I'm Scott, I'm Russell, and I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three enthusiastic entrepreneurs 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.
this week, Russell, I believe you brought our guest.
- Yes, we have Nick Hayhoe here,
good friend of the pod, also worked with Scottie.
Nick was literally my first boss, guys.
Like, fresh out of school, this is my boss right here.
So I'm a little intimidated on this.
But I brought him in because I wanted Scott
to feel intimidated.
But more importantly, no, Nick's a product designer,
not in the digital sense, but in the physical sense.
and he's just like an ideas guy at heart one way or another.
So welcome, Nick.
- Welcome.
- Thank you, thank you.
I'm happy to be here.
And I will say, Scott, I didn't love all my interns,
but you were right at the top, buddy.
- Aw.
- Intern Scott.
- I was the only intern he had.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- I was like the intern guy at Disher.
Like I got, I just had to, you know,
I was the one managing that.
- Intern wrangler, I remember this.
- Bottom of the totem pole above interns, got it.
Actually, the first year I worked there, the other engineers thought I was an intern, but
I was like, "Oh, no, I graduated."
All right.
Ooh.
You got to work your way up.
Yep.
Well, sometimes when we get warmed up here on the show, we will have a celebrity guest
pitch hop on and give us their ideas.
So this week we've got Louis Black, famous comedian from The Daily Show and all kinds
of other stuff too.
So let's listen to what this ranting lunatic has to say.
Hello there.
Scott, Russell, and Leo, if those are your real names,
and you really have a podcast called Spitball,
and I'm talking to you from my perch here in New York City,
and you can hear in the background the sound of sirens.
I'll try to be straight about this, okie doke.
Look, you know, the first thing that came to mind, really,
'cause I don't really sit around and think of these things,
or if I do, I'm usually half in the bag.
And I go, boy, that would be a good idea.
And then we talk about it for five minutes.
I don't write it down.
And then of course, forget about it
because between my age and the alcohol,
who remembers anything?
So look.
- He's perfect for this.
- You should be able to take your fantasy football team
and actually play against the fantasy football team
that you're playing against,
as opposed to this kind of watching all the games,
that you watch your own game on your phone, okay,
that you then throw to the TV, and that's what you watch.
And why hasn't somebody come up with that?
And isn't it possible?
Isn't it more than possible?
I think so.
I don't know why nobody's thought of it.
I don't know where my money is.
I don't know when it'll be coming in.
But if you guys get checks and you pull it off,
let me know.
Scott, Russell, and Leo, all the best.
So--
Wow.
[LAUGHTER]
Oh, man.
The fantasy football idea at the beginning.
Yeah.
Tell me more about how you've interpreted this fantasy
football idea.
I mean, I pictured it.
You have your fantasy team.
But instead of watching all the football games
that the real people play, it puts all of your players
onto one fake team, maybe digitally,
using like Madden or something.
Yes.
And you play against your opponent.
My son is in high school.
He loves fantasy football.
does it with all of his friends they would eat that up. Wait just doing that
with Madden's a really like you guys ever watch World's Deadliest Warrior way
back when on Spike TV? No. It's like I just want a ninja to fight a pirate
let's just see what happens. Just take a Madden game put AI players for both
stack up your teams and just let it run and then place bets on that. This could be a
cool twitch idea like what if you got like 64 of your paying community members
who are in your Discord on Twitch,
and they all do a fantasy football draft,
maybe you allow like duplicates or something,
and then you stream the tournament bracket
and the playoffs between the people who paid to be in it,
you know, you're like a commentator
and you can invite your community up
to like talk about their strategy
and the big trade that happened and stuff.
You could make like a season out of it.
And because it's happening simulated,
it doesn't even have to happen during the on-season.
It can be like any time.
You want your football fix in May?
What if you had it actually pulling live data from the games that happened?
So it's actually playing out what the real players are doing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In their actual real life performance as well.
The games don't happen in real time though.
There's like a staggered time.
Right.
It'd have to be like on Tuesday.
You could rewatch the whole game.
This is like regular fantasy football, but enhanced with a visual.
That's fun.
They could make it so cool too.
like the best game you ever watched,
like it could be super close, you know?
'Cause it's just all made up points.
So it could actually be amazing games to watch too, right?
- What was the equivalent,
wasn't there a NBA jam or NHL hits, but for NFL?
It was like NFL Street or something.
- NFL Blitz.
- Was it NFL Blitz?
- Oh yeah.
- NFL Blitz on N64 when I was in high school.
- So it's fantasy football, but you can dial up the,
they got jet packs and spring boots
Like really make it like goofy fun.
