| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kt2krz2cadkaxg4xbfkeza6m |
|---|---|
| Readwise ID | 01kt2krz2cadkaxg4xbfkeza6m |
| Date | 2026-05-21 |
| Author | youtube.com |
| Category | video |
\n\nSource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHhg-l9AZpM
Nobody is paying attention to thisproblem. Right now, everyone and theirgrandma is busy chasing the latest AItrends. But what if the real money is ina category everyone’s ignoring? This wasa massive problem [music], hiding in avery sexy niche. Meet Bo. He built abusiness around one of the most boringtopics imaginable, and today hisbusiness is doing almost 140,000a month, three of his boring businessideas hiding in plain sight right nowthat you can build, and his advice forhow to find a million-dollar idea in acategory with very, very lowcompetition. This one, I promise, youcannot miss. Let’s dive in. I’m PatWalls, and this is Starter Story.
Okay, Bo, welcome to the channel. Tellme about who you are, what you built,and what’s your story. Hello, Pat. I amBo. I am co-founder of Savvy Nomad.Savvy Nomad helps US citizens abroad payless taxes back in the US. Today, we do 1.7million a year, serve over 1,400customers, and we have approximately saved 10million in state taxes for ourcustomers. Okay, before we jump into it,I want to understand what business youbuilt, how much money does this make?Could you pull up the app, the businessmodel, and then walk me through some ofthe Stripe dashboards to show me howmuch money this is making? We runbasically the American infrastructurefor people who don’t live in America anymore. We have, uh, three subscriptionplans for different types of thecustomers. We have a basic domicile,then we have a mid-tier plan, which isthe most popular. Last but not least,our premium option, domicile premium.So, here is our Stripe with subscription.
Business. So, we focus on MRR. Uh, right now we have 140,000 MRR, net volume slightly higher because we charge upfront.Every month we add 120 to 150 new customers.Also, we track ARR, which is 1.7, and the amount of active subscribers.My favorite part of that story is that he’s not building just another AI app or chasing some TikTok trend.He picked one of the most boring niches in the world and turned it into a million-dollar business.And this is the lesson that most people miss because they’re on social media.Sometimes, the best opportunities are the ones that nobody’s excited about and nobody’s talking about.
But I know your question: how do you actually find ideas like this?Well, we have the data and we put together a free report with unsexy, boring business ideas that are actually making money right now.We’ll break down real businesses making millions in niches you never even thought about with actual revenue numbers, growth tactics,And the strategies behind each one. Ifyou’re interested in finding problemsthat are actually worth solving, butmight not be the sexiest ideas, thenhead to the link in the description tograb the report for free and take a lookat them. All right, let’s get back tothe episode. I love that you were kindof a software engineer, a technical guy,yet you decided, “Hey, I want to get infront of customers. I want to buildsomething a little bit different.” It’ssimilar to what I did with StarterStory. I was also a software engineer
and I got into media. I got intoYouTube. Maybe there’s something therewhere technical people can take theirsoftware skills and apply them to cool,boring businesses like this. Let’s talkabout boring ideas. How did you come upwith the idea for Savvy Nomad? Where didthat come from? How did you get the ideafor this? On my side, because of the warin Ukraine, I was rebuilding my life,and navigating in much more internationalThe reality that pulled me deep into theworld of international taxation andeventually into building a previousstartup in the digital nomad tax space.
In that process, I kept seeingthat Americans were the biggest, [music]most underserved group. My co-founder,he met surfers from California who hadbeen abroad for years and was stillstuck paying California state taxes.
He recognized the opportunity and startedbuilding an initial version of [music]the product. When he was looking for amarketing and business co-founder, weconnected and together we turned thisidea into Nomad. Okay, so let’s talkabout the main reason why I wanted tobring you on this channel is that youbuilt a boring or unsexy business in aboring and unsexy niche, taxation,taxes. So, let’s talk about this boringbusiness. Why do you think that thisbusiness specifically, this boringbusiness worked and became amillion-dollar business? I think itWorks for four reasons. First, lowcompetition for real demand. In unsexymarkets, you often have fewer talentedfounders chasing very real problems andthe ratio of opportunity to competitionis way better. Second, extremely highpay. Taxes, compliance, domiciles,people don’t want to deal with them.
