- Duration: 27 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JX0TKXPTYW0RGE54W5T95RV1 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JX0TKXPTYW0RGE54W5T95RV1)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Hi, good, how’s it going? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, good, thanks for grabbing some time. Yeah, where are you located? I’m in Philadelphia right now, but I’m not really based here or anywhere. [Julia Xu]: Nice, nomadic life? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, since like, I don’t know, end of last fall, I’ve just been all over the place. [Julia Xu]: Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m also kind of right now, I’m currently in London, actually. [Michael Houck]: Nice. Oh, wow. We can totally do this earlier some other day if you’d like, [Julia Xu]: Oh no no it’s okay I still have more calls after honestly like, Yeah this is like my two days for calls and then I’m going to be at conferences back to back. Wow so yeah it’s a bit it’s a bit crazy yeah so like maybe five more countries to go- yeah and then I’m going to be in Asia so it’s going to be nonstop. [Michael Houck]: Let’s let’s knock it out now then we’ll take a break. [Julia Xu]: Yeah, I think someone on your team messaged me and then I saw, I was like, oh yeah, we’d love to learn more. And also, it seems like you work with a lot of founders. We help a lot of companies with merch too. [Michael Houck]: There might be some way to partner. Yeah. That’s a cool idea. Yeah, we should talk about that. Yeah. Because we definitely have some folks who are looking to build their brand. [Julia Xu]: Exactly, yeah. [Michael Houck]: We don’t have a swag partner, so it might be good to… Well, cool. Okay. So I can tell you a little bit about us and sort of me and what we do, and then we can sort of see where it fits in. Great. So yeah, so I’m Michael. I’ve been a founder for a while. Before this, I was part of the early team that built Uber Eats and then was at Airbnb for a while as a product manager after that. And then been founding companies for the past five-ish years now, a little more than that. The first one raised a series A from Andreessen Horowitz and then we raised a venture fund off the back of that. And then now also have this bootstrap kind of holding company that I do a lot of my other things out of these days. And so the main one, the largest one is our content agency, Megafon. And so we do content and distribution for founders and startups and sometimes VCs. Basically, I’ve built my audience up to 100K across LinkedIn and X and also 200K on Substack. And my partner on the agency has built a similarly large audience, bigger than me on social actually. And so yeah, we just help founders with that. We also have a large creator network that sort of helped amplify content we create so that our founders get better reach and social proof and credibility and things like that. So we have- Nice. 500 creators with a few tens of millions of followers in aggregate and we match them appropriately and can partner with them on engagements and also like sponsored posts, testimonials, ads in their newsletters, whatever you might want. So it’s sort of a full service agency offer where we do the content and the distribution. And there’s a few packages of sort of how you can set that up. [Julia Xu]: Awesome. Yeah. Because we’re kind of just getting started. I did like our official launch announcement lately, and now we’re kind of just like hitting go to market. So definitely I think like content and especially like LinkedIn, we’re B2B, and mainly just like, you know, targeting founders or, you know, people at companies. So like, that’s gonna be I think, one of our very big like acquisition channel. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you need that you need the decision makers to have the budget. Cool. Okay. So would you want to, if we’re talking LinkedIn primarily, then would this be through your account, a company page or what do you think? [Julia Xu]: Probably my account makes the most sense. Cause like, I feel like company account on LinkedIn, people don’t really like, you know, it’s not really the same. And then I already have like some kind of like a base. So hopefully it can build on upon that. I do most of the outreach, like through my account anyways, like for sales So I think that’s probably more effective. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think just putting it all in one place makes the most sense. And then once you build up, you know, your audience to be as large as you as you want it to be, it’s a lot easier to build a company page than start sending people there rather than trying to do both kind of at once. It’s for sure more of a struggle. Okay, so I can tell you about our process and sort of options and things like that. That’s helpful. Sure. Okay. So, you know, we know you’re super busy. The founders are doing a million things. You’re going to conferences for the next five weeks and you’re all over the world and everything like that. So, um, we’re not trying to put meetings on your calendar. Basically after this, there’s only one required call that we ever need to have. Uh, that’s just like a kickoff with you, me and the writer. Um, if you want to do sort of recurring content interviews one-on-one with the writer, that’s totally fine. We can accommodate that. But what we find is that most of our clients prefer, uh, like a Slack