Brains on the Outside: A Business Ideas Podcast

Wave: The future of phone cases

• Alex and Andrew • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Wave is an ecologically focused phone case manufacturer, coincidentally based near us in the North East of England. They need help though: why do Apple keep releasing so many iPhones, each needing a unique case? 

Some of our ideas: springs, goo, and strict government regulation.

Thank you Ross Longhorn, Wave Case's Co-Founder, for getting in touch. How would you solve his problem? Email us at: brainsontheoutside@gmail.com 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brainsontheoutside/ 

Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brainsontheoutside 

Thank you to Rich Endersby-Marsh for our theme music: https://soundcloud.com/rich-marsh

Keep your brains on the outside! xo

Andrew:

Hey, Alex.

Alex:

Hey, Andrew.

Andrew:

What is this?

Alex:

This is brains on the outside.

Andrew:

And what is brains on the outside?

Alex:

It's a podcast where we dream up ridiculous solutions to solve the business world's business problems.

Andrew:

Yeah. Every single week we take an impossible problem from a very, very real business and we just like, solve it.

Alex:

This week it's Wave, the phone case manufacturer.

Andrew:

Alex who? Or wave wave.

Alex:

They're a, local phone case manufacturer, Andrew. They make eco friendly, biodegradable protective plastic free phone cases and cases for your Airpods and cases for your keys and stuff like that.

Andrew:

Incredible.

Alex:

Why do you ask?

Andrew:

Oh, well, this guy called Ross Longhorn, who's the co founder of Wave, has actually been in touch with me.

Alex:

Whoa, really?

Andrew:

Yeah. Well, he's actually got a, business problem for us to solve. No way. I know. Crazy. Ross says one thing we struggle with is keeping up, ah. With releases of new models of phone. Also, there are a lot of niche brands we get asked for that don't have the market for mass produced cases. I hope this gives you something to.

Alex:

Go on that's fun. I also like the idea of niche brands of phone because in my head there's only Apple phones and Samsung phones and Google phones. Those are the only phones. That's it these days. But then in the past, there were definitely a lot more phones and lots of the phone manufacturers had different shapes of phones and there were some fucking nuts phones in the history of phones.

Andrew:

So you're saying Wave's nightmare back 20 years ago?

Alex:

Yeah. And I sort of want that to come back, even though it's a nightmare for Wave because it was fun having lots of different things that weren't just the shape of a cube of glass.

Andrew:

Yeah. Big glass rectangle. I don't know. I had also flip phones. I had, a Sony phone that actually had like a lens that can move about like a little lens and protector bit. That was great. I was always very jealous of people who had the n gauge.

Alex:

Oh, yeah, play games on your phone. I had a really, really tiny Sony Ericsson phone. It was gray and it was probably about, it must have been about two and a half inches tall. It was absolutely tiny. It was really, really small. and you had these tiny, tiny buttons that you could use to text with. it was great phone. I loved that phone.

Andrew:

Have you seen the new phone that's kind of like that?

Alex:

No.

Andrew:

So it's like a little square.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Doesn't go in your pocket, it goes like, it clips onto your clothes.

Alex:

Right.

Andrew:

And, I think you wear a ring or something, and, it holograms onto the palm of your hand. It's like some ex apple designer, and they've got just, like, an absolute shit ton of money. But the twist on top of all those twists is that you have to pay another subscription fee to OpenAI to use it.

Alex:

Oh, my God.

Andrew:

I know, man.

Alex:

I missed the times when phones were just snake and messages.

Andrew:

I actually kind of log for those days where I had a brick that was indestructible.

Alex:

Yeah, exactly.

Andrew:

And a screen I could barely make any sense of.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Weird AI phone that can listen to my every move. I'm not sure that's it.

Alex:

Yeah, the old brick phones were great. I mean, I dropped my. My, early phones many times. I got my first phone when I was, I think, 15. It was really old. It played snake, but it did have an infrared port on the top, which meant I could play two player snake with another person with the same phone, which is pretty rad.

