Zoom

Oasis: a Zoom replacement that sends pixel coordinates, not video

Shaan breaks down Oasis, a startup that renders a photoreal digital version of you on calls. Because it transmits face-tracking pixel data instead of video, it works on terrible connections, and you always look great. He cites that 60%+ of North Americans won't turn their camera on out of self-consciousness.

“And so, you know, over 60% of people don't actually turn their camera on in, in North America because they're self-conscious of how they look. And, um, that kind of sucks. And now we're video calling without the video, right? And he's like, so what if instead you could have a representation of you That wasn't like cartoony. It's not like an emoji or an animoji or whatever the Apple thing is. It literally looks like you.”

Steal thisFind a magic-trick demo so jarring it spreads itself, then attack a giant incumbent (Zoom) on a dimension it can't easily re-architect.

Homeschool stack: file the paperwork, keep records, supply the curriculum

Shaan breaks homeschooling (2.5-3M US kids, doubling with COVID) into a three-part software stack: a Stripe-Atlas-style filing service for state paperwork, a record-keeping app for documenting kids' work, and curriculum/worksheets to teach day to day.

“So if you want to homeschool your kid, first, each state has a different process to like establish yourself as like a legal homeschool person. So I have a friend who started their business doing Stripe Atlas, one of the previous ideas for homeschooling. So like, hey, just type in your kid's name and birthday and all that, and we will file the homeschooling paperwork for you. You don't have to figure out what the state of Georgia requires you to do for that.”

Steal thisBuild a homeschool stack: automate state filing, record-keeping, and curriculum delivery.

Digital meet-and-greet: a Zoom line where fans buy 1 minute with a creator

Shaan pitches a virtual meet-and-greet product: creators set a date and ticket price (~$10-15), fans queue in a two-square Zoom room, get one minute on camera plus a screenshot selfie, then the line advances. Built for 'Instagram famous' creators and designed to go viral via shared selfies.

“So the idea is you create an event, like let's say you get 15 TikTokers to say, hey, we're doing a virtual meet and greet on this day, tickets are $10. And then what happens is on the day the website goes live, you just see everyone's face. You just click to get in line for the person you wanna meet. And all it is is like a Zoom room that's just two squares. One is the celebrity and the other one's you, and you're just in line. And then you get one minute and you're on camera with them.”

Steal thisTurn the in-person fan meet-and-greet into a ticketed Zoom queue; the auto-captured selfie is the built-in viral loop.

A streaming app built just for company all-hands

Shaan pitches a dedicated all-hands streaming product to replace the 4-5 tools companies duct-tape together (StreamShark for video, PollEV for Q&A, separate SSO). It would bundle single sign-on, live stream, recording, and Q&A — something Zoom isn't enough for — and companies would pay for it.

“And we were stitching together 4 or 5 tools. We use StreamShark for the video, we use PollEV for the questions, we use this other thing for the SSO. Like, so at that time I was like, I think we should— I think somebody could build an all-hands app or streaming solution just for this because Zoom is not enough. And I think you could charge companies for this.”

Steal thisFind a recurring corporate ritual people hack together with 4-5 tools and sell the all-in-one purpose-built replacement.

Compliance-as-a-service: HIPAA today, the next law tomorrow

Steph notes Zoom was effectively the only HIPAA-compliant video tool, so most apps silently can't sell to healthcare. The play: a service that makes apps compliant — and that front-runs each new law (PPP, etc.) to sell the playbook first.

“you basically hire a couple lawyers, you track what legislation is coming to fruition in the next like 3 months, 6 months, whatever, and then you are the first mover and you basically say, hey, I know exactly what you're— like, you know, PPP recently, I know exactly what you need to do with PPP.”

Steal thisFront-run new legislation: hire lawyers, package the compliance checklist, and be the first mover selling it to affected companies.

A SPAC index fund: hold the 2020-21 vintage of de-SPAC startups

Ben proposes indexing the SPAC boom: SPACs trade near $10/share (cash in trust), pop when they announce a target, and you either flip the pop or hold the whole basket of 20+ Series-C-plus startups going public, betting one is the next Zoom.

“So in general, I think we're going to see 20+ of these Series C or later startups go public through this mechanism. Of SPACs in the next, I don't know, couple years. And, um, there's two levels of appreciation here. There's the first one where, you know, you buy in at, at $10 a share, and then there's a pop when they announce who they're gonna buy.”

