We Rated Your Craziest Business Ideas

0:26Race the rudders!

0:33Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, no news. We've got a special episode lined up to discuss listeners' startup ideas with two incredible guests. From niche BMW marketplaces to hair vacuums, we'll cover some of the best and worst ideas that you all submitted. It's Friday, November 10th. Let's ride.

0:58tomorrow is veterans day here in the united states but since it takes place on a saturday it's observed as a federal holiday today first of all before we start the show a huge shout out and thank you to all the veterans of the u.s armed forces on your special day since this is not a typical day we are not doing a typical podcast we brought on tara reed and money with katie to chat about entrepreneurship specifically the startup ideas you've graciously sent into us tara and Katie host Bossy, a new podcast from The Brew that focuses on female leadership and business building. So if there's anyone who has a good instinct for the next unicorn startup, it's them.

1:34So let's get into it. Katie and Tara, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. So you do have this new show out called Bossy. Amazing content. I highly recommend. But that word Bossy evokes a lot of emotions in people. How did you land on that as a name for the show? Well, I love that you highlighted that it evokes a lot of emotion because I think that's kind of why we picked it. Just, you know, the funny way in which young girls that tend to exhibit leadership qualities quickly get labeled as bossy. And so we're like, what could we what could we do there? Because there's a bit of a double entendre, I think.

2:11Yeah. And I think we are just playing with reclaiming that word. And we are bosses in our own businesses. And we're really talking about leaning into your inner boss on our show. I love that. And I love that we have the two, the Fosse hosts themselves in studio with us. And we got a great show ahead of us. Yeah. So hear how it's going to work. Toby and I are going to give a quick elevator pitch of a startup idea from one of our listeners. And then we'll have a little discussion among the four of us around it. And at the end, Tara and Katie, you're going to have to say whether you're in or you're out on it.

2:44OK. OK. So here we go. The first idea comes from listener Peter Slivich. He is creating a social media-based marketplace specifically for BMW M models. The word niche is overused these days, but I'd say it's pretty appropriate here. The community, called M List, has gained thousands of followers across Instagram and Facebook, and Peter claims the demand for such a marketplace is immense among enthusiasts. It does not charge any money to list or promote listings, and he aims to make money from donations or sponsorships. Katie, you're an aspiring M Series owner. Would you join M-List? You know what?

3:20I think so. I like this idea a lot. I think first and foremost, because the clientele he's after, the users he's going after, are very low price sensitivity. So they are ready to spend, right? And they're enthusiasts. If you're going to buy an M-Series BMW, you are ready to spend money. You know what you're doing. And you're probably really into cars in that particular car. So I think this is a really valuable niche to go after. What do you think? What do you think an M series costs? Oh, gosh, I actually don't know. Every single BMW they make comes in like the M model. But it's like a pricier BMW.

3:59It's like a souped up version. Yep, yep. I really love how scrappy Peter's been with like creating the first version of this product. Right. It's straight to social media, got followers and was like, doesn't even have a website yet. Doesn't really matter. I love that. It reminds me so much. And I actually looked on his Instagram. So if you click on the link on the Instagram, it opens up this like Google form where you fill out information about the car, like your needs. And I love just using just like off the shelf tools, things you already have to get something going. Both of you have created communities kind of around your brands in the past.

4:35Do you think that this one has the chance to be monetized in its current state or do you think it has to get bigger? Right now he says there's around 7 ,000 followers across platforms. Do you think he can start monetizing right now? So it reminds me quite a bit of this guy named Doug DeMuro. Have you all heard of him? I've seen him, yeah. Okay, so he was just a YouTube car reviewer, but he was super enthusiastic. People loved his recommendations. They really trusted him. He built cars and bids. And so he basically built a car marketplace, like a Carvana or a CarMax. But I think they're doing like$300 million in revenue a year.

5:10I mean, it's just unbelievable. So I think that even though this is going to be a much smaller population because you're just talking about one specific type of one specific brand. These are high intent people. Right. And they're they're really into what they're they're buying and selling. So I kind of think that would be potentially the most lucrative route as opposed to an advertising model. But I think an advertising model could work. I don't know that I love the donation model. I feel like you probably have thoughts about that. I definitely don't love the donation model. Right. So he said he wants to make money primarily from donations.

5:44I think there are some people who can do this like who pulled this off Wikipedia pulls this off as a business model. They're a foundation. They have like millions hundred and maybe hundred fifty dollars million dollars in revenue. And on average people pay fifteen dollars as their donation. But you've got to get a lot of fifteen dollars. And ask a lot. And ask a lot. Like when you go on Wikipedia, it's like huge space at the very top. You've got to like scroll to get past it. I don't know that we want like donations to be the business model of this, particularly when the customers are willing to pay.