Andrew:

Did you have a case for it?

Alex:

No. Phone cases were. I don't think they were a thing back then. I mean, the phone was indestructible. I remember, my brother wanting a new phone, so dropping his phone into a pint, and it's surviving and taking it into the shop because you can get phone insurance at that time, which was like, oh, you drop your phone in a pint, just give you a new phone.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

And him taking it in and the guy being like, it still works. Ah. Shit. Yeah. Fun times.

Andrew:

I, guess, in some sense, thankfully, we don't live in that era anymore. For waves from waves point of view.

Alex:

Yeah. I mean, to be honest, my phone now does way more stuff than it did back then, and it's pretty cool.

Andrew:

Yeah, yeah. I see all phones now. They're, Oh, this is one of the niche markets they're talking about. They make phones that are like, they don't do anything.

Alex:

Oh, wow.

Andrew:

They're like, they just phone people. Yeah, it's pretty.

Alex:

Who phones anybody? That's nuts.

Andrew:

Ktao is a little bit more about wave.

Alex:

Yeah. They're a company based up near us here.

Andrew:

Almost out in the northeast.

Alex:

Yeah. Just in Hartlepool. It is, you know, by the sea.

Andrew:

So that means if they either really like this episode, I really hate it. They could actually come find us, track.

Alex:

Us down in person. They could do. Oh, my God. They make pretty colorful and beautiful kind of engraved phone cases. You have one, right?

Andrew:

I've got one right here. this really sounds like we've transitioned into an advert. It does, but gotta stress, no one's paying us. No, it's really nice. I've actually recommended it to a lot of people.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

I was going through the website earlier and I saw that, like, you actually get referral codes and I shouldn't be dishing them out. So I think actually, like three people have got them because they're just really, just quite nice.

Alex:

They're very tactile.

Andrew:

They're tactile. They're quite. I like the engravings on it.

Alex:

It's nice. It's unlike other phone cases. and they're not made of plastic. Right. I don't know how they've done that. It looks like plastic and it feels like plastic, but apparently it's made of wheat.

Andrew:

Oh, I didn't actually know that. It has taken a few pretty big knocks though.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Do you think there's a way to reverse engineer this into a meal?

Alex:

Edible bread? Phone case.

Andrew:

So the issue is too many phones, too hard, make cases for them all. Do you wanna start us off? Where's your head at right now?

Alex:

I think there are possibly two kind of routes of solution here. Yep, right there is. Make all phones the same.

Andrew:

Okay.

Alex:

Or create a case that doesn't matter that the phones are all different sizes.

Andrew:

So really lean in. You think somehow lobby the phone companies, just lean into this. Everything is a glass rectangle.

Alex:

Well, yeah. So the EU have come in and said all phones need to be charged by USB C. Right. So Ursula's gone, all phones have to have a USB C slot. And my Apple went, no. And Ursula went, yes. And Apple went, okay, fine. And now actually things are better for everybody because there's only one charging cable, which is pretty amazing.

Andrew:

I got the new iPhone.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

And, actually the only noteworthy feature on it, USB C. Yeah.

Alex:

So the EU has the sway to be able to do that. And one of the biggest reasons that they've done that is for sustainability purposes. It means that people aren't throwing away their chargers, they're not throwing away their cables all the time. They're not creating loads and loads of excess e waste all the time. The different sizes and shapes of phones, creating lots of different sizes and shapes of cases which are then also thrown way is definitely a sustainability issue.

Andrew:

Oh, that's really, that's actually a really interesting space you've instantly dragged us into.

Alex:

So if the EU came in and went, well, this is creating too much waste because there's not enough standardization of phone sizes and shapes, then we could force every phone to be exactly the same size and exactly the same shape.

Andrew:

There is now like three tiers of phone. You have small rectangle, medium sized rectangle, and big rectangle.

Alex:

Yeah, exactly.

