Brainstorming Million Dollar Ideas with Elaine Zelby | My First Million Ep. #175

SaaS Bundles, Adulting Vaults, and Unicorn Investments - April 26, 2021 (almost 4 years ago) • 01:13:31

This My First Million podcast episode features Shaan Puri and Sam Parr interviewing Elaine Zelby, a VC partner at SignalFire. They discuss her approach to venture capital, her Substack focused on startup ideas, and several specific business concepts. The conversation touches on SignalFire's data-driven investment strategy, Shaan's recent unicorn investment, and various business models.

SignalFire's Data Approach: Elaine explains SignalFire's strategy of leveraging data to identify promising startups and assist portfolio companies, emphasizing the aggregation and unique combination of multiple data sources rather than relying on single datasets.
Shaan's Unicorn Investment: Shaan shares his experience investing in Deel, a platform for managing international payroll and compliance, highlighting its simplified approach to contractor payments and its recent billion-dollar valuation.
Startup SaaS Bundle: Elaine proposes a bundled SaaS product for early-stage startups, offering core functionalities of various essential software tools in one integrated platform to simplify operations and reduce vendor management overhead.
Adulting Vault: She suggests a centralized platform for managing all aspects of adult life, from bills and subscriptions to financial products and insurance policies, offering personalized recommendations and automated reminders.
Snoo for Adults: Elaine pitches the idea of a high-tech bed designed for optimal sleep, incorporating features like temperature control, rocking motions, noise cancellation, and light deprivation, inspired by the Snoo smart bassinet.
Subscription Running Shoes: She proposes a subscription service for running shoes, automatically delivering new shoes based on mileage tracked by wearable devices, catering to runners' brand loyalty and simplifying the replacement process.
TheraPunch: Elaine introduces the concept of a rage room combined with a zen zone, providing a space for individuals to release pent-up aggression through physical activity followed by guided meditation and relaxation.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	By the way, by the way, the first unicorn officially today! One of my angel investments officially raised over $1,000,000,000. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to be.
00:20	Sam Parr	Alright everyone, we have a great episode! But first, before we get into it, I've got a huge favor to ask. There's this new feature in the iTunes Store, and I want to show it to you. I want to be one of the first to use it. So, go type in "My First Million"—or hopefully, you already are. If you're not, and if you're on an Android, you can ignore this for now. As a matter of fact, you can do this through Spotify as well. So, go to your iTunes Store right now, or your podcast app—my apologies, podcast app. Type in "My First Million" and find our podcast. Then, you're going to see a button. It should be blue on podcasts, and it says "Subscribe." Click that button, and something really amazing is going to happen. I want you to tweet at me, @TheSamParr, with a picture of that. You're going to see this brand new feature that Apple just relaunched. It's a really cool hack that we just discovered. So, click that button and tell us what happened!
01:08	Shaan Puri	this is what they were talking about in the keynote yesterday right
01:10	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's like a big deal. Only a few people got access to it. I knew a guy, and I got access to it. So go ahead and click that subscribe button. If you're on Spotify, I talked to Daniel Ek. He actually... they're releasing something too. Click the button that says follow.
01:23	Shaan Puri	daniel elk the cousin of daniel ek the actual founder of spotify right
01:26	Sam Parr	It's their cousins. It's a Norwegian thing, or you know, a Swedish thing, whatever he is. It's a Scandinavian thing. Anyway, today we've got a great episode. Sean, who do we have?
01:36	Shaan Puri	We had Elaine Zelby on. She's a VC at Signalfire, and more importantly, she is an idea woman. She has a Substack that features three new ideas every week, very much like what we do. She also does this thing called... I don't know what it's called, but it's a podcast about boring businesses, like "Unsexy."
01:54	Sam Parr	called unsexy
01:55	Shaan Puri	Unsexy... it's about, like, you know, "Oh, you run a chemical plant? Tell me about that." You know, so things like that. She's very much in line with what we do. We brainstormed a bunch of ideas. We talked about ideas like the Adulting Vault—we'll tell you what that is—the Snoo Sleep Bed for adults, and Therapunch was one of the ideas. A subscription shoe company idea was also discussed. And then we also had one more...
02:18	Sam Parr	the the start up saas bundle that was the best one
02:21	Shaan Puri	Start up SaaS bundle. She kind of gave us a peek under the hood. SignalFire has this thing that's like a data machine that spits out great investments using all 27 different data signals. We asked her, "Hey, is that bullshit? Is that just marketing?" It seems like it's just marketing. Is that bullshit? She gave a pretty good response, so we talked about that as well.
02:42	Sam Parr	Alright, we're gonna get to the episode, but first, remember to go to the podcast store. Click that button that says "subscribe," and then you have to send me a picture on Twitter @SamParr. You're gonna see this new feature that Apple released. I promise it's gonna be worth it, so make sure everyone does it right now. Thank you! So, Alain, hey, what's going on? I'm Sam Parr. We haven't met. I think you were on the podcast before when I was sick. Yes.
03:06	Shaan Puri	So Sam, last time she was on, she had one idea... well, two ideas. One that went kinda semi-viral was the milk bombs idea. It's like a functional milk bomb. I don't know if you even know what that means... Yeah, you get the picture. Basically, you dunk a little... like a bath bomb. You dunk it into your milk, and it sort of has a little fizzy, color, whatever experience. You're adding some adaptogens or nootropics or whatever to your milk. I thought that was kinda interesting. People liked that one a lot.
03:35	Sam Parr	but now that we have like these viral video people
03:39	Shaan Puri	oh it would be on a whole another level now
03:41	Sam Parr	yeah should we ask her to because that's like a that's like a pretty virally thing but sorry go ahead
03:46	Shaan Puri	We'll do that one again. The other idea I really liked was fantasy football for stocks. So basically, we could create a little game. Let's say we could create a game with me, you, Andrew, and whoever else. We each get our budget and allocate it into a portfolio that you can change, I don't know, every month or so. Then we see whose portfolio would have performed the best. It's like fantasy football where you get points based on the ups and downs of the stock. It's a very social way to gamble or bet on stocks. What did you think of that one, Sam?
04:19	Sam Parr	I used to do that as a kid didn't we do that as a kid in like class
04:22	Shaan Puri	There was a thing back in like 7th grade, I think everybody did this one fantasy portfolio for about a month at school. But it hasn't... it was pretty rudimentary then and it never made its way out. So I think somebody who worked at Yahoo Fantasy Football, they should just basically fork everything they learned about how to make Yahoo Fantasy Football viral and be like: "Cool, I'm gonna do that, except instead of, you know, the Patriots, it's gonna be Amazon and Tesla and whatnot."
04:48	Sam Parr	Did you folks, have you guys used... is it called the... they were one of our sponsors? Was it Webull? What's the Israeli Coinbase competitor?
05:00	Shaan Puri	israeli coinbase
05:01	Elaine Zelby	israeli
05:02	Sam Parr	yeah they're yeah yeah I think one of those words
05:04	Shaan Puri	is wrong coinbase it's an exchange crypto
05:08	Sam Parr	yeah yeah yeah well it's like a robinhood both coinbase well they what what what what was the difference
05:13	Shaan Puri	wefunder is that what you're talking about or like no
05:14	Sam Parr	it was like weebull
05:15	Elaine Zelby	it's like crowdfunding
05:17	Sam Parr	But they... I think it's Webull. They have this feature, so basically it's like a stock investing platform.
05:23	Shaan Puri	I know jevo webull like b u l l yes
05:25	Sam Parr	is it webull
05:26	Shaan Puri	yeah yeah yeah
05:27	Elaine Zelby	yeah yeah
05:28	Sam Parr	Is that the one? But anyway, they have this feature where you can sign up and choose to share your portfolio with anyone. People can copy you, and I thought that was kind of amazing. It's kind of like... [turns?] and you'll be like, "Invest in their fund." I don't even think they make any money off of it. It's just like a... point of pride.
05:47	Shaan Puri	A bunch of these that came out in the last, I don't know, two years. Elaine, you've probably seen all of them. Public came out as one of the Robinhood competitors, where it's like a social network, a social feed where you could see what people are investing in. Then there are the more extreme versions, like what you're talking about, like Doji. I think is one of them. In Doji, I create kind of like my little basket of stocks, and I call it, you know, the "Sean Index." Then you could just straight up buy the Sean Index and invest in all my stocks. I get kind of like... it's like my index becomes more popular because you've invested in it and you trust me. It shows that you follow it or you invested in it.
06:21	Elaine Zelby	Well, in 2017, Eric Voorhees, who was the guy that created ShapeShift, actually created Satoshi Dice. He was super, super early in the crypto space. He launched something that never got out of private beta called Prism. You could create a basket of tokens. This was when all the altcoins started popping up on Ethereum. You could show, for example, Sean's basket of tokens and Sam's, and you could watch. I could follow you and I could just invest in your basket of tokens, right? But it was a competition too, and I thought it was such a great idea. I'm not sure why it never got off the ground, but it was cool. I dug it.
06:52	Sam Parr	Can I ask you, Elaine, what is Signalfire? I'm on your website, and your landing page says, "I want whatever you're selling," but I'm still a little confused as to what it is.
07:04	Elaine Zelby	So, we do that a little bit on purpose. We are a venture capital firm, but we're actually structured and operate a lot more like a technology company. If you look at our team, we're about a third engineers and data scientists building products. We're about a third people on our platform; these are like the in-house business people doing PR, recruiting, and growth. Then we have investment, and we essentially monetize via the investment vehicle. We're currently investing from our Fund 3, which is $500,000,000. But, you know, we don't have "capital" in the name, we don't have "ventures" in the name. We definitely try to be a little bit more startup-y than the traditional VC.
