3 startup ideas from the co-founder of Loom (make $120k/mo)

I've got a close friend on the Pod right now and I mean he sold a company for a billion dollars he doesn't do podcasts really but he is doing us a favor the community a favor and he's got a few ideas that he would do so he's giving them away so you might as well listen to this full episode welcome to the Pod it's great to be here Greg it's good to see you good to see you [Music] I I mean you've got some free time ever since the the the loom exit to write some

ideas and I want I'm I'm chomping at the bits like what do you got for us yeah so um I'm I'm pretty excited about this one so I you know I spent the last year more or less kind of traveling going to different countries going to different states just with friends solo um and I've I've one of the things that I'm actually really passionate about from a consumer perspective is just like how we travel today and witnessing how uh millenials especially prefer to travel these days um so the first idea which I would say is

probably uh one of my favorite ideas on this list is what I'm coining the anti-rip advisor Traveler so you go on Google today say you're going to Rome Italy and you have to now build an itinerary um there have been services that have been created targeting Millennials uh around these kind of micro travel agents who can kind of design a guide uh you know if you give them the dates the budget and they could design something pretty uh Advanced for you but for 99 % of The Travelers out there travel is you know I would

say a byproduct of how good an SEO engineer really is and what I mean by that is Trip Advisor ranks very highly on uh Google and Expedia ranks very highly all of the this like conglomerate Monopoly of travel sites that have been around since our you know parents were our age traveling um tend to get the most traffic so what does that do for travel it sends people to all the same places it sends them to all the same restaurants sends them to all the same you know takes them to the coliseum in the morning

for a walking tour it takes them to the famous kacho Pepe restaurant that's like two blocks away from uh the Coliseum and the restaurant itself is called kacho Pepe so you know none of the locals are eating there so the idea is Tik Tock for modern travel um so right now users on Tik Tok uh these like micro influencers post these really aesthetically minimal uh Tik Tok Guides of beautiful coffee shops bookstores uh places to sit and people watch and take in the city right like this does not exist on any of these travel sites

today so I'm actually helping a friend of mine who kind of had this concept um and I would love to kind of bring this to life but I when I travel I go on Tik Tok I've try to find two or three you know spots near my hotel that I should go to and I just kind of curate this own list and I went to Soul last year in May love the city incredible City very creative you know design forward city um and designed for businesses pastry shops and none of these things had popped up

on uh when I when I was looking it up on trip advisor so I I think there's like this new segment for Millennials and jenes who want to travel the path less taken um and I feel like if we you know if there's an app that can kind of bring this to life there would be a a huge crowd that would be interested in it so I want to talk about this idea but before we get into the idea there's something that um I've been playing with a lot recently which is I'm curious if you

have checked it out have you seen on Tik Tok the Creator search insights I have not no okay so if you haven't chance that other people haven't because I and me too I actually I only recently figured this out so if you go and you open up Tik Tok instead of searching for I don't know some whatever you weird things you people search on Tik Tok um you can actually search for creator search insight and it pulls this up uh if you're watching this on YouTube uh sorry if you're watching this on Spotify or apple

go to YouTube to see what it is you have to click this and it says see what Tik Tok users are searching for and get inspired to create now it shows suggested and trending search topics um and it shows content gaps as well what you'll notice is a lot of time there's travel in here so it seems that people are using Tik Tok for instead of going to Google they're going to Tik Tok Tik Tok to your point so I just wanted to just make that note that people whatever it is you're working on look

at the trending topics on on that on Tik Tok because it is worth it to to figure out what you should build because this is like one of those really big ideas but it's like where do you start right like how do you you know should you Niche it down a little bit and this is where where something like Tik Tok could help you figure that out shh don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free these aren't just random guesses they're validated

