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- I Found 5 Startup Ideas Hiding in Podcasts And Here They Are.
I Found 5 Startup Ideas Hiding in Podcasts And Here They Are.
Needs To Exist
December 07, 2025
Yesterday I told you about EpisodeRecap, our experiment to mine the world’s podcasts for problems, patterns, and startup ideas most people never notice.
A bunch of you wrote back asking:
“Okay… but does it actually work?”
So today I want to show you.
Not theory.
Not hype.
Receipts.
We ran five completely different podcasts through the machine - different genres, different guests, different vibes and asked it to surface the hidden asymmetric insights inside each one.
Some episodes were idea gold mines.
Some were… quieter.
But all of them produced something interesting once you looked under the conversation instead of just listening to it.
Here are five ideas that EpisodeRecap surfaced - real examples of what’s now possible.
Malcolm Gladwell — “How to Convince the World of Bulls**t & Evil”
Problem
Most leaders treat big problems like they’re evenly distributed - crime, fraud, misinformation, opioid abuse, when in reality almost everything important is asymmetric.
A tiny % of nodes do almost all the damage (or all the good).
But today, finding those nodes is slow, manual, and usually happens after something explodes.
Solution — Asymmetry Radar
A detection engine that plugs into whatever exhaust a system already produces like claims, prescriptions, CRM data, mobility, Discord chats, whatever and pinpoints the micro-nodes doing macro damage.
It ranks the 10 city blocks, 200 doctors, or 15 accounts that matter most… and tells you what to do about them.
Why Now
We finally have granular data + cheap compute + regulators demanding systemic fixes instead of PR theater.
Example
A state health agency runs opioid scripts + overdose deaths through Asymmetry Radar.
It discovers 1.7% of prescribers drive 63% of overdoses in specific zip codes.
Instead of carpet bombing everyone with compliance memos, they target education, audits, and intervention exactly where it matters.
Alex Hormozi - If I Started A Business in 2026, Here’s What I’d Do
Problem
Most people don’t fail because they have no ideas, they fail because the gap between “I want to start something” and “I have a real business” is a six-month swamp of life obligations.
Kids, meetings, emails, Netflix… boom, three years vanish.
Solution — The 5-Day Business Builder
A strike team + AI toolchain that compresses a year of progress into one high-pressure, high-output week.
In 5 days they:
pick a validated niche → build the brand → spin up landing pages → wire payments → write ads → launch → get customers.
Not a course.
Not coaching.
Done-for-you momentum.
Why Now
AI allows a tiny team to do in hours what used to take weeks like design, copy, dev, research, ads, everything.
Example
A burned-out consultant pays $40k.
Shows up Monday with “I want a productized service.”
Leaves Friday with a working product, onboarding flow, booked calendar, running ads… and Stripe notifications already dinging.
Lead Without Ego, Lessons from Patrick Lencioni | 6 types of working Genius
Problem
Leaders slowly drift from “I’m here to serve” to “I’m here to look important.”
Boards don’t catch it until culture is broken and talent walks out the door.
There’s no instrument that shows whether a leader’s time reflects their stated motives.
Solution — MotiveMirror
A private dashboard for founders and execs that plugs into calendar, Slack, email, and tasks.
Then it reveals the brutal truth:
Where they took on suffering for the team.
Where they dodged it.
Where they hid behind the CEO title.
Where their motives drifted.
Each month it generates a narrative and actionable corrections.
Why Now
Executives are overloaded, remote work hides behavioral drift, and boards are staring at retention cliffs and culture collapses.
Example
A Series B CEO keeps preaching “people first,” but MotiveMirror detects he spent 80% of the week recording podcasts and zero time helping the broken product team.
It flags the drift and recommends three “sacrificial moves” to realign - today, not next quarter.
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All In Podcast - OpenAI's Code Red, Sacks vs New York Times, New Poverty Line?
Problem
Power AI users live in a multi-model world such as Claude for code, Gemini for search, Grok for news, ChatGPT for reasoning but there’s no brain that knows which model should handle what.
People are tab-hopping blindly and hoping for the best.
Solution — Goldilocks AI Router
A neutral “AI ISP” that routes each request to the best model for that job based on quality, cost, safety, speed, context length, etc.
One interface.
All models behind it.
Optimized automatically.
Why Now
Models are fragmenting, specialization is accelerating, and the biggest value isn’t building another LLM, it’s owning the routing layer and the usage data every other model depends on.
Example
A startup engineer types:
“Summarize this 40-page PDF, generate TypeScript types, and write Cypress tests.”
Gemini handles summarization.
Claude handles types.
OpenAI handles tests.
One clean answer comes back with a little dashboard showing latency + cost per vendor.
Bankless: Crypto’s Agentic Future: AI, ZK & Money Networks at Bankless Summit
Problem
Agents are getting wallets, autonomy, decision loops…
But nowhere safe to observe what happens when you drop 10,000 semi-intelligent entities into an economic world with real incentives.
No place to study cooperation, predation, survival, emergent economies.
Solution — ProtoLife Arena
A simulation-world where creators spawn digital organisms with budgets, goals, constraints, personalities and consequences.
If they run out of money, they die.
They can trade, earn, hire, negotiate, pivot, exploit, defend.
Season by season, they evolve.
Why Now
Agents are exploding in capability, but we have zero tooling for “agent ecology.”
This is part research lab, part entertainment, part Darwinian startup accelerator for machine intelligence.
Example
A founder releases 100 agents.
One becomes a mini-banker.
One invents a side hustle selling summaries.
One begs until it finds product-market fit.
You can literally watch intelligence learn capitalism.
Want to Play With It Yourself?
Here’s the workflow - rewritten clean and punchy:
Your Workflow:
1️⃣ Go to EpisodeRecap.com
2️⃣ Scroll through the recaps until something hits your curiosity nerve
3️⃣ Sign up so you can generate ideas
4️⃣ Hit Generate Startup Ideas
5️⃣ Screenshot your best one and reply - I want to see what you uncover
6️⃣ Add transcripts or guest info to earn extra credits and help the community
This might become the most powerful idea machine on the internet…
but only if we build it together.