- I'm Scott.
- I'm Russell.
- And I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball,
where three technotacticians and a guest, that's us,
empty our heads of all the 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 this week, I brought our guest.
This week, we're having a very special guest,
because he's not just a friend of ours
that we've baited into joining us on the show.
This week, we're welcoming Chase, Chase Roberts,
author and Arduino enthusiast,
computer scientist, former app developer,
and successful twice Kickstarter champion.
Chase, welcome to Spitball.
- Thank you, thank you so much.
It's fun to be here.
- Chase is the author of "Computer Engineering for Babies."
Your website again, what is that?
- Computerengineeringforbabies.com.
- Perfect, you just came out with a sequel, right?
- Yeah, so, yeah, just this last,
well, I guess it's been a few months now,
"Computer Engineering for Big Babies."
So that's the sequel book.
I'm thinking about doing a third book.
- A secret project.
- A third, I'm thinking about doing
a third computer engineering book.
- Sweet.
- But I'm not sure what that's gonna look like yet.
But I, and I'm working on another book
that's not computer engineering
that I'm really excited about.
But yeah, I'm not ready to go public with it quite yet.
- I get that.
- I just placed an order for your first two books
like 40 seconds ago.
- Nice.
- And my two and four year old absolutely adore
the buttons and switches and lights,
and we have a good time with it.
It's a successful product in our household.
- Great gifts.
- I'm glad you're liking it.
- We're at the age where a lot of our friends
have all gotten married now and the babies are starting,
and it's a perfect little like, hey, you're a nerd.
Your kid will love this and you will too.
- It's wonderful.
All right, as we do always, our show starts off with a game.
And this week we're gonna be returning to a classic.
This is in honor of your successful Kickstarters.
We're gonna be playing Wisdom of the Crowd Fund.
This is where I'm going to name a successful,
all of these are successful,
Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign.
You just have to tell me if it actually succeeded
all the way through to fulfilling the orders
or if people backed it and then got nothing.
And as always, we start with our guest, Chase.
I gotta tell you about this wonderful Kickstarter.
This is from a while back here.
Let me look up the date.
Chase, this is a project from 2014.
So cast your mind back long before the dark times.
- Oh man.
- I gotta tell you about the Pancake Pirate Griddle.
This is a cast iron project where you can back
and you'll get a little set of three pancake griddles
that have a skull and crossbones in them.
It successfully backed with 200 backers and $18,000.
But did their backers actually get their griddles?
- I'm gonna say no.
- They did.
It went all the way through.
It was like a weird one-time limited run thing in Illinois,
somewhere in Chicago.
This guy had a dream.
- Oh wow.
I don't know how much it costs to make a griddle,
but 18,000 doesn't seem like enough.
- Right?
I would think so too.
He met his goal and it was all successful.
But yeah, it's a giant waffle iron looking cast iron thing
that you got in the mail.
- Dang.
- It's a lost money, that's for sure.
(laughing)
- Yeah, wouldn't recommend any of these projects,
especially, yeah.
- Money was worth more back then.
(laughing)
- So true though.
- I mean, after the inflation.
- Scott.
- Hey, bae.
- I gotta tell you about the Hand Free.
This is not hands free, H-A-N-F-R-E-E.
This is in 2011, right after the iPad came out.
And it is the hands free iPad accessory.
Imagine a floor standing floor lamp,
but with like a long arm and hook.
The iPad attaches to it.
You can lay in bed and use the iPad
above your head like WALL-E.
It had 440 backers that pledged $35,000.
But, did that ship?
- Yes, I absolutely think this is shipped.
- It did.
(laughing)
- No.
- It seems so easy, right?
It's just a big old metal arm.
- Everything on Kickstarter, this seems very straightforward.
And if you have the backers, like,
yeah, this should have shipped.
- What do you think?
- What went wrong?
- I don't know, man.
- Was it too top heavy?
That sounds like it might be too top heavy.
- It hit several people in the face, falling over.
- I don't know if it was mass production
or if they just didn't prototype well enough.
But, you know, never came through.
Russell, I'm here to tell you about Crystal Bacon.
Yes, that's right, Crystal Bacon.
This is a project from 2013.
49 backers pledged $2,000, and that was enough.
$2,700.
So, Crystal Bacon is, of course, bacon made of acrylic.
This person CNC'd a necklace or a earrings or an ornament,
or, of course, you could get all three.
- Wow.
- Yeah, it looks like glass bacon.
It succeeded, but did it ship?
- Wait, I'm sorry, is this actual bacon?
Or is this just something they CNC'd to look like bacon?
- Yeah, it's that.
- Okay.
- I don't know why, but.
- I thought all the ideas on our show were bad,
but I have a feeling that this one got funded.
- It did get funded, but did it ship?
- This shipped, for sure.
Somebody loves bacon enough.
- That's exactly right.
- There's somebody that loves bacon that much.
- There was a whole internet meme thing around bacon
in around 2013, feels right.
He, of course, successfully went on to go
and create the Booze Bolt,
which was a big, giant bolt that was a shot glass.
- Of course.
- I don't know why.
- I mean, when you make money on bacon.
- That's the obvious next step in your career.
- Yeah, the next step.
- Chase, I gotta tell you about the ostrich pillow.
Have you heard of the ostrich pillow?
- No.
- It's like moderately famous,
so I wanted to make sure that, okay, great.
It's a full, fluffy pillowcase looking thing
that's kind of bulbous, and it has three holes in it.
One for your head, so it goes completely over your head,
and two for your arms, so you can sleep heads down
on a desk.
- I have seen this.
- Yeah, so this was a thing that was like
a big laughing stock, and they got $195,000
from about two grand backers, but did it actually ship?
- I feel like I've, I don't know if I've seen these
in real life, but I feel like I've seen these in magazines.
- Is it the knockoff?
- So if they didn't ship it, somebody else stole the idea
and did ship it.
I'm gonna say they shipped it.
- They shipped it, they did, and they had like
six other ones afterward that were for other
similar looking products.
- Studio Banana, of course, we all love Studio Banana,
and their famous ostrich pillow.
Well done, Jason.
(laughing)
- That is also a statement.
(laughing)
You put ideas can do really well on Kickstarter.
- You'd think, yeah.
- Yeah.
- It seems like a crapshoot whether or not something
grabs onto the public imagination.
Scott, I gotta tell you about the Amabrush.
This is the 10 second toothbrush, which is a product
that looks like a mouth guard, but it's got like
automated bristles all around the top and bottom
that you just stick in and let it do its thing.
It's battery powered.
It got 26,000, 27,000 backers,
three million euros in 2019.
But did it actually ship?
- I want this to ship, shipped so bad.
I'm gonna say yes, it shipped.
- The last update was from the bankruptcy proceedings
at this link, they did not ship.
(laughing)
Which is hilarious, 'cause there's a big
order now button right at the top of the Kickstarter.
(laughing)
But you cannot purchase it.
- Try it, see what happens.
- Russell, another product that I'm hoping
you haven't seen.