07:39	Sam Parr	So, are you using some type of data on your web page, like on the landing page, to spot trends? Is that correct?
07:47	Elaine Zelby	So, we buy, scrape, or aggregate every data signal you could possibly imagine. Our engineers have proprietary algorithms that use that data to do one of two things. 1. We have different systems that are alerting systems for us on the investment side. They pull in all these signals and try to show us at seed, at Series A, and at Series B who the cool companies are and what we should be looking at. They also provide trends around markets, fundraising trends, and things like that. 2. We have a bunch of products for the portfolio around talent migration and talent movement. We analyze who’s good, who’s in the market from a hiring perspective, competitive intelligence, co-spend analysis, market intelligence, and all that kind of stuff.
08:24	Sam Parr	Do you... so, like, when a lot of people, like, when Sean and I probably have both started our things, which, like, granted, our...
08:31	Shaan Puri	By the way, by the way, the first unicorn officially today! One of my angel investments officially raised over $1,000,000,000. Although, I gotta say, it's not super exciting because it's a company I was trying to invest in from the seed stage. But at that time, I wasn't really focused on it; I was running my company. I only wanted to invest because I thought it was a great idea and I liked the founder. However, I forgot to follow up. Then, when I did follow up, he said, "Oh dude, we closed that like 2 months ago. Sorry, I'll get you into the next round." When the A round came around, it was like, "Oh dude, it's super competitive. Sorry, I'm not gonna be able to get you in." Finally, he messaged me and said, "Hey man, I'm gonna make sure I get you in this time. I feel like I messed you over. You missed it the first time, but we're definitely gonna get you in here in the B round at a $200,000,000 valuation." I was like, "Bro, $200,000,000? I knew you when you were a baby! This is way too high." Alright, fuck it, I'm in. And so that company is now worth over a billion dollars.
09:28	Sam Parr	I
09:29	Shaan Puri	don't know if I could I well we'll say I might I might bleep it out know
09:32	Elaine Zelby	juan you have to tell
09:33	Shaan Puri	we may have to bleep it out because you may not have announced it yet but it's a company called deal and they do
09:38	Elaine Zelby	my husband and I were talking about that one this morning
09:40	Shaan Puri	yeah okay what were you guys talking about my first unicorn because I appreciate that
09:45	Elaine Zelby	Yes, the joke is this: this is essentially a company I wanted to build three years ago. I started seeing every startup that had 10 employees was beginning to hire internationally. They had to treat these employees as contractors, and there was no way to manage it. If I looked under the hood, most companies were using Shield GEO as the PEO, and everyone hated it. It was super old school. So I thought, "Okay, somebody needs to go and build a better Shield GEO." I envisioned doing kind of the Plaid model—building the nitty-gritty, going into each country where people in the U.S. hire remotely, and building out the infrastructure. We would go and find every startup and say, "Hey, we're going to handle all the hiring, payroll, compliance, everything for your remote people." I love it! I think it's such a good idea.
10:27	Sam Parr	wait so what sorry how do you spell it sean
10:30	Shaan Puri	d e e l
10:32	Elaine Zelby	I think the url is letsdeal.com unless they
10:34	Shaan Puri	change it I think they got deal.com also now
10:36	Sam Parr	oh good for them cool
10:38	Shaan Puri	So, I actually use it. That's how I pay any contractors that I work with. Even if they're in the U.S., I'm like, "Oh, this is just way easier." I just type in their name, say what the contract is, and every month I'm going to pay them this on the 1st of the month. It's like, "Would you like an NDA with that?" I'm like, "Yeah, why not? Let's add on an NDA." They're like, "Great! Would you like to add a milestone-based payment?" I'm like, "You know what? That's a good idea. I do like milestone-based payments; that aligns our incentives." It's like, boom! Here's a contract. We've sent it to them, and when they'll sign it, it'll be kept in your records automatically for you. We took care of all the compliance and tax issues that you're going to have to deal with based on where they live. We'll connect to your bank, and then it'll auto-pay every month for you and send you an invoice when you're done. I was like, "Oh wow, that's great! You just eliminated the need for me to have a person who does that whole thing."
11:23	Sam Parr	By the way, it's on their page that they've just raised money at a $1,000,000,000 valuation. So, you're good.
11:28	Elaine Zelby	Biggest competitors? There are two big ones: Papaya Global and Remote.com. Deal started out a little bit differently. The other two said, "Hey, we're gonna really focus on full-time employment internationally." They focused on contractors and they've had to shift, from my understanding, a little bit because in reality, you don't just have contractors for the most part. You want a one-stop shop; you don't want to go and have different solutions for the different types of employees, right? So I think they now have everything.
11:53	Shaan Puri	exactly they they now do everything they also let you like pay in crypto and pay in every currency
11:57	Sam Parr	and like you know
11:58	Shaan Puri	They're doing all those kind of gnarly problems, which is great. I almost invested in Remote.com. Also, I really like that guy. His name is Job; I think it's pronounced slightly differently, but it's spelled J-O-B. I just love that whenever it's like, "Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world," I'm like, "This guy named Job is creating the platform for hiring remote workers." Like, okay, I'm in. I'm interested. And he was like, so...
12:23	Sam Parr	what makes you interested in this company deal
12:25	Shaan Puri	As soon as I heard the idea, I was like, "Oh yeah, that's a pain. Like, that's a real pain." I don't know how people solve it, but I looked at their website and saw that it was really simple. I'm not that sophisticated, right? It's like, "Yes, this is a real problem." Then I go to your website and I'm like, "Oh, you're one of the easy-to-use products," which is just kind of the standard best practices of design. You have clear colors, good fonts, and clear copy. Two clicks and you're done. I was like, "Oh yeah, this is gonna win." So then I started reaching out to the founder. I met with them and I was like, "Oh, this is amazing! Let's do something." Unfortunately, this would have been a much, much bigger return had I just been a little bit more proactive about following up before. But, you know, I feel like I learned that lesson 30 times.
13:07	Sam Parr	You invested $10,000 in them. Let's say, would that mean that it's worth like what, five times more?
13:13	Shaan Puri	well at the current valuation yeah
13:15	Elaine Zelby	on paper
13:16	Shaan Puri	On paper, yeah, it worked out. But if I had done it at the seed stage, it would have been... you know, maybe I think the seed was probably like $10-15 million coming out of Y Combinator. And so, that's taking $10 million and turning it into $1 billion in terms of the multiple, plus dilution, blah blah blah. Not that interesting. More importantly, I can now say I invested in a unicorn. So that's just a stamp that I needed to collect here.
13:40	Elaine Zelby	Also, I appreciate your honesty that you invested at the beginning because so many people will come in at later rounds and be like, "I made all these unicorns," and they invested in the previous round.
13:49	Sam Parr	What I wanted to ask, though, was Elaine. When I started my company, I just thought, "This seems like it could work, and it's fun, and I'm good at it." I bet Sean kind of did the same, where he's like, "Yeah, it might work." SignalFire seems far more analytical. My question is, in reality, do you actually think that matters? If I'm trying to start something, do you think that the likelihood of my success would be different if I said, "Elaine, give me three things to start," versus just going to do whatever? Do you think you would bet on that?
14:24	Shaan Puri	Let me give you an example here of honesty. When I started my rolling fund, the marketing was, "I have this big podcast that's going to help me get deal flow." Well, okay, if you have a podcast that does 5,000,000 downloads a year in the business or startup niche, that's a unique asset. I see how you're different from the other funds. In reality, most of my deals don't come from podcast listeners sending me stuff or reaching out to me. Most of the deals are from the same five friends who email me when they see something cool. That would have been much less sexy to talk about, like, "Oh, I have five great friends who will email me cool stuff, and I email them cool stuff." But in reality, that's how the best deals happen. Or, I'm just bored on Twitter a lot. When I see something cool, I reach out. Again, that doesn't sound great for my fund marketing, but it is closer to reality. So the question is basically: How often are your deals because your computer program is like, "Do, do, do, this company is undervalued, growing fast, nobody's heard of it," versus another fund shares something with you, or you guys are interested in the space and you see something cool on Product Hunt or whatever, and you reach out? That's how it happens. So can you give us the truth?
15:29	Elaine Zelby	Well, in general, venture capital involves selling the most commoditized asset you can imagine: money. In terms of differentiation, having this podcast and a different model does go a long way. If I break up venture capital into five stages, they are: sourcing, diligencing, picking winners, and supporting. We try to leverage data in probably four of the five different categories. On the sourcing side, we've definitely done deals that were completely from our alerting system. In addition, we do a ton more outbound than the average firm. We go into these meetings and triage based on, "Oh, this looks interesting," and "Oh, Elaine is connected to the founder," or "Elaine knows about this industry," so we follow up accordingly. We do a lot more outbound than traditional firms. Is it the majority of our deals? No. On the diligence side, we really try to understand how good these people are. We give people talent scores, understand hiring patterns, mobile app downloads, Alexa score trends, and a lot of the stuff you guys look at in similar web or Ahrefs. We're just doing it on a different level. But I would say where we have the most value...
16:39	Sam Parr	Wait, hold on. But does that level actually matter? So you basically said that you must listen because we... I talk about reps all the time, we talk about SimilarWeb all the time. That's like anyone could do that for either free or for $100 a month, and it's like I could just skim it and I kinda have an idea. You kind of implied that you do that times 10 or whatever it is. Is that way actually better than our way?
