All podcasts / My First Million / Summary

7 killer startups that the internet has not caught up to yet

2026-06-02 - 46 min - source - Read full transcript

Shaan Puri (host)Sam Parr (host)

Key insights

Good startup ideas provoke disagreement, not consensus; unanimous approval in the room is a warning sign.

Shaan frames the whole segment around a 'good crazy vs. bad crazy' test: ideas like Airbnb (strangers sleeping on your couch) and Uber (strangers driving you) sounded insane before they worked. If 100% of a room nods along, the idea is probably too safe and already crowded.

contrarian-idea-evaluation

At-home versions of gym and spa amenities have proven to be $100M-plus direct-to-consumer categories, and hyperbaric chambers look positioned to follow the same path.

Hosts cite a cold-plunge brand doing roughly $100M direct-to-consumer with no retail presence and home sauna brands doing hundreds of millions in revenue. They argue the growth driver is Instagram-shareable 'wellness flex' visibility as much as the underlying health claim, and expect an at-home hyperbaric chamber to ride the same wave, complicated by it being a regulated medical device.

wellness-consumer-trends

Pet and wellness product claims are frequently unverifiable, and that ambiguity functions as part of the business model rather than a flaw.

Pet Chat's dog-collar bark translator claims 95% accuracy with no stated verification method. Hosts compare this directly to pet supplements, where nobody can actually check whether claimed benefits like calmer mood or better gut health are real; Sam ultimately rates the idea 'bad crazy' because dog owners already know what their own dog's barks mean.

wellness-consumer-trends

Deliberately changing physiological 'state' via heat, cold, breath work, and music is becoming a major consumer category, and it explains why certain fitness brands succeed despite mediocre training form.

Sam argues SoulCycle, Barry's Bootcamp, and CrossFit thrive not because they're optimal workouts (form is often poor, strength gains limited) but because they reliably shift a participant's state through a dark room, pumping music, a leader, and a communal sweat. He predicts 'state' becomes an important cultural word over the next decade.

wellness-consumer-trends

VR headset training is being used to address a real, large blue-collar labor shortage in the skilled trades.

Interplay Learning and Skill VR use Meta Quest simulations to train and certify workers in HVAC, welding, plumbing, and electrical work. The hosts cite roughly 500,000 unfilled HVAC and plumbing jobs in the US, with training on real equipment being comparatively slow, expensive, and dangerous.

blue-collar-vr-training

A startup is applying prediction-market mechanics to clinical trial outcomes to try to beat individual expert probability estimates.

Endpoint Arena lets users bet yes/no on outcomes like FDA approval or clinical trial results for specific drugs, with prices set purely by the market rather than a bookmaker. Founder Michael Fisher argues the 'wisdom of the crowd' from people with skin in the game could speed up science and enable smaller, more targeted trials. Hosts were skeptical of the framing (calling it 'democratize the trial process' a red flag word) and ultimately called it 'bad crazy.'

prediction-markets-for-science

Physical, low-tech, deliberately 'anti-news' print products are proving to be real, monetizable niches even against digital media.

The New York Times' news-free games-only product has roughly a million paying subscribers at $5/month, about $60M ARR. A Wall Street Journal profile describes a school crossing guard, Christine, who reportedly earns around $14,000/month from a mailed physical newsletter about her job. The Funday Press pitches a printed newspaper of only games, comics, and puzzles, no news, competing directly with The Sunday Club on the same idea.

physical-analog-product-comeback

Phone-addiction hardware is a growing wave, and the size and growth of its online community signals real demand rather than a niche fad.

dumb.co sells a $25 flip phone plus a forwarding app that routes calls and texts away from an iPhone. Cat GPT (an Instagram creator) built a Bluetooth-connected rotary/corded 'dumb' phone that did $800,000 in revenue in 5 months and is tracking toward $5M ARR. Zach Yadegari (who sold the Cal AI calorie-tracking app for an estimated $50-100M) launched Flow, a brick you must physically tap to silence your alarm, to interrupt the wake-up-and-doomscroll habit. The hosts note the r/dumbphones subreddit has roughly 200,000 subscribers and is still growing.

physical-analog-product-comeback

In commoditized physical-product categories, branding is the real competitive moat, not the underlying technology.

