- Duration: 37 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JWY2XZJG0KGC8XZBC0NK1F4J (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JWY2XZJG0KGC8XZBC0NK1F4J)
Transcript
Michael Houck: I mean, what’s, what’s not to like, Um, cool. Michael Houck: So we were chatting on LinkedIn. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Um, I’m happy to share whatever makes sense. Um, but maybe, maybe the best way to just kind of set the table, we only have 15 minutes for the call. I can go over a little bit if we need, but I can tell you what problem I have and what problem I solve and where you might fit in. Michael Houck: That works. Michael Houck: Um, awesome. [Mike Vladimer]: So you have this thing called founding journey. Like you’re interested in founders, I’m interested in founders, blah, blah, blah. I am very, very specifically focused on one problem that founders have. Fundamentally, I believe that startups at the idea stage that have no customers have very different problems from startups that have customers. Everybody agrees with that. There’s no startup strategy that actually makes that distinction. Product market fit, minimum viable, product, pick anything that you want. No one starts by saying, if you’re a founder with a startup, you need to bifurcate. And here’s the playbook for founders of startups that have customers versus not. I’m trying to write the book for folks that are just idea stage that have no customers. I don’t need to get into the reasoning, but I have a lot of reasoning why I think that this historically it’s been to blur that distinction, and now it’s in their interest to separate it. So for founders that have the kernel of an idea and know customers, there’s a lot that they’re told to do. You can Google it. There’s like 10 different things. Incorporate and find a co-founder and all this crap. I think that the most important thing they need to do is customer discovery. Yeah, 1,000%. 1,000%. The problem with customer discovery today I see customer discovery as kind of like a two-part process, data gathering and data analysis. Data gathering is classic Steve Blank, get out of the building. There’s no customers next to you right now. Go talk, go get out of here and go find someone. Great, so you do that and now what? How do you process the data? What is the data analysis framework to be able to, as a founder, to make a decision about your idea? And I’ve mentored over a hundred founders with idea stage startups. And the conventional approach, the current status quo, I would argue data analysis is a count. Meaning I’ve done 12 discovery interviews. That’s a very, it’s a very astute observation. Michael Houck: It’s like, oh yeah, seven people said this. Exactly. [Mike Vladimer]: Not even seven people said this. I’ve spoken with seven people. If only if it were seven people said this. Here’s the problem we solve. Here’s our solution. Here’s, you know, blah, blah, blah. Here’s our amazing team. And oh, yeah, I checked the box into customer discovery because I did seven. Michael Houck: Right. That’s okay. That’s, that’s true. But the good ones will even just say, Oh, more people said this, it doesn’t get like more layered than that, you know? [Mike Vladimer]: Sure, sure, sure. But fundamentally, in my experience, I see this gap in terms of data analysis, right? For discovery interviews. Another way just to kind of frame it, then I’ll hands off, is if you looked on YouTube, Y Combinator has a great speaker series where they went to Stanford and had this whole thing called how to start a startup. Yeah, I’ve seen it. Awesome. The way I would summarize that is a successful startup requires as its foundation, a good idea. So once you have a a good idea, here’s what Y Combinator wants you to do. You got to worry about marketing and co-founders, but everything starts with a good idea. And then in the first two episodes, it’s like Sam Altman and then this other woman, and then episode three is Paul Graham. And he goes, people go, dude, okay. You keep telling me the foundation of a good startup is a good idea. How the fuck do I know? And people push him and push it. And he goes, I have some kind of internal compass. Michael Houck: And I, what’s the Rick Rubin thing. People pay me because I know what I like and my taste and that’s it. I love that you’re referencing Rick Rubin. [Mike Vladimer]: I’m a huge fan of Rick Rubin. I read his book. I couldn’t agree with it more. All this to say, I’m worried about the rest of us who do not have an internal compass like Paul Graham and Rick Rubin. And so the essence of Nascent, the essence of what I’ve created and what I’m continuing to build is essentially that compass. And the compass only has two knobs. It doesn’t even have North, South, East, West. It’s got two different things. If you have an idea for a startup and you’re definitely going to build no matter what, I can’t help you. If you’ve got an idea for a startup and you’re like, eh, I’m kind of worried. You know, I want to get some clarity. My compass either gets you to, you know, is this a good idea? It’s either doubtful or it’s possible. I can’t guarantee that you’re gonna be successful, but I can either get you to very quickly, in literally a matter of seconds, my idea is either doubtful or possible. Michael Houck: Yeah, like more than a 10% chance of potentially working, possible, right? [Mike Vladimer]: I don’t even want to go as far as percentages. I had originally started