- Duration: 32 min
- Platform: meet
- Attendees: Andrew Tan, Andrew’s Circleback.ai Notes, Michael Houck
- Source: Read.ai 01JXBAW7MRCB3EXX8DE024EK7X (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JXBAW7MRCB3EXX8DE024EK7X)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: I’m looking forward to looking forward to this. I mean, I feel like I’ve seen you around forever. And I don’t think we’ve ever done a one on one. [Andrew Tan]: So it’s good to it’s good to connect. Yeah, it’s great to meet you, man. I’ve obviously I’ve seen launch house a bunch. I was at one point during COVID thinking about joining one of the launch house cohorts in in LA. Never got around to it. But I love what you guys are doing. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, man, it was a good time. Crazy community. I still follow so many of the folks and actually just got drinks with someone from the community the other day. So catching up. But yeah, everyone’s still great friends. And you know, they’re all in each other’s Instagram stories and everything. So it’s, it’s fun to see. But yeah, I mean, look, let’s jump into it. I’m curious to know sort of what your thought and priority around content sort of is right now. I mean, because I feel like there’s a lot we could do here. So I’ll toss it to you first and then can kind of get into what we’re currently doing and can offer. [Andrew Tan]: Yeah, definitely. So I can share a little bit about my story and I think that’ll lead into how I’m thinking about content. So I started a company called Nova during COVID in 2020. It was a professional community platform for Gen Z. And we exited to a unicorn art space called Handshake. This was around like 2022, 2023. I know Handshake. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, sure. [Andrew Tan]: Yeah, so stayed on a Handshake for about a year and a half leading our generative AI products. And then left last year to think about what’s next. And that turned into starting a small, like an early stage AI focused fund. And so as part of that, I’m trying to do some brand building. Personally as well as for the fund. Try to like really just position myself as a thought leader in AI. I have my AI newsletter, which has I think 800,000 subscribers now. I haven’t updated the numbers. So that’s like a great asset that I can leverage. I don’t feel like I’m really leveraging fully. I will tweet and post on LinkedIn here and there. Like things that I notice other people are doing that seems to perform well. So one of those things is like a recap of important AI news. I’ve seen other people do that and ended up being doing really well. And so I have my newsletter. Why don’t I repurpose some of that content? [Michael Houck]: How much flexibility and I guess freedom do you have within sort of the TLDR brand within the newsletter that you run within it to promote yourself? [Andrew Tan]: Reasonably, as long as it makes sense. So for example, if I ever write an article that’s AI related, or founders, I also have a founders newsletter called TLDR Founders. If I put together, recently I put together a sub stack on founder communities and I that in the TLDR founders newsletter. So I definitely have these assets I can use. If I ever ship an MVP for an AI project, I could probably share it in the AI newsletter, given that I think it’s something that people would find interesting and useful. I just haven’t really been leveraging this asset. [Michael Houck]: So basically, if you are doing things that meet the guardrails of what should be in the and obviously those would be interesting things, then it’s totally fine to promote them or at least mention them in an organic way through the newsletter. Yeah, exactly. Cool. That’s helpful. We’re seeing more and more of this. We work with some pretty well-known investors. I obviously can’t name specific names for client confidentiality. Some literal billionaire VCs who’ve been doing it for three, four decades and are super established. There’s a lot of appetite to build more of a brand in the space. I think, obviously, this has been growing for a while, but we’ve seen a pretty big uptick in, I’d say, the last six months or so. So it makes total sense. And we have folks on the team who are sort of versed in that dynamic. Ideas in context of how we work and sort of what we do, if that’s if that’s helpful. Sure. Yeah. So basically, in terms of what we do, it’s newsletters, it’s social, LinkedIn X, even if you want to do like, you know, Instagram threads, we can do that too. I’ve actually been posting on there a bit recently, and it’s been, it’s actually been pretty good. We can do sub stack notes, since you already have the sub stack. And if you want to sort of build up a presence on there, relatively easy to grow on sub stack right now. I think are starting to move over there. And we also have the ability to create like an AI digital twin of you if you want to get into video content, where we’d like write scripts and create short form vertical videos with the twin and with B-roll. We’ve seen folks grow up to 100,000 followers on Instagram with this. Because at the end of the day, most people either can’t tell because it’s high quality, or they just don’t care. And they’re like, I just want the information. That’s really it. I know you’re a real person at the end of the day anyway, right? Even if the avatar isn’t. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So, you know, it sounds like you sort of got the newsletter side taken care of So if you assuming you want to continue owning and writing that, then, you know, we won’t no need for us to talk about that. But on social, yeah, it could definitely help kind of a repurpose some of the content in the newsletter, but also create original content based on like voice notes that we get from and sort of our own research and asking you questions about your unique POV on things and turning that into sort of thought leadership style content. Would you say that the primary goal is just awareness or is it specifically followers or is it inbound deals that you get? How are you thinking about that? [Andrew Tan]: I’d say first and foremost probably I’d say probably like followers is the main thing. I think for me, it’s like finding a repeatable process. Like I see some of these other creators and they have a very repeatable process where they’re like, they just do like, I think what Ben Lang does is interesting. It seems like relatively low lift types of content, like here are 25 companies that have raised a series A in the last two weeks. And I’ve done some of the content like that. And it’s done pretty well, obviously not to the extent that, you know, of virality that Ben has gone, but yeah, something like that, I think would be interesting. I think I have a little bit of like fear of like, maybe I don’t have any unique POV to share. Well, first of all, that’s probably not true. [Michael Houck]: I think a lot of times we see folks who sort of come in thinking that like, oh, you know, I’m not, you know, like, I’ve not done the most incredible things over a 20 year career that I have to share an exit for a billion dollars or something like that. But then you talk to them about their opinions on where things are going. And they actually do have some interesting thoughts on So I would bet that’s not true, first of all. But second of all, yeah, if you want to lean into at least initially sort of tried and true formats that we know are working, like those one-pager curation type posts that Ben does, that’s an easy place to start for sure. And we could get a regular cadence of those sort of going out from your account. And all you need to do is basically sign off on them. But I would imagine that if we send over a question questions about topics in the space that are trending right now, you probably would have some interesting stuff to share over voice notes. So I probably want to test a little bit of both, but at least to get things started, at least we know that there’s sort of a baseline that would drive results. While those things do drive followers, I would say that there’s a difference between an audience and audience trust. So for example, Ben, he’s done an amazing job building an audience and growing letter as a result of that. I would argue that somebody with similar or fewer followers who sort of does more thought leadership style content, like even Greg Eisenberg way early on before he built up a big audience, right? Like you could kind of tell this is an interesting guy with unique POV who sort of you’re curious what he’s going to say next. That’s sort of the effect that I want to do for you as well. So like maybe we start out getting the algorithm loving your account by getting these like tried and true formats, but I would wanna layer in some stuff from you. My guess is that we could do that pretty easily over time. [Andrew Tan]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. [Michael Houck]: So as far as the process goes, it’s pretty straightforward. We’d set up a Slack connect channel between you and us. We do one kickoff call at the beginning, and that would be you, me, and a writer from our team. And that writer would be your guy the whole You know, we’re not putting you into a pool or having different people check in each week and write content for you your partner And then that’d be the only call we would need to do if you wanted to do content interviews with the writer you totally could but Most of our clients are super busy. So Async tends to work best And then yeah, so then we’d send over batches of content each week if we do have questions that come up during research Do we want your pov on? We would send over them in Slack and we would just ask you to send like a rambly voice note a couple minutes long back to us so we can hear your intonation and things like that, get the voice down. And then, I mean, that’s pretty much it. All the content would live in Notion. There’d be like a Kanban board where you can review and request edits on things before it gets published. We’d have a content operations manager from our team handle scheduling, performance reporting, And also like do engagements from your account, you know, cause it’s not enough to just necessarily post content. You also need to engage with replies and also comment on posts from thought leaders in the niche so that like you get their audience checking out your profile. Um, so we handle all that. And then we also have our megaphone creator network, which has like, I think at this point it’s a little over 500, 500 creators. And they have, uh, I’m going to get this number wrong, but I think it’s 42 million aggregate followers and so different packages you could choose but one of them would include like credits for the creator network each month basically. [Andrew Tan]: And is that the one where it’s like I put out a tweet and I want other people to engage with it and you like pay for that engagement? [Michael Houck]: Yeah so we have a matching algorithm that would match it with