Idea
Clout Kitchens: celebrity-branded virtual restaurants on delivery apps
Guest Stu Iverson's idea, ranked among Shaan's favorites: instead of celebrity brick-and-mortar restaurants, influencers and celebrities launch branded virtual restaurants on DoorDash and Uber Eats, fulfilled by cloud kitchens or existing restaurants behind the scenes.
“And he's like, you know, these celebrities create their own restaurant chains. I think people are gonna do this as cloud kitchens on top of Uber Eats, DoorDash, et cetera. So I thought it was a great idea. I put it in my newsletter, 'cause I started ranking in my newsletter some of our best ideas, right?”
Steal thisPartner an influencer with a cloud-kitchen operator to launch a branded delivery-only restaurant overnight in dozens of cities.
Framework
Motion vs Action: most founders confuse the two
Stu's distinction (via Atomic Habits): motion is talking, thinking, and tweeting about the idea; action is putting up the first page, calling customers, trying to actually sell, and rapid-prototyping. Most founders think they're in action but are only in motion.
“Action is putting up that first page, calling customers, actually go try to sell something, rapid prototyping it, like putting it into action, like not blaming anyone else, but legitimately putting it into action to try to turn this into a real business.”
Steal thisAudit your week: if you only talked, thought, and tweeted about the idea, you were in motion, not action. Ship a page and call a customer.
Idea
The Kinfolk of Bibles: a beautiful coffee-table Bible
Stu pitches reinventing the Bible as a gorgeously bound, visual coffee-table object, like Kinfolk magazine, instead of the ugly hand-me-down hidden in a drawer. The Bible is the best-selling book ever and the IP is free to print and remix.
“And so I I think there's this really great opportunity to reinvent what the Bible actually looks like and create like the Kinfolk of Bibles.”
Steal thisTake public-domain IP (the Bible) and re-issue it as a beautifully designed object people display, not hide.
Number
Full-time Uber drivers earn ~$36,525/yr, near $3/hr after costs
Stu cites that average US Uber pay is $8.55-$11.77/hr, roughly $36,525 a year for a full-time driver, and once expenses and idle time are accounted for it nets closer to minimum wage, a figure they round to about $3/hr.
$37K
Average full-time Uber driver annual pay · USD/year
“In America, the average full-time for a driver, full year, $36,525 a year. $3 an hour, right? That's minimum wage.”
Idea
Turn Uber rides into a targeted in-car music promotion network
Stu pitches using millions of daily rides as audio inventory: partner with Uber and music labels to play new artists' songs to a micro-targeted captive audience during that critical first viral week, paying the driver to run the station. Non-invasive because it's just music, not ads.
“a music label wants to get their new artist, someone that they've invested in, in front of the right consumer, especially in that first week where they want songs to hit that kind of viral effect. Right. And so if you were able to build a music platform to partner with labels and Uber to actually serve direct music towards a very targeted audience, and you could make money by playing that song, right, I think it'd be a great business.”
Steal thisTreat idle in-car rides as targeted audio inventory: pay drivers to stream label-promoted new music to riders.
Idea
Clout Kitchens: influencer-branded cloud kitchens
Stu pitches 'Clout Kitchens', delivery-only cloud kitchens fronted by food influencers, the way Kylie Cosmetics and Fenty paired a celebrity name with a behind-the-scenes incubator. The influencer brings distribution and recipes; the operator handles formulation, marketing, and execution.
“So something that I've been thinking a lot about, which I'm calling— are you ready for it— Clout Kitchens, is influencer-based cloud kitchens. Okay. And so if you look at the, the, the expansion of influencer marketing, and not just influencers as a pay-to-play scheme that startups are, or large corporates are working with to hawk their products, but instead actually having these influencers build real businesses.”
Steal thisPair a food influencer's audience and recipes with a cloud-kitchen operator to launch a delivery brand with near-zero startup cost.
Billy
Tyson Fury out-saunas the champ to win a psychological war
Stu's favorite sports story: at a training camp, underdog Tyson Fury refused to leave the sauna before champion Wladimir Klitschko, grabbing a newspaper and lying down as Klitschko kept turning up the heat, outlasting him until Klitschko cracked first, an early mind-game Fury used years later to take the title.
“Wladimir Klitschko turns up the heat, sits back down. And so Tyson Fury says, I can't let this guy get in my head. Everyone thinks I can't beat him. I'm gonna get up too. He gets up, you know what he does? Turns it up, grabs a newspaper. He lays down and he grabs a newspaper, right? Right? Another 25 minutes go by, they're in legitimately as hot as the sauna can go, and Klitschko finally leaves. Tyson Fury wins.”
Idea
Build the App Store for Notion templates
Stu pitches a marketplace/app store of ready-made Notion templates (CRM, journal, etc.). Notion has a huge engaged community hacking together templates and scattering them across YouTube, but only ~12 official templates, so a platform tying them together is a big opportunity.
“I think the biggest opportunity Notion has, and I've tweeted at them so many times and I will continue to, is that they have the opportunity to legitimately create the app store for business templates. And so if you go on notion.so/templates, they have a couple, they have about 12. But if you want to become a power user, you got to go on YouTube, you got to find all the right channels, right?”
Steal thisBuild a marketplace of ready-to-use Notion templates for common use cases (CRM, journal) since the community already wants them.