Welcome to the 28 new subscribers who joined this week!

Each week I help founders & marketers spark their creativity by sharing a new product idea & marketing plan.

Today's idea is a multi-billion dollar idea, & something I could picture myself actually building. It comes from Brett Martin, a venture capitalist at Charge, & was shared by Mario Gabriele in his newsletter RFS 100, which you should sign up for (each week he shares 5 VC-vetted business ideas).

First, a few updates from me.

As I mentioned last week, I'm participating in a Ship 30 for 30 challenge where I write 30 short essays in 30 days. Here are my favorites from last week:

• The most attractive industries are regulated
• How Zoom has made us soft
• Why we should do away with budgets - HIGHLY RECOMMEND
• You can't be above average without being unconventional - HIGHLY RECOMMEND

And my 2 top Internet finds of the week:

• In Praise of the Gods: a secular argument for value in religious tradition. Myths have more truth than many academic papers. For example, we haven't discovered anything really new in psychology in decades. If the ancients didn't come up with it first, it's probably false. Lots of implications for innovation.
• Antifragility: if you're not familiar with the concept of being anti-fragile (basically being chaos-resistant), here's a great video summary (HIGHLY RECOMMEND) by Nat Eliason of the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. This is also a great blog post by Steph Smith, who leads Trends at The Hustle, reflecting on antifragility in her career.

Now, on to this week's product idea: ReviewYou - Yelp for the working person.

"Venture capitalists are falling over themselves to fund the passion economy — writers, musicians, and aspiring actresses — but who is building the platform to support and empower the working person?"

- Brett Martin, VC at Charge, in Mario Gabriele’s RFS 100

If you know me, you know I love LinkedIn, but people love hating on it, especially on Twitter. And they have a point. For the ~30% of people who work in business or have office jobs, LinkedIn is a job board, social proof collector, & professional address book. But if you're in healthcare, drive for Uber, or work at a restaurant, LinkedIn isn’t much help. New verticalized platforms are the future.

Enter ReviewYou, a online peer-to-peer resume, like Yelp or LinkedIn, but for workers in the gig economy & service industry. It would integrate with Uber & Lyft to pull in driver ratings, let customers leave reviews for the people that serve them, & let employees easily request letters of recommendation from past bosses.

For employees in the restaurant, customer service, or travel industry, ReviewYou's value is clear. One place to show off your customer service skills in the form of real testimonials from real customers, & help you land your next job.

For customers, it's a fun way to show love to the workers you encounter. What if instead of reviewing your local coffee shop on Yelp, you could leave a 5 star review for the barista that served you or the stylist that cut your hair?

Here's how I'd launch:

Many of my high school friends work in the service industry, which would make a family & friends launch perfect. Build a simple platform, make it fun to use, & people will start using it.

The best products get free advertising when their customers use them. This is why mattress companies like Purple & Casper are so bad at acquiring customers. You don't tell your friends the brand of your mattress. But ReviewYou doesn't have this problem. When employees request reviews from past bosses or show their ReviewYou profile to new bosses, word automatically spreads.

To scale, I'd focus on landing key players in the gig economy like Uber & Lyft. Given the ongoing contractor vs. employee debate, ReviewYou is an opportunity for companies to show they care about their contractors' careers.

Next, I'd partner with restaurants & onboard their employees. Imagine Wendy's & McDonald's beef over whose employees have the highest ReviewYou rating. With strategic messaging on counters, receipts, & packaging, restaurants could incentivize customers to leave reviews. Having a ReviewYou profile would become as essential to an employee as their uniform. In your own company, how can you align incentives so others do your advertising for you?

Uber ratings have become uber-competitive & a cultural phenomenon, but Uber doesn't focus on qualitative ratings. ReviewYou would combine both the qualitative & quantitative as a new sort of social & professional signaling.

This is a really cool idea that inevitably someone, perhaps me, will build, but when?

In 2020 people on Tinder brag about Uber ratings.

In 2025, people will brag about their ReviewYou profile.

That's all for this issue! As always, respond with the biggest challenge you're facing & I'll try to help if I can.

Cheers,

Luke

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