September 8, 2025 • 41 mins
Special thanks to Costa for joining us on this episode!
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:59 - Guest Pitch: Brian Baumgartner
00:05:48 - Ticketmaster Robinhood
00:15:13 - Cop Pullover Assistant
00:20:20 - Mini ATMs
00:29:27 - Stroller Mods
00:40:21 - Outro
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
I'm Scott, I'm Russell, and I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three bandwidth buccaneers and a guest
empty our heads of startup and tech product ideas that we have
stuck up in there so you can all have them for free.
(00:25):
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
And this week, Scott, I believe you brought our guest.
I did. I am so excited to finally have on Constantine Fenerakis. We'll call him Costa.
Yeah.
Costa is a senior software engineer, expert coder, and is deep in the embedded world.
Born and raised in Greece, he's worked on everything from medical, aerospace, agricultural.
(00:49):
Pretty much if there's code in it, Costa's probably touched it at some point.
Dang.
So yeah, very excited to have you. Welcome, Costa.
Welcome.
Thank you, guys. Good to be here.
Oh, this is gonna be so fun. And this week in order to get us going, it's been a minute since we've had a celebrity guest pitch, so
May I turn your attention to the screens?
We are gonna be having on Brian Baumgartner, who played famously Kevin from The Office, as well as many other parts over the years.
(01:14):
He's got a short pitch for us. Brace yourselves. This is quite the something. You ready? Here we go.
What's up, Spitball? Oh, do I have an idea for you. A footbath
That's also a gaming remote controller
(01:35):
So gentlemen I
Bring before you today. How could you integrate a footbath as a video game controller?
I'm still reeling. I just got blindsided by Kevin from the office
Kevin
so
Where you're like running in place. Those don't cover swimming games, do they? It does seem like something is there, right?
(02:02):
There we go. I thought I need more of swimming games.
I don't know you're in the like Mario 64 level the dire dire dock and boom you jump in the water
And you gotta get out your foot bath
One level in the whole game that requires a $200 foot bath to get through
(02:25):
- Oh, okay.
- Yep.
- Non-stop, all the time.
- There it is.
(laughing)
- But my toe joints hurt.
Oh, well I got a product for you.
- Oh.
- You know, low impact, high gaming efficiency.
- You can put some Epsom salts.
Perfect.
(laughing)
- Smells so good.
Scott, you're the hardware guy.
How do you do like capacitive,
(02:46):
electro, how do you like figure out
what an input is? - While underwater.
- Yeah, while underwater.
That seems like an engineering challenge.
- It's just gotta be pressure, right?
Is that the only thing we can read on the foot?
-So like each toe?
-I would put just cameras.
-Oh, camera.
-Underwater cameras on your toesies.
Oh, and then you can sell that on OnlyFans.
(03:07):
-I'd subscribe.
I'd subscribe.
FootbathGamer.
Yes, that's Twitch for free, dude.
-That username I've been taking already.
-It's just going to be Kevin, you'll see.
[laughter]
Camera, visual, you got button pressing.
Magnets. Magnets on each toe.
(03:29):
Okay? Through the water.
You can play the piano game, you know.
I know that some Twitch streamers have like foot pedals where they use that to switch scenes or start and stop going live or whatever
so that they can have both hands on whatever game they're doing or whatever.
It does seem like there's something there, but way more exotic.
[laughter]
Just put those on the bottom of a footbath, of course.
(03:50):
That is ultimate work from home luxury home office.
- Dude, rowing machine, rowing the game with real water.
- Peloton, but rowing.
(laughing)
- Hydro dynamic.
(laughing)
- I'm going down the Nile.
I'm in the Amazon.
Yeah, man.
- Ooh, this water is all of a sudden warmer, right?
(04:13):
Oh, now we're in the Arctic, cold water.
Oh, temperature.
- That's perfect.
I
Can't believe but I'm honestly really liking the idea of a swimming game now where I'm just like splashing my feet under the table
And just picking up the splashes as they're going. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You have to wear flippers
(04:34):
It's measuring how much like output you have in order to give you speed
So the harder you cake while sitting on the couch the faster you go
It's like those infinity pool things that you like swim against the home spa thing with the big jet
You know where you've got a small hot tub, but you're just staying in place fighting the current you got that
Oh, yeah, just for your feet. I love it dude actually like pro swimmers
(04:55):
That's probably like a very important. You know your kicks are you got to keep your toes pointed
Yeah, and it'll like coach you on technique. They're using too much ankle flip and not enough leg
Straightening I don't know what I'm talking about
(05:16):
Hey
Has somebody sponsored them yet, that's all that matters. Have they got busted for weed yet?
Yeah, that's all I know about Michael Phelps. Amazing swimmer, likes weed.
People made a big deal about it for some reason. I think we've lost the plot a little bit.
(05:38):
Thanks Kevin!
It's a bong bath, foot bath.
We just get all the way there.
Leo, what do you got this week?
Alright, so there's all kinds of scripts and discord servers and stuff all dedicated to ticket scalping, right?
Ticketmaster is a cesspool.
(06:00):
I went to go buy some tickets for lawn general entry, general admission tickets a year or two ago.
I was there the second they went up.
Lawn tickets still available, $50.
Clicked buy.
Went through the checkout process.
Clicked complete purchase.
Sorry, these are no longer available.
Refresh the page.
Entire show is sold out.
It was about three minutes after doors opened.
(06:21):
Refresh the page again.
Immediately, three, four, $500 resale
for the exact same ticket
that I was looking at five minutes prior.
It's crazy.
At the same time, these scalpers,
there's like a whole subculture
that I've learned a little bit about
that is all about like how do you make money
from this grift, right?
Ticketmasters incentivize because they take a cut
of all the resales to keep letting this happen.
(06:42):
So I want to leverage all of the knowledge
that these people have foolishly put out for free
and start a nonprofit that is a Ticketmaster Robinhood bot.
So we're going to take all of their processes
and their tricks and their bots and their scamming stuff
and sell things at sale at cost and run a 401,
(07:04):
What is it called?
403C Nonprofit.
Yeah, we're gonna go around.
Do you, that rich donor, wanna donate to the art gallery
or do you wanna donate to making experiences for people?
We're gonna be like part Make-A-Wish and part,
we're gonna be the altruistic version
that is trying to bring power back to the people.
(07:26):
I don't know what to call it yet.
Take a master Robin Hood.
- So repeating this back,
Nonprofit is gonna scalp all the tickets
And then resell them themselves just like they already do and resell them for at cost and we can actually do what ticketmaster or whoever
Should be doing and verifying that they're real people who intend on going and yes a lot of verification on limiting to a certain amount
(07:50):
Yeah, absolutely. This stuff is so so solved
It's very easy to make sure that people are legitimate people who are interested in going right?
So you offer that and you're the middleman the broker. This is a really good idea
It seems like the kind of thing that would be like a like a meme it could go viral
It's kind of a oh man. You got your tickets from the the whatever. Oh, that's so cool. You you won
(08:14):
You'll say a lottery system. Do you remember what a huge deal people made about the Hamilton lottery?
Swift concerts in Hamilton. Yeah, it seems like we could like have that moment. We're like, oh wow
Do you remember when blink-182 like?
Announced their tour a year or two ago and the tickets were just like through the roof insane prices for the cheapest seats
(08:37):
That's absurd. And so this I mean it has to fund itself somehow
Oh, you get a flat 1% of everything or something. Yeah. Yeah, even then it's not gonna operate at a profit
There is no business model here, which is why you need to then raise money
This could be something that could be tax write-offs for people who are looking for something to put money into
It could be I'm not quite sure how to give the donors recognition
(08:59):
You know what I mean? Like yeah, there's got to be some way to reward someone for donating to this
Honestly the marketing for it would be pretty easy
Anyone that's ever posted on Facebook or Instagram like fuck ticketmaster like there there's your target audience right there
Are you giving away the tickets? No people are buying them through you at cost. At cost
Well, you're still gonna lose money because oh, I see what you're saying
(09:21):
Just do a 1% markup on everything
I would happily pay a 1% markup if I knew it was going towards this program to fuck ticketmaster
I think people would donate money to just have petty cash for this
For this org, right? Yeah. Yeah, you have a couple employees run the show. It's like
Open source style VLC media player. You're like, yeah VLC. Oh, yeah
(09:44):
I don't even know if it has to be a nonprofit
Like I would happily go to these guys all the time on it
And then as long as you get a little bit of seed funding on there
You could you could have a profitable
Business model as long as your mission statement was like we will never ever charge more than 1%
Yeah above what the actual what we buy it for in theory if you only have a 30-day turnaround time, right?
