I'm Scott. I'm Russell. And I'm Leo. This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three kooky computerphiles 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 I believe Russell, you brought our guest this time.
Is that right? That's right. I brought Jordan here. I know him from the college competitive
entrepreneurial business circuit. He started a company called Arindi. He's like a super engineer
consultant guy also on the side. And now he does solar installations. So he's, you know,
living his best life out in these parts, which is hard to do in our neck of the woods.
The entrepreneur grind.
Yeah. So welcome, Jordan. Thanks for joining. Yeah.
Yeah, I guess. Thank you, guys.
So excited to have you.
As we all know, not always is the first idea the best idea, except, you know, when it's pitched
on our show. This week for getting a little bit of a warm up game going, I want to talk
a little bit about the pivot. The idea that a business starts off doing one thing and then
decides this isn't working and they decide to pivot to something else. We're going to play
a little game that I'm going to call pivot or fibbit. I want to give you a scenario of a business that did
this. Is it true or is it something that I made up? Starting with you, of course, as we always do. Jordan,
did you know, yes or no, truth or false, YouTube began as a video dating service where users could upload
videos of themselves talking about their ideal partner and then they decided to pivot to general
video hosting. Did that actually happen or did I make that up?
riveting. I would have tried it if it existed. I don't think it happened.
It absolutely is. That's the origins of the video.
No, I'm not kidding.
Yeah, they developed this whole stack for like uploading and processing and displaying videos
and they were like, wow, this actually works really well and nobody wanted to do the dating thing.
Apparently VHS dating but on the internet isn't a thing.
I wonder what their name was before YouTube.
Oh, I don't know. I know that their slogan was tune in, hook up.
Yikes.
Yeah, it's a good thing they did that pivot.
Amazing.
Scott, Amazon began as a library cataloging software company before they pivoted to consumer book sales.
Did I make it up or is that actually the story?
I think that's false. I think it was just straight up selling books at that point.
Bezos is way too ruthless to be involved in non-profit.
I worked in a bookstore. We were talking about Amazon from the day they went live.
Russell.
Yep.
Shopify started as an online snowboard equipment store called Snow Devil before they realized that their e-commerce platform was more valuable than their snowboard sales.
True or false?
Whoa.
That'd be so cool.
I'm going to say true just because I want it to be true.
It's totally true.
Pivot in 2006.
That's exactly how it started.
Yep.
Jordan.
Netflix started as a movie theater subscription service offering unlimited tickets before they pivoted to the DVD by mail and theaters rejected that model.
I just listened to a competitive podcast about Netflix.
And I want to say that's true.
That is something I totally made up.
I'm sorry.
Wow.
MoviePass equals Netflix.
Yeah.
There we go.
MoviePass has an awesome documentary out there.
MoviePass, MovieFlop or something.
I forget the name of it.
But yeah.
MoviePass itself has its own drama.
Scott.
Slack started as a gaming company developing an MMO called Glitch.
And then their internal chat team tool ended up becoming the main product.
That would be really cool.
I do not believe that though.
That's exactly what happened.
No kidding.
They were called Tiny Spec Studios.
They had an MMO for a year in 2011.
Then they shuttered the game in 2012.
They're like, wow, this thing that we built is really good.
And then they launched Slack in 2013.
And that's how you get bought by Salesforce.
Good for them.
Is that game still playable?
I don't think so.
I think it shut down.
Yeah.
Russell.
Instagram began internally as bourbon.
B-U-R-B-N.
A four square knockoff check-in app that you'd focused on whiskey and bourbon lovers.
And it happened to have photo features.
True or false?
What?
No.
That didn't happen.
Yeah.
That's not a problem.
That's exactly how it went.
For bourbon and whiskey lovers?
Yeah.
It never actually launched.
That was how they built and pitched the app at first.
And then they're like, wow, all this photo stuff is actually working okay.
And then they switched to that.
Oh my gosh.
I know.
One more time through.
Jordan.
eBay began as a website for tracking and collecting Pez dispenser collections before they became a general auction site.
Someone who's very passionate about Pez.
I gotta say no.
It is in fact not true.
But that is a story that their marketing department has made up and told before to be whimsical about their origins.
Really?
It was like an auction site or whatever.
But they're like, yeah, we started as a business.
But it's totally not true.
What a founder story right there.
It was such a bizarre thing for a company to lie about their own origins.
Scott, Yelp started as an automated email system where you'd email friends for business recommendations and it would organize your friends' replies before they pivoted to public reviews.
True or false?
That actually sounds plausible, but I'm going to still say false.
I just don't think that's the case.
That's exactly how it went.
It's true.
Goddamn.
Gosh.
Yeah.
Crazy.
0-3.
Good for you, Yelp.
All right.
It was true.
2004 to 2005, they were this weird little email service and then nobody wanted to email their friends.
Organize your emails.
I know.
Check out this Chinese place at this gas station.
It's great.
And then lastly, Russell, PayPal began as Confinity, making security software for Palm pilots that let users beam payments to each other over infrared.
Whoa.
These are so cool.
Yes, it happened.
That was it.
That's how it went.
1998, actually.
Dude.
Yeah.
There's a lot of weird stories out there.
I knew about the YouTube ones.
I'm like, I wonder if this has ever happened anywhere else.
There's so many other weird ones, right?
Leo, that's like the best game ever.
Yeah.
This is the best game.
That was a really good one.
Ever played.
I liked it.
Yeah.
It's like Spitball is like, we're real.
Yeah.
If we had just launched one of these damn things, we'll pivot into a slack.
What was our origin story?
It'll always be endlessly entertaining to me that YouTube was a dating service.
Like, that's always been one of those fun, like, I don't know, tech party trick trivias that I had in my back pocket.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Scott's over three, which I think Jordan's a winner.
Scott always gets the hardest.
Who wants to kick us off this week?
I can start us off.
Do it.
Scott.
Thank you.
You are the biggest loser, so you have to go first.
What is your idea for this week?
Sounds good.
I'm going to try.
All right.
I'm going to put another dollar in the AI swear jar.
So, sorry ahead of time.
Scotty.
I know.
I just keep coming.
All right.
What do you got?
All right.
So, I was reading a random Stephen King book over Christmas, and there was one.
There was a scene in it that Stephen King's just a very descriptive writer in every form.
And I'm reading this, and I'm like, I wonder if anyone's ever made, like, some fan art of this one going through.
Because this is, people always use fun random fan art if you Google it.
There wasn't any.
It's a very old book.
So, I'm like, screw it.
I took a picture of it, just the page, put it in the chat GPT, and I said, show me what this looks like.
And it created just this incredible rendition of exactly what he described.
I had no other prompt than that.
Just show me what this author has described.
And that reminded me of a time, Leo and I used to play D&D a lot, when we had one of our friends, Sean Craddy, who would, he wouldn't play D&D with us, but he would just kind of sit in the corner and just sketch what was happening.
And, like, every five or ten minutes, he would just kind of turn around and hold up, like, some crazy scene that we were describing, because he's a very good artist.
We'd be like, oh, that's cool.
So, all that combined, I want an AI app for live drawing things as you describe them.
And the initial thing was just D&D, right?
You can go on Fiverr and pay someone, like, you describe a scene, and they will create the characters and everything and draw it for you.
But I want this just, like, constantly cycling, like, a Google Photos in the background of just whatever the heck you're talking about.
And listening to the conversation, taking in what's going on and displaying it.
And just, yeah, that's the whole idea.
And I realize this would be very simple to build app-wise, but I also really want this.
Oh, it's so cool.
So, like, you could take literally, so I'm thinking, like, Harry Potter, right?
Mm-hmm.
You have, like, an illustration per chapter.
Exactly.
But imagine, like, a couple more of, like, the most iconic scenes.
You take some of the images that the illustrator made before, and now you have a more illustrative version, a picture book of Harry Potter with the same illustrations.
Like, that just is so cool that you can, yeah, that'd be awesome.
Like, we're reading Harry Potter to my niece and nephew right now, and they're just like, it's their first time.
They're, you know, six years old and going through and just describing it as you're going.
That would be great for children's stories.
Even if it's Harry Potter, if you're making up a kid's story, it's just, like, showing pictures of whatever the heck you're talking about to the kids.
Does that, like, deplete their imagination going through?
I don't know.
I mean, external imagination box.
They're just like, oh, you can give it purple hair, and now snakes are around it.
Interesting.
Yeah, let them add to the prompt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Picture books are, like, what you start children off.
So, like, we've already killed their imagination before they get to chapter books, right?
So, that's it.
No, but I think, no, I guess what I'm saying is, I think.
Picture books ruin your kids.
Oh, damn it.
We messed it up.
Better luck with the next good.
I mean, you could sell this as a service, Scott, to, like, authors.
Like, why not?
Just, like, all right, we'll take your books, throw some more imagery in there, and you just, you know, facilitate illustrations for different versions.
And basically, take a book that's as old as time, like Dune, right?
Dune is so hard to read.
I mean, you don't need visuals, but it almost make it better, because it's so, yeah.
There's a ton of fan art.
Like, Dune's a great example.
There's a ton of fan art.
If I Google any scene in Dune, it's been around for so long, people are like, here's all the different ways that I visualize this.
Oh, cool.
Right?
So, this is another version.
You can do that for anything.
So, can we just take the copy from a book and just say, hey, convert this to a movie?
And flammo, get rid of all of the...
Oh, man.
Storyboard the hell out of it.
Yeah.
Create a storyboard for this book.
Here's every page.
Go.
Just imagine the compute needed to do all this.
You're taking a...
Burn down the Amazon for it.
It's $10 a month.
What are you talking about?
I think conversationally, though, it would be cool.
Like, I think that's what's unique and different.
Yeah, the fact that it's live.
Right next to you going...
So, I'm going to generously set aside all the copyrighted books here.
I am curious.
The big budget franchises like your Dunes and Harry Potters, I wonder how much the training set has been tainted by the already existing adaptations.
Like, are you only going to get Daniel Radcliffe doing stuff?
You know what I mean?
Oh.
Like, this would have been such a different prospect if we had been only feeding in art generated from 2012 and prior.
Or whenever the first couple of Harry Potters hadn't been out yet, you know?
So, it's interesting to think of the implications of, like, oh, man, I'm just getting Javier Bardem in Dune or whatever, you know?
That was what was really cool about the Stephen King page I scanned in because it was just like...
It was just verbatim.
This is the only text you have in the world about this.
Just describe what is going on in this scene.
And it did.
And I guess you could, you know, you could change the prompt in some form to be like, just describe exactly what is in this text.
Describe a kid with a lightning bolt scar and brown hair and blah, blah, blah.
How was the representation of the image that it came out with?
It was fantastic.
I put it on the subreddit immediately.
I'm like, guys, this is really cool.
Check this out.
AI as the collector and indexer and organizer of the thing that you want the scene of is the key.
Where you've got, like, oh, man, you know, take this page and figure out what are the key parts that are actually important to depict.
Or you're listening for a half hour to rambling at a D&D table.
Turn that into, like, the moment and hear you describe that in a couple of sentences, right?
It's the art piece that I'm hung up on.
I'm worried about all the existing fan artists.
And I'm worried about the, like, yeah, I know that Fiverr is probably not long for this world because, you know, all of those are low-hanging fruit to be automated away.
How can we turn this idea into something that doesn't eliminate humans from the picture?
Straight-up storybook for, or a device for when you're making up a story for your kids.
And that's the only one I can come up with, where it's just visually showing whatever crap you're making up.
ChatGPT and Claude are both excellent at creating bedtime stories.
Crap.
I don't know if you've tried that before.