Concepts from entrepreneurs who built hundred million plus businesses I've compiled them into one simple database compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast but the main thing is most of these ideas don't need a single investor some cost nothing to start I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet the idea bank is your startup shortcut just click below to get access your next cash flowing business is waiting for you yeah and another Pro tip that I maybe it's um more popular now uh than when I first found out about it I would you

know alongside Tik Tok I would go on Instagram and I would you know search if I'm if I'm going to Rome um and I want to see like since the last time I went to Rome what are all the best places for me to go to um I would go I would search for Rome and I would kind of use the Instagram map which is a great you know geolocation tool that's hidden within Instagram um and I would just zoom and there's a bunch of photos of people posting stories and it's kind of like your

snap map that kind of has this uh like heat map on it to show where there's like density or like what's more popular uh and where like are people kind of going to in real time so that that has also helped me when kind of Designing um things to go see uh museums with new exhibits um that might not be as well known you know some of the more locally I I love exploring local culture when I travel so like Instagram and you know kind of to your uh Point um Tik Tok as well these

are all great places to go find hidden gems with uh within the app so if you were to start something like this you know I buy the key Insight it's validated by people searching on Tik Tok What you know how how do you actually go and build it like where do you take a there so I I I think the first I would go to um I I would do my research by looking at you know what are all to to your point the Tik Tok um you know search results I would look at okay

well what are the most search results and try to find a category are people looking to find coffee shops are they looking to find you know coffee art in cities like Soul are they going to bookstores what what are the top ranked kind of category of places people want to visit and then what I would do is I would kind of hack together a mobile app there's a bunch of no code tools out there low code tools um or if you want to build something sophisticated you could go kind of hire developer you could also

use Claude Ai and uh and chat GPT uh there's a bunch of tutorials on how to build uh apps without knowing how to code with AI specifically and I would do is I would kind of build a directory based on cities so what I the the way that I would do that is I would kind of formulate everything into guides so I would want like a coffee guide of soul and within soul soul is such a big city um and it there should be a map where I could see these are like the top 10

most incredible new relevant design forward coffee shops if you're a coffee snop you'd love to go there I would love to go into that guide and and if you're monetizing it you could either sell it by guide so you could unlock say you get the first two coffee shops for free and it's a list of 10 and if you want to unlock it you could pay say 99 cents to unlock that guide uh now you have access to the best coffee shops and so so I would rank I would build these guides um and I

would make like kind of like a video Carousel very similar to Tik Tok uh this is like what the aesthetic this is what you know the coffee is like the the general Vibes if you go on Google Maps and you go on a specific location they now have a Vibes category so it kind of just shows the uh the general charm of the place um and then I would Branch out you know from a very specific Niche such as coffee shops and bookstores to what are all the other search searches that are trending on Tik

Tok and on Instagram and start to kind of build that curation um further out so the next time someone comes you know if they're not just looking for coffee shops maybe they're looking for something else uh and there there's something that's nearby to the coffee shop that based on their Tik Tok history they would like that is something that I would expand into and the content like how do you create the content so it's actually the content is already there you know like you can technically go on Tik Tok and just as an a general

minimal viable product you can host these Tik Tok videos um just embed them directly into the app and be like these are you know the top local you know micro influencers who are talking about these coffee shops and this is like these are the coffee shops that you should go to um I think the beauty of Tik Tok is that it has this critical mass so as any influencer um I could kind of or even if I'm not an influencer right I could just kind of create a video seamlessly add a aesthetic pleasing sound on

top of it and add some you know use cap cut or any of these video editing tools and add um captions on top of them um and you know what I would do so I live in New York City and if I were to create this and I were to create the content myself just to get the app up and running I would go to all the you know spots that I think a you know say a foreign traveler who wants to experience Soho um like a local like what are the coffee shops the wine

bars the bookstores the um the streets for the best photos at Sunset um the Westside Highway you know rent a city bike get on the westside Highway bike path and ride up and down the path and you get to see uh New York City and you get to see the Hudson River um and it's especially this time of the year in the fall like I could I could go myself and create this content and host it that isn't as scalable as just kind of initially when you're ramping up um you just want to kind of

get the information into the app I think what's also really interesting about this idea is there's probably a ton of like amazing I mean not probably there is the best content around local is hidden in Tik Tok videos so the the real the real question is how do you extract that in a meaningful way post it on the web with like curating it a little bit like adding uh you don't want to just pull the raw transcripts right um right so what do you do I'm just trying to think about it so if I'm if

