How to come up with good business ideas - Lesson 1

it's not very relaxing i don't think

this is what happens when you lose a

penny

can you imagine just like

it just i can just see a charlie chaplin

right now does anybody play instrument

an instrument

i know some people were saying in the

introductions that they play instruments

hello everyone

he plays an instrument feel free to

unmute and uh

[Music]

yeah who does play an instrument we

could have our own band

no one play i played clarinet um

when i was in school i played flute very

badly

very very badly

i feel you wish you played a different

instrument like if you went backward

like

yes because all the girls played flute

or clarinet

and i wish that i had played um

a brass instrument like the trumpet

something loud

so we can start a really really bad band

oh that really bad bands are the best

kinds did you know that every band

starts out as a really bad band it's the

only way to start

unless you're you're like uh

i don't know a fork of another band or

something maybe

or you come together with some soloists

yeah

well we have um 34 we'll give everyone

one more minute

how was your weekend

anyone do anything exciting

[Music]

i don't read it on you there's not that

many people so we can you should we're

you can unmute and speak it's we're not

we won't buy it

um i brought a bunch of my clothes from

my wardrobe to a thrift store to just

donate just to be more of a minimalist

in my own like wardrobe

awesome i love doing that

i do that like every three months and i

don't feel like i buy that much stuff

but every time i do it i'm like holy

crap

stuff just accumulates

like i feel like i don't know what are

you down to do you have a uniform

um

no i mean i have like

five outfits i have three two pants that

i alternate between

so i'm that like that you know the

barack obama thing he like wears two

suits like it's like blue or gray i

think um

so i'm like i'm that on pants

at least

and what about you julie what are you

down to now that you've donated all of

your stuff

i'm down to enough stuff that will fit

into a carry on luggage so all right

exactly

yeah for clothes yeah

wow wow

that's pretty impressive you're winning

you're winning today on minimalism

okay maybe we should go ahead and get

started 904.

awesome yes let's do it let's get

started uh so let me quickly share my

screen and just go really really quickly

recap kind of the overview because there

may be some people who are

watching this for the first time

so let me share my screen and just go

through

uh how we're going to spend the next six

weeks of the class

so this week the first week is about

coming up with good business ideas then

we're going to take those business ideas

and we're going to take at least one of

them each um and write a memo um

and write a really really awesome memo

just the kind of memos that i assemble

uh to get feedback on my own ideas and

to raise money and to do all of these

sorts of things uh then we'll design

stuff in figma i'm going to teach

everyone how to design stuff this is how

i got my start

um and then we're going to build stuff

uh

we're going to build an mvp we're going

to go through kind of like what the no

code version of that might look like

what the code version of that might look

like we're all going to deploy if we

don't haven't already done so uh our own

websites to the internet with our own

domains

um which is gonna be awesome

and then we're gonna talk about sales

uh you know obviously if you want to

build a business which is the goal here

after you build a product you need to

sell that product uh and then finally

we'll go through kind of everything else

um which i've kind of used the word

growth but effectively growing your your

team via recruiting via growing your

your company um

you know basically i'm gonna do a pretty

intense

deep dive you'll basically see every

single thing that we do at gumroad um

around

quarterly planning recruiting i'll go

through our pnl our accounting

our crowdfunding filing with the sec

i'll go through notion how we use notion

how you slack how we use it like

literally basically everything and then

obviously like the vast majority of the

content is not here

uh because the vast majority of content

is either gonna be peer-based or it's

gonna be you asking me questions

um and figuring this thing out because

obviously there's like 70 words on here

um

and i thought what would be really fun

is to actually use procreate so i don't

know if people are familiar with

procreate um who's familiar with

prograde

uh procreate is an awesome app oh wow

that's like half or more um so i'm gonna

i'm gonna share my screen again but this

time i'm gonna share

my screen

using

airplay

uh actually now what i'm going to do i'm

going to share my screen using

my ipad because that doesn't work and

then i'm going to be knighted

by julie so that my ipad will show up as

the main

v i'm going to jump in and just say

something quickly about uh

anyone who was not here last thursday

just a quick overview

of course i just posted the course

notion in uh

in the chat and it'll also be in slack

but just to get a sense of every week

the workshops are monday six to eight

pacific time for six weeks in a row uh

then we have three peer mentor groups

that happen uh one on tuesday at 11 p.s

11 am pst

one on thursday at nine at six pm pst

and one on friday

at uh

6 pm pst and i'll post all of that in

the slack

but we've sort of added to that we're

adding to the course notion as we go so

i added an alumni mentor group page at

the bottom that has a link to all of the

calendars and a link to the

mentor group slack channels and then

office hours on friday yes

and sahil is going to post a accountly

link for the office hours every

wednesday so you can look for that in

slack

uh so they're just i'm trying to answer

all of the questions that i got today

and over the weekend about logistics

scheduling you should have gotten six uh

email invites uh for the workshop and if

you didn't just send me a message in

slack and we'll work it out um but we're

trying to post things in multiple

locations so you'll never be looking for

the zoom link or the time or anything

that you need

um but i'm on my computer a lot so

just send me messages

awesome yeah we're gonna try a bunch of

stuff as we do every time we're gonna

try a bunch of new things

uh and then a few things are gonna

really really really work and then we'll

double down on those things and that is

kind of one of definitely one of the

themes of

i feel like a lot of what i say over and

over again try a bunch of stuff some

things work double down on those things

small bets

um etc but uh yeah let's get let's get

started and we'll see this is kind of an

experiment i haven't

like done anything like this before but

like this is how i

think through my ideas like i like being

able to do freeform instead of just like

type in this list of slides and text and

all these sorts of things and it also

means that i have the chat open the so

please use it um

but julie will help as well

um awesome so yeah let's get let's get

started so this week actually before

this week let me let me set the goal the

goal for the whole course

i think the right framing is kind of

what we talked about on thursday but

it's kind of this idea called anti-work

right and i really like this i like

picking up picking up on like what the

zeitgeist is kind of already talking

about another theme that we'll get into

in a second but anti-work basically is

you know because something like 100 of

the time

your

time

doing

what you want

that is kind of like the broad

goal

right uh

that's i think what everyone wants um

and hopefully we'll get there

the way that our approach to actually

getting to this goal

is by building a business right

and so

our approach to this is

building

a business

so that is kind of the six weeks or so

that we're spending here and obviously

if you want to be able to do this

you need a profitable business uh

because it needs to exist for a long

period of time

and there's only one way to do that

which is to be profitable

um

and yeah so that's kind of the focus of

the course and this week is going to be

on the first part of that

which is coming up with the idea itself

and there's two ways uh to come up with

ideas there's sort of two approaches i

mean there's there's many approaches

we'll go through a gazillion of them

today uh but there's there's there's

kind of two i think real framings of

this approach

uh the first approach

to a

also i want to flex my drawing abilities

at some point

there's two approaches what are the two

approaches well there is

my approach which i kind of consider

like bottoms up

the bottom

and

another way to say this very commonly

said is solve your own problem right

[Music]

