Unvalidated Ideas #006

Here's a fresh idea you can take out there and validate. If you want to see more, subscribe to the uncut edition -- more ideas, previous uncut editions, access to research for each idea, and more.

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FreeRangeFeeds - Chronological feeds for content (Tier: S)

People want chronological feeds to content they already like. The feed is the product -- fostering addiction perpetually recurring engagement isn't required, but having an aggregated feed is why people use social networks. Give the people what they want -- a feed that will never be driven by algorithms.

This idea is so good, it's S tier despite being B2C -- it's the kind of idea that will immediately excite your friends, and it fits with the scale-then-charge model we all have come to know so well. That said, it will draw the ire of probably every single social network company that you integrate, so you need to insulate a little bit:

• Avoiding signing up as a developer on their platforms or entering into any new agreements with large social networks where possible
• Build scraping competence (or even better, use platforms that make it easy)
• Publish a Web Extension for content producers (or allow submission of content)
• Get ready for the long painful slog that accompanies running a B2C business

There are many ways to profit, but here are just a few:

• Premium membership for fans (no ads, access to information first/notifications), essentially the Twitch subscriber model, but weighted more heavily towards the creator
• Customizations for creators (community building tools, forums, private chatrooms, notifications, etc)
• Ad placement on streams for creators (make this something crazy like 70% to the creator, 30% to the platform)
  • Many people have adblockers, but probably one of the biggest reasons anyone turns them off is supporting content creators

You could validate this idea quickly by maintaining pages for the top 10 content producers in a few niches, and trying to reach their fans (and the creators themselves), or taking a platform-driven approach and find people complaining about the lack of chronological feeds on certain platforms (those people would at the very least try out your idea immediately, if not helping you build)

Read my raw notes >

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Victor (vados@vadosware.io)