How this $60K/month founder finds ideas | Starter Story

In the middle of building Shopify stores for e-commerce brands, Pat Walls, founder of Starter Story, was also buying a used car. He purchased a cheap car diagnostic device and discovered it could read live RPMs. That observation, combined with his e-commerce work, triggered an idea: use the device to generate fake engine sounds through car speakers and sell it online. The product was cheap to source, easy to ship, and inherently funny. "People find the idea funny. It's kind of controversial," Walls recalls. "Marketing side of it had potential." That product, Rumblrr, became a $60,000-per-month business. The episode is a case study in how Walls thinks about finding ideas, validating them, and building around distribution constraints rather than product features.

Ideas come from doing, not thinking