My First Million · Episode Brief
5 under-the-radar trends (+ our business ideas)
Steph Smith's trend framework rewards people who study adjacent spaces, not the ones already crowded into the same five conversations.
This is MFM episode 700, a milestone the show treats by bringing in Steph Smith — analyst, Andreessen Horowitz writer, and arguably one of the more rigorous trend-spotters in the internet media ecosystem. The format is deliberate: five trends that are real and accelerating but haven't yet attracted mainstream entrepreneurial attention, with concrete business ideas attached to each.
The hearing loss trend is the most immediately actionable, and the most likely to produce a real business in the near term. An aging population combined with generational exposure to loud concerts and earbud use is producing a hearing loss cohort that skews significantly younger than historical data would predict. The existing market is dominated by incumbent hearing aid companies whose pricing ($3,000-6,000 per device) and distribution (audiologist appointments) hasn't changed meaningfully in decades. The FDA's over-the-counter hearing aid approval in 2022 changed the regulatory landscape, and no one has yet built the brand that captures the 35-55 year old who needs help but won't walk into an audiology clinic.
The eVTOL segment is the episode's most ambitious idea in terms of capital requirements and regulatory complexity, but Steph's point isn't that you should build an eVTOL company — it's that the FAA rule changes create a category of adjacent businesses (vertiport infrastructure, maintenance training, insurance products) that will be needed well before the vehicles themselves are profitable. The psychedelics trend follows a similar logic: the actual therapeutic market is years away from mainstream adoption, but the research tools, trial management software, and patient intake infrastructure have demand right now.
The 'nature technology' trend is the most intellectually interesting and the least commercially obvious. Steph's thesis: we are at an early stage of understanding how biological systems optimize for efficiency, resilience, and adaptation, and the companies that translate those insights into industrial applications are building in a category that has no name yet.
Key Ideas
- →The hearing loss market has been disrupted from above by OTC FDA approval but not yet from below by a consumer brand — the opportunity is building the Warby Parker of hearing aids for the 35-55 year old who won't go to an audiologist.
- →eVTOL infrastructure (vertiports, maintenance, insurance, training) has real near-term demand even before the vehicles themselves achieve commercial viability — classic enabling-technology investment thesis.
- →The psychedelics legalization timeline is slower than advocates expect, but the research infrastructure (trial software, patient management, therapist training) needs to be built now to be ready when the market opens.
- →New job skills created by AI displacement represent a training market that doesn't exist yet in structured form — who teaches the 'AI operator' role that will exist in every company within five years?
- →Nature technology (biomimicry applied to industrial and materials problems) is Steph's highest-conviction long-horizon bet: the category has no dominant player and the scientific understanding is advancing faster than the commercialization.
Worth Remembering
Steph's reaction when Sam pushes on the hearing loss idea — she's clearly done real research on this one, citing specific FDA ruling dates and incumbent pricing structures that reveal genuine market knowledge.
The moment Shaan realizes that the eVTOL opportunity isn't about building the vehicle — it's about building the vertiport equivalent of the charging station networks that made EV adoption possible.
Sam admitting he's never thought about nature technology as a category, followed by a genuine attempt to understand it — the kind of on-air learning that makes these episodes worth going back to.
The discussion of psychedelic therapy's 'regulatory arbitrage window' — states that legalize before federal approval create a brief period of legitimate above-ground operations that create the infrastructure the national market will need.