SaaS day passes, AI image generation for slide decks, exporting plugins, ...
Hey,
this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to help you level up your entrepreneurial game.
Let's dive into today's ideas, trends, and opportunities.
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💡 Social Listening
Fitness studios and coworking spaces have day passes. But what about day passes for SaaS tools? Could you possibly purchase subscriptions to popular tools and then resell day-passes at a price that allows you to make a healthy profit? Especially for research tools, there’s definitely demand. Most people research in spurts but not on a continuous basis. - Inspired by this experiment.
“I think AI image generation is perfect for creating images for slide decks. It’s so common to need an image metaphor to accompany a slide, and this is perfect for that. I’ve spent days building polished decks for presentations at conferences, for CEOs, and sales teams. I see a future where it could be more self-serve. Please bake imagen straight into Google slides. Make it as easy as creating a new slide, clicking on the image placeholder, and typing in a prompt.” - Blog Post
“About 2 years ago Slack were running an internal beta for "stories" in channels, which were actually just async video meetings. I saw a demo of it, and it looked incredible... but it never got released Anyone know any other apps/companies who have built something similar?” - Twitter
“You can make purchases inside Gmail 🤯” - Twitter
Note: Less friction = more sales. Any way you can help people take out steps and remove friction like in the example here is usually an amazing business opportunity.
“I’m an engineering manager at a fully remote US company with long-term plans to stay (and even if not, no desire to return to the office regularly). I don’t drive but like to walk to the supermarket and restaurants. My wife doesn’t like living in a big city, so we’re in the burbs within walking distance of a little “downtown” area. It’s a bit of an unhappy medium because the homes we want still cost $1M, yet it’s a long and limited walk. Plus we’re ready for something new. We’d likely both be happier in a town, living just off some Main Street with 20 or so shops. Any ideas on whether this mid-sized town dream exists, ideas for cities, and/or how we’d go about finding it?” - Hacker News
📈 Trend Signals of the Week
Everyone loves to make fun of Linkedin but it’s undeniably having a moment right now.
People spent a ton of time on the platform but there’s not much high-quality content for Linkedin to show to its users. So if you’re a content creator, this is a huge opportunity and more and more people start realizing this.
And this means there’s an equally large opportunity to build tools that help creators leverage Linkedin.
LinkedIn also just announced that it will roll out new tools to give creators more ways to share visual content
Ray Ban Stories is a new project by Ray Ban that allows people to capture moments using their sunglasses or glasses.
Users can now capture photos or videos by using their glasses, which has a dual 5MP camera.
PC Building Simulator 2 is a simulation game in which the player builds their own PC.
The player can customize their PC and learn how to choose and configure hardware to optimize their PC.
👨🎓 Framework of the Week
The Framework: Research the most popular plugins and tools for one ecosystem and then brainstorm if it could make sense to build something similar for a different ecosystem.
Examples:
Google sheet extensions can become Airtable plugins. For example, Table2Site is for Airtable what Sheet2Site (which Andrew Azimov grew well past $10k MRR) is for Google Sheets.
WooCommerce extensions can become Shopify plugins, Wordpress Themes become Ghost or Webflow templates, and Instagram Tools become TikTok tools.
💭 Prompt of the Week
Prompt: What novel personalised products could you create in your industry?
Example: Personalised perfume.
💸 Revenue Signals of the Week
Taplio grew to $23k MRR in just 3 months after the launch. (“Create better LinkedIn content, identify new leads and reach out to them automatically.“)
Urbanhunt grew by +541.78% in the past 33 days to $3,902/month in revenue. (“a cryptic self-guided treasure hunt game that takes you on a fun and unique urban adventure. experience the best of your city and uncover secret spots en route.”)
Leaddelta hits $3,122 MRR, a 13% increase compared to last month. (“linkedin connections manager – distraction-free networking“)
Pitchlane is now at $875 MRR. (“Outstanding outreach with personalized videos on scale“)
📚 Business Read of the Week
I loved reading this piece by Charlotte Grysolle on the uncommon tactics Shaan Puri uses for injecting more energy into your day and business.
Favorite takeaways:
Regularly ask yourself: Did I show up in a 5-star mood? If not, I can’t expect to have a 5-star experience. If you want a 5-star-experience, you need to show up with a 5-star attitude.
Project the energy and the attitude you want from people onto them.
Whenever you hit a plateau you have the choice to either panick and give up or to greet it like an old friend “Ah, there you are again, I thought I’d be seeing you soon.”
🤖 AI Idea of the Week
The Idea: CRM for Online Communities
The Pain Points: Online communities are often having a difficult time keeping track of members. Community leaders and moderators are often spending a significant amount of time trying to manage and engage with the members of their online communities. The current solutions often require a lot of manual entry and effort to track and engage with members.
The Opportunity: The solution could be a CRM for online communities that is easier for community leaders and moderators to use and manage their communities.
📢 Shoutouts
My friend Laurin recently started the the Actionable Book Club. The idea is to help people by taking the insights from popular books and breaking them down into actionable pieces. It’s far too easy to just keep consuming content without ever taking action and this seems like a great solution to that problem.
Adam Thornhill writes the Podup newsletter. His goal is to save you 2+ hours every week with roundups of the best 3 business podcasts. Winning podcasts include My First Million, All-In, Lenny’s Podcast, Business Brainstorms (by yours truly) and more.
The Discourse - A biweekly newsletter that helps you upskill in product management, learn to build apps with no-code, and explore curiosity about startups.