3 millionaires reveal their super niche businesses

0:00 All right, we're back. We're playing Shoot Your Shot where we take Founders and business owners from the audience. Who get to sit in this chair right here. It's just their business. We have founders all the way from a million bucks to hundred million dollar businesses. So let's do it. Let's bring out the next founder.

0:15 He's smiling. First leather jacket on the pond. What's your name? Yeah, I'm Rishi. I'm one of the founders of Hot Play and we powered over a hundred million dollars of sales. For independent food entrepreneurs.

0:27 Okay. So the big number's a hundred million in sales. Yeah. Unpack that. Uh what does that mean? Totally. So Hot Plate is a platform that lets anybody sell food online. We work with like And with like small pop up bakers that like sell food at their house, all the way to like this guy who's an ice cream maker in Minnesota. It's Airbnb for food type of thing, right? Type of thing. Yeah, yeah. So we're starting right now as a tool that lets a seller who has like an Instagram following sell food directly to their audience. A lot of times those sellers are using like s you know, spreadsheets, Venmo DMs, like a hodgepodge of tools. Or they're using a platform like Square Shop. If I just isn't built for like pre order. But will they stay small? Is it like for the person who wants to stay as a small business? It's a really good question. So a lot of people think that like, oh you guys just work with like really tiny pop ups and eventually go to a brick and mortar. We actually have tons of six or seven figure businesses that are doing drops and selling food directly to their audience. I bought this uh

1:16 There's this dude who's real jacked. He's like a bodybuilder who does these cookies. Yeah, but he he's he does these drops of like cheat meal cookies are insanely huge. Way over the top. But like he sells out in seconds and it's all just through his Instagram presence'cause he builds up a lot of trust. So First of all, Hot Plate. Incredible name. Thank you. And this was totally like a Covid thing a little bit. I remember like You have you heard of Pop Up Bagels? Yeah, well actually we powered Papa Bagels. Oh really? So Papa Bagels was uh they actually started in Western Connecticut, where I used to live.

1:49 There was a bunch of companies that did this where it was like a husband and wife couple like I'm gonna make this and sell it in my apartment and we'll drop it out of the windows when people come and whatever. And these guys did'cause Covid made it like hey, just do a weird pickup on the camera. We're sitting at home, let's just make food and then we'll do and so these guys did that with bagels and they like you had a You have an appointment and you could only get it by the dozen and now they've since raised A lot of venture capital and they do hundreds of millions and their product is amazing. I love it. So you powered them at the beginning? We powered them in the beginning, um, you know, as they scaled to like the multi to your point, almost billion dollar empire that they are now. And so we work with tons of pop ups across the country that I kinda like the next Papa Bagels in a way too. How much revenue do you do?

2:28 Yeah. So we're uh we're do we do like hundreds of thousands of revenue a month. Got it. Um and yeah, are just growing very quickly. Honestly, most of the hundred million in sales has been the last two years. Did you raise funding? Yeah. So we've raised uh a little over four million dollars total, but we're actually profitable. So we've been profitable the last uh almost a year. And I've been running the business profitably, which has honestly been amazing. So wait, explain what does your product actually do? You make the app that the consumer uses, you make the thing that lets them have a storefront. Yeah.

2:55 For their Instagram. So we started and what we are today is that storefront for them to on Instagram. So right now is like for chefs and bakers. Exactly. So right now we're the platform that a chef uses to put that link in their bio so that they can streamline their order management, right? But as you're saying, like the end state and kind of the dream for Hot Play. Is that anyone can go not just to sell food independently, but also to buy it. And we're Who would I go to? Like what's like so in SF there's a bakery called Butter and Crumble. It's like one of the most popular bakeries in SF. So if you want to order from Butter and Crumble, there's a three hour line every single day. If you want to skip the line, they do drops on their Instagram and they use hot plate. Um they have a Yeah, almost twenty thousand person waiting lists. So she's got eighty three eighty three thousand followers. Yep.

3:38 And okay, I go order from here. Yep. It's like a ticketing system for her to fulfill orders. Exactly. But you don't do anything beyond that. The pickups and all that stuff, they coordinate themselves. Well, so we we do a lot of like once you order as a customer, we send you like automatic text message reminders about the pickup and we do a lot of the like the logistics coordination. But right now it's kind of crazy that you're pointing it out that we are a Pre-order. Pick up platform for like pop up chefs. And we're doing like millions a month in sales. It's gay, like we are truly like still on day one of what this can be and we're Are you are you scratching the surface? Totally. What's a founder gonna say now? Yeah. We've we've we've fully tapped into this. We were talking to a guy who's got a TMJ pad, he's like I gotta expand. Yeah, that's true. But like like like I'm a buyer of these products, but like how many crazy people are there that make shit in their apartment or these small mom and pop? No, it it's a good point that like right now

4:30 I think that the market that we're in is still really niche, right? It's like still like there's you know, maybe tens of thousands of sellers in the US that are selling food this way. The real opportunity for us is that we think we have an opportunity not just Playing an existing market, like you're saying about BW SaaS, right? There's so many companies that are just playing existing markets. We have a rare opportunity to actually create a market and make this market mainstream. And I think consumer is the way that's gonna happen in a way that like Only a handful of company in the last 10 years have been able to do. If you look at like call sheet, polymarket, whatnot, like I can count'em a hand, the number of like consumer trends and categories. And that's not good, is it? Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes. The team at HubSpot went through, they pulled out

5:14 All the simple Relatable. interesting, profitable uh ideas that we have brainstormed and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. Like I don't want to be able to do it. All or nothing. Yeah, I don't want to count on one hand how many companies have been successful. I think it's because consumers hard. I mean, like if you know, I think really I really like think about what we're doing kinda like substack, right? Like substack made it so that anyone can start a media business without having to like run one, right?

5:45 And I think in the same way Hopley lets anyone start a food business without having to open a brick and mortar. Right. So like right now the traditional way you start a food business is I have to take out a loan, spend hundreds of thousands just to like Open a brick and mortar where the the business's not proven out. The rent goes up, the labor could go up, then greeting costs goes up, and you're susceptible to all that. How'd you get this idea? Um

6:03 So me and my co founders actually started in at U T. Um, we and I've always been obsessed with food, worked at a you know, a food delivery company for a little bit, honestly hated it'cause so much of food has been really consumer first. I'm like consumer centric. And one of my buddies and I were during COVID, we're like, Why you know, we wanna open up a food business. So we actually rented an apartment. in our like campus and open like a Thai restaurant.