- Yeah.
- This one had a late night appearance
during the Kickstarter on like Tonight Show or something.
This is the Licki Brush, all capitals, L-I-C-K-I Brush.
This is a mouthpiece that goes in your mouth
like a mouth guard with an artificial bristled tongue
so you can groom your cat.
- No.
Oh, oh no.
- Yeah, it's like a brush thing that you put
and then you can just sort of go at it.
But it got 2,000 backers, $52,000 in 2018.
But did it actually ship?
- I hope for everyone on this planet that it never shipped.
- It totally shipped, it's a real thing.
(laughing)
- Oh no, how many people backed it?
How many people backed it?
2,000 people?
- 2,022 people.
- So there are 2,000 people licking their cats.
- At least.
- Guys, no, it made it on Shark Tank.
I'm just, look, click this link.
This thing looks insane.
- I don't want to, I don't want to.
(laughing)
I don't want to know it exists.
- Yeah, the byline says,
have you ever wanted to lick your cat?
Now you can without the fur balls.
You know, that thing everyone wants to do.
(laughing)
Yep.
- Oh my gosh.
- I think that means that the score's one all,
is that right?
- I think so.
- All right, last time through.
Chase, I gotta tell you about the Pop Charging Station.
Kind of looks like a white trash can Mac Pro
a little bit, like a long cylinder
that sits on a desk or on a table.
And there's legs that hold it up a little bit
and a bunch of retractable charging cables
that come out from the underside of it.
You plug in your phone, your iPad, whatever,
and then when you're done,
they retract back into a little cylinder.
It got 1,000 backers on the dot
and raised about $140,000 in 2013.
So early on in iPad life cycle,
like six years after the iPhone launch,
but did it ship?
- What's it called?
- The Pop, P-O-P, all capitals.
The Pop, the intersection of charging and design.
- These are hard.
- I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say yeah.
I'm gonna say it shipped.
- No sir, that was another failure.
- Oh, I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
As soon as I said it, I really thought it was wrong.
- It didn't, you'd think 140,000 would be enough
to like take some cables and a spool
and shove them in a plastic box, but nope.
- I mean, they got tape measures have been around forever.
Like just repurpose that, I don't know.
- That's right.
- I'm not an engineer.
Tape a USB to a tape measure and just let it go.
I could have had 150,000 sales.
- There's a study somewhere that's like
the more a Kickstarter project makes,
the more unlikely it is that it's going to actually ship.
- Robert's Law, as we call it now.
- I think people just get excited about it.
- You've coined it.
- Robert's Law.
- Chase Robert, is it him?
- No, I did not make this up.
Somebody else has written about this,
but I'm pretty sure it's true.
Scott, I got to tell you about the Krypteks,
C-R-Y-P-T-E-K-S, Krypteks USB.
This is a flash drive that has some hardware encryption.
So like a fingerprint scanner on it
that encrypts all of your stuff on it.
And it slides into a cylinder
that's got a combination lock along it.
It's the most secure, world-class,
super secure digital stash for all of your files.
It got 990 backers, so quite a bit in 2014
and almost $200,000, but did it ship?
- This is another one that seems like,
yeah, this seems it could be doable.
Biometrics, yeah, I think it shipped.
- No, sir.
- Not even close.
- God damn it.
- They're from Michigan like us,
but no, unfortunately it was one of those things, right?
Don't even know if they had a prototype.
There's a lot of CGI renders on this thing.
- That's a bummer.
- Of course, Russell, the last one.
Lionel Richie's head.
So for a festival in England in 2013,
211 backers raised about eight grand for,
let me read the quote for sure here.
"Lionel Richie's head is in the official lineup
"for Bestival, a four-day weekend music festival
"held in Wright, England."
What they wanted to do was,
depending on how many backers they got,
get at least three meters,
maybe as tall as six or more meters tall,
paper mache and/or other material of Lionel Richie.
And it's an art piece.
You could go in it, you could look at it,
you could take a picture of it.
A good-looking Lionel Richie head
at a respectable height of three meters
will cost us around 5,000 euros.
So it'll need some internal turbines
to help keep his head up and sandbags to keep it down
and things like that.
But the more that they can raise, the better.
So they were successful and they raised about eight grand.
Did they hold up their end of the bargain?
Was there a Lionel Richie head at Bestival 2013?
- I hope so.
This one seems like it needed to happen.
And I feel like it didn't, the money didn't matter.
It just, it was gonna happen one way or another.
- I have the best news for you.
It indeed did happen.
It ended up being five meters,
which is about 16 feet tall.
- See?
- So you too can see the giant ass Lionel Richie.
Don't know why. - A 16 foot tall.
Oh my gosh.
This makes me happy.
- It's kind of like, remember the potato salad one
where a guy was like,
"Kickstarter me eating potato salad."
Look at this.
Isn't that haunting?
- Oh my gosh.
- I probably would have backed that.
- You too could.
(laughing)
- Whoa.
- That's an artist render.
(laughing)
- I love the windows background.
- No, it was just for a music festival.
It's gone now.
Well, actually I don't know where it ended up.
The Kickstarter page itself only shows like,
here's what it could be.
I had to look up news articles
to see if they ever held up.
- I cannot believe somebody's licking their cats right now.
Like I still,
(laughing)
I can't stop thinking about this.
Lick E.
- I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news there.
- The Kickstarter page has multiple,
like you could buy three and get a discount.
- Yeah, I want three of these.
They're out of stock on Amazon, guys.
There are 313 ratings.
This is a mistake.
This is an abomination.
I don't know.
- Somewhere Jordan Peele's writing down
for his next horror movie script,
a family of three are licking their cat
when they turn the corner.
What a jump scare.
(laughing)
- Oh my gosh.
- All right, Russell.
You are up first this week.
What do you got for us?
- All right.
I think this one I've told a lot of people about
'cause I almost launched it,
but I just, I'm not going to anymore.
- All right.
- All right, guys.
So my idea this week,
I'm currently working on my basement,
kinda sorta I had to hire somebody out
because the amount of work isn't as bad
as the amount of YouTubing and like all I have to do.
I think the amount of content on the internet
has killed the DIY 'cause I'm looking at
this old house videos from 15 years ago
to some dude that just installed this thing a year ago
and I'm trying to figure out,
all right, who do I trust for my DIY project, right?
All I wanna do is talk to some retired professional
that I need a hotline, right?
So my idea is the DIY hotline
and all you do is called old retire guys or gals
that are kind of out of work
because they've done the manual labor,
but they have all the knowledge, right?
You call them up, you ask for advice,
you do a FaceTime call or a Webex call
if they still use that or whatever
and basically just walk through the house
and just be like, hey, I'm trying to fix this.
Like what should I do here, right?
Cut through all the YouTube BS, skip all that.
Like I don't need an online course thing,
I just need to talk to somebody
to make me feel better about my DIY decision.
I think there's a little bit of therapy there
that comes with having an old wise person telling you this.
And yeah, simply put, that's the model.