(10:05):
You could just put it on a big credit card like 20k tickets
Literally cuz yeah, they're gonna sell they're gonna sell right cuz they're gonna be cheap
You're gonna have the cheapest ones out there. You know how public media like NPR or
PBS has corporate sponsors. I wonder if you could do that with the ticket like your two tickets to that Jonas Brothers concert
(10:27):
You wanted to go to are sponsored by your local grocery store or whatever, you know, and it's like somehow
Hey, why don't you say thanks on social media to Burger King for making this possible for you today?
Maybe we kind of have a little bit of a donor
Connection thing to the people who benefited from it. Nice
(10:50):
Everything is at cost, right?
But you make money on like the membership or--
- Could be a membership program, yeah.
- Yeah, or what is it?
Just like the ads.
Like you just make money on a bunch of ads.
You have to watch, sorry, but in order to make this cheap,
you have to watch 30 minutes of ads,
no, like a minute of ads, right?
(11:11):
- Wait, how does VLC make money?
Do they make money? - I don't think they make money.
- No. - Is it just,
he's just like, I am ultra-listic,
I am just putting this in the world.
Oh my God, what an incredible human.
Is a French dude who has turned down millions of dollars of offers to sell out.
Yeah.
Amazing person.
They have a team and everything.
Yeah.
It's just cool.
What is, why hasn't this existed?
Is there not enough?
(11:32):
Why are you going?
Ticketmaster probably just squashes them.
If Leo's would start this, he'd get assassinated or something immediately.
Assassinated.
Yeah.
Hey, would you pay, you know how there's Scott's cheap flights, which is now called
going.com where it's like a newsletter where it's like, Hey, here's some cheap
Would you pay five bucks a month, 60 bucks a year
(11:52):
in order to have access to this club where,
hey, just so you know, we got access to a handful
of tickets at cost to that local concert
that's sold out now, we'll sell them to you at cost.
But you make money entirely on the membership Costco style,
like Russell said.
- Yeah, yeah.
That'd be tough, I think, if you didn't get enough tickets.
You'd have to have enough inventory for people.
(12:14):
Like if you had 10,000 members
and you're only buying tickets,
and you only can get like 50.
- That's true, there's a critical mass there.
Or the opposite, you get a bunch of tickets
and they don't end up selling out and nobody wants them.
- Well, you just sell them to Ticketmaster.
- Yeah. - Right?
(laughing)
Could you just sell them back to Ticketmaster?
- Yeah, I mean, do the resale thing.
That's what they're all doing.
- We can't be the first person to like,
(12:36):
all right, I'm gonna take a 20,
I'm gonna just max out my American Express.
Leo, I'll just give you my code the next concert.
It's gotta be bumping though, it's gotta be like--
like Snoop Dogg or something nobody
who do the kids like nowadays I know Jay Bieber okay Justin Biebs so you'd
(13:06):
you'd get in and buy a chunk before all the other guys get in that's the idea
Mm-hmm. He's our own tool against them. Yeah all his sleazy secret methods. They post on reddit
But if you have members you at least you know, they could do some survey in the beginning
You know what you're looking for you buy that because that's what they want. Totally match it up Netflix style
(13:29):
Give me a thumbs up for how that was. We've got a recommendation for these kinds of people
Yeah, it could be very niche II right to that end, right? Like I only want you know, it's a certain genre, right?
That's that's probably where you subscribe that would make more sense if like yeah, my punk emo rock
subscription
Honestly, I love that. Maybe there's just one dude right who wants one ticket. You only get one ticket, right?
(13:53):
Yeah
I know ahead of time that glass animals is gonna be playing in Toronto at X time and X people have signed up for this
Service it's gonna steal X tickets. Oh, that's a really good idea steal
Quickly purchase you have the demand there then yeah, there's not really much risk for you as long as you can get them
Yeah, you know that they're gonna be bought and paid for you
You know
You're gonna get your 1% markup on it
(14:15):
and you always have the emergency escape hatch of like Russell said just sell it and for the markup that
Other people do anyway
Even like half the markup that everyone else is doing and you still are a good guy in the situation
Even if you're making a profit, it's not a guarantee that someone signs up for that ahead of time
We're gonna do our best to get you that ticket. But here we go
Hmm, can we just partner with the venues or something ahead of time - that's the trouble ticket masters contracts
(14:40):
Take a master has bought up like all of the exclusivity on every major performance venue that there is it's crazy
So gross. Hmm Wow, and you can't even boycott him, right?
Really? No, it's a true monopoly
Everything bigger than your local community center or like outdoor park is exclusive. It's a bummer
(15:01):
In conclusion, fuck Ticketmaster. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. What a hot original take
Scott what do you got for us this week?
okay, I fell down a rabbit hole a reddit rabbit hole last night of all these videos of cops pulling people over and
(15:26):
Someone is doing something stupid.
It's either the cop being like way too much escalated in the situation, or it's
some guy in the car who thinks he's a lawyer saying, I blah, blah, blah.
I know my rights and everyone's getting angry and it just always ends horribly.
Sovereign citizen.
Exactly.
Uh, I want an app that when I get pulled over, I could just pull up the app and
(15:47):
it does a bunch of different things.
It records the whole situation and interaction, and then it just gives me.
Helpful hints or voice prompts anything that'll statistically reduce the likelihood that I'll get a ticket like whatever it takes
I'm not gonna be an asshole to the cop. I'm not gonna like throw
Anger all my rights in his face
But I'm just gonna whatever is the most likely thing that I'm gonna get out of this situation without a ticket and that's the entire
(16:11):
Idea I've had like two bad tickets in my life and I've really wished I had this
What is a bad ticket bad ticket is when the cop was having a really bad day when I was driving through Flint and he just
like unloaded the world on me and I'm at 10 and 2 I'm as polite as I could
possibly be but oh my god this man was angry at the time and if I had something
that was telling me how to handle that situation or like afterwards I could use
(16:34):
the app and scan the ticket and be like what's the chance that I could fight
this in court can you give me like an action plan or something what are my
next steps here's my GPS location here's the district what do I do that's the
whole idea I just I got scared watching all these videos last night that's great
Mm-hmm. What other features could you add to that integration with your local law firms?
(17:01):
Billboards are out. Yeah, Scott's app is in
Yeah, have you been pulled over lately? I know you have you just sent me all the information already
Contact me at this number. Okay, we're not gonna sell the data
But could you review cops like just create a review platform for instant review?
Files a complaint through the app on like rate my professor
(17:23):
Exactly. Yes. Oh
Man, okay, and then that way it follows them to from precinct to precinct if they get fired
You know, you can kind of like when you see one of the really bad cops like you're pulled over
Instantly like red alert like you need to be very careful here
95% of this cops
(17:44):
Pull or interactions have resulted in a ticket for the person it is advised that you do not say a word and just
Get to this I know that cop cars are numbered
But do they usually have the same person in them badge number are they a size a cop assigned a car number badge numbers
You can politely ask them their name or something at the start
(18:04):
You can ask for your badge number for sure, but by then it's too late
I was gonna say what if you had the car laser detector thing on the windshield, but it's saying oh
That's cop car 2185 you do not want to mess with Doug today or whatever
87 tickets in the last four hours dude. It's like that ice block thing right? Yeah, I think that's very doable ice block Oh
(18:27):
ice ice Oh
God I've heard of this a little that ice
Is this worth explaining? What is the deal with ice? It's an app - it's like ways but for ice, right?
So outsourced location reports. Mm-hmm. That's a good idea. I'm I use like Claude all the time for legal questions
That's good. He's good. That's why you spent three months in jail
(18:51):
Because of the terrible advice it gave you
There's this would be dope like you could you have the right to remain silent and then you have this like little lawyer
Speaking on your behalf that is sorry. Here's my lawyer on the phone
I don't know if I want the cop interacting with it. I've been trying to figure that part out
Like what is the thing that's gonna piss the cop off the least cuz like rights and other things they only go so far
(19:17):
I'm just trying to not get a ticket. That is my entire goal. I don't care if that takes flattery
I don't care if that means I'm throwing my rights in their face like whatever
We could be like have a special mode where it's your mom calling you to come home quickly cuz grandpa's in the hospital
She's going into labor what?
Hold on, I gotta take this.
(19:38):
It's those fake phone call things.
Let me drive you to the hospital.
I'll happily walk you all the way to the room.
That's great.
Shoot.
Then it has another mode where it hires someone to be in the room ahead of time or something
while you're on your way out there.
Nice.
You're in a network of hospital moms, right?
Paid staff.
(19:58):
Dude, how much money could a mom make for four days just sitting in a hospital?
Pretending to be an excuse. Husband! Yeah, what's your name?
Cops are gonna pick up on that. Every person I pulled over has been having a baby.
I met the same mother three times today.
Four different times. Yeah.
(20:25):
All right, Russell, what do you got for us this week?
All right, so I was recently at the farmers market and everybody knows that
in cash when you go to a farmer's market.
