- Duration: 69 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01K5VV6TB0GTP1992BJ0YWZMNT (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01K5VV6TB0GTP1992BJ0YWZMNT)
Transcript
[Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: All good, just the usual. Yeah, how about you? [Michael Houck]: I’m finally able to walk around without a lot of pain, which is nice. First time in almost a month. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So that’s good. [Michael Houck]: That’s good. That’s good. But yeah, same here. Normal stuff. Normal stuff. But all good things. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hey Tatem. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Hey, how are you? [Tatem Lindner]: Good, sunshine and roses. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Well, not too much sunshine these days. It’s getting colder now. [Tatem Lindner]: Yeah, isn’t it also like night there for you? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I guess, yeah, good point. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Usually at this time it’s like bright still. It’s like 8 p.m. Now, so it’s usually so bright. [Michael Houck]: End of summer, official end of summer, for sure. Yeah, that’s for sure. [Tatem Lindner]: That’s okay, now I can look forward to pumpkin patches, so. [Michael Houck]: Tatem, for some reason, I always, you’re not in L.A., or I always feel like you’re in L.A., but then you say like, you’re not in L.A., there’s no pumpkin patch. [Tatem Lindner]: I’m from Ohio. Do I give the LA vibe? Because if I do, I’m going to take that as a win. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Like my default assumption is that you’re, you’re in LA whenever we hop on. But I’m like, wait, I have to correct myself. She’s not, she’s not in LA. [Tatem Lindner]: That’s so funny. You know what is so ironic about that is my default assumption for you is that you live in California. Like I don’t know where you’re from, but in my head you’re from like San Francisco. [Michael Houck]: I mean, I lived in San Francisco. [Michael Houck]: Santa Monica for two years and San Francisco then for three. So I did my time. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: You did. You put in the hours. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I did. I literally put in the hours getting chased by hobos with crowbars on the street. [Tatem Lindner]: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And that’s the reason why I have to stay away from it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, me too. There’s more things to life than being in San Francisco. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Yeah. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I don’t know why everybody I always talk to has negative San Francisco experiences. I’ve never had any. Yeah, I guess it depends on the time, right? [Michael Houck]: I mean, I got mugged my first day in San Francisco. I mean, I knew what I was getting myself into, but the business needed me up there, so I had to make the move. It was a rough decision. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, so interesting. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: But yeah, I have tons of people that are like, you know, I check with the people that grew up there. I think that’s kind of different. Yeah, that’s like a lot of big cities now. Toronto is getting, Vancouver is getting like quite bad as well. [Michael Houck]: Um, but you know, that’s why I’m in Toronto guys. Nice city right on the coast. Warm, but no, none of those problems. [Jacob Shipley]: None of those problems. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Anyways. [Jacob Shipley]: Hey, Jacob. Hey, what’s going on? And, uh, lovely friends coming It’s Taco Tuesday, man. [Michael Houck]: Well, okay, sounds good. Well, I do think that we’ll probably use most of today just to jam and brainstorm. I think it’s pretty clear that Emil on his end at least has had a lot of, you know, obviously things to take care of with everything that’s been going on after the incident. So we can talk about how that’s affecting plans and sort of what next steps are. But then, yeah, we should brainstorm a bit because, you know, to Emil’s point, we had planned for the sort of man on the street videos to be a potential big shot this month. We know that’s not going to happen due to the scheduling. And so I don’t want us to get complacent and say, all right, let’s push that to be the big shot for October. We want to do like a second one basically in October. So I think should brainstorm what that should be. Um, and then, uh, and then go from there. And I’ll share some updates on the stuff that I’ve been working on around the site. I’m hoping to have a working prototype of that for the map this week. So we can get into that a little bit, too. So I guess just real quick to start off, yeah, does everyone just want to go around and share where are we at with current work, what’s in the pipeline, and have timelines been affected by the incident and everything? What’s the status? So if anyone wants to go first with that, feel free. [Tatem Lindner]: I’ll go first. Um, so we were supposed to have men on the street interviews yesterday. Um, Emil asked me Sunday night to kind of push those back and cancel those. Um, so now I’m working with the street interviewers and their teams to find a different date. They’re pretty much chill with it. I just said that he had a personal emergency and that we could pay 50% upfront now. So that they knew that we were still very interested and we weren’t trying to be flaky. And they’ve been pretty okay with that, but now it’s just a matter of time of reorganizing everyone’s schedules once again so that they fall pretty much on the same date. So bear with me on that because one guy is out of town until the second. So that’s kind of an update on timeline there. With TikTok videos themselves, it’s been very hard to like get a meal to be present and available for those videos, but we are planning on having a shoot either Thursday or Friday of this week, so that hopefully we’ll be back on a daily posting schedule again. But yeah, not a lot of happy things to report, sorry, but updates nonetheless. [Michael Houck]: Cool, yeah, I’m glad that they sort of are okay with that. I think paying 50% upfront is smart, just to sort of appease, because it is an inconvenience. And we don’t want them to like, you know, half-ass it once they actually do it. [Tatem Lindner]: So I think. And we canceled on them like 12 weeks or 12 hours ahead of time. It was ridiculous. Like, yeah, I was emailing them at midnight and just hoping that they were going to respond. And yeah, so the 50% up front has been like a really easy thing. We do have fallback ones just in case, but those costs way more. So I wanted to kind of keep a hold like the ones that we already have a relationship with and just, you know, see if we can make it work. [Michael Houck]: And it seems like we can, but yeah. Cool. Okay. Just keep me updated with the scheduling there. And if we do want to reschedule, did you and Emil get to do the rehearsal on Friday or how did that, how’d that go? [Tatem Lindner]: He kept pushing it. Um, and then he rewrote the script a little bit and then we had like a quick rehearsal, but then there were just a bunch of things in the