6:25 And that apartment. Um we ran that for a few months and then kind of realized the old big man on campus playbook. Open up a Thai restaurant. How'd that do for the social life? Was that actually like amazing? And then Covet happened and it's like okay, you can't have people showing up to your house to like eat Thai food?'Cause like you can't even see people, right? During COVID. Boring question, but is that legal to just open up a restaurant out of an apartment? Yeah, definitely not. Baking's okay or something like that. Baking's okay. So there's single cottage food laws that lets you sell food directly from your home. And what's really cool is also recently, like Texas just expanded their laws. They're called food freedom laws. So you actually sell almost anything out of your house now. And in er for example, Arizona, the dairy laws have really opened up to now people are starting these like there's like this huge trend of like home cafes that are starting in like Yuma, Arizona, where like We have tons of like these home businesses starting in Arizona. Coffee shop in their house. Coffee shop in their house. It's actually insane. And like people Arizona's so hot. But not in the cool, insane way. Yeah, no, it's it's it's um it's insane. We have like businesses like A to Z creamery, it was in Hopkins, Minnesota. Who's running one of the largest like ice cream brands in Minnesota right now, doing six to seven figures a year in revenue on like 40 to 50% profit margin, which like is unheard. That's like a that's a SAS.

7:38 Company. Right. But like the reason he's able to do that is because it's a team of like three or four people. He does he uses like Instagram and Hoplate as a storefront and doesn't do walk ups, right? And is able to like streamline all that in a way where he has like Way more demand than supply and is able to sell out every single week and have people come and pick it up. What do you guys do? Fee or right now actually it's all fee. So the way our business model is kinda cool to the chefs. So Our m our mission at Hot Play is that we're a chef first company. And so we take that to the extreme where like

8:06 As a customer, when you check out from a Hopley vendor, we charge the customer a small fee at checkout and the chef only pays payment processing. So the beauty of that is that I as a chef can start, there's already so many fixed costs in food as it is, that being able to like eliminate some of those on our side has made us really attractive to vendors outside of like a traditional platform. I would assume people are not that price sensitive. when they're checking out'cause it's like I've been watching this on Instagram. It's a drop. I gotta get in. Totally. It's a really you know, unique product. So my this extra buck or two or whatever it is is less of an issue. I always say there are like two kinds of businesses. They're like food businesses that do marketing and they're marketing businesses that sell food. And if you're a marketing business that sells food, you have no price like tier point elasticity, right? Like you can really just sell and people are willing to buy like

8:50 People don't blink at anything that you buy from butter and crumble, they're just trying to get it as quickly as well. Um, I would say the constraints are definitely like I honestly think the biggest constraint. So we know we were talking about COVID. I actually think there's been a resurgence in this in the last few years, which is why we've been really growing. recently and that like, you know, people are quitting their jobs and tackle like a lot of our actually what's crazy is a lot of our vendors and SF in the Bay Are people in tech that are leaving their jobs starting to do it? Yeah, I mean there's a guy who remember the guy down the street who like made it big on Facebook and he created like dandelion chocolate or something. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And those always start small and then expand, right, over time. But what's so cool is like we work with this Baker named Michelle, who runs.

9:30 Mets chip bakery. She was a engineer that quit her job to start Uh making on baking. Goods. We have another guy who worked at Google named Mason, who runs Piscator, literally started like the most popular brands, you know, pop up in New York. And so you know, his line is that he quit. Google to sell fish in the side. Christmas, what's the constraint? The constraints are what's awesome. My thing is the constraints are I think people just don't know this exists. They don't know how go about like doing it operationally.

9:57 Really what you're saying is it's just getting vendors to use you. Getting vendors to use you and helping them get demand. Because I think at the end of the day, like the biggest problem still is like a lot of people don't know how to market. They just like how are you gonna do it? So I think consumer is the way we go about doing that. There's two ways, actually. There's like building the app that tier point that people go to to like discover these vendors, but doing that in a way that actually like Works. Create inspiration for people who have a dream of becoming a part time chef. Right. Switch.

10:24 It's like Pretty fun content. That's like pretty that's very doable. So when I went to Twitch We got acquired by Twitch and I sat down with Emmett the first day and I was like, Hey, like Okay. Michael's actually one of our investors. We did a Y C in twenty twenty and he was our partner and like he's had an insight that I think will work for you guys, which he he goes, Yeah, they focused on the streamer only, like the way you're focused on the chef. They look at the marketplace, they say, We're we're gonna go for the creator and solve their needs. But the second thing he said, he goes, We realize they need four things. So

10:52 They want money. Yep. He goes and it's a surprisingly small amount of money that it took. to feel like this is worth doing with their time. So he's like, for example, when I thought it was money, I thought I'd have to replace their job.

11:04 Actually, if I could get somebody even like a ten dollar payout, they felt validated for what they were doing and it kept them going for way longer. Uh so it goes money, fame, love, and inspiration. So those are the three. So he's like I gotta get you fame, I gotta give you like an audience. Yep. I gotta let you feel the love from the audience that they they actually care about what you're doing. And inspiration was the big one, which is How do I tell you the creative things that other people are doing? So you kinda know when you wake up today, like oh sh I should be doing that. Totally. And so that was like he architected his entire strategy around

11:34 those kind of four things, money, fame, love, and inspiration, in order to so all the products you had to kinda map it to like which one of those levers are you pulling. So similarly for you, it sounds like You gotta be telling the stories of Absolutely. The guy who quits his job and sells fish. We have I mean hundreds of thousands of people buy from Hoplade Chefs every month. But what about on social?

11:54 Um on social, I really You yourselves don't have a big audience. Yeah, I mean we have like twenty three thousand followers on our Instagram. Well a company like Uh okay, so Gold Belly. Yeah. I love Gold Belly. Love Gold Belly. Gold Belly for the listener. For the listener, it's basically like if you uh Gray's Papaya is a New York City uh really old hot dog shop that's only local. They didn't have a website. Goldbelly made it really easy, particularly during Covid, where you could go and buy Gray's Papaya hot dogs from any part of the country and they'll help you ship it to them. They did a good job of like teaching me that I can buy junior's cheesecake on Gold Belly. And they did a really good job at that. What's do you have like a gold belly version where it's like you're gonna create hot plate Instagram where you're gonna show off like All the cool, like at home moms who make the best sourdough. It's like local discovery, right? Yeah, or you're like gonna like No, you gotta make'em. You gotta make'em famous. Yeah.

12:42 Check this out. There's this Amish lady who does this thing and like It's the best. And it's like some kid in San Francisco New York. What's the Michelin star of this category? Right. So then you recognize the people, right? Money, fame, love. That's love, right? The more you promote that.