6:15Like it's not like your customers don't have willingness to pay. They've got high willingness to pay. So I think I like the advertising business model over the donations for sure. This is such good advice. All right. So what I'm hearing is maybe you're in, but you'd like to have a strategic advisory role to discuss monetization on Peter's board. I do think commissions would be huge. Commissions on the sales. I think you could do a pretty good business. I also think that there's a lot of accessories in this space. Like my dad bought a used BMW at one point and he was always tinkering with it in the garage.

6:45And there were so many like the 303 wipes and all the different cleaning things. And he's like rewiring the speakers. And so I think that like those are very niche advertisers that are probably going to have a hard time reaching that audience any other way. So I think it could work that way, too. So much of a business's success is about the founder being willing to get out of their own way and do the thing to charge the money. So I think provided that we had a conversation with Peter and he was open to that, I'm in. This is the conversation, Peter, right there. Yeah. Okay. Up next is an idea for an app that centralizes influencers' discount codes from Bridge Bullard.

7:20Here's their spiel. We all see those shameless plugs for influencers' sponsors, but how often do we actually stop in that moment and use their code? We need an app that can pull influencer discount codes, centralize all of them, and apply them to a product when you're checking out. It'll be perfect for selling ads directly on the app as well, since people will be on it in buying mode already. Katie and Tara, as somewhat of influencers yourselves, what are your thoughts on this? I think as a product, it's a really straightforward one to build. I teach people how to build apps, and so I know this space really well.

7:55I think there's a huge opportunity in analytics and tracking. So whenever you have data and numbers around what people click when they're interested in buying, how many times that they click, you can really set that up to monetize. So I like that. And I also think you can use these like off-the-shelf no-code app building tools to get something like this built in like a week or two. So you like the data side of it a lot. I like the data side of it a lot. And I like the ease of getting it out to customers. And I think I like also that influencers are also going to be willing to participate in this too.

8:25And there's a good monetization opportunity there. I love that. Katie? I think it occurred to me that it strikes me as being very similar to honey, which makes money off commissions. I think the opportunity to differentiate for influencers and the capitalizing on the creator economy is very interesting. But I do think it's a double edged sword because typically these brands that work with influencers work with a lot of them and they're going to give everybody the same discount. So I think you're going to have a handful of brands that are going to have 50 codes, and then every other brand that's not doing influencer marketing isn't going to have any.

9:00So I think that that could be a challenge, but I do think that there's an opportunity to capitalize on that a little bit. If you were to get the network effects and the scale of getting enough users on the platform, you could theoretically have it be a bit of a pay-to-play where the influencers have to give you a little bit of money to float their code to the top so that theirs is the first one in the list that pops up i could see that working model yelp does that really well so you like claim your business it's already there probably you claim it and then you can promote it to the top so that's interesting yeah you guys have said on your show that if no one's building in the space then it's probably not a good sign so even though there are things like honey out there and i mean i guess yelp out there as well it does seem like this person is on onto something with this yeah but they've got a niche perspective We said the riches are in the niches.

9:48Is it niche or niche? I say niche. I try to not say the word at all

9:58Alright, so are you in or out on this this coupon? I'm in on this. I think I'm in provided it It's like a like a browser plug-in or like an aggregate or a site I think an app that is itself shoppable, I don't actually know how you would execute that. All right. Okay, this next idea is also in the creator space. It's an OnlyFans-style platform for learning, and it's from Mendel Vogel. On the one hand, you have influencers on TikTok and Instagram educating people about topics in their wheelhouse, and on the other side, you have bigger subscription education sites like Udemy. You combine these forces together into a creator-friendly platform that allows people to actually feel connected to the person you're learning from.

10:43So it seems like a play to democratize education. What do you think? I feel like this one's a bit of an uphill battle only because I think your competitive set is Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, these sites that have billions of monthly active users. I think that's going to be really tough. I also am a little concerned that the creators that have the big audiences or who will have the big audiences probably want to own the means of production a little bit more. So I almost would think about this more in the realm of like a riff on something like Kajabi, those course hosting platforms that already exist, but maybe with some enhanced features and functionality that are going to allow a little bit more direct interaction.

11:27But I do, I think it's going to be tough to compete with like the social media heavy hitters. Not just social media heavy hitters, but also all the Kajabis and all the education platforms too. I think that AI is going to really disrupt this space. I think it's going to happen in two different places. One, I think educators are going to be using AI a lot more for like the activities, the lessons, the ways that you learn instead of you having to do a bunch of lessons, it generates things for you. But also I think we're going to see a lot more of like you just talking to the AI character and it teaching you or influencing you or talking to you.