The problem is--
- Cash sucks.
- I hate the ATMs.
Yeah, I also hate carrying cash, right?
So, my idea is to help support the people
(20:49):
that want to be cash businesses by renting, leasing,
selling, I don't know, mini ATMs, okay?
There's a little bit of issues around data security,
I don't know, like money security,
but like basically, simply put, you buy a mini ATM,
you strap it to the ground, it's your responsibility.
(21:10):
I don't know, like if you're a big enough business,
like why not just get a thousand dollar mini ATM
in front of your booth and if they get stolen,
you know, they're, I don't know,
it's just the cops problem now.
But you put a little, you know,
and it's, let's say you get a nice insurance policy with it,
You can pay more money to get the insurance policy,
(21:33):
so if your mini ATM gets stolen, I don't know.
- Real slow.
- Yeah.
- I'm just picturing a dude with a sign on him,
like a Venmo QR code that's like,
"I'm your ATM.
"You Venmo me, I'm gonna hand you the cash, one to one.
"You can tip me if you want."
- Shoot, heck yeah.
- He gives you like, you know, you get $20 from him
and give you a 10 to five and five ones,
(21:54):
be like, you know, $1 tip maybe.
That's a great way to validate this idea so quickly.
I'm an ATM.
Cash app, Venmo, whatever.
So is MiniATM the company stocking the ATM,
or is the local business farm stand?
Local businesses are responsible for--
(22:17):
Like, you know, just--
With money in it?
With money in it, yeah.
OK.
It's a cash register style size, we'll say.
sits right at the corner of your booth,
say, "Ah, sorry, we're cash only."
You can go to the mini ATM there.
We split the commission on ATM fees,
so they even make a little money.
- I was just gonna say,
I think more and more and more banks are like,
(22:38):
"We'll cover up to three ATM fee transactions a month
"or something on your plans."
At least I know my local credit union does that.
And that money is going to the ATM company.
That could instead be going to 50/50
between your mini ATM company and the farm stand.
That's interesting.
- Yeah.
(22:58):
- Skim off the top.
- You don't have to put a ton of money in there either.
You just, if it gets stolen, it's not too bad.
- Yeah, just pictured my sign with the big QR code
for Venmo is really just a, please rob me sign.
I have cash on me.
- I'm carrying a lot of money right now, thank you.
Yeah.
- Or you just have like a background guy,
just like roll up, handshake.
(23:19):
(laughing)
You know.
- This one.
Pretty much all ATMs that I've seen in production, which there aren't very many left out there,
but the ones that I've seen that aren't attached directly to a bank are cellular.
Our local pizza place has one, our campus at Hope College has one, which means that
the infrastructure's gotta be already there, right?
Like, you take what's in there, you miniaturize it.
(23:41):
I don't think you have to reinvent everything to make this product real.
Why are they ginormous?
Like insanely... like CRT, you know what I mean?
Let's just let's get a Canon printer. Okay, easy to walk off with you know metal box
Easy like you throw an air tag in that shit
(24:02):
now
They're gonna spike lock right you tell the cop. It's grand larceny, right?
Cuz that's a felony you you stock it with enough money so that it is grand larceny
And then with an air tag a cop, you know
They have to do something.
And now, as long as that air tag takes longer than, you know,
a day to get out or a couple days or somebody's got a special
(24:25):
tool. And at that point, the air tags like, you know where it was.
I don't know.
This is neat.
Yeah.
Does miniATMs.com like lease them out and rent them? Or is this
a product that's sold and then the farm stand owns it, but they
pay a subscription to keep it working?
Or what's the angle here?
Right, that's the part, the machine itself, the mini ATM.
(24:49):
So yeah, we can sell the hardware.
You could rent it, you could sell it.
That's probably better for mini ATM because I bet a lot of farm
stands don't want to pay monthly in January when they don't have
their farm stand.
So if you've sold it to them already, yeah.
Yeah, and they can place in other places, right?
If they own it or you can franchise it and be the person that
(25:11):
Distributes those many ATMs to a farmers market sell to farmers markets and they can then but what's cool about is you don't need
A ship it like the shipping of a giant ATM. I think is like way crazier
This is just like a smart like a modern ATM as long as your credit card processing fee
Yeah
if you're cheaper than credit cards instead of
(25:31):
35 cents plus 3% or whatever it is nowadays for square or clover or any of those if you're less than that then you could
even say, "Hey, farm stand, we'll charge you 21 bucks for every 20 that these people
take out and call it even otherwise."
And you just skim off the top.
Oh, man, yeah.
It's still cheaper than credit.
I didn't even think about that.
Yeah, the 3% alone, they could just start phasing out.
(25:53):
Like, "Hey, we'll give you a discount if you use cash.
Use the ATM."
Right?
"I don't make money."
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you're going to make money, right?
In a way, so, yeah, just bring back cash, right?
to make life worse for credit card companies. They're an evil industry and
that would be wonderful. --So we're fucking over Ticketmaster, fucking over Visa
(26:14):
--Yeah, down with the system! That's the name of this episode. --Fight the cops.
--See this, if we get really cool we can actually print the money so it's really small.
We get a little--
Use your inkjet in the back.
Shrute bucks.
(26:35):
And then, hey, I mean, there might
be a way to do your own kind of currency from the ATM,
if it's a mini ATM.
I was going there.
Yeah.
OK.
OK.
And then you go back to miniatm.com
and you type in your serial numbers
and they deposit it into your bank account.
Yeah.
Little old school cash but not at the same time.
(26:57):
I don't know about that.
You know what's great about cash?
Well, now imagine that, but only accepted at one place.
Take the worst parts of cash and gift cards
and smush them together.
That's exactly what I'm thinking.
I got a house recently.
Realtor gift was literally $100 of John bucks.
(27:19):
This guy created his own currency
that I can use at a couple different places around town.
And it's this whole process.
It's just a card that's like, well, you gotta can't.
I tried to use it and the manager's like,
I have no idea what this is.
And it took like 30 minutes of talking
to all these different employees.
Eventually the owner's like, oh yeah, that.
(27:39):
Yeah, just honor that.
I don't remember.
It was awful.
(laughing)
That is so weird.
- That is a social nightmare.
That is a my mother, my mother would be questioned.
I love that very much.
- John Bucks.
Ugh.
(laughing)
Okay, that's my next pit ball.
Okay, we're gonna meme coin every but cash for everybody. Yeah, how does your ATM get on the blockchain? Yeah
(28:04):
Everybody gets their own gift card and their own currency. There we go. All right
I I haven't thought this through yet. But what is it possible to?
Like have the digital part of the ATM but use your own cash from your cash register to give them money
Whoa virtual ATM a ghost kitchen ATM, so I run a business
I go to the bank and I'm like, all right if people use this ATM
(28:28):
I'm just gonna hold like I like your Venmo sign Scott. I guess yeah, that's true for any business
I could go into probably not Jimmy John's but I'll say Jimmy John's it'd be like could I Venmo you 50 bucks and you give
Me 50 bucks, you know, remember when they used to do cash back with a debit card
Yeah, I guess it is just cash back
(28:53):
but Venmo
ATM is like a financial thing.
I don't understand exactly how that gets processed as a transaction on the back end.
You need to somehow become, I'm sure, valid as a real ATM.
There's like a backbone network.
That fee.
There's probably some... yeah, that's the mafia.
The ATM debit card mafia, right?
(29:15):
They're like, "No."
That's right.
Financial companies famously love young upstarts coming in and shaking everything up.
I like a good fight the power episode
How are you gonna take down the system
I'm gonna take us a whole different place here with a
(29:38):
Wonderful. Hell yeah, let's go Costa. What do you got for us? All right, so my idea is not very techie or
Software II or anything like that
Great so the thought is
Um, you're walking your kid in the stroller and the park and you know,
like there's a couple of different configurations.
(29:58):
Um, you got your kid facing forward, you got your kid facing
towards you backwards, right?
And you're pushing on the handlebar.
And if you want to interact with your kid, you're probably, if they're
looking at you, you can talk to them.
But if they're facing forward, you kind of have to stop lean over.
Hey, how you doing?
(30:18):
Uh, are you asleep?
What's going on?
But, uh, you know, like when you're walking in the park with a friend, you're
not walking single file, right?
You're, you're walking side by side.
So the thought is, um, to create a handle attachment, a handlebar attachment that
will swing you to the side of the stroller right next to the kid.
(30:41):
So you can have a conversation, you can talk to them, you could do whatever, you
know, you would do with your buddy walking side by side.
Um, and then, so there's a little, you know, you gotta have a
certain mechanism to, uh, to steer.
I've been thinking about kind of propulsion assist, maybe like a
push behind mower situation.
(31:03):
So like you could, um, go up a hill.
My wife hates going up the hills with the double stroller.
So that's where I'm at.
