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Half Baked
Oct 19, 2026
5 Huge Business Ideas Nobody's Building Yet
5 Huge Business Ideas Nobody's Building Yet
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1:00:48
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Transcript
0:00
I think CrunchLabs is my favorite business of all time, and I actually think the market for getting people to think like an entrepreneur is actually way, way bigger than the market for people saying, "Think like an engineer."
0:10
[upbeat music] Half-baked. He's, like, half-baked. Half-baked. Half-baked. A half-baked. Half-baked. Half-baked. Half-baked. Half-baked. All of a sudden, it's like the revenge of the idea guys.
0:20
[upbeat music] What a week. Is that the intro? [laughs] It's been a busy week. They're all busy weeks, but it's been a particularly busy week this week, I feel like.
0:34
I think we're both physically exhausted for, like, six different reasons, all completely independent from each other. Very much so.
0:41
Yeah, I think you have more, you have more of a reason to be, uh, [laughs] to be wiped out if you've only, you're only running on two hours sleep. That's a bit of a different, uh, different animal, I think.
0:50
Yeah, I, I wish I was running on two hours sleep for a better reason other than just being on a red-eye flight, but we live and we learn.
0:57
I was just saying it to John before this, that I'm after a nice, strong black coffee. So, I think we have about a 90-minute window here for me to give you my best, and then I'm just gonna crash.
1:11
Yeah, it's just, there's gonna be loads of cuts half way through the episode. We're just gonna have to cut, cut to you napping and then come back in again, like, later on in the day [laughs] when you're- I'm here.
1:19
I'm here... when the- Don't worry... when, like, it's, it goes dark, whatever, the lighting changes, but it's like, "No, no, he's back. Nothing, nothing changed. It's all good. It's all good." I'm back.
1:25
"We didn't stop recording at all." [laughs] I'm back. We are going to do this for as long as we need to because, though it was a busy week, busy weeks inspire lots of things to talk about.
1:35
Which I think is a, is a nice segue into your, the first thing you want to talk about, 'cause we actually haven't caught up properly this week. This is the first week where I feel like we actually...
1:41
Like, we normally talk, like, literally every day, and, um, this is the first time I feel like where we actually have stuff we haven't caught up on in a week. [laughs] So- Yeah...
1:48
uh, it's gonna be interesting to see what, uh, yeah, what you, what you found during your, uh, your New York trip. Yeah, this is gonna be fun. So just for, just for context, everyone, I'm just back from New York.
1:58
Uh, we do a lot of travel forward and back to the US. We're based in Ireland, and we go over for conferences, meeting partners.
2:06
I wish we'd say we go over for funner things, but maybe that's a couple of years down the line. Uh, and what we had this week was a, a conference in New York, and N- New York is just a bonkers place.
2:17
It's so, it's so bonkers. The opportunity density in such a small area is uncomprehendible. Is that even a word, uncomprehendible? Uncomprehendible, yeah. I think so.
2:31
[laughs] I, I always default to John if it's something to do with linguistics. I, I always used to ask John, "John, can you please just dumb down that word for me, please? Because I have no idea what that means."
2:41
You haven't done it in a while. I was gonna say, no, I'm definitely, I'm definitely slipping quite badly now. I think, uh- Have I dragged you down?
2:46
[smacks lips] I spent so much time in Claude and Codex that, like, my use of language has just regressed to the mean, 'cause I just spend so much time, like, dealing with or talking to [laughs] Claude or Codex about work stuff that, like, um, it's just the exact same thing for me.
3:00
I've just, like, regressed to, to, uh, yeah, talking like an AI, basically.
3:05
You should create an auto prompt that asks Claude to level up linguistically, and instead of using, like, a Hemingway Grade 6, you should use a Hemingway Grade 15 or 18.
3:18
I think that would end up like, do you, do you ever see that episode of Friends when, uh, I think Joey has to write a letter for Chandler or Monica as, like, a reference or something, and he, uh, he's worried about sounding dumb, so Phoebe gives him a thesaurus.
3:30
[laughs] So, like, he writes the entire thing [laughs] using a thesaurus, and it makes no sense, and then at the end of the day, uh, they, [laughs] they just tell him to do, like, "Don't use it.
3:39
Just write in your own language," or whatever. And, uh, yeah, they end up, uh... I think, I think they were wr- he was writing to, to an adoption agency, I think.
3:46
And the, the adoption agency at the end are really impressed because, uh, they're like, "It was very clever of you to get a child to write your recommendation letter."
3:53
So they, [laughs] they read Joey's, Joey's language and thought he was a child. I kind of- And-... think it's that, it's that kind of thing, you know? That's funny.
4:01
In this case, I am Joey, and you are Chandler or Monica. [laughs] I am both. But anyway, anyway, what a, like, what a week. So, we were there for a conference.
4:10
There were def- definitely a few, like, ums and ahs, but as everyone knows, this is an idea podcast. And when you have
4:18
20 things hit the fan in the space of a week, you see a lot of problems that you want solved, and you start asking yourself, "Why hasn't anyone solved them before?" And I'm gonna give you number one.
4:27
I heard a couple of guys on a podcast, I think it was My First Million, talk about this sauna called Othership, and I was like, "An, a sauna called Othership?"
4:36
And then I thought back to a time when I was like, "Othership?" I actually heard about that before from Sam Kolder. I don't know are you familiar with Sam Kolder, YouTube editor, OG- Yeah... My Year 2015, 2016. Yeah.
4:52
Was, was he a photographer or editor or kind of a bit of everything? Yeah, he's just a god. [laughs] He's a YouTube god. You could grate Parmesan off of a six-pack.
5:02
He has it all in that beautiful editor, creates these amazing videos, storytelling. He's interesting.
5:08
He doesn't give away too much, and if you haven't gone onto YouTube and watched his My Year 2016 video, it's widely regarded as the best video on the platform. So, just watch it.
5:19
I go back to it probably every three months and just watch it just because it's cool and inspiring. Anyway, he talked about it a few years ago, and at the time, Othership was just a breathwork app.
5:30
So, when I saw Sam and Sean talking about it, I was a bit like, "Hmm, is this the same Othership?" So, I got to New York. First thing I did, I booked a session, and it was wild.
5:41
So, you walk in, they hand you these towels. It's in this dark, deep environment right in the middle of New York City.
5:48
And you walk into this room that could fit about 100 people with a big fire, with this guy walking around topless and a headset on called Gonzo.
5:57
And Gonzo is like, "Right, everybody, this is gonna be a very intimate session. It's all about love and kindness. If you don't have a partner, pick a partner, and it has to be a stranger.
6:07
And just know it's gonna get intimate." And I'm here like, "Hey, I'm married. I'm married." [laughs] Uh, where, where is this, where is this story going? This is, this is sounding very dodgy.
6:16
[laughs] I'm like, "I'm married." Like, what? Anyway, so long story short, um, there was a woman next to me, really nice woman, and I was like, "Do you wanna be my partner?" She was like, "Yeah."
6:25
So what then transpired was an hour and 15 minute session of sauna, ice baths, and meditation.
6:35
So there was a group of 100 people in what was the biggest and the hottest sauna I have ever been in, with snowballs, and within those snowballs there was different scents of flowers.
