Idea
The 'Plaid for International Hiring' (a.k.a. Deel)
Elaine describes the idea behind Deel: every startup with 10+ employees was hiring internationally with no good way to manage payroll and compliance, all stuck on a hated incumbent called ShieldGeo. The play was to build a better back-end, going country-by-country like Plaid.
“I started seeing every startup that had 10 employees was starting to hire internationally, and they had to treat them as contractors, and there was no way to manage it. And if I looked under the hood, most companies were using ShieldGeo as the PEO, and everyone hated it— super old school. So I was like, okay, somebody needs to go and build a better ShieldGeo under the hood, do kind of the Plaid model of building the nitty-gritty, going into each country that people in the US hire remotely with and build out the, you know, infrastructure”
Steal thisFind a hated, old-school incumbent that everyone uses 'under the hood' and rebuild it country-by-country, Plaid-style.
Idea
Build the Education Layer on Top of Roblox
Elaine pitches building life-skills games (financial literacy, mental health) directly on Roblox, where 75% of kids aged 9-15 already are, rather than building a new platform. Let kids co-build the games and share in the upside.
“So I wrote about a concept of doing this but on top of Roblox. And the reason being, Roblox already has the eyeballs and the attention of kids. 75% of kids between 9 and 15, I think, are on Roblox. And today, anybody can go and build these games. But why can't you go and build games? I was focusing more on life skills. Right. 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”
Steal thisDon't build a new platform — build your product on top of one that already owns your audience's attention and habits (Roblox, Fortnite).
Idea
The Startup SaaS Bundle: One Login Instead of 34
Elaine's biggest idea: the average Series A company runs 34 separate SaaS apps. Build an out-of-the-box bundle covering the core 60% of functionality for early companies — payroll, CRM, HR, accounting — as modules under one login, captured before they buy anything.
“the idea here is if you look at the average Series A company they're using, I think the stat is there's 34 different SaaS applications. And what happened was we used to have these monoliths, which are SAP and Oracle, and I used to joke like, 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.”
Steal thisCatch startups when they have nothing and sell them a bundled 60%-functionality version of the core 8 apps, then add modules as they grow.
Tactic
The Growth Hack: Partner With VCs for Unlimited Customers
Elaine's go-to-market hack from her growth-consulting days: partner with VCs instead of doing business development. They constantly fund new seed and Series A companies, 100% of which need help, and they're eager to refer — so they funnel you unlimited customers for free.
“I learned really quickly that if I partnered with the VCs, they would just send me unlimited number of customers. I never did any business development because they're constantly investing in net new seed and Series A companies and they're trying to be helpful. And their companies, 100% of companies are needing help with growth, 100%. And so they're like, okay, who should we send them to? Send them to Elaine. So the hack here is you start with all the VCs.”
Steal thisIf you sell to startups, partner with VCs as your distribution channel — they refer their entire net-new portfolio for free.
Idea
The Adulting Vault: Mint.com for Your Whole Life
Elaine pitches an 'adulting vault' that aggregates every adult responsibility — rent, insurance, bills, subscriptions, financial accounts — in one place, like Mint did for finances. It surfaces gaps ('you might want life insurance'), monetizes via referral/affiliate, and handles renewals and autopay.
“there is no one place where kind of all of my adulting responsibilities live. And 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? And I want to do that for literally everything in your consulting world.”
Steal thisAggregate a messy, scattered category into one dashboard, then monetize by recommending the products users are missing via affiliate.
Idea
The Snoo for Adults: Rethinking the Bed From First Principles
Elaine pitches a smart bed for adults modeled on the Snoo baby bassinet: temperature-controlled, rocks you, learns your behavior, removes all light, and locks away your phone. Her thesis: nobody has rethought sleep from first principles despite having the sensors to do it.
“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. We have a dog in our bed, too. That kind of makes no sense. Second, I want something that is temperature controlled, that rocks me and knows my behavior, that removes all light, that removes my phone so I can't go and scroll on BuzzFeed stupid quizzes at 2 in the morning. Why has nobody rebuilt the bed for humans?”
Steal thisTake a beloved high-end baby product (the Snoo) and rebuild it for the much larger adult market.