No, no, no.
Like, to read to your kid.
Write me a quick story about the two guys from Paw Patrol who go on an adventure to meet the Mars rover.
Because those are the things that you're into right now, four-year-old, you know.
And then, oh, man.
Oh, it is so good.
One of my friends made a little demo of AI.
And they would say, hey, we're going to make some kids' books.
And with whatever prompt you want, it's like, hey, Blueberry goes on an adventure.
First, it writes that script.
It says, hey, we're going to write it in 12 different pages.
It then summarizes the copy from that, generates a cover title image.
Oh, my God.
And then it generates an image per page as well.
And he was like, yeah, I did this in the afternoon.
It's pretty much free.
Maybe like 12 bucks a month just for subscriptions.
And it's just.
That was me.
Yeah.
That was Russ.
Leo was there for that, right?
You were there.
I was.
Yeah.
Oh, good.
It's incredible, right?
Freaking AI books is.
But no, I agree.
It's amazing, right, Jordan?
I'm sorry I forgot that you made that presentation, Russ.
Oh, I know.
I'm not memorable.
I have this really smart friend.
I can't remember who it was.
It's so impressive.
It's not this dumbass in the room, but I'm not kidding.
But I think there's something about like a real time thing, Scott, that'd be so cool.
Yes.
Real time.
That's what I'm stuck on, too.
That is so cool.
Having the thing that's listening in the room and like summarizing the D&D.
Ignoring all the other crap and just focusing on the main part of the main scene, like
you said.
I think that's the key.
I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it, but the worst part of playing D&D is recapping what happened
last time and trying to get back up to speed when you first sit down at the table again
or online or whatever.
Having it listen to the last couple of sessions and writing the here's what you should be remembering,
here's where we're starting notes is so good.
Also, just being able to use it as like making myself be a good artist.
I can just look at a screen and be like, oh, yeah, it's a forest grove with this and that and adding adjectives and like enabling a kid to do that, too, and unleash their creativity through their eyes and voice.
Like, okay, what if you brought this into schools and like, all right, kids, everybody, you're going to write a story, like a couple sentence story.
And then you use this tool and it generates a cover or an image and a picture of your, you know, this story.
And this kid probably is like, whoa, my story came to life, right?
It's there's some visual like buzz that you get with high.
You know, when you're like, oh, whoa, my art is alive, right?
So I think that's, yeah, inspirational, right?
I saw a feel good social media post this week of a teacher who fired up a local image generator on her computer at home,
took pictures of all the kids in her elementary school class.
You saw that, too.
And then generated here's what you would look like as the career that you want to be.
Here's you as an astronaut in 20 years.
Here's you as a, you know, doctor or whatever.
Really cool.
Just connects the dots.
The kids were really into it.
Something about that, right?
Yeah.
Visualizing it like tangibly.
Yeah.
Oh, I was thinking like, okay, okay.
I feel like charades.
Wait, sorry.
I want to do one more thing.
This like would be really interesting for like a board game like charades or something.
We're like, I know this sounds crazy, but so Pictionary, I guess like, like a real life example of this is like real time image descriptions, right?
So imagine you're you and your AI friend like this is a whole new game.
It listens to your conversation.
You're trying to create an image that would, and I feel like we got to figure this out a little bit more.
But like you have to talk to the AI and it has to generate an image and it probably like, you know, you have to say the right words in order to create the right response or something, right?
You ever play teledraw where you have like, everyone starts with the same prompt and then the next person draws that.
And then the next person after that is only allowed to describe what they drew.
And then they fold that over.
Then the next person is only allowed to draw what that description was.
And you kind of do the like game of telephone where you're only either looking at a picture describing it or vice versa.
You need to do that.
But like Jackbox style where it's got an AI in the middle that you're describing to trying to get it to generate the thing.
Whatever it comes up with, someone else has to try to interpret.
You could like have it be one of the players.
That could be a really fun game.
Yeah, I'm surprised they don't have something like that.
Like.
Yeah.
AI enabled Pictionary.
Because it's expensive as hell to run those language models and image generators.
And they don't have venture capital funding to burn.
My $2 a month subscription free fee to Jackbox is enough.
Would you pay $20 a month for Jackbox Plus?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Probably not.
All right, Jordan.
What have you brought this week?
So I've always been fascinated about those drinking fountains.
Like the Eclay water bottle filters where that perfect laminar flow comes out of it and just fills your water bottle just perfectly.
Like that beautiful laminar flow.
I'm always just trying to imagine like redirecting that into like this arch that I can grab in my mouth or like shoot it around the airport where I'm just everyone's looking for some sort of entertainment.
I've always just wanted to be able to drink from a drinking fountain with a bit more excitement.
And I feel like that Eclay water bottle filler is like the start of my childhood dream of just catching water in my mouth.
Like the jumping fountains that you see in the downtown parks.
Yeah, downtown parks.
But you can drink the water instead of get chlorine filter.
Yes.
You just don't recycle it.
That's fun.
Dude, that'd be fun as heck.
You're just walking around like, oh, I'm going to get a drink real quick.
And you just full on hibachi.
Throwing the broccoli in the mouth.
I mean, that's how I'm picturing it.
We're like, there's just like a thing where like, put your head here, open your mouth and don't move.
Something shoots from 100 feet away and hits it perfectly.
The Guantanamo simulator.
Oh, God.
There is something memorizing about a laminar flow though, right?
Like what is up with that?
Yeah.
It's so cool.
I'm just imagining like it could go into like century mode where all of a sudden, maybe it's not just like the stick your head here kind of mode, but we can direct it and aim it.
We had a previous guest get just that, but in the backyard on their roof, getting water that squirrels and stuff to spook them away.
You almost want that, but like for people.
Keep them out of his crops.
Squirrels, children, all of the above.
I don't remember who this was.
There's some YouTuber who created a wastebasket that if I were to crumple up paper and toss it behind me, the wastebasket would always move to the position.
