I'm Scott, I'm Russell, and I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three international inventors 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.
- Yes, this is Tonje from Norway.
I botch these all the time, so just give me
a little slack here, our favorite listeners.
- We'll edit it down to something usable.
- Yeah, she's the CEO, co-founder of Somebody Make It,
which is a company that's flipping the script
on how products get made.
So instead of guessing what people want,
they ask you to drop your wildest physical product ideas
and validate the demand,
and see if your idea gets popular among buyers,
connects you with makers who can build it,
and you get royalties along the way.
So I hope that's a good recap.
I thought it was a great overlap
to what we do here on Spitball.
And we kind of just bumped into each other online.
So welcome, Tonja.
I hope I said your name correctly too.
I'm just a Midwest American, you know,
trying my best, so.
- Yes, it was perfect.
- Thank you.
And thank you so much for inviting me here.
- Yeah.
- We're so excited to have you.
So how long have you been doing Somebody Make It?
- So I think I woke up one morning in January this year.
- Wow.
- And yeah, it just hit me.
Then I went online.
Is it someone who has made Somebody Make It before?
And then I found this Reddit thread
called Somebody Make This.
(laughing)
And I saw, whoa, so many people are actually posting their ideas.
It's amazing.
But what's happening to them?
They just get votes and then they disappear.
Totally.
So yeah, that's when it all started.
But, um, before that, of course I had a heart and love for creatives and, uh,
creators, makers, creating awesome physical products.
Yeah.
So who is, who is somebody make it for?
What are our listeners?
Would it be something that they would be interested in?
I really hope so.
So it's for anyone who has a brilliant idea or not so good idea, but want to test it out.
That's what we do here, the not so good ones.
Yeah.
Well, fantastic.
Where, where do you find?
So you go to somebody make it calm and just post an idea.
Yes, you can do that.
You can also sign up as a maker if you do have the skills to create something awesome.
So we only invite them there aside makers who can actually prove that they can make something.
But we we want to make it easier for the creators so that you don't have to do the marketing job yourself.
don't have to do the paperwork or all the things around actually creating. Yeah, so that's the two
target groups. Well, in 51 episodes, I think pretty much every one of my half-baked ideas has
been, "I wish somebody would just go and make this thing." So I have a lot of posting to do.
Yeah. Amazing.
Fantastic. Well, we talked a little bit before the show, and, Tonja, you said that you have so
ideas that you're like, Oh, we could do this.
We could do that.
Which one should I talk about?
And sometimes when we have guests on who have a lot of ideas instead
of a warmup game or a guest pitch, we'll do a round of inter murals
where we just throw a half-baked idea out there that doesn't
really deserve a whole pitch.
But something that we want to have linger out there as an idea to have
someone else take and run with someday.
So I think we're going to do a round of that.
Gentlemen, lady, guest, who would like to go first on an inter mural pitch?
Russell, do you have something good?
- I do, I do, I have a great intramural pitch.
Well, I think it's great.
So I was recently learning that you can take
and eat local honey and it'll help you with allergies.
And if you get honey from the place you're going
ahead of time, you could have a better time
on your trip, right?
And so recently I went up north and saw
that the local farmer's market was selling honey
And I'm like, I should have ordered that like a week ago,
because then I wouldn't be, you know, like, yeah,
blowing my nose the whole time I'm here, right?
So my idea is straight up meeting with local,
purely local honey vendors and creating a marketplace for you
to buy ahead of time the honey so you get your allergy
tolerance to the local flora or whatever.
That's fun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's such a cool idea.
You could even have it be like a swap,
Like trade you a honey for a honey and stock your local.
Oh, oh, you could partner with like...
It's to come with Airbnb.
Yeah, Airbnb, there you go.
I was going to say your local like travel agency or airport or something.
Like you could have the shelf of at the airport stand.
Here's the honey from France and from, you know what I mean?
Like one giant collage of all the locals.
That's fun.
This can be huge.
Oh, I should have used this for my main idea.
[LAUGHTER]
This is too good, Russell.
Easy there.
Don't get ahead of yourself.
I love the Airbnb idea, because I could just put an ad
on every Airbnb purchase.
Like, don't forget to buy the honey before you go.
Save yourself the allergy attack.
Yes, and partner up with the insurance company
that Airbnb uses as well.
There you go.
Why not, right?
How do you, so are you the middleman, the broker,
who's coordinating all this?
- Yeah, and if I wanted to really get good with it,
I could like, you know, send them packaging
and all that stuff, make the, you know,
streamline the logistics.
That's what I am.
- Yeah, it's a logistics company.
- I'm like Amazon, yeah, for honey.
(laughing)
I'm the Amazon of honey.
- That's great, there's definitely something there.
- Did you guys buy it?
- Yes. - I did get some local money.
- Definitely, right? - Heck yeah.
All right, I've got a silly one.
So single use plastics for shampoos and lotions
and all that really bother me when they have a pump
at the top because there's a straw that goes from the top
down to the bottom of the bottle
and it never gets all of it.
There's always that like bottom 10th of the product
at the bottom that you just can't get out.
