(upbeat music)
- I'm Scott.
- I'm Russell.
- I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Spitball, the Pitchin' Kitchen,
where three coding comrades, that's us,
and a guest, empty our heads of startup
and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there
so you can all have them for free.
Anything we say is yours to keep.
Russell, I hear you brought a guest with us this week.
- I did.
We have the famous Sam Zoe.
He's here to, I guess, lead us all to victory
of whatever it is that we wanna be victorious on.
I have no other way to say it.
- I haven't had any victories in my book.
I don't know about this.
- He's our fearless leader.
- Thanks for being here, Sam.
- Thanks for having me, guys.
- This is gonna be a lot of fun.
All right, getting started this week.
I've got something for us.
So I don't know if you guys know this,
but a few years ago, it became more and more of a trend
in the security and infosec industry
to start naming and branding your exploits.
Instead of just saying, I have this bug
that I've discovered in some Intel processor,
it's all the rage to say, hey, everybody,
you have to check out heartbleed.org for the Heartbleed bug.
If somebody executes code in this way,
then I can take over your computer.
It's a Heartbleed bug.
They've been like branding it,
and I don't know why that is.
So today for this or that,
we're gonna be doing Mountain Dew flavors
versus code exploits that have been named.
We're gonna go around the circle and guess,
am I naming a Mountain Dew flavor
or a vulnerability that someone is trying to brand
and get named?
- I love it.
- And we're gonna start, Sam, with our guest.
Starting off here, Meltdown,
spelled as you'd expect, M-E-L-T-D-O-W-N, Meltdown.
Is that a vulnerability
that is some security researcher named
or is that a Mountain Dew flavor?
- Vulnerability.
- Absolutely right.
That's an Intel CPU exploit.
- I would guess Mountain Dew on that.
That's why you brought me, Russell.
Absolutely.
- You are on the board.
Scott, Uproar.
- I also gotta go Mountain Dew on that.
- It is Mountain Dew.
You're absolutely right.
2021 through 23, Strawberry Kiwi.
- I was gonna ask, what color is it?
Okay.
I still don't know what color it is.
- Can we pick up a can of Uproar?
- Absolutely.
- Calling it Strawberry Kiwi doesn't tell us anything
about if it's still like neon purple.
Russell, Deja Blue, D-E-J-A-B-L-U-E with a capital B.
- 100% Mountain Dew.
- It's a Windows exploit, unfortunately.
That was something used in Windows.
- What?
- Yeah.
- Dude, that's what I was thinking.
It's like Baja.
- I've definitely had that.
- Baja Blast, at least I know, right?
That's like.
- Yeah, that's probably what we're thinking.
It was too many Baja Blasts for Taco Bell.
- Sam, you're up.
Frostbite, and that's with a space and a capital B.
F-R-O-S-T space B-I-T-E.
- Codexploit.
- That is a Mountain Dew flavor, Walmart exclusive,
unfortunately.
- What?
- 2020 through present.
It's a Honeydew and Melon.
- Walmart exclusive.
- Scott, Distortion.
- I really want this to be a Mountain Dew flavor.
- It is a Mountain Dew flavor.
- Unfortunately, it is.
- What a terrible Mountain Dew name.
- Mountain Dew Distortion was part
of the Dewmocracy promotion
and it lost to Whiteout in 2014.
- Just name it Rancid or something.
- I believe that is one Sam, two Scott.
Russell, you're next.
Shellshock, all one word, Shellshock.
- Oh, the Ninja Turtle edition of Mountain Dew.
- That was a Unix shell codexploit, unfortunately.
Sorry to say.
Still not on the board yet, better look next time.
Sam, we got two more each for you.
Spark, S-P-A-R-K.
- Codexploit.
- Has a limited time Speedway exclusive Mountain Dew flavor.
- Speedway exclusive?
- That's Speedway's a chain over in the area.
I know, sorry to say.
It was only available from 2020 through 21,
so maybe you were hunkered down to that point.
Scott, Supernova, all one word, Supernova.
- Gotta be it.
Oh, I have no idea.
Codexploit.
- That was a Dew flavor, 2012 through present.
It's Finland and Denmark, raspberry lemon.
- Of course, when you think of Supernova,
you think of Denmark and lemons.
- That's right.
Russell, we got Eternal Blue, all one word,
E-T-E-R-N-A-L, capital B-L-U-E.
- Oh man, I gotta get a scoreboard.
We're going with Codexploit.
- Yeah, that's absolutely right.
It's a Windows exploit.
It was used by WannaCry, which is a famous virus.
All right, I believe it's Sam2, Scott1, Russell1.
Is that right?
Think so.
One more each.
- I only have one.
- Well, then I believe it is Sam1, Scott2, Russell1.
All right, one last one all around.
- All right, Scottie B.
- Sam, last one for you.
Sam, your word is Venom, V-E-N-O-M.
- Oh, that's Mountain Dew.
I've had it, it's red.
- There is no Mountain Dew Venom, I've looked.
(laughing)
It's an acronym.
It stands for Virtualized Environment Neglected
Operations Manipulation.
- Obviously need that code, absolutely.
- All right, Scott Beast.
- It gotta be Mountain Dew.
- That's another exploit.
It's another acronym.
Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS.
All right, Russell, last one.
Here we go, ready?
- I am Vibe, V-I-B-E.
- Exploit.
It's a Mountain Dew flavor.
(laughing)
2021 through present, it's Lemon,
a flavor exclusive to Which Which Restaurants.
Well, with no more scores through the last round there,
I believe that means, Scott, you're our champion this week.
- Oh my God.
Okay, if someone got all of those right,
please email us 'cause you are absolutely
our target person to be on this show.
- That's absolutely right.
You're our next guest.
All right.
- That was the hardest game.
Like the other games, that was incredibly difficult.
- Yeah.
Actually, I wanna thank my coworker, Maddy,
for coming up with that idea.
That was as difficult as I thought it would be.
- Okay, wait, there's something weird.
I just wanna figure out how Mountain Dew gets away
with exclusives at Speedway and Walmart.