17:04	Elaine Zelby	I think in our industry it does actually move the needle for us
17:07	Shaan Puri	So, give us an example. Like, you know, if I'm watching "1,000,000,000" and I'm like, "Oh shit, Bobby Axel, he gets satellite data and he can see how many trucks are leaving the factory every day." That's how he... blah blah blah. I've seen some things in VC where it's like, you know, everybody's kind of got App Annie or whatever, like something to look at app growth. But, you know, I don't know about 2nd Measure, where you get credit card spending data aggregated. That can be more interesting. Or, like, if you're plugged in with Pipe or somebody, you could see recurring revenue businesses that are growing in some way before maybe others do. So, I'm curious, what's a cool data source? Can you give me an example? Like, "Oh, we have this one data source that helped us spot this cool company." Can you tell a story like that?
17:49	Elaine Zelby	So it's not the one data source piece, it's the fact that we buy or have access to all of them and then we combine them in unique ways. It's really about the joining of the data and what that surfaces for us. That could be, again, on the... you know, we look at things like business filings, and then we combine that with data on: - Okay, well what is their website? - What are their app downloads? This approach allows us to create a more comprehensive picture by integrating multiple data sources.
18:08	Shaan Puri	what do you mean business filings like incorporation or what what do you mean
18:11	Elaine Zelby	Yeah, so exactly. I can understand that, you know, somebody is a founder based in San Francisco. They just incorporated their company as a Delaware C Corporation. I can then know when they filed for incorporation. I know who the person is. I can put them through our talent ranking score or our founder ranking score. I can then see who they are working with, how good those people are, what the business category is, and how interesting that is for us. How investable is the timing? So we have a kind of timing alerting system too. Those things combined will then give it a score, saying, "Okay, this one you should look at," versus when you shouldn't, based off of the aggregate score. That's the piece that I think actually helps, not the single dataset or the single piece of info.
18:50	Sam Parr	you guys have a score
18:51	Shaan Puri	can you give me my founder score what what am I
18:54	Elaine Zelby	I could but I don't think I'm allowed to
18:56	Shaan Puri	Oh, come on! What's going on? This is the best marketing ever for Signifier, I know!
19:02	Elaine Zelby	We actually do score. We give people ranks. It's, you know, one is like the number one person we think in our list right now, and then it kind of goes down.
19:09	Sam Parr	from there
19:10	Shaan Puri	It's like a chess ranking. You know, it's like an Elo score, basically. Everyone is actually ranked from 1 to 1,000,000 or whatever.
19:17	Elaine Zelby	pretty much yeah exactly and it changes it changes as a percentage of
19:20	Shaan Puri	what's what's going on
19:22	Elaine Zelby	No, because it's for us... We only invest in Series A and Series B, so I don't care about people in those other categories. I want to know who are the best people starting companies right now that are actively looking for funding.
19:33	Shaan Puri	gotcha
19:34	Elaine Zelby	Okay, the timeliness is actually really important. But the thing that's also really cool about what we can do is this: I'll give you a really concrete example. We have a company that is in the Shopify eCommerce infrastructure ecosystem. They were looking to say, "Hey, we want to target..." I'm going to make these numbers up, but "we want to target every merchant who has between $10,000 and $100,000,000 in revenue in these four categories." And here are three buyer titles. Oh, and like, here's where they need to be located. We can go and pull all that data. We match that up to the people at the company, so we say, "Here are their email addresses. Here are the people you should go after." We create this kind of custom lead list for them. Being able to do that is really, really impactful.
20:13	Shaan Puri	that's on the support the company said so and you guys sell access to this platform right like this is a product no
20:18	Elaine Zelby	yeah that that's that's something
20:20	Sam Parr	I was going to ask you, because why? I mean, I bet you can make like $50 to $100 million a year in the cap world.
20:27	Shaan Puri	told me that you guys are spinning this out or considering spinning this out as a product
20:31	Elaine Zelby	We do not sell it and we don't spin it out. That's part of our whole selling point. This is within the family, so if you come and take our money and become part of the SignalFire family, you get access to all this stuff. We don't actually give it out outside of it.
20:43	Shaan Puri	interesting okay
20:45	Sam Parr	who who who came up with this
20:48	Elaine Zelby	So our founding partner, Chris Farmer, has a long history in the VC world. He kind of got frustrated, saying, "Why are we investing in these bleeding-edge tech companies and we're literally doing deals by talking to our friends?" ... kind of what Sean was alluding to. He's like, "Look, we have access to all this data. Why are we not leveraging it?" And so he had kind of spun this out in his last firm and then created an entire fund cycle around it, a firm around it.
21:12	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I'm gonna say I still think it's 50% marketing and 50% useful. But that's higher than it was in my head an hour ago, where I would have said it's 90% just marketing and 10% useful. So you've done a good job; you've moved.
21:23	Sam Parr	in he's right elaine
21:24	Shaan Puri	40 +
21:24	Elaine Zelby	say that again
21:25	Sam Parr	is he right
21:27	Elaine Zelby	In terms of what it is, I would say it's more useful than not, for sure. Especially, I think the two areas I would highlight are the barbells. It's definitely useful on the flagging side, sourcing companies that we would never have seen. It's also very, very useful on the supporting side. Honestly, as I mentioned before, we kind of say we're a startup. We do OKRs, we measure NPS scores, and we treat ourselves like a tech startup in terms of how we operate. For us, we care so much about our NPS. We care so much about whether we are moving the needle for founders. So if we can be, you know, if that's the only place that it's really valuable, that's enough. You know, that's really enough.
22:06	Shaan Puri	for us
22:06	Sam Parr	did you
22:06	Shaan Puri	ever hear about chamath's 8 ball yeah yeah this is sort of reminds me of that
22:11	Sam Parr	yeah go this is this is gonna be a clip I tell go for it
22:14	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so Chamath, who is the founder of Social Capital, at one time was like, "Look, he came from Facebook, super data-driven growth team." He was leading the growth team and helped to grow it from whatever, 100 million users to 100 million users. He was like, "Well, why don't we have that same level of analytical rigor when it comes to our companies?" As that thought evolved, it came down to something really simple. He said, "Let's make capital as a service instead of, you know, software as a service. Capital as a service." So here's how it goes: it's self-serve. You come and you plug in your analytics. Our little algorithm will run a formula and it'll basically tell you two things. First, it'll say, "Here's how you rank relative to other SaaS companies that are your size, your age, and your kind of like price or demographic." You'll know if you're above the benchmark, if your retention is way better or way worse than other companies. Secondly, they're like, "This is our Moneyball formula to basically figure out if we should invest in you or not." They hyped it, and as a founder, it was a little bit scary, right? You're going to go, "Am I going to give Chamath like all of my data, basically pipe right into our database and just say, 'Hey, here you go'?" It feeds their system, right? Because whether they invest in us or not, they've just downloaded, "Hey, at this..."
23:28	Shaan Puri	In time, here's how this company was doing. They take your historical data as well, so it's like they sucked in all this data. If they looked at the Hustle, they'll know whether they should invest in the Hustle. But also, Morning Brew, The Skimm, and any other company like The Hustle, they'll be able to compare and contrast. As a founder, it's useful because you want to compare and contrast. But you've just, you know, opened up your blouse to them. I think that was, for me, a little bit scary. But I think some people really liked it. Ultimately, I think it was more marketing than substance. I don't know, Elaine, what's the word on the street? I don't see them using it anymore. I know that the group of people that spun off of Chamath, like Arjun and those guys from Tribe...
24:08	Elaine Zelby	tribe capital
24:08	Shaan Puri	I think they still do that, or that's a big piece of it. They don't maybe brand it that way, but I don't know. Elaine, was that like... was that legit? Was it as secret and saucy as they try to make it sound, or was it a little overhyped?
24:20	Elaine Zelby	I was never on the inside, so I have no idea. I know that it was very polarizing in terms of what you were saying. Some founders loved it, some founders hated it. In my opinion, it only works at certain stages and in certain categories. This does not work at all at the seed stage. You're betting on people for the most part, and you're betting on the growth of a category. There's no data, there's nothing that's gonna...
24:38	Shaan Puri	Most startups don't have their data structured enough or in a way that you can actually run these types of apples-to-apples analyses until you're...
24:46	Elaine Zelby	Logged in to Clearbank. Clearbank makes sense to me because you're literally saying, "Hook into my Facebook and Google data."
24:52	Shaan Puri	and shopify
24:52	Elaine Zelby	There's nothing that I could be... and there's nothing I can be fudging around that. I'm going to analyze it and say, "You put in $10 to Facebook, you get out $15." I'm going to give you a short-term high-interest loan. It works for everybody; we win. People are now doing this for Amazon sellers and to your Shopify. So, on Amazon, it's much more around working capital. People are constantly in these manufacturing cycles or cash flow negative. So they're like, "Okay, well, I can hook into your Amazon seller portal. I can see exactly what your inflow and outflow of money is. I can hook into your bank account. I should be able to do dynamic loans." So I'm never at peak exposure from a loan perspective for very long. I'm kind of like constantly pulling it in and pulling it out. That makes a ton of sense to me.
25:33	Sam Parr	Yesterday, I invested in a C-stage company, and I pretty much only did it because Sean did it. I basically thought, "This is silly. Are you in?" He goes, "I'm in." If you don't want to go in, ask him if I could have your share.
25:46	Shaan Puri	I was like, "I love it!" and he's like, "Yeah, I don't know. I think I hate it." I was like, "What's there to hate? It's amazing!" And then he's like, "Yeah, it's so good that I kinda hate just popular things. It seems so good." I was like, "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. I said if you don't want it, give me your share!" because I was asking the founder.