And you end up doing this, like wiggling it, shaking it,
trying to do the centrifugal force thing.
So I was thinking about this problem
as all good shower thoughts originate.
What if you had like a salad spinner
or some sort of centrifugal thing
that you set a bottle in and spin it
so that you're pushing all of the product out, right?
So you slot any sort of bottle.
(laughing)
Scott, you look completely perplexed.
Okay, so the best way to get ketchup out of a bottle
or anything like that is to do like an arm
waving through the air motion, right?
To try to like use centrifugal force
to like get it out, right?
So you need to automate that by spinning it.
And I don't quite know how this product looks yet,
but I'm picturing something that's like a Bundt cake tin,
or maybe a little bigger, and it spins
so that the product comes out into a smaller container
or into like a dish or something
so you completely empty bottles.
- What a great intramural idea.
- Amazing. - Definitely, Leo.
I love that. - Perfect.
- What a great, not good idea, thank you.
- What's this underneath your sink?
It's a 40 pound device.
Oh, it's the last quarter of my shampoo.
It's gas powered.
[LAUGHTER]
[MAKES RASPBERRY NOISE]
[LAUGHTER]
I think maybe you could do this, Leo,
but you have like, instead of it being electric or gas powered,
you could have it be like a rope that you swing around
with a little cup at the end or something, right?
[LAUGHTER]
That's the prototype.
Oh, I see.
You're like swinging it like a lasso.
OK.
Oh, interesting.
It's a little bit more convenient,
a little more portable, but you might just launch shampoo
all over your shower.
I have not put much time yet into the how does it
get captured at the end and where does it go.
But getting out of the bottle is the part
that I was daydreaming about.
Yeah.
I know what you mean, because I end up leaning it
against the back, like upside down
in the corner of the shower.
And then you knock it over, and you're like, well,
this is a waste of time.
I should just throw this out.
Yeah.
What is $0.02 worth of my time, right?
but two cents of ketchup.
- As we're talking about this, you know what it could be?
It could be a small product
that attaches two bottles together
so that they sit upside down on each other
and one empties out into the new one that's almost full.
- Oh, I like this one.
- You know those tornado things
that two two-liter bottles would get attached for?
Yeah, for kids.
That's what we need.
- That's way better.
(laughing)
- Thanks.
(laughing)
You don't like my salad spinner?
(laughing)
Leo is a great intramural idea.
Always.
Very much.
Thank you.
I'm just picturing ketchup flying everywhere in the bathroom.
Yep.
I got a very simple one that I've always wanted to make, but it's just not good
enough for the full big product here.
But I have a lot of, I like led lights and led strips and I have them all
over the house doing everything.
And I had a, um, a person I worked with who was very convinced that like
breathing is the most important thing that you can do in terms of calming
and for relaxation and meditation on there.
And with all these strips all over the house on it,
I almost want them to just kind of like breathe with me
and go with me so just I am always
in a more meditative state.
Or if it tells that I'm like getting a little too ADD
or excited on things, it can just like,
go with me and I'll just like,
I know the back of my brain will automatically
start doing it with this guy.
And then over time, over a couple of minutes,
I'll just be in a more calm, reflective state on there.
Very simple, very simple to create,
but I know that would do a lot of good for me.
- It's like light therapy as you go.
- Light therapy, but breathing therapy.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, a way that I'm not focused on it,
but it still is helping me out.
- There's gotta be a calming color spectrum, right?
- Probably.
- You're talking more about the intensity of it changing.
- Yeah, the intensity just comes up.
- Bright to dim to bright to dim.
- Comes down.
- Like guiding you.
- I love that.
- Guiding, yeah, breathing guiding tool.
- Wow, that sounds right.
But I want that in every room in my house.
It's a part that's interesting is making it aware of you.
I feel like every little LED trinket that I buy
that's some cheap Chinese whatever has--
Has a little feature on there.
--this one's the flashing animation,
and this one's the back and forth animation.
And one of them is always called breathing.
And it just sort of fades in, fades out, fades in, fades out.
But it's not smart or aware or useful.
Pair it with my smartwatch or something
that I can tell what I'm feeling.
Oh, that would be--
Yeah, your heart rate spikes.
So it can tell when your pulse is getting higher.
And then--
Yeah, yeah.
Yep.
Now I need to give some extra effort here.
That's cool.
Get more in your face.
Otherwise, they sort of fade into the background.
I know if I'm in an agitated state, though,
and all of a sudden my house starts like, relax, relax.
I'm just going to get more mad.
Shut the hell up, lights.
Yeah.
I'm fine.
I'm going to turn you off.
I will unplug you, knock it off.
That'd be, it's funny how I think about my lights are always on full blast.
Never thought about them like, that's why you're always at full intensity, Russell.
That's right.
I'm always all gas, no brakes.
You have a full blast lights kind of persona.
Staring at a ring light right now.
Keeps me awake though.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
Let me know when you made it.
I have experienced this a lot and also heard it from other people.
And maybe you have experienced the same, at least if you have kids.
So have you experienced when you try to get one baby wipe out of the package that you
drag out the whole package?
Yes.
Oh, my gosh. It's the biggest frustration.
