I'm Scott.

I'm Russell.

And I'm Leo.

This is Spitball.

Welcome to Spitball, where three technical directors and a guest empty our heads of startup and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free.

Anything that we say is yours to keep.

And Scott, I believe you brought our guest this week.

I did.

I brought my good friend Meg.

Hello.

Meg is a pharmaceutical account manager, but much more importantly, she is a gaming enthusiast, Twitch streamer, theater nerd, anime cinephile, EMD connoisseur, cosplay designer, and all-around home-taught geek extraordinaire.

And she's going to fit right in on here.

What's EMD?

Do you mean EDM, Scott?

It's supposed to be EDM.

(laughing) - I had a big conversation about EMDR today and like that.

(laughing) For Peter Liu who's editing, I'm so sorry.

- I'm gonna keep it in and what's EMDR?

(laughing) - It's a form of therapy, like musical dance.

(laughing) - Meg, welcome to Spitball.

- We know what EDM is.

- Exactly.

Welcome to Spitball Meg, how are you?

- I'm great, thanks for having me guys.

- We're so glad to have you.

This is gonna be really fun.

- I'm flattered, who you thought of?

In honor of you and Scott meeting at a DDM festival, I've written a game for us that I think will get us warmed up this week that I'm going to call Fun Rave or Fundraise.

So in this one, I'm going to throw out a name.

And all you have to tell me is, is this the name of some sort of music festival that happens somewhere in the world?

Or is this a recent graduate of the Y Combinator fundraising venture capital, like demo day?

So a startup that just started.

- Okay.

- If I had said the bass coast, then you would say, of course, that that's the women founded boutique in the UK.

That is an electronic music festival started in 2009.

As we do every week, I got to start with Meg.

Meg, Noisily, is that a music festival or a recent graduate startup?

Noisily, like the first thing I think of when I hear Noisily is maybe another website with ly at the end.

But Noisily sounds to me like a startup because I haven't heard, I've got a pretty good base knowledge of like a lot of the North American festival scene at least.

I haven't heard of Noisily.

That's why I went worldwide.

This is of course the Noisily Festival of Music and Arts that happens in Lancaster Shire in the UK.

And that would get me.

It sounds a lot like a Noisily.ly or whatever.

Yeah, totally.

Scott, Village Labs.

to be startup right go and start up on that one yeah it's a fintech platform well done okay no one's gonna call their festival village labs I don't know it sounds pretty EDM fringy to me Russell lumen orbit that's a gum I'll take startup for 500 yeah they're building solar-powered data center constellations and they've rebranded recently to star cloud I almost called that one the one Star Cloud.

That sounds like an EDM festival too, doesn't it?

It does.

Star Cloud sounds like some of the prompt you'd get spit out from an AI when you're like, "Hey, I've got this rocket ship company in this game that I'm building.

What should I call it?" "Chachapiti, give me 10 suggestions." Star Cloud sounds like a bargain bin video game.

Meg, Passage.

Passage sounds like a rave.

I don't think I've heard of it, but it sounds like a rave.

It totally does.

AI copilot that automates customs, classification, and paperwork.

And also a rave.

And also a rave.

Scott Shambhala.

S-H-A-M-B-H-A-L-A.

I want this one to be EDM.

I'm going to say festival.

Family run, sponsorship free, multi-stage rave in British Columbia.

Very good.

I'm going to Canada.

Next year.

Are you going?

Oh, very fun.

Family friendly?

I have a bunch of Canadian friends.

No.

2025 is already sold out.

People are doobie skinny dipping in the lake there.

Doobie skinny dipping?

They doobie.

There is a lake like right in the middle of all of it and people doobie skinny dipping in that lake.

Please don't burn your children.

They would love it.

They will learn.

Russell.

Abundant.

Mmm.

Ah, it's going to be a startup.

Provides on demand human tele-ops workforce.

A yes.

To help rescue stuck AI agents.

Yes.

YC company very good.

Nice one more time through Meg rainbow serpent This is another one.

I haven't heard of I you know in a perfect world.

I have a 50/50 I've got a goose egg right now.

So realistically I can only either go up or stay where I'm at, right?

What's what's what's one more loss here?

It sounds like a four-day Australian bushed off side trance art workshop thing near Lexton, Victoria - I didn't rush up on my international EDM scene.

- I had to go international 'cause I figured you knew all the ones around here.

- I got the North American one, Shambhala.

- You did.

Scott, Desert Hearts.

- My gut instinct is EDM, but I've learned in this game to always say the opposite when I think Leo's tricking.

So I'm gonna go start up.

- 72 hour house techno in love marathon in Flagstaff, Arizona.

- Yeah, it's in the desert.

- I figured you'd know about that.

I just need to watch Meg's face on this.

(laughing) - Okay, I have a better poker face is what I'm hearing.

- That's right.

- I heard, look, this was supposed to be audio.

- Last one, Russell, Spacium, S-P-A-C-E-I-U-M.

- That's an EDM, right?

- Constructing robotic in-orbit refueling depot for spacecraft.

Fresh off a $6.3 million seed round.

Sorry, that was another Y Combinator.

- Dude, that's a Star Wars, like, - I know.

(laughing) - Refuel in space.

Yeah, I didn't realize Y Combinator was graduating like so many space projects nowadays.

I mean, they have like refueling just in general for aircraft.

It makes sense that spacecraft would need it too.

Space Wars, that's why, you know, patrol space.

They're just creating the things that Space Force can use to justify having Space Force.

Justify having it, right?

Yeah.

Scott, I think you got a perfect score.

Am I right?

Really?

Pretty sure you did.

Yep.

Let's go.

Does that mean I get to go first?

What do you got for us this week, Scott?

All right.

So this is a pretty simple idea, but I talked to my little sister about it.

I'm excited now.

I recently watched this viral video where there's a Senator standing at a podium and they're holding up different food pair products.

Like here's the, here's two Gatorades, two Skittles, pasta, bread, whatever.

And then they explained that this is the American version and this is the non-American version.

And then it was like a, we all know this is going as a 10 minute rant about how awful the stuff is that they put into the American version of the exact same thing.

You got the red dye 40, that titanium dioxide, subway bread is not even considered bread, all of that.

Uh, my little sister spent a lot, went to school in Europe and she came back and was just like, I can't believe how much better I felt like just living in Europe.

Just, and I couldn't figure out what it was.

And then as soon as I got back to America, it all came back and how much, how awful I feel just based upon the food that we're eating here.

So there is a, people know all this already, but there's just been a bigger movement coming out lately of people just realizing this more and more.

And I want to create a EU grocery store in America, a hundred percent EU imported products, like nothing is allowed in there that, um, is goes against the European union standards.

And that's it.

It'll be a premium product, import everything, but people can eat all the good stuff that doesn't have all the crap.

That's it.

Brick and mortar store.

maybe we'll do an online version so it's easier to ship to people in the US.

It's an exotic Asian market or whatever.

But it's just cheap.

That's what my immediate thought was is we think about like these market things and a lot of times they're like peddling spices that are from their countries of origin.

Nope.

I want Skittles.

But yeah, England like invaded everywhere for their spices.

Didn't use a single one of them.

Don't.

I'm very curious of the types of things we are putting in this store.

Yeah, I want all the same products and if there's not, I want like the closest equivalent of product.

Like, this is an Areciz, but it's essentially the same thing and I want to have like the Areciz logo above it and then the product below it.

So people, you know, stupid Americans can figure out what we're buying here.

That's fun.

It runs into all of the problems of like, you know, the Kinder Egg stuff, right?

Where like we have certain things we can't have.

Yeah.

So I'm curious the overcome for that.

But beyond that.

I feel like the bar is going to be a lot lower of being at the import into America versus the other way around.

Probably.

I think I've told you this before.

I was traveling in Nepal, and there was this young lady from Germany there.

And she was telling me about Aldi.

And Aldi in Europe, especially in Germany, is like Walmart, Target, Megaplex.

She's like, yes, I got my cell phone and my camera that I have here at Aldi.

I was like, really?

The Aldi that expresses itself in the US is budget store brands like, you know, Froot Loops knockoffs and cheap food and stuff.

Whereas there it's like Megaplex supermarket, right?

We need to like pitch this idea to Aldi.

Just have like one aisle that is-- - That's the exit strategy.

- You're already a distributor and everything in Aldi UK.

Like just bring it to all your stores here.

Set outside a corner of your store and just bring all that stuff that you're already selling over there.

- Dude, it's, I mean, Mexican Coke is really popular because, and that's what they call it, right?

'cause it's in a glass bottle and it's sugar cane instead of high fructose corn syrup.

- High fructose.

- Whatever.

- Cocaine.

- Just like, can you smuggle that across the border?

You know what I mean?

Instead of fentanyl.

(laughing) - Jesus.

- Are we accusing the Brits of smuggling the fentanyl?

- It's all Aldi, man.

- We're gonna bring, why don't we just grow all the EU equivalent stuff and Skittles and manufacture it in Mexico.