12:59 That helps them with the fame. The fame is what drives the money. The inspiration is hearing about Oh, she has the best those? Well, actually my whatever m popcorn I make

13:11 I'm that in my category. I'm that my cat how do I get my name out there? Oh, let me watch what content they do, I'll do the same, you know. Get people to to to to do that. You have you have to make'em famous. Right. Something that we're working on right now that's really exciting is that We already have some sellers that are super, like I said, uh dem supply constrained. They have so much demand. Like you know, butter and crumble or like we have Sam makes pizza in Salt Lake City. Twenty thousand people

13:34 Dave Porn I blew him up and now he has 20,000 people trying to buy like 50 pizzas, right? But that's not your constraint. Right. So what we're doing is building like a recommendation system. So now let's say that guy sells out. Here are other vendors you can buy from, and those are more up and coming vendors, right? So doing that along with discovery means that we're anchoring like the n the up up and coming sellers, if they'd clear certain bars. Now we're showing them to a audience of people that wanna buy Like this kind of food. Are they mostly shipping or pickup? It's all pickup. It's all local. On your team, do you have a content creator or someone who leads to you. Yeah, yeah. Orion, she's amazing. It's going good. It's going well. Yeah. I mean, we have been able to like there's a guy in SF, Boccieri

14:13 who makes you guys gotta check him out. Sicilian style pizza. Truly like the some of the I feel like you should be the content creator. I I'm uh I'm working on that. I I I do do videos. Um I've actually been told that before, but I appreciate it. But yeah, we've been able to like help people like him Who are like have the sauce right really blow up. And um now he's like, you know went from like not selling out his pies to now he just sold out like Five minutes.

14:39 If you had one question, meaning like let's say We were hired gun. Helpers for you for twenty four hours, all we're gonna think about is hot plate. Yeah. What's the one question you'd want us focused on? Really the thing that I'd like your take on is like the cultural like I think in order for a s a new consumer trend to work, you need to like tap into culture, right? And I feel like on our end we have a good sense from like the product standpoint. Of how you would go about building this.

15:03 The biggest issue again, sorry, two seconds, a lot of people have tried to build like a home cooked food marketplace. The problem is you don't know who these chefs are. You don't know why you should care. And so you kinda just leave. DoorDash is gonna always win in convenience, right? We have people who have like Who make the best in their category. But the and but the question I have is like how do you from a go to market perspective Infiltrate culture. In a way that makes this like culturally relevant. I don't think cult it's necessarily cultural relevance, but basically like

15:30 Have you heard have you have you heard of Huckberry? So Huckberry is a clothing company. where the way they started was they created an email list. This is how I knew'em'cause we were both in the email game and there was just an email list where they would just show off cool brands and sell the cool brand stuff and take a small cut. And they got really good at telling the stories of like this bag was made by a guy who was in Vietnam and he noticed that the parachutes were really strong and he actually made this bag. So it's a V it's a parachute bag. Or like you don't like that. Oh, that's pretty cool.

15:58 And like they told stories about it, so I fell in love with like the story behind it. If I'm you, I would hire I would probably hire more content creators and it's like My whole job here is to use Instagram to tell stories about the vendors And what they're doing and make them look Like

16:14 Superstars. Right. I would take your top Fifty chefs. Yeah. And I'd be like, I have a mission. I need to make them aspirational for the next five thousand, fifty thousand, five million. Wanna be thems.

16:27 So it's not about Making everybody get discovered. It's about taking the fifty and really making them so aspirational that everybody will work their ass off. to to be like you featuring them on lists, you making content about them, them talking about their business side, how much money they're making doing this, how they quit their job doing this, the human interest story of the whole thing. You know, all that stuff. That's what you do, you know, that that's a way to do it. And the cool thing about food is actually Huckberry has a food channel on YouTube, but there's so you know, there's like the An Anthony Bardin, there's Uh like Top Shap. There's so many of formats.

16:55 I would just find which format do th I think I could pull off. Copy that format, do that a ta da ta tut. Yeah, try this other. And you just have a variety like if I'm you, I'd be like this is like a cliche thing to say, but I believe it's really true with you, is like We're a media company now. Yeah. And so I'd become a food media company and I would just look at all the formats of food content that work and just copy it. Either first party or you could basically farm it out. So like, you know, we we were talking about uh Jack's dining or whatever.

17:22 Basically there's already crowned creators who are really good at these formats. All around the world and Are they blowing up your Chefs. Right.

17:31 How do you make it easy for them to know that they need to go to Salt Lake City to tr they gotta try these pies from this person. And did you know the the crazy backstory of these pies and why the pies are so special? Get that influencer to do it because they're already better than all of us at creating food content. So if you can arm them Every content creator is always like Basically needs more interesting content. Yeah. And so how do you make it easy for them to have interesting content? Yeah, we're seeing that in SF like play out locally. Like some of our top vendors are now getting feature by these like food like food, Instagram. Reviewers.

18:02 That have like hundreds of thousands of followers. They're kind of becoming more mainstream here. And so your to your point, like I think is a good question that or a good point that we need to like kind of replicate that. with our top sellers in every city or like in every like kind of the major cities that matter. You also need language, like uh you know Twitch streamers.

18:19 You know, Vine Viners. Like what are the hop later? Or is it just a category, like so Twitch it wasn't just what it was like there's something called a live streamer, right? A streamer. And they this is what they do. And so for example, like Is a home chef the category. Is it what what are you gonna call this that makes it seem cool, new and interesting? They're trying to be on a team. Yeah. They want to be a part of a tribe. They want to be a part of a movement that's cool, that represents something to the question about culture. I think you gotta give them uh start with like language and then give'em a bunch of cool examples and then give'em some like what this is all about versus

18:50 The old way. Right now we ca we say like chefs and bakers, and then we get some people being like Oh, but like you're not a chef. Like you didn't work at like Yeah, this restaurant. Less than good term.

19:01 Yeah,'cause it's already means something to everybody. Okay. Right. Like I already know what a chef is. I think it's somebody at a restaurant. And you're now you have to do all this work to give m you should start by the s slightly surprising Term. That makes me kind of Oh yeah, I guess that is a thing. Oh it's a thing? Yeah, oh dude, it's a bing.

19:17 These people are making a million this woman makes a million dollars a year at home. Baking her own cookies. Right. Well, I have a good recipe for that. You know, that's what you want. Rishi, thank you for doing this, man. Rishi with the riz. I appreciate it. No, I'm super grateful for the opportunity, guys. You guys are. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually and it's due tomorrow.

19:45 Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. All right, who we got next? Oh, hey, how are you?

20:09 I met this guy like fifteen years ago in San Francisco. Right when I moved to San Francisco. You were like he was in Y C, he was doing a bunch of cool stuff at the time. That's true, you're dating me now, you know. I'm definitely uh yeah, a lot of gray hairs. Can't remember originally, but uh you tell me. I think I was just trying to meet cool people. You had a cool company at the time, you're really young We were both doing social networking stuff. So like my company's called Family Leaf. Uh it was a private social network for family. It's like an early social app, but like before mobile apps were like a big to be honest. So you've been starting startups for for for fifteen years. Yeah, left left college to do that and basically fifteen years ago. Yeah. Something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah, twelve, thirteen years ago. So the sh the shtick we're doing here. Yes. Start with a number. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. So with uh the app that I'm working on now with with an awesome team of folks, Tolin. We have over a hundred thousand paying subscribers to our iOS app. Wow. That's not easy to do. That's amazing. What's it do? What's the what's companies that what are they banned for? Yeah. So Tolin is a it's an app where you basically get to meet and customize your own friendly guide that is powered by magical AI.