6:48
So every so often he'd chant, he'd tell you what to do, he'd show you how to breathe, he'd throw in a snowball, and then he'd get a towel, and he would whip it around the place, and he would [laughs]
7:01
basically create a convection oven that went from a hot sauna to a very hot sauna.
7:07
And then you combine that with an ice bath, and the point of having a partner was that there was a time where, because this was a love and kindness session,
7:15
you needed to bestow love and kindness on yourself, on the people you know, and on a stranger. So he forced us to look each other in the eyes and the face for about two minutes straight, and it was--
7:28
It sounds very uncomfortable. At the time, didn't feel uncomfortable. It was actually very, very cool. Anyway, where does this come from? I felt amazing after this.
7:36
I felt like the stresses of the city, the stresses of the conference, of having, like, 15 meetings that day, all of the stuff happening with Half Baked and the business just melted away.
7:46
And I came out, and I was like, "This is amazing." And what it did for me is it said, "Okay, this owns a moment of a busy city."
7:55
When it comes to busy cities, they are stressful, they're overwhelming, and you always feel like you're in a rush. Where else do you feel like this? I felt it 12 hours beforehand in an airport, right?
8:05
Airports are stressful, [laughs] they are busy, you are constantly in a rush, and I always feel like I need some physical release when I'm in an airport, particularly if you're traveling, like, long distances.
8:18
So my kind of premise and concept was, why aren't there equivalents of gyms, and other ships, and spas in airports? Because if you think about it, airports have
8:34
hundreds of millions of footfall every single year. They have an insane amount of demand.
8:39
Yeah, the price per square foot is probably an awful lot more than your tr-traditional gym or spa, but I personally would happily pay an extortionately high fee to get what I got in New York City in an airport.
8:54
Interesting. I'm just looking at them now. So they've got, it looks like, four different locations. So they're relatively small. Like, they're, they're not like a gigantic chain, are they?
9:02
No, they're not a gigantic chain yet, but I think it probably is only a matter of time.
9:07
Like, what's, what's so different about this versus, like, a traditional sauna, kind of an ice bath, you know, experience that you might get kind of anywhere?
9:14
Like, the reason I'm, I'm wondering is because I know you're talking about the meditation piece.
9:18
I'm wondering, is that just, like, an overlay or something that people could put on, onto, like, an existing kind of, you know, business, or is there something about the experience that is just completely different?
9:27
I think there's two things. I think as a general ecosystem and spa, it's, it's a branding thing.
9:33
Like, the idea of bringing sauna, meditation, ice bath together is just a standard business formula that you do to layer two things that work, bring them together in a different format, and call it something else.
9:46
I think that's, like, unique in a way, but that's not what's gonna turn this idea into, into a success.
9:53
I think the, the, the idea that was kind of, like, sparked here is selling de-stressors in a stressful environment, and the stressful environment that I'm talking about are airports. Interesting.
10:04
So it doesn't necessarily have to be just a sauna, it doesn't have to be an ice bath, it doesn't have to be a gym.
10:10
All it has to be is some form of a physical release that can be, uh, kind of encapsulated within that area. Like, one really, really good example, right?
10:19
Casey Nei- Neistat put up a video six months ago about how he ran every day for, I don't know, was it, like, 1,000 days or some outrageous number, and he talked about the day that he almost let it go was the day that he had to take two flights to travel to London.
10:34
Mm-hmm. So he talked about the time where he was in a layover in an airport, and he had to run up and down the same hall to get his mile in and officially count that day.
10:44
And the beauty behind something like this is that there's an airport in every major city in the world, and if you're able to build a brand that invokes this, you know, sense of physical movement or sweating- Mm-hmm...
10:58
you just become synonymous with airports, so that no matter where you go, you see a Starbucks, same way you go to airport, you'd say, "Oh, there's the," insert really cool name for this brand.
11:11
I think it's worth saying up, saying this upfront, would I like to start this business? Absolutely not. [laughs] I think this is probably one of the hardest businesses ever to start.
11:21
But I think once you prove out the model in a couple of places, it's probably one of the easier ones to scale, because all airports are the same. They all have the same amount of regulation.
11:31
They all have the same behaviors about them, and if you're able to make it work economically, you might need to charge an outrageously high fee for whatever service it is that you're selling.
11:43
It's purely just a matter of replicating it again and again. Yeah, I think like the, the amount of times I've seen people talk about or tweet about like, you know, "I wish there was a gym in an airport.
11:55
Like, why don't they put gyms in airports?" Like, all that kind of stuff.
11:58
Like, I think it's only a matter of time before like, yeah, that or some concept similar to this, yeah, ends up finding its way in- inside of airports.
12:05
'Cause again, it's just at this kind of intersection of like, you know, health and wellness is obviously like the kind of current trend, you know, behind maybe AI, um, health, wellness, longevity, et cetera, like that.
12:17
There's just an absolutely gigantic market there, number one.
12:20
And number two, to your point, like you're, you're getting people at the moment of like most stress and where people, like, have got time to kill and they don't know what to do.
12:29
There's de- there's definitely a, a business to be built here, um, without a shadow of a doubt. There are different ways you could sell it too.
12:35
I don't know about you, I have been on hundreds of flights, and I have still not mastered the art of sleeping on planes- Mm-hmm... unless I do a really hard workout or I go through some physical exertion that day.
12:49
So yesterday, I knew I was taking a red-eye flight, so I woke up in the morning, I went for a crazy long run, and then in the afternoon, I went to, to Othership, and I slept the, almost the entire flight just because my body- Mm...
13:03
was like, "No, there's nothing else you can do. You have to go to sleep."
13:06
So I think there's this mechanism as well to say, yeah, you can get your workout done, you can feel good about yourself, but also, this is gonna help you sleep better when you're on your plane.
13:15
I, I think, I'm not a big, uh, fan of flying. I, I just, I just don't enjoy it.
13:20
Um, and like, you know, there's a lot of people out there who are, like, deathly a- afraid of flying, and also people who, who can't sleep on planes.
13:25
So I, I love the idea of, of somebody creating an airline where you just basically get people under, like, general anesthetic, chuck them all on a plane, and just fly them all, [laughs] fly them halfway around the world.
13:36
And you just wake up and you're like, "Oh, cool, I'm in Australia. Nice. This is, yeah, this is pretty good." And I, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have to endure the, the flight.
13:43
I was just unconscious for the whole thing. So Rory Sutherland, he's the marketing guy. Yeah. He's, he's the- Yeah... OG marketing guy.
13:50
He talks an awful lot about really trying to uncover the problems in an experience and solving the most underserved problem within that experience. So- Mm... going off of what you just said, you don't like flying, okay?
14:06
And realistically, is there anything that you can do to make the actual flight better? Probably not. Like, flying is flying, highly regulated. You're not gonna be able to change the way that you transport- No...
14:19
in the air. Physics are physics. But what you can do is you can change the before and after experience.
14:24
So in the same way that Uber did when they, you know, had the, the car map that told you how long, how far away the car was gonna be. They, they- Mm... they just mastered that pre-experience.
14:34
There's definitely room for an airline that just has a 10 out of 10 pre-flight experience, and as part of that pre-flight experience, you have your Othership, you have your, your drugs if you n- if you need to be sedated.
14:49
Uh, you have your own lounge. It's like a mix between a first-class airline, but it's not necessarily flying private.