(laughing) here.

And then people can just drive through it too.

Like why not just redo everything EU brand right across the border and then import it or people as they're driving through that way you don't have to deal with the whole tariff import stuff.

You know what I mean?

It's like duty free.

Yes.

Let's just be next to an airport.

I want like explanation placards in the aisle way of like how it differs in the US.

What and why.

Here's all the ingredients.

So that way people are incentivized to buy.

Yeah, like here is why you're here buying it.

You've got that picture.

Why don't I just pick up the things that's $3 less over at Starbucks?

Here's all the side effects of the titanium dioxide that you're going to experience if you eat the regular version.

Of the red dye 40 that is only allowed in America.

There's so many things.

You know how some of the store brand generic, like, great values will have, like, compare this to actual bottle of Windex right on there.

And you want like that but the opposite where everything's on there compare this to Reese's peanut butter cups But way better you have like the equivalents like front and center.

It's super obvious what this thing is Yeah, yeah, cuz I think you had mentioned before the whole bread thing.

That was my favorite one I saw a whole series recently of people going around and like picking up like bread and picking up the ingredients and it's like if You told like a bread maker to use these things to make You've made a long cupcake.

Yes To see what at that same value are we then worried about making bland food?

We're good enough for Parisian bacon, right?

There's got to be a way to make it good We'll just start a movement and be like try this diet for three weeks or something and see how much better you'll feel and you Have to try it.

Don't knock until you try it and then you'll get them.

Hope it'll be great But not don't do organic stuff come over to the UK That is a perfect segue Scott you're going to someone you're telling him about this what is your cool store called the eurozone You food is better and that's it Yeah, there you go.

EU food.

EU food is better.

Eat up, EU.

Eat up, hey, that's great.

(laughing) All right, Leo, what do you got this week?

All right, Meg, I don't know if you were part of this era, but Russell, Scott, maybe Meg, what was the best part of MySpace?

You got to code it yourself, and you could have music.

Get the music custom.

You got to do it yourself.

Music, that's what I'm gonna get at.

So there was a website like 10 years ago called turntable.fm that has come and gone and I think maybe it's launched again or something But its whole shtick was you have this little avatar and you're in one of many rooms and it's kind of chatroom style But you are building a playlist of music from music services or YouTube or whatever And then there's a stage at the front of the little avatar room and you play music for everyone else who's in the room So it's like a collaborative like game kind of where you're playing music for each other and stuff Park that idea.

I would love, I was looking recently into what it would look like for FCC rules to have my own radio station for funsies, just a little hobby side thing.

And you can't have a terrestrial radio station, essentially.

You get like 200 feet of wattage and then you can barely reach the neighbor's house, right?

But we have the internet in front of us.

I want to bring back the magic of MySpace where we have this choice of two to 10 songs that play that are your profile, that are your mood, that are your season of your life that you're in.

And I want to build a social network that is location-based music, where as I'm walking around other users have pinned playlists to spots in the world and you can listen to each other's pins as you are walking through the neighborhood or walking by that museum and and they have that one exhibit, and oh, they've curated lists from the 1940s right now, or you're walking through that college campus, and wow, that dorm room has some really eclectic taste right here because there's 12 dudes who have all built really weird playlists, or whatever.

It's radio, but it's internet-based, and this could be a feature within Spotify, or it could be its own separate service, I don't know yet, but I would love to recapture the personalization that was MySpace music with places in the world.

- I'm just immediately picturing like, you go to a fancy restaurant and they're like, "This wine will pair perfectly with this dish." And so often, "And this song will pair perfectly with downtown Manhattan or something." - You're laughing, but I've been to Alinea.

They already, not only do they do that, they pump in smells to like a meal, to enhance the meal.

- I purposefully picked this one 'cause I knew that you're a music enthusiast.

It seems like there's something missing as far as the social aspect of music.

You can see what other people are playing on Spotify if they also happen to have Spotify, and that's about as social as it gets right now.

There have been attempts over the years, but they never really reached critical mass, so maybe you have to piggyback on the Apple Music's of the world or something, I don't know.

But we're so close.

We have the internet.

Yeah.

It definitely feels kind of like it could be a Spotify thing, but also it gives me Spotify.

Did you ever see that, what is it called?

Spotify thing or whatever, the car thing?

- Oh yeah, car thing, yeah.

- Like, I imagine it almost is like, it was an old failed thing, Spotify tried.

- It's awesome.

- It was basically like a dash MP3 almost.

