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For those who don’t want to scan every product launch of Product Hunt, don’t worry. I do, and I include the most interesting potential venture scale startups here, with bullets on why I think they could be be big.
Top 3 potential venture scale products
Ocean - Make music with friends in your browser
The user experience is incredible. Within one click, you can start making EDM in your browser. Pretty seamless.
More and more apps are being built on top of Spotify, meaning I think we will seeing the rise of more music-first products. Few are building music creation products though, which is an opening for Ocean.
They already have social built into the products, as the goal is to make music with friends. This makes virality more attainable.
Alpaca Data API - Free real-time stock market data API
As trading stocks becomes more common for kids and teens, Alpaca will allow developers to create challengers to Robinhood for a fraction of the cost.
Robinhood appears like it can’t be stopped, which means it’s the perfect time to enter the market as a small team. There are not enough competitors in the space, and Alpaca allows single developers to build these apps, which may not take much market share from Robinhood, but will be financially significant for the developers.
Alpaca is a YC startup in a very hot space. But instead of competing for market share, they are selling picks and shovels. I don’t know many others doing this.
Dithering - A new podcast from Ben Thompson and John Gruber
You might be wondering why I listed a podcast as a venture scale idea. It’s because in order to listen to the podcast, you must pay a $5/mo subscription. The innovation here is the business model, not the content.
This is a collaboration of two popular subcreators, which will largely dominate the next decade. Instead of two influencers being in the same Youtube video to maximize views, they will start projects together and paywall it.
Ben Thompson’s work at Stratechery has been very ahead of the curve, in charging directly for content, not relying on ads. I won’t be surprised when Ben becomes a billionaire while having a company under 10 people by 2030. We’ll look back on this small Dithering launch as a small piece of his large, yet lean, empire.
Honorable mentions
Spatial - Collaborate with lifelike avatars in VR/AR/Web.
Scener - A virtual movie theater to watch content with your friends
Here’s everything I wrote this last week (Subscribers only)
The Subcreator Gold Rush - A post highlighting areas where founders could build to serve the next generation of creators.
How I would Save NFTY - My high school youth group has been slammed by COVID, but has been more slammed by generational shifts in teens. I purpose a solution to the leadership in a direction the movement should go in.
Rise of the Avatars - Avatars are on the rise everywhere. This is a short post on why I think this matters, a lot, for the future.
On June 1st, I will go public with my subscription of $15/mo, and I am considering this my Seed Round. I will write a few pitches about why I think I’m worth your $15/mo investment. If I have already sold you with my writing so far, please consider subscribing and being a part of Forward Thinking’s Pre-Seed round. I set up a 33% discount for anyone subscribing before June 1st, which is $10/mo. I will write a blog post about my pre-seed round and will include you in it if you subscribe, and there will never be another chance to be a pre-seed investor in Forward Thinking. A pre-seed investor in me. I never forget my early backers.