26:02	Sam Parr	For more, it was hypey. It was hypey. It's got all the cool kids in it. I'm like, "All the cool kids are doing it; I don't want to do it." But Sean was like, "Well, I'm doing it." I talked to the guy, and the guy seemed wonderful. I really don't even know... like, how do I?
26:14	Shaan Puri	Do we need to talk about the company now, or should we discuss it in the next episode so that there's a little distance between this conversation and that?
26:20	Sam Parr	yeah we've yeah I guess okay it's called synthesis
26:24	Shaan Puri	do you know this one elaine
26:25	Elaine Zelby	no what do they do
26:26	Shaan Puri	the algorithm didn't spot it but there
26:30	Elaine Zelby	you go
26:30	Shaan Puri	The five friends did spot this. Alright, so this is a cool company. The story of this is: have you heard of Ad Astra, which is like Elon Musk's personal school that was inside SpaceX? For those who don't know, Elon Musk is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, two kind of multi-billion dollar companies. His kids were going to school, and he basically needed to have his kids in school. He kind of thought, "You know, the traditional school system's not so great. Why don't we build a school inside SpaceX that's done the way we think?" His big theory was that in schools, they teach you, "Here's this tool," right? Like, let's say calculus or algebra. They say, "Here's algebra, go learn algebra," but they don't tell you why you need to know algebra. Maybe they should be teaching you how to run a lemonade stand, and in order to calculate how many lemons you're going to need per day, boom! We'll teach you algebra. That's a tool to help you do this thing you wanted to do. So his big thing was, "Why don't we teach kids how engines work rather than what a wrench is?" as a basic analogy. He creates this school, or he wants to have the school, and there's a guy, I think Josh is his name, who runs the school at SpaceX. It's great; it's kind of well-known. The fundamental premise was that kids were learning by really playing games. So, have you guys seen the movie Ender's Game?
27:50	Elaine Zelby	yes
27:50	Shaan Puri	So, in Ender's Game, you basically have small teams of kids. Then, you go into this one simulation area where your team (Team A) fights against Team B and C. The game always has some kind of arbitrary set of rules, but it teaches you strategy, teamwork, communication, and all the different things you need to do to win the game. Kids love it because it's competitive; it's not just sitting there listening to a lecture. Anyways, those are the same principles they took into this. Let's say they create a game that's about art. Instead of telling you, "Okay, here we're going to talk about art, so sit down and read these three chapters about the Renaissance of Italy and memorize it," they create a map. It's like, "Okay, where do you want to explore?" You pick, and you're like, "Japan." You go to Japan, find this artifact, and then you have to bid on it. The other teams are bidding on it too, and you're trying to decide, "Should we bid on this?" Well, let's go look at Italy and see what they have there. The team goes, and all these kids are playing this together on Zoom. It's a really cool, totally different alternative form of education. What ended up happening was the guy who created this at SpaceX for Elon and his kids, the game system was called Synthesis. What he did was spin it out with Elon's blessing. Elon was like, "Hey, go for it! More kids should have access to this." He paired up with this guy who was the number one engineer at ClassDojo, so he'd been working at a...
29:17	Sam Parr	edtech company signalfire is an investor
29:19	Elaine Zelby	exactly our portfolio company
29:20	Shaan Puri	and so they got together and they created this this company synthesis and they
29:25	Sam Parr	can't I guess can't share too much
29:26	Shaan Puri	Of their numbers, they have this amazing traction so far. You know, the business is only 6 to 8 months old. They spent $0 on paid marketing. All the attention has come because of free press and people who are reading about Elon’s school. They just sort of click the links and find them, and it got him.
29:41	Sam Parr	the greatest headline ever which is like elon musk spinning off school
29:45	Shaan Puri	Right, and the founder was very honest. He was like, "You know, honestly, we had a big question: does this only work if it's rocket scientist kids?" Because maybe they are willing to really engage in this material, figure it out, and play with these things. But is this accessible if your dad is not a rocket scientist at SpaceX or your mom is not a data scientist or wherever? But they found that, you know, it does work. They have super high retention and amazing revenue already in 6 months, doing multiple millions of dollars a year in revenue with $0 in paid marketing. What seems like the perfect team is in place: the guy who created the school at Elon's thing and this guy from ClassDojo. So I was like, "What's not to love? Great impact, super cool product. I want to send my own kids there." Great traction in a very short amount of time and tons of room to grow because they haven't even started marketing yet. And so I was like, "I love it." And Sam was like, "Yeah, it seems really great, but I'm skeptical of real things that everything seems great."
30:40	Sam Parr	it was expensive
30:42	Elaine Zelby	Well, can I pitch you a spin on this that I wrote about recently? You can give this to the guys because it might be interesting for them. I wrote about a concept of doing this but on top of Roblox, and the reason being Roblox already has the eyeballs and attention of kids. 75% of kids between 9-15, I think, are on Roblox. Today, you know, anybody can go and build these games, but why can't you go and build games... I was focusing more on life skills.
31:06	Shaan Puri	right
31:07	Elaine Zelby	So, things like financial literacy, which you never learn, mental health, which you never learn... all the things that you'd want either a younger kid or a teenager to learn. Gamify it, but build it where they're already there.
31:17	Shaan Puri	right
31:17	Elaine Zelby	And also, enable the kids to become the builders. Partner with some people, like these two individuals doing synthesis. Bring in some kids to make it actually appropriate and age-appropriate. Then, let them have some of the upside and allow them to spin off the games and bring in their millions of followers. I think there's something to be done on top of Roblox.
31:35	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I love that. I think that works for two reasons. 1. Teaching kids through games is not a new idea. When I was a kid, I was playing Math Blaster and whatever else—these little games on whatever. We had a computer room at my house, and I used to go there and get to play for an hour a day. So, teaching kids through games has obviously been around for a while. But now, the games are already built with tons of love. Kids already know the controls, like in Fortnite or Roblox. They already know how to play, they're super familiar with it, and they love the game. Additionally, Roblox and Fortnite have created these open-world systems where you can go build whatever you want and just share the link. It makes total sense to me to borrow the millions of dollars they poured into their game engine, marketing, and distribution, where they already have kids with accounts, to just say now...
32:25	Sam Parr	all we
32:25	Shaan Puri	Have to build is the learning experience. I think that is a great idea.
32:31	Sam Parr	can I ask you and
32:31	Elaine Zelby	they might be able to port it over you know they can port some of these games to roblox
32:35	Sam Parr	Can I ask you about something you wrote about? So you have Lane has a Substack. Is it zelby.substack.com? Three things, yeah.
32:44	Elaine Zelby	it's just my last name
32:46	Sam Parr	it's it's cool it's it's a
32:48	Shaan Puri	lot like this podcast you basically put out 3 kinda business ideas a week right is that the idea
32:52	Elaine Zelby	Exactly. I write about three requests for startups or opportunities I see to build big businesses. I also outline how I would do it, how I would monetize it, and why now.
33:00	Sam Parr	Great! So, obviously, everyone should go sign up for that because it's right up our alley. I think I've seen you because you've linked to us a couple of times, and I've tracked the traffic back. Alright, so you have this thing called the Startup SaaS Bundle, and I wanted to bring this up because I think that most everyone listening is in a position where they can actually go out and start this. I have investigated this a ton. I used to own this thing called The Hustle, which had about 2,000,000 subscribers, many of whom are business folks. I'm like, "Oh, we should make this and sell it." There are actually a lot of reasons why I think this can work at a huge scale, but I also think there are a bunch of reasons why it could work at a smaller scale. I believe you could build a $5 to $10 million a year company in about 3 to 4 years, pretty straightforward. Can you talk about your ideas here? And you could actually tell me if you think I'm wrong or right.
33:53	Elaine Zelby	Yeah, and I'll tell you why I think it's way bigger than that. Great! So the idea here is, if you look at the average Series A company, they're using, I think the stat is, 34 different SaaS applications. What happened was, we used to have these monoliths, like SAP and Oracle. I used to joke, "Bring back SAP," and I don't really mean that, but what I mean is, I am so sick of now having to deal with 34 vendors, 34 UIs, 34 logins and passwords, you know, 34 different bills and renewal cycles, and all that kind of stuff. It just makes no sense. If you think about what core business software runs a startup, it's very consistent. You have things like G Suite or Office 365, you need some kind of communication tool, you need something for payroll, for HR, for accounting, for recruiting, for CRM, marketing, project management, issue tracking, and help desk. To me, that is the core of business software. Of course, there are best-in-breed solutions for all these things at the SMB level, the mid-market level, and the enterprise level. But in reality, if you're a startup that is seed, Series A, or probably even getting into Series B, you need not the 80/20 rule, but like 60% of the functionality. That's the easier stuff to build. The additional bells and whistles are the harder pieces, and those aren't even utilized by these early companies. So the idea is, look, okay, if you wanted to build a bundle and get people to migrate over, if they've already bought eight different pieces of software, that's nearly impossible. But if you catch people when they have nothing...
35:24	Sam Parr	yeah
35:24	Elaine Zelby	You're going to say, "Hey, we have this out-of-the-box bundle. You can start with 3 modules, but as you go and you want a CRM because you didn't have a sales team before, just add on the CRM module. It already hooks in, it's super seamless, it has the same user experience, no new login, no new vendor relationship." And you can continue to add to the bundle as your needs evolve.
35:45	Sam Parr	And I think down though, is you said something important that we have to go back to. You said something, "It won't work if you already are using something." Yes, and can you explain why? Because that's actually a really big deal.
35:57	Elaine Zelby	Yes, ripping and replacing software is so painful, and it's incredibly hard to get people to do it. You've already trained your team on it, it has all of your information and data sitting in that system. It's just really hard to rip something out when it's there, which is why things like Salesforce are gazillion-dollar companies even though people complain about it all the time. It's that... it is your system of record for that thing, and so...
36:20	Sam Parr	I think that the vendor won't give you... well, let's call this an Elaine Company, an Elaine Bundle Company. They're not going to give an Elaine Bundle Company a referral fee, I think, for...
36:31	Elaine Zelby	correct
36:32	Sam Parr	And the whole way this makes money... I mean, I guess there's two ways: a subscription or a referral fee. Their sales force is going to say, "No, these customers already use us. We're not going to give you any more discount or we're not going to give you a cut."
36:44	Shaan Puri	Let me clarify. So you're not saying it's ClassPass, it's not saying "pay me X and then you get discounts across all your 34 apps." What you're saying is: Make a beginner version of the core 8 things as an actual bundled thing, not these single-player apps or single-function apps. Do the 80/20 and just do the core functionality. Don't get the long tail of edge case features that you need, and offer it to somebody out of the box as: "Hey, here's the simple thing, so you don't need to sign up for 12 different services."
37:15	Elaine Zelby	Yes, and when you look at the volume of companies at the early stage versus the later stage which need enterprise functionality, the volume is like 1,000 times greater at the early stages. So in terms of your ability to capture those people and capture them early, where they are going to be sticky and they're going to grow with you... Will people outgrow this? Maybe. But the number of people that ever get to that scale are so few and far between that I just don't think it matters, right?
37:39	Shaan Puri	but
37:40	Sam Parr	It's so hard to acquire those customers early on. We work with a lot of people who advertise with The Hustle, and one of them is called Justworks. You know what Justworks is?
37:50	Elaine Zelby	yes I've used that
37:51	Sam Parr	It's basically a... I'm gonna kind of dumb it down, really dumb, but it's basically a payroll software. However, because of the way that they operate, you have to sign up with them pretty much from the beginning, like right when you start a company. I have a feeling that they're struggling because they can't get... it's really hard to get a lot of those people to sign up. It's challenging in the same way that it's hard for SignalFire to find companies who are just starting. It's really, really hard for these folks.
38:19	Elaine Zelby	Well, so here's my hack. I learned this back in the days when I was first getting into startups. I got really into growth hacking around 2013 when it was a hot topic. I started my own side hustle consulting gig, working with seed and Series A founders on growth. I learned really quickly that if I partnered with the VCs, they would just send me an unlimited number of customers. I never did any business development because they were constantly investing in new seed and Series A companies. They're trying to be helpful, and 100% of those companies need help with growth. So they're like, "Okay, who should we send them to? Send them to Elaine." So the hack here is to start with all the VCs. They're getting asked a dozen times a week, "What software should I buy for this? What tool should I use for that?" So that's my hack to get started. Then you start to get some viral word-of-mouth going among founders. Founders have their groups online; they have their communities. They talk and say, "Oh dude, you have to get this! That's the best software you can use for all your stuff." So that's how I would go to market.
39:23	Shaan Puri	But even then, like where you were, growth hacker... growth comes right after you have a team, you have a product, you have something. You start to talk about growth. Whereas, even when you talk to a VC, you've already done something. You usually are not in a pre-seed stage where it's just, you know, two people on an idea. But it is still hard to catch you before you've even started with Slack and G Suite and, you know, three of those eight modules.
39:50	Elaine Zelby	My whole thing around this is that the one thing everyone will have is either G Suite or Office 365. I'm not trying to build that. You do G Suite, and this hooks into that. I'm not trying to take that down. Now, Slack... yes, probably that one is a little bit easier, in my opinion, to rip out. But if I look at our seed portfolio, when they graduate to Series A, that is the time when they're starting to think about getting a CRM. What helped us? A marketing automation system. I think there are probably three different pieces of software that are the right insertion points after you get G Suite. The next thing is probably payroll. If you look at Gusto, it's kind of like the only thing most people use today. It's been around for a long time, and it does fine. I don't think it's a particularly super complex piece of software. So, can you go and say, "Cool, if you're under 40 employees, we offer the exact same functionality as Gusto, but we also offer X, Y, Z, and a bit of a zillion more things?"
40:43	Shaan Puri	Have a bunch of ideas? Let's hop to another idea that you have. Give us your top three ideas, and we'll pick which one to go into. So just give us the one lever.
40:50	Sam Parr	Wrap this up. Someone should start this. I think that's cool if you think it's going to be huge. I think it won't be huge; I think it would be mild. But I think one of us could be wrong. Either way, it's a win.
41:01	Elaine Zelby	Yes, agreed. I think it could be huge, but even if it's not, it will definitely not be a bad outcome.
41:07	Sam Parr	right
41:08	Elaine Zelby	Oh man, where to start? Okay, one idea that I really like and also want somebody to build is an adulting vault. Is this what...?
41:16	Shaan Puri	what does that mean what's an adulting vault
41:18	Elaine Zelby	So, by the time you're out of college, you have a bunch of things in your life that are like, "Okay, I have a credit card. I need to get my first apartment, so I'm paying rent. I have to think about insurance. I need to have all my monthly bills paid and subscriptions." I now have internet and utilities, and all these things are disparate. There's no one place where all of my adulting responsibilities live. If I compare this to a product that's existed in the past, Mint.com, which I think launched back in 2007, was kind of the first thing that said, "Hey, your financial life and financial picture is sitting all over the place. Can I aggregate it in a really simple app to give you that one-stop shop?" I want to do that for literally everything in your adulting world. As you get older, as you have kids, a mortgage, a car, and all these other things, you have so many different places where your insurance policies live, your bills live, your financial products live, and your investing accounts live. Nothing is accurate to that. I also want it to suggest things that I'm missing. So it's like, "Hey, you might want to think about life insurance. Here are the best life insurance policies for somebody that fits your description." You monetize via referral and, you know, via affiliate. But it also can let you know, like, "Hey, this is coming up for renewal. Make sure you pay this bill," and you can auto-pay and stuff like that.
42:37	Sam Parr	can I niche this down even a little bit more so sure do you own a house
42:41	Elaine Zelby	I own a condo
42:43	Sam Parr	So, I just bought my home recently. It's the first time I've done it, and I didn't know anything about anything. I probably still don't. Basically, what you do is, for anyone who doesn't own a home, right before you agree to buy it, you hire an inspector. In Texas, I paid this guy only $500. It was pretty crazy. He comes through, pokes his head in the closets, and goes, "Alright, all the electrical things work. This thing looks like there's a little mold here, yada yada yada." I got a booklet that was pretty thick, about 50 to 100 pages. I'm like, "Okay, that's kinda cool." But even two months after they did this inspection, I'm like, "Wait, what is this light switch? This light switch doesn't turn anything on. What is this doing?" In the booklet, this guy has actually already addressed this, but I don't want to search through this printed-out booklet. I almost switched to something else. You're almost talking about a life manual. I would niche that down even further. I'm like, someone should just create a house manual. So I can just do a "Control + F" for "bedroom back corner light switch." What is that? Where is that? What's that doing? I almost wish I had this just for a home. Then you could layer things on top of that, like what's the best home insurance, which I was trying to figure out. You know, similar to that.
43:53	Shaan Puri	So, I'm with you, Elaine, on the adulting thing. I have two ways to contribute to this idea. One is: how do you get customers? I'm a big fan of quizzes. I think they are extremely overlooked. I remember Michael Birch, who was my investor in my previous company and the original founder of Bebo. He basically created a social network and sold it to Tickle, which was a quiz company. Tickle was like a $100 million company that was just doing quizzes, like "What breed of dog are you?" or "What city would you be if you were a city?" Those fun little quizzes. They also had some career quizzes that helped people get jobs, and that's where they made some money. When he left there, he thought, "Alright, I'm going to start another social network." He said, "I know how I'm going to seed it. I'm going to make a quiz." He created the "Best Friends Quiz," which was "How well do you know me?" I would create a quiz, answer a bunch of questions about myself, and then send it to my friends, saying, "Steve, take this quiz and see how well you know me." The results were posted on my profile, and he got a million members in nine days off this quiz. Oh wow! Their profiles were filled because they filled in a 10-20 question questionnaire about themselves. So now they had a full profile and they had their friends. It was crazy! I've started to pay attention to quizzes. I think you could create the "Adulting Quiz" and go viral. Like, "What % adult are you?" I think most people in our generation admit and acknowledge, and laugh at the fact that we're totally not adults, even though our age technically classifies us as one. So, I think you could use a quiz to get a bunch of people to see, like, "Do you have life insurance?" Yes, no, "I don't know..."
45:32	Elaine Zelby	what is life insurance
45:33	Sam Parr	right
45:33	Shaan Puri	Like, yeah, exactly. What is life insurance? At the end of it, you basically give them this little infographic that's like 9 squares. The 9 squares are like, "Cool, you have enough savings for like 3 months of life if you needed it. Good! You've checked that box of adulting." You don't have health insurance? You know, you are an "X" here. Click here and we can help you figure out why you need this, how much it costs, and how you should do it depending on who you are. So, I think you could kind of give people a report card and then let them click in to solve that problem for themselves. You can provide them with the education or referrals that they need from there.
