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- [00:00]
A
Sorry. Good to have you.
- [00:03]
B
Wonderful to be here.
- [00:04]
A
You're a fountain of startup ideas. And you got some. You told me you have some ideas.
- [00:12]
B
A lot of ideas.
- [00:14]
A
Where do you want to start?
- [00:15]
B
Let's see. I think the ideas that I have are combination of things I would pay for, and I know a lot of people would pay for things that I think basically reflect everything that I've learned about building Sublime. So I'm just gonna, like, I could do like startup ideas on easy mode for you because I've done a lot of things on hard mode and then I generally like. My general sense of where startup ideas are today is like you have to be as close or as far as possible from AI. So I think I've got a lot of ideas that are like in the heart of it and a lot of ideas that are overlooked because they're just so far from AI. But we could start with the one thing that I was thinking about last night that I would pay for in a heartbeat.
- [01:03]
A
Okay, let's start there.
- [01:04]
B
Okay, so the gist of it is the startup, I guess, franchise for parental controls. So hear me out. So I've got three kids, ages 37 and 9. The two older ones have iPads, have had iPads since COVID Companies like Apple make it so hard to control. Like, I think I have set up like banned YouTube shorts or, you know, all these things so many times. And these kids continue to outsmart me. I, I think of myself as pretty tech savvy, but I can't figure this out. Like, these interfaces are like an airplane cockpit of features. They're really hard to figure out. And I think that a couple things, like, one is like, screen time is not good or bad. It depends on what's on the screen. But parents can't fucking control what's on the screen. So I think people are willing to pay for somebody to come into my house, like a physical person that asks me what my preferences are and like resets. Basically, like our family screen dynamic. Ideally the kids are there. It's like, hey, here are the rules and like you cannot use YouTube shorts or this or that. And it depends. Like, some families will be different, but I think the business is you essentially, like have one person create a ton of educational content and then license a bunch of people to do this stuff. And I don't know, I think parents have like, very little. Like, they're very price elastic when it comes to this stuff because you're basically paying for peace of mind.
- [02:53]
A
And would you pay? Is it like a one Time fee or is there a subscription element to it?
- [03:00]
B
I think there would be like a one time setup fee. But I think where the business could be interesting and recurring is there's like, as kids get older there's things like they need like a green light is like a credit card or like circle to track where they are, things like that. So you could become an affiliate. These licensed people can become an affiliate and like recommend stuff or like, hey, you know, like maybe your kid is like really into this thing. So like they should have this app. So I think there could be some recurrence and definitely like affiliate revenue. But I think that the idea of like a reset, like a family reset, people would pay like $2,000 for.
- [03:36]
A
I think if I was starting this idea I would call it drscreentime.com and I would actually start by building the media business. So basically start by creating content just all around screen time. And your first goal is how do I get to 100,000 followers of parents who are looking to consume content to basically curb screen time or just make, you know, time well spent with respect to screen time.
- [04:13]
B
Totally. Like, I don't know if you are familiar with Dr. Becky at good Inside, but she's built a huge business. Started off as a media business.
- [04:20]
A
Yeah. Can you, can you like? I don't think everyone knows about her.
- [04:23]
B
So Dr. Becky is just this like incredibly influential parent that built a media business and now has an app that people pay, I don't like a lot of money for and it has like I think tens of thousands of paying customers. But like you said, it started off as a, as a media business, but I think there's like she goes broad.
- [04:44]
A
It's recurring, isn't it?
- [04:45]
B
It's recurring. It's a subscription business. It's recurring. But I actually think like that's the typical like software business where it's like a media company and then you know, you build like a content app.
- [04:56]
A
Content. Content to commerce.
- [04:58]
B
Content to commerce, like Playbook. But I genuinely think so. I am a big fan of, I don't know if you know the Zumba fitness business. So the founder of Zumba is actually.
- [05:07]
A
I don't know anything about the business. I just know.
