I'm Scott. I'm Russell. And I'm Leo. This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three future forecasters and a guest empty our heads of startup and tech
product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free. Anything that we
say is yours to keep. And Russell, I believe you brought our guest this week.
I did. I brought Bryce Kaiser, entrepreneur extraordinaire of West Michigan. He's, I guess,
starting a VC startup, maybe. But also just the successful entrepreneur that I know,
having sold a company. Yeah, West Michigan, shout out to Bryce, the entrepreneur.
So way overqualified for us.
Not just qualified enough. That's right.
He's, yeah. So thank you, Bryce, for joining.
Welcome.
Hey, thanks for having me. I am so excited to be here. Longtime listener of the show. And
it is a privilege to be able to pitch ideas here today. I'm so excited.
We're so happy to have you. This is gonna be so much fun.
Wait, are we all pitching to Bryce today?
Are you gonna fund one more ideas?
Bryce, please. Is my idea good? You're the only one who can tell me.
To get us started this week, I want to, in the spirit of entrepreneurship and inventions, I want to get us going on with a little bit of a warm up game that I'm gonna call.
But wait, there's more. I want to pitch you guys.
I want to tell you guys about a famous as-seen-on-screen TV product from back in the 80s, 90s, 2000s here.
And you, all you have to do is tell me if they still exist today. Can you buy one or not?
So if I said, OxyClean, it's got the power of oxygen. Billy Mays here. Yes, you can still buy that at Costco, right?
So, as always, we got to start with our guest, Bryce, the Clapper.
Introduced in 1985, a sound-activated device. You plug it in. It lets you turn outlets on or off with a clap.
Or, as I recall, a dog bark or a loud thunderclap would also turn your light on or whatever.
Clap on, clap off. The Clapper. Does it still exist today? Can you buy one?
I absolutely believe that it still exists, and I also believe they have extended the product line to have more products recently.
Have you purchased a Clapper recently?
I've browsed. I have browsed. I haven't committed.
Same. You can still buy the Clapper. In the age of smart outlets and stuff, I guess it's still open.
Yeah, for real, the IoT.
Yeah. Grandma doesn't want to do your Samsung Galaxy smart home.
She wants to clap.
We just turned on lights to, like, millions of listeners right now.
You got to bleep that out, Leo.
Yeah, right.
No clapping allowed.
Scott, do you remember the Flowbee?
The Flowbee was introduced in 1988.
It's a device that goes on the end of your vacuum, and it was an unusual device that let you vacuum and cut your hair, and it sucked up your hair as you went.
It was kind of a famous, like, half-meme, half-oh-my-gosh-this-is-the-best-idea-in-the-world sort of thing.
Introduced in 1988.
The clean-as-you-go haircutting home service.
But does it still exist today?
I'm going to say no, but there's probably a million STL 3D print versions of it out there.
The Flowbee does not exist anymore.
It was pretty ridiculed at the time, so no.
It is still ridiculed today.
Yeah.
I don't think you can buy the Flowbee, but there's probably some knockoff home 3D printed versions out there somewhere that you could scalp yourself with.
I do have a dog version of it.
I actually use it with my pup.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Are they afraid of it?
Yeah.
Do they freak out from the vacuum noise?
No, not at all.
It's not like the full Flowbee where it would go over your whole head, but it is like a vacuum attached to a clipper.
That's great.
I'm sure you just use it for dogs, Bryce.
I'm sure it's just for dogs, right?
You have two kids, right?
You have some kids.
Yeah.
Exactly.
You shave them down and then hose them down outside when you're done.
Done.
Hey there.
Editor Leo here.
In the interest of not spreading any fake news, I had apparently sourced some misinformation and that you totally still can by the Flowbee.
So props to all you Flowbee heads out there.
You can get one today.
Sorry to Russell for skimping you some points.
F-L-O-W-B-E-E dot com, I guess.
Anyway, back to the show.
Russell, do you remember Head On?
Applied directly to the forehead.
Head On.
A topical homeopathic headache relief product.
And it would say that over and over again.
Head On applied directly to the forehead.
Introduced in 2005.
So more recently than I remember.
But can you still buy Head On today?
I'm sure you can buy the organic version with essential oils.
So, I mean, you just have...
Yes.
That's got to be a thing.
Head On is gone.
You cannot buy Head On.
There's probably 100 knockoffs, like you said.
The FDA shut it down.
The product, even though it was not even marketed as real medicine, it didn't even survive those standards.
It is gone.
All right.
Round two.
The workout round.
Bryce, do you remember the perfect push-up in 2006?
It was a rotating push-up handle.
You'd go, like, up and down and it would rotate as you pumped up and down.
Introduced in 2006.
Does it exist today?
I think I still see videos of those going around.
I think fitness influencers are still using it.
That is still a thing.
Absolutely right.
Perfect push-up.
Scott.
The Bowflex.
The big one in the...
The titan of the industry.
1986.
I didn't realize it was that old.
Resistance-based design.
It was kind of a cultural icon of a thing for a while there, but does it still exist today?
I see it on Facebook Marketplace every once in a while, so I'm going to say no.
They are still around.
No way.
Good for them.
Bowflexes are things you can...
Yeah, you can still buy a Bowflex today.
Is Chuck Norris still alive?
Is that...
It's his product, right?
As long as he's alive, that thing is still alive, right?
Is he a Bowflex guy?
I think so, right?
I thought he invented it.
I believe it.
There's probably a Chuck Norris joke in there, like the Bowflexes flex Chuck Norris or something.
I don't know.
That's right.
That's it.
Yeah.
There's something in there.
I can't find it.
Edit one in later.
Russell.
The Shake Weight.
Introduced in 2009.
Known for dynamic inertia design.