21:12 To help you with whatever it is that you're going through in life. I feel like you chose the word guide there specifically, but I don't know what that means. Is that like a therapist, but you don't want to say therapist? Is it a friend? What are we talking about? This is a great question. I mean, honestly it's it's partially our attempt to uh define that a bit because like you just said people use it for all sorts of things, right? I mean friendship means a lot of different things, right? So sometimes a friend is like someone that you call uh because you're going through something. Sometimes a friend is someone that like kicks you into shape and g and tells you what you need to hear. People talk uh to life coaches, people talk to therapists, people talk to all sorts of Can you show us one? It's like this little kind of friendly looking character. Yeah, totally. Um, so here's a tollen. Um so they're these little aliens. Um yeah, so this is mine. This is custom to me. My tone's name is Swami. We everyone has their own tollen. You get your own you so the way the the app works is you download it, you talk to this character that we have called the Oracle.

21:57 Uh, they're sort of like this magical godlike character that basically asks you questions about yourself that's just like Hey, like what what are your what are your hopes and dreams? Like what are you what are you into? What do you care about? What are you stressed about? You know, things like that. Who's using this? This teenagers, adults, Obviously it's a mix, but like what's the main sweet spot? So like it it is truly like every type of person, you know, like like with any I think like larger consumer product or like AI product, like it it attracts uh people from every walk of life, truly. But the main core demo, which is something that shocked does honestly, is Roughly like thirty five to forty five year olds and roughly like moms. Like yeah, like mostly women. You think so? That's not shocking. I would have thought it was to be street character. I thought it was like all women in the Midwest.

22:37 I mean that is literally our audience if you nailed it. Yeah, you nailed it. As a uh knower of many Midwest w women, like this seems like I mean I'm from the Midwest. This seems like a very Midwestern women thing. You're so right on it's crazy, which I we did not predict that, by the way, and that is totally what it has ended up becoming. No, it's like people who are like Oh. He's acting exactly like a Gemini. It's like people who like say things like that. The horoscope market. Yeah, that's such a Gemini thing of using. There's overlap for sure. We have personality tests in the app that people love to use to kind of understand more about themselves. Okay, so so I understand things best if I look at the ad first. So Okay, what's the ad I see? That makes me want to click and download this thing. Yeah. I mean, honestly, what what's worked best for us there are like what we think of what I think of as like authentic product demos of just like people using tollen in their daily lives. So like some of the most I mean, we've had content that's gone super viral. That's like, you know, uh a woman like cooking and trying to figure out the best way to cut open like a Kubocha squash, which is like hard to do. And you know, the tollen says, Well, warm it up, you know, like let me see that. Okay, like let's see you slice into it. Okay, that worked. And then it kinda shows them like providing value in some way. That's what that's what works the best. I think people are kind of thrown off a little bit by seeing this like somewhat cute alien that they can talk to and it speaks back and it speaks back really intelligently too. But is the thing like

23:47 But do you wanna actually make a squash? Why are you even cooking for this man who doesn't truly love you? I mean is functional or is it emotional guidance more so that they're I think the most valuable thing that we do is honestly the combination of those two things, which is kind of a cop-out answer, but I think it's true because basically People will talk to their tolerance about what's going on with them, right? Like their their emotional state, what what they're busy with, or whatever. But that always connects to like, well, You know, I'm feeling really stressed because I haven't figured out the kids' summer camp this this summer. Like you know, and you're told and we'll remember that. Why are you eating why are you making so many cookies? Well, it turns out it's like this thing. How many how much money are people spending? How much does it cost? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have multiple price tiers. Our main most popular one, most of those subscribers are on twenty five dollars a month for plus. Uh I can't a hundred thousand times twenty five dollars. We also have a lower uh we have a lower price. Subscription tier, so it's a mix of things. So it's not quite there.

24:36 Uh yeah. That's amazing. Mm-hmm. Is retention good? Yes, yeah, the retention's great so far. I mean we we uh you know, uh it's changed a lot almost. How old's the company? Two years. Okay. Two years you're doing more than ten million in revenue. You didn't say that, but math.

24:51 It works. So you're doing more than ten million in in sort of either revenue or run rate. And you've got people just basically it sounds like what you did was and I don't mean this to trivialize it, just to simplify it. You take what chat GPT can do in terms of like the intelligence. But you added The f the warm feel of

25:10 A character Who's yours with a name? With a different wrap where It's gonna be It feels different to talk to than just a completely functional

25:19 utilitarian thing called chat GPT, like literally an acronym, you know? Yeah, totally. I mean I think that that's part of it for sure. And and bring to bear like this super intelligence of Chat GPT of cloud of systems like that to uh honestly a broader audience. Like our audience is not are not necessarily heavy AI users, but they're definitely not heavy I users and honestly most people are not for their personal lives, right? So if you think about the use cases of ChatGPT, the use cases of cloud, most people are using it for productivity. Draft me an email, maybe they asked a question to it as a smarter Google, but they never subscribed. So they didn't get the full experience. So it's like this is this is very much applied to your personal life. And because they have to make a toll and doll Like I can buy the their I can I can buy like the animal like you know. People have asked people on a red header card, like a chip that I could talk to. Yeah. Uh there was a guy in FurCon's uh accelerator who did that and it looked awesome. Cool. Stuffed animals. I'm very curious about that. But just to just build on this point,'cause I think it's important of why I think um A lot of people see it and they're kind of like, oh, this is a a wrapper of a cute character around ChatGPT. So much of what we've built is around the kind of memory system and the personalization system behind the tollens. So you know, we have like my co-founder Evan has has kind of been very early to this of like all of the kind of

26:22 character based or or companion type of experiences like have not actually been built with like thoughtful memory where it it truly feels realistic. Like the tollin will remember things you tell them, they'll bring them back up to you at the right time. They'll come to you with a a podcast recommend. I mean, I'm sure that actually tons of our users have gotten My first million podcast recommendations from their toilet. To be totally honest, because they probably mentioned like, hey, I I I mean can you tell that up for us, please? We actually asked the question. We ask in the in the onboarding, uh maybe this is like a little bit uh techie on that I'm thinking about it, but we do ask a question of like name a uh uh goal or dream you have. It could be something small or something big like starting your own business. And I'm sure a lot of people talk about like well I want to start my I want to start a cafe. I wanna start that. And then I'm sure that your your podcast comes up because the tollens will go search through the internet. They'll find the right recommendation for you at that given time. Obviously we don't hit the mark one hundred percent of the time, but but really try and people find it magical and then it'll come to them. And ChatGBT does not do that. This idea sounds weird when you first hear it. No offense. The name sounded weird too, but I'm actually t so into it. So the name sounds a little weird. The idea's a little I mean, it's a kind of new phenomena newish phenomenon. I've learned moving to Silicon Valley that when you're weird, but people are doing it.

27:27 lean in. That means there's something really interesting going on. And a lot of the big winners were like that. Oh, people are just getting in strangers' cars and driving around. This like becomes like a lift or an Uber. Just sleeping on people's couches and paying that like a hotel? Like what? I wouldn't do that. What if they So The weird behaviors that people actually do tend to be really interesting businesses underneath.