air, I got a model for us that date, and then had to cancel on the model. So now I have to figure out, like, if we’re going to rewrite the script in that area, or if I can find another model for like the upcoming date, you know? So like, yes, we did rehearse a bit, but a lot of it did change in that process. And now I still have to figure some things out. So I wouldn’t say it’s like 100% there right now. [Michael Houck]: Okay. I mean, loop me in as needed. If, you know, if you want me to push back on anything on the script, I know you, you know, you know what you’re doing here. So if we’re making changes that you think will negatively impact performance, like just loop me in and we can, we can chat about it. [Tatem Lindner]: I think it’s fine. I think that the number one thing is that I actually am glad that these were pushed back because I do think that his head wasn’t exactly where it needed to be for it. And I think it was kind of coming across when we were practicing So I’m really glad that maybe if we push it by a week or two, it’ll be different like he’ll be less underwater with everything going on and just Be able to like put full focus into it And then once once we film it they can take them live like within what like a week or two Yeah, so I’m sure that it’s basically give them the money, then they’ll be happy to post. But one of them agreed to have it posted all over TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, just like everywhere, trying to get some collab posts with them. So I wanted to, you know, coordinate with them on that. It also just depends on, like, sometimes some people’s accounts allow you to collab post and some don’t. And I’ve been trying to mess with them y’alls and figure out what’s happening there. Because it’s just like something that they’re testing on tik-tok not everybody. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I’m trying to figure out if we can do that for hours and then um Oh, there’s something else. [Michael Houck]: But yeah, whatever if I if it comes to mind, I’ll I’ll say that later, but Cool. Um, okay Jacob, how are things on on your end? Um any disruption? Yeah I really want to know what Starbucks is. All right. Is this any better? I can hear you. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah. [Jacob Shipley]: OK, cool. I’ll just switch to the receiver on my phone instead of the AirPods. OK, so Chris Kerner, got back with him. We were kind of chatting a little bit about the Emil wanting to give 5,000 away to a young, hungry hustler. I think he’s down. He just said that video has kind of lost its life. And I said, well, yeah, it doesn’t need to be that video. I don’t want to say this, but we really just want Chris. We want to partner with Chris. And so I said, it doesn’t have to be that specific video. He’s really focused on wanting to grow on X, so we can wait until there’s a good opportunity. So we’re just staying on his radar. I’m trying to be very tentative. I don’t want to like over push, but I’m not going to let it go. So I’m going to keep following up there. Some of the investor deep dives are in client review and notion. So Emil has access to that. Some that are geared towards like deep dives on Peter Thiel and Masa. I’m going through your old tweets as inspiration, not straight copying pasting, but copying I’m kind of formatting that to try to get in front of those people. And then I’m also doing buying some books on Kindle so I can do like those screenshot essay kind of things where you screenshot quotes and kind of give commentary on that. Going through, Anil has given me lists before of his top, you know, biographies that he likes. And so going through those, let’s see. [Michael Houck]: If you do the if you do a Marc Andreessen one just make sure to use the egghead photos most important point Okay, I will Honestly, it’s like if you do it people go crazy in the comments like posting like the conehead So you have to like hide the comments and you’re like actively doing that But it drives it drives tons of engagement because everyone’s like his head looks like an egg, but like obviously it’s like engagement So you have to hide it but it’s obviously still good to find. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah, okay. No, I’ll hit you up about that. That’s super interesting. [Michael Houck]: Let me actually make a note of that so I don’t forget. It’s this beautiful picture of this guy and his head just looks totally like an egg. [Jacob Shipley]: It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. All right, I’ll make a note of that. And then the paying influencers to do like threads on a meal. So that process, I mean, it sounds like he gave the thumbs up on that. So how you said something around that and next steps. Let’s see, let me get this pulled up. Yeah, so first step is dropping some thoughts on the angles we should encourage them to take. So I kind of want to just send them the poets and quants article and just say like, hey, whatever you find interesting, because I feel like there are seven or eight different angles they could take there and then just have them kind Let loose and the meal said he wants to move really quickly on that So I can work with Ben and we can get that, you know, hopefully live by the end of September Yeah, okay, so it sounds good I think the big thing is we definitely want to do order of operations right here because if we Yeah, if we if we go to them first and we’re just like hey, what do you need? [Michael Houck]: You’re not gonna know right? Yeah do that research So the more we can provide for them in terms of angle and the secondary materials they can include the better the threat is going going to perform. Yeah. [Jacob Shipley]: What do you think as far as, sorry, I’m walking across the mariachi music is slightly less loud on the other side of the Starbucks. So the, the angles there, do you want me to essentially like write it for them or just give them a, Hey, here’s a direction I think, or give them like maybe just do three or four options of like, Hey, here’s some ideas we have. And then here are the photos we have. [Michael Houck]: Definitely. Definitely the latter, because they know their audience. They know their voice. We’re not going to know that. It’s not a good use of your time. I would say just give them a couple options for angles and say, here are the materials. Put it in a Google Drive folder and just say, here are some materials. [Jacob Shipley]: You should look for more, but here are some that we can provide. Let me make a note of this. And I will try to get everything assembled by tomorrow at the latest so that so that we can get this live by end of month. Cool. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that’d be great. Because I do think that this is like a similar approach to what Tatem is doing on TikTok, where we’re just like kind of trying to, I don’t know, pillage these other people’s audiences. So I like this sort of consistent approach there across platforms. [Jacob Shipley]: And if it works well, I picked the ones that I thought were like the highest leverage of like, you know, they’re allowed to help like their tweets get like seven views. But so all of these ones were like super high profile. It’s crazy, like the discrepancy in prices, but you know, one of them that they’re not all that different in like size and engagement. And one was 2,600, one was 260. So, but it’s like, oh, that’s what you charge. That’s what you charge. So we’ll, I’ll get that stuff ready. [Michael Houck]: It’s the social proof, man. It’s the brand. That’s what we’re paying for, you know? [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah, no, totally. I’ll get that set up and I’ll pass everything off to Ben to have them set up with the creators. [Michael Houck]: And I don’t know how we want to do like the billing. Ben handles all that. Ben handles all that. We’ve done this, not with other clients of yours, but we’ve done this with other clients before. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Ben knows the process. [Michael Houck]: Okay, dope. I’ll get it done by tomorrow. Cool. Sounds good. And then Greg, like how are things on the news? Like in the PR world right now like obviously the Charlie Kirk thing was so big for like basically a full 10 day cycle like are we do you feel like we’re on the other side of that now or is it still chaos like what are you seeing? [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Yeah it’s it’s I mean you know it’s it’s obviously we have the Jimmy Kimmel stuff as well but um yeah it’s better it’s better I mean you know it’s obviously like post funeral um post-mortem so it’s it’s definitely Definitely a bit lighter. But, yeah, I mean, you know, I think we’ll be okay. I think right now it’s just more of a question of, like, what’s next? We’ve written… I mean, the Observer piece went out yesterday. You know, now that we have this sort of profile, I just don’t really know how valuable the Observer stuff is anymore. I mean, it’s good, because the audience is good. You know, Jared Kushner used to own it, right? You know, because we pay for each of these, right? I mean, we have writers kind of, and they’re quite expensive. And the entrepreneur one, we were supposed to do one that was approved, and then we kind of had to rewrite it. So I’m basically paying twice for one article. And so that’s being written now. I should have that draft by the next draft by Wednesday. And then once that’s ready, I’ll again kind of do like what we did with Wall Street Journal and just pitch it to others. And then if they don’t take it, give it to an entrepreneur. But yeah, I mean, you know, we’re ready to pitch again. I’m just sort of trying to figure out, you know, what’s kind of like the angle. It’s difficult to kind of like follow up that act and not make it feel like it’s, you know, it’s less of an impact, you know? I want to figure out what’s the thing that we can kind of create that spike again. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you set the bar high, man. I just waited like five months. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I was thinking like, you know, sometimes it’s like, you know, just instead of like having it all at one in one cluster, let’s just spread it out. A, you can’t control it and B, that’s really not what we’re doing here. So it’s all good. It’s just, yeah, it’s just now post Kirk. I don’t know if you had a chance to talk about the stuff that we talked about with Emil. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Our meeting last week kept getting pushed back, so I haven’t actually spoken with him yet. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: No, that’s cool. That’s cool. Yeah, so, I don’t know, you know, how can you have stuff that will update us on, but then maybe after that, I’d be happy to kind of just brainstorm, because I think we’re going to start getting into the cadence again of like the regular Op-Ed stuff, which is fine, but again, it just feels less impactful now yeah for sure but like at the same time you know I I think we we did set the expectation I think I mean internally I think we know this and I think emile knows this too that like that was an outlier result we shouldn’t expect that to come from every you know big piece that we try to pitch or anything like that so I think that’s fair um anything on this but if we try and aim for it you know like you know what I mean like we might not land on the moon every time right But at least we kind of aim for that landing. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I thought you were going to lay the, well, we’ll be in the stars line on me right there, man. I thought you were going to lay it on us. But yeah, no, of course we should, we should aim big. Absolutely. Anything on the network side of things, any new people we’re trying to get a meal to spend one-on-one time with right now that are top of mind for you? And it’s okay if the answer’s no. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: right now but just just curious yes and no I mean no but yes um he’s getting ready for the b612 stuff I think there’s a trip to arizona I believe let me check the calendar um so that stuff is all the jervits and all of these sort of things so that’s going to happen in the next kind of like four weeks we’re going to have a lot of that going on um but I didn’t I didn’t reach out to like the the ben chestnuts again etc I was thinking if we kind of figure out our, and maybe this is like one of the things we can brainstorm around is like, do we, is this now the time to think and implement this sort of young business leader idea? [Michael Houck]: Right. Yep. Okay. Um, and then I think also on that front, um, Jacob, you’re working with Ben on the, um, Forbes 30 under 30, like conference meetups, uh, and stuff, right? [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah, I wrote a generic DM and then sent that to Ben. Ben said he was going to get Emil’s approval on that and start sending that out to everybody on that list. So yeah, the DM I wrote and then I think it’s in Emil’s hands now with Ben ready, locked and loaded to start sending that out. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think Ben has started sending that out today because he sent Emil’s edit request to me last I tweaked it a little bit. So I think he’s good to go. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. All right. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Good deal Okay, let me know if anything else comes up there, but I think we should be good Sorry, Emil is in Flagstaff for that’s cool Yeah next week and he’s actually gonna be with my good friend Ed Lu driving which is awesome. I mean he was like instrumental in Google Earth And all that stuff he wasn’t he’s an astronaut. So we should definitely think of like content and all that stuff. [Michael Houck]: Oh That’s interesting. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I didn’t know that that’s cool a bunch of astronauts He’s gonna go to the largest media crater in the world and you know in black stuff I Said it’s cool. [Michael Houck]: Nice little town. I had no idea that yeah, I Guess Tatem. Is there something there that we should do? [Tatem Lindner]: Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking through would it be an approach? For him to record a day in the life while he’s there? Like, is it an actual event or? [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I mean, I’ve been to these things a few times. No, it’s kind of like, you know, you take like a group of, I mean, yes, yes, I definitely, and I spoke to Danica, the president, because we’re like super close friends. She said, you know, basically even happy to film at Steve Jurvetson’s party, like pretty much kind of like everywhere that there’s going to be some restrictions and the media creator, like, we’re officially technically not allowed to go down into the crater, although this group always is allowed to kind of, so not filming down there, but otherwise, yeah, totally. And it makes perfect sense, because they also love the content. You know, so yeah, I think that’d be great. And then it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like, they get to the hotel, they kind of do the drive. Sometimes I think they fly like five, they usually take like five jets or four jets down. The donors usually give their jets and then they just spend time at the crater for a couple of hours, three hours, which is always cool. And then they have a really fancy dinner with everyone. So yeah, there’s plenty of opportunity. [Tatem Lindner]: Okay, that’s really cool. Yeah, I’ve been working on trying to get Emil to be able to film himself doing compelling stuff when he’s traveling. So hopefully by that point, We’ll have like him getting some good angles so that we can so that I can edit that together Next weekend, so it’s like, you know first October weekend here. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: This is like kind of what it looks like Right. I mean, it’s pretty spectacular when you’re like in there That’s crazy. Yeah, and then you know, you can do like a little interview with the does he have like a little you know one of those like little little kind of clip mics or something like that and bluetooth maybe just for his phone just to have some good good audio yeah I almost fell into the cradle what yes there’s a few like little spots like you have these you have these like kind of safety things but then uh not everywhere that’s really cool it’s really cool it’ll be some it’ll get some good Great, great pictures. And I’m sure that Scott Manley is going to be there. He’s actually, we should think about Scott. Scott’s cool. He used to be special, something at like Apple. He just left because he’s got like 1.8 million followers now, massive following. And he’s like a really good friend. And so I’m sure that they could do some stuff together as well. Probably not our audience, but Elon, Elon is a big fan, right? So, you know, he retweets a lot of stuff that he puts out. There’s like something fun they could do on that trip. [Tatem Lindner]: Yeah. I think anyone reputable can only help because we’re trying to build like this idea that Emil knows these people and he’s, he’s got that intelligence behind him where they want to talk to him. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: So yeah. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Check out, check him out here on his YouTube channel and then his ex, uh, like really big datum. [Michael Houck]: Let’s, I think it would be good to, to brainstorm some ideas on how we could make Not just I mean of this relationship with Scott obviously this looks really good In general they’re like specific Content ideas, but obviously we want to be able to capture like day-in-the-life b-roll type stuff But if they’re like specific things we want him to do or pretty unique opportunity, right? And so it’s a one-shot-on-goal type thing. [Tatem Lindner]: So let’s let’s try to be strategic about it Okay, I’ll do that when he went to New York the this past time, I sent him a shot list. And I was like, we need these clips. And then if you can’t get or like, and if you get these clips, these are like optional clips that would really help. And then I just like prioritize them as we went down. And then I sent him like a list of video ideas that I wanted to do with said clips. So I think I’ll do kind of similar things for him there. [Michael Houck]: How did we do on those capturing them? [Tatem Lindner]: Um, well, he We had another person from Candid that was in New York. She lives up there. So she helped record those videos. So the ones that she captured, that was the initial video that got 30,000 views. That was her first push. So not bad. But for the ones he was recording, they just weren’t there yet. [Michael Houck]: Got it. OK. All right. Sounds good. So yeah, if that’s next weekend, Greg, it’s not this coming weekend. It’s the following. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: It’s the following. It’s on the 3rd and 4th of October. Okay. Cool. [Michael Houck]: So let’s, I guess, yeah, Tata, maybe for next week’s meeting, when Emil’s going to be on this call, let’s just have some ideas to throw at him and kind of get his reactions for it. Because he might know how he wants to use the trip and we’ll want to get his sort of POV on it too. Awesome. Okay. Works. Okay. Cool. OK. So then, yeah, Greg, I think let’s use the majority of the rest of the time to jam on new angles to pitch. Because I think whether we hit the same cultural chord of the work-life balances for losers angle or not, it’s clear we can make noise to this channel. So where’s your head at? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I love this. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: So when the whole Jimmy Kimmel thing happened, right? Like I, you know, I was basically talking to his team since Wednesday last week, because we, we all thought that he’s gonna not come back. And so our kind of like little scheme was, uh, to have him on German TV, um, sort of do the joke that, you know, America doesn’t have freedom of speech anymore. So Jimmy’s now moving to Germany. Um, and then when the deal happened with over the weekend, we kind of, I guess, you know, kind of scrape that pretty quickly. But the point is, like, I’ve got to go in with his team, like with his head producers and writers. And so now it’s kind of like this last thing was like, well, we basically said, if they’re back on, he’s not going to Germany. But, you know, so I don’t know, I’m just kind of thinking maybe because that’s like, there’s like an open thread in my email. Is there some I mean, Emil is going to be in San Francisco for some time. So obviously during the trip to LA, to be in the studio would be, but what’s the sort of like thing that Emil could do? And it has to be like, I mean, Kimmel did a joke on me years ago because, and it was great, but it was like basically making fun of me. So is there something that Emil would feel comfortable that I could do? Kimmel could do like yeah, you know light-hearted son of that Feels to Kimmel like this is a great, you know, like yeah, I mean it can just be you know Yeah, I think that’s that’s the right way to think about it Like it has to be has to be funny. [Michael Houck]: I mean has to be a little bit comfortable with like the self-deprecating nature of the experience but it also has to be something that culturally Kimmel is gonna want to talk about make a make a point on. Interesting. Interesting. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Maybe to just, it has to be something really huge. Either it’s another kind of op-ed type thing that we launch, and then that, instead of being on Fox, will be on Kimmel. Or maybe we can even make fun of the… It would have been perfect if we would have done it right after to the Wall Street Journal thing, right? It’s like, this kid, you know, could we film, like, okay, so one thing that could be good, and we could use it for other stuff too, we should have like footage of like Emil, in like all the sort of like craziest places, where he’s just on the laptop, like working, like that kid at that ballgame. And it’s like, he’s like at the crater, and everybody’s like talking to Emil, like just like on the phone, like kind of Gordon Gekko style, or like that sort of thing. And we just have him like at all of these places, like, you’d expect, you know, you to be like, like this working. And then we can maybe like do the thing of like, you know, what’s this kid doing? He’s like, you know, he’s like at this thing. And he’s like, you know, I mean, what if I’m great at the US open? [Michael Houck]: He’s like, always on the phone, always just working, you know, like, so I, I like this because I’m curious, Tatem, what you think about it, too. But I like this because it reminds me of one of my buddies, content, like style. So He does this guy, Jacob, you know him, this guy, Jason Levin. He’s like a Twitter guy for the most part. He used to record these man on the street style videos in the New York subway where he would be sitting on the subway and like just reading like a very embarrassing book. It would be like, like how to live with a really small penis or something like that. Like right on the cover, that’d be the title of the book. And it was just like these like very like awkward, like, why would you be here doing that type vibe? And so I get that same kind of sense of like, why would you be at the Grand Canyon on your laptop and on your phone? Or why would you be, you know, at Hakkasan nightclub in Vegas on your laptop or on your phone, you know, like, those types, it’s like a why, like, this kind of dissonance, like, why is this happening here type setting that I think we can we can play off of for this. But Tatem, I’m curious what you think about that. [Tatem Lindner]: No, I actually really like that because I think that if we do this well enough, people will start spotting him, you know, when he’s in New York or somewhere else and want him to take videos and post it. We can really manufacture this, but I think that it has to be to an extreme, like your buddy, where like we’re catching people’s eye from the very beginning. Yeah. So how do we do that? [Michael Houck]: How do we make it so that it’s not just okay he’s on his laptop in a weird situation it’s like there’s like a instant visual hookup like whoa like who is this guy how do we how do we take it to that next level we’re not gonna have him carrying around a book of you know how to live with this one and the laptop itself isn’t like as visually eye-catching is that I think like I don’t know like it could be a visual thing. [Tatem Lindner]: It could also be, you know how when you’re walking by someone on the street and they say something like on their phone, and you’re like, what are they even talking about, you know, and you’ve like, over their conversation, like, do some stuff like that, where out of context, it sounds really completely weird, or just like, odd, but then like, with context, it makes sense. I don’t know, I think I’m gonna need some time to brainstorm. [Michael Houck]: But Yeah, we run the risk with that of like it that becoming the thing. And if that’s the thing, then the algo is naturally going to want to push us to more extreme versions of that, which then get away from, like, you know what I mean? So we have to be careful about like, we don’t want to be able to be saying like crazy, like insane things, whether it be like related to working, you know, we could do more extreme versions of like him working in weird places. [Tatem Lindner]: like Greg was talking about with the US Open, the Creator, et cetera, just like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think you should just give me some time to think on it. I don’t think I’m gonna come up with the answer right now. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s a good thread. It’s a good thread. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Who other than me is like old enough on this call to like remember? No, actually I’m not that old. But to remember these like old chunky phones. They’re like in the 90s, right? You had these really big chunky phones, like the first, before the Nokia. And so I’m thinking, I’m actually just looking, maybe we can get one of those vintage phones. I heard somebody say, some tech people, I think Steve Jobs even, that they used really simple phones. I may not know Steve Jobs because of the iPhone, but somebody else, they used really simple phones without so many apps, so they don’t have these distractions. So we could have, because Emil has this whole thing he always had a good suit, even at like, you know, college, right? That he would like wear it. So why don’t give him like one of those like classic big phones that really pops up. It’s like, you know, but it’s working, you know, so he can make his calls. It’ll pop up on the video easily. We’d want to avoid him coming off, like, cause there’s two ways to take that. [Michael Houck]: The one way to take that is he’s locked in, like he’s only focused on what he’s doing. He’s not distracted by the apps or whatever. The other way to take it is, Who is this, like, Gen Z boomer? You know, why is this guy on this old, old ass tech? So I think we need to do it right. But that would definitely be visually eye catching for sure. [Tatem Lindner]: Just thinking of the eye catching thing. I almost want to take your idea and change it a tiny bit and say, what if we got him a bunch of custom made foam cases? And they all said something different or like all had like different symbols I don’t know like where we could really play around with it almost like I don’t know if you guys I’m gonna really do the thing again where I’m calling out like a random celebrity or something but Taylor Swift on stage always had like different shirts and stuff and then people would like piece together what they said over time or it would like hint to something I don’t know if we can do something like that where we can just Like on every single video, people go backwards and they can like Read through it. And it’s just something silly. [Michael Houck]: It’s like an Easter egg. Like if you’re, yeah. Okay. Interesting. I feel like it’s okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No, I don’t dislike it. [Michael Houck]: I think it’d be easier to do once we establish his, you know, and then it’s like, okay, what, what is, what’s the next layer that he’s adding onto this? It’s like a story at that point, but I feel like, At first, it’s just going to be like, you know, why is this guy have a phone case with a giant like letter R on it or something like that? [Tatem Lindner]: It would be like a weird word or like maybe not even a weird word, like the word we or something where people are like, that’s really odd. And then they see another one and it’s like the word, I don’t know, like another random word. And then later they’re like, what is he trying to say? And could it bring them back to his initial page? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: You know, it could, it the videos get enough traction. Mm-hmm. [Tatem Lindner]: But we really only need like a couple videos to pop off where people start to see this pattern to where it might pique an interest, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s a layer. [Michael Houck]: I don’t think it’s the thing that’s gonna make the videos pop off, but I think it’s a layer for sure. Yeah, I agree. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: We just need to email back on Fox News and then in the middle of the interview he’s like picking up his phone with that like case and he’s like on the call because he’s been busy for the interview. It’s like, yeah, yeah, buy the stock. Buy the stock now. Sorry. [Michael Houck]: Sorry, what are you doing? Sorry, I got to take my laptop out, guys. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I just started working on Vox. But I kind of like the idea of him popping up in all these places, where you’d be like, why is he on the top of the Eiffel Tower? Instead of looking at the view on the phone. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think we need two things for this. We need, what are the settings? Think those are somewhat intuitive. We can figure those out. That’s not hard. I think the harder part is, like, what is the thing? What is the thing that he is doing that is going to catch people’s attention enough to make them stop scrolling? [Tatem Lindner]: Right? Wait, hold on. Sorry, pause real quick. What if I’m like, say, for instance, we went back to baseball, right? And I created like a fake commentators thing like on TV. And you see him like being zoomed in and it goes away from the baseball game and it goes in a hand. That’s a way where it feels organic and people are talking about him, but it’s really on his page. [Tatem Lindner]: That’s good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I like that a lot. Let’s try that. That’s fun. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: The other one is because you were saying baseball and I was just thinking the kiss cam thing with Coldplay. I was just thinking, obviously we can’t go to Coldplay and give them 5k. Well, we could ride the kiss cam guy I give him 5k to zoom in on the meal. Well, he’s like on the phone, you know, and then, you know, and then like somebody, this is, this is getting at something. [Michael Houck]: What both, both of the examples you guys just shared is I think getting at the key point here. It’s not enough to put a meal in a place that is weird to be working. It has to be a social situation where you shouldn’t be working. So kiss him. Someone’s trying to kiss him. He’s like, I’m on a call. Like, get out of here, you know? It’s like, that’s so weird. That’s better. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: That’s like 10x better. I mean, I’m sure, like, I don’t know who the Kiss Cam operators are, but I’m sure we could, like, literally go up to, like, I mean, find somebody who’s, like, operating these things at, like, the arenas. [Tatem Lindner]: There are some baseball teams like for all of their kiss cams they’ll put like their mascot or someone like these people in a position where they do something really embarrassing like propose and the girl says no whatever like I wonder if we can reach out and be like we really want to be involved in one of those like embarrassing things and just see see we can have it unfold because they’re already gonna be recording it and yeah and we’re if we’re gonna do this for baseball we have like a week because the playoffs start in like a week from now. [Michael Houck]: So we got to move quick on this. But I do like the baseball idea. I think we should also brainstorm like 10 or 20 of these type of scenarios and just pick out the best, I don’t know, three to five. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I like the idea that Emil is like popping a few in San Francisco and L.A. Right in that area and like he could easily go to when is the NBA kicking off like a Lakers game or something like that. [Michael Houck]: And I like the idea of like the thing is I was just watching the old curb your enthusiasm episode where Larry David gets in the front row seat at the Lakers game and accidentally trips and injures Shaq Like that’s the kind of like social situation awkwardness that we need for this But obviously like it needs to be about him working not him being you know, an ignorant Larry David s character. But yeah, I totally, totally agree. This is good. All right. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: So to bring it to bring it back, though, this while being a very cool content strategy and idea that we can and should try out. [Michael Houck]: I don’t know how this relates necessarily, Greg, to the Kimo idea. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: And I do think that the Kimo idea does because it’s like I remember that guy, it was like a social thing where he would travel around the world and photograph him jumping up or something. He would always jump with a bunch of people and he had thousands of people with him jumping at all these places around the world. It was just weird, but he did it hundreds of times and he ended up on one of those shows, right? And so I was just thinking if we made it a thing that Emil pops up at all these places and it becomes a viral thing and I can pitch it. Here’s this guy who always works at all these events that you’ve seen. We really have to start placing him at all of these big things where he might just get invited as well to just work at the NBA. [Michael Houck]: I think we could pitch that, but we’re not going to have that ready in the next couple of days. If you have the open thread with Kimmel now, what are we talking about? [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I know. I also don’t want to just kind of blow that up for something kind of not great, right? Like that’s one of those things. Like right now is probably also not going to be the time because right now it’s going to have like everybody in the world will want to be on Kimmel. Once the ratings are down again, you know, I can, I did this thing, the French government shut us down, but we were supposed to do like a live call with Kimmel in space. And then it was like, Oh, I lost you. I lost you. Oh, we lost signal. We think we lost the internet. International Space Station, sorry, sorry, call the president.” And we had the whole thing recorded, and then the French government said, no, it makes us look bad. But we can do little skits with Jimmy, like that, with his team, where if we have enough momentum around something like this, that could be like, why don’t we have Jimmy at the Lakers game, or one of his team, and then Emil, like, sitting next to him, like, talking on the phone. It could be, like, really obnoxious, like, yeah, yeah, buy that thing, buy that thing, buy it now, It’s like, dude, I’m trying to watch the fricking game, you know, like, Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Like, like he gets in a fight, he gets in a fight with a celebrity, like, because he’s like too busy working and it’s like distracting them, having a good experience or whatever. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Like, that’s cool. That’s funny. Making a deal is like Shaq, like, dude, I’m trying to enjoy the game. [Michael Houck]: Shaq would be like, dude, I’m trying to enjoy the game. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. So we basically, we should treat that like an open channel that we can just go back. Yeah. Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think so. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What else? Yeah. What else is the question? [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Jacob, any thoughts on your end? Or is the mariachi band making it hard to hear us? No, I can hear you. [Jacob Shipley]: Can you guys still hear the music? [Michael Houck]: No, we can hear you. [Jacob Shipley]: Um, yeah, no, while you guys were talking, I was kind of looking on the content I have up, you know, like ready to go. I think it’s going to be a lot of just like swinging big on those industry guys. I think there’s like some potential there. LinkedIn has really, really slowed down a ton. And so trying to think through like options there, but I think this consistent, you know, quality content is still to play there. But with Twitter specifically. Things like these threads that we’re paying for, I think that’s going to be a big one. I’m really just kind of thinking through the lenses. I don’t know if I have any unique angles to add to what you’re saying. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I think I’m just thinking more tactically. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah, more tactically on what I can leverage on the poll on Twitter to get us from 300 to 3,000 or 3,000. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thinking like we’ve got them in San Francisco, basically for the entire month next month, right? Is that true? [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Is he going to ask that for most of October? [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I’m checking. [Michael Houck]: I think he doesn’t mean like in no, no. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Oh yeah. Yeah. Until the 30th of October, at least according to his calendar. He’s flying over on… No, it looks like he’s there for the entirety of October. From the 9th. Right, because he’s probably going into fundraising mode. [Michael Houck]: He wanted to chat with me about that this week. So, yeah, okay. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Yeah, for the videos I was just going to say, where did he go? [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: We had to go take care of fundraising right away. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: It was top priority. [Tatem Lindner]: But yeah. Okay. That makes sense. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So, okay. [Michael Houck]: So we should, I guess we should think a lot about that and like startup world stuff in particular. How can we make him make noise in the startup world? Right. That’s like, I guess should be the priority then in October, if he’s going to be there. So, I mean, Greg, we can talk about this sort of young business leaders thing. I do think that’s a good idea. I do think that we should explore it. I don’t know how much that’s going to resonate in SF in particular. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Well, the question is like, why isn’t SF, right? Like we need to like, I know he’s going to be busy with Andres, but we should, we should Figure out like how can we use this for like everything like yeah, the easy stuff is I can set up a bunch of like just meetings with journalists, you know, we just have to like figure out the angle but That’s not gonna Get us and I feel like we’re generally really need to figure out like how do we bump up? Numbers both like media mentions the following, you know everything so We gotta think of like a couple of big moments while he’s in sf. [Michael Houck]: I think I really want to try to get him I’m on TBPN, which is like the, it’s like the daily show. Like it’s like three, four, five hours live show every day of like hosted by a former founders fund partner. And they bring on founders to talk for like 10 or 15 minutes segments at times like Bloomberg, basically like Bloomberg TV, but around venture capital and startups. I know both of the guys who are the hosts a bit, they’re not like close contacts, reached out to one I haven’t heard back so I’m just gonna keep pushing on that because I think that’s getting a lot of attention right now in SF but that’s like a you know that’s like a single piece of content I guess yeah what are like moments what are other moments we can create in that in that space I don’t know about moments but um you’ll mentioned potentially having me fly down there for a couple of days and do some content while he’s in ESSA. [Tatem Lindner]: So yeah, I was gonna have him kind of fill me in on what the average day is for him there and if there’s anything like in particular we wanted to capture on socials too. [Michael Houck]: I mean I think it’d be good to have b-roll of him like you know like walking into the offices of like venture firms that are well known and like they have their name on the door so you can see it like stuff like that you know. There’s Also, there’s a really well-regarded place there called Shack 15. It’s on the water downtown. They host a lot of in-the-know type hackathons there and events. It’s like a club slash co-working space, kind of a unique spot. But it’s very beautiful, and there are good people there. So he should spend time there, number one. I’ll advise him to do that. But number two, we should try to get some content there for sure. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I have an idea. Um, the, there was a thing, the Stan founders, uh, you know, the, the, this, this new kind of platform, um, they’re getting some traction. They’re flying to San Francisco. They just flew to San Francisco to like interview, like the best engineers and stuff for the company. Right. Um, and I was just thinking, right, San Francisco startup hub. Um, what if we did like a, kind of a pop-up sort of thing where we could probably partner with some like, uh, influencers. What if like Emil does like a, like a, like just everybody in San Francisco, like has an idea for a startup, right? Like, I mean, that’s kind of like, you know, it’s like the hub in the world. So what if he did like some kind of an open call for like startup founders to pitch to him? And we could even do like, I mean, I was going to say this, but you know, like Charlie, Charlie Kirk always had this sort of tent, right? Oh, up in the open. Um, but he could do like at WeWork or something. And it’s like, you know, we do like one day and you know, people can essentially apply. We do like a whole kind of a thing around it. And then they can come like with their, their best, like ideas, like they got 20 seconds essentially in the elevator type stuff, but, but we can kind of like do it in a fun way, like in a kind of completely like unique way, not sort of like the way that you know, VCs and others are doing it, but just in a, I don’t know, in a completely unique way. Maybe, I don’t know. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I feel like in NSF, that type of thing would probably attract like low quality founders. That doesn’t mean we can’t get good content out of it, but I don’t think, I mean, I don’t know how much we care about the quality of the founders that come to this thing, but [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: It’s not really about that. I mean. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Yeah, that’s true. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: It’s more about, here’s this guy, 22, right? And maybe we can, I mean, we don’t want to say he’s going to give a million or a quarter million or something, but we can sort of say, it’s like with Shark Tank, right? They don’t go in and say, Mark Cuban doesn’t say, I’m going to spend a million dollars today on any startup that comes. But we could sort of present it like that way, you know, like depending on idea or whatever like we’re not going to put a number around that we’re just going to say like you know this this founders slash investor you know you you get a chance you know whether you’re the barista at starbucks and you have a great idea but we’re sort of making it more open and yeah we’re going to get a lot of low quality but it’s really just to have like this sort of moment um yeah I see what you’re saying yeah I think if we’re if we’re not actually concerned with like like sourcing deals from it or like the quality or whatever. [Michael Houck]: No, maybe I think it’s kind of, it’s kind of odd though, because we, I feel like that, that thing could like do well when we post content about it with like audiences outside of SF. But I almost think it would be like some people in SF would like not love that because like It positions Emil in this almost presumptuous light of, oh, you should come to me for this. Come sit before me, peons, and ask me for money. And I feel like, in SF, folks are very much, they try to hide it. They really try to hide the fact that it is transactional. They really try to make it as peer-to-peer, relationship-y focused as possible. So like, when I hear that, I put my like, you know, SF hat on, it would turn me off to Emil, but I think for a lot of people who aren’t in SF, it would sort of be a cool thing that we could show. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I guess the idea would be, you know, I mean, I don’t know how, I’ve done it a couple of times, but I guess I’ve never like gone to SF, lived there and then, And it was looking for deals. I was kind of going in, right, because I had deals lined up that I was going to close. So I’m just kind of thinking maybe a lot of people would think it’s like impossible. I need to know somebody somewhere to like even present them my idea. You know, like it’s kind of a close, close circus versus I can just walk up somewhere and somebody gives me a chance. It’s kind of like he gives people a chance, but maybe there’s, Maybe there’s some people that only need like, you know, 20K or 15K, and it’s actually a good idea. And then they might actually invest, but it’s like, it’s really this idea of like kind of shattering that. [Tatem Lindner]: Can I play off of your idea a tiny bit and suggest, like, I almost feel that SF is not the exact correct place to do it, like Houck was saying, but what if we could get him to speak to an entrepreneurship program something at Stanford, which is like 45 minutes away. And then we’re giving students almost another platform. And we’re saying that we can kind of put them in front of potential investors via his social media. And then on top of that, he’s speaking to the class and showing them like just a couple years after graduation, you could be where he is. And it’s more of like an inspirational thing. [Michael Houck]: I’m with you, except for the part about put them in front of investors through his social media, because I don’t think we have a social media following. There are people that can find an SF who have a bigger social media following who can help them with that part. But I do think there’s value with Emil being so young and so successful at his age and having built companies while in college. There’s an angle to go to Stanford and talk to the students there and be like, hey, here’s how I did it while I was in college, not even at a great place like Stanford. Here’s how you should be thinking about it. But now that you have all this environment around you. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I like that idea. I like that idea, actually. That’s a good idea. And it kind of makes sense of that crowd, right? Because, yeah, she was there just a few years ago. [Michael Houck]: Let’s think on this a little bit more. I’d like to touch base on this later in the week so that we have a plan going into next week here. But I think let’s all brainstorm some ideas for what this SF tentpole should be, because I think it’s I didn’t know he was going to be an SFO next month, but the fact that he is, that should be our focus for October for sure. How can we best utilize in any type of setting or configuration or whatever, what is the big shot we can take to create a massive media moment in one channel or another within the context of the startup world? I’ll bring some ideas, you guys bring some ideas, and let’s just touch base for a few minutes on Friday or something. And figure out what we want to present to him next week. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: That’s all October stuff, right? Do we have anything? So what’s our September? Do we still have, I mean, we still have like, what, eight days? Is there anything for September that we’re still trying to push? [Michael Houck]: I mean, for my POV, I don’t know that we’re gonna be able to execute against anything new in the next like seven days to get it live that’s gonna have massive impact. What we were going to do in September was the man on the street stuff that got pushed back to, October 2 so basically what we’re saying is and what we’ll say to a meal is that hey, you know We wanted to take this shot with with these like, you know Leveraging these creators and their audiences both across tick-tock and also on the Twitter side, too We’re gonna have these go live in October, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not doing something new in October as well I think that’ll I think that’ll fly Yeah, probably I just um I Yeah. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: I mean, I have a better idea. [Michael Houck]: If we have a better idea, we can get something big to happen in the next seven days from scratch. [Grigorij “8664 Grigorijrichters” Richters]: Like by all means, let’s, let’s talk about it. Well, maybe not, maybe not like have it like launched in some days, but maybe sort of like something that at least I’m just kind of thinking like it was a general thing that was like one day thing in terms of We knew what’s going to happen. Like we could arrange something like that, even if it’s October 2nd. Right. [Michael Houck]: But we’re just of thinking you know the stuff obviously like the meal stuff is so you know but you know it’s too fresh and everything but yeah yeah I know like you know like something look I feel like there’s got to be something on on that side of things I’m going to chat with him about fundraising uh he’s booking some time for either tomorrow or thursday so I’ll bring that up with him then see what he wants us to do and uh and we’ll go from there on it so let’s plan to touch Friday on all of the above, and we’ll find some time. We won’t need an hour, just like a little bit of time to jam on it so that we have something cohesive for him next week. Cool. All right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thanks, everyone. Good chat. It was fun. Absolutely. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thanks.