- Duration: 23 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JXASWP27ZASVHYSQ3AED88YC (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JXASWP27ZASVHYSQ3AED88YC)
Transcript
[Ayvan Krishan]: crazy travel day Friday. So I appreciate the flexibility. [Ayvan Krishan]: I appreciate your flexibility today too. [Michael Houck]: Don’t worry about it. Um, well, cool. Look, I won’t take up too much of your time. Um, basically, yeah. I mean, would it help if I start on our side? Uh, okay. So, you know, I’m Michael, um, been a founder for a while, uh, was early at Uber eats and Airbnb and then started a company called launch house. We raised, Between our main company and our fund, $23 million from Andreessen and some other folks, and ended up folding that and actually turning it into the fund. So it's now just an investment fund that we have. But have built up this personal holding company over the past couple of years, where I've built my audience to, between X and LinkedIn, like $100K and then $200K on Substack. And you have met a bunch of creators through that process. And so we created this network called Megaphone, where anyone can partner with these creators on everything from engaging with their social media content to amplify it to, you know, sponsored posts, product testimonials, basically leveraging their social proof and monetizing social proof. So we did that. But then a lot of people were like, Well, you know what, I want their engagements on my social, my social content, but I don’t know how to write good social content. We don’t have time to. And so we created a content agency around that as well. We’ve been doing that for about a year now. We work with about 30 startups and VC firms, have a wide range of clients from super early stage to crypto millionaires and billionaires and people like that. So it’s a wide range of folks. We cover a lot of industries and it’s a small team. And we’re sort of optimized to work with super busy founders, where we don’t require any meetings at all, except for one kickoff call. Everything can happen async through Slack voice notes, where we sort of get the intonation and your unique voice to specific questions that come up during our research. So it can go more into the process if you want, but high level, we’re optimized for founders. And I think we’re the only agency that’s actually like, you know, previous venture back founder, um, who’s actually in the weeds with the writers and things like that every day. So I’m happy to go more into detail on process, as I said, but that’s sort of a high level on us. [Ayvan Krishan]: Cool. That sounds awesome. Um, I did a little bit of like preliminary research, but that was a good, uh, information. Um, I know you messaged me cause you had read my custody article. I’m curious to know, How do you see, I guess, like my content and megaphone? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, well, let me let me first throw it back to you, which is like, you know, how much of a priority for you is content? Is it more so you want to create more content you just don’t have time to because you’re super busy? Or is it more so that, you know, you want to leverage the creator network and get them involved, amplifying your existing content? Like where, how are you thinking about that? Because that’ll help me kind of answer. To answer your question. [Ayvan Krishan]: Yeah. So most of the content I write, I write by myself. I have a lot of draft content, mainly because perfectionism. [Michael Houck]: Sure. [Ayvan Krishan]: But from that, honestly, the content would be great to have more people interacting with it, because I do write a lot of content for people to learn about Bitcoin and I utilize my network and the people who follow me on Instagram and stuff and TikTok, but it’s not as much as it could be. And I know that. And I think not putting content out consistently also affects that. So for me, I’m actually really open mainly because this isn’t something I’ve been doing full-time as much right now, but it is still something want to actively pursue. Okay. [Michael Houck]: And then in terms of like the goal with the content, is it just sort of building awareness, building the personal brand? Do you want to drive folks to somewhere specific in terms of like driving traffic? Like, what’s your what would the primary goal be? [Ayvan Krishan]: Yeah, so the content is there for people to kind of piece together Bitcoin and like learn that, learn it a little bit easier. But the whole goal is that you read the content, And it opens or you learn, but then you’re also interested in booking a call with me to further your own learning. Everything I teach is already, there’s already content behind it. Now it’s different when I guess people are reading the content individually and don’t really have as much context and understanding as opposed to if you’re like, you know, someone’s teaching you and talking to you about that content. [Michael Houck]: So, okay, so let me let me put this in like, kind of a binary scenario. So you have what, like about 1000 followers on LinkedIn today, let’s say we were to prioritize LinkedIn, right? Would you rather get to 10,000 followers on LinkedIn? Or would you