this is kind of the approach that we

will generally be taking

but i want to give credit and talk a lot

about

the other way the other sort of sets of

approaches um because this is not like

sort of my way is the right way

uh so the other approach is kind of the

opposite right so instead of bottoms up

it's sort of like top down

todd i also flip that

top down

and uh another way to kind of i think

about this because this is really i

think the framing

that that sort of side uses is kind of

opportunity or market

first

and this kind of works nicely in a in

like a framing way because if you kind

of you know the bottom is obviously the

bottom

top is at the top you know you kind of

start with your own problem over here

and you kind of finish with the market

opportunity over here you know this is

kind of like

let's say right here is kind of like

zero to one

zero to one

which is a great book i highly recommend

everyone read it and then maybe here's

kind of like tme

or rework

and of course there's kind of you know

most ideas fall

right something like that so it's

everything kind of is is in the in the

gray area but just to be super kind of

clear that like we're really really

focused on

kind of this bottoms up

approach

uh

and why is that uh there's a bunch of

reasons uh the core reason is that this

is about the minimalist entrepreneur and

if the goal is 100 of your time like

notice that the goal is not to build a

profitable business right um the goal is

100 of your time doing whatever the hell

you want

i think owning a business is a great way

to do that there are probably other

approaches um

certainly if you go to the anti-work

server there are many other approaches

to getting to this to this place um but

the goal is 100 of your time which often

means that you're going to start many

many businesses i was just listening to

a podcast

or a youtube video with naval i love

finding like going like eight set you

know like finding the oldest content

possible from from people that i i like

and respect and kind of getting a sense

of like what did they think when they

weren't as famous

um

and i learned that angellist was

13 years into his career he started

angelus when he was 36 and he had like

dozens and dozens of ideas i'm pretty

similar it's in the book but like i had

a bunch of ideas before gumroad some of

them even kind of worked most did not um

and my guess is like everybody has these

ideas and we'll use elon actually as an

example in a second um and so

you're gonna have a lot of ideas uh

good the

to ask people who has started a business

before or how many businesses have you

started before

uh you can type into the chat or you can

unmute for a second

i'm in the middle of founding my first

uh startup only one okay you're in the

first one okay good oh look here we go

starting i'm gonna ask a clarifying

question as well which is yes

like are what what do people when they

hear that this is like a meta question

what do they what are they hearing when

you say started a business before like

how do you define starting a business

because that also might change right

like is that

like incorporated a

c corporation in the state of uh

delaware

or is it

i had an idea i tried it made a sale

maybe didn't

failed

um

if you want to chime in on what even the

people who have already answered like

how are you thinking about i'm very

curious like how even people frame in

their heads

what what building a business what a

business even is

sorry to get mad but this is my show

i'm thinking of um almost anything as a

business from when i was a little kid

and i used to

clean houses for people or babysit and

i'd set up my little schedule and go out

and try to get clients

awesome

does anyone disagree does anyone did

anyone or not disagree

but like just in there kind of think

about it like oh no i have to

really like for example the person who

said uh you're building your first

startup

yeah

is that your first business endeavor

ever or like do you kind of wait start

up more in your head and that's why it's

your first one no i've been a freelance

illustrator for 20 years

oh my gosh wow amazing

peter so this is my first

business business not a creative

freelancer but when you're freelancing

were you self-employed

yes of course so you were a cell phone

so you kind of had a business or a sense

like sole proprietorship but this is a

startup so when you say startup what do

you mean by startup more than freelance

business obviously startup did business

like how do you differentiate those two

um

right now i i had an idea i i wrote an

mvp document and uh

i made a team and

we built the mvp basically we and we are

ready to launch

in

i think about two weeks

oh awesome awesome cool

and do you have certain expectations for

kind of the startup in terms of growth

or is it just like we'll see what

happens

it's basically the idea was something

that i needed myself and that i could

not find out there so i decided to build

it myself

so

solve your own problem my only

expectation for it is for actually to

work and for other artists to start

using it

all right that's good that's good okay

okay so i see i i i think i do think

this does remind me of

or this does bring up something where a

lot of people the way that they define

business is

uh or that they have started a business

is when they have a co-founder

uh or in your case like a team i think a

team really changes things uh like

having one other person

really kind of

defines a business in many people but i

prefer sort of the first kind of the the

first person who spoke sorry i have like

a lot of things open um

because i really want to make sure that

everyone feels like they can do this and

that like they can start a business and

that they should actually start many

many many many things and the smaller

the way that i think of it is like

jumping off a cliff like everyone says

that all the time like starting a

business like jumping off a cliff and

maybe building the airplane on the way

down like what a terrible way to like

get people excited about

entrepreneurship like it's you know i

like to like lower the the height of the

cliff like let's like make it as simple

as possible so everyone should feel like

they can start a business in this six

weeks like actually ideally much much

faster than i would argue to peter's

point freelance is like an amazing

way to start and we'll get into that

later um daniel vasalo has like a really

good good way to think about it but

freelance i think teaches you so much

about being a business owner because you

are actually kind of a business owner

it's kind of a

yeah it's kind of you sign up to be an

entrepreneur without maybe realizing it

even

um

awesome

um

so yeah so so why this approach um well

one is i mentioned like this is about

you the way we maximize your chance of

success

is by

taking many shots on goal and inherently

like these sort of top-down approaches

like there's just not that many of them

right uh the example that i often use

is

the iphone the iphone is obviously one

of these massive opportunities though

apple also kind of discovered it kind of

organically from kind of the ipod

etc

um but you know the iphone let's draw an

iphone they keep changing the design so

now this one has like a notch at the top

and goes all the way to the bottom

uh so this is the iphone

uh

and uh

how many companies are kind of this top

down like i'm gonna say apple right

apple

like when i look at this i think of an

apple iphone but there's like 10

or there's 6 000 businesses i believe

businesses

that helped make this iphone a thing

built

this and actually that i bet is

just

including like the actual things on the

phone uh it probably doesn't include for

example like all the restaurants that

served the people who worked at these

companies and so my point being that for

every one of these top-down

massive businesses

you have you know the kind of things

that peter thiel is interested in right

the facebooks of the world

there are

tens of thousands if not hundreds of

thousands of these businesses that will

all solve this problem

for you

and so there are so many of these out

there uh like i kind of believe that

there may even be more than one per

human because the more problems you

solve the more problems there will

become like i kind of believe there's

like just an unlimited amount of these

um

and so that's like a really really big

reason for it and of course if you're

someone like a peter thiel or maybe even

like me i get to invest in a lot of

startups like i like when people take

big shots on goal right because i don't

mind if there's a bunch of zeros as long

as there's a hundred

but everybody else

really wishes that there was an average

right except for the one person uh

right at the top and actually even if

you see kind of this like using apple as

an example or the iphone is an example

this kind of power lock happens even at

this level because you have

apple obviously up here i don't know

what they're worth like a 2 trillion or

something like that 1 trillion some some

stupid t

uh then you have like tsmc which is like

you know the manufacturing company in

taiwan that kind of makes all the

semiconductor chips which is kind of

scary but it is what it is and that i

think they're worth like half roughly um

and then who knows maybe you can like

put instagram like instagram's probably

worth like 500 billion or something like

if you kind of include that on on the

thing and like you know blah blah blah

right so this thing plays out everywhere

you can't help it and i just find that

like i'd much rather

i don't know focus on on the sort of

bottoms up like i don't need to think

about building this sort of thing all i

need is a business that makes me a

hundred grand a year and then i have all

the time in the world to do whatever the

hell i want

uh and so that is kind of

that's kind of why we take the approach

it's a multi-iteration

game

it's a very long-term game and we should

you know we should kind of treat our uh

treat it like that

julie any questions that i should answer

is anyone

confused

any questions feel free to chime chime

in the chat or just unmute and ask

does that make sense

questions um

no questions very curious i'm i'm very

i'm excited to get to the

what uh i'm excited to

get to the what businesses do you wish

you had start wish you started or wish

you ran question

awesome okay so let's do that in one sec

i want to give one other example um

which is

elon elon musk

and the reason i give him uh like to

give him as an example is one i do

actually think he does like a lot of the

sort of minimalist entrepreneur things

um even though people probably don't

consider him one um but his trajectory

uh as an entrepreneur

i believe fits very nicely into this

framework and so

for example his first company i'm sure

he had other companies before this he

had a company called zip

two and people can look this up if

they're not familiar but he started a

company kind of a very software like

super simple easy to start software

business um i think it's basically sold

like mapping software to

uh like newspapers have maps on their

websites or something some

newspaper website or something something

like that um so he started this company

called zip2

with his brother

uh in canada i think and then he started

another company

called x

which became paypal

had some like weird merger thing happen

uh and then became kind of a co-founder

of paypal and then the kind of the

famous story is that he made like 107

million dollars off that and then that

kind of spun into

spacex

tesla

and solarcity i think was the other one

um

but the cool thing here is like zip2 if

you kind of graph this out

like zip2 was kind of like his

thing this kind of got him to anti where

he could kind of do whatever he wanted

that kind of created this paypal x thing

and then obviously tesla like in spacex

and who knows what's going to happen

and so over time you can kind of make

bigger bets yourself and you can kind of

take the peditelian

zero to one

you know sort of thing but it turns out

if you have unlimited time and capital

and

you've built trust and you have an

audience and these sort of being able to

take these moonshot bets actually

becomes easier and easier over time so

my thinking is actually maybe if i

really want to like eat my cake and have

it too that like the best approach to

the zero to one mentality to the top

down opportunity first sort of approach

is actually my approach anyway

so i get to eat my cake and have it too

so anyway that's that's just what i

wanted to say

uh and julie yeah let's let's let's ask

that and i'm gonna write them down

because i can do that when it's not

google slides

so

my question is uh what business is sort

of on the pathway to defining like what

a minimalist business is

i'd love to hear what businesses people

wish they had founded or wish that they

ran

yeah what are your favorite domain names

what was the domain and also

just buying domain names in general oh

interesting

you wish that was your dream business

i wish i just learned about it way

earlier

so my challenge to you would be to find

find someone who did so you can

visualize like what that business

actually what what that looks like

go ahead yeah i can add one um there was

a it's kind of shut down now but um the

founder of groupon started this company

called detour a few years back i don't

know if anybody used it it was like a

personal knocking crap

yeah it was like my favorite app of all

time and then i got bought by bose and

shut down which made me really sad and

there's no alternative that exists it's

like it was a beautiful business and

really great at storytelling and

learning

and so yeah okay so that's my follow-up

question which is what why

why these businesses i want to try mine

i just wanted to give the people a

chance to oh yeah sorry oh wordle that's

my that's my dream business i wish that

i had come up with word all

wordle

that guy's a he's a he's a he's a many

you know if you could he actually has a

bunch of these too like wordle was not

his first game

um he had two at least that i know of

before um

so yeah common common theme um

okay so something about like why the

things that attract us that are

important

sigma

no one wrote procreate so sound

sub stack

okay now i need to know why

so why

okay detour was answered

which was

storytelling

what else what else was cool about it

why do you want why why would you

it got people out of the house and

taught them something new

at their own convenience

taught something new

awesome what else who said figma why

figma

um i said figma and i'm a designer i

think used before design tools were so

expensive

you know that prevented people from like

buying

photoshop or sketch but figma it's like

free for two people so it just

makes it so much more design tools way

more accessible

and the fact that it like allows for

collaboration so multiple people can be

in the file

and is really good for the remote world

so it fosters like collaboration amongst

um

like everyone in this remote world and

especially along

designers pms developers execs to all be

in the design file whereas before it

wasn't really

as possible to have that collaboration

um

yeah and also i think the fact that it's

end to end so as a designer

the the process is way more streamlined

versus like

different parts of the design process

like going to a different tool like for

prototyping perhaps

or for um

doing a task flow

i do love uh i do love figma

which we obviously will spend a week

a week on it awesome uh we could do this

for a long time um but

i'm talking too much i think

so i'm going to move on

uh and i'm going to move on to all of

all of the different ways that we can

come up with with ideas and so obviously

solve your own problem um is not uh

enough this is like a good framing for

what um

you know i basically what i want you to

do is i'm going to come up with my own

framework

and different ways that i think about

this and i want people to look at these

companies

and figure out okay this is how you know

like basically start to visualize okay

how can i come up with for example other

companies that also teach something new

that are that also make something like

figma i think is a phenomenal example of

this because i really believe that there

is

um this sort of

like thing that has happened in which

you can take some like expensive piece

of one-off software move it to the cloud

give it to everybody for free make it

way more collaborative more stakeholders

like you can take that and probably

apply it to many many many things like

splice is kind of doing this with music

um they're a bunch of stars doing this

with um

with video

um canva it kind of does this but for

like a different kind of thing so like

that i often think about it like

you know let's say you had some sort of

dimension and like figma's over here

and there's like two dimensions here

right like there's that whatever you

defined

uh

as like okay collaboration like this is

the collaboration line right but then

there are this is like the vertical line

let's say

and so like figma's here right because

it intersects like collaboration

variation

and like designers right

um

i'm going to make a note to myself

because i want to talk about something

in a second but uh designers and then

you could like imagine like well there's

probably like this whole thing is

businesses

right so there's probably like every you

know every you can almost intersect this

with so many different like like lawyers

i think really

lawyers really need something like this

like it drives me insane how they work

um writing this book

i can tell you man like there's a lot a

lot of need for collaborative

collaborative collaborative software

um

yeah

okay so let me go through my firmware

these these are kind of like the ones

that i think about the one

sort of most old school one

is called economic utility right so this

is kind of the thing that you learn in

high school probably

um

shout out the four types of economic

utility if you took economics in

high school or college what are the four

types of economic utility

what are the four types or type it in

there's a there's at least one of them

is written on the uh

on this appropriate slide

come on

everyone everyone's gonna have to drink

a couple beers or something yes you got

it

foreign she's a doctor in economics

no that's that's cheating

form time place possession form util

okay so josh can you unmute and explain

one of them

a while but i think like the one that

resonates most with me is time utility

so like ways to give people back their

time ways that like reward people along

the curves of demand or supply in terms

of giving that asset back to them and

that's kind of the trend for the other

four but just in different places

or other three

yeah it's there yeah they're definitely

there's kind of a lot of overlap so you

said okay so time

uh which i

uh yeah basically

save people time you can't really give

people time

people

time let's say saving people time

basically

another way of saying this is make it

faster

faster right um

place who wants to do place

what does place mean place utility what

is the faster equivalent of this box

retail retail store

watch me what you say

retail retail store any like uh

shopping stores but why why like what

you're correct you're correct in that

that is an example of of a of a of a

business that provides place utility but

specifically what is place utility like

what is the property of that store that

you value

is it the branding

[Music]

