Bathroom Fans 2.0, Food Truck Finder, Restaurant Tinder, and a Proposal Marketplace

I'm Scott. I'm Russell. And I'm Leo. This is Spitball.

Welcome to Spitball, where three techie tinkerers and a guest empty their heads of startup and tech

product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free. Anything that we

say is yours to keep. And Russell, I believe you brought our guest this week. Is that right?

I did. We have Jimmy here, who is one of the all-star folks of back in the day. We had a college

entrepreneurship program. Him and his buddy launched and won many competitions with a little of my help.

And it was... Because of me, you'd say. Definitely not. No. They, yeah. Anyways,

no, they were awesome. And I hope to get more of these folks on. But yeah, Jimmy and Neil, the tag team

duo. Yeah. Jimmy's one of the founders of... I forgot the name of that idea, Jimmy, but maybe you could

drop some hints on that. I did too. I also forgot it.

Fire Stop or something.

Firesight. Firesight.

Firesight. And not... Well, and then we rebranded to Deep Sight, which... Deep Sight. We were young.

Interesting. Yep. Yep. Four eyes.

I made a logo with Shopify's logo maker. It was great. Good times. I'm... I guess I'm Jimmy. Hello.

Hi, Jimmy. Thank you for having me. Glad you're here. Deep Sight sounds like something conspiracy

theorist right-wing nutjobs might say. 100%. That or an AI company.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Deep learning. We could revive... Are you sitting on a logo? Yeah.

The domain. If you got the domain, it's gonna be worth something. Yeah. Welcome to the Deep Sight.

I'll be back. I'm gonna go... Actually, .site is a TLD. You could have Deep.Sight. I'm for this. Let's do it.

Jimmy and I also, we started a podcast back in the day. This was actually one of the original...

Like, when I talked about Sharkstank back in the day.

Yeah. Sharkstank. I forgot.

This really is the spiritual successor to Sharkstank. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. I think we nod to that in episode one, right?

Mm-hmm. Very first one. We have a little moment. Yeah.

But yeah, they had actually a much more... It was a much more creative podcast that was very intellectual.

I think it was like very thoughtful thinking of how to make ideas. Levers. Right?

We had different levers that we pulled. This is a little bit more junk food-y is what I like to...

Junk food for the entrepreneur podcast. That was a little bit more like, whoa, this is ideation on like steroids.

So, I mean, if you ever come back, Jimmy, you could plug your podcast or whatever you want by the end of this episode.

Sweet. If you're on your best behavior.

If your idea is good.

All right. Well, this week, it's been a few minutes since we've done a celebrity guest pitch.

So this week, we're going to be kicking it off with Eric Charles Nielsen.

Eric is Garrett in community and among other things and a big fan.

So let's see what he has to say.

Hi, this is Eric Charles Nielsen.

Simple idea here.

Laundromat, but for dishes.

So, you know, the basic idea of a laundromat is that if you don't have a washing machine or if you've accumulated way too many clothes that need to be washed, etc., you go there, you wash your clothes, and you leave.

And we don't really have anything like that for dishes.

So if you don't have a dishwasher in your house or if your dishwasher is broken, you have to do them all by hand.

And I feel like people would go and, you know, do their dishes.

And I think it would work.

Thank you very much, Eric.

That rules.

I am the dishes person in my house.

And it always kills me when there's like two or three big pots and then that's like 80% of the dishwasher.

And I prefer to wash everything so I get it thoroughly scrubbed and sanitized and all that.

And like, oh, man, this is going to be two loads because we use this certain set subset of our dishes instead of that certain subset.

I would totally like go to a place and do that.

That sounds awesome.

Or even better if it was like the laundromat services where they pick it up like an industrial one, drop it off the next day.

Leave all your dishes in a garbage bag on your front door.

Who's taking that?

You know what I mean?

The raccoons are.

Have you seen those restaurant ones that are the giant metal boxes?

You put dishes in there and then you run it and it's done in like three minutes.

Then mine takes like two and a half hours.

I would love to have access to an industrial one.

That'd be great.

Okay.

That's the secret.

Okay.

You go around in a truck and people leave their dishes out and you have that industrial machine in the truck and you just go pull up two minutes.

Do do do do do do.

Put it back.

Can I borrow your hose spigot?

Dude.

Yes.

Or you just go full firefighter with it.

You just take a fire truck.

You could use the sprayer on an actual fire truck.

It's good enough.

I mean you just need a water boiler.

Right.

And what?

A high pressure hose.

And you just go to town.

Boom.

This is going to turn into Uber for dishes and I'm so excited.

It's pretty much there.

Yeah.

Surge pricing.

Dinner.

Right after dinner.

What if we just do rentable dishes?

You know?

Like the Uber for dishes but literally the dishes.

So they take one set away and they give you back another set.

Fractional dishes.

Whoa.

I love that.

No one cleans them.

You just put it outside in a precept tray when you're done.

Unstackable.

Yes.

That's it.

Like that way you don't have to buy dishes ever again.

It's washing as a service.

T-W-A-S.

I wonder how much something like that would cost.

That's what I was wondering.

Yeah.

That's fascinating.

Or like there's so many times where I'm like twice a year I need this thing.

So I'll just have that.

You know?

I'll use my credit in the app to say I really need a weird deep 9x13 pan that I normally don't have.

And then you're like sharing all.

Yeah.

This sounds like store is on and I'm very...

I've got a worse one which is Roomba for dishes.

So what if you have a small...

Like you have a small device like a Roomba that you just let loose in your sink and it's just roaming around.

It might take all night but who gives a crap?

You're good.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hold on.

This is actually...

Throwback to garage cleaning episode.

Okay?

It's a good one.

Jimmy, it's basically you hang a hose in a soap machine and as you back out of the driveway it cleans your car every day.

Okay?

Unlimited wash.

Okay?

We got salt up here in the middle.

Uh-huh.

You're in Pittsburgh, right?

There you go.

I'm in.

You could use this too.

Yes.

So throwback to that but taking that concept, okay?

You have your dishes.

You create a unit that goes on top of your sink and you just full on Etch-a-Sketch or clean this.

You know what I mean?

And it just creates...

G-code clean it.

You have high pressure, hot water and it swipes back and forth.

Etch-a-Sketch?

No.

What's the thing?

Yeah.

The kid's toy or the magnet, you know?

And then you erase it by sliding that little thing back and forth.

Isn't that Sketch-a-Sketch?

I think it's Etch-a-Sketch.

I think you're right.

Yeah.

Sketch-a-Sketch.

No, Etch-a-Sketch is...

Etch-a-Sketch is the two tiles and you shake it.

He's talking about the magnet that you draw and then you erase with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those were cheaper too.

What is that called?

What is that called?

Yeah.

Doesn't matter.

The magnet writing thing.

I'm just trying to...

Is there some hardware way that you could...

I love the Roomba idea though.

Like is it...

What would it...

What would that physically look like?

Because if you have a bunch of plates in your sink stacked up...

I have no idea.

You'd have to physically pick one up and move it and start scrubbing the next one.

I think it's more like a worm, like an invertebrate.

All right?

It's just slipping and sliding through there.

You know?

Because there's spaces.

It's just wriggling around.

It just lives in your garbage disposal and just like slides out when it senses dishes.

Crawls out.

Or it's like a robot arm that's coming out.

Like you know how they have the sprayer?

It's living there, but it's coming out and it's reaching its hand around in there and scrubbing.

I know we're going to like high efficiency washing machines.

This is like low efficiency, but you could almost like fill the sink to the brim and have

it sort of slosh around in there for a while, don't you think?

Uh-huh.

Like an agitator?

Yeah.

The whole sink kind of fills up and...

Because you're going to get plates that stack 10 high and how do you get in between them and

stuff?

What if the sink covers, has a top and it becomes a dishwasher?

Yeah.

What if your sink is a dishwasher?

Sink?

We've already done cabinets that are dishwashers in this show.

It's time to do sinks that are dishwashers.

I'm in.

Oh.

You just get a giant...

You're like churning butter.

Yes.

It's like a freaking butter churn, all right?

Big old sponge at the end.

Rotate.

Rotate.

As you're going throughout the day, you're actually slotting the plate not haphazardly into the

sink, but into spokes that are in the sink itself.

You slide the top on twice a day, three times a day.

Who cares?

Then you just wash right then.

I like it.

Huh.

You know, if we're at this point...

I'm so happy we keep going back to this.

Yeah.

Let's just have it so the dishes just get stored.

There's these way over-engineered cabinets that I've been working with at this company where

it's just like this massive wall that one slot opens and it has all the things you need for

this project.

And then you can shut that slot, type in a button on a keypad, and the whole thing will rotate

and pick the level that you want for your project.

So your stuff's always in one spot and anyone can share it.

I want that with my sink now where I don't have a drawer for forks or anything.

I just type in, I need six forks, two plates, and a cup.

And then when you put them back in the sink, it automatically washes it, automatically puts it

away.

That's where my head went to.

I love it.

Wow.

I now want one.

The technology's all here.

Yep.

This reminds me of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I don't know if you guys have seen that.

Give me the synopsis.

Like the opening scene is like there's an egg.

It's like a Rube Goldberg.

An egg like rolls down this metal thing.

Like the chicken lays it, drops in, rolls down, it cracks itself open, hops onto a pan, pan

makes it, something takes the pan, turns it into a plate, and then bam, it's at the kitchen

table.

We almost could design like a back and forth multi-layered conveyor belt where it's like

a car wash where the plates and stuff go through a machine and pop out the other end in a couple

minutes, you know?

We've gotten away from the laundromat a little bit, but I like this.

Yeah, I guess so.

That's okay.

Eric, we got so many dishwasher ideas, they're just overflowing.

Yes.

Okay.

So what if you filled the sink with Orbeez?

Okay.

Or...

Orbeez?

The little like gel balls?

Instead of Orbeez though, think of it like little tiny sponges.

Tiny little bits of sponges.

Okay.

And now you just go in and out of the thing and you just...

It becomes like the abrasive thing.

It's just like in the sink, you know?

It's like a ball pit, but for plate.

Yes.

And all the sponges impact.

Yes.

How many days before the sponge pit is repulsive beyond belief?

I don't want to go in a ball pit, let alone one that's covered in old food and mildew.

Listen, Leo, it's all connected to a giant...

You throw it in the washing machine?

Who washes the washman?

It just feeds into your washing machine.

What about Rover for dishwashers?

Or someone else doesn't.

How much could it be to have...

You hit a button and some guy runs in your house and washes all your dishes and runs out.

I would want like a team of three.

I'd be like, all right, three guys, 45 bucks, 15 minutes in and out.

Especially after a party, you know?

You're just like, no, this is awful.

I don't want to do a single dish.

All the plates and...

It sucked.

I would pay $100 for that.

Without a doubt.

Yeah.

There are some nights.

Yeah.

I like the truck idea the best.

Mobile pulls up.

Mm-hmm.

That's the way.

Hand them out the window.

Leave it out.

Give them a few minutes.

They can get them back.

That's great.

It needs to have a theme music, like an ice cream truck.

I don't know what it is.

You gotta know that thing's coming, you know?

Honey, get the...

Me walking out with like 15 plates.

Get the crock pot out.

We've been sitting on these dirty dishes for three days.

Finally, they're driving through the neighborhood.

This becomes a utility, guys.

Soon you're gonna be bringing out your trash can and your dishes to the edge of the curb.

Oh my god.

If you put it in some kind of cooler like sealed box or whatever and they can just...

Oh.

I mean, this is, I think, huge for apartment complexes.

Oh.

You know what I mean?

Oh yeah.

Every single apartment could now be dishwasher free.

You have a room that's shared in the entire apartment complex.

Campgrounds.

They could just drive through the campground where you don't have access to stuff every night.

Yes.

Playing their music.

That takes glamping to a whole new level.

You'd have to do some branding around the music, you know?

It'd have to be iconic, like the ice cream truck.

That's a warm up.

Yeah.

Yeah, no kidding.

I think I've got a good pivot right into my idea from this, actually.

Let's do it.

Let's just go right into it.

So, it's time, finally, as we've all been asking for years, to improve the bathroom fan.

It's on the ceiling.

It has so many downsides.

If you need to do like a full air displacement, but you also want to shut the door, then air

is like seeping in from under the door and through cracks and stuff.

That's not super efficient.

Sometimes you just want to like dehumidify, but you also are doing a complete total air

displacement and it takes forever and you forget that you left it on or it's loud.

So, I've got a few things that I want to throw at y'all.

This is kind of a threefer.

First, obvious bathroom fans should have a dehumidifier in them so that I'm not doing

a full displacement, don't you think?

Where it just sort of like sends it down the drain line.

That's not even, I don't even know if that's worth discussing.

I should be able to flip one switch next to the fan to turn it on and do the whole suck

it out to the outside or another one to say, no, I want you in the middle of winter to not

be pulling all of the warm air that I paid for out into the world, but instead run a dehumidifier

for a few minutes.

It makes heat.

It's like perfect.

While you're showering, you just flip on that and then it's sucking up all of the extra

humidity.

Is there any more to say about that?

It's so obvious to me.

That's the first one.

I honestly had never occurred to me and second one.

There's a little more out there.

I am constantly wowed by the wonders of ozone.

You can get an ozone generator and it like disinfects a bit and it makes things smell good.

I wish that I could flip a timer that runs like a five minute, put ozone in there and

another five minute to suck it out.

Huh?

In the bathroom.

Sure.

So I hope you don't have plants or like a cat in there.

The liability.

The Yelp review.

I guess that does lead right into my third, even more dangerous idea, which is just bathroom

wide UV lights built into the thing itself.

Put on your tanning bed goggles because we're going to light up every surface in this thing.

Dehumidifier, ozone, UV.

During flu season?

Whoa, whoa.

UV might, that might be huge, dude.

Yeah.