Andrew:

I have two immediate thoughts. One is you're going to get a lot of people saying you're stifling innovation, but actually we're forcing it. How are you going to stand out when you look literally identical to every other phone?

Alex:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew:

You gotta be bringing. You gotta be bringing it every other time.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

But also, this is really interesting from a phone case manufacturer. Your phone case could hypothetically last your whole life. Your phone you replaced, but your case stays with you forever.

Alex:

Wow. So you've started to get into some really high end case space.

Andrew:

I mean, yeah. You are paying maybe 30 pounds a month for your case because this case is going to last through anything. It could become like a hand me down or something.

Alex:

Like an heirloom.

Andrew:

An heirloom. My great great granddad had this vodka.

Alex:

You get those adverts for, Patek Philippe watches, you know, 200,000 pound watch, and the advert says, like, you know, you don't buy it for you, you buy it for the future generation, but it's the same thing. But for your wave case. Yes.

Andrew:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex:

It's made out of the finest wheat. The heirloom wheat. It's made out of heirloom wheat. It's incredibly strong, it's very beautiful, it's ornate.

Andrew:

But that's the next step. Right. What's more sustainable than being, like, biodegradable? Amazing stuff is like, you just never something you don't ever throw away. So how do you never actually replace?

Alex:

Yeah, and actually, because before, where we, you know, the phone innovation was in, the things that were in the phone and how the phone. And that affected the sizes and shapes of the phones and, you know, like, made them change shape and everything. But actually, now innovation goes into the case. You can use your phone case to really exert your own uniqueness and your stamp upon the world. Like, your phone case becomes much more about reflecting who you are.

Andrew:

There's actually something really interesting that you said there, which was you're changing where the importance of the shape is at now. Because now the phone case has to change the shape. Right?

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

It's always rectangle. So does that mean, like, you get phone cases that look like iPhone fifteen s?

Alex:

I guess so.

Andrew:

But you could put your Google phone right in there.

Alex:

Yeah. And slot it in. An interesting question is who determines what sizes and shapes the standard phones are? And I think you have to open that up maybe to auction so that companies can bid to determine what size and shape the phones are. I think, like every, I don't know, 3510 years, something like that. There's a big auction, and the winning bid gets to determine what size each of the phones is. Or maybe it's like three auctions for the three different sizes and shapes of phones. And if Apple wins it, they can be like, oh, if the phone is this size for everybody for the next.

Andrew:

Three years, there's actually something. There's a really interesting game there of, like, you get to good choose a size and you deliberately make it a size and shape that your competitors just don't have the technological capability to reproduce. You make it absurdly thin because, you know, your chips can be that thin.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

And you're like, well, sorry, Google.

Alex:

Actually, it's, a star shape this year. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, it's perfectly spherical.

Andrew:

It's actually a doughnut shape.

Alex:

Yeah, it's a torus. It's actually one of those impossible triangles. It's an Escher. An Escher triangle.

Andrew:

My only example is, like, hs two. You're going to go bait to make hs two. It's like that. Or the phone signal bands.

Alex:

Exactly. Or like the rail lines here in the UK, where they get opened up for auctions. If you want to run the east coast main line, there's an auction for that, and you get to run it. And this is like, you want to determine what size the phone is. Size and shape of the phone in the EU for the next 20 years come to the auction, and everyone bids in the auction. This opens it up as well for wave, because they no longer just have to react to the shape and size of the phones. If they bid big enough, they could determine exactly what size and shape all the phones are for the next ten years.

Andrew:

I don't mean to. I hope, wave, don't find this comment disparaging, but I don't know, waves, lawyers can compete financially with Apple, so can we make this contract process slightly different? When you bid on contracts and tenders right now, you're not just judged on the cost. There's multiple other factors.

Alex:

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Andrew:

So maybe it's like, cost is a bit your bids, a bit of it, but it's also like, how are you going to choose a shape? What shape do you want? Are you profiting from this shape? Are you going to share the shape with your competitors? And overall, it adds up just to give wave kind of a chance to win this auction.

Alex:

Yeah. To be honest, it's probably much more of an EU style way of doing it. Whereas here in the UK, we just give it to the richest company.

Andrew:

Yeah. We'd find like whoever story brother owned the phone case manufacturer and we were like, they could do it.

Alex:

Yeah. especially Sunak's determined what size of phone. Yeah. Okay. And then that lets them make the decision about what size and shape your phone is and they can determine it. That's the best thing for their manufacturing process. Easy.

Andrew:

Okay. I love that. So I have a slight twist on that idea.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Which is, what if every phone case was just the same size? What if there was a singular phone case size and if your phone was too small for it, you could either maybe magnet it in or fill it full of foam, or there'd be little clippers that come down from the side to hold it in place.

Alex:

Oh.

Andrew:

So they made one phone case that, was maybe quite large, maybe like a foot by a foot. Then you slot your phone in, and you superglue or something to keep it in place.

Alex:

Keep it in place. Oh, yeah, yeah. A foot by a foot. That's a heck of a phone call. Hold that up to the side of your head. That also gives you that additional benefit of having extra cushioning in there. So if you got a foot by a foot, your phone's only three inches by five inches or whatever.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

you drop it. There's a lot, a lot of good five inches worth of bouncy space there to protect it.

Andrew:

So they'd have the manufacturer one case size, I imagine, actually being like just a frame, like a square frame with four springs pointing inwards. And, you put your phone in there and you carry, you carry it around like a bag or something because it's just a frame.

Alex:

Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, I like it, I like it. It's certainly a status symbol, isn't it? It's a symbol, yeah. I mean, it's basically a big picture frame with a phone on the back, so you can put whatever painting or picture you want on the other side.

Andrew:

How do you feel on first glance that either standardized phone case shape against standardized phone size itself?

Alex:

I'm excited about both versions, I think. Yeah, because I mean, standardized phone shape is more constraining for the phone manufacturers and that is going to lead to innovation, but it's not going to let them do cool and funky stuff with the shapes and size of their phones. Whereas standardized phone case shape, it does mean that your phone could be any size or shape inside of it, which is pretty cool.

Andrew:

It's kind of a unique selling point as well.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Like, you. You spend all this money in your phone case and, next year when you upgrade your phone, you're going to need a new one. Well, not anymore. Yeah, you just have to buy a new set of springs.

Alex:

It's true.

Andrew:

Or somehow chisel your phone out from the case you've superglued it into and then superglue in a new one.

Alex:

What about a case that was just a big bowl of jelly that you shoved your phone into? It's just a big ball of, like, gooey jelly and it just sits in the middle of it like a blob. You want to make a phone call, you just like, reaching and pluck it out and then make the phone call and then stick it back in again. And it's bouncy. It's made out of, like, rubbery bouncy stuff. So if you drop it, it just bounces.

Andrew:

True. Return to the side of you after the break.

Alex:

It's the ad break, Andrew.

Andrew:

It's the ad break. Alex, I've got a great ad this week.

Alex:

Have you?

Andrew:

Yes. I noticed this actually added about quite a bit. I always find it really bizarre, strange when people don't have their mobile phones as silent.

Alex:

I. Who? What kind of.

Andrew:

I know.

Alex:

It's like you are the person that bites the four finger Kitkat all four fingers at a time. What is wrong with you?

Andrew:

It's such a red flag.

Alex:

I feel as if it's the 2020s, man.

Andrew:

My mom and dad do it, but I'm like, it's okay. You like, they spend their whole lives for phones that do make noises, so maybe that's okay. But it's when, like, the youths do it. I'm like, what is going on here? But this new business is aimed at, getting these people back and ready to reenter normal society. We have to accept that this isn't going to be an immediate overnight process, getting them to turn their phones on silent.

Alex:

Yeah, yeah.