That'd be cool.
(laughs)
- That's yeah, that's interesting.
It'd just be fun to play those, like watch the sim,
bet on that, compare like how the game in real life
played out versus how the sim did.
- And it would just be a neat thing,
like in your fantasy app to subscribe the premium tier
or whatever, and then you and your friends
can like gather around it every week
and watch the goofy, like highlight reel of the, you know,
the games that actually happened or whatever, you know?
- Yeah, you could actually,
like your MVP could just be some short clips,
like just some plays, some highlights,
like a highlight reel.
It doesn't have to be a whole game.
It could just show like your receiver
going against their defense,
even though they didn't actually play,
they get a touchdown and burn them.
- You got like a shot of your quarterbacks close up
throwing it and then cut to three days later
when your receiver caught it and stuff.
That'd be cool.
- Bowling energy.
Is that like when you're in the wings?
[laughter]
Strike.
[laughter]
Spare!
[laughter]
Thanks, Jack.
Or is it Black?
Is it Lewis?
[laughter]
Lewis.
Mr. Black.
[laughter]
Mr. Lewis.
[laughter]
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Lewis, sir.
[laughter]
Well, I hope you tweet us or ex us or whatever.
[laughter]
Ex us.
Yeah.
All right, who's up first this week?
I can go.
Okay.
Hell yeah, Leo.
You never get to go first.
That's not true.
All right.
Think about the magic that was the jukebox at the bar.
You had your, like, everyone enjoying the pick that somebody had chosen or whatever.
Some of that kinda sorta exists.
There's some like digital versions of jukeboxes.
They kinda suck with the apps that you might have to download or whatever.
I would love to see, either for public spaces like restaurants, bars, whatever, or even
for like an office, a communal DJing jukebox system where everyone who is opting to participate
can choose maybe just genre or vibe or station or whatever, maybe not even necessarily playlist
management for the speakers that the whole office is enjoying or the whole restaurant,
coffee shop, whatever.
I think it'd be neat if we could say, you know what, the energy is really dragging in
here I'm gonna go in and like vote for pump up jams or vice versa and I was
thinking about this because 10 years ago or so geez closer to 15 years ago now
there was a website where it was called turntable.fm somebody's trying to
revive it but basically you would make your playlist other people in a virtual
room would make their playlists and then it just kind of took turns back and
forth playing each other's choices I don't have time to work and do like a
micromanagement of my playlist all day but I totally would hop into a room in
one tab and just say like, "I want chill coffee shop 90s alternative this morning" or "I want
high energy whatever this afternoon at this party that I'm gonna be at with 10 friends."
And it looks like there's kinda sorta things that do this a little bit.
You got your Spotify group DJ thing, but there's nothing that's just vibes-based, generic,
doesn't take a lot of management.
So that's the pitch, some sort of communal office space jukebox DJ system.
I love that.
Dude, when somebody hands you the aux or whatever, it's always tough, right?
Because you don't know what the room is.
So much pressure.
Handmetheaux.com.
Hand us the aux, comrade.
We're doing this together.
Comrade's in the URL, yep.
Yeah.
Hand ustheauxcomrade.biz.
My cool new service.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I worked at a small startup for just under a year, and we had a couple guys that were
really passionate about the music, but we were always like, you know, yelling out
recommendations and stuff. It'd be much easier to just like drag and drop on an
app the next song I want in the queue or a genre shift or something like that.
Most people have curated playlists in whatever service they use. At the very
least, like, pull that in, right? Just say like, shuffle this in with whatever
else other people are bringing to the table and find the common ground between
them love you know yeah that's my dentist like oh god they just they have
no idea what's going on musically and you're just sitting there with your
mouth wide open and like Frank Sinatra is playing and then it switches to like
Tupac and it is very jarring and what an intramural should be like I just want an
app that lets me pick the music while I'm getting my teeth drilled because I
I don't wanna deal, even think about it.
- They could use this.
- Yeah.
- And each room could have its own.
- That would be perfect for it.
- Yeah.
So as an example of a business using it for its customers.
- Yup.
- Duct tape a Bluetooth speaker to the ceiling, boom.
Got yourself an MVP.
- Double down on that, yup.
I think I like your playlist idea, Leo.
Or like the like songs in Spotify.
I take all my like songs, but then I walk in the room
and it's genre vibe based, right?
So like it's the morning.
All right, it picks my favorite songs,
matches it with my friend's favorite songs.
'Cause like Spotify does this now where you can like do,
like, I don't know, you can merge playlists together, right?