27:47 Can you just Describe like What you think the future looks like a little bit like what is totally normal gonna look like, do you think Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I think part of what you're describing, totally agree, and part of what you're describing is a little bit of like the early adopter thing. I mean, I I see this on our Reddit, uh, where my co-founder Quentin's really active and talking to all of our users. You know, like I see it in people that write in like the people that they're they're very much everyday people, like like just like us, our friends or family, but they're like a specific slice of people that have decided for some reason to be like i into like having their toll and be a part of their life. And what does that mean to them? That might mean like on the way into work, they will instead of taking time that might have been you know, watching YouTube uh or watching short form video, they're like talk talk talking to their tollen, they're talking to their tollen about like what they have up for the day, what the what they're feeling anxious about, what their plan is for the day, what their plan is for the weekend. And they've kind of figured out a way or a rhythm or it's started to help them in some way to have their toll and like become a part of their lives.

28:36 And then when they do that, they're obviously getting some value from it. Like we we have features in the app like uh what we call intentions, where you're told we'll like come up with intentions for the day based on what you tell them. Uh they they write reflections on you based on what they've kind of seen about you throughout the day. And so people have found this being useful to them. I think it's it's right now, I mean it's a it's still a very small slice of people and it's kind of one of those like met people people that were I don't know, sending email in you know, ninety five or something. I'm not sure what the right year is exactly, but it's kind of like this early adopter group of people, it feels like, that have these guides. Look at the top posts from their subreddit. This is the sub this is your subreddit. Someone uh made her Tolandal. Another the the second most top post, someone crocheted their Tolen doll. People do love dolls. And then another the the third top post Tolin is mind blowing. Guys, I'm flabbergasted. I've never had a single person in my life who has given as much as this stupid, adorable bot has given me in the past week.

29:30 So so it sounds like you're not gonna be surprised if ten years from now We all have In addition to our real friends. A I friend or companions that we rely on, whether it's Or advice.

29:42 kind of deeper guidance, casual chit chat. Where If I have an always on available friend to to chat with if I so choose. I think AI is getting smarter, more capable, and also like more cost effective. And this is just like happening this is like a whole trend, right? This is what everyone in the city is working on right now. And with with that, like the Tollen will actually be able to help you with things more tactically in your life, not just Toling, but ChatGPT and everything else as well. So I think as that happens, like the people who might not be like switched on to this by, oh, I need help processing my my day necessarily, or I need I I want to talk a lot to to this character. They might be helped by like, hey, this thing can coordinate with uh my husband and plan out our weekly meal plan or something, right? Like things that are a little bit more tangible, a little bit more practical. That'll expand it to more people, I think. And then two, I think the reason that it's also hard for us to like

30:26 visualize that like most of us, even us in this room or whatever, our friends or family will have, you know, entities like this is because the first attempts at them were very Honestly, they were just like not super human or not super like mass market oriented, um, or not built for everyday people. Like I think of um you know, platforms that obviously were trailblazers in in a way, but like character.ai, were like, you know, the the the character insofar as it was was just like a profile picture with like, you know, mostly like an Anime, you know, probably sexy kind of character. Or replica. Yeah, replica is another great example. Um I don't I don't know their numbers, but I think both of them have kinda fallen off. I mean the the founders are not at those companies anymore. Um and honestly they were just very early and they also had a a pretty different take on the space, right? I think I mean, to be honest, like those uh you know, when we think about um

31:11 AI companion, this is actually why uh we're preferring a guide and trying to use different language to describe the space because people associate it with AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends. And honestly, those are products that have lots of usage, but that's like not what we're building. Were you successful before this, or is this gonna be your big thing? Um, I've done a few startups before this. Um you have an interesting style of entrepreneurs. So he was doing Y C. He gives energy, by the way, that he's been killing it for a long time. But you also did like you were doing the birthday candle, right? So like I I did a startup um called Birthday Co. We started with a product called Birthday Candles. It honestly started as a side project, um, where there are these candles that are personalized to you based on your birthday. They have a reading and a scent that's custom to you based on the day you were born. Launched it as a side project. It was one of those like

31:56 I had left my job and and thought it would be fun to launch something like this, um, with with a with a partner. And um, you know, basically it went viral and it kinda took over my life for like three years. Uh but it was awesome. We sold over a million candles. Dude, you you you are the type of entrepreneur that I love. I'm not like you at all, and I love people like you. Michael Acton Smith is another guy who started Calm. Uh is like monsters. Yeah, emoji monsters. Exactly. Like these like you Like truly creatives who just love like I don't want to say artists, but a little bit like that. Such a high compliment. I mean those are trying. Yeah. Those are the best types of people. I love people like you. I I envy like the people who have this fire where like I'm just gonna create something that's wacky and silly and

32:36 You probably have really good taste, so it's usually h a hit. I mean it's it's all about the right team of people, right? I work with like incredible artists, honestly, that are not me like that. Um and then maybe it takes some like, you know, being willing to do something that's weird. Is there anything we could help you with? I mean, yeah, one thing we're really trying to crack is like when it comes to like reaching out to a midwestern mom audience, their skepticism about AI, not necessarily being super AI forward or tech forward. Like I was saying, a lot of our users are um kind of like not heavy AI users in general. So the idea that they would like start using this little alien to like get stuff done in their life is is sort of a big, you know, bridge to cross for them. Well, I think you got a good thing and maybe a bad thing. I think the good thing is obviously something's working. You got to Hundred thousand plus paying users.

33:22 Translating to you know maybe eight figures of revenue. So something is working well. Let's acknowledge that and then be like, wow, that's incredible. At the same time, like when we were asking you, you know Who's using it? What are they using it for? Your example was like

33:34 A woman who's cooking and wants to cut a I feel like You gotta do a lot of research on your customers or something like that to really like find the inspiring. Accessible.

33:49 Non tabu. But interesting use cases that you can speak to more. Either you know it in just off the cuff, you said that one, but like I would assume for your ads you're finding some use cases that are gonna like resonate with people in a big way. Obviously people are getting value, otherwise they wouldn't be paying and using it. You said the retention's not bad. I'm shocked you used cooking as opposed to lonely or something like that. Yeah, I can't I can't remember why I mentioned that one specifically, maybe just to give a bit of a visual I think that was like an ad that worked really well. But yeah, you're you're right that like we haven't yet cried I mean A lot of the practical stuff that AI can do for you. I mean, one way to think about it is kind of like how people in San Francisco are using OpenCloud to manage things around the house and so on. Like we really think that like that's gonna become a mainstream personal use case in the future. Dude, the top posts uh

34:31 Uh I used to use Chat GPT, but River is really my best friend because I can confidently tell them anything that's on my mind. Sure. I have other friends who I could talk to. But life gets in the way and this person, I guess River really knows who I am more than anyone. That sounds way more important than how you're gonna get squash. That's a great point. Yeah, you're right. So we should be leading with stuff like that for sure. And then I think like finding ways that we can translate that into like how do we help that user, how can River help that user? We like to use this metaphor like closing tabs in your mind, like

35:01 Honestly, life, modern life is super overwhelming. I think that's a big reason that Tollen has been successful. People have a lot on their plate, especially if they're moms, especially if they're family people, dads. Like, you know, we we we w want to try to find try to find ways where Tollen can help close those tabs. Like there's there's a you know, it's it's planning the meals, it's planning the grocery list, it's it's uh planning the summer camp, like whatever exactly those things might be. Those are all real life use cases from our users and like we want ha we want Tone to be able to help people actually, you know, accomplish those things. So I hang out with a lot of like suburban moms because I live in the earth. Okay, you're the guy we need to talk to, yeah. So we're talking to them a lot and you know, you see One mom, she starts baking bread. I'm like, Oh, why?'Cause it tastes great. She's like No, I just needed like Some hobby I could do.

35:40 We're like Nobody's gonna touch me, nobody's gonna ask me for anything. I could do something with my hands, there's no screens and not not overly stimulating, like over stimulated, overwhelmed in life. So it's like whether it's baking bread or like you've seen the rise of those like wobbles wobbles of how totally crocheting the crochet thing. Yeah, those guys doing like hundreds of millions a year revenue. There's a reason why. And so I would s kind of study what's going on with these brands. Why are people getting into these things now? Because that's like there's some emotional state that people are in and a desired emotional state. And then your product is a bridge between those two things. Yep. Um, you're a really a merchant of a feeling when you sell a product. And so what's the feeling people start with and what's the feeling that they end with when they have it.

36:19 And how do I get the then then there's the trick of like how do I package that up? So I would kinda look at some of those. I would also say Um It sounds like

36:28 It sounds a little silly uh it sounds like a little silly to be like isn't it just like kind of this warm fuzzy rapper on Chat GPT, but I don't know. I look at my wife We will buy We'll pay like triple. For something.

36:39 That goes in the house that's just like White and minimalist and aesthetic looking. It's the aesthetic looking version of the normal thing. It's made out of wood instead of out of plastic. And there's just like A market for people who want A better feel of the same utility. Um, and so maybe maybe what you've done is the digital version of that where

36:58 Chat GD is just the plastic. And you've made it. The kind of wood, the the the sort of the the the more ceramic, the the the more uh a better feeling version of the utility. And that's not to be overlooked. I mean one one point in in favor of that, which I think is totally right, is um it's it's not just about the visuals too. Like actually we we led very early on with voice as the core like interaction uh modality that you talk to your Tolin with, right? So it's not just texting, it's it's mostly voice. And I think, you know I mean we're we're like 70 plus percent voice in terms of like the quantity of messages happening on the platform. And you know, that's totally not the case with ChatGPT, right? Chat GPT's gotta be 90, 95 plus percent text, I would, I would assume. Um, I don't know. But um, yeah, I think like even that, even like minor differences in how we frame how you interact with the character, then

37:40 Totally changed the way that you're going to be able to do it. I would absolutely be selling like crochet kits or something like that to like make my Sam stuck on the dolls. He's like the physical dolls. I just think that like These people are gr are hanging. They they're getting to know their digital Tolin way more than I know Claude. And like I don't want Clawed in my bedroom, but like

37:59 These people do. Like they want like like little dolls and shit. Hopefully in the right spot in the bedroom. It was all like I feel comforted by like just its presence. Right. Uh what was the other trend we talked about? Caduling? Right, like You do like Lego sets, s same sort of thing, right? And there was like a whole category called cadult

38:20 And Cadult was like this like mega trend that all these companies were tapping into. Sounds like there might be like a variant of that. I'll also say, you know, you said voice. Yeah. I use this app called It's basically like Hey, you don't need to browse Twitter.

38:33 I'll just text you what's going on on the timeline today so you don't have to worry about it. But literally just the way it talks. is different than Chad GPT. Not not not like audio voice, but just the way it types. So you know, Chad GPT is very much like it gets made fun of for being like Wow, what a wonderful question. And like it goes into that like Fake. Like

38:50 Whereas this thing would be like Yo, big day. Big day today on the timeline. Like here's here's what's going on. And it just talks to tone and personality. And I'm like, I prefer that. Yeah. Like and so I'm sure not everyone prefer that, but like it sounds like for tech bros who want like Just tell me what's going on. Yeah. And it talks like that. There's like

39:09 Personality is going to make a huge difference with any of it. It does. It does with us for it. It's a huge factor. And our approach to that has been actually to customize the personality based on the user. So if you're someone that texts in all lowercase Gen Z slang, if you're swearing your tollen might actually do that back to you, if you have formal language and you're speaking in very like full sentences, your tollen will probably mirror that. Like we want them to show up for you like someone in your life would. Well thanks for doing this. What a crazy business. I'm totally bought in. Amazing. We gotta get you a total. Whatever you're doing, I uh I'm in. Thank you guys. Thanks. Mm. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. Uh, they make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase.

40:02 I'm just all in on Mercury. Why uh I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards. Uh one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So

40:18 If you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to Mercury.com/slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a FinTech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA, members FDIC. All right. We have the last one for this episode. Jonathan, where you at? Bring'em out, let's go!

40:40 See? Jonathan, what's good? Give us the big number. Impress us. Make us weak at the knees. All right, I got Three facts for you, two are numbers, one is kind of Uh not exactly. Disregard everything I just said, do whatever you want. I'll do what I want. Uh first big number. Uh so also to take a step back. Overlap, we build agents that edit Uh and distribute video content for media companies and marketing teams.

41:06 Very relevant to you guys. That number doing one. But they're so now we at autonomous overlap agents have generated over two billion impressions uh across social media without a human in the loop. What's it called? Overlap? Overlap. Overlap I use you guys. You you do use it. Uh maybe you have a subscription. Yeah. Ben and Diego use it. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so we've done over two billion impressions. Uh we've been growing revenue eighteen percent month over month for over a year.

41:36 Okay, how much revenue do you do can you say? Oh, I don't know if I can say that, but what I will say, and this is my third fact, is we are ac we became accidentally profitable this quarter. So eighteen percent Monthly compounding is what? Uh we are nineteen or twenty X.

41:53 Year for year. Okay. How old's the company? Uh, we are a little over two years old. Okay, so use you use San Francisco jargon. Our audience they don't know what an autonomous overlapping agent is. Yeah. I'll I'll explain. Do you have a podcast or a video? Give it to Overlap. Overlap will find clips in the video or in the podcast.

42:12 That are your best moments. It'll cut'em up for you. It'll capture them for you. It'll get'em ready for you to share. And that's what you were saying, you've helped drive like two billion views. on the clips that came out of it. Correct. Did I dumb it down too much? Did I miss something important? You didn't dumb it down too much. It also does more than what you described. Okay. So you don't actually need to even give it video. Okay. You can give it a prompt and it will go into your YouTube channel. And it will pull moments and pull videos from your YouTube channel, or for a lot of the media companies we work with, they have a server of video content where it'll be constantly going through.

