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

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: