I'm Scott, I'm Russell, and I'm Leo. This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, the pitchin' kitchen. Where three startup savants. That's us. Empty
our heads of all the tech product and startup 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 this week I brought
our guest. Today we have Alex. Alex is my former coworker and good friend and fellow
tech enthusiast. He is one of the reasons that I know how to code at all because I would
pester him incessantly about syntax and structure questions over the years. And today he's going
to lend us some thoughts. Alex, welcome to Spitball.
Thank you. Hi. This is gonna be a good time. Today to kick us off, we have a guest pitch
that we're going to discuss here. Some of you may know fabulous Neil, Real Neil Pipes
of Steel from Community, Charlie Kuntz. We've pitched him for an idea. So let's take a listen
to what he's bringing to the table.
What's up, Scott, Russell, Leo, all the Spitball family. How are you? Just in case your audience
doesn't know who I am. My name's Charlie Kuntz. I was on a show called Community and a special
shout out to the small but mighty fans of CSI Cyber out there. That was a favorite.
It's raining here in L.A. today, which is a rare occurrence. But I would like to pitch
a better umbrella. The classic umbrella. I mean, it's been around for centuries, but
I got to say, I'm not happy with it. You're going to get less wet than you would without
it. But you're still getting wet. I mean, it's got the bar that goes up into the middle
and then it comes out. But then I hold it at this side and then I got a whole area over
here that's keeping the sidewalk dry. And I got this shoulder that's getting all wet
and my pants are getting wet. My shoes are getting wet. Perhaps it's more of like an
L shape. So you hold it in one hand, you can switch it around, whatever, just goes up and
over. Or maybe two. Maybe the ski pole or better yet, an umbrella, an improvement on
the hat umbrella, maybe just bigger and dome like. I know it's already kind of invented,
but I want use of both my hands, too. You know, I'm a busy guy. I got to stay on the
phone. I got to I'm moving and shaking. I'm walking. So that's my pitch. The better umbrella.
I think it's time for a redesign. I hope that inspires conversation and thought and debate.
And if somebody does invent the new umbrella, I'd like the first one and I'll save it for
the two days in Los Angeles that it brings. So cheers to you all. Thanks for having me.
I can't wait to hear how it all works.
Thanks, Charlie, for your thoughts. So, yeah, he gave us a few places to start, right?
I'm sorry. That was Neil from Community. Right.
I love Community. That's amazing.
That's great. Fabulous Neil.
So isn't this like something that they do already in Japan where they've got like the
ones that go from all the way down to the ground? It's almost like it's got like a shower
curtain attached to the rim of the umbrella or something.
Yeah, I feel like I've seen the like the full body thing.
Yeah, like I feel like it's a I don't know if it's like a fashion thing.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Yep. Do you be walking around with a shower curtain?
Yeah, it's gonna be hard to make this cool.
Oh, it's a shower curtain guy. It's a guy that walks around with a shower curtain.
I mean, I guess that's a pretty easy way to prototype it, right? Like, right.
I guess that's it. Like, that's the poncho. Like, that's why people don't walk around
with ponchos or garbage bags, you know? Right.
Have you seen those air umbrellas where it's just like a wand that points straight up?
Oh, yeah. It's really high pressure air in all directions
to deflect the air. What? How big is this?
So cool. It's just a wand. It's like a pole that you're
holding above your head. How?
I don't know. It must be very loud, though. Like a like a Dyson or something.
A Dyson vacuum. Blowing air out the-
With about 12 minutes of battery life. You have to use an extension cord.
That's incredible if that's a real thing. I love that. That's the sort of place that
I was starting with was like, is there some sort of technology solution to this that nobody's
thought of? But yeah, Dyson Airblade butt above your head is amazing.
You're fine when you're not, when the rain isn't moving and you're not walking forward.
I think that's part of the problem. So you can't walk forward.
Or if it's really windy. Yeah.
Maybe what if you shape the umbrella to like go forward like six extra feet?
Like an awning? I didn't want to say six inches.
I wanted to say like- Six feet.
Oblong umbrella instead of an elliptical umbrella instead of a-
Oscar Mayer Wiener umbrella. Circular.
Yeah. We got it. The place where my mind went to was those
cabs that you can attach to a snowblower. You know what I'm talking about? Where like
you kind of have a full body. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know who, Chick-fil-A. Have you seen, have you gone to Chick-fil-A when it rains?
Yeah, the things they wear. That's right. They've got like little pop-up tents.
They're like little minions with clipboards. Is it like on their back or are they like
off to the side? I don't know how it attaches to the body,
but it's like a pop- Oh, it's attached to you.
Yeah. It's a full pop tent, bright fluorescent yellow thing with a little window. It's funny.
Walking around with perfect cubes. There's no way anyone in LA would ever wear anything
like that. I think, yeah. What's the fashionable umbrella?
Like what's, I think that's part of it. Stainless steel.
60 pounds. Beauty is pain.
Just an aluminum cube around you with a little eye slit and nothing else.
You mentioned the umbrella hat. I want to circle back to this Dyson Airblade idea. Can
we integrate this into something you wear? So it's pushing the force field of water around
you like a bubble. Like a backpack?
I love that. Backpack for the batteries because that thing's
going to be heavy. I don't want to wear that on my head.
One of those straw hats or a bucket hat. Yeah.
I really like that. Like one of those, the sun hats, but like
three foot out. Yes.
A sun hat that emits 15 PSI in all directions. Three foot diameter hat with a Dyson vacuum
on full reverse. There's no way you can do that quiet either.
I was just going to say that. I think down the hall and around the corner of the alleyway,
"Whaaa!" coming over towards you. That's going to be great.
I'm just picturing like a funeral scene in a Hollywood movie where everyone's dressed
in black with their black umbrellas. And there's just that one guy just "Whaaa!"
That's like a, I think you should leave sketch or something. That's great.
Sounds real. Women's hair getting messed up as you walk
by. Papers, newspapers stand going flying into the breeze.
So what if we go a different way, right? Like the other way to get rid of water is to heat
it up, right? And then it'll turn to steam and go away. So all we got to do is just make
a super hot plane above the head, right? Yeah.