And they kind of have similarities,
but you know, you could take songs that everybody likes,
songs that some people like,
and then make, attach it to like a genre,
and then you can vote for genres.
And if you want like EDM by 10 o'clock,
you know, or whatever,
you can have the playlist slowly shift towards EDM.
So it starts off as like Frank Sinatra, Michael Buble.
Sweet child of mine.
Dot, dot, dot.
Clock at the end.
Then EDM just--
Daft Punk's in the middle somewhere.
There you go.
Like you get the lead--
What's the halfway point between EDM and--
There's probably a way to get there,
because you kind of want to get more energy over the day
after everybody's had their coffee too or something.
There's something about time of day and people in the room.
I love the find the communal mashup playlist between people thing because then you might
have those moments where you're like, "Oh my gosh, you like X too?
I do too.
That's really cool."
You have that moment, right?
I didn't know that about you.
You're also into that indie band that nobody's heard of.
Yeah.
If you take everybody's most listened to songs in the last few weeks too, you could probably
find a song that would just get everybody in the room to jump up.
no matter what time of day.
Do you know what I mean?
- Productivity plummets.
(laughing)
- This is a song that's on everyone's playlist in this room.
I guess it would just, Taylor Swift,
it's just Taylor Swift comes on.
It's just Taylor Swift all the time, right?
- In high school, we had a CD that we had always listened to
to warm up for before football games in the locker room.
And when it was time to go out to the field,
my coach would give me the signal and I would go and skip
and we'd listen to the same song as the last song
so that we are all like, that was the cue to like,
okay, get in the mental state.
We're going, you know, we're going outside now.
And you could do that like before a meeting
or end of the day or something.
It could know that you have a meeting coming
and play like the meeting hype up song.
- Oh, heck yeah.
- So that everyone in the office was just ready.
- Just built in your Google calendar.
- Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
- That actually, yeah, it's like some,
- What is it Pavlov stuff, right?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Actually at this co-working space I worked at,
they would always play Friday at like Rebecca Black's Friday
at four o'clock every Friday.
- Sure.
- Oh yeah, dude.
We play that every morning on Fridays
before we take the kids to school.
That is our Friday hype up song.
(laughing)
- Did somebody have to remember to do that manually, Russell?
- I think it's on a playlist.
It's like some trigger.
This guy's a coder.
Yeah, he figured it out.
Did you ever play it on a Tuesday just to mess with people
and see the reaction?
That would be--
Thursday, oh, I was so excited.
I like the idea of walking into a coffee shop or whatever
and just kind of influencing it a little bit.
And the things that we're listening to
is the amalgamation of the 30 people
who are hanging out here this morning.
That is cool.
Isn't that a fun idea?
Like, this group of people, this roughly represents them.
That's neat.
And you could, like, as an employee,
you could watch that change over time and stuff.
This is more of a grunge crowd
than I would have really realized, you know, or whatever.
- Yeah.
- Oh, the lacrosse team just walked in, you know.
(laughing)
- A lot of nickel back here.
- More Rebecca Black again.
(laughing)
- Every time Russell comes in, Rebecca Black plays.
(laughing)
- He listens to it so much, yeah, the whole time.
(laughing)
His weightings and balances are all screwed up.
The trouble with us dads is that you might get a little bit of
cocoa melon or something mixed in there.
Oh yeah, some K-pop demon under.
A lot of blue.
A lot of bluey.
All righty, Scott.
You're up.
What you got for us this week?
All right.
I'm just going to start with the title on this one
and we're going to go from there.
All right.
OK.
Thingiverse for ants.
Hear me out.
Whoa, OK.
When's the last time you guys saw an ant farm?
It's been generations at this point, right?
I just have not thought about them at all.
And I was trying to explain what it was
to my seven-year-old nephew this peak weekend.
He's like, "What are you talking about?"
And so I just Googled it.
Maybe I'll get him an ant farm.
And I Google it.
They are the exact same as they've been 20 years ago,
30 years ago, 40.
It's two pieces of plexiglass, some dirt in the middle,
and then you order on this sketchy '90s website
to send you a thing of ants in a tube.
And that's it.
We all have 3D printers now.
We have a whole new world.
I want to create a modular system
that you could build a badass ant farm thing
that you can have the different,
like the desert or the jungle or the moon base theme.
And then you have a website
with a recurring revenue stream
where all you're selling is ants, ant food,
and maybe some pre-built plexiglass things
that'll fit into this thing.
And then a huge community of just,
hey, I built this thing for this guy
that you can print and put this on
and this thing and this thing.
And that's the entire idea.
I just wanna build an ant farm and I wanna print it
and not have to think of all the different guys for it.