You can charge per or honestly,
I think this is where we win,
is it's 100% free to call these folks, okay?
Yeah. - Whoa.
- And all the materials you need,
so they're recommending and trying to sell you on,
oh yeah, you need this pipe fitting,
you need these things.
They only make a cut on all the products.
- Sure. (laughs)
- So you make as much calls,
you answer as many calls as possible
and you make money on recommendations
of the products you buy.
You give them discounts to Menards,
you know the 11% that you get back.
Menards, they cut that back
to the person doing the advising, right?
- Home Depot or Lowe's or whatever, yeah.
- Yeah, so you do like,
you increase your inbound calls
by making it free to call
and you just make all the money on the buying behavior
that comes out of those calls.
So now, the more active you are,
the more you upsell,
you turn them a little bit into salespeople,
but also like, I don't know,
you could also do the Uber bottle, right?
You could say, all right, for 15 bucks,
I don't know, it sounds like a hotline.
When I get to hotlines--
- Yeah, I was gonna say, dude,
I kinda wanna make this into a hotline,
like a phone sex hotline.
- That's what I was trying to avoid.
- Where you are charged by the minute on there
and you get the guy who knows absolutely everything
about what you are trying to do,
but every minute you're talking to him,
like, you're gonna pay for that going forward.
- Yeah, I don't wanna buy a product
where the guy's incentive is to upsell me
on the most expensive thing.
- Yeah, it's true.
There's a balance.
- Yeah, I know, I've already come to terms,
I have to make four trips to Home Depot
when I'm trying to just do it in one.
- I know, right?
- Well, the other issue is that you're gonna have
all these slow talkers that get on
that are just trying to run up the meter.
- It's like a lawyer when they're billable.
You can hear them slow down.
- I was listening to NPR and they said,
today's episode is brought to you, it was a podcast,
today's episode is brought to you by,
I forget which, it was one of those handyman,
like rent something, local carpenter,
come to your house sort of service,
and they said, I had never heard this before,
even though I've heard the ad many times,
your first visit or whatever is free,
or your first video call.
And I remember thinking like, oh man,
like live video call with exactly what you're pitching
would be amazing, but I've never followed through
to see how does that even work, you know?
But if you could make it free somehow, that's really cool.
- A lead gen?
- Like somehow guarantee that it's not just
the local whatever carpenter business,
but it's like actually retired old grizzled dudes
looking for something to do, like that's the way to go.
That's fun.
- Can I pile onto Russell's idea here?
- Please, yes.
- So I've had a very similar idea,
but I wanna, instead of focusing on fixing my water heater,
I want somebody to just teach me about stepper motors,
or walk me through my Facebook ads.
I kinda want Fiverr, but like I don't want $5 people,
I want $100 an hour people where I can just get on,
and it's like, I just wanna speak to a professional
in an industry, and just, yeah,
'cause going through all the YouTube slog is terrible,
'cause they don't know what problem I'm having.
I end up watching an hour long video
to find the two minute segment
that addresses the issue I'm having, right?
Like I just wanna cut to the crap and get somebody
that can help me with my problem,
but it's not just water heaters or home stuff,
it's like on a professional level too.
- Totally.
- I feel like LinkedIn is supposed to do that,
that's like what they want LinkedIn to do,
but it just doesn't work.
I don't know, it just doesn't scratch the itch
the way it's supposed to.
- Do you wanna connect?
- Yeah, that's amazing.
I did not think about how this would apply
to my life outside of DIY projects,
but that's so true.
The amount of videos that I've had to watch
for some software solution, that I'm like, yeah.
And then you end up watching three of them
because you don't trust the first one.
You always gotta watch the second and third one
to make sure they all say the same thing.
- You watch like eight of them and find consensus
'cause you got the one whack nut who's not doing it right.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That's the streets, you know?
That's how you learn on the streets
of back in the day of early YouTube, you know?
Yeah, people read books.
No, we watch three hours of YouTube.
That's our thing.
- Dude, that's a great idea.
- Yeah, I think there's something there
for somebody to build off of.
I just think that it's hard to trust
or build a trustworthy website.
So the charging per dollar thing just seems like it's hard.
But I think--
- Oh, like per minute, yeah.
- Yeah, but I think that's why it's like, I don't know.
- First two hours free.
- Oh yeah, maybe that.
- Or something to like get me in, you know?
I need to get hooked.
- I mean, honestly, it might be like, okay,
if I get my first two hours free with whatever handyman,
Handyman Bob on your website and it works and it's great,
I am always going back to Handyman Bob.
Like, holy shit, like you helped me on this one.
Help me on this next project coming forward.
- You could also just do a big data play, right?
Where it's like we're collecting all of this video stuff
and soon we're gonna have a video AI robot that, you know?
- AI assistant.
- We'll just make another YouTube video
and put it out there.
- You can just FaceTime with the robot and it'll know.
Like, it'll take us 10 years to get there,
but you would own all the data, right?
You'd be able to solve any problem.
- That's actually really interesting.
Like, if there's something wrong with my dishwasher,
I need this repaired.
And this video, I look at 10 different videos
and none of them are the exact same dishwasher.
They're close, but it's not that same brand
as Samsung, whatever.
But by doing that and collecting all this,
I would have some guy repairing the exact same dishwasher
that I have at some point.
- Yeah, actually, it'd be so funny
if all the free calls were recorded
and the education was free.
And now you pay a subscription to access the library
of everybody else's videos.
And now you look up like Samsung S3RUN, right?
And now I can find that dishwasher and watch that.
- Or just post up all those videos on YouTube
as marketing for your platform, right?
- Make that ad sense funny.
- That's how you bring people in.
- I've thought about this.
- This is it, man.
- For a minute, I was like gonna do this idea.
Like I still might.
So like, if you steal my idea,
know that you might be competing with me.
- TMTM.
- Right.
(laughing)
- TMTM.
- Take it, man.
I will sign up.
I'll be your early adopter, man.
- Yeah, me too.
I haven't done it yet, but I might.
- Can you imagine a dating,
this is kind of a dating app where you're going through
and it's like, this person has self-reported
that they are an expert in these brands,
these categories of home repair.
They were a carpenter for 12 years.
They were a furnace guy for eight.
Yeah, that'd be so cool.
- Dude, yeah.
- Swipe right.
- We could take over LinkedIn.
Basically get all these professionals
helping them generate content.
It's super casual and free.
Like, you know, and now you're just like,
oh, I didn't know I was creating content.
And all of a sudden I'm a content engine machine.
You know?
- Talking to a person who's like in the evening,
but currently in the workforce is fine,
but it seems like it'd be really fun
if it was grizzled old retirees.
Like, there's something charming about that.
- Yeah. - I don't know why.
- The grandpas, you know?
- I've never worked on a Samsung dishwasher before.
They didn't invent those back when I worked, but.
- Get yourself a Maytag.
- Washboard and a bucket.
- Yeah.
- All right, so I mean, that's it, guys.
