(upbeat music)
- I'm Scott.
- I'm Russell.
- And I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Spitball, the pitchin' kitchen.
We're three brainstorming buffs, that's us,
and a guest, empty our heads of all of our startup
and tech product 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 Scott, I hear you brought our guest this week.
- I did.
I brought our friend, Ryan.
Ryan is currently out in Colorado.
He's working on his PhD in integrative and systems biology,
AKA spiders.
So please welcome soon to be Doc Ock, Ryan.
- I was told that Mark Cuban would be here with me.
- He's next week, he just missed him.
- Oh crap.
- Hello.
- Glad to have you, this is gonna be a good time.
This week to get us going, we are dipping into the mailbag.
As always, you can email the show with ideas,
your own things that this spawned in your mind.
If you take an idea and run with it,
we are podcast@Spitball.show.
But we got an email from Sean
and it has two different pitches in it here.
All right, the first one is simple.
The second one has a little bit to talk about here.
So the first one, Kool-Aid Hammers.
It's a Kool-Aid jammer style juice container,
mix of vodka, likely needs to rename if it's off-brand.
So you can't call it Kool-Aid Hammers,
it'd have to be like Kool-Dad Hammers, they say.
That's the whole pitch.
(laughing)
- That's the whole pitch.
- Target audience, 17 year old's trying to get in the club.
- Yeah, and us.
Podcasters who are looking to stay fresh.
- Are those like the plastic bottles that like twist?
- I was just trying to remember the name of those,
the weird little wing thing on top that you twist.
- Where it kind of looks like a spaceship on top, yeah.
- Exactly.
Yeah, I've always wanted those alcoholic.
- Imagine how many landfills those fill up.
- Wow, downer, all right.
- We'll make it, there we go.
- Our target market, it's compost only.
- Biodegradable compost only plastic.
- It's like those old wax candies with the juice in them
where you kind of bite the head off
and suck out the juice in the middle.
We just make that, but big.
- And just fill it with vodka.
- All right, the second idea.
(laughing)
- Done, that was great guys.
- We did it, we solved Kool-Aid.
- Great idea to start with.
- We solved Kool-Aid hammers.
Next, all right, this pitch is told as a story.
I'm really enjoying it.
We've all won the race once, time for a race of champions.
You wanna do a themed 10K race,
think popularity like a Tough Mudder type thing.
People receive hats that look like sperm
and from an aerial shot, the theme of the race
is you're trying to get to the egg and fertilize it.
First to win wins.
You start in a huge, long, flesh-colored, inflatable tube,
break through a wall of some kind,
so some kind of Trojan advert maybe, they could sponsor it,
and then compete obstacles through the race
until you take a plunge in a circular pool,
which is the finish.
I'm censoring some of the more graphic details
that they included.
Thank you very much, Sean, for your very vivid idea.
- I'm gonna hit subscribe right now.
- Do you think that's like an Olympic level race
where you have the whole world compete
and for some reason, the sperm in certain countries
always beat the other ones?
Just have an Olympic level gold medalist?
- I would say we're not very far off
because cyclists wear those aerodynamic helmets.
(laughing)
- They kinda got the look going for them.
- I competed in one triathlon once
and I was the only guy without that sperm helmet.
It really--
- Yeah, it just needs like a ribbon on the end, doesn't it?
Just kinda flap it in the wind.
- It's gotta be anything goes during the race though.
You don't have to pull any punches.
It's first one to make it to the end wins.
Everyone else loses.
- What kind of obstacles would you face in a race like this?
Obviously, there's gotta be a hard left or right turn.
(laughing)
- Making some assumptions.
(laughing)
- Oh, that's right.
(laughing)
- It's just a bunch of inflatable jumping castles
but filled with water just for miles and miles.
- I don't know if I could do 5Ks of that, let alone 10.
- It's like running through sand.
That would kill people, dude.
We gotta be careful.
- No joke.
- Wow, that's very interesting, Mr. Sean,
for your suggestions.
- And you too could be just like Sean.
Email us at podcast@Spitball.show.
Send us something on social media.
We're the same handle, podcast@Spitball.show.
- All right, Leo, what is an idea you would love to try
but just have not had time for?
- All right, so whether or not you believe it,
the world's getting a little warmer every year,
which isn't great.
We in Michigan here up in the great Midwest
have less and less snow.
And it seems like more and more of the snow is intermittent.
My darling wife is from Minnesota and treasures snow.
And it seems like this last year,
we've had a couple of weeks where there's snow
on the ground at the most.
There are industrial snow makers for ski hills
and things like that, those giant fans with hoses
that'll crystallize snow.
And all you need to make something like that
is a high amount of air under high pressure.
You just think like an air compressor
where you've got something that is able
to continuously generate high pressure.
And you need a, there's a name for the tip.
It's some sort of articulating gyrating tip
where it sort of is like a ball bearing that moves
and causes the snow that, or the water and air mix
to crystallize really quickly.
There are a few machines like that that you can get
for multi-thousand dollars for like small scale
industrial use, but there's no home snow maker.
I can imagine those days where it's like 33, 34 degrees out
where you plug in something in the backyard,
a couple hundred bucks at the most,
where it does all of the kit for you.
There's one company that has made a backyard
home use snow maker.
And the very first thing is you buy this really expensive
nozzle and then supply your own compressed air
and supply your own water line.
And I want to make all that of easy full service
all in one thing where I fill a water tank,
I plug it in and it just makes some snow
for a little while, like a bubble maker for kids, right?
There's a lot of days in the Midwest here
where we've got just the right conditions, but it's dirt.
Winter looks brown and that's going to be more
and more common in the coming months and years and decades.
And I think we can fight it or still live it up, right?
- Getting ahead of the curve right now.
- Yeah.
Imagine being the one house on your whole block
that has a bunch of snow in the front yard
and an igloo and a snowman and a snowball fight going on.
- You are going to take Christmas decorations
to the next level with this.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- That's the whole pitch.
Make this commoditized.
- Childhood winter wonderland simulator 9,000.
(laughing)
Us millennials, you know, being grandparents,
when I was your age, we had the real thing.
- Oh, oh.
- That was too real.
(laughing)
- I know in Minnesota and some other
like deep Midwest plains states that they get snow
in the beginning of the winter and then it just stays
for like five months in terms of giant ice banks.
We don't really have that here in Michigan.
We kind of have it come for a bit and then it's gone.
And then we have a couple of weeks of 40 degrees
in the middle of January.
And then it'll be back to being 20 and another blizzard
and another week of snow.
And then it's gone again.
And we sort of go that way the whole time.
I don't think we're going toward a world
where we are going to get sick of snow
in the way that we did in the nineties.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
It's trending down.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- So it's, I think this is--
- Divest in your snow chairs.
(laughing)
Short snow.
Your municipal plowing companies, divest, divest, divest.
(laughing)
Sell, sell, sell.
Always have a white Christmas.
Okay. So every year, you know.
- You're working on the branding.
- Yes.
It's, that's it.
