4 microSaaS ideas you can build to make $100k/month

In this episode, Sari Azout, Founder and CEO of Sublime, explores various startup ideas and business concepts. The discussion centers on the evolving nature of startups in the AI era, emphasizing the importance of focusing on specific, well-defined problems rather than broad solutions. Sari shares multiple business ideas, from parental control services to creative tools, while discussing the philosophy behind building successful products in today's market. Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction and setup 00:57 - Startup Idea 1: DrScreenTime 06:39 - Startup Idea 2: Business-in-a-box ideas 13:34 - What becomes scarce in an AGI world? 14:38 - Founders and Their Approaches 16:10 - Akio Morita Simplicity Principle 17:01 - Startup Idea 3: Podshot 22:10 - Discussion on micro-startups 25:53 - Testing Ideas and Positioning 29:03 - Feedback and Intuition 33:04 - Startup Idea 4: Meme generator Key Points: • Discussion of several innovative startup ideas including "DrScreenTime" (parental control franchise), PodShot, and meme generator • Exploration of business-in-a-box concepts and the future of trades/crafts • Analysis of micro-startups vs. traditional startup approaches 1) The "Franchise for Parental Controls" Idea Parents are desperate for help managing screen time. Current solutions = messy. Opportunity: In-home screen time consultants who: - Set up controls - Create family rules - Recommend apps/tools Revenue model: • $2K setup fee • Recurring affiliate revenue • Think "Dr. Screen Time" 2) The "Business in a Box" Trend Big insight: What becomes scarce in an AI world? Answer: People doing things with their hands! Opportunity: Modern craft business franchise • Partner with local artists • Supply chain + education • Target: offline-first experiences • Status = disconnecting from screens 3) The Trade School Revolution Huge opportunity in modernizing trade education: • Lambda School model for trades • Zero upfront tuition • Revenue share after job placement • Bundle with business tools/marketing • Focus: plumbing, electrical, etc. Why? Trades becoming MORE valuable in AI era 4) The Micro-Startup Strategy Modern startup playbook: 1. Have a 10-year vision 2. Unbundle into micro-products 3. Start with easiest/viral pieces 4. Build distribution first Key insight: "Nobody searches for an inspiration engine" 5) Product Development Philosophy Two types of founders: • Artists (creative vision driven) • Scientists (iteration driven) Choose your path but stick to it. Sari’s 2024 goal: "Take less feedback, trust intuition more" 6) The Meme Generator Opportunity Final killer idea: Long-form to meme converter • Input: articles, presentations, links • Output: culturally relevant memes • Train on curated meme library • Potential $10M+ SaaS business Why? No idea goes mainstream without memes Key Takeaway: 2024 startup strategy: 1. Build close to OR far from AI 2. Focus on what becomes scarce 3. Start micro, think macro 4. Distribution not Product Notable Quotes: "No idea will become mainstream if it's not captured in a meme." - Sari Azout "Screenshots are the new bookmarks." - Greg LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/ BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/ Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.co FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND SARI ON SOCIAL Sublime: https://sublime.app X/Twitter: https://x.com/sariazout Substack: https://sublimeinternet.substack.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  Sorry. Good to have you. You're a fountain of startup ideas. And I need, you got some. You told me you have some ideas. Is that right?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  A lot of ideas.

• 0:13Greg Isenberg?

  Where do you want to start?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Let's see. I think the ideas that I have are combination of things I would pay for, and I know a lot of people would pay for. Things that I think basically reflect everything that I've learned about building sublime. So I'm just gonna like, I could do like startup ideas on easy mode for you because I've done a lot of things on hard mode. And then I generally, like my general sense of where startup ideas are today is like, you have to be as close or as far as possible from AI. So I think I've got a lot of ideas that are like in the heart of it and a lot of ideas that are overlooked because they're just so far from AI. But we could start with

• 0:59Speaker 01

  the one thing that I was thinking about last night that I would pay for in a heartbeat.