That's, that's my thought there.
It's been, so every now and then I'll, I'll hold on to the side of the
stroller and walk next to my kid, like just holding on really tight.
And it's a blast, you know?
So what if I had a nice handle there that I could do this with?
(31:24):
That's great.
Are you thinking this is a different kind of stroller that you sell or is this an add-on accessory for any...
Nothing new there.
Just a... it climps onto your handlebar and then it kind of swings out to the side when you want it to.
Otherwise it swings back in.
That's so fun.
Literally was doing this the other day.
(31:45):
I was walking downtown, holding the stroller.
And it's impossible, right?
Because you're bumping into people,
and then you're constantly going back and forth.
But it's also extremely awkward, too, to hold it.
Yeah, I know exactly that feel.
And you know what else?
The ergonomics for when you're pushing a shopping cart.
(32:06):
I have-- so I'm behind where the things are being held.
I've grabbed a jar of peanut butter.
I now have to reach across everything
into the farthest possible spot away
in order to dip way down into the basket.
Sure, it'd be nice to walk right next to it instead,
wouldn't it?
- I always walk next to a shopping cart.
I hold it by the side and I walk next to me on it.
It's probably an asshole to other people's
and I'm just realizing this now,
(32:27):
but it is so much easier to shop this way.
Yes, I get it.
- You need this mod that you attach to the handles.
- So I'm sorry, 'cause this is like, I love the idea.
This is like a bar that comes out on the side of it
that I can put, okay, I push the stroller next to me.
- Yeah, so the bar would attach to the handlebars
and then it would have a pivot
(32:48):
that would allow you to swing it forward
and it would extend, yeah.
- Ah, an optional pivot that can come out, okay, yes.
- So you can tug it back in, 'cause yeah,
there's times you don't wanna be that wide
with your kid, right?
So you'll bring it back, you're good to go.
- Of course.
- That's great.
I got all the way to pricing out,
(33:10):
like bank teller intercom systems
because my kids stroller when they were younger
had this rain cover that would go over it
and he couldn't talk to them or acknowledge them
or check to see if they're okay.
And I think I even texted Scott about this years ago,
like what's the best way to hear what they're saying
and have two-way communication back in
(33:30):
that's mobile and battery powered and whatever?
Because you're absolutely right,
like where you're at is ergonomically a terrible place
to like have interaction with the kid.
And so I was looking at like, how do I just like keep a conversation going,
even though I'm not in front of them.
I like that too, though.
Like a little.
In, in stroller video.
Yeah.
Like a baby monitor inside there, but like, they don't want to
(33:54):
just be looking at a camera.
You almost want a two way baby monitor or maybe it's just voice.
I don't know.
I do think it's a problem, right?
Like zoom call style, right?
People just talk over each other.
Right.
Am I going to be on a zoom call with the other device that I can
in front of me maybe you just use an old phone and do that yeah that's awful it
could be two old iPhones, the worst experience of my life. The lag, the stroller, your child is not stop touching the screen you know I just you go into a dead spot
(34:27):
and you just but I think a hardware like a hardware like that would be awesome I
actually got a walkie-talkie for when I'm riding my bike in there in the
whatever the the burly bee yep but it kind of sucks cuz he doesn't really know
how to like press the button yeah yep I can't hear you I can't hear you it's
cuz you're hold I can't even tell him that he's holding on the button so it's
(34:48):
like what do you do the concept of yeah yeah the walkie-talkie intercom category
needs a kid-friendly innovation agreed like a pennant that you clip to him that
is just Vox and two-way talk. Open channel. I would buy that. Yeah. I think they
invented this though it's like two cups and string right? While biking. I thought you're
(35:19):
gonna go into a they sell these monitors like video monitors for my car so I can
watch my kids in the car I like there's a two-way one and a split screen and all
all that stuff, it's like 50 bucks, but it's not two way.
Right.
It's just it's a monitor, right?
You watch them.
You need it to be interactive.
(35:41):
There's probably something to be said about not training
your kid on watching your face on a screen as, like, primary
interaction with you, the parent.
You know, yeah.
As I'm thinking more about this, gluing the iPad into the
stroller, be like, watch, watch, Daddy.
We're going to have a conversation now.
That's a little weird for a toddler. I don't want to lean over. I don't know what to tell you. I
(36:08):
Well in my case it was this waterproof cover thing so we could see them but we'd have to like undo it
Well, it's right. I mean like you do it. All right in here then like rebundle them in you know, like their little pod
So you wanted to do like extra components though like the electric boost, you know the self-propelled
Stroller mods they could be something different. Yeah, like I'd love a boost for the stroller that I don't think I'd haven't seen that
(36:33):
An e-bike where it's like pedal assist, but it's a push assist
Yeah, you just attach it to the bottom or something and make it a system. Yeah
Yeah, it's a little you can clip it in the front or the back so it can be push or pull right?
That seems that seems nice. Yeah, why is that not?
(36:54):
It's probably somewhere. It costs a lot of money.
You can hit 30 miles an hour on this baby.
[laughter]
Hop on!
That's what you do, right, Leo?
You literally one-wheel with a wagon, right?
That's true, I do do that.
What about that? What about the mod being
"Attach your scooter one-wheel, sidecar style," right?
(37:14):
Little sketch, but a little...
Yeah, we've once again run up against the
"As long as you put a warning label on it" territory
we should be okay legally, right?
Someone breaks their neck on your electric stroller mod.
I'm not the guy on the one wheel, Leo, pulling the wagon at 15 miles per hour on the road.
Yeah, we've hit the wagon at top speed, yes.
(37:35):
Of course you're going to, right? Of course.
It's very fun.
Fresh paved road.
Kids love it, dad loves it. Mom doesn't know, it's great.
Everyone's happy.
Well, we'll see if that gets cut in this...
(laughing)
- Does Megan listen to the dub?
- We're good, we're good.
(37:56):
- Okay, okay.
This will be the first episode she does.
- Right.
- You did what?
- Yeah, initially I talked it through with my wife
and I'm like, what if it just followed you?
Like, what if it just followed you?
But she didn't like that.
She's like, there's no way, I don't trust it.
- Like Grogu.
(38:16):
You know what I'm talking about with the luggage?
- Is that a thing?
- That's the baby Yoda and the Mandalorian.
But, um...
Oh, got it, got it. I'm like, "Is this a brand? I don't know this one."
You know, the little pod that the baby Yoda sits in.
Mm-hmm.
Do you know the luggage that would do this?
There was like a couple years before they banned this in airports,
but there was a little Bluetooth beacon that you'd have in your pocket or RF or something,
and the luggage was motorized and would like follow behind you like a little dog.
(38:39):
That's what you want for the whole stroller.
Hope it doesn't go haywire.
That's fun.
Oh, I feel bad for that startup.
They pour millions into this and the engineering,
And then they wake up one day and it's just banned everywhere. You could put like a rope. That's a rope to the
clothesline every little kid along the way
No, I we put a leash believe it or not on this side of our
(39:02):
Stroller cuz sometimes my son wants to jump out and walk next to it, but we don't want him to run too far
So he's like hey hold the leash to the stroller if you let go the leash you're going back in that stroller
So don't let go but I've used it before
to like pull the stroller closer or, you know,
little yo-yo action, you know,
(39:23):
sometimes it's nice to rock the 11 month old.
- This is box fan mods, but stroller mods.
That's what we've arrived at.
Russell's pitch like many episodes ago
was just a suite of different accessories for box fans.
We've at least three or four products deep now
for strollermods.com.
(39:44):
That's great.
Five-point harness that baby. We're going remote control stroller
RC stroller racing sprint mods
flight mods
Oh God Oh quadcopter stroller
Loudest thing you can imagine
(40:08):
Got over that puddle
Got up the hill. You got up the hill. That's right. What's the way we can get up this hill using the most energy possible?
Well, dear listener if you are enjoying listening to our show on your evening walk with your young one
Pushing a stroller wishing that you were next to them instead of behind them. Thank you very much for listening
(40:32):
We hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you so much Costa for joining us. This was awesome. Thank you guys
It was my pleasure. What a delight
Our website is spitball.show. There you can find links to our YouTube channel, other social media.
Please email us feedback, comments, ideas. We'd love to hear from you.
We are podcast@spitball.show and that's also how you can follow us on the favors such as Mastodon.
(40:53):
We are podcast@spitball.show and on bluesky @Spitball.Show. Our subreddit is r/SpitballShow.
Our intro/outro music is Swingers by Bonkers Beat Club. Please, if you wouldn't mind, that one friend who
is a farmer who is sick of credit card fees and cops and
Ticketmaster prices being too much and is always that's everyone yeah
(41:19):
Who is always at that protest because they want to take down the establishment send them a link to this episode
They definitely would enjoy this one
And if you wouldn't mind leave us a review Apple podcast Spotify whatever it is that you listen on
subscribe, add, leave us a review. That's the best way for people to find out about the show.
