- Duration: 23 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JJQ2JZNCGR0G0BN1DP9TMM4J (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JJQ2JZNCGR0G0BN1DP9TMM4J)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: It’s been a while. I’m good. I’m down in Argentina right now, actually. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: How about you? Argentina. Whereabouts? Buenos Aires? Or whereabouts are you based in Argentina? [Michael Houck]: I was in Buenos for a weekend, basically just did a food tour. It was great. But no. I’m in a place called Bariloche. It’s like part of Patagonia, but still sort of civilized, like not like total wilderness. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: So it’s nice. Nice, man. You’re always up to something cool, man. I swear. You can count on you to do something interesting, that’s for sure. But yeah, I’m in London at the moment. Been traveling myself, not quite as exotic as you, just between the Bay and New York and London, to be honest. Nice. Yeah, I’m well, man. How have you been? I see you’ve lost the, is it blonde I can’t remember the highlights that you used to have. [Michael Houck]: The blonde is long gone at this point. It’s been a while. Things are good. I mean, business is growing really, really well. So everything’s solid there. I got divorced, so that was weird. My choice. She didn’t want kids at the end of the day, so I just had to move on. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Fair enough. That makes sense. And how are you adapting to everything now? Like, you know, how’s it going? What do you, business-wise, what are you up to? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, our ghost rating agency is growing like crazy. Everyone wants newsletters right now, and we’ve got a killer team, and we have, like, a way to grow it that’s cheaper than paid ads, so people are really digging that. And so, yeah, I mean, that part of the business is growing like crazy. We’re planning a big launch for Megaphone this quarter, too, so the software side should pick up, too. That’s healthy as it is. And then the newsletter is just chugging along, you know, still growing, still making sponsorship revenue on it. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: It’s nice. Awesome, man. And are you working with Jamie at all? Because I remember he started like a little ghost writing thing for Twitter or something. [Michael Houck]: He’s been doing his thing. I think he’s working with a few agencies right now. Not us. Yeah. Hope piece of having success with it too. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Yeah, nice man. That’s, that’s dope. I mean, I’m definitely, you know, once we’ve, uh, raised our seed, I think I’m definitely going to come to you for some of that. Cause I don’t think there’s many people that do it better than you guys. Thank you. [Michael Houck]: If it’s social media, if it’s newsletter, we got you a hundred percent. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: No, a hundred percent, man. Definitely need to, uh, touch base on that. But, uh, Yeah, on my side, kind of, you know, launch house kind of thing. It’s been ages now, man. But yeah, I was kind of in the idea maze, I think, for a while. I was kind of thinking, like, what should I spend my time doing? But what’s good is, like, I studied public policy at college, right? At Penn. And I was just trying to think, like, what should I do? I’m actually the third generation now building in public service. So my granddad was in an orphanage in the 1930s. My dad was a social care practitioner for over 30 years. And then I’ve been doing a lot of public service work as well. And so I was just rattling my brain, like, what should I work on? What should I work on? And my dad just goes to me like, you’re a tech guy, man. Just try and solve some of the crap that I do on a daily basis. It’s mind-numbing. So I looked into it. Haven’t looked back. And now that’s resulted in Starlight, I guess. I was wearing launch shells yesterday, actually. I still have that shirt. But yeah, it shows about my gym gains, I guess you could say. But yeah. But yeah, so now we’re building Starlight, we’re building AI agents for public services, you know, selling to governments and private contractors. So yeah, just just kind of like starting out, making some revenue now, which is great. Yeah, working with a lot of government bodies now. So just getting into like, you know, that fundraising kind of journey got about like 750 and commits right now. But, you know, still kind of thinking like who’s the right partner and stuff. But yeah, I remember kind of those fireside chats with you just like, you know, give us like crazy amount of games. So yeah, touch base and yeah, get your perspective on what we’re building and what’s the best way to go about all this kind of stuff. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, first off, like congrats to like the journey. I love it. Having 750 already sort of soft commit is really nice too. So nice work on that. I feel like the best businesses right now, like when you look back, like, you know, five years down the road, the best businesses that come out are going to be basically exactly what you’re doing, which is taking this new tech and applying it somewhere where no one else is looking. No other AI companies are going to come in and compete with you guys right away and make it really hard. You can sort of have that time to learn about the user and the problem and sort of experiment. Because it’s new, right? It’s new tech. Got to figure out how to apply it. In my opinion, those are the industries where the most resilient businesses from this era are going to come out of So that’s dope, dude. I love it. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: No, I appreciate it, man. That’s part of like our pitch like we show like AI agents like just swarming like what you call it legal and finance and architecture and logistics and he’s like hey but they missed the biggest one which is which is government and public service um and then we say oh well there’s probably a reason for that because um that we’re first movements because people say it’s hard to sell to the government but um you know thankfully we’ve cracked it um day now are like, you’ve got loads of debt, you’ve got loads of societal issues, you know, you’re under resourced, what’s the solution? It’s like, literally, a hot pot for, for AI, you know, so that’s what we’re kind of like seeing now. But, but yeah, thank you so much, man. Really appreciate that. So okay, so what, what do you need? [Michael Houck]: Like, how can I how can I help out here? What’s the most impactful thing either on the call or like afterwards like what can I do to help you guys? [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Yeah sure I mean you’re like in my head Hout is just like Mr. Style so it’s not really it’s not really I don’t know exactly like obviously maybe maybe on the kind of fundraising thing I still you know I still use your Trunch calculator I still actually I still like when I have other founders like talk to me about this kind of So I’m like, hey, check out this thing. It’s so sick. It’s only been like an hour or two. But yeah, still super helpful. But yeah, so I guess maybe on the pitch would be really helpful on how about to go about this round, if there’s any folks in your network that you might think might be useful to speak to, and just generally more about the business and, you know, is there anything like any value where you think might be useful in terms of, oh, like Shahbaz, you haven’t thought about this in terms of like, I don’t know, a product or go to market, whatever it might be. But yeah, that’s basically, yeah. [Michael Houck]: Well, we’re, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is, you know, we do every like, it’s usually like one to two months, it kind of varies, but we do these like intro rounds where, you know, we have a bunch of investors in our network. And we just go through a bunch of pitch decks that people submit and structure the deal and info like that. We just pick out a few favorites and make some interesting people. So we’re probably gonna do another one of those in like, I don’t know, two weeks maybe. So I don’t know if that timing lines up for you guys, but we’d love to feature you guys. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Yeah, sure, why not? We’d love to be part of it. I mean, yeah, we’ve got a pretty crack team as well, like guys that like built like LMs like Copilot and Gemini and Palantir and all that kind of nonsense. So yeah. [Michael Houck]: I’ll show the credentials, but I don’t want to show the credentials. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: I feel like all this kind of stuff helps, right? I guess like, but yeah, man, would love to be part of that. And yeah, anyway that, you know, actually I’m quite plugged in and if you found a community still, stuff like that. So if there’s anything that, you know, on my side that I can do for Megaphone or anything that you’re doing as well, happy to help out, man. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, man, I appreciate that. [Michael Houck]: I mean, the number one thing right now is just trying to grow the ghost running agency. You know, basically, my goal with that is to grow it really large over the next one to two years, and then then sell it to some bigger company that wants to take on an agency. And right now we’re doing like, where are we at? We’re like a little under a million in, uh, ARR for the agency right now. I mean, the whole business together is larger, but just having the agency get to that point alone would be pretty great. So, um, I want to get there in the next little bit. Um, so any, anyone you can send our way, I’ll toss you a referral fee or something like that. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: So don’t worry about it, man. It’s all, it’s all good. [Michael Houck]: Uh, you know, So basically our ICP is like any founders or just startups in general who are like, you know, they’ve been funded probably. So they, you know, they have the money to invest in this and they want either a newsletter to stay top of mind and convert customers or social media presence to grow a personal brand. We can do either. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: That’s, I definitely want to do that for sure. I just, uh, I just at the moment with my bootstrap money, I can’t, I can’t really afford it. [Michael Houck]: No, no, no, no. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: But once I, once I get funded, for but I’m coming to you for sure. But no, awesome, sounds good. Yeah, I guess, I don’t know like how much time you have, cause I know, you know, we’re a bit tight. Do you wanna kind of catch up later or? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: If you wanna send me some stuff or actually I’ll send you the little form that we use for the fundraising interest thing. And then when I get the deck in from there, I’ll go through it in more detail and then I’ll follow up with you and we can hop back on and chat some more. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Yeah, sure. Sounds good, man. Sounds good. You got any plans coming up this way anytime soon? [Michael Houck]: I don’t know, man. I mean, like, I just got divorced, like in December. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: And so yeah, so I’m taking the winter. [Michael Houck]: I mean, I decided to do it in August. It just took a while to like, you know, stuff. So I’m down here for the winter, going to go to Brazil in like two weeks. And then really my number one goal for this is to like find out where I want to live for the next 10 plus years. That’s really the goal. So I’d like to take some more trips, but I don’t know if I’m gonna have time because I got to check out different cities in the US. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: I don’t know if I could ever live outside the US permanently, but I do love London. [Michael Houck]: It’s honestly it’s like top five city in the world to me. I spent some time there when I was at Man, we had some fun. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: The culture is a bit different, you know, like literally every day is like post-work kind of vibe. [Michael Houck]: I had my nights out in Shoreditch and the night that I flew back to the States, this was like a couple of weeks, that night I flew back to the States. I stayed up all night. I was at Fabric before it was like closed and then reopened or whatever. And I went to the airport straight from there. [Michael Houck]: That was wild. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: I forgot about that. That’s what I expect from Hulk, man. I don’t expect anything less. But whereabouts are you thinking about hopping around in the States? [Michael Houck]: I’m curious. It’s tough, man. Because look, I’ve done the coasts, right? I went to college in Miami. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: I got married in New York. I lived in SF and LA. [Michael Houck]: I kind of want to try something radically different, right? So I’m thinking like Dallas, Nashville, Salt Lake City, like something like really different. So we’ll see. I don’t know. We’ve got to figure it out. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: I mean, you didn’t say Alabama. So, you know, not as rogue as I would have thought. [Michael Houck]: But hey, Huntsville’s on the list. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Huntsville, Alabama’s on the list. That’s hilarious, man. No, that sounds really fun. What in particular are you looking for exactly? Like, is it just like the vibe or? [Michael Houck]: I’m looking for an environment where it’s going to be good community vibes, number one. And number two is going to be conducive to meeting the kind of woman who will want a lot of kids and building a family top priority. Right. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: You’re in these coastal cities and like, you know, it’s just not the same. [Michael Houck]: Like everyone, everyone’s focused on their career and that’s great. More power to them, but I want to build a family. And I want to build a family. And I want to focus on my business. And so it’s, you know. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: I feel like Dallas would definitely be your vibe though. Like I’ve got loads of friends in Dallas and they, they all, it’s like a very like family kind of place. Like, you know, I don’t know, maybe, maybe that’s post you, you know, have something going on or I don’t know whether like, you know, um, and Salt Lake, obviously you’ve got the, you know, a lot of like family stuff out there as also, but there’s a, If you want kids, if you’re trying to start a factory, you know, go back to Salt Lake City, man. [Michael Houck]: I got to convert, man. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: I got to convert. Exactly. But yeah, look, I don’t want to take more of your time. I appreciate you. Yeah. And really nice to catch up, man. I’m just happy that we reconnected. And yeah, I’m glad you reached out. [Michael Houck]: And I’ll send you that form. I’ll take a look at the deck. We’ll chat some more. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: and we’ll take it from there. Sounds good, pal. [Michael Houck]: You wanna keep in touch via LinkedIn or WhatsApp? I forgot, just here, this is my WhatsApp and then my best email these days. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Oh, sounds good. Yeah, cause I’ve got hella dated information now, so. [Michael Houck]: I usually don’t open my LinkedIn DMs that much. I’m just glad I saw yours, actually. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Yeah, I can imagine it’s probably a field day in yours. But yeah, look, anyway, really enjoyed catching up, man. And yeah, I’m really excited about what you’re doing. I’ll definitely kind of have it in mind. I’ve got a few friends that are funded and gone through IC and all that stuff. And we’ll definitely… So I’ve seen it firsthand as well, right? Literally, you guys built Launch House in front of me. So yeah, if there’s anyone in that space, it’s definitely you guys that’s gonna crack it. And yeah, really appreciate your time, man. And we’ll send you some stuff and get your take on it. [Michael Houck]: Dude, good to catch up. We’ll talk more soon. I’ll see you. [Shahbaz Ahmad]: Catch you in a bit. Take care.