GM. This is Needs to Exist, today’s idea: doctors can save lives, but still can’t see their own paychecks. Time to fix that.

We’ve crossed 5,000 ideas. NTE Pro hands you the binoculars so you don’t miss the ones hiding on the horizon.

Everyone’s got rocket fuel lying around. NTE Zero To One is the launchpad that actually gets you off the ground.

Check out all the past newsletters here

Here’s what we’ve got for you today.

• Daily Idea - Doctor Pay Exposed

• The Ideas Auction

Scalpel, meet salary transparency tool

NTE Zero To One can help you build the tool that finally gives doctors a paycheck MRI.

Inspired by the MFM Podcast 

The One Liner

Doctors know anatomy, not salaries.

The 140 character tweet (or X) version

Surgeons can crack your chest open blindfolded but when it comes to pay, they’re clueless. This tool flips the script with salary transparency.

The Longer Story Version

The Problem

Doctors save lives, but when it comes to money, they’re basically patients themselves, blindfolded, poked, and prodded by HR.

A resident finishing 80-hour weeks doesn’t know if their $180K offer is fair or if the hospital down the street is paying $250K for the same grind.

A dermatologist in Miami has no clue if she’s making more or less than her buddy in Dallas. A neurosurgeon might be pulling 7 figures… or just barely clearing high six.

Right now, it’s like stepping into the OR without the scans, you’re making massive life decisions with zero visibility. And the stakes? We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars over a career.

Recruiters know. Hospitals know. Even the accountants know. But the actual people wielding the scalpels? Left guessing.

The Solution

Think Levels.fyi, but with stethoscopes.

• Step 1: Docs, nurses, PAs drop their salary data anonymously.

• Step 2: Tool spits out a dashboard where you can filter by specialty (Cardio vs. Peds), geography (California vs. Kentucky), and seniority (resident vs. attending).

• Step 3: You suddenly know if you’re underpaid, overpaid, or right in the sweet spot.

Imagine you’re a fresh med school grad about to sign your first contract. Instead of asking “Hey, what’s fair?” on a sketchy forum, you punch in “Internal Medicine, Chicago, 2 years experience” and boom, you see the going rate.

Or you’re a surgeon at Mayo Clinic, sipping your latte, and you realize a peer across town is making $100K more for the same gig. Now you walk into HR like, “Scalpel, please—I’m cutting myself a raise.”

This isn’t just about paychecks. It’s about leverage.

How We’d Build It

Stage 1 — MVP (Get the Juice)

• Collect anonymous submissions with Tally or Typeform, pipe into Supabase.

• Guarantee privacy using OpenMined / PySyft for differential privacy so no hospital lawyer freaks out.

• Launch quietly inside Reddit subs like r/Residency and physician Discords. (Doctors gossip hard online.)

Stage 2 — Growth & Trust

• Add filtering dashboards using Metabase so you can slice comp by specialty, location, gender, and more.

• Verify submissions (optional LinkedIn or NPI number) to keep it clean.

• Drop spicy blog posts: “Pediatricians: Heroes, But Broke” or “Why Dermatologists Make Bank While ER Docs Burn Out.”

Stage 3 — Big Leagues

• Pro tier: “Your offer is $40K under market. Negotiate or walk.”

• Employer angle: hospitals pay for anonymized, aggregate insights.

• Public angle: quarterly reports that become the gold standard—like Medscape, but fresher, funnier, and doctor-driven.

Why It Needs to Exist

Because doctors can cure cancer but can’t cure salary secrecy.

This tool makes compensation transparent in one of the most opaque, high-stakes industries on earth.

And here’s the kicker: If even 1% of the 10M+ healthcare workers in the US use it, you’ve got a multi-million dollar platform that’s half Glassdoor, half Robinhood for medicine.

You ever notice how every group chat has that guy?

The one who says, “What if Uber… but for dogs?”
Then disappears.

Two weeks later: “I’m building a VR gym for cats.”
Ghosted again.

Ideas come easy. Execution? That’s where 99% tap out.

Here’s where NTE Zero to One flips the script.
We don’t care about your “billion-dollar vision.”
We care about you putting something real in front of strangers.

👉 Less talking. More shipping.

The Idea Auction

Your idea walks into an auction house.

The auctioneer bangs the gavel:
“We’ve got a brand-new orthopedic surgeon job in Dallas, do I hear a bid?”

The room is silent.
Why? Because nobody knows what that gig should pay. Is it $350K? $500K? Is the cardiologist across the street making double? Even the people holding the scalpels are guessing.

Now the auctioneer clears his throat:
“Next lot up: a platform where every doctor can compare salaries in real time.”

This time, the room erupts. Paddles shoot up. Nurses, residents, and surgeons are waving like they’re at Sotheby’s. Because finally, somebody is willing to show the numbers.

The Debate

Side A: The Old Guard
They say, “Medicine is a calling, not a business. Pay will sort itself out.”
Translation: keep the whispers, keep the secrets, and let hospitals negotiate from a position of power.

Side B: The Realists
They argue, “Doctors can’t pay med school debt with noble intentions.”
Medicine is noble, yes, but it’s also a $4 trillion industry where salary opacity screws workers daily. Without transparency, you’re negotiating blind. And blindfolded bargaining is how you end up with a pediatrician pulling 40% less than a dermatologist with the same hours.

The Twist

Here’s the twist: every other industry already has this playbook.

• Tech got Levels.fyi. Engineers can walk into a FAANG offer armed to the teeth with comp data.

• Corporate got Glassdoor. Even interns can benchmark before they sign.

But doctors? The people we trust with our literal lives? They’re still whispering at conferences, “Hey, what do you make?” like it’s contraband.

That’s insane.

The Solution

A Medical Salary Transparency Tool.

• Anonymized submissions from doctors, nurses, residents.

• Filters by specialty, geography, gender, years of experience.

• Real-time dashboards so you know if your offer is fair—or a ripoff.

It’s not a survey once a year. It’s live, crowd-sourced, and impossible to ignore.

Suddenly, the “auction” is real. Employers bid against market data, not your ignorance.

The Closer

Doctors can save lives, but they shouldn’t have to guess their worth.

This tool turns every paycheck into an open auction where the market sets the price, not whispers in a break room.

That’s why it needs to exist.

👉 Build it, and you don’t just make money, you give 10 million healthcare workers the leverage they’ve been missing.

Tomorrow’s Headlines, Today

Everyone’s chasing yesterday’s headlines. By the time you hear “AI tutor raises $50M” or “DTC ramen exits to Nestlé,” the money’s gone and the idea’s taken.

But NTE Pro? We deal in tomorrow’s headlines. The stuff you’ll be pissed you didn’t see coming.

• “Startup Raises $20M to Transform Empty Warehouses into AI Data Centers”
  Why it works: AI compute demand is exploding, warehouses are sitting idle — the arbitrage screams opportunity. Feels massive, inevitable, and urgent.

• “The New Doritos? Incubator Reimagines Nostalgic Junk Food for Gen Z Palates”
  Why it works: Everyone loves a guilty snack + nostalgia is a proven brand strategy. Click-worthy, fun, and relatable to anyone reading.

• “Apprenticeship Platform Emerges as College Alternative for High-Skill Careers”
  Why it works: Education disruption is a perennial billion-dollar story. Feels high-impact, long-term, and sparks debate.

Those are just 3. Inside NTE Pro there are 5,000+ of these waiting to be built.

The only question: are you going to build them… or read about the people who did?

👉 Join NTE Pro

One More Meme