connection. Where we are sending weekly batches of questions that come up during our research that we want your unique POV on. And basically, all you need to do is record a couple-minute-long voice note just right in Slack. We like that because it gives us the intonation, it gives us the unique wording, and WordPress better than writing it out really would. So if we get that from you, the content sounds more like you. That’s how I like to think about it. And then we’ll deliver weekly batches of content at the end of the week. And we’ll work to get a couple weeks ahead too. So we’re not like scrambling and waiting for your comments on something or anything like that. And yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much it. We handle scheduling, we handle all reporting operations on the account. I’ll personally go through and like optimize your profile, record a Loom video of myself just doing that. And then we can make any changes that you wanna move forward with. And we can optimize that for lead generation, or for DMs, or whatever you want to be, followers. And we also do engagements. So for example, let’s say that we have a list of thought leaders in your niche who you want to get in front of, and you want their audience to know who you are. Our team will go in and start leaving comments on popular posts from those people so that their audience sees you. Hopefully some engagement happens on those replies. And then they check out your profile and follow you. So we see that strategy work pretty well. We’ve dedicated folks on the team for that. And they also handle conversations in the comments of your own posts, too. So if we get some traction on posts and making sure the algorithm knows that we’re responding and it’s a conversation happening in the comments, because that does help. So all of that is included. And then if you want to also layer in the creator as I mentioned, we can do that in two ways. Either you can do that ad hoc and just say, Oh, you know, I want to put some budget towards creators on this post. Or if we want to have a standard amount that we set per month, we can do it that way too. [Julia Xu]: And it’s just included in the main, uh, the main plan. Got it. Okay. That makes sense. Um, and then what is like the typical package for something like that? [Michael Houck]: So all in including like, what I would say is like a standard creator network package. Would be 4k and so if you wanted to do the creator network ad hoc or do smaller batches of content per week so like instead of say three long form or daily short to medium form posts if you wanted to just do like you know two long form or three to five short form throughout the week that would be down to either 3k or if you take both of them off and bring it down to be just 2k. So those are those are the options that we have. And it’s month to month. It’s effectively a two month commitment because we do ask for, you know, 30 day notice, and like, you know, assume that we go through the first month before we get to that point. So minimum two months, but then after that, it’s it’s month to month. [Julia Xu]: That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And then I guess like in terms of like the growth, like what you typically expect, maybe, Until we get in there for a couple weeks and we’re sort of probing your audience with different topics and post formats and things like that It’s it’s tricky and I don’t want to like I don’t want to give you like a pie-in-the-sky answer and I also don’t want to give you like under expectation too much right but You know, we’ve seen folks go from 1,000 followers to 17 K in a little under six months. So And that’s on LinkedIn I think they were just doing the 3K plan or they are just doing the 3K plan. So they’re not even using the creator network for those results. Their content just hit really well. So I would say that’s like one of the better performing LinkedIn clients that we have, but it’s possible. I see. Okay. So you kind of have to like test it out. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So we work with you and we kind of set goals as we go, but I personally want to hesitate until we hit the one month mark and then we can say, okay, here’s what we saw the first Now we can work out goals for the next quarter, for the next six months, et cetera, from there. [Julia Xu]: Got it. Okay. And you probably also have like some of the examples, like, so we can like kind of check it out. Yeah. I think that that’d be really helpful to see. Like, I don’t know if you have anyone like kind of in this space, I guess it’s a little bit less common space, so. [Michael Houck]: We have people who are speaking to the same people that you want to speak to, but obviously from different perspectives. Right. I’m happy to share like some anomalies. Examples the one thing I say in the caveat that I always like to make is when people ask for examples are like oh well you know I wouldn’t write like that or that’s too Mimi for me or that’s too like viral focused or that’s too dense and thought leadership II right like our writing team can do anything we do do everything so I would say don’t take away sort of the tone right because they’re the voice that we build for you is going to be based on your preferences entirely. Makes sense. Okay. [Julia Xu]: Yeah, I think like definitely something that I wanted to do. And I think in terms of timeline, though, probably looking more maybe