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, pitch us their business. We have founders all the way from a million bucks to a hundred million dollar businesses. So let's do it. Let's bring out the next founder.
He's styling, dude. First leather jacket on the pod. 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. Okay, so the big number is a hundred million in sales. Yeah. Unpack that. What does that mean? Totally. So Hot Play is a platform that lets anybody sell food online. We work with small pop-up bakers that sell food at their house, all the way to this guy who's an ice cream maker in Minnesota. Have you seen this? It's Airbnb for food type of thing, right? Type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're starting right now as a tool
that lets a seller who has an Instagram following sell food directly to their audience. A lot of times those sellers are using spreadsheets, Venmo, DMs, a hodgepodge of tools, or they're using a platform like Square. Shopify just isn't built for pre-order. But will they stay small? Is it for the person who wants to stay as a small business? It's a really good question. So a lot of people think that, oh, you guys just work with really tiny pop-ups that 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, there's this dude who's real jacked.
He's a bodybuilder who does his cookies. You've seen this? I'm in. Yeah, we talked about him four years ago. Yeah, he does these drops of cheat meal cookies. They're insanely huge. Way over the top. But he sells out in seconds and it's all just through his Instagram presence because he builds up a lot of trust. So first of all, Hot Plate. Hot Plate, yeah. Incredible name. Thank you. And this was totally a COVID thing a little bit. I remember, have you heard of Pop-Up Bagels? So actually we powered Pop-Up Bagels. Oh really? Yeah, yeah. Listen to this. So Pop-Up Bagels was, they actually started in Westport, Connecticut, where I used to live.
And there were a bunch of companies that did this where it was like a husband and wife couple were like, I'm going to make this and sell it to my apartment, and we'll drop it out of the windows when people come and whatever. And these guys did. Oh, because COVID made it like, hey, just do a weird pickup on the curb. It's like, well, we're sitting at home, let's just make food and then we will do it. And so these guys did that with bagels, and you had to have an appointment and you could only get it by the dozen. And now they've since raised a lot of venture capital. 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, as they scaled to the multi-tier point, almost billion dollar empire that they are now. And so we work with tons of pop-ups across the country that are kind of like the next Pop-Up Bagels in a way too. How much revenue do you do? Yeah, so we do hundreds of thousands of revenue a month. Got it. And yeah, are just growing very quickly. Honestly, most of the 100 million in sales has been in the last two years. Do you raise funding? Yeah. So we've raised a little over $4 million total, but we're actually profitable. So we've been profitable the last almost year. Wow.
I've been running the business profitably, which has honestly been amazing. So wait, what does your product actually do? You make the app that the consumer uses? You make the thing that lets them have a storefront for their Instagram? So we started, and what we are today, is that storefront for them on Instagram. Shopify for food people. 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, the end state and kind of the dream for Hot Plate is that anyone can go not just to sell food independently, but also to buy it.
So who would I go to? What's one of your brands? Yeah, so in SF, there's a bakery called Butter and Crumble. It's 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. They have an almost 20,000 person waiting list. So she's got 83,000 followers. Yep. 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. So we do a lot of, once you order as a customer,
we send you automatic text message reminders about the pickup and we do a lot of the logistics coordination. But right now, it's kind of crazy that you're pointing out that we are a pre-order pickup platform for pop-up chefs. And we're doing millions a month in sales. It's like, we are truly still on day one of what this can be. Are you scratching the surface? Totally. What's the founder going to say? No. Yeah. We fully tapped into this. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is as good as it's ever going to get. No, no, I mean- No, we were talking to a guy who's got a TMJ pen. He's like, I got to expand. Yeah, that's true. But I'm a buyer of these products. But I'm like,
how many crazy people are there that make shit in their apartment or these small mom and pops? No, it's a good point that right now, I think the market that we're in is still really niche, right? It's still like, there's 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 to not just play in an existing market. Like you were saying about B2B 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 going to happen
in a way that only a handful of companies in the last 10 years have been able to do. If you look at Call She, Polymarket, whatnot, I can count on my hand the number of consumer trends and categories that I'm 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 all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable 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. I don't want to be like- It's all or nothing. Yeah, I don't want to count on one hand how many companies have been successful. I think it's because consumer is hard. I really think about what we're doing kind of like Substack, right? Substack made it so that anyone can start a media business without having to run one, right? And I think in the same way, Hot Play lets anyone start a food business without having to open a brick and mortar, right? So right now, the traditional way you start a food business is I have to take out a loan, spend hundreds of thousand dollars
just to open a brick and mortar where the business is not proven out, the rent goes up, the labor could go up, the ingredient cost goes up, and you're susceptible to all of that. How'd you get this idea? So me and my co-founders actually started at UT. I've always been obsessed with food, worked at a food delivery company for a little bit, honestly hated it because so much of food has been really consumer first and really consumer centric. And one of my buddies and I during COVID were like, we want to open up a food business, so we actually rented an apartment on our campus and opened a Thai restaurant in that apartment. And we ran that for a few months
and then kind of realized start a food business without having to open a brick and mortar, right? So right now, the traditional way you start a food business is, I have to take out a loan, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to open a brick and mortar where the business is not proven out, the rent goes up, the labor could go up, the ingredient cost goes up, and you're susceptible to all of that. How'd you get this idea?
So me and my co-founders actually started at UT. I've always been obsessed with food, worked at a food delivery company for a little bit, honestly hated it because so much of food has been really consumer-first and really consumer-centric. One of my buddies and I, during COVID, were like, we want to open up a food business. So we actually rented an apartment on our campus and opened a Thai restaurant in that apartment, and we ran that for a few months and then realized— That's the old big man on campus playbook. Yeah. Open up a Thai restaurant. How'd that do for the social life? Was that actually amazing?
It was fun. It was really fun. Then COVID happened, and it's like, okay, you can't have people showing up to your house to eat Thai food because you can't even see people during COVID. So, boring question, but is that legal, to just open up a restaurant out of an apartment? Yeah, definitely not. 100% not. Baking's okay, or it's also not okay?
So there's this thing called cottage food laws that lets you sell food directly from your home, and what's really cool is also recently Texas just expanded their laws. They're called food freedom laws, so you can actually sell almost anything out of your house now. For example, Arizona, the dairy laws have really opened up, and now people are starting these home cafes in Yuma, Arizona, where we have tons of these home businesses starting in Arizona. Like a coffee shop in their house? Coffee shop in their house. It's actually insane, and people—Arizona's so hot. But not in the cool insane way. Yeah, I know. It's insane. It's insane.
We have businesses like A to Z Creamery, who's in Hopkins, Minnesota, who's running one of the largest ice cream brands in Minnesota right now, doing six to seven figures a year in revenue on 40 to 50% profit margin, which is unheard of. That's like a SaaS company. Right? But the reason he's able to do that is because it's a team of three or four people. He uses Instagram and Hotplate as a storefront and doesn't do walk-ups, and is able to streamline all that in a way where he has 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? SaaS plus fee?
Yep. So right now, actually, it's all fee. The way our business model is kind of cool to the chefs. Our mission at Hotplay is that we're a chef-first company, and so we take that to the extreme where, as a customer, when you check out from a Hotplay vendor, we charge the customer a small fee at checkout, and the chef only pays payment processing. The beauty of that is that I, as a chef, can start. There are already so many fixed costs in food as it is that being able to eliminate some of those on our side has made us really attractive to vendors outside of a traditional platform.
I would assume people are not that price-sensitive when they're checking out because it's like, I've been watching this on Instagram with the drop, I gotta get in. Totally. It's a really unique product, so this extra buck or two, or whatever it is, is less of an issue.
