- Duration: 39 min
- Platform: meet
- Attendees: Michael Houck, Steve O’Brien, Steve’s Note Pal, steve@mantisvc.com
- Source: Read.ai 01JXX1DS9R8W8X53HEF71XE50S (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JXX1DS9R8W8X53HEF71XE50S)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Thank you. Steve, how you doing, man? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good. [Steve O’Brien]: Good to meet you. [Michael Houck]: Um, you know, Blake, right? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Michael Houck]: How do you guys know each other? [Steve O’Brien]: Uh, I was like on this Colonel thing they did. Oh, right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Steve O’Brien]: And then hit him up. Recently, because we’re going to be doing a LP webinar for all of our investors and our funds, I just kind of wanted to see if you had some resources. That was run really well. So I just wanted to see if you had resources around webinar production and stuff. So Connect Museum folks kind of sent me some info on what you guys are doing around email marketing, and I’m trying to kind of rebrand a little bit of how we’re doing more regular things to port co-investors, stuff like that. So I want to just check out what you had cooking on that side. Yeah, it makes sense, man. [Michael Houck]: And yeah, when they were running the kernel webinars and the investor days and everything, those were great. I wish they still did these, but you know, it is what it is. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Things move on. [Michael Houck]: I can give some background. Me and on us and then we can sort of dive into specifics and maybe how we can help. I’m obviously very familiar with you guys and all that, so I would love to hear more about you and sort of your involvement and sort of how you are managing things over there too, but I can start. So I’ve been a founder for a while, was before that early Uber Eats, helped grow that business and then jumped over to Airbnb, product manager there for a bit. Ended up Founding a company called Launch House, we raised 23 million in total from Andreessen and some other folks. Ended up turning that into a venture fund. Basically, we were bringing these founders together in like co-living houses and running like cohorts for them. So it ended up just being better to turn that into a fund. So we did, and that’s still running. And then basically for the last couple of years, I built up my personal brand 100k across uh, twitter and linkedin and then 200k on substack. Um and Started bringing creators together to help people grow because you know, we saw when they engage with us, obviously, you know, you know how it works. Um So the platform called megaphone where folks can uh, basically partner with creators in different ways So one of those that’s unique to us is engaging on social media. So if you want to repost from like a hundred creators in your niche, we can get that for you. And then also obviously the more traditional stuff like sponsored posts, product testimonials and newsletter ads and things like that. But then a lot of people asked us to create the content for them too. So we started doing that. And so for the last year, built up this sort of content agency where we run a lot of LinkedIn accounts, Twitter accounts and newsletters on both Beehive and Substance. Stack for VCs and for founders, basically up and down the gamut in terms of stage. And so that’s primarily where we can help. We know a lot about email marketing too. So if you’re thinking about outbound campaigns and sort of more in the weeds marketing automation segmentation, we do that too. Our bread and butter is sort of more content driven just because that’s how we started. [Steve O’Brien]: Yeah. OK, great. Very good to know. I’ll give you just a brief background. We can kind of talk about some stuff I’m thinking about. Please. That’s cool. Yeah, no on test. I know Jacob Peter as well. Oh, yeah. Because he saw the journey. I think I went to one of them a while ago. Ultimately, we didn’t really think it was a venture-backable business, but we thought it was great for the LA ecosystem. And you were right. It was back then. But I think a lot of people enjoyed that experience. I think it was a pretty good format of getting young entrepreneurs together. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That’s cool. [Michael Houck]: I’m going to run out some more in the fall and into next year as like a reading type thing. So we’ll see. [Steve O’Brien]: Cool. So I was the first employee here at Mantis. I’m sure you know a little bit about Mantis. Because you’ve kind of been involved in the VC ecosystem, especially around LA, but Chainsmokers are the managing partners, pretty dialed guys. They take this shit pretty seriously, and that’s why we have built a really good brand. I think it starts with, you know, if you want a celebrity fund, the celebrities have to be all in on it, get half-assed this shit, or it’s gonna come off, you know, disingenuous. There’s not a lot of celebrities who’ve done it really well. Ashton Kutcher, is one of the prime examples of the model that we’re trying to follow, what he built with sound. And I think we’ve been doing a pretty good job at building a great brand name in that. Alex and I sort of took hit on his LinkedIn a little over a year ago. And we brought on an agency to help us with that. I think we’re kind of capped out on the agencies I started it and then brought them on as it was a pretty unscalable function. I do a lot of different shit here now. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I do fundraising. [Steve O’Brien]: I do a lot of marketing. I do a lot of marketing. I do a lot of marketing. [Michael Houck]: I do a lot of marketing. [Steve O’Brien]: I run our operations system. We partnered with Palantir, and we’re building all of our data systems and operations from scratch now on their Foundry program. So I do a lot of different stuff. I’m now looking towards agencies for the future, and I want to turn off this group called SAM Sales. They’ve done a really good job at building the voice for Alex, but now we have this whole bank, and we have GPT, and I literally can just do stuff. I’ve literally chained a folder in GPT and just can be like, make this sound like a LinkedIn post. I think we’re a lot more scalable now. We don’t have any Twitter. They won’t do Twitter. It’s only LinkedIn for them. And I think we’re getting half-ass efforts out of it. I want to use them to do sales nav stuff to find LPs and family offices. And I think we can just find a better team to manage the LinkedIn and then move into Twitter. And then I’d like to discuss what short-form content looks like as we start to think about further branding techniques. Branding mechanism was kind of be a dark horse for the first, you know, year or two, right? And for a while I was the only employee at Mantis. So I was doing all these different stuff. We’ve since built the team out a lot. You know, we’re at, we have three funds, a $40 million fund, 75 and a hundred million dollar fund that we closed in December. We scaled quite a bit. Thanks. It’s been a lot of work and we’ve made some really good deals. And so, you know, it’s great to see that. I think we need to build a bit more. I want to start positioning branding differently. I want young Gen Z cracked kids with AI tools that are coming out these days to know about me at this. I think LinkedIn, we’ve sort of accomplished phase one of branding and having Alex and Drew well represented as entrepreneurs themselves and understanding tech. Now I think we can move into some of the Twitter spaces. I think we can do some short We have 170 portfolio companies we can pick and choose to do bite-sized bits with. The guys continue to do a ton of different speaking events over the years at tech conferences. So I think we can find a better agency to manage. Number one priority is continue the LinkedIn progress. I think we can find someone better, too. I’m sure you built your LinkedIn channel up quite a bit, right? So it’s like, potentially, this would be a good fit for us to manage. Move into other domains. And yeah, I can give you some context and sort of everything that we could do. [Michael Houck]: So yeah, content is sort of, as I mentioned, like, our main offer. But we do pretty aggressive outreach through my own account and through our client accounts to through sales nav. And also, there’s this tool that I invested in out of out of our fund called Valley, that you can hear on top of sales nav. And it basically sends out these research agents across to the internet to find very hyper-personalized things about these people. So like, oh, I saw that, you know, I mean, this is too personal. I’m going to go this way. But it could find, oh, I saw your dog was at the vet last week or something. Like, hope they’re OK. Any professional type of thing, an event they really spoke at, whatever. So it really makes the messages, the response rates, tick up. So we can set that up. We also do do short-form video as well. Don’t advertise that as much, but we actually have built out like an AI avatar system. So I don’t know, you know, anyone from the fund would want to be on the content themselves, or if they’re too busy. You know, we’ve taken an account to 100k on Instagram from zero this way. So I’m happy to talk about that when the time comes. And also, you know, I think just want to say like, you know, there are a lot of these celebrity funds, I think you guys in particular, done a really good job of making it more about, hey, this is Mantis, this is brand, this is a real legitimate VC, everyone’s all in, it’s not just some celebrities throwing their money into startups and hoping that they get a winner. That’s something that I just want to call out. [Steve O’Brien]: I’ve noticed. Yeah, I think we’ve done a really good job. We’ve been really methodical about it since day one. And we’re not trying to rush it. You have to build that legitimacy in the tech communities, takes time and it takes hard work and work in building valuable brand for these companies and opening doors for them. And that was our first branding is let the founders talk about us that we invest in. And then we went into LinkedIn, and now I think it’s time to continue to do some more outward movement so we can stay top of mind for these young kids that are going to be the next founders. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And I think one thing that is different about us and a lot of other is that my partner and I, and my partner’s Blake Mall, you’ve probably seen his content on Twitter, is like 95,000 on Twitter. We’re actually the two people operating this business. I’m not just some guy on a sales call with you right now, I’m your primary VC, right? We have a writer on our team who we’ve worked with for a long time, who I think would be a good fit for you guys, because he works with a couple of other clients who are billionaire VCs, been doing this for 40 years, have a ton of legitimacy in the space. Obviously, you know, want to be confidential, sensitive, like that. But I just I know the guy who would be who’d be the fit for this. So directly with us, and no content that we send to you guys for publishing and review. Yep, not have been personally edited by either Blake or myself. [Steve O’Brien]: So our contract is up with Sam sales, I think in November, or something around that time period, you know, we’d love to kind of maybe find some ways to do some stuff together to start, you know, building that muscle. I’m in the process of, of course, this summer, kind of, during the VC slowdown, I’m kind of, kind of, you know, we’re probably, we’re not too active in, won’t be too active in the investment period. I’m going to go back to Maine on Wednesday and just kind of vibe. Alex, you’re going to Europe, you know, I’ll be in Europe for a week, like, so I’m just kind of trying to do some stuff more, just focusing on platform side that stuff. Understanding what do we want that short form vision to look like, I think it’s very clean, cool, focus on tech we’ve invested in, value. I think it can be headless to a certain degree. I think we can do some stuff that has some personality too. And then I’d love to expand into Twitter, continue to manage LinkedIn and grow LinkedIn more effectively. We’ve been growing slower than I would want. And like and and also what rubbed me the wrong way with this with the agency that we have now is They like really want us to like do a post from alex’s things like promoting them like ghostwriting Oh, no, and we were like no like we pay you you do a good job Like what are you fucking talking about? And they’re like it was in the agreement and they had like snuck it into like the agreement No, and like