Alex, yes. Can we build like a plasma hat or something?
A plasma hat? Dude.
We could have done lightsabers. Nope. We're doing umbrellas.
It just whirs like a helicopter above your head.
There you go. The full lightsaber effect.
Just don't get too close to somebody else, right?
Accidentally behead your dinner date. Dude, what about like a ceiling fan though?
Like, could you do like a ceiling fan type of... A ceiling fan hat.
Like a helicopter hat that actually... Okay. Quadcopters. Okay. How much power does a quadcopter...
When one blade just isn't dangerous enough. They are loud, but they're not like that loud.
You're going to have the strongest neck of any human alive as you're supporting the force
of... No, it's doing upward thrust.
It's doing upward thrust. Wait, what? Downward thrust. Oh, downward thrust.
It's forcing you into the ground. Shooting the air up.
They can just carry like a tarp above you and then... Oh.
Yeah, you get four of them on each corner and... It follows you around autonomously down the street.
Yeah. And then, you know, it's high enough away... They already do that, right?
Yeah, you can't hear it because it's, you know, it's 50 feet in the air or whatever,
but it's aligned perfectly so that whatever vector the rain is coming down is, it will not hit you.
Yeah, you've created an anti-cloud. Anti-cloud, that's a good name.
That's my favorite so far. Yeah, that's mine as well.
Hope that helps, Charlie. We solved it for you. Next.
Yep. We'll take investment.
All right, Russell, what is an idea that you would love to implement but just don't have time for?
All right. So, I have a baby, a big dog, and the house is constantly getting smaller
because every year you get new shit. Just constantly. It just doesn't stop.
And I'm not getting rid of shit fast enough. So, you kind of store it and you run out of space to
store it all, start organizing. And I had this brilliant idea. All right.
Why? I don't need everything in my house. I need it accessible at some point in time,
but not right away. So, what if I had a storage locker like Amazon, where I had all of my extra
stuff in inventory on a website that I could leave my stuff outside, they'd pick it up,
store it in their warehouse. I could order my stuff, already exists to be at my house within
one to two day shipping, two hour shipping. I don't know. Just storage garage meets Amazon
logistics. And we got ourselves... I don't need to buy another house or a garage or a basement
storage room. I just store it in my Amazon storage garage.
I love that. Yes.
But it's cool because I feel like I'm buying my own shit again.
I buy it twice. So, that's it.
I have been wondering what to do with my new pole barn.
There you go.
Yeah. And then it's like...
Rent it out, lease it out to this.
I was just going to say, yeah. You know how people moonlight as an Uber driver or an Amazon
delivery driver. You are literally the whole stack.
There you go. Crowdsource. No, crowdsource everything. There's tons of people with pole
barn space. So, you have on one side, you got people storing and then you got the drivers too.
So, you got the full...
Dude, like your winter storage clothes, your summer storage clothes, it's two days away.
And the whole system, it's like they take pictures and they store it. And it's a subscription.
You probably pay per square foot or something. And it's not too expensive or you price yourself
out, but it's like, all right, winter clothes, go into store is on.
I don't know what's... I don't have a name for it yet.
Store is on.
Yeah.
I would want some guarantee that it's not being fiddled with and rifled through. So,
you could do this per box where you have it like locking. I know that I have inventoried it myself
to have these eight items in the box or whatever. And it just, it has my own code that I set on it
or a key that I keep and gets whisked away. I want boxes number three and seven today,
please. And I'll swap out whatever's in it.
Love that. You have your own inventory of what's in there.
Sure.
Just request it and it shows up that day. I'm just picturing all these like storage
units that you see where they just hire a runner who's like, I am the guy that
runs back and forth and brings your shit from this place to your house.
Yeah. It seems like the next shipped app, right? Like you got the ship shoppers,
the Uber, like storage garages. That's the next, the next innovation.
And I hate seeing good space being developed into storage units. That is the most ugly,
annoying, like sad use of like a downtown area, right? If you do this, you can whisk it away to
the warehouse district or people's bowl barns or whatever.
I mean, you could even go to the Airbnb route. You get an extra room, you can
hire out your extra room and I'll store 10 totes or whatever, right?
Yes.
You can have someone coming into your, on your property at 1am being like,
"No, I got to get totes four through seven."
Presumably the app or service would coordinate.
Yeah.
You have to have this area accessible by the pickup person at these times of day,
or you just set it on the back porch or whatever.
Yeah. You can upsell it like temperature controlled, cooler unit. If you want to go
full three sided marketplace with it, right? I'm just thinking I rent a old ass warehouse,
couple of vans. That's it.
Sounds like you're plotting a murder.
Yeah. I'm selling.
I know. I was just starting to think that too. I was like, "Is there some kind of like
liability issue here?"
Well, it's seasonal, you know? So we have the kidnapping season and we have a storage running
season on the downtown.
Legally, when that box you're storing starts to smell real bad, what are your rights?
I didn't think about that.
That's a great question.
Yeah.
So I would pitch it like, "Get your basement back."
Yeah.
You know? Add square footage to your home at $2 a square foot.
I am a child at heart. I would store some of my gadgets and then be excited to see them again
six months from now.
Right?
I think most people would. Not only get your basement back, but like you said,
excited to see my stuff again. Yeah.
I love that. Honestly, just put a scrapbook in there and then it comes back a year later
or several years later and be like, "Oh yeah, this is really cool."
How big could we go? Because it'd be great if I could send my snowblower off when I'm
not going to need it for nine months.
Oh my gosh. That is... Yes. Exactly.
Stay out the mower for the blower.
You have small totes, big totes, and pallets. And just whatever you can put on the pallet,
we move it from point A to point B.
Yeah.
Wow. This is real. This seems real. It is.
I think so. Yeah. Now we just got to come up with a good name for it.
What did you say earlier?
Store-azon. I already said it.
Store-azon. There it is. It's like a Power Ranger villain.
It's Zordon. That's the help desk ticket person.
Here's another thing. You could look at your stuff and then it's already hosted at some facility.