I always say there are two types of businesses. There are food businesses that do marketing, and there are marketing businesses that sell food. If you're a marketing business that sells food, you have no price elasticity, to your point. You can really just sell, and people are willing to buy. People don't blink at anything that you buy from Butter and Crumble. They're just trying to get it as quickly as possible. What are the constraints right now?
I would say the constraints are definitely—I honestly think the biggest constraint, so 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, in that people are quitting their jobs in tech. Actually, what's crazy is a lot of our vendors in SF and the Bay are people in tech that are leaving their jobs to start this business. Yeah, there's a guy who—remember the guy down the street who made it big on Facebook and he created Dandelion Chocolate or something? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and those always start small and then expand over time, but what's so cool is we work with this baker named Michelle, who runs Metchip Bakery. She was an engineer that quit her job to start baking goods. We have another guy who worked at Google named Mason, who runs Piscator, literally one of the most popular pop-up brands in New York, and his line is he quit Google to sell fish on the sidewalk. But answer my question. Yeah, his question was, what's the constraint? The constraints—and you're like, let me tell you what's awesome.
My thing is, the constraints are, I think people just don't know this exists. They don't know how to go about doing it operationally. 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, the biggest problem still is a lot of people don't know how to market. So how are you going to do it? So I think consumer is the way we go about doing that. There's two ways, actually. There's building the app, to your point, that people go to to discover these vendors, but doing that in a way that actually works.
But you basically need to create inspiration for people who have a dream of becoming a part-time chef. Right. Which is pretty fun content. That's very doable. Totally. You get a couple smart people. 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, okay. Michael is actually one of our investors. We did YC in 2020, and he was our partner.
Well, he's got an insight that I think will work for you guys, which is, they focused on the streamer only, the way you're focusing on the chef. They look at the marketplace, they say, we're going to go for the creator and solve their needs. The second thing he said, he goes, we realized they need four things. They want money. He goes, and it's a surprisingly small amount of money that it took to get them 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. Actually, if I could get somebody even a $10 payout, they felt validated for what they were doing, and it kept them going for way longer. So he goes, money, fame, love, and inspiration. So those are the four. So he's like, I gotta get you fame, I gotta give you an audience. I gotta let you feel the love from the audience, that 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 kind of know when you wake up today, like, oh, I should be doing that.
Totally. And so that was like, he architected his entire strategy around those four things: money, fame, love, and inspiration. So all the products, you had to kind of map it to 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 and ends up making a million dollars. But do you guys have a huge audience? We have hundreds of thousands of people buy from Hot Plate chefs every month. But what about on social? On social— You yourselves don't have a big audience. Yeah, we have like 23,000 followers on our Instagram. Well, a company like—okay, so Goldbelly.
Yeah. I love Goldbelly. Love Goldbelly. Goldbelly— Explain what it is. For the listener, it's basically like if you—Gray's Papaya is a New York City really old hot dog shop. It'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 teaching me that I can buy Junior's Cheesecake on Goldbelly, and they did a really good job at that.
Do you have a Goldbelly version where you're going to create Hot Plate Instagram, where you're going to show off all the cool at-home moms who make the best sourdough? You yourselves don't have a big audience. Yeah, we have 23,000 followers on our Instagram. Well, a company like, okay, so Gold Belly. Yeah. I love Gold Belly. Love Gold Belly. Gold Belly. Explain what it is.
For the listener, it's basically if Grace Papaya is a New York City really old hot dog shop, it's only local, they didn't have a website. Gold Belly made it really easy, particularly during COVID, where you could go and buy Grace Papaya hot dogs from any part of the country, and they'll help you ship it to them. They did a good job of teaching me that I can buy Junior's Cheesecake. Yes. On Gold Belly, and they did a really good job at that. Do you have a Gold Belly version where you're going to create Hot Plate Instagram, where you're going to show off all the cool at-home moms who make the best sourdough? It's like local discovery. Yeah, or you're going to get—
No, you got to make them famous. You got to be famous. Yeah, you got to be like, check this out, there's this Amish lady who does this thing, and it's the best, and some kid in San Francisco or New York is like— I think you got to create an award system like Michelin star. What's the Michelin star of this category? Right.
So then you recognize the people, right? Money, fame, love. That's the love one, right? The more you promote that, 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 popcorn I make, I'm that in my category. I'm that in my category. How do I get my name out there? Let me watch what content they do. I'll do the same. Get people to do that. You have to make them 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, supply constrained. They have so much demand, like Butter and Crumble, or we have Sam Makes Pizza in Salt Lake City. 20,000 people—Dave Portman blew him up, and now he has 20,000 people trying to buy 50 pizzas, right? But that's not your constraint, right? So what we're doing is building 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 the up-and-coming sellers, that they clear certain bars. Now we're showing them to an audience of people that want to buy this kind of food.
Are they mostly shipping or pickup? It's all pickup. All pickup. So it's all local. On your team, do you have a content creator or someone who leads— We do. Yeah, yeah. Orion, she's amazing. It's going good? It's going well. Yeah, we have been able to—there's a guy in SF, Bo Kieri, who makes—you guys gotta check him out—Sicilian-style pizza, truly some of the best. Dude, I feel like you should be the content creator.
I'm working on that. I do do videos. I've actually been told that before, but I appreciate it. But yeah, we've been able to help people like him, who have the sauce, really blow up, and now he's gone from not selling out his pies, now he just sold out in five minutes the other day. If you had one question, meaning let's say we were hired-gun helpers for you for 24 hours, all we're going to think about is Hot Plate, what's the one question you'd want us focused on?
Really, the thing that I'd like your take on is the cultural—I think in order for a new consumer trend to work, you need to tap into culture, right? And I feel like on our end, we have a good sense from the product standpoint of how you'd go about building this. The biggest issue, again—sorry, two seconds—a lot of people have tried to build 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 just leave. DoorDash is going to always win in convenience, right? We have people who make the best in their category, and the question I have is, how do you, from a go-to-market perspective, infiltrate culture in a way that makes this culturally relevant?
I don't think it's necessarily cultural relevance, but 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 them, because we were both in the email game. And there was just an email list where they would show off cool brands, right, and sell the cool brand stuff and take a small cut. And they got really good at telling the stories of, 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 parachute bag, or, you know, I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. And they told stories about it, so I fell in love with the story behind it.
If I'm you, 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 superstars, right? I would take your top 50 chefs, and I'd be like, I have a mission. I need to make them aspirational, right, for the next 5,000, 50,000, 5,000,000 wannabe thems. So it's not about making everybody get discovered. It's about taking the 50 and really making them so aspirational that everybody will work their ass off to be like them: 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, all that stuff. 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 still Anthony Bourdain, there's Top Chef, there are so many formats. I would just find which format I think I could pull off, copy that format, do that a ton, a ton, a ton, try this, and you just have a variety. If I'm you, I'd be like, this is a cliché thing to say, but I believe it's really true with you, is 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 we were talking about Jack's Dining or whatever. Basically, there are already content creators who are really good at these formats all around the world, and are they blowing up your chefs, right? How do you make it easy for them to know that they need to go to Salt Lake City, they gotta try these pies, right, from this person, and did you know 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 always 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 play out locally. Some of our top vendors are now getting featured by these food Instagram reviewers that have hundreds of thousands of followers and are becoming more mainstream here. And so, to your point, I think it's a good question, or a good point, that we need to kind of replicate that with our top sellers in every city, or in the major cities that matter.
You also need language. Twitch streamers, Viners—what are the Hot Plate—like the Hot Plate—or is it just a category? So Twitch, it wasn't just—it was like, there's something called a live streamer, right? A streamer. And this is what they do. So, for example, is a home chef the category? What are you going to 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 your question about culture, I think you got to start with language, and then give them a bunch of cool examples, and then give them some, like, what this is all about versus the old way. No, that's a good point. Right now we say chefs and bakers, and then we get some people being like, oh, but you're not a chef, like you didn't work at this restaurant. I think that's a less-than-good term. Yeah, because it already means something to everybody. Okay.