It seems like, I don't know, you'd flip the light switch and then the other one next to

it is the five minute timer to just sort of blast it all when I'm walking out the door.

AI.

Machine learning.

Machine learning does all this.

All right.

We have to slap that on there.

Now we just doubled the valuation.

There we go.

Uh-huh.

So what is air displacement?

Why are we air just, is this a euphemism for it smells terrible and we got to get that

stuff out of there?

So the old timey bathroom fan that we've had for a hundred years means suck the air outside

and then replace it with other air from under the door or just you leave it cracked or whatever,

right?

That's how fans kind of work now.

And it seems largely wasteful when we spend so much energy trying to climate control inside

and I don't know, like it takes a long time to suck all the air out of the room through

a little fan.

By displacement, I mean, you just like take all the air and replace it.

Surely we can do better.

Yeah.

Oh, I see.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

There's a better way to disinfect, which is ozone or to clean up the smell.

Now, have you, have you bought like a little UV wand and ran through there before?

I haven't.

Just as a little, little tricky test there.

I'm thinking more for surfaces.

That'd be nice.

I'm curious about this.

I think I mentioned before on the show that I wish I had something to stick a toothbrush

in that would sort of UV blast it, but why not the whole freaking bathroom?

Yeah.

I love that.

Just have a couple sensors to make sure no one's in there in any form.

Or even if that's manual control.

I don't know.

I'm walking out here.

I know no one's going in for the next couple of minutes.

If the door opens again, then it flips off or something.

Ooh.

Yeah.

They have old timey bathrooms, I think, where they had infrared light bulbs and you'd

set a timer to it.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah.

I've used those in like public.

Yeah.

Yep.

That's what I want.

A heat lamp, but it's UV.

Yes.

Swap out the bulb.

Boom.

There you go.

But you have to install it.

Oh.

You could sell like, you know, an LED powered one.

I don't know if LED and UV make sense.

But like you stick it on the ceiling and boom.

And I think a ton of people are like, with all this COVID conscious stuff, like,

you throw it in there.

And every time you go in and out of a bathroom, especially if you're hosting and maybe the

guest bathroom, it's always there.

Even like dishwashers even have UV lights now.

The fancy ones.

Like you open it up and it's just solid UV at all times.

Yep.

That's cool.

It's crazy.

No, I think that's really interesting.

The UV part.

But I don't know if it does.

Does that work with like smells in the moment?

Do you know the big old parts?

I don't think so.

With smells.

We worked on a UV doorknob during COVID.

That was pretty cool.

Where like the doorknob would, after it's been used and it senses no one's around, it'll

auto light up internally and the whole thing was translucent.

And so it would clean itself off of, you know, whatever germs around the doorknob from someone

touching it.

We learned pretty quick that you need a lot of wattage of a UV light to kill things.

So this light bulb would work, but it would be damn right.

Oh, shoot.

Which is fine.

Just make sure no one's in the room.

It's an empty room, right?

Who cares?

I think this is fixed by more theme music.

Right.

So.

And this is just my thread.

The song's on right now.

The song's playing.

3 a.m.

And your bathroom's just bopping.

Yeah.

Maybe it even makes sense to run it like overnight.

You have a cycle where it's programmed to be on for an hour from 3 to 4 a.m.

You're not near it.

Maybe it's not.

I love the idea of the light bulb, though, that you just screw in, but you make it a smart

bulb.

So, you know, it's app controlled and everything.

It still gets power all the time, but it turns on when it knows it's time to turn on.

If there's a non-camera-based motion sensor in there that detects motion, then it doesn't

turn on.

Public bathrooms would love this.

Every airport, you know, you throw that in there.

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

Keeps the, yeah, every cruise ship, every cruise ship bathroom.

Good Lord, they need that.

I've got a pitch.

What if it's a Roomba with a UV light strapped to the top of it?

And that thing is going to be a Roomba.

It's already got a speaker on there.

The theme music rolls right in.

If you were gone for the day, could you run your Roomba to both vacuum and disinfect

with UV blasted all over the house?

That probably is a lot of wattage.

Like you said, you don't know if the battery would last.

You'd have to climb up on the walls, right?

Well, no, I'm blasting up.

The thing comes off the top and it just like rotates.

Yeah, that's police siren.

Yeah.

Police siren.

Or, yeah, you could have an antenna that like slowly lifts up, you know, and it just

a giant string of UV LEDs that go eight feet in the air.

Boom.

Yeah.

Is this how we breed superbugs that are UV resistant?

I don't know how that works.

Mm-hmm.

Probably.

That's not our problem.

That's an opportunity for UV2.

Okay?

The successor to UV2.

UV2, double the wattage.

It would become targeted suppression.

We would locate.

We would triangulate and locate.

Lasers.

It's a UV laser pointer.

That's seeking and destroying.

I like it.

Yeah.

Now, what I understand least is the ozone.

How would ozone work?

What is ozone exactly?

Yeah.

You add an extra oxygen molecule to O2 and it turns into a thing that becomes inert after

a while and turns back to O2.

But in its temporary O3 state, it smells like the smell of being at the base of a waterfall.

It's like energy.

It just smells really fresh and whatever.

But it also is a potent disinfectant.

It's not good to breathe.

It's not great to be around.

It kills everything.

But it kills everything.

That's what I was wondering.

It's like bleach in the air.

It's like bleaching the air, but the bleach goes away on its own naturally after a little

bit.

So people use them for like, oh man, my basement flooded and it smells musty down here now.

So let me just blast it with ozone for a day.

And now it smells better.

It just kills everything.

Melts plastic, I hear, or certain rubbers.

Yeah.

Gaskets, plastic, anything like that will start to melt over time.

So I ran an ozone generator in my house while I was gone on vacation for two weeks and I

left it on a little bit too long and it devulcanized the rubber and the cables in my room and stuff.

It like, everything came kind of sticky.

Not great.

Wouldn't recommend running those things for longer than like a half hour.

I bought like an industrial one.

They're great.

You can get it for like 50 bucks on Amazon.

What?

But maybe, you know, like run it for just a few minutes.

Test the waters.

It's cool though.

It's like a natural, yeah, like I said, bleach that sort of gets rid of itself.

Then you have your bathroom fan that sucks it all out after.

That's what I was thinking.

You throw that in like a paper towel roller and like, or toilet paper roller.

And now every time it spins, it just like releases a little bit of ozone every time, you know.

A little bit.

Or the flush.

I don't want a little bit of ozone.

Or the flush.

A little bit of bleach in your hair.

Just a little bit.

Uh-huh.

Like, just spritzes you with bleach.

Just a little bit.

10 seconds?

Is that too much?

Is that, will that injure, I don't know, the impact of ozone.

No.

It's not great to breathe for long term, but maybe in little short bursts.

I don't know.

Just put a sticker on it.

Yeah.

Not our fault if absolved of all.

Do not use, ever.

Do not use.

There you go.

Do not use.

And you're done.

I think, what if this is a fleet of drones in your home?

Okay.

Like, a different form factor, right?

Yes.

You, like, hit a switch and it deploys, you know.

