5 under-the-radar trends (+ our business ideas)

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: The episode explores how “generation-defining” data points can reveal long-term business opportunities across hearing loss, drone regulation, psychedelics, jobs, and nature-inspired product design. Steph Smith argues that major trends often emerge from policy shifts, demographic change, and overlooked edge cases, creating room for new companies, adjacent services, and novel consumer products.

Main Topics: Hearing loss as a normalization opportunity (Priority: 5/5): The discussion frames rising hearing loss as a massive, underappreciated market driven by aging, louder environments, and wearables. The speakers discuss over-the-counter hearing aids, cultural stigma, and adjacent products like stylish earplugs. Regulatory inflections and drones/EVTOL (Priority: 5/5): Steph explains how FAA rule changes around beyond-line-of-sight drone flight and eVTOL certification could unlock drone delivery, urban air mobility, public safety uses, and a range of supporting businesses. Psychedelics moving from fringe to therapeutic use (Priority: 4/5): The conversation covers decriminalization, psychedelic retreats, ketamine/psilocybin-assisted therapy, and the possibility that lower-dose or guided use could expand into life decisions and preventative mental health support. AI, labor shortages, and job creation (Priority: 5/5): The episode examines fastest-growing jobs, especially in areas with labor scarcity like accounting and nursing, and argues that AI startups should target industries with unmet demand rather than saturated talent markets. Salary transparency and the next Glassdoor (Priority: 4/5): The speakers note that pay data is increasingly public via job postings and suggest a new aggregator could obsolete legacy salary-intelligence products by scraping disclosed compensation at scale. Nature, evolution, and biomimicry as product inspiration (Priority: 4/5): The discussion uses An Immense World and the Galapagos to show how animal senses and evolution inspire technology, branding, and product design, from velcro and wings to color-changing consumer goods. Building around second-order effects (Priority: 5/5): A recurring theme is that major shifts create many opportunities beyond the obvious winner company, including operations, cleaning, safety, infrastructure, and data-layer businesses.

Key Arguments: Big trends are most valuable when they change behavior, regulation, or infrastructure, not just when they create a popular consumer product. Hearing loss is becoming more common and culturally normal, so products like hearing aids and premium earplugs can follow the same path as glasses. FAA policy changes are not small technicalities; they can create entirely new markets such as drone delivery and urban air mobility. The most attractive AI opportunities may be in industries with labor shortages, because companies are eager for help and less threatened by automation. Public salary disclosures have made the old Glassdoor model easier to replicate with scraping and aggregation. Psychedelics may expand from crisis treatment into broader guided use cases, including career, family, and life-transition decisions. Nature offers both inspiration for product design and a framework for understanding new sensing and communication technologies.

Data Points: Projected people with hearing loss by 2050: nearly 2.5 billion - Steph cites this as a major signal for the hearing-aid market Projected people requiring hearing rehabilitation by 2050: over 700 million - Used to emphasize scale of hearing-related demand OTC hearing aids in the U.S.: legalized in 2022 - Presented as a policy unlock that broadens access FAA category change: first new aircraft category in nearly 80 years - Refers to eVTOL approval as a major regulatory inflection Waymo share in Austin: 20% of Uber rides - Used to show autonomy can scale faster than expected Psychadelic decriminalization in Oregon: 2020 - Example of policy change accelerating a new market Fastest-growing job categories: data scientists, security analysts, wind turbine service technicians, solar panel installers - From Bureau of Labor Statistics examples Solar panel cleaning cadence: every 6 to 12 months - Opportunity noted for maintenance businesses Travel nurse company valuation: unicorn / billion-dollar-plus range - Trusted Health cited as a major example in nursing labor markets Hampton accounting database size: 3 to 400 accountants - Used to illustrate hiring shortages among accountants Internet Pipes revenue: eight figures - Mentioned casually as the product’s business outcome Hearing aid cost: about $2,000 - Sam describes his own experience with expensive, poor-quality devices Noise exposure warning: more than 10 minutes - Apple Watch warning cited for loud SoulCycle classes Stamps and mail delivery: 40 to 50 cents - Used to illustrate the extraordinary logistics moat of USPS/parcel networks

Pivotal Quotes: "“Maybe you should actually examine this a little more closely.”" — Steph Smith: Describing how certain statistics become signals for future business opportunities "“The thing that I'm trying to drive home here is like these are obviously going to take years, if not decades, to influence us in major ways.”" — Steph Smith: On drone delivery, autonomy, and other long-horizon trends "“People don’t even realize their earplugs.”" — Steph Smith: On Loop’s stylish earplugs and the importance of making utility feel culturally desirable

Implications: Listeners are encouraged to look beyond obvious winners and identify the infrastructure, services, and software that emerge around regulatory shifts, demographic change, and new consumer norms. Many of the best opportunities sit in the edges of big trends.