- Duration: 17 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JBA4E98KMMA611BEJ9HW5Q1B (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JBA4E98KMMA611BEJ9HW5Q1B)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hey, David. Michael Houck: How are you doing? Hey, good. How are you? [David Yue]: Good, man. Glad you’re able to hop on. Michael Houck: Yeah, sorry. [David Yue]: I’m running a little bit late. But yeah, no, good. Are you based in the SoCal, Bay Area, New York? Michael Houck: I live in all three, but I’m in New York right now. [David Yue]: New York, nice. Very cool. How about you? Bay Area, San Francisco. So if you recognize Salesforce Park in the back over there. Yeah. That’s cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Michael Houck: I lived in the mission for like three years. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. Nice. [David Yue]: Good spot. Yeah. Um, well, cool, man. Michael Houck: Hey, glad to chat. Um, and thanks for, yeah. Thanks for grabbing some time, I guess. Tell me more about sort of what the goals are for content, how you think we can help. Um, and also, I guess, I guess it’s you too. Uh, I mean, took a look at the product. I kind of, at least website accounting space. So yeah, I guess just let me know how you think we can help. Cool. Yeah, sounds good. [David Yue]: I’m going to give you some context. You know, David, you know, one of the founders. Yeah, companies, you know, of course, as you probably know, you know, venture backed company not publicly launched. Right. So it’s we’ve been around for about a year now and, you know, gone through multiple rounds of funding, but it’s all been very stealthy so far. And so I think the couple of things that we’re looking at, like one is just, you know, a how do we launch? Which I think we also spoke to, was it your chief of staff or maybe one of your colleagues? And I think he kind of gave us a little bit of the rundown of how Megaphone works and sort of how that platform stuff works. And so that’s really helpful. But then beyond that, it’s just like, how do we do content? And so, yeah, I think a couple of questions. I mean, definitely, it’s on our roadmap. Right now, it’s not a key focus for us. We’re very much in sort of a stealth, build, get customers sort of stage. But I think once we sort of open the floodgates, that is a really key aspect for us. So just trying to think about, like, I mean, honestly, open to ideas. So I think when we mentioned, hey, like, we’re looking at content, I think you mentioned, hey, yeah, like, we also do that as well. So I think, yeah, maybe a couple of questions to start off, even as like, you know, like, when does this make sense? Is this for individuals? Is this for companies? Like, what’s best there? Just like those kinds of basic questions, and then like happy to just figure out what makes sense. Michael Houck: So. Yeah, I mean, Megaphone basically has two sides. There’s the platform for distribution, our creator network, and then there’s our ghost rating agency for content. And creation, right? So if you want content to perform well, you need both, you need high quality content, and you need to get engagement distribution from the right creators, right, right. So on the content side, I think Max talked about the distribution side. So we can talk more. On the content side, specifically, we tend to work with founders. And so our processes are to build for founders, super lightweight, not a lot of meetings, we have like one kickoff call, and then all the same So after that, you could voice those through a shared Slack channel to send those content ideas and things like that. So super lightweight. And we pair you up with a writer, and that could be for your personal account. It could be for your entire co-founding team’s personal accounts. It could be for the account as well. We can talk through strategy. I recommend the personal account. People follow people first. Way easier to follow the Andrew Ghezdek. Of your personal brand, and then blow out the business account after that. But yeah, so that’s what I generally recommend, but we can talk in more detail. And on that kickoff call, we just want to go over, all right, here’s who the audience is, here’s what they care about, here’s the type of content we want to put out, what we want to talk about. And also, who are the accounts that either have that audience today that we want to kind of steal some people from, or also, who are the people who have the writing style So we want to try to emulate with your brand. Got it. Got it. That’s it. Super lightweight. And a couple of different price points based on how much content you want us to produce. Cool. That sounds good. And I think you sent those over before. [David Yue]: So I think that’s really helpful. That makes sense. And then timing wise, I mean, this sounds really interesting. I think at the very least, maybe we could give it a shot just to like, we’re not really sure what’s the, I mean, here’s the thing again. We have not launched. Michael Houck: And we are not public. You guys are in product mode and in the early customer mode right now, I can tell. [David Yue]: Right. Exactly. Exactly. So we really haven’t done any of that stuff, but like, I mean, at the very least, it’s something that I think when we do launch and like, so I assume, right, when we do launch, this is something that we would like absolutely give it a try. Um, so, and you know, that’s not, that’s not too far off in the distance. It’s as soon as going to be probably if it’s, it’s probably going to be before the end of the year, this year, um, there’s a small chance that maybe it will be big at Q1 next year, but, um, so it will happen. Um, just trying to think through what makes sense and timing and all that. That’s really helpful