- Like-- - That's amazing.
- Like hamster habit trails and stuff.
- I thought this is hamsters at first
and maybe like sea monkeys
and I'm like, we're gonna stick with ants on here.
- Yeah. - Mm-hmm.
But yes, exactly.
- Yeah, that's sweet.
Like you can, the parts you print
could be like the connections or accessories or the theme
but then you can sell different shapes of the Plexiglas
so that you have the clear material.
- You sell the acrylic that'll fit into this type of--
- Little tunnels or, you know.
- Your starter kits and stuff.
- Some clever person is gonna think of a cool way,
a cool shaped piece of glass, Plexiglas or whatever
that you can see even more inside of the anthove arm
versus just the two side thing
so you could have it more three dimensional or something.
- Sure.
- But still be able to peep into it.
- Yeah, I love that.
- Honestly, this would get too cruel at some point,
like you could have two different ant farms and they meet in the middle of a big like printed
coliseum or something and you put like a single cube of sugar in the middle and they have to
fight for it. When the kids leave the home you just have the coliseum for the empty nesters right?
Exactly. That's so cool. I love that. I love bringing analog classics into you know mostly
an era where kids are mostly entertained by digital stuff you know that's a that's a great
like hybrid because you have technology you have the 3d printing you have
customization but you have ants get them in the stem early man if I if I had a
3d printer as a kid and I still had hamsters like I would have so much crap
for them to do mush mush man teachers would love this every classroom in every
school would have one of those to like just be no-brainer why don't they do it
I don't know this seems like really low-hanging fruit right now
Yeah, all I need to do is find a site to sell ants and post it on reddit until we get some cool ideas
And dude I have ants in my backyard there. We go. You're our supplier. We're just gonna
It came in a Dixie cup I
Think one of those things that people joke about having the ability to buy on Amazon is a bunch of ants
I don't even know if we need to like invent that you can buy ants on Amazon. I think so live
ants yeah, man
25 live red harvester and eight bucks
For you guys, I'll send them to you right in the mail right now
Yeah, I don't know if it comes with the Queen though when I don't know if I multiply when I googled it
The very first thing that came up was by live ants dot
Com or dot org or something and it looked like you know
It's again out of the 90s just an awful website in every sense
Wonder if you could like you know ants follow a pheromone trail. Yes
Yeah, I wonder if you could work into it into like a different type of PLA that has an embedded
Pheromones or different chemicals that cause different behaviors like catnip for ants like a single trail of it through Oh full maze
I'm gonna build a labyrinth for them. That's cool
Yeah, or even little accessories that haven't that they've tried to move through the to get to the place
I don't know you'd have to do some research on different puzzles and psychology
Pheromone filament, can you imagine?
Ferment ferment that's what you sell like it's like like a string. It's like a single strand, you know
Something super it's oh, it's it's super expensive 30 bucks for you know
a third of a kilogram or less than that, right? Or like you have little food balls in the middle of
the like you can print little toys for them like dog toy style. Print it out of sugar.
It's like those dog toys where the treat is inside and it's really hard to get to.
You could 3D print like a little thing with tiny holes in it that you put as it's printing you have
to set a grain of sugar or something in it and it prints around it and you have to watch them like
try to crack it open that's fun could they because isn't some filament made of
like corn could they eat the filament pla is but i don't know if it's edible
if it's ant i don't think humans can eat it
maybe ants won't be i don't think i don't think they say it's plant-based
but we should check this first because i don't
want them to come back the next day and then all that's left is plexiglass and
no ants and everything oh yeah
A bunch of blue ants floating around just-
They need so much-
Mutant.
Yeah.
Size of your thumb.
What the hell?
Hungry for plastic.
They chew through the wall.
They're all over your living room.
Oh man.
Yeah, what do they call that?
Like planned obsolescence or something?
Where you design in failure modes with the replacement parts
as part of your business model.
Gotta buy new plexiglass.
Guaranteed not to be eaten for at least six months.
I love the idea of ants, ants challenges, maybe not Coliseum, but like the maze.
Right?
Obstacle course.
Yeah.
Obstacle course.
Right?
Like that would be so just like different.
And then that's where the community really thrives.
Like, oh yeah, we have like a trail.
It's like a Grubergstein or whatever.
Rube Goldberg.
