Co-Star's Playbook for Founders
How "decision hygiene" became a $3B category — and why timing tools are the next founder productivity unlock
Education & Work
Education & Work uncovers the systems powering skill development and productivity. From AI tutors to workplace automation, these opportunities redefine how people learn, earn, and collaborate.
Build a $20M/Year Business Certifying Air
Brain function drops 2–4% in stuffy rooms. Biohackers measure it publicly. Coworking operators need verified proof before members start asking questions.
The Amazon Launch Manager Play
Book launch services jumped from $5K to $50K+. Nobody owns the middle market turning founder manuscripts into qualified leads.
Build the Training Layer Series B Companies Actually Need
L&D headcount down 4%, external training spend up 23%—Series B companies need workflow training that auto-updates when their SaaS tools change.
The Living Room Franchise
Silent reading events surged 223% while commercial real estate bleeds off-peak. The format scales, the membership model is missing.
The Missing macOS Layer for Dasung's $2,000 E-Ink Monitors
E-ink monitor displaying crisp text, macOS menu bar, eye strain relief icon, Dasung company logo, VS Code editor interface
Strava for Mental Resets (How to Monetize Dopamenus)
Everyone's selling dopamine menu templates. The real opportunity: build the social layer where people discover, fork, and share their reset rituals.
Search In The AI Age (Build What Google Can't)
AI-generated content now sits at 17-19% of search results. RAG teams manually rebuild allowlists. Build the trust graph as infrastructure before specialized data providers do.
From 30-Day Challenges to Seven-Figure Platform
Creators are duct-taping 30-day challenges with Docs + drips. The wedge: “Seasons”—an advent-calendar format for transformation (daily unlocks, spoiler-proof sharing, finite finish line). 100 creators × $50K/yr = $5M GMV; a 10–15% take = $500K–$750K.
Blue Collar "Moneyball" Recruiting
Gen Z wants trades, contractors need workers, but matching infrastructure is prehistoric—measurement layer wins, not another job board.
Blue-Collar Cred Empire
Fashion distributed workwear as identity. High-income professionals want the competence to match—and they'll pay premium retreat prices to earn it.
The "Grandma-as-a-Service" Marketplace
When AI floods every category with free how-tos, human verification becomes the scarce resource worth paying for.
"Oh-Shit" Bar for WordPress
Most newsrooms use AI daily but lack pre-publish safety gates. When prompt remnants ship to print, screenshots go viral and Legal starts asking questions.
Ghost Job Detection Infrastructure
Job boards sell hope without proof. Regulators want disclosure. Build the hiring internet's "nutrition label" for jobs. Start as a ghost-job detector. Finish as the verification standard.
Morning Triage for Niches
Google and OpenAI are training users to expect AI-run mornings. The free briefing normalizes the habit. The paid opportunity is vertical execution.
"Small Brand Hollywood" for TikTok Shop
Video drives 58% of TikTok Shop's $33B GMV. The creative bottleneck creates infrastructure opportunity in the protocol layer above commodity UGC.
Weekly Template Drop Platform
CapCut templates hit 50,000+ uses each. Meta just launched a competitor. The formats people copy are becoming infrastructure.
AI Copilots For Professional Associations
OpenAI's Australian workforce initiative proves AI training infrastructure is becoming quasi-regulatory. Professional associations control certification but lack credible curriculum—creating arbitrage.
Knowledge Curation for Creators
Animoca just validated curated knowledge collections with institutional money. The boring SaaS version could capture recurring revenue without blockchain complexity.
Plant Tissue Culture Kits & Clone Lab Infrastructure
A YouTuber democratized tissue culture and crashed rare plant prices. The real money moved upstream to kits, skills, and infrastructure.
Vertical AI Content Desk for Niche Industries
TokTak validated URL-to-content for everyone. Now build the vertical agent that owns one industry's entire marketing workflow.
Telepresence Robot Staffing OS
DAWN proved telepresence robots work in hospitality. Someone needs to build the staffing infrastructure layer beneath it at scale.
Focus & Accountability Infrastructure for ADHD
Remote work broke 15.5M ADHD brains. Focusmate validated demand. The infrastructure play—guided sessions and institutional licenses—remains wide open.
Leadership Practice Simulator
Leadership development hits $82B annually while 60% of new managers fail. PwC validated VR training works—nobody owns the simulation layer yet.