It would track the trajectory and do the calc and figure out, okay, it's got to go here.
Dude, of course.
I mean, you could do that with your laminar flow, right?
It's just, there's a camera.
It's watching your face.
It knows where your mouth is.
X, Y, Z coordinates.
I know that if I shoot it from this angle, this spot's going to hit you perfectly, even if you're moving.
Big box on the floor, drawn in tape, anywhere in there where you look at the wall, the second you open your mouth, you get blasted.
You just got to yell, pull, and then it'll shoot in.
And wherever you are, it'll hit you.
Pull!
That seems like an art installation.
Jordan, you put that at GR, you know, like whatever.
For real.
Yep.
And now you're walking around, it's like, put that at art price.
Water conservation.
You know, you'll have a whole thing around it and you're like, you can make some backstory with it.
You'll figure it out.
Do the why later.
Water conservation.
We drained 20,000 gallons through this installation, but look how beautiful it is.
It's to bring awareness, all right?
It's all in good faith, you know?
Oh, of course.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
You know what's even better than reusing plastic water bottles is having no water bottles to destroy the earth at all, Russell.
We just have these on every street corner.
It's the city of the future.
Anywhere in the world, you could say pull and you'll just get water.
From orbit.
Love it.
Future from Starlink.
I love it.
From Starlink.
We just attach these giant-ass cannons to the top of every cell phone tower.
Pay the subscription fee and you get like root beer or something.
Okay, wait.
Hold on.
I have...
This made me think, Jordan.
So the laminar float...
What if you created a water...
Did you...
Is this a water bottle that does laminar flows?
Or are you just talking about the...
Oh, interesting.
The filler, right?
Okay.
What if you had...
So using the power of laminar flows.
Okay.
You have a water bottle that turns into a water fountain that recycles.
And so now you're just...
I don't know how gross that is.
But like...
So imagine you have a water bottle.
Wait.
It's got a spout and a receiving end, right?
Okay.
And so...
No, that's where you lose me.
How does it have a receiving end?
Okay.
A laminar float.
We'll shoot...
It'll go straight up and into the...
Back in the water bottle.
There's a bowl.
It's a funnel on top?
You've got a little tiny basin on the top of the cap of the water bottle.
Like a tiny mini baby drinking fountain.
Wait.
It shoots into itself.
It's the basin.
This is an audio podcast, Russell.
Use ChatGPT to describe it based on Russell's description here.
Yeah.
Listeners, go on ChatGPT and figure this out.
Okay.
Are you saying a little tiny baby drinking fountain where there's both a spout and a drain at the
top of a bottle?
Yeah.
But it's just recircuted.
Yeah.
But it's all in a water bottle.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now we're...
Pretty fun.
Now we're talking like futuristic and it's...
You can go all this into like, oh, you never have to clean your dirty water bottle.
Right?
You never...
You know how those water bottles always get dirty?
Dude, we got...
Sorry, Jordan.
We'll talk about this later.
We'll make this into a real thing.
Drinking fountains.
Famously clean.
Okay.
This is fun.
I would...
I mean, it'd be novel for sure.
The novelty of it would be great.
It's kind of like the Gatorade water bottles where you just squeeze and it just blasts this...
Oh!
There we go.
That makes way more sense to my stupid...
But laminar flow.
Oh!
There's a differentiating factor.
What makes you unique?
It's luxury.
It's the luxury version of the Gatorade bottle.
Well, we can pitch Louis Vuitton on this.
Don't mess up your makeup.
Go straight in your mouth.
Yep.
Louis, Gucci...
Dude, Kanye's gonna be all over this if he's still around, you know?
He's gonna be all about this.
All right.
I'm gonna hand this over to you, Russell.
All right, guys.
Well, I hope you guys had a happy holidays.
Coming out in late January.
What an intro.
Coming out in late January.
But, you know, one of the things that happens every Christmas, at least with my family or some version of it, is like, kind of like a dessert potluck or like kind of thing.
And so, but since I don't, like, see my family all that often, I was like, and I think we had pitched a similar idea, but I want to take this up a notch.
But it's like the idea of a cookie exchange remotely sending and receiving cookies or desserts or whatever you have that you want to do an exchange on.
And you can do it with your family, your friends, and you can create a whole app system behind it with, like, sending food, all that good stuff, right?
Because I feel like the idea of sending food sounds really whimsical and idealistic.
But then when you actually go to do it, you're like, God, what am I paying for this box?
How am I supposed to keep this cold?
Like, where's the cardboard, right?
Like, and so I think the app would, like, like an app version of this would match with people, match with your family.
You can create groups, you can create, like, a secret Santa almost experience with, like, a cookie exchange, a dessert exchange or whatever, right?
And we have special boxes, let's say, that allow for 10 boxes to be packed really quickly and cheaply or some manner, some fulfillment aspect that makes it a little bit more fun and easy than, like, getting 10 USPS red boxes.
And, like, for $5, you're sending $15, $5, eight cookie things.
So I just feel like that experience would never be fun unless you have this packaging, maybe an app service behind it to make this type of exchange happen, right?
So, yeah, I'm trying to save the US Postal Service.
No.
But, yeah, that's it.
Cookie exchange app plus fulfillment thing.
I love the idea of imagining, like, a robot pick up grandma's famous apple pie and then going to some co-packing facility that just chops it up and sends it to all of her grandkids.
Grandma, can you mail a pie to this warehouse every year, please?
Only if I see you during Christmas.
Oh, shoot.
What if we just made the recipes?
That's a great idea.
I don't know.
That's what you're going.
Like, you sent us the recipe and we manufacture it.
Recipe fulfillment as a service.
Grandma's secret recipe.
That's interesting.
But I really like that idea, though.
It stays a secret because it's in their facility.
Yeah, yeah.
It's encrypted.
256-bit AES encryption.