Andrew:

It's going to be a long process. So these people have developed ways to let them feel safe and have a ringtone, but not freak out the rest of us. Okay, so they give a lot of ringtones, like flight overhead or conversation in next room. So when your phone does ring, no one really notices it because they think, oh, well, there's a flight overhead or is that someone talking in the next room? And that gives that person the chance to actually answer their call without everyone realizing that actually their phone was ringing.

Alex:

I. I can't get on board with this enough.

Andrew:

Yeah, yeah.

Alex:

Cause actually I was recently in the theater and someone's phone went off and it played Bonnie Tyler's total eclipse of the heart as the ringtone in the middle of the theater.

Andrew:

What movie?

Alex:

no, like the actual, like the theater theater. Oh my God, that's people on stage. That's even worse. Yeah, we've seen Matilda and off it went. But if instead it had sounded like a plane was flying overhead, I mean, I would have freaked out the people sitting next to it because we were in the theater, but actually it wouldn't have been as bad.

Andrew:

It'd be quite exciting, actually. You'd be like, huh?

Alex:

Yeah, that's quite exciting. Yeah, exactly.

Andrew:

A bit different.

Alex:

Yeah, we were in the west end as well, so actually, if it had been like tube train runs past, actually. Yeah. that would have. Would have been normal. Yeah, it's normal sound.

Andrew:

And, they're expecting, as this catches on, phone manufacturers to make their speakers more directional. So you could actually have that?

Alex:

Oh, yeah.

Andrew:

Be smart enough to know, play this sound downwards so it sounds like the tube.

Alex:

Wow.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

That's really cool.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

Yeah. What's that company called?

Andrew:

So after searching through my files, I remembered that it's actually called, oh, is there someone at the door after their most popular ringtone, which sounds like your specific doorbell going off.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

So if you know any of your friends and family who need this service. who for some reason don't put their phones on silent, please let them know about it.

Alex:

Andrew. If I listen to the show, which obviously I do, but if I wasn't in the show and I listened to it, is there anything that I could do that would make both you and me the happiest boys on the planet?

Andrew:

Yes. If you were not a host of this show, and you want to make one host of the show the happiest boys on the planet. I hate that, by the way, what you could do is you could, subscribe or rate the show on the podcast app you're using right now. Or even better, tell one of your friends, tell them all about the exciting world of brains on the outside. Season two. So you came in pretty hot there, Alex, with your strange jelly slime idea. Yeah, yeah. So you have some slime, you have some jelly, you dunk your phone in there, you pray that it's ip 67 rated or whatever.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

And you just go about your day.

Alex:

I was just thinking about this during the ad break, though. I can see a minor problem with it that I don't want to have a big bowl of sticky, slimy jelly in my pocket.

Andrew:

My first question was going to be, how are you holding this thing? does it come with gloves? Does it come with a box, a case or something?

Alex:

So the magic of it is, I've decided, is that actually it's a ball of jelly that's exactly the same size and shape as a standard basketball, and it's the same amount of bounciness.

Andrew:

Oh, awesome.

Alex:

So you just dribble it down the street.

Andrew:

Oh, that's actually really sick.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Like, because one day you will pass a basketball hoop and, you'll be so ready for it, you'll be able to, like, a half court short behind your back, and everyone will clap.

Alex:

Exactly. Oh, what's that? It's your phone ringing. Oh, you just caught it and plunged your hand inside it, ripped it out, and it's your mom.

Andrew:

What? Okay, I obviously no notes, but I do have one note, which is imagine you're bouncing it, you're dribbling, going down the street. You're a cool dude. And, then your phone rings.

Alex:

Ah.

Andrew:

it's your mommy. You need to pick it up, and your hand plunges into the. Plunges into the, into that jelly. Pull your phone out. Have you ruined your case? Is it done? Is it a single use item?

Alex:

I mean, that's the absolute opposite of what we want. Yeah. So, no, but it's a big bowl of, like, it's a big bowl of self healing, slimy jelly.

Andrew:

I'm imagining wave, listening to this and being like, yeah, we're not, we're not in the jelly market. But you, you do have a lot of wheat, right? You're a pretty good chef. Alex, do you think you can make.