- [05:09]
B
So the founder is one of my closest friends, like built a business in Miami. The idea was born in a Shabbat dinner that I was part of. But I love the business because essentially what they did is like, it's a very capital light business. They have I think 15,000 fitness instructors these days that pay a monthly fee to get Music and like choreographies and to be a part of the brand. And so I think that like, there's like a physical presence to that that I think is like really cool relative to just like, I just can't see more Becky from good inside content anymore. Like, I'm not gonna pay for the app. I already have enough. So I just feel like there's an opportunity to like, to have like a business in a box type of thing where you like arm these like screen time polices or whatever, doctors and just like, I don't know, like it's a. It's a great like side hustle income.
- [06:02]
A
Totally. Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire. So Startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co founders, they're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing, how do you build an audience, how do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what Startup Empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas, or it's for people who have a startup but just they're not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to StartupEmpire Co and in the description. So I actually think there's a huge trend around business in a box companies. So we're sitting here in Miami. Everything that everyone sees here, like with the mics and the cameras and our whole setup, that was actually. There's a company that sent us all this stuff so you can rent all your podcasting stuff in a box. They send you a box, you pick it up at FedEx. But what was missing, in my opinion is do you want to name. Drop the. The name of the company? Lens Rentals?
- [07:33]
B
Is the company like a podcast business in a box?
- [07:35]
A
Yeah, but if I was running Lens Rentals, I would have upsold for sending like a doc podcast doctor to come and actually set up everything, make sure all the levels are correct, make sure the shot is, the frame is there. Like, that's what was. What was missing. And if I was Lens Rentals, I wouldn't be called Lens Rentals. I would be called podcastinabox.com which, by the way, the domain is available.
- [08:05]
B
Amazing.
- [08:06]
A
Yeah. In fact, we should probably just buy that domain.
- [08:10]
B
I mean, I think they're like, it's so genius to abstract away the complexity of starting anything, like bundle a bunch of things together, narrow the choices and just present them to you. I have another actually business in a box idea that I'm not the right person to do this. But the question that I've been asking myself is what becomes scarce in an AI world? And I think what becomes scarce is people doing stuff with their hands like this. We have a generation of people that grew up scrolling and the tactile joy of making something physical I think is gonna come back. And there's a business in New York that I went to about a year ago. It's called Happy Medium and essentially it's this art cafe where basically it's a super cool brand. They partner with brands like Glossier and to do brand activations, but essentially they have like pottery, figure drawing, painting, all sorts of crafty things. Their tagline is amazing. I think it's something like be brave enough to be terrible. So it tries to appeal to, not to the amateurs really. But the problem is it's not scalable. It's a business that has real estate and they've, they have one location. I think they're venture backed. But I think that this like you could do this like a business in a box where you essentially partner with local artists, Etsy sellers, whatever, arm them with the supplies, the educational stuff, like even like you could probably like do it at like restaurants during off hours or like homes or whatever. But like I think you could build a modern, cool consumer brand around like people doing stuff with their hands. If you look at the space, there's like Michaels and like, like even just like Color Me Mine is, I think the like brick and mortar, like they're all dated and boring. And I just think that the status symbol in an AIA just like, you know, it's just going to be like I disconnected from the information flow and.
- [10:19]
A
I like did something with my hands 100%. I also think that there's probably, there's probably a business that you can create like a status business. Whereas like I've been off my phone for seven days and I get this badge and I can, there's something there.
- [10:36]
B
Also offline is the new luxury. And what do you do with that?
- [10:39]
A
Exactly.
- [10:39]
B
Yeah. But yeah, I just really feel like. And even thinking about doing stuff with your hands, if you think about the Industrial revolution, what that did is it automated a lot of physical labor. But what AI is doing is it's automating a lot of white collar jobs. And, and so I think A lot of, like, trade jobs where there used to be a lot of stigma around, like, you don't wanna do trade jobs. It's not perceived as, like, a status job. It's actually gonna be the opposite. Like, plumbers, electricians. Like, these people are making a lot more money, and their jobs are a lot more safe than, you know, your average, like, junior copywriter working at an agency in New York City.
- [11:15]
A
Totally.