I'm trying to do something like this um Tik Tok does have an API so you can use the Tik Tok API for getting some of these trending local videos um and then you can use descript for uh trans transcription um there's also other tools I think Google has like a speech to text API as well that you can use um but then you're going to actually have to clean up the transcripts because you're you know it's not it worked in video but it won't it won't work for like a Blog so to speak so you

can use uh you can use Cloe you can use chat gpts API um and then you can automate you can actually literally automate this whole process you just use zapier to eventually like post it to your WordPress Rog or whatever it is so what are you doing you're essentially making an you know the MVP you're making like an SEO machine right right um and maybe you start only with coffee shops like you become the place where wherever it is you land like if you're a coffee snob maybe you call it coffee snobs doxyz because that's

probably available um but you you do it in every city and then once you do coffee shops then you know you can expand Beyond there right yeah I I I think it's important to your point to kind of start in a very specific Focus area that um you know if if if like kind of imagine yourself if you go to a new city or new country you've never been to you check into your hotel you drop your bags what is the first thing you look for on Google Maps um and or on Tik Tok or

on any of these social platforms um and when you look for recommendations you know what is if you go down the list of things that the average traveler does is they probably ask their friends they probably go on Instagram and have probably saved these videos in advance and then they probably go on to Google Maps and start pinning a bunch of locations near their hotel that they should check out uh and truth be told like we don't you know we tend to um over complicate this process but instead if like you said the MVP could

be if you follow those instructions you can extract that information imagine just pasting a Tik Tok link into a URL like the URL into a text field um or excuse me into a URL field and then it just kind of autog generates a written guide from that one Tik Tok video it's like in this Tik Tok video uh there was this coffee shop was mentioned here's like the link to their Google Maps this coffee shop was mentioned here's the link to their Maps um and uh and then it just kind of creates a written guide

that is SEO friendly that people if they search for say coffee um in Williamsburg this guide would ideally pop up and it would also allow them to save it to like bookmarket in the app so that once they are in say Brooklyn they see that that coffee shop is nearby um so I think there's a lot of ways to kind of get started with this I you know kind of in this like postco world where travel has really taken off um a lot of airlines have posted massive uh profits just goes to show that travel

is not slowing down people love experiences um they love to go to new cities they love to go to uh cities they've been to many times and try new things there so if there's an app that can kind of facilitate that for the millennial and genen z uh you know kind of generation that is very specific when it comes to traveling I think there's uh there's there's a big Market um for someone who ends up building this including myself I would love to use it you'd love to you'd love to try third wave coffee in

Istanbul you know the right the right yeah you know the right Shop I actually I heard recently uh there's like a famous coffee saying around coffee snobs that once you like once you really get into coffee you're going to hate it cuz you're going to be that person that travels lands in New City and has to walk 45 minutes or take an Uber somewhere to get that first cup of coffee that is going to hit the spot for you like the diner coffee won't be good enough so um I digress I like this idea I

think it's great we've talked a lot about directories on the Pod before I think that directories are only going to get more more popular I think what I'm really interested with respect to directories is how can you put directories on autopilot um start building that SEO juice and who knows where you know some of these could go um you could end up getting for all you know in the coffee business you could end up becoming an OT you know working working to create like an Expedia competitor um so you don't really know where it goes

but the cool part about a directory and guides and I like that you're using the word guide because I think that's a really important word um is you're just you're building a center of gravity you're building a center of gravity around a topic um and uh it gives you a lot of Leverage uh for where to take it so I like this idea um what's your next idea um so if we stay on the topic of travel for a second um one of the things that I feel like has been broken um and it really

broke during like when uh you know kind of covid had taken place um people are everywhere now people have moved to New cities you moved to Miami I moved to New York we both lived in San Francisco um our friends have moved all over the place um and there hasn't been a what I want to call like this micro social network which is a very minimalist thing it does one thing really well um and we'll get into that in a second but this there hasn't been a micro social network around where my friends are so

especially in summertime when no one I mean all my friends who live in New York are all out traveling uh I want to know like if we end up overlapping the same city uh or if we're going to overlap in the same city I would love to know that in advance so we can kind of arrange some plans um maybe meet for a meal plan some stuff out but you might have noticed that Instagram had launched their kind of you could call it status updates those status updates are I would say at least in my

