourself in the early days of the business. Make sure you actually know how to play poker though.

You could try going all-in and get venture backing, but it’s hard to tell if this is a venture scale idea. Going the venture route increases your chances of going bust. At a minimum this could be a multi-million dollar per year revenue business.

IDEA #2 | STARTUP

New pod, who dis?

Everyone loves a good podcast.

Maybe you’re a Joe Rogan fan, or an All-In stan. Maybe you’re an ardent fan of the Beef and Dairy Network’s podcast, because that’s a thing apparently.

There’s a podcast out there for everyone and everyone has an idea for a podcast.

In fact, we’re willing to bet everything we have ($2.09 last we checked) that someone has said to you “dude we should totally start a podcast.”

Even though there are more than 3 million active podcasts in the world, everyone believes the world needs another one.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

The business podcast space is particularly saturated today, with all manner of business podcasts being produced, usually with the same founders doing the rounds around different podcasts, rehashing the same stories.

Someone needs to come up with something new in the business podcast space. And we think we have something.

Here’s the idea…create a podcast where you only interview early employees in incredibly successful businesses about their experience in the early days of these businesses. Think employee number 5 at Stripe or employee number 6 at Airbnb.

This would make for incredibly engaging content. You get a different perspective on what it was like to work with iconic founders in iconic companies from day 1, rather than the PR polished version the founder themselves tell.

You’ll also get the opportunity to speak to a wide variety of people with very different backgrounds, from designers to engineers and everything in between.

Also, booking guests for the pod should be easier than if you were to go after the founders themselves.You’re more likely to get a response from employee number 9 at Facebook than Zuck himself

Go-to-market: Record, record, record. Then try and get the word out there, some early guerrilla marketing will be needed to get those early listeners.

Monetisation: Sell ads on the podcast. Given your audience would be executives, founders and business people, advertisers will be willing to pay a high CPM to advertise to this cohort

Startup Costs: There’s very little capital required to start this business. Buy yourself half decent mic and you should be good to go!

Once you’ve built distribution in the form of an audience, the key is to create businesses and products that your audience want and to put them through your distribution. Think Mr Beast and Feastables or KSI/Logan Paul and Prime. They sell their own products to their audience. You can do the exact same thing.

IDEA #3 | STARTUP

Out of the dog house, into the love shack

There’s a theory that anywhere someone uses a spreadsheet there’s a SaaS product waiting to be built.

But is there an equivalent in the consumer market? We think so…in phone notes. Wherever someone’s using their notes app for a specific purpose, we think there’s an opportunity for someone to build an app.

Which brings us to this:

There was a tiktok trend recently where people (guys mainly) are sharing their notes app where they keep a record of important details about their loved one and their relationship - likes and dislikes, anniversaries and more.

When we saw this our spidey senses started tingling, and we think there’s an app here to be built.

Here’s the idea…create an app which acts like a personal assistant for your relationship.

Imagine having someone who reminded you about an upcoming anniversary or birthday, knew your partner’s likes or dislikes, gave you date or holiday suggestions…basically a wingman to make make you the best possible boyfriend or girlfriend.

This is not an app for finding love, it’s for keeping love. If tinder helps you find a girlfriend, this app helps you keep her.

Some of the apps features would include:

It’s a great way to earn brownie points with your partner and show you really care, as well as avoiding that awkward “I can’t believe you forgot our anniversary” conversation.

Go-to-market: Social is your best friend on the go-to-market side. We got this idea from tiktok, so short form content here will be your best route to market and acquiring users.

Monetisation: There’s a few paths to monetisation here:

Startup Costs: Building apps isn’t as expensive as it used to be. If you’re technical yourself then start building! If not then you should find yourself a technical co-founder or you should leverage no-code tooling like bubble.io or other platforms to build yourself an MVP and test out the concept.

This could be a very tidy exit for whoever executes it well. An acquisition by a dating app would very much be on the cards.

This is a rock.

Beautiful.

And in 1975 a man named Gary Dahl managed to become a millionaire by selling rocks. Plain old rocks. How you ask?

Well one day Gary was in a bar when one of his friends started complaining about how much effort it was to look after their pet. After a few drinks they joked about how low-maintenance it would be to have a pet rock, a joke that Gary decided to turn into a business.

He took the idea and ran with it, creating a product that was literally just a rock in a box with air holes and a manual.

When the Pet Rock was released in time for the 1975 holiday season, it quickly became a sensation. People were buying them as gag gifts and stocking stuffers, and the media caught wind of the craze. Dahl was interviewed on several TV shows, including “The Tonight Show,” which helped to increase sales even more.

By the end of the holiday season, Dahl had sold over 1.5 million Pet Rocks at $4 each, making him a millionaire.

What’s the lesson here? As stupid as an idea may sound, not pursuing it will always be stupider.