why place

yeah it's mostly like central repository

where i could get everything over there

like i don't need to know

yeah

okay so central central i'm going to put

central repository here

um and the way that's suggesting we give

examples of some of these companies if

we can is that what you mean oh yes yeah

we can do we get let's do examples this

is going to get crazy yeah um this is

going to be an insane slide

but we'll we'll do all of that um so

yeah let me do examples but first let's

do these um so i'm going to the word the

word i'm going to use is closer

effectively closer right like central is

kind of a way of saying that central

you're basically saying close to

where other things are um but closer to

you is kind of like you know if you're

looking at this and you're like what

drives me utility closer right um

form

is the hardest one so i'm going to skip

that uh and then or i'll fill it in

myself and then possession who wants to

do possession

possession should be relatively easy

it's on here

iphone is an example of one okay let me

write that down iphone

retail store

airpods

airpods

but yeah so basically accessibility is

is the answer here the reason it's the

fact that you can possess it at all

um is is what brings a utility because

there are many things that you literally

cannot possess

um

sid says uh remove middlemen

um

that is definitely yes this is homework

for the book good catch um

yes that basically things that you were

not previously even allowed to do like

you were you know only half the

population could do it and now the whole

population can do it right that is a

huge amount

of value

uh and the network effects fit into that

and all these other sorts of things and

then form utility i'll fill in myself

which is basically i mean it's kind of

but basically i've never found the right

like

uh

uh

unfortunately there isn't like a word

for this but basically

more useful is kind of like what i say

um

and if you notice i don't know if anyone

saw my synthetic womb's tweet which went

more viral than i wished it did um

this is what i said i said you know

basically we should make having kids and

what i said was faster cheaper simpler

this is where that comes from it's like

the framework that i use to

create new ideas and come up with uh

business business ideas um and the the

biggest businesses

do all of these right uh so like i don't

know what what's the most valuable

company in the world is it amazon maybe

what does amazon do right they save

people time

they make things closer to them they

literally have these like distribution

facilities that they've built

uh they don't really do form though they

kind of do now with amazon basics right

like they build their own products they

make their own products um and

possession utility right uh and

possession actually is really clear with

something like an amazon web services

where they really do like allow me to

possess to like effectively

own

my own servers

and create a lot of value um a lot of

value by doing that and so this is this

is like my framework this is kind of

what i use like 80 of the time like and

a really easy way to sort of come up

with ideas is to say what is really

freaking expensive that shouldn't be

like it doesn't make sense everyone

probably has examples in their life of

like why did that cost so much um it

might be like some interfacing with the

government it might be i don't know some

product it might be some food it might

be whatever but there are so many things

really like the most obvious one of this

for me

is if you do anything in crypto gas fees

obviously gas fees are going to go down

over time like that is a multi-trillion

dollar opportunity the

the amount like the amount of demand to

get into crypto is massively

regulated by how expensive it is to get

in so if you make crypto by the way like

all the haters on crypto you will get

rid of all the haters you will turn them

all into lovers if you solve these

problems if you fix

time if you make it fast

i mean this is like what people are

trying to do make it fast make it cheap

make it free ideally um you know change

its form so that people can even

understand what the hell is going on and

then give it to everybody right the

accessibility the possession utility is

kind of

built in from the start um and so i i

use this framework kind of all the time

right it's like this thing costs 50

bucks i could use this piece of software

you know they're doing it manually i can

automate it and i can charge 25 bucks

that's a business right and so you can

constantly kind of do this where similar

kind of exercise i do is i kind of find

a business that's over here and i'm like

can i move it this way right can i move

it this way in time can i make it faster

can i make it cheaper

you know can i move it over here you

know sometimes something as simple as

hey

no one in this city has eaten this

awesome food that i love right i'm gonna

open a restaurant like that is

place utility right um and for me how

many of these how many of these criteria

does a business need to meet for you to

think about starting it just one to be

honest

just one um is plenty it's plenty

because most businesses most business

ideas honestly i hear them and i'm like

you have not solved any of them

like it's surprising to me i'll get

pitched an idea and i'm like you

actually haven't really solved a problem

this is like a and sometimes you're like

really like every problem fits in this

uh like i got a lot of crap because at

one time i tweeted there's only three

ways to make money

this is kind of another way to look at

this framework only three ways

to make money

what are the three only three ways to

make money

someone said glue which i assume is not

the answer to this question

uh

kind of bundling right would be some

glue i guess

okay well i already said one which is

save time save

people peopletime

time

save people money number two

and there's one left

and there's only one new word in it

is anyone gonna say oh someone got it

make

it's like wordle this is like wordle

money

literally like and and everybody's like

oh no there's like other businesses that

like don't do these three things and i'm

like first of all

sure uh

there are a lot of bad businesses uh but

i guarantee you if you go to like the s

p 500 or you go to your local store or

you go to like 99.9 of the businesses

you support that you patronize like go

on open your credit card statement

uh i guarantee you that like these

businesses are doing these things um the

other thing that maybe like isn't

addressed here is they make you happy

right like there's sort of a whole set

of businesses that just like make you

happy

i'm not focused on those businesses i'm

focused on like the thousands of

businesses that are supplying to apple

sort of businesses uh things that are

obviously in business because they save

time

or make money or save money um the

reason is this is far more objective on

the left right happiness it's like no

one agrees on like the best artist the

best food the best restaurants are all

very very soft abstract things these

things over here like if you can save

someone 100 bucks

like that's a number um it's so much

easier to build a business like this and

it makes your whole life easier like

sales becomes a lot easier because

you're like i will say my value prop is

seven minutes how do you sell a

restaurant

the food is amazing

it's like what the f like that's

super hard that's super hard

um so anyway yeah

okay so do you want to unmute and ask

your question quickly

uh yeah i like the framework i'm just

curious um

rather than a binary solution you're

giving more time they're giving more uh

how much

if you give it like a few minutes extra

that's not adequate so how much marginal

utility like when would it make sense to

you know there's some overhead and

starting a business so when does it make

sense to say okay you're doing 10 times

better or like is there some ballpark to

uh criteria

yeah i mean that's a really good

question and yeah you're basically

trying to figure out like yeah what's

the activation energy right like yeah

when is it really worth it both in the

sense of you may be starting the

business but then two like on the other

side like you can't really say hey this

is like one percent better right like

that's a lot of work a lot of risk to

try new product and you know blah blah

blah um so you know there's there's a

couple ways to think about it one is

like this obvious 10x better

um i don't know if you've ever heard

this framing before um but basically

make something that's 10 times better

the reason being that people will only

switch like everyone has inertia on what

they're doing right like they already

have solved their problems somehow right

um

and the only way you get them to kind of

like say actually i'm gonna do something

different right is like when there's a

big like a big reason for that right um

it's like easier to say hey like i'm

gonna do this crazy trip go to france

then like hey can you like you know grab

coffee with me tomorrow sort of thing

right like and so 10x is kind of the

simple heuristic the reason it's 10x is

because we have 10 fingers right like

literally totally arbitrary so but what

i like about it is that it's just like

it has to be a lot it has to be

significant and maybe that is something

i do incorporate in this when i sort of

use this framing

is

oops uh use this framing

is

i like uh i want to figure out what is

the biggest differential there is right

and so another question um

was basically like

uh from last time was like how do you

if you have a lot of ideas like which

one do you pick right um and i kind of

think about it like well what

how can what is the 10x like if i have

an 8x and a 15x like go for the 15x like

cry try to create as much value per

person as possible i think it's going to

vastly

sort of increase the ability for your

business to succeed

um like paul graham says it's much

better to have like 10 people love your

product

and like 50 people hate it right then

like

70 people like kind of think it's okay

it's fine whatever not a big deal right

um and so you really want to like over

index like that those kinds of those

kinds of of people um and that's

actually brings me to uh

my second thing which is

i said sort of that you know figma was

kind of for designers right i think

what's really important uh to aunt to

help answer that is it you have to think

about who is this going to be a 10x for

right because you build a product for

some people it's nothing right they

don't care for it um and so starting

with the right people right like why

commenter has that great thing make

something people want it's pretty

awesome

uh

people want

and this is maybe kind of where i start

to get more counter-intuitive like

they've really i would say they really

focus on the something they kind of have

like this very like builder engineering

mentality to it i really think you

should focus on people like you should

really you know in the book i call the

start with community um basically start

with people like start with who who uh

and we'll do an exercise about who um

but start with the who and then i think

it's a lot easier to come up with a lot

of these other these other problems the

last exercise i want to do there's two

there's two exercises i want to do i

want to do one more thing before i go

into our last final thing that's going

to be actually coming up with a bunch of

business ideas um is i want to come up

with trends like i think one thing

that's really important

um is you need to ride a wave like i

think it's very difficult like part of

selling selling is just hard you know if

you kind of want to search for market

pull which i i just use riding a wave is

kind of the metaphor you know you can't

surf in a lake like you kind of have to

go to where

things are already happening uh

and so i just want to like really

quickly like go through a bunch of

trends i would love if people just wrote

a bunch down in the chat and i'll write

up a bunch of these i'll start

with a bunch of trends uh offline to

online is something i often think a lot

about uh again these will all map back

to economic utility they should uh

you know either because going online

saves time or you know make something

closer more convenient or cheaper um

but generally like these this is kind of

like one

level of abstraction lower right um

desktop to cloud is a great one like

that created a ton of opportunity

and ultimately by the way like the way

you come up with business ideas it's

just like bashing you know it's a bunch

of like atoms coming together so i just

like will throw all these at you and

hopefully things will start to work solo

player to multiplayer single player to

collaborative yeah that's a good one so

that's kind of like that sigma one sigma

is also kind of this desktop to cloud

and kind of offline online if you if you

you know for like wire framing for

example

um single to collaborative is a good one

i like gated to open also

oh that's a good one

uh domestic to global user to

self-service

agency to freelancer creator

uh it's going so fast now hold on uh

client and designer to collaborators

centralized to decentralized go to no

code

counts out

oh manual to automated

man you're the automate oh i love this

one honestly

if i could pick one and just say just

literally just

zoom in on this one is probably what i

would do

like i'm gonna

star this

um

agency the product is a good one too

actually

there's a lot there's there's a lot um

like i would i would put like

plant-based

it's another one to be on you know like

meat to plant it's definitely kind of a

trend

it seems like manual to automate it also

applies to agency to product and a lot

others

yeah definitely

um you know like the in the book i say

process to product start with process

right this is kind of

that right like all of the it's

basically and

this is a yeah this is often something i

think about like when i when i when i

think about okay how do i map economic

utility applied to a business that

already exists

it often is basically doing this right

which is taking a business that already

exists

and being like wow this is like so badly

wrong or like could be so you know so

much better done um

and and just making it better and you

don't have to like say oh we're going to

take this coffee shop and make freaking

starbucks right or come a tear or like

something crazy like that um but you can

say hey we're going to like use a bunch

of software and we're going to make this

awesome right like i think for example

uh

a lot of cloud kitchen kitchens

businesses do this right where they're

like oh wow like

now everyone's just ordering on doordash

like you can build probably a 10x better

sort of like fried chicken restaurant if

you're just focused on that specific

kind of thing you could use a packaging

that keeps the wings crispy or whatever

right like you can really make that

experience better you can automate tons

of stuff uh you can kind of create these

checklist manifestos you know like all

these french you know franchise

basically you can like think like a

franchise even though you may only be

operating one or two and the way a

franchise thinks is they basically take

all of the

rote repetitive behavior

type it up codify it uh and then the

last step is kind of the full automation

step right which would be basically just

like a robot like you just if it's if

you can digitize it easy to automate if

you can't eventually

you know optimus subprime or something

like that

um audience to community is definitely

another trend um but like i would make a

list of all these trends and like you

know you you almost like think of like

the way i think about a business is like

it basically is an arrow and you wanted

to intersect as many possible things as

possible right so if it intersects like

time utility and place utility and

offline to online and manually automated

and collaborative

like

you'll start to be that's how you get to

the 10x better right like very few

things are 10x better obviously like you

you you know things don't disappear are

just like so much better than what came

before they're

they kind of you know get 10 boost from

this trend 10 over here 10 over here and

like figma becomes 10 times better

than photoshop um

you know all over all of these kind of

like small compounding compounding

things

so so far that's three things so looking

at uh traditional economic utility as

yeah i have more yeah oh you have more

okay so let's just let's

let's just because we had a couple i

know we're like 50 minutes in i'm like

no we had a couple really great like

framework questions um in the first

session so i just want to like stop for

a second before you yeah i'll do some

more quickly yeah no it's like so

traditional economic utility

uh is it 10x better than what exists

and

is it can i write a trend

yeah let me see what we have so far

yes let me let me write them all down so

it's nicely available start with people

like that's kind of like a really broad

one but just people in your life

um

[Music]