12:01And I have this feature actually that I have access to. You guys have access to this on Instagram where you can chat with someone about your like common interests. Have you seen that? We've talked about it, but I don't have interest. I don't have the I don't have interest. It's a little strange. OK, so I'll tell you why it's strange and why it relates to this. So you see a bunch of famous faces. There's like Charlie D 'Amelio on there and you click on it, but it's not actually Charlie. It's somebody else's name and you chat with them, but they like dancing or they like social media. Right. I think this is Instagram lining themselves up to make this available to influencers so that they can now chat with everybody.

12:40You get your own like Toby bot. You get to like just chat with them. And I think that the social media platforms are coming for this space hard. And so I'm out only because it's just so easy to get trampled by Facebook. Yeah. But OK. So the example that this person cited was Miss Excel, for instance, who is a great educator. and some people really have a ton of affinity towards her. So don't you think that someone would pay to chat with her one-on-one, get that one-on-one kind of attention, and that having a platform that facilitates that really easily would be something that Miss Excel would like as well?

13:15Yeah. Or do we think that it's still just a little too competitive of a space? You're saying chatting with the real Miss Excel. Yeah, the real Miss Excel. Like the real person? The real Miss Excel. I think we're so close to the space where chatting with the real is just going to be AI. Like that's not scalable for Miss Excel to do past. Like she probably has the team helping with her emails on their own. So I think we're just we're so close to just the chat being the AI conversation. And that's so easy to just get like disrupted on. I do think the opportunity here, though, is white labeling. So like white labeling is like you take the app, you take your logo off of the app and put the customer, someone who wants to have their own version of the app.

13:57You put Miss Excel's logo on it. So now Miss Excel has her own white-labeled version of the app that is hers. I think that is competitive because now I don't have to share all of my data with Instagram, and now I don't own it. I get all the email addresses, all the phone numbers of everybody who wants to text and chat with me. That, I think, is an interesting angle in, and people will pay premium price points for that white-labeled product. I like that. I think you can help with that, too, right? I love white-labeled. We just talked about on the show about how the rise in homeschooling and how everything, you know, the traditional public education system is being disrupted right now.

14:29And we didn't even talk about the effects of AI and technology on that. It was more about the politics coming into schools. But, you know, hearing you, it's like I'm thinking, man, AI is going to change everything about education with the personal tutors and chatbots and things like that. OK, this final idea is from Kelly Walker and it is Carfax for horses. She says, I want to create something similar to Carfax, but for horses. This will make purchasing a horse more convenient by being able to pull the history of the horse and know past injuries and illnesses. Usually when purchasing a horse over$5 ,000, you would do what's called a PPE, which is a pre-purchase exam, which includes things like x-rays and blood tests, but doesn't cover all previous injuries or illnesses.

15:13This would be huge in the equestrian industry. However, and this is her saying, I am stuck on how to get going and how to find funding. Katie or Tara, I don't know if either one of you guys are horse lovers and want to jump in and grab this, but what advice do you have for Kelly? So I actually have a few friends who are horse lovers, horse girls, horse girls, if you will. I think they would love this. So I know the question is more about how to get started. It sounds like she knows that it's a good idea. But I think I just want to highlight, you know, this is a very stressful purchase and stressful in a way that like buying a car really isn't because there's a living creature involved.

15:52So that kind of elevates the it ups the ante a little bit. But it's also an infrequent purchase, also like a car. So it's not like you're going to have a lot of repetitive customers. Most likely, it's probably going to be one and done every few years. I don't know. How often do you buy horses? I think people I think it's rare that someone just has one horse No, I didn't know that you owned your own horse for equestrian I thought you go to a ranch or something and you you know your horse lives there and you just go yeah rent it or lease it or Uber for horses I think when you're serious I feel icky about this When you're serious you own the horse I think Really?

16:31Yeah, okay, so what I think is important to say about getting started because the question was where do I get started? And also, how do I get funding? What came immediately after? And so quickly, we tack those things together. I think the main thing you should do and get started is not go try to get funding and to figure out how to get some revenue generated first. When you go get funding first, you have to determine the value of the company. And you don't even know what you have yet. So it's way too early to price the value of the company and also give away equity. I think that because this is like a high price point purchase, the horse is$5 ,000 plus.