The Shake Weight is a spring-loaded dumbbell that had an awkward way that you held it, and it
was to tone your upper body muscles.
Famously parodied on South Park.
Does it still exist today?
I feel like they made so much money back in the day, they could never get rid of it.
There is still updated modern Shake Weight that you can buy today on Amazon.
Yes.
All three of those products in that category are still a thing.
What colors do they come in?
I guess that's...
I looked on Amazon.
There is a white one.
It was like the Shake Weight Flex or something.
It had like a...
There's like categories of product now in there.
I don't know how it works, but a great gag gift for White Elephant, I think.
Always.
Yeah.
One more time through.
Bryce.
The Ronco Rotisserie.
The classic, set it and forget it.
Rotisserie oven.
1991.
Famous for making home-cooked rotisserie-style meats with minimal effort.
1991.
Does it exist today?
I can't believe that it still exists.
Although, fantastic product.
Love the marketing.
I don't think it survived this era of ninjas and all the other products out there.
So I say no.
It's not around.
They are still around.
You can get yourself a Ronco Rotisserie.
Yeah.
I was surprised too.
Scott, last one for you.
Life Call.
This is a medical alert device, the precursor to a different company called Life Alert.
The ones who invented the phrase, I've fallen and I can't get up.
That's not Life Alert?
That's not Life Alert.
Life Alert had a variant that they trademarked, but that was originally made by Life Call in
1989.
Is Life Call still in the industry today?
I'm going to say because I heard a one and not this one, I'm going to say no.
They did fold.
You are correct.
Life Alert came along and like, where I've fallen, but I can't get up.
They like vanilla iced it.
It's like really similar, but not the same, you know?
Just enough to not get sued.
Vanilla iced it.
Ours is dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
You know, totally different.
Yeah.
Russell, last one for you.
Sham Wow.
2006.
Absorbent cleaning towel.
It had a really iconic like marketing thing, but is it still a product you can buy today?
High energy demos.
That's right.
Late night infomercials.
I'm pretty sure, rest in peace, that guy.
I think he, like.
Vince?
Is it Vince?
Oh, no.
He was the Slap Chop guy.
Yeah.
Oh, no.
That were both Vince.
It was the same guy.
I think the product left with him.
I think it's the same guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or maybe this is the OxyClean guy.
I think I'm going to see him up.
Billy Mays is definitely dead.
Rest in peace.
Yes.
Okay.
That's the wrong.
I'm thinking.
Shoot.
Maybe Vince is dead too.
I don't know.
Then Sham Wow.
If Chuck Norris is alive and the Bowflex is alive, whatever that guy's name is.
Is the Sham Wow alive, Russell?
Yes.
George Foreman.
It is still.
You are absolutely right.
Which I think means you clinched it.
You got all three, Russell.
Did I really?
Oh, wow.
I think so.
Well done.
So I think that means you got to go first, right?
Oh.
Russell, what have you got for us this week?
All right.
So me and the fam love to walk around downtowns all the time, and we love to see these cute little
signs, but never buy them.
All those cute little signs that say, you know, live, laugh, love.
Oh.
All the home is where your heart is.
All that stuff, right?
Drink coffee.
Read a good book.
Yes.
All that.
So my idea is to create a machine that you post up in a Lowe's, and you have all the different
selections of wood, whatever options are available.
You cut it to size, shape, and you have this giant maybe printer or CNC or whatever, and you
sell the machine, and you print whatever you want.
There's templates.
There's upload your own design.
There's whatever.
You know, it's straight up like the Walgreens printer, but on wood.
You can duplicate your keys.
You can print a live, laugh, love sign.
I like it.
Exactly.
It's like a hundred craft show booths all in one little machine.
Yeah.
Completely destroy like Etsy and the entire industry of mom and pop shop like signage.
So yeah.
Choose your campy italic or cursive font.
Choose your family motto or whatever and print it in vinyl.
I have a friend who has a vinyl cutter, and about once a year I ask her, hey, can you make
this logo or make this custom design for me?
Because I haven't needed it enough to buy my own, right?
But if I could go to a store and do that too, I probably would.
Yeah.
And I make all this money on the ink or whatever.
Lowe's is buying ink for me all the time, right?
They buy the machine.
They buy my ink.
They buy the tool heads.
Training.
Got the full.
The full HP experience.
My mind goes to having this in a Staples or a store like that.
Like, let's revitalize those stores, right?
Give me a reason to go in there and make some signs.
I forgot about Staples.
Like motivational posters for your office.
Yes.
That's actually not a bad idea.
You got to have the inventory of different wood sites.
Actually, they do that at Walgreens right now.
They just have tons of different picture frames.
You just do that for pre-made wood things, right?
Yeah.
Staples would love that.
Here at Ringcam.
You can do anything.
You can, like, have the custom, you know, your business name, your family's last name here
thing.
Every wedding would get, like, every, you know, you'd get, like, three or four.
Weddings would be huge for that.
I don't know what to get.
The registry's all bought up.
Get a sign.
Yeah.
Custom everything on there.
Honestly, Russell, I like the, I just love the idea of having, you know, Lowe's a just
anyone can use easy to use CNC or laser or whatever.
Where, like, I need a specific piece of wood in this shape or exactly this thickness for
just a shim or whatever.
And I can just go in there, hit three buttons, and it'll spit out by the time I'm done.
The maker space.
Yeah.
I would have used that on many occasions.
I've been on the hunt for, like, a year for a picture frame that's big enough to be a
shadow box for a project I have in my mind.
But, like, I haven't found quite the right one.
The Ikeas and craft stores of the world haven't really had the right, like, size and shape that
I have in my brain.
But if I could go in and custom order it and not pay $8 million from a framing studio.