If you are putting in the recipe, then you have the economies of scale of the business having a million pounds of flour and sugar and all this stuff.
You're just like, yeah, that's fun.
You need, like, how it's made but just bespoke individual.
You know what I'm talking about?
The pies then move down the conveyor belt to the flour station.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But, like, each one is bespoke and unique and individual for the whatever recipe.
And then you're, yeah, it's combining, like, factory automation with homemade grandma's whatever.
That wouldn't be hard to automate either.
Like, a PLC with, there's a finite number of ingredients that can go into a cookie, right?
Or, honestly, you could do it with any recipe.
But if we're sticking with cookies.
And then you can publish your recipe or just the title of your thing as your collection, your store, your Shopify store.
Here's all the things.
But it's just like when those people have, like, a t-shirt design company.
But really, they're just uploading their graphic that they made in Photoshop and then outsourcing all of the printing and stuff to one of those shops.
Except you have your recipes.
You have your storefront.
You click buy.
They're doing the fulfillment and taking a chunk of it.
That rules.
If that existed, every single year, I would go online and I would sort by top recipes of this year.
And I would order a variety bin of that every year.
It's like those Hogwarts jelly beans where some of them are super delicious and some of them are just disgusting and gross.
You've got your rating system.
You've got your social aspect where it's like, you know, this month is, you know, pie month or whatever.
Oh, man.
This writes itself.
Grandma, I'm going to sassify your cookie recipe.
How do we monetize grandma?
Everybody subscribe to my cookie subscription.
What's it called?
Shoot.
I don't know.
Grandma's.
The virtual grandma's house.
Yeah.
What about like recipe.real?
Oh, there we go.
Real recipe.
Jordan, are you looking at domains right now?
I was.
That's what makes me up, writer.
You got.
Download them before you guys do.
I already bought four.
Buy the domain.
We're almost there.
That's the hardest part.
Going to buy them before you guys do.
This would be fun.
Can you imagine getting grandma's cookies on tap, dude?
Yeah.
Oh, man.
I really want some cookies.
What is that called when you have those fulfillment companies doing like 90% of the work for you?
They do it with a compounding facility.
There's a name for that.
Dropshipping?
It's not dropshipping quite where like you are doing the actual design work and curation, but then you're basically dropshipping everything else.
There's a name for that like industry.
That but food is so interesting.
Because when you're first pitching like, oh, I, you know, cookie exchange with a random person, secret Santa style.
It's like, oh, how does that prevent me from getting arsenic cookies, you know?
Right.
But if I'm just going and like, if I'm happy, I trust that the actual place is making the food because they only, you know, they're curating the recipe on their end.
They're doing the fulfillment.
Yeah.
And you can get a copy yourself.
You know, like, let's if you don't want to buy cookie, make cookies yourself.
You're like, I'm just going to buy three dozen of my own cookie recipe online and send it to me.
Right.
If you wanted to start this today, you don't have to own the factory.
You could make ghost kitchen agreements and do this locally.
Like, yeah, you go through and you are the platform that people on one end are uploading recipes to and on the other end are ordering from their local restaurant, but they don't know it.
And it's getting DoorDash Ubered Eats whatever to their house from what's actually an Applebee's, you know, oven or whatever.
Whoa.
You're like a highly customizable cookie ghost kitchen, like a bakery ghost kitchen instead of a...
Yeah.
I've seen commercials for like shampoos or lotions, like, oh, it's for curly hair versus this and fill out this form and they'll custom blend you a specific formula.
It's like, I've seen that in like the dermatology kind of style of worlds, but never in the cookie world.
I like it.
Whoa.
We could do this for lotions.
No.
A lot of bakeries and donut shops and bagel stores and stuff run their kitchens really, really hard from like 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
And then they sit unused a lot of the rest of the day.
If you could like have a couple of contract workers going in and asking your local bakeries, hey, can I use your equipment a couple hours a week to make these recipes and fulfill them out?
You could make this happen.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, that's what you meant the whole time.
That's right.
No, Jordan's like something about recipes.
I'm like, oh, shoot.
This is it.
This is why we Spitball.
This is way better.
It's so much better.
That's really fun.
It all started out as an idea from Russ.
Grandma's cookies.
Grandma, stop peddling your SaaS product to us at Christmas.
Four months subscription to my cookie recipe on whatever cookies.com.
Grandma's cookies.
You're almost like telling people to like open an Etsy store and stuff, right?
But you're handling the actual creation of the thing.
You'd have to worry a little bit about the quality variants across all the ghost kitchens or whatever.
Like their oven doesn't make it like I did at home.
But if you could get that dialed in, send proofs to the original recipe maker, make sure they're happy with it.
Does this represent your vision for whatever?
You don't even have to be proof, right?
Because you don't even have to be a person who owns all of those ingredients and equipments and stuff.
I don't personally in my life have a stand mixer right now.
I just never have.
We don't need one enough to warrant buying a KitchenAid mixer.
But if I could go and write up 12 recipes that are interesting to me that do use a KitchenAid mixer and have them all sent to me once, I like those.
Yes.
Now anyone can buy them and I get a cut.
That's so fun.
Whoa.
What if you just.
I'm hype on this.
What if he like?
What if like?
So what if he didn't even bake it?
What if he just made the dough or like the ingredients?
And then when they get it, that way you save on like the manufacturing or the baking process.
And so you get them.
And now grandma's cookies, you just mix these together.
Now it's like the ready, you know, the Betty Crocker.
Add the liquids and you're done.
That's some cookie dough.
And it's just like a mix of flour and sugar of grandma's, right?
It's all.
All of them are just some ratio of that.
Different forms of cinnamon or other things in there.
The butter content.
You know, nobody wants to know how much butter grandma puts in it.
So you got to make sure you deliver that one separate or something, right?
This would not be a hard one to start either.
The entire culinary industry is about like high volume though.
Like it's, it's all about like, we're doing mint chocolate chip ice cream today and for the
next month.
