- Platform: meet
- Attendees: Austin Schlessinger, Ben Ornstein, Steve O’Brien
- Source: Read.ai 01KM14XN3ZDYT8SKCQ16NA2WSH (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Ben Ornstein: Hey, what’s up, awesome? Austin Schlessinger: Hey, Ben, how are you doing? Ben Ornstein: Well, just me and the bots. Oh man. Austin Schlessinger: Sorry. I’m a few minutes late. Holy cow. Ben Ornstein: I just joined too. All the bots. Austin Schlessinger: I know. Ben Ornstein: Right. Austin Schlessinger: I didn’t even know I had one in here. I have one set up. I’m assuming Read.AI is you. Austin Schlessinger: What was that? Ben Ornstein: Is the Read.AI you? Austin Schlessinger: Yeah, that’s me. That’s me. Austin Schlessinger: I don’t even know what note taker I have in here. Austin Schlessinger: That’s great. Austin Schlessinger: Hey, Steve. Austin Schlessinger: Thank you. Not bad. Steve O’Brien: How are we doing? Steve O’Brien: Doing great. How are you? Steve O’Brien: And also pretty great. So first thing first, sorry about this, we’ve kind of teed up this email draft for the diversity reporting, we no longer have to do that. So that’s great. But I’m sorry, we have formed that. Steve O’Brien: It’s an annoying process that With that reporting, I got to plug my computer in. Steve O’Brien: But yeah, we don’t have to do that. We didn’t want to do that ever. It was a requirement. And now we don’t have to do that. So I’m sorry to waste some time thinking about it. Steve O’Brien: Ultimately, I have the next format of our portfolio newsletter here. Great. But so what’s the best sort of workflow for me? Because, like, things come up from, like, resources and reporting. And I have a bunch of new, like, credit programs, you know, with, like, Grafana labs and stuff I want everybody to see. But, like, I’m just, like, kind of forced it to one thing within my email, and then I copy and paste it into a working document. Just in Google Docs, should we set up a notion so I can just word vomit stuff over a course of a month or two that I would want to report to? Like, hey, this person’s pretty cool at viral videos. This person’s pretty cool at x. You know, so that we can kind of just like meet on like every few weeks and just refine some of it and get it ready for when I’m ready to get it out. Like, is there a better flow than me just like, I have just like fucking bunch of jumble that obviously we just like refine. Steve O’Brien: But yeah. Ben Ornstein: So, I mean, we have a notion space where like Austin like created like the first versions of the content. And if you wanted to, I mean, Austin, maybe you would be the better one. What would be the best way for you two to work on generating this? Austin Schlessinger: I mean, ultimately, we want to make it as easy for you as possible. So for you to email, if you’re emailing it to yourself, you could just email it directly me if Slack’s easy, just drop it in our Slack channel and I’ll just assume that it’s for the portfolio newsletter and I can kind of organize it. And that way if something comes through and I need more context, I could just reply back and just ask you about it. Um, if that’s easy for you, I just think that dropping it in notion, like if that’s, if that’s easy, we can do it. But also like, you could just email it to me and we can get it all organized and everything. Okay. Ben Ornstein: Cause structurally this one’s gonna look similar to the other one that one. Yeah, they’ll all look extremely similar. Steve O’Brien: I just think like there’s a better way to be working on like an ongoing basis, you know? Austin Schlessinger: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Austin, I don’t know if you do this for your clients, but there’s a V1 in the Notion card for the newsletter. There’d be a V1, and then if there are significant changes, you could do a V2, or it could just be comments directly on a section of a company that you’re talking about. Notion’s pretty great for that. Steve O’Brien: Yeah, I completely agree. I’ll kind of show you. Here’s what I’ll just show you. Steve O’Brien: I’ll also just share this with you, because it’s just what I’m working out of right now. And this will be the basis of the next one going out. Steve O’Brien: Is the Arena Studios the best email? Yeah. Ben Ornstein: So, kind of like similar structure with messaging that we saw from like the first one, right? Steve O’Brien: And what I have here is this example from our portfolio company of how they’ve injected AI into their business. And then I have another example of what’s been really helpful for us is a Notion page from one of our portfolio companies at Sandstorm who formats things they need, they’re thinking about, like, really well for, like, investors to, like, look through. You know, kind of what we’ve seen from, like, Manus, from, like, a chat GPT function. And then, you know, I kind of just port stuff in here. There’s a demanding company that’s really good. Then there’s another company that we shared, you know, shown media, like I’ve really loved was going to feature megaphone here, a partnership with Caruso data centers. I’m getting rid of Meredith seven. They’re annoying. Um, this is for future sort of like a PR playbook that we’re getting together. Um, There’s a sandstone PDF that I think is really interesting. And I’ll put that up here. Steve O’Brien: Some talent that’s available. I’m over, Sarah. Steve O’Brien: First, I thought I was really impressed. And then just the sheer amount of emails and asking to like, it’s just, yeah. Steve O’Brien: available he’s he’s a beast then here’s some