New episodes coming out in two weeks. We'll see you then.
I'm Scott, I'm Russell, and I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three bandwidth buccaneers and a guest
empty our heads of startup and tech product ideas that we have
stuck up in there so you can all have them for free.
(00:25):
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
And this week, Scott, I believe you brought our guest.
I did. I am so excited to finally have on Constantine Fenerakis. We'll call him Costa.
Yeah.
Costa is a senior software engineer, expert coder, and is deep in the embedded world.
Born and raised in Greece, he's worked on everything from medical, aerospace, agricultural.
(00:49):
Pretty much if there's code in it, Costa's probably touched it at some point.
Dang.
So yeah, very excited to have you. Welcome, Costa.
Welcome.
Thank you, guys. Good to be here.
Oh, this is gonna be so fun. And this week in order to get us going, it's been a minute since we've had a celebrity guest pitch, so
May I turn your attention to the screens?
We are gonna be having on Brian Baumgartner, who played famously Kevin from The Office, as well as many other parts over the years.
(01:14):
He's got a short pitch for us. Brace yourselves. This is quite the something. You ready? Here we go.
What's up, Spitball? Oh, do I have an idea for you. A footbath
That's also a gaming remote controller
(01:35):
So gentlemen I
Bring before you today. How could you integrate a footbath as a video game controller?
I'm still reeling. I just got blindsided by Kevin from the office
Kevin
so
Where you're like running in place. Those don't cover swimming games, do they? It does seem like something is there, right?
(02:02):
There we go. I thought I need more of swimming games.
I don't know you're in the like Mario 64 level the dire dire dock and boom you jump in the water
And you gotta get out your foot bath
One level in the whole game that requires a $200 foot bath to get through
(02:25):
- Oh, okay.
- Yep.
- Non-stop, all the time.
- There it is.
(laughing)
- But my toe joints hurt.
Oh, well I got a product for you.
- Oh.
- You know, low impact, high gaming efficiency.
- You can put some Epsom salts.
Perfect.
(laughing)
- Smells so good.
Scott, you're the hardware guy.
How do you do like capacitive,
(02:46):
electro, how do you like figure out
what an input is? - While underwater.
- Yeah, while underwater.
That seems like an engineering challenge.
- It's just gotta be pressure, right?
Is that the only thing we can read on the foot?
-So like each toe?
-I would put just cameras.
-Oh, camera.
-Underwater cameras on your toesies.
Oh, and then you can sell that on OnlyFans.
(03:07):
-I'd subscribe.
I'd subscribe.
FootbathGamer.
Yes, that's Twitch for free, dude.
-That username I've been taking already.
-It's just going to be Kevin, you'll see.
[laughter]
Camera, visual, you got button pressing.
Magnets. Magnets on each toe.
(03:29):
Okay? Through the water.
You can play the piano game, you know.
I know that some Twitch streamers have like foot pedals where they use that to switch scenes or start and stop going live or whatever
so that they can have both hands on whatever game they're doing or whatever.
It does seem like there's something there, but way more exotic.
[laughter]
Just put those on the bottom of a footbath, of course.
(03:50):
That is ultimate work from home luxury home office.
- Dude, rowing machine, rowing the game with real water.
- Peloton, but rowing.
(laughing)
- Hydro dynamic.
(laughing)
- I'm going down the Nile.
I'm in the Amazon.
Yeah, man.
- Ooh, this water is all of a sudden warmer, right?
(04:13):
Oh, now we're in the Arctic, cold water.
Oh, temperature.
- That's perfect.
I
Can't believe but I'm honestly really liking the idea of a swimming game now where I'm just like splashing my feet under the table
And just picking up the splashes as they're going. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You have to wear flippers
(04:34):
It's measuring how much like output you have in order to give you speed
So the harder you cake while sitting on the couch the faster you go
It's like those infinity pool things that you like swim against the home spa thing with the big jet
You know where you've got a small hot tub, but you're just staying in place fighting the current you got that
Oh, yeah, just for your feet. I love it dude actually like pro swimmers
(04:55):
That's probably like a very important. You know your kicks are you got to keep your toes pointed
Yeah, and it'll like coach you on technique. They're using too much ankle flip and not enough leg
Straightening I don't know what I'm talking about
(05:16):
Hey
Has somebody sponsored them yet, that's all that matters. Have they got busted for weed yet?
Yeah, that's all I know about Michael Phelps. Amazing swimmer, likes weed.
People made a big deal about it for some reason. I think we've lost the plot a little bit.
(05:38):
Thanks Kevin!
It's a bong bath, foot bath.
We just get all the way there.
Leo, what do you got this week?
Alright, so there's all kinds of scripts and discord servers and stuff all dedicated to ticket scalping, right?
Ticketmaster is a cesspool.
(06:00):
I went to go buy some tickets for lawn general entry, general admission tickets a year or two ago.
I was there the second they went up.
Lawn tickets still available, $50.
Clicked buy.
Went through the checkout process.
Clicked complete purchase.
Sorry, these are no longer available.
Refresh the page.
Entire show is sold out.
It was about three minutes after doors opened.
(06:21):
Refresh the page again.
Immediately, three, four, $500 resale
for the exact same ticket
that I was looking at five minutes prior.
It's crazy.
At the same time, these scalpers,
there's like a whole subculture
that I've learned a little bit about
that is all about like how do you make money
from this grift, right?
Ticketmasters incentivize because they take a cut
of all the resales to keep letting this happen.
(06:42):
So I want to leverage all of the knowledge
that these people have foolishly put out for free
and start a nonprofit that is a Ticketmaster Robinhood bot.
So we're going to take all of their processes
and their tricks and their bots and their scamming stuff
and sell things at sale at cost and run a 401,
(07:04):
What is it called?
403C Nonprofit.
Yeah, we're gonna go around.
Do you, that rich donor, wanna donate to the art gallery
or do you wanna donate to making experiences for people?
We're gonna be like part Make-A-Wish and part,
we're gonna be the altruistic version
that is trying to bring power back to the people.
(07:26):
I don't know what to call it yet.
Take a master Robin Hood.
- So repeating this back,
Nonprofit is gonna scalp all the tickets
And then resell them themselves just like they already do and resell them for at cost and we can actually do what ticketmaster or whoever
Should be doing and verifying that they're real people who intend on going and yes a lot of verification on limiting to a certain amount
(07:50):
Yeah, absolutely. This stuff is so so solved
It's very easy to make sure that people are legitimate people who are interested in going right?
So you offer that and you're the middleman the broker. This is a really good idea
It seems like the kind of thing that would be like a like a meme it could go viral
It's kind of a oh man. You got your tickets from the the whatever. Oh, that's so cool. You you won
(08:14):
You'll say a lottery system. Do you remember what a huge deal people made about the Hamilton lottery?
Swift concerts in Hamilton. Yeah, it seems like we could like have that moment. We're like, oh wow
Do you remember when blink-182 like?
Announced their tour a year or two ago and the tickets were just like through the roof insane prices for the cheapest seats
(08:37):
That's absurd. And so this I mean it has to fund itself somehow
Oh, you get a flat 1% of everything or something. Yeah. Yeah, even then it's not gonna operate at a profit
There is no business model here, which is why you need to then raise money
This could be something that could be tax write-offs for people who are looking for something to put money into
It could be I'm not quite sure how to give the donors recognition
(08:59):
You know what I mean? Like yeah, there's got to be some way to reward someone for donating to this
Honestly the marketing for it would be pretty easy
Anyone that's ever posted on Facebook or Instagram like fuck ticketmaster like there there's your target audience right there
Are you giving away the tickets? No people are buying them through you at cost. At cost
Well, you're still gonna lose money because oh, I see what you're saying
(09:21):
Just do a 1% markup on everything
I would happily pay a 1% markup if I knew it was going towards this program to fuck ticketmaster
I think people would donate money to just have petty cash for this
For this org, right? Yeah. Yeah, you have a couple employees run the show. It's like
Open source style VLC media player. You're like, yeah VLC. Oh, yeah
(09:44):
I don't even know if it has to be a nonprofit
Like I would happily go to these guys all the time on it
And then as long as you get a little bit of seed funding on there
You could you could have a profitable
Business model as long as your mission statement was like we will never ever charge more than 1%
Yeah above what the actual what we buy it for in theory if you only have a 30-day turnaround time, right?
(10:05):
You could just put it on a big credit card like 20k tickets
Literally cuz yeah, they're gonna sell they're gonna sell right cuz they're gonna be cheap
You're gonna have the cheapest ones out there. You know how public media like NPR or
PBS has corporate sponsors. I wonder if you could do that with the ticket like your two tickets to that Jonas Brothers concert
(10:27):
You wanted to go to are sponsored by your local grocery store or whatever, you know, and it's like somehow
Hey, why don't you say thanks on social media to Burger King for making this possible for you today?