(laughing)
Like, what a business model.
- Something changed around like the late 20 teens,
something changed and we have a lot more
one-on-one partnerships and stuff.
I don't know, maybe their Baja success at Taco Bell
made them excited about something, I don't know.
- Let that be a lesson to everybody of our listeners
that you can just make an exclusive flavor for Speedway
and be successful through this.
- Or it could be a computer virus.
- Or, yes.
- Two career paths ahead of you, Lye.
Which do you choose?
- One brand.
Unreal, unreal.
- All right, Leo, you are first.
What is your idea this week?
- I am first.
- All right, so you guys, how many of you
have had a long distance relationship
or a close family member not live with you
or a good, like close best friend
who doesn't live anywhere near you?
Is that an experience you've all had?
Yeah, me too.
So I think, I'm looking--
- We all nodded.
- You know this is an audio podcast, right?
You all have to say something.
- We all raised our hands and nodded.
- Yeah, we all nodded in unison and just--
- You started crying thinking of the memory.
- Oh yeah.
I moved away from you all last year and you know.
- We all looked right at Sam on here.
- I think I have an idea for a product
that could make remote relationships a little bit easier.
So there are E-ink touchscreen kits
that you can get for less than a hundred bucks.
You've got an ESP32 or an Arduino
on the back of like a slab of silicon
that has your display driver and your touchscreen driver
and all this stuff integrated into one.
You can even stick a battery in there.
- E-ink like a Kindle, right?
- Yeah, like a Kindle.
So it's a screen that takes very, very low power.
It's got a touchscreen digitizer over it.
- This is Leo's fifth E-ink startup idea.
This is the E-ink corner. - I adore E-ink.
- Corner of E-ink.
- You can say, you know, Kindle, right?
But I think we all know what it is at this point.
- It's not like someone does a new dating app every week.
That's fine.
- That's right, okay.
- Leo's E-ink corner and Russell's dating corner.
Yeah, Russell's love corner.
- We're using for each.
- So I want to sell a product that comes in a pair of two
where each one of these are linked to each other.
You've got an E-ink screen that's designed as to be art
or something that goes on the wall.
It's got a frame around it, looks pretty.
And when you walk by, it's displaying a game board
and they are linked to each other.
So you could have chess, checkers, tic-tac-toe.
And when you walk by, it'll say either your turn
or their turn.
And this is something that meant to be happening
either in real time or just over the course of many days.
You could have battleship.
Yeah, you can have your like remote asynchronous playing
where you walk by and oh shit, it's my turn,
night to E4.
And that now it is now registered on both tablets.
They're communicating to some centralized server
where you are playing a game with someone over the internet.
This is something, you know, you could make this a phone app
where it's like one hardware device and one phone app,
but that takes away a little bit of the charm
of it being like a dedicated thing, right?
I wanna have something that doubles as both art decor
for my home and also function.
- I love that.
I could just totally picture that like sitting
and hanging on the wall in the kitchen or something
and I'm walking by grabbing a cup of coffee like, oh, okay.
I got an update by checkers piece or my night to E5
or something.
- Grandson and grandpa or father who is deployed overseas
and son who these are all males that I'm thinking about.
Yeah, you've got your kid and parent.
- Words with friends with your aunt.
- There you go, a big Scrabble board.
- Right?
Yeah, yeah.
- You'd be standing in front of that thing for 10 minutes
trying to figure out the word or the battle.
Every morning, wife and kid come downstairs
and see me staring at an E Ink screen, drinking a coffee.
- Most of the games that you would play on something
like that don't need to refresh 60 frames a second, right?
You just need something static that only changes
when there's been a change.
So that's really good for E Ink.
You could get weeks and weeks and weeks of battery life
out of those things, months even.
- That would be pretty easy to make an MVP of that too.
I really liked that.
- Dude, I think there's like other applications
besides games.
You could do like Etch-a-Sketch style, right?
So like if your kid's a little younger, right?
Just draw a little like heart or whatever
that somebody would send to each other.
And it's kind of like, there's this app.
I don't know if you guys have seen it called Lock It.
Have you guys heard about this?
- Is that the one for couples like avocado?
Where they like, it's a couple chat kind of?
- Yeah, you send a picture to each other randomly
and it just shows up as a widget on your screen, right?
I mean, I don't use it.
You can just like get a friend group in it.
But I think there's like validation that you have
in those types of apps out there where one-on-one connections
- Another product that's similar that my nephew has,
it's a picture frame that changes colors
between purple and like red.
And whenever you touch it,
it changes the color of the other picture frame
just to let them know like,
oh, thinking of you touch the picture frame,
go back and forth.
This is like, whoa, that's cool.
- It's the Facebook poke, but productized.
- Oh my gosh, it's exactly it.
- Or yo.
- The yes, with a picture frame, right?
It's drop dead simple.
This is like 2.0,
you know, when Facebook decided to put Messenger in there.
Right?
- With an E screen.
- Yeah.
- Oh, I love that.
It's all the same things that the picture frame.
I touch this, I'm clearly thinking of you in this moment
or just at some point today I did
and now it's your turn to move.
That's so good.
- So we have Sam here who's living in Ohio.
Sam, what would you wanna play with me?
- What I wanna play with you guys remotely?
- If I were to stick this on my computer.
Or.
- I think the reason that draw, is it drawful?
Draw something, draw something and words with friends
and those things took off
is 'cause you can have kind of an asynchronous experience
with it where you like.
- You keep it going.
- Yeah, you fire it up when you have time
and you leave it when you don't.
- I even, what I thought of,
which is super like applicational was like,
Russell, I think for years we wanted to run
a fantasy football team together.
And you always wanna be,
if we had a roster on the same screen
and we could just make moves and check out,
like imagine the amount of interaction we would have
if it was just one location.
- Oh, that's cool.
- 'Cause otherwise I'm sorry,
I don't care about your team enough
to log in all the time on an app.
But if it was sitting there right in my room,
all right, Russell and I got that thing.
Let me see, make sure that you didn't drop
our entire roster in the process.
I shouldn't be talking,
Russell actually pretty mean fantasy.