14:59
So it's like an in-between between first class and economy, where you have 400 passengers that are paying relatively the same, but everybody goes through a different experience than you would in a usual airport.
15:12
Again, 10 out of 10 business in terms of difficulty, [laughs] but I would love- [laughs] I, I would love for someone to start.
15:19
I'd be, I'd be so curious about, like, this business, how much, how m- like, how much money are they, like, making?
15:25
If you're doing, like, four of those studios, like, what's your kind of, you know, what are your occupancy rates? They're making s- stupid money.
15:32
I, I went twice in the five days I, I was in New York, and it was, like, 70 bucks a session. [laughs] And they had- Really? Okay... nearly 80 people. Now, I was going during the busy time, but that's- Yeah...
15:47
still a crazy high hourly rate. Mm.
15:49
And I think their particular business model is great 'cause they're hitting on the niche of, you know, longevity enthusiasts, people who are living in New York and are on a million a year and somehow still think they're poor.
16:01
That's their- Mm-hmm... like, target, target market. But I think, like, as a whole, it's just a phenomenal brand too. If you're ever looking for branding, they, they've really done an amazing job.
16:13
Yeah, it's very good, to be fair. Very, very good.
16:15
I, I'd like to, to hijack the second part of this and talk about airplanes again for a second, because there's, there, there's another-- While I'm around the topic, there's another idea/problem that I came across about flying.
16:28
So on the first evening, we were given the opportunity to fly down to Miami to meet Greg Isenberg for dinner, and I was like, "Ugh, can I go? Because I have meetings, and does this derail the New York trip?"
16:42
Went for a run, listened to Sam Altman. Sam Altman said the best piece of advice he's ever gotten is get on planes in marginal situations. That was a good enough sign for me.
16:51
I just booked a flight to Miami, uh, to go and see Greg, and about four hours before the flight, the flight was canceled. And I was like, "Okay, bit of a bummer. Let's see if I can get another flight."
17:06
And the only other flight options that were available to me had this little toggle over them that said, uh, "Go on standby," or, you know, "Be on standby."
17:19
And the whole premise here was that if somebody on the flights that were going out outside of the flight that was canceled wanted to drop out or cancel, I could then, you know, sub in for a place.
17:29
But what I really wanted to do was actually offer them money [laughs] for the seats that they already have, because hypothetically, if you were going down to Miami to see, I don't know, your brother or your sister, or you were doing a routine flight, or you weren't necessarily governed to be there at a specific time, you probably have a bit more flexibility than me.
17:47
I don't have the opportunity to fly down to Miami to meet someone like Greg every day.
17:51
So I would have paid three, four, five times the price of the ticket To take one of their seats, but I didn't necessarily have the option to do it.
18:01
Now, again, this is probably 10 out of 10 difficulty when it comes to business because you need to develop relationships with airlines.
18:06
But what I would love to see is when I'm booking a flight, a little tick box at the bottom to say, "Leave my seat open for auction," or, "Leave my seat open for offers," such that if somebody wants to buy
18:20
my ticket, they can send me offers.
18:23
So hypothetically, if you bought any flight, you could get an email up to four hours, five hours before the flight from somebody saying, "Hey, I wanna buy your ticket for four times markup."
18:35
And then you bring the airline into it, they get a cut of it. They really get to squeeze the juice out of the supply and demand dynamics, and then everybody wins. I get to go to Miami,
18:45
you know, John Joe over there got paid four times the ticket price, and the airline also takes a cut of it. Makes sense. It's like Uber surge pricing. Why do you, like, 'cause if I'm an airline, right?
18:55
Like, airlines obviously have all this information, and they would have the ability to do this themselves. Why do you think they don't offer this as an option?
19:02
Like, what, what would be preventing them from doing something? I'm, I'm not, I'm not saying that they'd, like, uh, I- I'm trying to figure out, like, is this something that they would actually want to do?
19:12
Or, like, is there some reason why, like, have they just not thought of this, or are they thinking, "No, no, this, like, this is a good idea, but we don't wanna do it because of X, Y, or Z"?
19:19
Well, I think the thought process of they haven't thought of it is always a very dangerous thought process because it's very, very likely they have. Yeah. Yeah. In, in, in a way, they already do this.
19:30
They already auction off seats for when they overbook flights. Mm. So oftentimes, a lot of airlines will overbook a flight, and then it's the, how would you describe it?
19:40
It's almost like they are selling the demand at that point. So, "Hey, if you want off this flight, we're gonna just raise the money again and again," but they have a cap on it.
19:50
When it comes to this idea, you're actually buying the demand instead of selling it, and buying the demand is always way more profitable than selling it.
19:59
I think there are some, like, regulatory elements here as well, where the airline needs to declare who's flying and their details a certain amount of time before the flight. Mm.
20:08
So that's why this is a 10 out of 10 difficulty business because, number one, you need to get over the regulatory barriers. Number two- Mm...
20:14
you need to develop, uh, relationships with airlines who are regarded as the hardest customers in the world.
20:20
I have a good friend who is, uh, running a airline optimization company, and I, I do not envy the challenges that he has when it comes to dealing with airlines. They're- Mm-hmm... a podcast episode in itself.
20:34
We should have him on, actually. He's an absolute character. But if you can get over them, I, I don't see what the downside risk is here for airlines if you actually bring them into the transaction.
20:49
Like, hypothetically, even if you were able to increase their, let's say, revenue per seat by a coup- like, a fraction of a percent, you're talking about, you know, tens of millions of dollars probably.
21:01
Uh, and that's pure profit too, because the only cost on their side is just the operational cost of transferring the seats, the software side of things.
21:12
If, if you ever hear Michael O'Leary talk about, like, running Ryanair and the way he thinks about, like, it literally, it- it's these tiny little marginal gains of, like, "Well, yeah, you know, if, if f- if I can get, um, if I can buy 20 new airplanes that are, like, 5% more efficient, like, that will save me 100 million in fuel costs or whatever over the next couple of years."
21:33
Like, it- it's, the, the, it, it's, the margins are so tight. It's such a tough industry. They have to be absolute, like, unbelievably good operators to make, make the business work.
21:41
It's, um, yeah, it's very interesting. Um- It's, it's insane.
21:45
He, he went on I- Ireland's version of The Late Late Show and made the case that for short flights, he wants to get rid of the bathrooms on flights, and everybody booed him. And then he was like, "Hold on there a second.
21:58
The reason I wanna do this is because if I'm able to take away the toilets, I'm able to add six extra seats on each side. That's 12 seats.
22:06
Those 12 seats will offset the costs for you, so I can drop your prices by 7%, and you can get 7% cheaper f- [chuckles] flights, uh, and then everybody's happy."
22:15
And then he was like, "Even better, if I could remove the seats in the second half of the plane and instead just put up some barriers to allow people to stand, I could then reduce their seats and their prices by a further 25%."
22:29
And everyone was like, "Uh, yeah, that sounds pretty good actually, Michael. Uh, maybe you should do that."
22:36
I think his, his business, like, is in- is unbelievably good because they basically figured out, like, what is the one thing that matters, like, more than anything else?
22:45
Like, 'cause, uh, you know, a lot of businesses get kind of tied up in trying to do 50 different things at once or whatever, and Ryanair are just like, "All that we're gonna do is we're going to give you the cheapest seats possible, and we'll do whatever we possibly can to do that because that is the thing that is going to influence
22:58
80 or 90% of your decision, um, if you're looking to fly somewhere, you know, short haul or whatever, so."