• 1:02Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, let's start there.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so the gist of it is

• 1:15Speaker 01

  franchise for parental controls. So hear me out. So I've got three kids, ages three, seven, and nine. The two older ones have iPads, have had iPads since COVID.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Companies like Apple make it so hard to control. Like, I think I have set up like banned YouTube Shorts or, you know, all these things so many times and these kids continue to outsmart me. I think of myself as pretty tech savvy, but I can't figure this out. Like, these interfaces are like an airplane cockpit of features. They're really hard to figure out. And I think that

• 1:52Speaker 01

  A couple of things, like one is like, screen time is not good or bad. It depends on what's on the screen. But parents can't fucking control what's on the screen. So I think people are willing to pay for somebody to come into my house, like a physical person that asks me what my preferences are and like resets basically like our family screen dynamic. Ideally, the kids are there. It's like, hey, here are the rules. And like, you cannot use YouTube Shorts or this or that. And it depends, like some families will be different. But I think the business is you essentially like have one person, create a ton of educational content and then license a bunch of people to do this stuff. And I don't know, I think parents have like very little like,

• 2:36Speaker 01

  they're very price elastic when it comes to this stuff. Cause you're basically paying for peace of mind.

• 2:40Greg Isenberg?

  And would you pay, is it like a one time fee? Or is there a subscription element to it?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  I, I think that, I think there would be like a one time setup fee. But I think where the business could be interesting and recurring is there's like, as kids get older, there's things like, you know, they need like a green light as like a credit card or like circle to track where they are, things like that. So you could become an affiliate. These licensed people can become an affiliate and like recommend stuff. Or like, hey, you know, like maybe your kid is like really into this thing. So like, like they should have this app. So I think there could be some recurrence and definitely like affiliate revenue. But I think that the idea of like a reset, like a family reset, people would pay like $2,000.

• 3:23Greg Isenberg?

  I think if I was starting this idea, I would call it DrScreenTime.com. And I would actually start by building like the media business. So basically start by creating content just all around screen time. And

• 3:42Greg Isenberg?

  You know, your first goal is like, how do I get to 100,000 followers of parents who are looking for, to consume content to basically curb screen time or just make, you know, time well spent with respect to screen time?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Totally. Like, I don't know if you are familiar with Dr. Becky at Good Inside. She's built a huge business. Started off as a media business.

• 4:07Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. Can you, can you, like, I don't think everyone knows about her.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  So Dr. Becky is just this like incredibly influential parent that built a media business and now has a, an app that people pay, I don't know, like a lot of money for. And it has like, I think, tens of thousands of paying customers. But like you said, it started off as a, as a media business, but I think there's not, like, she goes broad.

• 4:31Greg Isenberg?

  It's recurring, isn't it?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  It's recurring. It's a subscription business. It's recurring. But I actually think, like, that's the typical, like, software business where it's like a media company and then, you know, you build like a content app of sorts.

• 4:43Greg Isenberg?

  Content, content to commerce.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Content to commerce, like playbook. But I genuinely think, so I'm a big fan of, I don't know if you know, the Zumba Fitness business. So the founder of Zumba is-

• 4:54Greg Isenberg?

  Actually, I don't know anything about the business. I just know-

• 4:56Speaker 01

  So the founder is one of my closest friends, like, built a business in Miami. The idea was born in a Shabbat dinner that I was part of. But I love the business because essentially what they did is like, it's a very capital light business. They have, I think, 15,000 fitness instructors these days that pay a monthly fee to get music and like choreographies and to be a part of the brand. And so I think that, like, there's like a physical presence to that, that I think is like, really cool relative to just like, I just can't like, like see more Becky from Good Inside content anymore. Like, I'm not going to pay for the app. I already have enough. So I just feel like there's an opportunity to- Like to have like a business in a box type of thing where you like arm these like

• 5:40Speaker 01

  screen time, police is or whatever, doctors and just like, I don't know, like it's a, it's a great like side hustle income.

• 5:48Greg Isenberg?

  Totally. Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire. So Startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things? That's exactly what Startup Empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup, but are looking for ideas, or it's for people who have a startup, but just they're not

• 6:32Greg Isenberg?

  seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startupempire.co in the description. So I actually think there's a huge trend around business in a box companies. So we're sitting here in Miami, all, everything that everyone sees here, like with the mics and the cameras and our whole setup, that was actually, there's a company that sent us all this stuff. So you can rent all your podcasting stuff in a box. They send you a box, you pick it up at FedEx. But what was missing, in my opinion, is, do we want

• 7:15Greg Isenberg?

  to name drop the, the name of the company? Lens Rentals is the company.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  It's like a podcast business in a box.

