I’m not sure when it started, but my guess is that it coincided pretty closely with when my wife and I started watching Shark Tank. Whenever I thought of something that seemed like it could make a lot of money or fill some unmet need or just make life a little easier, I would turn to my wife, say, “MDI” and then follow it up with whatever half-baked idea I had at the time. No context was necessary, and in fact I tended to toss them out as soon as they occurred to me, which oftentimes was in the middle of conversations. MDI stands for “Million Dollar Idea”, and it was my way of (half) jokingly saying that the idea that was forthcoming was so good, that it could make a million dollars if properly implemented.
Here are some of them:
Ideas Copied by Others
I say “copied”, but it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek. If I had to guess, most of these likely existed before I had my idea, even if I didn’t know about it at the time. Still, I take some perverse pride in this category and choose to believe that it proves that some of my ideas truly were workable concepts.
Board Game Cafes – From The Boardroom near my neck of the woods, to Snakes and Lattes in Toronto, it seems like board game cafes are popping up all over the place now. While I have yet to see any which is an exact match for my own personal vision of what a board game cafe could be, I’m really happy to see the proliferation of these cafes as it shows a growing acceptance of a hobby that I hold near and dear to my heart. If pool halls can be profitable with such niche entertainment, then I don’t see why board game cafes can’t perform even better.
Other fast casual “Chipotle-style” concepts – I’m pretty sure I can pinpoint exactly when I came up with this idea: the first time I visited Cava and realized that the pick-your-own-ingredients style of restaurants didn’t need to be restricted to Mexican food. Once I had that epiphany, I immediately thought of pizza, because I can’t think of another food that I would be more interested in customizing to make it just the way I like. I discovered Mod Pizza soon after, although I know there are many more. I just hope these places don’t become too popular, or else I run the risk of becoming very fat from patronizing them too much.
I do still think there is room for other fast casual types of restaurants that expand beyond burritos, pizza and hamburgers, though. In particular, I think a noodle soup concept could work really well. Dishes like Pho and Ramen seem to be gaining in popularity and it doesn’t seem like it would be too complicated to have a few different types of broth, a few different types of noodles, and then a dozen or so options for toppings. Noodle soups can be easily made vegetarian or even vegan and there could even be edamame or zucchini noodles for those who are more carb conscious. Done right, this seems like it would be a surefire winner1.
Stackable disposable silverware – I was legitimately surprised to see this MDI actually end up being a thing, simply because I thought the frustration that I felt trying to deal with holding the cup/plate/silverware combination while scooping food during cookouts was something unique to my own clumsiness. I guess I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who has had trouble with this in the past. iFork was presented on the aforementioned Shark Tank and is almost exactly how I envisioned it when I first had the idea. Bravo. I might need to get me some.
Food containers color coded and properly sized for recommended protein/carb/veggie ratios – I’ve seen these types of containers available through companies like Beachbody, although they haven’t attained the popularity I might’ve expected. I think I can understand why, though. I have enough trouble keeping the right mix of bottoms and tops clean for my four sizes of Pyrex containers that I feel like adding color as an extra dimension might drive me insane.
Ideas That are Still Game
As far as I know, these MDIs are all still available to implement. Feel free to steal them. All I ask is 5% royalties on whatever you make off of it. Yes, I know this probably makes you question if I know the definition of the word “steal”. These are just brief overviews. I could expound on them for hours. If you want more information, I’m also available to work as a consultant for a very reasonable rate.
Financial Education camp – Americans aren’t very good with financial literacy. It’s hard to blame them, though, considering it’s not a topic taught in most schools. It’s a shame, too, because financial literacy is so important. For most people, I would argue it’s more important than learning high level math like calculus or trigonometry2. If the school system isn’t going to teach financial literacy, maybe there could be a summer camp to pick up the slack. Parents could send their kids to camp for a few weeks where there’s fun and games, but also education on topics like: inflation, compound interest, budgeting, and investing. While I understand paying money for a financial education camp is practically begging for snarky jokes, that doesn’t change the fact that there is a huge unmet need3. Maybe this could be a first step in filling it.