23:04
Yeah, they're just absolutely maniacally focused on, like, literally one number, which is, like, [chuckles] you know, how, or one goal, like how cheap can we make flights, um, and, and how many passengers can we get in the air therefore?
23:14
And, uh, yeah, they've managed to build a, a mega business out of it, so, uh, very impressive.
23:17
There's a great book, it's called Made to Stick, and it's a book about branding and how to position yourselves as a formidable brand.
23:28
And he talks a lot about, I don't know, who's the lo- who's the low-cost airline in the US? Was it Southwest?
23:35
Yeah, South- Southwest Airlines kind of pioneered the, let's say, low-cost model, and then Ryanair effectively just kind of copied and brought that model to, [chuckles] to Europe, yeah. Exactly.
23:43
So he had them as an example. I think their motto was, "The low-cost airline."
23:48
And he said the reason that that works so well is because, as you said, any decision that anybody makes, whether it's the flight attendant or the pilot or the CFO or the customer success rep who's dealing with clients, it all boils down to, "We are the low-cost airline."
24:06
So if there is a decision where we buy seats for $10 that are marginally comfy or seats that are $2 and not comfy at all, which one do we buy?
24:16
we buy the $2 seats because we're the low-cost airline and we want to reduce our costs. And I think that's a brilliant framing, particularly like for, for us. Like, our mission is to create a million founders.
24:26
So if there is a decision to be made to create one founder, do it, because it brings us closer to our goal.
24:34
And now I think there's ways that you can make that better because he talks about ways you can introduce like visual components and other cool things that, you know, we're too busy to do.
24:43
Anyway, so that's my rant on airplanes and airports and what I think somebody should do. If you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance that you have an idea that you want to bring to life.
24:55
And whenever anyone brings an idea to me and asks what do I do next, I always say the same thing, "Make it real. Give it a home."
25:02
And for all of the businesses that I've ever started, alongside the thousands of businesses that we have helped start through Half Baked, that home is Google Workspace.
25:10
It gives you a business email address, so people actually take your idea seriously. You get one place for all your docs, your calendar, meetings, storage, spreadsheets, and even AI with Gemini built right into it.
25:23
Setting all of that up used to take me days, and now it takes less than 10 minutes. Nothing else even comes close on price or quality, and anyone who says otherwise, I challenge you to a duel.
25:31
Google Workspace are very good friends of Half Baked, and they're giving our listeners and readers 14 days free and 20% off their first year. And with plans starting as low as $7 a month, you really do have no excuses.
25:45
So if you want to grab this exclusive offer, go to gethalfbaked.com/google. That's gethalfbaked.com/google. Thank you, Google Workspace, for making this episode possible.
26:01
John, tell me the sauce that you've brought, 'cause I'm sick of airports. So I have not had to take a flight this week, which is, uh, which has been nice.
26:11
Um, so yeah, I have been, uh, in a very different headspace, I think, to you, who has been stressed out and in airports and, uh, r- running around conferences like a, like a madman.
26:20
But, um, yeah, what I do want to do is, kind of, you mentioned Sam Kolder earlier.
26:25
I want to, you know, go back to that kind of era as well, to something that was, you know, big back in, you know, 2015, 2016, that kind of time. Which were subscription boxes.
26:35
So I feel like subscription boxes had, like, a moment back in the, yeah, mid-2010s.
26:40
I think it was-- So I think Birchbox was kind of the first one that was founded in 2010, and then after that, a bunch of other ones kind of started, you know, Blue Apron and BarkBox and all that.
26:48
And there was kind of the golden era of them there for about four or five years, and then they just kind of tanked and fell off a cliff.
26:54
And now they're having a little bit of a resurgence recently, and there's been a few good examples of ones. But, um, yeah, but what's got me thinking about, um,
27:03
uh, subscription boxes is actually something that I saw, uh, on Twitter yesterday. So a guy called Dan Pequin, he built something really, really cool.
27:12
So he basically, um, created a way for his kids to, uh, chat to or to communicate with their grandparents, but without using a screen. So essentially, he built kind of like a big box that, like, sits in their bedroom.
27:26
Um, and then there's, like, a big massive blue button on it, and they basically, like, you know, hit the button and press record, and then they can send voice notes, like, to their grandparents, basically.
27:36
Um, and then the grandparents can reply and, like, they, you know, they spent a while iterating on the UI, and it's, it's all done through WhatsApp and, and whatnot.
27:42
And it was just a really cool example of, like- Do you know why this is so funny? [chuckles] Why? You've basically just described a phone from the early 2000s. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
27:53
But, like, what's nice about it is that it's, it's this whole kind of trend of, like, trying to get people off of screens fundamentally.
28:01
Um, like, it's like how, how do you, how do you invent, uh, or how do you have cool ways of people keeping in touch, um, that isn't necessarily novel but is just a, a nice, like, you know, cool way of doing it?
28:11
And obviously, like, they love it. It's the novelty of the, the way that it's being presented. Like, they love it. Uh, the grandparents love it. They're in touch a lot more, et cetera.
28:19
So it's one of these just cool things where, like, there was, there was huge demand for it. Uh, I think he opened up a wait list, and I think there was, like,
28:26
2,000 or 3,000 people sign up for the wait list in, like, a day, being like, "I would love to have this product."
28:30
Um, and yeah, like, I just think that's a really cool little kind of DIY project, and tons of people were saying like, "Oh, you know, uh, do you have the code for this so I can, like, you know, fork my own version?"
28:40
And, "I'd love to build this myself," like all of this kind of stuff. So yeah, just- I see where you're going with this. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
28:45
So it just got me thinking about, like, you know, tech is this thing that we're all kind of, you know, running away from a little bit.
28:51
We're all, you know, afraid of our screen time, and we're trying to get outdoors more and, you know, particularly people are very worried about, obviously, their, you know, kids and their screen time.
29:00
So, like, I'm basically trying to think of or, or come up with a way to, like, kind of meld this concept of, like, how do you make tech more, like, fun and kind of, uh, you know, surface these kinds of really cool use cases that are actually really, really fun and, and really interesting, and then combine that with a way to get kids kind of learning about and thinking about how to actually build some of this stuff, and obviously an activity they can do with their parents.
29:23
Um, so yeah. So this idea of these kind of like, you know, tech kits for kids, um, try and say that five times fast, uh, is kind of what I'm thinking about.
29:31
Um, so, like, that would be one example of, like, a build you could do. Um, you could crowdsource or come up with a bunch of, you know, a bunch of other builds.
29:38
Um, and then you could get, you know, creators maybe to help with them or whatever, and they could help market them, you know, all of that good stuff.
29:44
Um, because there's obviously a few companies in, in this space, um, and it's actually really interesting how well they're doing.
29:50
So, like, the big two companies really that kind of do something similar are Kiwico is the first one. So Kiwico was founded back in 2011, um, by, uh, Sandra O. Lin.
30:02
So she was actually a chemical engineer and an executive at eBay, and she basically just decided, "I'm sick of this. I want to do something different."
30:09
And, uh, yeah, she basically created these kind of subscription boxes with these kind of crafts, I suppose, these kind of STEM-related crafts for, for, uh, kids to do.