You could list it at that point too. You could sell your stuff through this app as well.
There you go.
So now it becomes...
Somebody else meets you up. Yeah.
Storage and fulfillment. So now Facebook marketplace is now managed through store-azon.
Rights to the snowblower that Alex put in storage.
Or rent it out.
You can take over the movement...
Oh my gosh.
Or the moving industry too. Why take all this time over a weekend to load up a truck and drive
it to my new house if I can just send all my stuff to the warehouse and then send it to my new house
later?
Get it at my leisure. Whenever I need it, I'll pull it out.
Oh shit. Yeah. It's just like I can store my whole house and then buy it one at a time.
Rebuy it.
So is it subscription model or is it like a per shipment?
I feel like I'd have...
Both.
If it was me, I would do a subscription model just because...
Exactly what you're saying, Russell. I don't want to be buying my stuff back every time.
I just want to hit a button and have it show up.
Yeah.
Paying $99 a year or whatever.
Probably more than that, but whatever it is.
And we can't just afford to store stuff for free.
That's taking up space somewhere. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know what the price...
I mean, I think it'd be a little bit of both at first until we found the right mix of
price and spice.
Yeah.
Ideally, it'd just be Amazon Prime style because everybody knows that. But I don't know.
I think it's per box.
You'd have to store it. The costs are storage and shipping.
And hosting and...
Yep.
I can't stop thinking about the take a cut to sell it though. You're looking at a catalog of
all your shit. You say, "You know what? I haven't even pulled that out of the storage unit in two
years. Let me press one button." The site takes 30%. They list it on Facebook Marketplace for you.
They do the meetup. They sell it. Man, that's great.
That's so good.
They could even... They could do suggestions of like, "Hey, you haven't touched this thing in
five years."
Oh, yeah.
Shit. I shouldn't have pitched this.
It's so good. It's like writing a check to someone else. No money actually changed hands,
but you're now the owner of this thing somewhere else.
Oh, yeah. Because technically, you don't even need to send it to your house. It could just be like...
No. They just have access to it now in the same storage unit.
That's great.
Did I even buy anything?
It's like NFTs.
It is.
Except they actually have something behind it.
I bought a new computer. I just...
There's a physical object somewhere.
I haven't seen it yet.
And then you built a buying and selling assets tradable commodity market where you can invest
by buying up all the area snowblowers. And then in three months, you've got them all. You can
slowly introduce them back out into the market.
Refurbished, like new.
It's like how people... There's a whole corn market and stuff, the ETFs, right? People don't
actually keep the corn in their warehouses. They're just selling pieces of paper that say,
"This is good for 12 truckloads of corn." Yeah. It's a speculative asset market. I love this.
Speculative markets with store... What's your store?
Speculative garage sale.
Yeah. This is the next level from those storage wars reality shows where they buy a unit.
You know what's in there. That's great.
See, that's how you can cut your costs down too. It's like, "Oh, you could get your subscription
paid for each month by selling stuff through the service or just flat rate." We make some finance
guy gurus looking at this and saying, "If we store 100,000 pallets, we make actually 10 million a
year. So just assets under management, baby." That's what they say, I think, in the CFO office.
And so they're like, "Yeah, just free. Make it free." And then we sell for 100. That's
the subscription.
Right.
Or the old, "How could we commoditize this data?" We know everything that these people own, right? So
there's your monetization.
You sell everything that they own to them. "Hey, these guys have a lot of cat accessories,
Facebook. Now you have that."
Whoa.
"MetaQuest 2s are going in storage all over the world. Sell Facebook stock."
Partner with the insurance industry.
Boy.
Yeah.
When us, this business, has information on all of the stuff that's around these
clients' houses, that's something.
It seems good.
Well, I mean, even just think about how easy it would be to itemize your...
Whatever you call the list of the stuff that you own.
You have an insurance claim to make and you've got like, "Oh, well, these were the items that
I did not have checked in." Right? So like...
Sure. This is a complete house inventory system.
You can get a better deal on your insurance depending on how much your stuff is stored
at this facility.
If you go around your house with our new app and you note with object recognition and/or
typing in stuff manually, everything you own, we will even make suggestions on the things that
make sense to put into storage seasonally. Or you make the walk once a week. Boy, it looks like that
thing has been sitting on a shelf untouched every week you've walked by for six months.
Maybe you should put that in storage.
Doesn't Amazon own Roomba now? Can't they just like put little cameras on there,
just figure it out on its own with every backseat?
No joke why I switched away from Roomba. I didn't love the idea of like, "Hey, we noticed
that there's a new baby crib in your house. Want some new baby accessories? Screw you,
iRobot."
God, it's so dystopian.
Amazon cameras flying around my house feeding back data to the headquarters is a
real dystopian something, huh?
You guys need anything? You guys need to store anything? First customers?
You piloting out your basement?
I was thinking garage or my trunk of the car, but...
Captain Leo, what you got this week?
All right, so this goes along really nicely with the needing to increase organization in my home
idea. So...
Storazon.
Storazon. This is a product that Storazon is going to sell to us. So I have a bookshelf,
and I don't know if you have seen a collection of children's books altogether, but they're all
really small, which means that they kind of make a bookshelf look ridiculous. It's so
overstuffed with a billion books.
I want to either sell an add-on kit for an existing nice bookshelf or sell a whole bookshelf
with my product integrated that is an Arduino or some kind of microcontroller on the side.
It's got a barcode scanner, and it's got some sort of touch screen, simple little interface,
doesn't need a complicated UI. And then I want to have strips of LEDs and/or presence detection
that go all along the tops of the shelves. So when I buy a new book or I get gifted a new book,
I walk up to my little thing and I scan its barcode and I put it anywhere on the shelf.
