Andrew doubles MetaMonster customers in one week and is launching credit-based free trials! 🚀 Sean's still drowning in Miscreants growth (by the way Miscreants is hiring). Plus: LinkedIn strategy shifts, AI acquisition dynamics, and Sean just figured out what "I have to charge" actually means.
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Transcript:
00:00.83
Sean
whats up?
00:01.73
Andrew
Hey, we back.
00:01.83
Sean
Where are you?
00:03.17
Andrew
is this Is this the start of season? What season are we on? Season four?
00:06.65
Sean
Yeah, this is...
00:06.70
Andrew
This is season four, episode two.
00:07.29
Sean
this is
00:08.18
Andrew
Are we going to bury episode one forever and make it our new Lost Tapes? Or are we going to, do you want me to release it? Make a decision right now?
00:17.64
Sean
feel like... It seems like you want to bury it so we can bury it.
00:20.54
Andrew
Yeah, kind of.
00:21.32
Sean
Yeah. Okay.
00:22.37
Andrew
I feel like I just rambled for 30 minutes.
00:22.55
Sean
Yeah. We can bury it.
00:24.88
Andrew
And I was also like, You definitely caught me on the downturn of the startup roller coaster like mental cycle. And i'm I'm feeling more positive this week.
00:33.35
Sean
and
00:35.37
Andrew
So let's start on a good note.
00:35.99
Sean
Cool. There was no such thing as everyone. Cool. Done. Easy. Yeah. Great. How you doing? Where where are you? This is not the usual background.
00:45.64
Andrew
I am it no, no. I'm in Columbia, South Carolina, cat sitting for my parents. My parents are jet setting around Europe, living their retired life to the fullest.
00:52.21
Sean
Nice.
00:56.16
Sean
Cool.
00:57.40
Andrew
My German aunt is getting remarried this week.
01:01.31
Sean
Sweet.
01:01.43
Andrew
So there went to London and then Amsterdam and then Germany. And then they're going to Denmark on a joint honeymoon with my aunt and her new husband.
01:11.16
Sean
Okay.
01:12.08
Andrew
Yeah.
01:14.89
Sean
Joint honeymoon. Cool. Okay.
01:17.32
Andrew
yeah
01:17.56
Sean
I've never heard that term like used before, but that makes sense.
01:20.53
Andrew
It's not real. Like they, they actually got married a few months ago and this is just like the wedding celebration.
01:22.25
Sean
Cool.
01:25.98
Andrew
And so they just wanted to go on a weekend trip with my parents. And so I've been joking with my mom that she's going on Giese's honeymoon with her, but that's not really what's happening.
01:30.24
Sean
Cool.
01:39.13
Andrew
I'm cat sitting, hanging out with Ruthie.
01:38.82
Sean
Cool.
01:41.76
Sean
Nice. Nice, nice.
01:42.69
Andrew
Yeah. My cat's got it.
01:44.03
Sean
I'm going to a wedding.
01:45.87
Andrew
Huh?
01:46.59
Sean
I'm going to a wedding.
01:47.80
Andrew
Oh, fun.
01:49.23
Sean
Yeah, but tell about your cat first. What what about Ruthie?
01:51.29
Andrew
Oh, I was just going to say earlier this year, my mom got a, what she calls her resistance cat. cat's name is RBG, uh, and we call her Ruthie.
01:58.81
Sean
Oh, nice. Nice.
02:00.38
Andrew
So she's adorable. Big fan.
02:02.45
Sean
Cool. Oh, cool. Hope she also lives to like 90 something.
02:06.11
Andrew
I hope so too.
02:08.05
Sean
Yeah, i'm going I'm going to like my first wedding ever because it's not even a wedding.
02:12.32
Andrew
Oh my God. How is this your first wedding? I've, I feel like I've been going to weddings nonstop for the last 10 years.
02:21.16
Sean
maybe this is the start to that.
02:21.12
Andrew
Maybe this is like, maybe, yeah, we are different ages, which I forget often.
02:24.29
Sean
Yeah.
02:28.09
Andrew
I'm old and getting older every day.
02:29.42
Sean
Yeah.
02:32.45
Sean
You don't look a day over 40, my friend.
02:38.06
Andrew
i also wonder if it's partially a New York thing versus a like growing up in the Southeast thing. If my friends got married young.
02:42.58
Sean
No, just my asshole friends just don't like there's like fuck a wedding. We just got married and didn't tell you. And then and then like that's that's all.
02:50.31
Andrew
To be fair, that's kind of what I want to do. I think I i want to elope with just like parents and then and then throw a big ass party because I do not want to pay the wedding markup.
02:53.65
Sean
See. This is.
02:58.78
Sean
Nice.
03:01.40
Andrew
I'm not about that life.
03:01.77
Sean
Yeah, fair. I think um fair. I think um this, these friends, he's a summer camp friend from like high school and just always kept in touch for years.
03:09.81
Andrew
Oh, no way. That's cool.