30:17
Um, yeah, they've been going for now, you know, 15, just over 15 years now. They've done a billion dollars- A billion dollars? They've done a billion dollars in lifetime revenue since founding. So 100 million a year.
30:31
Well, they would've obviously scaled. It's, you know, it's, it's- Yeah, yeah, but like an average of 100 million a year over 10 years. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. B- yeah, exactly.
30:37
So, uh, a billion dollars in, in lifetime revenue.
30:40
Uh, they ship more than 50 million crates to 40 different countries, and, uh, probably the most impressive thing, they maintained an operating profit for seven years while scaling organically.
30:51
So they grew organically, they stayed profitable, and they grew to, yeah, to do more than a billion dollars in, in cumulative revenue.
30:57
Like- Do they have an influencer backing them, or is it purely just a machine that does paid ads? Purely...
31:03
Like, no, I think it's, I think it's, uh, it seems like, I mean, it says here, "Maintained an operating profit for seven years while scaling organically." So it sounds like it was just an awful lot of word of mouth.
31:11
Um, they definitely run ads- Because-... obviously and stuff like that, but yeah, there's no, there's no big creator, uh, behind them as far as I know. Because- Is the second one CrunchLabs?
31:19
The second one is CrunchLabs, which has Mark Rober [laughs] be- behind them, so. Yeah. Yeah, Mark- Talk, talk about an unfair advantage. [laughs] I know. Yeah, I know, and I...
31:27
CrunchLabs, this is probably, you probably know more about b- this business than I do, but, um, yeah, CrunchLabs, similar concept. Uh, only founded back in 2022 by Mark Rober.
31:37
Um, incredible YouTuber, probably, I mean, certainly top five YouTubers of all time. Um, he has 80 million subscribers. Top, top three. Top three, yeah, could be top three.
31:47
Um, yeah, 80 million subscribers, and yeah, like, obviously they have the kind of unfair advantage of, uh, of, of Mark Rober, [laughs] um, kind of backing them a- and his following.
31:56
But, uh, yeah, they are, they're growing profitably as well. Uh, the latest kind of numbers I could find was that they had passed 200,000 subscribers.
32:04
An annual plan is about 300 bucks, so that's sort of 60, 70 million in annual revenue. Like, conservatively. It's probably a lot more than that. He was on a podcast with Colin and Samir
32:16
about six months ago, and he said they surpassed a million boxes a long time ago. Oh, did he? Oh. So that just... Now, that's a million boxes, not- I was gonna say, yeah, not subscribers...
32:24
not necessarily a million subscriptions. Yeah. But that kind of lands similar numbers, and you gotta imagine that the CAC there, well, the direct CAC is zero because they're marketing it- Yeah...
32:36
through the videos, but obviously- Mm-hmm... the cost of making videos has gone up exponentially. I think CrunchLabs is my favorite business of all time. Yeah. It, it's such a cool business.
32:46
Like, I think you have the unfair advantage of, of being backed by or, or being founded by Mark Rober, but, uh, if you compare that, uh, to Kiwico, I think you're right.
32:54
I think the idea of having a product that is a kind of a beloved, like, activity, like, physical product that you're actually shipping out into the world, people are using, people are trying, and people are learning through, like, that's such a nice business to own.
33:10
Like- It's an am- And it's a business that does good in the world. TA talked about it when we were on the podcast the last time.
33:17
If, if, if you're able to answer the question of does this business actually make the world a better place, I think when it comes to something like this, the answer is absolutely yes. And I think also- 100%...
33:28
it is the easiest sell in the world. So the experience that I have here is, you know, my first two businesses were education products that were geared towards teenagers and kids, but you were selling to parents.
33:40
And you're not actually selling the product itself, you're selling peace of mind to the parents.
33:46
So the idea here is you need to make sure that you're doing the utmost to make sure that your kid has the most chance possible of succeeding in whatever way- Mm-hmm... you want them to succeed.
33:56
So Mark Rober promises think like an engineer.
33:59
I don't know what Kiwico promise, but if you were able to encapsulate this business idea that you have around the tech kits, now, you, it would have to be differentiated from the CrunchLab model because the CrunchLab model is gonna be very, very difficult to compete with.
34:12
But if you were able to just, even something simple as, you know, make sure your kid grows up thinking like Elon Musk, or, uh- Mm... what is the outcome to which you are pushing your kid towards?
34:26
Is it thinking like a technician or thinking like an innovator, thinking like a creator? Mm.
34:32
That's, that's what you're selling, and, you know, the byproduct of having an enjoyable experience, having them learning, is kind of secondary in reality.
34:41
What you're actually selling is the parents going to sleep, head on the pillow, knowing that they've done everything they can for their child. 100%.
34:49
Um, yeah, I think differentiating from CrunchLabs is probably the biggest thing here.
34:54
Um, I think with CrunchLabs, their kind of, you know, their kind of tagline or whatever is think like an engineer, uh, and, and a lot of projects are kind of based around, yeah, like, uh, engineering as opposed to, this, I think, is more of, like, an electric- has more of an electrical engineering bent to it.
35:07
So, like, you're s- you know, people are using, like, Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and that kind of stuff, and then obviously you've got the whole AI layer on top of this, where this technology is gonna get a lot more powerful, and what you're gonna be able to do with very, very simple, you know, uh, pieces of tech is gonna get, like, more and more interesting.
35:23
Um, and yeah, I think I, I do definitely like the idea of, like, could you then collaborate with a bunch of different creators where they come up with a concept for each kind of box, you work with them, and they push to their audiences, and it's kind of like this, um, decentralized Mark Rober type, type model, basically.
35:38
Um, and then yeah, to your point, you mentioned, like, thinking like Elon or whatever. I do wonder, is there a layer where you, where you could try and layer some aspect of entrepreneurship on top of this?
35:47
Like, become a tech founder, tech entrepreneurship, like, this kind of idea. If someone wants to start this business, please let us know, because- [laughs]... we are, we are the perfect distribution channel.
35:59
Like, I, John, I think one of the first things that I said to you when we talked about Half Baked and what we were gonna do about building a big audience, building distribution,
36:07
I told you that I wanted to do CrunchLabs for entrepreneurship.
36:11
So instead of the tagline think like an engineer, you have think like an entrepreneur, and I actually think the market for getting people to think like an entrepreneur is actually way, way bigger than the market for people saying think like an engineer.
36:24
And also- Mm-hmm Probably a bit more profitable as well, because you can probably charge- Yes... a bit more money for it. And- Mm-hmm...
36:31
the costs involved in developing the boxes are actually probably gonna be far less, because entrepreneurship is about doing IRL activities, especially at a young age.
36:43
You don't necessarily have to spend millions on developing physical products that need to have these very intricate, well-thought-out, LEGO-esque designs and plans that are probably gonna break, and you're gonna have lots of issues with.
36:59
It's more about empowering the kids to act like an entrepreneur.
37:05
And if you're able to have a brand behind it, like, you know, Half Baked, hopefully, as we kind of, you know, do this over the next 85 years, I think that is an incredibly strong business. Yeah.
37:18
No, I honestly, I, I think, uh, this is, like, w- you know, obviously, you know, we, we, we talk about, like, what other businesses would we like to start pretty much all the time.