Alex:

A, the big bowl of borage.

Andrew:

Likes to sauce sourdough starter consistency.

Alex:

Oh, so, yeah, so it's like a. Just a loaf of bread. You just bake it in there.

Andrew:

What if it was a sourdough starter?

Alex:

What if it was just a loaf of bread? Yeah, well, you know, in films, whenever anyone goes to the supermarket, they always buy a baguette.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

So what if we just baked your phone into a, into a bread loaf every morning and you just carried it around like it was a baguette?

Andrew:

We did it. So you imagine they go to a bakery and they're like, kind of panel chocolate, a cup of coffee. And could you take this and bake it at 230 degrees or five minutes, please? Is that how you imagine the transaction occurring?

Alex:

Well, yeah, I had not really thought that through because you kind of sprung it on me there.

Andrew:

Not on the Disney bread idea.

Alex:

Okay.

Andrew:

No, I'm m just.

Alex:

Wow. It wasn't my idea. You brought it up. Yeah, you asked it for me. I just riffed on it, came up with something. I mean, if you want to buy a sourdough and plunge a. Plunge a phone into it and use that as your case, I mean, it's going to look pretty cool when it rings and you hold a loaf of bread up to you. If you held a baguette up to the side of your head and had a phone call, conversations, you walk down the street, a, you'd look pretty cool, and b, you'd look absolutely bonkers.

Andrew:

He's got your lunch. Yeah, he's got your lunch.

Alex:

Baguette's a real multifunctional because you can use it as a phone case. You can use it as a bread, but you can also use it as a weapon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew:

Depending as well how, like, long it's been baked for, how hard and sharp that crust is, you do some real damage.

Alex:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm. Whenever I eat a, pret baguette, I always tear the roof of my mouth up. So I imagine if you just smack someone across the face, you'd absolutely eviscerate them. Yeah.

Andrew:

You turn to the slime for 1 second.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

You acquired some conducting slime recently.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Do you imagine that that material, this conducting slime, will play into your slime case?

Alex:

My, slime mold? Well, I guess maybe in the future, and this is not useful to wave, but maybe phones will just be made out of slime.

Andrew:

Do you want to explain what slime mold is?

Alex:

Slime mold is, almost like a primordial soup of magic. It's incredible. It's like a. Apparently, we don't know whether it's an animal or a plant. Okay. Because it is a plant that exhibits the behaviors of some animals, like some bacteria. It can solve puzzles and, like, solve problems while also being kind of primordial ooze. And it's very beautiful. Sometimes it looks horrible, and it's, like, kind of slimy, horrible, moldy stuff, but sometimes it fruits, and it's just, like, got these incredibly brightly colored iridescent patterns.

Andrew:

But it's conductive.

Alex:

Right. But it conducts. Conducts electricity, so you can make circuits out of it. So if you could get enough of it, you could grow a. You could grow a phone.

Andrew:

Well, also, could this mean, like, you wouldn't have to plunge your hand into the slime ball because you could just poke the outside of the slime ball.

Alex:

Oh. And it just opens and presents itself to you.

Andrew:

Or it would just like.

Alex:

It'd be like a,

Andrew:

Your phone would be inside.

Alex:

Oh, you just use the phone as a slime ball. Yeah. Because it's capacitive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's it, isn't it? You just have a ball of slime. You don't need to plunge your hand into the slime because it's just there. Oh, shit, man.

Andrew:

Carrying around a bit of a pain. But that's a marketing problem, I think.

Alex:

Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew:

I like this because tackling it from a different angle, we, the first half, we tackle, make everything, make either a case or the phone the same size. And this is more like fall protection.

Alex:

Yeah, that's actually. That's a good point, because the reason that you have a phone case is in case you drop your phone. Yeah. Like, it's a twofold. I guess you might. You want it to look like something cool. You want to stamp your thumbprint on your phone. Right. They all look the same. You want to make it look different. You buy a phone case that looks like a loaf of bread, but also you want it to protect it when you drop it. Yeah, yeah. And if I think about things that are really good at falling or being dropped.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

It's cats.