And then someday later, when I want to retrieve my book, I walk up to the interface and I say,
I'm looking for this book, start typing, and it gently lights up roughly the area on the shelf
where the book went. And either a book is checked in or checked out. I've got a list of all the
books that I have that are on the shelf itself, but I'm running up against the problem of having
a disorganized mess of shelves. And I think other people might too. There are book collectors out
there, I'm sure with their home libraries that have a really big collection. It would be neat
to be able to say, where did I put the grapes of wrath again? And then just a soft little glow
over in the top left. Oh, I see it's up on the third shelf there. Let me grab it. And you don't
need to have it be absolutely precise right on the book, but give me like a hint, because I'm tired
of rifling through all these little tiny five page children's books trying to figure out where
the heck that one went. - So a digital Dewey decimal system.
- Dewey decimal, because it's not perfect, right? - Yeah, but it doesn't even have to be organized.
It just knows, oh, you put it here somewhere, right? Organize it however you want.
- There you go. - I want to try to build this so bad.
It wouldn't be that hard, right? - I've seen a guy do it before with phones.
So there's this guy on YouTube. He built a shelf system for this guy who has a phone collection.
He's a reviewer of phones or something. I don't know, but had a whole, you flip through the
database, select the device you want, and the LEDs fly across and then stop on the one that
you're looking for. It was pretty cool. - Like a vending machine, but for my own stuff.
- Yeah. - I need to walk into a library and it needs to
know what book I want and just guide me there through the lights. I just follow the light.
- I really like that, actually. Have you guys ever read Ender's Game way back when?
So you have a bunch of people in a space station that's huge and they don't know where to go,
and you scan your badge on the side and the floor will light up and take you to where you want to go,
just a string of LEDs, and you follow your color. Put that in a library and then have it go up to
the shelf as well. - Every grocery store,
every bookstore, any store should have that. You have the Meijer or whatever your local grocery
store is app, and it's guiding you. Yes! - Wow. The thought that this could be in
a grocery store just- - Why does that exist?
- I don't know. It took me to another place. Like, that's what-
(all laughing)
- We need that. - What does that mean?
- You give it your 12 things. You give your 12 things to the shopping list and you walk in the
door and tap your phone to the little pad. - Builds an optimized list.
- And it just gently guides you to the exact, like, traveling salesman optimized path through
the store. It doesn't really benefit the store to have you be so laser focused, though. They
want you to mandor around. - I don't know. Walmart's desperate,
though. Like, they need help. - Yeah, make it your MVP.
- Kmart could have used this. They were like, you know, sinking ship. They would have maybe
survived if they had. - There was a brief moment in time
where Google and Apple were trying to make Bluetooth beacons a thing where you would walk
through the physical worlds and little coin-sized Bluetooth emitters would have some sort of unique
piece of info. So you could have that store or that mall or whatever's app and it would say,
"Oh, you're near the bananas. They're on sale this week," kind of stuff, right? It seems like
we were almost there 10 years ago and we totally turned away. Probably privacy concerns.
- And Bluetooth is just a terrible protocol. - It was too progressive.
- So is this like searching? I want to find stuff all over my house all the time. Does it have to
be books? I get the idea. So I guess... - Like a tile tracker, but...
- I'm a software guy, all right? So 360 camera through the whole house. This is some next level
shit. Inventory, like... - We last saw the TV remote slide into
this couch cushion from OCR four hours ago. - Stick RF tags on everything.
- Roomba does it already, right? We just talked about how Roomba and Amazon already
figures out what's in your house. Just monetize that. Just inventory everything.
- I don't know. I kind of like the idea of being able to put in some cheap
vinyl that has LEDs built into it and my house can guide me to... I guess the only example I can come
up with is the remote, like you said. - It's 2 AM and the dotted light
in my drunk ass is guiding me to the bathroom. - I mean, like the amount of times where I've
been like, "Where did I set my phone down? Where did I..."
- "Hey Google, find my ex." - It's like airplane or theater
emergency exit lighting dotting the floor. - What's cool about it is it's not super
specific. So it's just like, it's in the bedroom. It's got a pissy kind of like,
you dumb ass tone to it to really send a message home.
But like that would be convenient. Like, thank you.
- Slightly exasperated with you. - Again, you left it on the counter.
You put your car keys in the freezer again, dumbass.
- Why does the freezer let me is really the question.
- New product, new week. - A freezer that's bitchy?
- No, it just has a metal detector on it. - There you go.
- So this is like, do you have a big bookshelf, Leo? Or like, are you just, this is like LED?
- No, that's my problem. I have a pretty small bookshelf and I need a bookshelf that's bigger.
And so we have books on the shelf and spilling out of the shelf and on top of the shelf in piles.
It's not like we have thousands of books, but children's books are just irregular. Some of
them are cardboard books, and some of them are like five pages, and some of them are thicker,
heavy, hardcover things. And because you're trying to stick them all on the shelf together,
most of them are too small to be obvious from the side what they are. If I'm putting War and
Peace on my shelf, it's pretty obvious what that is from the side, but these little tiny
six page books, not so much. - Dude, it's such a huge problem.
And then the kid is, my kid at least, will cry now until he gets the book.
- Yeah, that's the thing. The four-year-old will come to me and say, "Can we read this?"
And I just feel the dread in my heart. "Oh, okay, let's go find it." I'm sure mom knows exactly
where that is. Nope, not me. This is going to be a 10 minute treasure hunt that you and I are going
on, bud. - Yep, and bedtimes,
we're already 10 minutes late. It's just like... - You're angry, you're exhausted. Yeah.
- Yeah, exactly. - Could you take a picture of your
bookshelf, Leo, and then process it? Could you Google Lens this shit, where you just like,
"All right, here's my bookshelf, click." It scans all the book titles, guesses,
it knows all the page sizes, it knows all the books and says, "Oh, this book is normally eight
inches tall, this wide. Here are the 30 books that match this description."
- That's interesting. Yeah. Based off of Amazon product listings and stuff, I'm sure that those
rough numbers are... Yeah, yeah. - Dude, yes, Amazon would love that.
They get a picture of your bookshelf, they know what you want, they know what you read,
and then they make recommendations on the sidebar after you're done scanning. "We found your book.
Did you think about these three books, are there two?"
- Did you know there's a sequel? Yeah, right. - Now we have a monetization method.