yeah economic utility was another one

i would say like 10x better is kind of

its own one because it's such an easy

simple framing of like what sucks

um i often do this with like uh my bank

account

or gumroad's p l statement

which is i just look at literally what

are what what am i or the company paying

for and like what is the worst thing

like what is the worst thing in december

2021 that we paid for oh wow we spent

four grand on amex like what a shitty

company right

and like that's like there since then

since i i went through this exercise in

like 2015 2016 when i was like wow what

are all the crappy things we pay for and

then now since then you know brax ramp

stripe corporate card like boom like all

these like startups right so there's so

many opportunities if you can just look

at um yeah this kind of you know bank p

l sort of thing like just literally

going to your credit card like what do

you spend money on like what's there um

i also do this like google and twitter

like what questions do people ask like

if you go through your search history

one you'll realize like how many times

you use google i'm always shocked by

like how many times i google stuff it's

bonkers

um but you'll see like all the stuff

that you need help with all the time and

if you think about the save people time

like if you're if you're doing content

like

there are a few people who are doing

content courses books things like that a

lot of that is is this right

which is

it took five hours for me to figure this

thing out and i'm gonna write a blog

post that's gonna get you that answer in

10 minutes right or a youtube video or

something like that um even when i had

the idea for governor the reason i built

gumroad was because i wanted to sell

this pencil icon that i spent four years

or four hours designing

and i felt like someone could learn it

in 15 minutes if they had had the pencil

icon so the pencil icons utility was

time utility really um but then

government's utility was like

you know form utility or possession

utility right like so there's kind of

layers to it right every marketplace is

gonna have like multiple kind of layers

right um another one i think about uh

this is a new one

is what

and then actually i'm going to use the

trend because there was a trend which

was a the domestic to global

so i'm just going to say local to global

because it's slightly more rhythmic

but this one is is one i've started

thinking a lot about recently which is

just like what is literally

like what does your region locally

produce and i've just been fascinating i

got a little bit into wine i'm like oh

wow it's kind of crazy like you cannot

compete because like your geography

really matters on certain things and i

noticed that like every place has things

so i often think about that too like the

internet is connecting everyone so all

of a sudden your customers are global

but you locally can oh you know your

region is the is the best place in the

world that produces x right so for

example i live in near portland near

portland in birch and oregon

uh we have the best shoe company

and we have the best chip company

outside of tsmc we have intel and we

have nike um and so like

like think about like what is in your

region um

uh obviously the

common

things that will come to mind are going

to be the the sort of food products

right uh generally um but like literally

like think about what businesses have

started like if you're you know if

you're in seattle like whole foods start

in seattle right for example like why

like what what what about that

confluence of things i i like thinking

about that that kind of thing these are

all kind of just kind of filters just to

help you sort of get more specific you

don't really need any of these but these

are these are kind of fun to

to sort of think about they have volvo

volvo cars um

what else

um another one is

just this broad concept of being early

i really felt this when i tweeted about

synthetic wounds because i thought it

was kind of obvious that at some point

we would have these things uh

you know 50 100 years from now sort of

thing uh

and it was not

and it just really made me realize like

early is really important like what are

you early on like what are you what what

do you know is the future that you're

like one of the first five million

people on it right obviously crypto kind

of is probably something that comes up

in people's heads uh that's kind of too

easy so like skip that one like what you

know i remember i got my first

apple laptop was uh was an ibook g4

um

i was early you know um i was one of the

first ios developers like

what are you early what interest and

generally it's your interests your your

natural curiosities like what are you

already kind of tween with on the

weekends like what are you reading about

that you know like start trying to pay

more attention there like what are you

if you if you imagine like i like to

think of it like kind of a beach ted or

something like that

right like you're here somewhere

uh and like it looks like oh wow i'm so

late everyone in the world already

everyone already has this but it's like

no it's because you're only looking that

way like you don't see all these people

right like a really uh one that i often

think about is just startup equity

startup equity everyone knows what it is

here

a bunch of people have some

you know you can angel invest you know

whatever you want you can republic um

you own crypto probably

almost nobody does like almost nobody

does and so like that's pretty obvious

to me that like yeah 10 years from now

20 years from now like everybody will

right that's another one what will er

this is another way of saying it what

will everyone do at some point in the

future

you know what is what will be at 100

for example the internet my guess is the

internet will be at some point 100

everybody basically will will have

access to the internet

uh

currently not true

um i'm gonna get lucky under to to

unmute and ask your question

yeah hi

thanks uh so i have two questions like

so don't i need to choose a domino idea

which

resonates with with my existing

background

like okay i have an idea but i don't

have full background to work on it in

future

uh

will that impact me down the line after

i choose my idea

um

it does and we'll get into it i think

we'll do the checklist julie if you can

if you remind me of that checklist um

we'll do it after the

the who what

exercise so yeah i think it does matter

but honestly i don't think it matters

that much

um

the beauty of building a business like

if you imagine like using this graph um

any business you start you're gonna be

over here right

uh

and most people are gonna be over here

and very few people as i mentioned want

to be here like nobody really wants to

be here i noticed this because the

bigger gummer got the easier it got to

higher which made no sense to me because

i'm like you're getting less equity like

what's less fun

uh

but no it turns out people

want other people like you know you want

to risk mitigate uh and so basically my

point being it doesn't really matter

because if you're the one who's willing

to start

and you make some progress your business

makes it like over here still might die

but you know you've made some progress

you've removed some boulders out of the

way you've done a lot of the hard work

people will will want to help you like

they will start to join your journey

because you already have this momentum

and they're happy to help you kind of

accelerate it until you're to the moon

right

you got it

so so i won't worry too much about it

honestly um

it's certainly a nice like if you want

to use it as a filter right like there's

there's all of these ideas all over and

if you're willing to say like i'm only

going to focus on ideas that are in this

box

and you can ignore all this stuff great

right i think that's totally awesome

because ultimately you only need one

right

you don't need 50 businesses right you

only need one uh

so i do think sometimes it is nice like

and sometimes i'll like i'll do that

like one other exercise i like to do is

the domain one

which i talk about in the book because

peter askew does this or he's just like

buys domains

and then he's like what can i build with

this right um which i know is not what

you meant when you said domain uh you

probably meant

more of your experience doing but like

that's it's kind of fun to just come up

with like a really intense

filter and it will you know the best

book i've read on this subject is called

thinking fast and slow um but basically

he says like the more specific the more

constrained the more ideas you have

which is kind of weird because you you

think it's limiting but it's actually

freeing in a way

it's kind of like that you know the 140

characters on twitter right that sort of

thing um so let me go through these real

quick and then we'll start with the the

fun exercise um and we'll see if any of

this works right very important uh

so yeah domain i mentioned that uh and

then toe stubs is another one which is i

also talked about the book but basically

this is the solve your own problem one

this is just about your observational

ability

this is just about

being able to see

what's already happening in front of you

i guarantee you you walk around your

life and there are problems everywhere

they're constantly like oh i wish i

could do this the problem is so many i

think there's just an expectation

that

it is the way it is for a reason for

some reason it's like this it was like

this you know some cost or regulatory

whatever uh and that just like seems to

happen all the time uh and so you just

have to start to like use this stuff use

economic utility as ways to kind of

start to train your observational

ability to start to see these

opportunities like when i started

painting i started like just the world

became more interesting to me because

it's like oh that could be a painting

that can be a painting that could be

painting you start to train your eyeball

um

and so i would say that's the other

thing by the way like don't wait for the

perfect idea like give yourself 10

minutes and then go with the best idea

of that 10 minute period and start

building it because the act of building

it will start to teach you oh that

wasn't that good of an idea for this

reason or that reason right and as we

talked about on thursday ideas are not

worthless ideas are very very very very

valuable

um so yeah

awesome i think

that is uh

everything i really wanted to oh yeah

the other thing another one is old

versus new

this kind of goes with the trend one

uh old verse new is basically old human

need

old problem new solution new technology

humans have always needed to eat but

there's better awesome cheaper faster

ways to eat today right um humans have

always wanted things

showing up to their door

there are better faster cheaper ways for

that to happen humans kind of want the

same stuff

we've kind of always wanted the same

stuff um but if you can find a new

technology you can literally go through

all of the things humans have always

wanted and be like hey this new

technology

makes that cheaper makes that

faster makes i can now have that closer

to me that i couldn't do it before so i

often kind of use this old verse new

as another kind of framing

um

and i think those are it um

and and and

i guess maybe my last point would be

that most of this work is going to be

wasted like you are going to build stuff

that will not work

you will be

you will have a lot of bad ideas um i

think it's really important to measure

yourself based on like how much effort

you put into it not your success not

your output necessarily 99 of your work

will be wasted uh just like 99 of

everything i do is basically pointless

um but the only way to get to that one

percent is through that 99

right like that's the only way uh so

unfortunately even if it is you know is

it a waste is it not how do you even

define that i don't know um

but yeah anyway um do we want to give

people like a break before we do the

exercise or i think so we have one

question before and maybe we'll take a

five minute break or three minute break

um nikoi you wanna on you didn't ask

your question

hi um

so i just wanted to ask how important is

the domain name i've only read a little

bit of the beginning of the minimalist

on camera and i know it uh really

mentions that but what are some creative

workarounds if you don't have the domain

name that you want

oh yeah

yeah it's a good question honestly i

don't think it matters a lot

um i think it can matter um and

certainly certain kinds of businesses it

matters more so so i think they for

example the uh the example in the book

peter

ivan vidalia onions.com and he said that

was awesome because

when it came with the business idea for

free like it's kind of obvious what you

would build there but then two

um

like he could email someone and if if

that email came from like peter advent

by daily onions.com like they'd respond

right like immediately they would

respond and if you think about it like a

domain is like the

first opportunity you have to kind of

say something right like it's text it's

again literally be called email someone

like that's kind of the first thing that

that they're going to see um and if it

is like

food.com like that that's probably gonna

they're gonna be like hmm like

that's interesting right like so i do

think it it does matter i wouldn't let

it stop you like i my company's called

gumroad.com

didn't stop me

uh but i do think uh you know if you can

spend like a thousand bucks or like

depending on how you think about it like

i do think it can it can be worth it um

but i don't think it's like the end of

the world um and i always i always use

examples like

google yahoo facebook i mean like those

sound normal now

to our brains but like those are not

normal like google

yahoo like are you joking google's a two

trillion dollar company or something

that's insane to me um

so i think you just successful me you

know like everyone gets used to the name

right after so i so i don't think it

supremely matters um

but i do think it's worth thinking a lot

about um i do have some uh i know this

is not part of this but the way that i

often think about domains

the way i come up with names there's two

uh and then there's two words

so there's puns i just try to come up

with puns so if i'm working on like i

don't know like something to do with

the future work or payments or this like

for example if stripe is kind of a pun

right it's the credit card stripe right

um two words gumroad facebook dropbox

the reason i like this

one it's it go it works on the radio

which obviously it doesn't really matter

anymore but like podcasts like you can

just say say to someone in person um

it's easy to remember gumroad.com right

if i said it's

like

then they'd be like oh how do you spell

right um so i like the i don't like i

like the fact that people just have to

remember the linkage um but the best is

the is puns like i love puns i think if

you can find a good pun um double

meaning triple meeting pawn um like

vimeo is one of my favorites

um

can someone tell me what is cool about

vimeo the name vimeo

two things

that have to you have to

let's see can anyone come up with

one of those

oh there's three things so i came

there's a new one so me

it's like youtube but the me yo me is

better than you

so that's me

another one said play on video which is

also true right

so that's ones two

and there's one more

which is pretty awesome

which is it it is an anagram

of movie how sick is that like come on

that might be the best name of any

company of all time

um

amazing right like once you once you

realize that like game over that's your

company name right amazing

so well done vimeo um

so anyway yeah so sorry that was kind of

a a

tangent

uh but but domains

they don't matter too much i would say

but they're a lot of fun you know and

again like if it gets you excited like

whatever gets you to start just make

progress on your business like if it's

uh like for example i i bought

antiwork.com

uh i have no idea what the hell i'm

gonna do with it if anyone has business

ideas um maybe we can try that here um

but i just like i just like the fact

that i own antiwork.com uh and like it

might inspire me like i'm gonna spend a

lot of my time thinking about like what

can i build on this thing right um

so so sometimes it's like a nice hack to

get me out of bed

metaphorically

um any other questions julie i look at

the chat that's it

awesome i mean i'm i'm so i would love

to hear great uh if people hate we'll

take it

how about i'm sure people do have trivia

on this kind of stuff so if people have

on anything i say by the way put in the

chat because i love reading about this

kind of stuff after the fact people can

read it in the fact in the moment um

yeah yeah i want to take a three minute

break come back at uh 10 10 or whatever

10 wherever you are awesome and just to

give people a preview of what we're

going to do we're going to do this

exercise that's from the book start with

community and we're going to try to

apply as many of these things that we

just talked about and then we're gonna

do breakouts um

and and give everyone a chance to kind

of like make those ideas better and

stronger and then maybe at the end as a

preview of the next time we can like

kind of workshop the ideas and see if we

can like griffin make them better as a

group and and come up see if we can how

many kind of really good ones that we

can we can come up with which is the

true test right like two hours in did we

are we actually able to do this like in

a which by the way one last point sorry

i talk a lot i know um

actually i forgot my point so let's take

a break and let's see if i remember in

three minutes

that was the most professor professorial

thing i think i've ever done

great so we'll be back at uh 10 10.

manoku is a good name i do like that

name

like if you asked me to spell it i'd get

it right

well now that i looked at everyone's

email address i want to um know why

uh there's chris and always august i'm

really yeah it's always cool right as

long as it is you know i i want to go

through the email addresses and say why

that domain

yeah there's a bunch of fun yeah because

now i know now i know everyone's email

address so

it's like a bumper sticker your email

you know it's like you're

[Music]

uh

yes

hold on i will you ask your question

again about the first email don't leave

the meeting

yeah

i was just gonna ask what was the first

uh what was the first email address you

ever had um

what was the first email address i ever

had

it might be it might have been rackety

tammy burl

it might

oh honestly i was the i was such a

boring kid i literally think my email

was sile underscore living get

hotmail.com actually

um hotmail

hotmail yeah

um hotmail is a pun as well oh could you

let me in by the way i left oh you left

oh okay yes i can leave

um

what a single okay single line hi okay

so natalia you answered my question

uh it's a single line haiku extremely

hard to make and extremely beautiful to

read

i don't think i understand what that

means

extremely hard to make extremely

beautiful

a single line haiku

um

well do you know what a haiku is yes

it's a 13 line poem yes

well whoa and english in english it's a

three-line clone

well uh i'm like it's a 13-line line

long time ago uh yeah

someone in the united states decided to

make a single line

haiku

and

that's

called

monoku

oh i mean 13 syllables instead of oh i

see

oh oh oh now i understand okay 13

syllables

in one line is there any other

constraint like a number of words as

well i know

like three

it's funny how many of these things

refer to children's programs because

like you were talking about the name i

was using on discord which is which is

gem

and i'm totally dating myself there was

a cartoon when i was growing up

with yes thank you alex i appreciate it

and that's why i always use the david

bowie emoji because

of that cartoon and very horrible theme

song which i will not sing but you can

look up on your own time

i love roly-poly ollie really polioli

good times

i since i i went through all the emails

uh tell me is chris from always august

here what is always august

hey yeah i just got back

um yeah so i manage i own and operate an

agency called august

we couldn't get august.com

i live in toronto where it's very cold

and we always wish you know that it was

august so at august it is always august

oh there you go and the alliteration is

nice um yeah

nice over here august is the hottest

time of year so it's horrible

yeah i mean i'm in toronto july's hot

february is very cold and august is like

nice

i'm born in august that's kind of like

the what does your region locally

produce thing

like it it kind of hints at something

you know like

always august

you must be in a place that's

you want it to be august more often

why may that be

like gumroad even like why gum road like

well i grew up in singapore where gum is

not allowed so maybe that factored into

the prominence of gum in my

brain

a blank page lab

that's interesting in singapore it is

always august it's it's literally

singapore is always august for sure

right now i can't tell you what the

temperature is it's 27 degrees celsius

up to maybe 32 degrees celsius yeah yeah

yeah no matter what time of day or what

day of year

[Music]