46:07	Elaine Zelby	I love that idea! Also, you hit on an interesting stat that I heard before, which was validated by a couple of companies I was looking at: the longer the quiz, the more likely people will actually continue to answer and convert. 100%! It's crazy.
46:22	Shaan Puri	I haven't dated points here
46:23	Sam Parr	Kind of when people sign up for the hustle, we get like 10,000 sign-ups a day. We would ask them questions after they sign up. I would put in 2 questions, and inevitably everyone at the company would say, "Oh, that's already too many." I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. Put in 5." So we put in 5, then we put in 10, and eventually we had like 30 questions. It had a 98% completion rate. Not only that, they actually interact with you more after they've answered these questions, which is really counterintuitive. A lot of startup people are like, "Oh, you know, I don't want to be too aggressive," yada, yada, yada. I'm like, "No."
46:57	Shaan Puri	Well, here's how it works. I've tested this same thing many times. Anyways, I'll skip the story part, but there's an entertaining story from Michael Birch. He put a red button on the site for 1 out of every 1,000 visitors. Imagine going to Facebook and just seeing a shiny red button in the corner for the first time. You click it, and then the whole screen just goes clear. It says, "Here's a cat. Click the cat." You click the cat, and it says, "This is a bowl of pasta. Don't click the bowl of pasta." But you clicked it, and then it says, "The cat's dead. We told you not to click the bowl of pasta. Alright, click the cat to bring him back to life." It was just a stupid thing that he had with 100 steps. What he learned was that the first button usually gets clicked out of curiosity, but you'll lose about 30% of people who just don't click it because they're busy and go do something else. Then, on the second one, you'll lose another maybe 20%. After that, the people who get to step 3—like 98% of them—will go all the way to the end because they want to know how this ends. We did the same thing for a charity project where we were raising money. It was the exact same steps: 30% lost on the first one, 20% lost on the second one, and then 98% finished the rest. I've seen this several times, and everybody in your team will tell you, "Dude, this is too long. We shouldn't ask too many things." But it works! Get as much as you can because once they get to step 3, question 3, they're going to finish no matter how many questions are in the thing.
48:20	Elaine Zelby	One nuance here that is 100% accurate for consumer and 100% inaccurate for B2B: for anything enterprise, shorter is better. But I think on the consumer side, there are two psychological things at play: 1. People love talking about themselves, and that's why we do all the quizzes. 2. The second, which I think Sam was hitting on, is if I've answered 30 questions, I think what I'm going to get after that is going to be super valuable. Because you know me now, so whatever it's going to be, it's personalized, it's going to be valuable. And it totally works.
48:48	Sam Parr	What do you do at SignalFire? I saw your title. Is it just Venture Partner?
48:54	Elaine Zelby	I'm a partner, so I invest, but I also spend about 30% of my time leading all the growth and go-to-market programs for the portfolio. It's kind of just me getting to exercise that muscle still. Sometimes I parachute in, parachute out, help them with some of the growth needs. I have an entire network of freelancers, contractors, and agencies for everything. Like, "Hey, I need an SEO content writer" or "I need a TikTok video producer," and so I can matchmake on stuff like that. We also run a bunch of events and teach people how to do this stuff.
49:22	Sam Parr	And are there like 2 or 3 partners? You're one of them. Basically, a partner just means you're one of the owners. You're one of the shot callers.
49:30	Elaine Zelby	I I have investment power we'll put it that way yes I think there are 5 partners at signalfire
49:35	Shaan Puri	so let's let's do ideas sam no nobody cares about vc
49:38	Sam Parr	alright well no wait
49:39	Shaan Puri	are you going somewhere with this
49:41	Sam Parr	You're like, "I'm looking through these ideas. You're very amazing! Every one of these ideas is interesting. I want to go through all of them."
49:52	Elaine Zelby	well have me back on we'll do all of them it'll be great
49:55	Shaan Puri	Let's do what we're talking about. Let's do Snoo for adults. What's this one? I know what the Snoo is because I have a baby. Sam, do you know what the Snoo is?
50:01	Sam Parr	no okay
50:02	Elaine Zelby	I'll explain the Snoo. There's a company called The Happiest Baby, and it produces a smart bassinet. What it does is it rocks the baby, it has noise, it can sense all this stuff, and people swear by this. Sean, did you guys use the Snoo?
50:16	Shaan Puri	Like, my kid is in it right now while I do the podcast. So yeah, the only reason I could do the podcast is because the Snoo is basically babysitting my kid. You see this app, and it'll basically say like, "Oh, Banks is calm." It's like he's sleeping in there, he's not crying. If he cries, it'll go to level 2. It'll rock more to try to get him to chill out. So it saves you the step of going in and soothing the baby.
50:37	Sam Parr	or it's a
50:38	Shaan Puri	A fan... it's a fan. It makes noise and rocks like a human. It's safe because there's a big problem with something called SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
50:45	Sam Parr	but is this is this snew a a a category or a brand
50:48	Shaan Puri	it's a brand
50:49	Elaine Zelby	It's a brand. It's a brand, and these things are incredibly expensive. You can only use them for a really short window of time. So, there's a whole secondary rental market and resale market for these things, but parents swear by this. So, okay, let's apply this to the broad population of human adults. We suck at sleeping, and nobody has ever rethought sleeping from a first principles perspective. I mean, first off, it kind of makes no sense that we sleep with another human in the bed. Quite frankly, like I roll over, I grind my teeth, you know? We have a dog in our bed too, and that kind of makes no sense. Secondly, I want something that is temperature controlled, that rocks me, and knows my behavior. I want something that removes all light and takes away my phone so I can't go and scroll on BuzzFeed's stupid quizzes at 2 in the morning. Why has nobody rebuilt the bed for humans? I think we have enough sensors and smart connected home products today to do this.
51:43	Shaan Puri	so I would have been I
51:44	Elaine Zelby	would buy this
51:45	Sam Parr	I would
51:45	Shaan Puri	I have been skeptical about this, but for three reasons: a) I've used the Snoo, and I'm like, "Oh, I wish I had this! This is great." b) You've seen a rise in these expensive at-home equipment options, whether it's Peloton, Mirror, Tonal... there are all these things that cost like $1,000, such as the Eight Sleep bed. These are things you buy to improve one small aspect of your life. Whereas, if you told me there was genuinely a sleep pod that I could go into that would improve my sleep by even like 20%, what's that really worth to me? Right? Of course, this is kind of a first-world problem, high-class product. Okay, whatever, yeah, it is. But I think that's worth at least $5 to $10, right? Because that's 8 hours a night, every single night, getting better, which is making me healthier, happier, and more productive the next day. So I actually now believe that a product like this could exist. I never used one of those Google nap pods, but I feel like that's what those are trying to be.
52:47	Elaine Zelby	I think I would totally buy it. You're spot on. It's a first-world problem, but for all the people that are buying $3,000 bikes or like the $5,000 treadmill from Peloton, right? That's the demographic here. So I want somebody to build it.
52:59	Shaan Puri	I will absolutely build it. They should do it, honestly. They're not going to find another bike. Even the treadmill, they're not going to find another treadmill. There are always so many of these places to expand. They should go straight to the bed and create a bed with a sleep subscription that's like the Calm sleep stories layered on top of this.
53:16	Elaine Zelby	well make a wellness brand out
53:18	Shaan Puri	of it
53:18	Elaine Zelby	health is only one piece sleep is a huge component of wellness I totally agree with that
53:22	Sam Parr	Can you talk a little bit about subscription running shoes? That interests me, and I have a few opinions, but what is this?
53:30	Elaine Zelby	So, I'm a huge runner. I think you are too, Sam. I also have an Apple Watch. Most people who are runners have some kind of connected device that's tracking all your steps and things like that. You're supposed to change your running shoes every 300 to 500 miles. I have no clue when my shoes have had 300 to 500 miles. I can't even tell you when I ordered them. Also, for runners, you typically have a brand and a style of shoe that you stick with. I don't know any of my running friends who mix and match. So, I'm a Brooks runner. I use Brooks Adrenaline, size 8.5 narrow, every time.
54:01	Sam Parr	me too
54:02	Elaine Zelby	I want Brooks to create a subscription for me. It hooks into my watch and my smart device. It says, "Hey, we're just gonna auto-order you new shoes every time you hit, like, you can pick 400 miles or X number of months." It gives me a discount because it knows I'm gonna be a customer. My lifetime value just went up 100 times because it knows I'm gonna continually order. So, they're gonna get me to order more frequently. I'm gonna be a super happy customer because I just get it in the mail. They can start partnering with other companies and doing these bundled subscription products. But to me, this is such an obvious product that no brand has done. You could also partner with some celebrities and make it really cool. I don't know why this doesn't exist.
54:41	Shaan Puri	Give you the low-tech version of this. Here's how you do this without the Apple Watch. You know, like toothbrushes have the little blue strip that indicates, "This toothbrush has been used way too much." Baby diapers have this too, the blue little streak which tells you they peed. This is what you need on the bottom of the shoe. The bottom of the shoe needs to change colors as it gets worn out. So, you basically have a visual indicator that you have outworn this shoe. It's time to order another. And, you know, put the promo code for your next order under the insole. When it wears away, it's like, "It's time to reorder. Here's your code. Get your next shoe."
55:19	Elaine Zelby	Here's the problem with that though: I know when my shoes are worn out, my friends know when their shoes are worn out. It's the fact that I have to go and be proactive and reorder that's the sticking point. I just want it to happen automatically. It's like the whole Amazon button that they were trying to launch, right?