like the right creators for your posts and they would engage within usually within one hour and then so it’s like time relevant engagement on the post early on and then yeah it gets amplified to their to their audiences but you can either choose to sort of include that in the package or do that totally ad hoc just like if there’s a post you want to put budget behind you know go for it. [Andrew Tan]: Is it possible because I think I remember seeing that a while back that was like a standalone product are you guys still offering as like a standalone thing or it’s only part of the package? [Michael Houck]: We are offering a standalone thing we’re actually in the middle of adding some lead and functionality to it. So the pricing model is going to change a little bit in like, three weeks. But yes, it is a standalone product, you would have to put your own posts sort of in there and pick the settings and the budgets and everything like that. But it’s under the same like, entity on our side now, because it’s just, you know, content distribution, two sides of the same coin. [Andrew Tan]: Makes sense. Yeah, I’m interested in that. Because I think I like, I’ve learned that for of creators, they have like group chats with other creators, where they just like amplify each other. That’s like a very key part of the algorithm, right? It’s like the engagement you get in the first hour or so. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s, you know, when I was building my audience up, I got really lucky. And I met some big creators who like invited me into these chat groups that they have. And we just share URLs in there every morning. And I was like, well, I know a lot of founders who would love that, but who don’t know the creators and you know, etc. So that’s why we built the platform first. And then people were like, well, you know, it’s great to get the engagement, but my content isn’t optimized. So do you just want to make my content too? And that’s actually how the agency started. [Andrew Tan]: I see how big of a part is just like hacking that engagement. Cause like I’ll get a lot of founder friends of mine, just like whenever they post something, they’ll like ask me to comment and engage and stuff. And sometimes I feel shy. Asking everyone to comment, engage on my posts. And like, I also think, Oh, maybe I should be picky about which posts that I asked people to engage on. Um, but do you feel like that’s like, like an average post, like one of the posts that I’ve made around, like, you know, one of these Ben Lang style posts, if I just got some like people to engage early on with, is that what makes a difference? Is that what makes a difference with Ben Lang? [Michael Houck]: It does make a difference. I’m, I don’t know Ben that well, personally, we just like chatted a little But I’m sure he uses engagement groups like I’d be shocked if he didn’t But I would say it matters who the people are how big their audience is and the volume of Comments that you’re getting so like if you’re getting like, you know five friends who have a couple thousand followers each maybe or something like that Impacts not gonna be that big. It’ll it will increase impressions, but not by a ton but if you’re getting a either a few really big creators or be like tens of smaller accounts commenting on it, either one of those is going to make a big difference. And so we’ve built the creator side and then what we’re launching alongside this like lead gen update where we’re going to capture people’s emails from social media engagements and put them in your CRM and things like that. Alongside that, we’re launching sort of the swarm style as well. [Andrew Tan]: So we’ll have both. Makes sense. I’ve got like, obviously I have like, like Twitter accounts from like previous projects I’ve worked on. And is it helpful to engage using those like, just like, like and bookmark, whatever on those small accounts or does it actually hurt? No, any, any signal is going to help. [Michael Houck]: The only thing that’s going to hurt is if those people are outside your niche and the algorithm is like confused, like why they’re opening the page to your profile and clicking on your tweets and, and reposting your tweets. Like, If you’re in the marketing niche and someone in the finance niche is reposting your stuff, the algorithm wouldn’t know what to do with that because it wouldn’t want to show your post to their audience who are in the finance niche, but also the signal wouldn’t necessarily amplify folks for your own audience either. [Andrew Tan]: That’s the only time where it gets a little negative. I have a few accounts that are I mean, they were like project accounts before, but now they’re like private and they’ve got like a couple dozen followers. And I’m like, should I use those to like, and repost and bookmark? Or is that actually hurting? [Michael Houck]: If they’re private accounts and like, it’s not going to show it to like that many new people, if anyone, then the impact is going to be minimal. It’s not going to hurt. Like a good example here is, um, is Sahil Bloom, you know, Sahil, um, he had, he has like his like SRB Ventures Twitter account or whatever. And he also has a Twitter account for his wife. And like, yes, his wife like logs in and will comment funny stuff on his post sometimes. But also he just reposts all his stuff from both of those accounts. And, you know, I think the people who follow those accounts probably also follow him. So it’s actually like a good signal for him. So it does