Maybe we kind of have a little bit of a donor
Connection thing to the people who benefited from it. Nice
(10:50):
Everything is at cost, right?
But you make money on like the membership or--
- Could be a membership program, yeah.
- Yeah, or what is it?
Just like the ads.
Like you just make money on a bunch of ads.
You have to watch, sorry, but in order to make this cheap,
you have to watch 30 minutes of ads,
no, like a minute of ads, right?
(11:11):
- Wait, how does VLC make money?
Do they make money? - I don't think they make money.
- No. - Is it just,
he's just like, I am ultra-listic,
I am just putting this in the world.
Oh my God, what an incredible human.
Is a French dude who has turned down millions of dollars of offers to sell out.
Yeah.
Amazing person.
They have a team and everything.
Yeah.
It's just cool.
What is, why hasn't this existed?
Is there not enough?
(11:32):
Why are you going?
Ticketmaster probably just squashes them.
If Leo's would start this, he'd get assassinated or something immediately.
Assassinated.
Yeah.
Hey, would you pay, you know how there's Scott's cheap flights, which is now called
going.com where it's like a newsletter where it's like, Hey, here's some cheap
Would you pay five bucks a month, 60 bucks a year
(11:52):
in order to have access to this club where,
hey, just so you know, we got access to a handful
of tickets at cost to that local concert
that's sold out now, we'll sell them to you at cost.
But you make money entirely on the membership Costco style,
like Russell said.
- Yeah, yeah.
That'd be tough, I think, if you didn't get enough tickets.
You'd have to have enough inventory for people.
(12:14):
Like if you had 10,000 members
and you're only buying tickets,
and you only can get like 50.
- That's true, there's a critical mass there.
Or the opposite, you get a bunch of tickets
and they don't end up selling out and nobody wants them.
- Well, you just sell them to Ticketmaster.
- Yeah. - Right?
(laughing)
Could you just sell them back to Ticketmaster?
- Yeah, I mean, do the resale thing.
That's what they're all doing.
- We can't be the first person to like,
(12:36):
all right, I'm gonna take a 20,
I'm gonna just max out my American Express.
Leo, I'll just give you my code the next concert.
It's gotta be bumping though, it's gotta be like--
like Snoop Dogg or something nobody
who do the kids like nowadays I know Jay Bieber okay Justin Biebs so you'd
(13:06):
you'd get in and buy a chunk before all the other guys get in that's the idea
Mm-hmm. He's our own tool against them. Yeah all his sleazy secret methods. They post on reddit
But if you have members you at least you know, they could do some survey in the beginning
You know what you're looking for you buy that because that's what they want. Totally match it up Netflix style
(13:29):
Give me a thumbs up for how that was. We've got a recommendation for these kinds of people
Yeah, it could be very niche II right to that end, right? Like I only want you know, it's a certain genre, right?
That's that's probably where you subscribe that would make more sense if like yeah, my punk emo rock
subscription
Honestly, I love that. Maybe there's just one dude right who wants one ticket. You only get one ticket, right?
(13:53):
Yeah
I know ahead of time that glass animals is gonna be playing in Toronto at X time and X people have signed up for this
Service it's gonna steal X tickets. Oh, that's a really good idea steal
Quickly purchase you have the demand there then yeah, there's not really much risk for you as long as you can get them
Yeah, you know that they're gonna be bought and paid for you
You know
You're gonna get your 1% markup on it
(14:15):
and you always have the emergency escape hatch of like Russell said just sell it and for the markup that
Other people do anyway
Even like half the markup that everyone else is doing and you still are a good guy in the situation
Even if you're making a profit, it's not a guarantee that someone signs up for that ahead of time
We're gonna do our best to get you that ticket. But here we go
Hmm, can we just partner with the venues or something ahead of time - that's the trouble ticket masters contracts
(14:40):
Take a master has bought up like all of the exclusivity on every major performance venue that there is it's crazy
So gross. Hmm Wow, and you can't even boycott him, right?
Really? No, it's a true monopoly
Everything bigger than your local community center or like outdoor park is exclusive. It's a bummer
(15:01):
In conclusion, fuck Ticketmaster. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. What a hot original take
Scott what do you got for us this week?
okay, I fell down a rabbit hole a reddit rabbit hole last night of all these videos of cops pulling people over and
(15:26):
Someone is doing something stupid.
It's either the cop being like way too much escalated in the situation, or it's
some guy in the car who thinks he's a lawyer saying, I blah, blah, blah.
I know my rights and everyone's getting angry and it just always ends horribly.
Sovereign citizen.
Exactly.
Uh, I want an app that when I get pulled over, I could just pull up the app and
(15:47):
it does a bunch of different things.
It records the whole situation and interaction, and then it just gives me.
Helpful hints or voice prompts anything that'll statistically reduce the likelihood that I'll get a ticket like whatever it takes
I'm not gonna be an asshole to the cop. I'm not gonna like throw
Anger all my rights in his face
But I'm just gonna whatever is the most likely thing that I'm gonna get out of this situation without a ticket and that's the entire
(16:11):
Idea I've had like two bad tickets in my life and I've really wished I had this
What is a bad ticket bad ticket is when the cop was having a really bad day when I was driving through Flint and he just
like unloaded the world on me and I'm at 10 and 2 I'm as polite as I could
possibly be but oh my god this man was angry at the time and if I had something
that was telling me how to handle that situation or like afterwards I could use
(16:34):
the app and scan the ticket and be like what's the chance that I could fight
this in court can you give me like an action plan or something what are my
next steps here's my GPS location here's the district what do I do that's the
whole idea I just I got scared watching all these videos last night that's great
Mm-hmm. What other features could you add to that integration with your local law firms?
(17:01):
Billboards are out. Yeah, Scott's app is in
Yeah, have you been pulled over lately? I know you have you just sent me all the information already
Contact me at this number. Okay, we're not gonna sell the data
But could you review cops like just create a review platform for instant review?
Files a complaint through the app on like rate my professor
(17:23):
Exactly. Yes. Oh
Man, okay, and then that way it follows them to from precinct to precinct if they get fired
You know, you can kind of like when you see one of the really bad cops like you're pulled over
Instantly like red alert like you need to be very careful here
95% of this cops
(17:44):
Pull or interactions have resulted in a ticket for the person it is advised that you do not say a word and just
Get to this I know that cop cars are numbered
But do they usually have the same person in them badge number are they a size a cop assigned a car number badge numbers
You can politely ask them their name or something at the start
(18:04):
You can ask for your badge number for sure, but by then it's too late
I was gonna say what if you had the car laser detector thing on the windshield, but it's saying oh
That's cop car 2185 you do not want to mess with Doug today or whatever
87 tickets in the last four hours dude. It's like that ice block thing right? Yeah, I think that's very doable ice block Oh
(18:27):
ice ice Oh
God I've heard of this a little that ice
Is this worth explaining? What is the deal with ice? It's an app - it's like ways but for ice, right?
So outsourced location reports. Mm-hmm. That's a good idea. I'm I use like Claude all the time for legal questions
That's good. He's good. That's why you spent three months in jail
(18:51):
Because of the terrible advice it gave you
There's this would be dope like you could you have the right to remain silent and then you have this like little lawyer
Speaking on your behalf that is sorry. Here's my lawyer on the phone
I don't know if I want the cop interacting with it. I've been trying to figure that part out
Like what is the thing that's gonna piss the cop off the least cuz like rights and other things they only go so far
(19:17):
I'm just trying to not get a ticket. That is my entire goal. I don't care if that takes flattery
I don't care if that means I'm throwing my rights in their face like whatever
We could be like have a special mode where it's your mom calling you to come home quickly cuz grandpa's in the hospital
She's going into labor what?
Hold on, I gotta take this.
(19:38):
It's those fake phone call things.
Let me drive you to the hospital.
I'll happily walk you all the way to the room.
That's great.
Shoot.
Then it has another mode where it hires someone to be in the room ahead of time or something
while you're on your way out there.
Nice.
You're in a network of hospital moms, right?
Paid staff.
(19:58):
Dude, how much money could a mom make for four days just sitting in a hospital?
Pretending to be an excuse. Husband! Yeah, what's your name?
Cops are gonna pick up on that. Every person I pulled over has been having a baby.
I met the same mother three times today.
Four different times. Yeah.
(20:25):
All right, Russell, what do you got for us this week?
All right, so I was recently at the farmers market and everybody knows that
in cash when you go to a farmer's market.
The problem is--
- Cash sucks.
- I hate the ATMs.
Yeah, I also hate carrying cash, right?
So, my idea is to help support the people
(20:49):
that want to be cash businesses by renting, leasing,
selling, I don't know, mini ATMs, okay?
There's a little bit of issues around data security,
I don't know, like money security,
but like basically, simply put, you buy a mini ATM,
you strap it to the ground, it's your responsibility.
(21:10):
I don't know, like if you're a big enough business,
like why not just get a thousand dollar mini ATM
in front of your booth and if they get stolen,
you know, they're, I don't know,
it's just the cops problem now.
But you put a little, you know,
and it's, let's say you get a nice insurance policy with it,
You can pay more money to get the insurance policy,
(21:33):
so if your mini ATM gets stolen, I don't know.
- Real slow.
- Yeah.
- I'm just picturing a dude with a sign on him,
like a Venmo QR code that's like,
"I'm your ATM.
"You Venmo me, I'm gonna hand you the cash, one to one.
"You can tip me if you want."
- Shoot, heck yeah.
- He gives you like, you know, you get $20 from him
and give you a 10 to five and five ones,
(21:54):
be like, you know, $1 tip maybe.
That's a great way to validate this idea so quickly.
I'm an ATM.
Cash app, Venmo, whatever.
So is MiniATM the company stocking the ATM,
or is the local business farm stand?
Local businesses are responsible for--
(22:17):
Like, you know, just--
With money in it?
With money in it, yeah.
OK.
It's a cash register style size, we'll say.
sits right at the corner of your booth,
say, "Ah, sorry, we're cash only."
You can go to the mini ATM there.
We split the commission on ATM fees,
so they even make a little money.
- I was just gonna say,
I think more and more and more banks are like,
(22:38):
"We'll cover up to three ATM fee transactions a month
"or something on your plans."
At least I know my local credit union does that.
And that money is going to the ATM company.
That could instead be going to 50/50
between your mini ATM company and the farm stand.
That's interesting.
- Yeah.
(22:58):
- Skim off the top.
- You don't have to put a ton of money in there either.
You just, if it gets stolen, it's not too bad.
- Yeah, just pictured my sign with the big QR code
for Venmo is really just a, please rob me sign.
I have cash on me.
- I'm carrying a lot of money right now, thank you.
Yeah.
- Or you just have like a background guy,
just like roll up, handshake.
(23:19):
(laughing)
You know.
- This one.
Pretty much all ATMs that I've seen in production, which there aren't very many left out there,
but the ones that I've seen that aren't attached directly to a bank are cellular.
Our local pizza place has one, our campus at Hope College has one, which means that
the infrastructure's gotta be already there, right?
Like, you take what's in there, you miniaturize it.
(23:41):
I don't think you have to reinvent everything to make this product real.
Why are they ginormous?
Like insanely... like CRT, you know what I mean?
Let's just let's get a Canon printer. Okay, easy to walk off with you know metal box
Easy like you throw an air tag in that shit
(24:02):
now
They're gonna spike lock right you tell the cop. It's grand larceny, right?
Cuz that's a felony you you stock it with enough money so that it is grand larceny
And then with an air tag a cop, you know
They have to do something.
And now, as long as that air tag takes longer than, you know,
a day to get out or a couple days or somebody's got a special
(24:25):
tool. And at that point, the air tags like, you know where it was.
I don't know.
This is neat.
Yeah.
Does miniATMs.com like lease them out and rent them? Or is this
a product that's sold and then the farm stand owns it, but they
pay a subscription to keep it working?
Or what's the angle here?
Right, that's the part, the machine itself, the mini ATM.
(24:49):
So yeah, we can sell the hardware.
You could rent it, you could sell it.
That's probably better for mini ATM because I bet a lot of farm
stands don't want to pay monthly in January when they don't have
their farm stand.
So if you've sold it to them already, yeah.
Yeah, and they can place in other places, right?
If they own it or you can franchise it and be the person that
(25:11):
Distributes those many ATMs to a farmers market sell to farmers markets and they can then but what's cool about is you don't need
A ship it like the shipping of a giant ATM. I think is like way crazier
This is just like a smart like a modern ATM as long as your credit card processing fee
Yeah
if you're cheaper than credit cards instead of
(25:31):
35 cents plus 3% or whatever it is nowadays for square or clover or any of those if you're less than that then you could
even say, "Hey, farm stand, we'll charge you 21 bucks for every 20 that these people
take out and call it even otherwise."
And you just skim off the top.
Oh, man, yeah.
It's still cheaper than credit.
I didn't even think about that.
Yeah, the 3% alone, they could just start phasing out.
(25:53):
Like, "Hey, we'll give you a discount if you use cash.
Use the ATM."
Right?
"I don't make money."
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you're going to make money, right?
In a way, so, yeah, just bring back cash, right?
to make life worse for credit card companies. They're an evil industry and
that would be wonderful. --So we're fucking over Ticketmaster, fucking over Visa
(26:14):
--Yeah, down with the system! That's the name of this episode. --Fight the cops.
--See this, if we get really cool we can actually print the money so it's really small.
We get a little--
Use your inkjet in the back.
Shrute bucks.
(26:35):
And then, hey, I mean, there might
be a way to do your own kind of currency from the ATM,
if it's a mini ATM.
I was going there.
Yeah.
OK.
OK.
And then you go back to miniatm.com
and you type in your serial numbers
and they deposit it into your bank account.
Yeah.
Little old school cash but not at the same time.
(26:57):
I don't know about that.
You know what's great about cash?
Well, now imagine that, but only accepted at one place.
Take the worst parts of cash and gift cards
and smush them together.
That's exactly what I'm thinking.
I got a house recently.
Realtor gift was literally $100 of John bucks.
(27:19):
This guy created his own currency
that I can use at a couple different places around town.
And it's this whole process.
It's just a card that's like, well, you gotta can't.
I tried to use it and the manager's like,
I have no idea what this is.
And it took like 30 minutes of talking
to all these different employees.
Eventually the owner's like, oh yeah, that.
(27:39):
Yeah, just honor that.
I don't remember.
It was awful.
(laughing)
That is so weird.
- That is a social nightmare.
That is a my mother, my mother would be questioned.
I love that very much.
- John Bucks.
Ugh.
(laughing)
Okay, that's my next pit ball.
Okay, we're gonna meme coin every but cash for everybody. Yeah, how does your ATM get on the blockchain? Yeah
(28:04):
Everybody gets their own gift card and their own currency. There we go. All right
I I haven't thought this through yet. But what is it possible to?
Like have the digital part of the ATM but use your own cash from your cash register to give them money
Whoa virtual ATM a ghost kitchen ATM, so I run a business
I go to the bank and I'm like, all right if people use this ATM
(28:28):
I'm just gonna hold like I like your Venmo sign Scott. I guess yeah, that's true for any business
I could go into probably not Jimmy John's but I'll say Jimmy John's it'd be like could I Venmo you 50 bucks and you give
Me 50 bucks, you know, remember when they used to do cash back with a debit card
Yeah, I guess it is just cash back
(28:53):
but Venmo
ATM is like a financial thing.
I don't understand exactly how that gets processed as a transaction on the back end.
You need to somehow become, I'm sure, valid as a real ATM.
There's like a backbone network.
That fee.
There's probably some... yeah, that's the mafia.
The ATM debit card mafia, right?
(29:15):
They're like, "No."
That's right.
Financial companies famously love young upstarts coming in and shaking everything up.
I like a good fight the power episode
How are you gonna take down the system
I'm gonna take us a whole different place here with a
(29:38):
Wonderful. Hell yeah, let's go Costa. What do you got for us? All right, so my idea is not very techie or
Software II or anything like that
Great so the thought is
Um, you're walking your kid in the stroller and the park and you know,
like there's a couple of different configurations.
(29:58):
Um, you got your kid facing forward, you got your kid facing
towards you backwards, right?
And you're pushing on the handlebar.
And if you want to interact with your kid, you're probably, if they're
looking at you, you can talk to them.
But if they're facing forward, you kind of have to stop lean over.
Hey, how you doing?
(30:18):
Uh, are you asleep?
What's going on?
But, uh, you know, like when you're walking in the park with a friend, you're
not walking single file, right?
You're, you're walking side by side.
So the thought is, um, to create a handle attachment, a handlebar attachment that
will swing you to the side of the stroller right next to the kid.
(30:41):
So you can have a conversation, you can talk to them, you could do whatever, you
know, you would do with your buddy walking side by side.
Um, and then, so there's a little, you know, you gotta have a
certain mechanism to, uh, to steer.
I've been thinking about kind of propulsion assist, maybe like a
push behind mower situation.
(31:03):
So like you could, um, go up a hill.
My wife hates going up the hills with the double stroller.
So that's where I'm at.
That's, that's my thought there.
It's been, so every now and then I'll, I'll hold on to the side of the
stroller and walk next to my kid, like just holding on really tight.
And it's a blast, you know?
