Dani Grant

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74 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2024 last heard Jul 2024

Dani Grant’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Startup Ideas Podcast · Silicon Valley founder shares 3 of her best 150+ ideas · 24 Jul 2024 podcast

Let millennials invest in VC funds. What you would do is you'd create a shadow LP that becomes an LP in all these funds and then allows the general public to be a part of that LP. So like what it would broaden access to is like you as a 25 year old could buy a hundred dollars of A16Zs, you know, fund, whatever, whether or not the VCs will enjoy that TBD, but do people want it? A hundred percent.

Yes, yeah. This is, for the record, an idea that won't work. And it won't, like, and there are more reasons than that that it won't work. It's like, also, they love not having to share their fund, like, returns with the general public. And this would change that. Like, it's like, for all the reasons this won't work. This is sort of an idea kind of like, allow Harvard to accept more students.

And it's like, that's not really what they do. Yeah.

Totally. At the time that we wrote this Notion doc, a company had just launched called Otis, which was the Skillshare founder launching a new financial startup. And it allowed, like, I guess it's targeted for young people, but allowed anyone to invest in like alternative assets like art and sneakers and just own a part of culture. And when I saw that, I was like, that's super inspiring.

What else do millennials want to be a part of? And I was like, A16C.

Yeah. At the time, so this one is, okay, the one more theme that I got very interested in at the time was these in-person events. And I think that now is the time to start in-person things because we're all so, we all realize just how precious they are, but they're all really hard to start because the quality bar for what you'll attend a second time that's in-person is just super high.

And so there is an amazing company called Sofar Sounds. Are you familiar?

They are concerts in people's homes. But the thing that they just got right is they got the formula that you can trust and you don't know what you're going to get until you show up. So you know it's going to be 60 minutes, three bands play, like 10 minutes each, but like breaks in the middle. So you show up and then you know that they've curated the quality.

So one idea in this doc is so far sounds for talks where like I love that format. It's such an easy and fun thing to go and do. It's novel each time. But sitting and listening to music for an hour like isn't everyone's jam. But what could be is sort of more like a variety show where you you show up. And they're going to be three talks. Maybe one is like a comedian. One is like a scientist.

And you just and that's that's the format. And that's the that's the in-person event empire.

I think it's more generalized. People want to be entertained. And so like, It's so far sounds for your entertainment and you know that the quality bar is going to be good. I think that the hard part is not choosing a category. The hard part is the brand where my co-founder says this like so eloquently and I'm going to butcher this, but his philosophy is,

which I think is so right, is that moats are dead and brand is the only moat. It's like, we used to all talk about network effects and like, you know, build something like Twitter. But if you think about all the software tools you use right now, there's not really a network effect. There's not really a network effect for Notion.

Like maybe there's like, like we can come up with some, but why did you choose Notion? It's because the brand is just so strong. like basically the strategy for startups right now is to be Coca-Cola. It's like, why do you drink Coca-Cola? Not because of any like, like lock-in or anything. It's because it's Coca-Cola. And so the, why do you show up to a SoFar sounds with the first date?

It's because, you know, it's going to be a high quality hour of your life. And so I think the hard part is to establish that trust and to maintain it.

I agree. You know, Peter Thiel says like the best way to compete is to not compete. And I think that brand is the best way you can do that, where if you occupy enough mental space for a category, no one is searching for an alternative. When we started Jam, we didn't search for what's the best knowledge base. We just use Notion because their brand is so strong.

I think that brand is the best mode out there this year. 100%. The thing really to end on is to say that there are things that I did not appreciate on day one of starting a startup about choosing your idea that I really wish that I had known on day one or we sort of lucked into, but I think are helpful for people who are on day one of choosing what to work on. The first thing is that if

if the startup goes to plan, like if all your dreams come true, this is probably like 10 to 20 years of your life, which is really a lot. Like when we started Jam when I was 26, this is probably gonna be all my 30s. And so that's very exciting, but it's only exciting if you love what you do.

And the thing that I didn't realize on day one is that it's A, has to be exciting enough that you're gonna say no to a lot of other opportunities that come your way. But B, it is going to be like, you are going... to think and talk about your company all the time. Because it's not just at work. It's you go see your family and your family's like, how's the business doing?

And you go see your friends and they're like, how's the startup? And you meet people at parties and they're like, what are you working on? And then they have follow-up questions. So you are in that space all the time. And so you better find the thing fascinating enough to talk about it for 10 years straight. The second is

once the thing starts working, then you have this question of like, okay, well, great. Like now, how do we like a thousand X this thing? And you kind of want to know on day one that there is a path to that.

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