Fantasy investing – There’s fantasy football, baseball, and basketball. There’s a fantasy movie league. There’s even a fantasy bachelor league. So why isn’t fantasy investing a thing? The stock market is full of metrics which easily lend itself to gamification. There would be no need to come up with an awkward scoring system to try to mimic how the real game works for fantasy sports (or create an arbitrary scoring system for movies and TV shows that lack them). Even better, the studying done for a fantasy investing game and the knowledge gained could be almost directly applied to actual investing, which is far more useful than being able to anticipate which bachelorette will take a dip in the hot tub with the bachelor. Much like the financial education camp, maybe this could even help teach people about investing who otherwise wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
Estate planning “bank” – My wife and I, in an effort to appear like responsible adults, recently had estate plans drawn up. Now that we have these fancy notarized documents, the problem that I’m facing is what exactly to do with them. We’ve got a separate trustee, executor and guardian for our kids. We’ve got physical copies of our living wills and estate plans for those people and a safety deposit box, and also digital copies for backup. That’s fine, but what if we want to make a change? We have to replace all those old versions and make sure the older ones are destroyed. That’s not even counting all those potentially contradictory beneficiary forms for 401(k)s and insurance policies. I’m amazed that there is no company offering to centralize all of this to keep one definitive truth of people’s estate plans. They would offer to keep physical and digital copies of your plan and deal with the myriad beneficiary forms to keep track of. Want to change the guardians for your kids? Make it in one place and don’t worry about old versions of plans causing problems. Getting divorced? Change beneficiary information once and don’t worry about accidentally leaving an old IRA to your ex. All you would have to do is tell your family what company your info is saved at if something were to happen to you so everybody knows where to go to find your plan instead of checking safety deposit boxes or papers buried in your sock drawer. They could even offer services to make things easier for executors as well. Why isn’t this a thing?
Simple betting app – This is a new idea based on the recent Supreme Court case on gambling, so it might not be as thought through as the others. I’m a little unclear as to how a gambling app would potentially work in a world where some states have legalized gambling and others haven’t, but the general concept should still work. The basic concept is this: Americans love to gamble, but they also like their gambling to be simple. Look at the most popular ways that Americans gamble: NCAA tournament brackets, lottery tickets, slot machines, raffles. They are all incredibly simple for anybody to do. With the legal restrictions starting to come down, I suspect we’ll see a lot more Americans gambling on a lot more things going forward: sports (or eSports), political elections, Supreme Court decisions, where Amazon HQ2 will be located, who is going to “win” the Bachelor. There’s a lot of potential for gleaning insights and forecasting future events by tapping the wisdom of crowds (especially crowds with money on the line). At the same time, there needs to be a simpler way to convey odds to the novices who will undoubtedly be dipping in their toes. Terms like “10 to 1 odds” or “3 to 2 odds” or “+800” might make sense to experienced gamblers, but can be confusing and non-intuitive to newcomers.
I propose an app which simplifies the gambling process as much as possible. Users can search for whatever topics interest them (politics, sports, TV shows, etc). All bets are made using tokens which represent one dollar being wagered and bets are represented by the payout one would receive if won. Think that this is the year the Browns shock everybody and win the Super Bowl? You can win $100 for every token you wager. Willing to bet that the Browns won’t be hoisting the Lombardi Trophy? One token bet can win you a penny. Everything would be clear and straightforward. It would also be easy to set up limits and restrictions to prevent people with addictive personalities from getting into trouble. Right now, there’s really no brand name associated with online gambling like Xerox or Kleenex or Uber are associated with photo copies, tissues and ride-sharing, respectively. If somebody could design a mobile app that even the most tech-averse person can use, then I think the opportunity is there for the seizing.
Multi-purpose “universal” board game system – My family owns a lot of board games. The more games we get, the more I notice how similar a lot of games can be. Usually there are coins or other ways of tracking money. Oftentimes there are houses or meeples or other color-coded wooden pieces used to differentiate ownership of certain resources by different players. Obviously nearly all of them have a board to play on. Another thing I’ve realized as an avid player of board games? Compactness of packaging is not prioritized and they can be really hard to transport, to the point where there are multiple types of bags designed to help people carry their games around. Considering how much overlap there is in game components, why isn’t there a better way to transport games around?