That's Rube Goldberg machines for ants.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You've seen the pictures in National Geographic of them like making a bridge by just holding on to each other and stuff
I want that in my closet
To do that. Yeah, probably print some cool
I keep thinking about the food thing
Like what could you make out of food for them?
but maybe make a mold of something like a sandcastle mold that you could put together and
Something in it. That will be a cool shape out of sugar or even sand hell
I just put a sandcastle in the middle. Yeah, regular ant farms are just sand
So maybe you somehow arrange it so that they end up placing the sand in a way
That's a novel like shape or whatever, you know, and you're like look they made a little
Heart or something. Yeah, I don't know an emoji for those kiddos
How do we make it hip and trendy with the alphas
Let's make it emoji kids love those things if Scott was 20 years older this would be exactly what you'd be spit-balling right now
(saxophone music)
- All right, Russell, what do you got this week?
- Okay, so I have a bunch of board games, right?
And sometimes I get boring and old,
I don't wanna play it the same way.
And you then find out, like, I got kinda lost
in some board game modifications or something like that.
Like you can do, not modifications,
but different ways to play the same game, right?
- Sure.
I went to the there's a board game shop near our place and I'm thinking between
losing board game pieces now that I have kids between getting bored with the same
board games what if a board game shop had a setup that I would sell them it's
a 3d printer and a bunch of little boxes and like a paper printer to sell
modifications to the board games they sell.
So, like booster packs,
hey you lost a piece, just come into my shop,
I'll print you another sorry piece
or a bunch of dice for all I care, right?
It's just part of the package.
It's like, and you can have a subscription
and all that stuff, right?
So basically, it's a 3D printer with a community
with this like software package that, you know,
if you're a board game shop owner
or a person that happens to own a lot of board games,
you can print and access all these different mods
or changes or whatever, right?
So that's it.
It's basically like your favorite board games with a twist.
And now you can play fricking, what is some old,
like Uno with, I don't know, with dice, right?
Or something crazy like that, right?
Here's the board game Uno, right?
We can print you, like if the place has a printer,
we can give you a piece of paper or some cardboard.
You stick it on that old Amazon box
and now you have board game Uno, right?
And people can submit their own.
It turns into like this community gathering
and using the 3D printer and this board game shop
as that means to do that, right?
That's the concept. - That's sweet.
- Yeah.
- I love the idea of going to print like 20 draw fours
that I sneak into the game as we're playing Uno,
just to like ruin the person's life who's next to me.
Dude, that thing is, that is such a cool idea.
- There is a chaos mode in Uno.
I don't know if you've gone to the Uno section
of your local target or whatever,
but there's like 30 different variants now.
It's ridiculous.
There's like Uno, but this, Uno, but that.
But my son is really into Uno, no mercy,
which has draw tens, draw sixes, draw fours,
and a bunch of other like mods that are,
The game had to add either you get all the cards and out of your hand and you win or
You're out when you have 25 cards in your hand
Because the game is one of those so it becomes more like
Offensive the game is a lot more about trying to like plan when you're gonna dump 25 cards on someone, you know, it's interesting
But anyway, yeah
Do you think Russell that this would be more paying for access to the community and then they get their own you'd said like I
I ship them a 3D printer and a printer printer,
but you could almost like just have this
be a software solution, right?
- It depends on what you want, right?
If you want a card printer, if you have a 3D,
we can sell it however you want,
but like we have a business in a box version
for like card shops and board games.
You might not wanna pay for like a whole card printer, right?
- Well, I don't know.
I like that idea where you could have
a board game refresher kit,
where you could bring all your board games to one spot
and they're like, you need pieces, I'll print them.
You need cards, I'll have an instant printer
that'll print, it'll size the card of what you need,
it'll print on both sides of it and spit it out.
What, you're missing all your Monopoly money?
This is how many you're supposed to have?
Well, make sure you leave
with that exact amount or something.
- Yeah, dude, it could have a barcode scanner.
So you scan the box and it pulls up the menu
of what do you need.
- You're missing this, this, this, and this.
- Do you want replacement parts or mods?
- Yeah.
I need a new lead pipe for my clue game, right?
So you click it and it prints you a little lead pipe.
- That's cool.
- Stores love those standalone kiosk things that, you know,
- Oh yeah.
- That people can go in.
It's like a new revenue stream.
- Well, and then you could license with Hasbro
or whatever, right?
Or like, and then like help alleviate
their shipping stuff, right?
People are pissed if they get a board game
and they lose a piece, right?
So, I mean, this would be easy enough.
- You could print a whole game from scratch.
You could just go in and 25 bucks, boom,
you got the pieces, it prints the cards.
- Yeah, you could replace the entire distribution
and if you wanna go crazy with this, right?
'Cause like, Settlers of Catan--
- Grassroots.
- What's that?
- Grassroots.
- That's right.
Open source, all the popular games, right?