And then we'll switch over.
That's true.
So you just have to really push hard the like 10 featured recipes and say, oh, you might
not get them for two weeks because we're going to do them in batches or whatever.
Like crumble cookie.
How often do you urgently need grandma's cookie?
And that's why you ship them frozen cookie dough because then they're not as on demand,
like increase that shelf life.
Easier to ship.
Sure.
What if you made this into like a world competition, like worldwide competition, right?
This is maybe what you're saying, Leo?
Like, all right.
You can hone those recipes at home if you have all the equipment and ingredients, but you don't
even need to have those.
Use the service yourself to send you the various versions of what you want to try to make and
go with your favorite.
You can do top cookie in each state and then the states compete.
And now.
Yes.
Yeah.
You just have a year long.
Make it a game.
Yeah.
Like at the end of the year, you release the best cookie competitor of the year.
And now everybody can buy those cookies, right?
You subscribe to a year long subscription of cookie competitions and recipe making.
And now you have the economies of scale, right?
I want this now.
The best.
Quite bad.
Chocolate chip cookie as, you know, nationwide.
I've been raving to my wife about the chocolate chip cookies that I make and I haven't made
them in the past two years.
We've been married for a year and a half.
She's never tasted these things.
If you could upload that recipe and click buy now and they'd be there in a couple of days.
There you go, honey.
Would you still do it?
Yeah.
Got a lot to live up to then, Jordan.
Yeah.
There's a chance that like an industrial kitchen would be able to do your recipe better justice
than your home equipment and ingredients would.
Like my, I have a weird ingredient that I normally wouldn't have access to or my oven variance
and temperature a little bit too much or whatever it is, you know, it might be better.
Really true.
At least more consistent.
Yeah.
Because they do this for like pizza machines.
Like they do that one machine dough goes in, toppings go in, and then you can get a pepperoni
or a pineapple and ham and yeah, all those different stuff.
And if that cookie wins, like you don't have, nobody has to know the recipe.
Now it's like an asset on your website, right?
Yes.
The 2022 winner, the 2023 winner, right?
Gamifying it.
How do we get competitors?
I feel actually we just, I'm sure there's a lot of people that want to compete.
It's so easy for the store owner.
They just have to type in on a computer what they want their cookie to look like and then
we make it for them.
Like the low barrier entry is a plus.
And if you really are worried about it, then you generate a bunch of fake grandmas and
you make some common recipes for Betty Crocker and stuff.
And you like have those that be the top cookie that someone has to try to beat, but you don't
tell anyone and you kind of seed your own platform with, you know, fake recipes or popular recipes
until you get going.
Boom.
Dude, we go to the, you know, those like local community apple pie county fair kind of style.
We just reach out to all of those people and say, Hey, this is, you want to make a lot of
money with your apple pie.
We have a competition fantasy pie off pie ball.
All right.
I don't know if that works.
And, uh, yeah, you, we're going to take your apple pie recipe, mass produce it for a hundred
thousand people that are going to, you know, test, you know, and taste your apple pie.
And now you have like 30 different, like 15 slices out there for a hundred thousand
people.
Like that would be.
Oh my God.
Little.
Set your rules.
Crazy.
Awesome.
Take a picture of that pie and send us to GPT and they'll tell you the ingredients already.
Reverse engineer this pie.
We'll save that one for next week.
Then you get acquired by some like giant cookie company.
Look out.
Keebler's coming for you.
The big dough boy.
Oh, Leo, what you got this week?
All right.
I got a pretty simple problem.
Uh, very similar to the library books, my bookshelf thing that I want to make, but my
closet is filled with shirts and I know that I have too many sweatshirts and t-shirts and
dress shirts.
And I never know which ones to get rid of because I'm not very aware of wardrobe and
fashion and clothing, but I know that I don't wear some very often just because I back into
liking certain ones more than others.
But if I just look at everything at once, I don't know which ones to actually keep or how
often I wear them.
I want to inventory my closet.
I want to have some sort of tag or barcode or stamp or something hidden on the inside
hem of every shirt that I own.
And every time I pull it out, I scan it or I tap it or I do something to it so that I have
a frequency worn graph.
And then I can say, what are the top 20 things that I haven't worn in the last year?
Or what shirts do I need to back off on?
Hey, buddy, you wore that shirt eight times in the last two weeks.
Are you sure?
Because I just, I really don't have an eye for like paying attention to this.
I always make my, what am I going to wear today decision with no thought at the very last
second as I've already stepped out of the shower and I'm looking at stuff.
I reach for whatever feels right.
And I'm not a fashion guy, like I said.
So yeah, I need a device to help me be more aware of what things go well together and what
things I don't like and wear and why don't I like them and draw that to my attention.
So what are unintrusive, I always rip the tags out of every t-shirt I own.
What are unintrusive ways that I can.
You're not making this easy, Leo.
Yeah, I know.
How do I hide this like tracking?
Is it something printed on the inside?
Maybe it's like, like a ink tattoo sort of thing that gets put on the inside of the sleeve
or something.
Or maybe it's, I don't know, on the bottom of the, the hem of the waistline of the shirt
and pant or something.
Gut Reaction was an NFC tag, like sewed into it somewhere.
But how thin can those get?
They make those for laundromats.
They can just kind of sew them in or iron them on.
Okay.
Iron on.
Really?
Iron on would be perfect.
I would totally iron them all on.
Yeah.
And then build an inventory system.
Come in with your RFID scanner just like beeping all around you.
Yeah, right.
Just get a megawatt scanner just on your door.
You don't even have to like hold it up to it.
It'll just, it just goes.
Sir, I'm the TSA.
Do you have any metal objects on you?
Everything I own is an NFC tag.
Take off your shirt.
I need to strip down naked.
It's on my underwear officer.
Yeah, right.
You could probably just do it with a camera system too, honestly.