• 7:22Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. But if I was running Lens Rentals.

• 7:26Greg Isenberg?

  I would have upsold for sending like a doc, a podcast doctor to come and actually set up everything. Make sure all the levels are correct. Make sure the shot is, the frame is there. Like, that's what was, what was missing. And if I was Lens Rentals, I wouldn't be called Lens Rentals. I'd be called PodcastInABox.com. Which, by the way, the domain is available.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 7:53Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. In fact, we should probably just buy that domain.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  I mean, I think they're like, it's, it's, it's so genius to abstract away the complexity of starting anything. Like, bundle a bunch of things together, narrow the choices, and like, just present them to you. I have another, actually, business in a box idea. That I, I'm not the right person to do this, but what, like, the question that I've been asking myself is, what becomes scarce in an AI world? And I think what becomes scarce is like, people doing stuff with their hands. Like, this, we have a generation of people that grew up scrolling. They, and like, the tactile joy of like, making something physical, I think is gonna come back. And there's a business in New York that I went to about a year ago.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  It's called Happy Medium. And essentially, it's this like, art cafe. Where basically, like, they, it's a super cool brand. They partner with brands like Glossier and like, to do brand activations. But essentially, like, they have like, pottery, you know, like, like, figure drawing, like, painting, all sorts of like, crafty things. Their tagline is amazing. I think it's something like, be brave enough to be terrible. So, so it like, tries to appeal to not like, to the amateurs, really. But the problem is, is it's not scalable. It's like, it's a business that has real estate, and they've, they have one location. I think they're venture-backed.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  But I think that this, like you could do this like a business in a box where you essentially partner with local artists, Etsy sellers, whatever, arm them with the supplies, the educational stuff, like even like, you could probably like do it at like restaurants during off hours or like homes or whatever, but like, I think you could build a modern, cool consumer brand around like people doing stuff with their hands. If you look at the space, there's like Michaels and like, like even just like Color Me Mine is, I think the like brick and mortar, like they're all dated and like boring. And I just think that the status symbol in an AI age is like, you know, it's just gonna be like, I disconnected from the information flow and I like did something with my hands.

• 10:07Greg Isenberg?

  A hundred percent. I also think that there's probably, there's probably a business that you can create, like a status business, where it's like, I've been off my phone for seven days and I get this badge and I can like, you know, there's, there's something there also.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Like offline is the new luxury and what do you do with that?

• 10:25Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I, yeah, I just really feel like, and even like, and like thinking about doing stuff with your hands, like if you think about the industrial revolution, what that did is like, it automated a lot of physical labor. But what AI is doing is it's automating a lot of white collar jobs. And so I think a lot of like trade jobs, where there used to be a lot of stigma around like, you don't want to do trade jobs, it's not perceived as like a status job. It's actually gonna be the opposite. Like plumbers, electricians, like these people are making a lot more money and their jobs are a lot more safe than, you know, your average like junior copywriter working in an agency in New York City.

• 11:02Greg Isenberg?

  Totally.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  So I just, I, I don't know, I feel like we're just on the cusp of this like, you know, like the, the, the statit, like what is like, has status is changing. And like doing things with your hands, like doing things away from your computer, that has status. And, and so I, like, I think the craft thing is like a leisure thing. But I really do think. And I see that, certainly in Miami, people like it's so hard to find like tradesmen. It's so expensive, construction costs are through the roof. And I always think about whether you could apply the business model of Lambda School. If you like, remember, or it's like zero tuition, you know, like train these, train these people, but then you make a cut of like their revenue, once you find them a job, like what if you build

• 11:47Speaker 01

  like a modern brand around like tradesmen, but like, I don't know, just like elevate the status of it, because there's like real money in these jobs and there's a huge shortage. Most of the people in these trades jobs are actually retiring in a couple of years. It's a huge problem, actually.

• 11:58Greg Isenberg?