Right, I already know what a chef is. Now you have to do all this work to give—you should start with the 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 big thing. 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. That's what you want. Rishi, thank you for doing this, man. Rishi with the riz. I appreciate it. and then give them some what this is all about versus the old way. No, that's a good point. Right now, we say chefs and bakers, and then we get some people being like,
oh, but you're not a chef. You didn't work at this restaurant. I think that's a less than good term. Yeah, because it already means something to everybody. Okay. I already know what a chef is. I think it's somebody at a restaurant, and now you have to do all this work to give... You should start by the 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 big thing. 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. 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 the best. All right, thank you. All right, who we got next? Yes. What's up? Oh, dude. Hey, dude, how are you? Nice to meet you. Dude, I met this guy 15 years ago in San Francisco, right when I moved to San Francisco. You kind of showed me around. You were like... He was in YC. He was doing a bunch of cool stuff at the time. That's true. You're dating me now. I'm definitely... Yeah, a lot of gray hairs. How did you guys meet? Can't even remember originally, but you tell me. I think I was just trying to meet cool people. You had a cool company at the time. You were really young.
We were both doing social networking stuff. What was your company? My company was called Family Leaf. It was a private social network for families, like an early social app, but before mobile apps were a big thing, to be honest. So you've been starting startups for 15 years? Yeah, left college to do that, and 15 years ago, something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah, 12, 13 years ago. So the shtick we're doing here: start with a number. Okay. Absolutely, yeah. With the app that I'm working on now with an awesome few folks, Tolan, we have over 100,000 paying subscribers to our iOS app. Wow. That's not easy to do. That's amazing. What's it do? What are they paying for?
Yeah, so Tolan is an app where you get to meet and customize your own friendly guide that is powered by magical AI 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 a therapist, but you don't want to say therapist? Is it a friend? What are we talking about? This is a great question. Honestly, it's partially our attempt to define that a bit because, like you just said, people use it for all sorts of things, right? Friendship means a lot of different things. Sometimes a friend is someone that you call because you're going through something. Sometimes a friend
is someone that kicks you into shape and tells you what you need to hear. People talk to life coaches. People talk to therapists. People talk to all sorts of... Can you show us one? It's this little friendly-looking character. Yeah, totally. So here's a Tolan. So they're these little aliens? Yeah, so this is mine. This is custom to me. My Tolan's name is Swami. Everyone has their own Tolan. You get your own. So the way the app works is you download it, you talk to this character that we have called the Oracle. They're sort of like this magical, god-like character that asks you questions about yourself. It's just like, hey, what are your hopes and dreams?
What are you into? What do you care about? What are you stressed about? Things like that. Who's using this? Is this teenagers? Adults? Obviously it's a mix, but what's the main sweet spot? It is truly every type of person. With any, I think, larger consumer product or AI product, it attracts people from every walk of life, truly. But the main core demo, which is something that shocked us honestly, is roughly 35- to 45-year-olds, and roughly moms. Mostly women. You think so? That's not shocking. I would have thought it was all women in the Midwest. I mean, that is literally our audience. You nailed it. Yeah, you nailed it. As a knower of many Midwest women, this seems like
a very Midwestern women thing. You're so right on. It's crazy, which we did not predict, by the way, and that is totally what it has ended up becoming. No, it's people who are like, oh, he's acting exactly like a Gemini. It's people who say things like that. The horoscope market. Yeah, that's such a Gemini, I think, of you. 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 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, honestly, what's worked best for us, there are what I think of as
authentic product demos of people using Tolan in their daily lives. Some of the most... We've had content that's gone super viral that's a woman cooking and trying to figure out the best way to cut open a kabocha squash, which is hard to do, and the Tolan says, well, warm it up. Let me see that. Okay, let's see you slice into it. Okay, that worked. And then it kind of shows them providing value in some way. That's what works the best. I think people are thrown off a little bit by seeing this somewhat cute alien that they can talk to. And it speaks back? And it speaks back really intelligently too. But is it the thing like, do you want to actually make a squash?
Why are you even cooking for this man who doesn't truly love you? Is it functional, or is it emotional guidance more so that they want? I think the most valuable thing that we do is the combination of those two things, which is kind of a cop-out answer, but I think it's true. Basically, people will talk to their Tolan about what's going on with them, their emotional state, what they're busy with, or whatever, but that always connects to, well, I'm feeling really stressed because I haven't figured out the kids' summer camp this summer, and your Tolan will remember that, come back to you. Why are you making so many cookies? Well, it turns out it's this thing. How much money
are people spending, or 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 $25 a month for Tolan Plus. So you're doing... It's going to change a lot unless you hold the company two years. Okay, yeah. Two years. You're doing more than 10 million in revenue. You didn't say that, but math, it works. So you're doing more than 10 million in either revenue or run rate, and you've got people... Basically, it sounds like what you did was, and I don't mean this to trivialize it, just to simplify it, you take what ChatGPT can do in terms of the intelligence, but you added the warm feel
of a character who's yours, with a name, with a different wrapper where it feels different to talk to than just a completely functional, utilitarian thing called ChatGPT, literally an acronym. Yeah, totally. I think that's part of it, for sure, and bring to bear this superintelligence of ChatGPT, of Claude, of systems like that to, honestly, a broader audience. Our audiences are not necessarily heavy AI users, but they're definitely not heavy AI 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 Claude, 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 this is very much applied to your personal life. And because of that... Dude, you have to make a Tolan doll, like I can buy the animal. People have asked. People on our Reddit... And it comes with a chip that I can talk to. There was a guy in Furcon's accelerator who did that, and it looked awesome. Cool. Stuffed animals. I've seen some of those. I'm very curious about that. But just to build on this point, because I think it's important, why I think a lot of people see it and they're kind of like, oh, this is a wrapper of a cute character
around ChatGPT, so much of what we've built is around the memory system and the personalization system behind the Tolans. My co-founder Evan has been very early to this: all of the character-based or companion-type experiences have not actually been built with thoughtful memory where it truly feels realistic. The Tolan 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 podcast. I'm sure that tons of our users have gotten My First Million podcast recommendations from their Tolan, to be totally honest, because they probably mentioned, hey... Can you dial that up for us, please? We actually ask a question
in the onboarding. Maybe this is like... but just to build on this point, because I think it's important, of why I think a lot of people see it and they're like, oh, this is a wrapper of a cute character around ChatGPT. So much of what we've built is around the memory system and the personalization system behind the tollens. We have my co-founder Evan has been very early to this, of all of the character-based or companion types of experiences have not actually been built with thoughtful memory, where it truly feels realistic. The tollen 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 podcast. I'm sure
that actually tons of our users have gotten My First Million podcast recommendations from their tollen, to be totally honest, because they probably mentioned, hey, can you dial that up for us, please? We actually ask a question in the onboarding. Maybe this is a little bit techy on and on, think about it, but we do ask a question of name a 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, well, I want to start a cafe. I want to start this or that. And then I'm sure that 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 100% of the time, but really try, and people find it magical. And then it'll come to them, and ChatGPT does not do that. This idea sounds weird when you first hear it. No offense. The name sounded weird too, but I'm actually so into it. So the name sounds a little weird. The idea is a kind of new, newish phenomenon. I've learned, moving to Silicon Valley, that when you hear weird, but people are doing it, 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.