Like, that's a, I feel like very simple,
but I think that it's like,
I have a, I think there's like a,
there's probably a company out there that does this,
or like, they're already like Angie's List and TaskRabbit
and those types of folks that could totally.
But there's something, you know,
maybe they tap into this or this company exists
and they pull in Angie's List professionals and stuff.
It just feels like easy to steal
or maybe there's a reason why it wasn't.
- Angie's List was great when it was a list of ratings.
It was like Yelp, like Google Maps reviews, right?
And then they turned into this like,
we'll call you from a special number
and take care of all of it for you.
And I don't trust it as much anymore.
And I feel like that's because
I'm not able to see all the options
and I'm not able to get the bio of the places
and I'm not looking at actual verified reviews or whatever.
It's like, we'll match for you
and you don't get to see any of their info.
Don't worry about it.
We'll do all the connecting.
It's like, something that's really charming
about what you're originally pitching, Russell,
is the connection that you're gonna have with a rando.
Like, this is Doug, he did this for 50 years or whatever.
Like, this is Susan and she currently works in the industry
and here's connecting you now.
That's so much better.
- I tried to make a TikTok ad the other day.
And like what you said, Chase, like I went on Fiverr,
found someone who's done this a hundred times
and all I paid for was like a one hour video call
with this person, nothing else.
And I got so much further from this one video call
than anything would have been me digging through YouTubes
and whatnot trying this.
I really like this idea.
- Dude, send me your guy.
I want a video call with him.
- He's in Morocco and he's awesome.
- Oh, I love Morocco.
Yeah, serious.
Send me your guy.
- I will.
- The other problem with Fiverr is I just get nervous
about like, are these guys any good, right?
And like, they've got reviews.
- Funny, he was recommended by a different Fiverr guy
and that's why I used them.
- Yeah, I feel like the reviews on Fiverr,
like I just don't trust those as much.
- The whole premise of Fiverr was cheap
and medium quality at best, like for a long time.
Rather trying to make it like more, you know,
luxury quality products.
But yeah, it's hard to shake that stigma
when you kind of build your whole name
and branding and conceit off of cheap, cheap, cheap.
- Five, five dollars.
- Was that guy, Scott, like, was it a free call?
Like, was it just like an intro,
get to know each other call?
- No.
- Oh, you paid for that?
- I straight up, I paid for the service up front
to be like, I will help you get up and running for this.
- Oh, okay, so he did book by the hour.
So this is kind of like an example of it working.
Okay, cool.
- Yeah.
- Validated.
- Yeah, I think people are, I mean,
I don't know how many like, people that'll help you
with your dishwasher on Fiverr, but there's definitely
like some consulting that goes through there.
- It's hard to be a 30 year veteran
grizzled old TikToker.
(laughing)
- That's true.
- I've been doing TikTok for a long time, kid.
- Oh, so all these companies, right?
They spend all this time quoting
and they have all these wheel,
these guys driving around doing quotes for work, right?
Like they just drove out there, it's like, yeah,
it's going to be 60 bucks minimum
for me to drive out there to see what I could have just seen
or send me a picture, right?
Like you solve some of that
and you make a really good experience for people.
Like I think for millennials too,
like tapping into that market, like it's just,
oh, you're a video call away from doing a quote.
And now instead of it being $60,
an hour of some dude's time in our company,
you now just did it virtually.
That's good.
- Company saves gas, company's able to bang, bang, bang
right through all the morning calls.
Yeah, totally.
- And this also, I think like there's some element to like,
Chase, what you were saying,
like in my friend group and my maybe like extended network,
like there are probably people that want to talk to me
about like no code, for example.
And I don't know how to charge for that
without being weird, right?
So it's like, oh, book a time on my Calendly
and there's a checkout page or something like.
- Which that is a thing, cal.com.
There's other Calendlies that'll like do
like the you pay to get the schedule thing going,
but it's still not like a market.
You have to have the, I already know them
and yeah, steer them to it first.
- It feels a little weird, I guess doing it that way, right?
Maybe if there is a marketplace or, you know,
my LinkedIn profile has like 400 reviews,
like, oh, sorry, I do this for a living.
So it's not as weird, right?
But I don't know, there's probably something.
There's something that, something there.
So, thanks guys.
- Good job, you're welcome.
- I'm so excited about this.
- We say thank you at the end of everything.
- Thank you for your time.
- I was excited for it.
- All right, Scotty, let's hear what you got this time.
- Russell, I am so excited.
I think this idea is a product hardware idea
and it'll go very well with yours.
I do a lot of troubleshooting for my job right now.
Every, and I've worked with either with customers
or remotely and by far the most difficult troubleshooting
I've ever had to deal with is with my parents.
My parents have something wrong with the television
or there's an app that is doing something weird
and I got to hop on a call with them and be like,
have them explain it to me over the phone
or we'll try to set up a, more recently,
I've been trying to set up like a Google Hangouts
or something like, mom, just click this link,
just click this link and everything will be,
and then I'll be able to see what's going on.
And even that just doesn't work.
As Rebecca said last week, a silver tsunami is coming.
This is gonna be a more and more occurrence.
I would like to build a hardware device
that helps in remote troubleshooting
where it's a very one-sided device
where I have complete control over it on one side
and on the other side, it just sits there
and nothing else has to be done.
So I'm picturing like a 360 degree camera on a device
with a laser pointer on a gimbal
that I can like point to different things in the room
or on the television or whatever.
There's a screen on it that I can show,
I can pull up images of screenshots that it took
and drew a big circle on it or pull up YouTube videos.
There's a built-in microphone and speaker.
That's about as far as I got before I'm like,
"Crap, I really wanna build this."
- The orb.
- Exactly, just the orb.
Mom, go get the orb, hit the button on the orb.
And then it'll just, everything is pre-set up
and it'll automatically like generate the call
and I can just hop onto it and walk them through
why their Sony television doesn't have the HBO app
or something like installed and how to do that.
- Throw an IR blaster on it, boom.
- Oh, right, that's a great idea.
Or have it like a Bluetooth receiver on it
that I just see, it's just sniffing
all the Bluetooth devices in the room.
It'd be like, "Well, mom, this one isn't on right now.
You gotta turn this switch."
Just everything you could ever want for troubleshooting
in one device, one-sided.
That's my idea.
- The guys at Def Con are gonna love hacking this thing.
(laughing)
You'd be messing with all these old people.
- That's what everyone wants,
another camera in their house, you know?
- You could have the Staples Easy button on the top
that only opens up and connects to wifi
and does stuff when kids told me to press the button
or I need help button and then that's when it connects.
But yeah.
- Let 'em spy, they'll be watching over our old people,
you know, just making sure they're safe.
- It's comforting.
- Yeah, it's like, "Oh, the hacker saw me fall
and now they called 911."
I don't know, but nice hackers.
- I got an interesting help desk ticket
a couple months ago from someone where I work
who was asking what is the best way for me
to find a device where I can give it to my elderly mom
who's in a nursing home where I can call her
and she doesn't have to do anything.
