- Platform: meet
- Attendees: Ben Ornstein, Ivo Machado (Wisecut)
- Source: Read.ai 01JT9941PZT15XX8PX4Q78ZNR3 (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Ben Ornstein: Hey, how’s it going? I’m doing good. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Where are you based? I’m in the random state of Delaware. Delaware, that’s where all the companies are, supposedly. That’s what everyone says. Ben Ornstein: Where are you? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): So my company is in Delaware, but I’m based in Miami, Miami, Florida. How warm is it down there now? It’s pretty warm, but it’s not that warm. It’s like maybe 85. Sorry, I’m a Celsius kind of guy. Ben Ornstein: It’s around 85. Where are you from originally? Brazil. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I moved to the US about 10 years ago, but I’ve been in Florida for four years. Very cool. That’s awesome. Cool. So thanks for the call. It seems like you guys are working with Team Vapor, right? I mean, doing some content. I also saw your website, right? The podcast journey? Yeah, our podcast. That’s cool. Ben Ornstein: I didn’t know about it. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I just started looking right now. There’s some really cool stories. I’d love to test these in Wiseguy, actually. But I’d love to hear, you know, what are you guys doing with Stan? And if you guys played around a little bit with Wiseguy, you should know and how we can support you with that. Ben Ornstein: 100%, yeah. So We are like a content agency and we’re working with Tim on his on his content and Yes, we we’ve got many parts of the business. There’s It’s essentially like a holding company a personal holding company how it helps personal holding company And we have a bunch of businesses the founding journey is Both the newsletter that used to be talks newsletter used to be his newsletter At peak it was about 100,000 subscribers, founders, VCs, aspiring founders. And so, yeah, he’s been working on that for quite a while and he spun out a bunch of businesses from that. I joined to start the podcast with him. And so we went really hard on that last year and other priorities just came, We kind of temporarily stopped focusing full-time on the podcast, and we’ve gone deep on this ghostwriting agency that we have. It’s grown, yeah, I think it’s doubled since January of this year, so it’s been nuts. It’s been, yeah, really, really good. And so primarily we write newsletters for founders and VCs and really a whole bunch other people, newsletters, but then we also do social media content. It’s usually text-based content. And so that’s on X and LinkedIn. And so those are bread and butter, that’s what we do. And yeah, we also have a tech startup as well, that’s a piece of, we kind of see Megaphone as two sides of the same coin. Megaphone Studio is the ghostwriting agency, and then Megaphone itself is the tech product. It’s called Megaphone.network. Megaphone.network? Yep, .network. And it’s essentially like you creators, we call them amplifiers, get paid to engage with content. And so we’ve got like a marketplace, a two-sided marketplace of people whose content they want to get, you know, essentially boosted. And then amplifiers with real audiences that get paid to engage organically with posts. You mean like this? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Yeah, that’s it, that’s it. Ben Ornstein: Seems like it didn’t work. Oh, now it works. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Okay, cool, cool. Cool, I’m gonna check it out later. Yeah, yeah, it’s great. Ben Ornstein: It’s great platform. And so I think the primary use case for Wisecut would be because we’re exploring, you know, content as well, shorts, repurposing the content that we’re already generating. And yeah, I checked out Wisecut. I didn’t do a, you know, a deep dive, but it looked awesome. And I wanted to learn, you know, a little bit more about it. Great. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): And so for Tim right now, you’re doing LinkedIn and text posts for them, right? Primarily, yes. Ben Ornstein: Primarily. Okay. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): And maybe, I think he’s mentioned in the email, he was thinking about like maybe doing TikTok or something like that, like videos that people visit, right? Ben Ornstein: Okay. Yeah, so Tim’s excited about that. And then just as an agency, we’re pumped about that as well. Like we wanna get into, you know, videos like shorts, like how can we make shorts more viable in terms of both spending, but then also like, you know, capability, like actually making it happen. Love it. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I love all the business you guys are creating. Yeah, I might even considering for ourselves, you know, for the newsletter or, you know, for the podcast or… For the post, we’re trying to be more in the video, because my video stopped. But maybe if you guys get into video, maybe that doesn’t fit there as well. So basically, the way Wisecut works, I mean, I started Wisecut five years ago before the AI hype, because I was a video editor myself in LA. And I was also a post supervisor managing a lot And I saw the struggle to edit videos with voice, not because it’s complex, it’s just because it takes a long time, right? So just to listen to the whole content, if you have like a two, one hour of footage and you have to listen to it three times, that’s like three hours, just try to understand before you start making the editing decisions. So we started really simple, like doing simple editing stuff, but now with the whole GNI evolving, we are able now to actually do the curation