with percentages that people are pushing back on me being like, how do you know it’s, you know, one in a million versus one in a hundred? I’m like, you know, all I’m trying to say is actually on that note, I will say, um, one of the ways I pitched this for a while was the dumb and dumber movie where Jim Carrey goes to Lauren Holly, you know, one of the, you already know where I’m going. One in a hundred, more like one in a million. Michael Houck: So you’re saying there’s a chance. Michael Houck: I like the bike. Doubtful possible better. [Mike Vladimer]: Yeah, I’ve been using this 100 and my buddy was like, What are you talking about? How do you get that level of that certainty? I’m like, you know, but the point is, as dumb as Jim Carrey is, at least he thought to ask the question, right? Most founders just jump in. And again, I think that there’s very, very good historical precedent for why that was the right approach up until now. And now there’s a lot of reasons not to do that anymore. So I And I want to be here. Part of my goal with Nascent is to tell folks, good news. The world has changed. Your life is dramatically simpler, easier, and more fun. We have a lot more chances to do something productive with our lives. And the conventional way of doing startups, at least at the idea stage, there’s a better way. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve been running workshops and webinars. Where are you based? I should ask nowhere right now You’re on earth. Michael Houck: I’m on the planet. [Mike Vladimer]: I’m physically I’m physically in Philadelphia, but I’m not based here Cream cheese, I’ve actually been dying to go there recently, but that’s a whole nother story. Um All this to say so I’m based in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been running workshops in Atlanta. I’m supposed to go to South Carolina in a couple of weeks. I’m running some stuff here. I do webinars. Michael Houck: Not to get too off topic, but where in South Carolina? [Mike Vladimer]: Columbia, Cola, if you know. Michael Houck: I’ll be in Charleston next month. Michael Houck: That’s what I was asking. [Mike Vladimer]: Oh, I’m probably going to be in Charleston too. So yeah, we can get a coffee. I can tell you right now. So I’m on Wednesday. I’ll die My plans might change in 20 minutes. I have a call with them to check. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: We can figure it out. [Mike Vladimer]: We can figure it out. I can tell you right. Like if everything stays the same on Wednesday, July 16th, I’ll be in Columbia. Okay. So I’m either going to be in Charleston the day before or the day after. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Yeah. [Mike Vladimer]: Give me a call. [Mike Vladimer]: I should be there. Nice. All right. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll shoot for Columbia or Charleston, whatever. So actually that’d be great. Cause then you have three people, like you’d be number three. I already have two people I’m supposed to meet. Um, Yeah, so this is a way too long-winded pitch about why I want to change the world in this specific way and what I want to do. All this to say my journey with this is the last 10 years I’ve been advising founders with ideal stage startups. Five years ago, I said at the beginning, people are like, you have great advice. It’s very unique. Love it. I’m like, woo! Five years ago, I was like, you know what? I should start writing this down. I can make a book. I got to 160 pages of raw notes. And just like, let me just be super so you can see what I’m talking about. I’ve got this like mega thing. I’ve got the content. I know in this world, I know in this world that having something unique to say is really valuable. I just suck at marketing and telling and like packaging it. And so I’m like, if there’s a way for me to get this 160 pages, not to mention like, I have so much more content I’ve created this year that’s not even reflected in that. If you’re like, dude, I’ve got a way to like put this out into the world at a low, low price. I’m an independent founder. Like I, so, so yeah. That was the thing when we were kind of going back and forth where you were like, you know, um, I can help you. I’m like, all right, right. I’ll do what you could do. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. Michael Houck: So that’s helpful. And the fact that you have so much sort of unique content to put out there, like that’s going to make our job pretty easy, uh, at least relative to some other folks that we work with. Um, just so I get a sense before I dive into like what we would want to do, like give me a range, rough range for like where the budget is at, because then and I can tailor it? [Mike Vladimer]: Ideally, a couple hundred a month, I’d say. I’ll say a better way to say it is this. I have at least three ideas for value creation. And based upon those, we could do value capture and start charging people. Meaning, I have a sub stack that I started about a year ago. I’ve barely published on it. I’ve got 500 followers. I keep getting people. I like what you have to say, even though you’re not saying anything, just like the description. If I could start publishing the stuff weekly, I bet I could grow that like crazy. And then I could do a freemium version. So basically, the most important thing I’d say in terms of budgeting is, I forgot, performance marketing, I think that’s the term, where it’s like, if we can create a