Initializing the player… Entrepreneur and ex-presidential candidate Andrew Yang believes the next big wave of startup opportunities will come from a question most founders still ignore: what if your business model focused on giving money back to people instead of extracting it from them? Yang drew inspiration from Mark Cuban. Not by his riches or fame, but through Cost Plus Drugs — the startup Cuban founded that sells medicine at cost. Yang compiled a list. “Housing, education, food, fuel, transportation, media, and wireless,” Yang told TechCrunch during a recent episode of Equity. What everyone spends their money on. He chose wireless services and, last September, launched Nobile Mobile—a new MVNO that delivers cell coverage at a fraction of traditional carriers’ prices and refunds customers for any unused data. With AI poised to squeeze wages and eliminate jobs, Yang views lowering the cost of living as a major business opportunity. Cost Plus Drugs, Noble Mobile, minimalist phone makers like the Light Phone, and even online grocer Misfits Markets are among the first examples of a new business model in which a startup’s main value proposition is simply returning more of its margin to the customer. “AI is going to absorb a huge share of the value and the jobs, and Americans are eventually going to wake up and ask, ‘How do I afford the basics?’”
Andrew Yang thinks the next big startup opportunity is lowering the cost of living
- by stefan