•idea09:30
Fractional real estate: renting the hours a nightclub isn't open
Steph's opening idea reframes the commercial real estate crisis. Rather than only converting empty offices into apartments, she argues for fractional use of buildings that already have tenants but sit idle most of the week. Her example is Temple Immersive in San Francisco, a nightclub used Friday to Sunday from roughly 7:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., which now hosts a candlelit yoga class under a forest-projection ceiling during the week. When she asked the operator how they found the space, the answer was that the club approached them. She sees a repeatable brokerage in any city — link clubs to yoga and Pilates studios — and other daytime uses such as rage rooms, where people pay to smash plates and old electronics in an empty room.
- San Francisco office vacancy is around 35% and rising as leases roll off
- Temple Immersive is a nightclub running yoga in its unused weekday hours
- The club approached the yoga operator, not the other way round
- A city-level brokerage matching idle venues to studios is replicable
- Rage rooms are a second daytime use for the same square footage
“And especially in cities like San Francisco, where I think there's like 35% vacancy and going up as soon as people's leases roll off.”
“But, I think there's this huge opportunity for fractional real estate.”
“I guess it makes sense, but this club has just all this real estate that's being unused.”
#real estate#arbitrage#business ideas
•idea19:30
Over-the-counter hearing aids, and 3D printing's quiet comeback in medicine
The FDA relaxed its rule in October so hearing aids can now be sold over the counter, which Sam has wanted for years — he keeps missing the appointments the old system required, and puts glucose monitors in the same bucket. Steph's angle is the supply chain underneath: about 99% of custom hearing aids are already 3D printed, with a few companies owning that market. She uses it as a case study in hype cycles, since 3D printing started in the 1980s, was massively over-hyped, was declared dead, and quietly came back in narrow high-value niches. Sean's college friend, an ENT surgeon who runs Duke's 3D printing facility, surgically implanted a 3D-printed section of skull. Sam separately met founders doing 7 million a month on a DTC hearing aid brand.
- The FDA rule change legalised over-the-counter hearing aid sales
- About 99% of custom hearing aids are already 3D printed
- 3D printing died as hype and returned via dental implants and surgical parts
- Medicine justifies the cost of maturing a technology; the same is happening in VR
- An unknown DTC hearing aid brand was doing $7M a month, profitably and near-bootstrapped
“But apparently 99% of hearing aids or custom hearing aids are 3D printed already.”
“But the reason I love this is because 3D printing is the epitome of like tech hype cycle. Started in the 80s, then got way…”
“Well, I also for this hearing aid thing, I met these guys that were doing 7 million a month in sales on their hearing aid…”
#healthcare#3d printing#dtc
•idea34:30
Embed a team dysfunction spotter instead of hiring an executive coach after the fact
Prompted by The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Sean argues companies do this backwards: resentment and scar tissue accumulate until someone books an executive coach and an offsite. His alternative is a permanent internal role, roughly the Wendy Rhoades character from Billions but not one-on-one — someone who sits in meetings, takes notes, and each week tells people what they did and how it landed, including the second-order effects on what colleagues then go and do. Sam floats calling it a doula. The economics Sean offers: for every ten people hired, making that team 10% more efficient creates one extra employee without the payroll.
- Successful teams all look different but dysfunctional companies look the same
- Executive coaches and offsites are reactive; the role should be embedded
- The job is observing meetings and reporting weekly on second-order effects
- 10% efficiency across ten people equals a free extra headcount
- Sean is surprised the role does not already exist
“the reason the book's called that is uh successful teams all look different, but every dysfunctional company looks the same.”
“I actually think that companies should embed this in the company.”
“every 10 people you hire, if you can make that team 10% more efficient, you've basically created one extra employee without that payroll.”
#team dynamics#management#future of work
•idea39:00
Head of Remote, and the missing concept of a digital suit
Steph's next job of the future is Head of Remote, a role GitLab already has. Her case is that companies which transitioned from office to remote simply copy and pasted a bunch of things from the office and never learned to build a remote organisation from the ground up or work asynchronously — a huge macro shift with no expertise guiding it. Sean's scope for the role covers home setups, remote working best practices, boundaries across time zones and meeting planning. Steph's sharpest observation is that the same companies with strict suit-and-tie rules now let people join client meetings with a MacBook under their chin and a filthy background, because a digital dress code is outside their field of view. At a16z the design team refreshes high-quality company Zoom backgrounds every quarter for visual consistency.
- GitLab already has the role; most remote companies have nobody owning it
- Companies ported office habits rather than designing for remote
- Location-based pay is another unresolved remote question
- Nobody enforces a digital dress code despite historic physical ones
- a16z's design team ships refreshed Zoom backgrounds every quarter
“They just copy and pasted a bunch of things from the office. They don't actually know how to build a remote organization from the ground…”
“are letting people sit with their MacBook under their chin with like a dirty ass background behind them showing up to their business meetings trying…”
“Um and they again, they refresh them every quarter. Everyone has access to them so there's at least that visual consistency”
#remote work#future of work#company culture
•idea48:30
The cyber actuary, and Eden Data's subscription compliance business
Steph's last job pick is the cyber actuary. Actuaries price risk for ordinary things like flights; she argues there is enormous unpriced white space around new digital risks — how risky is deploying a celebrity's voice, or open-sourcing your LLM, in a world of voice cloning and rising cyber crime. Sam offers a live business already monetising the adjacent gap: Eden Data, run by a Hampton member named Taylor who claims he started it because of an article on Trends. It sells security compliance as a subscription to 50-to-100-person startups that need certification to sell into enterprise but cannot afford a full-time chief security officer, working a 50-to-100-point checklist with templates and an overseas team, then monitoring it for changes. Sean adds the same fragmentation exists in personal security audits for high-net-worth individuals.