Sam argues that for products like dumb phones and wellness gadgets, the core technology is simple and easily copied, so aesthetic identity and storytelling are what actually win and defend customers, for example Cat GPT's old-school Polaroid-style branding. He compares the pattern to Ridge Wallet, which expanded from a single wallet SKU into a broader product line on the strength of its brand rather than product novelty.

physical-analog-product-comeback

Media referenced

Crossing guard making $14,000 a month mailing out her musings - article - Wall Street Journal piece Sam cites about a woman named Christine who built a paid physical newsletter from her job as a school crossing guard, used as a comp for The Funday Press idea.

Companies

Pet Chat - Chinese-styled dog collar startup claiming AI can translate pet barks with 95% accuracy; hosts split on whether the accuracy claim is even verifiable.
SuperBrain - App that lets users upload a deceased loved one's video, audio, and personality so they can keep chatting with an AI version of them.
Interplay Learning - Austin-based leader in VR (Meta Quest) training for HVAC, solar, plumbing, and electrical trades; can get trainees certified as technicians.
Skill VR - VR training company covering welding and painting simulations, cited alongside Interplay Learning as blue-collar trade training via headset.
Endpoint Arena - Prediction market (founded by Michael Fisher) for betting on clinical trial and FDA approval outcomes, pitched as a way to beat individual expert probability estimates.
The Cleveland Shvitz - 98-year-old Jewish bathhouse in Cleveland combining Russian-style steam, cold plunge, and massage with a steakhouse and cocktails; Barstool called it the hottest reservation in the country.
Othership - Group sauna/cold-plunge/breathwork experience Shaan is an investor in, described as 'SoulCycle for sauna'; UFC president Dana White publicly raved about it.
The Funday Press - Early-stage print newspaper with only games, comics, and puzzles, no news, created by a board game designer; competes with The Sunday Club on the same premise.
The Sunday Club - Competitor to The Funday Press running the identical all-games, no-news physical newspaper model.
New York Times Games - Cited as proof the no-news, games-only format works at scale: about a million paying subscribers at $5/month, roughly $60M ARR.
dumb.co - Sells a $25 TCL flip phone plus a $20/month forwarding app that reroutes an iPhone's calls and texts to the flip phone; self-funded, ~4-person company, ~4 months old.
Cat GPT / Cat Labs - Instagram creator's brand selling a Bluetooth rotary/corded 'dumb' phone attachment; did $800,000 in 5 months and is tracking toward $5M ARR; planning a broader Cat Labs product line of anti-digital-addiction hardware.
Flow - New alarm clock company from Zach Yadegari (Cal AI co-founder, sold that business for an estimated $50-100M); a physical brick you must tap to silence the alarm, forcing you out of bed instead of doom-scrolling.
Ridge Wallet - Referenced as the model for expanding a single hardware SKU into a broader branded product line.
HubSpot - Episode sponsor; provided a free downloadable database of 'unsexy' business ideas pulled from past MFM episodes.

Techniques and frameworks

Good crazy vs. bad crazy test - Shaan's framework for evaluating startup ideas on this segment: if everyone in the room agrees an idea is good, it's probably too safe to work; the best ideas provoke real disagreement.
State management - Sam's mental model that people don't think their way into a mood, they use the body (heat, cold, breath, music, smell) to change their physiological 'state,' which he predicts becomes a bigger consumer wellness category and explains why SoulCycle/Barry's Bootcamp work despite mediocre training form.
Brand as the moat - For commoditized physical products (dumb phones, wellness gadgets), Sam argues the technology is simple and replicable, so branding and storytelling are the actual competitive defense.