machine where I can work with you, where we put $200 into the machine every month, and I get out $2,000, then I’m going to be like, fuck this. Why am I giving you $200 a month? Let me give you $1,000. And that’s really the thing that I want to create. I don’t know what your sensitivity is, how much you’d want to take, how flexible you want to be. The easier you make this, the easier it is. Would be, I don’t know, we have to fill each other out, I’d say, is what I’m trying, like, if you’re like, dude, I need you to cut me $1,000 a month or it's not worth my time, like, that's totally fine. And that probably wouldn't work for me. I have, yeah, I don't have that much money. But yeah, like it's, so yeah, just to highlight the work streams. So one is the newsletter. Another thing I'm doing is webinars and workshops. And then a third thing is I have software. So when you're like, So we're talking about this whole discovery interview process. The pitch for nascent methodology in a heartbeat is today what founders will often just remember what people told them, which is bullshit, or they'll take notes, which I think is also bullshit. My key aspect with nascent is I say you must, must, must record the interviews because you're a human and humans are shitty filters and you suck. And so we need the raw data. But once you have 20 minutes, an hour, of an interview, there's a huge data processing problem. It's taken me days or weeks to get value out of, call it five, six, 10 hours of interviews. And so that's what I have software to do. So all this to say, my monetization strategy affects my budget for you. Because if you can help me get people either as subscribers or as webinar attendees or as software users, then any of those will make it easier for me to pay you. [Michael Houck]: I totally get it. OK, so we wouldn't be able to do content creation at that price point. Our minimum for content creation is $2K a month. So we would need to start by basically growing. [Mike Vladimer]: Sorry, that term does not mean much to me. So to me, when I hear content creation, I’m like, I’ve got 160 pages of what I would think is raw content creation, which clearly is not what you mean by it. So what do you mean by content creation? Michael Houck: Sure, you have hundreds of pages of great stuff with unique But you have those turned into Optimized social media posts that will perform and therefore grow your email list, right? So that’s that’s what we do So we have writers on staff who work with me like I’d be your primary POC just personally because I I’m actually in the weeds with all of our clients And we’ve writers have worked with for a long time who basically turn Content into social media content or newsletter content if you want to write long form on some stack for example, but like do it take it from that big doc and turn it into more structured sub stack posts or sub stack notes like they’re like twitter competitor on there now we do that too so that’s the content creation side we wouldn’t be able to do that so we shouldn’t we shouldn’t even spend time talking about that right now uh what we can do at for like you know a few hundred bucks a month to start with is we can grow the email list for you and or I can sort of be a sounding board strategically one or the other basically and so We have a large, large database of folks who we’ve tagged not just with job title and Zoom info or Apollo-style data, but also who they follow on social media. And so therefore, we have an interest-based graph of people’s emails, millions and millions of people. And what we can do is we can send them into your substack every week or every month at some level, and therefore, you’ll be growing the list, excuse me, with people who we know are interested in the topic based on what they follow. So that’s one option. And then the other option is you and me chatting on calls and me helping you build that sort of machine that you’re talking about. [Mike Vladimer]: So, okay, this is helpful. So tell me like, just quick thought is something getting these other signups to me feels like a tree falling in the woods, like completely you. My problem is not growing my email list. My problem is publishing. It’s June, I’ve published once this year. Yeah. It’s tough to find the time. Well, the other, yeah, yeah. It can be, and maybe you guys are not the right people to do this, but if you have a recommendation, I’ll take it. My ideal, like the thing, if you’re like, Mike, design what I want founding journey to be or whatever, would be, I would love somebody to look at, to just take my 160 pages and whatever other content I have, like throw it to a black box and be like, okay, Mike, I’m going to do a recording session. Cause like, to me, I love video. Like I used to be a radio DJ. I’m very comfortable. I enjoy speaking publicly. I would love for somebody to be like, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to do a I’m going to take all your content. I’m going to chop it up. It’s like an editorial calendar. I’m going to have you do an interview like an hour a week. Michael Houck: You’re not going to get that. I’m just being candid with you just straight up. You’re not going to get that at the budget level that you’re currently able to do. [Mike Vladimer]: So it doesn’t like to get all that. Let’s flip it. Let’s flip it again. So you’re anchoring against my budget as it stands, but I’m less interested if I’m less interested in the budget right now, I’m