03:12.25
Sean
loosely, loosely. They also got married in middle of COVID and they just never actually had like a wedding-esque party. So this isn't even, technically I've never been to it.
03:22.42
Sean
Well, think my cousin got married when I was really young. So I think I've been there, but outside of like, actually as a brain functioning adult, like I've never seen people consummate their marriage or whatever the that's not what that means.
03:36.78
Andrew
i Yeah, I don't think I have either.
03:38.47
Sean
as an Okay.
03:38.54
Andrew
i don't i don't think that's like a thing anymore, Sean.
03:39.62
Sean
Sorry.
03:42.08
Sean
Not what I'm, I've never seen people publicly like make vows to each other in the, in a wedding setting. Not consummate does not mean what I,
03:49.86
Andrew
Okay, fair.
03:51.64
Sean
thought of me you know what's crazy we're gonna go on a tangent really quickly guess what i just realized yesterday after like 18 years you know the song my milkshake brings on the boys of the yard okay this is the this is like
03:58.37
Andrew
What's that?
04:02.17
Andrew
Yep.
04:05.51
Andrew
Are you just now realizing that's about boobs?
04:08.60
Sean
no i'm just realizing that when she says i have to charge she meant i have to like charge you money ever since i was a kid ever since i was a kid like when i first heard that song
04:14.92
Andrew
Oh!
04:21.06
Sean
I thought she meant like, i don't know, I have to like charge the machine or I'm out of milkshake. I have to like recharge it. And I always thought that song made no fucking sense. But now it's trending because of the whole Cat's Eye Gap commercial.
04:34.45
Andrew
I have no idea what commercial you're talking about. And to be honest, have never heard that line or never noticed that line.
04:36.61
Sean
Okay.
04:40.80
Andrew
That's funny.
04:41.96
Sean
Great. Great. Great. Okay. Well, anyway, I went to bed right after that.
04:45.32
Andrew
What's the commercial?
04:46.99
Sean
You know, the whole like jeans commercial with like Sydney Sweeney.
04:49.83
Andrew
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:50.06
Sean
And then like, then, then I forget which other American Eagle was that there's, and then another one did another, like a response to that. And then gap just did one with the global girl group cat's eye, which is like, and they've become like the winner in this entire scenario because like, anyway,
05:03.07
Andrew
Oh, cool.
05:09.04
Sean
The song that they chose, which I also don't understand why they chose that song. But anyway, they chose that song, My Milkshake Brings Up the Boys to the Yard, and then water whatever, whatever, I have to charge. And it's just nonstop.
05:20.22
Sean
I just hear it on like every other short. and Yeah, it finally clicked. I was just like thinking about it and then just, anyway.
05:33.53
Sean
Cool, how's Metamonso doing?
05:37.80
Andrew
meta monster is good i am like i said earlier i'm kind of on an upswing right now so a week or two ago we had our best week ever three new customers in one week yeah yeah so that's like basically doubled we went from four to seven customers so we like doubled our mrr uh in one day
05:43.01
Sean
Yeah.
05:48.14
Sean
Cool. Like paid customers? Cool.
05:53.81
Sean
Amazing. Amazing. Okay.
06:00.22
Sean
Cool.
06:01.13
Andrew
which is the hilarity of being an early stage startup and not having any customers.
06:08.35
Sean
Yeah.
06:09.13
Andrew
We are also launching the new stuff
06:13.61
Sean
Yeah.
06:14.41
Andrew
a week from today. So the new UI is going live.
06:16.79
Sean
cool
06:19.66
Andrew
We are going to be rolling out a an update to our pricing model.
06:24.76
Sean
cool
06:25.70
Andrew
So we have made the switch to credits. We should talk about that because I'm a little terrified that our pricing is going to be wildly unprofitable, but at least on the upper tiers.
06:31.87
Sean
okay
06:38.68
Sean
yeah
06:39.67
Andrew
But we're also, i've been wanting to test this for ages and we finally did it because we finally have like a proper credit system. And so we are going to be testing a credit-based free trial.
06:51.28
Andrew
So no time limit, take as long as you want. You get 500 credits when you sign up. and, uh, while you're on a free trial, we limit you to like, I think we're going to limit you to like 250 pages crawled per site so that you don't burn all your credits in one go.
06:58.28
Sean
Cool.
07:05.71
Sean
Cool.
07:09.07
Andrew
And then, that would basically give you like a full website of optimizations of like one optimization.
07:14.80
Sean
Hold These are optimization credits or crawl credits?
07:17.66
Andrew
They apply for both. So, you crawl a page, that's a credit.
07:19.44
Sean
Okay, cool.
07:21.39
Andrew
If you run an optimization on a page, that's a credit. If you send a message to the chat agent, that's a credit. Reason for that is we automatically generate vector embeddings of all of your site content when we crawl a site.
07:32.54
Sean
Good job. Sweet. Sweet.
07:34.56
Andrew
And so that's part of our costs and part of the yeah value.