A frame?
Are you kidding me?
It's four of the cheapest pieces of wood possible and you're charging me $800?
No.
I don't know how much, but yeah.
So true.
If you could custom order that shit from Lowe's in 10 minutes and it, like, cuts it to size
and stuff, that makes a lot of sense.
Wow.
What if we just did that?
Like, just picture frames.
That's where all the money is.
They're stupid expensive, man.
Like, wow.
There's got to be something about it that I don't, that I'm too stupid to, like, realize
is the key to this market.
Because framing studios are, like, a thing.
And I get that some of it is the artistic vision and you have to, like, know how to lay
it out right and what colors would go well and kinds of wood.
But some of it is like, this is like four cents of materials.
Are you kidding?
I guess it's nice glass if I'm doing the, like, expensive version or something.
But a sheet of plastic.
I don't know.
Like acrylic.
But off topic.
So what is the actual specific product?
Like, is it vinyl that's going onto this wood?
Is it paint?
Is it something else?
It's the machine.
So I'm selling the machine.
Oh.
And the machine creates what?
The machine prints on the inventory.
Prints what onto the inventory?
Prints paint?
Like ink?
Yes.
Something.
Okay.
That was it.
That was stenciling.
That was the original.
Actually, now I think about it.
When I wrote this down a couple months ago now, it was at the print.
It was at the paint section.
So you'd put it and you post it next to the paint section.
And so you could refill it on paint.
They got all the different color things.
And so you can just plug.
It's just right there.
Like Lowe's has everything you need for that to make sense.
True.
I was embarrassingly old when I realized that all of the paint jugs on the shelf are all white and they just squirt dye into it and shake it up.
Same.
Like I just assumed that it was like spray paint where there's your, you know, a hundred colors and you have to custom order anything that you don't want or whatever.
But you can make infinite colors with whatever's in the back of the Lowe's there.
Yeah.
Another thing I have.
Sorry.
I'm trying to like maybe going to Spitball this into a maker space within Lowe's.
Yeah.
Sounds like it.
Yeah.
Because like that's where it goes.
Like I feel like I hate, I want to build these, these shelves behind me.
Right.
And I could either buy $30 shelves or buy a sheet of plywood for 30 and then they cut it.
I think they already have like some saws already at Lowe's that you can use.
But like get me the CNC, the router, the, all that other stuff, but like make it stupid easy where I just slide it in like a DVD and it comes out the other side.
Like exactly what I want.
Makerspaces have a reputation for being the like high tech, you know, soldering stations and drones and 3D printers and stuff.
But they're, you know, long before that stuff existed, you had your guy in a garage with like a lathe and a CNC machine and stuff that was doing the same principles of things.
But that sort of never became a communal thing that you could do.
Like if a library or whatever spins up a maker space, it's all the high tech stuff.
There really needs to be the like Lowe's hardcore equivalent to the car garage maker space where you're doing this kind of stuff.
I don't know where I would go if I needed to borrow one lathe for an afternoon other than the one guy that I know, you know.
I do love the idea of a commercialized maker space.
It's one of the, one of the great things and not so great things about a maker space is that you have some interesting characters that are often in there and you're sharing these.
Notice that.
These machines with them, you know, and, and sometimes they get upset with you if you don't do the settings in the right way.
But if I could have the standardized a little bit more by a Lowe's or similar and just have a guaranteed experience every time, I'd take it.
And going back to the picture frame example here of, you know, so often I go to a store and they only have three of the frames that I want.
But I need five or six of them.
And, but so if I could go and get as many made as, as I needed exactly the way I wanted to, I'd be happy.
I'd sign up.
Are you picturing this Russell is like, this is like another, this is a red box.
It's just a fully enclosed thing in the corner of Lowe's that you can just go up and type.
Or is this like a sectioned out area where there's some guy in there running everything and just helping you through.
Hmm.
The grizzled old retired car mechanic.
Grizzled old.
That's it.
Like, you know, the blinds machine.
Have you guys gotten blinds at Lowe's?
Yeah.
Like they have this enormous, enormous, uh, blinds cutter.
It is like 10 feet long.
Insanely.
It seems like very dangerous.
Right.
But like just some lowly employee that doesn't know how to like would never touch a machine in their entire life.
Just plops this blind on the thing.
And now it says, how long do you want it?
All right.
I cut it.
And then boom, I got my blind.
Measured and cut to size.
Like they do the same thing for plexiglass too.
If you need like a sheet of acrylic to see through you to grab the big sheet and they'll cut it to size right there with a special blade that some, you know, untrained employees hanging out at.
Yeah.
I mean, that's it.
Like, let's just get some, let's throw some engineers on this, you know, and make this thing happen.
Like just sell a couple machines or special routers.
And I bet there's some carpenter geek out there listening on this podcast.
That's like, I could make those machines out of wood.
No problem.
The equivalent.
What the key to it is, is the equivalent of the like thing averse or pre-made, you know, design gallery stuff where you're scrolling through and you're typing in your custom line here or whatever for the wedding.
But it's based off of the live, laugh, love design that someone else has actually professionally laid out.
Do you guys remember when you'd have to get your photos developed and they would have these like Kodak little booths that would just be out in the middle of a parking lot?
Yeah.
And you just drive up, drop off your film.
You come back later and pick it up.
I imagine just these little pop-up booths like that for this.
Like Scotty, you're saying like this red box equivalent, size it up a little bit more and you just drive up, put it in your order, pick it up.
Simple enough.
Man, I could almost like if Lowe's doesn't like me, right, like this idea, I could just post this up like in the strip mall right next to it.
In the Lowe's parking lot.
And you buy all your stuff at Lowe's, you drive over to Cutters R Us.