- [11:15]
B
So I just. I don't know. I feel like we're just on the cusp of this, like, you know, like, the status. Like, what is. Like, how status is changing and, like, doing things with your hands, like, doing things away from your computer that has status. And so I think the craft thing is, like, a leisure thing. But I really do think. And I see that certainly in Miami, people, like, it's so hard to find, like, tradesmen. It's so expensive. Construction costs are through the roof. And I always think about whether you could apply the business model of Lambda School, if you like. Remember, of course, where it's, like, zero tuition, you know, like, train these people, but then you make a cut of, like, their revenue once you find them a job. Like, what if you build, like, a modern brand around, like, tradesmen, but, like, I don't know, just, like, elevate the status of it because there's, like, real money in these jobs, and there's a huge shortage. Most of the people in these trades jobs are actually retiring in a couple of years. It's a huge problem, actually.
- [12:11]
A
So basically, is the idea Lambda School for tradespeople?
- [12:14]
B
I think so. I think there's, like, an opportunity to be, like, choose a vertical. But whether it's, like, painting, landscaping, plumbing, electricians, like, I don't know, like, woodworking, whatever, train these people, find them jobs, and then get a cut of, like, their income. But I think, like, the. Like, you have to build a compelling brand that elevates the status of these things.
- [12:33]
A
I think if I was gonna do that idea, which, by the way, is a big idea in a good way, I think that not only would I wanna train these tradespeople, but I'd want to arm them with, here's how to get customers. So basically, what I would do would be like, okay, you're now trained to be a. You know, call it an electrician. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna do all the Facebook ads for you. I'm gonna create the website for you, and then you take a cut for that, and then you take a cut for the training.
- [13:14]
B
That's where I think A lot of the, I mean these businesses operate like fax machines, like 1985 type stuff. So I think there's a lot of vertical SaaS. But like you said, it's a huge idea. If I was just getting started, I would literally find somebody to license these people. Find like companies that are actually hiring instead of like them doing this like freelance to start. I think it's a huge idea. And I also think it's like one that like tech people don't touch this stuff. But I think a lot of the ideas that I have that are more like in the heart of tech, like they're just going to be less valuable when an AI can do that.
- [13:47]
A
Yeah, I mean, I honestly think that's the biggest question I'm wrestling with is just if AGI happens, which you have to assume it will, what becomes a commodity and what becomes scarce?
- [14:04]
B
Yeah. Somebody said, posted on Twitter last time, like, what happens? Like what? You know, how do people choose one software over the other in a world where like AI can do absolutely everything? And I don't know, my take on it is my answer was like founder worldview. I genuinely think that the motivation and the vision and the intention behind something is something you can't fake. It's a little bit woo woo, it's a little bit wishy washy, but I think that's how, I think that's how people make decisions. It matters. Like, why are you building this? Like, I don't think people, the humans are not like rational. Like we were talking Econ 11, you know, it's like people make decisions based on emotions and I don't know, I, I think it's like far less utilitarian than people.
- [14:51]
A
What other ideas you got?
- [14:53]
B
Okay, so here's, here's something I've learned. Building Sublime is, I think there's two types of founders, broadly speaking. I think there's founders that operate less like business executives and more like artists. They have a creative vision and they're manifesting it and they're not really solving a problem, they're just manifesting a creative vision. And the kind of like counter point to that is like founders that are iterating and validating and like here's a hypothesis and I'm going to tweak it and iteratively get to product market fit. I definitely think I'm the former. Sublime is the former in some ways. I had this idea fully formed in my head about building a sublime Internet and I had to work backwards to reverse engineer that idea. Because the reality that most People don't care about their mission. They care about what can you do for them. Today. I've been in that process of how do you take this, that big vision, and piecemeal it into specific value props? But I say that because I think that sublime for me is the missionary thing. It's the multi decade project. It's gonna take me decades, but it's like the moat is so profound. But I think there's a huge opportunity to do the opposite of that, which is do one thing, do it well. And I have two ideas, one of which I'm building, the other of which I would build if somebody in this podcast wants to help. But essentially, or actually maybe let me frame it with an anecdote that I think is fantastic. So Akio Morita was the designer for the Sony Walkman, and he had an opportunity when he was designing the Walkman to add a record button on the Walkman for 50 cents. All it would do is add 50 cents to the cost of making the thing. But he decided against it. He said adding a record button would basically generate ambiguity about what this is for. This is a device to just play music. It does nothing else. And I just think that that's such a profound lesson for founders that want to, I don't know, I'm going to build you an AI Co founder. No, build an AI that will do one specific thing. So I have two ideas that are inspired by that that are just very simple. Do one thing and do it right. The first, I have a prototype of this, but essentially it's capture insights from podcasts with a screenshot. So let me tell you more. So a lot of ideas are stuck in audio formats that are just hard.