Where I can like drop in and just start a call
and there's literally nothing.
We looked at Amazon, if you have an Amazon Echo
that is part of your household
and then you put it in their house,
you can do the drop in feature
where it kind of starts an intercom type thing.
Yeah, you just wanna like bolt more and more sensors
and stuff onto something like that.
- I wanna add more features to that.
- That's great.
- I want that laser pointer.
That would be so game changing for me.
If I could see everything in the room
and point at one thing.
You know what, screw it.
Take that laser pointer gimbal and put a stylus on it
and be like, "Mom, just put your phone in front of me
and I will like point and fix whatever is going wrong."
I will change your settings remotely with my stylus.
- That's awesome.
So a long time ago, I hacked my Ender 3 3D printer
and put a stylus on it and had it play
one of those word search games.
It's called Word Fate.
And I got like, I set it up and it would just run all night
and I had like a camera that was doing recognition
to pick up the letters and everything.
It was like a several month project,
but I beat every single level on that game.
- Got the all time high score.
- That's wonderful.
- Yeah, I posted on YouTube and all sorts of people
commented that they hated me and that I was cheating
and all that stuff.
I'm like, "You guys don't get it."
- They're blood and tears.
If we're porting that game and you're just...
No, that makes sense.
- Some hacker with an Ender.
- So Scott, I feel like you could create multiple,
like just sell separate devices, right?
So you have like, so why I say that is because...
- Make it modular?
- Yeah, you have the laser pointer.
So it's good for you to tell where your parents need to go,
but also if you need to play with your dog,
you know, or your cat, you just need them to run around,
just plug it in, universal market, right?
It's not just old folks.
And then your 3D camera thing, you know,
just a plug and play thing.
I think that's really helpful for like,
home security to, you know, job sites, right?
If you have multiple job sites and you wanna remote in
and see, is your team slacking off, you know?
So you can just pop in, turn on the green light
and like, get to work.
- Is your team slacking off?
- I mean, if you have like three hour,
like job sites that are like an hour apart, you know,
and you're, you know, there's probably that,
something like that, but...
- You can attach the whip attachment,
crack it at your, yeah, the insubordination.
- That's right, you know, or like there's probably a more...
That's right, just light a firecracker,
a black cat every hour if they're,
- Oh my God.
- Auto mode, you know?
But like the Facebook, I used actually the Facebook portal
back in the day.
- Yeah, portal, that's what it's called.
- Yeah, and that was really,
Carrie's grandpa used that.
Everybody loved that thing.
Like every single, because like...
- You know why?
'Cause it was simple on the parent's side.
I hit the button and I'm talking to my kids at this point.
- It was super nice.
The funny thing is you had to create like a Facebook account
for somebody that's never gonna use Facebook,
and then everybody had to like add him as a friend,
and it just became this whole thing.
- I want even less steps.
- Yeah.
- I want one, which is honestly, Chase,
what you were saying about like,
yeah, this is gonna be such a target for hackers on it.
And you're right, it probably would be.
I really like the idea of having it like,
it is fully disconnected from everything.
Just a couple of relays in there that are like,
you cannot do this until the person comes over
and like hits the big button on top
that activates everything, then I get the link to use.
So that there aren't even more scams going around
through my mobile laser pointer device.
- Could you just get like security cameras or something?
And then when you hit the button, it gives them power.
I don't know.
Seems like this should not be difficult to prototype.
Like we should be able to buy a bunch of off the shelf stuff
and just slap it together, right?
- Oh yeah.
- All right, cool.
- We'll report back next week with our prototype.
(laughing)
- With their ball of UV cameras and laser pointer
with the Nerf gun firing.
(laughing)
- Just create a BB-8, you know?
Just get an R2-D2 made for real, though, real life one.
- Seriously.
- This is, I was thinking about this.
What if you had a device, like my wife,
it takes care of my kid, right?
And what if she falls or like gets injured
and nobody's able to call me, right?
That this has happened.
But if I put up a little device for my kid
to call grandma, grandpa, just very simple interface.
- Life alert for babies.
- Yes, like kind of like old people
and very young people have a lot in common, right?
(laughing)
I mean.
- Life is a bell curve of skills.
- They can nap whenever they want, me too.
They don't know what time it is.
Impulse control, I don't know.
- They can't install Netflix on their smart TV.
- That's, yes, right?
But they wanna watch a show and they will demand for it.
It's very similar.
So I guess, don't stop at all, people,
saying, but like I think babies would love
to call their grandma, you know?
And how awesome would it be if my kids
were talking to grandpa all the time,
whenever he wanted, right?
It wasn't like a forced option.
It was--
- My kids are already talking to grandma all the time
and I hate it.
(laughing)
- Do they initiate it all by themselves?
- No, I don't know who's initiating it.
I'm sure she's initiating it.
But I feel like every time I turn around,
they're talking to grandma and grandma doesn't hang up.
She just waits, right?
The kids are just running around with the phone.
They'll set it down in the corner and grandma will just wait.
(laughing)
- But then Zion's phone's on a commission.
You need the orb.
- It's awful.
- Yeah, the orb.
- It's gotta be mounted to a wall
and expire after 20 minutes.
You have to restart the session every--
- There you go.
- I want it so that it's tracking faces
and if there's not a face in front of the screen,
ends the call.
So when my kids walk away, it's over, boom.
- That's actually very convenient for old and young people.
(laughing)
- Let's do that.
- Oh yeah.
- All right, Leo, what idea do you have this week?
- All right, I was in a newly opened health food store here
where we live and they have this super cute thing
that I'd never seen before
where they have regular size carts for the adults
and they have little tiny kid sized carts
and there's a big flag that comes up from the cart
that says shopper in training
and they can walk around the store with their parents
and put their products into their own shopping carts.
And it's super cute, right?
It gives the kids something to do
so they're not wandering around
stealing cookies off the shelf
and throwing tantrums in the middle of the aisle.
It gives them purpose and autonomy.
And I was thinking about the logical end of that situation
where they arrive at the checkout lane together
and you've got too wide of a cart situation going on
and you're trying to figure out
what products are in what cart, get it all.
Mom or dad is struggling to get all the stuff
out of both the carts and that'd be a little bit chaotic.
I think that there should be a checkout lane
much like you have like the regular checkout lanes
and the robot checkout lanes for self-checkout.
There should be one or two
that is the parent and child co-lanes
where they're paired together.
The parent walks up and they start the checkout system.
They say, you know, begin the new thing
and they scan their first item
and both the normal height one
and the small kid height one light up together
and the kid can start checking out too.
It shows up on the one bill.
It's all going to the parent's one who's in control.
The kid gets a dumbed down interface
where they're only looking at like, hold item here.
Great, you did it, put it in the spot.
It doesn't have to have much on the kid's side.
But then at the very end, mom says complete
or dad says complete and then they both get totaled up
and it's like, you know, giving the kid more,
hey, you did it, good job autonomy, you know?
- Awesome.
This is fricking, I don't know why
but I feel like this is so important for the world.