Idea
Therapunch: Rage Room Meets Guided Meditation
Elaine's Therapunch concept: a safe, padded room with punching bags and stuffable toys plus a Spotify rage playlist for a 15-minute all-out release, followed by 30 minutes in a 'Zen Zone' of guided meditation and spa water — get it out, then center yourself, then return to work.
“It's a padded room with padded walls. Punching bags, things to like rip and pop. Imagine like stuffed animals you could tear the heads off. And you go and you connect to a Spotify rage playlist. And there's a bunch you can choose from. You go in for 15 minutes into one of these things. And if you guys have ever done boxing, 15 minutes, you'll be 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 meditation.”
Steal thisPair an intense physical-release experience with a calming wind-down so customers can rage, reset, and get back to work.
Idea
The Starbucks-model coworking chain built from abandoned COVID leases
Elaine Zelby pitches scooping up cheap, abandoned office leases during COVID and operating small, standardized coworking spaces sold to companies on a per-head enterprise contract — the 'Starbucks of coworking,' predictable in every location.
“So you start going and essentially taking these leases at a really ridiculously low price. Then you can go to those companies that you're taking the leases and then also find any other smaller companies that have given up their office space. Essentially, the plan is you hire staff who's going to be kind of the— everything from security, office manager, all that kind of stuff. Again, economies of scale, you can retrofit it with furniture, whatever you need, but you essentially start selling these enterprise contracts to companies where they're going to pay per head, per person, but they can go and leverage the space. I think of it as like the coworking— sorry, the Starbucks model of coworking.”
Steal thisTake over cheap distressed office leases and resell standardized per-seat coworking contracts to multiple small companies.
Idea
Buy up shuttered bank branches for suburban coworking
Zelby notes Wells Fargo closed roughly a quarter of its branches in a single year, leaving 3,000–6,000 sq ft buildings with great suburban foot traffic. Buy them cheap and convert them into suburban coworking spaces.
“Back in, I think this is 2016, Wells Fargo shut down in a single year 25% of all their bank branches. That was like 1,000 or 2,000 bank branches. Now, bank branches are well-positioned for foot traffic in mostly suburban, you know, some more rural areas. Now, huge square footage. What is going to go into these 3,000 to 6,000 square foot things? That would be a perfect place to go and build the, you know, the suburban version of the coworking model. Buy up the banks, you know, like all the places they're trying to shut down, get it for pennies on the dollar, and then go and do that.”
Steal thisConvert closed bank branches — prime suburban foot traffic, big square footage — into suburban coworking spaces.
Idea
Turn idle daytime restaurant kitchens into night ghost kitchens
Zelby points out that restaurants only open for breakfast or lunch sit on a fully-equipped commercial kitchen all evening; the obvious move is to run a ghost kitchen out of that space at night.
“You know, one thing that I think would be interesting similar to that is a lot of restaurants that are only open for breakfast or lunch that close at 2, 3 PM, why don't they turn that commercial kitchen into a ghost kitchen at night? I mean, it's literally a commercial kitchen with all that space, so to me it feels like an obvious use for that.”
Steal thisRun a delivery-only ghost kitchen out of a breakfast/lunch restaurant's empty evening kitchen.
Number
53 million people now make a living as full-time creators
Zelby cites the size of the creator economy as evidence Gen Z fans care more about creators than traditional credit-card rewards, noting more kids now want to be a YouTube star than a doctor or astronaut.
$53M
People making a living as full-time creators · people
“There's more than 53 million people now making a living as a full-time creator. If you ask young kids what do they want to be when they grow up, more people will say they want to be a YouTube star than an astronaut, a doctor, a lawyer, all the things we traditionally think of as what kids want to be.”
Number
53 million people now make a living as full-time creators
Zelby cites the size of the creator economy as evidence Gen Z fans care more about creators than traditional credit-card rewards, noting more kids now want to be a YouTube star than a doctor or astronaut.
$53M
People making a living as full-time creators · people
“There's more than 53 million people now making a living as a full-time creator. If you ask young kids what do they want to be when they grow up, more people will say they want to be a YouTube star than an astronaut, a doctor, a lawyer, all the things we traditionally think of as what kids want to be.”
Idea
Repurpose a glucose monitor into a continuous cortisol (stress) monitor
Zelby, a mechanical engineer, took apart a Levels glucose sensor and realized the same enzyme-on-a-sensor approach could measure cortisol continuously — giving real-time stress feedback, including for parents wanting to know if their kid is stressed.