  So basically, is the idea Lambda School for tradespeople?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  I think so. I think there's like an opportunity to be like, choose a vertical, whether it's like painting, landscaping, plumbing, electricians, like, I don't know, like woodworking, whatever, train these people, find them jobs, and then get a cut of like their income. But I think like the, like you have to build a compelling brand that elevates the status of these things.

• 12:20Greg Isenberg?

  I think if I was gonna do that idea, which by the way, is a big idea, in a good way, I think that not only would I want to train these tradespeople, but I'd want to arm them with, here's how to get customers. So basically, what I would do would be like, okay, you're now trained to be a, you know, call it an electrician, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do all the Facebook ads for you. I'm gonna create the website for you, and then you take a cut for that, and then you take a cut for the training.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  That's where I think a lot of the, yeah, I mean, these businesses operate like fax machines, like 1985 type stuff. So I think there's a lot of vertical SaaS, but like you said, it's a huge idea. If I was just getting started, I would literally find somebody to license these people, find like companies that are actually hiring, instead of like them doing this like freelance to start. It's a hu, I think it's a huge idea. And I also think it's like one that, like tech people don't touch this stuff. But I think a lot of the ideas that I have that are more like in the heart of tech, like they're just gonna be less valuable when an AI can do that.

• 13:34Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I mean, I honestly think that's the biggest question I'm wrestling with, is just, if AGI happens, would you have to assume it will? What becomes a commodity and what becomes scarce?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, somebody posted on Twitter last night, like, what happens? Like, what, you know, how do people choose one software or the other in a world where like, AI can do absolutely everything? And I don't know, my, my take on it is, my answer was like founder worldview. I genuinely think that the motivation and the vision and the intention behind something is something you can't fake. It's, it's a little bit woo woo, it's a little bit wishy washy, but I think that's how, I think that's how people make decisions. It matters. Like, why are you building this? Like, I don't think people, the humans are not like rational, like we were talking econ 11, you know, like people make decisions based on emotions and, I don't know, I, I

• 14:32Speaker 01

  think it's like far less utilitarian than people's.

• 14:38Greg Isenberg?

  What other ideas you got?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Okay, so here's, here's something I've learned building Sublime is, I think, so I think there's two types of founders, broadly speaking. I think there's founders that operate less like business executives and more like artists. They have a creative vision and they're manifesting it and they're not really solving a problem. They're just manifesting a creative vision. And the kind of like counterpoint to that is like founders that are iterating and validating and like, you know, here's a hypothesis that I'm going to tweak it and like iteratively get to product market fit. And I definitely think I'm the former, like Sublime is the former. It's, you know, in some ways, like I had this idea fully formed in my head about like

• 15:24Speaker 01

  building a sublime internet and I had to kind of work backwards to reverse engineer that idea because the reality is that most people don't care about their mission. They care about what can you do for them today? And so I'm, I've sort of been in that process of like, how do you take that big vision and like piecemeal it into specific value props? But I say that because I think that, you know, like Sublime for me is like the missionary thing. It's like the multi-decade project. It's gonna like take me decades, but it's like the moat is so profound. But I think there's a huge opportunity to do the opposite of that, which is do one thing, do it well. And, and I have two ideas, one of which I'm building, the other of which I would build if somebody in this podcast wants to help.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  But essentially, or actually maybe, let me frame it with an anecdote that I think is fantastic. So Akio Morita was the designer for the Sony Walkman.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  And he had an opportunity when he was designing the Walkman, to add a record button on the Walkman for 50 cents. All it would do is add 50 cents to the cost of making the thing. But he decided against it. He said adding a record button would basically like, generate ambiguity about what this is for. This is a device to just play music. It does nothing else. And I, you know, I just think that that's such a profound lesson for founders that wanna, I don't know, I'm gonna build you an AI co-founder, like, no. Like, build an AI that will do one specific thing. So, so I have two ideas that are inspired by that. They're just very simple, do one thing and do it right. The first, I have a prototype of this.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  But essentially, it's capture insights from podcasts with a screenshot. So let me, let me tell you more. So, a lot of ideas are stuck in audio. Formats that are just hard to capture.

• 17:21Greg Isenberg?