feed 90% of it is just people telling their friends which city they're in um and I don't know if Instagram had either envisioned that that would be the primary use case for their status updates um but I think it says something really important which is friends want want to know where their other friends are so uh a lot of people and including myself I have a lot of my close friends on find my friends um and that's you know that's that's Apple's kind of take on this like call it pseudo social network um but it's

it's a very flat you know there isn't much depth to find my friends and instead what I would love to see is where I could push a button it just automatically updates my location uh the feed would be incred simple it shows your friends based on your proximity to them so uh just imagine your face right next to mine it's like oh we're we're overlapping in Montreal I shoot you a text um and I'm like hey we should we should grab a meal I saw that you're in Montreal and I'm I'm sure you remember I

don't know how many how many of your listeners remember this maybe this is dating us a little bit about 10 to 12 years ago uh there was a private social network called path that had kind of Taken um you know uh really the media um it had kind of taken off on its own and the whole premise of path was a privatized close social network of your close friends family members so you're only able to I think have up to 75 friends I'm not sure on the exact number of that but uh you only wanted

to accept friends that were your true friends you're call it 75 best friends and you would be able to kind of see their l through a series of photos and you know videos and status updates and locations but people have been wanting a path likee social network for so long because you know Twitter is a completely different product today Facebook is a completely different product and now you know we kind of use Instagram for letting our friends know where we're at um some of us still use snap uh I think there's a vertical in which

people can build this incredibly simple micro social network quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't

want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com so yeah let's talk about first of all I just want to say something that I always when when it comes to building a new startup social consumer social I'm always like don't do

it Greg don't do it Greg don't do a Greg and then I'm like sketching it out and then it's like oh no I'm doing it um the reason the reason is it's it's playing startups on hard mode it is just so hard to do it well now I will say it what changes it a little bit is with AI now it is faster to create these products so um you don't need a $2 million and hire a team of 10 to beta test this now what you're talking about with path I think people need to

study path especially you know because people have probably forgotten um someone in the comment section is going to be like I didn't forget I I I hear you but most people who are listening this have not heard of path it was 150 people up to 150 people that you can have on path and the reason why it was 150 people I don't know if you remember this is because it had to do with a sociology Theory called dunbar's number dunbar's number was the theory that human beings can only maintain about 150 connections Max at once

but when you think about uh today's world in social media like we follow hundreds thousands we're seeing tweets posts Tik toks everywhere right so what was path path was the anti version of the current state of social networks now path actually ended up selling for like a hundred million to Google I think this idea which your idea which is basically like reinvent path for today's um for for today is really interesting I'm not convinced that it's the I'm in a new city like I need to you know I'm in a city and like you're in

the city and like let's hang out but I think the idea around a social network called Dunbar I think the that you get like the name of it is Dunbar because then there's a story about Dunbar and oh what's Dunbar oh it's an app where you can have Max 15 people and like you can do XYZ things and then you just clone it and then you run a PR machine to get like everywhere everyone wants to write about how every Legacy Media Company hates social media so they're going to be happy to write about how

you're going to try to kill it and why it's ruining your lives that's that's my take what do you think no I I I I like that I like The Branding around it too I I I think a lot of people um in in our industry who had got to play with path and you know even uh more broadly than um our industry have kind of wanted a path for 2024 2025 right what does it look like today um to your point the reason why we haven't seen one since the existence of path is because

like you said consumer and social are like oil and water it's just it it's so hard to mix um almost impossible and quite nearly impossible right so so many companies have tried to build consumer social products I think there is such a demand for it but when there aren't Network effects or um you know kind of levels of scale to it it kind of really becomes difficult so if I'm the one on this app and none of my friends are on it and there's like I have some internet friends who I don't consider to be

close friends where I would feel comfortable enough either sharing my location or photos or whatever um it becomes really tricky I my very specific use case was around I love you know kind of seeing where my friends are at any given time like oh cool you know they're and it doesn't have to be like the exact GPS location um it has to be like assuming we're close enough friends and we see that we're in a different city in Europe um and we have plans to kind of like meet up it it kind of creates it's