then. Okay. So, and then what does engagement look like, So let’s, let’s say we want to get started. Um, how long is there like a ramp up period? Like, can we just hit the ground running? Like, what does that look like, Michael Houck: Yeah. I mean, again, real for founders. So we sort of, we sort of enable you to just hit the ground running. Uh, there’s no, there’s a two week period where we’ll sort of get a lot of writing samples from you, collect a lot of voice notes from you, build up a nice backlog and start generating the initial content by the week, be able to start posting. And then it’s month to month. There’s no long-term commitment. We just ask for 30 days if you want to cancel. But yeah, super lightweight. We set up a shared Slack channel. We do the kickoff. And I also just find the writer on our team who I think would be the best match for you guys based on the topic area and also just sort of what you’re looking for. [David Yue]: That makes sense. Any other questions for you? We have no writing samples. Is that doable still? Or, you know, it’s, it’s sorry, helicopter flying by. Michael Houck: Good. Yeah, it’s totally doable. We have a lot of folks who are, you know, starting to just raise some money. And there’s like, alright, let’s get another word out there about ourselves. So we can totally work with that. What we’ll probably ask you to do is just engage with like sending us voice notes where we can get emotion and intonation in your voice. Yeah. Because we don’t want the content to just be like, you know, some thread that’ll get some attention based on some topic that we anyone could write, we want it to be like your unique voice and personality and perspective. So the more we can get from that, from you initially, the better, but on a weekly basis, it’s pretty lightweight. Okay, that makes sense. [David Yue]: And I know it’s probably, you know, it’s hard to guarantee this stuff, but like, what kind of results can I expect? Like, let’s say we did it for a year, six months, like, what could we expect out of it? Or like, maybe just some data points. I know it’s not guaranteed, but like, what does that usually look like, Michael Houck: Yeah, I mean, it depends also how you leverage Megaphone. So you’ll get a free subscription to Megaphone as part of this. $59 a month per account. But you get that for free, you still need to spend and pay the creators if you want to get a commission from them. But for folks that we’ve written good content for who’ve then gone on and also had a few creators engage with their stuff. We’ve seen people go from literally like a couple hundred followers to 20,000 followers in a few days now. Wow, that’s like a that’s not like an you know, not guaranteeing that that’s a result for sure. Sure does happen. I’d say a more realistic result would be you build up authority in your niche. You get a few thousand followers over the course of six months or so, maybe even less than that, three to six months. But more importantly, you get the right people following you who are either going to be customers or they’re going to maybe be investors who are interested in checking you guys out. [David Yue]: So it’s a lot. Okay, that makes sense. And this is mostly for Twitter, right? Twitter or LinkedIn? Michael Houck: We do Twitter. And we also do newsletters. If you guys have any interest in newsletters, we can do that too. [David Yue]: Like personal newsletter. It’s hard to do a personal Twitter and a company newsletter. Those would be too much, right? No, no. We have options where you can do that. Michael Houck: It just depends on how much you want to invest in content. You guys probably have an email list that you’re going to be building up, especially once you publicly launch. What are you going to do to stay top of mind for those folks? There’s always a good way to do it. Got it. [David Yue]: Got it. Cool. Okay. Awesome. Huge. Um, that sounds really good. So I think, yeah, definitely interested. Um, I think timing for sure. Like, you know, it’s probably just a matter of when we are ready to go along and go public. Right. And so I’ll keep you posted on that, but like definitely this is like something that we’re interested in. Michael Houck: So, um, as long as you guys are still taking customers in a month or so, we’re, we’re, we’re growing fast, but we’re, we have good writers on the team who can handle capacity. So we’re still small enough where I’m super involved. As well in the day-to-day. It’s basically, it’s myself and Blake Emall, who you might know from Twitter, too. He’s like, he has more followers than I’ve had, actually. He’s got 100,000 followers, first CMO of Copy.ai, really smart guy. The two of us, we manage the writers together. I sort of handle client stuff as well. And then the writers are folks who both of us, or one of us, have worked with for quite a while at this point. So they’re helpful folks. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. [David Yue]: Awesome. Okay, cool. That sounds great. So then, if this sounds right, maybe give us a couple weeks, maybe a month, and then I’ll hit you on email, and then we can probably just dive in if that’s good. So. Michael Houck: Yeah, if I don’t hear from you by like beginning of December, I’ll check in. [David Yue]: Sure, yeah, check in, and then I’ll give you an update as to whether or not we’re launching this year, or if it’s gonna be Q1 next year, but Michael Houck: Cool. Yeah. Davey, I’m rooting for you guys. Thanks. It’s an exciting space, and I think there’s a few people competing in it right now, so I’m excited to see you guys rise to the top. [David Yue]: Yeah, we’ll see what happens, so maybe, yeah, with your help probably. Cool. Awesome. Great. Well, good to meet you. Talk to you soon. Michael Houck: Good to meet you too. Talk soon.