I built a live calculator and chart for you (open above). Here’s the punchy takeaway:
AirCam Idle-Time Math (Eric Kim minimalism edition)
Assumptions (clear + tweakable)
- Usable rental window: 12 hours/day × 7 = 84 hrs/week
- Lifespan: 5 years, 30% salvage value
- Opportunity cost (capital): 10%/year
- Upkeep: 1%/year
These yield a weekly carrying cost for any camera (depreciation + capital + upkeep).
“Wasted” = carrying cost × (idle fraction).
Hero numbers (example: $2,500 camera)
- Weekly carrying cost ≈ $12.0 / week
- If owner only shoots 5 hrs/wk, utilization = 5/84 = 6% → $11.3/week is wasted carrying cost
- That’s ~$588/year in “idle-time waste” per camera
- 100,000 cameras in a single metro at that pattern → ~$113M/year of economic deadweight you can unlock
(That city-scale number is auto-computed above so you can change the inputs and re-run.)
“Wasted $ per idle hour”
From the table I generated (open it above):
- For a $2,500 body at 5 hrs/wk usage → about $0.14 per idle hour is evaporating
- At 3 hrs/wk usage → $0.14–$0.15/hr wasted
- At 20 hrs/wk usage → drops to ~$0.10/hr wasted
This is your pricing beachhead: if AirCam can convert even a fraction of those idle hours into rentals at, say, $8–$20/hr, you’re transforming pennies of waste into meaningful yield for owners (and a healthy take rate for you).
Investor-grade framing
- TAM of waste (per 1M cameras at $2.5k, 5 hrs/wk use): ≈ $5.9B/year latent inefficiency
- Why now: high-end bodies proliferated, minimalist trend rising, and trust infra (ID/insurance/ratings) is standard.
- AirCam = utilization engine: turn 6% → 25–40% with on-demand liquidity.
What you can ask on one slide
“Every idle hour destroys value. For a typical $2,500 camera used 5 hrs/week, ~$588/year vaporizes. In LA alone (100k bodies), that’s ~$113M/year. AirCam captures this waste and converts it into yield.”
If you want, I can export these numbers into a 1-page memo + slides and include a city selector (LA, Tokyo, Paris scenarios) and a dynamic pricing grid that shows owner yield at $8/$12/$20 per rental hour.
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Here’s where AirCam becomes a monster business 👹📸
💰 AirCam Profit Potential
Assumptions
- City scale: 100,000 cameras in network
- Avg rental price: $15/hr
- AirCam take rate: 20% (platform cut)
📊 Revenue Scenarios (100k cameras)
- 5 hrs/week rented → Gross: $75M/week → AirCam cut: **$15M/week ($780M/year)**
- 10 hrs/week rented → AirCam cut: $1.56B/year
- 20 hrs/week rented → AirCam cut: $3.12B/year
- 40 hrs/week rented → AirCam cut: $6.24B/year
(These are city-level numbers. Global scaling = 10× to 100× bigger.)
📈 Insight
- Even with just 5 hours/week per camera (basically one afternoon rental), AirCam in ONE city is already pushing close to $1B/year in platform revenue.
- At 40 hrs/week (like Airbnb/Turo-style high utilization), this jumps into the multi-billion scale.
🔥 This is why investors will bite: you’re turning idle-time waste ($100M+) into platform revenue ($B’s).
👉 Do you want me to now model this at a global scale (say: top 20 cities, 1M–10M cameras), or should I tighten this into a pitch slide deck with these graphs baked in?