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Happy Thanksgiving.

A quick story.

For most of my life, I was the person with a million ideas and a million reasons to wait. I’d see problems everywhere, write them down, get excited, then talk myself out of starting. Not because the idea wasn’t good but because I convinced myself building had to be complicated, perfectly planned, or backed by money.

That frustration became the spark for Needs To Exist.

I didn’t want ideas to die in the notes app. I didn’t want to be one of those people who says “I had that idea years ago” while someone else built it. I wanted to prove something simple: in the right environment, ideas don’t stay ideas. They become momentum.

A year ago NTE had around 100 startup ideas.

Today, NTE Pro has over 6,000 and climbing.

And here’s what I’ve learned: ideas matter more than ever.

AI didn’t kill creativity. It did the opposite. It leveled the playing field. Now the rare skill is not execution horsepower but it’s taste. It’s judgment. It’s knowing what should exist. Because anyone can build faster now. The bottleneck shifted from code to clarity.

We’re entering a world where:
Everyone can build.
But not everyone knows what to build.

That’s why this community exists. It’s why NTE grew. It’s why NTE Pro keeps filling up. Because the future rewards people who notice the hidden frustrations, the broken systems, and the everyday moments where something better should exist.

And the biggest unlock is still the oldest one: you just have to start.

No perfect path.
No perfect timing.
No perfect plan.
Just one step.

This Thanksgiving, that’s what I’m grateful for.

I’m grateful for every subscriber who reads these and thinks, “Yeah, that should exist.”
I’m grateful for the builders and tinkerers who take action.
I’m grateful for the people who share their ideas publicly.
And I’m grateful for every experiment, launch, and “why not?”

Thanksgiving is about food and family but it’s also about noticing the overlooked. Every tradition started as someone’s weird idea. Every billion-dollar category started with someone saying, “There has to be a better way.”

The same is true for startups.

So thank you for being here. For building with us. For supporting NTE’s growth. And for proving that ideas are still the most valuable currency in the world, especially when you combine them with AI, taste, and the willingness to take the first step.

Now let’s dig into some ideas inspired by Thanksgiving.

Because hidden inside the stuffing and the chaos are next year’s opportunities.

Let’s go build.

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The Leftover Economy

The Problem

After Thanksgiving the real crisis starts: waste.
America throws away $400M+ of food because people don’t know what to do with leftovers. Nobody wants turkey five days in a row. Nobody has recipes. Food dies in the fridge.

The Solution
An app that says: here’s what’s in your kitchen, here’s how much longer it lasts, and here are 3 days of meals using it. It turns leftovers into inventory. Like meal-planning in reverse.

Why It Needs To Exist
Inflation changed behavior. People care about waste again.
Turning $40 of leftovers into $120 of meals is the new “couponing,” but smarter.

The Counterargument
“People won’t want to cook twice.”
Maybe. But people will save money without thinking. The version that wins automates the brainwork, not the cooking.

The MVP
Ask users to upload a photo of their leftovers.
The app just returns 3 recipes + a shopping add-on.
No tech needed at first. Just human wizardry or GPT.

Someone just spent $236,000,000 on a painting. Here’s why it matters for your wallet.

The WSJ just reported the highest price ever paid for modern art at auction.

While equities, gold, bitcoin hover near highs, the art market is showing signs of early recovery after one of the longest downturns since the 1990s.

Here’s where it gets interesting→

Each investing environment is unique, but after the dot com crash, contemporary and post-war art grew ~24% a year for a decade, and after 2008, it grew ~11% annually for 12 years.*

Overall, the segment has outpaced the S&P by 15 percent with near-zero correlation from 1995 to 2025.

Now, Masterworks lets you invest in shares of artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso. Since 2019, investors have deployed $1.25 billion across 500+ artworks.

Masterworks has sold 25 works with net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.

Shares can sell quickly, but my subscribers skip the waitlist:

Skip waitlist

_{*Per Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd}

The AI Meal Planner

The Problem
Hosting is the most stressful part of Thanksgiving.
The shopping list, the budget, the amount of food, everyone just guesses. People waste money because they don’t plan.

The Solution
An AI meal planner that takes: guests, budget, allergies, what you already have, and cooking skill.
Then it spits out the exact plan: menu, shopping list, and timeline.

Why It Needs To Exist
Holidays are expensive, and time is the real tax.
This isn’t about food. It’s about removing the mental load.

The Counterargument
“People already know how to cook Thanksgiving.”
No they don’t, they’re barely holding it together. That’s why every kitchen looks like a disaster movie.

The MVP
Start with a simple form:

guests → $ budget → dietary restrictions.

Tool outputs 1 menu + 1 shopping list.
Manual or GPT doesn’t matter. Prove people want it.

The Holiday Logistics App

The Problem
Thanksgiving isn’t a meal, it’s a coordination nightmare.
Flights, arrivals, groceries, who’s bringing what, where everyone stays. All handled inside 17 text threads and no one has the full picture.

The Solution
A single coordination app for travel plans, shared lists, potluck assignments, weather, cost sharing, and arrival times.

Why It Needs To Exist
Every year more families are split across cities. Every year travel demand hits a new record. Complexity has gone up 10x, tools stayed the same.

The Counterargument
“Group planning apps never get adoption.”
True for casual events. But holidays are rituals. Rituals create habits. Habits create lock-in.

The MVP
Start with one feature: shared potluck + arrival ETA tracking.
If people use that, expand.
If they don’t, kill it. Simple.

The Idea Advantage

You know that person who always says “I had that idea years ago”?

Don’t be that person.

There’s a reason Needs To Exist has grown. AI leveled the playing field. Building is no longer the bottleneck. The new bottleneck is taste. Ideas. Judgment. Knowing where the next billion-dollar opportunity is hiding.

A year ago we had 100 startup ideas.

Now NTE Pro has over 6,000. And we add more every day.

These aren’t recycled business models or startup clichés. They’re ideas hiding in plain sight. Problems that already exist in the world. Categories primed for disruption. The kind of stuff founders, operators, and investors steal and run with.

If you’re serious about starting something, this is your unfair advantage:
new ideas
new markets
new categories
new angles
new opportunities

You don’t need permission. You don’t need a cofounder. You don’t need a 200-page plan.

You just need one idea that clicks.

NTE Pro is for the people who want to build the future instead of waiting for it.

Tap in. Don’t let your next billion-dollar idea die in the Notes app.

One More Meme