okay you ready we'll get started again

awesome

so let me share my screen and we can do

this awesome exercise and we'll see how

it goes

oh yeah one one thing i wanted to say is

this basically i really believe this is

i know it sounds kind of weird because

like execution is much harder than

coming up with ideas to build stuff

building stuff's certainly not easy but

i really think especially in a format

like this where you're like forced to

come up with ideas like that's hard like

if you're like hey design this app based

on this idea i can do it immediately i

can do all the other stuff like i feel

like is much more

deterministic right um in the sense like

i kind of know what i'm going to get out

of an hour or two doing something um

this is kind of the hardest so i really

believe though like this is the hardest

week um of the um

of the uh of the lecture it only gets

easier from here or of the of the course

in my in my view so anyway let's let's

do this one if you've done

if you've read the book or you've kind

of done that

you you're familiar with this

um

but basically this is kind of like the

way this is like the mental model that i

use

which is kind of a combination of a lot

of the stuff that we've already talked

about

and

it is start with community

you mean to be sure

am i not sharing it nope i think i am i

think you might have to highlight my

ipad or no am i not

oh no maybe i'm not okay one second i'm

sorry everybody

i thought it was but

share content screen

star broadcast

in three two one

all right there you go cool

if you want to see pictures of my cat

let me know

um okay who

who is the first one pretty simple

who are we solving for again start with

people start with community

then i say basically what do they do

like what are the kinds of things that

they do kind of like activities

and then

what problems

do they have

with those activities

problems

and

solution

solution and this is kind of a double

because there's the product solution and

then there's like the business model

solution which are always the same

so let me just note that and then we can

kind of

uh explore that um and often what i find

is like let's focus on product

often overlaying the business

kind of makes everything feel a lot more

real

in the context of coming up with

business ideas instead of just ideas

business we'll do that at the very end

um

awesome

so i'm going to start with some uh and i

would love to hear um

some other ones as well but i already

mentioned antique work so i'm going to

put

anti-work and more specifically the

community i'm going to wrap frontier is

going to be the entityworks subreddit as

a group of people

uh another one i often like to think

about is like fine art painters because

that's a lot of who i hang out with for

fun

this is often like a list of people who

you enjoy hanging out with or that you

have a hobby in common with

or something like that you know another

one i've been kind of obvious one would

be like remote founders or something

like that like who follows you on

twitter

like who are your people

etc i would love to hear have a couple

more of these

um what you have the gum twitter handle

hmm we almost rebranded the gum by the

way uh gumroad

uh anyway sorry distracted um

i would love more rock climbers

rock climbing is a good one riders

which what do you say sorry uh writers

people right

writers

and aspiring digital nomads let's start

we can start with this this is a good

list i'm gonna say the opposite of

aspiring digital mode nomads say moms

moms well i have i have the thing for

you

oh no it starts with synthetic and ends

with wounds etc

uh just kidding

um

awesome medicine practitioners

plan medicine oh no i'm running out of

space let me delete

amazing thing you can do with uh digital

one thing i love about plants medicine

practitioners is how specific it is

like yeah that's a good one yeah one

thing we've talked about that hasn't

come up today is

how

very very specific communities can be a

great place to start

yeah and i'm gonna i'm gonna

yeah push on that a little bit right

like figma did not just start with like

designers

you know like we started out with very

specific like ui ux which is much much

much more you know graphic design for

example is like 90 percent of designers

identify as a graphic designer so that

is the primary sort of design

and then probably illustration is

probably second which kind of similar uh

marketing ads etc um like a lot of that

i actually like ui ux product design is

like not a massive industry in terms of

number of people but that's what they

focused on um and so it's really

important to be specific and that's like

one of those things that i like

don't you write i don't have a slide

form we'll talk well like especially the

memo chapter

um so i'm just gonna list some keywords

here and we can go through them maybe at

the end um as we start thinking about

how to like make our ideas better and

better which is really about that that

next week we'll get into that um

but yeah like for example writers like

literally when you said writers what i

thought of was like people who write

tweet storms why because

it's a bit more specific but it's also

new

it's also kind of new right um

it's this new and it's it's not like a

new technology but it's like this new

format community medium

consumer behavior thing something's

happening there i don't know exactly

what um but certainly there's like some

weird dynamic happening there um and so

i would kind of like if i were you you

know i would probably say thread writers

right as like a much

obviously you don't have to do this or

agree with me or anything like that but

i find that

yeah plant medicine practitioners would

be much better than medicine

practitioners better than practitioners

better than humans

right

like all of these are a subset of humans

right um not very useful to say humans

uh so getting you know fine art painters

is more specific than painters right i

would say even like fine art might be

too

uh broad you could say oil oil painters

or something like that or people who

want to do portrait painting right or

some some specific thing like that

um

so let's pick one of these i'm gonna uh

just pick uh plant-based practitioners

um

even though i'm not super familiar with

that one so maybe that's a risk actually

yeah let's not do that let's do one i'm

familiar with first

um and then we'll do one that i'm not

familiar with if we have time uh yeah so

let's do let's do find our painters

and this this is the way it's gonna work

is i'm gonna draw another thing and i'm

just gonna do this

because we're going to need this whole

thing per category

um

and then i'll hide and show the

different layers if we want to do if we

have time for another one um so awesome

what activities does the fine art

painter do um

let's list some if you're not familiar

with what fine art painters do i will

start to list some in one

chance

do you want live i paint

they buy paint

buy paints yes they do buy paints

they do buy paints

but then there's oil paint acrylic

paints spray paints

there's a lot of paint so i'm going to

say oil paints let's change this to oil

make make it easier boom oil paints only

we're not going to do anything else

what else do they do

like clean research

oh the people running down clean up

after painting

i've

i have no idea what the hell you could

do here to build a business

but that's awesome that's totally fine

because we're going to write everything

down if you have if you want to write

something down you're like that's not a

good idea

i'm not going to write it down

write it down anyway just write it down

every everything you think try to try to

get it out there that's really important

um this is like the vomit draft of

business like you're putting all of your

ideas out there you can always delete

stuff you can always throw stuff away

um

but yeah you you want to start broadly

sorry figure out colors there's another

one figure out colors

this is a is actually a really good one

this one i've thought a lot about um

research paints

i've also done this

a lot

the underpainting is the sketch that you

do before you do oil painting to see

what you're gonna

thank you very much

the underpainting yeah that's uh

you guys will see that i'm the person

that's like 102. i'll ask all the

questions that you that you think i

don't want to ask that oh display the r

in a gallery is a good one to display

their art oh paint related i think

social like

sort of canva for painters

ooh

social

oh figure out what objects to paint

one of the most important ones in oil

painting is look at other at the

classics

yes

yes you uh like master copies and

studies exactly that's that's that's the

way to learn or old painting oh sid

wrote deal with rejection

oh yeah see it gets more abstract

i'll tell you a quick story about the

pinterest logo the pinterest logo which

is a beautiful p the way it was designed

was the designers two designers got

super baked

and then just

i know uh

drove uh drew

hundreds of peas and their rule was they

would never draw they were never allowed

to draw the same p twice uh and guess

what after 100 p it gets really hard but

you keep doing it you keep doing it and

that's kind of the point here is you

keep doing this and you keep doing this

you keep doing this and like for example

the deal with rejection i don't think

would have been your first or second or

third or fourth but there might be

something there and it might

cross-section with other communities and

other verticals and other this and that

but deal with rejection is certainly a

problem and then that kind of is like

kind of the save people time thing

almost it's like let me save you a bunch

of time dealing with you know let me

teach you this skill or let me help you

get over this thing um you know imposter

syndrome

um

really really real things um

awesome so i think that's a good start

we can certainly add more and people can

keep typing them

uh

in in their oh preserve the painting i

think that's a really actually

interesting one as well

um

wow you're like so many business ideas

uh so i'm

already coming

um

transport their art replace brushes oh

yeah

i can show you some of my brushes

oil painting restoration yeah so i mean

at least to me like before i was

familiar with the fine art industry i

thought that they would paint like it

was like my conception of what they did

but this is like

dozens of things already like imagine

like every single

small community that like has this many

things like hundreds of things that they

it's and obviously you all know this

because if you're in a specific hobby

you kind of know all those sorts of

things but i find that like it's kind of

like if you look at something far in the

distance like you look at some building

far in the distance you're like oh

that's the building

right and it's closer and then it's

actually like no it has this like cool

thing whatever and then you get really

close and you're like oh actually

they're all these windows and this and

that like right like

i i just think it's it's helpful to

realize like oh wow there's really a lot

of a lot there

um

awesome and obviously you know there are

many businesses at each one of these um

these things okay so what problems do

they have the second one what problems

do they have with those activities like

what problems do they face again like

think about some of those frameworks

like economic utility um

what are the kinds of problems that

they're having

as they do these things and you've kind

of some of some of you are clever so

you've embedded the problem within the