It becomes a Lyft or an Uber. They're sleeping on people's couches and paying that like a hotel. What? I wouldn't do that. What if they— So the weird behaviors that people actually do tend to be really interesting businesses underneath. Can you just describe what you think the future looks like a little bit? What is Totally Normal going to look like, do you think? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think part of what you're describing, totally agree, and part of what you're describing is a little bit of the early adopter thing. I see this on our Reddit, where my co-founder Quintin's really active and talking to all of our users. I see it in people that write in.
The people that— they're very much everyday people, just like us, our friends, our family, but they're a specific slice of people that have decided, for some reason, to be into having their tollen be a part of their life. And what does that mean to them? That might mean on the way into work, instead of taking time that might have been watching YouTube or watching short-form video, they're talking to their tollen. They're talking to their tollen about what they have up for the day, what they're feeling anxious about, what their plan is for the day, what their plan is for the weekend. And they've figured out a way or a rhythm, or it started to help them in some way,
to have their tollen become a part of their lives. And then when they do that, they're obviously getting some value from it. We have features in the app like what we call intentions, where your tollen will come up with intentions for the day based on what you tell them. They write reflections on you based on what they've seen about you throughout the day. And so people have found this being useful to them. I think right now, it's still a very small slice of people, and it's one of those, like people that were, I don't know, sending email in 95 or something. I'm not sure what the right year is exactly, but it's like this early adopter group of people, it feels like,
that have these guides. Look at the top posts from their subreddit. This is your subreddit. Someone made her tollen doll. The second most top post, someone crocheted their tollen doll. That's a good idea. People do love, it seems like. And then another, the third top post: Tollen is mind-blowing. Guys, I'm flabbergasted. I've never had a single person in my life who has given as much as the stupid adorable bot has given me in the past week. So it sounds like you're not going to be surprised if 10 years from now we all have, in addition to our real friends, AI friends or companions that we rely on, whether it's for advice, whether it's for deeper guidance, coaching,
or casual chitchat, where I have an always-on, available friend to chat with if I so choose. I think AI is getting smarter, more capable, and also more cost-effective, and this is just happening. This is a whole trend, right? This is what everyone in the city is working on right now. And with that, the tollen will actually be able to help you with things more tactically in your life. Not just tollen, but ChatGPT and everything else as well. So I think as that happens, the people who might not be switched on to this by, oh, I need help processing my day necessarily, or I want to talk a lot to this character, they might be helped by, hey, this thing can coordinate
with my husband and plan out our weekly meal plan or something, right? Things that are a little bit more tangible, a little bit more practical. That'll expand it to more people, I think. And then, too, I think the reason that it's also hard for us to visualize that most of us, even us in this room or whatever, our friends or family will have entities like this is because the first attempts at them were very, honestly, they were just not superhuman or not super mass-market-oriented or not built for everyday people. I think of platforms that obviously were trailblazers in a way, but like Character.AI, where the character, insofar as it was, was just a profile picture
with mostly an anime, probably sexy kind of character. Or Replika. Yeah, Replika is another great example. Did they fall off, or are they still going? I don't know their numbers, but I think both of them have fallen off. The founders are not at those companies anymore. And honestly, they were just very early, and they also had a pretty different take on the space, right? To be honest, when we think about AI companion, this is actually why we're preferring 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 not what we're building. Were you successful before this, or is this going to be your big thing? I've done a few startups before this. You have an interesting style of entrepreneur. He was doing YC here. He gives energy, by the way, that he's been killing it for a long time. Well, he's always a confident guy, but you also did the birth date candle, right? So explain what that one is. Yeah, yeah. I did a startup called Birthdate Co. We started with a product called Birthdate Candles. It honestly started as a side project, 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, I had left my job and thought it would be fun to launch something like this with a partner. And basically it went viral, and it took over my life for three years. But it was awesome. We sold over a million candles. Dude, 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 and Moshi Monsters. Yeah, Moshi Monsters, similar to Tallade. Exactly. These like— truly creatives who just love— I don't want to say artists, but a little bit like that. Such a high compliment. We're trying.
Those are the best types of people. I love people like you. I envy the people who have this fire where I'm just going to create something that's wacky and silly, and you probably have really good taste, so it's usually a hit. It's all about the right team of people, right? I work with incredible artists, honestly, that are not me. Classic nice guy thing to say. It's just true, though. It's honestly true. And then maybe it takes some, being willing to do something that's weird. Is there anything we could help you with? Yeah, one thing we're really trying to crack is when it comes to 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 not heavy AI users in general, so the idea that they would start using this little alien to get stuff done in their life is a big 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 100,000-plus paying users. really good taste so it's usually a hit. it's all about the right team of people, right? I work with incredible artists, honestly, that are not me. classic nice guy thing to say. it's just true, though. it's honestly true. and then maybe it takes some being willing to do something that's weird.
is there anything we could help you with? yeah, one thing we're really trying to crack is when it comes to 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 not heavy AI users in general, so the idea that they would start using this little alien to get stuff done in their life is a big 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 100,000-plus paying users, translating to maybe eight figures of revenue, so something is working well. let's acknowledge that and be like, wow, that's incredible.
at the same time, when we were asking you who's using it, what are they using it for, your example was a woman who's cooking and wants to cut a delicata squash or something like that. it's like, I feel like you got to do a lot of research on your customers or something like that to really find the inspiring, accessible, non-taboo but interesting use cases that you can speak to more. either you know it, and just off the cuff you said that one, but I would assume for your ads you're finding some use cases that are going to 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 is not bad. I'm shocked you used cooking as opposed to lonely or something like that.
yeah, I can't remember why I mentioned that one specifically, maybe just to give a bit of a visual. I think that was an ad that worked really well. but yeah, you're right that we haven't yet. a lot of the practical stuff that AI can do for you, one way to think about it is how people in San Francisco are using open cloud to manage things around the house and so on. we really think that that's going to become a mainstream personal use case in the future.
dude, the top post says, "I used to use chatgpt, 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 going to cut a squash.
yeah, that's a great point. yeah, you're right. so we should be leading with stuff like that for sure. and then I think finding ways that we can translate that into how do we help that user? how can River help that user? we like to use this metaphor, closing tabs in your mind. honestly, modern life is super overwhelming. I think that's a big reason that Tolan has been successful. people have a lot on their plate, especially if they're moms, especially if they're family people, dads. we want to try to find ways where Tolan can help close those tabs. it's planning the meals, it's planning the grocery list, it's planning the summer camp, whatever exactly those things might be. those are all real-life use cases from our users, and we want Tolan to be able to help people actually accomplish those things.
so I hang out with a lot of suburban moms because I live in the— okay, you're the guy we need to talk to. yeah, so we're talking to them, and you see one mom, she starts baking bread. I'm like, oh, why? because it tastes great? she's like, no, I just needed some hobby I could do where nobody's going to touch me, nobody's going to ask me for anything, I could do something with my hands, there's no screens, and not overly stimulating. overstimulated, overwhelmed in life. so it's like, whether it's baking bread or you've seen the rise of those woobles, wobbles— oh yeah, totally, the crochet thing.
yeah, those guys doing hundreds of millions a year in revenue. there's a reason why. and so I would study what's going on with these brands. why are people getting into these things now? because 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. you're 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, and how do I get that? then there's the trick of how do I package that up? so I would look at some of those.
