- Duration: 43 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JY744Y4CKX4YWKCQJN0EETAN (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JY744Y4CKX4YWKCQJN0EETAN)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: John, how you doing, man? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good to meet you. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, good to meet you too, Michael. Happy Friday. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, happy Friday. [John Knapp]: How’s going? Going really good. Productive week over here, so that’s awesome. So are you in Brooklyn? [Michael Houck]: I used to be. Now I’m sort of all over the place. I was in Brooklyn for four years. [John Knapp]: Okay, okay. I’ve got one of the team is over there. So I saw that you’ve got your your meeting note thing, that’s fine. I would ask, if you’re okay with it, I was sending me a transcript when you’re done. Yeah, sure, I can send it over. Good, appreciate that. So, you know, when I first saw the calendar events come in, I was like, who’s this guy? And I had to backtrack and make the connection back to Blake, as I guess, bird dogging for you, Yeah, Blake, he helps out with our growth and outreach and all that. [Michael Houck]: So he’s always monitoring for folks who he thinks we could potentially help out with. [John Knapp]: Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s great. I do see some potential, dude, on a couple of different fronts. So I’d like to talk a little bit about that, and we can zero in on priorities. But I got you pegged as a guy. I’d like to know. So we’ll see if it’s mutual after this call. But what is your, it looks like you’ve had a few different brands going on. And I think I remember Launch House when you had that going. And so what are your priorities? [John Knapp]: Could we start there? [Michael Houck]: We’ve got a few things going on. [John Knapp]: And then I’ll put some context around. [Michael Houck]: Let us know. We have a holding company that has a few different brands within it. We have Founding Journey, which is our brand for founders in terms of everything from fundraising to growth, just advice for early stage founders who are building new things. We run a fundraising support process where I connect them with my investor network. We run a weekly newsletter that goes out to them. We have a couple other case study offerings and things like that that we do as well. That sort of serves as a top of funnel for Megaphone, which is our content and distribution company where we have a ghost rating agency underneath that. And we also have a creator network to help get the word out about content. So for some background, when I was building up my personal brand, I met a bunch of creators. And they started engaging with my content. That obviously amplified me to their audience. And those people became my audience, and you know how that works. But not a lot of people have those creator connections, and a lot of founders need that distribution. And so we built a platform that basically aggregates all those creators in one place. It’s like 500 plus on the platform at this point, with like 60 million total followers. And they’re all tagged by niche, and we have a matching algorithm. So when someone goes on the platform, they share a post social media LinkedIn or X and This is megaphone, yeah, this is megaphone megaphone that’s and it was on that Yeah, so Basically, they share a post and we get big creators in their niche we notify them and we send them to the post and they amplify it and they get paid for that and And so it helps founders sort of grow their social media presence, either for themselves or for their startup account, either, either one. [Michael Houck]: Um, and what we found, how long have you been doing that? [John Knapp]: It sounds like a natural trend, but how long has that been a thing? [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So we started the platform a little over a little under two years ago. Um, and so it’s been growing and basically what we found was that, you know, getting these creators to comment on people’s stuff and repost it and all that was great. But some people, their content wasn’t that good in the first place, just candidly. And so it didn’t actually help as much for them. And so we wanted to help for them, too. And so we built a content agency where it’s myself and Blake Emall, who you’ve probably also seen on social. He’s an even bigger following than I do. We’ve partnered up. A small team of writers who we’ve worked with for a long time. And we actually create the content for a bunch of folks now, too. And so Megaphone has sort of become this two-sided thing where we have the content side, content creation side, and also the distribution side with the creator network. [John Knapp]: That’s exactly what I wrote in my notes, content creation and distribution. [Michael Houck]: Got it. Yeah. So that’s what we do. And I think our main focus is, well, right now we’re normally combining those two things and just how we position them to folks because historically they’ve operated separately, but now we’re sort of bringing them together in terms of one website, one onboarding flow, all that stuff. And you can choose your package. What’s your elevator pitch for Founding Journey? Sorry, say that one more time. [John Knapp]: What’s your elevator pitch for Founding Journey? [Michael Houck]: Founding Journey is a newsletter that gives advice on fundraising, growth, go to market, finding product market fit, early stage validation. For founders. Those content. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. It’s content. [Michael Houck]: And would you say newsletter? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Is that fair? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [John Knapp]: It’s a newsletter. Yeah. Okay. [Michael Houck]: That’s in fact why they call it a newsletter. [John Knapp]: Okay. So, um, but founding journey and megaphone, you say you’re kind of working towards, towards, I can see that there’s some gravity between them. Uh, so you’re, But those are your two focuses. [John Knapp]: Does that account for 100% of your time? [Michael Houck]: It does for most of my time. I do some investing. I do some advising. We’re incubating some AI stuff right now, too. [John Knapp]: So yeah, it’s the majority of my time, I would say. OK, cool. Incubating some AI stuff. What’s that mean? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, that’s early stage. We’re just trying to see is there something there talking to people so I don’t know if that’s relevant to this conversation No, I get it. [John Knapp]: I just I just kind of curious so Con Concepts due diligence Is this worth pursuing maybe so on and so forth would that be you or with some companies or individuals you’re advising or? Or what? I don’t really care, but I’m just curious. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, some of it’s me. [John Knapp]: And I have folks who I advise, too. So it varies. Cool. Cool. All right. So that’s good context. And for that, I thank you. And when Blake hit me up, On LinkedIn, it was on the content creation side of things. And as they say, my ears perked up. And I could see that we could well be a client of Megaphone at some level or another. So that’s probably one of the top couple items on my list. There are two other things that, if I may, I would like to bring into the conversation. Let me bring some context around all of this stuff. First off, one of the reasons I’m glad that we meet is we obviously have, we’re big fans of entrepreneurship and helping founders and advising and so on and so forth. And I’ve done a pile of that for a number of years. Usually, how much I’m doing depends on if I’m building another company or whatever and such. But that’s something that has always been, what you’d say, near and dear to my heart. And there might be, in the next 12 or 18 months, an amplification on that focus. I have since the since Y2K basically Been doing that under the brand is startup Alliance And startup Alliance calm is a community and startup Alliance org is a philanthropic organization helping incubators do good And right now they’re both getting zero hours a week out of me because I’m I’m working on other stuff and so my my primary focus is is Strat rocket and Strat rocket calm is My second a I native b2b sass And my first a I native b2b sass was Procurement Sciences. And both of these are on my LinkedIn. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I saw. [John Knapp]: I took a look earlier. Yeah. Okay. And so Procurement Sciences, our trajectory was kind of like that. And we literally incorporated the same week that ChatGBT was announced. So suddenly there’s It’s a little bit of an updraft, right? And so peace I is still rocking and rolling Those I guess is a year since Since the series a 10 or 12 million From battery and a couple other firms nice But I I left I left early And honestly, between a couple of dudes chatting on a Friday, co-founder issues. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’ve been there. [John Knapp]: Yeah. Most of us wind up there, right? That’s the thing. And so my memo to self is be careful before you co-founded a business with an ex-Marine. And Christian Ferreira, great guy. And, you know, we clicked, we met late 22. And like I say, you know, it was about five weeks later that we were incorporating and chat GPT and yada yada. But procurement sciences is, helping government contractors with, and dude, I gotta love it. A three word value prop, win more bids. Everyone loves that. And talk about getting straight to the point. And so it was, I guess it was a year and a half ago that we parted company. I wouldn’t necessarily say amicable, but we did. And through that process, I wound up getting a pretty good exit out of the deal. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And so cha-ching. [John Knapp]: And thinking about what it is that I would like to do, it’s like, well, that whole AI native B2B SaaS, that sounds like fun. I think I’ll make another one. I went through an iterative process and zeroed in on Strat Rocket, which is essentially, you know, so many companies struggle with strategy to execution. There’s a big fucking gap between the two. It’s like, we get this plan, we got all these ideas, and then poof, just never really gets there. And so, you know, I call it the whiteboard to Jerry, gap. And yeah, yeah. And so, massive TAM here and such. So, this time a year ago, I had just met my co-founder. I was on a hunt four or five months to find the right co-founder. And I came away from this fantastic co-founder experience with Procurement Sciences, and