And they fly.

They've got UV lights.

They've got ozone.

They've got music.

Most importantly.

Scramble the jets.

You know, they're doing some UV blasting.

You've seen the home security drone rings, little.

No.

They have a home security drone?

Amazon has a little thing that slots into a base.

It's got four propellers.

And it's like a stick with a helicopter up top.

Exactly.

Pull over in your car, listener, and check this thing out.

It's from a couple years ago now.

I don't know if they ever shipped it.

But, yeah, you'd have a little base station in the corner.

And then, while you're gone, you can say, do a lap.

And it'll, like, rise and fly out of the base.

Go around the living room, dining room, kitchen, whatever.

And then return back to the base.

And you can have it, like, patrol.

Oh, I want one.

It's so dystopian.

You want this, but also blasting disinfectant.

Exactly.

And music.

And music.

The music's important.

This is the fifth element.

You guys ever see that movie?

Yeah.

Multipass.

Gary Oldman has, like, a button on his desk that he hits.

And all these little, the fleet of robots comes out and cleans up, you know, all his spills and everything going through.

All right.

I have one more thing.

That dehumidifier part.

Oh, yeah.

Like, tell me more about that.

Because I, yeah.

You know, in the winter, sometimes, as a treat, I'll run a little space heater in the bathroom once in a while.

It's not efficient.

It's not great.

But it's nice to have a really, really warm bathroom on a very cold day.

If you're running a fan, that's like an anti-space heater in the winter.

It's sucking out all the warm air and putting the cold air from outside in the cracks of your house and stuff and the rest of your rooms in your house in the bathroom instead.

Right?

Instead, you keep that as a moderately closed room.

But you're taking the water out of the air and that process adds heat to the air.

You are making it drier and so you dry off faster.

And you are less humid.

You're not fogging up the mirror.

You're not making your bathroom walls all drippy and stuff.

That's the dream.

I don't know why they're not built in everywhere.

In Los Angeles, they were required if there was, I don't know if it's the same here, but if there's no windows in the bathroom, it's humidity detection in the fan that will turn on and run until the humidity drops to prevent mold.

Just kidding.

I couldn't, it took me forever.

I kept killing the circuit for it because I was like, this fan is broken.

What the, like, we thought it was haunted.

We're like, what's going on?

And they were like, no, this is what it does.

So they can detect humidity already.

You can even kick on adaptive, you know?

Sure.

Adaptive.

If it gets above X percent, then it just turns on and yeah.

In the summer, if it gets humid in there, then it'll just kind of blast hot air out.

That's not super ideal.

I guess that's fair.

Maybe after a shower, it still would feel good.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I do think like there's a flushing mechanism attachment.

Like the fact that we're not utilizing the flusher to do certain things, like whether that's smell related or like the shower, right?

The shower and dehumidify is one thing, but like when you flush, it should, that should be smart.

A smart flusher.

Okay.

Bluetooth to your fan.

You can flush remotely.

Someone's in the bathroom too long.

You just give it a flush.

Kid didn't flush, you know?

All right, Scott, you're up next.

What do you got for us?

I have a very simple idea that I would love to share with Jimmy based on your coding background.

I was recently in Grand Rapids.

I was recently coming from a bar at night and there was nothing more I wanted in the world than a food truck and I could not find one.

So I'm like, someone somewhere has created an app to find your nearest food truck.

That must exist.

And I look and there's like one or two ones and they all have one or two stars on the app store.

And it's because none of them worked in the city you were in.

They were just like, oh yeah, we don't do it for this city or not enough drivers signed up that we could track their location on this.

And so I was getting really frustrated and I went to, I do what I do when I'm frustrated.

I went to chat GPT and I said, find me the closest food truck, just figure it out.

And it started scraping the internet and it was, and it came back when like, oh, we found on this Twitter feed that there is a food truck in such and such location.

We went there and I had amazing tacos.

Are you kidding me?

What?

That worked?

Whoa.

Yes.

Wow.

It blew my mind.

And now I'm like, well, okay, let's just make a very simple app now that uses chat GPT or something.

And I asked chat GPT later.

I'm like, what other ways could you track food trucks without anyone having inputs to it?

And without the food truck people being like, I have to put my location or update it all the time.

And it was like, oh, well just look at live updates of Venmo or something, or look at live updates on Twitter or just scrape past, you know, Google trends and just come up with an analysis of where we think the most likely spot this food truck will be and consolidate it.

That's the entire idea.

Interesting.

Are there other ways to track a food truck?

Crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing is a good one.

The thing about crowdsourcing, like ways for food trucks.

It's a good thought, but one of the apps that I tried from that had that and it was just like, you know, you're an app with less than a thousand downloads and how many people are going to actually get this in your city?

You load it up and it was like, you know, 38 days ago, there was one here and that's not helpful.

Yeah.

Like in ways when you load it up and it's like the gas price is last updated in February and it's June.

You're like, oh, okay.

Yeah.

This is a tricky one though, because it's like very real time and very spontaneous.

It's like a common, it's both sides are spontaneous.

Like you're not going to the same places nor the food trucks.

But it's so needed.

The only way I've ever found out about a food truck is by happenstance.

Yep.

You're just driving by and like, oh my God, there's bots over there.

Or it's social media.

That's what I was going to say.

Oh, I guess for some reason it popped up.

Yeah.

Instagram is like a hundred percent.

Yeah.

I mean, what I would probably do, although Instagram is pretty against bots, I would do hyper local and I would like hire one person to watch Instagram accounts for food trucks in Grand Rapids and add to them.

But then I would have a scraper that's grabbing where they are.

That's logging into Instagram, checking out where they are that day and then updating live.

But there isn't API.

For Instagram?

But I don't know what they give you.

I know.

That's Facebook.

I generally assume nothing.

They clamped it down pretty bad after the...

Cambridge Analytica.

Yes.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Oh, I didn't even think about that.

It's like Cambria.

Cambria.

That's not right.

That's a font.

Yeah.

They used to be pretty open.

Yeah.

They were like using data to manipulate people somehow.

I don't know.

Dude, this is tough.

Yeah.

I like it.

Food trucks.

You need like its own app, like a food truck, like a Yelp for food truck.

Like you need to figure out how to get the food truck to want to publish their hours, their location, their menu.

That's the trouble though.

That's what they're not doing.

People have tried that.

There's so many apps out there and all of that, the highest app I saw was rated like 2.9 on it because everyone was trying some variation.

It sounds like we're on the advent of large language models being able to do this, but I don't know, like if all of the selection of food trucks in the area is accessible to the bot in the way that you experienced, or if that was like everyone who tried it was able to find that one food truck.

I probably got lucky.

Like some guy happened to post on Twitter or maybe he's just in the same spot every week and it was able to find like, oh yeah, this is really lucky.

But it happened in my inebriated state.

It was fantastic.

That is incredible.

Now, one thing I'm thinking about is kind of a Trojan horse approach would be you build software for managing food trucks specifically.

Like you build toast for food trucks and you build that in and then that's your way in.

Maybe that's it.

Like you connect to all the POS systems that they're operating with.

That's what I was thinking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They almost all use either Square or Clover or one of those few ones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a good thought.

These guys were using Square.

How could you possibly get a FinTech place to like agree to give you all that data?

That's tough.

I know.

This almost seems like a feature that Square or Clover or whoever would want to build.

They come out with the app, you know?

Yeah.

Why do you think this hasn't been built?

Because one of the things I'm thinking about is like that's the beauty of the food truck is that uncertainty.

It's like the where is it going to be?

That's kind of the fun in it.

So is that why maybe people like that and they haven't wanted to bring certainty to it?

Hmm.

I don't know.

Don't download Scott's cool new app if you want to be uncertain about it.

Yeah.

Maybe.

I don't know.

That is kind of part of the charm.

Like, oh, they're in our area for the first time in a while.

How neat.

You develop favorites and stuff.

I'm surprised.

You can just hire a bunch of people to hide air tags on them.

That's another.

Yeah.

That could be it.

You just send it to every food truck in the nation.

Oh.

You could just request an air tag from us and we'll send you a free one or something and put

it on your nearest air food truck.

Or you just send it to them.

Just like next door.

You know, they send you postcards in the mail when they first started.

You're just like, I didn't want this postcard.

Your neighbor invited you, though.

Oh, thanks, neighbor.

Now I'm going to do it because they're talking about me.

You know?

Yeah.

But maybe that's it.

That's it.

Like you just throw the air tag or a version of that.

And the business exchange is if you put this somewhere in your truck, then we promise to

generate more, you know, people to you.

We'll get the traffic.

Yeah.

We'll get traffic for free.

We'll be the middleman.

I like that.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

That's interesting.

I think food truck owners don't, they want more sales, like in the moment when they're

open.

So I don't know if it's like, there is a little bit of charm to it, but also like as a food

truck owner, I'm like, I don't want to be invisible.

Right?

I don't think they do.

So how can you as the service tell if they're open or not?

Yeah.

It's kind of hard.

Like, okay.

The food truck's here now.

Oh shit.

That's just their driveway.

Whoops.

Is there an accelerometer in these?

Yeah.

And AirTags?

Do what?

Do you like ping that?

Is there an accelerometer in an AirTag?

Like, can you ping like, oh, there's been movement in the last X amount of time?

We just build our own, you know, tile or Bluetooth LE.

Of course.

Yeah.

Tile would jump on this.

They need money, don't they?

After.

They do need money.

They're dying.

Yeah.

Or Google just opened up their equivalent to the find my network.

There's got to be some way to attach on to that.

Yeah.

You could make your own Bluetooth LE accessory and, you know, use that to get the data

or something like Lora, a long range radio.

There's, there's options for getting the data out.

But yeah, I think if you're going to the business and you're saying we will take care of making

the tracker and keeping track of where you are, you press the button.

Maybe you even sell it as like one of those LED neon open signs.

We'll give that to you for free.

Cause when they press open on it, then it's broadcasting where they are.

That's a good.

Yeah.

That's it.

Oh, that's really smart.

Some inherent value in, you have to like,

every food truck starts buying whatever.

And guess what?

There's also a tracker.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

You, I like that.

Yeah.

Like you talk to some food distributor company that sell like that.

Every food truck buys their paper cups from or shit.

Right.

And you all of a sudden are selling like little, you sell the network through that app.

It's got the network effect problem of social media places where you cut, you want to get

enough food trucks in there and enough people using it to make it like valuable.

And I don't know how you like, you jumpstart that with a bunch of VC money.

You somehow make the accessory and give it to them for cheaper free is kind of the way in,

I think.

Well, or you just use Instagram.

Like maybe you don't have a front end at first.

Maybe it's just Instagram and you just post faster than anyone else.

And then you just build up, you're like food trucks and you do it hyper local.

You're like food trucks for Grand Rapids.

That's your page.

Yeah.

And you beat everyone else to it.

You could do bots to do pretty much all of this too.

That's a good idea.

Even the, even the approaching the food truck owner being like, find food truck on Google

anywhere in this area, send, find their email, send them this pre-made email with explanation.

Yep.

That makes sense.

I would use this all the time.

There's, we love it when there's one or two like craft fair of the summer type events

in our area.

And we go there literally just for the food trucks and we leave.

Like it's so much fun to see like, oh, I think they were at the other place last year.

I remember that one.

They had really good pizza that one time or whatever.

And then once in a great while, someone will send me a link to some Facebook post that I

never would have seen on my own.

That's like, Hey, here's a really cool, whatever truck.

And you never, you never like intentionally figure out where food trucks are.

It seems like I would totally use your app.

I don't know.

Maybe you plug this into the POS system, like whatever, like take the outlet that they're using

to charge that device or like the USB stick.

And now it connects to the wifi network and all that other stuff.

You attach it to the device as an add-on.

And now it's like, you press the beacon and then it turns it on, you know?

It all comes back to your beacon app.

That's so many uses for that Russell.

The beacons are lit.

I do want to move one last thing on it.

Is there any other non-hardware solution to this?

Because this is...

I see.

I'm all for the hardware section, but is there some way that we could...

Some database that we could be scraping, whether that's Instagram, Venmo, whatever.

I don't know.

Public street cameras.

Like...

Does the...

Parking meters?

What's the government body that gives out like dining licenses?

Do they have to get certified by somebody so that you at least know that they exist to start?

I'm sure you do.

You have to have a license to operate from the local...

I'm forgetting the name of the agency that does this, but whoever comes in and does health

inspections and stuff probably has at least a list of what active food trucks there are.

And then it's up to you to figure out, okay, are they still operating today?

Well, they have to renew it every X years.

So based off of that, you know that they exist somewhere.

If they have their phone number attached to that, Leo, you could do the Google thing.

Well, you know how Google now can call and make a reservation for you at a restaurant?

It was amazing and they discontinued it, but yes.

What?

I know.

Duplex.

What if every day you had all the food trucks and you called all of them and asked, are you

open today and where are you?

The latest chat GPT model can totally do that.

It can hold the call of...

It's just simply...

You have the database of phone numbers.

I bet the phone numbers in that database that you're talking about.

Oh, that's exciting.

So then you have a call.

Oh, they'd get so annoyed so quick.

Mass spam all 100 messages.

Hey, are you guys open today?

Cool.

Where are you?

Thanks.

Bye.

And you've recorded and transcribed that.

That's it.

I'm sure they get a call every day too.

That's brilliant.

With that exact same question multiple times a day.

So, I mean...

Yes.

You'll actually be saving them time and money and issues if they just pick up their phone

that one time.

That might be...

You don't even need to know.

Yep.

That's it.

And you can keep calling and calling and make sure it's not voicemail.

And eventually...

I love that.

There you go.

Every day.

100,000 minutes.

And I'm sure the answer would be like, oh yeah.

We're not operating until next Tuesday.

And you just like note that in your database.

And now you don't call them tomorrow.

And yeah, totally.

That's exciting.