They just want to hire somebody to paysomebody just to forget about this,which is exactly why they’re willing to[music] pay. Third, the value isconcrete and quantifiable. In a lot ofstartup categories, you’re selling abrighter future or some vague promise.In taxes, [music]you can say, “Here’s a likely financialbenefit and here is what our servicecosts.” It makes the customer decisionrational and straightforward. So, youneed to sell less. Fourth, it matchedour strengths as a team. So, this wasn’tjust an unsexy market with opportunity,it was a market where our strengths wereunusually complementary. That’s why I
Think it worked. Okay, cool. I mean, Ireally like number three that you saidthere, which is basically like, when yougo to a customer, you say, “Hey, here’sthe exact amount of money you’re goingto save if you use our service, andhere’s how much our service costs.” Ifthe amount they’re going to save is morethan what the service costs, it’s ano-brainer purchase. It’s a lot easierto sell something like that than it isto sell some AI app that, as youmentioned, doesn’t have like a truequantifiable result. Let’s dive a littlebit more into this, because since you’vebeen operating in the taxation space,
you’ve probably seen other maybetax-related ideas or finance-relatedideas or other boring or unsexyopportunities. Could you give us a fewideas the audience watching here couldthink about potentially building? Whatdo you think you could build amillion-dollar business right now inboring and unsexy niches? Let me giveYou three ideas. First, productizeimmigration workflows. A lot of peoplewant to move to the US, and they’repaying agencies 8, 10, sometimes even15,000 dollars for the process, for whatis essentially a workflow problem. Aproduct that sits in the middle, guidingprocess, templates, maybe a lawyer
review at the end, could charge one ortwo thousand dollars and still [music]feel like a steal. Second idea ishelping people move to tax-friendlyjurisdictions and cleanly exit stickyones. There are two sides of the samecoin. On the one side, you have peoplemoving to places like Dubai, Costa Rica,Malaysia, and people are nervous aboutgetting it wrong. On the other side, youhave people leaving countries likeCanada, UK, Spain. There are exitprocedures, notification requirements,sometimes even exit taxes. Youproductize the entry and the exit.
Third, international banking, assetholding, and estate planning. Founders,Investors spread across multiplecountries who need help with things likeopening a bank account in Singapore,choosing the right jurisdictions forholding real estate or IP. Today, thereis no real product for this. And what Ireally like about all three ideas, thecustomer is often the same person atdifferent stages. It’s not threeseparate customers, in my opinion. It’sone customer and multiple revenueevents. I love these ideas, and I think
that there’s like a couple convergingideas happening here. The first one isthat there’s a lot of regulation andgovernment that has been built up overmany, many years on things like taxes orcompliance or immigration, these sortsof things. And that’s not going anywhereanytime soon. Yet, there’s now twothings, AI and software that can helpsimplify or productize these servicesacross the entire world. So, I know thismight be a little bit different than thetypical interviews that we do on Starter.
Story, but I actually think this mightbe huge. And uh I hope you’re watchingup to this point because my nextquestion for you is if you were to startover today, a lot of people watchingthis are going, “Hmm, maybe I couldbuild something in this space. Maybe Iknow a little bit about some tax orimmigration thing.” What would be yourplaybook if you had to start over today?
You had $0. You wanted to build amillion-dollar business. What would beyour playbook in 2026 to build an unsexyor niche business? Second point, startwith a painful problem where people arealready overpaying. Look for categorieswhere people are stressed, confused,losing money. The ones that I have in mymind, taxes, compliance, legalworkforce, residencies, banking,documentation. The less people want todeal with the problem themselves, themore valuable it is to solve it forthem. If the customer already has to dothe same, the demand is already there.
Then, look how they’re currently solvingit. Usually, it’s one of two extremes.Either they DIY, it was scattered blogposts, Reddit threads, or they hire aprofessional for thousands of dollars.If you see the gap with your product,step number two, evaluate competitionrelative to opportunity. A lot offounders only think about market size.