rather have 100 people book a call with Oh, that’s see, that’s a hard one. [Ayvan Krishan]: The cause would be great. But I also know like that contents like helpful for other people. The goal is to like make the content so that other people can use it, even as they’re like educators. I mean, my premier Bitcoin has content, but it is a lot of words on a page, such as a page It’s like 150 page workbook. Um, I, I kind of do mine based off of segment segmented, smaller content. So for me, I think, huh, trying to figure out, can I answer that question? It’s actually really hard. Yeah, it’s fair. [Michael Houck]: I mean, look, I guess if we want to consider both of them as like good outcomes, rather than saying like, let’s fully optimize for one or the other, that’s okay. Because I think to your point, in a way, if we’re doing the job right to do one, the other will naturally happen to some degree. And so it’s just a matter of like, if we’re seeing that these calls are exactly who you’re looking to chat with, then maybe we double down on those. And we optimize things a little bit more for that. But we can incorporate CTAs and into posts that also will generate follower growth. So it’s not a binary outcome. But in terms of how we think about the content creation process, it just helps to have some level of context there. [Ayvan Krishan]: That makes sense. Yeah, the goal is to have, I mean, the more followers, the better, because then it means they’re engaging with the content. They like the content. They’re learning from the content. And then I know for a fact that people would be interested in getting on a call, the thing is, I am not cheap. That’s the point. [Michael Houck]: Okay, maybe then what we do is we optimize for just like building the brand through followers, through impressions, through views, and then we see who’s coming in to do the calls and if they’re sort of the right folks for you to work with. And if that’s the case, we can obviously refine our messaging to sort of go for more of those folks. So maybe that’s the right place to start here. [Ayvan Krishan]: Yeah. Sounds good. I mean on Instagram I have and I’m just using Instagram as an example because that’s where I post a lot of my content Yeah, those are like small snippet videos graphics and then links to all the articles and stuff, but I have about like 2,700 followers on there and I’d say out of That the one time I had a video pop off. I got a lot of inbounds and People booked my time but then didn’t show up. Gotta love that. [Michael Houck]: It was probably the most annoying part. [Ayvan Krishan]: Cause I would say I got like 20 people who booked a call and maybe two actually showed up. Oh man, that must drive you nuts. [Michael Houck]: Cause then you’re like, yes, this hit, this was a success. And then it’s like, well, like, was it like that? That sucks. I’ve had that happen to me before too. So it’s, it’s rough, but OK, so one thing I should mention, since you already are doing Instagram and TikTok too, we have a digital twin, like an AI digital twin system that we’ve built. So if you’re like, I want to do those platforms as well, but I don’t have the bandwidth or time to record all these videos and write all these scripts and things like that, part of what we can do or include in a package would be taking that off your hands. There are accounts that we’ve grown this way to over 100,000 followers on Instagram. People don’t really, we don’t advertise it too much because, I mean, we probably should advertise it more, but people either don’t know that it’s an AI avatar because it’s good, or they just don’t care, and they’re like, the content’s just good anyway, so. Yeah, so whether it’s doubling down on the video-focused platforms or expanding to do more stuff on LinkedIn X or even an email newsletter. Our team has expertise across the, across the board. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Ayvan Krishan]: Yeah. I think from this conversation, it looks, it seems that the written content over it would be prioritized over the video stuff because it is a lot easier for me to just take a phone, like take my phone and record something for video as opposed to like the articles and stuff. I have 14 in drafts right now. It’s tough to hit that publish button, man. [Michael Houck]: It really is. [Ayvan Krishan]: Well, it’s tough to not just hit the publish button, but it’s also like, is it completed? Is there more context I want to add? One thing I’ll say is- There’s so many different components. [Ayvan Krishan]: Oh, sorry. [Ayvan Krishan]: I think we’re lagging there for a second. [Michael Houck]: Sorry about that. I think I cut you off. You’re okay. But yeah, I mean, look, the thing with social, in my opinion, is that, like, perfect can be the enemy of good, right? It is a shots on goal game at the end of the day. And obviously, we want to be good stewards of your voice and your brand and everything, especially as we’re establishing it kind of early on. But you know, the algorithm rewards consistency. And in a lot of cases, the more nuance you’re adding to like a social post, sort of the more burden you’re putting on the reader to care, right? Cause they need to digest the details, the