  Tell me about it.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Right. Preaching to the right audience here. So how do people get around this today? A couple of things they do. So one is like they download other apps with like convoluted UIs, where you can like highlight from podcasts. But the vast majority of people are still doing Spotify, Apple Podcasts. So that's just like a tiny fraction of an audience. Like, I, I think that's a bad idea. Like, to build an entire podcast player, like, no. Make sure that you operate within the big players. The other thing people do is like after, you know, if I'm listening to a podcast on the car on the way here, if I liked some insight from an episode that you did, I'll go home, I'll use one of these like apps to generate the transcript. I'll highlight it, copy paste it into my notes, whatever. Too much work. Okay, so here's what we realized.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  A lot of people take screenshots of Spotify for like, to just look at the timestamp. They never. Go back to look at it. It's a lot of work to say like, okay, minute 8:36. Like, so what we did with AI is like, you take a screenshot from Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We use OCR, Optical Character Recognition, to figure out what's the name of the podcast? What's the episode? What's the timestamp? Then we go and look at like, do like, speech to text to figure out like, all right, what was the text around that time? And the cool thing is like, you actually don't have to set a beginning and end. We, we understand the context based on this conversation and the screenshot. Like, more or less, they were talking about like, Akio Morita's story of simplicity.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  So here's the transcript and here's the audio clip. And you basically have this library of like, insights from podcasts. So that the time you spend like, listening to podcasts is not wasted. What do you think?

• 19:03Greg Isenberg?

  I, I absolutely love it. So I believe that screenshots are the new bookmarks. So, um, and a lot of people, I notice screenshot this, this podcast and they, they'll send me a DM and they'll be like, hey, at minute 2 minute, you know, 35, you said this. It also kind of reminds me of how I use Twitter bookmarks. So I'm a bookmark person, but I never go back to the bookmarks. And it's too bad because the reality is the interface on X is not conducive to remembering and capturing insights.

• 19:45Greg Isenberg?

  So if I'm you, by the way, this is exactly what I'm building. Because based on what I know about Sublime and like, the mission around capturing insights and get, you know, becoming more creative and stuff like that. Uh, it, it feels like if I were you, I'd create a bunch of micro apps that do one thing really well.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  And then become top of funnel.

• 20:10Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  So that's exactly, well, and that's why I led with the story of simplicity, because we could have built this within Sublime. But it's like you said, like, people's mental model when they use Twitter is like scrolling for the ephemeral. It's not archival. So I, I just think people have a mental model of how they engage with products. And you have to do just one thing and do it well.

• 20:30Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  So this is, what do you think of the name Podcast Magic?

• 20:34Greg Isenberg?

  Podcast Magic?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  We have a better name.

• 20:36Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, I'm a name guy, you know?

• 20:41Greg Isenberg?

  I don't have one off the top of my head that's better than doctor podcast.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  You and doctors.

• 20:49Greg Isenberg?

  It's a doctor type of morning.

• 20:52Greg Isenberg?

  But

• 20:54Greg Isenberg?

  why I don't love it is

• 20:59Greg Isenberg?

  I feel like the trend around the sparkles for AI and like the magic of AI will lose. It's starting to lose like it's it's magic, so to speak. So I just wonder.

• 21:17Greg Isenberg?

  I wonder like, you know, what makes Google such a good search engine is it's a verb.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:23Greg Isenberg?

  So I wonder like, what's the verb?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:25Greg Isenberg?

  For for doing, you know, a screenshot that's of a podcast, right? So like, is it a pod shot? Like, maybe it's pod shot. And it's like, oh, I just did a pod shot and sent it to you.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  That's not bad, actually, pod shot.

• 21:37Greg Isenberg?

  There we go.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so I guess the thing for that idea, I think it's starting small. Like, people are gonna say like screenshots are the future, so do screenshots of this or that. But it has to be strictly limited to podcasts, I think, for it to work.

• 21:54Greg Isenberg?

  Yes.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Because that way, I think the advantage of doing something so specific is distribution. You like, there is no better place to distribute this than podcasts. Whereas if you're doing like, you know, screenshots of a million things, it's less relevant to a podcast.

• 22:11Greg Isenberg?