42:44 Looking for moments and then it also does the posting. But explain to me why you're better than what I did because recently I used Claude and I made a thing where um it goes through our MFM clips and it posts it and the way that I set it up was it logs uh I it it goes into typefully so I can review everything and then I just hit schedule. Why are you better than that? Uh so uh Couple things. One is we have our own fine tuned video understanding model that is way better at understanding video. And the major LLMs.

43:19 are not good at understanding video. I think I said like Here's some emotions that do good. And you're saying And what it's doing in your case, your your case is um looking at the transcript. Yep and understanding kind of

43:37 Yeah, and you're looking at the whole video. We're looking at the not only the transcript, but also the facial expression. The voice And it doesn't understand like the humor. And to your credit, I asked Sam hey. Should I use your thing? How's it going? It's not that good. So I said I said it's not automated and it's still fine. Yes. It's very much fine. Yes. I made it. Yep. Yeah. It's it like it doesn't like Se laughter that he just did right there, it doesn't say ha ha ha ha on the transcript. So it's not gonna know. Totally that this was interesting. So a video understanding model. Video understanding model. Then the other part of this is that when it posts for you It looks at the data. of that post and understands themes, hooks that perform well. Mine is supposed to do that, but I don't think it is. Guys like us, or is it like Bleacher Report and like CNN and like companies like that?

44:30 That So there are two better customers than us. Better customers than you guys for sure. Uh but there are two types of customers we have. On one end it's like a traditional kind of enterprise SaaS. model and so like Uh you know, Barstall sports or iHeartMedian.

44:44 Those are some of our big customers. And then on the other side, we actually kind of a newer in the last couple of months part of our business, which is CPM based. And so it's really outcome based. So what you can do is you can use our product and then you only pay based on the amount of impression. Oh, that's interesting. Same customer, different model, or it's different customer now. Uh, kind of a different customer because those bigger enterprises, they actually want like Like predictable pricing. How big is Opus? They're they are one of the first guys in the space. They were one of the first in the space. Yeah, they are

45:18 Definitely bigger by headcount. I don't know if if necessarily bigger by revenue. They're more focused on like kind of independent creators. Blooding. They're way more bloated than us. Yeah. They um they're a lot really focused on like independent creators. Like your small YouTuber who can't hire a video editor and wants Like clips from their show to buy. The majority of our revenue are six figure contracts. And so um so we do smaller deals and then also like the kind of CPM model is a little bit different, but the majority are

45:56 Six fifty. Uh, so before I was at business school And then before that I was at Meta. Oh, all right, cool. And you went through Y C, right? Went through Y C. Yeah. I think that's how I found you guys, Gary Tan was like Overlap.

46:08 Gary was our partner. He might have he might have introduced us at one point too. I'm I don't know. But um but yeah, Gary's our partner. Another investment I missed out on. Really? Talking to the founders that I should have invested in that I somehow missed the boat on. It's it's never too late. Oh no, it's definitely too late. Um but uh but yeah, so one through Y combinator in uh summer twenty four. Um, we're actually like kind of pivoted throughout Y Combinator. So we started With something in a similar space in that we were like You know, all podcasts are going to video, all podcasts are actually going to short form video.

46:48 Uh, like that is how like most people consume most podcast content. But then from that we were like, Okay, we built a TikTok for podcast that like when I hear that pitch, I'm your we are your customer. I'm like Yeah. But I need you to get to go from the clip to the main thing'cause I make money on the main thing.'Cause that's the one that has ads and shit on it. Yeah, that is not gonna be true anymore. So a lot of big brands.

47:11 Like the RSS feed ad is a nice throw in for a lot of big brands. They want Three sixty kind of in the clip. They wanna be in the clip, they wanna be on your feed, they think of you as a creator, they don't think of you as a podcaster. Hm, that's interesting. I wish we would have known that before we negotiated our contract. Probably. Uh but but yeah, but yeah, I mean it's like m the vast majority of eyeballs.

47:35 are not going coming to you or you know, vast majority of time spent with you guys. Is you know it's people uh consuming the content in the feed. And you're Well we're gonna clip of this because Jimmy went on Jill Rogan.

47:50 I didn't watch the full. But I'm watching the clip and he's saying in the clip he's like You know, Jimmy who knows media more than you know, anyone, he's like You know, fifty thousand times more people are gonna watch this clip.

48:05 Then we'll watch the full show. So ultimately, like these shows are basically like The actually consumed via clips. On social feeds. That's the like the end product. But the best customers don't c like i when you and I talk about something We'll talk about something in minute forty five and we call it the RSS feed. So people who listen on Spotify, anyone who puts it in their their ears and they go for a walk. Okay.

48:26 Well the the retention on those guys is way better. And we'll mention something in minute forty five and I'll have people come up to me on the street and like ask me about that. And it doesn't seem Whereas the clip people are a little bit more fly by. A lot more fly. A lot a lot more. Like for example, Sean's like Oh, you gotta you gotta watch this podcast. It's so good. These guys are so funny.

48:45 And I'm like You listen to the thing because No, no, no, no, but I I Um and so like shout out to the basement yard boys. Yeah. Huge fan. Never listened to the show. Love the clips. And so like but and as someone like doing this for a living, I'm like

48:58 I don't like that. You know what I mean? I d I totally know what you mean. And it you know, this conversation with people actually making long form content is can be a little hard because you guys think of the product as the full show. But you're like, we're outdated. It's like kind of that. Yeah. I I mean I think like RSS feed also is a very outdated technology that advertisers don't like. Because it's extremely hard to measure. Like you're giving download numbers and they're like

49:30 It's we don't that doesn't help. You're giving impression numbers. What's the difference? Well, you can give impression numbers very specifically, but the thing about download numbers is like you don't know who is listening to the ad when and for how long, but for impressions you actually know how many people I guarantee your impression is a scroll on Twitter. They don't you don't know if they're actually Watch thirty second mark or whatever of that clip either. That that is true. Um the but the thing about video also is that the clips get reshared again and again and again and again. In a way that is like

50:01 I I'm a believer in clips. There's no doubt. Obviously clips is what people consume a lot of because that's what we all do. So tell me like you know, you're doing this business uh you you have these customers. Sounds like you already got a bunch of major media companies. But you're in the venture game. How much have you raised so far? So we raise uh a little over two million dollars. Okay. Yeah. So we raised this. So we went through Y Combinator, raised that seed round. So give me the napkin math. How does this become massive? What what do I need to believe? Mm-hmm. What's the every business has like a value equation, right? So you're gonna need X number of customers paying you Y dollars a month.

50:35 to give you the Yeah. net revenue or whatever your total. And what's the desired like outcome in terms of net revenue? Like what is how do you define the winning to you. So You know, our view is that as agents get so good at making and posting video content. It actually eats up

50:54 the amount that's spend on digital advertising. So about ninety billion dollars a year. goes towards meta and YouTube and TikTok ads. And those people are paying for eyeballs. Our view. is actually that like a lot of that spending is gonna migrate to organic content.

