5 Startups I’d Build If I Were in My 20s

I share 5 startup ideas that could be launched for under $500, particularly aimed at entrepreneurs in their twenties. Each idea requires minimal technical expertise to start and can be launched using existing platforms like Notion, Circle, Discord, or simple AI tools. These ideas can generate meaningful revenue while providing valuable learning experiences that might lead to bigger opportunities. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:20 - Startup Idea 1: First Job Rejection Tracker 02:31 - Startup Idea 2: Take your headphones off 04:14 - Startup Idea 3: Creator-in-Residence Agency 06:08 - Startup Idea 4: $2K Vibe Coding Agency 07:57 - Startup Idea 5: Hook Line Studio 09:02 - Bonus idea: Polymarket for college campuses Key Points: • First Job Rejection Tracker - A platform for college graduates to log job applications, track responses, and connect with others who were rejected from the same companies • Take your headphones off - A paid community for people addicted to tech and screens, offering digital detox challenges and IRL meetups • Creator-in-Residence Agency - Connecting brands with micro-creators who need steady pay, taking 20% of contracts • 2K Vibe Coding Agency - Offering two-week sprints to build micro-SaaS products using AI tools for $2,000 per project • Hook Line Studio - A tool that generates catchy TikTok hook lines based on video ideas, with potential for a subscription model The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com 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/ Boringmarketing - Vibe Marketing for Companies: http://boringmarketing.com/ The Vibe Marketer - Join the Community and Learn: http://thevibemarketer.com/ Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.skool.com/startupempire/about FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

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

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  Today, we're going to talk about five startups I would build if I were in my twenties today for under $500. Now, I built and sold three venture-backed startups in my twenties. It absolutely changed my life. So, you know, hopefully someone listens to some of these ideas. It gets their creative juices flowing. I think this is particularly valuable for people in their twenties. But if you're 35, or 48, or 15, I still think that this is, uh, these are ideas that you can go ahead and do.

• 0:40Greg Isenberg?

  So, the first idea is a first job rejection tracker. So, uh, the idea is log all your job applications, track response rates by company and role, get insight on what's working, and connect with others who got rejected from the same place. Now, if you're in college or you just graduated college, you, you know, you know, a lot of people who are just trying to get their first jobs. But I don't think that there's like a levels.fyi for college. Now, if you don't know levels.fyi, it shows how much people get paid at all these different tech companies. So it basically, you know, if you're a product manager at Amazon, uh, based on, you know, certain, uh, levels,

• 1:23Greg Isenberg?

  like a senior PM, you know, you're going to get $307,000 Canadian, for example. So it breaks it all down and it basically gives transparency to something that, you know, not a lot of people talked about. It was, it was behind closed doors. Now, I think that there's an opportunity to do a similar thing around first jobs. So it's sort of a niche of this. And, and you know, you being in your twenties, you understand, uh, you know, these people going through these first jobs, uh, you know, first job applications and stuff like that. So I think that the, you know, why it's easy to get started, you can start with something like a Notion template, a Zapier automation, you can use a Discord, Circle, or School community to bring people together.

• 2:08Greg Isenberg?

  But your first steps are going to be crowdsource the data. Start with one company, expand from there. Use short form bids to drive awareness. So yeah, what I mean by start with one company, I mean, like, you know, maybe you just start with people applying at Procter and Gamble, people who want to work at Goldman Sachs. And then you start from there. So that's idea number one. Let's go to idea number two. So this one is called takeyourheadphonesoff.com. And this is just a paid community idea. I think a lot of people in your twenties, it's easy to start a paid community, right? Because you can go and sign up to school and circle. I'll include links to those in the show notes.

• 2:53Greg Isenberg?

  And you can just, you just need to come up with a unique niche that's super valuable. So takeyourheadphonesoff.com is a paid community for people addicted to tech and screens. And who's addicted to tech and screens? You know, a lot, it's young people, right? I mean, we're all addicted, let's be real, but you get it, right? So daily get offline text reminders, weekly IRL meetups in major cities, accountability partners, digital detox challenge. I think that there's a mega opportunity to own the brand around taking your headphones off. Why it's easy to get started? You can start with a circle or school community. You can use a Twilio for text.

• 3:33Greg Isenberg?

  You can use Eventbrite or Partifull probably for meetups. You can start a free Discord group. Tweet who else feels like their phones own them. I just think that what I'm seeing from a content perspective is there's tons of people who feel like their phones own them. And I think you can charge a monthly fee $9, $12, $19 a month and sort of host these meetups in a bunch of different cities. So really easy to get started. Really doesn't cost you a lot of money. And you could get a nice monthly recurring 10K a month from something like that. The third idea is an agency.

• 4:16Greg Isenberg?

  Now, agencies are just, they're just easier to start than tech companies. So I included a couple of ideas here. So it's a creator and residence agency. So basically, brands that suck at social, connect them with micro creators. You know them, you're in your twenties. You know, people who are, who are creators, who need steady pay. And take 20% of the contract. So you're basically like a recruiting firm, but you're placing micro creators and creators, basically your friends, who know how to create TikToks, know, you know, understand cap cut. That's, I think this is a mega opportunity. I don't see why this can't be a one, two, three, five million dollar a year opportunity.

• 4:59Greg Isenberg?

