Podcast translations, Apple opportunity, being unreasonable, don't hire corporate executives, the MVP of physical businesses.
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
“When the Apple VR headset drops tomorrow, every social app founder should lock themselves in a room until they invent the next Instagram, or live in regret for the rest of your life.” - Nikita Bier
Maybe VR is now finally entering the “Slope of Enlightenment” after the hype and trough of disillusionment.
As a result of Apple’s massive pulling power, there will be almost certainly huge new opportunities. Even though AirPods didn’t turn out to be that massive new platform that some predicted, savvy entrepreneurs got rich selling, for example, accessories like stylish cases or cleaning tools.
“Many things will change once American podcasts can be instantly translated using AI with the same voice as the original podcaster but in 200+ local languages.” - Pieter Levels
Mr Beast translates all of his videos to Spanish which leads to hundreds of millions of additional views.
Using all the latest advances in text-to-custom-speech + translation + podcast AI tech, it should be possible to build a low-cost service that generates versions of popular podcasts in different languages. Plus you can upsell 100% human voices + editing at a premium price.
🤔 Quote to ponder
“Reasonable man never achieved anything and Conor is a very unreasonable man” - from the excellent McGregor Forever Netflix series.
New founders have an advantage because of their naivety. They are willing to try unreasonable things simply because they don’t have a full grasp of the landscape.
I’ve definitely noted my tendency to become more reasonable over time in any field. You start to accept what is “normal” and start doing things the way everyone else does them. You’ve seen so many people try things and fail that you start playing it safe.
But if you want outsized returns, you have to be willing to try what no one else is trying. You have to do things differently. You have to be unreasonable.
For example, if you study a lot of companies in a similar field, you start to pick up certain patterns. Typically it takes companies X years to get to $Y in revenue. So you subconsciously start to adapt your pace to be aligned with this standard expectation. There is a pull towards the mean.
But why can’t we grow our agency to $5M in revenue in 12 months? Only because it takes most people several years to get there? Who cares? We are not most people and there is no law of physics standing in our way. There is no speed limit and we’re nowhere close to any relevant ceiling.
👨🎓 Lesson Learned
Lemon.io founder Aleksandr Volodarsky shared are great thread with examples of why “hiring corporate executives for a startup is a bad idea.”
He quotes, e.g. from this HackerNews comment:
“I worked for a large, late stage, Softbank backed company. They brought in some C-suite execs while I was there. A CTO paid several million annually with large, public company experience. They were totally clueless, and the engineering org was almost revolting within 6 months, trying to stage a coup to the CEO. No technical experience, no leadership, installing cronies, speaking in opaque platitudes.”
🧙♂️Framework
“wheels are the MVP of physical businesses”
For example, Raleigh Williams founded an escape room business that he sold for $26M by buying a bus and building it out.
He would take the bus on-site for corporate events and birthday parties. This allowed them to save enough money to build out their first location.
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