- [17:33]
A
To tell me about it.
- [17:34]
B
Right. Preaching to the right audience here. So how do people get around this today? A couple things they do. So one is like, they download other apps with convoluted UIs where you can highlight from podcasts, but the vast majority of people are still doing Spotify Apple podcasts. So that's just like a tiny fraction of an audience. I think that's a bad idea to build an entire podcast player. Like, no, make sure that you operate within the big players. The other thing people do is like, after, if I'm listening to a podcast on the car on the way here, if I liked some insight from an episode that you did, I'll go home, I'll use one of these apps to generate the transcript. I'll highlight it, copy, paste it into my notes, whatever. Too much work. Okay, so here's what we realized. A lot of people take screenshots of Spotify for, like, to just look at the timestamp. They never go back to look at. It's a lot of work to say, like, okay, minute 8, 36. So what we did with AI is like, you take a screenshot from Spotify or Apple Podcasts, we use OCR optical character recognition to figure out what's the name of the podcast, what's the episode, what's the timestamp. Then we go and look at, like, do, like, speech to text to figure out, like, all right, what was the text around that time? And the cool thing is, like, you actually don't have to set a beginning and end. Like, we. We understand the context based on this conversation and the screenshot. Like, more or less. They were talking about, like, Akio Morita story of simplicity. So here's the transcript and here's the audio clip, and you basically have this library of, like, insights from podcasts so that the time you spend, like, listening to podcasts is not wasted.
- [19:15]
A
So I. I absolutely love it. So I believe that screenshots are the new bookmarks. So. And a lot of people, I notice, screenshot this, this podcast, and they'll send me a DM and they'll be like, hey, at minute two, minute 35, you said this. It also kind of reminds me of how I use Twitter bookmarks. So I'm a bookmark person, but I never go back to the bookmarks. And it's too bad, because the reality is the interface on X is not conducive to remembering and capturing insights. So if I'm you, by the way, this is exactly what I'm building. Because based on what I know about Sublime and, like, the mission around capturing insights and becoming more creative and stuff like that, it feels like if I were you, I'd create a bunch of micro apps that do one thing really.
- [20:22]
B
Well and then become top of funnel.
- [20:23]
A
Exactly.
- [20:24]
B
So that's exactly. Well. And that's why I led with a story of simplicity, because we could have built this within Sublime. But it's like you said, people's mental model when they use Twitter is like scrolling for the ephemeral. It's not archival. So I just think people have a mental model of how they engage with products, and you have to do just one thing and do it well.
- [20:44]
A
Yeah.
- [20:44]
B
So this is. What do you think of the name? Podcast Magic.
- [20:47]
A
Podcast Magic.
- [20:48]
B
We have a better name.
- [20:49]
A
I mean, I'm a name guy. You know, I don't have one off the top of my head. That's better than doctor podcast.
- [21:00]
B
You and doctors.
- [21:02]
A
It's a doctor type of morning. But why I don't love it is I feel like the trend around the sparkles for AI and the magic of AI will lose. It's starting to lose, like, its magic, so to speak. So I just wonder, I wonder, like, you know, what makes Google such a good search engine is it's a verb.
- [21:36]
B
Yeah.
- [21:36]
A
So I wonder, like, what's the verb for doing a screenshot that's of a podcast? Right. So like, is it a pod shot? Yeah, like, maybe it's pod shot. And it's like, oh, I just did a pod shot and sent it to you.
- [21:49]
B
That actually potshot.
- [21:50]
A
There we go.