much more, but I care, again, like if there’s a way that I could work with you and maybe you’re not the right person, like whatever, but if you’re like helping me grow my business a thousand bucks a month or 2000 bucks a month, it’s very easy for me to pay you a lot more. Yeah. Michael Houck: I totally understand that. And like, you know, we can’t guarantee that upfront basically. And so when, when we were, when we work with clients, you know, we have our price points for and for turning those, those thoughts into posts and then putting them out there. Um, but yeah, we need to start at a certain level. Otherwise I’m underwater with the, with the writers and the editors and all that stuff. So it economically won’t make sense off the bat. [Mike Vladimer]: Okay. So, so sure. So the key questions I’m trying to ask are fundamentally, like, what would it take? Do you even offer what I’m talking about? Like, like video content creation? Absolutely. Michael Houck: We can, we can take. What are you saying? We create videos. Are you saying you create a video and we chop it up into the social media content? [Mike Vladimer]: Um, I would, my ideal would be that you guys have some kind of like touch point person who comes to me and it’s like, Mike, you just made this whole spiel about startups with customers versus startups without customers. I want to record you for 20 minutes talking about this and then I’m going to chop it up and make it social media. We can do that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yep. [Mike Vladimer]: And so my question to you is like, what would that take? Like if, cause I like my business is actually growing pretty quickly right now just cause I have a hundred dollar budget today. It doesn’t mean I would have a thousand dollar budget by the end of the year. And so it’s useful for me cause I’m not gonna be able to get on a call with you all the time for you to be like, yeah, come talk to me when you’re ready to spend $10,000 or 2000. Like I just need to, I want to be able to mentally bucket you against my ideals so that I know what it would take? [Michael Houck]: The standard package that we put out there, which includes content creation, whether it's video or written content, where we're in your account doing proactive engagements to comment on other people's posts, get some free profile views, and drive interest in your content that way, and also give you credits to use our creator network. We have 500 creators with tens of millions of followers across platforms and niches to go engage with your content to amplify it to their audiences. If you wanna include all that, that's our standard package, that's 4K a month. If you wanna take the creator network credits off and sort of do that more ad hoc and engage them on an ad hoc basis, and maybe do a lower volume of content, then we can bring that down to 3K and then to 2K, basically. So that's, those are the different things we offer. And again, that can be video content, that can be written content. And the process is, you know, you, me, and, a point person, let's say. Although I'll really be the point person most of the time. They're more so just executing the content creation. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [Mike Vladimer]: So the key that I'm hearing is, first and foremost, you guys are not making a big distinction between written content and video content. Because to me, that's like night and day. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No. [Michael Houck]: I mean, we have folks on staff for relatively the same cost to me. So I price it the same to the folks we work with. [Mike Vladimer]: Got it. So I'm looking at $2,000-ish a month. I want to be able to keep you in mind for a good opportunity, like when I’m ready. So the key thing, I’m just taking a note now. So I would be looking at $2,000 a month. I would say my ideal would be that I would meet with someone from your team, you or whoever, And you guys would do like a, call it like a one hour a week of me just like speaking. And then you guys could make posts against that. [Michael Houck]: Is that- And we'd edit that with B-roll and make it look all like, you know, Instagram realified or TikTokified or whatever you want to call it. [Michael Houck]: Like it'd be good, good looking, engaging content. [Mike Vladimer]: And so, and it sounds like you're, did I get like an editorial? Calendar like I was imagining? [Michael Houck]: We'll have everything in a Notion hub and we'll have a Kanban board where it goes through an internal review with me and then a client review with you and then it gets scheduled with a date and there's a calendar view on there too. And you'll be able to move things around if you want or edit them or anything like that. [Mike Vladimer]: Awesome. So there's an input and there's an output. So if I want to do this, I'm looking at 2000 a month. You guys can record me like a an hour a week talking about different topics. You have like my actually now that we're fleshing this out, like as much as I was starting with this mentality of a couple hundred dollars, like this actually doesn't sound unreasonable. I'm serious. Like, cause what? 2000 bucks a month. We're talking about like 25,000 a year. She's not, um, crazy money for the business I'm trying to build. And so Editorial calendar combat board and then you guys would also deal with like the promoting on like Facebook and LinkedIn or whatever Yeah, we cross post to