You just never, never let mom not have
a white Christmas again, you know,
or always have a white Christmas for the kids and family.
You got, you know, dad's,
what are dad's Christmas chores now?
Or progressive families are going to be spraying snow
all day and all night the night before, you know,
Santa came down, ate his cookie
and sprayed snow all over the yard.
- Add that to the mythology.
- All night for you kids.
Why was there a giant air compressor sound
coming outside all night while Santa was--
- Trying to be subtle for your children at 3 AM.
(imitates air compressor)
- That's the thing though.
I feel like right now what's out there is not fun
to just hang out and have fun with
like a bubble machine or whatever.
You got the giant (imitates air compressor)
sound of an air compressor right next to like
hoses that you're having to thaw out
to get to the machine right now.
Cause it's 29 degrees and there's no snow.
There's gotta be a way to like convenience this
so that it's just, I don't know,
fill up a water tank and it just does it, you know.
- It's taking the backyard ice rink to the next level.
I really like this.
There's always that guy on the block.
- It's like a slip and slide for the winter.
- Yeah, snow and slide.
- So if you, imagine what you could do
if you could control where the snow goes.
You could make one giant 15 foot pile in the backyard.
That's for snowing, or for sledding, excuse me.
You could build a ramp, like a roller coaster.
- Build a loop-de-loop.
- That is crazy to think that I could like 3D print
snow in my yard almost in a way, right?
Like-- - There it is.
- That would be fun.
- Yeah, even if there is snow,
there's probably a use for a machine
where you can directionalize it, right?
A little cannon, add to certain over here.
- Dude, that'd be actually super convenient.
I need to clean my gutters.
There's no snow.
I'm going to build a ramp up to my roof.
- Snow ladder.
- Yeah, it wouldn't take that much water
to make that much snow, right?
I don't know what the snow to water ratio would be, but--
- I feel like it fluffs up, yeah.
- Right, it's a lot of air.
- Just drain your pool in the backyard.
- The 1% talking.
We all just got pools we can drain.
- Oh yeah.
- I wish.
- Just repurpose some gray water, you know?
- Yellow snow?
No, gray snow.
- You guys are really putting a spin on this.
I don't know.
Gray water snow doesn't sound great.
- Tell your kids not to eat it.
- Don't eat gray snow.
It's a slightly tinge, a little off white.
- I'll have a gray Christmas without you.
- From what we're saying about this,
I think this might be one of the best ideas
that we've had on here.
This is brilliant.
If you could truly create a prepackaged way
to get snow in your backyard,
people would be all over that.
You'd be just that person in the neighborhood
that always has, it's not having a green grass,
it's having snow on your front lawn.
- Yes.
- Yeah, if you could have the machine itself do the cooling,
then you could even do this at like, you know,
40, 52 degrees in the spring.
It doesn't have to stay around for too long.
You run it for an hour or two, yeah.
- I didn't even think about that.
Could you pre-cool the,
is that what like snow throwers do in these?
I wonder how those commercial ones do it.
- I don't think so, yeah.
I think that they usually have like a big old fan
and they just rely on the cold weather itself.
But it seems like you could have a little, you know,
refrigerator freezer unit right at the tip.
Nucleation nozzle, that's what it is.
There's a commercial nucleation nozzle
that's kind of like a little ball bearing that spins
and sort of agitates the water
as it's coming out to mist it.
Nucleation nozzle plus high pressure air plus water.
That's all you need, plus temperature, obviously.
- Yeah, I think that's cool.
You also don't have to deal with like,
when I think of the snow,
I think of all the snow shoveling and the worst parts of it.
So this is all the fun, none of the hassle, right?
Get your snow thrower.
I bet, like if you figure out how to build this, Leo,
there is like, I guess I'm trying to think
of the upper version,
the one that's, like, yes, your local residential version,
but there's probably like a commercial level,
like, all right, here's your four grand version
for those that wanna always host the events, you know,
or like the city buys a more effective snow thrower
for special events or that kind of thing, you know.
If you can somehow make it portable and all that other stuff
you can create a snow as a service, which just sounds crazy,
but like, why not?
I mean, you don't need it all year round.
You can kind of just create a, you know,
a fire truck level experience where you just roll up,
- Yeah. - You know,
couple days. - Shoot snow
at little kids and drive away.
- Connect to a fire hydrant, right?
Like if the, like cities would love
to create a snow experience, you know,
creates a lot of, especially when it's like the winter time
and every city's trying to like get people
to go buy and shop, you can kind of create,
given certain times of year,
- Totally. - Roll up in an old fire truck,
spray snow for like a couple hours.
And I mean that flow rate, dude,
like get the nucleation going.
(laughing)
Kick it up in a, what if I had the commercial machine,
and I would, you could pay me a hundred bucks.
- Rentals, yeah.
- Yeah, like. - You fill up,
like a carpet cleaning van.
You just show up and you pull out your hose
and spray for an hour and you're done, you leave.
That's it, yeah.
- 'Cause then you don't have to worry about equipment
and storage and all that.
And it's not like, it's a service and sure it melts,
you know, but maybe you produce so much of it,
it'll like pile up and it's easier to stack
or something like that.
You know, you get.
- Just do a punch card system at that point.
- Yeah.
I mean, you might have like,
especially right at the week leading up to Christmas,
just. - There you go.
- Make all your money back for the year.
- If it wasn't snowing.
- Ads write themselves,
tired of living in a climate crisis?
Relive your childhood.
(laughing)
- Wanna go back to that nostalgic past?
- Pretend, the good old days.
Shake some jingle bells.
In the background, you got yourself a commercial.
I think I would pay like 50 bucks.
Like, all right, get the snow here, you know?
- Birthday parties coming up.
- I feel like 50 bucks doesn't even come close
to cover the energy bill for plucking in such a thing.
(laughing)
- Oh, I'll give it a hundred.
- Save the math for the engineers.
- Yeah, that's right, the engineers.
That's right.
I haven't talked about them in a while.
(laughing)
Oh, that's the other thing.
So the thing that I was looking at was water spigot.
So Backyard Snowstorm, who great job pioneering this idea
before I got a chance to.
It's water hose, garden hose to a pressure washer
that you also have to provide.
- What?
- So you're using your own power washer
and then that goes to the snow gun
and an air compressor separately also goes to the snow gun.
And that's what they need right now.
That's when I was reading that and I said,
okay, I gotta make this a little more.
- A lot of assembly required.
- I'm not bringing my power washer too, yeah.
- Yeah, no, screw all that.
- I love the idea of getting an old fire truck,
putting the machine on top of it
and just going around for a rental service,
blasting different people's lawn areas.
- The snow truck, yeah.
- Experience winter again, sucker.
- The snow truck called the Jack Frost.
(laughing)
- Chances coming in towns.
(laughing)
- If you could hold that little Dixie cone cups
and collect it and make snow cones on the side.
- Dude, that's where it's at, Leo.
Imagine you create an experience
that's just like a pile of snow
and people come up with their snow cones.