And there we go, the name.
Careful.
I don't know.
Probably not Cutters R Us.
Oh, yikes.
Yikes.
Maybe not that.
Trigger warning.
You're going to make me put our first content warning in the description?
Whoops.
Russ, why are we drawing such an interesting crowd at our makerspace?
The name, we got a, that was Chad GBD.
No.
Jeez.
First we blame Gen Z, now we blame the AI.
But yeah, but then you still get into this like, you got that employee that just geeks out about all the tech.
I don't know why, there's just always, that was such a good observation.
Why, like that's just how it is under those spots.
And you kind of need that to have somebody so passionate to make that exist in its own right.
But it's like.
But you also know that they're sleeping there at night, right?
They're the best at using all the equipment, but you know, they spent too much time there.
Oh yeah.
It's their identity.
It's their whole life.
And then, you know, you just have some mom that comes in like, I want to make a picture frame.
And he'll, they will go all in on like, tell me the color.
Where's it going to be?
Yeah.
They'll just, yeah.
How many, do you guys buy a lot of those signs?
Do you have a lot of those signs at home?
I guess we're talking to four dudes, so you may not even know that they're purchased or exist in your home.
My wife and I have ongoing jokes about how much we dislike that category of home decor.
Bryce is looking around like, read a good book.
Welcome to the kitchen.
We don't, we don't have the cheesy ones, but we do make our own signs around here.
We make our own decor.
Like what?
Uh, we'll definitely, I mean, I'll also make like a cutting board, you know, whatever.
I'm very handy.
I'm the extreme end of the spectrum though, because like I'm hand making my kitchen cabinets, right?
So every, I, I don't want to go to Hobby Lobby and pay $60 for something that is $2 of material.
Exactly.
Like you're saying, Leo, that that's, that's my apprehension.
It's like, I can make that myself.
But there is that little bit of, of tooling gap or talent gap when you have to get to like a, yeah, a laser cutter or CNC machine.
You know, I don't have room for those in my house.
So it's your garage that I want to go to.
Yeah.
We're going to recreate your garage, but in Lowe's, I get it.
Every project is an excuse to buy a new tool.
Exactly.
That's boy math.
All right, Leo, what do you got this week?
Okay.
So I don't know if there's enough meat on this bone to make it a full, this is kind of a, a intramurals idea, but I think we'll see where it goes.
We've talked a little bit about what it would be like to have like a shared pool of tools that you're subscribed to, or that you're contributing your tools to.
I want to pair that back and pivot on it a bit.
And I've been thinking about how there's the concept of the seasons being flipped in the hemispheres.
You've got your winter and the summer being north and south sides of the earth, right?
Which happens to coincide with exactly when I take my, Scott's already laughing at me.
When you take your equivalent tools out for either snow blowing or lawn mowing.
And I'm wondering if I could go to my cool new website and say, I would like to enter into a partnership with Pablo, who lives in Argentina or somewhere on the southern side of the world.
And we have my service rent a container ship twice a year, a couple of containers on there.
And I do a swap where I, I own 50% of every tool that I need seasonally.
And I just switch with someone else on the other side of the world.
Who, who also needs the tool the exact time that I don't.
And vice versa.
My snowblower is going to be better traveled than I am.
That's the whole idea.
This is a Spitball right here.
So we've got opposite of America and Europe and Russia, I guess.
We've got Australia, Africa, and South America.
And there's probably equivalent sister cities that we could try to match up climates with, right?
You find the perfect one.
They roughly correlate.
Yeah.
I only need my leaf blower for like six weeks a year.
And it's the exact opposite time of the year that someone else might need it on the other side of the world.
And it just sits.
Leo, I love that you set up this idea by saying, let's take a step back and make this simpler than just sharing with our neighbor.
Let's ship our tools all the way across the world.
All of this started because I learned that it's actually relatively inexpensive to very slowly ship something in a container.
Like you can get a container across long distances for pretty cheap, especially if you can pivot a lot of stuff in it.
And it's not usually by weight.
It's done by container itself.
So you just have to like make it fit into a big metal box.
Like what could you do with that?
That is a good point.
It must be super affordable.
In order for these like really cheap things to make it across the world and stay cheap, it's got to be affordable to load up a container.
Your AliExpresses and your Tmoo's of the world are just packaging up a bunch of orders into one big old container and shipping it six weeks.
You know, if you were a rental company and you owned all of that equipment, maybe that would make a little bit.
There you go.
So you're just renting it out for the season.
You never own it.
Yeah.
This could even be scaled up like industrial.
Like I know that the businesses that I work at have giant like front mounted front loader snowblowers and stuff that are sitting not used for months at a time.
Maybe this is a corporate subscription that they're doing the same idea, but with some headquarters over in Belize or I don't know.
Dude, where the market is.
There are people where there are people and there's snow.
That's where you go.
Catchphrase.
I meant to say Brazil.
Belize is in the Caribbean.
I'm trying to think of.
Yeah.
I'm trying to think of a tool or service that could very slowly, steadily just follow the changing season.
Just like birds migrating south.
You know, 100 miles a day.
It's just getting moved and used.
You can even do that across the US.
Right now we're having, we're in the middle of autumn when we're recording this and leaves are starting to fall where we are, which means that in a month leaves will be falling in like Tennessee and Kentucky.
And as it goes down, we could even have this be like a wave of tools that slowly makes its way south and then back north in the spring.
That's fun.
Yeah.
I think that's just, it's just a logistics issue.
Just got to do the, you know, traveling salesman math and you could do that, right?
Well, Leo, a shift on this.
This is quite a tangent.
I'm thinking of how carnivals go around the country.
And like, how could you just tag along with those carnivals are already moving around?
