- Duration: 32 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01KCM83SQVB67E32S3EZ5FD75E (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01KCM83SQVB67E32S3EZ5FD75E)
Transcript
[michael]: I’m going to be camera off. I’m just making my bed right now. So I’ll be camera for the first little bit here, but yeah, good to see you, dude. Good to see you guys. [Stephen OBrien]: I just want to get up to date and see kind of where we’re at with the sort of newsletter design. We have the sort of companies from a co-investor newsletter, all sort of inputted. We walk through some of you know, I want to kind of get the portfolio company newsletter a place where we can kind of like I can share an example with our team so we can get notes on it and kind of have our process dialed for next year where we can kind of do these in a format where we’re kind of compiling stuff in a notion as we go and kind of just like, you know, when we feel like we want to put something out, we put it out. [Andrew Cheng]: Yeah, for sure. So I’m going to drop two agenda items that I have, and one of them is finalizing it drops in the chat. So one of them is just making sure we finalize the title. I think that was those were the two that we had last decided on or we were deciding between. So once we finalize that, we can definitely get keep moving on with the design part. [Stephen OBrien]: Is there any sort of design function today? [Andrew Cheng]: There isn’t at the moment. There isn’t at the moment because that’s the main part that we need to get going. But once we have the title, it’s going to be rather quick. It’ll be like three to four business days. Um, okay. [Stephen OBrien]: So I’m just confused why we can’t get a design and like, are we able to change the title? [michael]: So typically how this works is that we’ll get the title and then we’ll base the design around like the vibe of the title, but we can totally flip it up and we can spend something up super quick, like in like, you know, 48 hours, maybe 72 hours, maybe depending on Celine’s availability. We can spend that up in the meantime. It’s just. Yeah, so we might as well clarify the title on this on this call. [Stephen OBrien]: OK, so let’s tackle both newsletters on this call so we can have a title for each and kind of move both into design phase because we had some lag in time. Some of it’s on my end with handling family issues, but I do want to get something out so we can edit it as a team and just get feedback. Um, cause that’s where, I mean, Alex usually just as a feedback machine on things. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So, yeah, I mean, I would say just, you know, as somebody who’s, you know, we do branding for my newsletter, we do branding for a lot of newsletters. [Stephen OBrien]: The meat and potatoes of it is not the design. [michael]: Like obviously we want you guys as feedback on the design, but especially for these types of newsletters, like who the audience is and how they’re sort of related to you guys already. [Stephen OBrien]: Yeah, the one thing is going to be the meat and potatoes. [michael]: So I would say that’s where we need to iterate the most. But we at the same time want to get you the design ASAP. [Stephen OBrien]: Makes sense. [Stephen OBrien]: So let’s start with the portfolio. Let’s start with the co-investor one. Say again, Michael. [michael]: Andrew, can you just like jump in here and walk us through everything you actually specifically need so that we can make sure that we have alignment on those things during this call? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I would say the biggest thing is, um, is the second question. Cause so Austin, I shared the Google sheet you shared with me to Austin. [Andrew Cheng]: He has gone through it, but I think he just needs, if there’s any extra direction as to the length of the newsletter, um, kind of how we want to format it, how we want to like address the content, that’d be really helpful for him. [Stephen OBrien]: So with the Co-Investor newsletter, I sent you the updated spreadsheet, correct? [Andrew Cheng]: So I shared that with him already. And I think that was his follow up question. [Stephen OBrien]: So really, like, I think sort of the kickoff messaging here is like Deere, like LP and Family Office, Co-Investor, you know, community. We want to you know, share a number of exciting deals with you, like every couple months, given that, you know, Mantis’s investment bandwidth may not often, you know, allow us to do every deal that we see, whether some deals are, you know, within thesis or slightly outside of thesis, there are some incredible, you know, access points that we have that we’d love to be able to make present to this community. So we’re going to build a cadence of sharing things that we really loved, thought were really interesting and thought were really exciting. And beyond that, we want to share the companies within our portfolio that have been, you know, key signal makers and companies that will, you know, in a sense, portray like outstanding future returns. So essentially the companies that we’re most bullish on within our portfolio, it represents the most co-investment opportunity, you know, stages we want to share so that we can make sure that we’re introducing those portfolio companies to our LP and family office co-investment network. [Stephen OBrien]: And so, you know, that’s kind of the gist of like the first chunk. Then we will share, you know, the context on the companies, like we’ve got the portfolio section, like this is why we’re excited about the companies and sort of what to expect. And then the companies that were in our pipeline that we ended up not doing. And then sort of a following perspective on like, if any of these companies are really interesting to you, we are happy to put you in touch directly. As for our portfolio companies, let us know which ones you’re most interested in. We tend to get significant allocations into the growth rounds of our own portfolio companies. And then whether or not the relationship pans with the companies that, you