what? Yeah I was just like, you don’t understand. And Alex and I were like, we’re not doing this. Like, so we can either, we can either cancel the contract now, or we can like kind of outlive this. So I’m just, I’m kind of betting a bunch of other marketing routes. And Blake told me about, you know, you guys, and I think it could be, you know, a great fit. Sounds like you really understand growth in those key areas that we fit into. And it’d be fun to kind of explore what that And when the contract’s up, I think we’d probably just parlay the whole thing into you guys. Be happy to spend 70k a year on what you guys have to offer. I think it’s a very good price and we obviously have got that budgeted. [Michael Houck]: We could put something together pretty compelling there across content and growth and outreach and things like that. I can give you a couple options when it gets closer and all that. But yeah, just to be super clear, like upfront, I will lose clients before I tell them that we are working with you guys. Give me testimonials, like give me real clients. There’s no way I would ever ask you guys for that. It was weird. And then she hit us back with this response. [Steve O’Brien]: Cause like we went back and forth and then she was like, well, maybe one day we can have like hashtag produced by Sam sales. And we were like, first of all, this is like all of our, Like this is me and Alex just describing what’s topical to us and you guys are putting it like in this voice that we’ve built over the like like I’m sorry, but like this is the business you started like and we hired you and I gave them I gave him a 15k bump in contract the because they’ve done some great stuff and They’ve even wanted to like work in like us bringing them to Vegas residency shows twice a year into the contract I don’t know. I think it’s time for a change. I think we can get a lot more for what we pay. They helped us build the voice. Also, the main writer we started with was a beast, and she was on the Ellen show, and she left. And so I think we can find a lot more holistic agency. It sounds like you guys really know the growth that we’re trying to head into and the different channels. Be fun to work on that. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Okay. I mean, look, I think it’s, I think it’s a good fit on our side to, um, love, love you guys. Um, we can sort of go up and down the stack as, as needed. So, uh, I guess what should we do from now until, uh, until November? [Steve O’Brien]: Um, I’d like to see like short form stuff. You know, I think when, uh, when I think about, um, you know, the future of Mantis branding is continual. LinkedIn management and then more holistic outreach from LinkedIn and, you know, sales strategies. You know, we do a lot of cold outreach on behalf of portfolio companies, but also the main thing is LPs, right? Can we start doing reach out from Alex’s account and start going out targeting family offices, multifamily offices, stuff like that. So it’s like when the LinkedIn bucket expansion into Twitter, um, from a mantis channel, maybe we do Alex’s, you know, Alex growth. We just so much content. I think he’s a little nervous about it because it’s a bit of a it can be a bit of a bloodbath on there. But to be honest, I’m like, let’s just like, manage it, and it will be fine. You got to embrace the cringe a little bit on Twitter. Yeah, you got to you got to cringe it up. And then, you know, take a look at short form, you know, is there can we do some really easy wins with AI tooling and short form, you know, content, you know, is there a way to do that? We have so many companies that have content out there. Can we have like a Mantis branded short form account that is just clean, quick, can be engaging, and just be top of mind to the young, talented kids coming up in college collegiate spaces. So those are kind of the three buckets. [Michael Houck]: OK, that all makes sense. So for context, I am flying out to SF. I got invited to HF0’s demo day. I can let you know if I see any good deals actually come through there if you want. [Steve O’Brien]: Yeah, so I think we have good engagement there too. But yeah, keep us posted. You know, I think we’re all getting into that slowdown period. And we’re, you know, again, we still are under contract. But I would love, you know, love to like, stay top of mind and kind of take a look at how you think about those three buckets and kind of build a plan to work forward to when it is time. [Michael Houck]: I just mean I’m flying out there in the morning, so I probably won’t be able to do something comprehensive together until Thursday, Friday. But I’ll get back to you with something, and we can see what makes sense in the meantime, and then ramp it up as we get closer to November 2. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Awesome. That works great. [Steve O’Brien]: Cool. But yeah, man, great to connect. I’m glad Blake introduced us. [Steve O’Brien]: Yeah, I think it’s a great fit. It sounds awesome. And enjoy HF0. Yeah, I’ll be traveling this week, too. So we’ll just continue. We’ll stay in the loop and touch base soon. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, let me know if there’s any lingering questions, though, that we should talk through now while we’re on the call. And then, yeah, we can hop off. [Steve O’Brien]: No, I don’t think so. I think we kind of touched on it all. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Nice. [Steve O’Brien]: Where are you going in Maine? I grew up in Freeport. And so I’m going to be back in my hometown for a good couple weeks. I don’t have a return ticket yet. Of my best buddies. We grew up there so we know everybody- a family that owns like a really sick house right on the water. Rented it to us for a month for like nothing so we were gonna pull his boat up there and just. Have a good two to three weeks main summer work from the house a bit go boating fishing do whatever golf you know do whatever. That’s as good as it gets eat a shit ton of lobster. [Michael Houck]: It doesn’t sound like a bad way to spend June and July. No, sounds ideal. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right, man. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Good to meet. I’ll follow up, uh, say Thursday, Friday, and we’ll go from there. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Awesome. All right, brother. Thank you.