activity like clean up painting

really that's kind of cheating in my

opinion really what you're you're saying

is the activity is painting maybe and

then what problem do they have is like

clean up right

i think i don't think amy's here but i

think that there's something about the

figuring out colors that intersects with

amy's thing last week about uh figuring

out the nail colors

based on yeah palette like if there's an

old master painting that has a certain

palette pulling those colors out

yeah there's a there's one of the first

apps i ever built because i was trying

to solve my own problems as a designer

because i built like a color palette

manager on my phone to

crack up color palettes and when i still

to this day and we'll do this in the

figma

design thing but like i still do this

where like every time i have a new idea

i go to colorlovers.com

and i just like scroll palettes and i

find like the cap the palette that like

feels like the right palette for this

brand or thing so like it's actually

kind of interesting like how often

that's come up there's like definitely

something pretty interesting and

compelling there um

like i could even pair some of these

ideas together like this like this sort

of

research paints

figure out colors

and buy

i could almost imagine all of these

coming together

right like oh that's another framework i

forgot about which is bundling and

unbundling right like you either make

money bundling or unbundling right like

you could potentially bundle these

things together

and i could imagine i'm i'm getting so

far ahead of myself what am i doing

um sorry everybody oh i also i'm so

curious what happens this is what starts

happening you know there are a couple

people who have said i know that we're

not supposed to skip to solution

but i'm i'm

but there are a couple people who have

said scared to show work and i'm really

curious what

people think the solution

the business solution is too scared to

show work

ben mentioned that i think peter

mentioned that

i'd be really i

think that's almost like a

mentorship issue and it's like almost

like a psychologist because all of this

like people

people feel inferior

to other artists and they are afraid to

show their art because there's always

someone out there that is better than

them

yeah and uh and i think the business

model there would be uh coaching

yeah

definitely there's so many opportunities

i mean like what does college do right

like i think a huge function

this is by the way another trend is like

in institution to individual i would say

is another trend and so like imagine all

the institutions like

take their market cap

that is the market cap of what will

replace them

right um and so like take art center

college of design uh or whatever it's

called in la which charges like 60 70

000 as an art student per year

and say that's all moving to gumroad to

youtube to patreon to the right like

that's where our

that's where our evaluations come from

is we're taking bits and pieces of all

these other

things um and so yeah it's like if we

want to solve the problem that the

university is solving then we have to

figure this out we have to figure out

like okay well university isn't just

about teaching you skills obviously

right it's about community it's about

networking it's about

all of these other things

um

so yeah i think that's yeah pricing like

how do you learn how to price um if you

go on youtube like this is like like the

top creators and all these verticals

this is kind of what they're doing

they're kind of

making a list of all the activities and

then they're teaching you how to deal

with them uh they're making a list of

all the problems like this is how you

build an audience like we'll get into

this a lot in the last week

and you can read chapter six in the book

if you want a preview but it's just

constantly it's kind of doing this

except it's not solving the problem by

building a business to solve the problem

it's like creating content to solve the

problem kind of obviously they should

use the business that they really want

the problem solved but you can kind of

help them along the way right um so

maybe we should give everyone a second

to do this activity for their own oh

yeah their own idea and then we can come

back and call on some people

and

and just

like we're we're our own community yes

you finished but then we can be yeah

everyone should pick their own

sorry you go no no because it was

interesting because the solution that

people came up to came up with for

uh feeling nervous about presenting

their work as community so i love

oliver's idea too which is blind dating

that's so there's something that's

pretty

there's a there's a lot of good stuff

here um

awesome i'm gonna continue i'll stop

talking and

you can watch or you can do your pic

pick your own community pick your own

community if you want to do something

really hard rock climbers because

honestly i have no idea

um

this this really applies to my current

startup actually can i pick this or yeah

no you can you can pick it no there's no

cheating here the great thing in

business

there i learned this quote there's

there's

there's

there are no

rules only laws

so there's no such thing as cheating in

business

uh for better or worse um

so you can break the law but

um there's no cheating

i'm sorry i have a quick question and

that's okay

sure yeah by the way if anyone's

listening to this wants to focus just

mute

you want so yeah um i'm sorry so you had

this idea of anti-work subreddit and

then you started working on the

activities um i often kind of think

about like self-evaluate myself thinking

that

um i may have a startup idea so the

activities i'm going to write down

they're very biased towards that idea

that's already set in my head

so how do you do kind of a sense check

to yourself saying that no i'm i'm

working on

activities which normal human beings do

and not tailored towards the startup

idea i already have in my head

yeah does it make sense

i mean to be honest what i would say

just build what you have in your head if

it's like

if it's capturing your attention like

just build it and like honestly i the

reason like the reason i and i i love

memos and we'll talk about this more uh

but i love memos because it it sometimes

gets the idea it literally gets the idea

out of my head onto something and then i

can like you know

work on it and i work on it and work on

it and then that's sometimes what i need

to stop thinking about the idea so then

i can go work on better ideas but like

it it's not like

it's not it wasn't good enough for a

business but in the idea form it was so

good and interesting to me that i

couldn't stop thinking about it

and only once i wrote it down as a memo

i was like oh that's not actually that

good of an idea or that's not that

interesting to me but it kind of it's

kind of like you know when you like i

don't know like the idea of something is

more attractive than the thing itself

right um

so i don't know if that's helpful but

sometimes like i kind of

well just i i sometimes it's good to

listen like if that's what you're

interested in like then that's what

you're interested in but like you can

you know you can always set up like

weird constraints for yourself like for

for example like

every single thing has to start with the

letter c

like you're only allowed to come up with

businesses that start with the letter c

um you do that 26 times you'll

have every you'll have no constraints

you'll have every letter but you'll come

up with a million more ideas

right because if you for example if i'm

like

um i don't know name a bunch of colors

you might think of some obvious ones

like red green blue yellow and then you

just freeze and you stop thinking of any

you're just like you named all the all

the obvious ones right but if i say only

name

like cool colors that remind you of the

ocean then you're going to be like

ultramarine blue you know like

aqua like these colors like aren't

really even colors they're they're they

are colors because we have them so we've

run out of the obvious names and we

actually do have these colors out there

there is an ultramarine blue um

uh etc but like

you know you don't you don't really know

until you know right in a way um so i

often find that like

some of these constraints are just

they're kind of stupid on purpose you

know um but then they work so then are

they stupid i don't know like twitter's

140 characters kind of stupid because

based on like the sms text thing right

it's kind of

kind of arbitrary uh

and now it's 280 which is like

2x the arbitrary uh but it worked right

like it kind of ended up working um

so sometimes like these kind of weird

constraints sometimes like technology

this is kind of like another way of

thinking about the new technology pieces

like what are the constraints of this

new technology like maybe that opens up

the door to

to something else

um

all right okay let me let me let me do

some of these uh

finding is one that often i feel like

some of these are saying that

which specifically

is like locations

community comes up a lot

finding a good

mentioned startup costs for people

learning to paint

i think that's it

startup costs

yeah it's just freaking expensive

yeah especially if we are narrowing down

to oil paints

well

turns out oil

and dirt

and the combination

is expensive

and pain to clean up oil painting is

the worst

waste disposal methods that's

interesting oh

that's kind of clean up i'm going to put

that under clean up

but

um

that does uh you must paint

yeah i know

i guess i do

it's awesome

ventilation

especially if you oil paint

oh yeah

it can get very unhealthy

i'm gonna probably say like health

like this is probably one like you could

probably take health and probably apply

it to a bunch of other communities right

because like a lot of these communities

have some health like for example like

if uh like my wife she's into like uh

she just 3d modeling

so she has like

you know carpal tunnel syndrome sort of

issues right rsa stuff

transporting and shipping it and sending

it

yeah there's so

there's so much uh transportation

sending and shipping

like one exercise i didn't have time to

mention uh was like

basically take a product like for

example a t-shirt

and just like try to trace it back to

like

try to go back as far as you can like

this shirt like came over here and then

was over there and it went over here and

then it was over here and it's made over

there and it's actually the combination

of like

this material from over there and then

this is actually from this plan over

there it's crazy

um and every every piece of clothing i

believe is made by hand still like i

don't i think effectively all clothing

like sewing is still like manual

basically

um is what i heard so basically like all

these everything we're wearing right now

it's like made by humans like it's

it's honestly insane like you wear a 10

shirt you're like this is great this is

amazing like both amazing and crazy and

scary and all these other things uh very

emotional to think about a t-shirt and

it's past um but i often think about

that because at all of these steps like

you know you mentioned like for painting

it's like distribution transportation

uh

security preservation like these are you

know oil painting is actually good

because it forces you to really it makes

that stuff front and center but it's

actually a problem with everything like

every

every

good has those kinds of constraints that

that kind of need to to get solved and

to be made faster cheaper better safer

etc um

pretty pretty interesting

um

distribution

[Music]