That makes me want to build that.

That's so cool.

The automated caller scraper real-time database.

How much would that cost a day though?

A lot of money.

A lot of money.

I mean, chat GPT is expensive for their API, but they all are right now.

Hopefully that would go down in price.

Eventually we'll get to the point where you can run it on your own hardware.

100%.

You know, you have a NVIDIA GPU sitting at home that's just calling people all day.

Yeah.

We just got to be ready for it.

You don't even need, like, AI to do this.

You can just have a pre-recorded message.

Hi.

What is...

Have Lenny call him.

Yes.

Hi.

I love you, food truck guy.

When are you open next?

Honestly, just pre-record yourself.

Hey, real quick.

When are you open and where are you located?

Just, that's it.

They get that same person every day.

This guy's an idiot.

Stop calling me!

Hey, I noticed you call me every...

Like, they try to have a conversation with you.

And they're like, hey, you know, thanks for being a regular caller.

Like, let me get to know you.

I'd love to get you a discount.

Bye.

Thanks, bye.

Well, thank you.

Flavor Wheels.

We appreciate it.

It's like the It's Lenny thing.

You have to have, like, a bank of pre-recorded messages where it picks from the...

Yeah, there you go.

You know, we were talking about trackers.

They already have a phone on them.

That's a tracker.

So, if we could download an app that...

Yeah.

I mean, that's tough.

But it's like...

That was one of the other apps that I saw in there where it's like, oh, yeah, food truck

owners sign up for this one.

Oh, well, yeah.

You can ping your location.

Yeah.

I was getting really frustrated.

It seemed like a good idea.

It must be a lot of work.

It must be too much work for a food truck owner.

I guess.

Yeah.

Or it's just the network effects.

You know, they used it for a week and they shouted into the void and there weren't enough

users.

And then there were no users because there's no food trucks on it.

Lost interest.

You got to kickstart that somehow.

Yeah.

I think the problem is the front end.

You don't build...

The front end is Instagram.

Like, why try to build something?

You just have an Instagram page that just auto-updates like a bot with locations.

Super simple.

And then that's where you build your network effect.

Like, once everybody's following your Instagram, you release the app for Grand Rapids, for

whatever, Chicago, New York, and you just get all these different cities.

You need like...

People have such app fatigue, though.

Nobody wants to...

Like, would you...

If I said to you, hey, dude, you got to download this app so you can find out where the food truck

is.

Like, everyone's like, no.

No.

I don't want to download another app.

You just follow that app then, and then if you want to download the app in the bio,

you can, right?

So, it starts off as a Twitter feed, Instagram feed, and then eventually you're like, you

know what?

I'm going to bite the bullet.

I'm loving this feed every day.

They update it.

It's a more better...

It's a better experience than Instagram.

Or it's just a web app.

I mean, the people who make their personal landing pages, like, you know, this is what

our menu is.

This is what whatever is.

And also, it's live updated with our companion app that we installed that keeps track of

where we are.

You almost want to have it as, like, a widget on the company's website if they're using Squarespace

or whatever.

And, like, one of the things on the homepage is their tracker app's current location for

the day, you know?

Oh, yeah.

All right, Jimmy.

What have you brought us this week?

I'm bringing restaurant Tinder, okay?

Like, I'm done looking through maps and zooming in, zooming out and searching things.

I want to swipe, okay?

I want to swipe left and right.

I want my friends to swipe with me and then we land on the place we're going that night.

I'm tired of sending three options.

I'm done with it.

I want quick, easy, and multiplayer.

Amazing.

Yep.

And multiplayer, yes.

First, I thought you meant two restaurants finding each other to partner up or something,

but that's way better.

There was WTFSIGTE.com.

Where the fuck should I go to eat.com?

That shuddered a while back.

But you'd load it up and it would just say, you are here.

Here is a nearby place.

Yes or no?

And you could say, like, no.

And it would find you another place and find another place.

That was basically the Tinder UI now that I think about it.

A hundred percent.

Yep.

I need this for, like, with my wife, though.

You know, I love your idea of we both have our options.

And, like, we just swipe on our own thing and then it shows the combined results afterwards.

And if there's some overlap and what the closest overlap is.

This is what, this started as Neil and I, we had hundreds of ideas for startups.

And we had a podcast where we'd talk about them and we couldn't pick.

And so we would.

Don't talk about other podcasts on this one.

No, yes.

I'm just kidding.

We would swipe.

We would both swipe.

It was literally the same thing, Scotty, where we'd both swipe.

And then it would be, like, here's each of your top three.

And, okay.

And then we'd talk and pick from there.

That's great.

So much easier.

What did you use for that?

I built it.

So it was a terrible web app.

It was disgusting.

But, yeah.

So I've tried to build this.

I actually have built some of this.

But not as a useful app.

Pulling local restaurant info.

Are you doing?

Yeah, that's the part, right?

Yeah.

So Google has an API where they do have restaurants.

So you can snack from that.

Yelp also has one.

Oh, you get ratings and all that.

Yeah.

And then I really like the pay-to-play model for the restaurants is, like, hey.

Like, just like a dating app.

Literally the same mechanics where it's, like, you want to be featured at the top?

You know, give us a little dough.

And then we'll put you up at the top.

We'll take our vig.

And you'll be the first one they see.

5% more chance to show up in someone's feeds or whatever.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

First swipe, you know?

Like, yeah.

You could change.

Top of the pile.

Yes.

You could make this, too.

You don't have to do left or right.

You could do a ranking model, right?

Where it's, like, you have one that's stationary and you're, like, does it beat this?

No.

Yes.

Like, do you want sushi?

No.

And you keep it.

You keep that there as, like, first place.

And then you keep trying to beat it.

So it's, like, a bracket.

A bracket.

March Madness.

Yes.

Like, you start with your favorite.

And it's, like, do you want sushi or tacos?

Sushi.

Yeah.

And then, no, I don't want.

And then maybe the freaking pizza place beats it.

So then it takes over the bracket or whatever.

Yeah.

Jimmy, how do you imagine the multiplayer work?

So, like, two people are doing this process separately and then eventually it shows them to each other?

Or how does that work?

Yeah.

No, that's a good question.

I think there's a lot of ways it could happen.

One is kind of like Scotty talked about where we, you know, we both swipe.

And at the end, it's, like, here's my top three.

Here's your top three.

I could even sweeten the deal a little bit.

I'll say, I'll give you.

Well, I'm just spitballing.

Here's how I would do it.

Person to person.

I'd say, hey, look.

I'll buy dinner.

If you go with my option, you know.

Okay.

I didn't win.

Mine was your fourth.

But how much is it worth to you?

You know?

Sure.

Up in the ante in between.

You can sabotage.

You know, you can throw a one-star rating in there just to really throw them off from Yelp.

You could almost imagine the feed of suggestions that you're being fed would include the things that the other people you've specified have, like, already voted as their favorites and vice versa.

So you're kind of building a collaborative list.

That's the way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, like your top five.

Yeah.

Like your top five restaurants or something you could generate and then use that information for, yeah.