Just like, hey, stand in this one spot every day when you're fully dressed and it just takes
a quick snapshot.
It would be able to recognize if you wore that shirt how many times in a row.
It's so true.
I wonder if it knows the difference between my three or four like plain white or plain black
tees though.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
I have white t-shirts that are way more worn than the other ones.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or that'd be great.
I am certain I have some shirts in there that are high school or like very, very, very, very
old that I really should be told like, hey, dummy, that's an inside shirt.
That's an inside shirt.
Don't go offside with that one.
I know exactly.
Everybody has those, right?
Don't wear this one in public.
Right.
I think I'm wearing two of those shirts right now.
Yeah.
Paint a room with that shirt, you know?
Exactly.
That one's going to the paint pile.
I am totally, it's, I don't, I don't know what's wrong with my brain where I'm totally
comfortable grabbing every shirt and undershirt and pair of pants and tapping it to a reader
and then putting it on.
But I cannot for the life of me remember like, have I worn this recently?
Is this one that I actually like?
Do these look good together?
You know?
I really want a scanner in front of the washing machine too.
I don't know if I would use this, but to have that data where I knew how many times
I've washed this one or worn it since then going through.
This brand tends to last longer than the other ones or all this data.
It'd be so good.
Yeah.
Whoa.
I didn't think about putting it in the washing machine.
That'd be, and then like LG or Samsung would sell, you know, those little like things, put
it in every one of your shirts.
Right.
So now it's like, oh, this is, you know, part of your smart washing machine.
You know, you throw it, you don't have to, you know, LG and Samsung will buy this.
Right.
But first you create an attachment that you put in your dryer and as it's tumbling scans
all the items in there, but you got to buy those little tags.
And now you're like, you get your plotted chart and graph, but that's just for wear and tear.
It doesn't like show you and your sexy man suit, Leo, you know, an inventory of that.
Right.
So.
And then it modifies the wash cycle.
Like, oh, this is a delicate or, oh, these are jeans.
Whoa.
Almost all of our clothes have that indecipherable hieroglyphic set of tags.
That's like, this is a square with an X through it.
And this is three triangles and a 30.
What the hell does that mean?
Or, you know, like we should turn that into something that the washing machine can read
for sure.
It just spins on its own a couple of times ahead of time and then figures out what's in
there and then does the cycle.
Yes.
Damn.
So I guess the minimum product here, if I wanted to build this totally homemade would be some
kind of screen printing that puts a QR code hidden on everything I own.
A QR code?
Why not?
It would work.
Like a serial number or something.
Or like, I see NFTs tag.
NFC tags are fun, but they'd be convenient to scan in.
But the cost per is a little higher.
What?
What do you have?
It just reminded me of my next, what was going to be my next intramural idea.
It was just a terrible one where I wanted socks that would match themselves in the washing,
in the dryer.
And I was trying to figure out like, can I take like different combinations of magnets
and like get like a ring of magnets or something and sew them into the sock, but they're super
thin, but they're in different.
It's like North, North, South, North, South that matches with South, South, North, South,
North.
So those, only those two socks would stick together in the dryer.
And then you pull the socks out of the dryer and they're just all along the rim of the whole
dryer.
They've stuck to the drum.
We didn't think this through.
But they're sopping wet.
We didn't believe them drum.
I was trying to think, is there some way it could do like magnets in order for it to scan
it as it goes by?
Right.
No.
Or something like that where it's somehow attracted to itself only.
Leo, I think you could get like, there's a trendy like thing where you can put a leather
patch, like a tiny little leather.
They have these like little leather patches that you can, that I see on certain hoodies.
I got one on this shirt.
Hey.
Yes.
Boom.
It's like a random thing on the outside.
You see, you just take that, apply it.
Now you got your brand logo on it.
You scan it every time.
And people are like, oh, that guy's cool.
I don't know how some people have the stamp that's like from the library of Leo Herzog,
but from the wardrobe.
From the, yes.
Oh, yikes.
You're like putting a wax seal on each shirt.
That's funny.
It's horrible in the dryer, but.
It looks cool and chic from afar, but then you read it and you're like, wow.
Okay.
Right.
You need something really, really, really, really, really durable.
QR code ink screen printed is fine.
NFC tags, maybe.
Waterproof, sure.
What else?
I don't know.
Even if it's not durable, you just replace the tag, right?
Yeah, I suppose.
I think like Stitch Fix or one of these other like clothing subscription companies would send
this to everybody for free in their wardrobe, right?
And now they can measure, oh, Leo really loves that red pattern shirt.
I'm going to send him an email with three similar shirts like that to match his style and look,
right?
And you're using it as like, oh, I just want to figure out.
Amazon to hone your ads.
Boom.
Like, sure.
Send me ads.
If I give you all this data about my clothing, like there are certain times when I want ads
and this is the time, right?
Right.
You're wearing this one a lot.
Yes, absolutely.
Here's three other styles, right?
You could loop Ditto in on it being like, hey, there's a shirt in your closet that you
haven't touched in two years.
Like donate it.
Whoa.
Your local Salvation Army is in Goodwills.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
There's also 17 other shirts just like the one you really love at Ditto right now that
you should go by.
Ditto is a local thrift shop.
Yeah, man.
I think it would be cool.
I have so many clothes in my closet right now.
I also lost.
So this is really epic.
I lost a shirt for three years and it was in a quarter zip.
I had taken off my quarter zip and this collared shirt and I threw it in the back of the closet.
And every time I look at the quarter zip, I have the green side out instead of the red
side.
And so I never wore it.
And then literally a week before Christmas, I'm like, oh my God, I thought I lost this
shirt years ago.
It was like my favorite shirt.
And so I'm like, yes, found it.
But if only I'd scanned it in my QR code drobe, you know, or something, whatever you name it,
Leo, I would have known.
All right.
So you guys are real friends.
Are you, am I narrow casting to just me or is this, is there anything here that someone
would want?