07:39.09
Sean
me
07:41.35
Sean
sweet
07:42.71
Andrew
Yeah. So really, really excited to test that out. And that will kind of turn back on the self-serve signup when we do that. and you know, refocus on product-led growth for a little while and and see if if I can, you know, get more traffic to the site, get some people coming through, trying the tool, experiencing, getting to the aha moment, hopefully a little bit better.
08:05.93
Sean
Sweet.
08:10.25
Andrew
Because I i do kind of think the tool, the risk is that, you know, AI is still a little wonky. Sometimes it takes some massaging and some working with to get, to really get value. So like we're going have to experiment with the credit limits that for that free trial a lot.
08:29.75
Andrew
That may be too few. But, you know, there's also costs associated again. And so I can't give away too many. But like,
08:40.87
Andrew
Yeah, so the risk is like, can people get to the aha moment on their own? Is the tool far enough along that they can experience that and get excited about it and and use it? Or does it take more handholding still?
08:54.35
Andrew
But I think at this point, we just need to get more people in the door and like, try some stuff out.
09:00.57
Sean
cool sweet sweet sweet i did get your email this morning had little cliffhanger it was like uh yeah it was cool to see it was cool you have a very like like I like always enjoy the writing style you have for like your SaaS emails.
09:21.15
Sean
Makes any sense.
09:20.37
Andrew
Oh, nice. I appreciate that.
09:22.16
Sean
Yeah.
09:22.59
Andrew
Yeah.
09:23.07
Sean
Yeah. That's cool. Cool. Sweet. i didn't I didn't realize that you generate vector embeddings every time you crawl something.
09:27.86
Andrew
What do you...
09:31.60
Sean
i
09:32.03
Andrew
Yeah, so that's new.
09:33.02
Sean
No.
09:33.58
Andrew
Within the new UI, we weren't doing that originally because we didn't need vector embeddings originally.
09:34.14
Sean
Oh, okay. Okay.
09:37.27
Sean
I see. I feel less bad. Okay. Cool.
09:40.17
Andrew
Yeah, like originally we were just passing the page content.
09:40.62
Sean
Got it.
09:44.14
Andrew
But now, for the...
09:44.53
Sean
Got it. Mm-hmm. Cool.
09:46.23
Andrew
so for the chat agent to work, we have to have vector embeddings of everything. And then for, you know, when you run a prompts template in the new, new UI, you can run a search, like every, every page optimization that runs can search every other page, which in enables you to do stuff like internal linking optimization and stuff like that.
10:14.53
Sean
Right. Sweet.
10:16.68
Sean
sweet
10:17.62
Andrew
I still got to really experiment with those tools and with our prompts in order to like really create some good content around how to leverage that. I think one of the things that like, I really want to create content around is like the tooling that's available to our our agents in, in MetaMonster because like the content cluster analyzer tool we have is fucking cool. We've got like, you know, a word, you account,
10:42.94
Andrew
word and character counter, like a counter tool is like a very simple thing, but it's something LLMs are naturally bad at.
10:49.87
Sean
Mm-hmm.
10:51.10
Sean
Yes.
10:51.64
Andrew
These like vector search tools, we have a SERP tool that you can pull in like SERP data.
10:57.06
Sean
Yeah.
10:58.99
Andrew
Eventually like we'll probably add some like keyword data tooling. So I'm, yeah, I feel like i need to, create more content around that and talk about that more.
11:09.72
Andrew
but what do you think about the 500 credits and like the credit based free trial?
11:15.80
Sean
I don't know about that. I don't I mean, I don't have feelings about the number, but I love that you have a free trial that's like limited to love the the decision to like not let someone burn it on their first go around makes like perfect sense to me.
11:28.52
Sean
i feel like, yeah, I mean, I feel like if you crawl 250 pages, that should be enough to get a sense of like. how good the tool is, right? Like I think, you know, I did get a chance to try it, i think a week or two weeks ago, like things that were useful was like, crawl the page, tell me all the typos that exist on these pages or tell me like all the loremipsum and all all that
11:46.78
Andrew
Let
11:50.85
Sean
Honestly, it's easier to do in that than like it is in Screaming Frog, especially for like the loremipsum stuff. So thought that was, I mean, makes sense.
11:59.83
Sean
Yeah. How's the traffic to the site right now?
12:03.20
Andrew
me check.
12:03.11
Sean
Yeah.
12:04.33
Andrew
let's ah fuck it Let's do it live.
12:06.69
Sean
cool
12:07.48
Andrew
So it was experimenting with ads and then i i turned those off for a little while because like they weren't they weren't really working and I didn't want to just be burning money.
12:16.03
Sean
yeah
12:19.76
Andrew
So let's take the last like two weeks maybe. Okay, so today's Wednesday. Let's take the last two weeks as you know a sample size.
12:31.31
Andrew
Uh, you know, not incredible. We're at like 178 people over the last two weeks. So like 400 people a month, would like to see that be like 4,000 people a month.