I really like that though, like an IoT LED strip that you have just in front of each of your
bookshelves, and then whether it's Amazon controlling it or your own app, like what you
were talking about, either way it can light up and tell you. - The original MVP of this is something
that I think someone out there could build because it's really simple. It just needs to remember
this number, light up LED number 61 over down in a corner. Got it.
- I just feel like there's so many applications to this too.
- Yeah, yeah. It could be your shelf in your garage filled with screws on your tool bench.
Where is the 12 millimeter whatever? Because I've got 600 kinds of screws I'm looking at
in little tiny buckets. Oh, right over here. - Pantry for you put in a recipe,
and it'll light up all the different spots that you have to go grab stuff from.
- That's a good one. I want to make this tonight. - You want to dig around for cumin?
- Right. - Everything lights up.
- Dude, Alex with the curve balls up in here. All right. That's amazing.
- That is amazing. - I want chicken pot pie. Send it.
- I'm sorry, you don't have peas. - Put it on your, like a liquor shelf
or something and just, I want to make, you know, mojitos tonight and just boom,
everything lights up. - Yeah, right. It's got your
cocktail bar area. It's got, oh, and if you put the lights under the liquors, then they all light
up like you're at a fancy bar. There you go. - But I have booze all over my house. So like...
- Your whole house lights up, man. - Alcoholic mode.
- Maybe you have to add a chime too, just so you can like, where in the house is it?
- It's a little puck that goes on the bottom of the bottle that lights it up beautifully. And yeah,
it's like an air tag. Yeah, there you go. - Also, if it moves, I want to hear a chime.
- Find my vermouth. - Google, where's my vodka?
- All right, Scott, what wholesome family-friendly organizational product have you brought this
to? - I wish. So pretty early on,
we had done a motivational app that we talked about, and I want to take that to the next level
here. I want to make an app and I want to call it not mutually assured destruction, but mutually
assured dedication. And so how it works is you have a group of people, and let's say we have a
group of guys and we all want to start working out. Like we just all want to get in shape. And
so we'll say the four of us here, we're all going to contribute to a pot. We'll say whatever amount
that would make you upset if you lost it, $100, $1,000, whatever. And if any of us does not
complete our goal for that week, all of us lose the money. There is nothing more motivating than
people breathing down your neck being like, "Hey, did you work out this week? Did you complete your
goal? Did you check that box?" It's not just me fighting me at this point. It's me fighting all
of you guys. It's not competition. It's you guys getting your ass in here as well as mine.
- That's brutal. - Oh, nice.
- Yes. I don't care what you're using this for. It's working out. It's trying to quit smoking,
whatever. You're assigned an account to Billabuddy. As soon as you log into this app,
you set your money off to the side. You have to complete your task. Otherwise, everyone loses.
- I have a philosophical question about this. So is it more motivating for everyone to keep each
other accountable if you can see who has and has not yet completed for this week, or if it's hidden?
- Ooh. - And it's terrifying to not know
who's done it yet or not. - I'd definitely hit it.
- Oh, gosh. - Yeah. You cannot, in your mind,
be the person to fail. I do not want to fail my friends. The embarrassment would just kill me here.
That's a great question. - There's arguments either way, right?
Because if you're the only one left and it's halfway through the week, like, "Come on,
just finish off the week. We're all done already," right? But then if nobody can see where anyone is.
- I mean, you would just start conversations. This is life or death at this point. One of
those games, like, "I'm going to lose $1,000." Or like $500.
- I feel like, so when you're eight hours out from the deadline for that week, month, whatever,
you got to start a countdown time. And that's like one person, two people still haven't completed
their thing. - Oh, that's good. Yeah. You know if it's you.
- Anonymous. Yeah. - That's a great idea.
- Exactly. - Dude, I think the scariest part is like
somebody not logging into the app and checking the box or something. Because I feel like it's like,
"You did it, but you didn't check the f***ing box. Get your f***ing ass into the app."
- If I had that much money in the line, I would drive to your door and I would be banging on it
at your house being like, "Russell, work out." Or whatever. "I will move your legs, you m****."
- "I went camping and had no service." - "I will buy you a phone, you piece of s***."
- Oh, that is, I think what sucks up, what's more motivating about that is not,
it's the fact that you are letting three other people experience failure.
- Exactly. - Yeah.
- And however many. - It's not like self-accountability.
- So, here's a question is if everybody loses, where does the money go?
- The company. That's your business model. - So, what's in it for them? Is there a reward
if everybody completes it? You get your money back plus?
- No, there's no reward. It's just not being embarrassed is your reward. Not being shunned
by your friends. And that is motivation enough. Into your question about the money, just,
I don't know, pick the most likely political affiliation with your group and send it to
the opposite party or something. I don't know. - That's a fun idea.
- Give you even more incentive to... - Pick from this list of most divisive
political organizations or whatever. Yeah. The NRA.
- Us. - PETA.
- The company. - It can't be going towards something you
want. - Right, exactly.
- Like, I can't be to harbor humane or puppies can't get this money. No, it's got to be something
bad. Or heck, just put in a shredder. - Dude, just make the app call it...
- We're solving inflation too. - You got to call it putting it in the
shredder, but really, I think that's your business model, man. You just collect all
the unpaid payments and you've built an app. - Don't make me rich. Don't make me rich. And
it's all about other people betting to not make you rich. It's just...
- Yeah. Isn't there a, I think it's Fox Sports has the win so-and-so's money.
- Yeah, I was thinking, yeah. - Something new.
- With Ben Stein's money. - But you can have a mascot that's like,
don't let the hamster guy steal your group's money or whatever. And he can be the embodiment
of the thing you don't want to get, but really that's just like your business revenue.
- Yes. That sounds like fun. I swear, I feel like the social loss, whether it's money or not,
it's just like, oh, I just made Leo spend $500 because I...
- We had talked about before, like making it a competition, or a step bed or whatever. I want
to beat out all my friends. No, embarrassment is stronger than competition.
- This is an upgrade. This is the first sequel 2.0 we've ever had on the show.
- 2.0. - Okay, other than working out,
what would you use this for? - Trying to quit smoking, cooking during a week.
- Any bad habits? - I guess so.
