- Duration: 23 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01KEA7Z2Q6EDEHKP7JBR08EXMZ (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01KEA7Z2Q6EDEHKP7JBR08EXMZ)
Transcript
[michael]: I see it. Read AI. He’s in there. [Jeffrey Evans]: Over email? Yeah. Yes. [Jeffrey Evans]: So they put that out. I’d like to put that out tomorrow. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sure. [michael]: That’s fine. [Jeffrey Evans]: And we should reference one of the articles, I guess. I don’t know. [michael]: I’ll hop on with Austin after you and I get off the call and we’ll put something together today for you. Okay. [michael]: Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sweet. Um, okay. I guess I have some stuff on my side, but top of mind for you, anything other than that? [Jeffrey Evans]: No, I mean, I just want to, no, just keep moving forward. Yeah. I mean, the other thing for me that’s not mine is, uh, we’re getting, I feel like we’re getting good. A good number of people that are looking at my side of stuff, but very few likes and comments. [michael]: Yeah, we want to drive up engagement and we want to drive up conversion to follower too. [michael]: So I’m talking with Austin about his thoughts there. I think he has some thoughts. I can put together a little like strategy plan for you and send it over for you to take a look at and we can. We can align, but [michael]: Yeah, I want to. I want to see the engagement numbers in particular and also the follower numbers bump up so. [michael]: Austin is more in the in the weeds on like, Here’s what resonate and formats resonate and things like that. Personally, my POV is that if we want to drive up engagement, the best way to do that is to get more just generally, this isn’t specific to you, this is just a general comment. People respond to the familiar hooks, they respond to familiar formats because they see it and it makes them stop scrolling faster because they know what they’re looking at. So that’s something I would suggest at a high level and then how we sort of implement that, I’ll leave to Austin and Blake for the most part. [michael]: Um, cool. [Jeffrey Evans]: Content badge standpoint. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That helps us. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No, I’m going to pull up my, that’s my batch five. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hold on. [michael]: of them are said to. [michael]: Yeah, Austin flag is to me that the the ones that are doing the best of the ones we lean into images. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. Like the one one crazy viral. [michael]: I don’t know if you saw that from like a while ago, but I like over 400 likes, which was, I mean, that’s a great result. But even some of the other ones that are getting better results. It’s consistently the ones where we’re throwing images on there. So I think that’s on us to make sure we’re doing that more often. [michael]: But yeah, curious if you have any thoughts on that. [Jeffrey Evans]: That’s a lot of fun. Why don’t we… [Jeffrey Evans]: We’re sort of responding to Joe Lonsdale’s article. [michael]: Which one is that? [Jeffrey Evans]: This is what vertical AI looks like, [michael]: Oh, yeah. Yep. [michael]: Yeah. So like, that’s the case where I think people just see his name and they’ll see that it’s like a kind of hot take article and they’ll be like, oh, okay. Um, for at least like an article on a, on a vertical and then there’ll be, um, like, okay, well, what is, what does Jeffrey have to say about that? Like, and they’ll, they’ll stop scrolling cause they recognize the name and something they might already have heard about, et cetera. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. Like you could add like an image. Let me just send to you. I don’t know if this is good or not. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m sure there’s better ones too. [Jeffrey Evans]: You could add an image like this and put the headline into this, that image or something. I don’t know what my article is. [michael]: Where’d you send it? I just sent it to you. You didn’t get it over email. Yeah. Oh no. There I got it. Oh yeah. Little AI image of Bob, the builder. [Jeffrey Evans]: Cool. [michael]: So yeah, I would just say like, we’ll double down on that. Um, I’ll probably stress to all that if we can get an image on, honestly, every post, we probably should at this point if we’re seeing this consistently. So we’ll work on that. And then we can level it up even more if we have like little video clips or GIFs or things like that to fit. Yeah. [Jeffrey Evans]: And maybe we should call out Alex more in our articles. [Jeffrey Evans]: Sorry, what’s that? [michael]: Maybe we should call out Alex Paul more in our articles. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. Yeah. [michael]: I think that’s a good, a good suggestion too. Um, okay. Cool. Process wise. How are you, how are you feeling? Um, cause I know where I know we’re doing some stuff at Google docs. Um, and I think Austin’s like initially writing in notion. Um, but that’s more on our side. Uh, so just wanna make sure. [michael]: process-wise, you’re feeling good? [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah, it’s fine. I mean, we’re, you’re sending the patches over. I’m looking at them. Cool. I’m trying to respond quickly. You know, we’re staying ahead of the things. I mean, I think we’re content’s about eight, batch eight. Yeah. [michael]: Puts us to the end of next week or something like that. The week after even. Yeah. I think it’s, I think it might be the week after. Are there any posts from, the recent batch that you want to workshop live or should we jump into just new questions? No, I think. [Jeffrey Evans]: Shinko is fine. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Um, I think we’re in good shape. [michael]: Okay, cool. Yeah. I like them too. Um, okay. Questions for, um, this week, obviously big thing is, um, like, uh, as we head into 2026, I think we talked a little bit about this last time, but just maybe we could think about it from other angles. Like, do we want to make predictions? Do we want, and you sent me over, um, those, uh, there’s a couple of emails, which were super helpful. I sent those to Austin too, but any predictions for the year, um, any other sort of wrap up stuff you want to do from 2025, we haven’t talked about yet. Um, anything, are those areas we wanna do? [Jeffrey Evans]: We can always. [michael]: Yeah, let’s do some predictions next. We can shift this around schedule wise so that we get this out sooner so it doesn’t feel like too late in January or anything like that. So yeah, let me know what you got. [Jeffrey Evans]: Okay, I’ll do that this week. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Let’s see what we got here. [michael]: Okay, here’s one that I think would be good for both LPs and also for founders. Like walk me through how a deal that you guys are excited about makes its way to you or how you get in touch with the right founders. Kind of either angle, like what’s the sourcing strategy and then the relationship building strategy from there? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I mean, I guess, yeah, interesting way to lay it out. [Jeffrey Evans]: I mean, I guess what happens is we find, it could be a space we’re looking into. It could be a deal we get introduced to. We find something that looks compelling on its face. And then the goal is to get to know the founder and even do things for the founder in the process of determining whether they want to invest and determining if they want us to be there. Understand the founder, who they are as a person, what’s driving them, what’s making, you know, how do we get to know them better than just what’s in a deck at the end of the day? So I think it’s, I’m process oriented. And the process is, you know, do we get, do we know and understand this person? Is there rationale for doing it? And it goes back to, you know, the right to win thing that we already wrote once about. But there’s an interesting story behind our investment in AI optics that we could tell. I’d have to get the founders permission to tell the story. But it’s this fantastic full circle story where, you know, Found this company, it was introduced to this company actually by a partner VC firm that we trust and respect tremendously. Met the founder, was blown away by the founder, really wanted to get the founder to meet the rest of the team in short order. Spent a little time talking to him. [Jeffrey Evans]: We ended up having a mutual connection with one of our team members and him from Vanderbilt. And as it turns out, the Chainsmokers, probably 10 years ago, somewhere around that time, 10, ago, 12 played for free, played a benefit concert at Vanderbilt. And the concert, because there was a student who had a boating accident and broke his back. Broke his spine and wanted to be able to finish his studies at school as opposed to having to be in a rehab facility away from school. And they needed to raise enough money to get the equipment so that he could finish his studies at school at Vanderbilt. And the Chainsmokers came and played that show and helped them raise $100,000, which was early in their career. And the student was able to do it. And as it turns out, that kid because it would finish your studies, you know, started to become a neurologist and then figured out this sort of gap in the healthcare space. And it was the founder of the company, of this company we’re trying to invest in. [michael]: So it was a full circle. [Jeffrey Evans]: It’s just a, it’s a great story of, it’s a great, you know, karma played forward, you know, you know, it’s a great straightforward story. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, full circle. [Jeffrey Evans]: I mean, it’s great for us to talk about this incredible company, AIOptics. [michael]: I mean, even if we don’t have the sort of other part of AIOptics story that you mentioned that we have to talk to the founder about, even just talking about that, like, it’s so powerful, because what it shows is that, you know, the people who are working, who would be on the cap table are age is like obviously very good people. Um, but also people who, people who like encounter them want to come back to them, right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And want to, want to work with them and want to, want to trust. Um, so I think there’s a lot of good angles to that. [michael]: We should totally, even if we don’t have the sort of more, um, you know, part, you have to talk to the founder about, we should even just do posts on that. That’s great. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. So there’s one that we could definitely do. [michael]: Cool. And then I’ll give you some of my predictions for the year. Yeah, those will be two good ones. Let me see what else we got. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh, do you guys have the Q4 LP update yet? [michael]: Or is that gonna be later in chat? [Jeffrey Evans]: It’ll be towards the end of the month. Okay, cool. [michael]: Cause we’ll get a lot of good stuff out of that too. [michael]: Let’s see. On the, on the Doctronic piece then, okay, so that’s the third one that we’ll get out of this, which is awesome. Is there anything, like, aside from what’s in that email that they sent over, is there anything that, like, you want to add your perspective to it in some way or things we should highlight? [Jeffrey Evans]: For Doctronic? Yeah. I wrote the post. [michael]: Oh, at the bottom of the email. I see it now. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Jeffrey Evans]: I sent their email because they had the articles, but that post at the bottom, that’s, that’s my post about that chronic. [michael]: Okay, cool. I started to write that before the article. [michael]: Sweet. I actually, as I’m reading through this, there might even be like two different posts in here too. So I’ll talk to Austin. I’ll see what we can, what we can do. But like when we have a big win like this from a port go, we should take multiple shots on goal and like sing their praises as much as we can. So it’s actually beneficial for us to split that up into smaller posts. I, in most cases. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. Okay. [michael]: Um, okay. Here’s one. I don’t know where you’ll take this, but, um, we had a thought about like, you know, whether you personally or other people at the firm, like, are you guys using any products from Portco’s? Um, and if so, like, does that change how you interact with or think about founders that you work with? [Jeffrey Evans]: There aren’t many products that are really made for us. Hero may be one, for me to talk about, but I’m just getting into the product. So maybe that’s a good month for February. And he’ll have a new launch update for February too. [michael]: Okay, cool. We’ll revisit that one in a month then. That’s fine. [michael]: Okay, here’s one. There’s a Wall Street Journal article. Let me drop it in the chat here. There’s a Wall Street Journal article that basically said a lot of other VCs predicting that like 2026 is going to be the year where we sort of trim the fat from AI startups and like there’s going to be winners and there’s going to be losers and you know you can check out the article in more detail when you have a second but just want to get your thoughts on like what does 2026 mean for AI specifically and the startups that are like you know riding high within it right now? [Jeffrey Evans]: Say that again. [michael]: Well, just like what’s, what does 2026 like for AI in particular, like LLMs and, um, and the startups built on top of them? Um, because, you know, we’re seeing a lot of folks talk about, you know, we’ve had a couple of high years of AI just continuing to go up and it’s sort of like the, the, it’s not even a hot take anymore. It’s like a, cause like, it’s like a consensus hot take or like a popular hot take of like, you know, like, Oh, like 2026 is going to be the year where there’s winners and losers among these AI companies and we’re going to start to see some failures and things like that. So curious if you have a perspective on that. [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, I don’t think it’s anything new or doing anything else. I mean, you’re going to see winners and losers in any industry. [michael]: So this is early stage investing and What about the companies that have already made it out of the early stages and even someone like an OpenAI or an Anthropic or bigger growth stage companies in general? What does the market look like for them and for that world this year? [Jeffrey Evans]: There’s an interesting theory I can be writing about the gross margin per token, which I think is how AI should be evaluated now. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [michael]: Let’s talk about that. [Jeffrey Evans]: What we don’t know is what is OpenAI’s gross margin per token. So AI companies that keep growing, are they growing at a pace where they’re increasing their potential bottom line, or are they growing at a loss leader pace. [michael]: Yep. [michael]: Interesting. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What, what would a good gross margin per token be for your perspective? 40 to 50%. 50%. [Jeffrey Evans]: Okay. [michael]: And what do you estimate that is actually happening right now? [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, no one knows, but some companies disclose it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: We’ll do some research and see I’m trying to think if there’s any other follow-ups there. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. [Jeffrey Evans]: I think that’s an interesting one. [michael]: Yeah, maybe that ties in because it can be like, you know, if companies are hiding that their gross margin of return is actually terrible, then they’re basically selling a vision that is not achievable, right? [michael]: Like, you can only go that way. [Jeffrey Evans]: You know, it’s like one of those things, if you can never make a profit, at some point in time, your company gets out of business. [michael]: Right. Unless you’re Uber and you just do it for so long and reach enough scale where eventually network effects kick in and you get pricing dominance, you can do what you want. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [michael]: Okay. Those were our main questions for, for this one. We’ll come back to, well, you’ll send over the predictions and then we’ll come back to the one for hero for using Portco products and kind of how that makes you think, think about things. With them. [michael]: Anything else you wanted to cover today? [Jeffrey Evans]: No, I think that’s a great start. I’m already trying to get some notes together for what are the predictions I want to kind of give for the year. [michael]: Cool. Well, I’ll give you a little bit of time back then. And if you want to send that over an email, whenever you get a chance, we’ll work that into the next batch. [Jeffrey Evans]: Okay. Sounds like a plan. Appreciate it, man. [michael]: Good to see you. Talk later. Bye. Bye. [Jeffrey Evans]: you this.