37:27
Um, but, like, this is one of the few ones where I'm like, yeah, I could actually see myself, like, working on that for a very long time, and that being, like, an, like, incredibly complex logistically, and, and, and much tougher than just, you know, writing a newsletter and, and doing media stuff.
37:40
But, uh, yeah, that would be such a fulfilling business to own, operate, grow. It would just be incredibly cool. Do you know what the, you know, evil villain version of this is? Mm-hmm.
37:53
If you really, really wanna think about this from a maximizing shareholder value perspective, is you use the subscription box as a funnel for highly talented people.
38:10
So you imagine that- Mm-hmm. Yeah... the box is a way to encourage people to, you know, do entrepreneurial endeavors.
38:19
But you layer in a com- like, a competitive element to it as well, where, hey, if you wanna take this up a level, we are doing a challenge where the person that can sell the most lemonade in the shortest space of time between these dates is gonna be entered into this boot camp, and that boot camp then is a, uh, you know, week-long endeavor where if you have, you know, a million people that do this every month, you might get the top, like, I don't know, 100 of them, and then you just invest in them immediately.
38:46
I have a little cousin, well, he's not so little anymore, but he was doing more advanced electronics than I was when he was 12. Uh, and I was- Mm... in my final year of electrical engineering in college. And- Mm-hmm...
39:00
I, you know, I invested in him at the time. I think I gave him 100 euro to go and buy a, an Arduino and drive on with some electronics. Yeah.
39:07
And now he's literally building ro- robots trying to compete with Tesla and Brett Adcock, uh, over in San Francisco. And I, I knew, I knew then that he was going to be something special, 'cause he, he, he just had it.
39:22
And imagine if you were able to build a funnel to get all of these Harrys. That, that's his name.
39:28
If you were able to get all of these Harrys together into one place, and instead of me being a broke college student giving him 100 euro, imagine s- telling all of them, "I'm gonna give you 100,000 euro, but the only one condition is that I have first rights of refusal to invest in anything you ever do [laughs]
39:44
from now on." When are you, when are you gonna call him up and, and, like, ask him for that 100 euro investment? Like, what, what has that turned into? What's the... What, what were the terms on that?
39:53
Was it a safe note or what for- Swings and roundabouts, baby. Harry, Harry won't, Harry won't forget me. I know he won't. And by the way, he would've done it anyway, so I think all- [laughs]...
40:04
all, all I, all I did was speed it up by a couple of weeks. It's cool, though. He is-- I would love to have him on the podcast, actually. He's, he's a Elon Musk-type character. Mm. Uh, I, I did offer him
40:18
a bit more money when I actually had a little bit more cash, back when he was going on this, you know, compete with Optimus mission, but he said he wasn't gonna take any money from family and friends. So
40:32
I shouldn't have taken no for an answer, to be honest. I should, I should've just given it to him anyway, but...
40:36
Well, the, the, the old adage is that, you know, the first, the first round of financing for most companies is friends, family, and fools.
40:42
You should, you should just put yourself in the third category and be like- [laughs]... "No, no, no. This is not friends or family. This is, this is fool's money. Please, please take it." No.
40:50
And then you would've been on the cap table. You would've been happy out. Yeah. Act like a Labrador, as John Coogan will say. Whenever I go running, I always come up with my best ideas.
40:59
For example, the other day when I went for a run, I thought about the idea of wearing glasses that had augmented reality built into them that could make my runs a bit more entertaining.
41:10
And though I definitely don't have the capacity to go and start this idea now, maybe this is gonna go in the someday pile.
41:17
And any ideas that I always feel a little bit more conviction on than others and go into the someday pile, I always buy the domain, because you never know when you're gonna use it, and the best time to buy a domain for a business that's gonna be launched in the future is yesterday.
41:32
And the place that I always go to buy my domains is name.com. They are a longtime friend of Half Baked.
41:37
In fact, they were the second sponsor we ever had back when we were a fledgling media company, and they have been supporting us ever since.
41:45
So if you have some ideas in your someday pile or even your today pile, go and buy them from name.com. Thanks, name.com, for keeping the lights on here at Half Baked.
41:54
Will I go into my, my other big, massive, gigantic idea? I would love to hear.
42:00
No, this is kind of another thought in a kind of a, again, kind of in the learning/education space, but, um, coming at it from a bit of a different angle. So, [lips smack]
42:09
you know, there's the famous, uh, Charlie Munger quote, um, that everybody's probably heard, but, um, it's one of my favorite quotes. Um, you know, "Show me an incentive, I'll show you an outcome."
42:19
Uh, and it, uh, you know, it applies to basically everything in life, where- Mm-hmm...
42:23
yeah, uh, if you know how someone is incentivized, you can quite reliably predict what they're going to do or how they're gonna- act, um, fundamentally.
42:32
Um, and yeah, when you think about that then in the context of, you know, learning, uh, obviously the, you know, one of the biggest, you know, things, uh, market, let's say online that, that people, um,
42:44
participate in is, like, online learning, online courses. We've all seen, you know, course bros selling drop shipping, you know, courses and crypto and whatever else, whatever the flavor of the month is, basically.
42:56
Um, but I find it really interesting because, like, the internet means that, uh, you know, basically all of the information,
43:05
like, ever available i- is, is right there at your fingertips, yet people still find it so hard to learn, and therefore people invest in, you know, courses, um, you know, in order to try and, you know, get better learning outcomes.
43:18
Um, it's even funnier as, or even it's interesting today that with AI you can kind of learn anything as well just by talking to AI, talking to Claude about it.
43:27
Um, but again, you know, the course, their, their market for online courses is still absolutely gigantic. So, um, like, if you look at, for example, Coursera and Udemy, so they merged earlier this year. Um- Did they?
43:39
Yeah, they did. They, they merged in May of 2026. What does merge mean? Like, did, did one consume the other, or was it a genuine merge? As in, so [chuckles]
43:51
you know, when people talk about mergers and acquisitions, so generally speaking, when, when, when you're at a bigger s- size, let's say, it's, it can be more palatable, we'll say, for, uh, [chuckles] for, for companies to merge instead of one to acquire the other.
44:02
Let's just put it that way. [chuckles] Um, so this was a, a merger. Who acquired who? [laughs] I think, I think Coursera i- is way bigger than Udemy, so as far as I'm aware, uh, Coursera acquired Udemy, effectively.
44:15
Um, but, like, some of the numbers, like Coursera, they generated $750 million in 2025, um, in revenue, and they had nearly 200 million, like, registered learners or registered users.
44:28
Um, so, like, yeah, like these online course companies are making a huge amount of money.
44:33
There's a huge amount of money to be made in online education, but the problem is the completion rates of these courses, um, are absolutely abysmal.
44:41
So, um, they've run studies on, like, what are called massive on- uh, massive open online courses, MOOCs they're called, and, uh, completion rates are generally between, like, 5 and 7%, if you're lucky.
44:55
You mean 5 to 7% complete the course, or people get 5 to 7% of the way through? No, sorry. Uh, so 5 or s- 5 to 7% of people will actually complete the course. So I don't know what the drop-off is like.
45:07
I'm, I- I'm guessing it's, like, you know, 80% probably don't make it past the first couple of modules and, you know, it just, you know, uh, degrades down then into, yeah, your, your kind of 5% of people who actually complete it.
45:18
I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I've been trying to figure out, like, what's a mechanism that you could turn on to encourage people to be, like, more bought into, you know, learning online and, and, and kind of online learning in general.