obviously make a living is like

they need to do which is i guess kind of

this one this is kind of more startup

cost but yeah same same kind of thing

um

time because oil paint needs to dry

yeah they need to let's say wait they

need to wait

you need to learn how to manage working

on multiple paintings at the same time

so i have one drying work on one

oh yeah like i'm gonna okay i'm running

out of space let me delete my

i'm going to put a like just

productivity

as one task because that's another one

that

probably comes up a lot

to cycle back to the to the to some

trivia a lot of painters in the past

died from lead poisoning in oil paint

like

fangok goya

gogan they all had suffered from that

poisoning

have you uh

listen to this podcast called s town

no really good um

it's like i think cereal is like you

know the mega famous like viral podcast

and this is like i kind of think it's

like kind of number two

um

but like

lead poisoning comes up i think in that

one or mercury or like some some sort of

aspect of that but it's like

yeah it's crazy like i mean

lead i've seen lead what uh was it

called white lead lead white is i guess

it's called lead white yeah yeah because

now we use titanium i guess for most

like by default i guess titanium is is

what we use i guess there's others like

zinc and stuff but titanium is kind of

probably the number one

but yeah this guy i like was painting uh

at this like workshop and this guy like

had a he was living out of his truck

and he's like check this out i'm making

my own lead white paint and it was

literally like these like tubes that he

was like making lead and he's like you

can make lead paint you're allowed to

make it but you can't like in the u.s i

don't think you can even buy

uh

lead paint anymore

which is uh

which is sad because i guess if you want

to make paintings like

van gogh you know like back you know

those kinds of paintings you really

wanted to master copy them

you'd probably probably want lead paint

but it was it was

it looked pretty cool

i love paint i love looking at oil

paints

john singer sergeant is probably my

favorite painter though apparently i

paint more like a sororia for whatever

that's worth

can't help it you know everyone has a

style everyone has a fingerprints

kind of inevitable

awesome julie should we get started

again

sure

awesome yeah so let's let's come up with

uh

with actual solutions like we have the

problems like the whole sort of you know

point here is to actually come up with

business ideas

um so like let's see how many of these

we can actually come up with like does

this stuff actually work

um we can come up with existing

businesses that will probably be easier

but we can certainly come up with new

ones i know we came up with

um with some already um like for example

this one right this bundled up buying of

oil paints figuring out colors

researching paints like to you know

even more right because you have like

learning and productivity and and all

these other things like i really think

that there is a huge opportunity

for something there um let me call it

like

the on-ramp

to oil painting or something like that

like i can imagine a

kit where you just order a kit and you

get

you know a set right like you get like a

little canvas like the amount of things

you even need to oil paint it's kind of

crazy you need canvas you have your

brushes you have your paints you might

need some thinner

um

that might be all that you need to start

maybe you probably need some paper

towels

um

so maybe you like buy a kit it comes

with like white

literally yellow

red and blue

and then you do that for a month and

then like month two comes and maybe you

get some you know you get some

uh

some famous painting that everyone knows

like some monet or some van gogh and

then it and you make this you learn

about how to mix colors in this very

limited palette and then month two comes

around you get three paintings

and maybe you get you know a bunch more

you know three canvases in the mail with

one extra color now you have a warm blue

what you have warm blues

crazy uh and then you you know like and

then month three you have like a now you

have a warm red and a cool red

and boom like

you know six months in you know you've

kind of learned how to paint like you

know the masters right um at least on a

you have all the tools now now it's just

like practice

right to become amazing uh so i i

definitely think there's a there's a

business idea there for sure um we

didn't talk about x for y today but maya

do you want oh yeah you wanna maya do

you wanna unmute and say your idea

please

hi my camera doesn't work but sister is

a painter and i always go down

um to her workshop and literally do my

graphic design and just watch her

do her thing and it's so productive the

time that i'm just like looking at an

artist doing something so i would

definitely pay for this service

i love it and we'll do a lot more extra

wise

uh

next week

rent the runway for the rent the runway

for oil painters so you could get the

brushes borrow the brushes send them

back buy them if you want

yeah

bread the runway is is a good one

brent how do you how is it written

normally i don't know something like

that

someone said preserve that one

spoke to me quite a bit um

because i i make oil paintings and i

even want to buy some to be honest but

i'm like i don't want to actually own

like i want to own them like in my name

but like i don't need them in my house

specifically um so i would totally you

know like those like i don't know if you

saw like a tenant right like the those

art ports uh

like

the art ports and this oh our port is a

good one because this goes perfectly to

accessibility like possession utility

like just not a thing that exists for

normal people like you i assume like i

can't just like do this right um airbnb

for all pains

um

yeah like there's there's there's

definitely like how do you you know how

do you 10x better often can just be

cheaper right 10x more accessible to you

know 10x more people right um

to those people it's a million times

better because they couldn't before now

they can uh and so yeah definitely kind

of like this like democratized air uh

artport i think that's a

massive a freeport that's a massive

opportunity especially with what's

happening crypto and ft like that's a

that's a big one so let me add

uh

artboard freeport whatever it's called

by the way another reason those

businesses are due so well is because

they're parked in places like

international attacks whatever laws

right save people money

right that's another one

uh our port freeport

yes digitally

preserve i guess nfts kind of solve that

problem and and some some degree for

some some people for sure bob ross great

business yeah

uh one thing i'll say about twitch for

oil painters as well is when you go

specific

one everyone's gonna every painter is

going to use your thing

right like if you're like oh we're for

everybody then you're for nobody right

um

unless you're coke like maybe you can

say that in a hundred years from now you

can be like oh for everybody everyone

believes you uh but in the beginning you

have to be specific you have to be the

best for and the best way to be the best

is to be the only and if you're like

we're literally the only

streaming service uh for

oil painters uh and because services

like daily and mux exist you can

actually build a kind of this old verse

new there's technology to make this kind

of stuff easier to build you could build

actually in 2022

a verticalized streaming service like in

2018 you probably wouldn't even haven't

been able to do without like a team of

engineers and this and that right um

and so that is definitely one um for

sure um

that i think is good and you oh the

other thing i want to say is you can

actually build a much better product

right because if you're like oh i'm only

for painters like cool then like what do

painters need that all these other

gamers don't need

um

or even like gaming like the reason

twitch was is even a thing right twitch

is a is a vertical right they took

gaming the reason they took it like

twitch is even a thing is because

justin's like i don't want gaming gaming

is stupid i don't want gaming on my

video streaming platform so we're gonna

spin it out and do it and like turns out

that thing is even bigger than the

original thing right crazy

um

so yeah twitch is actually a really good

example i think of this kind of like you

know gamer like problem for a community

open c

nice one julie open sees 100 this in

many different ways like we talked about

community we talked about distribution

um

display art social

and this is still early like i would

argue like there's almost no social on

openc there's a website called art

station which is kind of like they

basically took instagram and we're like

we're going to build instagram just for

artists

but it's still pretty basic i think you

could do a lot more um

so that's that's one for sure

um what else

um

there's a lot of physical things right

like there's a lot of like you can make

better paints better brushes better

easel like there's a there's a company

called strata which is mentioned in the

book the strata easel this guy had an

easel a friend of mine it broke while he

was camping or hiking and he's like i

need to build a better easel because i

really like my painting trips down so he

built a better easel now it's doing

great right um

and so

there's just so much i i mean i even

just look around my like desks and

there's like these key lights that kind

of die way too quickly right there's

like i know there's there's stuff all

over the place um

so hopefully people start to feel like

there's not a dearth of business ideas

you can have a lot of these and you can

do it in a way that's like kind of

kind of deterministic like there's at

least one business that i can build i i

could spend six months working on here

you know and not that you should like

you may not be interested in oil

painters um as a group of people to

solve for but but i am so um so it works

um

definitely like i think a lot of the

stuff around location is really

interesting like there's a website

called uh ioverlander which is an app

where you can find places to camp your

rv

like i use it when i went car camping

you can just basically it's like

community crop crowd sources is another

huge

i should have written this one down here

too

crowd sourcing if like

one of the big things the internet does

is it allows you

to crowdsource instead of expert source

uh so there's a lot you know yelp what

is yelp crowdsourcing what is angelus

crowdsourcing like

so so that's another one that i would i

would kind of recommend um

but like so the location

you know

give me all the cool barns like the

dilapidated barns within 20 minutes 20

20 minute drive for me like i would pay

10 bucks a month 20 bucks a month for

that seriously

um

yeah exactly so there's so there's

there's it's like unlimited amounts of

um and the fun thing about this is like

the solution if you are struggling is to

just like do more cool stuff right like

start oil painting start

contributing to subreddits like start

rock climbing start you know like just

start things adam from uh tailwind ui he

said if you don't have business ideas

start a business

any business because if you start a

business you go through the process of

starting a business you're gonna be like

that sucks this sucks i cannot believe i

have to do that i have to fax this i had

to fax something the other day like what

every time i send a pdf this is another

one this is another one i love to use

i just literally just call it pdf

that's my idea

pdf anytime i see a pdf i'm like there's

a business there pdfs are stupid they

don't need to exist anymore

they don't need to exist anytime and by

the way there's a pdf as part of this

course which is a good example of

something that doesn't need to exist um

so i always any time you have to like

download a file sign it

and then upload it again like there's

just so many

so many things that could be made faster

cheaper better simpler more accessible

over and over and over again

planar painting by virtual stream

again like if you can do it if you can

do this at a high quality

um

i would i would pay like there's it

doesn't exist right now this is the

other mind-boggling things you think

this stuff would exist

but the the reason it doesn't is because

building business is not easy it's hard

and so there's just like the the

bottleneck is not like

it's really just the amount of people

who want to start businesses like i even

see this as investing in startups i'm

like the bottleneck is people who want

to start businesses um and do

it's like that that seems to be where

like the bottleneck is not like there's

not enough investors there's that like

we need we do need more of those people

too

but we really need people uh starting

companies um

so yeah

um awesome

we have nine minutes left

um

any any anything julie that we we should

really really really cover

um

we didn't really cover the business

aspect of these um

which is basically pretty simple which

is you know basically how do you charge

money right um so let me break that out

into a new slide and we'll do again this

is like kind of a memo thing it gets

more into like the nuance but i often

find it again as kind of like a nice

constraint on business idea generation

so i'm gonna add this

um but like what yeah basically how do

you make money how do you actually

charge right um so there's a few ways

one is products right you can have like

digital products

you can have physical products

and one one fun thing by the way as you

as i write these down like think of this

you know think of these ideas that we

have come up with

and been like what is the marketplace

take great model for this what is the

digital product business here what is

the

course what is the

sas what is the events like apply the

you know and you'll you'll come up with

even more ideas i think doing it that

way right so anyway products

generally you know one-off sort of sales

right um so this would be like adobe

right or or a brush or something like

that then their services right products

and services

um which you know i would put in like

courses i'd put like consulting

i put freelance these are all like i

think freelance

is an amazing one to be honest because

you start freelancing which is kind of

how i started my career and then you

automate you're just like what am i

doing for every client over and over

again automate build a service agency

build a product sell the product boom

right like that's base camp that's

mailchimp like that's literally what

they did right um both mentioned in the

book i believe um

so that definitely works

or a restaurant i would i would kind of