I would also say it sounds a little silly to be like, isn't it just this warm fuzzy wrapper on chat GPT? but I don't know. I look at my wife. we'll pay triple for something that goes in the house that's white and minimalist and aesthetic-looking. it's the aesthetic-looking version of a normal thing. it's made out of wood instead of plastic. and there's a market for people who want a better feel of the same utility. and so maybe what you've done is the digital version of that, where chat GPT is just the plastic, and you've made the wood, the more ceramic, the better-feeling version of the utility. and that's not to be overlooked.
one point in favor of that, which I think is totally right, is it's not just about the visuals too. actually, we led very early on with voice as the core interaction modality that you talk to your Tolan with, right? so it's not just texting, it's mostly voice. and I think, we're 70-plus percent voice in terms of the quantity of messages happening on the platform. and that's totally not the case with chat GPT, right? chat GPT has got to be 90, 95-plus percent text, I would assume. I don't know. but yeah, I think even that, even minor differences in how we frame how you interact with the character, then totally changes the way that you—
dude, I would absolutely be selling crochet kits or something like that to make my— Sam's stuck on the dolls. he's like, gotta do the physical doll. I just think that these people are getting to know their digital Tolan way more than I know Claude. and I don't want Claude in my bedroom, but these people do. they want little dolls and shit. hopefully in the right spot in the bedroom, you know. none of those seem sexual. it was all, I feel comforted by its presence, right?
what was the other trend we talked about? cadulting, right? you do lego sets, same sort of thing, right? and there was a whole category called cadult. and cadult was this mega trend that all these companies are tapping into. sounds like there might be a variant of that.
I'll also say, you said voice. yeah, I use this app called, I think it's called no scroll. it's basically like, hey, you don't need to browse twitter. 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 chat gpd. not audio voice, but just the way it types. so chat gpd is very much like, it gets made fun of for being like, wow, what a wonderful question, and it goes into that fake personality. whereas this thing would be like, yo, big day, big day today on the timeline. here's what's going on. and it just talks— like tone and personality.
yeah, totally. and I'm like, I prefer that. and so I'm sure not everybody would prefer that, but it sounds like for tech bros who want just tell me what's going on, yeah. and it talks like that. personality is going to make a huge difference with AI.
it does. it does with us. 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 Tolan might actually do that back to you. if you have formal language and you're speaking in very full sentences, your Tolan will probably mirror that. 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. yeah, okay, amazing. we gotta get you a Tolan. whatever you're doing, I'm in. okay, awesome. thank you, guys. thanks for having me.
yeah, great. all right, we have the last one for this episode. Jonathan, where you at? bring him out. let's go. 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 not exactly a number. all right, disregard everything I just said. do whatever you want. I'll do what I want. first big number, so also to take a step back, Overlap. we build agents that edit and distribute video content for media companies and marketing teams. we don't pay attention to the number— very relevant to you guys. that number doing what? it's your show now, Jonathan.
we at Autonomous Overlap agents have generated over 2 billion impressions across social media without a human in the loop. what's it called? Overlap. Overlap. Overlap. well, thanks for doing this. What a crazy business. I'm totally bought in. Yeah, okay, amazing. We gotta get you a tone. Whatever you're doing, I'm in. Okay. Awesome. Thank you, guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah, great. All right. We have the last one for this episode. Jonathan, where you at? Bring them out. Let's go. 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 not exactly a number.
All right. Disregard everything I just said. Do whatever you want. I'll do what I want. First big number. Also, to take a step back, Overlap, we build agents that edit and distribute video content for media companies and marketing teams. We don't pay attention to the number. Very relevant to you guys. That number doing what? It's your show now, Jonathan. We at Autonomous Overlap Agents have generated over 2 billion impressions across social media without a human in the loop. What's it called? Overlap? Overlap. Overlap. I think I used you guys. You do use it. Maybe you have a subscription. I have used it. Yeah. Ben and Diego use it. Okay. Yeah.
So we've done over 2 billion impressions. We've been growing revenue 18% month over month for over a year. 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 became accidentally profitable this quarter. All right. So 18% monthly compounding is what? We are 19 or 20x year for year. Okay. How old is the company? We are a little over 2 years old. Okay, so you use San Francisco jargon. Our audience, they don't know what an autonomous overlapping agent is.
Yeah, I'll explain. You have a podcast or a video. You give it to Overlap. Overlap will find clips in the video or in the podcast that are your best moments. It'll cut them up for you. It'll caption them for you. It'll get them ready for you to share. And that's what you were saying. You've helped drive 2 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, looking for moments, and then it also does the posting. But explain to me why you're better than what I did, because, well, you're better than me. Recently I used Claude, and I made a thing where it goes through our MFM clips and it posts it. And the way that I set it up was it logs, it goes into Typefully so I can review everything, and then I just hit schedule. Why are you better than that?
A couple things. One is we have our own fine-tuned video understanding model that is way better at understanding video, and the major LLMs are not good at understanding video. Which is probably, I think I said, here's some emotions that do good, and you're saying I duct-taped it. And to your credit, I asked Sam, hey, should I use your thing? How's it going? You were like, it's not that good. Well, I said it's not automated, and it's still fine. Yes. And it's very much fine. Yes. I made it. It's fine. Yep.
Yeah, yeah. It doesn't like Sean's laughter that he just did right there. It doesn't say 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. 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. Totally. Mine is supposed to do that, but I don't think it is. Is your main business guys like us, or is it Bleacher Report and CNN and companies like that, better customers than us?
Better customers than you guys, for sure. But there are two types of customers we have. On one end, it's a traditional enterprise SaaS model, so Barstool Sports or iHeartMedia, those are some of our big customers. And then on the other side, actually kind of newer in the last couple months, part of our business is CPM-based, and so it's really outcome-based. So what you can do is use our product, and then you only pay based on the amount of impression. Oh, that's interesting. Same customer, different model, or different customer now? Kind of a different customer, because those bigger enterprises actually want predictable pricing.
How big is Opus? They were one of the first guys in this space. They were one of the first in the space. Yeah, they are definitely bigger by headcount. I don't know if necessarily bigger by revenue. They're more focused on independent creators. That was a subtle thing that was true in terms of bloating. They were way more bloated than us. Yeah, but it takes them more people to do what we need. Yeah, that was nice. They're really focused on independent creators, your small YouTuber who can't hire a video editor and wants clips from their show to post a lot. How much does it cost to use you? The majority of our revenue are six-figure contracts.
So we do smaller deals, and also the CPM model is a little bit different, but the majority of the revenue is six-figure contracts. What were you doing before? Before, I was at business school, and then before that I was at Meta. Oh, all right, cool. And you went through YC, right? Went through YC, yeah. I think that's how I found you guys. Gary Tan was like, Overlap. It's the new shit. Gary was our partner. He might have introduced us at one point too, I don't know. But yeah, Gary's our partner. Another investment I missed out on. Really? This podcast has just become talking to the founders that I should have invested in, that I somehow missed the boat on.
Hey, it's never too late. Oh no, it's definitely too late. Whatever price you're at now, all I'm thinking about is what I could have been in at. But yeah, so I went through Y Combinator in summer 24. We actually kind of pivoted throughout Y Combinator. So we started with something in a similar space, in that we were like, all podcasts are going to video. All podcasts are actually going to short-form video. That is how most people consume most podcast content. But then from that, we were like, okay, we built a TikTok for podcasts.
But when I hear that pitch, we are your customer. I'm like, yeah, but I need you to go from the clip to the main thing, because I make money on the main thing, because that's the one that has ads and shit on it. Yeah, that is not going to be true anymore. Tell me more. A lot of big brands, the RSS feed ad is a nice throw-in. For a lot of big brands, they want 360 kind of deals. They want to be in the clip. They want to be on your feed. They think of you as a creator. They don't think of you as a podcaster. Hmm, that's interesting. I wish we would have known that before we negotiated our contract. Probably.
