3 Startup Ideas: Mouse Jigglers, Employee Monitoring Softwares and Photoshop Copycats

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, so here's the deal. I have an update on a story that we talked about about two years ago. Partially, I want to like tell you something cool. Partially I just want to nerd out with you on this topic because I'm shocked by it.
So the pandemic hits in what, 2021, we all go remote and you and I start talking about something that was fascinating. So basically there's this weird Venn diagram of MFM listeners. There's this shithead and then there's this ambitious person and they overlap to create these ambitious shitheads. And what do ambitious shitheads do during the pandemic when we all go remote?
They do this thing called over-employed. Have you heard of over-employment?

**Shaan Puri** (0:48)
I think is over-employed when you basically, one guy has three jobs, but the three jobs don't know each other.

**Sam Parr** (0:54)
Yeah, it's like a culture.
It's like this tactic. It's the strategy. I don't know what you call it, but it's very weird and it explodes.
And basically a small group of people, they go and get multiple jobs because they're like, dude, I'm working at Airbnb. I'm only working 20 hours a week. I get paid $150,000. I definitely can also try and get a job at Facebook.

**Shaan Puri** (1:14)
Right, working remote was the key unlock, right?

**Sam Parr** (1:16)
It was the key unlock where they could kind of hide. And this story we talked about, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times has talked about, it's kind of been popular, but I have an update on this story and it's very fascinating to me. So last week, Wells Fargo made an announcement where a couple dozen of their employees, specifically ones who worked in the wealth management unit, they laid them all off.
And they laid them off because they found that they were using these devices that you put your mouse on top of and it's almost like a treadmill.
And it makes it seem like the mouse is constantly moving on their computer.
And they also did it with key pads where they had this device above their keyboard where it was typing stuff. And the reason they did that is because what has happened recently since the pandemic is there's been software that has absolutely exploded where it monitors employees work. Now this has already existed in remote first companies, but now many people are remote and this type of software has exploded to the point where something like 50% of all employers who have remote workers use some type of spy software. That's not the right word, but you know what I mean? Like some type of like...

**Shaan Puri** (2:22)
Productivity detection monitoring.

**Sam Parr** (2:25)
Yeah, spy software is more realistic, but that's like interesting. But all right, and so back to that Venn diagram of shitheads and ambitious people, here's what they're doing. They're using these things, I'm gonna tell you all about them, where they're exactly what the Wells Fargo folks were using, where they're like a treadmill for your mouse. So they're called mouse jigglers and it's crazy. Now there's a company called Hubstaff and Teramind. I think it's called, there's two of them.
They have something like 5,000 companies amongst them and they are employee tracking software. And they did this survey where they looked at a million of their customers or a million users using their spying tracking software. And they found that roughly 7% of the million people who are using this software, were using these mouse jigglers or something like it. And then one of the CEOs of the companies, they go, the true number is actually probably almost certainly higher because they found out that they were being really conservative about this.
And I was shocked. This market is so much bigger than I ever thought. And I wanna tell you about a few people who are winning in this market. The first one, on Amazon, go to Tech8. So the word tech and then the number eight USA.

**Shaan Puri** (3:43)
So Tech8 USA, this is another mouse jiggler. By the way, mouse jiggler is my new go-to disc for somebody who works at a computer all day. Oh, he's just a mouse jiggler.

**Sam Parr** (3:52)
It's the best. So there's this company called Tech8 USA. They're based in Austin, Texas.
And what they do is you can buy these things for like 30 or $40 and you can like add like a cool design to it. Like what they're doing is they're basically, they're selling these like, kind of fraud, like helping you to commit fraud or do something a little bit strange. And you could add like a cool like USA flag to it, or you can have-