- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J8G7D8A7GCRKRB7H2MHEP7AR (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: How’s it going? Danny Hamilton: Hey, Danny, how’s it going? All Ben, how’s it going here? Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: Doing well, doing well. Danny Hamilton: So is it just me today? Or we got everybody coming through or what’s going on? Talk with me. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: Looks like it’s just gonna be you and me. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 2: Stanley, he’s on the invite, but he never accepted the event, so I’m not sure if he’s joining. Danny Hamilton: Yeah, so look, let’s do this, because he’s the man of the hour. So let’s do this. Write an email to him, see what day and time works for him, and me in, and I’ll be there. I’ll show up. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: Got it. OK. Danny Hamilton: I will do that. That way, you know, you don’t have to repeat yourself twice, and we go from there. Give me a quick second. Give me a little short bio about yourself anyway. I’m gonna mute the mic. Give me a little introduction of yourself. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. So I grew up in New York, about an hour north of New York City. Went to college in Pennsylvania, played tennis there. That was my sport. After college, went to Morgan Stanley, did banking for like a year, well, two years. While I was doing that, I realized that I was way more interested in building things, but I’m non-technical. So when I said building things, that doesn’t mean technology. So while I was at Morgan Stanley, I did a podcast and along with that, I did a clubbing grind with a few friends of mine. So those are like the two first entrepreneurial activities that I did with watch, that I endured. And I loved it, I loved every second of it. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 2: I was working on those 15-20 hours a week on top of my day job. So that led to me quitting Morgan Stanley and going to an early stage startup where I just went on a crazy three and a half year journey of pivoting from one product to a feature in that product, a CEO change, layoffs, raising too much money, not being able to raise any money, It was nuts. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: But through that startup, I met Michael Houck, who is the CEO and founder of a holding company that has a bunch of businesses. And one of those businesses is launching case studies, speaking with founders who have raised money, venture-backed businesses. And that is why we I believe we’re chatting today, because you, Stanley, both of you, that context I don’t have, but yeah, that’s why, that’s me and that’s why we’re chatting today, I believe. Danny Hamilton: Yeah, so yeah, I would love for Stanley to take over this, you know, call a lot more than me. I’ll give you a little brief background about myself. I’m the manager and business partner for YDB, the son of ODB from Wu Tang. Mom, also his business partner, and Stanley is part of our team as well. And he has something really amazing he wants to talk about. And I think I’ll give him the floor now. With your holding company, are you guys out there, are you guys raising capital at all? Are you helping to raise capital too or no? Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: So I guess I didn’t make that very clear. Good question. So one of his main businesses was an email newsletter. Hauk is a former founder himself, raised funding from Andreessen Horowitz for his company called Launch House. But he left that company and he created an email newsletter for startup founders. He’s got like an email newsletter of like 60,000 members as the audience, and they’re either existing startup founders or aspiring startup founders. And so he’s built businesses off of that audience. Danny Hamilton: That’s pretty good. I like it. I like it. So thank you guys. Got a nice program over there. And I definitely think it’s something that can help us. So let’s schedule a call. Write him back in a group email if you could. See what works for Stanley, because I want him to lead. I don’t want to take over and be dominant, because I could. But I want I want him to lead, I want him to get the attention and then I’ll come in and give you some ideas of how this could work for us and work for you guys. Okay, sounds good. So yeah, write it, if you don’t mind, as soon as we get done, just say, hey Stanley, we showed up, you wasn’t there, you know, I know you pretty busy guy, but say, hey, you know, when it works for you, so we can do this again and we all can be present. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: Is this, and can I just ask, is this not for the case study interview? Danny Hamilton: Is this something separate that you wanted to discuss? With me or with him? With him it’s more of the case studies. With me, I’m here supporting him and we have a bunch of things that we have on the go that maybe some of his… Is it your boss or your partner? Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 1: He’s technically my boss, but yeah. Danny Hamilton: Okay, your boss. That we can talk to him about and see if we can leverage those startups for our founders that he have. He got a lot of founders there, man. I would love to kind of see how we can do something with that. So that’s for me, but that’s a more personal thing for me and YDB. But with Stanley, I know he has some thoughts about what he wanted to discuss and I’ll leave the floor to him. Conference Room (Ben Ornstein) - Speaker 2: Okay. Now, I appreciate that. I’ll write back in the chat and we’ll We’ll, uh, we’ll get on a call and we’ll get it. Danny Hamilton: We’ll get it in the books. Perfect. Looking forward. Thank you. Nice to meet you, Danny. All right. Take care.