- Any bad habits. - Trying to get outside at least once a day.
- It's simple. I feel like it would be easy to do an MVP for.
- Yeah, with like Stripe and some other kits and stuff, it wouldn't be that hard to get up
and running with this. You could even just have it be a web app. It doesn't even have to be like
a native app. - I feel like a lot of friends might be lost by this app, but you can't make it too
easy though. You got to actually put the fear of God into them that your friends are going to lose
their money. - That's where the money goes.
- Truly in deep losing. - Is we hire a bunch of auditors.
- I don't know. You don't look like you've been working out.
- Your money pays for our auditors. - You don't look like you've been working out.
- I sit in a sauna, all right? It's a middle ground.
- We're going to need a blood sample. - We see your testosterone's level on this
data. It's more than just working out, but yes. - All right, here's a curve ball.
So what if you challenged, what if you made like a challenge, a blank mystery box challenge,
this week only, accept or deny $50 mystery challenge. I sent it to you and Leo,
and you either join the challenge or you don't. And then you click accept or deny. It's like truth
or dare, but challenge. So it's like bet, but next level. It's like-
- You know what the challenge is though, right? - We have no idea what the challenge is. It's just
Scott is going to challenge me to do a freaking workout event. I know him. He's always going to
do that. So I'm going to accept. It's easy. - So if I accept the challenge, I get the money.
And if I don't fulfill the challenge, I have to pay?
- Oh, there needs to be a reward. - Do you have to buy in?
- I didn't think that hard. - Probably.
- I just want Russell to lose $50. - I don't know the idea of like getting
a challenge in my app and being like, "Ooh, a $50 challenge." I guess it doesn't really-
- Do you remember the rule? No, we got this. Do you remember the feeling of sitting in a public
place when HQ Trivia was going? - Yes.
- How communal that felt? You could have the moment of like, "Oh God, the betting app challenge of the
day just dropped. You all in? Let's all do this together. Let's get everyone doing it." We accept,
"Oh no, we have to take a photo on top of a mountain. We only have a day to do that."
- Print a mountain on a piece of paper, right? - So you have your pot of money. All four of us
have put in, we'll just say $1,000 into this pot, right? If one of us fails, I have failed to,
we'll go back to the workout example, I failed to work out this week, the money doesn't just
disappear. It all gets put on some Vegas bet on black or something automatically.
And there's like a 50/50 chance that the money's going to double for everyone else
or just disappear completely. - Hey, you just get freaking casinos
on board, but it's self-reporting. I guess it doesn't really win or lose for them. They're
just like literally betting a thousand. They're either going to make a thousand dollars.
- Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Is there something that this app could do that's a little
bit novel where you can't, like, I know it would be handy to have the, I've checked the box and I
promise for sure I did go skiing, like I said, I would or whatever, but is there something that we
could have the challenge be that is actually like, you know, go to a place or present to your phone's
camera a thing that's unique that you did or something to prove, like even people could vote
yes or no, this counts as they visited a historical tour, you know what I mean?
- Yeah, do a photo or video and crowdsource the validity.
- Right, does this count as a piece of art, like they said they wanted to make?
- That's true. Me and some friends were talking about, we need to go see the doctor. We're adult
men. We should be seeing the doctor regularly. - Your doctor has to sign it.
- You have to have a doctor's note. - You gotta get a selfie with the doctor.
- That's great. - This audit team is
going to need a huge budget. - Right.
- I was more thinking along the lines of accountability buddies or someone,
you have one person who verifies yes or no, but you're right. They can't have skin in the game
'cause Russell's not gonna wanna lose all his money by saying no to me.
- What if you like, at any random point, you could hire an auditor, like to Alex's point,
like it's the micro transactions that make the money. It's like, you get a third party certifier
and it's just some other dude on the app just look like, some guy's just like, yeah, I love this app.
I just certified the most random bets ever. So I need the evidence.
- Somebody nearby needs you to- - Yeah.
- It's like cha-cha. - The app platform.
- Yeah. - I love that.
For a few bucks, you can do, what is the mechanical Turk, like the Amazon small,
you get a few pennies to verify this at the other. If you wanna make a couple bucks on it
some evening, you can be the third party referee for some of the friends groups bet.
- Or just have another group actually verify yours.
- Yeah. Yeah, you check each other's, that's fun.
- 'Cause I have no, I don't give a shit if this other group fails or not, but-
- Does this count as pursuing their passion of wanting to do pottery?
That isn't pottery, you just played with Play-Doh, right? Yeah.
- Bought from Goodwill, uncheck.
All right, Alex, what is an idea you would love to do, but just haven't had time for?
- All right, so this is something that I feel like exists in part. I just want something
that brings us all together. I have the worst time keeping track of my life, right? So what
I would really like is, basically what I need is a personal assistant that's with me 24/7
that can be like, "Hey, you said that you wanna go to sleep by 10 o'clock every night. You're
still active, you're still playing video games, you're still," you know, whatever, right? I know
you can actually hire a personal assistant that will help manage your life, but there's no way
I could ever afford that. I've tried using Siri or whatever, right? But they don't have that hold.
I don't know, it even comes down to like little things, like I need something that can wake me up
in the morning that's not an alarm because that's gonna wake my wife up. To me, I need something on
my wrist that will like, it will ask me before I go to bed, like, "Hey, do you have to work tomorrow
because I'll change your alarm time," or something. I don't know, like this whole idea of like
something to help me manage my life, remind me of my projects that I'm wanting to get to,
all that kind of stuff. - Okay.
In 2012, 2013, Google pushed really hard for what they then called Google Now,
and they've pivoted away from that in favor of the assistant, and now they're pivoting away from the
assistant in favor of Bard. So this is several ADD Google iterations ago, but the idea was you would
land from a flight and it would say, "Hey, here's where your hotel is." You would arrive in a new
time zone and it would say, "Hey, we've updated all this stuff for you." It was the first really
foray into like putting information in front of you before you ask for it. Ambient computing,
they called it at the time. And I feel like we never really got there to like the promise of
computers that present me information without me asking.