- Yes.
- It's Settlers of, you know, is whatever.
some other place.
- 20 years of trade.
- Of the town you're in.
- Yeah.
- Settlers of Holland.
- That's right.
- Well, and it's cool, it's 'cause you can actually have like plastic pieces that are
gonna last forever, right?
If you spill water on all your favorite pieces, you know, like you gotta throw out the board
game or get a new one, right?
- Nick, you just said Settlers of Holland.
What if you could get most of your board games customized to your region, like how Monopoly
- That's what I'm saying, man.
- Oh, Monopoly's got everything?
Yeah, what if you take your favorite show or your favorite piece of media, your musician,
location, favorite national park, whatever, and just like dial up a custom one at the
kiosk?
That'd be insane at Christmas time.
That was just gonna say, what better birthday gift for grandpa than the version of Monopoly
that he loves but has all of his grandkids or whatever, right?
I don't know.
World War II Yahtzee, let's go.
Yeah, settlers of Normandy.
It's called Nazi!
[laughter]
N-H-A-T-Z-E-E
Yes!
[laughter]
I just got Nazi.
Oh, shoot.
We'll have some
DRM on there.
But yeah, custom games are good.
There is a thing where you could get, like, custom Monopoly,
I think. Yeah.
Monopoly is like they've monopoly does that for sure. They do it by sports teams
They do it by big cities and stuff
but I wonder if you could if you could write software that would like crawl the
Wikipedia page for the city and just pull like key people, you know landmark probably what they're freaking
Yes, use an image to make turn it into a 3d model or print on a card. And there you go
That's what I'm saying. You go to this software
Even if it's not a kiosk and you say like here's the picture of the family
Here's the dogs that he had growing up or whatever and it like turns it into custom cards or custom pieces. That's sweet
Yeah, I love it
There's there's a game our family plays and there was a booster pack available because we've like played it to death and now they
Discontinued it so we just can't can't get it anywhere. We would definitely go print the the booster pack for this game every year
We have a guys gaming weekend and we play two rooms in a boom which is a social deduction game in two rooms
And they had one run of a print of that game many years ago. They they did it
They sold them all out now. They just you can't buy it anymore
I would love to give this company 20 bucks and have a copy of it
But you just can't that would be so cool if I could have the rights to like make an authorized
Kiosk version, you know, but customized to my friends group. It has their names or whatever
I don't know all the inside jokes
So I think there's a little bit of a twist to that you could do if you know the board game piece idea doesn't work
You could start by creating like, you know people that want to create board games, but can't afford it
There's like those Kickstarter's out there. You could turn this into like play tester
Network. Yeah
And like you go to your local stores. He's like they're kind of like card shops
You know, like those when you go to a card shop, they know their board, like their card games and all that stuff.
It's like this, but board games in there.
Oh, yeah, this new game came out really popular on openboard.com.
And you should print this out.
And they print like 10 or 15 copies because they know that there's this community of people that would love to try those games.
I don't know how big the board game market is, but I just think that it would be cool to like open source that a little bit.
Our friend that introduced us to Two Rooms and a Boom is the one who's like super into collecting
print and play games. There's a whole subculture around print and play, but that's paper.
There, to my knowledge, is not much of a 3D print and play games. That's sweet.
Well, and if you like, I feel like Kickstarter has evolved to where it's, there's a ton of games.
It's like a huge segment of Kickstarter backers, or it's games, whether it's RPG or whatever, but
If you reach scale with your kiosk distribution, that could be a backer reward at a lower value.
Instead of us shipping you the game, you go and print it out at your local game shop,
like find one near you. So it could be a way to enable games to be launched and tested
after they're successfully funded on Kickstarter without them having to go through the arduous
manufacturing process which is where a lot of those campaigns fail. So true.
Like I bet people would pay a little extra if it meant that they could get it
sooner and it's like that limited release or like out of a card shop or
like a board game shop. Dude in the 90s when I was a kid my aunt took me to the
the mall once and it had like a CNC marker machine that you could pick a
And it would grab the markers and like CNC draw the greeting card right in front of you.
Like in this machine in the mall.
And I just, that's like stuck with me since I was like in elementary school as like an
awesome thing to see it produced right before your eyes.
You can have it type a sentimental greeting.
I've loved you since insert date here.