- Like a screen for cars that don't have screens and you can connect to Spotify and basically you can change songs or that's it.

You couldn't imagine.

- Imagine Apple CarPlay or Android Auto except only Spotify and no screen.

- That's kinda sorta what it did.

- Exactly.

- Right.

- Honestly, that's a great idea.

That little gap between technology.

- And then they discontinued it and bricked all the hardware.

- They bricked it.

It was crazy.

You can't even use it to connect to your Spotify now.

It just doesn't work.

- Yep.

- But there was lots of, anyway, that was a little side tangent.

But yeah, so Spotify is like, you know, I feel like the one to be involved in that type of thing, but I would also worry about bad actors.

How do we prevent bad actors?

I was just thinking what theme song.

- The whole campus is just Rick Rolls.

- Yes, exactly.

- Yeah.

- I would love that app for that reason.

- When we think of this, we just picture how Russell will abuse it.

And that's your test case.

- He's the hell out of that, man.

- What's so in now?

- But also it's so cool to be able to maybe just tap into like what a bunch of people have left as like an impression for that area.

Like the vibe that they want or that they were feeling at that time.

- So I found one app that's kind of, sort of a little bit like this.

And it's shtick is that you leave a song on the map Pokemon Go style and then other people can collect them.

Which is cool.

And I like that a lot.

It's like song map or something like that.

Neat, but not playlist enough for me.

I wanna be able to like walk by someone's home on my evening walk or drive on my commute and hear more than just one song that someone left.

I wanna like get a radio station experience, you know?

- Yeah, you want the Spotify DJ, but without it being an AI DJ.

- I want all of my friends Spotify DJs is what I want.

I wanna learn about them.

- Which is so, what a good idea, honestly.

It gives like, we already have like Geocache.

It's like basically just Geocaching songs.

- Yes, exactly.

Geocaching my friends Spotify DJs.

It would be so fun to dip into anyone who's given permission just to like hear what your DJ for the week would have played.

Doesn't even have to be location based.

I wish I could just dip into my friends' playlists of the week, that's cool.

- It'd be cool if there was like an event where you'd walk around with Bluetooth speakers.

You know how annoying that is when people walk around.

But if everybody's walking to certain locations and it's all playing the same song.

- They're perfectly synced to the exact moment.

Everyone's phones are all, oh that's fun.

- That'd be interesting.

- It's giving silent disco.

- Yes, yes.

I wish more people had the turntable FM experience that I had.

It was really cool.

We had six to eight people in my office who are all in various, like we aren't all in the same room, right?

And it was 2015 or so.

And we all had headphones on and we were taking turns getting up on stage and playing music for each other in the background while we worked.

It was so cool.

It was like having communal control over the office radio station or something, but just for us.

and we sort of curated a vibe together.

It was really neat.

- I feel like they've already got some of this technology for Spotify because they do jams.

So you can already like connect with other users.

So I definitely feel like we need to pitch this to Spotify.

Hey Spotify, if you are listening.

- Totally.

- Classic edgy strategy.

- When you do the jam, does it like take your and their interests into account together and try to find mutual interest?

- So it does, there's two different ways that you can like blend with your friends.

One is literally called a blend where it takes your music taste and your friend's music taste and curates a playlist with like your commonalities.

Oh, that's cool.

And it tells you who like it pulled that interest from.

And then there's also Spotify jams where real time you build a playlist together and you don't have to be next to each other.

I've done this like across, you know, work floors with other people where we're all connected into the same jam and we're adding stuff to this list and we can all control it at the same time.

That's super cool.

So I'm yeah, like you said, we're on the cusp of this.

This is maybe just one more layer, which is the physical location on Earth feature.

We're going to hear about it in a couple of months.

We're going to know.

That is the premise of this show.

I put something out in the world that I kind of want to see happen.

I don't want to make a business out of this.

Spotify, Apple Music, you can have it.

Or YouTube music.

Maybe this will be the first feature that people care about from YouTube.

Finally climbed to relevance.

(laughs) - How many different like, there's like YouTube TV, YouTube premium, YouTube music.

Is that YouTube Red or is those two different things?

- This is Leo's favorite rant.

- Yeah, Google is a startup incubator where all 50 of their companies happen to have the word Google in front.

- Yeah.

- It is a nightmare.

- I'm done being their guinea pig.

I jumped off of, yeah.

- Ever since Aloe, I've been burned too much.

- Yeah.

- My whole house is like Google.

I've got the Google Hubs, I've got the Google Nest, I've got my camera, everything, my whole home is a Google environment.