- I feel like we're almost there with AI, right? - Some general AI.
- Why can't I take a chat GPT, train it on my personal life, feed it my calendar,
feed it my project list, give it my access to my smart devices so that it can yell at me?
- Yeah. Like holidays, dude, are the worst because it's like three-day holiday where you're just
like, "Oh, I guess we're taking this day off." It just out of nowhere throws me off. It's like,
"Okay, well, all the stores are closed. I got to set my alarm differently. Should I turn off my
Slack, like my email signature?" There's like 30 things that I should or could do that would make
me look really professional or like probably make my life a little bit more what I would like it to
be. But I don't want to do all like 30 little things for 10 minutes. I'd rather just like,
"Yo, personal assistant, what questions do you have to get my life in order?" I get it. Makes sense.
- I was at a guy's weekend and I missed a call from the trash company saying, "Hey, just so you
know, MLK Day is coming up and we're not celebrating it and we're doing the normal route." And sure
enough, I didn't get the call. And then my trash day is on a Tuesday, Monday night, like, "Oh,
it's a holiday. So everything's probably off by a day." And I didn't put everything out. And then
that next morning, I heard the sound and had that panic moment of running out in shorts and Crocs,
running to get a trash bin to the end of the street because, oh man.
- I've never done that before.
- They're coming after all. And I didn't know. Nowhere other than a missed call was that
anywhere presented to me. And businesses who have information like that, that I am a customer of,
need to be able to get that in front of me in a more, I don't know, instead of just calling me,
it should just be on a display in my house. There's so many displays in my house.
- I mean, even if you think about it, you have a device on your wrist that knows when you're
active and stuff. Why can't we detect when you've taken out the trash? So it can give it access to
your voicemail and it can be like, "Oh, hey, they said that they're gonna be on normal schedule and
you haven't taken out the trash yet. I'm gonna remind you."
- Why can't the UPS truck that drove by that day not tell me?
- This was a Black Mirror episode, right?
- Oh, I'm sure it is. Yeah.
- They took like an imprint of your brain and then made it into its own AI that was tailored
to you 'cause it was you. And then it knew your preferences for how you liked your toast in the
morning or how you wanted to clean up your email inbox or whatever. And the whole dystopian,
it was trapped and it was you trapped in a computer helping yourself through stuff. But
the concept of it is awesome.
- So cool. So you're saying you would indeed enslave a digital version of yourself
to be your own assistant?
- Oh yeah. Yeah.
- 100%, no thought.
- Oh my God.
- If it would actually get me to get stuff done, that's my biggest thing is I always
forget the things that I need to do, no matter how I try to put it on a calendar or...
- OpenAI and Chachibitty caught Google on their back foot and their whole counter-argument
to OpenAI is, "Hey, we're gonna be able to take all the stuff that we know about you and put it
in there." So there's a chance that Google's working toward this vision of I go to Bard and I
say, "Hey, tell me the last four family members that emailed me and give me some starter points
as to what I should ask them about for how their day is going," or whatever. And it's looking
through your email and your calendar and, "Oh, I know in your contacts you have their birthdays,
this, their birthdays coming up," all the stuff that Google knows about you,
but thrown into a LLM blender.
- That already happens with companies at CRMs. It's just the personal CRM plus, right? Why not
just do that? Just take... I mean, there are thousands of CRMs all thinking about all these
things, but not to maybe the personal version, right? It's always company-centric. It's never
like me-centric. That makes sense? There should be a personal.
- It's gonna be wild.
- Yeah. Like, "Hey, you probably should send a letter to this person." Or like, "Hey,
you haven't talked to this person in a long time and you talk to them all the time.
Is there a reason why? No. Okay, we're gonna send you this text. How's that sound? Okay."
(laughter)
- That's a great idea.
- Their CRM is taking in all of their incoming messages and filtering them down to a nice
little summary for you. And soon the internet is just bots talking to bots and summarizing
and expanding.
- But how great would it be if you didn't have to open your email? Your personal assistant could
say, "Hey, you got 27 emails. Only three of them actually have any content in them. Here's what
they are." Right?
- The dream.
- Like a really involved mother. Like, "Oh, you-
- Pretty much, yeah.
- "You haven't talked to your best friend in a while. I'm gonna just- Here, give me your phone.
I'll send them a text message and we'll set up a play date. I mean, you guys can go hang out."
Right? Like-
- A play date?
- Just-
- A play date?
- Yeah, this is Wally.
- "You told me you were going to clean your room. Have you done that yet?"
- "Thanks, mom. You're right."
- "But seriously, I need that."
- There's something about- I wonder if this is just four dudes in a room talking about-
- "I was just gonna say that."
"I think the problem is our lack of female representation on the show."
- I'll be honest. When has that ever been a problem in history?
- I talk about this all the time. Like, my wife is my social assist- She's my social manager. So,
literally, every social event that I coordinate with friends, I have to go through my social
assistant. Because there's so many calendar events going on. I'm like, "I can't overbook.
I can't overbook." Just a little bit of that so that I don't have to-
- How does she manage it all?
- That's a great- It's a two X chromosomes.
- Is it in her head? Does she put it into a calendar somewhere or notes or something?
- She started putting it into a calendar for me because literally, she can handle-
She knows all the things, but she's like, "Russell's not gonna do this unless I put it
in his Google Calendar so that it shows up throughout his day." So, literally, I'll have
an event next week and I'm like, "Oh, Carrie's getting a massage at four o'clock. I should
probably be home." I'm like, "I guess it's happening." I'm out of office that week and
yeah, it's literally- - Wow.
- I have- I guess, Alex, I already have one. I really-
- Well, see- - Yeah.
- See, that's the thing is I can't ask my wife to be this for me, right?
- No. - I can't put this on her.
- We were just talking about how it's an overbearing mother.
- I know. - That's what our wives all
want to be compared to. - It makes me second guess myself.
Maybe I'm putting too much on my non-virtual assistants. I need to be helping her in a
digital way. I can solve this with technology. Is what you're saying, Alex? Is that this?