Okay.
You think that this is something that somebody else would want?
I would absolutely love the data.
I would absolutely love the data, but I'm also a very lazy son of a bitch and I would
not scan my clothes if I put them on.
I would for a while, but after like the second week, I would stop doing that.
Would you tear apart your closet and barcode them all?
My motivation would last like that first week and I would do it all and go through and be
like this great system.
And then it would peter out, which is why I'm still thinking the camera or something that's
passive in the background that just does it and collects it.
Just put a camera in the bathroom when you're getting dressed.
No problem.
Oh, it could be the mirror, right?
It could be your mirror.
Oh, as long as you could just stand in front of your mirror every day.
Then press the button to open the shutter.
We're going to be very good about privacy consciousness in the bathroom.
Hey everyone.
We have a cool new bathroom camera technology.
We're excited to sell you.
Yeah.
Buy Amazon three days later.
Maybe it's just recency bias for me because I'm sitting in our closet currently.
That's right.
My wife has a bunch of clothes and they're all folded up, but they're stacked or they're in
like, how can she know what she has?
Yeah.
That's how I am.
The t-shirt that is most likely to be worn is in the top two or three of the five files.
Which is the one that you just wore last week.
Exactly.
And once in a while when I'm really ambitious, I flip it upside down or shuffle it a little
bit.
That's clever.
You got to adopt the FIFO method.
First in, first out.
Yeah.
I need to like put them on the bottom or something.
Yeah, for sure.
Man.
No, I think this would, I think the mirror, maybe that's what it is.
Sure.
You have like issues with like the same shirt, you know, but like.
I love it.
Even that's useful.
Like, hey, you wear plain white shirts a lot, bud.
Cool it.
Right.
But like, you know, people take selfies in the mirror all the time.
Right.
So it's kind of like you could even like see maybe not inventory, but like, what do you
want to wear today?
And it just shuffles clothes.
And knowing that you have it in the closet, it would be nice to know if they were dirty or
not.
Right.
So like, I just don't want to think when I open my closet because I haven't had my coffee
yet.
Let's say I just want to know there's clean clothes.
Which one?
Boom.
If I could look at a dashboard on my phone and see you have a 38% left on the clean.
It's starting to get close.
Do a couple laundry loads, dummy.
That's pretty enticing to a lazy SOC.
That is really cool.
It's like a gas tank.
Hey, your underwear drawer is getting pretty empty there, bud.
You change your underwear every day, right?
This week?
You know?
Just ask the question.
My trouble is the opposite.
I over-launder.
I throw stuff into the laundry pile when it probably doesn't need to be cleaned yet and
so my clothes don't last as long.
But I feel better about like, every day is a brand new clean start, you know?
So that's especially why I have this problem is being able to track all that stuff is like,
wow, I have used those shirts too much and I need to switch it out for those ones that I
also like.
I just don't happen to see right in front of me or whatever, you know?
I'm the opposite of that, but it still lends me to the same problem because I wore these
jeans yesterday and I wore them today.
I'm going to tomorrow.
And then they sit in my too clean to be washed pile.
It's like, by the end of the month, I've worn them 12 times.
And then you do like a whole month's worth of laundry because you're just like, boom, right?
You've got a couple of other pairs of jeans that are nice, but you just don't happen to
wear them because they're not in the like active pile or whatever.
I need some notification to be like, hey, you just wore those pants six times already.
Go wash them.
Sure.
And if I'm tapping out my boom, boom, boom.
Okay.
I'm my reader or taking my picture or whatever, and it's keeping track of that, then that's
pretty doable.
It's the, how do you get the data in problem that I haven't quite cracked yet.
So I did a project with some like warehousing with RFID tags and then we could scan 56 RFID
tags in a giant four foot by four foot by eight foot pallet, just like pass it right through
a loading bay door.
You need a lot of energy for that.
That was a beautiful reader.
I'll say that.
That's cool.
A couple hundred bucks.
So if I'm just walking through my bathroom door frame on the way out to start my day
and it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Got those five things.
My fillings are like humming when I'm going to my bathroom, you know?
Yeah.
Well, it'd be like the library books, right?
Those library book things, you know, you just have one, install one of those in your house.
I don't know what those things cost.
Or the skaters at the grocery store, like those can check for the metal thing.
Eggs.
Dude, I think, but I think the data is so valuable.
Like, do you know how many clothing companies would just pay out the ass for that?
I don't know what else to say.
Like, that would be amazing data.
You would basically give this out for free if you could figure out how to capture this data.
And I would take it for free if it meant better ads.
Like you said, like, no ads is great.
If I have to have ads, useful ads are the next best thing.
And if it's suddenly showing me, wow, it looks like that brand of sock that normally is expensive is having a 20% off sale.
You like those socks.
That is useful.
Getting that, yeah, to improve my advertising experience would be nice.
Man, I feel like a lot of our app ideas are like, if only we had a mother that could just take care of us.
Our poor wives.
Leo, you are that short again.
I mean, you know.
Oh, no.
Let me do your laundry.
It's taken a while.
You know, it's just.
We need more women on this show.
Robo mom.
Only someone took care of you.
The clothes edition.
Can't my robot mommy set out my outfit in the morning?
I'm so confused.
I have all these shirts.
You privileged child.
Mom, I need new shirts.
No, you don't.
You just don't wear the ones that I bought you.
Thanks, Robo mom.
Well, dear listener, if you are listening to us while doing laundry, think about where you'd put that QR code on your shirt.
And shoot us an email if you have any idea about that.
We are podcast@spitball.show.
Jordan, it's been so awesome having you.
Thank you so much for being on the show today, man.
My pleasure.
Thanks, guys.
Like I said, our website is Spitball.show.
There you can find YouTube channel, all of our social media, all that stuff.
We are podcast@spitball.show.
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Our intro/outro music is Swingers by Bonkers Beat Club.
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