- Duration: 39 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JXGC7WAQTRNTN3MKG6Q1PBNZ (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JXGC7WAQTRNTN3MKG6Q1PBNZ)
Transcript
[Kiran Naik]: It’s been a while since I used Google Meet, so I was trying to find out where’s the mute button. [Blake Stewart]: Nice to meet you. [Kiran Naik]: Thanks for hopping on today. Yes. Pleasure meeting you and Michael, you as well. [Greg Stern]: Good to meet you, man. [Greg Stern]: Thanks for hopping on. A little bit of the context here is we’re very excited about this opportunity. We’re increasingly seeing opportunity in working with earlier stage companies. Historically, sources done a fair amount of it. In fact, I think we might have told Blake this in previous meetings, but we actually were doing early QA for some very, very large, now very, very large companies that had gone to either IPO or acquisition. So it’s something that we like to do and we see it as an investment in the future. Obviously, like any investment, some of them are not going to pan out, right? But we’re very willing to do it, and so we were meeting with Rajiv, who’s the CEO, a couple of weeks ago, and sort of talking through this initiative, and talking through, and then I followed up with the guys and said, well, what is our call to action going to be? Because I initially thought, we’ve been doing these AI workshops that’s really designed to talk about, to basically help people understand how to apply AI and software testing. And we have a whole sort of human in the loop process where we help companies do that. But then we also started talking about the fact that we’re working with a VC company, a VC firm that only invests in early stage startups. And they wanted us to like offer, we’re basically offering a couple of like little packets of like testing packets It’s that last a week and stuff like that. And then when I ran that past Blake, Blake said, well, we don’t, we we’ve not seen that things that are really low funnel, like, like an e-commerce kind of come here and, and, you know, sign up and convert to, uh, to this, uh, you know, pay us $10,000 and we'll do all of this testing for you in one week's time. That hasn't been as successful as some of the, um, higher, higher, higher funnel kind of offers. So this is really that this conversation was mostly to be a little bit of the brainstorming on what do we think would, would make the most sense to your audience to offer that, you know, meets our objectives of ultimately getting to sign up some new customers, but also being something that, you know, we'll, we'll, it has a higher probability of actually, you know, succeeding from, uh, you know, from the CD action perspective. Kiran, would you add anything to that? [Kiran Naik]: Yeah, I just wanted a quick idea on what type of companies are typically in your portfolio. Are they Series B, further along, or earlier than that? Yeah, definitely a little earlier than that. [Blake Stewart]: They are founders who are kind of just receiving their first round of funding and even trying to get that first round funding. So they've, you know, I like to think of them as they've got a good MVP out there, they're getting revenue, they're looking to grow and scale. And they're kind of coming to us to kind of look how they can do that over the next six months to a year so that they can really ramp up and get more funding or more, you know, customers and revenue. So yeah, talk to Greg about it. It's definitely early top of funnel for you guys. But people kind of stick along in our newsletter for a long time as they go on to, you know, their series B and C. So we do have a range, but it's definitely that earlier founder. Right. [Greg Stern]: And then there was one company that you had mentioned that you'd been working with that actually saw a lot of business out of it. [Blake Stewart]: I'm forgetting the name of it right now, but we talked about Athena a lot. So they were hiring company, they partnered us with us for over about 12 months. And so, you know, a lot of our readers were looking at, you know, how to outsource and how to kind of scale up and hire some offshore talent. And so a team had partnered with us and we were able to give them a lot of a lot of demand and really good successful campaigns there. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, more than 12 months. I think they worked with us for like 18 months, re-upped multiple They're currently, they currently have a, they match supply and demand of like virtual assistants to companies and executives. And so what they've seen is that it's actually easier to get the companies than the highly qualified VAs. So they certainly are working on solving that bottleneck, but yeah, they've worked with us for a long time. We've done founder dinners with them in New York and SF. We've done lots of placements in the newsletter, dedicated issues, And yeah, they've been a great partner and very happy with us. [Kiran Naik]: Yeah, go ahead, Kiran. [Kiran Naik]: Yeah, so my question was, if we come to a conclusion on what type of services that may be interesting for your portfolio members to use from us, what's in it for Founder's Journey? Understand motivations. What's in it for us? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Blake Stewart]: Well, we're just looking to kind of educate our founders. And so I think going with the Founder Deep Dive, the podcast that we have scheduled, that's going to see a lot of views, not just when we release it, but over time, our readers are going to come back. We've got a whole archive and database of educational topics. So they're going to look to us. Over the course of, you know, over years to learn about, you know, QA sourcing and testing and offshore qualifications and a whole lot of things. So I think ultimately, it's hard for me to kind of say what we want that conversation to look like now. We still haven't really done our research around how we're going to frame these podcasts. But I think that is going to kind of lead with what we want want to offer the readers in the first place. They'll continue to look at that interview and learn. [Kiran Naik]: The reason I was asking is whether, let's say if there was a revenue consideration from your side, then I would think about how to attach that in the proposition, which is why I was asking. So if there is a revenue model in this of how you help your members, and here is a revenue model, and you want it to be somehow attached into what we do for your members, then that's something to think about. If not, yeah, I mean, that's okay. Then we can talk about my next question, which is what exactly should we be doing for your members? [Greg Stern]: So, Kiran, just to make it clear, these guys have a lot of, a very, very large number of founders who follow their newsletters and podcasts and things like that. So I think the best way to think about them is sort of like a market influencer. Right. I mean, I don't know, Michael, if you think of yourself as a market and influencer, but and so, and so, and so we, we, we paid for a sponsorship with them that gets us these various different aspects of it, where we get, we got placements, we get a podcast and things like that. [Kiran Naik]: So you don't need to. Attached to the service offerings or the revenue data. So that's understood. Perfect. So now, we have done this similar thing for, we call it fractional QA, if you will, because most of your portfolio members are software companies, I'm assuming. [Michael Houck]: I would say, yeah, most are, yeah. [Kiran Naik]: And today, even if you're not, you're software driven in some way. So being a software intrinsic company, you have to do QA. You might avoid it for as long as you can, but sooner than later, it's going to catch up with you. You got to do QA. So in that other situation, what we're doing is we are offering, because these are younger, early stage companies, you need QA, but you you cannot have one QA guy employed by you. Correct. Otherwise, but you need that QA activity to happen. So we have now in that situation created fractional QA, which means you might just bring us in to do one quick run, see what our gaps are, and then you go solve for your gaps. Or we do one kind or second kind a third kind, but all of them are, one is $3,000, $5,000, $7,000. Okay, everything done in a week. We openly use our platform, we use our platform behind, but we just got, which is why we are able to do it very fast and do it inside a week. Okay, so three different grades of QA that we can do for you. You can do it once in a quarter, one QA run, you can do once in six months, wherever you are in your life. [Michael Houck]: Sorry, my dog’s going crazy. No, you’re okay. I’m surprised mine isn’t barking right now, too, actually. [Kiran Naik]: So, Greg, we can maybe share what we did for that other firm, the Fractional Cleaning Service that we have in place. [Greg Stern]: Yeah. Let me pull that up really quickly. [Kiran Naik]: While he’s pulling it up, you made an interesting point that we are saying this is low touch in the sense you want 3K service, we give you a page that because you’re Founder’s Journey member, you get to come to a specific page and there you just buy the service. And we are openly saying that you paid for it 3,000 bucks and then you’re wondering what happens next, next is we’ll call you and do and execute that service you bought. For whatever reason you’re not happy, just say you want a refund, we’ll, no questions asked, we’ll refund. We don’t even want to get, so what I’m saying is we want to make it low touch, no contract and chase the invoice all over the place. We don’t want to do that. Okay. For some reason you say, yeah, I don’t know what he did. And I’m not happy with it. Okay. So you return the money. No problem. Okay. So we are doing that. And then what we are thinking is you might require 6,000 worth of QA, you do two times for a big release in a year. That’s okay. To us, it is a lead that came in and we’ll nurture that lead through you with various other things we do for the lead. Till the point comes where they sort of step out of a cocoon and now they have a need for a full-time QA and then we take them off on that journey. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think to that point, we want you guys to be able to build a relationship with these high growth companies early on in their life cycle. And to Blake’s point, we cover sort of the full gamut of that from pre-seed to seed, some folks earlier than that. And so letting those be folks who you’re the first person sort of getting in there, presenting them with this offer, I think can help build trust and build that relationship over the long term. [Kiran Naik]: Correct. And you made an important point, Blake. I don’t know, I have an answer for it, but Greg and I have been thinking, saying, what is the first, the first thing you do for them should be free and high value to bring them to the table. Okay. Now, that may be a one-hour assessment that we talk about what you’re doing, what your stack is, what you should be doing, how should you prepare your baseline, etc., etc. And then you take that knowledge and you do whatever you want with it. If you want to take that knowledge and actually do some action on it, here are the panel of services that you can pick from and move forward. So we could even offer that one hour free consulting on basically an assessment of your QA strategy. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah, I like that approach a lot. I think that value is something that the readers and viewers would want to hop into. I understand the packages, that the 3, 5, 7k packages, they seem great. That’s where we want to get to. Don’t know how much convincing the readers and viewers will need. I mean, maybe after the podcast. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, think about it like this, right? Like if we’re, if we’re putting you guys in the newsletter, that’s their first impression and one impression from you guys, right? So we want to get them into your ecosystems so that you get unlimited shots on goal to nurture them and bring them through that funnel. [Greg Stern]: Hey guys. So, so what you’re saying is, is the best thing would be to offer them something so that we get their information. And is that sort of automated through you? Do they just click a button on your side, and then you send us their information? Or do they have to come to our website and fill something out? How does that work exactly? [Michael Houck]: So we can do it either way. So you can have a sign-up form or drop your email or something like that on a landing page that you guys create, or we’re happy to provide sort of the list of emails that have clicked on a link on our side, too. Obviously, if you’re asking them to give you the information, it’ll be sort of higher intent on your side, but we can provide that either way. [Greg Stern]: OK. So since Kidon brought this up, and I know what you’re, you’re essentially steering us away from initially testing with having an offer, that you’re thinking that the thing the call to action through you guys is something that’s of high value that is going to exhibit some level of intent related to software testing services but not immediately trying to close them on on packages this is um so let’s just finish that out and then I had another question um so this is this is uh the company that we’re working with in this case is team ignite ventures um and uh Uh, you know, essentially that this is the idea here, right? You can sort of see the messaging here. I mentioned to you before, here’s a, here’s a bunch of the companies that we started very, very early stage. Um, almost some of them almost at startup. Right. Um, and you know, obviously either got acquired or have become quite large companies now. And then here’s sort of like for this particular cohort, these guys are a little bit there. Um, I guess they’re still in, or in VC probably series A kind of funding, a lot of them. But the idea was that there was different sets of services we could provide here, each one designed for, in turn, a more mature company, like the simplest. And then we’re trying to price these, and then also quick, quick turnaround. And so the idea is we would Obviously we’d have to put more people on the one that’s 6,000, $7,000 and the one that's $3,000, but we still want to deliver it regardless in one week. So that, um, because generally these people aren’t working on, on, um, very out there timelines are generally like, you know, build, test, learn, build, test, learn, build, test, learn, right. You know, release cycles. So, um, Anything else you wanted to say about this, Kiran, then I had another question for you. [Kiran Naik]: No. So, of course, this needs some A and B testing to see where it goes. Just so you know the context, our minimum order value is 150K. So I had a hard time getting off from that pain and coming into this and saying what we do here. But this is true, true, true blue fractional QA. Okay, it’s just spot service you need. You just use it for that. And this is not revenue generation for us. This is lead acquisition. [Michael Houck]: Makes sense. [Greg Stern]: So, um, I guess, I guess the, you had said something earlier in the conversation here that piqued my interest. And that was one of the things that you need to do is you need to first explore what you thought, like the podcast angle is going to be. Then obviously it seems like the natural fit would be depending on what the angle is that you guys think is going to be the most appropriate for this audience, then having some sort of a takeaway from that or a call to action from that related to what was discussed, if I’m understanding that correctly. So I’m just thinking like with Athena, maybe your initial podcast was about the productivity gains used that founders just to do everything themselves. I’m just guessing, I didn’t listen to the podcast. They have to do everything themselves and that includes things that aren’t really as critically important to moving the business forward, but with highly skilled fractional virtual assistants, they can really improve their productivity and focus on the things that they need to focus on. The interesting thing about that is I’m not sure that all our pitch here would be a whole lot different. Software testing is often afterthought, or it’s being done by everyone on the team. Everybody has a bug smasher day, right? And then the issue becomes, well, but that takes away from time that you really wanted to be building the product, not testing the product. You’d rather have somebody coming in and testing it and telling you what’s wrong, and then just sending it back to the engineers fix it rather than spending a ton of time like, try this, try that, try this, you know, to see if you can break the thing, right? Plus, a lot of these guys may not have a lot of knowledge or experience in software testing. It’s a specialized kind of a thing. So I suspect that maybe, you know, when you look at it, the podcast angle that you’re going to look at from us is may go down a very similar direction. I’m completely speculating. I’m just imagining that’s what the podcast with Athena was. [Michael Houck]: You know, I don’t know what it was in reality, but yeah, yeah My hypothesis is that that’s pretty much what will happen is that we’ll we’ll lead with the podcast And we’ll sort of let people go deep and we get a lot of clicks into that from the from the newsletter when we send it out via email and also organically on on youtube we get views that way too, but um, Yeah, we’ll introduce everything that way and we’ll we’ll do a write-up on that interview sort of along with the podcast So people are not trying to watch it right now well, it’s all right there in the email for you anyway. [Greg Stern]: And that’s what we would lead with to sort of educate them. Got it. So it sounds like, you know, what we, what I think that I have to do here is not think about this as a single CTA. I think that what I’m hearing, let me, let me go back and what’s going through We want to get them into our ecosystem by at least knowing who they