So what if I had a nice handle there that I could do this with?
(31:24):
That's great.
Are you thinking this is a different kind of stroller that you sell or is this an add-on accessory for any...
Nothing new there.
Just a... it climps onto your handlebar and then it kind of swings out to the side when you want it to.
Otherwise it swings back in.
That's so fun.
Literally was doing this the other day.
(31:45):
I was walking downtown, holding the stroller.
And it's impossible, right?
Because you're bumping into people,
and then you're constantly going back and forth.
But it's also extremely awkward, too, to hold it.
Yeah, I know exactly that feel.
And you know what else?
The ergonomics for when you're pushing a shopping cart.
(32:06):
I have-- so I'm behind where the things are being held.
I've grabbed a jar of peanut butter.
I now have to reach across everything
into the farthest possible spot away
in order to dip way down into the basket.
Sure, it'd be nice to walk right next to it instead,
wouldn't it?
- I always walk next to a shopping cart.
I hold it by the side and I walk next to me on it.
It's probably an asshole to other people's
and I'm just realizing this now,
(32:27):
but it is so much easier to shop this way.
Yes, I get it.
- You need this mod that you attach to the handles.
- So I'm sorry, 'cause this is like, I love the idea.
This is like a bar that comes out on the side of it
that I can put, okay, I push the stroller next to me.
- Yeah, so the bar would attach to the handlebars
and then it would have a pivot
(32:48):
that would allow you to swing it forward
and it would extend, yeah.
- Ah, an optional pivot that can come out, okay, yes.
- So you can tug it back in, 'cause yeah,
there's times you don't wanna be that wide
with your kid, right?
So you'll bring it back, you're good to go.
- Of course.
- That's great.
I got all the way to pricing out,
(33:10):
like bank teller intercom systems
because my kids stroller when they were younger
had this rain cover that would go over it
and he couldn't talk to them or acknowledge them
or check to see if they're okay.
And I think I even texted Scott about this years ago,
like what's the best way to hear what they're saying
and have two-way communication back in
(33:30):
that's mobile and battery powered and whatever?
Because you're absolutely right,
like where you're at is ergonomically a terrible place
to like have interaction with the kid.
And so I was looking at like, how do I just like keep a conversation going,
even though I'm not in front of them.
I like that too, though.
Like a little.
In, in stroller video.
Yeah.
Like a baby monitor inside there, but like, they don't want to
(33:54):
just be looking at a camera.
You almost want a two way baby monitor or maybe it's just voice.
I don't know.
I do think it's a problem, right?
Like zoom call style, right?
People just talk over each other.
Right.
Am I going to be on a zoom call with the other device that I can
in front of me maybe you just use an old phone and do that yeah that's awful it
could be two old iPhones, the worst experience of my life. The lag, the stroller, your child is not stop touching the screen you know I just you go into a dead spot
(34:27):
and you just but I think a hardware like a hardware like that would be awesome I
actually got a walkie-talkie for when I'm riding my bike in there in the
whatever the the burly bee yep but it kind of sucks cuz he doesn't really know
how to like press the button yeah yep I can't hear you I can't hear you it's
cuz you're hold I can't even tell him that he's holding on the button so it's
(34:48):
like what do you do the concept of yeah yeah the walkie-talkie intercom category
needs a kid-friendly innovation agreed like a pennant that you clip to him that
is just Vox and two-way talk. Open channel. I would buy that. Yeah. I think they
invented this though it's like two cups and string right? While biking. I thought you're
(35:19):
gonna go into a they sell these monitors like video monitors for my car so I can
watch my kids in the car I like there's a two-way one and a split screen and all
all that stuff, it's like 50 bucks, but it's not two way.
Right.
It's just it's a monitor, right?
You watch them.
You need it to be interactive.
(35:41):
There's probably something to be said about not training
your kid on watching your face on a screen as, like, primary
interaction with you, the parent.
You know, yeah.
As I'm thinking more about this, gluing the iPad into the
stroller, be like, watch, watch, Daddy.
We're going to have a conversation now.
That's a little weird for a toddler. I don't want to lean over. I don't know what to tell you. I
(36:08):
Well in my case it was this waterproof cover thing so we could see them but we'd have to like undo it
Well, it's right. I mean like you do it. All right in here then like rebundle them in you know, like their little pod
So you wanted to do like extra components though like the electric boost, you know the self-propelled
Stroller mods they could be something different. Yeah, like I'd love a boost for the stroller that I don't think I'd haven't seen that
(36:33):
An e-bike where it's like pedal assist, but it's a push assist
Yeah, you just attach it to the bottom or something and make it a system. Yeah
Yeah, it's a little you can clip it in the front or the back so it can be push or pull right?
That seems that seems nice. Yeah, why is that not?
(36:54):
It's probably somewhere. It costs a lot of money.
You can hit 30 miles an hour on this baby.
[laughter]
Hop on!
That's what you do, right, Leo?
You literally one-wheel with a wagon, right?
That's true, I do do that.
What about that? What about the mod being
"Attach your scooter one-wheel, sidecar style," right?
(37:14):
Little sketch, but a little...
Yeah, we've once again run up against the
"As long as you put a warning label on it" territory
we should be okay legally, right?
Someone breaks their neck on your electric stroller mod.
I'm not the guy on the one wheel, Leo, pulling the wagon at 15 miles per hour on the road.
Yeah, we've hit the wagon at top speed, yes.
(37:35):
Of course you're going to, right? Of course.
It's very fun.
Fresh paved road.
Kids love it, dad loves it. Mom doesn't know, it's great.
Everyone's happy.
Well, we'll see if that gets cut in this...
(laughing)
- Does Megan listen to the dub?
- We're good, we're good.
(37:56):
- Okay, okay.
This will be the first episode she does.
- Right.
- You did what?
- Yeah, initially I talked it through with my wife
and I'm like, what if it just followed you?
Like, what if it just followed you?
But she didn't like that.
She's like, there's no way, I don't trust it.
- Like Grogu.
(38:16):
You know what I'm talking about with the luggage?
- Is that a thing?
- That's the baby Yoda and the Mandalorian.
But, um...
Oh, got it, got it. I'm like, "Is this a brand? I don't know this one."
You know, the little pod that the baby Yoda sits in.
Mm-hmm.
Do you know the luggage that would do this?
There was like a couple years before they banned this in airports,
but there was a little Bluetooth beacon that you'd have in your pocket or RF or something,
and the luggage was motorized and would like follow behind you like a little dog.
(38:39):
That's what you want for the whole stroller.
Hope it doesn't go haywire.
That's fun.
Oh, I feel bad for that startup.
They pour millions into this and the engineering,
And then they wake up one day and it's just banned everywhere. You could put like a rope. That's a rope to the
clothesline every little kid along the way
No, I we put a leash believe it or not on this side of our
(39:02):
Stroller cuz sometimes my son wants to jump out and walk next to it, but we don't want him to run too far
So he's like hey hold the leash to the stroller if you let go the leash you're going back in that stroller
So don't let go but I've used it before
to like pull the stroller closer or, you know,
little yo-yo action, you know,
(39:23):
sometimes it's nice to rock the 11 month old.
- This is box fan mods, but stroller mods.
That's what we've arrived at.
Russell's pitch like many episodes ago
was just a suite of different accessories for box fans.
We've at least three or four products deep now
for strollermods.com.
(39:44):
That's great.
Five-point harness that baby. We're going remote control stroller
RC stroller racing sprint mods
flight mods
Oh God Oh quadcopter stroller
Loudest thing you can imagine
(40:08):
Got over that puddle
Got up the hill. You got up the hill. That's right. What's the way we can get up this hill using the most energy possible?
Well, dear listener if you are enjoying listening to our show on your evening walk with your young one
Pushing a stroller wishing that you were next to them instead of behind them. Thank you very much for listening
(40:32):
We hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you so much Costa for joining us. This was awesome. Thank you guys
It was my pleasure. What a delight
Our website is spitball.show. There you can find links to our YouTube channel, other social media.
Please email us feedback, comments, ideas. We'd love to hear from you.
We are podcast@spitball.show and that's also how you can follow us on the favors such as Mastodon.
(40:53):
We are podcast@spitball.show and on bluesky @Spitball.Show. Our subreddit is r/SpitballShow.
Our intro/outro music is Swingers by Bonkers Beat Club. Please, if you wouldn't mind, that one friend who
is a farmer who is sick of credit card fees and cops and
Ticketmaster prices being too much and is always that's everyone yeah
(41:19):
Who is always at that protest because they want to take down the establishment send them a link to this episode
They definitely would enjoy this one
And if you wouldn't mind leave us a review Apple podcast Spotify whatever it is that you listen on
subscribe, add, leave us a review. That's the best way for people to find out about the show.
New episodes coming out in two weeks. We'll see you then.
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