- I got lucky, I got lucky,
but Kaffrey got like 50 points.
Like he was crazy, but yeah, that's cool.
- Yeah, the point being that's the type of thing, Leo,
like some sort of connection.
And I love the idea of it's a piece of furniture in my home
or whatnot that it's just part of my day.
And I walk, yeah, I could take a couple minutes
and I don't feel as guilty at that
versus swiping on my phone.
I'd feel okay just tapping around a little bit.
So love it.
- As I was thinking about it, I'm like,
well, this conceptually started as one person
with the display and then the other person
with their phone app,
but that's like a half a step away
from making another shitty battleship clone
in the app store, right?
It's something magical about it being dedicated hardware,
I think.
- Dedicated, put a picture frame in it,
put a little, you know, hanging on your wall
or just on your desk.
- Put a picture of them next to it or something.
- You type a note.
Don't forget, Timmy, you just came home from school
to let the dog out and start dinner or whatever.
- I know you cut stuff,
but it totally made me think of Ender's Game.
You know, when he's playing,
when he's playing with the mystery person,
damn it, it better be from Ender's Game.
We need to check if that's, otherwise cut this.
But in Ender's Game, I'm pretty sure in the book,
Ender plays virtual chess with somebody the whole,
throughout, you know,
the first six or seven chapters of the book,
but he never knows who he's playing.
So that's a different part,
but he would make a move,
come back to the same tablet and so.
- Dude, that's exactly the experience though, Sam,
whether it's Ender's Game or not.
It's like, you could not know where you could know, right?
I don't see why it has to be one-to-one either.
Like if I have like,
we could all be purchasing for each other, right?
'Cause the idea of like me and Sam,
like if it was a four-pack, let's say,
and we had like different, I don't know,
team things going on, that would be fun.
- We could gamble together.
We could, I don't know, just like,
hey, what, 10 to one on this,
let's pick swap that tonight.
I think there's so many applications of that,
that they're just having,
then you end up being in the tablet the whole time.
- Right.
- But I think at some level, it's like,
hey, let's do this together.
If it was sitting on my desk, I totally would.
- Yeah, if you have more than two,
then you could do like a, I don't know,
settlers, a Catan, or Risk, or something
over the course of a month.
- My wife's family, they all have one of those,
like, I forget what the brand is,
but it's a picture frame that anyone in the family,
they each have the same identical picture frame,
and you can upload pictures to,
and just spam your whole family with whatever you're doing.
And they love it.
They use it all the time for that.
Like I went out and picked some apples today,
and here's what we did.
And grandma gets to see it,
and her parents get to see it.
It's really cool.
- Yeah.
- Oh, that'd be interesting.
You could do like, okay, sorry,
this is gonna be a little bit of a pivot.
But like, voicemail, you know how that's super dead, right?
You could just add like a voice recording feature,
and now everybody's got this like cool little,
you go up to the tablet, you leave a note for grandma,
and you walk away, and now you have a list of like,
I feel like there's a ton of applications
where you have hardware on your wall,
and you're just trying to communicate.
And like, this is like,
oh, here's all my voice messages from grandma, right?
And a little kid would love this,
or make sure to do your laundry, Scotty,
from mom or something.
- Yes, grandma.
- I don't know.
I think there's like a need for-
- There are family-centric like LCD displays
that kind of do that, where you've got the calendar on it,
and the to-do list for the family and stuff.
But yeah, having it be something
that's a little bit more pretty.
- Yeah, I think this is almost,
it's a better version of Facebook portal almost, right?
Portal was like, you can click in and talk to somebody
and send messages.
This is like very much like more of a low touch, right?
You don't both have to be there,
and it's as you get time.
- Which is what I think makes it so much more magical though,
is that it is low touch.
Like, it's just, you know, it's an E-ink screen.
It's nothing crazy going on in there.
I'm just moving a chess piece,
or a checkers piece, or whatever.
The simplicity is what makes it good.
- It's got the magic of getting a letter in the mail,
where like, oh, there's one new thing waiting for me.
You know?
- Yeah.
- You guys are unproving my idea
that I'm gonna pitch in a minute.
(laughs)
- Well, that sounds like a natural segue.
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
Scottie B, what have you got for us this week?
- So I can't take credit for this one.
This is my wife's idea,
and I have been begging her to let me pitch this forever,
'cause I love it, and it fits perfectly.
It's something that I really wanna do,
and just do not have time to do.
Okay, so her idea is a website for millennials,
or Gen Zers, or whoever,
to easily stay in contact with their grandparents.
And so, how it would work is like,
Caroline's grandparents,
they loved to write her letters and postcards.
They would send her notes all the time.
They were also extremely un-tech savvy,
to the point that emails or text messages
were very difficult for them.
But it was all about the handwritten notes there.
Caroline, on the other hand,
it's hard to constantly be keeping up
with the amount of letters that they're sending
with a handwritten note,
'cause we are millennials,
and we do not regularly go out and buy stamps,
and postage, and whatnot.
So, picture a website that you go online,
you essentially email your grandma,
but a third-party company takes that,
prints it, either in your handwriting,
or just prints it,
and sends her a physical letter with your message in it.
And then you could do a bunch of other add-ons with it,
like upload pictures from your phone
into the app for this, or whatever,
and it'll automatically print those pictures,
and send them with your message
to whoever is going to receive their,
what was her name for it?
Grandmail, it's called grandmail.com.
(laughing)
We have not purchased that yet.
- That's a great name.
There are services where you sign up,
and for a buck or two each,
they'll send postcards on your behalf.
- Yep, so that's the beauty of this,
is you utilize one of those services,
have your own branding around it
that's completely dedicated to this niche market
of I need to communicate with my grandparents, or whatnot,
and then just go through their system and pricing,
and automate the entire thing.
That's a weekend startup right there.
- Really big font, really big card.
You know, I gotta go full grandma with it, grandpa.
- Yep.
- Wait, so, okay, is there like,
'cause this is a great idea for like,
thank you cards, millennial thank you cards,
and all that stuff.
