Today at a glance:
Opportunity → B2B Visa Process
Framework → Double Diamond
Tool → Hyperlight
Trend → Single Parents
Quote → When to go all in on your idea
Opportunity: B2B Visa Process
This sounds fake but there are 1.8 million people in the employment-based green card backlog in the US. These are skilled workers we’re missing out on. The legal immigration system needs a serious overhaul.
Additionally, hiring an engineer and relocating them to the US is a terrible process.
I’d love to see a ruthlessly efficient operator take this challenge on and build a company that makes this process as more efficient by cutting through government red tape wherever possible.
Companies would pay you to handle all the legal requirements of applying for a visa and ensuring the company is complying with the guidelines and regulations.
This would be a high-ticket service you could start creating by working 1:1 with startups and over time building the processes to package a high-ticket service to sell to large companies at scale.
There’s likely also a software component you could build out, with a dashboard for the companies and more, but I don’t see this as venture-scale. Your costs and headcount would likely scale too linearly. But I’d love for someone to prove me wrong on this one!
🧠 Framework: Double Diamond Framework
Founders know their product strategy will change early and often as they learn more about their users.
The Double Diamond framework is provides the required adaptability, particularly for software products and services:
Understand → When you’re triggered by a new idea, learning from users, macro change in the market, or new technology you return to this phase. Understanding the why behind these changes are essential. Consider how they’ll impact customer behavior going forward.
Define → Once you understand a shift, define the promising opportunities and create an initial strategy. Don’t skip this stage, as your solution should be rooted in this vision. It’s what sets you apart.
Explore → This phase is all about finding a solution that will work in your market, and for your users. Many founders make the mistake of setting a vision and jumping right into creating. Don’t be that founder. You don’t want to build any more than you need to in the early days. Building too much too soon is expensive and limits flexibility.
Create → Only after you’ve explored pathways with your users, move onto creating a full solution. But even as you progress through this phase, build in as small increments as possible, and then return to the Explore phase frequently to get new feedback. It may change your assumptions in unexpected ways.
🛠 Tool: Hyperlight
I’m fascinated by this summer’s YC batch and have bought into the hype that it may be the best batch in years.
Hyperlight is in the batch and is building natural-sounding AI agents for customer support.
This sounds way more lame and boring than it actually is (sell the benefit, guys, not the feature!). Their AI agents can actually talk to customers via phone or chat and integrate with all your systems.
What I like about it is that Hyperlight takes something that was previously only available to companies that have a considerable CS budget (high-quality human phone support) and gives it to everyone. All of a sudden, everyone’s got a premium support offering with no wait times. Killer! Customers will love it.
📈 Trend: Single Parents
The r/singleparents subreddit has exploded in the past year. It’s a community where single parents can find support and connect with each other. There are over 10M single parents in the US alone (and this number is rising), so this community may end up being very large.
Being a founder is really hard. Being a single parent is harder. Building products or services to make it easier would feel good. Some ideas:
A media company that gives advice and provides curated resources to help single parents navigate daily life. You could likely port some of the subreddit into your own community over time, and layer on educational resources and reviews for service providers as well.
Dating is a big topic in the subreddit. Dating apps are almost impossible to take to an IPO, but single parents are a unique demographic that a unique dating app could serve better than generic ones.
Healthcare can be tricky to navigate for single parents. I could see a telehealth platform specifically built for single parents and their kids, together in a single app, doing well.
An AI-based personal assistant specifically designed for single parents (i.e. maybe it has a mode to interface with their child(ren) as well in ways that the parent signs off on)
An online education platform that isn’t predatory. Single parents get hit hard with ads for University of Phoenix, etc that likely won’t materially help their chances of accelerating in their careers. They deserve a better solution.
A marketplace for businesses owned by single parents. There’s been a rise in support for niche, identity-focused services in the last few years. I could see this doing well among members of the subreddit in particular.
💬 Quote: How to know when to go all-in on your idea
I loved this answer from Shishir in Lenny’s Newsletter when asked how he knew when it was time to go all-in on Coda. I’ve written an entire piece on how to know when to go all-in on an idea, it’s the most important decision a founder makes.
The most successful startup founders usually have these two things in common. I can’t stress how important it is to find something you can’t imagine not working on. And, if you want or need co-founder(s), make sure it’s with someone you can’t imagine not working with. When both of those things work out it’s true harmony.
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