- Actuaries price conventional risk; digital risk is largely unpriced
- Eden Data charges roughly $7-10k a month for compliance-as-a-subscription
- It hit $6-7M revenue in two years, tracking to $8M this year
- The wedge is startups too small for a full-time CSO but selling to enterprise
- Personal security auditing for the wealthy is fragmented and still manual
“I think this idea of being a cyber actuary is basically actuaries assess risk for anything, right?”
“And I think there's just like this huge white space around um risk that people have not calculated yet.”
“I think he's only 2 years in. I think he's going to do 8 million in revenue this year.”
#cybersecurity#compliance#services business
•idea52:30
Mouth tape: from a dumb Twitter habit to $2M in sales
Steph first encountered mouth taping about six months earlier via a guy on Twitter who had taped his mouth shut nightly for six months and called it the best thing he had ever done. Sam knows the founder of Hostage Tape personally and openly told him the idea was dumb; six months later the company was at $500,000 in sales and a year later $2 million, which the founder now rubs in his face. The distribution accelerant is Andrew Huberman, who has talked about it — Steph's household calls him Father Drew, and Sean's read is that he functions as a bro Oprah whose endorsement produces a huge spike. The mechanism itself is simple: taping forces nasal breathing, which is better for you than mouth breathing.
- Originated as a self-experiment shared on Twitter
- Hostage Tape went from $500k to $2M in sales within about a year
- Sam called it dumb and was proven wrong
- Huberman's attention acts as a demand spike, sponsored or not
- The whole product benefit is forcing nasal instead of mouth breathing
“Yeah, so mouth tape I first heard about this like 6 months ago because some guy on Twitter was like, "I tape my mouth shut…”
“And then 6 months later he's like $500,000 in sales.”
“Well, it makes you breathe through your nose and breathing through your nose is better for you than breathing through your mouth.”
#consumer products#sleep#influencer marketing
•idea54:00
Lupini beans as the next edamame
Steph has been pitching lupini beans for a year, to Sam's visible exhaustion. The marketing numbers she cites — obviously cherry-picked against favourable comparators — are 50% more protein than chickpeas, twice the fiber of edamame, 80% fewer calories than almonds, 60% fewer carbs than pistachios, and 35g per serving. Her real argument is a pattern from travelling: edamame was unknown in North America twenty or thirty years ago and is now standard restaurant fare, so a popular Italian bean has a plausible path to the same adoption curve. She thinks it works as a DTC product, notes Brami as roughly the only brand doing it, and suspects the bottleneck is supply chain or procurement rather than cost or taste. Sean immediately says he will buy some, and both hosts caution that MFM-inspired product launches usually die within six months.
- Cherry-picked nutrition stats versus chickpeas, edamame, almonds and pistachios
- The thesis is an adoption curve, not the nutrition: edamame's path in North America
- Brami is roughly the only brand in the category
- Suspected bottleneck is supply chain or procurement, not price
- Hosts warn that thirteen listeners will start this and quit within six months
“Speaking of health benefits, another trend that I would love to see take off because then I would have called it is lupini beans.”
“50% more protein than chickpeas, 2% or two times more fiber than edamame, 80% fewer calories than almonds, 60% fewer carbs than pistachios, 35 g…”
“where like edamame edamame was not popular in North America 20, 30 years ago.”
#food trends#dtc#consumer products
•idea57:30
Premium advent calendars: $150k a year from one December drop
Steph's closing idea attacks a seasonal gift market currently served by expired milk chocolate. Advent calendars land exactly when people are scrambling for a gift that is thoughtful but fun. A man called Paul built a sake advent calendar roughly the size of a printer, filled with sake he hand-picks from Japan through his existing business, priced at $300, capped at 500 units a year — about $150,000 from a single annual drop off a site doing only around 2,000 visits a month. Steph challenges the MFM community to build better versions six months ahead of Christmas, citing hot sauce and LEGO calendars, and a viral tweet from a woman named Nicole captioned organize my sauces, showing her world sauce collection in a card-binder, that pulled around 468,000 likes.
- The category incumbent is cheap, low-effort chocolate calendars
- Paul's sake calendar: $300, 500 units capped, ~$150k per drop
- His site only gets around 2,000 visits per month
- The format works for 12 days or the full month of December
- A sauce-collection tweet with ~468k likes signals adjacent demand
“What Paul did is he created this sake calendar.”
“Um, and he sells them for 300 bucks and every year he sells 500 of them, which he caps.”
“What advent calendars is the My First Million community, what are you going to make that is way cooler than the expired milk chocolate?”
#seasonal products#dtc#business ideas