This is, is there like an app, you said, Leo,
that you can just write on and send a card?
- You upload a photo, and you type a message,
and it'll print it out for you,
and mail it as a postcard.
There's no writing one that I'm aware of.
- Okay, okay.
- Yeah, which makes me think,
so have you guys seen the mods
where people will take a 3D printer with its servos,
and just on a 2D plane, swap out the hot end for a pen,
and they'll like, make it right?
- Oh.
(laughing)
- I bet you could get your customers at grandmail.com
to pay for a 20 bucks a month version,
where you have them write a couple of test sentences,
and then you synthesize their handwriting.
- Well, it's making our generation
sound so shitty right now.
(laughing)
But I love it.
- Handwritten by a robot in your handwriting.
- Also, you could just send it through Gmail or something.
- Yeah.
- Imagine just all your text messages
being sent through this mail service.
Just like, hey grandma, just woke up thinking of you, send.
- Emoji face. - Grandson.
- Oh, emojis would be hard.
- Grandson, I'm confused.
I saw that you sent me something.
Were you traveling?
It's postmarked from Denver, Colorado.
(laughing)
- How can you read that grandma?
It's too small.
Are grandparents the only market for this, I'm wondering?
- I think so.
(laughing)
- Handwritten notes to your lover.
- It's my wife's idea, it's not mine anymore.
- The thank you cards is not a bad idea.
I'm sure there's--
- Thank you cards.
That plus the GPT-4 API, you upload your wedding list.
- Paste in your wedding website
and it figures everything else out for you.
This person got you this,
so I'm gonna send them this thank you.
- Okay, so here's the real problem.
It's like, I would write a postcard,
but I just don't have a stamp.
I don't wanna buy a postcard.
- Exactly. - Those are the worst parts
of the handwriting postcard experience.
Like, somebody make this so it makes my life easier, right?
I would do all those, like hell,
I would handwrite digitally on a tablet,
you know what I mean?
It meant that I didn't have to print,
get the stamp and all that other stuff, right?
Could you just, is the app gonna allow you to just,
why can't you just take a digital pen on your phone
and literally handwrite it?
It's just the whole shipping part, right?
- Yeah, but I also know that myself
is even lazier than that, than you at this point.
And even if I had the handwritten everything
right in front of me,
I'd still probably rather type it on a keyboard
in some form, but you're absolutely right.
Like, you could have any variation of input into this
as long as the output is a nice handwritten postcard
or letter, maybe not even handwritten.
- I think it's actually proven, there's plenty,
like, I was just thinking of this.
So I sponsor, and I think a couple of you guys do too,
sponsor with Compassion International,
where you have like, you know, somebody that's,
or World Vision, where you have someone overseas.
And while I could write a handwritten note
and put it in the mail,
every time I log into my computer
and upload pictures that are right there of my family
and type in a couple, you know, three or four sentences,
like, it just, it is a generational thing.
And I think I do get bummed out.
I'm like, wow, what a lazy slob.
I couldn't just, you know,
they gave me a piece of paper and an envelope.
I could have just written it out, but I, you know,
it's something about putting it together faster
on a computer and sending it out.
- It's the thought that counts, right?
Not the way it happens.
It's the thought of logging on to grandmail.com.
- I don't feel that bad about it.
I'm still writing a letter for the record.
There's nothing, I am buying Scott's product.
You're not gonna guilt me out of buying,
not buying Scott and Caroline's product.
- I'm not taking any credit for this.
- Oh, Scott, okay, got it, all right.
Oh, that's good.
There is this service I bought for my dad.
He's not gonna listen to this, so,
well, maybe he will after this.
But it's a memory a day, and it will basically turn,
he like writes down a memory of himself growing up a day
for like, I think it's like 200 days or whatever.
So it's the reverse of it.
They mail it in, they digitize it.
If there's no picture from that,
the company might even like go look for pictures
of that place that he grew up in Taiwan
and slide that into the book as well, you know?
And so it basically creates like 200 memories
of him growing up, you know?
And I just think that'd be really cool for my kids
to have generation by generation.
Yeah, yeah, so you made me think of like,
I think there's just so much value of like,
if you did 15 or 20 of these, right?
The books and the upsells that you can create out of it,
right, of just like, you know, all these handwritten things
that somebody put together for you.
- That is cool.
Wait, so your dad's handwriting all that, Sam?
- Yeah, I don't think he wants to type it out.
So he's gonna handwrite it out.
- Sorry, dad, you're handwriting for the next.
I'll let you guys know how it goes
as my dad doesn't even know he's getting skipped yet.
- I think it's cool to have a book though
of your like dad's handwriting, you know, for your kids.
- Right, that is pretty sweet.
- Whoa.
- And I think there's just so many interesting
generational things with that too.
'Cause you know, my dad's first language is in Chinese.
And so like, they are gonna translate the, you know,
so like I will have the ability whether,
I haven't figured out, I haven't talked to the service fully
but I believe I can get it in English or Chinese, right?
And so I can read to my kids based off of that
and say, hey, this is what grandpa did and whatnot.
And so there's just something to that value of handwritten
that you're talking about, Scott,
that I think is super cool.
- Dude, that's so true.
There's something about handwritten stuff.
Gonna pump up my idea a little bit here
that makes it amazing.
I don't know what it is.
It's just because I think it's making a comeback
or it becomes more meaningful
that things are handwritten now, right?
- No, I mean, people on my team
still have their cards hanging on the wall.
You know, I visit a clinic and I'll see that
they have the card that, you know,
VP Sam wrote for them from, you know, 2021.
And it's something that they have on their--
- That's pretty cool.
- Board or somewhere.
Yeah, and I can barely read my handwritten.
Hey, it's from 2021, they still got it up there.
You know, you can't over deliver on that.
You know, you can't just be giving them cards
or else they're gonna be hanging them up all the time, right?
Or throwing them out.
- The audacity.
- No, I'm messing, but it's valuable.
- That is true, they can't come back, right?
Next time boss man comes in and it's not on the wall,
that's, oh, oh.
- Well, you write cards all the time now, Sam.