- I imagine the checkout machine companies
are not at the forefront of innovation
but there's gotta be like something
that you could pitch to a regional chain
that would, they'd be interested in prototyping
something like this, right?
- Yeah, just make a modular device
that you can drop into any store from there.
- Oh, that could be fun.
- I mean, all the checkout lanes are now self-checkout
for the most part, right?
Like they need to figure out what to do
with all these checkout lanes.
Dude, like you can create that whole--
- The very best case scenario in the checkout lane
when you have a kid is that they're immobile
because they're trapped in a cart or whatever, right?
Like it's not, it's never pretty
when you have a bunch of kids running around
in a small confined checkout lane.
Give them something to do, you know?
- I know and they put the gum and the candy in arm's reach.
They literally try to make it awful.
- On the parent's side, they could be like approving
the items as they come so the kid doesn't try
to sneak Oreos through or whatever.
- Oreos, Oreos, Oreos.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- I think they should just, honestly Leo,
like you could create that whole fancy interface
but like just drop them in a ball pit.
Like this is the ball pit lane.
Put them down in there.
It's like a little bit cage-like, you know?
But like we just need to check out here
and the kids are always at the end of their rope
by the time that they've got to the checkout.
They've sat in the cart the whole time.
They didn't get half the shit they wanted
so they're already mad.
And then all the cool stuff at checkout,
nope, mom and dad won't let me.
So, oh, but here's a ball pit.
Just sit, you know, or whatever.
Like a slide, you know, just that would be, that's it.
You just take one checkout lane and literally that,
I bet that lane is gonna be long, like 30 minutes long
'cause it's worth waiting for.
- Maybe.
- Like if you are, it can be a normal checkout lane, right?
If you don't have a kid, it doesn't have to function
with the little kids thing, that's like an option.
They should have a couple of them here and there
that are right next to the regular one, you know?
It doesn't take up space too much.
- Yeah, they do this with like this,
like you know how there's like a special lane
for like the liquor and cigarettes?
I think they have it at like Walmart.
Like you just take that section out and just put it,
that's the kid one, right?
- We're gonna make liquor and cigarettes for kids.
(laughing)
- Try to open this device, unlock the.
- I think you're right though,
that they're not too concerned about people with kids
and optimizing the experience for eight year olds.
- Your MVP could just be like just another checkout lane,
a plastic checkout lane that has no electronics at all,
except a beeping noise.
And then when you've scanned items,
you put them in the kids section
that they can scan them to and put it in.
- That's a good idea.
- And that's the whole thing.
You're helping, you're helping daddy.
- Fisher Price might already make something like that.
You just stick it in there.
- Yeah, totally.
- Put it in a grocery store,
sell it to a grocery store.
- Something made of metal.
- Dude, this could be like a revenue stream for them.
I think if you created like, I don't know,
maybe a little section of the store for them to,
everything's their heights and they got to pick.
It's all like a mini dollar store for kids, right?
- That's cool.
- You have five dollars and just give them five singles
like pick out five things.
Little checkout experience.
- Maybe one dollar, how about one dollar?
- Get the brand loyalty.
- It's all like Chuck E. Cheese tokens, right?
You buy a little Chuck E. Cheese token at the start
and you say, this is your coin and they get the whole,
yeah, that's a fun idea.
- That's a good idea.
- Target would eat that up.
Target, like put a little,
like they're all about the Target mom, right?
They have the dollar store section
and you get a brand loyal buyer forever.
Like mama's going to Target, let's go.
- Sure.
- I'm a buyer, I want to stay at home.
Sorry, Meyer, if you were going to be a sponsor,
no, I'll flip the names.
But yeah, that's like the concept, right?
I think you can turn this into,
rather than just trying to accommodate a busy parent,
like turn this into a revenue stream for kids.
- Make a part of your brand.
- Yeah, this is like, what is it?
Children's museums do this all the time, right?
So like they have sponsored little sections
for grocery stores all the time.
So I don't know, this just seems like an easy add on.
And you would just make money building these
and selling the products.
You just out of the box solution,
we need a four by four square or not,
like maybe not four feet, maybe.
I don't know how big these kids need to be.
But you just create a set, maybe a wall of goods.
It's like a vending machine for kids or something.
I don't know, like sized thing or better
depending on how you guys, whoever makes this does it.
Right?
And here, our local grocery store, Chainmire,
has like a whole separate store within the store
for just the alcohol section.
It does seem like you could have that,
but the Chuck E. Cheese area, everything's kid sized.
That's fun.
- Just small enough.
And it's got all this stuff, right?
So it's, yeah, it should be.
I mean, they're selling to kids all the time.
Like just put every Hot Wheels car in one section,
every little ball.
You just, that's, I know exactly what would go on that shelf
and they're playing with it the whole time.
- It needs to be consumables,
moderately healthy consumables.
I'm not going to get a new Hot Wheels car
every time I have to go to the grocery store, Russell.
(laughing)
- I mean, you're not my customer, Leo.
Your kid is, all right?
That's for sure, so.
- All right, Chase, what have you brought to us this week?
- Can I pitch two ideas?
Is that allowed?
- Damn, sure, I guess.
- Yeah, why not? - It's your pitch, go for it.
- They're free. - All right.
- You're giving these ideas away, you know.
- Yeah, no, that's cool.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just hoping
that somebody's going to execute on these
so that I can be a customer.
- Hittas.
- So I pitched this one in an email, actually,
a couple of weeks ago for my newsletter,
just people who have bought my book.
And that was a Netflix for Legos.
So basically, my kids, they'll put together a Lego set,
and then it basically just goes in the bin
with all the other Legos.
And we've got, I mean, I said a bin.
I've got three of these huge bins filled with Legos.
And we have more than enough for free building,
and my kids are terrible at free building anyway
and never do it.
But it just feels like such a waste
to spend $100 on a new Lego set,
and they do it once,
and then it just goes in the bin forever.
And so I was like, what if I could just rent the Lego set?
They could put it together.
I could send it back,
and they could send it on to another kid, right?
So that's idea number one.
- That's great.
- Oh, Lego library.
- Like a Lego library.
And I think some libraries might even have Legos.
Mine doesn't.
But I think, I don't know, I think it's a cool idea.
There's some issues with,
you gotta figure out shipping,
'cause you start shipping Lego sets back and forth.
If you get people on subscription,
and they're doing two or three a month,
shipping adds up.
Yeah, and then counting pieces.
I feel like that's a solvable problem.
We could build some robots to count pieces.
Like there's some YouTube videos of people.
- Yeah, wait when it gets back,
and if it's off by X amount,
then pull it open and count the pieces or something.
- Sure, yeah.
- Right, visual learning, right?
That's the visual eye camera thing.
- Yeah, but those are solvable issues.
- Yes.
- Those are fun problems.
- And if you're making the service,
you don't have to use the official Harry Potter set
with all of its whack pieces.
You could make your own sets that are a little more basic
and easy to keep track of with all the basic parts.