But yeah. I mean, the vast majority of eyeballs are not coming to you, or the vast majority of time spent with you guys is people consuming the content in the feed, and your awareness. I saw a clip of this because Jimmy went on Joe Rogan. So Mr. Beast went on Joe Rogan, and I didn't watch the full, but I'm watching the clip, and he's saying in the clip, you know, Jimmy, who knows media more than anyone, he's like, 50,000 times more people are going to watch this clip than will watch the full show. So ultimately, these shows are basically consumed via clips on social feeds. That's the end product. That's the net.
But the best customers don't. When you and I talk about something, we'll talk about something in minute 45, and we call it the RSS feed. So people who listen on Spotify, anyone who puts it in their ears and they go for a walk. Yeah. Okay, well, the retention on those guys is way better. And we'll mention something in minute 45, and I'll have people come up to me on the street and ask me about that. Whereas the clip people are a little bit more fly-by. A lot more fly. Yeah, a lot more. For example, Sean's like, oh, you gotta watch this podcast. It's so good. These guys are so funny. And I'm like, you listen to this? He goes, no, no, no, but... I'm sorry.
And so, shout out to the Basement Yard boys. Huge fan. Never listened to the show. Love the clips. And as someone doing this for a living, I'm like, I don't like that. You know what I mean? I totally know what you mean. And this conversation with people actually making long-form content can be a little hard because you guys think of the product as the full show. But you're like, we're outdated. What's the phrase? It's like, never ask a man for his opinion when his salary depends on the answer. It's kind of that.
Yeah. I think RSS feed also is a very outdated technology that advertisers don't like because it's extremely hard to measure. You're giving download numbers, and they're like... yeah a lot more. For example, Sean's like, "Oh, you gotta watch this podcast. It's so good. These guys are so funny." And I'm like, "You listen to this?" He goes, "No. No, no, no, but I— I'm sorry." Shout out to the Basement Yard boys. Yeah, huge fan. Never listened to the show. Love the clips. But as someone doing this for a living, I'm like, "I don't like that."
I totally know what you mean. This conversation with people actually making long-form content can be a little hard because you guys think of the product as the full show, but you're like, "We're outdated." What's the phrase? It's like, "Never ask a man for his opinion when his salary depends on the answer." It's kind of that. Yeah. I think RSS feed also is a very outdated technology that advertisers don't like because it's extremely hard to measure. You're giving download numbers, and they're like, "That doesn't help us." Yeah, but you're giving impression numbers. What's the difference?
Well, you can give impression numbers very specifically, but the thing about download numbers is 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. You don't know if they're actually watching to the 30-second mark, or whatever, of that clip either. That is true, but the thing about video also is that the clips get re-shared again and again and again and again in a way that is like— I'm a believer in clips. There's no doubt. Obviously, clips are what people consume a lot of because that's what we all do.
So tell me, you're doing this business. You have these customers. It 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 raised 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 do I need to believe? Every business has a value equation, right? So you're gonna need x number of customers paying you y dollars a month to give you z net revenue or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, and what's the desired outcome in terms of net revenue? How do you define what's winning to you?
So our view is that as agents get so good at making and posting video content, it actually eats up the amount that's spent on digital advertising. So about 90 billion dollars a year goes towards Meta and YouTube and TikTok ads, and those people are paying for eyeballs. Our view is actually that a lot of that spending is gonna migrate to organic content, and it's going to migrate to paying agents for performance.
And so, for us, the TAM of video editing software, or the labor budgets of video editing software, that's in the tens of billions. 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 the amount of money to acquire customers instead of paying— 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. It's what we've already seen. We've seen a lot of customers allocate their digital ad budget to using Overlap, and whether that's paying on a CPM basis or that's paying for the software, we're a big believer that every company, to a certain extent, becomes a digital media company and starts investing 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 it. How does your agent do that?
Well, you can have someone talk to the camera and then put in a video, or have the agent go get the video, and then it could put in graphics, it can put in b-roll, it can understand, for this company account, what type of copy works really well, and it can go post a version of it every single week.
You have this energy of the guy at the poker table who's got a winning hand. Yep. Posture, the way you answer the questions, you're very good at that. But that's not that fun in the sense of, what is unfigured out? You're an entrepreneur. There's no way it's all just, "Yep, we got it, monopoly coming soon." 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, 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. You just need good enterprise salespeople. No, it is hard. Well, it's hard from the perspective of hiring people who know how to speak to old-school media people and new, savvy digital media people. I just don't think that that is that hard. Give us what's the burning question. What are you actually trying to figure out?
I mean, we've kind of cracked a little bit of product-market fit in that sense, and right now we're kind of in growth mode. We're getting pulled a lot. Did you do something to get pulled? You just had the right idea? Did you figure out a go-to-market motion? What'd you do? So, go-to-market motion, where we actually use the product ourselves to clip— And they're all branded Overlaps. No, they're not. No, because you guys were clipping our podcast for us or something. Somebody was doing— Probably it was the AI agent who was doing that. From an outside perspective, it seems like the big bet is the CPM thing or the SaaS thing. That seems like a pretty—
That is one of the biggest questions, and I think for the big media companies, it's always going to be the SaaS. They don't want to pay— Because my margin doesn't keep improving if I have to keep paying you a percent of how big it is. Exactly. Exactly. But for a lot of the creators and a lot of the smaller creator folks, that is way better. Yeah, because they can't afford six figures a year. They can't afford six figures a year, but also they can actually do— But how do they get CPM money to pay you? If they're like, "We don't make money on clips at all." Most people, I would think, don't make money on clips at all.
Well, an example of one of the recent CPM deals that we've done is, do you guys know James Sexton, the celebrity divorce lawyer? He's on a ton of podcasts. I've been seeing his clips, probably Overlap clips. But he's launching a legal tech business and selling some sort of prenup— It's like the guys who go on WAP and they're basically like, "Hey, we just want to— just make me famous. I'll give you three dollars CPM. Make me famous."
Well, there's that, which kind of makes our product like relevancy as a service, like relevancy on the timeline. But then there's a guy like James who knows that 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 your clipping is way better than Opal or Opus, whatever it's called, and then the 10,000 other ones that are gonna eventually come out, or the duct-tape people like me. 100%.
So drop some wisdom on us. If somebody is a founder listening to this, what's a golden nugget, a business insight, an insight from you about the way you're building Overlap that they can steal, they can take, and they can do? Maybe something 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 what I don't think I understood until I 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 to get promoted? Basically, you're selling, "Here's how I'm going to get you promoted."
That's particularly true in advertising. When I used to own a company that made money on advertising, we would close seven-figure deals, and the way the buy— I would think, "Oh, I'll just tell them that if they spend this much, they're going to make this much money. That makes sense. I'm a business owner. That's all I care about." And then that pitch never worked. Whining and dining worked, and making them say, "You have this budget, you have to spend it, spend it with me, it's safe." Totally. The thing about it is trust. That's what's really important, way more than ROI. Totally. It's trust and being like, "Will I help you get promoted?"