whatever platforms you want. [Michael Houck]: We'd write little text above it. So that there's like a text textual component to We're pretty full service and You know, we're able to both be flexible and also to keep our prices down because our team is super lean You know, I hire folks who know what they're doing, but who don't want, like, a bunch of management layers and approval layers internally. [Michael Houck]: So they like working for us, and so they're able to keep our rates down as a result. [Mike Vladimer]: Got it. One other thought as we're doing this. So we're saying 2K a month for one hour recording. Um, I don't think today's the day, but would you be interested in like doing so one hour of recording a week? That's like 500 bucks per recording, like four recordings a month. Um, I'd be willing to do like a $500 test. Um, or how do you, how do you, maybe let me frame it this another way. The problem try to solve is like, how do I, is there a lightweight way to test what would ultimately be a partnership? Or is it just like we go all in? Michael Houck: No, I mean, we’re service, right? We’re providing you a content creation service, we have set price points, it’s hard for us to go outside of that, because, you know, I need to loop in one of our creators, and they need to do research on the niche, and they need to get familiar with everything. And stops from guys, we just don’t offer like a trial or anything like that. Perfect. [Mike Vladimer]: Yeah, I I don’t want you to do anything special for me, but I’m trying to figure out is like, do you have a standard unwrapping package? And the answer sounds like, no, it’s like you flip a switch. Michael Houck: I know you 2k or whatever. [Mike Vladimer]: Yeah, it’s straight, but it’s the same thing. It’s, it’s a practice service basically. Okay. Um, no on board or no piloting. Just do it. Okay. Super duper cool. As much as I started with a very low number, like this 200 bucks a month, which I get is off by a factor of 10 from something that you would consider. I would love, like if it’s easy for you to send me like a quote or something, because I literally want to like print this out and stick it on my wall as like a target. Yeah, I can’t like the more I think about this but the It’s not sorry, I’m not one other question would then be like um I get that we couldn’t do a pilot but is it like How hard is it to get in and get out because I I don’t I don’t want to fuck up your situation I I so I could be like let’s do you know a two thousand dollar thing and then I Tested for a week and I changed my mind like, that’s not cool. I don’t want to do that. But I also need to understand, like, if after a month, if after we did this for four weeks, because maybe like, I’ll sleep on this, I’ll be like, you know what, it’s a $2,000 experiment, but it could be a useful $2,000 experiment. Michael Houck: We do 30 day cancellation notice. And basically, it’s month to month, but it’s effectively a two month to start because we say, hey, we’re doing for one month, and then 30 day cancellation. [Mike Vladimer]: So it’s effectively two months. Awesome. So the smallest test I could do would be basically 4k. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, exactly. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Exactly. [Mike Vladimer]: Okay, that’s super duper helpful. Super duper duper helpful. Okay. Um, yeah, I would love the more think about like, can you send me a quote? Or how does this work? Yeah. Michael Houck: So after the call, I’ll send over probably like either tonight or tomorrow. I’ll send over an ocean doc that just lists everything out that we have that we can offer. And I’ll also add some custom stuff in the email based on our conversation of what I think could be a good place to start. [Mike Vladimer]: Awesome. Cool. And then the last thing I’ll say on my end is I hope and assume you guys are using AI to make your life easier. Michael Houck: We find that it helps with the video stuff more than the written stuff, oddly enough. Interesting. You can create an AI avatar of somebody and create very engaging Instagram Reels and TikTok videos. But it’s still hard to get a text LinkedIn post in their voice that they’re happy with and that performs well and that we’re happy with. So we don’t really use it for the written stuff. But we will use it for video stuff in some cases. [Mike Vladimer]: OK. The reason I ask is just the way I see the world is pretty unique in whatever I’ve used. It kind of like shoehorns me back into the conventional approach. And it’s just like this really, I want to make sure anyone who is publishing in my voice actually publishes in my voice. Like it’s very easy to write generic shit about customer discovery. It’s very much not that. Michael Houck: Yeah, I mean, the good news is you have a lot of source material that is unique to pull from And so I think that that will make our jobs a bit easier. But yeah, for the written content, would be written by a human being, edited by a human being, and all that. For the video content, we speed up some of the editing process, but not the scripting. [Mike Vladimer]: OK. Awesome, dude. Cool. Thanks. I got to run to my next meeting. I really appreciate your reaching out. And if I’m in Charleston in July. Yeah, man. Michael Houck: Let me know when you’re there. I’ll be around. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Sounds good. Take care. Michael Houck: All right. See you, man.