nuances. And so we don’t want to, we don’t want to curve the edges off or sand the edges down too much. But we do, we do want to see engagement and things like that. So we can, we can work through that, but we’ll have a lot of options of things to send you and kind of see where you feel comfortable. [Ayvan Krishan]: Um, I am curious to know what the packages kind of like look like, Um, and then what that may look like from my side as well. [Michael Houck]: Yes. So, okay. So, uh, package wise, our standard package is 4k a month. Um, we can bring that down. Minimum is 2k a month and we can obviously expand it if you want it to include the AI digital twin video stuff as well. But for 4k a month, what you get is full weekly batches of content. So that’s either three like long form posts or. Seven-ish, so six to eight short to medium form posts where you can post every day. And also included is content ops. So we have someone on our team who will schedule the content, report performance back to you in a shared Slack channel, leave engagements and replies on people who comment on your content to have conversations there and tell the algorithm that, hey, this is actually driving conversations. And also, we’ll work with you to build a list of accounts that we want to target. People who already have the audience that you want. And then our content ops guy will go in and leave replies on those people’s like high performing viral posts early on. So we get free impressions, free profile views for you, and drive some traffic to your page and hopefully follower growth as well. So that’s that. And then we also have the creator network. So included in the 4k package, you get some credits to use the creator network every month. And we can do that automatically for you, you can use them ad hoc, and if however you want to be involved there, you can. Now, if you wanted to say, hey, I don’t want the creator network sort of included, and I want smaller batches of content, that’s when we bring it down to 3k or 2k from there. [Ayvan Krishan]: Okay, cool. Um, I’m gonna have to definitely think on that because I am some weird time period right now. But it just like amazing, um, in terms of what you guys could offer. [Michael Houck]: I mean, any, any like other, obviously I want you to take your time and think about it and we can touch base maybe later this week or next week or something like that. But before I let you go, any sort of unanswered thoughts or questions or anything like that, that we should, we should talk through at this moment? [Ayvan Krishan]: No. Um, because have a lot of information to digest. [Ayvan Krishan]: It’s, it’s good stuff. [Ayvan Krishan]: Because like, I mean, there’s just a lot that can be offered in that package. [Michael Houck]: So yeah, I mean, you know, I can’t guarantee any specific amount of follower growth or anything like that. But, you know, we’ve seen folks go from 1000 followers right around where you’re starting from on LinkedIn to 17 pay in about five months. And, you know, that’s not somebody who was throwing a ton of money into the or network or anything like that, that’s just good content and resonating with their audience. So I can’t guarantee that, but we do see things like that happen with some folks. Oh, the other thing I should mention is that unlike some other folks, we are month to month. We just have 30 days notice for cancellation. So it’s effectively two month commitment to sign up at the beginning. But then after that, it’s totally month to month from there. Try to be flexible and accommodating for founders and builders and folks who have things changing all the time. [Ayvan Krishan]: That’s so fair. And that makes sense. I mean, the concept that I put out would reach a very interesting group of Bitcoiners that are not kind of like the normal people in this space. Mostly because I always say that America of Bitcoiners are different than the rest of the world. [Michael Houck]: We should do a post about that. That’s interesting. As a Bitcoiner, that’s interesting. 100% of my crypto is actually just Bitcoin. I just invest in Bitcoin. That’s it. [Ayvan Krishan]: This is a good, solid plan, honestly. I’ve been in the space for nine years and I’m just back to Bitcoin. [Michael Houck]: in, this is like back in college, like 2013. And then I, of course, sold it when it hit, when it spiked to 1K. And I was like, Oh, I made a five extra turn. Amazing. But no, the long term, I now I hold it for the long term. And I played around with a bunch of other stuff back in like, you know, the couple booms that happened in the past few years, but it always comes back to Bitcoin. And that’s just, that’s just where I keep it. [Ayvan Krishan]: Yeah. Can agree with that. [Michael Houck]: I’ll let you go. I know we’re a couple minutes over. I appreciate it. But I’ll send over an email later today that just sort of goes over everything we talked about. And also, if you have any questions, feel free to check in. And otherwise, I’ll reach out. Maybe we catch up in a week or so and see where you’re at. [Ayvan Krishan]: Perfect. It sounds like a plan. Cool. [Ayvan Krishan]: Thank you so much. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Talk soon. Bye. It.