And 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 so that it's clear. promoted that's particularly true in advertising when I used to own a company that made money on advertising we would close seven-figure deals and the way I would think was, oh, I'll just tell them that if they spend this much, they're going to make this much money that makes sense I'm a business owner that's all I give a shit about and then that pitch never worked it was wining and dining worked and making them say you have this budget you have to spend it spend it with me it's safe
totally the thing about it is trust that's what's really important way more than ROI totally it's trust and being will I help you get promoted and 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 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 right there's a phrase for that what's it called cover my ass or what yeah yeah that's why people buy Gartner yeah that was my huge learning running an ad business I was like this doesn't make sense
all they do is they take them out this is why companies have box seats season passes what was the valuation of that $2 million round the so the valuation of the $2 million round was $25 million and also can we still invest at the $25 million we can talk about that it was a shoot your shot where we shoot our shot with the entrepreneurs and can we get the software for free dude, thanks for coming on this is awesome congrats this was great long-time listener first-time caller so great to meet you guys thank you we appreciate you all right that's it all right that's a wrap for San Francisco we had 9-10 founders come in everyone from a million to 100 million
and 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 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 him if you want to be on the show the next time we go to a different city all right we're out of here yay yay talk about like well I want to start a cafe I want to start this or that and then I'm sure
that 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 100% of the time but really try and people find it magical and then it'll come to them and ChatGPT does not do that this idea sounds weird when you first hear it no offense the name sounded weird too but I'm actually so into it so the name sounds a little weird the idea is a little I mean it's a kind of new newish phenomenon I've learned moving to Silicon Valley that when you hear weird but people are doing it 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 it's like becomes like a Lyft or an Uber they're 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 can you just describe like what you think the future looks like a little bit like what is totally normal going to 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 see this on our Reddit where my co-founder Quintin'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 very much everyday people like just like us our friends our family but they're like a specific slice of people that have decided for some reason to be like into like having their tollen 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 or watching short form video they're like talking to their tollen they're talking to their tollen about like
what they have up for the day 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 started to help them in some way to have their tollen like become a part of their lives and then when they do that they're obviously getting some value from it like we have features in the app like what we call intentions where your tollen will like come up with intentions for the day based on what you tell them 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 right now
I mean it's still a very small slice of people and it's kind of one of those like people that were I don't know sending email in you know 95 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 your subreddit someone made her tollen doll the second most top post someone crocheted their tollen doll that's a good idea people do love it seems like and then another the third top post tollen is mind blowing guys I'm flabbergasted I've never had a single person in my life who has given as much as the stupid adorable bot
has given me in the past week so it sounds like you're not going to be surprised if 10 years from now we all have in addition to our real friends AI friends or companions that we rely on whether it's for advice whether it's for more kind of deeper guidance coaching or casual chit chat where I have an always on available friend 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 that like the tollen will actually be able to help you with things more tactically in your life not just tollen
but chat chit bt 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 day necessarily or I need I want to talk a lot to this character they might be helped by like hey this thing can coordinate with 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 too I think the reason that it's also hard for us to like 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 or not built for everyday people like I think of you know platforms that obviously were trailblazers in a way but like character.ai where like you know 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 did they fall off or they're still going I don't know there are numbers but I think both of them have kind of fallen off I mean the founders are not at those companies anymore and honestly
they were just very early and they also had a pretty different take on the space right I think I mean to be honest like those you know when we think about AI companion this is actually why we're preferring 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 going to be your big thing I've done a few startups before this you have an interesting style of entrepreneur so he was doing YC here he gives energy by the way that he's been killing it for a long time
well he's always a confident guy but you also did like you were doing the birth date candle right so like explain what that one is yeah yeah I did a startup called birth date co we started with a product called birth date candles it honestly started as a side project 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 I had left my job and thought it would be fun to launch something like this with a partner and you know basically it went viral and it kind of took over my life for like three years
but it was awesome we sold over a million candles dude 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 and Mochi Monsters yeah Mochi Monsters similar to Tallade 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 we're trying those are the best types of people I love people like you I envy like the people who have this fire where like I'm just going to create something that's wacky and silly and you probably have really good taste so it's usually a hit I mean
it's all about the right team of people right I work with like incredible artists honestly that are not that are not me classic nice guy thing to say it's just true though it's honestly true 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 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 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 100,000 plus paying users translating to you know maybe eight figures of revenue so something is working well let's acknowledge that and 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 a woman who's cooking and wants to cut a delicata squash or something like that it's like I feel like you got to do a lot of research on your customers or something like that
to really like find the inspiring accessible non-taboo but interesting use cases that you can speak to more either you know it and just off the cuff you said that one but like I would assume for your ads you're finding some use cases that are going to 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 is not bad I'm shocked you used cooking as opposed to lonely or something like that yeah 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 right that like we haven't yet
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 open cloud to manage things around the house and so on like we really think that like that's going to become a mainstream personal use case in the future dude the top post says I used to use chatgpt 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 going to cut a squash yeah 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 honestly life modern life is super overwhelming I think that's a big reason that Tolan 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 want to try to find ways where Tolan can help close those tabs like there's a you know it's planning the meals it's planning the grocery list it's 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 Tolan 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 okay you're the guy we need to talk to yeah so we're talking to them and you know you see one mom she starts baking bread I'm like oh why because it tastes great she's like no I just needed like some hobby I could do where like nobody's going to touch me nobody's going to ask me for anything I could do something with my hands there's no screens and not overly stimulating like overstimulated overwhelmed in life so it's like
whether it's baking bread or like you've seen the rise of those like woobles wobbles oh yeah totally the crochet thing yeah those guys doing like hundreds of millions a year in revenue there's a reason why and so I would 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 you're 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 and how do I get that
then there's a trick of like how do I package that up so I would kind of look at some of those I would also say it sounds like it sounds a little silly it sounds like a little silly to be like isn't it just like kind of this warm fuzzy wrapper on chat GPT but I don't know I look at my wife we will buy we'll pay like triple for something that goes in the house that's just like white and minimalist and aesthetic looking it's the aesthetic looking version of a 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 and so maybe maybe what you've done is the digital version of that where
you know chat GPT is just the plastic and you've made the kind of wood the sort of the more ceramic the more a better feeling version of the utility and that's not to be overlooked I mean one point in favor of that which I think is totally right is it's not just about the visuals too like actually we led very early on with voice as the core like interaction modality that you talk to your tool in with right so it's not just texting it's mostly voice and I think you know I mean 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 chat GPT right chat GPT has got to be
90 95 plus percent text I would assume I don't know but yeah I think like even that even like minor differences in how we frame how you interact with the character then totally changes the way that you dude I would absolutely be selling like crochet kits or something like that to like make my Sam's stuck on the dolls he's like gotta do the physical doll I just think that like these people are they're getting to know their digital tollen way more than I know Claude and like I don't want Claude in my bedroom but like these people do like they want like little dolls and shit hopefully in the right spot in the bedroom you know none of those seem sexual it was all
I feel comforted by like just its presence right what was the other trend we talked about cadulting right like you do like lego sets same sort of thing right and there was like a whole category called cadult and cadult was like this like mega trend that all these companies are 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 I think it's called no scroll it's basically like hey you don't need to browse twitter 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 chat gpd not like audio voice
but just the way it types so you know chat gpd 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 personality whereas this thing would be like yo big day big day today on the timeline like here's what's going on and it just talks like tone and personality yeah totally and I'm like I prefer that yeah like and so I'm sure not everybody would 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 personality is going to make a huge difference with AI it does it does with us 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 tone might actually do that back to you if you have formal language and you're speaking in very like full sentences your tone 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 yeah okay amazing we gotta get you a tone whatever you're doing I'm in okay awesome thank you guys thanks for having me yeah great all right we have the last one for this episode Jonathan where you at bring them out let's go
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 not exactly a number all right disregard everything I just said do whatever you want I'll do what I want first big number so also to take a step back overlap we build agents that edit and distribute video content for media companies and marketing teams we don't pay attention to the number very relevant to you guys that number doing what it's your show now Jonathan we at Autonomous Overlap agents have generated over 2 billion impressions across social media without a human in the loop what's it called overlap overlap overlap
