- Duration: 54 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JQPWAE17CZWKF50HPGEQFGBM (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JQPWAE17CZWKF50HPGEQFGBM)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hi, sorry, I haven’t been on a Zoom in a while. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m trying to connect some things. [Jamie]: No, it’s okay. [Jamie]: I hope you’re feeling better. [Jamie]: Uh, yeah, mostly. I’m mostly recovered. Thank you. What did you have? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I don’t know. [Michelle Kwok]: Probably just a cold, right? [Jamie]: I feel like there’s a lot of colds going around right now. But it was just, you know, all the, it was a pile of mucus. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, I so feel that. I had like everything at once in the winter and now I’m immune. [Jamie]: Oh, good. That’s good timing for it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sorry, I’m still just like kind of playing around with my settings and I’m touch screen so if you see my hands. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Go ahead. [Michelle Kwok]: Hey, sorry, guys. [Michael Houck]: I was on with Mark and we went a bit over. How was that? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What’s that? [Michael Houck]: How was that with Mark? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it was good. [Michelle Kwok]: I think that we’re gonna be good. [Michael Houck]: There are some things that I think we need to talk through around how frequently we’re posting the videos, which is tough, because it sounds like they have an annual contract to post daily videos. So that’s a bit tricky, but we can figure that out. I’m gonna work with him on quality of the videos. Receptive to that, which is good. But like they get syndicated in some other places where they need to be in certain formats. So there’s practical roadblocks to get over with this stuff. But I think we’ll get there. I just need to kind of work through it with you. [Jamie]: Half an hour’s not enough. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [Michelle Kwok]: OK. Thank you so much. I honestly didn’t know either. [Michael Houck]: No, you’re good. You’re good. We can work with it. We can work with it. I’ve strategy and sort of making sure everyone’s happy and all that stuff. We can do that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No problem. [Michelle Kwok]: OK. OK, fantastic. Great. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Well, hey, did you guys already do intros? [Michael Houck]: Am I late? Where are we at? You’re not too late. [Jamie]: We’re just talking about being sick. [Michael Houck]: Oh, no. Well, good to see that you are at least feeling a little bit better. [Jamie]: Oh yeah, no, I’m almost out of it. I just occasionally have to cough or sneeze. But besides that, I’m mostly good. Cool. Well, OK. [Michael Houck]: Look, I mean, Michelle, the majority of this call will be you and Jamie. I’m sort of just here to jump in as needed and then wrap it up at the end, since you and I have already done our intros and everything, and we know each other at this point. So Jamie’s been reviewing what you filled out on the form. Thank you for doing that. Tedious. And then we’re going to run through a notion doc on this call, we just go deeper on some of that we wanted to get your sort of unfiltered thoughts on a lot of it. And then after this call, you know, we’ll begin to work on content. And you and I can also chat a bit more about next steps with the scheduling and video stuff if you’d like to. [Michael Houck]: Okay, sounds good. [Michael Houck]: Cool, so Jamie, I will leave it to you. Cool. Take it away. [Jamie]: Okay, let me see about sharing my screen. Hopefully it works. I have so many tabs up, I have to make sure it’s the right tab. [Michael Houck]: I think I always have like 50 tabs up. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, you’re one of those people. [Jamie]: Oh yeah, I’m bad. [Michelle Kwok]: I’m really bad about it. [Michelle Kwok]: Hey, can you guys all see that kickoff? Yep, there we go. Cool. Okay. [Jamie]: Well, I’ll start off with, hi, it’s me. Yeah, I think you probably already know this about me, Michelle, but my background basically is I was writing Robin Hood Snacks and their site, Sherwood News, which is obviously very, very like nitty gritty business focused, like a lot of earnings news and stuff like that. And then I’ve transitioned to freelancing since then. Before that I was writing for Morning Brew, kind of similar content, of very voicey, which is something I really enjoy doing. Right now I’m contributing stuff for 1440 and the Daily Upside in addition to this. So that’s been fun. And I’ve, I don’t know, I’ve done a lot of coverage of crypto. I love covering gaming stuff, science, anything business finance really is up my alley. [Jamie]: Perfect. [Michelle Kwok]: That’s exactly what we do. I know. [Jamie]: Yeah, I was looking through some and it seemed really dead on, the interests. Cool, okay. All right, well, I was told we can just kind of run through these questions and use them as a framework for, you know, chatting about what you’re looking for and getting aligned on that, so. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, and if we go off script and you guys want to dive deep on something, obviously, you know, Michelle or obviously Jamie, you know this, but either one of you guys just feel free to take it kind of where the conversation goes. Stuff we want to dig into and other stuff we feel like we already kind of know the answers to. [Jamie]: Okay, sounds good. Yeah. So I mean, definitely feel free to interrupt at any point, Michelle, if you think there’s something more important or something you’d rather this meeting focus on, down to go off on any tangents. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, like, generally, if you feel like there’s anything that you that you’re not clear about, about what I know what was in the document, like, seriously ask anything. I’ll try to, I definitely wanted to like get I think that what you said about Morning Brew is kind of right. I read Morning Brew every morning and I love that it has a voice. I love that it’s kind of funny. Not that Morning Brew has controversial jokes or anything, but it’s a little bit like, it’s willing to be a bit edgy sometimes. I hope that you have fun with this because I think that Tim is really willing to have fun with his voice. And like we have a lot of fun with what we invest in too. So just to, I don’t know if it was like super clear with everything that I wrote in the document or that form or whatever, but maybe, maybe can I show you something? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, totally. [Jamie]: Let me stop. [Michelle Kwok]: Did you read the, investment thesis, investment philosophy, but did I share that with you, Michael? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I looked through it, I believe. [Jamie]: Yeah. [Michelle Kwok]: Okay, like, okay, maybe I don’t want to share that with you, but like, I think that really encompasses where we’re trying to go. We’re trying to bet on the future before the world catches up. We’re really into things that are maybe, like, bizarre today, but will be normal tomorrow. That type of like frontier tech and we’re not and we’re willing to be the first ones to be like the artificial womb is the future like a third of women have struggled with endometriosis and PCOS and it’s really difficult for them to give birth like what if it was completely safe the entire time and we’re using artificial womb to do that or I’m gonna put in like a lot biosciences. I love them, they’re really fun to read about. Yeah, like exactly, like there’s, we’re taking, people are talking about conservation but we’re looking at it from a completely different angle, like let’s completely de-extinct mammoths, or like de-extinct animals, and even in my final interview to get the job at Draper, it was just like a little bit, I don’t know, like edgier, more interested, and just like you think he was just like if I was to have a mammoth like how do you think I should build the wall at my house you know to like keep my mammoth in my in my acreage or something you know like I mean I like it it can be edgy and funny I loved writing morning brew because morning brew really let me um be extra silly I’d say that’s what I think that this is gonna be kind of right like not like we’re not gonna be like insanely crazy right but like we do invest in crazy stuff and we think about crazy stuff all the time like one of our best companies is a micro nuclear reactor um and so that you can have like micro nuclear reactor fission energy like with you all the time and yeah that’s a really interesting space I mean i’ve loved writing about companies that are considered kind of bizarre I did this big deep dive on like cryogenic freezing and I companies behind it. [Jamie]: So yeah. [Michelle Kwok]: So yeah, like I think one of the one of the first questions on your document, sorry, I made you unsure of that, but now you can. Yeah, I’ll bring it back up. Is like I’ve said this to Michael so many times, it’s like we have so many ideas, but I don’t think anything is clear. And now I I’ve joined recently full time and I’m trying to bring clarity to the Draper brand. Like everybody is like, OK, a lot of the crypto people think that Tim only invests in crypto, and he does invest a lot in crypto. And we do believe in decentralized finance, like Deepin, we do love all that, but that’s only like, that’s like 25% of what we do, people don’t know what we do. So the number one reason for me is like clarity across the startup landscape. It’s that a lot of people know who Tim is, a lot of people know Draper’s name, But, and a lot of people think Bitcoin, which is great, because he was one of the first like early backers of Bitcoin. But it’s being really clear about everything in that investment philosophy is being really clear about what we’re looking for. It’s being really clear that we are willing to take the craziest bet. If you are the right people for it, when you’re the right founders for it. And if you’re an LP, and you’re really interested in deep tech, but like, the most frontier parts of deep tech. It’s just like overall brand clarity, you know what I mean? And also finding a voice within it because Tim has a ton of ideas. He just doesn’t have time to think about a post, write it out. And he doesn’t have time to think about LinkedIn strategy. You don’t realize that people only see these first sentences of your post and then they just like scroll on or they’re like, oh, these two first sentences are super interesting. And then I’m going to click read more. And so we have interesting ideas, but they’re not out there because of those two things. Like there’s no like real clarity around the content strategy, content bucketing. And if there are posts with interesting ideas, there’s just like no hook. It’s like, these are like, it’ll start with like, these are some ideas that we have right now that are really fun and good. Instead of, I don’t know, like, we just invested in a company that IPO, this is how we did it. Yeah, I don’t know. Like, there’s no more specific. Yeah. So it’s just like, number one reason, I guess is like hook and get the hooks, right? Like get the clarity, right? Make sure that the whole startup landscape, we have an but I think they’re confused, you know? So it’s that, it’s like clarity, them know our voice, know what we’re about, know what we’re interested in. And so when everybody is like, oh yeah, you do this. Okay, that makes sense to me. [Jamie]: And like you said, clarifying that you guys do more than crypto, kind of expanding. [Michelle Kwok]: Yes, clarifying more than crypto, exactly. Like everyone thinks we only do crypto, but then to be fair, like I, joined to lead off health care and biotech, which has been a newer kind of practice for us. So a lot of these things are new, which is why this is a good time to clarify. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK, so new direction also. [Jamie]: Also, I’m taking notes off to the side. I don’t know why I’m having a hard time clicking into the notion. But I’ll figure out how to do that. [Michael Houck]: I was just, I was saying it’s all the tabs. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Maybe. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Jamie]: Maybe my computer is overworked. I don’t know. It’s like not letting me, it’s not letting me like click on anything to edit in the notion right now, but I’ll figure it. I’ll take notes off to the side and add them after. [Jamie]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: You, you have edit access, so that’s odd, but yeah, we can figure that out afterwards. [Jamie]: Maybe I’m logged in on the wrong thing or something. I’d like multiple emails, but either way I’ll figure it out. I can figure it out afterwards. Okay, so primary goal I feel like is communicating with clarity who you are to the audience and maybe how that’s changed. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah. Right. Communicating with clarity with like a real voice behind it. [Jamie]: I guess I’m trying to think about how you’ll know if the audience is getting that message, but… [Michelle Kwok]: I think it’s like, literally, people are commenting back, like, seeing engagement. It’s just like, literally, I just need to see engagement. I need to see who is engaging. I want to see what they’re saying, and are they the right people? I think there’ll be a lot more clarity about that in the first month of posting. Yeah, just like being able to see the impressions, yeah, impressions to engagement even, like how many impressions are we getting, how many people are actually commenting. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: People say when they repost will be pretty insightful. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, yeah. [Jamie]: Whether they’re getting the message. I mean, this asks if there are any, you know, secondary goals while we’re at it. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s just like impressions. I just want as many people, my goal is as many people in the startup atmosphere that matter see this. Like VPs, founders, people from YC, operators, newsletter writers. [Jamie]: Got it, okay, founders. Okay, so who is engaging is really important as opposed to just like mass reach? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Michelle Kwok]: I only care about, for now, about people in the startup landscape. Reaching the right people, that makes sense. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, yeah. [Jamie]: OK, and then we already kind of talked about this next one, I guess, about considering it a success. It’s probably what people are commenting, how many people are engaging, et cetera. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Jamie]: And then this already also kind of got into it. The target audience is people in the startup landscape. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, I feel like that’s pretty clear. That’s like whatever VC, early stage VC. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yay, I can type now. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: There we go. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: There we go. [Jamie]: But I’ll add more later because I am like, it is like slow. Maybe it’s just my computer being overloaded. [Michelle Kwok]: I think it’s the DAB. [Jamie]: Yeah, I think I just need to delete some. This is like too big of a lift for how many tabs I’ve opened. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So I could add that later. [Michael Houck]: I’m sorry, my dog’s saying hi. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hi, dog. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Very loudly saying hi. [Jamie]: OK, I think he’s done. Are you done? [Jamie]: Good. [Jamie]: OK, same audience you want to target in your content? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think this question probably is less relevant for, you know, Draper in general. This is more for folks who are building a personal brand and like a startup on the side and whether they want those two things at full overlap or not. [Jamie]: Okay, got it. Yeah, I wasn’t sure about this question. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So that makes sense if you want to skip it. [Jamie]: Okay, top topics. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: This is interesting to me, actually. [Jamie]: Would crypto still be like a major content pillar or no? [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, but I want, like everything I said in that, all those things I said in the investment thesis are important to me. I would say, that was, I wrote about crypto, healthcare and biotech, extending, so on the healthcare and biotech side, we talk about extending healthy human lifespan, so not like, don’t go on the crazy end of infinite life. It’s like, preventative proactive health care, regenerative medicine, making stem cell, making stem cell manufacturing possible, like autologous stem cell therapies. It’s like things that are going to literally like save the world of healthcare, you know, and biotechnology. So it’s like we call it biotech 2.0. Yeah, crypto decent decentralization, VPN, all that stuff. Not really my area, but if you know things about it, definitely write about it. We talk about two things that kind of intersect, which is defense tech, dual use technologies. Obviously right now it’s very, the geopolitical environment, as everyone knows, is like very, ever-changing, you know? And so defense tech technologies becoming something that we talk about more, digital infrastructure, why it’s important that we just have a better digital infrastructure like cybersecurity, investing more in like the next generation of defense tech and dual use technologies, and then that intersects with aerospace and space tech, which is that like planes haven’t been changed in decades. And everybody’s talking about planes now because they’re like, why are planes crashing? Why hasn’t that been invented innovated on in decades? Who can be the next? Why? Why does it still take nine hours to fly to Europe? And like space tech, like the next economic frontier beyond Earth is going to be space. How do we build space infrastructure? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What does that look like, [Michelle Kwok]: And then it’s just like, everything that under and everything is like the wild, weird, and the unconventional. So things that are, like what I said, things that are bizarre today are going to be normal tomorrow. Let me see if I missed anything. Like nothing is too crazy. If you think that you’re talking like a mad scientist, you should probably talk to us. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: How cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I like the folks focused on future tech in general? [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, yeah. It’s like the most frontier tech that’s like technologically dispensable. Oh, we talk a lot about on the healthcare and biotech front, like brain computer interfaces, enhancing cognition, restoring loss function, stuff like that, bridging the gap between biology and technology. Neural interfaces, they obviously have a lot of especially with people with neurodegenerative diseases. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I think that was everything. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, the wild, unconventional, like flying cars, or like, this is maybe not that crazy, but like electric boats, or there was this one called Team Wildfire that that the way that they’re going to combat wildfires is they’re going to create a hurricane on the go. Like it’s a machine that can create a hurricane that will suck up the fire. Oh, whoa. Yeah, so just things that sound crazy and wack and wild, we want to… These are some notes to the team. This is how crazy it is, like, confirmation of content the idea that human intelligence, memories, and experiences can be preserved digitally, breakthroughs in interspecies communication, and then obviously like advances in reproductive longevity, fertility solutions, extending the window for having children, rewriting the biological timeline of human reproduction, human flight, jet packs, gravity seats, personal aerial mobility. So it’s just like things that are I don’t think it’s too crazy, basically. [Jamie]: Yeah, and kind of the craziest ideas. I mean, what I’ve always enjoyed writing about those kind of things is typically the craziest ideas will still yield, like, even if they don’t yield the craziest results, they’ll usually yield some results that can be applied to everyday life. So, yeah, they’re always interesting spaces to cover. Slash, I think people like to click on them. [Michelle Kwok]: So that’s in my favor. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. [Jamie]: is like the people get it because people are like oh this is not clickbait if you were like oh you this is crazy like I’m just gonna click on it but it’s true like we do do this and we’re interested in this that’s really cool um and then I feel like we we sort of have the the format honed in a little bit um but if you want to talk more about you know how you see these posts looking that would be great I think michelle I would I wouldn’t throw this one at you from from a slightly different angle here, which is like, we should talk about the cadence of all content coming through the accounts for now, right? [Michael Houck]: So this is like, we know, you know, the post that Jamie’s gonna be writing for the account, the kind of thought leadership stuff. But we also have this video side that maybe we talk about here, maybe we talk about that holistically after we run through sort of next steps. So sort of up to you whether we tackle that or circle back at the end? [Michelle Kwok]: Let’s just circle back at the end. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I think that’s it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I don’t know what ideas we have around the posting schedule, if you guys have already discussed this. [Jamie]: No, any specific preferences, Michelle? [Michael Houck]: Or I mean, in my opinion, it matters way less than most people give it kind of credence for. But if you have specific times in mind, we can obviously accommodate. [Michelle Kwok]: I mean, I prefer doing like Monday to Thursday in the morning-ish. Kind of like the time that you recommended. But Tim’s on PT. And so he’s on the West Coast. I’m on the East Coast. So it probably makes more sense to do like West Coast morning. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Before lunch, Eastern time, but early morning Pacific. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And then just try to stick into weekdays until maybe we have like a lot of stuff going on. [Michelle Kwok]: And then maybe we do try weekends. I don’t know the weekend thing. I’m not there yet with the weekend. Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: We’ll take baby steps. [Michael Houck]: We’ll stay weekdays for now. I think that the, my, My push for the weekends will just be because the people who Tim probably wants to see his content are probably also doing work and checking social media on the weekends more so than the average bear, so to speak. But let’s start with the sort of tried and true weekday mornings, and we can experiment from there down the road as we get some results. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I’m open to experimenting later. [Michael Houck]: I love it. [Jamie]: Yeah, that’s interesting because I lean towards, you know, weekdays, work hours, but obviously… [Jamie]: Yeah, that’s all done whenever I have to. [Michelle Kwok]: The competition is strong. [Michael Houck]: Not that we can’t stand out from the competition, but it’s, you know, there’s a lot going on. [Michelle Kwok]: I’m confident we can stand out. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: We can. [Michael Houck]: We definitely can. We definitely can. When I was doing three threads a week, I was doing Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday every week. That was my cadence. And we didn’t see material difference between one day to the other. As I said, I think people sort of over-intellectualize this, and I’m probably over-intellectualizing it right now. So we can try with weekdays and go from there. Okay, so the onboarding process, we normally do these calls like, you know, sort of right away after you sign up. So it’s a little different in this case. We’ve already sort of gotten started on some research and we’ve gotten a ton of good context from you. Michelle, please keep sending things, either example posts or internal docs you guys have written that you want want Jamie to review. The more you send the better, but I think we already have enough to sort of get started with. So Jamie is going to be working on content this week and we’ll open Blake and myself obviously to take a look at that as well. And then we’ll sort of be off to the races there. I’m also going to go through and do a loom profile audit. I don’t know how much Tim is going to want to like optimize his profile for any specific goal. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I definitely want that. [Michael Houck]: You do, you do, okay. [Michelle Kwok]: That would be great. You’ll listen, you’ll listen. He just doesn’t have time to like think about it. [Michael Houck]: Okay, I’m on it then. I will do that today. I will get that to you too later today. I will do that for all four accounts, so the both Twitters and both LinkedIns. [Michelle Kwok]: I honestly didn’t even know we had a Can we post on it? [Michael Houck]: I think we do, yeah. I mean, hey, if we have a Twitter for Meet the Drapers, we’ve got to have one for DA, right? [Michelle Kwok]: No, no, I know there is one, I just don’t like doing posts on it. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so then, only other thing we really need from you is, I know Tim wants to post his own stuff from his account to start with, which is fine, but for the DA accounts, it would be good if we get access to those just so we don’t need Tim to post manually in four different places, I would assume. [Michelle Kwok]: So I guess maybe Sandy check that when you when you talk about the schedule thing, just just be like, it is important that we do it at a certain time. Because then, because then Tim might give access, you know, or because he’s like, I’m not gonna have to check this every day at this time or so. Yeah, or you’ll or or you’ll I’ll give it, yeah, or it’ll be Addy, or he’ll give it to me or something. But I just wanna make sure that the time is very important. I want it so that we have it clear. [Michael Houck]: I can shoot an email over later today, and we’ll see what he comes back with. And then, yeah, all content’s gonna live in Notion. We’ll share access with this Notion space with you. It’s super easy to review and leave comments on there if you have anything specific. And then going forward, we’ll send over a few ideas on Monday each week along with specific questions about those ideas that we want your input on if you wanna give it, whether it’s by voice note or just sharing docs you guys already have written or something like that. [Michelle Kwok]: All of this is on Slack, right? [Michael Houck]: You’ll just Slack me the links and stuff? All in Slack, you don’t need to go anywhere else. Cool. Okay, and then we do have one round of edits included as well, but we want to keep things moving. So we don’t want to get too bogged down editing, you know, the same post a million times or anything like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So just want to flag that ahead of time. [Michelle Kwok]: What do you think? What do you what are you thinking for the post right now? Like, is it mostly long form? [Michael Houck]: Or what is the I’ll defer to Jamie if she has any initial thoughts. I have some but I can sort of follow on with those if she if she has anything she wants to throw out there. [Jamie]: Um, I was under the impressions that that the post would be around 200 to 300 words. So shortish, but not like tiny. [Michael Houck]: It’s not going to be like, wouldn’t be like a full, a full essay, so to speak, but it’ll be, it’ll be more than like a two line tweet. It’ll be more than like a couple lines. Yeah. So cool. [Michelle Kwok]: I think that I like, I like the 200 to 300. It’d be cool also to try out any, like, I like the list. Stuff that some people do, like maybe like the, I’ve seen these startups building this, this, this. It would be cool to see startups building this, this, this. [Michael Houck]: Ah, yep. 100%. I love that. That’s a cool idea. [Michelle Kwok]: So like maybe you mix that in a little bit too, so it’s not always just like a lot of long form. [Jamie]: Yeah, I just feel like when I look at it, I don’t know, as a newsletter writer, we do a lot of, you know, bullets and different ways of taking calls. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, feel free to like, yeah, test some different formats and let’s just see what happens. [Jamie]: Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: I think that’s basically all the stuff that we normally go through on these calls. Do you want to stick around for a bit, Michelle, and we can jam on the stuff with Mark? And then Jamie, if you want to hop off, you can. Around you can too, but no necessarily need to. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Um, yeah, I can hop off. [Jamie]: Looking forward to figuring out your guys’s style. And also, those are just really fun topics to write about all the future. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, I would love for you to have fun. Like if this is fun for you, then we’re doing a good job. [Jamie]: Oh, it is. I like writing about quirky companies. Like that’s always a good time for me. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So that’ll be fun. [Michelle Kwok]: Awesome. Awesome. [Michelle Kwok]: Nice to meet you. Awesome. Yeah. [Jamie]: Nice to meet you already. Bye. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So she’s off and running. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: She’ll be good there. [Michael Houck]: She’s great. And I think that she’s going to enjoy this type of content too. It’s in her wheelhouse. Awesome. OK, so I just had the meeting with Mark. It was, as I said, it was fine. There are some practical things that talk through though. So, um, the big thing, which I did not know, I don’t think you knew either is their media company defiance has an annual contract. He said to have five videos of this digital twin posted on Tim socials every single week. So this is not an issue. If the videos are optimized for social, it is an issue. If the videos are structured as they are right now. And the reason for this is he made the point to me that consistency is good on social media. Obviously that’s true. The problem is if you’re consistently posting content that is not going to perform well, the algorithm is going to treat your account like it’s a content. It’s an account that posts low quality content. So even if we posted something great, performance will be dragged down because there’s a higher quality posts. Um, we need to, we need to figure out what we’re going to do here. Um, if we want performance to be maximized. Um, I think you and I probably both see the same sort of issues with how 100% do. [Michelle Kwok]: I don’t think we need to go into that. [Michael Houck]: I sent him an example of one of these like hyper optimize, um, for social media, digital twin videos from that account that I shared with you. Um, so. He’s, you know, well, I guess, watch that. Okay, so the other thing is that there’s, they have a partnership or something with this company called Video Elephant. Video Elephant syndicates these digital twin editorial style videos to like news articles on a bunch of sites all over the world. And the problem is, that in order for them to syndicate those and for the publications to pick them up, they need to be formatted basically how they’re formatted right now, like a news story where Tim is like talking about the news story and not sort of optimized for social media, vertical video, split screen, B roll, things like that. So Mark seemed open to changing the long intro and also the sort of redundant outro, but the core content, it seems like it’s going to be tough to change that dramatically, at least optimize to the degree we would need it to be for social. [Michelle Kwok]: So that’s a roadblock. Okay. So does it matter? So, okay. So you said the company pages, they don’t get knocked down the same way as a personal page, right? Correct. [Michael Houck]: On Twitter, neither one does in terms of the immediate post on LinkedIn, like your literal post will just get dampened that same day. But the problem is the cumulative effect of this, right? Even on Twitter, I would assume the same thing is true on a LinkedIn company page. I don’t know that for a fact. But if you’re posting five, let’s say you’re posting six posts a week from an account, and five of those posts are low quality, and one is like high quality. The algorithm is going to not show the high quality posts as much, even if it’s- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? The roadblock exists there basically. And he said these were the point of making this was for social, it’s not for social, right? [Michelle Kwok]: I don’t know. He wasn’t super clear on that. [Michael Houck]: He obviously is, you know, he has a contract to deliver this much. And so he doesn’t want to get in a scenario where Tim is like, well, if we’re not posting these on social every day, then why am I paying you for daily posting on social these videos, right? So like he has the sort of contractual concern there, which I get, I don’t on his toes. But