  It's pretty easy to get started. You can lean on DMing creators. If you don't know the creators, you can use an airtable to store who these creators are. You know, list willing creators, list brands. You can just play a matchmaker via Zoom. You don't need to build or code. You don't need to build an app. You don't need to code. Like you can just use that. And it's good for someone who's kind of a hustler, who's gonna go and like convince these creators to sign on and convince these brands that they need to hire a creator in residence. And I'm giving away this, I mean, I don't think this exists, like this name Creator in Residence Agency. I think that is, you know, a good name because, you know, people are looking for these creators in residence. So, you know,

• 5:42Greg Isenberg?

  the first step is if you're trying to create, if you're, if you're trying to create

• 5:48Greg Isenberg?

  this, the startup is, you know, post just looking for brands. I want a creator on payroll, on LinkedIn. And then you can source creators from X, Instagram, that sort of thing. So this whole idea around creators on payroll, I think it's new. I think someone who's young, concerned in agency around this is probably best suited for it. The fourth idea is the 2K Vibe Coding Agency. So basically doing two week sprints, building micro SaaS using ChatGPT, Bolt, Lovable, Replin and Cursor. So you basically go and you just, you have one product, you're a productized service. You sell, you sell these sprints for $2,000, basically products for $2,000.

• 6:33Greg Isenberg?

  And, you know, they're

• 6:36Greg Isenberg?

  You know, they're teaching you these, you're getting these clients and they're teaching you to become better and better, you know, prompt engineers and also just vibe coders. So I think that, you know, just, you know, a great way to learn how to become incredible at vibe coding is to just get paid to do it. So yes, you're not getting paid 20K or 25K or whatever, but you know, you're spending, you know, a couple of weeks building these MVPs for people, giving them value, you're getting 2K in return. And I think just this idea around branding it around, and again, like, I don't know if it's $2,000 or a thousand, or 3,500, or if it's two weeks or one week sprints.

• 7:17Greg Isenberg?

  But the idea is owning that productized service around vibe coding, huge opportunity, and will take you from, you know, an okay vibe coder to an incredible vibe coder. And you're going to learn from that whole experience, you're actually going to learn about, you know, maybe there's a micro SaaS that you end up wanting to create. Maybe there's a full-on SaaS that you want to create. So I think that you spend one year, two years doing this, maybe it makes 300K a year, 500K a year of revenue. But the big insights is what you're going to learn from building these products for other people, SaaS products for other people. And, uh, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna get your creative juices flowing. The fifth idea is, um, just, you know, I called it Hook Line Studio.

• 8:02Greg Isenberg?

  So basically you paste a video idea and you get 10 catchy TikTok hook lines in 30 seconds. So, you know, this does require you to be somewhat of a vibe coder. You would have to use something like Cursor, but you know, you basically create this single text bomb box. It goes to a GPT prompt, it lists the hooks, you can embed it on Type Dream. And if you, you know, if you wanted to actually get this, you know, the first steps that I would do, if I was trying to build something like this, is I screen record the flow. I'd say, you know, steal these hooks for free and then I would upsell to a $9 a month unlimited hook. You know, product. So I think that there's, there's an opportunity to build a product around hooks, TikTok hooks. And you obviously, you know, being young, understand what hooks are good,

• 8:47Greg Isenberg?

  what hooks aren't good. And you just curate that database over time, curate those prompts over time. And I bet you that there's a few hundred, you know, KARR business, probably, you know, behind something like that. And the last idea, which came to me, but I, I, I preface it with like, I don't know if it's legal, but it's basically, I think that it would be cool if this existed. So I'm not, I don't know if anyone should do this because I don't know if it's legal. It operates into the gray area. This isn't, you know, financial advice. This isn't legal advice. But when, you know, I've been looking at poly market. I'm sure

• 9:27Greg Isenberg?

  a lot of you have seen this, where people basically use crypto, crypto to predict where, where the world is going to go. So for example, you know, people say Zohran Mamdadi, 72% chance of him winning the New York mayor election, or there, there, you know, how many Fed cut rates in 2025? And 26% of people say one. So I think there's an opportunity to create like poly market for college campuses, or just, you know, young people, you know, six, 18, call it to 22. I think there's an opportunity there. I did a little bit of research before this. I just asked perplexity to say like, is this legal? And it said it operates in a gray

• 10:12Greg Isenberg?

  area. So I don't know, but I, I think that this idea around students basically betting on the dean's list, which couples break up, who gets kicked out of Greek life, class curve predictions would be kind of an interesting model. And then you would obviously take a 5% rate, rate. In it. So these are just a few, you know, that's why I include that one as a bonus, by the way. These are just a few, you know, a few ideas that I would do if I were in my twenties. You know, they don't cost a lot to get going. I think my, probably my favorite one is, is the first one, the first job rejection tracker, because I think it's, it's tiny, but it could

• 10:55Greg Isenberg?

  actually end up becoming quite big. But all of these, you know, five ideas, you're gonna learn, you're gonna learn something from, you're gonna learn something from, and they don't cost a lot to get going. And I think they're, they are ideas that could expand from there. So, hope this has been helpful. You know, I'm trying to do, you know, more idea episodes on the Startup Ideas Podcast to get your creative juices flowing. If you're looking for more ideas, you can always go to ideabrowser.com. This is something that I created to give people startup ideas every single day. So I literally built this for myself, and now I'm sharing it with you. I can't wait to see what you build. And just comment on the YouTube video. I read every

• 11:40Greg Isenberg?

  single comment, just what you're thinking about, the first thing that comes to your mind, and then hit that like button as well. So I know to keep creating videos. It just gives me an idea around if you're liking this, or you're not liking this, or what you want to see. So, hope this has been helpful. Have a creative day, my friends, and I'll see you on the internet.