- Yeah, that's right, that's right.
I write cards all the time, so that's really what it is.
- Using Scott's new service.
- Yeah, I'm gonna bring in Scott's new service,
type them all out and they'll send them out.
- So I think too, this would be a really good market
for like kids that are not really well connected
with their grandparents, right?
So like the 15 year olds, the 14, 15, 16 year olds
that would never give themselves a chance
or an opportunity to.
So like a parent could be like, hey teenage kid,
write, here's like 50 credits for your app, right?
Write grandma a card, damn it.
And you just do it on the app
and you can take a Snapchat level photo, right?
And have that sent out.
I think it just makes it really easy
for like disengaged kids, let's say,
or kids that really don't know how to connect
with their grandparents to start connecting with them.
- Snapchat, just make a contact in Snapchat
that's your grandma, that's a brilliant idea.
Like send her the messages or the pictures
or whatever that, and they all just get printed
together with it.
Hey, I'm just gonna snap grandma real quick.
Boom, she gets a letter.
- That should go to market right there.
You just add this Snapchat, grandmail@snapchat tag, right?
- I don't know what videos are gonna be.
It's gonna be like a flip book that they send them.
- No video, if you send a video,
we're not sending a postcard.
- Yeah, pictures, start with pictures maybe.
But yeah, there's something.
You can pick up photo books from CVS, right?
Like 20 page photo book tomorrow that you send to CVS.
Why not do a letter, right?
This is genius.
- Caroline, Caroline.
- Just Caroline.
- Caroline, you're the genius.
Just Caroline.
- You wanna be the API layer for interfacing
between paper and people who don't wanna touch paper.
I love it.
- Okay, digital, can you do this for digital signatures?
You know, instead of a, I don't know.
I just, I have a digital signature problem
at my work right now.
If like, I send you a letter,
sometimes like it's so painful
to get a handwritten signature
that if I could send a letter in the mail,
it's like, there's this much of a problem.
That's just a blank piece of paper.
Please sign here.
And you stick it in the envelope.
- I thought everyone uses like DocuSign today
or those other programs.
- Not when you work with the--
- Nope, you still need a hand signature.
- The greatest generation doesn't like DocuSign, okay?
(laughing)
They don't trust it, so.
I don't know.
I'm just a little pivot there.
There's something about handwriting
that sticks around like fax machines.
- Ooh, we could have a cursive translator
coming the other direction.
Grandma sends you a letter
and you can take a picture of it
and translate the cursive back into Gen Zero lingo.
- Okay, now we're getting lazy.
You don't wanna read cursive.
Someone has to read the letter for you.
- Hey, my phone can translate it.
- Okay, sorry.
That was pretty good.
(laughing)
- Yeah, come on, AI OCR.
That's the future.
(upbeat music)
- Russell, it seems like you were pretty excited
about things that are handwritten.
What are you up for?
- I don't know what it is, guys.
Sometimes we're just on the same wavelength.
So...
- Guess so.
So wait, wait, wait.
We're gonna get grandma one of my E Ink displays
and we're gonna send her letters with Scott's thing.
What are you-
- Genuine heartfelt letters.
- So I'm gonna start with,
have you seen the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?
- I have not.
(laughing)
- So I think I have, but I think I...
(laughing)
- We're off to a great start here.
- Okay, Sam, just be my fax.
Sam, be my fax checker here.
- Okay.
- All right, I'll fax check you.
- Yep.
- Yep, had to read it for accelerated reading
in elementary school, so.
- So it's fresh.
(laughing)
- Oh yeah.
- Okay, my understanding is they had a pair of pants
and they would send it to each other, right?
And that was, and then they wrote a story about the pants.
- I don't know about the writing.
I would pay so much money to have Russell review books.
- I thought this was a movie,
so I didn't even know it was a book.
So this is where we're at in life.
- Yeah, it was a book.
- They sent it to each other
and they made a story about the pants, right, Sam?
- They do, yes, yeah.
They do send pants to each other.
- Okay, that's all I need.
That's all I need for this idea.
- Okay, excellent.
- So.
- Where's my beer?
- This, okay, this is going off of,
you got some of your guys' great ideas, right?
So my wife and her friends
would send a notebook back and forth
to each other in the mail.
And it was a full-on spiral-bound notebook
and it would get sent to each other
and you'd all get to read each other's letter at the end.
So you got to catch up on everybody's,
you're supposed to take it for a week, send it out.
Great, cool idea, 'cause then at the end of the week,
you'd be able to see all the letters prior
and catch up with everybody in a different way, unique way.
- Right.
- So I thought that was really creative.
My wife is finding startups all the time, just naturally.
But I guess I was thinking,
how could you turn that into a business, okay?
Instead of it being a full-on notebook,
what if you sent a card or some sort of physical media
that then everybody sent to each other, right?
So maybe it was a little picture book
or a five-page notebook with envelopes in there,
pre-envelope.
I think the hardest part was just, again,
getting the thing in the mail so the next person,
it wasn't the--
(laughing)
- A generation is useless.
- But you know what's even worse?
Like, I'll get into this, but you could just leave it
in the frickin' mailbox and the post person will pick it up.
Nobody knows about it, right?
The flag, the red flag thing.
Anyways, I'm just, my idea is simply that,
a service that will send and make it really easy to send
sister in a traveling pants version of a card
through the mail, all right?
- Love it.
So, okay, I'm picturing if it's a notebook
and it's in a box and you're just using the same box
to ship back and forth always,
and there's like a pile of stickers that it comes with,
pre-labeled stickers that you just slap on
of who's it's going to next.
- Much better.
- And you just keep all the stickers
with the box as it goes.
- What about a Russian nesting doll situation
where you start with like 30 boxes
and there's just enough of a gap in between them
all to fit the book? - I'm literally just
imagining you drawing.
- And on the 31st day, you get a chocolate or something.
- Why don't we send a Russian nesting doll to each other?
You know, the first person writes on the outer layer
and then you pull it back.
- That's what I was saying.
Oh, you just wanna write on it itself?
- That's what I thought was the first, but.