Andrew:

Cats, yeah.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

They always land on their feet.

Alex:

Always land on their feet. Just give your phone. Give your phone to a cat to hold.

Andrew:

you actually mean you give it to them, or is there some cell tape involved? I think I can imagine. Like, the case actually was like a little collar for your cat that your phone clipped into.

Alex:

Oh, yeah, that's it. Every. Every wave case comes with a cat. Your idea of attaching it via the collar is better than my idea of having them hold it. Or I was gonna suggest that we pull out the old crisper gun.

Andrew:

I love the.

Alex:

Yeah. Ah.

Andrew:

We talk about CRispr alone this show.

Alex:

And we crispered thumbs. Thumbs.

Andrew:

Or a pouch of kangaroo pouch making marsupials.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Wow.

Alex:

Tuck your phone in there.

Andrew:

That really is like playing God. But I do like that. Cute. It's meowing. Give a little pat.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

I bet it's quite nice for the cat as well. It's warm. Phone cases go quite warm. It vibrates sometimes. nice little pat, really? Basically, yeah.

Alex:

Be funny if your phone rang and it's had the sound of a plane going overhead. The cat walked past.

Andrew:

If we're talking about big business pivots, they can make. My final thought really is, It's on this falling idea is that. What if they didn't make cases at all and they went to the root of the problem? The real root is exactly this. You have a few people drop their phones, but what if you went to them and they gave you consultancy to become, like, lightning fast reflexes? Super hyper fast reflexes. So you got trained to be in a state where if anything was falling around you below, like, waist height, you just instinctively grab it.

Alex:

Ah, that's the. That's real cool, though.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

But, it's not very accessible. Right. There's an accessibility problem there.

Andrew:

Yeah, that. That is. That is true.

Alex:

What if instead of wave teaching you to do it, wave had a group of people who did it and you just. You just rented one to walk around.

Andrew:

With you like a public service? Well, could we go deeper? I guess we. We give the monopoly of fighting fires to firefighters. We have a monopoly of, violence. We give to the stake. We have a monopoly of phone protection just to waive. And they just walk around like the police or the firefighters or government officials. Just out among us, plain clothed officers, just darting about, stopping phones, hitting the ground.

Alex:

I love this.

Andrew:

Your taxpayer money goes to making sure your iPhone nine never, ever hits that concrete.

Alex:

I'm super excited about this because it's also going to look really cool.

Andrew:

Yeah.

Alex:

And I'm purposefully going to drop my phone quite regularly, just so someone swoops in and point.

Andrew:

I imagine they could be on high rises like snipers, but without. Not bullets. They have little airbags they could fire and they'd be tracking people who looked really clumsy.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

And as soon as the phone drops and then little, airbag hits the ground, catches your phone.

Alex:

Actually, a little airbags are a good idea. Just in general, what if your phone case was just a little puck that went in the back and if it detected it was falling, it just. Boom.

Andrew:

You went on the wave website.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

No, no phone cases, just a drop down menu. How heavy is your phone? Press button. It's that heavy. And, they just send you that big an airbag and that's it.

Alex:

It's a nightmare if it goes off in your pocket, but, I mean, it's gonna protect your phone no matter what you have.

Andrew:

You have to. Your life is full of risks, right?

Alex:

Yeah. if you fall over.

Andrew:

Yeah, exactly.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

It's all. It almost doubles up for that. Right.

Alex:

You have it.

Andrew:

If you kept it, like, in the breast pocket of like, your shirt. That means you could never face plant again. Yeah, because the phone, it would save you.

Alex:

Yeah. Holy shit. You fall on your face, the thing goes off and you just land back on your feet again.

Andrew:

And you continue walking as if nothing ever happened.

Alex:

Oh, super cool.

Andrew:

So that's, if that's like the high end option.

Alex:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Is there a budget option for that?