Summary

Shaan runs Sam through seven startup ideas he's spotted, asking him to sort each into "good crazy" (weird enough to actually work) or "bad crazy" (weird for no payoff), using their recurring rule that if an idea sounds too normal and everyone agrees it's smart, it's probably doomed. The ideas range from a Chinese AI dog-collar that claims to translate barks, to SuperBrain, an app for chatting with an AI recreation of a deceased loved one, to at-home hyperbaric chambers riding the same consumerization wave that turned cold plunges and saunas into hundred-million-dollar direct-to-consumer categories. Several ideas get dinged for making unverifiable claims (95% bark-translation accuracy, pet supplement benefits nobody can check), a pattern the hosts flag as endemic to the wellness and pet product categories generally.

The strongest reception goes to VR-based blue-collar trade training: companies like Interplay Learning and Skill VR use Meta Quest headsets to train and certify HVAC, welding, plumbing, and electrical technicians, addressing what the hosts cite as roughly 500,000 unfilled HVAC and plumbing jobs in the US. Endpoint Arena, a prediction market for clinical trial and FDA approval outcomes, gets a more skeptical read; both hosts admit they don't fully understand the "wisdom of the crowd" pitch for speeding up science and end up voting it down, more comfortable calling it what it looks like: gambling on drug trials. The Cleveland Shvitz, a bathhouse-plus-steakhouse combo, and Othership, a group sauna and breathwork experience Shaan has personally invested in, both land as unqualified "good crazy," prompting a longer riff from Sam on why he thinks deliberately managing your physiological "state" through heat, cold, breath, and music is becoming a defining consumer wellness behavior, and why it's the real (not fitness) reason brands like SoulCycle and Barry's Bootcamp work.

The back half of the episode turns into an extended riff on the anti-phone and anti-digital hardware trend. The Funday Press, a print newspaper of only games and comics, gets compared to the New York Times' news-free Games product (about a million paying subscribers, ~$60M ARR) and to a Wall Street Journal story about a school crossing guard who reportedly earns $14,000 a month from a mailed physical newsletter about her job. From there Shaan walks through his own recent flip-phone purchase from dumb.co, a small self-funded company selling a $25 TCL phone plus a forwarding app; Cat GPT, an Instagram creator turned founder whose Bluetooth rotary-phone product did $800,000 in five months and is tracking toward $5M ARR; and Flow, a new brick-style alarm clock from Zach Yadegari (previously of Cal AI) that forces you out of bed to silence it. Shaan points to the roughly 200,000-member and growing r/dumbphones subreddit as evidence this is more than a niche fad, and both hosts land on the idea that in this category the real competitive moat is branding, not the underlying tech, pointing to Ridge Wallet's expansion from a single SKU into a full brand as the template.

The episode closes with Sam and Shaan comparing their own personal phone-detox systems, Sam has deleted social media apps entirely and finds himself falling back on Claude instead, Shaan keeps a "brick" phone at his front door loaded only with maps, texts, calls, and Uber for outings, and both agree the underlying problem (near-universal phone addiction) is real and large even if neither is sure yet which specific product solves it.

Notable Quotes

"If your idea is too normal, too understandable, too expected, you actually have no shot. You say an idea and everybody in the room nods, if 100% of the room nods and says that's a good idea, run away. You're about to waste 3 years of your life." - Shaan Puri

"The moat is not the technology right now. The moat is not the product. The moat is the brand." - Shaan Puri

"It's not because it's the best workout... You go, you're in a dark room with a bunch of other people. It's a communal experience. The music is pumping... You changed states. That's what people go truly for, not the fitness layer." - Sam Parr

"Is there going to be a solution that some percentage of people gravitate towards? ... The problem is real. Total agreement on the problem, and then the question is which of these solutions is going to be the one." - Shaan Puri