like more credit stuff you know with anthropic super valuable uh there’s some other things I’m thinking I might just save for another one because this is kind of getting bulky it’s like this pretty cool like brand accelerator thing the grafana labs credit program I have I’ll have context of this guy steven who does these viral videos of a guy who ran marketing for a portfolio coming It’s his own thing now. It’s pretty sweet. So that’s kind of just how my mind works with it. Steve O’Brien: And what’s the best way to compile on an ongoing basis so we can kind of just not have to go chase down a bunch of things? I’m just working with you guys for suggestions. Steve O’Brien: Well, I think there’s like, so there’s the talent section, and that’s people. Austin Schlessinger: And we’re sticking like to the same kind of structure, right, around, I think it was like talent and then, I’m pulling up the last newsletter. Austin Schlessinger: Yeah, like portfolio news, growth resources, resources, talent and professional services, growth and operational partners. Steve O’Brien: So I think maybe it’s just a notion that’s like blank with those sections laid out. To just have. Austin Schlessinger: That’s what I was thinking as well. Steve O’Brien: Can you guys just create the blank one and label it like newsletter number two or something? Steve O’Brien: And we just generate a new blank one? Or what’s the best way for me to do that? Steve O’Brien: Actually, you know what? Maybe I show you something, and you tell me how the best way to insert this into our flow is because I’ve been trying to figure it out and I’m not sure if it’s possible with the notion. Steve O’Brien: Can you see like our notion? Yeah. Steve O’Brien: So like these are like staff meetings you know and you kind of just like to create a new one you know you duplicate and then like change the date you know so these are like our staff meetings that go You know and so like Some of it’s like well and good You know and how we run it and like it’d be cool to just kind of like insert the the newsletter format of like this Inside every week, you know or every sorry every every quarter Yeah, every quarter whenever we do it, right? I don’t is that possible it’d be like it’d be three creating like a newsletter template. Like the same format like this, just within our already existing, like staff meeting wiki. Ben Ornstein: So it would be like the, you’re saying like the newsletter structure, that would be like the talent section. Yeah, yeah. Steve O’Brien: Yeah, is that possible? And we could just have it, I could just duplicate it every time we get the one out. We just go back to the same, like over the course of, you know, a month or two, things are coming up that I’m thinking about, I just throw them in here. You know, you guys have access to that, you know, and we kind of just, you know, are going through it in that way. That’s the way I would love for it to happen, but I don’t know, I can’t figure out how to do it. Ben Ornstein: Let me see quickly if I can figure out how to create, like, I think it would be, it would be like a template. Austin Schlessinger: Yeah, we could create a template in our board, and then have them in Q2, Q3, Q4, and then just share those with you, and then you can just embed it into the meter. That’d be pretty cool. We totally did that. Austin Schlessinger: I think it could look something like this. Ben Ornstein: Something like… Ben Ornstein: I’m just creating this on the fly, seeing if I’m understanding what you guys are thinking here. Ben Ornstein: Okay, so maybe. Something like this, where it would have each section blank, where you could fill out every everything as they come in, like about a company? Is that kind of what you were envisioning? Steve O’Brien: Yeah, this would be for like the co-investor newsletter. Ben Ornstein: Right, right. I just wanted to build something, but for this newsletter would be like the same sort of thing, right? Yeah, same concept. Steve O’Brien: You know, the one we’re talking about right now is the portfolio one, right? So same, but yeah, that could definitely work. And if we could just like do the same sort of sense, embedded within our, you know, weekly staff meeting, right? Is that is that a functionable thing? Ben Ornstein: I would be or can we have a link to it? Steve O’Brien: Yeah, we just have the link to it. And then, you know, click in there, right? Where it’s me. Austin Schlessinger: See, I’m in I’m in newsletters here. Steve O’Brien: And instead of like all this you know, it could just have, you know, a link of like to the data, like newsletter dashboard or this whole thing is a link, you know, and it takes us to a format that kind of looks like this potentially where it’s just like, okay, create the news, the new working format. Austin Schlessinger: Steve, can you access that link I just sent you? Austin Schlessinger: Did you, In Slack. Steve O’Brien: Okay. Austin Schlessinger: See if you like drop it in into there, see what happens. Austin Schlessinger: No, I can’t believe it. That’s just a link to the Q1 one, but we can make a template for it. Steve O’Brien: I mean, that’s the link. Okay. But like, is there, yeah, like this setup. Steve O’Brien: We could even have it like Sorry. Austin Schlessinger: A separate, a separate database for all newsletter stuff. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah. Steve O’Brien: I mean, we could add it here and then just have the link out to it within the wiki, you know, and it would be the same sense, you know, like, kind of same format, we could I could. Should I just like build another one within here, and then just have the link within staff meetings? Ben Ornstein: Maybe I’m not fully understanding what what exactly this would be for. I’m trying to just are we are like monthly or like our ongoing working basis. Steve O’Brien: So I could this instead of weekly staff, you know, I wanted this format, you guys see my screen, right? Like I wanted this kind of format just for like the newsletter. So we’re working out of something like this, but it’s, you know, the format you sent in that link, you know, you know, if you clicked into something like that would be this, you know, and I just kind of copy and paste stuff as they come up. And then once we get it out, then it looks like, you know, kind of this again, you generate a new working format, you know, and you can kind of just like, update. I would ideally want this kind of like embedded within the wiki, but I don’t think that’s possible. So we would have to link out to something you know, maybe create a new one, uh, like newsletters, you know, but this is just kind of a dead. Ben Ornstein: With the so the templates the that we have within like the content board I’m trying to figure out how to make this work So So like there’s Within these we can create the templates, right? So for each quarter when we do a new newsletter, I just created these two So like there’s the lp exclusive template and investor. So if we’re ready to do a new one, you’d click it um, we could spawn like a We could set it as a default or something but we could also use it for like the next quarter, uh the next newsletter Um, is that, is that what you’re, you’re trying to, again, maybe I’m still missing context on something. I feel like I’m missing something. How do I describe this? Steve O’Brien: Like, how do I create something that looks like the staff meeting, but it’s just the newsletters we’re, we’re working on? So like, this would be core co-newsletters and then one would be co-investment and we just like, This is the one we’re working on each quarter, you know, I click into it and it’s the template. Ben Ornstein: Maybe it’s just creating a different view in the board. Maybe that’s what it is. Steve O’Brien: Like, maybe I just… Ben Ornstein: I think we need a new prop. Property called newsletters. Steve O’Brien: Like, kind of what I did here. Steve O’Brien: Like, only these would be, this would be the coinvest template. So we would change this template, you know. And so, and then this would be the portfolio one. So we would change this, you know, template. So then this is like our coinvest newsletters area, and we would just have the link to this you know so so Steve you want to keep it in the mantis notion you don’t want it in well I would just probably share it I would just share this with you guys and then we could just is that the is that a good way to do it ideally we’re we’re like editing the content in the the this dedicated board? Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Steve O’Brien: Do you link the board out into here? Steve O’Brien: I think we could do that. Ben Ornstein: I guess where you link it, whoever has access to that would need to have access to the the content board. So I created something custom here where it’s like a different view. It’s not fully what you’re looking for, I don’t think, but it’s like customized just for the newsletters. And then if you want it to do like a new LP exclusive, it’s like, okay, that’s there. And it has the template already. Steve O’Brien: I see what you’re trying to do though. Ben Ornstein: So like, if you make a change in the page on your end, it gets automatically updated into like the next newsletter, right? Yeah. Yeah. Steve O’Brien: Like a working, just a working doc basically for each quarter. Steve O’Brien: And you wouldn’t want to do that directly within like the next quarter’s newsletter in notion No, I would So, can you say can you share me like that that sort of content board that you had again Here I’ll pull it up. Ben Ornstein: I’ll just send it to you over DM here real quick So you can go to that content board. This one. Steve O’Brien: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: created this new view where it’s got like the, you know, the one that we did for the portfolio updates, LP exclusive, the one that was in review that we didn’t fully get out, but that’s how I can create the- And these are the ones that we’re actively like working on? Steve O’Brien: Those are the new ones I literally just created. Yeah, so like in theory, they would be the ones we’re like actively working on, right? Right, right. Ben Ornstein: Okay. Ben Ornstein: Austin, better process than to like, just work and edit just within that? Steve O’Brien: I could just have this link in our, you know, wiki staff meeting, and just click into here. And it’s the same process, right? Rather than having like, this actually would be so I can just kind of rename this can I provide this so here let me let me ask you a question here in our let me share my screen yeah but I could just link this within our staff meeting and we could just click into here and work off of this you know yeah I guess you would it would need to be you that’s like controlling the notion because yeah yeah as long as long as like you have access you have access to this right now. Ben Ornstein: So you would pull this up is what you’re saying? Ben Ornstein: Like for this meeting? Yeah. Then yeah. Would I add this as a workspace? Steve O’Brien: or request your guest in Rye Valley become a member for full access or explore? What should