I wish I could wean off of it.

- There's a lot of good stuff until a project manager decides it's not interesting anymore and then they discontinue it all.

- Yeah.

- All right, Russell, what do you have for us this week?

- Okay, so this one's interesting.

I was gonna start off with like some Meyer Briggs Strength Finder thing, but no.

We're going to do something better and different.

Horoscopes for MBAs.

Yeah.

[LAUGHTER] We'll save that.

I'm putting this on.

So this reminds me of Scott's plant idea.

I'm going with the musical theme here.

You know how everything has a resonance frequency?

And you can tie that resonant frequency to a musical note.

OK?

Right.

We're talking brown note?

[LAUGHTER] Yes.

Straight to the brown note.

Straight to the point.

No.

So this idea is where you take the resonance frequency of different things throughout the house and you stick these knockers on them.

That's probably a better name for that.

And basically it would tap.

You find all the different musical notes, you taps and then basically you hit play and it'll play songs based on a bunch of different resonance frequencies in the house.

You have to hit and find all the different right notes in any like location hit play and all of a sudden you're playing music with little knockers you know all over the house okay all right that's it chop a better name the knockers is not good little knockers that's his rap name okay so you want to turn inanimate objects in your house into a musical instrument?

Well, not.

It's more like a party trick.

Right.

You know, it's like all these YouTube videos or what?

And how do you do videos?

There's a lot of like people like Stomp.

Remember Stomp where you like me?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just like making it's just a creating a different experience.

Right.

Little party trick you throw out there.

Extreme Stomp Home Edition.

OK.

Yeah.

Birthday, baby, kids, birthday parties.

Oh, man.

All the cool little nursery.

What's our target audience?

I don't know if it has to knock it.

You could just put, you just have a small speaker and you input that frequency into whatever the object is.

The object will reverberate at that frequency and essentially play that note, turn anything into a speaker.

I think what Russell wants is a device that finds an object's resonant frequency and then plays it for you.

And then you have to go around and use those as individual notes and your house is a piano.

- Love that.

- Your house is a piano.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes, and then you can like maybe even use your phone, like tip like A, B, you know, you literally tap the notes.

- Once you've got them on there.

- Yes.

- All you need is a microphone and speaker, which your phone has.

This could be software where it does a sweep.

Ooh.

- You gotta sell them the hardware, which is just a mallet.

And like, you gotta buy this very special mallet.

- A knocker.

- For $300.

- Beat the shit out of your fridge.

- A regular tool would have worked, But everybody says the mallet works better.

- Yeah.

- The knocker.

- You're a marketer.

- The knocker.

(laughing) We gotta come up with a different name, guys.

We gotta.

- Russell's already bought the domain, man.

- Yeah.

- Knockers.com.

- Oh, I think that's taken.

- LilKnockers.com, also taken.

- I'm on the LilKnockers subreddit, and it is bleak, man.

(laughing) - I feel like the FBI agents won't like it if we say that.

- Yeah, probably not.

이것은 모든 어린이를 유사한 뇌에 변화시켜 줄 것입니다.

그들은 그것을 사랑할 것입니다.

그들은 그냥 주변을 뛰어다니며 그들을 울려주면 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 딴 back of every dorm door I have lived on, she can pound on my mirror to get me to like go do things.

So now that my mirror doesn't live on the back of the door it's still where she pounds on because she's used to...

yeah.

So I'm just imagining my cat with access to this technology.

She already pounds on that mirror.

Imagine if she just...

like yeah some bass behind it.

So a sound wave has both the pitch that it's at, but also the timbre.

So why a piano playing a G, middle C or whatever sounds different than a guitar.

So what kind of, are you thinking like a percussion sort of whatever that fridge makes, where you hit it and it sort of, are you looking to like, electronify it?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Mallet lifts up, drops up, drops.

Oh, this is automated.

Yeah.

This is electronically controlled.

I'm learning more about this idea every time.

I like it.

- I wasn't picturing this right.

So you're attaching various devices that wallop, like a kick drums hammer?

Yeah, okay, okay.

- He wants a metronome.

- Pen.

Okay, this is another note.

All right, I get four of those throughout all these different items in my house.

- Robotic.

- Now I can play music across.

- A four chord song, 'cause you only need four.

- There you go.

- There we go.

- You are making a Chuck E.

Cheese band.

- You gotta buy the eight pack though.

a Chuck E.

Cheese animatronic band out of your home's household objects.

- I like that.

- Your phone knows what-- - I show up to my friend's house.