55:34	Shaan Puri	it's a qr code you just hold your phone up to the shoe bottom yeah and then it orders you the next shoe
55:38	Elaine Zelby	That I like anything to remove friction. I want all friction removed. I would love to have a package show up.
55:45	Sam Parr	How would this make money? I mean, because like, when I hear this, I'm like, "Yeah, okay, cool, sounds great." But as an outsider, I'm like, "I don't think I can make money doing this." I have to take a look at Brooks. Like, "Brooks, why aren't you doing this?"
55:57	Elaine Zelby	this is for brooks this is not I don't think this is an independent company
55:59	Sam Parr	that's why I was excited about this I thought you had an angle here
56:02	Elaine Zelby	here's an idea you can offer
56:04	Shaan Puri	this as brand doing this right like
56:06	Elaine Zelby	correct you can start I mean if you look
56:07	Sam Parr	It started a shoe brand. I think it's like in the upper 5 percentile of horrible ideas.
56:15	Elaine Zelby	I get targeted on social media by... and maybe I must have clicked on one at some point. But every variation of your Allbirds-type shoes, so like semi-athletic... I mean, I've probably seen 50 [different brands]. So it can't be that hard to make. The only way I think you do this as an independent company is you provide the "picks and shovels" infrastructure for every brand to do it. So you go and sell to the Brooks, to the Nike, to the Adidas, to the Reebok. I think that's doable.
56:39	Shaan Puri	Right, okay. Let's see. We'll pick one more idea that you have on here. What's the best one that you sent in that we haven't talked about yet, that you're most excited about?
56:48	Elaine Zelby	This will be another fun, fun one that's kind of on the consumer side. I have this concept called Thera Punch, and I kind of need to give the backstory here because this is actually funny and involves running. So, like a year and a half ago, right before the pandemic, I was running in the Mission in San Francisco at like 6 in the morning. It was an area where there were no people. I'm just kind of going, and I have a green light. I'm running through the middle of the street in the intersection when this dude in a super beat-up, janky car comes and turns right, cutting me off and coming really close to hitting me. I kind of jump away and give him the "what are you doing, dude?" look. He rolls down his window and starts screaming. I don't know if you want to believe this, but he's like, "Get out of the street, you stupid fucking bitch!" I was like, "Holy shit!" I'm not an aggressive person normally, but I had had a rough week and was kind of on edge anyway. Normally, I just turn my head and run away, but I had to take every ounce of restraint not to go and just kick the back of his car. I was so pissed; I just wanted to punch something. As I finally got smart and ran away, I was thinking to myself, "There's something going on here that made me want to go and punch his car." Everyone always tells you to go meditate, go download Calm, go sit in a quiet room. Like, great, that's fine, but I need to punch something! So, I wanted to go punch something and then meditate. The concept here, and I think now is an interesting time because there's so much vacant real estate, is you buy up a...
58:15	Sam Parr	enraged there's so much rage rage
58:17	Elaine Zelby	so much rage yeah
58:18	Sam Parr	don't forget that part
58:19	Elaine Zelby	so much rage
58:20	Sam Parr	fire and demand
58:21	Elaine Zelby	Well, there's also an established concept of these rage rooms, smash rooms, or break rooms. The problem with these is that they can be very dangerous. You have to put on a suit, and you can hurt yourself. There's a lot of liability, and also, there's a lot of cleanup. So, this is the exact low-tech version: it's a padded room with padded walls, punching bags, and things to rip and pop. Imagine stuffed animals that you could tear the heads off. You go in and connect to a Spotify rage playlist, and there are a bunch you can choose from. You go in for 15 minutes. If you guys have ever done boxing, you know that 15 minutes will leave you exhausted. So, you just get it all out for 15 minutes, and then they take you to the zen zone for 30 minutes, where they have guided meditations and spa water. You can sit and meditate. So, you go, get it out, then center yourself, and then you go back to work.
59:11	Shaan Puri	sam you're our resident rager so how do you feel about this
59:16	Sam Parr	No, that would make me way too mad. I'd be like, "Motherfucker, I don't have time to go to the fucking thing. I just want to smash this shit right now." I like to smash stuff. I do break things.
59:27	Shaan Puri	last thing you've thrown or broken out of rage
59:30	Sam Parr	well cell phone I mean I mean everyone does that do you wanna tell them phone care
59:34	Elaine Zelby	everyone does not do that no
59:36	Shaan Puri	do that I haven't done that
59:37	Sam Parr	My screen is currently shattered. I mean, I'll just get angry, and I do that as well. But I think it's great. A lot of people tell you not to do that, but I think it's cathartic. You're just breaking a little thing that you could replace with some money, and like you're not hurting anyone.
59:53	Shaan Puri	I'll give you a quick spin on this idea because I also think that the timeliness is important. I don't want to book and reserve the room, and by then, it's all dissipated. Now it's a task I don't want to deal with. So, I'm with Sam that you need the instantaneous release. The other thing I found interesting is there's a whole bunch of these alternative therapy options that I find intriguing. For example, cryotherapy, where you go in and your neck is out of it, but your body is in this very cold environment. I don't even know how low the temperature goes, but it's like this very cold, kind of liquid nitrogen gas that's put against your body. It's supposed to be great for recovery. Then there's the float franchise, which is all about floating in a saltwater bath where you're weightless and in this light-deprived pod. An hour goes by, and you might hallucinate or whatever else. I don't know; Joe Rogan talks about it. I have a friend who gave me a pass to go do this once.
01:00:43	Sam Parr	they're awesome
01:00:44	Shaan Puri	flip flip teams
01:00:45	Sam Parr	end of lane
01:00:46	Elaine Zelby	uh-uh never yeah
01:00:47	Sam Parr	have you heard of it
01:00:48	Elaine Zelby	yeah yeah there's one in the mission actually I walk by it all the time
01:00:50	Sam Parr	I have been to that one many times
01:00:51	Shaan Puri	And so, there's basically a set of these alternative things. I wonder if you could create the equivalent of a gym membership that says, "Okay, instead of coming to this gym, which is a giant box that has all the heavy equipment you're not going to buy for yourself, you can come here and use it." I wonder if you could do the same by bundling these therapies together. For example, sauna, steam, cryotherapy, float tank, whatever. It would be a gym with no weights—a gym for the brain to recover and relax. You could put a whole bunch of these things together and maybe create a different type of wellness category.
01:01:29	Elaine Zelby	Would you ever do them back to back? Just thinking about what those all are. Would you ever go and be like, "I'm gonna spend 2 hours intense"? I like the idea of a ClassPass for that kind of stuff because they're pretty niche today and they're expensive. It's also not like a gym membership. ClassPass had so many problems; I could go into that, but I was one of the earliest users and they lost so much money on me. Ultimately, they were hoping that the vendors would encourage you to become a subscriber. But for these things, how often are you going to go to a float tank or cryo spa or whatever? So if it's more of a one-off thing and you want to try a bunch of stuff, they could actually end up making money on that.
01:02:05	Sam Parr	I actually started going quite regularly. I think the difference between San Francisco and where I live now is significant. I lived in San Francisco for 8 years, right around the Mission. It's kind of a pain to get from A to B, you know, because you have to take an Uber or a bus.
01:02:18	Elaine Zelby	or bikes
01:02:19	Sam Parr	Or a bike. Although I hated biking in San Francisco, now that I live in Austin, I feel like it's no big deal to leave work at 3, go do the thing, and come back by 5 to get some more stuff done. I do these cryotherapy sessions, which I don't think do anything, but they're fun. I also do the float tank; I love all that stuff. So, I do think that people would actually do that more regularly than you think.
01:02:42	Shaan Puri	Yeah, if there's food, I think people go somewhat regularly, or like smoothies or something. I feel like that might work. On a side note, I've looked into the economics of these things before, very briefly. But maybe we should do kind of a deep dive into these cryotherapy places and float tank places. These guys do actually pretty well. If you just kind of wanted to buy essentially a high-paying job for yourself, you can get a location. You basically buy one of these machines for $3,000 to $5,000 and then... no.
01:03:10	Sam Parr	no no no
01:03:10	Shaan Puri	no no no
01:03:11	Sam Parr	no no no I think they're way more
01:03:13	Shaan Puri	I think they're... I looked at the cryo, the cryo stuff, and also the second one is these DEXA scan places.
01:03:21	Sam Parr	I love
01:03:21	Shaan Puri	That they... it's just such... it's like literally one employee and online booking, contactless payments, all that stuff. So you basically have one person, who usually it's their place. Sometimes they have kind of a junior person who watches it while they leave for half the day. But it's very low labor, and it's just the same machine that pays itself off in the first X uses. X can be, you know, it might take 1 month, might take 3 months, might take 6 months max. But these businesses are pretty simple and can do quite well.
01:03:49	Sam Parr	have you heard of that business called dexafit the one they're like guys in a van yes
01:03:54	Elaine Zelby	they come to you yeah and do the dexafit in front of
01:03:56	Shaan Puri	Like company buildings usually, and they're like, "Hey, come see how fat you are." Then, you know, you pay $80 and you go get scanned, or $50, you go get scanned.
01:04:03	Sam Parr	You're the best! I go when I leverage every three months. I leverage $3. I would buy like a 10-turn pass or something like that. It was going to be $50 a turn, and you see progress. They are so awesome! I would imagine it's a pretty expensive machine, maybe $100 per van. They're really amazing. I would love to see what the revenue is. Eventually, they bought a place right across the street from the Twitch studio, or you know, the studio shop that we would go to. It was like a crappy lobby with just a CAT scan, and you would sit down in there, and then you're out in a few minutes. I love that business! I'm curious as to how they do. Elaine, you ever seen this?