Why couldn’t there be a product which included some generic wooden meeples/houses/cubes in 8 notably different colors (for games which inexplicably think that black, brown, dark purple, and dark red are easily distinguishable) along with some generic money tokens that can be used for many different types of games? It could be paired with some sort of large electronic display (maybe using the same kind of low power consumption technology that Kindles use for long battery life) that could conceivably store a virtually unlimited number of boards that could be played on. For many games, this could cut down on the number of items that would need to be transported to a deck of cards or two, which is a lot easier to deal with than the massive boxes the games come in. It wouldn’t work for every game, obviously. Dominion is basically nothing but custom cards and a game like Galaxy Trucker wouldn’t benefit much and still need a massive box to carry everything. Still, there are a lot of games for which this would save a lot of space.
Halloween costume exchange – It might not seem like my kind of holiday, but I actually enjoy Halloween and dressing up in costumes. One thing I have a hard time justifying, though, is the amount of time, effort and money that can be sunk into a costume which at most might get worn once or twice and then shoved into a closet and forgotten. Why couldn’t there be a service which takes these costumes that have been worn only once, deep cleans and disinfects them, and then allows them to be exchanged for a costume from somebody else who has outgrown theirs or doesn’t want to be Spider-Man two years in a row. Even if just a small percentage of costumes were exchanged this way, it could save a lot of money and reduce waste.
C
hopped baby food disposing system – One eye-opener that I had after having kids is how pacing oneself when eating is apparently something that needs to be learned. When my kids were little, I would carefully cut up their food into tiny pieces that were virtually impossible to choke on. Then, when presented with the plate full of these meticulously cut up pieces, they would immediately completely undo all of that work by grabbing every piece and shoving it into their mouth at the same time. What’s the point of spending all that time cutting the food into pieces if it’s all getting smashed back together into an esophagus-blocking ball anyway? Eventually, I found out the key is to just put one piece of food on the plate at a time, but that’s far too time-consuming. There has to be a better way. My proposal? Some sort of spherical device which doubles as a toy and a way to ration out food disposal so that kids can’t shove too much into their mouths at once. Yes, I am basically describing a human baby version of this dog toy.
Brake lights of varying intensity – Person A is driving on the highway and sees that they are gaining on the car in front of them so they tap lightly on their brakes to begin slowing down. Person B sees a deer jump out on the road in front of them and slams on their brakes as hard as they can. The look of the brake lights for somebody following those two people look identical despite the very different actions that are being taken. Maybe my depth perception is just really bad, or maybe my commute involves too much highway driving during rush hour. Either way, I’ve had a few times where I’ve badly misjudged how hard the car in front of me was braking and it’s dangerous. I’m a little surprised we don’t have brake lights that give an indication of how hard a car is braking. It could be as simple as having 3 brake lights on the back of cars. Tap on your brakes and only one lights up. Brake a little more forcefully and two might light up. Slam on your brakes and all three light up. It could help improve the reaction time of drivers behind you by an extra half second, which could make all the difference.
Bathroom stalls that make it clear which are occupied – This one is simple and I can’t believe it’s not ubiquitous. Bathroom stalls should absolutely have some sort of easy to see external indicator showing whether they are occupied. It is ridiculous that we’re living in a time that is past the “future” from Back to the Future II (2015) and I still have to bend over to see if there are visible feet in a stall to tell if it’s occupied.
Million Dollar Ideas Not Worth a Penny
If you do any kind of Google searching for “Million Dollar Ideas”, you might notice a common theme. There are a lot of people willing to give away their own million dollar ideas for free. That’s because, frankly, ideas are cheap. Being able to identify unmet needs in society or ways that things can be done better is easy. Actually taking action to meet those needs or improving the way things are done is a lot harder. I’ve been hanging out in the shallow kiddie pool for a while now coming up with ideas. One day, I hope to turn one of them into something more. What about you? Do you have any million dollar ideas? Do you like any of mine? Let me know in the comments. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.
My favorite idea is the Ramen/Pho shop as I love the idea of it. As a vegetarian both of those can be hit or miss in terms of options. A make your own shop where you can pick the broth? Great!
I like the brake lights, similarly I have mentioned to grocery stores that they really ought to price their milk based on expiration date, a sliding scale so to speak.
On the other hand I am not a fan of the baby food one. I remember getting my sisters spinach ready for her as a child, I separated each little bit, then she would gobble it all up. Putting that in a ball would NOT work as it would all mush together and not come out separately…