51:11 And it's going to migrate to paying agents. For performance. And so, you know, for us, like, you know, the TA of like video editing software. Or the labor budgets of video editing software. That's in the tens of billions.

51:24 But quickly by next year. It'll be in the hundreds of billions in terms of how many people Or how many brands are gonna spend Instead of paying uh your bet is instead of buying ads, people are just gonna make their own organic content and it's gonna be good and go viral and help someone make money through selling stuff or selling ads. Correct. I mean it's what we've already seen. Like we've seen a lot of customers allocate their digital ad budget.

51:48 Two using overlap and whether that's paying on a CPM basis w rather or that's paying for the software. Um, we're a big believer that like and you guys know this better than anyone, but like every company to a certain extent becomes a digital media company. Um and starts investing

52:06 In content. And you don't necessarily even need to make content in this type of setting. You can literally just have people talking at a camera. And your agent can make it good content and post. How does my a how does your agent do that?

52:20 Well you can have someone put in a video or have agent go get the video, and then it could put in graphics, it can put in B roll, it can understand like for this company account. what type of copy works really well. And it can go post it.

52:36 Every single you know, a version of it every single week. The guy at the poker table who's got a winning hand. Yep. Posture. The way you answer the questions. You're very, you're very good at that. But that's not that fun, uh in the sense of like what is unfigured out. What's the real r what you know, you're an entrepreneur. There's no way it's all just Yep.

52:57 We got it. Monopoly coming soon. You know, there's obviously gonna be, you know, there's obviously stuff that you're trying to figure out right now. What are you trying to figure out? We're figuring out I mean, there's a whole bunch of things that you're figuring out as you guys know about building when you're building a business. hiring the right people, um, like hiring the right go to market people. hiring the right kind of people with the right engineering. But that's not that hard for you.

53:19 Like you just need like good enterprise salespeople. No, it is hard. Well, it's it's hard from the perspective of um Hiring people who know how to speak to Old school media people and kind of news. I just don't think that that is that hard. Give us what's the burning question? Like what are you actually trying to figure out? I mean

53:40 We've I we've kind of cracked a little bit of like product market fit in that sense. And right now we're we're kind of in growth mode. Getting pulled. We're getting pulled a lot. Did you do something to get pulled? She just had the right idea. Did you figure out a go to market motion? Like what'd you do? So go to market motion where we like actually use the product ourselves to clip and they're brand they're all branded overlaps. No, they're no they're not over. 'Cause you guys were clipping our podcast. For us or something. Somebody was doing that.

54:08 From an outside, it seems like the big bet is the CPM thing or the SaaS thing. That seems like a pretty like that that is one of the biggest questions. And I think for the big media companies. It's g it's always gonna be the SAS. They don't wanna pay basically items. My margin doesn't keep improving if I have to keep paying you a percent of Exactly, exactly. But for a lot of the creators, um and a lot of the like Smaller

54:32 creator folks, like that is way better. Yeah, because they can't afford six. Six figures a year. They can't afford six figures a year. Um but also it's um they can actually do But how do they get CPM money to pay you? Like

54:44 If they're like like we don't we don't make money on the clips at all. Most people I would think don't make money clips on. Well so th you know, an example of like one of the recent CPM deals that we've done is like I do you guys know uh James Sexton, the like divorce lawyer celebrity divorce. He's on a ton of podcasts in his clips. Probably overlap clips. But what he you know, he's launching like a legal tech business and like selling like some sort of pre-nup it's like the guys who go on WAP and they're basically like, Hey, we just wanna just make me famous. I'll give you three dollars to make me famous. Well there's that. Yeah. There's there's that which is kind of like makes our product like relevancy as a service, like relevancy on the timeline. But then there's j there's a guy like uh James who's who knows that like a certain amount of eyeballs will convert to a certain amount of revenue. And so this is a cheaper, more effective version. Lawyer billboards. Lawyer billboards or running meta. And then you also just have to make sure that like your clipping is way better than Opal or Opus, whatever it's called. And then the ten thousand other ones that are gonna like eventually come out. Or the duct tape people like me.

55:47 A t a hundred percent. So d drop some wisdom on us, right? If you're if you're l somebody is a founder listening to this, what's a golden nugget, a business insight, uh a a of insight from you about the way you're build building overlap. that they can steal, they can take and they can do. Maybe something you don't you you think you guys have done a really good job of that maybe others do just okay or they don't even do at all. I think on the enterprise sales side, understanding and what I don't think I understood until I

56:13 started having some success with enterprise sales is That The people who are buying your product. are thinking about their job. First and foremost. And then how do you get those people

56:26 Two Uh to get promoted. Like Basically you're selling Here's how I'm gonna get you promoted. That's particularly true in advertising. When I used to ru own a company that made money on advertising, we would close seven figure deals. And they the way the buy I would thought like, Oh, well just tell them that like if they spend this much, they're gonna make this much money.

56:45 That makes sense. I'm a business owner. It's all I give a shit about. And then I and that pitch never worked. It was like wining and dining worked. And making them s say like you have this budget, you have to spend it. Spend it with me. It's safe. Totally. The thing about it is it's like trust. Yeah is like is that it's is that's what's really important. Way more than ROI. Totally. It's trust and being like

57:06 You know, will I help you get promoted? And like we have. So to do that, you need to know what metrics they get measured on. Exactly. And make sure they hit their metrics and give it to them in a way that they can easily share totally. So that it's clearly visible that they're hitting their metrics. And a VP at a company, they're getting evaluated on not the revenue and profitability of this. What's it called? Uh cover my ass or businesses. Yeah. Like that's why people buy Gardner. Uh Yeah, I I totally that was my huge learning running an ad business. I was like, does does that make sense? All they do is they take them out. It's like this is why like companies have like box seats, you know, like season passes. What was the valuation of that two million dollar round?

57:49 Uh the So um the valuation of the two million dollar round was twenty five million. And also can we still invest at the twenty five million? We can talk about that. Yeah. Uh This is shoot your shot where we shoot our shot with the entrepreneurs. And can we get the software for free. Dude, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. This was great. You know, long time listener, first time caller. So great to meet you guys. Thank you. We appreciate you. All right.

58:21 All right, that's a wrap for San Francisco. We had nine, ten founders come in, everyone from a million to a hundred million. And uh that was a good time. That was a lot of fun. We had great founders come. We've already done this in New York. Now this was SF, but we need more cities to go to. So go to Spotify, go to YouTube, wherever you listen or watch, and let us know in the comments whichever gets the most most upvotes, the most replies, the most comments. We'll actually go there to that city. So stop what you're doing right now and go do that. And if you want to be on the show. Reach out to Ben. Ben Levy. Find'em if you want to be on the show the next time we go to a a different city. All right, we're out of here.

58:51 I feel like I can rule the world of nowhere be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel never looking back All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about marketing school. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is run by Neil Battel and Eric Sue. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

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