Alex:

Well, it's just a lot of spring, just a lot of springs all over a phone.

Andrew:

I mean, I'm holding my new iPhone right now, and it's titanium. So there's potential that you could actually.

Alex:

Weld, just weld a bunch of springs to the bag.

Andrew:

Really? I imagine because this is the budget option. If you're paying the big bucks, you get their bag. But the cheap option is a bunch of really old and rusty springs. It's a, I imagine that'd be quite an interesting aesthetic.

Alex:

Oh, you pay the really high end, and it's like an anti gravity module. Just like, pauses it as it hits the floor. Just like m just lands like a hoverboard.

Andrew:

I mean, that could all, if it just dropped. As soon as your phone started dropping, it just like cluttered the ground with little electromagnets. it just bounced it right back up.

Alex:

Twing.

Andrew:

That's great. We covered a lot of ground there, ranging from excellent ideas to very excellent ideas. But I feel, you know, we can't go in and pitch everything we need to go and tell Ross, the co founder of wave one idea that he can buy into one thing he can start his journey off with us. With. What would you choose of that one idea?

Alex:

Well, Andrew, I am, addicted to power.

Andrew:

Okay?

Alex:

So it has to be getting the EU to standardize all phones.

Andrew:

This is such an interesting route to power. You've taken your improv comedy podcast.

Alex:

Yeah, but that's it. That's what it has to be, is me and Ross knocking on the door of the EU saying, hey, we've got it. We're sick of all this unsustainable phone case nonsense. We want to standardize everything. We want to make the world a better place through standardization, which is the thing that I'd never thought I could say. and everyone listening to this podcast who knows me is going to give.

Andrew:

The fuck 15 cm by 7 cm. That's it. Every phone's that now. Yeah, I love it. I think I might go for every case is the same size, and then you somehow glue or clip your phone into it. But I think they're compatible, actually.

Alex:

Yeah, yeah.

Andrew:

Because again, it's like you need a long term vision, right? You need to prove to the EU that people want standardization, that this is an area that people feel strongly about. So you start selling these cases, right? That standardized cases, until you build up, this body of evidence being like people are crying out for phone size standardization. And then you go to the EU and because you have this first mover advantage, this is how it works. I believe EU has to let you choose the first standardized shape. I believe that's how it works.

Alex:

It's all, this is great, this is great stuff. But I know that if I was stood in front of Ursula, von DER Leyen, and she was like, what, what size and shape of foam would you like? I'd be like, I want it 1 cm by 30 cm. She'd be like, are you sure? And I'm like, yes, all phones are 1 cm by 30 cm.

Andrew:

Now I also like the idea that you would do that. She'd be like, I don't like the sound of it, but okay, then you've shown me the numbers as she brings out her like standardized phone case as well. It does work. Okay.

Alex:

Every phone is the shape of an egg. An ostrich egg.

Andrew:

Alex, if Ross, the co founder of Wave, wanted to get back in contact with us to tell us what he thought of our ideas, or if our listener wanted to talk to us for some other reason, how they do that, how could they help us out?

Alex:

The best way there, Andrew, is to email us on brainsand the outsidemail uh.com.

Andrew:

I also realized we forgot to do something very, very important last episode.

Alex:

What's that?

Andrew:

We need to thank rich Endersby Marsh for writing us, our amazing new theme music.

Alex:

We really do. Yeah, it's incredible. I'm so proud of having a podcast that has its own theme music as well as its own branding.

Andrew:

We gave him so many vague, vague instructions. I just sent him a link to a Scooby doo theme song and yet he managed to spin something out of that.

Alex:

He's absolutely incredible. We'll link through his various bands that he's part of in the show notes.

Andrew:

Do you have one final business idea, Alex?

Alex:

yeah, actually, tape measure the measures in parsecs.

Andrew:

That's actually really good.

Alex:

Keep your brain on the outside.

Andrew:

Keep your brain on the outside.

People on this episode

Contributor

Alex Waterston

Host
Head Shot

Andrew Blance

Host