[laughing]
Scott, I'm sorry you don't have this problem in your life,
but my gosh, it's the worst.
You don't know his life.
He might have a pack of baby wipes next to him.
[laughing]
-Okay, keep going. -Yeah, you have to do it like
in the time where you do not have two hands,
you've got to like be holding the package down
and trying to, yes, annoying.
Yeah, and your baby is doing the acrobats at the same time.
So you have to hold the baby, focus on taking one napkin out.
And yeah, it's, it's very annoying.
So have you seen those, like the teats around like a small hole?
Like a case.
Why isn't this baby napkins inside of one of those instead?
So you can, you can choose the length and you can also, yeah, just
take out exactly what you need.
That's fun.
So it's like an accessory for the wipes
that you're pitching here.
Yeah.
You can put your wipes package into this thing.
It's like a roll.
Yes.
It's a roll that you cut like tape.
So I'm thinking like.
Oh.
Like a tape dispenser.
Yes, thank you.
Yeah.
Reinventing the form factor of the baby wipe.
That's cool.
So one thing that I always tell new parents
is store the box of baby wipes upside down
because they always end up dry at the top
when you first make them.
and then at the very bottom they're too wet.
So that could solve it.
If it was in a roll form factor, that
would also help like moisten it evenly as it's
coming out of the package too.
Yeah.
Yes.
Oh, that's genius.
Very fun.
OK, we're just-- create a whole new product.
Look out, tuggy or whatever.
Yeah.
This is like a--
oh, I had an--
I'm going back to your roll on there too, Russell.
Like this is a--
oh, this is like a four roll blowout or something.
like I need this quadruple length before it does the cut on there I don't actually
know you're right sometimes you need like a double wipe if possible like one
single wipe will come out. So this is a whole body contraption? Yeah. I've pitched baby
bidet right before? Have I talked about baby bidet? I don't think so. Okay, we'll do that
another episode. Babe day. Baby bidet. Yeah, it's just so difficult for me, I don't know.
Baby bidet is interesting, I want to hear more about this someday. But man, I honestly,
I think about that, I can't believe I don't remember this. Every time I wipe, like use
I end up throwing it everywhere, right?
Or like, I'm like whipping it around.
Not like the diaper, the wipes.
You know the pack of wipes.
- The clean wipe as it comes out.
- That makes more sense.
- You said every time I use the wipe,
I then whip it around.
(laughing)
- Uh oh.
- Perfect for your infection, Leo.
- Yes, yes, yes.
Fresh out of the package, it's hard to,
yes, I know what you mean.
- Yeah, yeah.
And I'm just like, there should be at least,
give me a paperweight or like,
let me hot glue a three pound, you know,
I don't know.
They should just have,
they should have 3M tape at the bottom
of every pack of wipes that I can just,
you know, stick to something.
It's just so insanely annoying.
- That's a great idea right there.
- Okay.
- Just to solve my immediate problem,
but then I would love like,
okay, I have a baby station, right?
It'd be nice to not have to re-use,
like they're all the same type of,
like portable packaging for wipes.
I would use this for like next to my baby station
and I would just like refill rolls.
And like, what's cool is I think this is another idea that I like the paper towel
thing where you can turn any paper towel into a Clorox disinfectant wipe.
Ah, yes.
This could be, you know, you sell different rolls.
You sell the same roll, but it could be baby wipe version.
Sorry.
I'm like full Spitball baby wipe version, uh, Clorox wipe version.
Window cleaner versions.
And fruit and food cleaner version.
Yes.
All the, yes.
So you're putting a generic paper towel like product into this thing and choosing which pod to insert to make this one
window wiping or this one is
Disinfecting or whatever. Okay. Yep
So cool, and then you are the one selling the the subscription services and stuff
Aren't you locked into your proprietary pod format?
Of course we're evil companies, right? That's right
You're gonna DRM each roll like Keurig so that you can't use any third-party pods
Unless everybody's got a Keurig, right?
Does yeah, that's a good transition does somebody want to do their full-on pitch? I've got a pretty weird one
You want me to go first? Oh, hell. Yeah. Okay
This one's a little abstract and I picked it because I don't know how prevalent. All right, let me just get into it
So Tonje have you heard of a corn maze? Do you know what a corn maze is?
It's fine if the answer is no.
No?
It's so middle America.
I think that's true.
Thank you for asking.
Yeah, I don't know if it's the language or this is something.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Corn, like the crop, eat corn.
And in the Midwest here, there's a lot of fields of corn.
And so a fun autumn activity or fall activity is they cut paths through it to make a maze
that you walk through.
And that's something that I think is very Middle America only.
I don't even know if the East and West Coast of the United States are very aware of this
thing.
Maybe they--I don't know how international this is.
And that's what the pitch is centered on.
A corn maze is a very fun and very regional thing that I think has broader appeal.
Put that aside...
Where is this going?
The lazy river is a lot of fun.
A water park where you have channels of water that flow from one end to another.
Lazy river corn mazes. So you've got a section of a water park
where water is originating on one end and
Water is terminating, being brought back into skimmers and filters and stuff at multiple dead ends and the finish.