- No, I guess like the packaging, right?
It's just peel and send, peel and rip and tear and send.
- A reminder text message service
that would remind the writer, right?
Hey, you know, you got a drop in the mail in two days
or whatever your deadline's coming up,
something sort of, you know, to keep it moving.
- That is a problem.
- That'd probably be at an added value.
- That's the upsell.
There we go, Sam.
The man with the money on the mind.
(laughing)
- My idea makes any money today, so that's good.
I'm making money.
- I mean, like this is like part of it, right?
It's like how do you get people,
despite making it as easy as possible,
it seemed like it's always that one friend
and everybody has that one friend
that it's gonna stay in their house
for a month or two months
and it's never gonna be shipped to the next person.
I don't know, it's gotta like self-destruct after.
- I think the other people would just pick it forward,
right, the other people just vote on the service
to say, "Hey, you know, Freddy over here
"isn't writing in his book.
"We'll forward it on," right?
You know, your package is getting picked up on this day.
And then Freddy won't wanna do that the next time,
you know, but you keep it going that way
'cause the other people in the group have voted,
you know, to keep it moving.
- I like that.
So like you could have a monthly subscription box,
let's say, and so you end up being the person
with like three boxes or like,
or you're always the last person to get it
or there's probably some,
or you can get like, you know, those dog, the bounty hunter,
they just come into your house and break in
and they just repossess that box and,
(laughing)
you did it right.
- Well, like let's say the four of us are together, right?
We're all in this thing together.
Russell, you just can't seem to get this box.
You can't write in it.
Sorry guys, my bad.
So Leo, Scotty B and I all get a text message
when you're late every week.
It's like, should we give Scott another week?
No, we're not gonna give him, you know,
let's give Russell another,
no, we're not gonna give another week.
And then so the next day, you know, all right, fine.
At least hopefully the person--
- Wait, what, does the postman like break into your house
and steal it from you?
How does the postman get it from Freddy?
- Well, hopefully, or Freddy or Russell, whoever,
I don't know at this point, but let's like,
yeah, Russell gets the notification.
Okay, I gotta give it up.
I'll drop it in the box.
- Oh, I see, I see.
- And put it on my porch.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's like, it keeps the group accountable in that way.
Right, the service is keeping the group accountable
to keep it moving.
- Oh.
- We could have a gig economy worker come
and like be the person who's repossessing it
and taking it to the USPS.
- Or I guess like in a way, it's just like,
you didn't write in it
or you didn't do what you were supposed to do.
You know, just put it in the damn mailbox.
Just get your ass up, walk it to the mailbox.
(laughing)
- You could do UPS pickup.
We could build in a UPS pickup or a FedEx pickup into that.
- That's all you gotta do.
- Just have it on your porch tomorrow.
That's all you gotta do is drop it in the box
and put it on the porch tomorrow.
- Other than Russian nesting doll packaging,
is there a way that we can design the product
where literally all you have to do
is drop it into the mailbox?
There's no other work to be done.
- Batch shipping through USPS,
where you prepay for 20 labels
and it uses the same barcode for each of them.
- Can you do that?
- I think you just rip a label.
- There was an old startup called Ringcam
that I think we did something similar.
- What about the same box,
but it just has a bunch of layers of stickers
and you just peel the top layer off?
- Yeah.
- Right, exactly.
- Yep, prepaid for.
- And if the person also is horrible at writing
and then they'll hire Scott's and Caroline's
writing service to write it for them
and then they'll mail it to them
and then they'll slide it into the box and then it'll work.
- While displaying it on an E-ink screen.
- I would buy this.
I would buy this for my,
this is a great marketing,
I wouldn't do it to stay in touch with you guys.
I mean, you guys are cool and all,
but from a marketing, I would buy this for my wife
and her mom and sister.
I would totally, so just on a side note,
this is a gift, right?
This is a nice gift to buy for your family
is where the marketing,
who cares if they all use it?
I mean, that's cool,
but it's the buying the service, totally.
Market it, slap it on, it's just logistics.
- Agree, I think the logistics is the MVP of this
or is the value prop of this.
You can have something, whatever you want.
It could be pants and notebook and Russian nesting doll,
go back and forth constantly between two people
and you pick whatever size box.
You just give us the addresses,
we'll give you as many labels as you want.
Or just one of those like, hey, if this label's scanned,
then you get charged for it,
but you already have a preset amount
that this company has taken care of.
And then it just goes back and forth forever.
I love that.
- You can add as many rounds as you want.
So if you want like three loops,
you can set the labels in there too,
'cause that's also a problem.
It's like, oh, who's next?
Who did I have to set it to?
What order?
The label's already pre-organized and set up and--
- Yeah, no thought required. - Very easy.
- And then you can upsell all the things on your website
that you could send back and forth,
like I guess a notebook or a pair of jeans.
- Oh man, I didn't even think about the jeans.
You could put a pair of jeans in there.
- Russell, why did the Sisterhood share jeans?
- Yeah, can you explain that to me?
- What happened again?
- You guys gotta watch the movie,
'cause there's no book about it.
No, Sam read the book.
I've heard of the movie.
- I think it was, they both really liked the pair.
And so she said, I'll share it with you.
And then it was like, the friends moved away
from each other, so then she mailed it to her.
But there were like four friends in the group,
and then they mailed it between them.
- Did they put something cute in the pockets,
like a postcard each time?
- Right, and then they got a text message service
that reminded them when they needed to drop it in the mail.
They already did this.
- Dr. Bounty Hunter comes.
- Russ is just ripping it off of the front.
- And steals your pants.
- What a third act twist.
I wasn't expecting it at all.
When the one sister got brutally murdered
by Dr. Bounty Hunter and her pants taken.
- Hey, it's part of the service we offer.
Subscribe.
- Don't forget to send the pants.
(upbeat music)
- Sammy Z, best in the biz.
Let's hear your idea.
- Great transition.
(laughing)
So I unfortunately don't have a family service
to add in to the portfolio tonight.
But all right, well, we'll bring it there.
