- Hey guys, welcome to Silicon Valley Girl.
Today, we're gonna talk about business ideas
for a post-pandemic world.
And I know we're still in the pandemic,
I know there are still lockdowns
happening in several countries,
but we're getting out of it with a new mindset.
People have realized that if we're stuck at home,
there are still plenty of things to do.
And this is why in January, 2021,
half a million new businesses were created in the U.S.
If we look at the stats,
more than 4.4 million new businesses
were created in the U.S. during 2020,
the highest total on record.
For reference, that's 24% increase from 2019
and 51% increase from the average of 2010 to 2019.
Now, if you think that COVID
was taking away opportunities from you,
with this video, I want to inspire you to look at things
in a different way.
For a lot of people,
it was a life-changing moment when they realized
they can actually help the world live better lives
and start new businesses.
In this video, I'm gonna inspire you with some ideas
that came to my mind,
and I would work on them if I had time.
But yeah, I also have a couple of businesses.
One of them was highly affected by the pandemic,
because it's travel-based,
but at the same time,
my online businesses saw a great increase in revenue.
Idea number one, anti-COVID meals and supplements.
Maintaining a healthy diet
helps you strengthen your immune system,
and of course it would help you in case you get a disease.
Of course, your website should have a clear statement
that you can not prevent having COVID by just eating healthy
or taking several supplements,
but you can improve your general wellbeing.
So maybe it's a meal delivery
that helps you maintain this healthy diet,
or maybe it's a supplement blend
that would help you maintain a healthy gut or whatever.
So if you are an expert in this topic,
do your own research,
and help people live a healthier lifestyle
by providing the meals.
Because every time when I'm busy,
I am just tempted to eat out and have an unhealthy snack.
And one way to solve this problem
is that now I have a lady who comes in and cooks for us,
for the whole family,
just because we don't have time to cook,
but if there was a healthy meal delivery
that would focus on boosting your immune system,
that will be something I was subscribed for.
129 Billion masks are used every single month,
this is a crazy number.
And there's actually a wave of startups
focusing on recycling masks.
One of them focuses on creating items
that help prevent COVID like face shields,
and another one recycles masks to create containers.
Maybe you have some brilliant ideas
how we can recycle those masks.
The problem is I've been to Guatemala three months ago,
and we were swimming in the Caribbean,
and every time I was at the beach, I saw hundreds of masks.
They're everywhere already.
There's already been a lot of trash before the pandemic,
in oceans and seas, and now even more.
Most of my calls during the pandemic and before the pandemic
happened online, I'm just this huge fan of remote work.
Imagine that for every online meeting,
you have a real-time collaboration doc,
where you collaborate together.
Where you add live graphs, charts, dashboards, videos,
really anything.
This is what Monday.com has just created for teams.
Monday Workdocs enable you to create text made of blogs,
so you can embed live objects like boards and charts,
and workdocs always stay relevant.
Because the problem is sometimes, for example,
you have like a spreadsheet with current expenses,
and you create a screenshot and you put it into doc,
but then boom, you added more expenses,
and the number has changed.
But with Monday Workdocs, you can actually insert that table
and it will be automatically updating.
So your whole team is just looking at one doc,
with data that's always relevant.
It was dreamed of an office
where I would have little screens
that are tracking our progress in terms of revenue,
or tracking our progress in a project.
This is something I've been dreaming of, but digitally.
And this is the best,
because almost everything now happens online.
Workdocs are connected to the rest of Monday.com
and other software it integrates with.
All of your unstructured words and collaboration
can turn into actionable items
to keep project, processes, and workflows moving forward.
So if you have a team like I do,
Monday.com is a place where you all collaborate,
where you don't have to exchange notes all the time,
because you'll have them in different places.
This is where you brainstorm together,
this is where you track your progress together,
and this is where you grow together as a team.
Monday.com is sponsoring this video,
and they gave me a special link for all of you my followers,
and if you click the link below,
you would get a full free month of Monday.com
to try it out with your team,
and I'm sure you'll fall in love with it.
The link is down below, check it out.
A lot of people these days use smart devices
to track whatever's happening to their body.
I use Oura Ring, for example, 'cause it tracks everything
from my sleep to my body temperature, et cetera.
There are smartwatch and smart rings, whatever,
but the thing is,
there's so much data that is just sitting there
and not being analyzed.
And for example,
Oura now asks you whether you had a COVID vaccine,
so they could help you focus on recovery.
And you can also see the symptoms that you get
after getting a vaccine, like high fever or whatever.
So the idea here is to try and work with data,
and learn how to predict different things.
Learn how to predict
that you're probably getting sick with something,
or you're having some after effects
after getting a vaccine, you know, I see it as a blue ocean.
Just because there's so much data,
and we haven't learned how to use it yet.
So you could partner with one of their hardware firms
and collect that data,
and help people understand their health better.
2020 saw a 700% increase in pet adoptions,
starting from birds and rats and hamsters to dogs and cats.
Imagine how much stuff people need for their pets.
First of all, healthy food.
This is an opportunity.
The second idea, this is brilliant, online pet training.
because again, people are afraid to go out,
they don't want to take their pets somewhere,
and online training for new pets,
this is one of the best ideas.
And if you want to start a class,
this is a huge opportunity.
One of my favorite things I've tried during the pandemic,
cohort-based courses.
The thing is again, before the pandemic, we were like,
"Okay, I'm gonna take the course,
"but I'm gonna meet people offline."
