- Duration: 17 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01J8T6NQJ49ECEH0SPE849CYV9 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01J8T6NQJ49ECEH0SPE849CYV9)
Transcript
[Sarah Allali]: How are you? I’m good. I’m good. [Michael Houck]: Good to see you. [Sarah Allali]: Yeah, good to see you too. [Sarah Allali]: really sorry about the call in the industry. I am running between two meetings that I like last time. [Michael Houck]: I know how it goes sometimes. It’s all good. No worries. [Sarah Allali]: Yeah. Honestly, I don’t know why I accepted the second meeting, which is pretty much the opposite in the city. So yeah. [Michael Houck]: Okay. We’ll be super quick. I won’t take up too much of your time. [Sarah Allali]: Yeah. No worries. Thanks for the flexibility in doing the call as quickly as that. Basically, I had a call with Max yesterday for like Megaphone, which I was really, really interested to answer pretty much all the questions that I had about that. So totally okay. On top of that, I have started looking for a goth writer. And I just asked him the question like pretty like just like that. Do you do like any ghost writing service? And he told me that yes, which I didn’t know about. So yeah, I just wanted to know more a little a bit more about that. And to explain you a little bit the situation, we have basically worked on the product, and we fixed all the issues with Google that we had, like the synchronization, etc. So right now we have like a product that we can really, really work from and scale, scale with. So second step for us is really starting to do like the basic of the communication, and a little bit of marketing. So we have several strategies we want to put in place for partnership, etc, which I will be taking care of And I want to start doing some pretty basic things for Twitter, mostly because this is where we’ll find our target. Right now, we are still two. On the company, we will potentially hire a fundraiser and hire at the end of the year or early 2025. But in the meantime, I wanted to basically externalize all the basic communication on Twitter. For a lot of reasons. First reason, if I’m 100% honest, is that I really don’t like it. Second one is, I have like more important things to do right now. So yeah, so I just wanted to know more. He sent me like the pricing. I have a question about the long form vs short form. And just how you’re working generally, do we take like, I don’t know, one session per month and then we decide about what we are doing during the whole month or yeah, if you have like any specific way of working, we’d love to know more. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, sure. First of all, that’s very helpful info. I feel like I’m up to speed on all the context now, which is great. Also good to hear about the product and also the plans for fundraising. So I think our mission in the meantime should basically be to make as much noise as possible and make people aware of what you guys are doing so that when you go to fundraise, they’re like, oh, I’ve seen her on Twitter, right? Like that’s the number one. Okay. Cool. We’re on the same page. So yeah, so we can definitely help with that. Obviously, you know, that’s what I’ve done for myself. And we’ve helped a bunch of others at this point do it too. So yes, so one thing I would say up front is that we do see ourselves sort of as like a long term partner for folks and using us and working with us is something that I think can be cost beneficial relative to hiring someone and bring them on payroll and all that stuff. So We definitely want to approach this from that lens, from our perspective. And as you fundraise, you know, we can expand this maybe to more people on the team or to a newsletter as well and sort of build that more trust. So there’s lots of options long term there. But as far as how we work, so it’s pretty simple. Basically, everything happens in like one week cycles. And your time commitment is super minimal, because we work with founders, we know how it is. So basically, once we get started, we’ll do do one like 30 to 45 minute max 60 minute call. And in that call, we’ll go really deep on like, who’s the exact audience you want to target, what people have that audience today, and also what people have the content styles that you want us to emulate. And so we’ll talk, you know, we’ll talk deep about the product, we’ll talk deep about the vision, we’ll talk deep about the mission. But really, what we’re what we’re nailing in on is like, who is that and what do they care about? And so on that call will be you, me, and a writer from our team. And unlike some other agencies, you get matched with one writer and they work with you on everything. They’re your partner, basically. So you’re not just being thrown into a pool and someone’s like, oh, I’m free, let me pick up this post. Our goal is for you to sort of imprint your brain onto this person. I actually have someone in mind already who I think could be a good fit since I know the product and since I know you, I think I have someone who could be a good fit. So yeah, the weekly process is pretty simple. Basically, every Monday in a shared Slack channel that is Slack Connect, so it’s in both of our native Slacks, we will share three topics, or up to three topics, and specific questions about those topics. The topics are just like, hey, what we’re thinking is interesting. Maybe they’re from a backlog that we have. Maybe they’re new things that we see that week. But then we need your expertise, so we’ll specific questions about them that we want you to get back to us on. And the best way to get back to us is probably easiest for you too, is just rambly voice notes. We don’t need you to write anything out. We don’t need to hop on an interview every week or anything like that. Just send us in Slack rambly voice notes where you get the intonation, the emotion, all that stuff, stream of consciousness. If we get those by Wednesday, then we’ll get the content back to you by Friday. And then if you want revisions, we can do revisions and stuff like that too. The first sort of like two-ish weeks will be basically deep dive research on the space, writing sample analysis from you, the initial kind of kickoff