“And so you aren't going to get that real-time feedback of something is causing me a lot of stress, I need to just chill for a minute or take a deep breath. And so I think you could probably repurpose one of these continuous glucose monitors. When I posted about that, some people also brought up hormones like testosterone. Which I think could also be really interesting.”
Steal thisAdapt the cheap continuous glucose monitor's enzyme-sensor approach to continuously track cortisol or other hormones.
Number
A continuous glucose monitor is ~$35 with a prescription
Zelby counters the assumption that CGMs are expensive: off the shelf with a prescription from a primary care doctor, they run about $35 — making it cheap enough to hack for other uses.
$35
Cost of a continuous glucose monitor with prescription · USD
“And off the shelf, they're actually really cheap. So if you go to your primary care doctor and you want to get a continuous glucose glucose monitor. It's like $35. It's actually not that expensive.”
Idea
Fantasy sports meets the stock market: social stock-picking competitions
Born from a family COVID game where each person put $1,000 in one stock and held for a year, Zelby pitches combining sports betting, fantasy sports, and public trading — public portfolios people can follow, copy, and compete with. References Shapeshift's 'Prism' crypto-basket beta as a precedent.
“So the idea here is, can you combine the best of sports betting with the best of fantasy sports— so like picking your team— with public trading? And there was an attempt at this in the crypto boom, the ICO boom, in 2017-18. By a company called Shapeshift. They launched— they didn't really launch. It was called Prism. And they had a private beta.”
Steal thisBuild a social stock-picking game with multiple game modes, public portfolios to follow and copy, and prizes.
Story
Homemade 'milk bombs': a bath bomb that fizzes into your coffee
Zelby reverse-engineered a bath bomb (citric acid, baking soda, dry milk powder, functional spices) into a drop-in 'milk bomb' that foams in hot liquid for up to 2 minutes then dissolves into a spiced functional latte — built at home from second-grade chemistry.
“And when you put them in hot liquid, it foams exactly like a bath bomb. Wow. It's like Alka-Seltzer. Foamer, and it foams for— it was interesting. The almond ones with the almond flour, which is essentially the base of almond milk, they foamed for maybe like 10, 15 seconds. The dry milk powder ones foamed for like 2 minutes, but it was a really cool experience, and then it dissolves into the liquid.”
Steal thisPrototype consumer products at home from cheap kits before raising money or building infrastructure.
Idea
Functional milk bombs as a natural daily subscription ritual
Zelby frames the functional milk bomb as a strong DTC subscription because coffee/tea is a daily ritual — shelf-stable, used every day, gifted, and 'playground viral' since people show it to friends in person.
“The nice thing about What I like about MILKS, and specifically for coffee and tea, is it's a natural subscription product because it's a ritual. If you drink coffee or tea, you drink it every day. And you're going to use this every day. So you now buy your little tin of whatever functional bomb.”
Steal thisTie a consumable product to an existing daily ritual so subscription and repeat purchase are automatic.
Idea
Automate rezoning and permitting to cut 12 months down to 3 weeks
Zelby pitches software that automates the paperwork side of rezoning/permitting (public records, form filing) and digitizes the human side with a Nextdoor-style app pushing notifications and votes to council members — collapsing a 12-month process to ~3 weeks.
“Literally just download some kind of simple app that's almost like your Nextdoor, where it pushes notifications to the people that need to go and make a decision with all the information. You can go and ask questions in it, but essentially it streamlines a process that could have taken 12 months down to something that's like 3 weeks.”
Steal thisAutomate the paperwork and digitize the approvals for a slow government process like rezoning to collapse the timeline.
Framework
Friction x volume x frequency: when people will pay to remove a hassle
Zelby's evaluation lens for service ideas: is it adding or reducing friction, and what's the volume and frequency of use? High-volume low-friction-removal, or high-frequency for a smaller group, both command real money.
“In general, I always look at is this thing adding friction or reducing friction, and then what is the volume and what is the frequency of use, right? So if you can get either high volume of people that have this pain point and you're reducing friction, or it's, you know, a high frequency use but a smaller demographic of people that have that friction, removing a small amount of friction, people will pay a ton of money”
Steal thisEvaluate service ideas on friction reduced times volume times frequency of use.