98 - Brainstorming V 💭
Hey there, !
We are so very close to the big 100, and yet here I am running out of my backlog during yet another lockdown :D
It’s time once again for another feedback form! It should only take 5 minutes - please help me fill it out :)
> Click here! <
Brainstorming every 10 posts, have you noticed? :)
Previous posts:
- here (initial idea post),
- here (businesses I want to see that don’t exist yet),
- here (absurd products bought in pairs)
- here (businesses that take advantage of things you don’t use at home) and
- here (stupid businesses that can help you get rich)
Today’s theme is businesses for Asian-Australian kids - inspired by a recent in-person event from As I Am as well as the fact that, well, I’m Asian-Australian :) :
-
Co-Star but for the Chinese Zodiac - Co-Star is a hyper-personalised, real-time horoscope app that is fantastically sassy. Since astrology can be determined on a minute-by-minute basis, why can’t we do the same for the Chinese Zodiac? I vaguely remember that in China, certain temples will check your day/month/year/hour of birth and give you a fortune based on that…it looks like Chinese numerology is pretty advanced as well ;)
-
Hawker Internships - lots of hawker stalls are currently staffed by an older generation, making wonderful foods that are going to be lost when they die (as many of the younger folk are moving on from food-based businesses). This business would send young people (aspiring chefs?) to do a ‘hawker internship’ in various stalls around Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong - and give them an on-the-ground education about different street foods which can be brought back to Australia. May also be coupled with a larger conglomerate or government body to set up Hawker Events in Melbourne.
-
Unique Hong Baos - this one I think probably already exists, is very seasonal, and probably has low margins (and the key to it would be finding the most efficient, cost-effective way to do it), but I reckon there’s a market somewhere in making super personalised red packets. Ronny Chieng made some recently which I LOVED that said “Hope you get RICH” - surely this could be done with a cricut or something on red packets? Get your last name on it, or put a picture on it? Future extensions would include changing the shape of the packet - could it look like a dragon? A phoenix?
-
Language Helpers - essentially, making the “hey Mum, what does this mean in Chinese?” or “hey Dad how do I translate this into Chinese?” into an app where you can call someone at any time and show them on your camera what you’re looking at (since, I assume you can’t easily type it - otherwise you could probably just Google Translate it…). This is based on Be My Eyes where volunteers help blind or low-sighted people with day to day tasks where required. I reckon you could get a lot of older, retired people to help with this - a way to be useful (if they want to) and pass on the language to the next generation.
-
The LB/LG style starter kit - hey, not everyone knows how to style that way, y’know? Why not offer a starter kit / makeover with outfits tailored to every occasion? This actually started in my head as like…an Asian stylist who knows how to dress you appropriately with the right sizes etc. but LB/LG starter kit sounds more fun.
-
Electric Gu Zheng - since we have electric guitars and electric violins, why not electric gu zheng? or electric er hu? Okay, it looks like there are some prototypes available out there, but that just means the next step is to make some sick electronic music using these traditional instruments 🤘
-
The Asian Library / Subscription - get a book / set of articles / other media every month that’s straight out from China / Hong Kong / Taiwan, which have been translated and changed into a form that helps you translate the text. This could be paired with a Chinese school of some sort to practice on translations. The sub-idea for this is capturing the oral history of Asian-Australian parents, grandparents, kids etc. to make sure the stories are not lost.
-
Deepfaked Asian FRIENDS - morally dubious, ethically wrong, but using AI to change the entire series of FRIENDS (slash insert popular tv show here) to have asian faces and also speak Chinese. What could go wrong? :D
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
-
The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou - I honestly wasn’t prepared for this. It’s an intensely raw recounting of Maya’s life (who I had really only known in passing and heard a few of her poems). She has an incredible memory and recounts the minutiae of her life all the way back to her teen years; the anguish, the laughter, the terror - laid bare and written extremely clearly. I have only got through 2 of the 6 books but thought it was good to recommend. It’s exactly what I would want an autobiography to be - showing the good with the bad, telling your story without washing out the flaws, and being as clear and well-spoken as Maya in her retelling.
-
Scoopy Milk Bar - I still technically haven’t gone to their actual shop, but I had it at an event recently and damn it is excellent! I thought it would be like one of those bingsu’s from Dessert Story (which are VERY icy and not super flavorful), but these ones were DELICIOUS. I don’t know how they do it - it’s so good~!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
-
I made 56874 calls to explore the telephone network. Here’s what I found - one of those ‘wow this guy dove really deep into something and found out something interesting’ articles. In this edition, we have a guy who tried calling every single telephone number in Finland to see if there was anything interesting in it.
I had the following requirements for the called numbers:
- No premium numbers (my budget was 5 EUR)
- No private individuals (I did not want to annoy and scare people with ghost calls in the middle of the night)
- Maximum amount of systems
What he finds is some weird recordings about zombie apocalypses, secret messages, various hold music patterns, and numerous speech bots.
-
Clubhouse but make it Chinese - they’re really good at copying shit in China - here’s an article about the new hotness Clubhouse being cloned over there. Often, they need to find something new and different that they can improve on with the original idea!
-
The AI wolf that preferred committing suicide over eating sheep - the article starts off with an AI simulation that seems weird in terms of its conclusions, but becomes a more general commentary on the culture of overwork and burnout in Chinese younger generation (i.e. better to just give up at the start than try).