are. They’re the hand raisers who have some level of problem that this is resonating with. And then our job on the sales and marketing side is to then take them down the path. And rather than thinking about it as a single CTA, we think about it as like a nurturing effort. They click done this because they’re interested in seeing this particular piece of material that we can provide for them, or they’re interested in talking to us about a workshop, or they’re interested, like Kiran said, they’re interested in setting up testing in their environment, and they want to book an hour with our engineering team to get straight up consulting on how to do it and what the best practices are, and anything along those lines and then it’s our job to then sort of try to take them down the path from that point forward. [Kiran Naik]: So here’s my salesperson’s take on this. Okay. So idea is to bring them definitely to the table and bring them to the shiniest. The shiniest toy today is anything AI. You say anything AI and people are saying, okay, So what if I say how to use AI to in testing and then you can qualify it by way more faster. If you want to know how to do it in your environment, come for a one hour in-person advisory session. We talk about your QA and how AI can power up your QA. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, it’s cost and time effective. [Kiran Naik]: We’ll bring them to that advisory session where we talk about what they want to do with QA and here’s what my tool can do for you. Exactly. Then let them go. [Michael Houck]: I think that’s a really strong framing. [Michael Houck]: I think that’s sort of the right altitude, kind of step by step to get them through there. And we can use the podcast episode in the first write up to sort of you know, educate them on why they should be going to the session, why they should care about this advisory session, why they should spend the time on that. And so I’ll go super deep on the conversation on that stuff. [Kiran Naik]: Yeah, absolutely. And your podcast theme, if I heard it right, was also why you don’t have to do everything yourself. You have methods using external parties to get your work done faster and cheaper. That same theme is what this is. And it’s all AI driven in that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I don’t think there’s a ton of awareness about like, I think that the content we create about this will make people think, oh, yeah, of course, I should be using AI to do QA faster and more effectively and earlier and things like that. Nobody will fight that. [Michael Houck]: Nobody will fight that. [Michael Houck]: But I think a lot of people might click in their brain, like, oh, why didn’t I already think about that? You know, like, this is a no brainer. [Kiran Naik]: So I’m bullish on it. I’m bullish on it. Yeah. And also, another point, I don’t know how you want to slip that in, is mind you, for your audience, for these services, we are literally not charging you for our platform. We’re actually not. We’re just saying for these dollar amounts upfront, here is the output we’ll give you. And the reason we are able to do it at fraction of the cost and fraction of the time, everything is one week, because we are powering it up with our AI platform. So we are bringing our service, which is enabled by an AI platform to you as for these economical and time effective packets. So Sam, if you can slip that, and I’m not worried that forever they become bigger, they still want to use, yeah, I mean, we’ll cross that bridge when we reach it. We somehow have to make money on our platform, but these guys, they have to grow up a little bit more because literally if you want to do 50 use cases, it’ll take me five minutes to do it. So I don’t even know why we are saying one week. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. [Blake Stewart]: I think it’ll be, yeah, that’s a good way to talk about that. You can kind of ask. You guys have a, it’s free? Your platform’s free? Like how did you do that? [Kiran Naik]: How did you do that? It’s free. They’re not going to be in near time going to be able to misuse my platform. Misuse happens when you have 15,000 test cases and I give you free and you get the work done in two weeks and I’m screwed because I can’t take on lunch for my employees. [Michael Houck]: I want to tell our lead engineer to go do this. [Greg Stern]: All right. So I think I got what I needed from this, Kira. And Rajeev had actually asked me for sort of a detailed workflow on what this program would look like, And Blake, you and I did, I shared with him our initial roughed out model of what success would look like, And he’s an engineer as well. So everything gets modeled out and process flowed and it’s software testing, right? It’s very process driven. So even the marketing team has to follow that. So. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Makes sense. [Greg Stern]: Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Great. All right. [Greg Stern]: Thanks guys. And then as Rajeev mentioned, um, he’s actually doing a podcast next week with the team ignite. Um, and, um, and he just feels like he wants to, it isn’t going to be his first time doing a podcast. He wants to get that under his belt. Uh, and then he’ll feel a lot more, you know, ready to do this. Plus he’s also put a lot on our plates as far as starting spinning up a bunch of things. And so he’s like, yeah, if we have too much going, we’re, we’re, we’re going to let it Too many balls drop. So that’s why he wanted to push it out. [Michael Houck]: So, um, you know sometime in early in early July Perfect, okay Taiwan works on our end. Um, Greg you and you and Blake can uh can can take it from here and look as needed from our side Thanks, gents. [Greg Stern]: All right Good to meet you Can you send me the recording? [Greg Stern]: It looks like it happened on my recording too. If I don’t get it, because I use AI to then with all the notes and then put it into Notion. And then I remember what we actually talked about. [Kiran Naik]: All right. Thanks guys.