after this summer, just because right now we’re kind of like gearing up for a lot of future release. And I feel like it’s still like, we’re not quite there yet product wise, where I feel like the investment more into all the like, you know, more in PR, like marketing, probably is when we’re thinking like maybe this fall. So yeah, but I would love to kind of start a conversation so I know like as we’re planning out you know like what to really look for as well and we’re now since like we did like the initial launch I think we’re going to get some like traction over this summer and we already have a bunch of like big accounts like that we’re about to close and then we’re gearing up for like a fundraise this fall and I think that’s what we’re going to be raising for like I mean obviously I think your rates like are very reasonable already but you know just like generally I think as we’re deploying to go to market any paid initiative we’re kind of probably more thinking like, you know, once we raise the next round, and then we’ll be like, really, like hitting go. We’re gonna be doing like this. And then we’ll probably also want to like start doing like, you know, as well, but not like a lot of the other things like PR or stuff like that. [Michael Houck]: Let me do a layout some other stuff that we can we can do as well, just so you have the full kind of gamut. So if you want to also do video, I didn’t mention this, but we have we built a system that can build an AI digital twin of you. And then we write scripts, we make the videos, they’re like optimized sort of Instagram real style videos. And we’ve seen really crazy results with that across because you can post them across every platform, right? Those have done really well. And that’s that would be either additional or in place of but roughly same price range. And then yeah, I mean, look, if you’re if you’re going for a fundraiser, the one thing I would say I’m not trying to, you know, convince you when we were there, you’ve got your timeline, you’ve got your budget, I totally get that. I was able to raise, this is gonna sound nuts, my last company, we were able to raise at a $120 million valuation from some of the best investors in the world with one million in ARR. And we did that because we were super active on social and if an investor was like, hey, who the hell are these guys? They could see how we were thinking and they could see the engagement that we had with our audience and with our brand. It de-risked it for them a little bit. So obviously, if you want to say, let's wait till we get the cash in the bank, I totally get it. But if you also build up some of that public brain resume, in a way, is the way I think about it, we're happy to help with that in the meantime, too. [Julia Xu]: That's really good to know. I do think I can see that being very important for fundraising as well. Yeah. Okay, that's I think like super super helpful to know and then probably if we were to start a little bit sooner maybe it'll be like after I return at least like from this like crazy trip is probably roughly when so it'll be like later this summer or like you know fall maybe more hopefully like you know a little bit sooner because we need to still like gear up for it. So timeline wise is like you know for actual engagement kind of like thinking about like that but I do think there's probably ways for us to partner just given that well all of your audience and your creative network, you know, those people, they could use merch. And right now, most likely there isn't very good options out there. So it's true. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they're at this point. They're all they're all either really big and impersonal or like outdated or expensive. [Julia Xu]: Yeah, so you're nailing it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that's a problem. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, tell me about that. [Michael Houck]: Because that could be that could be cool in the meantime. Yeah. [Julia Xu]: So actually, I before starting this, I used to work at Alibaba. So she was So actually, I think if we were to do content, that's probably the angle to go, right? Like, um, yeah. So, so after that, just, that's kind of where I saw the problems and also the opportunity. So we, we built way out to directly connect with global factories overseas, and that's why we can make literally anything and we can do it for half the price comparing to any merge platform, um, way cooler items, you know, like different kinds of material, different kinds of customization method on a shirt, you know, the label the latest trendy tech gadget you see on TikTok, we can make that into a merch. So we've built some pretty cool tools right now where we have like, you know, hundreds of like how our products you can ready, you know, auto quote, realistic previews of checkout. There's an AI sourcing agent. And very soon we're launching like Merch Line Generator. You can basically say, here's my website. We fetch the logo, what you do, and, you know, kind of you set a budget and use case and we recommend a product and we'll generate like memes or like, you know, mockups, put it exactly on the merch, We already know the outline and literally if you approve it, you just like place order and get in two weeks, ship to you custom two weeks. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Wow. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. [Julia Xu]: So we did basically, and it's global too. So that's why I'm like now in Europe and you know, we're also about to like Japan market. So like, yeah, it's like literally like in two weeks, pretty much anyone in the world, you can receive your custom merch and that's high quality about it. And it's like, what has can be under $5 all and including shipping. [Michael Houck]: Maybe what I’ll do then, maybe I’ll try this out for us or for myself or for my creator brand or something like that. And I’ll be able to speak to the experience and we can find a way to partner up for our creators or for our startups and go from there. [Julia Xu]: Yeah, and we can also like, I think for a lot of like communities, especially knowing that, you know, you have exactly kind of the audience that we’re targeting, we could even sponsor and just make you some merch. So you can like try it out. [Michael Houck]: That’d be cool. I mean, I don’t want to put you out, but then yeah, of course. [Julia Xu]: Yeah. So we, we could start there. And I think mainly just like, let me know kind of like, you know, what kind of items you’re looking for, you know, what, what amount you think is like reasonable to, to get started. But I think we can do that first. And then probably like, then we can, if you’re like, Oh, I love the products, which we’re pretty confident and about like people love your products. Then, you know, from there we can say, okay, actually there could be a way to more officially partner where you know like I don’t know like it could be affiliate deal we do a lot of like kind of more like affiliate deals with like you know partners where basically you offer an exclusive discount to your network and then we have the auto cash back or you know like you could do like auto merge credit for whatever out of multiple different ways we can we can kind of talk about that um yeah but we mainly now help a bunch of like tech companies ai companies um I would say our sweet spot is like series a plus Um, it could be up to very large, like some of our clients are like, you know, Flexport is huge now, like quite a few companies that we work with now, they’re like maybe Series E, Series F. Um, but I think like usually the sweet spot is probably like Series B-ish when they’re not that big and can still make decisions quickly. Um, so it sounds like you’ve known plenty of people in that circle and it could be honestly any industry, right? Like, I mean, we do tech because I’m in tech and then It’s easier, we know the people more, and also tech industry people like using all those latest tools. But it’s honestly anyone who needs to source custom products or merch. Brands and creators as well, yeah. Let’s baby step our way into this on both sides and see where it goes. [Michael Houck]: But this is, I think, a missing piece to some stuff on our side, so I think we’d love to test it out. I’ll send you an email about the content. If you want to send me an email about this stuff, we can go from there. [Julia Xu]: That’d be amazing, yeah. And then I’ll send you also our website and catalog so we can take a look and maybe let me know what you might be interested in to get started with. Do you guys have any merge actually? No. [Michael Houck]: Not yet. [Michael Houck]: I think we were going to experiment with something early on or maybe we did as a referral reward in a very limited run, like maybe two years ago. I might be totally off by then. We might not have actually done it. It’s been a while, and we definitely don’t have anything right now. [Julia Xu]: Great. That’s kind of what we can help with. Either you’re more staple, like a really nice shirt, how we can do that, or we can do some of the cool gadgets. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. There’s definitely folks who are super fans who would love that stuff. [Julia Xu]: Yeah. Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Let’s do it. Let’s try it out. [Julia Xu]: Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Let me also, we’ll do to follow up. And then, you know, can do some of the, some of these things like async. And then, you know, once you kind of make your mind for like next step, we can kind of jump in another call. Maybe when, when I’m like more settled or. [Michael Houck]: No, no, no, no rush. I’m I’m out tomorrow. Um, and then this is going to be a pretty crazy weekend. So, um, I’ll probably get back to you next week and we can go from there. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. That sounds good. [Michael Houck]: Cool. All right. Well, I hope you don’t have too many more calls super late, but I Two more, not too bad. [Julia Xu]: I have like 10 calls today, literally. I’ve been out like all past weeks at conferences. Where are you normally based? SF? I’m based in LA, but I’m moving to SF now because literally all the events are there. Now I’m kind of also nomadic, I guess, for a bit. At least Europe is fun. I was in Barcelona, going to Paris and Amsterdam. That would be cool. Yeah. Cool. [Michael Houck]: Well, I’m in SF sometimes. [Michael Houck]: So maybe we can do one of these in person at some point. But regardless, I will let you know. Because we definitely want to do the sample and sort of take things from there. [Julia Xu]: Yes. Awesome. Sounds good. All right, Julia. Thank you so much. Yeah, likewise. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: See you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Bye. Bye.