Steal thisBuild a basket index of SPACs bought near $10/share; either flip the announcement pop or hold the de-SPAC vintage for a decade.

Virtual escape room over Zoom strips out rent and staff costs

Shaan highlights Moonshot, a virtual escape room run entirely over Zoom for about $300, sold as corporate team-building. It keeps the good economics of escape rooms while removing their two biggest costs: physical rent and the human facilitator.

“So what Moonshot is, it's a virtual escape room that happens over Zoom. So it costs, uh, I think, I think it's like $300 to do the experience, But it's great, you know, that as a team building experience, a team building cost is nothing.”

Steal thisTake an offline experience business and rebuild it digitally to delete its rent and labor costs.

ZoomURL: Eventbrite for Zoom, built by piggybacking a fast-growing platform

Shaan describes his friend Victor building zmurl.com, an 'Eventbrite for Zoom' that turns ugly Zoom links into pretty event landing pages. By piggybacking on Zoom's explosive COVID growth (from ~10M to 250M+ users), he solved a problem Zoom hadn't gotten to yet.

“I had this friend Victor. I don't even remember if I mentioned this on the podcast, but he created this thing called ZoomURL, basically zmurl.com. And it's basically Eventbrite for Zoom. So he noticed the problem of like, hey, cool, everyone's using Zoom to meet up, but Zoom's like kind of invite and like, you know, the sort of like splash that page doesn't exist.”

Steal thisFind a platform growing like crazy and build the obvious feature it hasn't gotten around to yet.

Looking great on Zoom is the new wearing a suit to work

Shaan argues that in a remote world, a clean background and good camera setup on Zoom is the modern equivalent of dressing well for the office, and notes operators are quietly copying a barely-watched YC tutorial to pull it off.

“This is the new— like, this is the equivalent of wearing a suit to work now, right? Like, is sitting on Zoom and not looking like shit with your room looking like shit.”

Bottoms-up is sexy, but whales pay for billion-dollar companies

Kukoff pushes back on the bottoms-up adoption trend, pointing to public S-1s from Zoom, PagerDuty and Slack where revenue is wildly concentrated, in some cases around 5 customers driving roughly 30% of revenue. Bottoms-up works early, but big whales are needed for a billion-dollar outcome.

“Look at Zoom, which we're in. Look at PagerDuty. Look at Slack. And look at where their revenue comes from. I think it's like Slack, like 5 of their— or maybe it's another one, but like in many cases, 5 of their customers have like 30% of their revenue. It's super, super concentrated in just a few huge customers. And so the bottoms-up motion can— it actually can work in early days and it works for a little bit, but when you get big enough that you have a billion-dollar outcome, you need big whales to actually pay for the whole company.”

Investors pump the wrong 'Zoom' stock (ticker ZOOM vs ZM) by 50%

Shaan points out that as work-from-home fears spiked, people bought a tiny unrelated company with ticker ZOOM instead of Zoom Video (ticker ZM), sending it up 50%. The same mistake happened at Zoom's IPO, making it a predictable pattern.

“So people are buying the wrong stock because they think people are gonna be working from home and teleconferencing in, and so they're buying Zoom, which does something else altogether. It's a very small-cap stock. I don't know, Henry, check what the stock for ZOOM actually does. —God bless. —And it's a tiny stock, so it jumped 50% today, and like, you know, but you could actually predict this, 'cause this happened also at the IPO.”

Zoom's founder: if I started over, I'd go fully remote

Sam relays that Zoom's founder said if he could start the company over he would have built it fully remote, because San Francisco is prohibitively expensive and switching from in-office to remote later is nearly impossible.

“The founder of Zoom yesterday They said if he had to start over again, it would have been all remote. Whole company. Whole company. He said San Francisco is too expensive. Zoom, like the hottest thing going. It's prohibitively expensive. It's impossible for him to go from not remote to remote. But he would have done that.”

Bullish on remote work and the tools that enable it

Sam, who two years earlier thought a remote company was the stupidest idea, predicts remote work and its tooling are booming. He notes Zoom's CEO personally does Twitter support and frames hiring within a 20-mile radius as soon-to-be archaic.

“And so I'm quite bullish on remote work. Remote work and tools that make that possible. And even the good ones still all like, I think are pretty bad. And 2 years ago, if you would've told me my work, my company would be remote, I'd be like, that's the stupidest thing ever. Now it's like, it's clearly we're gonna do that.”