All you can cone, you know?
- Wait, is this the gray snow or the normal snow?
(laughing)
- You sell this to firefighter company, like firefighters.
And now they're doing it themselves.
- An attachment that goes on top of the fire truck
so that they can be the cool fireman in the city.
- That's right.
And so maybe they don't,
you're missing out on the service component,
but they're more of that,
oh, now the city has a snow throwing machine on tap.
- Dude, yes.
- Or you make it a subscription service
where they'll come by once or twice a week
and just lay out a nice snow yard
on your neighborhood hill.
- Like your front yard, who knows?
- It's a fundraiser event, you know,
buy some snow and the fire trucks just go around.
- It's a fundraiser for municipalities.
That's a great idea.
- There you go.
Now it can actually happen, right?
We just got to create the nuclei for the nozzle.
(laughing)
- Create the nuclei.
- The nuclear brand name.
- Nuculi.
(laughing)
- There's so much fusion with snow, I didn't know.
- Nuculi is the name of the business.
It's settled.
(upbeat music)
- All right, Scott, what do you got for us this week?
- All right, guys.
I want to do something a little different this week.
In case anyone's forgotten,
our normal MO in the show is that we talk about
fun startup or tech ideas that we'd love to try,
but don't have time for.
Over the last couple of weeks,
I broke that rule and attempted to execute
one of the ideas fully.
And so what I mean is that I started
with the napkin sketch idea from,
I think it was episode two,
and flushed it out into a e-commerce website
that's selling a product right now.
So instead of pitching this week,
I just want to kind of tell what happens
if you follow through with one of the crazy ideas
in the show and how the process works.
- Beautiful, let's do it.
Which episode was that?
What idea?
- We had talked about a small plastic light up button
that we had found in AliExpress.
And they look like that was easy buttons,
if you guys remember those.
- Oh yeah.
- They light up and there's also,
it's a button that lights up and there's also a USB tail
that comes out and plugs into a computer.
- Press this one grandma to answer the call.
I remember that.
- Yes, exactly.
So on AliExpress, the Chinese factory
that was selling these guys,
you buy them in bulk, of course,
and you're supposed to put your company's logo on top
and then give them away at like trade shows
or marketing events.
And then anyone who receives one of these buttons
from your booth can go home, plug it in your computer.
And when you press it, your company website will pop up.
It blew my mind that like the amount of overkill
that was happening here and that they were,
this factory was selling so much hardware for so cheap.
There's a plastic injection shell,
there's a circuit board inside, there's a USB cable,
there's a logo on top,
all for just a couple of bucks a unit.
So in the original Spitball episode,
we had talked about what if for a startup idea,
we took these buttons, wrote some code
so that there could be say a light reminder
for daily tasks.
Like I keep one in my kitchen and once a week
when it's time to take out the garbage, it'll light up.
And I know to take out the garbage.
And when I take it out, I press it
and it turns off until next week.
What if instead of reminders,
I could use this while playing a video game
as a piece of extended hardware?
- Which I think you had mentioned in the original pitch.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, very briefly.
This was kind of where my mind was at at the time.
But I mean, we all grew up in a time
when real time strategy games were all the rage,
Starcraft, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires,
Rise of Nations, whatever.
You know, you would get the CD in a cereal box growing up
and then be able to play it on your Windows 95 PC.
Yes, I still play these games to this day
and there's a large community of people that still do.
Thank you Twitch for bringing it back.
But I wanted to see if I could use one of these buttons
inside of the video game,
like have this button sitting on my desk.
And when something happens in the game
that I need reminding of, or I forget to do something,
it lights up and tells me I need to do something.
So anyway, that started, that whole pitch on Spitball
started a journey into the idle TC reminder light.
Really, I just wanted to make an MVP for this
and I'm not a coder.
So I've dabbled in some microcontroller stuff before,
but I've never got like down and dirty with Python.
So fortunately, chat GPT is a thing now.
And if you just describe what you're thinking
in a chat GPT, it's competent enough to spit out some code
that actually works decently well.
And if it doesn't do exactly what you want the first time,
you just, or it gives you an error,
you just paste the error back into chat GPT and say, fix it.
And then it spits out a different version of code.
And you just keep repeating that more and more
until you come up with an MVP
for whatever product you're trying to work on.
Hint, hint for people in the future.
So anyway, we ended up with a working prototype
for the game Age of Empires,
where if you're playing the game
and your main building, the game town center
is not producing the villagers,
the light will light up on your desk.
And that is the entire product MVP.
- Wow.
- I messaged some people on Reddit.
I started reaching out to random friends
that I knew still played the game
and got enough interest in it that we kept it going.
- I would love to talk about like just being a background.
- And you launched.
- Being an observer to this, Scott,
what was cool is it didn't start like,
I think you kind of thought about the idea,
but it was a little bit of listening to the community
on the Age of Empires subreddit
and just watching that community one grow
and then everybody talking about a major problem
they were having.
And you're like, shoot, I'm on Spitball.
- I have a cheap Chinese product that could solve this
that I heard on episode two of Spitball.
- Right.
- Would that product be easily transferable
to something like Starcraft or Starcraft 2?
- I think if you just went back to chat GPT
and re-asked, use some of the same prompts to be like,
hey, if you see this image on this screen,
this specific thing is happening,
send this USB command to light up light.
Yeah, I think it would be very easy
to move this to any other game.
Age of Empires is just kind of a prototype
that we've been doing it with.
- Is this cheating?
- That's my next question is,
(laughing)
Starcraft 2 is a big like e-sports
and like, I assume it could also be applied
if someone was adventurous enough
could probably do League of Legends or whatever.
- So this is when you learn how to pivot really quick.
'Cause when I first posted this on Reddit,
people were like, is that, can you do that?
I don't know.
So you rebranded as, well, it's actually a training light
for new players learn the game.
And everyone's like, oh yeah, okay, that makes sense.
And so that's what we've been going with ever since.
The idle town center training light.
- Which I think is totally legit.
'Cause like when you're doing,
here's an example, like when you're swimming
and you wear flippers or you have a pull buoy,
like you have things that help you cheat when you swim,
but it helps you train.
- You need your training wheels, exactly.
- You can focus on other things
or gain muscle memory using this training light.
You know, I think it's really hard
if you're like trying to be a pro gamer
to become more effective.
Yeah, I have a lot of family
in like the video game industry.
And it's just like, you have to be born
with like crazy reaction time
or you find ways like this to maybe be more competitive
or practice something in a different way.
I think stuff like this needs to come out
like more often than just play as much as you can
and eventually get good.
You know, there should be just like drills.
I don't know, like to get good at a game
instead of playing it in the same way.
It's like only learning how to play soccer or basketball
by playing live games.
There are drills, there are practice,
there are methods to this.
And I feel like Idle TC might be that first step
in practice gaming or something.
Yeah, I don't know.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
- Scott, I think a nice natural extension to this idea
is to make the light condition change.
So like my scout has stopped moving,
like it's gonna start flashing, right?