help. [Andrew Tan]: But it’s like if those accounts again, are totally unrelated to your audience, then I wouldn’t recommend I could it hurt like I’m now I’m thinking about like, should I just like create like five fake accounts and then like, like my post just to show more engaging or would that actually hurt? [Michael Houck]: If they’re brand new accounts, and no one follows them, and all they’re doing is engaging with your stuff. Yeah, that’s gonna look weird and might get some flags. But if they’re like, if you’re like investing time and building those accounts up and posting content and engaging with other people, you can see how the the time costs like accumulates quickly. Yeah. Yeah. [Andrew Tan]: Makes sense. Okay. Makes sense. [Michael Houck]: Especially on LinkedIn on, on X, they’re a little more lenient and also you can just create whatever account on LinkedIn. You don’t really see that much impact, um, from, from things like that, like random company pages or, or whatever. [Michael Houck]: So, okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Makes sense. What are you thinking? [Michael Houck]: Like, how do you think of make the most sense? To plug into what we’re doing, and how can we help? [Andrew Tan]: Yeah, I’m thinking I’d love to try out those one-off megaphone type things, especially if they’re posts that I have that I think can do especially well. I’d want to amplify it and give it its best shot. So that’s an area where I’d love to try out. Cool. OK. [Michael Houck]: Well, if you want to do that, the site’s just megaphone.network. As I said, it’s gonna be changing pretty drastically in, I’d say like three weeks in terms of new functionality, new pricing model, things like that. So if you get in now, you’ll sort of have the option to stick with a current model or move to the new one. So I would just say, go check that out. And then what about on the content side? Do you feel like you have that covered? Would you want us to help out with anything? What do you think in there? [Andrew Tan]: Yeah, on the content side, I think I still got some work to do in like figuring out what type of content I want to be putting up. Frankly, I also don’t know like how much budget I think I could be able to dedicate to a service like this. So that’s something I have to think through as well. Yeah, that’s kind of like where my head is at currently. That makes sense. [Michael Houck]: Well, we just to give you some context. So for a full pack where we were doing daily LinkedIn posts and or three long-form LinkedIn posts, let’s say, per week, plus full content ops, and also plus credits for the Creator Network on anything you’d want us to use. That would be 4K a month. If we were to drop the dedicated Creator Network credits, you would just use that sort of ad hoc as you wanted instead, and or smaller content backups. Per week so think like two long form per week or you know four to six maybe short form per week that would be either 3k or then at the minimum 2k so we can get started a pretty affordable rate at the 2k if you think that’s what would make sense and and see how it goes from there but obviously depending on on your budget yeah makes sense okay well that’s helpful to know I’ll keep that in mind if you have any questions about about like Megaphone and getting started there. Definitely just shoot me an email and I’ll loop in my chief of staff who manages most of the ops around the product. But yeah, excited to help out, man. I think it’d be great. Yeah, I appreciate you, dude. [Andrew Tan]: And are you based down in LA or? I’m not really based anywhere right now. [Michael Houck]: I’ve been nomading since like December. So I’m actually thinking about where to sort of plant some roots, whether it’s coming back to SA or I just spent a couple years in New York or maybe somewhere totally new like Austin or somewhere in the South. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, that’s awesome. [Michael Houck]: Where in the world are you currently? Currently, I’m at my parents’ house in Philadelphia. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, nice. [Michael Houck]: I just got back from like two months on the road and just nice to spend some time with them after, you know, not being in the area for a while. [Andrew Tan]: Totally. That’s the, you know, after college and all that, you, we barely get to see our parents. [Michael Houck]: And so that’s important. I know, man, it’s been like 10 years since I lived in Philly. So it’s, uh, I’m, I’m savoring every, uh, every little day, you know? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I was just back home in Fremont with my folks as well. [Michael Houck]: So that’s great. Nice. Um, are you in LA or UNSF? I’m based in SF. Cool. Um, I’m thinking about coming out for, uh, HF zeros demo day, David. Um, so maybe that’s in like two weeks. So if I come out, I’ll hit you up. [Andrew Tan]: Yeah, please do. Yeah, let me drop you my number I think I’ll probably be at HF zeros demo day as well. Oh, no way. [Michael Houck]: That’d be cool Yeah, no, I’ll drop mine in here, too Shoot your text Well, I make a note. There we go. Yeah, sweet I’m uh, the flights are crazy from here, but I’m gonna try to grab one tonight or tomorrow. [Andrew Tan]: So yeah. Oh sick. Nice Awesome, dude. Well, thank you so much for taking time, man. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I really appreciate it Looking forward to helping out. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Awesome. All right