I think that that would be a very fun addition to a water park.
I was floating around with my son in our local water park, like, aquatic center,
and we had the lazy river, and they all just go in a small circle, and it's kind of...
I don't know. It's fine to float around, but I think that it could be zhuzhed up a bit.
And then I put those two things together in my mind. Does this have legs?
Is the lazy river corn maze something that has international appeal? Could you see that in Dubai?
Probably only in Dubai. I need to clarify. Is there still corn involved in this? No. Okay
*laughter*
That's the part I was missing here. It's a lazy river maze
but
I think if you had walls that yeah, you can't see it's still a maze
You can't see where you're trying to get to. Yeah, they could go up high
What I was gonna say is is it could be sort of like a temporary
my permanent thing that could even make it rearrangeable
so that you have different maze configurations every month.
Haunted house style, I don't know.
- Like big Roman aqueduct slats come down or something
and you can rearrange and go through.
Okay, okay.
- It's almost like a ride.
- Yes.
- Like a amusement park ride.
That's kind of cool.
And you can go through it multiple times
and have different experiences every time.
- Yes, it sounds super fun.
I'm so obsessed with actual corn here.
(laughing)
- It's fun to be in a first person, a life-size maze
where you are surrounded by the maze on all sides
and you don't know where you are.
And I don't know if that is a sensation that's given
in any other context other than what we Midwesterners
call the corn maze.
It's neat to not like surrounded on all sides by walls.
I guess I took the wrong turn.
I don't know where I am.
This is kind of fun.
But also a gentle flow of water pushing you toward
from certain spots I think that could be neat. It sounds super fun and exciting
and a bit claustrophobic maybe. I think people freak out a lot in those mazes.
Yeah. That's true it's kind of hard to lifeguard. You would need somebody
patrolling along the tops of the walls, barriers. It'd be a good workout.
Speedrun. Oh, yeah, you have those super fast
Lazy rivers the not lazy lazy rivers that the water is just rapid flowing
Yeah, the rapid rivers put one in there and just going through your hedge maze. Oh hedge maze
Maybe that's the international version on the edge maze
Yeah, that's of a state where you have not well
Yes
And I guess like I'm thinking too with that like you could use rivers systems that exist today and turn them into
mazes right so you start at the top of a river and it's kind of like you know
those like a haunted like you know walk through the street kind of thing but
doesn't have to be haunted it's just like a themed river where you can change
it up and you put like I don't know pool noodles to direct people into different
areas and you create a game out of it sure so you can collect let's say little
tokens along the river or something.
There's a water park in Texas that's built along a river and there's several natural
springs around it, freshwater springs, and all of the water slides are fed from those
freshwater springs and many of them end in the river at the bottom, which is cool.
And it seems like you could like build, yeah, if you find the right landscape and spot,
you could build this into the natural formation.
Yeah.
Dude, Whitewater Rapids but a maze.
Oh man.
I still just want to flood a cornfield now and see what happens.
Tonje's like living in mountain land, right?
So she's like, "Uh, what about the cliffs?"
Right?
So it's just like a lake.
What way then?
Just take a mountain trip and you'll have this whole experience.
No, but I really like it.
And yeah, it sounds exciting.
It's a big project.
Yeah.
do you pay to go in? How much time would you spend being in there? Often it's another team.
Yeah, I have many questions around this.
The waterpark model is often admission fee and then you just go around wherever you want to go.
So that is the traditional way. But yeah.
Yeah. Do you bring your bathsuit or? Yeah.
I hope so.
Yeah.
I hope so.
You can swim to it.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that's very cool.
We're not included.
Be like a water.
So it's like a water river maze
where you can choose your own adventure
on what you're doing.
I don't like the tone you're adapting.
This is pretty expensive.
This is a pretty expensive endeavor,
unless you use natural resources,
which I think that's why
you got to use like a river.
And like it'd be cool
if you ended up in some random lake
and at that like little pond.
OK, but like there's like
Creative events that like, you know, it's like activities and stuff and then you can go off the pond back in I'm thinking this is like a
river community
Walking tour where like everybody participates and you get into this little small inland pond
You know throw darts. All right now go Bob some apples and then go back on the river
This is almost a kit that you're selling that you attach into your existing. Yeah real life
video game. Yeah
That'd be legit
All right, Scott, what do you have for us this week? Okay, I fell down a
Internet rabbit hole last night of those really really fancy
espresso machines making the most like beautiful
Espresso shot you've ever seen where it'll just be like a video if they take like the highest end beans and grind them in a
$5,000 burr grinder and put it into a ten thousand dollar espresso machine and they're tapping it like you look up the tap that they
Use on that just a piece of metal and that alone is like 800 bucks or something
It's just over the top and ridiculous. I don't even like coffee that much but when it comes out of that machine
It's like liquid gold. It's like the most beautiful
Perfect-looking espresso shot you've ever seen and it would be a crime to mix this with anything
It just looks amazing and I'm sitting there like I don't want to pay, you know
$20,000 for a shot of espresso, but I would pay a decent bit of money just to try that just once
I just want to know what that tastes like and I realize there's a lot of things
High-end premium products that I just want to try like I don't need the full packaging experience of whatnot
Like I could go in just like a spritz of really nice
cologne or perfume or like a super high-end whiskey or
Leo the audiophile like I want to put on the best pair of audio headphones ever and just listen to any song I want
For just give me one minute with that just to see what it's like
Yeah
And so I'm thinking like can we make I don't know if it's a vending machine or a brick-and-mortar store
or something where I can just go up and
try that just once where it, the machine will go and it has all the super fancy coffee equipment
and spits it out and I just get a little sip or like the most expensive bottle of whiskey and I
just get like this much just to say that I've tried it on there. Taste of luxury. This is a
very cool idea and I just have to say that we have recently got a restaurant in Oslo where you can
try a little sip of the most expensive wines.