  So you're talking about an insight that I want to double down on, which is, or double click into, which is kind of the future of building startups is not by building a startup, it's by building a micro startup. So the old way of building a startup was

• 22:30Greg Isenberg?

  you had this big idea and you went and go built this big idea and you iterated your way to product market fit. But I actually think now, especially with AI and how easy it is to build.

• 22:43Greg Isenberg?

  It makes sense to be like, okay, I want, you know, here's my big vision. Here's what my startup could look like in five, 10 years. This is like draw it out. But then being like, okay, how do I unbundle my startup? So you go through an unbundling process. And then you write out, what are the five to 10 micro startups?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:03Greg Isenberg?

  And then from that, you prioritize around which ones do I think have the highest likelihoods of going viral or spreading?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:11Greg Isenberg?

  And then from that, you prioritize, what are the easiest? Wait, you know, this, yeah, what's, what's, what's the effort estimate for, for this startup versus that startup? And then you do something with low effort estimate. And then your job, like, as a startup builder is, is you're building multiple of these, basically.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, what, what I love about what you're saying is that I think the key is like to have that 10 year vision in your head and work backwards. Because the reality is, I think a lot of founders fall in love with, I'm going to build an empire, a one stop shop, you know, a collection of products. But users don't think that way. They think about like a job to be done. But for Sublime specifically. So I remember, if you remember the Rome craze from like the no taking days. I remember the founder saying something like, we're not competing with Evernote. We're competing with Google. And as somebody who's been building and living and breathing this space, it's impossible, like from a product architecture perspective to become that if you don't really have that foundation from day zero.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Like Sublime from day zero, we were so conscious about every decision we made because we felt that even though we don't pitch it as this, like over time, because of the multiplayer foundation, this becomes like the world's best curated inspiration engine for ideas. But you had to bake that into the foundation, even though if I start like pitching Sublime as like an inspiration engine and a personal, it just becomes too overwhelming.

• 24:43Greg Isenberg?

  Also, people don't look for an inspiration engine.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  People don't look for an inspiration engine. It's like not a-

• 24:47Greg Isenberg?

  That's a mistake a lot of founders make is they, they write out their 10 year vision. And it's like, I'm creating the inspiration engine and then go look at Google Trends data. Like no one is searching-

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Nobody's searching that. Right. So, right. So, but, but I think it's still useful to know how this like ecosystem will work. But I think to your point, I think the most effective thing a founder can do, I mean, there's the meme of like first founders think about products, second founders think about distribution. I think that's spot on. I think you need to think about like, what is the headline that will make this thing go viral? And I think the headline for a pot shot app is like a lot clearer and better than like a, you know, headline for like a mission driven thing that will maybe appeal to VCs, but not really to a consumer that's like scrolling TikTok or whatever. So I think that founders need to like, like, like, think of the headline first. What is that?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  What is like, and then work backwards. You know, if you have this big vision, okay, how do you piecemeal that into a headline for a micro product that could go viral? And then build that.

• 25:52Greg Isenberg?

  A hundred percent. And then you, and the beauty is you can test that. You can test those headlines, like create some ads, see, you know, see what resonates with people before you go and, you know, raise millions of dollars and, or, or spend your own money and time to go build a big software product.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, I, the whole like testing thing with ads, like I don't really know how to do that.

• 26:14Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I feel like, I don't know, I feel like everything I want to do needs to have a high bar for polish. So I don't really know, I don't really know how that could be effective at telling you if it's going to work or not, if it's not done to the degree of polish that like ultimately the thing would have. So I struggle with the, with the like, you know, like test with an ad.

• 26:39Greg Isenberg?

  So how to test with ads, I would say is you still need to build your micro app or, or startup, but what you can test is the positioning. So, you know, you can do a, you can do an ad where it's like, you know, find your creativity, or you can do an ad that's like screenshot your.

• 27:01Greg Isenberg?

  Or get insights from podcasts and you can see like what resonates. And then from that, you could do conversion rate optimization on your main product.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:12Greg Isenberg?

  That's, you know, the Lean Startup, old school book at this point, but like The Lean Startup by Eric Ries talks about

• 27:22Greg Isenberg?

  how you don't need to actually build anything. You can put a landing page, you can send traffic to it. And based on that, you know, you can figure out what to build.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I don't think that works anymore.

