Cooking on startup ideas

I really want to start a company. I really want to run a company. I have many ideas of what that company could be.

For context, I did grow up in Palo Alto, the heart of silicon valley, and was raised by a father that was sort of like the Jos Verstappen of entrepreneurship. Successful in his own entrepreneurial career and wanted to push his son from a young age to be even more successful in that field. I went to after school tutoring, looked at business school cases, got put in coder school, toured his offices, and was forced to join an “academic extracurricular” of which I chose robotics. This upbringing culminated in who I am today, an ambitious engineer that wants to start a company.

While at work at US Synthetic or Lift Aircraft, or while sitting in class, I naturally think about startups. I listen to YC how to start a startup and other business podcasts. I ideate on what problems I am passionate about solving. Here are a few of them

1. Orcamaker A platform where AI is used to solve problems, but humans guarantee the results. Currently, there are platforms such as Schematik.io that are glorified AI wrappers that teach you how to build hardware.

   My idea is to have a platform like Schematik and McMaster-Carr combined, with elements of the former sports ecommerce business Curated.com

   Orcamaker would have an AI chatbot that takes your idea and builds a generalized plan. Then after paying a deposit on the parts, a real human being looks at the BOM and plan, and guarantees it. Then the customer buys the parts, and they have a guarantee that the parts will work together. They are paying for peace of mind and guarantees, knowing that any inconsistencies will get free replacements, and support from real human engineers.

2. Peddle Anything What do most of the most successful consumer facing customers of the last 15 years have in common? AirBnB, Uber, Instagram, Facebook, DoorDash, Kalshi, Turo, and more.

   I would argue their strongest common thread is network effects that connect people to a new way of making money on the side. AirBnB hosts make money renting out spare rooms, DoorDash drivers obviously make some side hustle cash delivering people’s food. I thought about a problem I personally have that could be solved by this method. And it came to me- wholesaling physical stuff.

   I have obviously been working on wholesaling real estate, and that model speaks to me. I view it as a win-win-win. It’s a win for the seller who has someone take care of the marketing/negotation and find a buyer for them. It’s a win for the wholesaler who gets to make a nice commission. And it’s a win for the end buyer who gets a house they at a price they want with little to no work other than just saying yes.

   I would love to bring that into the world of reselling and flipping.

   Feeling inspired by Gary V one day, I went to my local thrift store to find some of these supposed legendary resellable snags that make it worth quitting any sub $100k salary job where someone feels deeply unhappy (Gary V’s reccomendation). What I found was a bunch of garbage lol. Perhaps this was just my particular nearby Saver’s but I was very unimpressed.

   On the other end of this problem, even when I have quality stuff to sell, between all of the other things I do, many times my listings go absolutely nowhere. Observe the wonderful statistics of these listings on brand new ski gear in UTAH

   

   I’m aware that I just must be doing something wrong, but I honestly think my time is better spent focusing on other things. That being said, I would still rather have a few hundred bucks than donating it to a thrift store or having it continue to sit in my in laws’ attic.

   Business idea: This is not that much of a startup idea, but I am very interested in running a service based or other “boring” business. I have had a lot of sucess selling sports jerseys but I want to build a more “real” company rather than just providing the service of sourcing and customizing. One such business I am very interested in is manufacturing inflatable mascots. I was inspired by this after seeing a giant inflatable duck outside the new Quick Quack car wash in Provo Utah. This sounds silly, but I think it’s an underrated industry. Simple businesses that provide physical products for marketing like signarama are extremely profitable. I believe that my interest in them, alongside my creativity and ability to do engineering deisgn, would make me a good mogul for this niche.