a conversation starter and I feel like most social networks kind of today are you're you're kind of taking in a lot of information you're not contributing you're kind of just lurking around um so if you could kind of get the consumer to create information or to create something to discuss um or to spark a conversation that that would hopefully create uh more engagement around uh around the app but I think to your point there's a lot of ways to go around it the desire for having a closed off network with your friends because everything is

so public these days uh is certainly there hopefully someone builds it and hopefully we can use it yeah and I think that with the location bit I think what was cool about uh path back in the day and like people should really look at it like when you used to open up path I'm pretty sure he used to say like good morning from Hayes Valley you know it like new your neighborhood even Hayes Valley San Francisco a neighborhood in San Francisco um so I think that if honestly like I kind of want to do this

but like someone should just clone path like look at exactly what they did clone path make it like a little more shinier a little more glossier a little more beautiful in today's 2025 standards but like from a dude I hate to I hate to this publicly I'm just going to go ahead and say this cuz whatever if you're going to judge me judge me I went on Facebook the other day cuz I wasn't I wasn't no it gets worse it gets way worse I went on Facebook the uh yesterday because I wasn't sure if it

was a friend of mine's birthday and I knew he I had him on Facebook so I was like oh let me check see if it's his birthday so so I go on Facebook lo and behold 45 minutes past and I'm just scrolling Facebook and the worst part about it is I'm enjoying every second of it what what were you scrolling were you looking at photos were looking at memories just through the timeline I was everywhere bro I was everywhere I I I I was like I started off on the just like the the time the

the feed I was scrolling down the feed and let me open it up I was scrolling down the feed and I just loved how you know oh someone moved to Bend Oregon like I had no idea like that's an that's an you would never like I don't know if you'd post that on Instagram like you might just you might but you might not and then I got like you know a Facebook group update that was like really interesting and then I see this like someone is playing tennis and it's like a week ago right because

Facebook is like not you know but my point is I started thinking to myself it would be cool like Facebook as a product is pretty amazing like the profiles that you can like yeah explain who you are and customize your profile to a certain extent is like quite interesting it just sucks because like it's Facebook and you know what I mean so what was path path was the reinvention of Facebook mobile first max 150 people someone needs to take this idea it will it will work someone could make this work and create a really nice

business uh path used to monetize via selling sticker packs I believe they used to sell sticker packs and charge two three four five bucks there's a way to just charge $20 a year $30 a year and people will pay for this if you start getting a network effect and there is demand from people to do this and this is a multi-million dollar year idea you can do a bootstrap that's right and I also think I mean you look at the progression of snap as a company and where they've been able to monetize from um and

uh even Instagram right it's like sponsored posts and very curated to the user sponsored posts relevant ads um I I also so there's there's this wild idea but this is very kind of like Tech forward and less um kind of steers us away from this idea but I'm going to come back to it I I I've thought about this a lot you know with kind of chat GPT launching two or three years ago now um and companies constantly trying to train their local language you know their large language models with more information um I feel

like there's a future in which we will you know this the SAS subscription model which call it $8 a month $16 a month and then there's an Enterprise plan right very uh very typical SAS structure that gets replaced with being able to commit your personal data so I'm not I'm talking about like anonymized data where this data gets anonymized and then someone like Facebook can basically train on it so just like oh and we're talking not necessarily Shaw met up with Greg but it's like oh there's a connection that was made here maybe that data

is relevant maybe that data is not relevant but I do think there will be at some point my hunch is a future in which we can pay uh and for premium subscriptions uh with our own anonymized data um and hopefully someone builds a path and I I do want to kind of kind of double click into your uh you know your 10 minutes of or 30 minutes of Facebook uh screen time for a second which is this kind of goes into my third idea um and this is because of something that I find myself doing

quite often which is I will go into my iCloud photos I'll go I'll just open up the photos app and I'll try to find a specific memory and I'll try to create a sticker out of it so I could send it to a friend um and I'll just find myself 20 minutes deep into like looking through photos from the past so shared albums my my take on this is shared albums are where your memories go to die um I want to be able to share a in the idea here is time what I'm calling type

time capsules of your shared memories so I want to be able to share a physical Time Capsule of the memories I've made with friends either on trips or just at dinner at their home you and I hosted a dinner at your place in San Francisco I actually had a memory for that on Facebook funny enough we talk about that uh that must have been eight years ago um seven years ago let's say and that was a super fun dinner but how often do we come back to that period of our lives right just like the

the Beautiful Bliss of pre covid everyone living in San Francisco us hosting a dinner together and having our friends over um was awesome but if I was like oh it's Greg's birthday I want to send him a present I want to send him a memory of both of us and sure I could send him photos of us from my iCloud um or I could you know somehow curate this time capsule and send it to him that's a very personal High touch uh gift and I think for it to work it has to be ephemeral because