Like if you can make a GUI
that would allow you to change the condition that.
- So it's funny you bring that up
because after the feedback of random people on Reddit
and just talking it through and describing the product,
they're like, "Oh, you should add this feature.
"You should add a GUI that you can control this."
And I'll go, "Great, we're gonna do that."
And so with a combination of some smart coworkers
who know how to code and chat GPT
just describing what I want into it,
we were able to create to add several more features
'cause it's an RGB light, it can flash any color you want.
So different colors mean different things in the game.
And then a little GUI can pop up now
that you can control exactly what you wanna see
and what you don't.
- Consider like templates for different games,
like StarCraft II, like you preload a profile for that game
so that as SAV has stopped,
or you need extra pylons flashing.
- There almost needs to be additional pylons.
- Steam has the whole, like you can define
a controller layout and everyone has their favorites
and you can vote this, this controller layout's the best.
You almost need like a marketplace
where people can create their own RGB schemes
and things to look for. - Yeah, fantastic.
- Yeah, you download it for that one obscure game
'cause someone else made it
and you make your own different set for Age of Empires
'cause you want that to be purple at this time.
- Just an entire open source community of,
hey, you could turn this little USB button
to do whatever you want for whatever game.
- And there's so many resources out there for like,
go into your program that you made
and put in a GitHub repository or something
and you don't even have to worry about the hosting
and infrastructure and all that.
- Right, no, that's it.
I think if you marketplace this, you're selling hardware.
That's where you're making your money.
The software is a sinkhole of, right?
Infinite amount of software improvements.
- Outsource the software to the community.
- And they're the type of people
you're in a niche that they're all coders
probably in their part-time jobs
or contributing in some way.
So naturally they're gonna wanna contribute,
I think, to a project like this.
- You're just making an API, yeah.
- So just selling the hardware,
Russell had a brilliant idea of,
well, look, you just have a that was easy button
on your desk.
What if you actually made something that,
you know, reference the game
or look like something from the game that would light up
instead of just the button itself.
So Russell had this idea to create a medieval tower
of something from the game that would sit on your desk,
look cool, and also light up to whatever color
that you need to be alerted to in the game.
And then that's when everything just really took off
with this product.
People were like, oh my God, look at this cool thing.
It sits on my desk and it's functional.
Like, absolutely, give me one.
- It looks like the thing, yeah.
- And so we did a couple of Reddit posts.
We created a website,
bought several, you know,
thousands of these buttons from China
and have just been selling them ever since.
- Congratulations.
And where can you get those again?
- Oh yes, I shall plug this, idletowncenter.com.
If anyone plays Age of Empires II,
you should absolutely go there.
I know it's a niche of a niche market, but this is cool.
- Yeah.
- Can you make a tier product where like
you pay the base amount for like the simplest watch tower
and then you like the highest tier is the bombardier tower.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- Like the model.
- Why not?
- Oh, we're still, why not?
Absolutely.
We're still in early days on this.
You can buy just the button
or you can buy the cool tower attachment on top.
But every single person buys the cool tower
and that's where you get your margins from.
- Dude, that's why you Spitball at home.
You Spitball in your free time.
- That's why you Spitball.
- That's right.
'Cause yeah, just that community group thing.
I'm so glad it looks, I was lucky enough to get one
and we, it's so cool.
On my fricking desk, dude, I have it right here.
- So this tower you're selling is 3D printed?
- Yep.
It's all 3D printed at home.
- Holy cow.
It doesn't look like it at all.
- Yeah, right?
- If anyone, if you have any ideas
or you see any Spitball that's like, wow
that could actually be a good idea.
Let us know and we can.
- You should talk to us about any of your ideas.
We wanna Spitball it with you.
I mean, right?
Scott was selling a button and now it turned,
it started as a, you know, episode two idea
and now it's a button that exists.
- It's a real website that is selling units per day.
- I mean, that's no joke.
That's like a huge effort and it's a starting point, right?
I think a lot of success comes from starting somewhere
and then moving forward from that.
And I think I was, we were spitballing yesterday, Scott,
right?
About the next, the idle TC, finding a niche gaming,
you know, community and creating small little widgets
or gadgets to support their training experience.
You know, the, the super smash brothers
melee gaming community is for some reason, so hot.
It's an old game.
- For some reason.
- I mean, it's a fun game, but like.
- It's a masterpiece.
- Yes. See like, yeah, we got, we, it's just how it is.
So how do you create more training experiences
or create products within that niche to help them train
better while they're not gaming?
And I think maybe I don't TC is not like that
when they're not gaming, but like, there's definitely ways
that you can tap into that gaming niche
and that's where I don't TC could branch, you know,
in ways so.
- Yep.
- When Starcraft 2 first came out, like I watched
like the kind of the pro scene to try to learn how to play.
And I would try to mimic that, but they have such like fast,
I can't remember what was the minute.
Yes, that exactly.
Yes. Right.
I would just try to like slam on my keyboard.
Like I'm trying to do all these things.
And obviously it doesn't really work on this.
Like constantly hot keying the command center
or whatever that, and the, whatever the key
for the build the SCB.
This thing is, I ultimately got turned off
to the competitive scene.
Cause it was just so intimidating, but like, this is
such a great like tool for someone just increase their
like such a basic skill that's needed, like a higher level.
- All this to say like all these ideas on this show
they can all become real.
- Totally.
- Someone just has to act on them.
- Yeah. You, you two are always like super
into the entrepreneur side.
I bring all these ideas.
Cause I genuinely want to have these things in the world.
I just want a smoke detector for severe weather.
And so I'm just hoping someone actually does it.
I don't want to make a business out of it and deal
with tech support and distribution and all that stuff.
I just, I want the thing.
- I remember that episode of Leo where I just
I just want the voice on the smoke detector to be like
please tuck your head between your knees.
- Get down, get down, get down.
- Assume the position.
Embrace yourself now.
- Move to an interior room.
- Your house is about to be torn apart.
- I've been thinking about the last episode
in store is on.
- Store is on?
- Non-stop.
It's so good.
It's fun to think about how you can turn this
into a business, but if you're out there
and you just want something to exist in the world
I also encourage you to just do it for you, man.
I have so many things in my office that I have built
that I never intend to turn into a product
that I'm happy I made.
- Reach out to us.
We'd love to help.
- Open source podcast@spitball.show.
- Scott, like what's next with Idle TC?
Like what do you want to Spitball now that we're here
with Idle TC?
Is there a next?
- You don't want to call it done now.
- Not yet.
The idea of having an open source community,
being able to, we're, you know
we're just selling these buttons
and the community is creating different software for this.
That's incredible.
And I think everyone would win in that scenario.
- Very cool.
- Yeah, if you make it easy to create the plugin, right?
Like get the StarCraft version, you know
you could create the, what is it?
Horizontal, like get every gaming.
Every game has a tower on there, you know
whatever that might look like, any competitive gamer
go to Overwatch, League of Legends.
There's such a huge band that you can take.
- Any MOBA.
- Yeah.