01:04:40	Elaine Zelby	I think I know what you're talking about. I've never done it, I'm curious... With it, is it telling you information you don't know when you do it the first time? I get that that's a novelty, but if you're doing it every 3 months, do you not know how your body has been behaving over those 3 months?
01:04:53	Sam Parr	it tells your body fat percentage right
01:04:56	Elaine Zelby	but like don't you know if it like went up this month
01:04:58	Shaan Puri	Well, that's something you want to measure: the progress. For example, I'm working out right now. My actual weight stays the same because I'm adding muscle and losing fat. So I'm like, "Fuck, this doesn't..." I want my score to show the progress. I can see it in the mirror, and my trainer is like, "Dude, do you need this? Just look in the mirror; it's fine." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's true, but I like the science of it too." I think it's $45 to go get a DEXA scan. So, my brother-in-law and I kind of made a habit out of it. We're just like, "Okay, we're going to go get scanned every three months." That's how we measure our progress. And, you know, great! We're down 3% body fat. Let's do it again.
01:05:32	Sam Parr	The company that we're referring to is called BodySpec. So, the word is "body" and then "spec" (S-P-E-C): BodySpec.
01:05:39	Shaan Puri	and sam just
01:05:40	Sam Parr	so you
01:05:40	Shaan Puri	The price of these ranges from between $16,000 and $45,000. So, yeah.
01:05:46	Sam Parr	maybe not that bad
01:05:46	Shaan Puri	not that bad
01:05:47	Sam Parr	And they're in a Mercedes Sprinter. They have a car wrap, so maybe a total of $100. I think this is cool. I love this company. I don't know anything about their numbers, but I think it sounds so neat. It's so simple.
01:05:59	Shaan Puri	The distribution for this is also good because they can partner with gyms. They partner with CrossFit, they partner with trainers, and they're basically like, "Hey, you send us a client, you get $20 out of the $50 for every first-time customer that you send in." So they have a built-in referral system that makes a lot of sense.
01:06:19	Sam Parr	I'm actually shocked, Elaine, that you're not bullish on this. Because when I go, it sounds like Sean and I are the same. It's so rewarding! I'm pretty much working my ass off, literally just to go from like 20% body fat to 19.5%. I just think about that number constantly.
01:06:36	Elaine Zelby	I think I'm just not the target demographic at all because I've always been extremely into fitness. I'm intrinsically motivated, so I slim out. You know what I was going to say though? A partnership opportunity for them is Future Fit because they're already charging people $200 a month for literally a digital subscription to a virtual trainer. You can bundle in a lot of these other services and things like that. To me, that feels like the demographic because the people I know that do Future Fit are the ones that care about this stuff. They want to see incremental progress, they want to know their score constantly, and they'll pay for it.
01:07:11	Sam Parr	I use future fit so
01:07:13	Shaan Puri	there you go
01:07:14	Sam Parr	good job you're
01:07:15	Elaine Zelby	Everyone keeps trying to get me to use it. I'm like, "I don't need this." I'm very, very competitive with myself. I have a Peloton, which you can see in the back, and I've always been a huge runner. My mom actually won this [Peloton] like 4 years ago, and at the beginning, I didn't use it a lot. Now I've been doing a lot more cycling during the pandemic because I hate running with a mask. I've gotten so much better at the Peloton, but I'm always trying to beat my own score. I don't need to know... I remove the leaderboard and stuff. I don't care about that. It's just my own score [that matters].
01:07:45	Sam Parr	one of your portfolio companies is called tempo sean have you tried the tempo
01:07:49	Elaine Zelby	it's awesome it is so awesome
01:07:50	Sam Parr	it is so awesome have you not tried this
01:07:53	Shaan Puri	I haven't tried it you showed me the videos if you had it in your garage you still have it
01:07:57	Sam Parr	I bought one. Okay, so they sponsored us, so I got paid money to use their machine. Then I moved, and they freaking took it back. I was so mad at them! I was like, "Yeah, just leave it. Let me have it." They took it back after I used it. At the time, I was very, very fit into that HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) stuff, and I was number one in the category. I kept working my butt off to maintain that. I just bought one the other day; I think I paid $1,800. It took 8 weeks to get delivered. For the listener, it's called Tempo Fitness or something. Just Google "Tempo Fit." It's basically like Peloton but for weight lifting and high-intensity interval training. It is so awesome and so addicting! I am building my workout routine strictly around Tempo.
01:08:41	Elaine Zelby	It has, it's like a mirror... the mirror thing. So it's freestanding, it's not like Tonal where you have to wall mount it. And it has, I think, 185 or close to 200 pounds of weights. It's got these amazing instructors that do all kinds of these HIIT workouts. We had one of the original beta units in our office, and I was pretty much the only one that used it, but I used it all the time. I don't have room for it now, but Sean, when our office reopens, you'll have to come in and try it.
01:09:06	Shaan Puri	I love that sound. It sounds pretty good. I remember, Sam, the video looked cool. I would say that the actual design of the box... I don't know if you had like kind of an earlier version, but it wasn't as slick as what a Peloton or Mirror and whatnot looks like.
01:09:19	Sam Parr	It's not entirely slick, but I actually think they're making an error. It has a sensor on it, so it can track if you're lifting the weights and it counts it for you. That's great, but it's like a cabinet where they store the weights. I think a lot of people actually already have the weights, so I wish they would sell it to me just so I don't have to use their weights.
01:09:37	Elaine Zelby	Well, it uses computer vision to not only count the reps but it checks your form. Let's say you're doing a curl and you're only going 80% up, it'll call that out. Or if you're doing a lunge and your knee is going over your ankle. So part of the weight counting involves their own weights, but all the other stuff is essentially creating a dot matrix of your body. It's anonymized, but it can tell exactly what your form is. So it's like a real-time personal trainer there, plus this celebrity trainer who's doing the class for you. It's pretty freaking cool.
01:10:05	Sam Parr	You gotta get one, Sean. They're good. It's worth it. But there is another downside: it's $50 a month for a subscription, right?
01:10:11	Elaine Zelby	they all are though
01:10:13	Sam Parr	I think that's crazy. That's so expensive! I cannot believe that. I think it's way too expensive.
01:10:19	Elaine Zelby	cheaper than a gym membership
01:10:21	Sam Parr	Yeah, I know you do that logic, yada yada yada. You got my money, so I'm paying for it, but I feel this thing is nonsense.
01:10:27	Shaan Puri	for the price of a cup of coffee a day you could transform your body
01:10:31	Sam Parr	yeah and just by the way it's $10 a month so well but think okay think about
01:10:35	Elaine Zelby	The value you get from that versus, essentially, in my opinion, Future Fit is paying for accountability. So you're paying $200 a month for a person on the other end to... sort of care about you.
01:10:45	Sam Parr	I get it, but I know what this costs them. I already bought this $2,000 machine, and give me a year—it's free at least.
01:10:55	Elaine Zelby	they don't make a ton of money on the hardware part they're making money on the subscription
01:10:58	Sam Parr	well look I'd stop using logic on me and and just let me be angry
01:11:03	Shaan Puri	that currency is not accepted here we're like a vending machine
01:11:05	Sam Parr	you you keep putting it in
01:11:07	Shaan Puri	you keep getting it
01:11:08	Elaine Zelby	back out as long as you keep paying for it I'm okay I'm okay with removing logic
01:11:13	Sam Parr	no I'm paying for it another great one that you guys should look at is arcata you guys know arcata
01:11:18	Shaan Puri	Too famous now! We only use free stuff that people give us. We don't pay for anything anymore. You know how it works: the more popular and rich you get, the less you pay for anything. At this point, I don't pay for anything. I actually stopped giving out my address because I was getting so much free stuff. I was like, "Wait, maybe I shouldn't give out my home address to these strangers on Twitter." So now I'm like, "No, thank you." I'm going to get one of those celebrity YouTuber P.O. boxes and be like, "You know, just send it to my manager. Send it to my P.O. box."
01:11:44	Sam Parr	always say like hey I I would love to send you x y and z and you say yeah
01:11:48	Shaan Puri	I I just give them ben's address
01:11:49	Sam Parr	be like hey will you share
01:11:51	Shaan Puri	Right, right. I just give them Ben's address. Now I'm like, "Give Ben all the free stuff." And they're like, "Wait, you're not in Brooklyn?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a house in Brooklyn."
01:12:00	Elaine Zelby	You can send me all the stuff you don't want. Especially if anybody wants women to test stuff, send it to me. I'll take it.
01:12:05	Sam Parr	I'm sure you you got you I've seen your portfolio companies are badass you probably have so much great stuff
01:12:10	Elaine Zelby	Yeah, no, follow me at zelby.substack.com (that's Z-E-L-B-Y). It's called "3 Things." Every Sunday, I publish three business ideas that I would say are somewhat well-researched and thought through. But they're all fun and cover pretty much every topic you can imagine. Also, if you like unsexy businesses, I do a podcast called Unsexy. I just talk to founders building in super random niches, like chemical marketplaces or companies that are growing the growth media for lab-grown meat. Just super random stuff, but I find it fascinating.
01:12:41	Shaan Puri	you like our sister from another mother
01:12:44	Elaine Zelby	honestly when I heard the podcast really early days I was like oh my god these are my people
01:12:49	Sam Parr	yeah you're you're great thank you for coming on alright see you
01:12:57	Elaine Zelby	everyone

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Brainstorming Million Dollar Ideas with Elaine Zelby | My First Million Ep. #175

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