I throw all these mallets all throughout the house and now I'm playing music randomly.

- I love it.

- That rules.

Can you picture the mechanism in front of a kick drum that the person has their foot on?

- Exactly.

- It's that, I love that.

But with a robotic.

- And that's cool 'cause the app will know, it'll hit it once, learn what note it is, and then be like, "Okay, here's all the songs "you can play with what you've put out there." - I have to show you guys something 'cause it just reminded me of the app I have Automaton have you guys heard of it?

I didn't know they had an app.

Oh The automaton sir, they're like the weird.

Yeah, man No, it's a big music note, but Pac-man mouth at the bottom and then you rest your finger does the black plays that on late-night shows Know that there was an app I'm very excited to learn more about this.

It's cuz it's an electric one It's an electric automaton and so it's electric.

It's not it feeds into the app and then the app can like I Remember the summer of Dylan went electric it was a tomatone So just a bunch of robotic mallets whacking your fridge and your safe stove and stuff Yeah, that's ace.

You know that one you're watching called.

I already got little knockers knockers -Mallet music.

-Stomp it home.

-Stomp it up.

-I don't know.

We can't do it, but the little knockers are like the standard ones, and then you can buy the big knocker, which is the base one that you put on your fridge or your wall or something.

-Oh, jeez.

-There we go.

Maybe we just stick with it.

Maybe that's how we go viral, innocently calling them knockers.

-Viral YouTuber goes crazy with 200 knockers.

Musical mallets is good.

We have Hammer Time.

Oh, is that trademarked?

Probably.

Hammer Time.

And then you just start like the Hammer Time music instrument.

That's it.

That it's the whole phrase, but everybody calls it Hammer Time.

Stop.

HammerTimeMusicalInstrument.com Yeah.

That's the test song too.

Once you hang it up on all of our...

Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Gotta give you an example.

So yeah clearly just seem like the kind of thing that you know comes in a four-pack But then somebody online has bought 200 of them and has turned some warehouse into a root bouldering machine or something You know crazy instrument.

Here's all the Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever That's what you do you hire that guy to do that and then you take a tick tock video of it And that's the promotion.

That's a great idea Yeah, some guys gonna take this and just put it on it get 88 of them and put them on a piano Just go in full circle, man 88 pianos of different sizes From the little tiny toy piano for kids all the way to like a baby grand Not hitting any of the notes you just hit the piano.

This is my piano piano And he replaced all the mallets and the hammers inside of it with real hammers Nice I like that I heard you like piano so we turned All your pianos into a piano so you can piano your pianos piano out of increasingly smaller pianos I love little not that's the testimonial right at the top of the page Meg what do you have for us this week all right guys I have for you a problem I'm sure we have all experienced before.

So let's walk through it with me.

Are you ready?

We're going to an anime convention.

We have just spent the last four months and realistically the last week actually working on our cosplay.

And it is this giant petticoat dress.

It is giving you social distancing prior to COVID.

I don't know if you've seen a petticoat.

That thing makes you like two to three times larger than you are in a perfect circle.

And I ran into this specific problem of, I got to a place like Yomacon and I've realized, I don't know if I can actually get around.

I'm in this giant dress trying to go up an escalator with petticoats on.

Not only that, I had to figure out the tram system to get between the different buildings that they hold, like, at and figuring out a tram system in an unfamiliar city in a giant cosplay.

'Cause I'm also holding a giant sword and shield.

I'm cosplaying as Rose Quartz from Steven Universe.

So it's pretty big, hair's big too.

- Very good.

- And the whole time I got very lucky because I was able to use my friends as a cosplay handler, which is essentially the person that goes around and deals with things like doors.

I can't read because I physically can't get to it beyond my dress.

Not only that, but like things like when there are cameras taking pictures of me, I can't necessarily see what the back of my wig looks like.

There is not a service currently for cosplay handlers to hire somebody to come in and do that kind of work for you.

- A Sherpa.

- Yeah.

If you are unfamiliar to this area, you don't have a friend that you can rely on, or if you and your friends are in cosplay, what are you gonna do?

So, yeah, my idea is a collective of craftsmen who can get together, craftspeople in general, who are knowledgeable in cosplay or in the handling of cosplay at different events to essentially have like a hiring system, like a LinkedIn style for that.

I want it to go beyond that though.

I want you to be able to like schedule ahead of time to have these people there.

I also want whatever this cosplay handling service, I want them to have some kind of like partnership with the conventions.

So that way there are just cosplay handlers available to rent throughout the convention.

- Yes, that's it.

- Amazing.