Christian was Dude is an animal. You know, he’d get up every day and grind out deals. And I get up every day and grind out software. So that’s the dream team right there. And so I was looking for someone to help grind out deals. And I met a fellow, Josh Folk, had exited his last startup in a related field. A few months prior to our meeting, I found him on LinkedIn and cold called him, and now we’re friends, right? So we, in July, June, July last year, got our ducks in a row and incorporated Strat Rocket early July of this is a year, this is not quite a year ago. He had, like I say, he had cashed out of his last startup. And I think the dude just kind of went to the couch and put up his feet and was just chilling and enjoying life. And you know how it is, Michael, because you get into that kind of a mode, next thing you know, your brain is going soft. Next thing you know, you’re missing the jazz and so on. So I came and recruited his ass off the couch. There you go. And so, etc. And so Josh and I, and you know, like an investor, but he says you got to build it, you got to sell it. And so I’m the builder. And so we’re moving things forward and getting the software good to go and coming to market and all that. Stuff. And he decided he wasn’t feeling it. Josh decided he’d rather go back to the couch. He’s got two daughters, six and eight years old and such. So I can’t blame him for that. Very amicably, we parted company. Shares and all that crap so most of them And so he still exists on the strat rocket about page as an advisor Josh and And so that was February And so I’m like what the hell And I’m thinking well, how hard can that be to build? Build some market presence and generate some leads and traffic and start growing a thing. So I spent some time since then trying to get shit going. And I have come to a point of saying, well, yeah, I’m a builder, I’m not a seller. That’s like looking in the mirror and the challenge there is like, shit, what do I do? So it is really with that at the front of my mind. Now I’ve given you context around why I was interested to hear from Blake. Yeah, it makes total sense. Go ahead, sorry. Yeah, so Strat Rocket, the product status is ahead of the market development status. Makes sense. Product. Hey, look at right off my fingertips. And, and such. And so you can go to strat rocket.com and you can click the start free trial and yada yada. It’s a it’s a PLG go to market. We think that it’s SMB strategy leaders and product leaders, companies between 50 and 500 I just ballpark right there. That’s what I sense. We come in the door saying, have you ever had a great project that never came to fruition? Everybody says yes. And what I can say that we’ll help you with that. And so honestly, with my three word value prop from Procurement Sciences, win more bids. And when we follow through on That’s money straight to your top line. That’s growth Win more bids. Okay, great So that product pays for itself and my objective in finding that holy grail of that three-word value prop In Strat rocket we correlate that to a few if you can actually execute on your great ideas. You’re gonna fucking grow, right? Well, that’s the that’s the that’s the story And so I Bootstrapped You know we’re not raising any money My current objectives for Strat rocket are as follows I would like to show some proof of traction. I don’t care how I get it So we could start Monday and do a deal and you can help make shit happen this and that’d be great. So that’s one area. Now at the same time, I’ve been around, I’ve done a lot, a whole lot. And there is a part of me, Michael, there’s a part of me, what’s my drive? Why don’t I just fucking put my feet up on the couch? And the reason is I wanna help, I wanna help people. I want to help these companies, which most of their strategic initiatives crater. Yeah, I want to help them. And so I’m driven. I’m a helper. I want to get that out there and help you do good, so forth. I don’t have to. I don’t need to. But I want to. So that’s my baseline, right? And so in a way, I don’t care. How that occurs okay now here I’m going to introduce an additional concept into our conversation and see if this is something that might spark some interest on your end so you get the concept of what Strat Rockets about it’s not hard to grasp right don’t get shit up and grow and you know we’ve done a Enough customer discovery to know that’s it. That’s a horror. That’s a horizontal problem, which that’s a blessing and a curse obviously I know that’s we’ll find our niche and zero in I think maybe SAS product managers, you know Etc or whatever But it occurs to me that I would be interested in giving Strat Rocket to a team. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [John Knapp]: And what do I mean by that? I mean, giving with the with the right with the right structure to a team and call it 85% I’ll keep 15 and I’ll advise the crap out of you. Sure. And so where I’m at currently Is I’m seeking to put together what I will call a transition team And as I think Michael frankly about your network, you know the individuals That we might pull together the right few guys To launch that strat rod. Yeah and so You know did I say I was open-minded did I say I don’t care how to do it and You know if this is like, you know, you might be saying what’s this dude yakking at me? I gotta get on my next call or you might say listen if this is interesting That I would like to paint a picture and we can see if we can find a picture that makes us both smile and potentially do that. I would you would be the second person on the this transition team. There’s an individual here in the valley. I’m in the heart of the valley in Bay Area. And some of this really well connected around around here. And you know for a company like this with a potential like this there’s always money to be had. Sure. And I could maybe put some money into these people like give it And so that’s a thing. That’s a thing. And so let me take a moment. There’s one more thing I want to introduce as well. But Michael, if you could take a moment and ask questions and comments about what I just said. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, look, it’s interesting. I obviously think the product makes sense. And there’s, as you said, the horizontal market, there’s kind of multiple niches you could take it into. So there’s opportunity there. I think bandwidth wise, it would be hard for me right now, depending on what the kind of commitment would be. Yeah, I mean, if there are specific people, I’m happy to obviously make connections. And I’m happy to do that. Like, that’s, that’s easy. If it’s more proactive, where I’m like, scouring through my network for people might be the right fit and spending much time. [John Knapp]: Good stuff at that level. [John Knapp]: Got it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So it depends on what the involvement would be, but I’m, you know, obviously love to help other founders. [John Knapp]: So that’s, um, I’m happy to happy to make connections to folks. Yeah. Good. That’s great. I appreciate that. Thank you. Uh, and, um, yeah, trust me. I, I understand, you know, when you’re, when you’re hustling, uh, it’s not easy to just throw something else onto the stack of chores. Understood. And so the other thing that I wanted to introduce is the notion that I would like to give Startup Alliance to someone. And what is it? Grind, Hackers and Founders. I know the guys here in my neighborhood that built those things and such. And it’s a killer brand, but if somebody wanted to run with that, I’d happily flip it the way. I’m not looking for anything really out of that other than to see them go out and do good. Yeah, I mean, it’s a- Strat Rocker Transition Team, Startup Alliance, And that’s like the tiniest little slice of my pie chart. I don’t care. I’m not chasing that. Once I dispense with Strat Rock, and it’s off and going, then I’m going to return my attention to helping other entrepreneurs under that brand. But right now, that’s not a thing. So I’ve touched on that sufficiently. Thanks for hanging out with Firehose. I just dumped a lot of stuff on you. [Michael Houck]: But I wanted to give you that context. [John Knapp]: And I’d like to zero back around now and hear about Megafone. But you were going to make a couple points, please. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it’s helpful to know the background and how we got to where we are here. I don’t know if we have a ton of time to go into Megafone. But yeah. We normally do these calls to chat about ghostwriting, content creation, things like that. So if that’s a priority for you, happy to talk about that. Yeah, that’s whether it’s for LinkedIn, or for a newsletter, or even for x. And, you know, we have something that is built in AI digital twin, you can use to create like Instagram, real type videos and things like that, too. [John Knapp]: So pretty comprehensive content suite offer monthly cost, standard package, is 4k. [Michael Houck]: And that includes full batches of content, we actually go in and manage your account too. So we’ll do like proactive engagements on posts from thought leaders in your niche so that their audience is exposed to you will engage with people who comment on your stuff. And we’ll also give you credits to the creator network. So if you wanted to say, network, if you wanted to make the creator network more at where you say, oh, I don’t want any creators to comment on these posts. I’ll just use it. Sometimes that can reduce the cost down to 3K. And then if you also want to do smaller batches of content and still have the operational support, our entry level package is 2K. [John Knapp]: So do I say the range is 2 to 4K? [Michael Houck]: We can go above 4K, too. It depends if you wanted to do. Well, no, I mean, that’s the standard package of like written content on one social account that we’re supporting. And we can cross post between platforms, but it’d be like your voice versus one of the brand voices and things like that. [John Knapp]: So if you want to be different. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good. All right, well, that’s, that’s a that’s a solid, that’s a solid maybe, you know, I won’t shy away from a good investment if the results will be there. We are preparing to launch a marketing, I’ll call it, what do I call it, a marketing vehicle as a interactive StratRocket experience. That’ll be our, we’ll be driving people to that, call it a landing page or microsite or whatever. So we’re just to get that thing out the door in the next couple of weeks. And then I’m going to be all about I want tons of people come in there. And so shifting my attention back to how the hell do we grow this thing? And my my my. The happy path for Strat Rock in in my mind, Michael, would be Show some signs attraction over the next next couple of months or whatever and then And then you know raise some dough and keep going build team and whatnot So there’s that path and then there’s also Who would like a nice? B2b sass with a ribbon and a bow on top And you know I’ve got a I’ve got an investor buddy that’s done that a bunch of times. You know, here, take 85% of my company. Right. You know, go do good, send money. He calls them, he calls them mailbox money and you know exactly what I mean. Yeah. And so, but that’s, that’s my, that’s my job one. So over the next couple of weeks, what I would like, and in terms of understanding how we might most actively mesh with Megaphone. Would that be interactions with you, or you got somebody on your team I should talk to, or what? [Michael Houck]: No, I’m the primary POC. I actually operate the business. So it’d be you and me. And then once we would go deeper, you’d have a writer who’s like your partner. So you’re not thrown into some pool, different people all the time. It’s like one person. And nothing that would send to you would not have been reviewed by either Blake or myself. So we keep the bar pretty high. And then we also have a content… The thing Blake is. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. [Michael Houck]: I couldn’t hear what you said. [John Knapp]: Forgive me. Blake is an active part of Megafone. Yes, he is. [Michael Houck]: We operate the business together. [Michael Houck]: And you’d also have a content operations manager who would be the one sort of in your account, optimizing your profile and engaging with other people and things like that. [John Knapp]: Yeah, man, I’m sitting here right now thinking that’s what I need. Put us in the category of a strong prospect. [Michael Houck]: I’ll send over an email with just like a notion doc that sort of outlines everything. And then when the timing’s right on your end, we can pick the conversation back up, hop back on and chat some more about what the exact engagement could look like, [John Knapp]: Yeah, yeah. You know what I’m busy doing over the next couple of weeks, getting this thing out the door, this microsite. I just sent you a LinkedIn connection request so we can become LinkedIn buddies. I will look forward to your email if I If I need to, no, you don’t have an open LinkedIn profile, but my initials jkatstratrocket.com. Cool. So whoever, whoever gets back to me. I’m putting that into Blink’s LinkedIn message with that email address. I look forward to your input. I would expect that we’d have some low volume email back and forth over the next couple of weeks, potentially leading to an engagement. Should maybe kick off July 1. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: That sounds good. And I’ll also put some thought into if there’s any folks who do come to mind in my network who could potentially be helpful for either the transition team or also Startup Alliance, too. [John Knapp]: So I’ll put some thought into it. I would put those things as a fairly distant two and three. Let’s keep our focus here on getting Strat Rocket out there kicking some butt. And you don’t need to worry about me forgetting to ping you about the rocket team thing and maybe someday a startup alliance. But right now let’s keep, I don’t need to, I’m not giving you any ask on that at the moment. I’ll slip a thought into it. [Michael Houck]: Maybe there’s someone who comes to mind and you know, people reach out all the time about one thing or another. So maybe sometimes folks will reach out like, Oh, do you know any companies that are, you know, Right now so keep that in mind Sure, it’s not even an acquisition that I’m looking for you know You do understand I’ll shut up Where are you today? [John Knapp]: Where’s your physical location today? I’m in Philadelphia right now in Philly All right, all right, and you’re just that part of the world you’re hanging out in for the most part You’re not traveling internationally or what do I call you a digital? No or what? [Michael Houck]: Don’t know what I am I don’t, I like to say I’m in between homes. But I have some family here. [John Knapp]: That can be, oh, cool, cool. That can be great. I’ve got a good friend. He’s from here. And he’s, you know, dev dude and with a lot of great customers. And he’s just bouncing around from one Airbnb to another. He likes it in the Southeast, in Southeast Asia. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that’s nice, man. [John Knapp]: Now I’m in Texas. Michael, real pleasure meeting you. Thank you. I’m very glad that we had the opportunity to connect. Take my LinkedIn connection request thing. Okay, good. And just as wrapping up, how do you know Rob Kelly? We’ve got a mutual connection in Rob Kelly. I’m not sure. [Michael Houck]: I really do need to run to my next call. [Michael Houck]: So I got to jump off. Rob, I have a lot of people who just follow me on LinkedIn. So I’m not totally sure. [John Knapp]: Mike, appreciate your time. Yeah, you’re five and a half minutes late to your next call. So appreciate your time. I’ll look forward to your email outlining things with Megaphone. And with you and Blake, I look forward to connecting. Thanks, John. [Michael Houck]: Looking forward to it, man. [Michael Houck]: Good to meet you.