So I love that.
Exactly.
Oh, hey.
That's your concept.
Interesting.
It's got to be profitable, too, if I
have this super expensive wine and I'm dividing it by sips.
Like, that's probably even worth more
than what I would pay for the wine on there by a decent bit.
Yeah.
Oh, I really like that.
I always go back to the vending machine method, though,
which I don't know would work as well in this case.
Tiny vials, hundreds of vials.
Yeah, a little vial, honestly.
The Sam's Clubs and Costco's of the world make money by selling in bulk and you want
to make money by making the smallest possible.
Smallest amount possible.
This is not cheaper.
Yeah.
Maybe it wouldn't work so well with the coffee because it needs to be fresh but with other
things, liquid, you can have this subscription model.
Yeah.
Just give the smallest amount.
those monthly boxes of candy from Japan or the outdoorsy box or whatever this
could be your like luxury box of the month where you get just a sliver of the
fanciest chocolate and just a little bit of that yeah like ten or so selections
that you're breaking up and mailing out that's cool
yeah I'm the gold burger and yes gold flake the single gold flake this is a
a great method too, I think for people that would never maybe try or buy that
bottle of wine to maybe even consider it.
Like now when they try it, they're like, oh, you know what?
Maybe for that one special occasion, I'll drop the $2.50 on a bottle of
wine or fancy whiskey, right?
And I tried it once, now I'm hooked.
And I think this is like a good model for like...
It's where the Costco samplers at Leo's head gets you.
It could be that this is something that the purveyors of these expensive wines
actually want to partner with you on.
Find new customers.
Mm-hmm.
Grow their customer base.
Opposite will happen to another.
I think about it like, wow, this thousand dollar bottle of whiskey takes it
exactly like this $70 one over here.
Okay.
That's true.
A lot of the luxury industry is based around the experience and the brand and the like.
Nope.
We're killing the whole experience on there.
I want that little vial.
- You're at a vetting machine now.
- I would honestly be even more curious at that point.
He's like, okay, if this is what the best
of the best tastes like and all I need to do
is find what it most closely tastes like to me,
then I'll be happy.
- Yeah.
- What a great way to vet product.
Oh, if this company doesn't think they're as good
as the bottom shelf stuff, right?
They won't partner with you.
Good, don't let 'em.
You know, and then that's kind of like a cool vetting system.
You become like the purveyor and the true connoisseur
things like in that way.
So I don't know.
You always hear those stories about how the blind wine
tasting, the $40 bottle of wine always wins or whatever, right?
It's kind of like that.
I will say there's something to your like cool machines thing,
Scott.
The internet has kind of taken away the ability to like--
like the retail brick and mortar experience,
where you can actually see the machine work, see, all right,
this $800 coffee grinder, is it actually like,
can I look at the beans when it's like,
and feel it, there's something,
like why clothes, like buying clothes online
is still really difficult and maybe not as popular
as still today, I feel like there's something lost there.
So you could create, I don't know,
a brick and mortar kind of experience
or some version of that that shares,
like does a rotation, like an exhibit of,
here's your coffee, espresso,
We're going to do a coffee and espresso section.
Come on by.
What every month it changes.
So now you can try out all these fancy coffee machines.
So before you buy it online, come to our spot, right.
And try those out.
You can do that for bread makers for, uh, I don't know all the William and
Sonoma, like fancy cooking stuff.
Like look at this pan.
It's $400.
You want to know why me too?
So come on, come on.
Bye to our brick and mortar shop.
We don't know either.
Try to fry an egg on this thing, right?
And see if it's actually better than the one that,
you know, you could get at the dollar store
across the street, right?
So it'd be like a rotational trying thing.
And none of that product, hopefully, you have to pay for.
It would just be sponsored by those organizations
so that more people get their hands on the product
before they maybe buy it online direct.
You get a cut as a commission.
I think that's how, I mean, that would be,
I'd be all about that.
It's kind of like an experience.
Like every month I'm always going to that store
to try out the monthly cool expensive products thing
that they're always--
If Consumer Reports had a retail location, it would be this.
Yes.
Car seats, you know, vacuums.
Car seats.
It's car seat month down at the store.
You gotta see them.
But like vacuums, you know what?
That'd be fun.
It's like there's 500 of them online.
Like, all right, why do I like--
it's hard to tell.
I don't know, I just bought a $200 vacuum and it's like,
why would I buy the $400 one ever again?