17:06Right. People are willing to pay money in this process. I think Carfax makes money by like selling you the report. And I think it's maybe like a thirty nine fifty nine dollar report. report. Even if you just did like that kind of price point, you need like 1700 customers to make $100 ,000 with this idea. So I think like the idea is to get going and actually maybe go find some people, go on LinkedIn, go on social media, find people who are like horse lovers, horse owners, message them and DM them. I know that feels uncomfortable to do it, but that's how you start a business, right? You like start talking to people about it and go get some customers and ask them like, hey, is this something you're willing to pay for?

17:44Because I don't think you should go for funding first. It sounds like Kelly from the horses needs to talk to Peter from the BMW and maybe talk to each other, get some, get some pointers because that's kind of what you're describing, right? There's this concept, the MVP, the minimum viable product. So we had talked on Bossy about how sometimes when you have an idea for a business and you're not really sure how to execute the grandest version of that business, starting in a consulting or a services framework can be really useful because then to Tara's point, you're talking to your ideal customers.

18:19You're getting a sense for how much they're willing to pay for it. You don't really need some complicated tech stack because you're really just communicating with someone. And she had mentioned in her question about the microchipping process. So it occurs to me that part of the startup confusion might be around how does she access that data? I think that might be a bit of a roadblock. But I think that even talking with vets and making connections with these horse vets could also be a source of intel for her. And just starting regionally or starting in her area first and not worrying about, okay, how would I do this for the entire country?

19:00But how can I do this for my city and the people that are buying horses here? Start small, get bigger from there. Great advice. Okay, guys, that was fun, but we're going to take a quick break, and right after it, we're going to do a rapid-fire round.

19:16Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not Play Play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere tonight on NBC.

19:48When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets Mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. All right, we're going to move on to our next segment, and we're going to go a little bit more rapid fire. We're going to give you a brief description of a business idea, and I want you two to give me your one or two sentence review on whether or not they're onto something or not.

20:30No pressure, but whatever you say about these ideas could shape the entire futures of some MVD listeners. Oh, my God. Are you two ready? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, up first we have tofu chips from Dove. His reasoning is that they can be any flavor, have a ton of protein, and a great taste and texture if seasoned well. One sentence thoughts on tofu chips. Why not? I've been thinking more about the business model than the actual food. I think it's hard to produce, and CPG's hard. Okay, so they're a little iffy on tofu chips. Okay, Will Little proposed a yoga mat that rolls up into a foam roller. So two for one exercise deal.

21:12I feel like both of those items are pretty cheap. So I feel like people are probably just going to get both. But I don't even know what you used a foam roller for. Toby showed me how to use it. But you put it against your muscle and you press really hard and it gets the knots out. You're rolling on it on the ground like you lay down. It's great for like your hammies or something. I feel like my boyfriend would love this though. He's just like rolling around loving it. Definitely the same style of customer. Right. Yeah. But it's also, yeah, you can get both very easily as well. Okay, up next, Kelly Everly has an idea for a refill shop.

21:44You go there to refill shampoo bottles, hand soap, basically anything that gets emptied and can be refilled. Oh, I love this as a B2B idea. That's really interesting. Less for consumer, but more for like if I have a bunch of Airbnbs, if I have like a cleaning service even. Like that's really interesting. I think sustainability is very hot right now, so I'm in. Yeah, I'm just thinking of those balsamic vinegar or olive oil stores in very touristy areas where they have the big vats and you fill them up. And instead of olive oil, it's just shampoo and lotion. I like that. That's a very fancy version of the balsamic.

22:18Okay. Okay, this is one I don't have any insight into, but a hair vacuum that takes all the hair out when you're brushing your hair so it doesn't get on the brush. Absolutely, I'm into it. Wait, so it doesn't get on the brush? I'm confused. I know does it wait. I missed that part. So it doesn't get on the brush When you go to the dentist and they're you know, they have this suck going on at the same time So it takes all the liquid out. I've seen this product and it's sort of like it almost like there's like a hair straightener And it like pulls and as it pulls it straightens your hair. So there's no brush involved You just like stick your hair and it like is it Dyson doesn't Dyson already have that well if they If they're listening, they're going to come up with a$500 version of it.

23:01Oh, absolutely. I like it. I like it. I'm here for it. Okay. Alondra has an idea for a service that deletes videos and pictures of your ex off your social media accounts for you. I believe very firmly that you should not feel that angsty about your breakup. And you both were adults. It didn't work out. But you can still have love. So I'm not into the anger about that. I got to delete them. Such a mature stance on that. I am here for the petty. So I'm in. It is so nice because sometimes you don't want to go and relive all those bad memories. So it just wipes it all for you. And I mean, AI, face recognition technology.