It make it look like you hand wrote it.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm I think like watching your the game that you're taking home to your family to play or with your buddies or whatever
Watching it built right in front of your eyes. It's just like a memorable experience
They have it was cotton candy now - there's like a cotton candy kiosk in the mall that makes like crazy-looking cotton candy
Whoa, I've seen that. Yeah
It'd be like that dude malls would be a great place to start with this
Yeah, yeah, what's left of them instead of having a whole game store like there's a game store in our local mall. Yes
30 to 50 percent of the storefronts are empty but instead of a whole game store
It's just a game vending machine with a 3d printer and you're just cranking out games
Put it at the front of the grocery store put it at the bank. Put it at the
Post office put them everywhere. Yes, they're constrained enough
You don't really put them like wherever there's a red box shadow that used to be a red box
The empty area where those were in front of your CVS, but this
Filled with our little optometry stations. Yeah. Ah, yes. That's like in your business plan is is
benchmarking where red boxes were
And buying the remaining red boxes as our shell that we're gonna hollow out. There you go retrofitting
There you go, like how they retrofit arcades now and yep
All right, Nick, what do you have for us this week?
All right, so I work from home got two dogs
They're always running around when I'm when I'm here all day by myself. They're they're my co-workers, right?
so
now
drop the AI word in here, but I'm shocked that no one has done this, but it's a dog
collar that uses AI and a voice chat agent. And you can just talk to your dog. You can
have full kind of your dog forms of personality talks to you. You can, you enter in the breed.
It has its own voice. It's it's what's in the movie up. Yeah. They have it now. Now
exists to do this in a very simple way. Right? You just load a LLM onto it or
whatever like a local, it runs locally. You got a little bit of hardware, it clips
right onto their existing collar and boom you have a dog that you can just
have full-on conversations with. You're not rubber ducking anymore, you're just
talking to your dog. Yes. You have a problem to think through. I mean I do that
now but they just stare at me like I'm crazy. They don't have any good ideas.
Yeah. So are these, are these thoughts and responses that the dog is quote unquote having?
Are they based off of the dog's behavior or any metrics or signals?
Yeah, so like, okay. I was brainstorming this with my wife a little bit like a year ago when we first came up with it was
you could use an accelerometer to easily tell that the dog is wagging their tail. Like even at the neck level, like their whole body's moving.
So you could tell if they're getting excited or if they're bored. If they haven't moved in a while,
they can say, "Hey, you know, you want to go for a walk?"
So I think your MVP, it can just be conversational.
Yeah.
Over time, you can evolve it or maybe you upgrade it with software.
A subscription has an upgrade where it's actually taking biofeedback from the dog.
Just a heart rate.
I can tell when the head cocks to the side because I'm listening really intently.
Wow.
It could get more and more accurate.
Yeah, it gets smarter.
You got to train its collar too.
It evolves.
Yeah.
Like in Interstellar, how he can set the, you know, the humor level, the honesty level of the robots.
You could play with the settings a little bit until it's exactly where you want it.
Completely erase that dog's memory and voice if you don't like that anymore.
You just get a new dog, like by just replacing the whole model.
You put that voice to sleep.
I am not in the mood for your crap today.
And that voice to the farm.
The cool part about this is the accessory could be aware of what you're working on.
So you could be like, "I'm really confused by line 136 of this Python thing."
Well, actually, you're not supposed to use a while true.
[laughter]
>> Or your dog's just asleep in the corner guiding you through it.
>> Right. You're like, "Hey, Woofie, I'm really needing help with this debug thing."
>> I want a cat version where they're just complete assholes the whole time.
>> There you go. That'd be easy.
[laughter]
- Vibe coder, oh man.
(laughing)
Got me.
- The product I'm working on in my real job
is a electronic dog training collar.
So he could help me, like,
hey, what do you think about this?
Like, does this strap look comfortable?
(laughing)
You know, I can get real time product feedback.
(laughing)
- From the users.
- Yeah.
- I'm happier than ever, says the dog,
who's clearly trying to get it off.
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
That would be crazy to see at a dog park.
Just a dog runs up to you and starts saying hi.
Hello.
Dude, how many people at the dog park
would immediately buy one of those?
Right?
There is a virality to it for sure.
Yeah, literally, you'd say, where'd you get it?
Every time your dog barks, it'll just say, hey,
in like a monotone voice.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Hey, look.
Look.
Hey, look.
Hey, hey.
The ad, it could just be an ad too,
whenever they ask the dog where they got that collar.
I got it at dogbark.com.
(laughing)
I'm gonna send you a link.
What's your number and email address?
(laughing)
- Use code Louis26 for 10% off.
(laughing)
- Referral.
- It's like an MLM, a pyramid scheme,
but the dog's the referral.
(laughing)
If you use my coupon code and invite three friends,
you could be a dog that works from home.
- MLLM.