'Cause it was just, I wish I had tried all of them.
But anyways, I love it, Scott.
- It's coming from a deeply personal place, yes.
- I'm getting it.
- I get it.
I was like, all right, I hear you, Earl.
This all stems, I just wanna try that golden coffee.
I just wanna try that shot.
I wanna put that whole setup in a glass box,
have a machine or a person make it for me,
take one sip and it'll be good forever.
So I wanna try my $400 vacuum once.
You want to have the fancy espresso machine right next
to the dollar store espresso, right?
And have that experience.
Yeah.
Side by side.
Can you actually go and buy that espresso somewhere?
Nope, not unless I want to pay an obscene amount of money
for all that fancy equipment.
Does that $800 tap actually make a difference of the taste?
I really doubt it, but I want to find out.
[LAUGHTER]
Oh yeah.
I want this one.
I got a follow up, I think, to that, Scott.
Oh yeah?
Oh yeah.
All right, Russell, what do you got?
All right, so this is a little bit of a play
on what you're going at, Scott.
You know those Life Pro Tip videos?
Videos?
No?
I know the subreddit.
Short form videos.
So I've recently come across a really cool video
where it taught me how to fold laundry better.
And then I watch another video, and it'll teach me
how to clean my windows faster,
how to do X, Y, Z faster and better, right?
- Okay.
- The thing is, the only way for me to learn about
how to do, let's say, my chores or anything
that I wanna do around the house better
is to hopefully have the algorithms
hit me with this information, right?
What my idea is, kind of going back to,
is I'm also trying to get better at my coffee pour-overs,
and then what I end up doing is watching ad videos
about here's my cool coffee for 10 minutes,
and then I finally get to the part where they tell me how to make my pour over, and it's
not even a great video.
So this would just be...
It's like the recipe blogs, but yeah.
Yes, but for things that I actually want to get better at.
And so my idea is simply getting better at stuff videos or tying in chores or my daily
activities to videos and get fed life pro tips to make me better at what I'm already
doing.
Whether that's getting better at espresso making, coffee making, vacuuming my house without like...
I have been painting. I got a new... I recently moved and I've been painting
every single room in this house and after like the third room I'm like,
"I don't think I'm painting right." And I fell down a rabbit hole.
Hours of just watching these professionals and how they're painting trim and things properly.
I'm like, "What have I been doing with my life? I've been doing it wrong for years and just never
I love this Russell. I would absolutely use that.
Now you're right, that applies to probably so many things
in my life that a professional can just do this way better
'cause they've learned all these techniques.
I wanna learn them for all the little mundane things
I just never realized.
- But it's so hard to sift through all those videos.
You end up spending two and a half hours.
- Oh, there was a lot.
It took me hours to finally find that one guy
that's like, oh yeah, this makes sense.
And he's not, you know, you're right.
It's like six hours worth of videos
and I just needed this one 15 to 30 second part of it.
- And what's gonna happen, Scott,
is I'm gonna ask you five months from now,
hey, can you send me those videos?
And you're gonna spend 30 to 45 minutes
trying to find those two minute clips.
- Exactly, I had no idea which one it was
that it ended up being.
- But you remember it in your mind, right?
It's like, yeah, it'd be curating all that.
- Yeah, but that is genius if you can actually
find that way to target exactly what you need
when you need it.
- Life bro tips videos, but good.
Yeah. So the recipes pages that start with paragraphs and paragraphs of filler and my
grandma loved this recipes and all that stuff and then get to the recipe were born out of
SEO, right? The people were trying to get to the top of search results and gaming the
algorithms. What is the incentive for these people who are currently making the videos
to make them so bad? Why is it so bad today? I don't understand what market force is driving
these people to make 90-minute bad videos about painting to give you the
two-minute tip? That's a great question. Is it that YouTube optimizes for length
of video or something or what is it? Why are they... this is a world that I don't
know very well the whole Life Tips video and I don't understand why they're bad
now. I love sailing and there is no good sailing tutorials out there on it. It's
always just ran... you have two options. You either have old guys who are
very good sailors but have no idea how to use technology or you have people
that don't know what they're talking about and they'll make like a four-hour
video like what you're saying where they're explaining all these random
things that you just don't care about or aren't applicable to you and there's no
in-between on there so I don't know if that is an algorithm thing or if it's
just just the information is just hidden out there somewhere. Experts in their
field and good communicators don't overlap. They never talk to each other.
Somebody never asked that you got to pick one.
I don't--
I think we'd have to go through all these,
like create, literally create all the content, maybe.
Simplify the content.
Because I guess that hour long video, the start of the video
might be helpful for you at the beginning of your project.
And in the middle, it may not be--
half the stuff isn't relevant until it's relevant.
If you knew half of it already, 30 minutes of the hour
is a waste.
This is like, like masterclass, masterclass shorts.
It's an offshoot.
- Masterclass shorts, exactly.
Where it's clean cut and beautiful and makes sense,
but not a villain.
- It's not me, a Michelin star chef.
It's me, a guy who paints houses.
And I'm gonna show you what you're doing wrong.