And if you're doing the thing that Russell said where you're picking, do you prefer this or that?

There are algorithms out there to say, like, you know, you just are presented with dozens of what sounds better right now.

A or B and then it spits out at the end the ranked version of your things in order of most preferred at least.

You're doing that, but multiplayer, that's great.

That would be a lot of fun.

And then, I mean, you could also do some randomness, you know?

You could pick, you could do almost card draws where it's like you have three cards and you drew three from this list of restaurants you already like and you have to pick one.

That's game over.

And that's where the ad model, you know, 3% more chance of getting drawn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You could do rank choice voting too, where it's like, oh, everybody, everybody's number two got picked or everybody's two and three got picked.

Nobody's number one ever gets picked, but it's everybody's number two.

I almost like the idea of like Kahoot It.

Have you guys ever played this?

Like you put a quiz on the screen and then people are answering real time.

I think that could be fun too is like, okay, we've got a timer involved.

Here's four restaurants.

We got to pick.

You got 10 seconds.

That's fun.

Yeah.

Oh man.

Speed round it.

So a decision actually happens.

But among the, uh, the 10 people in your group, there's like six or seven different choices total that have been randomly dispersed.

So then you get the, like everyone who liked these three.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be fun.

There's some game theory in here for sure.

Yeah.

There is.

You put like 10 on the list and then every 10 seconds, one, the least choice goes away.

And then they get another vote if it was your choice.

And then eventually everybody's like, well, I picked it, I guess.

Right.

The last two get final.

Yeah.

And then you have two groups.

And you're watching the votes like change and people are haggling for, no, don't pick that.

You're like fighting it out in the room.

Yeah.

People pausing it like, hell no, we're stopping for a second.

I got to talk about this.

You know?

That becomes a fun party game all of a sudden, you know, you put that.

And you can, what if you had odds on which restaurant, you know, we've had a betting element on this.

Beat ups.

Exit strategy.

Draft.

Yeah.

Draft kings.

Exit strategy.

Yeah.

Beat ups three to one here.

That's what I'm thinking.

Did you pick Wendy's?

I didn't pick Wendy's.

Why are they here?

Dude, that'd be funny.

That's how your monetization is like, oh, sorry.

But every time there's always an ad or one of the five options is selected for you.

Subway.

All right.

That must have been the wild card.

I had this exact problem today, though.

Like I literally was on Yelp trying to find like a Japanese restaurant that was on my way home from the airport.

And I'm like, which one?

Oh, you know what?

I'm going to go 10 minutes out of my way.

You know, it's just like that whole balancing act.

I know.

What if we do this with Uber Eats so then you're locked in?

So it's like, OK, whatever the vote is, it's happening.

Like we're going to start an Uber Eats order.

There's no going back.

It locks in.

Yeah.

And it's like five bucks to cancel.

Like this way, it's game over.

The voting has been decided.

You made a deposit.

It's interesting when you're trying as a group to try to figure that out.

There's so many things like how far away it is, how busy they'll be, what's the genre, who has allergies.

If you had everyone on the same app keeping track of all the like factors and importances and stuff.

I don't like seafood.

Well, that one's too far away.

Well, whatever.

But everyone's preferences are also included in the deck that they're being served.

Seems like you'd arrive at that pretty quick.

I just want to use this.

It's like doodle for food.

Foodle.

Foodle.

Foodle.

That's the name right there.

That's such a freebie.

I love it.

Russell, let's hear what you've got for us.

All righty.

So throw, throw, throwback.

First startup, Scotty B and I living together.

Started a ring box camera company.

And one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that most guys, when they plan their proposal, they got like three weeks.

They're buying the ring.

And then now they just got a hole in their pocket.

They got to get rid of this ring.

I got to propose as soon as possible.

Right.

Literally, it's kind of what happens.

And one of the problems is guys aren't very creative with their proposals.

And there are tons of people out there that want to help these guys or gals get a proposal really cool.

And so I guess my suggestion, and I think this should exist, right?

I don't think I'll, well, we'll see.

Maybe if we kick off ring cam again, this might exist.

But a proposal matchmaking marketplace where you go on and you find all the different proposal features in your area to support your proposal.

Whether it's flower shop, local flower shop, local restaurant, local hotel, local, you know, venues that are great for proposals.

And you become like the spots, right?

Or the area for proposals.

And if you didn't have this before, like you could tap restaurants, like ask local restaurants, like, hey, where the proposal marketplace in your area?

Do you have a proposal feature that you want to add?

Here's like a selection of options at your hotel, restaurant.

Like, do you have a rooftop?

Great.

Here's an option.

We'll send flowers.

Like, we have a local flower shop to deliver roses and like here's some champagne.

Like we can matchmaking, create this marketplace for photographers, jewelers, and all that, right?

Chamber of Commerce, right?

Chamber of Commerce.

Yes.

So you get the local network to just use each other for certain specific events like this.

So the vast majority of proposals that we saw was always a travel destination, right?

Or going to somewhere fancy or just we're on a vacation or whatever with family.

So you need to be able to pull up this app service and type in whatever town you're going to or city and then it'll populate it with all the things that would be relevant to a proposal that you can choose from.

Yes.

That's one way to do it.

I think that's one way to do it.

I think you partner with jewelry stores too, maybe.

And you give them a pamphlet or something that says, hey, plan your proposal through all these options available to you, right?

Just making it better.

National parks with good scenery.

Yes.

Or...

Like what are the spots?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But like, that's the thing.

Like, that's not like...

I don't know if you want to go YouTube famous with it.

Sometimes it's not like the tradition.

It's like, how do you make the national park experience a flash mob level awesome, but the flash mob model has been played out.

And so now you want, I don't know, a helicopter to drop a package from the sky.

Okay.

Some crazy ass service like that.

Or somebody will bury a treasure chest in the middle of Sleeping Bear Dunes and you have to go find it.

Just something crazy and unique.

Just a little bit of special in there that something you can't do because your significant other is always around you.

And, I mean, just add that buried treasure chest or balloon thing sitting in the middle of the road.

I don't know.

Do you know what I mean?

Do you ever see those TikToks or Reddit videos where it's just a couple sitting on a stairway or in a park or something and some guy will like run up behind him and tap the guy on the shoulder and hand him a big bouquet of flowers and then run away.

And then it just makes the guy of the couple look really thoughtful and cool.

Yeah.

It's like having a little hitch.

That's what I was thinking of 100%.

Yeah, wingman.

But Hitch hides himself.

So that's the trick here is I think there's a stigma about having someone else plan your proposal.

So this is like a white glove though, right?

It's the wedding planner but proposal planner.

And it's like a quiet, it's like a silent partner.

You're a consultant.

Yes.

Yes.

It's hard because you ideally would only have each individual customer once.

How do you get a fresh pipeline of new customers constantly and getting the word out in front of people that have never heard of you before and probably won't need your services again.

That's what happened to Ringcam.

You turn it into date ideas or something.

You pivot and you add that into like a service of like other dates, making your date special.

