Hey,

this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to share the most interesting trends, frameworks, opportunities, and ideas with you.

Let's dive in!

💡 Opportunities

“Bumble should replace people's dating profiles with a screenshot of their youtube recommendations” - Twitter
- Note: Revealed preferences are in general 10x more interesting and useful than stated preferences. The books you read vs. the books you publicly recommend. The tweets you save privately vs. the ones you retweet. Matchmaking is one interesting application, but any kind of recommendation service can benefit from it.
“we need shazam for clothes being worn on tv shows and movies” - Twitter
- Note: Really weird that this doesn’t exist yet despire all the advanves in AI.
- Note 2: Interestingly ASOS got started with a somewhat similar idea. ASOS originally stood for AsSeenOnScreen with the tagline "Buy what you see on film and TV”.
“Would pay money to never receive a cold sales email in my primary inbox ever again.” - Chris Frantz

🛠 Things Worth Checking Out:

Curation Monetized. Real-world examples of online projects that monetize by organizing existing information
SaaS Origin Stories Podcast. Deep conversations with founders as they share how they started their SaaS journeys. You’ll hear firsthand the do’s and don’ts of building and growing a SaaS company and inspirational stories to fuel your own SaaS adventures. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

📈 Trend Signals (Consumer Behavior Edition)

Great question by Sriram Krishnan: “What is consumer behavior on the edge today that will be widely adopted in 4-5 years?”
A few answers I found interesting:
- “Drinking ketones.” (Note: Ketones are alternative fuels for the body that are made when glucose is in short supply. There’s some evidence that they suppress hunger, boost energy and enhance cognition.)
- “Facial recognition to identify strangers. “Or even just people you’ve met before. Think I would pay $10k for this right now.”
- “psychedelics”
- “GLP-1 injections. Everyone will be on that shit soon”. (Note: GLP-1 agonists are most often used by people with type 2 diabetes to manage blood sugar levels.”)
- “more customized/personalized physical products (skincare/beauty/food/nutrition). e.g. prose for shampoo, curology for skincare, gainful for protein supplements, cana for drinks”
- “At-home blood tests”
- “Homesteading - both the real thing and modified for urban life.”

👨‍🎓 Framework: The Motivation Equation

Screen Shot 2020-01-06 at 5.08.51 PM.png

The procrastination equation from Piers Steel summarizes hundreds of studies done on the topic of procrastination.
It tells us there are four leverage points to use for increasing our motivation. You can:
- Focus on Expectancy by increasing the perceived odds of success.
- Focus on Value increasing the perceived reward.
- Focus on Impulsiveness by decreasing the number of distractions.
- Focus on Delay by decreasing the time it will take to get the reward.
So for whatever goals you have for this year, it makes a ton of sense to spend at least a few minutes to brainstorm how you can increase your motivation taking these factors into account.

(Image Source)

👊 Hustle Story

Billy McFarland (of Fyre Festival fame) started his company Magnises simply by ordering a bunch of cool looking blank credit cards on Alibaba and buying a credit card copying machine.
He then sold them to fellow entrepreneurs in the WeWork he was working at at the time.
Only later he added further perks which work mostly made possibly by existing members. In the beginning the whole value prop was really just a cool looking credit card he ordered on Alibaba.

💸 Revenue Signals

RanchWork.com generated $88k last year. (“Find a Farm & Ranch Job. Post a Job Wanted”)
Tally is now at $35k MRR. (“Create forms for all purposes in seconds.”)
Popupsmart is at $27k MRR. (“A no-code tool to increase e-commerce sales, build email lists, and engage with your visitors in just 5 minutes.“)

End Note

As always, if you’re enjoying this report, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up.

Have a great week,

Jakob

PS: Wanna partner with me? If you are interested in reaching my audience, click here.

Business Brainstorms

GLP-1 injections, consumer trends, the…