• 27:32Greg Isenberg?

  I think that it's like, why would you do that in an AI world where building isn't the hard part?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:38Greg Isenberg?

  You know, I think that worked maybe a long time ago when like idea to like production took like 18 months.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:46Greg Isenberg?

  But if it takes 18 days, it's kind of.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I also think that works, you know, like the bar for consumers is so high these days.

• 27:53Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  We've been spoiled with incredible software. Like every time I use Uber, Instacart, like this is like, we are just so spoiled that the bar for polish, like nobody wants a minimum viable product. People want something awesome. People want something that moves them that like is emotionally compelling. And I think you can do that in cheap ways. But I think you need a fantastic copy. I think you need like somebody that like understands like humans and emotion. And I just don't think that it's like an optimization thing. I think it's like an emotion thing.

• 28:28Greg Isenberg?

  It's, it's tough. I think, you know, some people, like you talked about, you know, art versus science, basically, earlier. Some people get to the positioning and the product via taking out ads, putting their money where their mouth is. And iterating their way to success. And some people are, and that's like science.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:50Greg Isenberg?

  And some people are more like. I need to go and like go on a journey to like go and figure this out. And it's more of this like intuition.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a soul question.

• 29:03Greg Isenberg?

  So, yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Well, so my resolution for this year is like, take less feedback. Like, I just want, like, every time I have a dilemma for like a product question, I ask 10 people. I get 10 different answers. It takes me further from myself. I think there's, like you said, there's two, you could succeed both ways, but you have to know who you are.

• 29:23Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  And I know that I just need to like dial up on my intuition and like, just like tune out the noise. And I, I think especially with Sublime, where I am building the product I wish I had, the more I hear other people's opinions, the further I get from like what I actually want. So I think last year I overdosed on feedback. I did over a thousand onboarding calls. And this year I want the opposite. I just, I wanna, I wanna create things that have more edge, like the language that might, you know, like it might polarize some people, but it's okay. You know, I just think that there's no room today for like the bland, you know? You just have to like stand for something and you can't do that. Like if you take feedback from everybody, you're reverting to the mean.

• 30:08Greg Isenberg?

  How many, how many customer feedback calls you think you'll take this year?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  So we actually like promised the first 1,000 paying customers that they'd have a one-on-one onboarding call. So we got our first 1,000 customers. So in theory, I owe no more onboarding calls. I still, I mean, I still like to talk to people. You know, I think that like being a founder is like this very like schizophrenic experience where you're going from like abstract Figma screens to like, you know, like, so I think talking to people, it reminds you that there are like people on the other side of things that are like benefiting from what you do. So I think it's important. But I, I don't know, I just think that what, what I want this year is like more time to go deep and like just come up on the other side with stuff that's weirder.

• 30:54Greg Isenberg?

  I want to hear, I want to hear your other idea that you have. But before we do that, I want to tell you a quick story of something that happened to me. So.

• 31:07Greg Isenberg?

  I saw that a really well-known founder with a many multi-billion dollar exit and a mainstream technology product started following me on X. And I reached out and I said, and he started a new startup recently. And I reached out and I'm like, hey, I like what your new startup is doing. By the way, you know, I'm very excited about it. And he was like, oh, Late Checkout should use our software. And I was like, okay. And he's like, let me connect you with my team. And then I see on the, you know, okay, so we schedule a time. And I see on the calendar invite that the founder is on the call.

• 31:52Greg Isenberg?

  It's literally like a sales call and he's coming to the call. And I was so shocked because like, I couldn't believe that this billionaire was taking sales calls with essentially like random people from the internet. And that inspired me to, for 2025, to take more, more sales calls, more customer journey. So the reason I bring that up is every founder, depending on where they are in their cycle, they may be like, I need more feedback or less feedback. And it's important to know where you are.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Totally. It's interesting. I mean, I feel like one of my kind of like mantras in life is like, both are true. You know, like, I think people like don't embrace nuance.