Also ask, how many smart, capablefounders are actually choosing to buildhere? In sexy categories, AI apps,social platforms, creator tools, themarket might be huge, but you’recompeting against hundreds ofwell-fundedteams. In unsexy markets, you get theopposite. Real demand, high willingnessto pay, and very few people who want totouch the category. Their asymmetry isyour edge. Step number three, pick oneworkflow, productize it, and if you can,build the recurring layer on top. Don’ttry to build a platform. Pick the mostcommon, most painful workflow, and turnIt into repeatable, step-by-stepproduct. For us, it was a state domicilechange. We didn’t try to solve all ofthe international taxation; we solvedone thing really well. I love thatplaybook. I want to dive a little deeper
into step three, which is what youmentioned, which is pick one workflowand then productize it. With AI apps,you can do this really easily now. Youdon’t need a developer team to buildsome crazy app. You kind of turnprocess, some boring process likesomething related to tax or immigration,into software that people can use, andthis software can make a bunch of moneylike your business does, almost $2million a year. Can you just show me anexample of what that software lookslike? Like, what does your app actuallylook like? How hard is it to buildsomething like this? So, at thebeginning of our product, we just ask alot of questions about some qualifyingquestions. And remember I told you aboutTransactional value.
So, we even showpotentially how much you can save.And then, in the end, we show differentplans, what is more suitable for you.And most of our customers are done withthe online part of the process maybe in lessthan 1 hour.
Cool. Well, thanks forshowing that. I’m sure people watchingthis are wondering, “Okay, why are weletting him advertise his product onhere?” That’s not the goal of this. Mygoal was to see how simple this softwarecan be till you build it.And I reallylike the onboarding flow that you didwhere you showed potential tax savings.That probably convinces people to buy.That’s super cool. On this note, what’sthe tech stack behind this? How simpleit is to build stuff like this? Whattech stack runs your app? We optimizefor speed and letting non-technicalpeople run things. We use Bubble. Ourentire product is built on it. Framer,our marketing website. Ghost, contentpublishing. ChatGPT Plus, Claude, a lotOf operations tasks. Ahrefs for SEO. APIfor AI optimization. Customer IO foremails. Power BI plus BigQuerydashboards, reporting on the top of thedata warehouse. TurnKey churn analysis.
Stripe, billing and payments. AndSavvyCal, scheduling of calls. Okay,cool. Well, thank you for sharing that.I love how simple it is to buildsomething like this nowadays. Lastquestion we ask all founders who come onStarter Story is what advice would youhave to young Bo or anyone watching thiswho wants to build a million-dollarbusiness in unsexy niche. What would beyour advice? The difference between awinner and a loser is that the winnertried one more time. I shut down myprevious startup and I was defeated. Icould have stopped there, but [music]something in me still wanted to go. Andevery successful founder I know has astory exactly like this. If you are inthat place right now, try one more time.
Well, great. That’s the best advice thatI heard all week. Thank you, Bo, forcoming on the channel. I hope peoplewatching this think it’s cool that youbuilt in a boring and unsexy niche. I’drather make 20,000 a year in asexy AI app right now. So, thanks forcoming on, sharing everything. Yeah,thank you. Thanks for having me. Gus,producer of Starter Story. What did youthink of this business? I’m alwaysshocked by the variety of different, likecategories and niches that people arereally successful in. Just because
it’s not an area that I know, it doesn’tmean it’s not like a big problem. But,that’s the first thing: what acrazy little carve-out in theworld. There’s so many sexy ideas outthere, and as he mentioned, that there areso many capable founders attracted tothese ideas because of social media. Yousee someone else doing it on socialmedia; that’s the business you should gobuild. But, he’s doing the exactOpposite. He’s chasing something super boring, tax. [music] Every single personis impacted by taxes, and itusually has to do with a lot of money.
You can save a lot of money by helpingpeople do that. I really hope peoplehave made it this far into the video andare getting inspired by something alittle bit different than what wetypically cover. And yeah, to that pointof like, you know, I’m on Twitter everyday and it’s just like the latest AIthing drops or this new way to, youknow, do this cool thing with AI, Ioften feel like I don’t knowI can’t keep up with all this. I don’tknow if Bo would say this exactly, butit’s almost like he doesn’t have to keepup with all of it because he’s likesolving a real problem. And I thinkthat’s a problem that I experience, islike all these shiny tools andstuff get me so distracted. One ofhis points he said is like just go solvea real problem.
And if there’s any more proof, a lot ofthe interviews we do with apps and SaaS,I mean it’s amazing when it hits 140,000a month. And if there’s any more proofyou need, that’s it right there. So ifyou’re watching this, I’m going to put alink in the description with 50 moreboring ideas just like this. This is thestuff you’re not going to see on socialmedia, stuff you’re not going to see onYouTube, you’re not going to see it onX. Go down there, click that, anddownload it. Uh, I think you’ll like it.
So, thank you guys for watching thisone. We’ll see you in the next one.Peace.