- It's, I mean.
- Can we get the Counter-Strike?
That's like the biggest game ever.
How do you get into PAL world?
How do you get into Counter-Strike?
- Yes.
And you 3D print everything, Scott.
Like you have the base, you have the raw material.
So it's like, you know, I think the software fee is the cost.
And so how do you get around
or how do you figure that part out?
- Open source.
- Here's the key market, Stardew Valley.
- Yes.
- Starts blinking at midnight.
- You haven't given Gus a fish taco today.
You're gonna lose out on major friendship gains
if you don't give him that fish taco.
- I was thinking, keeping an eye on the time.
I have a hard time making it back to my bed by 2 AM.
- I have a spreadsheet, like, oh God.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- It's like 90% of my time, my Steam deck
has been playing that game that I already have
like 150 hours on anyways.
- Yeah.
- It's deceptively like stressful.
That game builds itself as like,
oh, you could just have some fun.
- That's how I sell it to everyone else.
- Have a nice time, but then yeah,
you end up with your spreadsheet.
- It's Thursday, I have to haul village to give gifts to.
(laughing)
- It's gonna be her birthday tomorrow.
How freaking dare you?
- I dare you.
- I leap for George.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- All right, Russell, what's an idea
that you would love to do, but just don't have time for?
- All right, everybody, we got a love corner idea today.
(cheering)
- Cue the music.
- So, all right, this idea takes actually all the success
that there is on dating shows.
So originally, this is an idea of the success
of "The Bachelor," wife and her friends
all watch "The Bachelorette."
Everybody is brainwashed on that show to trust the process.
I love the process, it makes sense.
I Google the data, it turns out that the success
of these "Bachelor" and "Bachelorette" shows,
it's not that great.
But I think there are--
- So we need to make use of that and make an effort.
- Yes, right, but I think there's a lot of magic
when it comes to some of these shows, right?
So maybe not "The Bachelor," well, maybe "The Bachelor."
We create a bunch of dating apps based
on your favorite dating shows.
And so now you can have the experience
of being on "Love is Blind," or be on these other
dating shows through virtual dating, right?
So it just creates a little different of experience.
You can cater it a little bit, you can be a little bit of,
it's a service, so you kind of have to curate
some of the dating profiles.
You actually create more of a, you're finding profiles,
you're matching them together.
There's a ton of different dating shows
that you can kind of take the concept, apply it,
and now you have the app version
or the service version of that.
So yeah, it's not online, it's kind of like online dating,
but it's like there's somebody kind of masterminding
behind the scenes, the matchmaking component.
They're receiving all the applications,
setting up the experience.
- Oh, I get what you're saying now.
- Yeah.
- You've got a producer role.
- Yes, so you're actually facilitating these connections.
You're kind of creating like a digital online course
experience almost with like-
- Do you think this is like a paid position?
Like the app brings forward these people,
or is this like a Reddit mod where they're just like,
"Oh, hell yeah, I'll volunteer to be the MC
of random strangers trying to date across the country."
- Can't go poorly at all.
- It does sound fun.
- No, I think this is like truly like a service
that you kind of pay a bit of money for.
Like it's a thousand bucks, let's say for you.
And then you get 16 people
and you run maybe two or three cohorts a year
and maybe 30, right?
Now you're making a pretty good amount of money
to be a matchmaker once every three months.
You can record it, you can create all these different
like content narratives off of it as well.
And now you have like unlimited amateur content
of dating matchmaking, which feels more authentic
and competes with these high produced dating shows.
It's like genuine.
And then, you know, for a thousand bucks,
like, "Oh, I'll contribute to my friend
to be on this show," right?
Or submit an application or whatever,
you can help make that win.
So you might receive a lot of applicants
that you have to like filter down every quarter and stuff.
I think that's gonna be the trouble.
But yeah, basically it's creating a virtual cohort
experience that you see from your online dating shows.
- And the whole thing takes place in the app.
There's not another place to engage with it, right?
- So yeah, I was thinking about it more.
It's like you have the app, a phone app maybe,
but might be more like custom
depending on what the needs of the show are.
Like "Love is Blind," you could do virtually.
It's a vert like that whole show,
the concept of the show for the viewers
that haven't seen the show is basically
you have a bunch of empty rooms
and guys are on one side and girls on the other.
And you basically just walk into a room
and on the other side of a wall
is another person that you talk to.
You can't see them at all,
but it's just like a see-through,
like a sound pass through a wall.
So you're basically,
the show is you watching people talk to a wall.
Like one, this person talked to a wall,
this person talked to a wall,
and you're just like,
"Oh, they're gonna be such a great match,"
or whatever, right?
And you're like, "Just throw up Zoom,
just like do this virtually."
And now you have the exact same experience,
but then at the end of the six weeks,
you fly them in together
and now they're meeting in real life
and you can create content off of that,
or people are gonna drop off.
There might be some,
you cut some people that are not great content.
I don't know, you can do a lot with it, right?
It doesn't have to be a full TV show experience, right?
To help cut the costs of running
and producing this virtual experience.
But yeah, it's,
whether it's "The Bachelor," "Love is Blind,"
or any of these other shows that are really popular,
you capitalize on that
and create the experience for,
'cause everybody's like,
"Oh, I'm gonna put you on 'The Bachelor,'
I'm gonna put you on 'The Bachelorette,'" right?
That's what people want.
So why not do that?
So this is, yeah,
this is more of the catered experience.
There is other ways to do it.
Like you could create the app version
that makes things happen really quickly,
but I don't know if that's gonna be as successful.
So I like this matchmaker behind the scene.
So that's kind of it.
- Is the matchmaker behind the scenes
making a viewable experience for the general public?
Like are people firing up your app
to watch the 16 people in the cohort?
Or is this an experience just for the people who are on it?
- I don't know yet.
I think it's like,
the service itself can be spun into greater accolades.
We'll say of,
you can just be a guy that makes a thousand bucks
per applicant.
You create the experience of like 'The Bachelor,' right?
You find a bachelor,
you find 30 eligible bachelorettes,
and you're just having them maybe fight over each other,
either digitally, right?
Or, I don't know what it's like to be on that,
like a producer of that show, right?
But I think that you can create a similar experience,
and it doesn't have to be once a season, right?
- The reason I ask,
so you could have a lot of concurrent going at once.
That's so true.
I ask because I remember,
I think this is the second time in a row I've mentioned this,
but do you remember how much of a craze it was
to have HQ Trivia,
the whole world watching something on their phone at once?
You might be able to turn this into like a thing
that the world is engaged with, you know?
- Oh, that'd be cool. - That'd be cool.
- A viral internet version. - It's all digital, yeah.
- Not Netflix or something.
- Right.
And it's in real time.
- Different ones for different cities.
This is the Houston one.
This is the Detroit one.
This is, and all of a sudden,
the San Francisco one really blows up
'cause of some crazy drama,
and people really focus in on that particular one.
- Yes.
- Yeah. - That, yeah.
Why does it have to be a televised experience?