- Yeah, micro learning.
- Micro learning.
- Micro, yes.
For the public.
Yeah, just short, just one team.
Two minutes.
Yeah.
Is that a thing?
That sounds like a thing.
TED Talk, Lightning Talk, but only about actual practical
things.
Lightning Talks are a presentation format
where you have five minutes.
And it's kind of a rapid fire style, right?
So that, but TED Talks about practical life things.
I like that.
Have you guys ever seen a retail worker
who works at Target or Kohl's or--
Folding shirts.
Folding clothes?
Yes.
- They have perfected the craft, right?
And they do it nonstop and it's perfect.
And then here I am folding my laundry
and the sleeves are popping off.
And I'm like, I've been doing this for how long
and I'm a grown ass man.
Like I should know how to do this.
And yet I still am like in awe of how these people
are just like talking to their friends
and looking at their phone while folding a shirt,
like hundreds of shirts, you know?
But they're masters of their craft.
And it's like, why?
But that thing is applied in so many situations.
If I could watch a professional IKEA person for maybe 30 minutes do 30 different pieces
of furniture, and you realize, "Oh, they bought that drill," or like, I don't know.
I just want to know the tips.
I want to get faster.
>> What if it was, I guess, maybe it exists, but an AI that actually could figure out which
voice is the best for this exact problem.
So maybe they could even like cut out that exact part from existing shows and videos.
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
- That'd actually be awesome.
- Yeah.
- You ever search for like,
how to replace spark plug on specific model of car
and then their search results from Google has,
you need to go to minute seven of this YouTube video.
It'll sometimes highlight the exact moment
in the video that you are asking about.
That's what we want to build,
but for anything more generic stuff.
- I wanna watch five of those three minute clips.
That's really what it is.
I think it's what, I can't trust one person,
so I gotta watch five of them.
- Exactly.
- And then I finally get, okay, these three people,
there's some sense of that, right?
- Watch 10 YouTube videos and take the average.
- That's it.
That's what happens.
- It's true, yeah.
I think we've all had that experience, yeah.
- It's like talking to your five friends
about something that you wanna do,
and then certain ones you trust more than others,
and then you're like,
but I really like that crazy person's idea,
so I'm gonna mix that with my smart friend's idea, right?
- Right.
All right, Tonje, what do you got for us?
Oh, yes.
What I got.
Okay.
So this is not my idea.
It's from a community that I recently got to know very well.
You probably know them better because this is a bigger thing in the United States than
in Norway, definitely by far. So the idea is electronic cosplay wings that can fold and unfold
and they can flap at the same time. And it's not like you buy these exact fairy wings or anything.
Det er bare systemet som kan gjøre disse tingene.
Du kan kjappe dem som du vil.
Du kan ha ulike fabriker.
Du kan være en djævel, en engel eller en børrefløy.
Det er noe som er på markedet,
but they are quite huge. They're made out of steel and when cosplayers go to their cons,
then they need something easy and light to bring with them. So yeah, that's the one I wanted to bring here.
Cosplay is becoming a recurring theme on our show. This is fun.
Yeah.
Okay. Wings.
I really like the idea of like, it's just like a skeleton of a wing on there and you can put in,
Like if you were to get this product to be like, okay
Your wing needs to be made of like four parts per wing on here. Here's the template for each part
It has whatever you make has to fit into this size
And you cut whatever fabric or things on there to start it smaller smaller smaller
And then they'll all be able to fold up into each other because they all fit inside that template
Exactly
Yeah, and this is huge. So I worked in this
cosplay community or company for a little while.
And yeah, this is something that everyone wants.
Is that right? OK.
Yes. Fascinating.
So why hasn't it been made already?
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
So honestly, this would be really cool for like even mascots.
You know what I mean?
I mean, there's a ton of like college, high school mascots that probably would love a
set of wings to throw on there like these hornets, the, you know, sure, whatever the
bats are, what do we have here?
There's all these different animals that we use as mascots that could totally, there's
a huge market out even outside of cosplay too, right?
So yes, in theater shows and TV shows.
And for Halloween, imagine you just enter the Halloween party
and you just flap your wings.
[LAUGHTER]
That'd be so cool.
They're flappable.
So how do you control it?
Are you just like moving your shoulders to flap it?
How does that work?
No, because that already exists.
So this needs to be connected to Arduino.
Of course.
It's got to be smart.
Bluetooth.
Yes.
I was thinking right in the brain.
You can steer the speed and maybe they move after your walking move.
But yeah, it needs to be electronical.
And they have, yeah, so a butterfly probably also move very different than what a devil
or an angel moves.
Yeah.
Some preset, you know, movements, right?
Yes.
- Three settings, four or six settings,
and you move between the two.
And you're saying most of them are just made of,
they're super heavy, made of steel, it sounds like.
There could be a backpack pod version,
and you have different, like tent poles.
I think of, you know the tent camping poles?
They're really sturdy, but also really flexible
at the same time, and really light.
I wonder if you could, like, your base is like steel,
and then you attach different tent pole types of things
to make your different wings.
- Is that what they're made out of?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Yeah, that would be...
- That would work really well.
- Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, 'cause this is, I think it's proper heavy.
I've never like actually touched one, but...
(laughs)
Yeah, so in this company called Koskir,
which I was working in for a tiny bit,
they made this to entail some moving ears.
(laughs)
- Oh, wow.
Yes, so that kind of technology already exists. So just need someone who can actually figure out
how to make the wing. Yeah, how to make the wing technology.
Missing piece. It sounds like they got ears tail like we just got to get the wings, right?
Yes. Only thing missing.
My next question was going to be you sort of glossed over I've been working a little bit
here and there with the cosplay community. I would love to know more about that. Yeah,
yeah. How did you so is this you worked with the company? Or you also have been like hearing from
customers to? Yes. So yeah, I was working there for just a few months. And then in somebody make
it we we have produced a couple of products already. So yeah, we just started up and it's
brand new and the platform is not perfect. So if you visit it, just be aware it's still in beta.
But the first products we have produced is a Star Trek prop and a Star Wars prop. So a
Pickard phaser and a blaster rifle. Yeah. So I think this kind of buying props and gears
is happening a lot within this community and of course, yeah, fans in general.
So yeah, and those products are in many ways simple to make as well.
So you can create a print a lot of them, or you can sue of course your costumes.
Yeah, sorry, I think I'm talking.
Oh, that's interesting.
Wings, ears, tails.
I assume that there's other things, too,
that this business could get into, right?
Extra arms or something.
Yeah, so we have actually got a pilot customer now
that is a sci-fi TV series.
So it's set in 2015.
For this show, you have to reimagine the whole world,
because, of course, 15 years, that's
not a very long time in the future, but at the same time, we know how fast the development
of the, of the world is going and the technology and how does the world look 15 years from
now.
Oh, I like that.
So, so here is like a good example and we're very excited to see if we can create like
props and costumes and gear from somebody make it for this TV show and then see if other
fans after the show has been released will copy it.
And then we already have the design and we can license it out to those who want to create
the same props and gears and costumes.
It's like crowd building, like crowdfunding, but building instead of money.
Yes.
With the proper licensing. Yeah
You could probably build a whole
Wiki peer-to-peer like instruction database to around this right? So like I
Took this kit and turned it into monarch butterfly wings
But here's what you should do and here's some stuff to avoid and here's the best way that I found to attach the various fabrics
To the mount points and stuff kind of make that community feel because that's so important in the cosplay world, right?
to have the sharing of ideas. Exactly. And yeah, collaborate about how it's gonna look and how
it's gonna work. Yeah, you need a lot of input in this more complicated processes. But that's
very cool. Yeah. So cool. Have you cosplayed anything? Never. Have you? Like, is that like,
I feel like this is more and more people I know have cosplayed before.
Have you?
Oh me?
I have not.
So have you ever went to a Halloween party and got dressed up?
Yeah.
And have you ever got dressed up like someone like an icon like a real character or a fake
character imaginary character?
That's true.
I guess I have cosplayed before.
Yeah
Yeah, but my out my
My wardrobe and costume is usually based around something from Goodwill or Salvation Army or secondhand clothes stores and not
Very inventive so this would definitely be an easier way to level up
Yeah with the wings
Cosplay is universal. Holy cow. I just realized if people celebrate Halloween
I mean like why not? Yeah listener if you're sitting there judging how nerdy cosplay is
What are you gonna be for Halloween this year for the party?
Yeah, it's fun and everyone loves or maybe not everyone but a lot of people love to get dressed up
So it's everyone. I think it's relevant for everyone and then I think cosplay community. Of course, they take it
some levels up
Well, dear listener, if you are listening to us while walking through the halls of that convention hall with us in your ear, thank you very much for listening.
And we hope you enjoyed yourself. And oh my gosh, thank you so much, Tonje, for joining us. This was so fun.
Thank you so much. It was really fun to make you.
So what if listeners were more interested in your website, where do they go? What do they need to know? If they have their own idea, what do they need?
Yes. So go to somebodymakeit.com and try putting out your idea or sign up as a maker and then
you need to go through this verified process to show that you can actually make things.
But yeah, it's early days, but try it out and sign up.
Listeners, you're probably either somebody who has a lot of ideas but doesn't know how to make
stuff or you're somebody who's a maker who wants that killer idea to get out into the marketplace
or maybe you're both but either way this sounds like an awesome matchmaking service.
So take your idea go to somebodymakeit.com or email it to us also at podcast@spitball.show.
We would love to hear from you. Our website is spitball.show. There you can find links to our
YouTube channel, social media. We'd love to hear from you, again, podcast@spitball.show. Comments,
feedback, ideas about the show and that's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse such as
is Mastodon, we are a podcast@spitball.show, or on bluesky @Spitball.Show. Our subreddit
is r/SpitballShow. Our intro/outro music is Swingers by Bonkers Beat Club. Please, if
you wouldn't mind, that one friend who has really weird ideas about the next attraction
at their local water park that should be added, send them a link to the show. We'd love to
have them as a listener. And please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever
it is that you listen to us on, that is the best way for people to find out about the
show. New episodes coming out in two weeks. We will see you then.