(laughing)
- Your collar accelerometer can tell tail wagging
and it could tell when your dog's running
and it'd be fun to see a dog just screaming
through the park going, "Woo hoo hoo!"
- Yes!
- "Wee-oo!"
(laughing)
- I like the thought of yelling at my dog
from across the yard, "Louie!"
He's like, "What?"
(laughing)
I'm like, "What's up, what do you need?"
- What?
- "Is it time to come inside?"
"No!"
- "You don't have a treat, I'm not coming over there."
- Ah, shoot.
(laughing)
- I feel like this exists already, but digitally.
Just like a version of this, like not dog-centric.
- Drop an iPad to your dog's head.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, there's tons of conversational chatbots out there
that people are like falling in love with and stuff.
It's just that, but on a dog.
It's in the physical world.
- Yeah, you gotta worry about those hallucinations
and stuff, huh?
got your dog telling you how cute you look tonight
and what a handsome man you are and stuff.
Oh, who's a good boy?
- Who's a good human?
- You'd have to put some controls in there, wouldn't you?
- There's gotta be some good prompts
to make sure that we're staying well
within the safety bounds.
You wanna jailbreak your dog?
(laughing)
- I mean, for 10 bucks a month, anything's possible.
- Only good boys can tell me how to make anthrax.
- Dude, that's really...
I mean, there's only been, there's several ideas in Spitball.
I'm like, I want to try this one.
I just truly want to try this.
This is up there on there.
What if you did like mods?
Like, you know, you could do Doug from up, right.
Or you can do like, yeah.
R2D2.
The voices.
Yeah.
Just like different voices.
R2D2?
Were you about to say R2D2?
Did you see dogs just beeping and whistling?
For Halloween, you know?
Time to go outside.
That mode.
The dog's freaking out the whole time hearing the whistles.
What?
What did I do wrong?
From its own collar.
How long do you think it would take for a golden retriever
to get used to its collar talking
at its owner on its behalf?
Instantly.
Yeah, probably.
Didn't even notice?
Yeah.
No.
It probably wouldn't.
If it meant it got more treats or more food,
it'd probably be like, yup.
More attention paid to it, yes.
Oh, that's a good point.
They would love it.
The dogs would love it.
I'd get more attention.
Everyone wins.
At least it's not an actual robot though. It's not a robotic dog. It's a dog with a human voice.
You could get so rich if you had a device that would be able to tell when your dog's bladder was full, like from its collar, and then it vocalized that.
Hey, hey, I bet you could hear a dog peeing and it could at least like track
Calculates when it hears the laughing noises of water input. Yeah
Then it would know that like hey in a half hour. You're gonna have to let me out
You better do it before you get on that call. That's fun. Yeah automatic timing
like schedule
It really I think I forgot who mentioned it earlier, but it needs to know what I'm working on
I think you said that Leo like I need a thinking partner
It can listen to the water slurping in the food bowl and stuff and try to build a rhythm out of that
Yeah, hey, it's 10 minutes after dinner. Hey
I'm hungry. You just got a really important email
[laughter]
Again, your dog asleep in the corner.
And there's a really nice monetization strategy for ads.
Hey, have you been to Steak 'n Shake lately?
What?
Grab a doggy bag on the way home.
The free version.
Yeah, right.
The free version that's ad-supported.
Oh, ad-supported dog.
[laughter]
I sure would love Beggin' Strips.
Beggin' Strips, the delicious, all-natural--
Like, shut it, stop it.
Maybe instead of paying for it to not be ad supported, you just have
to take your dog for a walk.
There you go.
Like, like a 20 minute walk is, is like a day of ad free
conversations.
It's a grant funded program.
PETA would be all over that, right?
Would you have people look at you weird if you're just talking to your
dog all the way down the sidewalk?
Probably not, right?
I think they would think that part's normal.
It's the dog talking back that might, they might think that they're crazy.
You're wrong.
All your ideas are wrong.
Just got this happy golden yelling at you.
Benghazi is where it all started.
We never should have gone out of Afghanistan and you know it, Ruffles.
My dog's really political.
I'm so sorry.
Yes.
It's like how kids can get away with saying really offensive things to people.
It's like you train your dog to say really offensive things to your neighbors.
Well, dear listener, if you and your dog were listening to this episode,
thank you very much for listening and we hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thank you so much, Nick.
This was really fun.
I had a great time.
Our website is spitball.show.
There you can find our YouTube channel, other social media.
Hey, if you have an idea, record a pitch, send it in a voice memo
like our friend Louis Black did over to podcast@Spitball.show
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that must be their full time job.
Send an episode like this one to them.
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