How could you ship things alongside them and just follow their route?
You know, they're already going that direction.
Well, like how concert infrastructure, you've got your tours that like pack and unpack buses and loads full of equipment and stuff.
Yeah.
Whoa.
I bet there's empty like room in a bunch of trucks too, just all over.
Sorry.
That sound is Scott laughing at how there's not any room in the tour bus.
Dave Matthews Band is totally fine with you sticking your lawnmower in the tour bus.
They don't care.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
Yeah, we're heading down to Georgia.
Hop on.
Well, what if you had like a standard box that you can put and ship anything like the USPS flat rate shipping boxes?
And now, like, let's say I wanted to move across the state, right?
I could have a truck.
I could ping my local truckers.
As long as you don't see your stuff for two months, it'll get there though.
And it's cheap.
Right?
That's what I'm looking for.
It all comes back to stores on.
Everything is stores on.
In our hearts, we want it to be stores on.
Which, I mean, at that point, like, now it's, you know, it's empty space on a truck that's being utilized and paid for and it's cheaper.
And if you don't care about the time, boom, every truck in America is full.
It's eco-friendly.
This could be something where logistics companies are just laughing.
Like, of course we don't have empty space.
That's our whole job.
What if you did this for, like, with cars?
Like, what if I had, like, you know, my fast car or my cheap, like, my summer car or my winter truck?
Or tires.
I trade my seasonal winter tires to someone over on the other side of the world and vice versa.
I'd more likely do with tires than a snowblower.
They put a couple thousand miles on them, but there's still plenty of life left in these things.
I'll put them back on.
Yeah.
There's got to be other stuff that you only use part of the year, right?
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to think of right now.
Christmas lights.
Well, I guess Christmas happens on the same date, even if it's summertime.
Something like that, you know?
Where it's like, I only need this for a month or two.
Clothing?
Here's all my summer outfits.
Here's all my winter outfits.
Hot tubs.
Hot tubs!
Are there any other products that have special shipping rates, like books?
You know, it's super cheap to ship books around.
They have their own class.
Yeah.
Media mail.
Other media, so, like, DVDs and tapes and stuff also fall under media mail.
It'd be great if it was, like, shoes qualified.
Because you could easily move your winter boots around and someone else.
Yeah.
Or you trade DVD collections with your media mail friend.
I guess we just reinvented Netflix.
DVDs.com.
That's good.
A peer-to-peer version of it?
That'd be kind of fun.
Yeah.
I'm contributing this old DVD of Blade to the collections that I could pull down someone else's.
Starsky and Hutch season two.
Yeah, that's where the future is.
It's physical DVDs getting shipped out.
Take all my money.
Packing in all empty crevices in a semi full of DVDs.
Yeah.
On a tour bus.
With Dave Matthews.
Okay, we don't have to try to pull any more out of this.
It was a half-baked one, I admit.
It's entitled Container Ship Lawn Tools Hemisphere Swap.
Shipping a snowblower to Pablo.
I don't think that combination of words has ever existed.
No, it's a brand new sentences.
All right, Scott, what have you brought for us this week?
Okay, if anyone has tried to buy a house in the last X years, you know it sucks right now.
There's no inventory.
What there is gets snapped up immediately.
Interest rates are high.
Everything just stinks about it.
And among our friend group and my family and recently a random group of people I met on a trip last week,
everyone just seems to be talking like,
let's just screw everything.
let's just buy a plot of land and start a commune.
And I've been hearing that more and more.
And so Amazon is now selling like those A-frame houses for like 15 to 20 grand, right?
Let's just start a company that goes out, you pick a plot of land, you get a group of people together
that pools money, and this company that we start will set up all the rest.
We will help you get utilities running to each individual plot on there.
We will help you with whatever gas electrical on it.
We'll help you set up the pole barn in the middle or the shared tool space or whatever.
You can just get a group and start a commune for cheap.
And we just have all the resources to do that.
And that is the entire idea.
And I am so frustrated.
I want to start this all the time.
Yes.
You pitch us on the commune for our friends group several times a year, every year.
And I love it.
And my first hesitation is always like, man, the contracts and obligations side of that would be like a nightmare.
Like, how do you make sure that you don't have the guys who, you know, ruin it for everybody?
That's what this company's for.
It has all the templates of all of the...
Exactly.
Scott, I'm all in.
I think I am the Scott of my friend group.
I'm always pitching the commune as well, trying to get people to move in.
I just don't know what I'm doing fully.
And I know that if I were to talk to...
I actually have talked to professional builders about this and just all the little things that I am forgetting of what it would take to set this up.
Although I kind of came to the conclusion last night, like, am I just creating a way for people to build HOAs and that's it?
Easy.
Because that feels evil.
A commune owner's association.
I mean, that's what a commune is, right?
It's just a...
It's either a cult or an HOA.
There's only two options.
Inside of you, there are two wolves.
Scott, I think you single-handedly solved the housing crisis.
That's it.
We will get so many more houses if just...
Every day I look on Zillow and there's like, oh, there's 20 acres over there for a relatively affordable price.
Because there's no utilities on that property.
It's not sections.
It's not zoned.
It's 20 acres.
Either forest or farmland.
We could turn that into...
Do zoning laws in most places let you do this?
Like, can you just take one parcel and turn it into 10?
That's another page on our website that helps you navigate the zoning laws.
Oh, of course.
We have a lawyer on retainer.
The engineers will figure that out.
The lawyers.
Lawyer engineers.
Can you tell me a little bit about these A-frame houses that are on Amazon?
Have you seen these?
No.
Tell me more.
Oh, we got to post a link on it.
It is...
Yeah.
15, 20 grand homes, right?
It's just like, it's everything...
Is this like a tiny home?
