Throwaways 1.0

Every quarter I intend on writing a few ideas which I think are interesting but not ideal for me to work on. Some are not ideal because of the lack of industry knowledge, others are just not exciting enough for me. I will share some of them with you here in hopes that it inspires you. If you do choose to work on these ideas or want to learn more about my thought process, feel free to reach out!

The ideas are not listed in any particular order, and some are not even framed as concrete ideas, just trailing thoughts. Here they are:

Insurance for Millennials:

This idea comes straight from McKinsey’s Insights article. The way insurance, especially life insurance has been is pretty terrible. You have to speak to a few people before you can get the right plan, and then run through a long application form to be insured. Plus, the benefits are rarely communicated properly, and lets be honest, young people don’t care about life insurance. The solution? Find trigger events in the lives of young people and create a digital way to obtain life insurance. Trigger events are things like a new child, sickness in the family, marriage etc. These events force us to think about the shortness of life, and usually tends to force us to play it safe. At this moment, it should be easy to just get all the information we need in a few clicks and sign up for insurance rather than booking an appointment, speaking to a (usually shady) insurance rep and then filling out a tedious form. Companies are doing this already, but doesn’t mean anyone has done it well, or that insurance companies aren’t racing to solve this problem. Another way to frame this problem is to ask how do you identify trigger events for users, and thats where mint.com and others may play a substantial role.

Travellers App:

Over the past year I have travelled to a new city about once a month for work or leisure. I am active on couchsurfing, yelp, airbnb, lonely planet, culture trip and obviously my own social networks. I use these tools to find things that I think I would like which are usually cheap, hipster-y and local. Isn’t it about time an app solves that problem? There should be something that knows how I like to travel, what I like to find, and where other people like me might be on a Friday night (low key hip hop venue perhaps?) I think you can segment travellers into a few high level buckets, and create solutions for them. You can do this by type of person, but you can also do it by economic standing — say cheap travellers guide, or hipster guide. The app obviously gets smarter based on where you end up going and what events are attended, and eventually offers you more of the same. Facebook is trying to do this with events but Facebook events are not active in all parts of the world, and I’d estimate Facebook only tackles ~20% of all events in the city. And I am being generous with that number. One way to solve this is to identify what kinds of meetups people like (via meetup.com) or ask for types of things they are into and matching that with labels on the event. Some apps have tried this but none have been very successful.

Additional spin on this could be a dietary or cultural focused app, i.e the halal travellers app, or the vegan’s app. I know there are labels on Yelp but its not the same. There are huge communities behind this and it should be done well.

Ecommerce in Pakistan:

It’s obvious millenials will dictate buying behaviour over the next decade. It’s also obvious that we are lazy potatoes that prefer to buy online, and not have to move a muscle. Ecommerce is growing in the developing world, and its fuelled by the number of young people entering the workforce and having money. Many countries, especially Pakistan have less than 1% of their purchases made online, leaving room for tonnes of growth. Some estimates predict upwards of 100% YoY growth in these markets. Ecommerce means vast opportunities not just to find traditional products and sell them but for all sorts of supporting ecosystem companies to appear. Take Amazon, Alibaba or Zalando and look at all the subsidiary companies they own. Each of those companies can be a standalone in Pakistan. You can have a delivery company, online payments, KYC and fraud, customer support, etc all as third parties powering any of these large ecommerce players. Granted many ecommerce players will build their own solutions, but there will be so many small and medium size businesses that they will need a cheap and efficient solution to grow with. Where is the Stripe for Pakistan? What about the Jumio? Postmates? Etc.

Additionally, one business I find super interesting is Trustpilot. Its a company that aggregates user ratings and displays how good an ecommerce website is. The ecommerce website pays to display the ratings as they feel it leads to greater CTR and conversion. In some cases its part of their marketing budgets. Can you believe that? Theres a company out there making money for aggregating user feedback (cause people love bitching on forums and reddit) and displaying it succinctly on ecommerce websites. Where is the Trustpilot for Pakistan? By the way, replace Pakistan with any developing country and my above idea applies. I would seriously consider helping someone who would be interested in this for Pakistan.

Part time coding classes:

This is a real simple one but it bothers me that there are no part time coding classes in major cities around the world. Berlin has none that offer a full course load, and neither does London. Sure you can learn 10 hours worth of HTML at obscenely high prices for 5 Saturdays in a row, but where are the 2x week, 3 hours a day courses for coding? Coding is a growing field, and people don’t have 9 weeks to do a bootcamp. This is a no brainer.

International ATM Withdrawals:

Living in Europe has made me realize how little it costs to use my card across countries. I pay such low exchange rates with Revolut and N26 that I almost scoff at how silly Canadian cards are. The one issue that still remains however is ATMs. These large machines charge a fee for usage, and sometimes an additional fee to the bank, just so users can take out money. Why is this still a thing? ATMs are dying, they face becoming obsolete. Once exchange fees diminish (which I predict will happen in 5 years or so, either through internal blockchain protocols, or other competitive pressures), ATMs will serve little purpose. Can we find a way to add value to these large boxes?

Nutrition Platform:

I am confident our diet and the effects it has on us is not studied successfully. I also know we can always improve the way we eat, especially our parents. The way to solve this is to try and get as much accurate data about our diets as we can. There are a few sites that are trying this but a) its low user uptake because it requires user inputs and b) I doubt it has a machine learning component to it. There is going to be a world where you can track everything you eat, the program tracking you can tell you what things are good for you, and the information you provide can help research our diets a lot better. The crux of getting to this world is how do you solve the tracking part? Do you force user inputs every time? Would that even be accurate? If that is the path, how do you reward users for it? If that is not the path, what better option exists. Someone who can solve this, can really make a dent in this space. It’s another area I am passionate about and would love to help anyone in the space.

That is all for now.

This is not the album, these are just the throwaways. KYLE

Don’t hesitate in reaching out to me over twitter or email!