12:43.40
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
12:45.06
Andrew
so I need to figure out like part of what I need to do is I need to
12:44.45
Sean
yeah
12:50.59
Andrew
10x that so i need to start creating a lot more content get more content up on the site i have been doing that we've got some use case pages up now we've got some more alternative pages we've got a couple new blog posts uh and i just i want to scale that so probably going to create a couple of like long form guides and then try to build some you establish those as my hubs pages my pillar pages and then try to create some supporting content around that.
13:20.93
Andrew
The flow, like I'm kind of split strategy here because, you know, the LinkedIn stuff that I'm doing is not driving a whole lot of traffic. Like let's, let's see in the last two weeks, you know LinkedIn's our fourth biggest referrer. Like Google is still the biggest one. And so like, I'd rather like double down on,
13:43.07
Andrew
also for makes it's a natural fit for us, like double down on search, organic search.
13:46.38
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
13:48.36
Andrew
And let's see.
13:49.41
Sean
yeah
13:51.27
Andrew
Yeah, chat GPT is pretty far down there, but I'm sure there's room to grow on like AI search optimization stuff. So
14:01.94
Andrew
so like LinkedIn is not sending a bunch of traffic to the site, but LinkedIn is like, we're getting good engagement. Like the LinkedIn strategy that I talked about months ago of let me find SEO influencers who are talking about new trends and and tactics and techniques in SEO and then show how you can do that, like execute that in Metamonster is working.
14:25.06
Andrew
And like people are booking calls and like talking to me and like expressing interest on LinkedIn from that.
14:25.93
Sean
Sweet.
14:30.36
Sean
sweet
14:30.75
Andrew
And so i don't want to stop doing that. I think the answer is like, there's a nice... there's a ah ah natural flow here where I can record a demo video doing something cool in MetaMonster.
14:43.73
Andrew
And then I can pretty easily take the transcript from that video and use that to create a LinkedIn post, an email and a blog post. And that pattern, you know, I think is he' a good pattern like execute on, but it ends up where like,
15:04.93
Andrew
like taking that approach, my like content creation is a little less strategic. And I think to like really explode organic content, I probably need to do some like more,
15:16.08
Andrew
like I probably need more scale than like one post a week. I need to do, you know, like I want to create some prompt templates and create like kind of a vault of prompt templates, which can be good to LinkedIn content too, I think.
15:26.67
Sean
Mm-hmm.
15:29.30
Andrew
But, but I want a bunch of pages for like all of our prompt, like a page for all of our prompt templates in our product with a short little write up around it.
15:38.92
Andrew
And i you know, I've been meaning for ages to go and create some free tools, which I think would help with organic a lot. And so I guess basically what I'm saying is I'm struggling a little bit to figure out how much effort to put into more intentional organic growth versus social and like YouTube.
16:00.29
Sean
I'll come back to it. It just, it's related. Now that you have three new customers, are you still going to go do the SEO agency strategy?
16:14.12
Andrew
that's another good question so our customers two of our three new customers the third i haven't talked to but it the two we have talked to are seo agencies and so i still think seo agencies are going to be our best customers the exception is potentially like
16:23.19
Sean
Okay.
16:28.78
Sean
Mm-hmm.
16:35.03
Andrew
larger scale companies and like, especially like kind of e-commerce brands, I think could be like, if we're going to go after brands, it needs to be finding brands with lots of pages, which is either like, go ahead.
16:40.34
Sean
Right.
16:48.76
Sean
So the question, the question that I'm asking isn't, are you going to target SEO agencies? I mean, there was a moment where you thought about like offering SEO consulting services.
17:00.06
Andrew
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
17:00.70
Sean
Are you still going to do that? Yeah.
17:03.86
Andrew
I do have, i do still have a proposal out for like a content engineering contract.
17:11.14
Sean
Okay.
17:13.39
Andrew
And i would would still like to execute that. And if that proposal falls through, i probably will find a couple. I still, like the reason for that was not like, let's become an agency. The reason for that was we need to do ah ah seo work to learn what's working and build case studies.
17:36.75
Andrew
And, whether we do that like for ourselves and for like a couple of clients for free, i would rather get paid for it if we're going to be doing it anyway.
17:44.51
Sean
Agreed.
17:48.89
Andrew
and then it would bring some revenue in.
17:48.23
Sean
agreed
17:50.33
Andrew
So it's, that's more about building case studies than it is like a pivot in business strategy to me.
17:56.77
Sean
Got it, got it, got it.
17:58.19
Andrew
Yeah.
17:59.21
Sean
Okay, so going back to your other question, I think you should definitely do the organic content stuff, especially if it's like SEO rich and ready, but like actually human readable and you know going back to the whole like this is how you do XYZ in the platform creating content off of that.
18:16.70
Sean
I think you should totally but I think you should go like you should spend a lot more time doing like the social listening and commenting thing. I think like link the conversation around like growth on LinkedIn reminds me of like 20.
