{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"START","title":"START: Neal Patel, Founder, Producer, Comedian, Artificially Unintelligent Tech Comedy: “Tech stand up comedy shows”","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":571,"description":"You can't do a joke about the Jira board at a normal comedy club. The audience won't know what the Jira board is, and explaining it kills the laugh before you get to it.\nNeal Patel wanted to do that set anyway. \nFor years he worked two jobs, software engineer during the day and stand-up three or four nights a week in New York clubs at night. \nPlenty of the comedians he ran into were also in tech. Backstage they'd trade jokes about tech, about Jira, and all the little things that only people in the industry found funny, and none of it really worked once they stepped in front of a normal comedy audience.\nSo in 2024 he built the room that didn't exist yet.\nArtificially Unintelligent puts engineers, PMs, founders, CEOs, and VCs who happen to be experienced comedians on the same bill as comics you've seen on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, NPR, Comedy Central, and in The New York Times. Hundreds and hundreds of people signed up for the first one.\nAsk him how the audience got that big that fast and he'll tell you he hates the question, because the honest answer is that he doesn't know.\nWhat he does know: put on a really good event with really cool people, invest heavily in design and branding so nobody files it under \"another open mic,\" and never spend a single dollar on advertising or marketing. The rooms fill with founders, senior operators, cracked engineers, heads of finance, and operators from across the startup ecosystem. Open bar, themed drinks, designed end to end.\nKeeping the shows free is part of the philosophy, and sponsors are what make that possible. Neal would rather take one sponsor check than twenty bucks each from 200 people. \nWhich gets at why he thinks the first open mic isn't the hard one. You go up convinced you're the funniest person alive, nobody laughs, and that's survivable. The second one is where it gets decided, because that's when you have to choose whether you're doing it again. He kept choosing it.\nArtificially Unintelligent now runs regularly in New...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/q-E1hh7K6IS4AfZiNy2p4MYVGcUOO8lQP92h8QbOEOA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80NzVj/MDEzNjkxNjU1N2Uy/NDFhMDQ3M2ZhNWI3/NWY0MS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}