Now you can't really,
well in some places you can take offline courses,
but when you take an online course,
you still want this community feeling,
you still want to connect with people.
And I took a course from On Deck,
and the way they market themselves as Stanford of online.
But the thing is,
I just see that knowledge has become a commodity.
Like there is so much stuff we can Google,
there's so much stuff on YouTube,
but the value of taking a course
is connecting with a person that you like,
and also building relationships.
So if you want to create a course,
think about this community aspect.
And when you think about the community aspect,
you also think about apps that could enable that.
So for example, there's an awesome app that just appeared
during the pandemic called the Icebreaker.
So if you're taking the course,
and there are 100 people in the course,
everybody registers on the Icebreaker,
and they randomly connect people
so they could chat for five minutes.
And this is an app that enables the seamless process,
because otherwise the logistics would have been a nightmare.
There is another app that I use all the time called Luma.
And this is where you can schedule your online meetings,
this is where you can sell tickets for your online meetings
and do overall planning.
So just think about this.
This is like Mark Zuckerberg is talking about metaverse,
basically the universe, but online, you might not like it,
but this is where we're moving.
People are buying digital clothes
for the digital version of themselves.
And almost everyone has a digital version of themselves
on Instagram, on Facebook, whatever.
And so we're moving into that metaverse,
and we would need a lot of different apps
to facilitate communication.
Just think about that.
That could be an app that could be easy to start,
'cause there's not much code involved.
And this is also something you can test really quickly,
because this is not some huge idea,
like, I don't know, recycling masks,
where you actually need the whole production setup.
This is something you could code and try out yourself.
Another awesome idea.
I don't know if you've ever done that,
but during the pandemic, I had a couple of virtual dinners.
So this was something organized by YouTube.
There was several YouTubers,
YouTube ordered food for every one of us,
and we jumped on Zoom on a Zoom call,
and we were all eating and chatting to each other.
Because they used to host those events offline,
they would create a dinner for everyone,
but they couldn't do it during the pandemic.
And this is amazing.
Like for example, I have a friend in Amsterdam
and I really, really wanna see her.
And I really wanna go out with her
and have a drink or whatever.
What if we created a chain of bars in big locations,
where you could go and you could click button.
So it's an actual restaurant,
and you come and you get your food.
Your friend in Amsterdam goes to the same chain,
goes to that place, also clicks a button,
and you're sitting in a booth
and you see your friend on a screen.
But you also have this physical service
where a waiter comes in, you order food,
and your friend does the same, then you split the bill.
Like the actual experience of dining with someone,
but that someone is online.
Like, I think this is amazing.
If I had time, I would totally do this,
and I would bring this idea to life,
'cause I just wanna see my friends.
And this is not even just the pandemic,
it's just that my network is all over the world,
and I miss those people,
but I don't want to just jump on Zoom call.
Because all the online ideas, sometimes they seem like,
but why don't you do it just now, Marina,
why don't you bring your laptop to a restaurant?
It's just this friction, like nobody does it.
And if I see an app that enables everything,
that streamlines the process,
and because everyone who comes to that place
would know why they're coming there,
I wouldn't look weird chatting to my friend on screen.
But if I bring a laptop to a restaurant,
it will be probably too loud, and people will be like,
"Why is she chatting to a laptop the whole dinner?"
That would distract them.
But in a place that I'm talking about,
there would be special booths,
there would be a great screen,
a very fast internet connection.
So you can have the whole experience, actually dress up,
it would almost feel like offline.
When I talk about such ideas,
it seems like we're going to a world that was described
in the "Black Mirror," but guess what?
I think we're going there, cheers! (chuckles)
I know I've talked a lot about being online,
but yes, people are actually getting Zoom-fatigued,
and they want to be outside.
You can't really do a lot of things in doors right now,
depending on where you are, of course,
but there is a lot of opportunity to do something outdoors.
One of my friends has created an app called Locals.org,
that lets you connect with people
based on activities you wanna do together offline.
Like maybe you are creating a picnic,
or you just wanna explore some particular location,
like walk around LA,
but this is a way to meet new people offline.
And again, I think there is great opportunity around it.
Just connecting people in your local community.
Again, you would say,
"But why don't they connect themselves?"
They need a facilitator.
They need someone who would come or an app,
and would say like,
"Today we are cleaning the grass in this park.
"Let's meet up,
"let's talk about how COVID changed our lives."
This is a way to go.
And this is how you start with a local community,
and then you grow probably worldwide.
And last but not least, virtual tours.
And you might be like, "Oh, Marina, come on!
"What kind of person would do a virtual tour?"
Actually, Amazon just started a marketplace
which is built into the same account,
where you can do a virtual tour of a city,
or you could do a virtual cooking class.
So for example, a one-hour tour of Prague costs $85,
and it's a virtual tour, and I think this is gonna grow.
Again, I would rather travel by myself
and see places with my own eyes,
but when it comes to cooking classes,
it will be great if I could put a VR set
and be in the kitchen with someone and cook,
I think this is a market that has huge potential.
Thank you guys so much
for watching this video up to the very end.
I hope you enjoyed it,
and I hope I inspired you with some ideas, some new markets,
and some amazing opportunities
that are there right now in the world
for you to come and grab them and start your own business.
See you very soon in my next vlog.
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there is a red button down below,
Silicon Valley Girl, see you soon, bye-bye!