Specialty shoes for nurses, erotic newsletter sells for $75K, high school newspaper for companies
Startup idea recap of My First Million podcast episode #115
Hey guys,
Here’s the recap of the latest MFM podcast, including timestamps and links to make your life easier. Enjoy!
12:35 Specialty clothing and apparel like shoes for nurses or clothing like scrubs
Ex-Nike guy makes shoes for nurses called Bala
Raised 750K in 5 days with some sort of fundraiser campaign
Shaan likes this idea. He’s looked into specialty scrubs as well called Figs
Figs scrubs sells for $38 to $40
Figs on track to make $100M in revenue in 2018…probably crushing it in 2020
Sam says shoes are challenging due to varying sizes needed for inventory
Figs was bootstrapped without funding Sam/Shaan said?
Sam thinks oil workers may needs specialty clothing. He thinks there are 500,000 of these workers. [from Wes: I know oil workers have to have special “flame resistant” clothing. There currently are a few companies that sells these like by Ariat]
Shaan and Sam think there may be opportunity for restaurant workers apparel as well
21:20 A company that provides workforce tools for certain workers like travel nurses and truckers
Rig Up is a company doing this for oil & gas workers
Rig Up is valued at $3 billion. Raised money from Andreessen Horowitz
Rig up provides digital workforce tools for oil & gas, renewables, energy. “Our network and digital solutions help energy companies scale faster – allowing operators, vendors, and contractors to work together seamlessly while reducing costs and risk.”
A way to hire, do safety, do on-boarding of workers, etc.
Sam thinks someone should do this for other workers like travel nurses or truckers
Hospitals have fluctuating demand for nurses. So travel nurses go city to city and work at a hospital for periods of time. They get paid a higher rate since they are working on demand and are flexible.
There’s a shortage of truckers so trucker companies are begging people to get certified and be hired as truckers. The turnover rate is 100% per year according to Sam
How could someone apply the “Rig Up” model to travel nurses and truckers?
23:40 Erotic newsletter sold for $75,000
Sold to a private buyer at MicroAquire marketplace
Geared to black women
Advertised on Porn Hub
Sam thinks this could be as big as Crunchy Roll which is a billion (?) dollar business
Someone just needs to find the next niche and get on it
28:10 Video streaming solution that can’t be recorded (leaked)
An app for “company all hands” meetings
Currently when Shaan conducts an “all hands” meeting he has to put together a bunch of apps to make it all work: SSO service, video stream, recording in case you missed it, a way to do Q&As…
Shaan’s idea was to make one app to do all this to make it easier
Due to COVID and WFO “all hands” meetings have gone digital.
Shaan says this has led to security issues like how Facebook employees have been recording FB’s all hands meetings and publishing them
This means employers, CEOs have to be careful about what they say on the digital all hands meetings
32:40 A high school newspaper for companies
When Jeff Bezos bought Washington Post he created something called Arc
Arc is a publishing system CMS
They pivoted with Arc and started selling to Morgan Stanley and other big banks to create a private, internal newspaper for the company’s internal memos, announcements, all hands meeting, etc.
Shaan wants to know how can this be “leak free” so no one publishes it.
36:00 Artificial intelligence for everyday tasks
Compose.ai: Compose uses state-of-the-art machine learning to turn bullet points into polished emails
Synthesia.io: Synthesia CREATE is a powerful tool to create engaging video content without the need for actors, film crews and studios. You type in a message and the fake person reads it out on video.
These may be based on Open.ai
The guys then go on to talk about how amazed they are by Open.ai.