know, within our pipeline is up to you, but we can get you a line of contact. And that’s really the gist of it is just your small pipelines, really exciting, you know, competitive companies in our pipeline that we love that just couldn’t do. And then making sure that the companies in our portfolio are being seen so that we can then go out and justify like significant SPV opportunities with those companies. So what we’ve been doing with Calshi, right. And I think we could even have filled, you know, a considerable amount more in Calshi and some other companies in our portfolio if we had just kind of built this hype train, you know, over through like a newsletter format. And then I would say there’s a there’s a follow on sort of portion of being like, you know, stay tuned for our LP, like family office, you know, network opportunities. To have a golf tournament at the Wynn in March, and we’re going to be building like a more, you know, regular cadence networking opportunity to ensure that our LPs and family office networks are getting to collaborate, you know, with each other more, is sort of the gist of it. Okay, awesome. [Andrew Cheng]: So I think it’s so, what I’m hearing from all of this is like, the base, you know, the intro will always be a little bit different. Of course, we’re not gonna be introducing this every single time, but we’ll tweak the wording a little bit for like each month to see how, like what the, what we want to, what’s the, like the main message you want to get across. But from what I’ve seen, like the rest of the body is pretty much going to be very similar in terms of structure. [Andrew Cheng]: So I don’t know if you have an opinion on this, but I think the second title might work a little bit better. I think it’s just more welcoming and it’s just more. [Stephen OBrien]: I also think that like potentially, I don’t know, I’ll just throw this out there, and I’d love you and Michael’s opinion. What if it’s Mantis, LP, Family Office, and Co-Investor exclusive? That’s it. Just exclusive. [michael]: I think that’s a little long. [michael]: What I like about the two that we have right now are that they’re relatively concise. I think the second one is a little bit long, but it’s okay. [michael]: And I agree, Andrew, that it is sort of a nicer title, but I think we don’t wanna go too much longer than the second one, otherwise we’ll see open rates maybe drop off a little bit. [Stephen OBrien]: Cool, I mean, we could call it Mantis LP exclusive. [michael]: Yeah, that was what I was actually thinking as well. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Something that was in the back of my head. [Stephen OBrien]: If these people kind of like don’t invest in the funds or aren’t like a value add to the co-invest network to a certain degree, like we’ll kind of cycle them out of the newsletter list. You know, like this is the whole idea is that these people are LP targets to, you know, or like very valuable family offices may not do funds, but have the ability to be like interested in things or have introduced me to like other family offices. [Stephen OBrien]: Yeah, okay. I like Mantis LP exclusive. It builds a [michael]: Steve, do you want like, um, in this case, it might be kind of gauche to do this, but what we do with a lot of newsletters is we’ll add an emoji, like a standard emoji for every issue, like same one for every issue, uh, start of the subject line. Uh, that way it stands out in people’s inboxes that it’s from you guys, as opposed to just being another email, they have to read the line for they see the emojis and since they recognizable. [Stephen OBrien]: I think when you’re talking to this audience in particular and the sort of relationship that a fund has to this audience. It might be a little, little corny to do that, but yeah, I don’t, I don’t think we want emojis. I think Alex would disagree as well too. [michael]: Oh, okay. [Stephen OBrien]: So I think that covers the first one. [Andrew Cheng]: Do we want to jump into the second one? Yeah, let’s do it. [Stephen OBrien]: So I guess like, from a tech, we’ll start with the title perspective, and I’ll kind of get into get into some things around it. Let me just open my wiki here. Kind of track. And I can, well, this meeting will make it like This will probably be called Mantis Quarterly Portfolio Newsletter. You know? Or would you suggest something around the lines of like reiterating value add of the fund? [Stephen OBrien]: Yeah, like rather than just portfolio newsletter, like Mantis value driven newsletter. This portco value exclusive. I like exclusive. [michael]: I don’t think we need. [Stephen OBrien]: You know what I’m trying to go for here? [michael]: Yeah, I don’t think we need to over intellectualize it. It’s portco updates, right? I think that’s fine. We can add another word instead of updates and that’s also fine, but we wanna be descriptive about what it is. So I don’t think it’s. [Stephen OBrien]: Mantis portfolio updates. Yeah, that’s easiest. And so the way I want to start this one to come and it’s like a gist of like a gist of, you know, what we’ll be working with is like, hey, Mantis portfolio companies. You know, this is our quarterly quarterly newsletter to, you know, highlight key vendors, portfolio companies in the news, and value-driven activities that Mantis is spearheading. Couple partnerships we want to update is our AWS Activate partnership. Here’s the details behind our upgraded. We’re going to continue to build out more cloud partnerships. To offer cloud credits to companies, and we’ll update you quarterly on the progress of each. We want to highlight a few hyper valuable growth partners, which are, I’ve outlined a few here, which are hyper growth partners, LeanScale, HockeyStick.co, and Craftsman Plus, which is a preferred app love And we’ll have a little blurb about each. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: We want to identify a few talent partners within our network that have been really valuable over the past few years. [Stephen OBrien]: And I’ll highlight a few that we partnered with that give a discount to our portfolio companies. And then we will highlight some talent, some folks that are are available for hire. We have one CFO candidate that’s a really good candidate that’s looking for a new job right now and we’ll highlight him. And then we’ll highlight some portfolio companies in the news. And then we’ll reiterate, like if there are, here’s our up-to-date portfolio air table. If there’s portfolio companies in our network with similar customer bases, We love to put portfolio founders in touch with each other. One other request, you know, on behalf of our portfolio is that, you know, if there are any vendors, partners or, you know, folks in your network that have been incredibly valuable to your growth, team building, et cetera, please recommend them to us because it really helps sort of the cross pollination of our whole network. So it’s like, you know, a request. And then also at the end is like if again, as always, if there are any exceptional founders raising early stage capital in our particular wheelhouses, please let us know and we’ll let you know if it’s a fit for us. But generally, portfolio recommended founders, we take highly seriously as we support all of our founders and represent their opinions of other founders. That’s the whole concept of it. [michael]: And Steve, do you want like, Do you want, like, specific CTAs for these? Like, should we be linking out to type forms, or should we just be instructing people to, like, reply to this email to get in touch about these various actions you want them to take? [Stephen OBrien]: Let’s see. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What do you guys think? I mean… [michael]: The lowest friction way is just to ask them to send an email rather than fill out a form. [Stephen OBrien]: Yeah, and we can have, can we have like a, an email? I have an email called resources at MantisVC. Could that email go back to that email? That way it’s not in my inbox. [michael]: In Beehive, it can. I don’t know about Gatsby. We’d have to look. Andrew, can you take an action item to look if we can have a different reply to email address in Gatsby? [Andrew Cheng]: If so, then we can do that. [michael]: We could also instruct them to send an email to that email, but it’s probably, again, just less friction to have them reply to the actual email that we’re sending. [Stephen OBrien]: If the automatic reply is that, great. We could also set up the email coming from resources at MantisVC or something like that. [Andrew Cheng]: During the training, I think we could do that, but let me confirm that. [Stephen OBrien]: And that is really the gist of it all. [Andrew Cheng]: I think you said you had a blurb or a Google Sheet. Do you mind sending that over with the second, the information just provided for the second? [Andrew Cheng]: All right, so one other thing I wanted to discuss was the timing, especially for the first one, since I know we had targeted originally early December, so we’ll work I’ll have Selim rush the, or not rush, but like prioritize getting the visuals over. But also I’ll, I’m going to talk to Austin after this and ensure that he has everything set up because those were his two questions. I think you covered more than that. So I think he has more than enough to get started. So just want to see where we want to look at in terms of a first draft for like, when, when’s an ideal time for like you to have a first draft for the Mantis team to look at? [michael]: I mean, I think, I think the MO is like ASAP. At this point, so Austin should have more than he needs at this point. Like, I feel like I could go write the newsletter right now, so if he has any questions like that, just connect him with me and I’ll solve the problem, because I don’t know why there should be any more delay at this point. [Stephen OBrien]: Yeah, I think, like, Monday’s good, or Friday, even, and if, you know, beyond that, you know, just let me know if there’s more time needed. I’ll get a bit more, like, contextual stuff for the portfolio company piece, because I have like a blurb for the AWS activate, I have like a bunch of talent. [Stephen OBrien]: And, you know, the talent partners listed out in the growth partners, and I have this sort of portfolio company in the news section. So I can just aggregate all of that stuff to you. And then you have like the sort of AI not take your transcript tier and we can kind of bang everything out. [Stephen OBrien]: And then we will, you know, sort of moving into 2026 let’s do within our staff meeting update. I think we can link in a section. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cause we use notion for our staff meetings and that’s kind of where we just kind of, as we’re talking about things every day. [Stephen OBrien]: we kind of move them into these sections and just kind of jam on stuff so we can have a shared one so that it’s all together. [Stephen OBrien]: I’ll try to figure out how that best works within our staff meeting agenda. [Andrew Cheng]: Yeah, sounds good, because we also use Notion for newsletters as well for our clients. [Stephen OBrien]: Yeah, that’ll be the best way to do that. And then we’ll be using, we’ll just do Notion in both of them, just like an ongoing basis. So everything’s there. And now you understand sort of the reasoning, all of the sort of format behind everything. [Andrew Cheng]: And that way it’s easy to just kind of plug and play moving forward. [Stephen OBrien]: Yeah, definitely. [michael]: It sounds straightforward to me. So Andrew, if you and Austin have any issues, let’s jam. Because yeah, I feel good about this. [michael]: And yeah, as long as we have a process to get new stuff each time we want to do a new issue, Steve, then we should be good. It sounds like we will. So we’ll get that first one to you Friday or at the latest Monday, but we’ll shoot for Friday for both. And then we’ll follow up then with the first batch so you guys have some time to review before the holidays. [Andrew Cheng]: I think that’s all I had on my side. [Stephen OBrien]: Awesome guys. Good to see you, man. Good to see you guys.