Houston #8 - We need a bank for expats and a payment processor for cannabis?
Find great problems to solve.
Hi there 👋 This is Houston's eighth issue and here are the five interesting problems that we found this week:
I wish there were an easy/intuitive app to bet with friends on anything
Last week when the new Game of Thrones season came out my friends, and I wished that there was an easy way for us to place bets on what was going to happen. If there are more than two people betting things get complicated and Venmo doesn't work. There are betting sites, but I wish we could set up whatever bet we wanted in a way that's as easy as sending a Venmo request.
We need a bank just for expats.
I think there is a real opportunity to build a challenger bank catering almost exclusively to foreigners in Japan. Opening an account, sending/receiving money, accessing credit, financial planning... all painful. If there are any founders looking at this space, contact me. via James Riney
We need a payment processor for cannabis products
I just found out that Stripe will not process CBD payments. I love Stripe, and sure there are many reasons this is the case. But doesn’t this seem crazy in 2019? I can buy CBD products at almost every corner store in Los Angeles, including CVS and Walgreens. via Jeff Morris Jr.
I wish there were a marketplace for buying cats and other pets
I’m in the process of looking for a cat friend to bring home with me, but I quickly found that it’s not an easy process. There are tons of places offering up cats, including breeders, shelters, and rescues. But it’s not always clear if these places are legitimate. A startup called Good Dog just raised $6.7M to do this for dogs, so it's a significant opportunity.
I wish there was an app that dynamically calculated your chances of crashing
“Something I wish existed: a mobile app that dynamically calculates the probability you're about to crash your car, based on your speed, the history of the piece of road you're on, the weather, the time of day, accelerometer data, etc.” via Paul Graham There's an app called DriveMark that seems to do this, but it's only available in Malaysia right now.
Quick Community Updates:
Houston is evolving! Houston started as a weekend project but it's been crazy how fast we have grown. My friend and I have brainstormed about where we want Houston to go and we're convinced that we can build something pretty meaningful so we will be dedicating our time to building Houston. We're just two guys with a site and a dream and we're pretty pumped about the future. If you're an angel/seed investor or would love to put us in touch with one, please hit reply to this email. We would love to chat(:
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That's it for this week! If you're enjoying Houston please forward this email to a friend. Let find more great problems to solve(: