Product Ideas Newsletter #11

X OS, quarks and leptons, and what the smartest people do

🚀Product of the Week

Idea Economy. I recently discovered the Idea Economy newsletter and quickly became a huge fan. Each issue contains links to a bunch of interesting articles that are somewhat related to “Ideas and Opportunities for Hustling Startups”, together with a summary why the article is worth your time. You can view an example here.

There are, of course, lots of curation newsletters like this. But this is only one where I find 80%+ of the articles interesting and I’m looking forward to every single edition.

Oh and I should probably emphasize that, even though it may seem like one, this is not an ad. I’m just a huge fan and thought that everyone who enjoys this newsletter will enjoy the Idea Economy newsletter as well.

💰 Opportunity of the Week

X OS. Not too long ago, it was possible to get a lot of attention and earn thousands of dollars by creating simple sites like Startup Stash or Marketing Stack. Just look at those upvote numbers on Product Hunt! Both projects got acquired shortly after the launch and there are countless examples of similar sites that were quite successful too. They all seemed to perfectly hit the nerve of the time.

Now I’m not proposing that you should create a “stack” or “stash” site (even though I’m pretty sure it can still work). Instead, I want to point out that there’s a new type of product that right now hits perfectly the nerve of the time.

People are obsessed with personal productivity. All kinds of related products, from courses to newsletters, are selling like crazy.

Now meet “operating systems” that run on Notion.

Two relevant data points:

• Janel made more than $10,000 by selling her Newsletter OS.

• Tem made more than $3,000 by selling his Entrepreneur OS.

These are great numbers for these relatively simple kinds of products and there’s a huge opportunity to create similar products for different niches. For example, has anyone created Podcast OS yet?

But you can also niche done and become creative if you combine the OS idea with other rising trends. (Idea sex!) For example, as people are forced to spend more and more time at home, interest in house plants is skyrocketing.

So what could you create? Plant OS obviously.

Now you might point out that an OS in this context is just a bunch of Notion templates and that these have been around for quite a while now. You’re of course right with this. All the “Stack” and “Stash” sites are just prettified Excel sheets if you want to break it down to that level. Similarly, a product like Bullet Train (a popular Ruby on Rails starter kit that’s currently priced at $1,450) is just a bunch of Rails code, and an iPhone is just a bunch of quarks and leptons.

So while these characterizations are technically certainly correct, they completely miss the point. Great products are more than the sum of their parts.

An OS is not just a bunch of Notion templates. It’s a highly-customizable, actionable productivity starter kit that allows creators to do more of what they love.

📈 Trend Signals

Creators are making millions on Onlyfans and the demand for “Onlyfans advice” is exploding.

Already 2000+ people are searching for “Dark Academia Fashion” each month on Google and the trend curve is clearly pointing upwards. Meanwhile, the keyword difficulty, according to Ahrefs, is almost zero.

💭 Thought of the Week

"What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years" - Chris Dixon

🤔 Prompt of the Week

Big acquisitions. Have a look at big company acquisitions that happened recently. Now might be the perfect time to launch a competitor. Typically, after an acquisition many skilled engineers leave (because they made enough money) and the strategy becomes more profit-focused. This opens the door for innovative newcomers.

👋 End Notes

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