You have your own plain set
that your Netflix for Legos has designed with,
you know exactly it's the same 50 pieces
across the entire thing,
so you get the economies of scale there.
- Yeah.
- Whoa.
- And there are some people who have done similar things.
I think there's somebody in the UK
that's doing rent Lego stuff.
I don't know, I think it's a fun idea.
I would sign up and do it.
- Dude, I could Spitball that for like,
what Leo, you just said.
- I know, same.
- Chase, you could totally, I think you said this,
what if you took or scanned all the Legos
in your library and just open source Lego creations, right?
And so now people know your inventory
and now your subscription Netflix style
is not getting new boxes,
but taking your current Lego set
and applying it to new designs, creator community,
or it just auto generates the instructions
based upon what you have in front of you.
- So there's actually an app that does this.
I think it's called Brick It.
- No way.
- And you spread out all your Legos on the carpet
and then you like hold it up
and it's supposed to scan your Legos and inventory
and then tell you what you can build.
- That's really cool.
- In theory, it's really awesome.
I haven't used it in a while,
but I tried using it like two years ago
and I scanned probably like 200 pieces
and then it kicked back and it was like,
you can use 20 of your pieces to build this bird.
And I was like, oh, that's not exciting.
So the execution wasn't quite there when I tested it.
It's probably better now, but yeah.
- Maybe the community.
- There's a lot of people in the Lego space
working on cool ideas like this.
- Peer to peer, like, hey, you and the guy across town
who has similar age kids, if you work together,
you could build this mega robot,
but you only have half the pieces
and so do they have the other half.
It's a dating app, but for Legos.
(laughing)
- Yikes.
- No, it could be good what you were saying though.
Like if you could inventory all of your Legos
and do it correctly, you know,
and then like upload it somewhere
and then we could send you designs,
that'd be cool for sure.
Or if you could just somehow say like,
I know I've bought this Lego set in the past,
I've bought this Lego set in the past,
like I know I have these pieces and just do it that way.
Like maybe that's the way to do it.
And then it's like, oh yeah, build the mega robot
from, you know, these 20 sets that you said
you already, that you have.
- And Lego themselves have the whole like ideas forge thing
where people submit designs that they've created
that they want Lego to make a set for.
So clearly there's like a well of people
who are creative with designing cool new things
that are like, they have,
here's what you could make with these parts, right?
That inspiration is out there.
I'm not the kind of person who can look at a pile
and say, this is gonna be great as a robot,
but there's clearly a lot of people out there who are,
I'd love to like get connected with them, yeah.
- That's cool.
- So idea number two.
- Yeah.
- So my kids, I've been paying to have my kids
take tennis lessons for like two years, okay?
My son is like eight years old and I,
and then I go out and I play tennis with him
and he's swinging his racket, like windmilling it.
I'm like, dude, forehand, bring it across your body.
This is like day one in tennis is like how to hit
a basic forehand and you're swinging the racket around
like it's a windmill.
And like, I'm like, you can't hit the ball like that.
And like, I've probably spent thousands of dollars,
literally thousands of dollars for my kid to learn tennis.
And he doesn't even know how to hit the ball.
(laughing)
It's, oh, it's making me so upset.
Anyway.
- How did you solve this?
I'd love to hear it.
- I feel the idea, the idea I had.
- Is a pit to burn money in.
- Does it involve a lot of rubber bands?
(laughing)
- Around this time, I bought one of those VR,
Oculus, Rift headsets, right?
And so, and my kid, like, I didn't even tell my kid
that I bought one of these 'cause I knew that he would
just pep me all day long wanting to use it.
'Cause he would use it all day if I would let him, right?
So I was thinking it'd be cool to just have like
a tennis training app that was like in VR
where it's like, we start simple.
We just put coins or something in the air
and he's just gotta make that basic forehand stroke
and collect the coins.
(imitating coin dropping)
And then it's like, you know, he just swings through
and he collects the coins.
- So this is a wax on, wax off app.
- Yeah.
- Where it just has like the outline of the hand to go.
- We're just gonna draw basic stroke.
And then maybe like after a while we remove the coins
and we just have a ball that stands free in the air
and he just hits that ball.
And then maybe the ball just bounces and then you hit it.
And we just work up to like hitting a ball.
But we're drilling that basic stroke over and over again
and we're monitoring that he's like doing it right
and he's not windmilling, right?
And I just think that that would be like a super useful,
let's build some muscle memory here
and we can do it for, you know,
we can make a $20 app
instead of spending thousands of dollars on lesson.
Like, I mean, we can still spend thousands of dollars
on lessons, but this would be a nice supplementary
teaching tool.
Anyway.
- Totally.
- Long story short, I ended up spending like 20
or $30,000 trying to like get this developed.
(laughing)
- Was this on Fiverr or something?
- Well, no, I found these guys.
- Oh no.
- I just found this dev shop that was working on it
for a while and then they weren't working out.
And so I like fired them and found a local like Unity dev.
And like, I could, I probably, like I've never done Unity
and I just felt like I didn't want to go figure it out.
And so I just wanted to hire somebody in retrospect.
Like if I was serious about doing it
instead of paying money, I should have just done it myself.
'Cause then I could get it done the way I wanted to.
But I just don't have the time to like, anyway.
And the intersection of like people who have VR headsets
that want to teach their kids tennis, it's kind of,
it's a tight like--
- I love niche markets.
- It's very, I think it's too niche.
So I kind of decided I'm going to put this one on hold.
I'm going to give this one away to you guys
so that you can work on it.
But I will be your first customer and I will pay
maybe not thousands, but like I'll pay a lot.
- I will pay $30 for that.
- We have a friend, the three of us, a good guy friend
who swears that his Quest 1 back way back when,
when that was first released, improved his golf game a lot.
He got one of the pro training golf things
and he played it quite a bit.
And he says that it was a night and day difference.
He loved it.
And he loved it so much that he bought me
a copy of the golf game.
It's fun, I'm not a great golfer.
It's like, I don't know, it's like putt-putt or whatever,
but it's super cool that these technologies can do that.
- I think you're totally onto something.
- Yeah, I mean, I still think it's a super cool idea.
- It looks like there's one company
who's claiming to do this.
I don't know if it's, have you ever heard of ATP Tour?
Apparently this is, I'm kind of Googling on the fly
a little bit.
There might be something that's come out recently
that maybe does this now.
- That's his company, ATP Tour.
- I don't know how good it is for like, yes, have you?
Yeah.
- There was a, there was somebody that had done
a very similar thing for hockey and they were,
oh, well, let's see.
No, it was, I think it was baseball.
Maybe they're doing, maybe they're doing hockey too,
but they had done baseball and they had done it really well,
but they did it at a high level where they were going after
like college, like athletes and stuff.
- That's what this looks like too.
- Yeah, and same with the tennis one.
They're going after like, like high level.
Whereas I want to go--
- Like Mario Kart.
- Very bottom.
I want to do, yeah, I want to make it like super gamified.
I want it to be for like six year olds.
- That's great.
- I'm very focused on all of these six year old products.
- There was a cool, a student I was working with,
his research project was, they were taking,
we'll use tennis as the example, professional athletes,
Serena Williams, they asked Serena Williams,
I'm just making this up.
Hey, can we put like different electrodes and whatever
on different muscles on your body
and then just watch you do some forehand
and backhand on here?
They gathered all that data and then they were able
to put the electrodes on someone trying to learn tennis
and be like, okay, this is what, you know,
we're able to see what Serena Williams was doing for this.
This is what you need to focus on
on your forehand going through.
Just a hundred percent data driven,
trying to improve people's games going at it.
I don't think you want to put electrodes
on your VR headset, but I think that'd be interesting.
- Do you know what would be even cooler?
Is if instead of showing you, okay,
this is the difference between you and Serena.
If they could somehow like stimulate your muscles--
- That's what I was going to say.
- Yeah.
- So that you actually did what Serena did
and it's like, oh, that's what it feels like.
- At this point in the swing, she's already moving.
Yeah, you should be, yeah.
- That's probably also 10 years away,
but that would be really cool.
- That would be nuts.
We'll circle back on that in a couple of years.
- You got like a robot exosuit.
You just relax all your muscles
and you're in a robot exoskeleton
and it pilots and puppets you around
so that you get the feeling of where you should be.
- That's exactly where my head went, Leo.
- Let's do that.
- I just slide into the suit and just--
- What would it be like to be Michael Phelps?
- It's that Rick and Morty.
You just, you wake up in the morning
and you have a six pack
'cause it's been exercising you all night long.
- Right.
- Dude.
- I think there's something though,
muscle memory training, right?
That's really what it is.
It's like, how do you get the muscle memory
as fast as possible, right?
Wax on, wax off, dude.
Like, I mean, you can do military,
like here's the thing, Chase.
Here's how you make a ton of money.
You sell it to the military
and you train all these six year old soldiers, right?
They, oh my God.
- Dude, that's awful.
(laughing)
- I'm just, we're here for the capitalism, right?
No?
It's just--
(laughing)
- As long as we make money.
- Tennis, one way.
- I'm shaking my head.
- No.
(laughing)
- My cool VR game just got bought by Raytheon.
(laughing)
- No, but I mean--
- Don't worry.
- Halliburton just put an offer in for my--
- Teach me how to fly an F-15 though.
Like, I'm all there.
Like, if the government wanted me to do some muscle memory
on like one of those fancy jets, like, all right,
I'll take the bait, you know?
(laughing)
- There you go.
- But no, I think you're like, yeah,
there's something about muscle memory,
making it a game, or maybe you don't even make it look
like they're playing tennis or golf or hockey.
All of a sudden they acquire these, like,
skills to be active in sports.
And all of a sudden they're playing baseball
and they're like, holy cow, I'm killing it, you know?
- I love products that trick you
into learning something, right?
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
- Math Blaster, you guys ever play Math Blaster
when you were a kid?
- Oh, yeah. - Oh, hell yeah.
- That game was legit.
(laughing)
- So it reminds me of like, but for sports.
(laughing)
Not for math.
- Math Blaster but for sports is great
because I have a feeling that those
are diametrically opposed ideas.
- Chase, what did you call it?
What did you call your tennis trainer?
- I didn't have a, I bought the domain Level Zero Tennis.
But I didn't have, I didn't get far enough
to like actually name it, like anything.
Yeah, I mean, I've got a prototype somewhere around.
- You bought the domain.
- The physics.
- Buying the domain is the first step in any project.
We are right there with you.
I've got like 50.
- Level Zero Tennis.
- That's great, yeah.
- Dude, like, Wii Tennis doesn't work, huh?
It does not work.
- Nope.
- No, 'cause like my kid can still go like this
and swing it like an idiot.
And it worked fine in Wii Tennis.
I need him to like actually learn how to swing the racket.
- Bowling, you could, like for bowling.
I'm just thinking, now thinking--
- There's a ton of applications for this.
This is cool.
- What is it, the, dude, have you seen like,
I think there's a lot of like weird niche Olympic sports
that would like love to get more people into the game
and just, or like, I feel like that you do this application,
if you could develop the apps really quickly
or the muscle training, that like all these Olympic sports
would love it because, okay, I have this conspiracy theory
a little bit, not really conspiracy,
but like there are a lot of people
that are really good athletes in, let's say,
track and long jump or something,
but can never, will never be gold medalists,
so they try this completely out there,
like, have you seen like the horseback shooting?
Do you guys remember this, like crazy,
like you're like, how did this become an Olympic event?
Like, I feel like you apply, like, okay,
you're a great runner, we need you on horseback
and shooting, right?
Somehow that applies.
And here, we're gonna put you in this VR headset
and now we can get you from, you know, bronze medal
because you're a great runner and it applies here
to gold medal in this event because of like
the constant training that you do
and you're not gonna fatigue your muscles,
you're not gonna do the same type of stuff.
Like, I see this being like a next stage
of sports development, like, I don't know,
there's like, especially when you don't have to actually
do the work, like physically tire yourself maybe.
I don't know.
- I think at some point to be a world class Olympian,
you probably have to start tiring your body
a little bit here and there.
- Not for no reason.
- You're gonna train an Olympian who's not even trying.
- Have you seen?
- I've only done curling in VR,
but I guess I'm a gold medalist now.
(laughing)
- This is how we're gonna train our future pilots,
it's gonna be great.
- Guys, it's not for the events that anybody really knows,
it's for the events that are like, what?
- The luge.
- I mean. - The luge.
- No one's ever watched the luge.
- As Greg Geraldo said, you could be dead
and be pretty good at the luge.
You could be dead, right?
- I like the idea of Netflix suggestions
for alternative Olympic sports.
I think that's great.
- You keep trying in the 500 meter, but.
- You're pretty good at running, but you might be great
at these other sports.
- There was a comedian whose name escapes me who said,
I'm willing to bet the top 100 pole vaulters in the world
are not aware of it.
(laughing)
- That's exact, yes.
Oh my gosh.
- Thanks so much for listening.
We hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thank you so much, Chase, you were amazing.
That was wonderful.
- Yeah, thanks for having me.
I hope we can do it again.
- One more time.
That's computerengineeringforbabies.com.
If you have anyone in your life that you know
that has a young child who is also a inclination
to be a nerd.
- You wanna plug anything, Chase?
You wanna plug your next book or whatever too?
Is your newsletter at your website?
- That's just, yeah, I try to just send out an email
once a month with, I don't know, whatever I'm working on,
just to try to, I don't know.
I try to make it entertaining 'cause people send out emails
and it's like, buy our stuff.
And I don't wanna send that out.
I wanna send out something that at least is
somewhat interesting, but also a reminder that like,
hey, I'm still around.
If you've got a baby shower or something coming up,
it's a great gift. - Sure, totally.
- Anyway. - It really is.
- Once again, computerengineeringforbabies.com.
Our website is Spitball.show.
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