18:32.48
Sean
I think it's a really cool thing about Twitter. think it's really cool thing about Twitter. I think really cool thing about Twitter.
18:40.02
Andrew
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
18:40.84
Sean
think it's really cool thing about Twitter. comment on some famous person's thing and they would actually see it and like might have it might actually respond to it versus like instagram right I think like LinkedIn, the cool thing is like when you post as a comment, all their followers actually do see it have a high chance of seeing it.
18:58.82
Sean
Especially if people are engaging with your specific comment. you know and's some you know Because like on the LinkedIn feed, they don't show you every single comment, but they show like one or two sort of highlighted, most relevant ones.
19:08.22
Sean
So I totally think you should go little.
19:08.76
Andrew
okay So you're talking about expanding the LinkedIn strategy to kind like do more commenting and like being more of an active part of the conversation on LinkedIn beyond just just posting.
19:16.35
Sean
Yeah.
19:19.48
Sean
Yeah, yeah, be social on social media. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:24.17
Andrew
Yeah.
19:25.03
Sean
I think you should still post, but I think that you would, I think you should, like, if I was going to, like, 80-20 my time, I would 80% do the, like, social listening stuff and searching, because I think, yeah, I mean, it's, like like, I think in between the two, only one of them actually expands your reach outside of your network.
19:25.01
Andrew
Cool. Yeah.
19:45.21
Sean
you know I
19:46.78
Andrew
Cool. So you would, you would go 80%, like, are you saying 80% social listening, 20% posting, or are you saying 80% LinkedIn, 20% organic social?
19:55.62
Sean
yeah
19:59.16
Sean
no i don't have a i don't have like a good uh even organic content you mean like for to the blog yeah uh i have no idea what i would split my time doing between posts like blog posts versus okay no this is what i think this is what i would do
20:04.86
Andrew
Sorry, sorry. Organic. Yeah. Organic search content.
20:20.15
Sean
I think I would probably try to comment on like at least two people's LinkedIn posts a day and then probably try to do like one blog post a week.
20:30.50
Sean
That's like a use case blog post, like how to find typos or how to... you know i don't know what it what it would be using the platform and i think i would just like yeah i would just do that and i'm i'm sure they would converge right i'm sure like you're gonna like do i would just i guess my point is like i would lead with social listening and then i can even see you write blog posts based on so the social listening part and i feel like that makes a lot of sense i just like across the board i just like
20:36.09
Andrew
Yeah.
20:56.30
Andrew
yeah
21:01.19
Sean
I think we just see like way more opportunity to do in growth on LinkedIn that way at the moment. So yeah.
21:07.28
Andrew
Cool. I think the thing that I struggle with, whether it's doing that on LinkedIn, doing it on Reddit is ah ah one, there's a little bit of imposter syndrome of like,
21:20.23
Andrew
you know I still don't feel like an SEO expert. And so sometimes commenting on these things, and I i think the way around, sometimes commenting on these things is hard. I think the way around that is like, be authentic.
21:32.06
Andrew
Don't position yourself as an expert, ask questions, you know provide, say like, hey, I saw this thing, like link to other people's resources.
21:34.52
Sean
Yeah.
21:40.95
Andrew
Like, you know you don't have to be a know-it-all.
21:42.48
Sean
yeah
21:43.83
Andrew
You can show up and be a part of the conversation while being honest about like your level of expertise. Yeah.
21:50.44
Sean
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the the thing that I'm imagining your comments are are more like you see someone talk about a problem they're having, you link them like a loom of like, hey, this is how you can do that in MetaMonster easily.
21:51.52
Andrew
yeah
22:04.30
Andrew
Yeah.
22:05.11
Sean
Sort of what I'm thinking.
22:05.27
Andrew
The other thing that's a struggle is just like for someone with ADHD, like social is such a like black hole that I can get sucked into and lose my entire day that it's, it's hard to like constrain that in a productive way.
22:13.71
Sean
Yeah.
22:23.48
Andrew
and I think, but I think the, I mean, I've just, yeah.
22:22.36
Sean
Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.
22:28.79
Andrew
The solution for right now is just fucking deal with it. And then like, as soon as you're capable, hire someone and who's better, like whose psychology is better suited to do that on a consistent basis.
22:40.32
Sean
Yeah, I mean, you know for what it's worth, I don't know who's good at social that doesn't have ADHD. I almost feel like you have to have it because it makes you want to doom scroll. And then you like, i I think like social is about understanding like cultural context, right?
22:52.94
Sean
So that your comments are relevant and stuff.
22:53.26
Andrew
Yeah.
22:55.19
Sean
So like, how do you get cultural context if you're not doing scroll? Like, yeah.
22:59.08
Andrew
maybe it's Maybe it's about hiring someone who can afford to just, that's their entire job and they don't have to feel like they're not doing other things that they should be doing.
