Bath bombs for hot drinks, co-working 2.0, and fantasy stock betting...
Recap of all the startup ideas from My First Million podcast episode #124
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On episode 124 of My First Million podcast, host Shaan Puri spoke with Elaine Zelby about a bunch of startup ideas she has. Elaine has worked at Slack and now part of a VC group. She messaged Shaan about a bunch of startup ideas so Shaan invited her on the podcast to talk about them. Here’s a recap with time stamps and links. Enjoy!
Milk Bombs. Photos by Elaine Zelby
3:45 Co-working 2.0: the Starbucks model of co-working
Have a co-working space where you are working amongst people who are not your actual co-workers
Companies would pay their employee to work at these different co-working 2.0 communities
That way you still get the social aspect and community and not not have to hop around to different co-working places
How would you approach this to build it out?
Currently leases are really low due to COVID pandemic. So lock in a low rate on office space
Then go to those companies you bought the lease from and other companies in area to pay to have their employees there
Hire staff to do all stuff, security, office manager, etc
Sell enterprise contracts to companies to put their employees here
Holds 30-50 people, not hundreds or thousands
Would work best in high density cities
Thousands retail bank branches going out of business in suburbs. Would be great for a co-working space for the suburbs?
9:15 Under-utilized real estate
In Indonesia Shaan saw massive hotel and apartment buildings. The first floor of these were night clubs
These clubs were not open during the day
One group was going to nightclub owners and asking to take over night club when the night club wasn’t using the space (mon-fri 6am to 1pm)
Then they would turn it into a fitness studio; dance floor became workout floor
Without owning any real estate got access to these nightclub for pennies on the dollar
12:25 Credit cards for fans. [I wrote more about this here.]
Gen Z does not care for traditional rewards
Gen Z does not want credit cards and only wants debit cards?
Instead of traditional rewards, you can earn rewards from your favorite creator for things like t-shirts, getting an online shoutout, doing a one-on-one experience with the creator, access to a concert, etc
Astro Card is trying to do this. Read more here.
20:30 Continuous cortisol monitoring (aka stress hormone) [like the glucose idea]
Too much stress (cortisol) is a major contributor to negative health
Could help parents understand their kids and if they need medical/emotional help, etc
Shaan and Elaine were not sure how cortisol could be monitored continuously. I think it may be possible to infer a cortisol level using a heart rate monitor which can be done on the Apple Watch.
26:20 Fantasy stock betting
Huge influx of retail investors on platforms like Robinhood
Can you combine the best of sports betting with fantasy sports (picking your team) with public trading?
Attempt was made by Shape Shift based on crypto (called Prism). You could pick a portfolio of tokens and allocate a percent based on your allocation. It’s public so people could follow you and made it social.
Shaan says if he we're to try to build a fun social product, this would be at the top of his list
You could create a social group, pick a game mode (monthly/weekly/daily bet) and get $1K, and whoever gets the most money at end of the month wins
Users could build statuses and followers
Think about a big casino. Tons of people are just watching others play the game (think craps).
32:50 “Bath bomb” for hot drinks
Would be a healthy/functional milk for your coffee or tea…similar to adding nootropics, CBD, etc to products now which is super popular
You would drop a “functional milk” bomb in your coffee or tea and get health benefits like CBD, nootropics for brain function, etc
huge explosive categories nootropics, CBD, etc
These are primed for subscription purchases because drinking coffee and tea is something people do everyday
Spherification kits are used to easily make these
40:10 Streamline/Automating the re-zoning and permitting processes for real estate
Currently the process to get a permit for construction of anything, house, barn, fence, gate, shed is ridiculous cumbersome and time consuming
Consists of two aspects: Paperwork and humans involvement
Easy to automate the paper work aspect
The human part is more complicated but now with COVID everyone is getting stuff done online
This would be either for the consumer or to the permit granters (the city or HOA)
Someone in the MFM group is trying this for DMV offices, making very good money doing this according to Shaan.
Maybe you could model this after the DMV model
International visas are another possible target to automate
Clear for airport security is another example of how this was done successfully