You know, these giant, these,
you could localize it and actually make it real, right?
- Just have TikTok clips of the best parts
of it going through.
- Right. - Yeah.
- What if you added a twist?
You guys ever seen the Naked Attraction Show?
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- Basically, they start with like a,
you see a prospective partner's feet,
and then you like eliminate someone based upon their feet,
and then the next round, they like move up above their knees
and salute. (laughing)
- You could create that experience, right?
This is a real show, guys.
Like, literally, it's just like-
- It's so ridiculous.
- You could rip off all kinds of formats.
If you get the audience engaged,
you could make dating shows.
You could make actual game shows.
You could make all kinds of like formats, right?
- Yes.
I guess like that's what's kind of cool.
You could create, I think,
the televised dating show experiences are hot,
like heavily edited,
and I guess maybe it's because there's a lot of boring
content behind the scenes,
but like, this is like,
I think it'd be fun to watch a local,
my local group of the dating show things go live.
- Totally.
Our generation and older
enjoyed the highly produced television,
but I think the generations younger than us
enjoy the authenticity of something being like real time.
It's not, you know, super well produced.
It's got some hokiness to it.
It's a little bit more direct person to person.
You could still have a producer
kind of setting it up and stuff,
but if you just get an interesting story going
and you turn the cameras
that everyone already has in their pockets on each other,
yeah, you could make something cool.
- Yeah, you know,
and I think if I thought about this more,
you could create like,
like how do you create this more like passively?
So let's say you create a bunch of dating dates,
you know, and they're just like,
produce like at the date,
you have to take out your phone every 15 minutes
or 20 minutes and do those like,
I'm on this date, things are going well, blah,
you know, and you close the phone.
Yeah, like those side,
and then all of a sudden you're just slowly revealing
this like dramatic story, like in some way.
- I didn't like that she ordered
the most expensive appetizer, like.
- I can hear you, you're talking at your phone
right in front of me.
- You're singing to the bathroom.
- Yeah, you gotta go away or something, right?
But you keep going to the bathroom every 15 minutes,
are you feeling okay?
- Well, they both do, right?
They're probably both because they're both on the show.
- I wonder if you could just hire a friend at this point
or just ask a friend to be like,
hey, can you just kind of like monitor my date
and live tweet it or whatever to this app?
- Yeah, I know, I think it'd be fun to just like,
have my wife's friends as everybody knows,
just be able and eligible.
I could submit them into the app,
help curate their application, get them on the show.
And now I get to watch them compete on this dating show.
Oh, it'd be so fun to just help them do that.
- I think you'd be a good producer too.
Take him in the applications, decide who gets to be on.
- Yeah, he's invented Russell's Love Corner.
Of course he would.
- The Russell's Love Corner.
- You know, when a bachelor contacts me,
or love is blind or Netflix will make it happen.
They need content. - This is fun.
I like this a lot.
- Do you guys watch dating shows at all?
Or like your wives do?
- My wife does.
There's lots of friends that she has
that would be very into this idea
and would love to participate in it.
- Is that right?
- See, we need a lady on to,
we'll have to do this again when we get a girl guest.
'Cause I am curious what they're thinking.
- Ladies, please DM us.
Please, please talk to us ladies.
- We're so many dudes.
If you like what our content says, give us a like.
But yeah, that's, I gotta name it though.
What should we name it?
- Right, you gotta name it.
- What's like a variation of like Big Brother, right?
Where the camera's kind of like--
- Oh, this is the classics.
Love is blind, naked and afraid.
- It's not naked and afraid.
- Naked and interested.
- That's a different thing.
- Naked and aroused.
- That's a terrible horror.
(laughing)
- Naked and interested.
- Naked and intrigued.
- Naked and aroused.
- Yeah, that's good.
- Naked and intrigued.
- Yeah, why don't you submit your names for the show, guys?
Ryan, I'd love for you to introduce yourself a little bit,
but Ryan's here, he is our guest.
He's got a PhD in something and loves spiders.
- Close enough.
(laughing)
- Nailed it.
It's like we've been friends for years now.
I know him so well.
- Almost PhD in something and loves spiders.
- Yeah, to kind of undo that.
(laughing)
I will hopefully, but yes,
we have an online PhD award program.
(laughing)
Just give me your social security number
and we'll send you a doctorate.
Anywho, I guess with some background,
I'm a PhD candidate in University of Colorado,
Denver campus, and I do my research
at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
I'm an arachnologist, which means I study arachnids.
Most people think of arachnids, spiders, scorpions,
things with eight legs, two main body parts.
And so I spend a lot of time looking at
what people would call creepy crawlies.
And so this idea is mostly self-serving,
but also is public service.
That's because--
- I was so hoping you'd do an idea related to this, okay.
- I engage a lot with the people around brown recluses.
So brown recluses are a spider
that live in the Southeast United States,
and they have a venom that can cause dermonecronic lesions.
A lot of people will just find a random spider
in their home and be like, "Oh my God,
"this is a brown recluse that bit my child,
"that bit my dog, we're gonna die."
And really that's not the case.
So the idea is an app that basically tells you,
brown recluse, no brown recluse.
(all laughing)
- It's like the hot dog, no hot dog thing.
- Yes, yes, you are a third person who said that to me.
Yeah, so yes, folks who have watched Silicon Valley
will recognize a certain episode where hot dog, no hot dog,
but it's brown recluse, no recluse.
- That rules.
- So this stems from, I do a lot of public outreach
as being a part of a natural history museum,
which does public education.
And usually, when we do events, someone will be like,
at least multiple people will be like,
"My cousin's uncle's roommate from college,
"their barber once knew a guy who lost a limb
"from a brown recluse bite."
And it's like, okay, well, where do you come from that
as a, from a scientific perspective?
The vast majority of brown recluse bites
are not at all like the media portrays them to be,
like where these huge lesions and you lose limbs.
So the idea for this app would be like,
it uses machine learning for image recognition, right?
It'll basically tell you,
you take a photo of whatever spider,
as long as it's sufficient resolution,
like it'll assign some type of certainty, recluse, no.
(laughing)
- There's a 46% chance that this is not a brown.
- So I envisioned this to be pretty accurate
in saying this is not a recluse,
but then when it comes to actually saying
this could be a recluse,
that's where it gets a little bit wishy-washy
because there are multiple spiders
that on the surface look like a brown recluse
and you have to get a really good up-close photo
in order to like positively ID the recluse itself.
But this technology is already being used
in the conservation biology across the world.
There's multiple papers that say,
we put out like a type of trap
that collects like insects, spiders, other arthropods,
those are creatures with exoskeletons and jointed legs.
And then you put those critters that you collect
after some months of putting out a trap
under like a high definition photography device, microscope.
And the algorithm would say, this is some type of beetle,
this is some type of fly, right?
This is some type of spider.
And so they use this to try to see
are there species that are non-native to New Zealand,
Canada, whatever coming in
and somehow ending up in our natural environment.
So the technology exists to do this.