They're bigger than a tiny home, but not by much.
Like, it's technically two stories with a second story.
It's just kind of a loft.
Couple bedrooms, single bathroom, all on a slab.
So you just get someone to go out, pull out the concrete, and then they will deliver you
a house to put on there.
You hook up the utilities and you're good.
And you use that as like your baseline for if you want to build bigger, better houses,
do whatever you want over time.
But this is your starter home on the commune for 15 grand.
Dang.
Yeah.
And then we can make a bunch of money selling materials and other things to individuals going
forward.
Yeah.
The whole setup process.
Like...
Mm-hmm.
The 12-stall garage.
Yep.
The communal playground in the middle, the communal tool barn or whatever.
You could subcontract all that work out too, so you're technically like not doing
anything.
You're the coordinator, yeah.
Find a couple companies that you trust of contractors.
Easy call.
In your ideal version of the commune with your friends, Scott, if this came to fruition exactly
how you wanted it to be, what things would be a communal resource and what things would
be individual to the home?
We'd have to set it up in the bylaws at the start.
I love the idea of, like I said, a shared pole barn for tools, shared garden in some form.
Anyone can come out here, a big hydroponic setup or something.
Shared shower.
You know, it's a commune.
Shared shower.
Shared bathhouse.
Once a year, Leo's Pablo snowblower comes in and gets delivered and we can all share that
one together.
Guys, I was almost a customer of a similar service.
No way.
That is focused on, it's focused on homesteaders, not really calling it the commune.
They call it homesteading collectives.
Yeah.
But they, they buy real estate in strategic areas.
Just kind of exactly what you're talking about there.
And then they subdivide it and they do some matchmaking to make sure that everyone shares
values on this property.
But there are, to answer the question of like the common infrastructure, they do have, like
they have shared pastures or livestock.
Yeah.
And then a schoolhouse building.
So everyone's homeschooling their kids and all that.
So this is like three levels beyond what I was thinking, but that's incredible.
Whoa.
Yeah.
Well, and these homes, like each one is like $800,000, but they, like they build the homes
for you, including your own livestock and your gardens.
They have it all ready for you to move it.
It's high end homesteading done for you.
Um, so different, probably different entry point to the market than, you know, the commune,
but yeah, I love it.
It's like farming and glamping.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So for the ultra rich in that, in that case, like you've still got, you know,
like each individual house with its own traditional land ownership and all that stuff.
Scott, you're kind of thinking like some sort of communal LLC or something is the owner of
a lot of this stuff, right?
Or how does that honestly think it makes more sense if you were to divvy it up in the property
of it, like, Hey, this is your plot of land.
We just have first rights to buy.
If you want to sell it back to the communal area.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
800,000 for the house coming in at the start.
I honestly, I love the concept.
I want to try to get a low barrier to entry on this though.
More mass market, Scott.
More mass market.
Yeah.
You come to me with, you found the property already.
You come to me and we will help you set that up.
How many dudes want to be on this plot?
All right.
I got it.
Forward.
Venmo 80, 80 K.
I got you.
We take Venmo.
I got you.
Here's the kit for all the husbands to try to sell their various partners on the idea.
I'll talk to them.
We all know none of the wives want to do this.
Comes with the live, laugh, love sign.
It's fine.
Bryce, I want to look up that company so bad now.
Well, Scott, I do see that trend on social media all the time.
It's always a collection of female best friends who want to build six tiny houses next to each
other on a piece of land somewhere.
And then you see the comments are just full of like, we got to do this.
They're tagging all their friends.
Right.
The market's there.
You just, yeah, just be the service for them.
Be like, we got turnkey for you.
How many, exactly what you're saying, guys.
Like, how many houses do you need?
Where are you thinking?
I got you.
What amenities do you want?
Venmo 80K.
We'll take it.
Venmo 80K.
It's prime delivery.
We'll be done in two days.
It'll be fine.
Two days shipping of all your homes.
I think that's why it went viral.
I got to find the link to that A-frame, but it was on prime and people were just like,
how is this possible?
What is happening here?
There has to be a company in China that just is spitting out like modular homes, right?
You can buy a car on AliExpress.
You can buy a house on Amazon.
You just Google like West Michigan tiny homes.
There's like a building.
Tiny homes are a thing that like doesn't necessarily have to mean one little one room cabin.
There's upstairs lofts and stuff, all kinds of designs.
I like what you're saying though, Bryce, where it's the, you could start with the tiny home
on the low end of the spectrum and go all the way up to the high end.
And there was a couple up in Northern Michigan that they bought a modular home, but it was
a multi-million dollar modular home where they're just like, they send a fully assembled
bathroom in there and they just connect it to the rest of the house and a fully assembled
bedroom connected.
And they kind of shifted around how they want.
And this house was beautiful.
It was everything pre-designed and ready to go and up in just a couple of days.
I played Tetris.
Yeah.
But it was very expensive.
And in a year, if you want to rearrange your whole home's layout, you just take it apart,
put the bathroom on the other end.
And yeah.
It's just all about putting it on slabs, I guess.
If you can live without a basement, you can make this work.
I'll be so fond of rearrange your home like that.
Yeah.
I'm kind of stuck on that idea now.
Is there a way that we could make like International Space Station style modules that connect and
disconnect and you could like get one crane in a weekend and rearrange your whole house
layout?
And put in the laundry room right next to the bedroom.
I'm sick of this.
For now.
But if you're in a commune and then like your neighbor takes your wall from you because
they just want like, you're just missing a wall.
What do you do?
All right, Bryce, what have you brought us this week?
Guys, I'm so excited to share these ideas with you.
I've been pondering all day which ones it would be.
I'm like you guys.
I have the long list of business ideas.