- I think it's like the premium, like you have a special pin or something and you paid to be a cosplayer and everybody's opening your doors for you.

People are looking for the cosplay pin or like, I don't know, some sort of method to identify who you are and if you paid for it.

And they're doing, there's just a fleet of people, I'm guessing, throughout this convention that are helping you do everything because you have the, I don't know, the RFID tag or something.

- Yeah, I'm feeling like, almost like cosplay EMS also, where like, you can take advantage of that app to do location-based, like, this is the convention we are at.

Here are all of the EMS workers that can repair your cosplay, that can follow you around to make sure you're eating and drinking, that can, whatever, rent them for a little period of time, or maybe a subscription service where, whatever, and you can, like, go based off of, like, their experience.

'Cause sometimes maybe I need, like, somebody to style my wig, and that kind of person is gonna be different than the kind of person who needs to like hot glue back together, whatever just fell apart.

Just a guy walking around with hot glue guns.

I love it.

Totally.

So we are a tech startup nerdy targeted show.

So I think everyone listening knows what this is.

But can you give the two sentence version of why you like cosplay and what it is for in case someone doesn't know?

Yeah, absolutely.

So cosplay is for pretty much any fandom, but it originated realistically with anime.

And it is a way for those who are creative enough to literally create the costume pieces to imitate their favorite character from any fandom, whether that be a manga or an anime or people cosplay and dress up as costumes and a lot of other stuff.

But it is typically seen around in anime.

Have you had any notable, "God, I wish I had this person" moments with costume falling apart, or just wish you had a guide?

- Yeah, definitely costume falling apart.

- Oh no!

- I briefly talked about this actually recently, which is funny.

I made a whole sword out of Worbla, which is a thermal plastic.

- Whoa.

- Yeah, so the base of it, this is what I mean, is it takes a lot of knowledge and there's a lot that goes into it.

The base was like a wooden dowel that I then molded with foam around it and did inlay designs on, and then I put Worbla on top of that and then created it.

But there was a point at which I had worked the Worbla too much and it was beginning to crack, and it cracked real big.

And I didn't know how to handle it 'cause my paint was chipping and I had to go and get somebody with emergency modge podge and do just a slab job.

so it would hold together.

And so thankfully, I was able to, you know, I happened to be there with many friends who have like cosplay connections and so they could go out and be like, hey, who's got the sink and and save the day?

But it'd be nice if I had a whole service.

Uber for emergency sewing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Partnering with the convention seems like your easy way in for a business like this.

Yeah.

We will for a fee or for free.

You convention people advertise this too, and then we just charge the customer directly.

It doesn't cost you anything, but it gives you brownie points, like, we love cosplayers and here's a service we brought in, but the convention doesn't have to pay necessarily.

It could just be the people who need the services or vice versa.

Would you like to do a scholarship for the people who are coming in, you know?

The convention will cover your first one repair for free if you make make an account or something.

Yeah.

And it might be nice for people who have those kinds of skills to make a little bit of money as their own freelance agent doing that kind of work.

I have a couple of seamstress friends who maybe don't want to necessarily commit to making a whole cosplay.

But if they're at a con, they'll sign up for $20 to fix somebody something real fast.

Absolutely.

You have a captive audience.

They just roll in with their sewing machine, hot glue gun, and 3D printer.

And they just got the little booth in the back ready to go.

I love it.

Yeah.

You glossed over the guide side of this, but I feel like that's way more applicable to a general audience.

The conference local employee guide person.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah, just having somebody who's been to that kind of a convention before can then walk you through, here's an escalator that you can get your consul.

(laughing) Here's how these trams work to get to this place.

Here's where on the schedule your next shoot is.

you know, type of thing, almost as like manager.

- Totally.

- Is this like a cosplay network?

Like, why isn't this maybe more of a like social network type of app where if you're at the convention, you know, people helping other people out, right?

Rather than it being a whole network service or a paid service, you could just like-- - Peer to peer.

- Peer to peer, right?

Hey, I have-- - Who has extra LEDs?

I've got a hot glue gun.

- Yeah.

- And then live at the convention, you can hit like EMT needed for this out your note and now people are like, oh, I can help with that.

Or I'm not cosplaying.

In my profile, I list all the stuff that I'm good at and have.

Mm-hmm.

And other people list needed this and I'm pinged.

Yeah.

Or I'm cosplaying or not cosplaying.

Maybe like you rotate or you didn't do it that time, but you're there to help people.

So you bring some extra stuff and you just- The next day you aren't cosplaying, so you're available to then swap for somebody.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

I guess that sounds easy.