It just would require a large training data set to say,
the spider, long-legged, brown,
has a violin pattern on its back.
And the most important characteristic in this case
is that it has three sets of two eyes
on like a same lateral plane on its head.
- Yeah.
So what I envision is like the first question is like,
do you live in the Southeast United States?
And if the answer is no, then you're like, okay,
you're probably not gonna lose.
- You can literally put a GPS on there
and be like, where are you right now?
- I don't wanna be evil here,
but like you could say we require location data
for you to use this app.
And then sell that data to Google or something.
That would be the evil route.
Alternatively, you say, do you live in Alabama,
Mississippi, Florida, Texas, whatever.
And then if the answer is no, then say, okay,
you're probably not dealing with a recluse.
That being said, recluses do hitchhike quite a bit,
but they don't establish permanent like-
- Hitchhike?
- So they'll like get in someone's clothing,
they'll get in like a luggage,
they'll just ride along and maybe they'll end up,
you guys are from Michigan,
so you'll see like a story every year,
like brown recluse spotted in so-and-so.
They're not natively from Michigan.
Same here in Colorado, like we hear all the time,
brown recluses are Colorado, they don't natively live here.
It's too high elevation, too cold,
like the weather patterns are too drastic.
So they're only native to like the Southeast United States.
And so a lot of people will just like,
I see this especially on Reddit,
like there's this whole spider subreddit
and people are like- - Of course there is.
- Here's this black spider, is it a brown recluse?
Like, oh yeah, I think you didn't check the dots
quite well enough there, like, you know,
or this one's clearly green, is a brown recluse, you know.
And I often get like photos, like this is three pixels,
I can't even tell how many legs this thing has,
what species is it, type of thing, like, I don't know.
- The app could guide you on getting, you know,
zoomed in enough and what angle you need to see the eyes
and all that, yeah.
- Well, that's the major hole,
is that people probably aren't gonna be comfortable enough
to like get a nice closeup photo,
but it could probably say, you know,
if it's not, doesn't fit these characteristics,
then it's probably a brown recluse
and you don't need to worry
if it's around your child or your pet, something like that.
- Kill it, like just kill it.
- I don't endorse killing of the animals.
- I forgot we have the--
- I don't remember who you're talking to.
- The spider lover on the call.
- If they're cold outside, bring them inside.
(laughing)
- Give them a home.
Why don't you, I mean, like you could create
like a confidence level, like a percentage of,
scale one on a hundred, right, you add that feature
instead of it being so binary, right?
You can be like, we're 80% sure
this is a brown recluse 'cause you meet,
it's brown, it's got eight legs and eyes.
I don't know, like it doesn't have wings.
I don't know, it's like.
(laughing)
- Yes, not a hot dog.
- Yes, it's not a hot dog.
- I love this as an idea for like an awareness
or like raising awareness for different things
or just using this, that idea of an app,
like is this some binary thing, yes or no?
And then using that moving forward.
- So the other is that, and then maybe you can expand
to like black widows as the only other real spider
of medical concern in the United States or Canada.
Like black widows are pretty recognizable though.
- Oh yeah.
- But if you wanna reach worldwide, right,
like you'd basically have to try to,
it would take gobs of data to basically
have an image recognized.
Brown recluse is the relatives, any widow,
the relatives, and then anything else, right?
There's like, I can't remember the last time I looked,
but there's like 50, 51,000 species of spider out there.
- Geez.
- And like a fraction of 1% is something
that is potentially harmful to you or a pet or a child.
- Oh wow.
- Good, that's how it should be.
- This is the kind of public service we do on this show.
(laughing)
- Yes, so this helps me 'cause I don't have
to potentially answer, like I don't have to look
at these photos.
They're taken from like a football field away
and they're like, let's see this thing ripped off
my cousin's leg.
What is it?
And I have to be like, I couldn't tell you, man.
People don't know, but separating species of spider
has to do with, you have to look under a microscope
and it's a dissect like their genitalia.
- Oh damn.
- That's the way you do it.
Yeah, it's involved.
You can't just take a picture and be like,
I know what this is.
- Wow.
- For the most part.
- I think this would be cool to like add to museums
and spread awareness like about this stuff.
Like I can see this being like, you know,
rebranded a bunch of ways like learn more about spiders.
I call them spiders, so that's just how I call them.
Arachnids, download this app, right?
And now you're just scanning a bunch of different,
sure you didn't get the brown recluse,
but here's what it probably,
here's like five other things it could be, right?
And now people are like maybe able to see this
and like compare, oh, this is the brown recluse
and here's four other images that are kind of close,
but aren't it.
And so they can now say, oh, does it have
that black spotted feature on the back
or does it have this bulb?
And now you're, I guess like teaching them about spiders
without actually doing much.
They're like trying to make sure that this is a safe spider.
And all of a sudden they're like learning about,
oh, this is normal or it actually is pretty nice
of a spider for some, like whatever that may,
if that makes sense, but like.
- It eats a lot of mosquitoes, you want it around.
- Yeah, exactly, right?
Like spiders provide a lot of like ecosystem benefits
for humans, they eat like over 200,000 tons of insect,
like biomatter, right?
So that's that many less insects in your face, in your home.
Yeah, they're spiders.
They're doing great things.
- And I mean, you hit the nail on the head there, Russell.
People just wanna know,
is this thing harmful to me or not?
And they don't need to necessarily know what species it is
or what, you know, brother group it is.
It just, is this thing gonna cause me to go to the hospital
or whatever?
And that's basically it.
Vast majority of answers is no.
- It makes sense.
- There's an app I was playing with just recently
called Picture This, which is a household plant tracker,
but it blew my mind.
You hold up your phone's camera to any plant in your house
and it will say with certainty, oh, this is this.
This is this plant, add it to my shelf, my collection.
It'll remind you when you need to water it.
You take a picture of the leaf and it'll say,
oh, it looks like you're over watering
or oh, that's whatever rot.
You'll wanna find some mildew remover.
I don't know, whatever you need to do to kick your plants.
I'm not a plant guy.
- Dude.
- But it does all the stuff.
- This is brilliant.
- This kind of thing exists.
- Because we should adapt this for the spider.
- Yeah.
- Take that spider,
you put it in a little bit of a terrarium, right?
You give it a little bit of water,
give it a cricket once a week and all right, we're done.
Thank you, Leo.
This is the app.
- I was gonna say we're right on the cusp
of like the technology to build this
is not out of reach anymore.
It doesn't have to just be hot dog or not hot dog.
It can be what spider is this?
How, when does it seasonally become more active?
When, where are good spots in your house
to let it not disturb you while you're sleeping?
- Sure.
What, so if I may inquire, Leo,
like what, does it give you this app?
If you know, does it give you like a certain,
to like this species or does it give it a broad category?
Like this thing is a--
- No, it was like, this is this specific one here.
Let me see if I can find it.
I pointed it at it and it said,
oh, this is the genus and species of this exact plant.
And it got it right for all eight of Megan's plants
that I pointed it out immediately with no second guessing.