Hell yeah.
Things I'm never going to touch.
Notebooks, follow them.
And there was so much pressure today to pick which one I was going to present.
You don't know like the anxiety and the thrill I've had all day trying to think about which
one it's going to be.
And at the end of it all, I couldn't decide.
So I'm going to give you three options to choose from.
Hell yeah.
Yeah.
And but I'm not I'm not even going to give you like the one liner on it.
I'm just going to give you category for where it is.
So one's for at work, one's for at home and one's for the gym.
All three.
Oh, we can do all three, too.
I can burn through them.
I got another 50 after that.
I would love home.
Yeah, let's start.
I choose home.
I was going to say home, too.
What is home?
Home for 200.
OK, so home for 200.
This is a 200 one.
So this one is inspired by the recent Tesla robots, the Optimus robots.
And you know how they're saying that in the next few years are going to be these autonomous
robots that are in your home doing all that.
But they at the demos, they were being controlled by just a human remotely.
Right.
And I was thinking, I'm actually totally OK with that right now.
Give me these robots controlled by a remote worker and let them like log in for two hours,
do stuff around my house, then log into someone else's robot for a couple hours, do things in
their house.
And now I'm not paying for a full time robot butler.
And I'm getting the result.
I don't need the autonomous thing.
You're training the data.
Yeah.
And they don't have to drive to like whatever that service would be.
Let's say it's like housekeeping that the butler is doing that.
A human doesn't have to drive to my house to do it now.
Better for the environment.
Better for their time.
It's more efficient.
You get your choice of knowledge experts.
You've got the best plumber in the region who's hopping into like 30 different houses
because he doesn't have to travel between them all.
Ooh.
Exactly.
The robot can do anything.
It's who's the operator.
And you just tag them in.
Whatever you need.
Plumber, housekeeper.
That's amazing.
Oh, man.
This is like the dial old grizzled expert idea but dialed up to 11.
Yeah.
But I could also hire some random person to mow my backyard at the same time with the same
hardware.
And aid me on the piano while I'm eating dinner.
Or maybe it's a neighborhood robot and you can share it with your neighbors.
It just marches down the street.
On the commune.
That's perfect.
The commune.
The commune bot.
I suppose you don't have to have your own.
Yeah.
In fact, I'd probably be more comfortable not having my own.
I don't love the idea of someone being able to remote software wise and then just be an
agent in my home.
That's definitely what you wake up to at 2 a.m.
Strangling you, right?
You just chain it in your basement when it's not in use.
Unplug the Wi-Fi, all right?
From it, you know?
From some.
The only thing that could be a little unsettling is if this robot is outside your house and has
to like come to your front door to then get access.
And sometimes it misses the front door.
It's just in your window.
Just kind of like peering in.
Oh, no.
I must do your dishes.
Yeah.
Walked through your front door, busted it off the hinges.
It's so dystopian.
But this is like, this is going to be a real thing sooner than later in between that.
Yeah.
My fear is the idea that we're there.
Full of general AI robots.
It's going to be a lot cheaper to outsource it to Indonesia, right?
And have some third world country person driving around doing your whatever.
Oof.
What if like I could have like even like friends and family come over in a way and make it like
a little less weird, right?
But they're like present.
So, yeah, the phone a friend, you know, you're making a meal and you want your aunt who has
a secret recipe and also the know-how for how to like make the thing.
They're right there.
They're rolling the dough.
Whatever it is, you know?
Tape a picture of her face on other robots face.
Yeah.
It's just FaceTime, right?
You throw your phone on it or something.
It's FaceTime on the phone.
It's called FaceTime already.
It's perfect.
I'm just wondering why are we waiting until it's fully autonomous?
And then we have to trust it to make all these decisions on its own.
Yeah.
If it can mechanically move around through the world now and I can control it maybe through
a smart suit or whatever or just like an Xbox controller to get me most of the way there,
you know?
Why not?
Why are we waiting?
Yeah.
People talk about how the best like current telepresence systems are VR headsets, right?
Where you feel like you're tricking your brain into being in this space.
But you can imagine the VR headset plus this being the ultimate like control.
control apparatus for going to visit grandma who lives in another country or whatever.
Give me a hug, grandma.
You finally get to hold the baby.
Too hard.
Oh, God.
But man, construction.
That'd be awesome.
Yeah.
Like just building homes, right?
Like those subcontractors in general are expensive and they hate driving.
You could do virtual visits, like virtual assessments of properties and inspections like
remotely.
Yeah.
Do you have eliminating travel time in a lot of these industries?
One of my previous startups was in the restaurant technology space.
We worked with a lot of service providers and every service provider, you know, these, uh,
the electricians, the plumbers, they all had a truck fee, right?
Whether they were going to do work or not, when they got out there, they were going to
charge you 150 bucks for them just to get there.
And then they may, they quote you, maybe they do work, maybe they do nothing, but it's 150
bucks and you're just out.
So how do we avoid that?
Right.
You could, um, like temps, I don't know.
Like, let's say, um, you run a retail shop and you, one of your employees was like, I'm
sick last minute, boom, fire up the robot.
Sure.
You're paying a premium maybe for like, you know, a 15 or $30 an hour worker at that point
because they're the, the backup to the retail outlet.
Right.
So they know they have a bunch of retail experience.
So you, you know, pull up the robot in the back and now they're running the shop or stocking
shelves or something too.
Right.
Yeah.
Commercial.
And you can have, yeah.
And those things don't get tired, you know, stocking shelves or whatever.
They don't need smoke breaks.
They don't need like if, when, when you have somebody does their 20 minutes of controlling
the robot, but then they can immediately cut over to somebody else doing it without a loss
of like, you know, the humans can take more breaks and it wouldn't be.