It may be easier, but that's also cheaper.

It's more wholesome.

It is less of a business, but it sounds like that's the community, though, to tips.

It's great.

I feel like cosplayers are kind of like, you know, one of those like that community of people that want to help each other.

When you're here, your family.

That's it.

There's definitely like a section of them.

I think part of that is just getting everybody on the same social media to work that, right?

Because some people use like Discord, some people are like Instagram, some people, you know, everything.

So it's what is the best forum for that too?

Right.

We don't need another social app.

We need another.

Oh, we'll say the opposite.

Immediately the same, the opposite thing.

We need another one?

Is that what...

I mean, it's kind of cool to have your own niche in that way, but like, yeah, I could see people being like, "Oh, I don't want another Facebook." Right?

Yeah.

It almost gives me more like, I don't know if you guys will have ever heard of this.

Have you ever heard of Ravelry?

So it's a website for hosting patterns.

So I crochet.

Oh, yeah.

So it'll host like crochet and like knitting patterns.

So maybe something along those lines where it's more community focused in that way.

Yeah, I see.

I wonder if there is like a different thing it could piggyback off of already, like Ravelry or something.

Oh yeah, if there's a cosplay.net.

Existing service.

Yeah, right.

I have yet to see any like official ones, but I just think it would be so neat to have a well known in the community style, like cosplay EMS that goes around to different conventions.

So you're, you know, familiar with them in general.

Yeah, the easy way to rocket to popularity would be to piggyback off of getting the convention behind you and have a service to offer them that then puts your logo all over their posters and their website and pamphlets and all that stuff.

Like looking for this, we partnered with your business to like get you the service and help you need.

Yeah, that's really cool.

- And there's multiple conventions, not just anime, right?

Comic-Con, there's so many different conventions.

- Gen Con.

- Yep.

Like it just, there's so many.

So why it should be a service or like you could create a service, right?

That's external third party and just tap into this, right?

Yeah.

You could even white label and like offer to come alongside the existing app and just not have, you know, you can just be an infrastructure company for this, but then you show up, you add like extra long canes for doors, right?

There's a special cane for a door so you can open it or, you know, somebody -They gave you the map of the convention center that they had custom made for extra wide costumes.

Here's elevators, here's bathrooms.

-The door height is this amount for the people that go in on stilts and stuff.

-This is your optimal path based upon your dimensions.

-You have to go through this entrance.

If you try that one, you're going to get stuck.

-Garage Bay 5.

-You just talk to Eddie for the forklift.

-Yes.

pivoting.

You are going around the convention center that's happening ahead of time in the days leading up to the event.

And you're measuring all of the things you're taking, you know, augmented realities, pictures and measurements of door frames and of trams and of whatever.

And then you're then gating all of that behind an app that people like you, the participant, are downloading where you say, I want to get from here to here.

and it's a navigation transit app where it says you can't go through this door, you gotta go around that way.

You're like the very niche boutique navigator.

- Yeah.

- That's cool.

- I'm more so thinking, yeah, it's like, you could hire like a, yeah, someone who's like a local guide and if you have this planned ahead of time, part of their duties could be going out and scoping, like, here's the dimensions of my weird cosplay with its crazy wings.

Are there any issues you think I'm going to run into walking around?

Not only that, but literally to have them follow you while you're also walking around so you don't knock some kid out with your wing.

Will this theater seat be compatible with 12-foot wings?

Yes.

What's cool is you can map this convention center out once, have it in your app and you have the base tier and then the premium tier being like, you know, handyman services or whatever follow follow.

I don't know what to call it.

Right.

Put in your personal like statistics and we'll tell you if you can fit.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what I was.

Yeah.

I hadn't thought of it like that.

Just mapping the whole actual convention center out as an additional.

That'd be good, too.

Honestly, it would be good to have a better map.

Let's be so real.

Half of the convention maps are so bad.

Yeah, 100 percent.

Oh, yeah.

They are not built for giving advice to people with 12 foot fairy wings.

Look, we've been spending the last three days building those fairy wings.

You thought it was three months.

We spent three days with a lot of hot glue.

We didn't got a whole lot of brain power left up there to figure out what you mean when you changed what number we're in five times.

Well, dear listener, we know that you're taking a quick break between sessions over with us in your ear.

Thank you very much for listening to us while you're at your con.

We appreciate you being a listener and thank you very much Meg for joining us.

This was so much fun.

Yeah, happy to be here.

Thanks for having me guys.

Oh, what a pleasure.

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