- I would hope so. I mean, I feel like we've got to be close. The reason why I think I
struggle with this particularly is my ADHD. I've looked into ADHD assistants and stuff
and there's people working on them. The people that really need this are the people with ADHD
and so they're the ones that have this idea to build this thing and then they never get
around to finishing it. That's my problem too, right? I never finish anything because-
- Preach your brother. - I mean, I've even tried, they have apps
for kids that are routine builders, right? I've literally tried this app that is meant
for children that goes through and it's like, "You have five minutes to brush your teeth
and if you don't finish it, you have to either swipe it or away to do it later or it will
only let you do a couple things. You can't just swipe your whole thing away." Then every
time you go beyond your time, it automatically adjusts the rest of your schedule for the
morning or whatever. - It's pesting you.
- Whoa. - But the problem is I don't have a routine.
I'm not a kid that goes to school at a certain time every day and building routines is a
really hard thing for people who have ADHD to handle, right?
- Dude, I'm going to add onto this, Alex, in a weird way, but I don't know if every
dude in this podcast or in general has this morning routine element where you sit on the
porcelain throne for just a good couple minutes. What if it knew?
And it asks you- - What?
- It asks you- - My bidet has a camera,
is that what you're saying? - No, it asks you five questions.
Like, "Oh, we noticed that you're sitting on the toilet. Would you like to answer
some five questions about your week before-" - What's talking to you right now?
What is the thing that speaks? Is it the toilet? I got to know.
- I mean, okay, let's say for you hardware guys, we put a Bluetooth device in the toilet. So as
soon as you connect to Bluetooth to the toilet, it immediately asks you five questions about,
"Did you know it's Martin Luther King Day next Monday? Would you like to change your count?"
Like, it just asks you five quick questions, not intrusive, not trying to ruin your experience here,
but- - No, man,
my toilet is my private time. - The virtual assistant needs to take
a moment of time that you definitely have, but choose to take on your own. And I think that best
time is when you're sitting, like right when you sit down, it asks you three or four questions
about your week. - Like what?
- Maybe once a week, not every time. - What information does it need?
What does it ask? - Just whatever information
it's missing at that time. - Yes.
- Like what? - It can see on your calendar that you've got
all day event on Thursday and Friday. So it says, "Do you want me to change your alarm so that you're
not waking up at 5 a.m. while you're gone?" - A couple of quick questions to learn your
habits so that it can do better in the future. - Yes, one porcelain thrown time at a time.
Small little props, like not trying to be intrusive, but-
- Three minutes every day at the same time. - Like the Google Maps ones. "Hey,
where is the entrance to this place?" - It can just pop up when it notices
some idle activity and say, "Hey, you got a minute?"
- Yeah. - Can I ask you a few questions?
- "Do you have plans this weekend or are you going to be sitting at home by yourself?"
- It just judges you for three minutes a day. - You haven't talked to that person in a while.
- That's it. Try calling your mother.
- Maybe that's the app. It's paid for by mothers. It just encourages to call your family
every weekend. - Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- There you go. - If you're listening to this podcast,
you should probably call your mother right now or just highly recommend it.
- I mean, it is going to be Mother's Day pretty soon here, right? So-
- That's right. - That's the kind of public service
that this podcast performs for you. Don't forget to get something for your mom for Mother's Day.
- Dude, but what if you set this goal in your app? Like, "Hey, I have some goals this year,"
or like right now, I'll type into my app and then it would just be like, "You might have some free
time this weekend," or, "Hey, Thursday nights, you seem to be bored or you don't have anything.
Maybe we'll drop a hint like, "Draw." - Yeah.
- Somebody that would, yeah. - Yeah.
- "We're going to wake you up early tomorrow, all right? Let's get you going." Something like that.
Little encouragements. - You can go to the gym tomorrow. Yeah.
- "You went to bed early, we're going to wake you up early." You can always hit snooze or whatever.
- Or like, "Hey, you haven't gotten a full eight hours all week, so I'm going to let you sleep in."
- Whoa, that's a good one. - Me and Leo are like, "That's..."
- Yeah, you would say that. - Yeah.
- Yeah, spoken like a true no kid household. - Wow, yeah.
- "Hey, I have a dog that will wake us up at like 7 a.m. if we don't get up and let her out to give
her breakfast." So she stomps in her crate. - I bet OpenAI comes out with one of this.
You know, like, there's a... - Oh, I know. I'm sure we're like...
We got to be like within a couple years of the personal assistant that just...
- Yeah. It seems like where they're headed with the MyGPT's infrastructure, you could have one
that's trained specifically on... You just Hoover up all of your email, all of your calendar,
all of that stuff. - I mean, Microsoft is kind of doing
that at a company level, aren't they? With Copilot. So...
- Yeah. - Yeah, I bet.
- Just got an ad on my Microsoft PC. - It's pretty on-device still.
- Like, Copilot. Like, this is an ad-free experience, I thought.
- Oh, no. - Nope. Windows gives ads now.
Like, just Windows computer. - Did you not see Candy Crush?
And the Bing search area and stuff? Oh, yeah. Microsoft... Windows has been compromised.
- My favorite thing is today I downloaded Chrome from Edge. And it's like, "Are you sure?"
- "What are you doing? Don't do that." - "You don't need another browser."
- Edge really... - Nothing is thirstier than
Microsoft watching you download a different browser.
- Isn't that just, like, embarrassing? Like, it's almost like...
We know you're on Chrome. We know what our browser is for. It's to download Chrome. But, like,
can you just... We're gonna try. - It's like... It was like,
Edge is based on the same thing as Chrome. Plus, you get the benefit of...
- But with the added trust of Microsoft. - The added trust.
- There's a... That whole... It says, yeah... - Oh, yeah.
- "Microsoft Edge is built on the same technology as Chrome, but with the added trust of Microsoft."
And the Linux memes subreddits had a field day with that wording here.
- What? Wow. - Thanks so much for listening.
We hope you enjoyed yourself. And thank you, Alex, for being here. This was a great time.
- Yeah, it was great. Thanks. - Our website is Spitball.show.
There you can find all of our stuff, our YouTube channel, social media. Email us any feedback,
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