So I've had to travel quite a bit recently
and stay in hotels quite frequently.
And I continue to encounter the same issue
as I'm checking out of the hotel.
And that is the fact that I never have cash on me
to tip the cleaning service at my hotel.
I never carry cash anymore.
I'm always gonna pay via card.
And at every hotel that I check out at,
I ask the service, hey, how do I tip my cleaning service?
Can you just throw 10 bucks on my bill?
No, sir, there's policies, procedures, we can't do that.
And there's all these employment issues, whatever.
So I've just been thinking through,
and obviously to try and get hotels to buy in this
would might be difficult,
but just some sort of easy QR code
for every cleaning service individual to be able to leave.
'Cause you always get those cards.
Hi, I'm Angela, I'm Fred, I'm Russell,
I'm your cleaning person taking care of your room today.
I'm like, great, I don't have $2 or $5 or $10, $20
to just throw on there and say thank you.
And so it would be phenomenal to have some sort of QR code,
a Zelle that would be tied to that person
to still allow me to tip that individual
for the good service.
'Cause I do think to some level
that those people are being left out
in this cashless economy.
And so to have a service,
probably you would need a credit card service
of some sort, credit processor
that would be linked to Venmo, linked to Zelle.
You could just be the QR code,
but then you wouldn't make money.
So I feel like it has to be some sort of credit processor
that would fund this and make it readily available
for hotel services to allow their folks
to be able to be paid.
And so services probably would just steal this
and just do that themselves.
But I feel like from a value chain standpoint,
it would just be really nice to be able
to give cleaning services an extra couple of dollars
and we'll take the credit processing fees up top.
Dude, this is so cool.
My brain went to like,
so street performers, cash economy, it's so hard.
Like how do you, all the other ways
when you need cash or you just wanna give.
The bellboy, the person that's driving,
your shuttle driver, Uber driver, you can tip them.
But some taxi drivers you can,
but there's tons of people that just,
you can't, I don't have cash on me anymore.
Yeah, this is totally a point of that.
Man, okay, so like,
you're thinking that you have a QR code credit,
like a business card kind of thing
where you drop the business card
and then they can scan it.
Business card, little placard just that was on the stand
that says my name is Angela.
If you're happy with your service today, you can tip.
I see.
Would you wanna be the one providing the payment layer
or would you wanna be the one who makes the product
with Venmos and cash apps and stuff already on it?
It seems like this, you're like 99% of the way
already there if you just use their existing
whatever accounts they have, right?
Correct, but then we can't make money.
Right.
Of course.
It was just tied to their demo, which is fine.
Yeah, yeah.
But, and so to some level, I feel like
for it to be an enterprise,
we'd have to be the one being the credit processor
to make it free.
And I'm sure there's some licenses
of how people get paid on that stuff.
And so maybe we wouldn't want all that liability.
But outside of that--
Taxes and stuff too, yeah.
Right, yeah, yeah.
Otherwise, then it is purely a QR.
Then we could just be the ones that print QR codes,
but I think hotels could do that too.
Right.
They're just too lazy.
Maybe they don't care for these people like we do.
I don't know.
So.
That's what it is.
We care more about hourly workers than businesses do.
You heard it here first.
So I might make this a little more complicated
than it should be, but I think this would be really cool.
Like, what if you had, like let's say, Sam,
you are the QR code.
So instead of having the QR code stands in the hotels,
you, Sam, carry a pack of, you know,
Zoe books, okay?
And they're literally, you buy a pack of QR codes.
And just like you activate, you can activate each QR code
with like a certain amount of dollars.
It's like two bucks, one dollar, $10.
And you just hand them the business card
and they go into their preferred app,
whether that's Venmo, Cash App or whatever,
and they scan that QR code.
And now it's more universalized.
It acts more like cash 'cause anybody can scan this QR code
that you've activated and connected $2, $5, $10 to.
And now it's like, you are basically doing gift cards
through your own cash payment app.
So now it's like, hey, I don't have cash.
And you leave this business card on there
that says scan this QR code
and you'll get money in your bank account.
Like here's five bucks tip.
It's the tip card.
We'll say the tip.
- Oh.
- So you're making, you're allowing,
I'm, yeah, basically I'm giving the QR code to the payer.
Right?
I, as the payer now have, the payer is able to pay.
Is that more complicated?
Is that easier than just going to the bank and having cash?
- That's what I was about to say.
I think you just invented currency.
- Guys.
- Is there a gold standard?
- It's shrew bucks.
- I need, I need Leo's Russian doll system
where I can just pull money off for free.
- It's better than cash though, because cash you can lose.
You, or you can't lose.
You lose money when you lose cash.
If you lose these QR code scanners,
you don't lose any money, right?
'Cause you didn't activate any of those QR codes.
They're blanks until,
- They're just blanks.
- Just like a gift card at the grocery store.
- Until you fill them.
- Okay.
- Until I activate it.
- So it is kind of still, yeah, go ahead.
- You're trading your own currency.
- But like, cash sucks because then I have coins
and I have to fold them up and put them in my wallet.
I just want like five little cards.
- I agree.
- Yeah.
- Having a small stack of blank gift cards
that you can put whatever on there would be awesome
for when you're Facebook marketplacing and Craigslisting too.
You go and you watch them put 50 bucks on the thing
and you take it with you home.
And now you have your $50
that you put into PayPal or whatever.
- Well, you can pick any different account to go through.
- Yeah.
- I can do PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, whatever.
This will transfer to any of them.
- What if it's a stamp?
You stamp on a piece of paper.
I'm trying to think of like a more convenient way
to provide a payment that's more,
I guess, anonymous or not tied to anything.
It's like a coin.
- You guys remember the Game Boy printer?
- Yeah.
- You almost need like a receipt printer
that you can make infinite ones of these.
- Whoa.
- Or something.
- Like the Polaroid picture, right?
Like you just got your stack in here.
- Yeah.
- Or even just on a normal inkjet printer at home.
You print out a page of 16 blank gift card things
and you keep them in your briefcase or whatever
and pull one out when you need it.
- But you gotta do it with your phone.