- [21:54]
B
So, yeah. So I guess the thing for that idea, I think is starting small. Like, people are going to say, like, screenshots are the future. So do screenshots of this or that. But it has to be strictly limited to podcasts, I think, for it to work.
- [22:07]
A
Yes.
- [22:07]
B
Because that way, I think the advantage of doing something so specific is distribution. There is no better place to distribute this than podcasts. Whereas if you're doing screenshots of a million things, it's less relevant to a podcast.
- [22:24]
A
So you're talking about an insight that I want to double down on, which is. Or double click into, which is kind of the future of building startups is not by building a startup, it's by building a micro startup. So the old way of building a startup was you had this big idea and you went and go built this big idea and you iterated your way to product market fit. But I actually think now, especially with AI and how easy it is to build, it makes sense to be like, okay, I want, you know, here's my big vision. Here's what my startup could look like in five, 10 years. This is like, draw it out. But then being like, okay, how do I unbundle my startup? So you go through an unbundling process and then you write out what are the five to ten micro startups.
- [23:15]
B
Yes.
- [23:16]
A
And then from that you prioritize around which ones do I think have the highest likelihoods of going viral or spreading. And then from that you prioritize what are the easiest way. You know this. Yeah. What's. What's the effort estimate for this startup versus that startup. And then you do something with low effort estimate. And then your job as a startup builder is you're building multiple of these. Basically.
- [23:46]
B
Yes. Well, what I love about what you're saying is that I think the key is to have that 10 year vision in your head and work backwards. Because the reality is I think a lot of founders fall in love with I'm going to build an empire, a one stop shop, you know, a collection of products. But users don't think that way. They think about like a job to be done, but for Sublime specifically. So I remember if you remember the Rome craze from like the note taking days, I remember the founder saying something like, we're not competing with Evernote, we're competing with Google. And as somebody who's been building and living and breathing this space, it's impossible like from a product architecture perspective to become that if you don't really have that foundation from day zero, like Sublime from day zero. We were so conscious about every decision we made because we felt that even though we don't pitch it as this, like over time because of the multiplayer foundation, this becomes like the world's best curated inspiration engine for ideas. But you had to make that into the foundation. Even though if I start like pitching Sublime as like an inspiration engine and a personal, it just becomes too overwhelming.
- [24:56]
A
Also people don't look for an inspiration engine.
- [24:59]
B
People don't look for an inspiration engine. It's like not.
- [25:00]
A
That's a mistake a lot of founders make is they write out their 10 year vision and it's like I'm creating the inspiration engine and then go look at Google trends data. Like no one is searching.
- [25:11]
B
Nobody's searching that. Right. So. Right. But I think it's still useful to know how this like ecosystem will work. But I think to your point, I think the most effective thing a founder can do, there's the meme of first founders think about products, second founders think about distribution. I think that's spot on. I think you need to think about what is the headline that will make this thing go viral. I think the headline for a potshot app is a lot clearer and better than a headline for a mission driven thing that will maybe appeal to VCs but not really to a consumer that's scrolling TikTok or whatever. So I think that founders need to think of the headline first and then work backwards. If you have this big vision, okay, how do you piecemeal that into a headline for a micro product that could go viral and then build that 100%.
- [26:07]
A
And the beauty is you can test that, you can test those headlines, create some ads, see, you know, see what resonates with people before you go and you know, raise millions of dollars and, or spend your own money and time to go Build a big software.
- [26:23]
B
Yeah, I mean, I. The whole like testing thing with ads, like, I don't really know how to do that. Yeah, I feel like. I feel like everything I want to do needs to have a high bar for polish. I don't really know. I don't really know how that could be effective at telling you if it's going to work or not. If it's not done to the degree of polish that ultimately the thing would have. So I struggle with the test with an ad.
- [26:52]
A
So how to test with ads, I would say is you still need to build your micro app or startup, but what you can test is the positioning. So you can do a. You can do an ad where it's like find your creativity or you can do an ad that's like screenshot your or get insights from podcasts and you can see what resonates. And then from that you could do conversion rate optimization on your main product. That's the Lean Startup old school book at this point. But the Lean Startup by Eric Ries talks about how you don't need to actually build anything. You can put a landing page, you can send traffic to it, and based on that you can figure out what to build.
