TikTok

Why Clubhouse will fail: the growth-vs-retention catch-22

Shaan predicts Clubhouse fails because it serves two incompatible jobs: content (great growth, terrible retention) and chilling/making friends (great retention, no growth, since you don't recruit friends to a make-friends app). He forecasts a pivot, a Facebook acquisition, and the founder quitting.

“So any platform where the value prop is to make friends, I'm not gonna bring friends. So now you have sticky retention, but now you have no growth. And in the other world, you had fast growth but no retention. And so you're stuck in this catch-22. And so then, just to kind of round it out, you eventually get disillusioned. You realize this shit's not gonna work. You try to pivot. You eventually sell the company to Facebook.”

Build the AngelList for college athletes monetizing NIL

Shaan pitches the software side of NIL: a platform connecting athletes, brands, and universities that handles the mandatory reporting and record-keeping of name-image-likeness deals, since above-board documentation will be required to prevent bribery.

“building the angel list for college athletes to monetize on this. So basically building the software stack that's gonna say, okay, here's a bunch of athletes, here's a bunch of brands, and here's a bunch of universities. And those three all need to talk about all this, like monetization's gonna happen because there are gonna be rules where you're gonna have to report”

Steal thisBuild the compliance and marketplace layer for NIL deals before the floodgates fully open.

Shaan discovered 'Kube,' the TikTok of Russia, years before TikTok

Shaan recounts inviting visiting Ukrainian entrepreneurs to his office and asking what the hottest thing back home was; the answer was Coub, a short-video-with-mismatched-audio app already at 10 million daily users. It got into Y Combinator but never crossed over to America, and years later TikTok did the same concept better.

“And I said, what's the hottest shit in Ukraine? I asked it kind of as a joke. And they go, oh, Kube. And everyone's like, Kube, Kube, Kube. And I was like, what the fuck is Kube? And I go to the website and it's basically TikTok. It's these short videos with audio that's like mashed together that doesn't fit the video. And they were funny as hell.”

Make Celebrity Deathmatch for TikTok and get millions of followers

Shaan pitches reviving MTV's claymation Celebrity Deathmatch as a TikTok account, now far cheaper to produce with modern/AI graphics. He predicts a well-executed account doing deathmatches between TikTokers could hit millions of followers fast and make roughly $1M/year in sponsorships.

“I bet you if you made a TikTok account that was like the poor man's version of Celebrity Deathmatch, you'd probably get 5 million followers in like 3 weeks., and you could make, I don't know, probably $1 million a year just sponsored off sponsored stuff of your TikTok channel. That's going to be because you're going to be way better production than any TikTok account, and it's completely permissionless.”

Steal thisRevive a beloved, hard-to-produce old format using cheap modern tools and TikTok's permissionless distribution; superior production stands out instantly.

Buy out Tootsie Roll and relaunch it on TikTok

Shaan pitches buying the ~$2B Tootsie Roll, arguing it does none of what M&M's and Skittles do to stay relevant (pop-star partnerships, new variations, holiday themes). The plan: hire the best marketing agency, use TikTok as distribution, and bring the brand back with a vengeance.

“And so the idea would be to buy Tootsie Roll out, um, and bring it back with like— hire like the best marketing agency of all time and bring it back with a vengeance, uh, using TikTok as distribution.”

Steal thisAcquire a beloved-but-stale candy brand with a sleepy owner and revive it with modern culture marketing and influencer distribution.

Songs got shorter because Spotify pays per stream, not per minute

Shaan's channel-market-fit example: average song length dropped from ~5 minutes to ~2.5 because Spotify pays per stream regardless of length, and songs are now engineered backwards from TikTok virality (with dances baked into the lyrics).

“The average song length has actually gone down. Why? Because Spotify just pays you per stream, not per minute streamed. So instead of 5 minutes for a song, they're doing 2.5 minutes per song, because why would I want a long song? The second thing is TikTok. A lot of songs are now being written working backwards from, okay, if this was going to go viral on TikTok, how would I do it?”

Hire Gen Z creators to make corporate training that doesn't suck

Steph pitches paying Gen Z creators (like the viral nuclear-energy TikToker) ~$10K to turn boring corporate training into game-like, captivating content that employees actually want to consume.

“And so I think these companies should go hire this girl, Isabel, other people, go hire them, say, I'm gonna pay you like $10K to go like make a couple of videos about, you know, whatever they're trying to train their employees on. And I think it would kill it.”

Steal thisPay native short-form creators to remake dull corporate training into game-like, watchable content.

Email is the only audience channel you fully control

Noah Kagan argues every platform (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok) is incentivized to make you pay to reach your own audience, because they have to make money. Email is the only scalable channel where you fully own and control the relationship.

“So I think, you know, the one problem that I noticed with all the channels like YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or any of these is that ultimately they are incentivized to get you to pay to talk to your audience. Why? Because they have to make money. And so email is the only channel I've ever found that can scale communicating with an audience that you can fully control.”

Steal thisBuild an owned email list as your audience foundation before relying on any rented social platform.