Okay, okay, hear me out.
This is insane.
You go with a pile of these blank gift cards
that have like a peel back layer on them.
In the peel back layer,
it has a photo sensitive ink or something on it.
You press it against your phone and it'll print
onto your blank guy.
And then you can have your custom gift cards
or whatever on there that it just instantly appears.
And all you need in the back of your phone case
is just a couple of these guys shoved in between your phone
and the phone case that you can pull out,
print to it and leave it on the desk.
- I too was trying to figure out
how we can create them on the go.
That's great.
- That is great.
- I was worried you were gonna say the word blockchain.
This is way better.
- Well, of course it's part of the blockchain.
- See, they're just blanks.
You know, you could reuse them too.
Like, oh, here's five bucks, here's $10.
And all right, once you scan it and claim it,
it's just reused.
Then it's just like everything's a currency.
- It's more transactable in that way.
Like I see what you're saying versus a tip.
It is kind of nice to just say,
I threw it onto the bit,
like it goes directly into their bank account.
That way it's, I know that I got,
hopefully it gets to the right person, right?
But I've already activated it.
So that's the same thing as cash,
leaving it on the table or whatnot.
- Really the reloadable,
or I don't know if they reloadable,
the loadable one-time use Visa gift cards for cash
have failed this market.
And it seems like that's the natural home.
You get a stack of a couple of those,
you leave them in your wallet
next to your actual credit cards.
You load them up, you give it to someone else,
they spend it or they add it to their thing,
then they take it and use it for somewhere else.
You want like a communal, passable,
aroundable gift card economy.
- I think the problem with that, Leo,
has been you need cash to buy those cards.
- And it costs $5 to load them, right?
- Also to buy those Visa gift cards.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the amount of effort, I might as well go to the bank.
And so to Russell and Scott's point,
I think there actually is something
that I can create this myself.
- Yeah, you're right, you're right.
- I don't know if I'd pay,
I wonder if I'd pay for a service to create that for myself
or if I would then at that point just go to the bank.
- Going to the bank is such a pain in the ass
or paying $3 for an ATM.
Could I just send cash?
Like what if we create a service where for a dollar,
we'll send you cash in the mail?
- Well, I think honestly,
it would have to be figuring out a way
to tie it to the HR departments of giant hotel chains.
Say, hey, we will take care of,
we will take care of your team.
We become the, it's a B2B service.
This is a way to recognize your teammates,
the folks that work with you in a differential way.
Your customers wanna do it.
1.7 billion, this is what I was typing in,
the 1.7 billion people stay in a hotel
every at one point across America.
That's insane, the amount of transactions
that we are missing out on because it's cashless.
- That's so true.
- Here's your service then.
You go to these hotel chains, you say,
I'm gonna sell you thousands of these little cards
that all have a unique, or not even unique,
but just a QR code on it that I can leave with the note.
And so the cleaning service leaves
this little QR code with it.
And when I, the person staying at the hotel,
scans the QR code, it brings me to a special site
that says, hey, you can tip through any of these services.
Yeah, cash app, Venmo, whatever.
- Now I'm tipping, right?
Absolutely.
- Yeah, so just make it digital
for me to be able to tip my purse.
And Scott, and now we've made it B2B,
now we're in the market.
- A little landing page for a purse, boom.
- Note about who they are.
- Yeah, you just pick the big icon of which one you have
and it logs you in instantly with a thumbprint scan.
- And the hotel chains are just taking
a small convenience fee off the top 'cause.
- Yeah, you gotta check that, I acknowledge,
and I've read the terms and conditions of tipping.
- Yeah, you gotta check that.
- The room service people have the ability
to fill out a profile there, so you get like,
he was a Vietnam veteran, he has eight kids at home,
he's missing an eye.
- Oh, that's good though.
- Really sell up the sob story.
- You like people that miss eyes, Scott?
That's what that's got you excited, right?
- No, but I do like a full description of the person.
- Oh, all right, got it.
- To make it more human.
- I do get handwritten cards in there, right?
That say, hey, I live here.
- We just digitized it 'cause we're millennials
and we can't do handwritten.
- And I feel like a complete jerk
when I walk out of that hotel room,
I'm like, wow, I've been here four days,
and I get soap and everything taken care of
and I have nothing to give this person.
- No, I travel a lot now, Sam, and I'm like,
oh, I forget to tip, which is not good.
I wanna be reminded though, too.
I feel like I don't wanna not tip if I should be,
which I should be.
- If it's just something a little underneath the TV
or on your way out, hey, forgot, you know, I think.
- Yeah, a thank you card to remind,
like, hey, this guy was here and yeah, that'd be good.
Why don't they do that?
Oh, sorry.
- Type a hand.
- Why can't the thank you cards themselves?
Like, hey, thanks for staying with us.
My name is Joanna and I'm, you know,
have a great weekend, right?
Like, that's the last card you get on your desk,
you know, sometimes before you leave the hotel,
QR code right there.
And now the thank you cards are all handled.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, they could be all on there.
Yeah, so essentially we're turning into the service
that provides that for them.
- Yep.
- Cool.
- Dude, I think you hit on a bigger problem though, Sam,
like the cashless world that we're living in
is gonna hurt a lot of people,
or like it takes away some of the fun things
that cash made happen, you know, or yeah.
- And everyone outside the United States is laughing at us
and our dependency on tipping.
(laughing)
- Or we could pay all of our service industry a living wage.
- What a concept.
(laughing)
- On that note.
(laughing)
- Thank you very much for listening.
We hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thank you very much, Sam, for being here.
That's a wonderful idea.
- Thanks for having me.
- I'll be back to do more of these, all right?
- Absolutely, I'll be back.
Thanks guys, I feel happy.
- Delightful.
Our website is Spitball.show.
We would love to hear from you.
Email us feedback, comments, ideas.
We're all at podcast@Spitball.show.
That's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse,
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Our subreddit is r/spitballshow.
Our intro/outro music is "Swingers" by Bonkers Beat Club.
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New episode is coming out soon.
We will see you then.
(upbeat music)
(dramatic music)