put under this generally i i don't

recommend restaurants because they have

a high failure rate but and but my my

guess is they're actually

less uh less high failure rate than than

you would think

i'm just gonna i'm going to inject my

personal experience as the do it as a as

the child of a commercial baker don't

start a restaurant

oh you know the numbers i know the

numbers don't start a restaurant

okay no no restaurants they're not

there's not a nick cacone is from

millennials like oh anyone can start a

restaurant just easy

turns to gold i'm like yeah but you have

grant uh sid has one question and asked

i have a question about

uh what people uh need to do this week

uh in order to be ready for next monday

sid will you ask your question

uh yeah i'm just curious how do you

actually choose between multiple

reasonably good ideas do you have some

mental heuristics

which guide you uh yeah

yeah

um let's see so let me say which

i i

there's a there's a bunch of answers so

yeah so heuristics is a good

i like that framing actually because i

don't have to pick one um

so which idea what heuristics do i use

um one here is like i use it honestly

it's like what can i build the fastest

like what can i get to an mvp to like

selling in front of you know to somebody

um

so fastest

um

by the way i do this in my daily life

like i do i i do my to-do list is

ordered not in terms of priority in

terms of how fast to how slow

and i just do the fastest thing the

reason is because i just i believe the

faster i can do stuff the more i do like

the more i feel like i just give myself

permission to be more aggressive and

stuff i find so anyway sometimes it

passes the the other thing i said sort

of previously was like the 10x thing

right like if you have one idea that's

like 10x and one idea that's like you

know

3x or something like i would generally

try to pick the one that has like more

impact per person probably because i

think you'll have a much easier time

getting the product market fed getting

you know for example if some someone

believes that your product has the

chance to make it 10 hours better

they're going to actually take time to

help you make it but if that you're

going to improve their life 10

you like it'll you can build the same

kind of business if you you just have to

help more people right but like each

person is going to care a lot less and

so you're not going to it's kind of

you never get to that scale right so i i

find that that generally i would do that

i would probably especially if you don't

have sort of a business that's working

exactly and

you're still kind of on your first one i

would say b to b

uh over b to c

so for folks who don't know

you know basically this is kind of

this this is like kind of going back to

the iphone this is the iphone

and this is like all the 10 000 other

businesses right like if you think about

it like basically all these businesses

are kind of you know selling to apple

and then apple is the one selling now

this is not exactly perfect right um

but

like there are many many more b2b

businesses you just don't see them

because you see the iphone right so i

think it's that's you know if you have a

bunch of b2c b2b generally b2b is a

little bit easier like it's very if

you're like hey gun would spend 600 on

this i could you know you'll have to

spend 60 bucks on this

really much easier sell um

so so so that's one thing i would say um

and then

what else um also yeah just what what's

interesting you know like i would just

follow your just what's more fun

um

i think that's another one that's

important

um

maybe there's someone you really want to

work with and they they may be more

interested in one or the other

um

so there's a bunch of different ways to

kind of think about it you i i i'm

reminding you about the checklist

yes

and then finally

we have a checklist

wait let me write this one down who do

you want

because i do fi like sometimes i'll

like i don't know if i'm like i'll ping

someone i really like and just try to be

like

try to riff with them and like what they

want to work on it's kind of a fun kind

of fun thing to do but that's a good

exercise for next week as well is to

just like find somebody and just like

help them come up with like you know

sometimes it's like i don't have any

designers here but like have you ever

tried designing your own personal

website it's like the most brutal

experience on earth but then you like

a client asks and you're like here's 50

different website designs for you you

know it's like it's like too hot it's

like too close to home right um so

sometimes like

you can't help

uh

like you can't do this exercise for your

own business it's like two high stakes

but if you like help someone else it's

like super easy you know like this

exercise probably would have been harder

honestly if i was just doing it myself

but like the sort of i'm like

not paying attention to that part of my

brain right now you know in a way um the

worst.com domain

uh but yeah so so so yeah um and yeah

let's do the checklist um

let's do the checklist so do we have it

uh julie do we have it yes i mean i have

it i feel like i probably haven't

memorized so this is the ultimate

checklist which is once you have your

ideas

you're going to realize they all suck

and you're going to do it again

no just kidding

but what is the checklist first one

which is will they pay for it right is

that one of them uh yes that is the well

it is one of them is that what is it

what is that specifically let me write

down actually here's the one you raised

it is there a clear path to

profitability by selling the product and

service to customers

also known as will someone pay for it

yeah i'm gonna say pass

to profitability

and i would just say

soon this is kind of the minimalist

thing you know like once you get a

probability you can take as many shots

on goals you want right um

so

i would say soon is kind of key here but

yeah path to profitability right unit

economics like are people willing to pay

um this is kind of like a way to do the

sorry to do the b2b to b2c thing another

thing is consumers are just less likely

to pay off

businesses are much more likely to pay

and have much more money a different way

to you know would be to say like rich

people over poor people right obviously

not in any real way

but in terms of ability to pay for a

product or service like you may want to

target some kinds of people over other

kinds of people right for example like

the iphone first came out it was like

stupidly expensive no one could buy it

it's actually weirdly more expensive now

but everyone has one i don't know

exactly what happened there maybe i

think phones just got so much more

powerful that like they just you know

sort of deflationary technology um but

yeah i think um

yeah anyway um

path to profitability right well will

there be will people pay for it um

another one and this is uh this is

something that i use often which is

will it grow organically

basically will it grow by people using

the product inherently why is this so

important this is the one that will

probably like a lot of the ideas like oh

this doesn't meet anymore again it

doesn't have to be but i often i often

use this so

will

it

grow

organically

and the reason it's so important is

because if it does grow organically when

people use it then you can focus on

getting people to use the product and

then them using the product is going to

get more people to use the product right

so example gumroad gumroad to use

gumroad you have to tell your audience

about it which means that for every

single person we sign up to gumroad they

are inherently going to sign up more

people to gumroad which creates this

like nice

snowball or kind of like compounding

thing right where we just have to focus

on this part

just getting people from zero to one

getting people from zero to one and then

they do the rest right um but imagine if

they didn't imagine if there was no

organic growth then like you have a

sales team you have all you know it's

like you're constantly trying to to to

make this thing move um again there are

many great businesses that do not do

this but i find for myself personally

it's important for me to find an angle

and this is just often a fun exercise

that you know you can take your business

idea and say what

how can i make it grow organically right

um

like instagram

before they launched had these beautiful

filters and like they were so

opinionated about them that people would

share them and like it became a brand

even without instagram having an app

like so there's there's sort of clever

ways to kind of do that

okay this is kind of a i know we're

going a little over sorry i swore we'd

have enough time for everything

but we never will it turns out um this

one is basically uh was that what was

mentioned earlier uh which was basically

like what skills do i need like or do i

need like i think watch me ask right

like

do is that a requirement it's not um but

i do think

you know you should have the right

skill sets to at least build the mvp

right so basically just basically can i

build it

uh maybe i being the dominant or the

most important thing here

like i just like building stuff myself i

like learning

um i don't like you know one reason that

i picked building a business as the way

to get free and anti-work is because

there are no gatekeepers you're selling

to a market you don't have to ask some

university for permission or you know

like some

association for a specific document

what i love about entrepreneurship is

you can just build a product and sell it

and you don't have there's no body

regulatory body you have to really

appease or anything like that um so

similarly here like i like to find

things that i can build myself obviously

i like building stuff with other people

too but

i want to be in control because then

it's my it's in you know my destiny sort

of thing

and then the most important thing is

will i love it

and this is not it like today

but this is you know this is kind of

like will you will you marry me sort of

thing right like but like 10 years from

now by the way i've been working on

government for 11 years so i can say

this um they're parts i don't love to be

honest um but there are parts i do love

um and so that's important because

ultimately if all these things do work

out then you're stuck with your business

uh

which you know i have friends who are

running businesses that they hate like

genuinely hate

uh

so you know

important too important to keep in mind

so anyway i think we're out of time i

know we went a little bit over i think

we did a pretty good job though i think

this format kind of works um but i would

love everybody's feedback

on it um

so we can uh we can we can and and and

starting next week we're gonna do a lot

more especially because people have

stuff

um a lot more of the second half will be

on like q a like actually working on

your on your problems together um but

what should people do this week to be

ready for next week

yes so you should probably i would say

read

let's say

the first three chapters of the

minimalist entrepreneur or i would

probably just listen to the audiobook by

the way if anyone in this class hasn't

bought it

uh just uh i'll put a pdf in slack for

free um so any anyone can have it for

free and browse it really quickly as

well um

don't tell penguin

and

um

what else um and then come up with do do

do the exercise like pick one community

pick two like

come up with as many business ideas as

possible like 15 20 25 i would say 25 is

probably a good number you only need one

but i do think it's helpful to kind of

you know

kind of get the bad ideas out of the way

you know in in a way

um

and then what else

i would say that's a pretty good start

if you want to start if you're pretty

convinced you're like this is my best

idea um you want to strengthen your

ideas you want to have varieties or

ideas like just oh sorry i'll just

unshare my screen

um how do i do that

zoom unsure i think another place is the

play i posted a link in the chat to the

playbook it's also on the course notion

uh though

the whole first section of it is really

about generating business ideas

in addition to the frameworks i'll

showed about who

what do they do

uh what are their problems and how

they're covering a lot more in this

cohort then

uh yeah this this is like two to three

weeks worth of content i mean let me

um and let me let me show you and yeah

people dropped a super cord anyway right

so uh let me show you an example of

you know a reach goal like if you do all

the ideas and everything like that and

you still have time would be to co would

be to write a memo um

you know kind of just be basically we'll

do this next time but like if you want

to kind of get a head start and like

have some sort of something to start

with

um

i'm gonna link uh i just linked

something in here so people can see it i

won't share because i don't want to ruin

it for any spoiler alert for anybody for

next time it's not that it's a secret

but i'll share it in the

in the chat so people can see it live

but this is a memo that i wrote um

for a product that we're working on

internally at gumroad this is literally

it's funny because i wrote the first

version of this like in 2017 or 2018 uh

before deal before remote.com before

covid and all of these other things um

so this is

you you can kind of take this and maybe

make a version of this

much shorter much smaller for your for

one of your business ideas um

your best one probably

um

but this is a lot of what we'll do next

time is like we'll kind of go through

like kind of how i i often use this

framing

of problem solution market

um i use different ways of doing it

sometimes like i use gtm mvp whatever so

we'll go through a bunch of those um

so that's kind of a preview um of the

kind of the next step of of uh and i

think if you

i don't know how public it is um

let me make the flex style thing public

too it is public so you should be able

to if you click through you'll see other

stuff there too um so you can get a

preview of more stuff if you want but uh

that should be a good start i think i

think that's plenty um

coming up with a bunch of business ideas

and seeing if you can turn one of them

into a memo

i think and read a couple chapters

it's a pretty good amount of stuff and

then i'll i'll try to do a better job of

like if as i see things

i'll put i'll post them in the slack so

it'll be kind of like ad hoc you know

kind of things that i if i see things

that are topical as i

waste time on the internet as we all do

awesome great

thank you everyone

awesome i'm gonna go have a glass of

wine so hopefully some people will join

me

unless you're in india or something then

don't do that

all right see y'all good night

you