GM. This is Needs to Exist (aka NTE), delivering you a startup idea that flips social media on its head, follow people not for what they post, but for what they consume.

More than 5,000 idea grenades, locked and loaded. Pull the pin with NTE Pro $99/year.

Startup ideas are like sparks at a campfire. Bright for a moment, then gone with the wind. Turning that flicker into a roaring blaze?
That’s the craft. NTE Zero to One helps you turn passing sparks into lasting flames.

Check out all the past newsletters here

Here’s what we’ve got for you today.

• Daily Idea - Ideas Behind Influence

• Debate Club Showdown

What Your Heroes Actually Read

The smartest ideas don’t stay secret for long.
Curated taste creates influence, but turning that into a platform takes vision.
NTE Zero To One can help you transform hidden reading lists and podcast queues into a business built on intellectual discovery.

The One Liner

Follow people not for what they post, but for what they consume.

The 140 character tweet (or X) version

Ever wonder what’s inside your favorite founder’s Kindle, YouTube history, and podcast queue? Now you can scroll their “taste boards.”

The Longer Story Version

The Problem
We follow people on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok to hear what they say. But most of that is performance.

The real magic is hidden in what they’re actually consuming the books that shaped their worldview, the podcasts that sparked an idea, the random YouTube rabbit holes that rewired their brain at 2 AM. Right now?

That treasure chest is locked up. Goodreads has books, Refind has links, but no one’s put it all together into a single, living feed of intellectual taste.

The Solution
Flip the script: don’t follow people for their hot takes, follow them for their inputs.

• Visual “knowledge stacks” — Pinterest boards but for ideas.

• Founders, VCs, and creators showcase their intellectual diet: books, podcasts, longform essays, even TikTok explainers.

• They sprinkle notes and highlights so you see not just what they consumed, but how they thought about it.

• Users browse free stacks, or pay to unlock annotated deep dives, exclusive boards, and influencer-curated bundles like “Marc Andreessen’s AI Canon” or “Naval’s Philosophy Starter Pack.”

It’s like Spotify Wrapped for brains.

How We’d Build It (3 Phases)

• Phase 1 – The Sneak Peek MVP
  Keep it scrappy. Pull in what influencers are already sharing Twitter bookmarks, public reading lists, podcast playlists.

  
  Package it as sexy visual boards. Imagine opening the app and seeing:
  
  “MrBeast’s YouTube Inspiration Stack” (ten weird videos that sparked his next viral stunt).
  

• Phase 2 – The Integration Glow-Up
  Go deeper. Build integrations with Kindle, Pocket, YouTube, Spotify. Now Naval’s Kindle highlights sync automatically.
  
  Balaji’s latest Substack gets added to his “Crypto Future” stack. Add one-click annotations so they can drop spicy notes: “This chapter changed how I negotiate.”
  

• Phase 3 – The Social Proof Engine
  Make it viral. Let stacks be shareable, remixable, and followable. Someone posts “The 10 Articles That Made Me Quit My Job,” it goes viral, and suddenly everyone’s flexing their intellectual taste.
  
  Add monetization here: premium annotations, private stacks, or paywalls like “Get Ben Horowitz’s unfiltered notes on management - $5/month.”

Why It Needs to Exist
Because right now, we’re all shouting into the void of social media, chasing likes. But what we actually want is signal. The things that shape how smart, interesting people think.

Imagine logging in and instantly peeking into the minds of the people you admire most not through their self-filtered tweets, but through the raw inputs that made them who they are. That’s aspirational. That’s addicting. And that’s a feed worth scrolling.

Your idea doesn’t get killed by haters

It gets smothered by your own to-do list.

Like:

• The “next Airbnb” scribbled on a Starbucks napkin (now serving as a coaster).

• The course you outlined in Notion that’s gathering dust like a digital attic.

• The side hustle that lives rent-free in your head but never pays rent in real life.

NTE Zero to One is your startup defibrillator.
We shock your half-asleep idea back to life, wire it to a launch date, and put it in front of real people.

Not therapy. Not theory. Actual traction.

👉 $49. The price of bottomless brunch except instead of pancakes, you get momentum.

The Debate Club Showdown

Motion of the day: “This house believes following taste beats following tweets.”

The floor is open.

Pro Side:
Let’s be real, inputs shape outputs. If you follow Naval for his tweets, you’re just getting the frosting. But if you could see his Kindle highlights, his YouTube rabbit holes, his bookmarked Substacks?

That’s the cake. Imagine skipping the hot takes and going straight to the source material that made the hot takes. Knowing what Balaji reads is more useful than 90% of his threads.

This is Pinterest for knowledge, Spotify Wrapped for brains. And it’s not just fun it’s scalable. Curated taste is the new flex.

Con Side:
Hold up. This is a privacy nightmare dressed up as an app. Nobody wants their TikTok history exposed. It’s all cute until someone realizes your ‘thought leader’ playlist is mostly cat compilations and mukbang videos.

And don’t pretend the tech is easy, integrating with Kindle, Pocket, YouTube, Spotify? That’s a spaghetti mess. Plus, are influencers really gonna hand over their secret sauce? Their edge comes from being smarter than you. Why would they give you the cheat codes?

Moderator:
Strong points on both sides. But let’s remember: subscription stacks = real money. People already pay for newsletters with curated links. They pay for Patreon communities just to see book lists. If you bundle everything into sexy, shareable boards, annotated, thematic, remixable, that’s a flywheel.

Thought leaders flex, fans learn, the platform skims off the top. Also, let’s not underestimate the voyeur factor. Humans love peeking into other people’s stuff. That’s why MTV Cribs worked, that’s why Instagram exists, that’s why we rubberneck Goodreads reviews.

You’re telling me people wouldn’t pay $5 to see what Sam Altman’s late-night YouTube binge looks like?

Audience (mixed reactions):

• The Fanboy: “This is genius. Inject Naval’s reading stack into my veins.”

• The Cynic: “So… you’re pitching fancy stalking.”

• The Pragmatist: “If this had started with mid-tier creators, they’d line up. They love flexing their curation skills.”

• The Meme Lord: “Following tweets = vibes. Following taste = cheat codes.”

Closing Vote:
Hands go up. Arguments fly. The motion carries by a slim margin.

Following taste beats following tweets.

Verdict:
This isn’t for everyone. But for the builders, the curious, the clout-chasers who want to know what fuels their heroes this is sticky, viral, and monetizable. Privacy will be messy, execution will be hell, but if someone nails it, this could be the next big social graph.

👉 Who’s making it?

🚨 Leaked: 3 Startup Sparks That Escaped the Vault

CONFIDENTIAL FILES — DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

Some ideas weren’t meant to see daylight. They were supposed to stay locked in the NTE Pro.

But a few slipped out. And now you’re seeing them before anyone else:

🕵️ Invest in Rising Stars with Career Futures 
Forget betting on stocks. Imagine buying equity in the next LeBron or next MrBeast before the world catches on.

🕵️ Volatility Markets: Trading on Outcome Turbulence 
Yes/no bets are boring. The real money’s in chaos — making markets where you profit off wild swings, not just winners.

🕵️ Real-Time Event-Linked Insurance 
Your concert gets canceled? Flight delayed? Boom — auto-triggered payout before Ticketmaster even sends the sad email.

If these are the leaked files… imagine what’s still sealed.

The rest of the leak lives inside NTE Pro.
👉 $99/year.

Read them while you can.

One More Meme