23:05.23
Sean
yeah
23:08.54
Sean
that's that's probably accurate that that makes a lot of sense yeah
23:14.16
Andrew
Yeah, cool.
23:14.41
Sean
yeah i i installed tiktok for like a month or ah ah but two months and i was like oh i actually well you know when it comes to like wanting to make merchandise and and things like for clients or for ourselves like oh i i feel so left out of like i don't know what's yeah i think but anyway
23:30.54
Andrew
cool
23:34.88
Andrew
Cool. How much time would you devote to things that are not, that are pure SEO plays and not like social? Like, And I mean, the the reality is every, you know, everything that you do can be reformatted for different platforms. And so like, ideally, like, you you build a free tool. Cool.
23:57.02
Andrew
Link to that.
23:57.53
Sean
Mm-hmm.
23:57.54
Andrew
Talk about that on social. You do a, you build a,
24:03.25
Andrew
you build a, you write a prompt template. Great. LinkedIn posts, steal this prompt. Yada, yada. So maybe I'm answering my own question. Maybe.
24:14.81
Andrew
Maybe I just need to like figure out how to work these like these things into the social plan. And just maybe it's... This is the hard part of about content marketing. is like It's just so much fucking work.
24:28.97
Andrew
it's like Because like to do it really well, you need to create content.
24:29.28
Sean
It is so much working work.
24:33.35
Andrew
But then you need you should really be repurposing that content for multiple platforms. And then you need to like distribute. You need to give... like Who's the guy... He's like a, he's sort of an SEO guy, ah ah SEO content marketing guy on Twitter, LinkedIn, who is always like, he's like, you should be spending 80% of your time distributing your content.
24:54.100
Andrew
And most people spend like 10% of their time distributing their content.
25:00.01
Sean
I don't understand how you spend 80% of your time distributing your content. Unless he also means like repurposing it for distribution. i don't.
25:06.68
Andrew
I think repurposing is part of that equation.
25:08.32
Sean
Oh.
25:09.65
Sean
Gotcha.
25:11.60
Andrew
Probably, yeah.
25:12.95
Sean
Gotcha. I don't know.
25:14.60
Andrew
which AI has made that a lot easier.
25:14.84
Sean
I don't know which SEO guy you're talking about.
25:17.82
Andrew
It's not perfect. It still takes work and like human oversight, but it is a lot easier than it was.
25:21.42
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
25:25.08
Andrew
Yeah, cool. So what's going on in your world? How are are you all like keeping your head above water? Like, are you trying to grow more? Like what is what miscre- like,
25:41.41
Sean
Yes.
25:41.45
Andrew
have you had any time to think strategically?
25:42.71
Sean
if Let me start with, if you have listened this far into the the podcast, we are hiring for like three to five more people before the end of the year at this point.
25:58.62
Sean
and Just, yeah, if you have any designers or Webflow developers or marketing people that are great and for like a cyber audience, you should totally send them my way, please.
26:09.95
Sean
And thank you. yeah we head is above head is not above water whatsoever i'm deep in it i thought it would slow down after black hat uh it did not it it's only picked up we are like building like almost like 100% coverage of certain VC port codes at this point that like we're also starting to like do sites for VCs which is then also
26:39.92
Andrew
Wait, you're getting to the point where you have almost 100% coverage of a like a couple of VCs portfolios?
26:45.47
Sean
yeah yeah yeah yeah I know it's fucking insane I would say like
26:46.35
Andrew
Wow.
26:50.51
Andrew
Does a VC want to buy you all and make you like their platform like play?
26:56.54
Sean
I don't know. I don't know. I haven't asked. Don't. I'll let you know. I don't really know if I want to sell it.
27:01.82
Andrew
I don't know if VCs are still obsessed with platform. Like, I feel like that was the VC buzzword five years ago was everyone was like, we have a platform, which just meant we write content.
27:11.36
Sean
Yeah.
27:13.62
Sean
Yeah.
27:14.90
Sean
I think they are. i think, i think ah ah okay, so like, you know, one of the things is like we we're beginning to do a lot of websites for VCs and they tell us like what they're thinking about strategy and whatnot.
27:22.58
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
27:24.81
Sean
Like content's a little big part of it, like having a distribution arm and like we were actually just talking a VC and like, oh, like what you're looking for is that your your website becomes a distribution and promotional platform for your startups.
27:35.62
Sean
so Whereas other VCs want... like their VC brand and personal brand to be like the distribution engine, are both totally fair ways to do it and given their reasonings.
27:41.97
Andrew
Yeah.
27:48.78
Sean
So yes, I think, I don't know if they would, I don't know if anyone would buy them. We've had like friendly, like open, like it's on the table offers.
27:58.06
Sean
Like, like, Hey, if you don't ever want to like stop doing it, happy to happy to talk about it. But don't know.
28:04.29
Andrew
I feel like those are always kind of, those always kind of pissed me off because it was always someone saying, I'm not going to pay you what you're worth, but if you ever like need a soft landing, I'm here. Which like, I guess is better than not having a soft landing, but like they always kind of pissed me off when people would make those kinds of offers.
