How to Find Consumer Startup Ideas

In this episode, Dalton and Michael discuss consumer startups. When they were consumer startup founders, just putting something online made it 10x better. The age of "just put it online" might be changing, but the opportunity remains the same: create luxury experiences and give them to the masses. Discussion includes: why really great consumer experiences start high-end, early experiences with Napster, Netflix, and Google Maps, Twitch inventing live streaming, finding premium experiences where the users have infinite resources, why it's hard for founders to find premium experiences, how to avoid the trap to make things 10% better, Brian Chesky's eleven star framework from Airbnb, how Uber did not invent black cars, and why founders should resist the urge to replace humans with chat agents to save money. Then Dalton and Michael brainstorm premium experiences for a variety of industries that might be changed with AI (travel, banking, education, healthcare, social media, retail and food delivery). – Standard Capital is the AI-native Series A fund. Learn more at standardcap.com – About Dalton: Dalton Caldwell is Co-Founder and Partner of Standard Capital. He spent 12 years at Y Combinator, where he served as Managing Partner, worked across 25 YC batches, and advised more than 1,000 startups. His investments include Whatnot, Brex, GitLab, PostHog, Retool, Rappi, Razorpay, and Oklo. Before becoming an investor, Dalton founded imeem and App.net. About Michael: Michael Seibel is a Partner Emeritus at Y Combinator, where he served as a group partner and leader of the early stage accelerator from 2014 - 2024. Michael also serves on the board of three companies: Reddit, Dropbox, and Kalshi. He moved to the bay area in 2006, and was a co-founder and CEO of two Y Combinator startups Justin.tv/Twitch (2007 - 2011) and Socialcam (2011 - 2012). In 2012 Socialcam sold to Autodesk Inc. for $60m and in 2014, under the leadership of Emmett Shear (CEO) and Kevin Lin (COO) Twitch sold to Amazon for $970m. – Are you an AI builder? Check out StandardDB. Discover offers, credits, tools, and partner programs from the StandardDB ecosystem. – Dalton Caldwell on X: https://x.com/daltonc Michael Seibel on X: https://x.com/mwseibel

Dalton CaldwellhostMichael Seibelhost

Aug 18, 202630mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: August 18, 2026
Duration: 30m
Channel: Dalton + Michael
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this episode, Dalton and Michael discuss consumer startups. When they were consumer startup founders, just putting something online made it 10x better. The age of "just put it online" might be changing, but the opportunity remains the same: create luxury experiences and give them to the masses. Discussion includes: why really great consumer experiences start high-end, early experiences with Napster, Netflix, and Google Maps, Twitch inventing live streaming, finding premium experiences where the users have infinite resources, why it's hard for founders to find premium experiences, how to avoid the trap to make things 10% better, Brian Chesky's eleven star framework from Airbnb, how Uber did not invent black cars, and why founders should resist the urge to replace humans with chat agents to save money. Then Dalton and Michael brainstorm premium experiences for a variety of industries that might be changed with AI (travel, banking, education, healthcare, social media, retail and food delivery). – Standard Capital is the AI-native Series A fund. Learn more at standardcap.com – About Dalton: Dalton Caldwell is Co-Founder and Partner of Standard Capital. He spent 12 years at Y Combinator, where he served as Managing Partner, worked across 25 YC batches, and advised more than 1,000 startups. His investments include Whatnot, Brex, GitLab, PostHog, Retool, Rappi, Razorpay, and Oklo. Before becoming an investor, Dalton founded imeem and App.net. About Michael: Michael Seibel is a Partner Emeritus at Y Combinator, where he served as a group partner and leader of the early stage accelerator from 2014 - 2024. Michael also serves on the board of three companies: Reddit, Dropbox, and Kalshi. He moved to the bay area in 2006, and was a co-founder and CEO of two Y Combinator startups Justin.tv/Twitch (2007 - 2011) and Socialcam (2011 - 2012). In 2012 Socialcam sold to Autodesk Inc. for $60m and in 2014, under the leadership of Emmett Shear (CEO) and Kevin Lin (COO) Twitch sold to Amazon for $970m. – Are you an AI builder? Check out StandardDB. Discover offers, credits, tools, and partner programs from the StandardDB ecosystem. – Dalton Caldwell on X: https://x.com/daltonc Michael Seibel on X: https://x.com/mwseibel

SPEAKERS

Dalton Caldwell
host
Y Combinator partner and startup founder (App.net), focused on early-stage investing and product strategy.
Michael Seibel
host
Y Combinator partner and startup founder (Twitch/Justin.tv), known for advising early-stage startups.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dalton + Michael, featuring Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel, How to Find Consumer Startup Ideas explores find consumer startup ideas by scaling ultra-premium experiences with AI Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel propose a reliable consumer-startup ideation method: identify ultra-premium experiences enjoyed by the wealthy and use technology (now especially AI) to make them available to everyone.

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