call, and building up that backlog of ideas. And then starting on the third week, we’ll get right into that weekly process. [Sarah Allali]: Okay, makes sense. Okay, so this is good. So basically, let’s say if I we should write like a little bit more technical posts and things like that. I will review everything so we are sure everything is good. But I don’t have to explain everything. You’re doing also research on your end or you really need like as many involvement as possible for these type of posts. [Michael Houck]: No, I mean, you know, we we have someone in mind who I again, I think is could be a good fit for this, but they’ll be doing their own research both on sort of the space in general and also so sort of what goes into the tech as well every single week. Obviously in the beginning sort of two week period, they go super deep on that. But the more you give to them initially, like the more writing samples, the more access to Notion docs about the business and stuff like that, the faster they’ll get up to speed on the technical side of things. So that’s all I would say, be super open and candid with them and they’ll get there. [Sarah Allali]: Okay, okay, perfect. Okay, so usually you write posts like kind of mixing authority side for myself and the CEO of the company, maybe company news announcement, like if you launch something with demos, et cetera, or you’re like mostly specialized in like one specific type of post. Or you’re- No, no. Okay. [Michael Houck]: That’s something we’ll talk through on the initial kickoff call. Basically, we’ll outline every sort of different type of post you want us to do, what cadence, how many per week, things like that. And we can also mix in some of those more well-researched, high viral potential style threads as well, if you want. Not everyone wants that, but they are an option that we do and we specialize in. So we can do those as well. But yeah, we’ll go deep on that when we have the writer on the call on the first kickoff. [Sarah Allali]: Okay, okay, perfect. And last question for you. So not the last bit. What is the difference between short and long post? [Michael Houck]: Sorry, you did ask that. So the long form posts are one of two types. One is like a thread that’s like, you know, the stuff that I would put posting on Twitter all the time for a while. And then the second is like the new sort of like long tweets, right? Like the Andrew Chen style essay tweets. So either of those would classify as a long post. Short post is basically anything else, right? Any company updates, any industry news commentary that you want to do. Sort of one-off interesting anecdotes and insights and things like that. So how we break that up, we’ll determine, again, we’ll probably test it a couple different methods, but you’ll give us direction on sort of what you want to start with and then we can adjust over time from there. [Sarah Allali]: Okay, perfect. So basically in your, the pricing that I saw that Max sent me, we can mix long form, let’s say like one long form in like other short for him for a week, et cetera. It’s not like either all long or all short. I guess it’s better. Like we never know. [Michael Houck]: No, no. The way it works is like with the, with the, the full here, like the, the, the more expensive here, that one you have basically either three long form per week or some mixture of long and short that equates roughly to three long form per week. And with the, with the lighter tier, it’s just two or equivalents. [Sarah Allali]: Okay, perfect. Okay. Um, so I think I you answer pretty much all of my questions. Oh, yeah, just the one thing. Um, so basically, I’m doing a TED at the end of October in SF. And I would love to leverage this because this is like a TED on AI agent. And this is what we are building. So I feel I should potentially communicate about that in one way or another. Just saying, yeah, I’ll do it. Is it something in your Or it would be like, I’m sorry, people just came by. [Michael Houck]: No, you’re fine, you’re fine. [Sarah Allali]: One meter from my face. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Anyway. [Sarah Allali]: Or it would be like too short for you. [Michael Houck]: No, no, that’s totally fine. I mean, I need to check in with our writer this afternoon to make sure that the person I have in mind has the bandwidth that I think they do. But assuming that’s true, we’d be able to do a kickoff next week and that would give us more than enough time to get get something out there ahead of time for the TED Talk. Yeah, absolutely. [Sarah Allali]: Okay, perfect. And last question, engagement or no engagement for your pricing? [Michael Houck]: Ah, yes. So we have the base pricing without engagement, but then since we have Megaphone, you get a subscription to Megaphone for free as part of this, and then you can spend as much or as little on the creators as you want. We also do where we will engage with both people who respond to your content and also like big names who you want us to sort of like engage with on your behalf. We typically do charge for that, but I think since we know each other and it’s not that big of a lift on our end, we can just include that in the base price for you. [Sarah Allali]: Okay. Oh, thank you very much. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. And for the, whatever the pricing, it’s like a paying every month or it’s like an annual pricing. Oh. Or like every six months? [Michael Houck]: Good question. No, it’s month to month. There’s no long-term commitment. We can give a discount on the first month if we do do something longer, but there’s no obligation to. All we ask for is 30 days before canceling. That’s it. [Sarah Allali]: Yeah, of course. Okay, perfect. Okay, perfect. So I think you answered pretty much all of my questions. Yeah, everything was pretty clear. I can get back to you by… [Sarah Allali]: um just the time to chat about it with my with my co-founder so we are sure we’re in line uh but yeah I think pretty clear sounds great I will reach out if I don’t hear from you by monday afternoon let’s say yeah yeah no sure you will hear from me from there thanks sarah thank you very much michael thanks for flexibility no of course of course good luck with the meeting