It turns into an anniversary beyond a proposal.

Promposal.

You know, you go the full anniversary, like birthdays, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And maybe that's what it is.

It's not just proposals.

That's the Spitball.

It's special events, right?

It's beyond the proposal.

But it's specific to couples.

It's not like we're not just doing any special events.

This is not a grad party.

What you need to do is just like rededicating your vows, ceremonies, or popular 10, 20, 30 years.

You, the company, need to make it cool to re-propose every 10 years.

We have some recurring customers going on.

Will you still stay married to me?

Oh, wow.

The stakes.

You just have to change all of society and culture and their stigma around rings and proposals.

And then you're good.

Really hope they don't say no.

Renewing the vows, right?

Renewing the proposal.

Hmm.

Need some workshopping.

Yeah.

Maybe it's just a renewal.

A renewal.

Give them a punch card.

Oh, man.

I really, this is a lot of fun to think about because I love planning this type of thing.

Like one of my friends is getting married while he's hoping to get married.

And it's like, we're thinking of proposal stuff.

And I'm like, oh, my God.

All right.

Here's what we got to do.

Here's the step one, step two, step three.

This is how you tie it up.

There's got to be levels of surprises, layers of surprises.

But this is the other thing, though.

Not a lot of people have a lot of experience with it, which is an interesting, which is, I think,

this is the entryway into it.

Because no one knows how this works.

Your parents probably haven't done it for 30 years.

If you're lucky, you have a friend that knows what's up and has gone through it recently.

Yeah.

I just think there's like all these opportunities for these, like the airplane flying over the

water people, right?

I feel like people could come up with services that make things just a little bit out of the

ordinary.

How do you create alternatives to make things extra special?

Because I know it's a special moment.

But like, what's the extravagant element that people are looking for?

And I think that's like fireworks, that kind of stuff, just impromptu craziness, right?

Because like baseball stadium proposal, like if you look online, a lot of this stuff is

like baseball, football stadium.

You're like, oh.

You know?

You kind of...

But like the thing is with these proposals, once they've been...

Like the extravagant stuff gets overplayed and outdone and just over.

So how do you create something different?

How do you keep it fresh?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Like even something crazy.

Like what if it's like on milk cartons or like you create labels and like you go to the

grocery store and you throw it on there or like...

Or those crazy proposals that are like for weeks or months or years where people are like

holding the ring in the background behind their significant color.

Behind them.

Yeah.

Like maybe there's more of that available that people...

Like maybe it's not just like that service, but it's just allowing for people's creativity

to be sold and bought and exchanged on this proposal marketplace so that your idea was awesome,

but you're only proposing once.

So like at least sharing that and then providing...

Somebody providing a service for that.

Interesting.

So you're saying I came up with a cool proposal.

I execute it.

And then I later I put my idea on this website and then other people can pull from it.

And honestly, yeah, I would do that because I want to show off that I did something cool and clever.

And then other people can just, yeah, follow through.

I wonder is this happening on Reddit and what could we learn from how that's happening?

That's where I would go if I were like, hey.

That's a good idea.

And just watching those interactions, that'd be fascinating to see like how people are doing that.

This could be a podcast.

Like there's that like viral element.

Maybe you start with like a podcast or a newsletter and then you start building up some vibe.

R slash bombastic proposal ideas.

You get Ryan Reynolds in on it from the proposal.

You have him on as a guest.

Yeah, you throw some Amazon affiliate links and all those ideas.

And now you're incentivized to post your proposal.

You put those links in there and now all of a sudden it's there, right?

Like how the not.

See how many people use your proposal or saved it off to the side is a good idea.

But you make a good point.

There's so much support for once you're engaged, right?

You have the not.

You have wedding wire.

You have all these sites.

But there's so little beforehand.

And there's even some stuff for dating.

But this is like the engagement period is like the, I don't know, dead zone.

The desert.

No one's doing that.

No one's touching it.

I hate that.

That phase of life is so bad.

How you buy a ring.

Why you should buy a ring.

What kinds of things there are out there.

How to guess your girlfriend's ring size or boyfriend's ring size without knowing.

Talk to her parents.

How to talk to the parents.

It's been done.

It's all played out.

And everybody's given up on it.

I feel like somebody needs to bring new life into it outside of recording the proposal.

I think there's just so much there that should be done or should be shared and should be easier for dudes or ladies, I guess, too, who need these ideas, right?

That's just like, it's just hard, I think.

And especially like when you just dropped a ton of money in the ring.

Like, how do you manage that?

What about a custom-tuned ChatGPT?

How good would ChatGPT be at this?

What if we just fed ChatGPT a bunch of proposal ideas and you sell it as a service.

You're like, hey, you have a lovely person in your life.

You're trying to figure out what to do.

Yeah.

We can help.

And talk to our associate.

The same way he looked up the food truck.

It live scraped stuff.

Like, maybe it live scrapes.

Maybe it says, hey, look, you've got an airplane.

You've got a stadium.

And you've got this restaurant that you can check out.

Dude, what if you, yes, add some questionnaire.

Like, what is your girl like?

What's your personality type?

Who is she as a person?

So that like, oh, she's not going to like the stadium of proposal.

She's going to like this type of proposal.

Buy her favorite book.

Cut a cart.

Cut a hole in it.

And now it's, you know, you go to the bookstore and you put it in there.

Her favorite bookstore.

Oh, that's a good one.

You see.

Or whatever.

Off the cuff, baby.

I might steal that one, Russell, down the road, man.

I'm taking it.

Yeah.

You know, you've got mail that is just perfect for that movie.

You guys got to watch some rom-coms, right?

But yes, I think there's like a bunch of those.

And now you create the marketplace to sell and buy that.

I don't know.

Through some affiliates and stuff.

But I don't know.

The money making part is the hardest part right now for this.

I think the money making part is blackmail.

Okay.

So here's the deal.

You say, hey, we know.

Do you want your partner to know you got help planning this?

That you didn't come up with it?

Just extort that.

Do you want it to be exposed?

We know now that you have a ring.

How much is that worth to you?

That'll be $5 a week until you do it.

Yeah, right.

If you tell anyone we blackmailed you, we're selling.

We're telling everybody anyway.

Thanks for telling us all about your partner.

We've identified them on social media and we will DM them unless you comply.

I don't know if that's quite the extortion we're thinking of.

It was too lame to come up with anything exciting.

Well, maybe not.

They don't care enough about you.

Right.

You must tell three friends in 30 days or else.

Just full extortion.

We wouldn't even buy our premium service.

Just our most basic package.

You're only worth $6 to them.

These were the ideas they fed in to start.

This is what you could have had if it had not been for us.

Well, dear listener, if you are planning a proposal anytime soon, I'm sure we just talked you into using our new cool service.

Just forget the last minute or two.

Yeah, right.

Thank you very much for listening.

We hope you enjoyed yourself.

And thank you, Jimmy, for joining us.

This was so fun.

Thank you for having me.

This was a blast.

Yes.

Yeah.

Come on back anytime.

You say you've got hundreds of ideas.

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