- Whoa.
- Dude, I've seen this app.
It like, it's like a doctor too.
It diagnosed issues.
It's beyond just plant identification.
It is like, oh, that plant is sick
and here's how to fix it and why.
It's like--
- It is wildly impressive.
And the only reason I'm not still using it
is 'cause it was very expensive.
- It's super expensive.
- It was like--
- It's like 10 bucks a month.
- 50 bucks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I feel like any farmer or weed grower
would be really into that.
- No, that's awesome.
And it uses that just, you take a photo
and like how soon does it give you a kind of like estimate
of what's going on?
- Immediately, it knew.
- That's crazy.
- I know.
And it'll tell you like, oh, this is a,
you know, semi-seasonal one.
It should be an indirect light.
Consider putting it over here.
It's good in these temperatures.
This one's toxic to cats, you know, that kind of thing.
- Oh, that's cool.
I didn't even think about that.
- Yeah.
I was just impressed by how quickly
and accurately it was able to identify.
It says on the website more than 10,000 plant species.
This is not a paid endorsement,
but it seems like we're on the cusp
of being able to point it at spiders and stuff too
if they can build something like this.
- Yeah, I just have to imagine, right,
the amount of data that those models are trained on
justifies the price tag for tens to hundreds of thousands
of photos.
- We gotta be getting closer though, right?
I mean, it's not gonna get more expensive
and harder to build in the coming years,
unless by the time you're listening to this,
OpenAI lost their lawsuit against New York Times.
- Oh.
- And now AI is illegal
and nobody's allowed to build anything anymore.
We'll see.
- Oh boy, yeah.
I was thinking like, what if you took some of the plant idea,
could you turn like, you said it, I think, Ryan,
like just catch your spider and give it a cricket
once a week or once a month,
and now you have like a pet,
like you could turn spider fear into spider fun.
- Feel, yeah, yeah.
Spider fun.
- Spider fun.
- Sure.
Spiders do make good pets.
They're pretty low maintenance.
Don't expect them to live super long, but.
- Is that right?
- Well, the females can live multiple years,
especially if you have a tarantula,
they can live decades.
- Wow, this is all in the app.
- You see that?
That'd be kind of cool to know.
Like this spider is probably gonna die in like six months,
so you can just leave it alone.
Or like, I don't know, like there's an element of like,
oh, I kill it now, it's only got one month left to live.
Like, I don't know.
It's like a fly, right?
They have what, their 48 hour lifespans or something?
Like.
- Yes.
- Maybe this is too hard of a pivot to even leave in here.
Is there a way you could make a kit,
a productized version of pet spider
where it acts as a bug zapper for you?
Like put this box in the corner
and it'll take care of all of your mosquitoes.
- Oh, you ship someone a spider
and you put it in the corner of your house.
- Maybe it can somehow be like a mesh
that it can go in or out of,
but the spider can't or something.
- A spider that has silk laced with pheromones
that are attractive to female mosquitoes.
Something stupid like that.
Stupid or genius?
- I don't know, that sounds pretty cool actually.
- Some bug bait that like,
there's flaps where the mosquitoes can get in,
but it can't crawl out, I don't know.
- Yeah, with like a fan,
you create like a fan thing or something
where it's one directional or something.
- I don't know.
- If you had the data to back that up,
to be like one spider box shipment
could knock out X amount of grams of mosquitoes
in your yard per year,
I think people could be into that.
- Maintenance free pet, it's like a sea monkey.
- Guarantee some ecologist somewhere has data
that they could extrapolate into a,
one poor weeding spider will kill like 30,000 mosquitoes
in one summer for you or some shit like that.
- That's cool.
That's what bat boxes do, right?
Like people buy bat boxes for that.
- Yeah.
- I think that's cool.
I think it'd be cool to have a,
you know, brown recluse or not,
but you know, double down on that
and turn it into a whole spider management app.
Like I have spiders all over my home
and you know, I wanna know more about them or whatever.
- Please cancel my next shipment.
- It's like dollar shave club.
- I have too many raises.
I have too many spiders.
- I mean, no, so that sounds crazy,
but in reality that's what countries have done
throughout our history is like,
oh, we have too many of X,
so let's release cane toads.
And now Australia has like a cane toad problem
or try to leave another analogy.
- Mongooses in Hawaii.
- Right, where yes, the hubris of humanity is like,
we can figure this out the biological way
and then they just make a new problem.
- Yeah.
- Well, so that's the other thing about this
is that you do, you create basically a data set.
You guys have heard iNaturalist?
- No.
- Oh, really?
Okay, so this is a website where basically
anyone can upload a photo
and then community members will try to identify
the organism in that photo.
And it turns into this kind of like
identification by consensus type of thing.
- Nice.
- It turns into like a data set of some limited utility
'cause you can't necessarily trust
the public's identification of things,
especially if you have to look under a microscope,
but like this app could be another source of data
of like what's in a home in the month of May.
What kind of splitter, potential data source?
- That'd be cool.
I think like tracking, like, I don't know,
like it just seems like such a small insignificant part
of what I think about.
But if I were to look at it, like with this app,
it makes me kind of consider what the heck is this?
You know, I just feel like it's a nuisance.
I immediately put it in the chore category
when I could be thinking about this,
like maybe a little differently.
Like if I had a little piece of technology
to like help me understand what it is,
I wouldn't immediately go into kill mode, you know, like.
- Yeah, sure.
Ultimately goal, like is this thing harmful?
- Right.
- Like, can I let it be,
or do I need to get the hell out of here?
- But I want to catch them now.
Like I want to catch them like little spider Pokemon,
and now I have my Pokey spider decks,
and now I can catch them all, Ryan.
- That's how we gamify it. - A spider Pokedex.
- Gamify it by having you try to take
as many pictures as possible.
And the more you take a picture of,
it's like birdwatching, but better.
- Why hasn't anyone made a Pokedex for birdwatching?
That's freaking great.
- They call that a Autobahn bird list.
It's the worst experience ever, unless you're a bird.
(laughing)
- What if you did that for all animals?
What if you created like a Pokedex
for like just like the whole kingdom of the animals?
- Yeah.
- Gotta snap 'em all.
- Collecting all several millions.
- To several million.
Dude, it ain't easy.
- Yeah, that's a understatement.
- It ain't easy filling your Pokedex, you know,
to be a animal master.
Start with spiders.
(laughing)
- Start with spiders.
We'll grow from there.
That's version two.
- Yeah.
- Ryan, that's a really good idea.
- I'm glad you think so.
- Yeah, I would download it,
or at least go to the web app version
when my leg is feeling tingly and I'm psyching myself out.
- I would frantically download it
when I see a large brown spider in my house.
- You're the target audience, right?
Like, oh God, is this thing about to kill me or what?
- Right.
Ignorant civilians like us.
Thank you very much for listening.
Hope you enjoyed yourself this evening,
and thank you for being here, Ryan.
That was fun.
- Thank you.
- Our website is Spitball.show.
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at the beginning of this episode.
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