Automating lists, making products more accurate, and earning millions with a scaffolding business

Jul 04, 2022

Hey,

This is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the newsletter that had lots of names during its 2-year lifetime (Founder Flywheel, Opportunities.so, Indie Opportunities, and Product Ideas Newsletter).

After tons of experiments, I've decided to start focusing on just one thing again: punchy, inspiring content focused on business ideas, trends, and opportunities.

This is what the majority of readers of this newsletter signed up for. And maybe just as important, I'm confident that I'm able to deliver this consistently every week and enjoy the process.

So there won't be any major experiments with the content of this newsletter any time soon. Promised. I'm going to stick to the new name Business Brainstorms and the new format for at least the next 12 months.

As an aside: I'm aware that you as a reader probably don't care about the name of the newsletter and overall it doesn't really matter that much. Dru Riley told me on a call a while ago that he thinks it's hilarious that his extremely popular newsletter is called Trends.vc even though it's neither really about trends nor about venture capital. But the reason why I care about it nevertheless is that it's important for my own self-narrative and identity. In a sense, it's like with the outfits I'm wearing. Other people don't really care about it but it has an important influence on how I feel and move through the day. Another similarity is that the only way to find out what fits is to try a bunch of things. And that's what I did.

Okay, now enough of me. In the future, I will publish all self-reflections like this and all experiments in my personal newsletter. The newsletter you're reading right now will stay laser-focused.

In any case, thanks so much for staying subscribed through all the pivots, no matter at what point you decided to join the ride.

Now let's dive into today's ideas, trends, and opportunities.

👨‍🎓 Framework of the Week

The Framework: Automate “How to” lists
Explanation: Take a "How to __" checklist article and convert it into a single-purpose web application that helps the user complete all the steps on the checklist. People love checklists but never execute on them. Take out steps by automating them or, even better, the whole process.

💭 Prompt of the Week

Prompt: What could you do to make a product or service you’re using yourself more accurate?
Example: A health app to help people with their eating habits. To make the app more accurate integrate it with a blood glucose monitor so that when I measure my blood sugar it will log it in the app and make it more useful.

💡 Social Listening

“Is there a way to automatically take all the entries in an @airtable and make them into formatted text (for a wordpress blog post)? I want to make my free Airtable base into a blog post.” Twitter
“I'm constantly seeing new 'form builders' pop up. I don't think there's anything wrong with Google Forms in the way of building forms - people are used to it and everyone has a Google account. I wouldn't want to invest in a new product that could go away if I were trying to gather information long term. But I do want to replace Google Form's ugly, non-customizable view.” Kernal

🤖 AI Idea of the Week

The Idea: Analytics for Group Chat Apps
The Pain Points: Group chat apps have become a staple of any company’s communication. These apps allow employees to collaborate, have informal discussions, and can even help improve workplace morale. The problem is that there aren’t a lot of ways to quantify the effectiveness of group chat apps.
The Opportunity: Someone should create analytics for group chat apps. These analytics would give companies a better understanding of how their employees are using the apps and what features they’d like to see added.

📈 Trend Signals of the Week

brought to you by Under the Radar

Raw ramen is a snack with a crunchy, salty taste that is popular in East Asia. The ingredients, which are generally available anywhere, are broken ramen noodles, which are sprinkled with ramen seasoning power to create a crunchy and savory snack that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

/r/tattooadvice is a community dedicated to helping people answer common questions around tatoos. (“Can't decide on placement? Need an external opinion? You're in the right place.”)

💸 Revenue Signals of the Week

brought to you by Revenue Watcher

Taplio grows to $19k MRR. (”Create better LinkedIn content, identify new leads and reach out to them automatically.”)
Notion Forms reaches $10k MRR. (”Create beautiful forms to fill your Notion tables.”)
Leave Me Alone reports $9k in revenue last month. ("See all of your newsletters in one place and unsubscribe from them with a single click.”)
Hyperping hits $8k MRR. (”Combining reliable uptime monitoring, elegant hosted status pages & incident management, all in one tool for your whole team.”)
ParityDeals reaches $500 MRR. (”Optimize your product pricing across countries to maximize revenue.”)
PokePrice is now making $400 per month selling a Pro subscription and the number is growing steadily. (“Facebook Group members find it time-consuming and repetitive to search eBay sold listings to determine the latest value of a Pokémon card. PokéPrice is a tool that automates that process in real-time.”)