45:31
Um, I think the way that you do it is you just structure the incentive a little bit differently.
45:35
So instead of, uh, going to Udemy and paying, you know, $25 or $50 for a course, um, what I'd love to do is basically set up an online learning platform
45:45
where instead of paying, like, 20 or $25, um, for a course, you have to pay 200 or $250 for the course.
45:53
$25 of that is, like, a non-refundable, let's say, tuition fee, and then the rest of it is basically, like, a, uh, refundable completion bond, we'll call it.
46:03
So basically, uh, as I get, uh, further through the course and, and as I get, you know, closer towards completion, I basically earn that bond back bit by bit.
46:13
So, like, I've put some money down, um, it's a meaningful amount of money, and over time, if I actually commit to it and I complete the course, I basically get all of that money back.
46:23
So if you go and you b- you know, you might spend $250 on the course. If you complete it, it only costs you 25 quid. If you get halfway through it, it actually costs you, like, 150 quid or $175, uh, to complete it.
46:34
That kind of an idea. Um, and then you could figure out a way for the forfeited bond money then to be used for, you know, scholarships for other people, or they could be donated or, or something like that.
46:43
You, you could figure out a nice, uh, a nice, um, thing to do with, uh, with those funds. But, um, yeah, I just think that would be such a re- an interesting way to
46:53
inspire, encourage, force [chuckles] people into, uh, actually committing and actually completing the courses, basically. Question for you.
47:01
Does completion rate correlate with the retention/likelihood that someone will buy again, or it would increase the LTV of the customer? What do you mean? So if I'm Coursera, and I buy a course for $1,000,
47:18
do I actually care whether you finish it or not if you've paid me?
47:23
Uh, I think Coursera probably don't care, no, because ultimately, like, their business model, uh, Coursera, Udemy, et cetera, like, their business model is just about getting as many people to sign up and pay for the course.
47:32
They don't actually care if people complete it, ultimately. Um- I got it.
47:35
So we're actually talking about developing a competitor here, a, a, a competitor that's more geared towards outcome-based learning, which should then, like, which should then inspire people to repurchase, which will then increase their LTV and Rob's share- Yeah...
47:51
from them. It, it, oh, no, it's 100%, like, it's 100% a, a competitor product. I think what you're trying to do is you, you're trying to,
47:57
um, you're trying to position yourself as an online learning platform with, like, much, much better completion rates, therefore much better outcomes, much more effective, therefore it's a much better investment that someone's making, even though it's the exact same amount of money, um, generally for, for, for people.
48:13
So, like, again, if a course costs, you know, $25 on Udemy, um, if you complete the course here, it's gonna cost you the same amount of money.
48:19
You'll just have had, have had the extra incentive to go and actually make sure you get it done, if that makes sense. I love this. I love this. I think one, one question that I have is,
48:28
where are the incentives aligned everywhere? So for example, like, is there- A platform or an online learning platform that is incentivized for people to finish their courses or to actually get through it.
48:45
And I think the, the answer is yes, and it's not directly related, but I'd say universities are. Yeah. I'd say outcome-based learning platforms are.
48:54
So I think if you did want to, you know, not go and, you know, build it yourself, there is definitely a world where you could try and incentivize, uh, like, outcome-based learning platforms that aren't necessarily- Mm...
49:07
for shits and giggles, I'd say.
49:09
But one thing that I think is so interesting about this idea is that, number one, obviously the fusion with AI and AI learning, I think you could do something very, very cool where you do a version of, like, Brilliant.
49:20
I don't know if you're familiar with Brilliant, but they're the- Yeah... you know, science and maths learning platform. Very cool. I've done loads of their courses. They're, uh, they're, they're actually so, so cool.
49:30
I think there is a way that you can then build the AI one-to-one learning there and the incentive together. What I- Mm-hmm... actually find interesting about this is,
49:39
you know this probably better than me, but the idea of deposits. So hypothetically, if you're charging
49:45
200 bucks for a course and $50 of that is going towards, like, a non-refundable fee, and you have $150 that's there, and, uh, it's in some, uh- High-yield [laughs] It's in an escrow- High-yield treasury account.
49:59
Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Like, that's- Yeah... like, that's the interesting bit, 'cause, like, banks make money off of deposits.
50:04
Now, I know you can only really do that if you are a bank, so, like, take that with a pinch of salt. That's why you need a ba- a banking license. But, you know, I, I know a guy who's developing this gifting platform.
50:15
Uh, so, like, uh, employee-based gifting, and one of the big revenue drivers for them is the fact that people don't always use all of the funds that they get. So if you distribute $10 million
50:29
worth of funds, the average take-up rate might only be $9 million. So there's always going to be a million dollars sitting there that you can't legally just take, but you can use, and you can work it.
50:41
So if you got this up to, I don't know, like a Coursera scale, where you're doing, like, $800 million- Mm...
50:47
in revenue, and your take-up rate yielded $100 million of deposits always there, that's your extra free revenue source, where if you put that to work in a good way, there's no reason why you can't make compounding profits off the back of that.
51:02
I think that's a really cool second-order effect to this business. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's like, um- Outside of that- It's like st- I'm gonna stop being the evil capitalist, uh- Yeah [laughs]...
51:13
uh, here and talk about actually developing something good for humanity. Well, I was gonna say, it's the same thing as, you know, the, the thing about Starbucks. So
51:22
Starbucks, um, because of Starbucks gift cards, they effectively operate like a bank because there's literally- Yeah...
51:27
hundreds of millions of people who've got, like, uh, yeah, uh, money on gift cards that's just sitting in their Starbucks account.
51:33
So they can then go, and they've got a whole treasury function [laughs] that's, like, managing, you know, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars worth of gift card deposits- It's just credit... at any one time, so.
51:42
Yeah. Question for you. If you were to launch- Mm... this in the morning, would you go with the marketplace approach, or would you go with developing your own content? I th- I think I'd probably go,
51:56
like, developing my own content. I'd probably try and figure out a way, you mentioned earlier, like, i- is there a way that you could, you know, layer AI into this? Um, I know there's a company, is it called Obo?
52:08
I think it might be obo.com. I think that they're kind of doing, like, AI-generated, um, like, AI-generated courses.
52:14
I'm not sure how, how, uh, high quality it is, but, like, I wonder, could you go down that route where you kind of try and, you know, train a model to basically develop really bespoke, really custom courses, like, for people, and then layer in the incentive, the incentive piece?
52:29
May- may- I think-... maybe, maybe you're trying too many things at once then, but, like, that could be a cool way of doing it. Yeah. That, like, that is extremely difficult to do.
52:36
I think if you were doing it, like, you'd have to gear towards an outcome. Like, this is actually good timing.
52:40
So yesterday, I got an ad for this company called Smarty Me on Instagram, and it was the most eye-catching ad I've seen in a very long time.
52:50
They had this 3D model of how a toilet works, and then it went to a 3D model of how an engine works, and then how a heat pump worked. And then it was like- Mm-hmm...
53:00
"You use these every day, but you have no idea how the, how they work. Become smarter and learn how they work using this app." And it kind of caught my attention.
53:08
Now, it went, I went through, like, a 10-minute onboarding process. It was absolutely heinous. It was, it was- [laughs]... horrendous.
53:15
It was designed by demons of the underworld, but I think you could definitely apply the same concept here.
53:20
If you really were willing to, like, develop your own content, which is a big moat to begin with, because obviously it's a brand moat, um, I think that's hard in the long term because
53:33
AI, frankly, it's very easy, e- easy to learn. While AI is very h- like, where I think AI is gonna fall short is the idea of learning through people.
53:43
So I think a really good model here would be if you could cross over with the incentive-based learning and something like Masterclass, where- Mm. Yeah...
53:54
Masterclass have a great model, because Masterclass solved the cold start problem of having a marketplace because they control the supply.
54:02
The supply is key people of influence that are, you know, teaching you about their subject matter of expertise. Mm-hmm.
54:09
And I think if you were able to employ a similar model, you're not gonna be afraid of anybody, you know, out-competing you with regard to content.
54:18
You're not gonna be afraid of AI because, frankly, if you told me, "Darragh, would you rather learn from Brian Cox, the physicist, or an AI version of Brian Cox?" Obviously, I would prefer to learn from Brian Cox itself.
54:30
Yeah. True. So I think if you were able to merge two of them together, I think that would be an absolute banger of a problem and a banger of an idea to solve.
54:39
I think the other interesting thing about this, though, is, like, what other domains could you apply this kind of, uh, let's say, incentive structure to?
54:48
So, like, the other, like, the really obvious one would be, like, could you do this for a gym?
54:53
So, like, your gym membership costs you 300 bucks a month, and then every time you go, you get $3 back, and [laughs] you know, you can get, get it down to, like, you know, next to nothing or whatever. Love it. Love it.
55:04
You'd go out of business in a year, though. [laughs] No, I know. You, you could, you could, you could figure out a way to, um, like- You, you, you could. You could, yeah...
55:12
yeah, you'd figure out, you'd figure out a cap or whatever. You, you'd figure out a cap.
55:15
But I think the thing is that it's like, uh, you know, people talk about, um, Alex Hormozi talks about Planet Fitness all the time, and how, like, you know, uh, Planet Fitness will go into a, a pretty small town.
55:24
They'd open up a gym, and then they'd, they just cycle through the same members, like, time and time again. Yeah. Where, like- Yeah...
55:31
they, you know, they might need 10,000 members, uh, for a gym to be profitable, and there might only be 5,000 people in the town, so they just cycle through everybody, 'cause people join, they don't go for a while, they quit.
55:40
Yeah. They say, "That's fine. Come back when you're ready." They rejoin. Cycle-- Like, it's just a never-ending cycle. So i- it's that kind of a, a concept again, where you're cycling through people.
55:48
You know, on average, your average person is probably gonna leave a fair bit of money on the table, and then you'll, you'll have some, uh, uplift there.
55:55
Yeah, it's just a maths equation to figure out what the best way is to do it and how profitable you want to be. I think you're right. Exactly. You can apply this to anything. Mm-hmm.
56:02
I think we should do a dedicated episode on the idea of productizing incentives and- Mm... productizing accountability- Mm-hmm... because this is all formed under a similar umbrella.
56:17
Like, I, I have this group, it's a group of me and somebody else, and we have this kind of, you know, routine thing where we'd say, "Okay, what are we gonna prioritize?
56:26
Okay, we're gonna prioritize not snooze, snoozing the alarm. We're gonna prioritize going to the gym, and if you don't do it for one of the days, you need to throw a five euro into a vault."
56:35
And, like, that, like, vault is then used for, you know, spending some other day. But that little p- like, that little incentive or that little bit of accountability is 50 times greater than not having it.
56:48
It's, it's so, it's such a disproportional, uh, increase in your willingness and likelihood of you doing the thing, and I think if you can figure out a way to productize that- Mm-hmm...
57:03
you can apply it to learning, you can apply it to fitness, you actually can apply it to more or less anything.
57:08
The big struggle there is actually figuring out how to do it effectively, and I think you're onto something here. I think this is likely going to eventually hit the market in some way.
57:19
The only question is how you're actually going to do it.
57:22
I think the other, the other question about this is, like, what would stop an incumbent from just, like, having this as a, as, you know, a, a pricing model that they try out?
57:30
Um, I'd be very curious if, yeah, if one of the incumbents did try it out, like, how would that turn out or how would that look? But, um, yeah, I think, uh, there's a lot to be said for, um, [lips smack]
57:41
you know, when people think about ideas and, and, and startup ideas and whatnot, they always think that they have to be super innovative in the sense that it has to be kind of a, a brand new product that no one's ever maybe seen before or no one's ever conceived of even before, when actually a lot of times you can do very well building a business or, or building a business that's very similar to one that already exists, but just changing the way that you're, you're, you're, you're pricing it, basically.
58:04
You're changing the kind of business model, um, and that can be a very, very good way to, uh, to build a very cool business. So yeah, honestly, I would, I would love for someone to, to, to try this and build it.
58:14
Um- Well, I saw an ad for Ali Abdaal's new course, and its promise headline was, "Make seven videos, we'll refund you $295." So we're not the only ones- There you go... thinking about this.
58:28
I've been getting hit with his ads as well, and I'm fascinated that a guy with that many subscribers and that big of a following is still running ads. That's what really- Yeah. [laughs]...
58:36
that's my big takeaway from that. I'm fascinated by that. I was trying to work it out.
58:39
I was like, actually, I was trying to figure, like, how, how could he be still, how could you still be running ads if you have that big of a following? John, all roads lead to Meta.
58:47
What, what, what have we learned over the last 10 years of doing business? I know. All roads lead to Meta. All goes back to Zuck at the end of the day.
58:56
We're all just, uh, conduits for, uh, for getting money into Mark Zuckerberg's back pocket, basically.
59:02
[laughs] I- if you look at the line items of our P&L, the biggest line item by a country mile is Meta, and they don't have an absolute clue who we are. We don't have an account manager. Yeah.
59:14
We don't, in f- we are paying somebody good money to help us figure out how to use the platform. [laughs] We are indeed.
59:23
And they still don't care about us, and that just shows how powerful a business that is, that you have a company spending i- in, in our world anyway, ungodly amounts of money every single month to get some attention, and yet you are still nowhere near big enough to garner any reasonable amount of attention from their team.
59:45
It's scandalous. I remember Chamath talking about this before, um, on a podcast. He was talking about how,
59:52
uh, for most tech startups, he was talking about, like, their allocation of, of VC dollars, so if they go and they raise, you know, 50 million or whatever.
1:00:02
I think the, the number he said was something like, oh, um, 60 or 70 cents of every dollar that they, that a company raises goes straight back to, like, one of Meta, Google, you know, one of the big, basically, ad, uh, ad platforms, which is a crazy statistic to think about.
1:00:17
I presume it's still the same today, but, um, yeah, that is mad to think about. And that, and that's why it's a multi-- Is Meta a multi-trillion dollar company? I think it is. I think it's- Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It is.
1:00:28
I think it's a two or, two or three trillion dollar company, as far as I can remember. Yeah, it's huge. Mad.
1:00:33
As always, any idea that John and I talk about or any ideas that you have, if you feel a burning desire to go and do one of them, message us on Twitter.
1:00:41
We're all about creating more founders in the world, and we'll see if we can do whatever we can to help bring your idea to life. That's the pod. Turn off the oven.
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