I don't want you to feel like you're getting assuming this like takes off it you know uh gets widely adopted now everyone's sending you these time capsules and now you feel obligated to hold on to these time capsules it has to feel ephemeral enough where and obviously super curated um and it should feel as if you're reliving that memory but it's Emeral enough where you could also toss it out if you want to after holding on to it for a day a week or two weeks but that's uh that's my that's my third idea and

this kind of this takes a page out of the book of path and a page out of the book of clout if you remember clout of course tell tell people what it was for people who don't remember so clout was The Social Network that really monetized on Nostalgia and what that means is um I would hook up I I would basically connect uh all of my Social Network accounts so Facebook Twitter Instagram at the time um and any other social network and clout would send me a reminder of this is before Facebook had memories built

into their app uh clout this is around 2013 so we're talking about 11 years ago clot would send you a reminder of this memory you had with a friend of yours and it was done so well people humans love Nostalgia they love to look back on life and be like wow that was an incredible time I'm glad we got to like you know share that moment yada yada and it just do it it did Nostalgia so well in a social format where because I was reminded of my trip to South by Southwest at the AMX

you know uh sponsored show where they had Jay-Z there um I was inclined you know clout had really clicked in on the idea of if we can send the emotions of nostalgia to this user of something that has happened you know that they posted in the past the likelihood of them sharing that out to their friends is very high so clout went viral as a result of people sharing their Nostalgia um but it failed to kind of really sustain um in a world where Facebook had the network effects and Instagram had the network effects people

would only come to Cloud to see their memories and share it to these other platforms so it didn't have its own uh Network effects and ultimately led to I think they ended up getting acquired um but there's always room for Nostalgia and I think we're this is very nostalgic ironically for us to talk about we're talking about two apps from 11 years ago uh that we both loved and I think they're you know this concept of time capsules of these shared memories of memorabilia or you know photos printed out on a no card with a

signature in the little box nice packaged well shipped to you sounds uh super cool and people are going to be like why are these people bringing up such old apps like why bring up clout why bring up path these thing people people don't change like human beings don't change our needs don't change the products that we create change based on how we consume it and and shifts like that but um I I like this idea I I had a I actually said something that went viral I said Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and

I like this idea because I think it not only is there a business here it's also like I actually think that it'll really put smiles on people's faces I'm also one of those people that uh like just last week I I came across some old photos I agree with your thesis on this by the way uh that shared albums is where memories go to die I I sent over like five photos to my group chat of like friends and everyone was like it made their day it made their day but then those photos are going

to like they're dead like they you know so there's something here and I think the catchiness of shared photos are going to die uh is is is enough to create a business around it exactly and I think there's something between a photo that you sent to a friend um you know in a text thread and a digital album that you have on your nightstand something in between needs to exist and it doesn't today uh and there's clear opportunity uh for someone to go out there and build it dude thank you for for sharing these ideas

I need I need people to literally just bug go into the comment section on YouTube and we need to have this we need to have this this man on again you know we have to convince him in 2025 to come on again and to thank him so I appreciate you uh where could what do you do you have anything to plug at this point uh no just uh you know really just happy to be here happy to see you um if you w to you know I I often tweet about kind of ideas like this

that I find when I travel or when I'm just kind of walking my dog on the West Side Highway um you know go follow me on Twitter uhor s DK um tweet at me if you have any ideas if you're building any things that we mentioned would love to love to take a look would love to give feedback also on Instagram wherever you can find me would love to connect beautiful all right my man this has been a treat thank you so much appreciate you having me on later baby [Music]