Date: 2026-08-20 | Time: 4:30 PM EDT Granola ID: b5912bcf-8472-4ea2-9320-2cdd3125bc5b Note taker: Blake Stewart (Megaphone) Client: Ben Gusberg (Cape / Joincape, ben@joincape.ai)
Attendees
- Blake Stewart (Megaphone, account manager, note creator)
- Ben Gusberg (Cape, founder)
Summary
First weekly content call between Blake and Ben. Blake’s role: listen, capture Ben’s voice, spin raw input into content drafts. Ben laid out his background (Harvard, 6 yrs investment banking, Stanford MBA, VC data company exit, USC blockchain/fintech professor, Cape co-founder ~2.5 yrs).
Content focus confirmed: AI education for founders and side hustlers, framing AI as a path to financial freedom, not job-loss doom. NOT Cape product-specific.
Ben flagged ego-driven content as the primary blocker to growth over the past 3 months: team has been posting what they want rather than adapting proven viral formats. He directed Blake to find viral outliers in the founder/side-hustler space and tailor them to the AI education angle.
Decisions Made
- Content strategy direction (final): Find proven viral content formats in the founder/side-hustler space; adapt them to Ben’s AI education angle. No original formats, no ego-driven picks.
- Content focus framing: Growth mindset (“here’s how you change your life”) over doom-and-gloom (“here’s how you don’t lose your job”).
- Ego blocker acknowledgment: Ben explicitly named Blake’s content ego as the key growth blocker for the past 3 months. This needs a direct conversation with Blake.
- Cadence: Weekly calls. Ben to rebook at a better time by checking Blake’s calendar.
Action Items
- Blake: Find viral outlier posts in the founder/side-hustler AI space; adapt to Cape’s AI education content angle.
- Blake or Michael: Address ego-driven content approach directly with Blake S.
- Ben: Rebook recurring weekly call at a better time.
Notable Transcript Excerpts
On content ego (Ben, direct):
“That is preventing him from being successful and it’s preventing us from being successful. We can’t have ego in content. We cannot be going anything that’s not going to… that is what has prevented us from growing as quickly as we should be over the last three months since we’ve been working together.”
On viral content strategy (Ben):
“Look for outliers and use those outliers and tailor them to our content. Take proven winners and use those proven winners for us to win. There’s a formula. Social media has a formula.”
On AI tool selection (Ben):
“The reality is they are all great. If you just stick with one and get to become an expert on it, you will be way better off than if you’re constantly trying to churn and change from all this.”
On prompting (Ben):
“Download Whisper Flow for free and just talk to Claude like you would a friend. Tell it what you want and don’t over-analyze it.”
On AI and jobs (Ben):
“Long term, they’re going to be more jobs than ever. The people who are like 50 to 65 who are still in the workforce are going to have a really hard time adapting. If you’re young, you are so well positioned.”
On Hermes (Ben, unprompted):
“It makes me feel more efficient and more powerful. It really feels like another person, another employee that you’re working with. It gives you this feeling of power that other apps don’t give you… you’re living in the future in a way that those don’t.”
On put-people-slightly-above-their-pay-grade (Ben):
“Don’t give me what I asked for, give me what I need. The best employees don’t just do what they’re told. They think about the task at hand and figure out what’s the best way to solve the underlying problem.”
Full transcript and exact phrasing: see ~/.hermes/profiles/ryevalley/clients/ben-gusberg/calls/2026-08-20-b5912bcf-8472-4ea2-9320-2cdd3125bc5b.md
Full meeting notes: Granola meeting b5912bcf-8472-4ea2-9320-2cdd3125bc5b