I do in this scenario? I don’t I think you can ignore that because you as you still have edit. Ben Ornstein: Okay, cool. Steve O’Brien: So In this Can I just have this be the content board Like a link to the content board Maybe maybe maybe if you copy like I like hyperlink it If you put in like the url What would be the best way to do that? Steve O’Brien: I mean, regardless, I’ll just take this link, put it in staff, and that’s our first step. And then here’s a better, more functional way of us working on this ongoing okay cool if yeah and then can I also share this with Can I add somebody to the content board yeah, um, I can uh Who would you who would you like in the Julian Julian at mantas VC comm Because he’ll pull out of the context for the co-investor descriptions All right, so they Julian will have full access to the content board. Ben Ornstein: Sweet. Steve O’Brien: So he’ll do, he’ll kind of get all the descriptions and stuff in there on the co-invest side from a newsletter’s perspective. I’m just going to replace this link and have it. Steve O’Brien: This is the, yeah, this is the content board. Steve O’Brien: And then I can just make it prettier. All right. Okay. So let me port everything over. This is the template. Well, so it’s the template, but you can change it. Ben Ornstein: So you can change the name of it. It’s fully editable. The template is, it exists as like a separate section. So now this acts as like a new newsletter. Steve O’Brien: Okay, is this this out? That was the and that was the other one. So they’re both the same right now, I think. Steve O’Brien: Oh, maybe I’d Yeah, we just didn’t do we just the LP exclusive and then there’s the portfolio newsletter. So I’ll port over and I will track down as much of the context of the just jumble of shit I have in this one. That you can see and then I think will be much easier to get out Cool and then that will be our like our working basis is like, okay Get everything start working on an ongoing like monthly basis So it’ll be like a monthly newsletter instead of a quarterly quarterly no, it’ll be really like more quarterly For sure. But just on a quarterly basis, I’m just working out of this every day. I just kind of have it open on one of my tabs. And as you see here, this is just reminders. As we get this ready, I hunt down some of the context around these things and go from there. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, feel free to use the notion like the actual, the board and the, and even like the specific card within Notion for the newsletter and just, yeah, use it as like your, as your workspace. Steve O’Brien: And that would be good, right? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, that would be the, that’s the best way forward. Steve O’Brien: I think for us to just kind of not do like a scramble and it just like is very easy ongoing basis. We’re all working on it and then we can kind of just slack about questions and stuff. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, 100%. Austin Schlessinger: We can also communicate in the notion, too. Like, I can tag you, Steve, in comments and stuff, too. Yeah. Austin Schlessinger: But I think this is great. Steve O’Brien: Yeah, this would be way, way easy for us to manage. And it’s not just siloed in a Google Doc from my end. And I can just add the link in staff meeting there. Steve O’Brien: Awesome. Okay Well, it would be so cool if notion allowed you to just have this content board In within like another notion, you know rather than just like a link out I feel like you should be able to do that I’ve played around with so many like different functions of notion to try to do like integrative like crm work And like other workspaces embedded into your workspace outside of your org It’s just I can’t get there. Yeah. Steve O’Brien: But I don’t know. Anyway, it sounds like we have a much better format here. I’m going to get everything on this end together now that I have all the credit programs teed up for another one to go out and that we’re not doing the diversity reporting now. So sorry for the false alarm on that one. Ben Ornstein: I didn’t even get context on this diversity report. Did you, Austin? No. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly sure what you were talking about with that one. Oh, I sent it. Steve O’Brien: Yeah, we were going to talk about it today. But essentially, we would have needed our portfolio founders in 2025 that we invested in to report on their diversity backgrounds. So that was the sort of survey thing I sent along. And then the letter and the message that we would have made just like our own sort of like email push to those specific people through fund three to those founders that we’ve invested in to basically say, are you white? Are you gay? Are you whatever, you know? And like, uh, yeah, I don’t know why we had to do that, but they canceled it. Steve O’Brien: Oh, I guess that’s one less step then. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, one less thing to do. Steve O’Brien: I’m just like tracking down stuff. But yeah, okay, I will get all this stuff. Now we have a good workflow of just working through the content board. It’s all kind of embedded in the staff stuff and we’ll take it from there. Cool. Ben Ornstein: Also, I will work together to like, make sure those templates are correct as well. So like, you know, because I think I may have duplicated the co-invest and I’ll be exclusive. They’ve done. So I’ll correct that. Cool. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Awesome. Steve O’Brien: Thanks, Steve.