- [27:44]
B
I don't think that works anymore.
- [27:45]
A
I think that it's like, why would you do that in an AI world where building isn't the hard part? Yeah, I think that worked maybe a long time ago when idea to production took 18 months, but if it takes 18 days, it's kind of.
- [28:01]
B
I also think that work to like the bar for consumers is so high these days. Yeah, we've been spoiled with incredible software. Like every time I use Uber Instacart, like, this is like, we are just so spoiled that the bar for polish, like, nobody wants a minimum viable product. People want something awesome. People want something that moves them, that like, is emotionally compelling. And I think you can do that in cheap ways. But I think you need a fantastic copy. I think you need somebody that understands humans and emotion. And I just don't think that it's an optimization thing. I think it's like an emotion thing.
- [28:41]
A
It's tough. I think some people, like you talked about art versus science basically earlier. Some people get to the positioning and the product via taking out ads, putting their money where their mouth is and iterating their way to success. And some people are. And that's like science. And some people are more like, I need to go and like go on a journey to like go and figure this out. And it's more of this like intuition.
- [29:15]
B
Yeah, it's a soul question.
- [29:16]
A
Yeah.
- [29:16]
B
Well, so my resolution for this year is like, take less feedback. Like I just want like every time I have a dilemma for like a product question, I ask 10 people, I get 10 different answers. It takes me further from myself. I think there's like you said there's two. You could succeed both ways, but you have to know who you are.
- [29:36]
A
Exactly.
- [29:36]
B
And I know that I just need to like dial up on my intuition and like, just like tune out the noise. And I think especially with Sublime where I am building the product, I wish I had. The more I hear other people's opinions, the further I get from like what I actually want. So I think last year I overdosed on feedback. I did over a thousand onboarding calls. And this year I want the opposite. I just, I wanna, I wanna create things that have more edge. Like the language that might, you know, like it might polarize some people, but it's okay, you know, I just think that there's no room today for like the bland. You know, you just have to like stand for something and you can't do that. Like if you take feedback from everybody, you're reverting to the mean.
- [30:21]
A
How many, how many customer feedback calls do you think you'll take this year?
- [30:25]
B
So we actually like promised the first 1,000 paying customers that they'd have a one on one onboarding call. So we got our first thousand customers. So in theory I owe no more onboarding calls. I still, I mean I still like to talk to people. You know, I think that like being a founder is like this very like schizophrenic experience where you're going from like abstract figma screens to like, you know, like it's so I think talking to people it reminds you that they're like people on the other side of things that are like benefiting from what you do. So I think it's important. But I, I don't know, I just think that what, what I want this year is like more time to go deep and like just come up on the other side with stuff that's weirder.
- [31:08]
A
I want to hear your other idea that you have. But before we do that, I want to tell you a quick story of something that happened to me. So I saw that a really well known founder with a many multi billion dollar exit and a mainstream technology product started following me on X. And I reached out and I said, and he started a new startup recently. And I reached out and I'm like, hey, I like what your new startup is doing, by the way. I'm very excited about it. And he was like, oh, late checkout. Should use our software. And I was like, okay. And he's like, let me connect you with my team. And then I see on the okay, so we schedule a time and I see on the calendar invite that the founder is on the call. It's literally like a sales call and he's coming to the call. And I was so shocked because I couldn't believe that this billionaire was taking sales calls with essentially random people from the Internet. And that inspired me to, for 2025, to take more sales calls, more customer journey. So the reason I bring that up is every founder, depending on where they are in their cycle, they may be like, I need more feedback or less feedback. And it's important to know where you are.
- [32:41]
B
Totally. It's interesting. I mean, I feel like one of my kind of like mantras in life is like, both are true. You know, I think people don't embrace nuance. It's like you either believe in feedback or you don't. And it's like, no, it's pretty nuanced. I spent all of last year getting feedback. Now I need to go deep and I don't want to stay at the surface of calls. I need to go deep. I need to actually think about what all of these calls mean and how do I combine those calls with my intuition. So I don't think it's like people that like. My resolution is to take less feedback. Doesn't mean I don't believe in feedback. It just is about, where am I?