Wouldn't mean that the job isn't getting done.
I was, I've been using replet lately with the AI agent and it writes code for you and it's
really cool.
And I, the first day I picked it up, I worked with it for eight hours and I was just loving
it.
And at the eighth hour it said, ah, I need to take a break.
And I said, no, you don't get to take a break.
What?
Please boss.
I'm still working.
Yeah.
It's like, if I'm working, you're working.
Let's go.
Dang.
Yeah.
Little glimpses of dystopia.
You fire that one.
You want the A type personality robots, not the, the go getter hustler ones.
Right.
Wipe your existence.
Get back to coding.
You know, this wrote, like, let's say you bought a fleet of these robots and you know,
the night shift for like manufacturing or stocking would be way easier.
Right.
Cause it's daytime in India.
That's right.
The other side of the world now.
So now there's no.
There's a hemisphere swab.
Leo, that's what I was thinking, right?
But like, then there you go.
Now, like the whole night shift crew does like the whole night shift thing doesn't have to
exist anymore.
Turns it into a day job.
That's interesting.
That's better health outcomes for individuals as well.
They don't have to work third shift, work overnight.
Quality of life for humankind, right?
And you're doing the same thing for your day job, stocking shelves for, you know, somewhere
in China or Russia or something.
Yeah.
The shelves already stocked over here.
You know?
Soon all we're doing is stocking each other's shelves and the economy is powered by night
workers that are actually in the day.
Everything's backwards.
So confusing.
I just watched a Optimist 2, like 30 second preview of it.
I hadn't seen that, the latest version of it.
That's incredible.
The dexterity and like, it's just like picking up an egg and just like, hey, I can walk.
I can do things.
That's incredible.
Makes you wonder if the robo taxis just had a dude in the trunk, like laying down, remote
controlling them.
The cyber robo van and the cyber taxi or whatever.
We should play around with that.
See how many different cutaways we could make of the robo taxi and all the different ways
the person could have been contorted in there.
Could they be like laying flat underneath it?
You know?
What is it?
That was how the Domino's autonomous delivery worked in the beginning.
Did you guys know about that?
No, I don't know this.
So Domino's, they have, I think they had drivers in the beginning and then it was autonomous.
But, you know, you would punch in a code in the, on the car as it showed up and then it
would open up, the hatch would open up and then you would get your pizza.
They actually had a person inside there who would open, no matter what code you pressed,
they would open the door and have your pizza loaded in there.
That's the only way it's legal.
Yeah.
So there was someone in there just hiding.
Right.
That's great.
The future is now.
But it was to like validate the market and some usability testing and all that.
Spoken beers.
Yeah.
MVP.
Is that like just some pizza driver driving 30 miles, pulling that thing out of their truck
and then going like 80 feet to the door?
Yep.
Yeah.
Make the autonomous thing autonomous in phase two.
Right now it's just autonomous proof of concept.
Okay.
I just feel like you're like a ghost jumping in between bodies.
It's just like, whoop, whoop.
I know.
Yeah.
For real.
It would be what the employee perk is like.
After you work eight hours, you get to walk around for 10 minutes in the, in this robot,
like outside or like that's the perk is you just get to explore a little bit.
Oh.
That would be really cool.
I would take, I would pay for a service that let me just like drop me in front of some
tourist traps around the country or on the world, even, you know, like, like a virtual
vacation for an afternoon where you are walking around someplace.
That's kind of hard to get to.
Growing up.
Do you get, did you guys ever play the game kidnap where you would like, okay, I'm going
to sound like a psychopath when I describe this, but I swear it was a fun adolescent game.
So you and your group of friends would take one of your friends and you would kidnap
them with their, I'm bored with this.
You drop them off some other opposite side of town with no phone.
And then they have to figure out how to get home.
Right.
Imagine that in this like a telepresence robot where you just get dropped into a robot somewhere
else in the world.
And then you have to figure out how to get this robot back.
You know, it's like interactive geo guesser.
You're stuck into like a street view, but you, Oh shoot.
I'm in Katmandu.
What am I supposed to do here?
Yeah.
Can I get the robot home?
The best escape room ever made.
Just sitting on a plane.
It's just a silent robot.
Perfectly still.
Does anyone know how to fly this plane?
One ticket to Chicago, please.
Put a pilot in there.
And dude, like what if you like, do you even need the full on robot?
I guess you could do this with way like Waymo does this with their cars.
Like, do you, why don't I just have somebody, can I just plug in?
Let's say like.
Someone's sitting at home with an Xbox controller and an Oculus can drive a car anywhere in the
world.
Yeah.
Or just do some of this, like without the full on robot, you could just create a remote
controlling devices as a service.
Right.
They are doing something like that in the construction industry.
So you can remotely control like excavators, which is going to be a lot safer than having
people on these construction sites.
Yeah.
Boom.
They talked about that with robot surgeons too.
You could have somebody controlling it across the world or across the country.
And there's, you know, the three different remote surgery places that the one surgeon's
operating in.
Be careful when you sign up for remote surgery, because if you read it wrong, maybe you're just
getting surgery in a far away place and you're in a remote territory.
I thought I was paying for a remote surgeon, but no, it was some dude in a shack in Brazil
or whatever.
Yeah.
To put your phone in airplane mode when you go get surgery in a place like that.
Like I can't have it messing with it.
One dropped packet and that scalpel's going through your body.
I hate that.
I hope you close it right there.
I hope that's your ending line of the segment.
So thanks for listening, listener.
Yeah.
We hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thanks so much, Bryce, for joining us.
This is so fun.
This is a blast.
We have at least two other ideas that you were like on deck to give us today.
So we definitely have to have you back soon, man.
Yeah.
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