✨ Hey there this is a free edition of next play’s newsletter, where we share under-the-radar opportunities to help you figure out what’s next in your journey. Join our private Slack community here and access $1000s of dollars of product discounts here.
We’re helping run a contest for your best and craziest side project and startup ideas.
(and it’s 100% free to enter)
You can submit your ideas here. The winner gets a few hundred dollars, and there are multiple prizes up for grabs. We suggest you enter, and also share with your friends. Both because we’re excited to see your ideas, and also because we think the world needs more great creative crazy ideas. (Even if you don’t have ideas, you’ll probably enjoy reading and voting for your favorites!)
If you need some ideas for inspiration, or you’re looking for something to work on, below you’ll find many to get your wheels turning (put together in collaboration with freeideas.net). It’s (probably) easier than ever to put together a side project…so we invite you to get to work, you never know what can happen.
Personal standup: Build a service that calls you every morning and asks you how yesterday went and your goals for the day. Log all the data from the calls in a simple app and beautiful dashboard with sentiment analysis.
References as a service: Loop in a service that does a detailed analysis/reference on a candidate before you hire them. Goes and talks to their former manager and friends so you get a detailed view of their capabilities.
Alley oop: Dating app where people in relationships make profiles for their single friends and connect with people their actual friends with to see if they can make good set ups.
Cross country: App that connects people who want to transport their car long distances to people who want to do road trips. Ship car for free and rent car for free.
Motivation while running/lifting: App that broadcasts to your friends when you start a workout. They can send you audio messages to motivate you that automatically get played during your activity.
Syllabus generator: Type in a topic and the app pulls together a collection of essays, books, activities, videos, shorts, music, prompts, things etc. for you to do in order to learn ANY topic. It does this by pairing everything the app knows about you—what you like, how you learn, what you are good at, what you are bad at, etc.—with the best information on the topic to create the absolute best way to go about learning anything.
Intern: program you get accepted to where you work 12 jobs at 12 companies, each for a month the year after college (or high school) to get a better understanding of the landscape of jobs.
Go submit your best and craziest ideas to the Whale Tank. It’s free! And you could win money. And laugh, hopefully.
Pastabilities: Like Chipotle, for pasta. Mainly for the name.
Hibachi for other foods: Why not like Hibachi for all types of foods where they cook right in front of you? Why just tableside guac? Give me hibachi breakfast. Tableside pancakes.
Live Streamed company: Company that live streams all of their work publicly. Every employee has a twitch channel, too.
Vintage tech brand swag: Sell clothing that companies gave to early employees. Apple t- shirts, google sweatshirts, etc.
Pal: A wearable collar for your dog that uses AI to translate its heartbeat, barks, and movements into messages you can read on your phone.
Competitor Listener: Notifies you if any of your competitors have changed anything on their website, e.g. pricing terms, features.
Wager: App for friend groups where everyone in the group anonymously bets on milestones (first kid, first marriage, etc.) and then totals get paid out as the milestones happen.
Posture-reminder: Wearable that buzzes you every 15 minutes reminding you to fix your posture. Could shock you physically if more effective.
Suno for memorization: Generates a catchy song about something you want to memorize. Easier to remember song lyrics than straight up terms and definitions. Could be great for pre-med students.
Intro finder: You type in a company, and it tells you your best path(s) to get an intro to the founder by scanning your Linkedin/Twitter connections.
Memory palace constructor: Converts anything you want to remember (list, numbers, speech, etc.) into an AI-generated visual memory palace and walks you through it using the best known memory training techniques.
Want to find a co-founder to work with? You should check out this list:
Your top priority: Mac app that sticks your top priority in the top right corner of your screen all the time so you are reminded of what to work on.
Gift giving consultancy: You tell us about your target gift receiver, we curate the perfect gift.
Partiful for weddings: Sometimes you want to coordinate flights, lodging, etc. to a wedding or other event, but you’re not sure who’s going. And it’s awkward to ask in case they weren’t actually invited. So basically Partiful but for weddings too.
Writing hackathon: A hackathon of sorts where your objective is to produce an essay or a book in a short period of time.
Dehydrated meal delivery service: When you do like long backpacking trips you can do dehydrated meals and just boil them. But why not turn this into a regular meal delivery service with much lower shipping costs.
ESPN for the tech industry: Cover the hottest companies - all of their big meetings, last minute partnership deals, key signings/firings, and more. Eventually create the ability to trade talent: “I’ll trade you my CTO for 3 sales directors.”
Paying attention filter: Zoom overlay or filter that makes it look like your eyes aren’t moving when you're not paying attention, but your camera can still be on.
Art subscription service: for $30/mo we will mail you a print from an up and coming artist.
Free problems: Forum where people post problems they have in the work place / their lives that a company could fix. People peruse it to get company ideas and if someone builds a company around your problem maybe you get royalties or some % of the business. Worst case your problems get solved.
If you liked this essay, please consider liking it and sharing with your friends. We very much appreciate your support!
And also a quick reminder to check out Whale Tank.
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