28:18.94
Sean
interesting
28:21.83
Andrew
Maybe I, maybe that was me reading something into it that, that they didn't intend, but.
28:25.78
Sean
no i i think it's fair i think
28:28.27
Andrew
I had, I will say i had a couple of bullshit offers from clients over the years where they were like, hey, we'll pay you a normal salary and like nothing else if you want to just quit crit and like come and work for us. And I was like, why the fuck would I do that?
28:42.25
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, i've definitely I've definitely had that too, for what it's worth.
28:45.100
Andrew
Okay.
28:46.33
Sean
I think I've told you about it before.
28:46.32
Andrew
All right.
28:47.100
Andrew
Yeah.
28:49.04
Sean
Yeah, I think more from other agency types, less from less from like VCs. But also I think it was like timing, I it was like, it was more in a headspace of like, oh, maybe I do want to just like get out of the, like, I don't know, maybe this, like it was working, but it's like,
29:07.60
Sean
how well is it going to actually work and all that stuff. but And I think, uh, anyway, yeah, yeah. Things are crazy at the moment. We're trying to hire.
29:18.02
Sean
i remember joking to so like on a call with, with someone, we're probably going to like double in size by the end of the year at the beginning, like in January. And then I remember jj Jason Valee, think, like, yeah like revenue- wise i think where're we are on to like double from last year is cool. like, like, think, like,
29:48.73
Andrew
Yeah, I mean, that's nuts. Like, agencies don't typically do that. If an agency has, like, a 20 to 30% revenue growth year over year, that's pretty solid. It can happen for sure.
30:01.55
Andrew
Like sometimes people like catch fire and they they grow, especially when you're small, but but that's like, that's a big deal, dude.
30:05.26
Sean
Yeah.
30:09.79
Sean
Thanks. Thanks. I do think that like, there's like some hesitation around all of it. I think like,
30:17.21
Sean
like Like, I mean, are are our growth is, like, pretty much entirely dependent on the the sentiment of the market, right? And, like, who we're servicing. So, like, when VCs were all holding their money and everything dred dried up in 2023, that was one of the hardest years.
30:34.96
Sean
And now, like, AI is in this crazy ass whatever.
30:35.66
Andrew
Yeah.
30:39.43
Sean
And, like, just to, like, stay mildly grounded, like, I don't know, kind of. a little bit worried that it feels like 2021. Yeah. Sure. and
30:48.55
Andrew
Oh, we're we're in an AI bubble. I think the difference, I firmly believe we're in an AI bubble. I think the difference between like the AI bubble and some of the like bubbles we've been through recently, I think there's more like legitimate value being created in this bubble.
30:55.70
Sean
yeah
31:07.45
Andrew
And so I feel like this is going be more of a dot com type thing where like,
31:10.97
Sean
sure
31:11.81
Andrew
Yes, there's going to be a crash at some point, but there's the people who survived that crash are going to build some like really valuable, cool things. On the flip side, dot com crash.
31:18.80
Sean
sure
31:21.12
Andrew
Fucking bad. Bad time.
31:22.65
Sean
yeah yeah yeah i hear i hear it was a terrible time at least no one's buying you know paying millions of dollars for ai domains right except that one company or maybe other
31:23.52
Andrew
I don't remember it much because we were both pretty young, but bad time.
31:39.16
Andrew
Oh yeah, I forgot that company early on. Dude, did you hear Statsig got bought by ChatGBT?
31:44.27
Sean
I did. and just saw that. I just saw that.
31:45.97
Andrew
Yeah.
31:47.30
Sean
I don't know.
31:47.09
Andrew
They're a, they're a scout and customer. Scout's my, my, ah yeah, I guess if we don't publish the last episode, I don't remember if we've talked about it, but my, my two clients right now, one of them is miscreants and one of them is scout, which is, you know, an AI agent platform for sales teams.
32:02.42
Sean
Yeah.
32:06.43
Andrew
And we, yes, that's it was one of our early customers. And I think the founders like an angel investor, um,
32:14.89
Sean
Nice. Nice.
32:16.09
Andrew
So you bet your ass I'm going to be putting the OpenAI logo on the Scout website at some point here soon.
32:21.92
Sean
Hell yeah, you are. Damn right. You know want pull both. Put static and open AI.
32:26.42
Andrew
yeah
32:26.65
Sean
Got you.
32:28.36
Sean
Um...
32:28.60
Andrew
What would be even better is if we can get stats. Well, I don't know what openaii what use OpenAI would have for an AI agent platform. just like Yeah, that might that might be a tough sell. Yeah.
32:41.12
Andrew
Hey, do you guys need a way to use Claude?
32:43.53
Andrew
we've got We've got a way for you to use Claude without telling your boss you're using Claude.
32:48.52
Sean
It's pretty good. I got like an interesting, okay, so like, got like an interesting thing to think, like chew on around like acquisitions in this space.