if we want to post them on social, we really should optimize the quality of the videos more. And so it seems like the practical concerns to optimize the quality are A, this like syndication thing that they do. And B, there is this legal, alleged legal, I don’t know for sure that it’s a legal constraint, but this alleged legal constraint of having the digital twin acknowledge that it is a digital twin at the start of the video, which kills the first two seconds at minimum. Um, and you know, we’ll, we’ll hurt performance. So I heard it less and maybe we can make it fun. It’s it’s not optimized. Yeah. I do. [Michelle Kwok]: I do know that we have to do the digital twin thing, but like, is there a way that we can put it in like writing on the screen? [Michael Houck]: Like this is an AI created digital twin rather than having him take up time in the script saying this is Tim. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah. Yeah. So did he, did you ask that to Mark? [Michael Houck]: He said that it was a legal thing, but he didn’t seem to know for sure. So I think I just need to do some research there on my end. I don’t want to loop in like, you know, the firm’s legal yet, because I would probably just create. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Michael Houck]: Let me do some research. [Michelle Kwok]: That’s an action item on me for for this week. Um, okay, let me think. What is your first or of what we should do. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so, oh, one other thing I want to flag. So I looked into Wisecut too. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Personally, we didn’t find that it was like a great solution. [Michael Houck]: We found two other similar products that seemed like they were further along, but still like wouldn’t really meet a super high quality bar. And I think this was my fear and kind of hypothesis on the first call with Tim. Like AI cut tools are okay. But in my opinion, in that regard, we should probably hold off on at least on Tim’s personal accounts, and then probably the main DA accounts as well. Until or unless either these tools improve. That’s fine. [Michelle Kwok]: Honestly, the wise cut thing is so separate. [Michael Houck]: Just making sure I just want to apply that. So okay. [Michelle Kwok]: So now I’m like, that’s meet the draper’s problem. And then we’ll fix it later. Yeah, sorry. [Michael Houck]: I feel like I’ve sort of gotten, I feel like I’ve sort of gone from like, all right, we’re going to do one thought leadership post per account per week to like, let me create an entire social strategy for this. But, okay. So as far as the videos with Mark, look, my focus is on achieving maximum results from social. That’s my goal. That’s my mandate, right? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: that I’m looking at this through, I’m not trying to step on anybody’s toes, but in the lens of that being the goal, we really do sort of need to figure out what to do here. If we want to post videos on social every day with a digital twin, then we really, really should change the format pretty substantially if we want them to be a meaningful part of success and also not drag down the good posts. So there’s a strategic decision for us to make around whether we see this video elephant syndication or social media video performance mattering more. If it’s the former, the video elephant, then the videos can stay formatted as they are, but it probably won’t make sense to post them on social every day, at least, you know, in an ideal world, not at all, but definitely not every day. If we want to use the digital twin for videos on social, and that’s the priority, then we should either consider working more with Mark’s team and creating new formatted videos for them or exploring other options. We just need to either update the format of the video, or we decide it’s for the syndication thing and not for social, or maybe not for Tim’s personal social, at least. [Michelle Kwok]: So again, I’m just Okay, I think what would be great is if you could put a lot of that in writing for Tim and Addy and just be like, this would, my recommendation would be as we’re building an audience, a lot of engagement, and we want to ensure that each of the posts is getting views or however you say it. We shouldn’t my recommendation right now is like to not post these every single day because they’re not optimized for social based on all of my experience of you know and I mean I I know what to say it’s just it’s a mark is going to be pissed if we go forward with that like I’m just I’m flagging that I think no but I think you should say like this is my recommendation for now until which point that we’re able to maybe change and and be like I’m in conversation with the mark about this, and we just need kind of like a nod from PIMS to be like, should we be creating, is it possible to even, like, I’m fine with hosting some videos, like, from my personal viewpoint on PIMS account, I’m like, it would be, sure, if it makes everyone happy to post like a video a week or something. But making that an option of like, I still want, like, I think Mark’s a great guy. I’m in conversation with Mark. I still want to make sure that we’re working with him. But maybe we have to switch up. We have to make a decision on if we’re switching these up, switching the videos up to optimize for social. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I can lay it out. We can all get on a thread, you, me, and Tim, and Addy, and we can see what what Tim wants to do, but yeah, I would strongly advise that we don’t post these every day. Yes, I agree. Okay, cool. As long as you and I are on the same page with that, I think that we can make the case and kind of see what Tim wants to do in terms of frequency. I do think that video could be a meaningful part of our strategy, that the digital is a really exciting thing, but we have to make sure that it’s social media content in the first place, right? [Michelle Kwok]: Yes, exactly. I love using video, but I don’t want to do a video a day. And I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And also like he was saying that like he walked me through their process for creating one of these videos. And like the script is not written by a social media person. The script is written by a combination of all he said was they were a journalist. I don’t know what that means. They’re a journalist. And AI tools. And so, you know, I think if we wanted to do videos optimized for social media, we would need to make sure that our process for scripting is like, that’s a good point. [Michelle Kwok]: Okay. I like that. Even bringing that up being like, um, I have a lot of respect because they’re using journalistic, whatever he said, Mark said something journalistic, something, somewhere, um, not, what was it? Integrity or some shit like that, sorry. We have a lot of respect for that, but that means that it’s utilized for journalism purposes and it isn’t optimized for social. And our goal is to, like when I was talking to Michelle, is to expand the audience, make sure there’s a lot of clarity around the brand and just like, this is my recommendation right now. And yeah, and like over time, I definitely, if it’s within what you guys can do. We want, obviously, to extend so that you’re actually managing a lot more of the social strategy of Draper. Yeah, and we want baby steps. [Michael Houck]: We don’t want to jump in it. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah, obviously, it’s going to be like baby steps, but it’s just like maybe that positioning you as the, you are the social god. You know? That’s the thing. Because he doesn’t, yeah. Know a lot about it. And so far it’s just me, but I, that’s like, I have a full time job. [Michael Houck]: So. Isn’t it, isn’t it crazy how, like, just because you are like a legend and an OG, you can accumulate 240,000 followers on Twitter without really being like optimizing your social media or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. [Michelle Kwok]: So there’s a piece of it that you’re like, you have such, you already have an audience and we know that you can build a bigger, you know, you know what to say like it’s just like a little bit of like the ego but like we have to do this the right way and i’ve done this before for whatever whatever we the big thing is we want to get the most out of this audience and we are not doing that and we probably won’t be able to do that if we’re posting these videos all the time so yeah yeah I agree okay just be like I would just be like michelle and I are on the same page yeah okay as long as I have your your blessing to to go to go that direction then I will send that email later today. [Michael Houck]: We’ll see what he says. And we’ll adapt from there. We’ll go from there. [Michelle Kwok]: Yeah. But I agree with your approach of like, we can’t throw Mark under the bus. We have to be like, he’s obviously doing great things for journalism, but this could be used for journalistic. Whatever the thing he said, like journalistic something. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think the outcome that I don’t want to have happen is like, Mark gets his contract cut from this. Because it shouldn’t be the case. If they’re getting value from these syndication things and the digital twin is this really cool asset that we can use, great. But we need to make sure that it’s social media content. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Michelle Kwok]: Which is why I think it’s important that you say that one of the options, I am in conversations with Mark and we are going to be able to create this into something. If we have your blessing to do so, it’s just going to take a little bit more time. And he’ll be fine with that. [Michael Houck]: Okay, I will I will get that to him today. I think we’re on the same page. [Michelle Kwok]: So sounds good. Awesome. Awesome. Bless you. [Michael Houck]: I will. [Michael Houck]: I’ll have Jamie follow up with some ideas for this week. And we’ll get some content rolling so we can start getting stuff posted. Hopefully as soon as early next week. Cool. [Michelle Kwok]: And then yeah, and then just the schedule and just like if you can send another thing about the scheduling piece and just be we have to decide now who’s going to be in charge of the posting. Just be like, we want to be posting soon, so let us know who is going to be in charge of it. It does matter what time it’s posted, so whatever. [Michael Houck]: I can tell that you’re so happy to have somebody who is able to be like, this is what we should do to Tim, and who’s like, I’ve been there. I’ve been in your shoes. I totally get it. [Michelle Kwok]: Because I already pushed so many other things, you know? Right, right, right. I can’t push this also. But if I have someone help me. [Michael Houck]: You’ve got to save your social capital for pushing deals that you guys should do. [Michelle Kwok]: Let me be the social capital. Yeah, yeah. And then I’ll agree with you. And that’s where I’m at. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: 100%. [Michael Houck]: I love it. Okay, this is great. So we’ll go from here. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thanks, Michael. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right, Michelle. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Talk soon.