I think I used you guys you do use it maybe you have a subscription I have used it yeah Ben and Diego use it okay yeah so we've done over 2 billion impressions we've been growing revenue 18% month over month for over a year 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 we became accidentally profitable this quarter all right so 18% monthly compounding is what we are 19 or 20x year for year okay how old is the company we are a little over 2 years old okay so you use you use San Francisco jargon our audience they don't know what an autonomous overlapping agent is yeah I'll explain
you have a podcast or a video you give it to overlap overlap will find clips in the video or in the podcast that are your best moments it'll cut them up for you it'll caption them for you it'll get them ready for you to share and that's what you were saying you've helped drive like 2 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 looking for moments and then it also does the posting but explain to me why you're better than what I did because well you're better than me recently I used Claude and I made a thing where it goes through our MFM clips and it posts it and the way that I set it up was it logs it goes into typefully so I can review everything and then I just hit schedule why are you better than that? so a couple things one is we have our own fine-tuned video understanding model that is way better at understanding video and the major LLMs are not good
at understanding video which is probably I think I said like here's some emotions that do good and you're saying you're I duct taped it you're and to your credit I asked Sam hey should I use your thing how's it going you're like ah it's not that good so well I said it's not automated and it's still fine yes and it's very much fine yes I made it it's fine yep yeah yeah it's like it doesn't like Sean's laughter that he just did right there it doesn't say 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 the other part of this is that when it posts for you it looks at the data
of that post and understands themes hooks totally that perform well mine is supposed to do that but I don't think it is is your main business guys like us or is it like Bleacher Report and like CNN and like companies like that that better customers than us better customers than you guys for sure 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 you know Barstool Sports or iHeart Media those are some of our big customers and then on the other side we actually kind of a newer in the last couple 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 different customer now kind of a different customer because those bigger enterprises they actually want like like predictable pricing how big is Opus they were one of the first guys in this space they were one of the first in the space yeah they are definitely bigger by headcount I don't know if necessarily bigger by revenue they're more focused on like kind of independent creators that was a subtle thing that was true in terms of bloating they were way more bloated than us yeah but it takes them more people to do what we need
yeah that was nice they 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 post a lot how much does it cost to use you the majority of our revenue are six figure contracts and so so we do smaller deals and then also like the kind of CPM model is a little bit different but the majority are six of the revenue is six figure contracts what were you doing before so before I was at business school and then before that I was at Meta oh alright cool and you went through YC right went through YC yeah I think that's how I found you guys Gary Tan was like overlap it's the new
it's the new shit Gary was our partner he might have he might have introduced us at one point too I don't know but yeah Gary's our partner another investment I missed out on really this podcast has just become talking to the founders that I should have invested in that I somehow missed the boat on hey it's never too late oh no it's definitely too late whatever price you're at now all I'm thinking about is what I could have been in that but yeah so I went through Y Combinator in summer 24 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 like that is how like most people consume most podcast content but then from that we were like okay we built a TikTok for podcasts but like when I hear that pitch we are your customer I'm like yeah but I need you to get to go from the clip to the main thing because I make money on the main thing because that's the one that has ads and shit on it yeah that is not going to be true anymore tell me more so a lot of big brands like the RSS feed ad is a nice throw in for a lot of big brands they want 360 kind of deals they want to be in the clip they want to be in the clip they want to be on your feed they think of you
as a creator they don't think of you as a podcaster hmm that's interesting I wish we would have known that before we negotiated our contract probably but yeah but yeah I mean it's like the vast majority of eyeballs are not coming to you or you know the vast majority of time spent with you guys is you know it's people consuming the content in the feed and your awareness well I saw a clip of this because Jimmy went on Joe Rogan so Mr. Beast went on Joe Rogan and he's 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 50,000 times more people
are going to watch this clip than will watch the full show so ultimately like these shows are basically like they're actually consumed via clips on social feeds that's like the end product that's the net but the best customers don't like when you and I talk about something we'll talk about something in minute 45 and we call it the RSS feed so people who listen on Spotify anyone who puts it in their ears and they go for a walk yeah okay well the retention on those guys is way better and we'll mention something in minute 45 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 of it more fly yeah 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 and I'm like you listen to this he goes no no no no but I I'm sorry 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 I don't like that you know what I mean I totally know what you mean and you know this conversation with people actually making long form content can be a little hard because you guys think of the product as the full show but you're like we're outdated what's the phrase it's like
never ask a man for his opinion when his salary depends on the answer it's like kind of that yeah 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 we don't that doesn't help us yeah but 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 you don't know if they're actually
watching to the 30 second mark or whatever of that clip either that is true but the thing about video also is that the clips get re-shared again and again and again and again in a way that is like 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 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 raised 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 do I need to believe what's every business has like a value equation right so you're gonna need x number of customers paying you y dollars a month to give you z you know net revenue or whatever yeah yeah and what's the desired like outcome in terms of net revenue like what is how do you define what's 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 the amount that's spent on digital advertising so about 90 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 and it's going to migrate to paying agents for performance and so you know for us like you know the tam of like video editing software or the labor budgets of video editing software that's in the tens of billions 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 the amount of money to acquire customers instead of paying 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 to using overlap and whether that's paying on a cpm basis rather or that's paying for the software 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 and starts investing 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 it how does your agent do that? well you can have someone talk to the camera and then put in a video or have the 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 every single you know a version of it every single week you have this energy of 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 in the sense of like what is unfigured out what's the real what you know you're an entrepreneur there's no way it's all just yep we got it monopoly coming soon you know there's obviously going to 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 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 like you just need like good enterprise sales people no it is hard well it's hard from the perspective of hiring people who know how to speak to old school media people and kind of new savvy digital media people 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 we've 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 you just had the right idea what 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 not no because you guys were clipping our podcast for us or something somebody was doing probably it was the AI agent who was doing that from an outside it seems like the big bet is the CPM thing or the SAS thing that seems like a pretty like that is one of
the biggest questions and I think for the big media companies it's always going to be the SAS they don't want to pay because my margin doesn't keep improving if I have to keep paying you a percent of how big it is exactly exactly but for a lot of the creators and a lot of the like smaller creator folks like that is way better yeah because they can't afford six figures a year they can't afford six figures a year but also it's they can actually do but how do they get CPM money to pay you like if they're like we don't we don't make money on clips at all most people I would think don't make money clips on all well so you know an example of like one of the recent CPM deals
that we've done is like do you guys know James Sexton the like divorce lawyer celebrity divorce lawyer he's on a ton of podcasts I've been seeing his clips probably overlap clips but what you know he's launching like a legal tech business and like selling like some sort of prenup it's like the guys who go on WAP and they're basically like hey we just want to just make me famous I'll give you three dollars CPM make me famous well there's that yeah 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 there's a guy like James 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 10,000 other ones that are going to like eventually come out or the duct tape people like me 100% so drop some wisdom on us right if you're if you're somebody is a founder listening to this what's a golden nugget a business insight a insight from you about the way you're building overlap that they can steal they can take and they can do maybe something you don't 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 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 to get promoted like basically you're selling here's how I'm going to get you promoted that's particularly true in advertising when I used to own a company that made money on advertising we would close seven figure deals and the way the buy I would thought like oh I'll just tell them that like if they spend this much they're going to
make this much money that makes sense I'm a business owner that's all I can't give a shit about and then that pitch never worked it was like whining and dining worked and making them 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 is that it's that's what's really important way more than ROI totally it's trust and being like 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 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 right there's a phrase for that what's it called cover my ass or what yeah yeah like that's why people buy Gartner yeah that was my huge learning running an ad business I was like this doesn't 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 $2 million round uh the so um the valuation of the $2 million round was $25 million and also can we still invest at the $25 million we can talk about that you know uh it was a shoot your shot
where we shoot our shot with the entrepreneurs and can we get the software for free dude thanks for coming on this is awesome congrats this was great you know long time listener first time caller so great to meet you guys thank you we appreciate you all right that's it all right that's a wrap for San Francisco we had 9-10 founders come in everyone from a million to 100 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 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 him if you want to be on the show the next time we go to a different city all right we're out of here yay yay