• 32:40Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  It's like, you either believe in feedback or you don't. And it's like, no, it's pretty nuanced. Like, I took, I spent all of last year getting feedback. Now I need to like go deep and like, I don't want to stay at the surface of calls. I need to go deep. I need to actually think about what all of these calls mean. And like, how do you, I combine that, those calls with like my intuition. So I don't think it's like people that like, my resolution is to take less feedback. Doesn't mean I don't believe in feedback. It just is about where, where am I?

• 33:05Greg Isenberg?

  You have one last idea for us?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I have one last idea. So, again, the theme is like, do one thing and do it well. So, the broad idea is, take an article, a link, a presentation, a long piece of text, anything, and convert it into a meme. So, my flavor of content on the internet is Substack. Like, that is where I naturally thrive, is long-form written content. I have like 30,000 readers on Substack, but again, it's like people that are like super engaged with long form. And it's great, but it's like harder to grow. You know, how many people are gonna devote 20 minutes a week to reading what I say?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Memes are this like, unit of like cultural transmission, that in a time-crunched world, say so much and so little. And I think that people that are creating like presentations, long-form videos, like, they would die to have like, whatever they're trying to say be conveyed into like, the format of a meme. Like, I just genuinely think that no idea will become mainstream if it's not like, captured in a meme. And so I think the idea is like, it's a GPT wrapper of sorts, but you have to train it on a model of like, a lot of memes, culturally relevant memes.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  And the user experience, like the value proposition is like, be funny, you know? Like, how do you communicate your idea in a way that's like funny and like, short-form? Right? So, anyone that's creating long-form content, like, would love to have a meme. And I've tried this on Claude, I've tried this on ChatGPT, but it's pretty generic. So I think if you train it on like this curated library of culturally relevant memes, and it has a bias for the present, which ChatGPT and Claude don't have, I think there's just like a product UI experience, it's just like, do one thing, do it well. Paste a link, type text, upload file, whatever. We ingest it, generate embeddings for the thing, understand it, and then like, you know?

• 35:13Greg Isenberg?

  I hear a lot of ideas, and this might be one of my favorite ideas I've heard in a long time. I'm serious.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 35:23Greg Isenberg?

  This is like- The insight is correct. I think there's so much insight trapped into long form that could be put into short form. And how that's being done today is that people are taking long form video and turning into short form clips, but they're not taking long form text and turning into memes. I think that there's a nuance to memes, like certain memes resonate with certain communities. And so you don't want to mess up the meme, right? And you want

• 36:02Greg Isenberg?

  to make sure that you're getting the most. Like, you don't want to post a meme when the meme is done, like that.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yes, there's a cultural relevance that you have to stay in tune with.

• 36:15Greg Isenberg?

  So that's going to take iteration to get to like prime time. But if you're able to create this, if someone ends up building this, this is like, you know, a $10 million a year plus SaaS business.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's interesting if you think about an interesting comp is Google's Notebook 11, where it was a pretty broad product where you could converse with your knowledge in some way. But what actually made it go viral, this tool, was the ability to convert anything. It could be like text or presentation, like any sort of document into a podcast. And so I just think that this idea of like convert, like take X, like X to meme, you know, and like the key is like, you can ingest all this stuff with like, you know, like, how do you convert and understand the meaning of like the document and then train it on the other side? So it's got some curation, but it's really a GPT wrapper.

• 37:05Greg Isenberg?

  I love it. I love it. Sorry, this has been fun. You got to come back again.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, anytime.

• 37:11Greg Isenberg?

  You have to come back on again.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  I'm a big ideas person, but yeah, I think right now, I like my playbook right now is like have this like multi-decade project, like my life's work, and then launch micro products.

• 37:28Greg Isenberg?

  I think that's right. It's making me.

• 37:32Greg Isenberg?

  It's making me rethink some stuff in my own, in my own stuff. So, thank you.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. This is awesome.

• 37:39Greg Isenberg?

  And where, where could people learn more about you and Sublime?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  I'm on Twitter at Sari Azout. I'm on Substack. I write a weekly newsletter. And then I'm on Sublime, sublime.app/sari.

• 37:51Greg Isenberg?

  I love it. I should, I should get on there.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, today, you're not, we're not leaving this without you having a discount.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Thanks, Greg.

• 38:01Greg Isenberg?

  Thank you. See you next time.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.