- [33:18]
A
You have one last idea for us?
- [33:19]
B
I have one last idea. So again, the theme is like, do one thing and do it well. So the broad idea is take an article, a link, a presentation, a long piece of text, anything, and convert it into a meme. So my flavor of content on the Internet is substack. That is where I naturally thrive. It's long form written content. I have 30,000 readers on substack. But again, it's people that are super engaged with long form. And it's great, but it's harder to grow. How many people are going to devote 20 minutes a week to reading what I say? Memes are this unit of cultural transmission that in a time crunched world say so much and so little. And I think that people that are creating like presentations, long form videos, like they would die to have like whatever they're trying to say be conveyed into like the format of a meme. Like, I just genuinely think that no idea will become mainstream if it's not like captured in a meme. And so I think the idea is like, you know, it's a GPT wrapper of sorts, but you have to train it on a model of like a lot of memes, culturally relevant memes, and the user experience, like the value proposition is like, be funny, you know, like, how do you communicate your idea in a way that's like funny and like short form. Right. So anyone that's creating long form content like, like would love to have a meme. And I've tried this on Cloud, I've tried this on ChatGPT, but it's, it's pretty generic. So I think if you train it on this curated library of culturally relevant means and it has a bias for the present, which ChatGPT and Cloud don't have. I think there's just a product UI experience that's just like, do one thing, do it well, paste a link, type text, upload file, whatever. We ingest it, generate embeddings for the thing, understand it.
- [35:24]
A
And then I hear a lot of ideas and this might be one of my favorite ideas I've heard in a long time. I'm serious.
- [35:35]
B
Let's do it.
- [35:36]
A
This is like the insight is correct. I think there's so much, there's so much insight trapped into long form that could be put into short form. And how that's being done today is people are taking long form video and turning into short form clips, but they're not taking long form text and turning into memes. I think that there's a nuance to memes. Like certain memes resonate with certain communities. And so you don't want to mess up the meme. Right. And you want to make sure that you're getting the most. Like you don't want to post a meme when the meme is done like that.
- [36:25]
B
Yes. Format, there's a cultural like relevance.
- [36:27]
A
Exactly.
- [36:28]
B
Stay like in tune with.
- [36:29]
A
So that's, that's going to be, that's going to take iteration to get to like prime time. But if, if you're able to create this, if someone ends up building this, this is like a, you know, a $10 million a year plus SaaS business.
- [36:43]
B
Well, it's, it's interesting if you think about an interesting comp is Google's Notebook lm where it was a pretty broad product where you could converse with your knowledge in some way. But what actually made it go viral, this tool was the ability to convert anything. It could be like text or presentation, like any sort of document into a podcast. And so I just think that this idea of like convert, like take X, like X to meme, you know, and like the key is like you can ingest all this stuff with like, you know, like how do you convert and understand the meaning of the document and then train it on the other side. So it's got some curation, but it's really a GPT wrapper.
- [37:18]
A
I love it.
- [37:19]
B
Product experience.
- [37:20]
A
I love it. Sorry. This has been fun. You got to come back again.
- [37:23]
B
Yeah.
- [37:24]
A
Anytime you have to come back on again.
- [37:27]
B
I'm a big ideas person, but yeah, I think right now my playbook right now is have this multi decade project, my life's work and then launch micro product.
- [37:41]
A
I think that's right. It's making me rethink some stuff in my own stuff. So thank you.
- [37:50]
B
Yeah, thank you. This is awesome.
- [37:52]
A
And where could people learn more about you and Sublime?
- [37:57]
B
I'm on Twitter Aryazout, I'm on Substack, I write a weekly newsletter and then I'm on Sublime. Sublime app Sari.
- [38:05]
A
I love it. I should get on there.
- [38:07]
B
Yeah. Today we're not leaving this without. All right, thanks, Greg.
- [38:14]
A
Thank you. See you next time.