of the videos. So before, like if you send me like one hour video, I would like remove the silences and then put together and then they’ll come down to 30 minute videos. Now you give me one hour video, I create like one minute snippets of the best moments for you automatically. So this is the core of the business is really selecting these great moments and transforming them into, it could be like horizontal, but it could be in vertical as well automatically. So it’s going to be ready for a TikTok into shorts and all that. It’s going to come with some titles. Music if you want and some other few features. Let me share screen real quick here. So basically it works, you can paste a link already from YouTube Dropbox or Google Drive or you can also upload a video and then once WhiteSky process the video, so it’s going to go to the cloud of WhiteSky and then it’s going to create a bunch of things for you. So this is like a one hour with the drapers show, basically it creates around 45 clips, right? So here are going to be all the clips that you can see by text, by the titles. So Wiseguy also creates the titles for you automatically and also creates a summarized text based on the content that you can just copy paste and use for the videos as well. We also create like a filter. So if you’re just looking for something zero to one minute, You can filter that down, or if you just want to three minutes. So depending which platform you’re going to be uploading to, if it’s longer, you can have like a 5 to 15. And the way you look, how it works, so you can just, you know, you can pick one of these. Usually we put on the top the ones that Whitescout finds to be the most compelling videos. So those tend to be the best ones. So this one we already export is one of them. And the way it works, Please click on the video, you can watch of course. I just took that personally and I wanted to make a difference. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I had an idea during my PhD, but I didn’t want the university to take any of my IP. So I worked on that after hours on the weekends with my own money. And then the moment I defended my PhD, I incorporated the company a week later. And at that point I had offers from the Mayo Clinic and from Stanford, which I rejected to stay in Canada and continue growing this company. That’s a great clip. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Wesco was able to find this by itself, and it’s pretty good. Then you can export. This is where you choose if you just want a vertical, you just choose vertical. You can change the subtitles as well. We can translate to other languages automatically. You can add smart background music automatically, and a few other features here. But those are basically the core. And then once you export it, so I already exported this clip. Let’s see how this one looks. I just took that personally and I wanted to make a difference. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I had the idea during my PhD, but I didn’t want the university to take any of my IP. So I worked on that after hours on the weekends with my own money. And then the moment I defended my PhD, I incorporated the company a week later. And at that point I had offers from the Mayo Clinic and from Stanford, which I rejected to stay in Canada and continue growing this company. I just realized this isn’t an old clip. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): So there’s a few bugs there that we already fixed. So the new ones should be even better than this one. So I thought I’m very picky with editing. So I saw some blinking there. That’s not there anymore. So basically, that’s how it works. So the core, so it may work automatically. It has feature recognition to know who is speaking. So it’s going to be focused on that person. It also knows if there’s a B-roll. So it’s going to have a box and then have everything. On the frame. We also have different colors. So we can have like the company color, for example, for the subtitles. But that’s, I think that’s the core of it. I’d love to hear from you, like what’s your thoughts and if there’s any questions so far. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. So I’m thinking, because like a Draper long form podcast or something, I could see immediate use cases of or just him talking in front of a camera or a video for a long period of time and just talking through thoughts or whatever. There’s probably so many different use cases, you know, speaking events that he goes to. So, when we upload a video here, what the tech does is it takes just segments, snippets from the longer form episode or video, Um, does it add effects or it literally just takes pieces and then just Yeah, does it do any of that? Automatically what kind of effects we’re looking like um, so like in that in that video, for example, like it in the the transition from like one thing to another and that was clearly in the video itself, but um when if I were to take a thing from our podcast just like a a segment from our podcast. Would it, would I be able to have like a little transition, like a, you know, a sound with a thing where like it slides off the screen to another side and then, and then, I don’t know, I don’t really know what I’m asking. Does, but essentially what it does, it just takes snippets from a longer form episode, right? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Yeah, essentially, yes. We’ll clip different parts of the video and, And you can kind of pick the ones that they like the best. But like I said, I will try to get the best ones on the top. We don’t have a lot of effects. I guess you’re looking for more like a visual effect. I think one of the effects that we have. What we have right now is the auto punching and out. This is an editing technique for when you’re cutting from one scene to the other, it does a punch. Like, so like zooming. So we have like this zooming effects that makes the editing more fluid, but we don’t have a lot of visuals effect. We’re focusing on the editing part of it. Yeah. Okay. Ben Ornstein: We also, we are developing this part here. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): This is not full developed yet. We only have one clip, but this part of this tab, we’re going to have different parts of the video put together automatically. So basically if I have a couple of clips, On our video, we’re gonna get one from the beginning, one from the middle, one from the end, and then we’re gonna put them together. So we’re gonna have like a reel of the best moments. So this is coming. So we already have one video that does that, but we’re making better for next week. Ben Ornstein: Nice. Yeah, that’s definitely helpful. That’s cool. That’d be cool to have like at the beginning of a podcast for like a, cause you know, right now we use external editors for the podcast to make those introductions And, you know, heavily animated with animations. And yeah, it’s great, but like, I’d love to be able to do that myself without having to go elsewhere. So that makes a lot of sense. Are you doing clips yet or not at all for the podcast? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): We did clips. Ben Ornstein: We did. They didn’t perform well on YouTube. We did YouTube shorts. And so we stopped investing in them. Time and money into it. Have you tried TikTok? We also tried TikTok for a little bit. Yes. And we didn’t go very hard. I think we repurposed the content that was going on YouTube Shorts in there as well. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): We just ran what we are calling Click Challenge. Basically what we are doing, we are telling our Clippers, hey, we’re doing a challenge for money. So the first, the people that gets the most view are going to win a cash prize. And here’s the thing, and then people start typing different things on the internet. And in one month, we got 33 million views with 16 people clipping. Two of them got like a lot, like 10 million, one of them. And all of them were TikTok. So like the top performers were all TikTok. So I think maybe trying a little bit more TikTok might get some cool results. Ben Ornstein: And if you have something like Wiseguy that can do all the clipping for you automatically, It’s just about getting the right content that that can go viral, you know, like you can test like a lot of them 100% one of the use cases I know that is very common is if if someone’s doing a podcast where they have the two faces in an episode or they’re doing a live stream with I don’t know two faces and Then like a screen shared because those are those are two separate instances of what our clients do does wise cut have the ability to You said it, does it automatically zoom in on one of the faces? And it can create a short just by looking at like one of the speaker’s faces. Can it do that? Correct. Yeah. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): So right now you’re using facial recognition to try to understand who is speaking. So if it, if it sees you like open, closing the mouth, for example, that’s one way that White Scott knows you’re speaking. And then White Scott’s going to zoom in on that person. If you have like multiple people speaking at the same time, like three or four people speaking at the same it might zoom out and then it’s going to show everyone at the same time. So it’s going to create like a box, you know, like a blurred box on the, on the background and then you’re going to show it everyone. So yeah, we are detecting who’s speaking and focus on the, on the person who’s speaking right now. Ben Ornstein: Cool. And when we’re uploading videos, what are the different options? Cause I think I tried YouTube. I tried with one of our YouTube videos and it gave me an error. I wasn’t able to, yeah. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): We are having a few issues with YouTube right now. So this is an ongoing thing. So sometimes YouTube will block the upload, but we are always fixing. So I know we had this maybe a couple of days ago, and we’re having right now, actually. But we already found a way to fix it, and it should be fixed by the end of today. So maybe you ran into this problem. Email, like when this happened, I can sometimes the error happens in the background. And I can ask my devs to run the video again. So even you can do that. Sometimes if the YouTube gives you an error, if you try again, it might work. It should work. But this is a problem that we had this week with YouTube. And we found a way around that should work going forward. But yeah, this is what YouTube communication with widespread issue. But we’re not happy. This issue, but sometimes we feel that we will have. Ben Ornstein: I think I did the backup of taking the video from like a Google Drive and then just upload the Google Drive link and then it worked. Yes, that will work. Yeah, I explored it once. It was cool. The tech is interesting. It saves a ton of time. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): What’s the pricing model? Okay, right now for B2C, we have the starter and the So the starter, if you pay monthly, it gives you four hours per month. That’s $15 per month. If you pay annually, you get 10 hours per month. That's $120 per year. That’s like $10 per month. The professional is $57 per month and gives you eight hours. But if you pay annually, it’s going to give you 29 hours per month, and it’s going to be about $29 per month. So that's what we have like for direct for consumer If you want to do something like a like a partnership something like a b2b model We can have more hours. We can discuss different ways to do it. Ben Ornstein: I'd be happy to discuss it as well And the biggest use case for wise cut in terms of a platform Is it tick tock by far like that's where people are uploading their videos to do you maybe do you know that? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Yes, I would say like most, they use it for all of them, because it's important for you to be in all platforms, like most of them, but I've been seeing a lot TikTok, because it feels like TikTok gets the most viral, but it should be in all of them, that's my opinion, and a lot of our creators do all of their platforms, but TikTok, especially after doing the clip challenge thing, is the one that's delivering more reach. Cool. Awesome. I'm trying to think what else. Ben Ornstein: What's cool about YouTube though is that you can link YouTube shorts to the long video if you're doing that. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Like let's say you have like a long podcast and you can create like a short on YouTube short and then you can put the link of the long video. So if the person who watched the short, they like it, they can be redirected to the long video. So that's one cool thing. That's cool. So there are different things. But TikTok is the one that gives you the most reach. Especially if you have clients and you want to show them that you're having a lot of views, I'll do TikTok. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, absolutely. What else should I know about Wiseguy that like maybe I wouldn't have seen when I explored? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): So there's a lot, especially like being the right contact with us, there's a lot of things that we could do personalized to you. Like let's say we do like a B2B partnership. And create like a automatic bumper, meaning like a outro. Let's say for Draper, once we create this, like for every short that we export it, at the end, we had like a, go watch the full video on www.draper.com. So every short that you create, like let's say you create like a hundred, we come with this automatic bumper at the end. So that's something we can create for special clients or something like that. That's one thing you're not going to find in our website or anywhere. And also, being direct contact, if there's any special need, that's something we can evaluate, that we can do. Something might not be possible because it's too heavy on the development side, but something might be simple that we can do. Ben Ornstein: Cool. What else? Another question I just thought of What percentage of videos are people after Or customers after they're you're you're generating the clips How often are they are they making edits versus it's ready to go and they're just exporting. Do you have any like stats on that? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Um I don't have the top on my head But on my personal experience like me using device cut like uh, I would say 90 they were ready, ready to go. Even if I make changes, they're pretty easy. I don't know if I showed this. This is a good question, actually. So let's say we have like a clip here. Let's open this one. So here's the video, right? So what happens is all the tabs, they are connected to the video. So that means if you make any changes in the tabs, it's also going to change the video. It's pretty easy if I don't like this part here. I did it wrong here. We think of Bupas digitizing transportation as the first step in our journey. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Then if we think of Bupas digitizing transportation. I don't like this part. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I can just select it and delete. And then it has been deleted from the video. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Thinking, taking bigger risks. Done. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): So if I export, it's not going to have this part of the video. It's the same thing, just select it and then bring it back. Oh, that's cool. And then this part of the video is back. So sometimes I have to make these changes because I want to take my creative control of it. I want to add something that the AI didn't. So I might want to do this, but it's super simple. Hmm. No, that's cool. Ben Ornstein: That's a cool feature. I played around with a lot of these like short form video tools. We're looking at ones for advertising like AI advertising rather than reaching out to people in You know on fiber to create an ad for us so that's use case a use case that I've been personally interested in Do do people use Wisecrack for that or not really ads You mean for ads I've seen people actually, I saw someone doing a review on Wisecut saying that they were on Fiverr. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): They were charging, but they were doing everything on Wisecut. I don't know exactly if they were doing ads. We're really good on making long to short videos. So I don't think it's good for a creator from scratch. An ad, I don't think so. We are the best tool for that. But if you have a longer ad, that's something that had been already added and then you can want to repurpose that, I think that would be good. I used to do that because as an editor, that's where Wisegate came from We had to do many versions as an agency. I was working for an agency that did a lot of ads and the agency would ask, okay, I want this version, this version, this version, this version. I was an editor, I did the 122nd version, which I crafted and made it perfect, but I didn't want to do all the thousand versions that they ask. They want like a 30 second, a 60 second, a five second, and they want a one version with this, another version with this. So that's something Wisecut is really good at. Like you already have the main video and then you want to create all these many variations that the clients want for different platforms, different formats, different timings. So this is what Wisecut can really save time. Ben Ornstein: So that's, that's your bread and butter. It's breaking down long form videos into shorter form content. Correct. Cool. Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely have to just do an even deeper dive into the platform, but it looks like the UI is really clean. Yeah, no, it sounds awesome. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): You guys do work with a lot of VCs and that's your main clients, right? VCs, the entrepreneurs? It's mostly founders. Ben Ornstein: And so like, or doing either their company social media or their, it's usually their personal social media account or a newsletter on behalf of their company or the person. Got it, got it. Cool. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I was thinking in ways like if there's any ways for us to partner in any way. We're also fundraising at the moment. So if you guys have like a relationship with an investor, that would be something that would be interesting, you know, Yeah, Hauk knows a ton of investors. Ben Ornstein: So, yeah, I'll mention that to him to see how we could collaborate on that side. He's got a ton of relationships there. So, yeah, what round are you guys raising? We're raising a C potentially to A, depending on who's the investor, right? Ivo Machado (Wisecut): So, Tim Draper is our main investor right now and he already to participate in the round. So we could go from five to $10 million round. If it’s a five, it’s a seed. If it’s a 10, it’s a series A So it depends who is the investor who’s coming in. Ben Ornstein: Yep. That makes sense. Cool. Okay. I’ll mention that to Hauk. Yeah. I’m just going to tell him about, you know, what we spoke about, more about the platform. Yeah. And then what, you know, What would you ideally like next steps to be? I can send you like a trial of Wisecut. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): So maybe I can send like a coupon. So it can have like a month for you, like maybe like an hour or something like that. So you can try for free with all the features there. And so that’s one thing, you know, so then you can give me some feedback, you know, like what you like and if it’s working for you or if there’s something else you’d like to see, you know, if you’re interested in doing something more personal for you, like the bumpers that I mentioned, that’s something we can discuss. Maybe we can set up a call for next week for that. And also keep your mind open for partnerships. Like I said, if you guys work with a lot of clients or with VCs, if there’s anything that we can partner, we are open. We have a direct contact here, you’ll be introduced by our investor, so we have this in common. So maybe keep their mind open for that as well. If there’s something that you guys see that we could work together as partners, that’s something we’d be open to as well. A hundred percent. Ben Ornstein: Hauk will definitely have, you know, uh, other ideas on that side. Um, I’m, I’m so deep into the operational side of things. I’m chief of staff. And so I’m, I’m doing, I’m working across the whole business, uh, partnerships a little bit. Um, not as much, so I’ll definitely speak with him about, about that. Cause, uh, yeah, I would love to, if there’s an opportunity. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Technophen, maybe if you want to join on a call next week, we can discuss more like potential partnerships or brainstorm ideas. I don’t know. Absolutely. Well, great. Ben Ornstein: It was great meeting you. Thank you so much for the demo. Yeah, platform looks awesome. So great, great job on that. And yeah, I’d love to explore it even deeper and do like a, yeah, a trial would be awesome. Check it out further. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): Is Hawk in Silicon Valley? Where is he based? Ben Ornstein: Oh man, he’s been everywhere. He’s traveling, he’s doing the whole like Airbnb thing from, he started like at the end of last year. He’s planning through July, just he’s been, he went, he was in Brazil actually. He went all across America. He was in Austin. He’s been in South Carolina. He was back in Philly. He’s been everywhere. So he’s doing, he’s traveling. He doesn’t really have a home base right now, but probably by the end of the summer, he’ll have some place. Okay. Okay. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I mentioned because I’m going to a team’s event on the 12th of May. So I’m going to be around Silicon Valley. So if he was around, I could meet him in person as well. And you said May 12th? Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Cool. All right. Yeah. I have no idea where he’s gonna be. He’s yeah, he’s been ever. I think he’s in he’s in Hawaii right now For a wedding. Oh, yeah, he’s got he’s everywhere. So Yeah, I think I’ll break around there. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I’ll be probably I’m not probably traveling. So Next week if he has the availability we can do like a call Sounds good. Yeah. No, I’ll definitely job with him Cool. Ben Ornstein: Thanks, man. Ivo Machado (Wisecut): I’ll send you the coupon and I looking forward to hear from you. Awesome. Great meeting you Likewise. Bye bye.