Startup Ideas Fresh from the Shower (Pt. 1)
Where 'I read a tweet about it' counts as market research
1: Terraform northern Canada
Market trends:
Canada has had ~600,000 new immigrants in the 2016-2023 (Trudeau) window.
This has led to an obscene rise in housing prices in Southern Ontario (Greater Toronto Area, Waterloo, Hamilton) and British Columbia (Greater Vancouver Area)
On paper, Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world. In practice, Canada Proper is a narrow strip along the southern tip. The expansion into the Canadian Frontier will assert Canada’s presence on the global stage.
Expansion into the frontier will not only address the rising influx of immigrants, it’ll also create thousands of jobs for Canadian families.
As permafrost thaws in subarctic regions due to climate change, building and road infrastructure affecting 4 million people could experience widescale collapse by 2050
Technology:
Wait for climate change to do its thing (issues: too slow, not a free lunch etc)
Do not put an ozone layer in the atmosphere
Put giant umbrellas in orbit to reflect the sun’s rays back at Norther Canada (has to be localized to prevent unintended warming)
Create artificial lakes for temperature regulation (energy-reliant solution)
Using cloud seeding somehow idk
Moral hazards:
Exacerbating climate change unintentionally by screwing up geoengineering
Not incorporating sufficient levels of feedback from indigenous communities in Northern Canada
2: Personalized immunotherapy for cancer
Thesis:
The cure for cancer will be personalized - be it by genome, immune system etc.
Market trends:
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world (second only to heart disease). In 2019, 10 million lives were lost to cancer (1/6 of all deaths)
Technology:
Initial trial for late stage head/neck cancer
TG4050, an mRNA vaccine that delivers personalized neoantigens for a patient’s immune system to induce an antitumor immune response via T-cells
n=33 patients were split into divisions: Arm A (17 patients), where each patient received standard patient care followed by TG4050. None of the patients relapsed within the follow-up window of 16.2 months (granted I don’t know what to expect for experimental therapies). Arm B (16 patients) received just TG4050, and 3/16 patients experienced disease relapse
Similar results with late stage pancreatic cancer: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06063-y
Need to look more deeply at these meta studies:
3: Prediction markets for your life*
Ah, prediction markets.
They range from the political:
To the personal:
What if we used them to bet on life trajectories?
Thesis:
We/our friends are extremely invested in our lives
We see ourselves as the main character, and are rightfully obsessed with what happens to us - financially, romantically etc.
Our friends see us as important side characters and are thus also keen on predicting our outcomes. Gossip is fun.
Step 3: Use prediction markets to capitalize on these instincts
Step 4: Profit
Market trends:
Prediction markets are becoming increasingly mainstream See: Manifold, Polymarket (e.g. 2024 Election market has a $950M market cap and reached $8M volume during the presidential debate in September 2024)
Granted, market caps will be much more modest for personal life trajectory markets, but there will also be many more markets
Technology:
Privacy concerns
Normalizing prediction markets for this use case requires anonymization - use something like zkp for restricting access to your actual friends
Moral hazards:
Market making by invested stakeholders leading to “friends” actively harming one’s life through interference
*Inspired by a Nick Cammarata tweet
4: Nap pods at college campuses
Thesis:
Highly paid knowledge workers are willing to pay a premium for personal health and wellness (source: most of my friends in tech- a demographic which is largely male, Asian, and in their early 20’s. So obviously a controlled group)
Lack of sleep leads to worse cognitive performance eg decreased working memory
The target market also extends to any other domains that consist of students, academics, knowledge workers, such as co-working spaces in SF/NYC
Market trends:
33% of Americans have symptoms of insomnia
Technology:
What does the landscape of nap pods look like? These ones (from Japan) cost a couple thousand. China has had co-napping spaces for years now. There’s this NYC offering. Last time I was in Japan, I stayed overnight in a Manga capsule hotel. It was mildly claustrophobic, and I’m unlikely to do so again. Most of these nap pod concepts remind me of my capsule hotel. These nap pods seem less claustrophobic.
Moral hazards:
Workplaces abusing nap pods to keep employees in the office 24/7
Tech bros deciding to just live at the office
5: Halal certification device
Thesis:
Halal certification for meat is easier than you think. Wrapper company that handles the logistics.
Technology:
Requirements for Halal include, among other animal welfare guidelines,
“3.2.4 The phrase “Bismillah” (In the Name of Allah) should be invoked immediately before the slaughter of each animal.”
This can be performed with an audio recording on a smartphone. In other words, at negligible additional cost to factories. No specialized investment in equipment required.
Market trends:
$3.3 trillion market size globally
This feels like a free lunch for fast food chains to capture billions in revenue in the growing consumer segment of Muslims by touting more Halal options.
Moral hazards:
Cargo culting animal welfare - where meat is Halal, but not necessarily raised ethically (pasture raising, stunning animals before slaughter). Let’s not Goodhart this folks
6: BCI headset that tells you on what to do right now
Thesis:
I can’t read research papers when I’m fried. But I can probably do braindead tasks like booking my flight.
The best action to take at any given time is strongly tied to how we’re feeling, but current productivity software fails to take this into stock. Instead we dump a laundry list of action items by priority, deadlines.
Market trends:
Rise of non-invasive non-clinical consumer BCI headsets: Muse (for meditation), Prophetic (for lucid dreaming) etc. Most of the market share is still medical grade invasive headsets
Technology:
Energy levels are equally important in deciding what one should do. I say we reap advancements in BCI wearables (EEG, tFUS) and build an integrated personal OS to help us decide which of our many TODOs to prioritize at any given time.