32:57.95
Andrew
OK.
32:59.08
Sean
Specifically, and this isn't related to Statsig, right? But like the granola is the fireflies, the the whatever's of the world.
33:05.35
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
33:05.96
Sean
And like the reason to acquire. So like point being that like, no, no, just like a lot of the more rapper based companies and like,
33:08.44
Andrew
Specifically the like note takers, are you are you going like that?
33:14.16
Andrew
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
33:15.73
Andrew
Let's be careful about throwing around derogatory words. Some of us prefer it GPT innovators, not GPT wrappers.
33:25.34
Sean
Okay, anyway, the i didn't know that was a I didn't know that was a derogatory term.
33:25.44
Andrew
I'm kidding.
33:29.22
Sean
I didn't realize.
33:29.57
Andrew
Oh, I'm kidding. I'm just making a joke about Metamonster 100% being a ChatGPT wrapper or a you a large model provider wrapper.
33:31.86
Sean
Oh.
33:36.47
Sean
Oh.
33:38.98
Andrew
I mean, I would argue we do some, we provide more than just a wrapper.
33:39.100
Sean
Yeah.
33:42.85
Andrew
Like we've got some tooling and whatnot, but like, and eventually we'll have some cool shit, but you know, right now we're a wrapper.
33:44.89
Sean
Agreed.
33:47.89
Sean
Agreed.
33:51.44
Sean
Anyway, the point I was making was like about like acquisition targets and like actually might be like pretty unreasonable to, not unreasonable, but it might be unlikely that, for example, an OpenAI would purchase a Fireflies or a Granola, not because that they can build it, and but because like you when you acquire, like outside of aqua hiring, right, which is totally fair and a totally legitimate reason to be bought or to buy,
33:52.47
Andrew
Yeah.
33:54.97
Andrew
Yeah.
34:18.82
Sean
because the user base is the same, like it's not like your user base of OpenAI, like it's it's not like your user base at Granola doesn't also probably use OpenAI, that when you purchase, like ah ah the point is like the reason to, like one of the reasons that companies might purchase others is because they want the user base.
34:28.27
Andrew
Yeah.
34:33.88
Andrew
Yeah.
34:35.42
Sean
This is not one of those cases, which is just like shifted my thinking a little bit about like how acquisition works in this world.
34:42.84
Andrew
Yeah, it is going to be, that's a really interesting point. so then like the reasons you might acquire them. So there's still acqui-hire there's, you might want the data if they have a different sort of usage data set that, that chat GPT doesn't have.
34:56.60
Sean
Yeah. Yeah, like any sphere is like a conversation at the moment. So yeah.
35:03.36
Andrew
some sort of, they've come up with some sort of proprietary tech that like,
35:08.91
Andrew
is still a thing. Like if they've come up with some sort of innovation that makes chat GPT better and chat GPT doesn't want someone else to get that, they just want to bring it in house.
35:15.77
Sean
Yeah.
35:17.10
Andrew
That's a possibility, but that's like, you know, I think like my, my assumption is that like a lot of the innovation happening right now is more like design user experience innovation, which is a lot harder to protect and like a lot harder to like,
35:32.50
Sean
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
35:36.52
Andrew
i kind of think a lot of the acquisitions are going to be like acquihires in disguise. Like if you just, I mean, look at the, you know, the money Meta's throwing around at AI talent right now.
35:48.23
Andrew
I kind of think that, you know talent's going to be valuable enough that people are going to get these like crazy sticker numbers. But when you look under the hood, it's going to be like, oh no, it's an acquihire.
35:58.78
Sean
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is totally fair. like we JJ and I have been talking about possibly buying an agency because like a small one, like like a two-person or solo person masking as an agency to charge more money, mainly because...
36:17.86
Andrew
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
36:20.26
Sean
mainly because like we would basically be paying a recruiter and it's like not that much of a difference in in cash if it was like you know four people that's a nice like pr thing and everything and also we just need to grow but this is like after we get some processes like more processes and stuff down anyway right it's it's kind of like an interesting thought
36:38.34
Andrew
Oh, man. love Love hearing those words.
36:41.02
Sean
but
36:42.15
Andrew
Love hearing Sean Sun say process. Oh, man. Music to my ears.
36:46.79
Sean
Yeah, you can check out my ASMR channel. That's one YouTube.
36:49.86
Andrew
but
36:52.30
Sean
just me saying. um I hate it because I just say that word and it doesn't happen. Or I don't, I don't like, you know, I feel like I've been saying process for four years. Yeah.
37:02.53
Andrew
Yeah, that's true.
37:03.34
Sean
Yeah.
37:03.51
Andrew
Yeah.
37:03.86
Sean
Yeah.
37:04.10
Andrew
It's hard. takes... It takes like dedicated effort or like resources or something. like You got to either be like, all right, it is this person's job.
37:11.65
Sean
yeah
37:13.33
Andrew
Go do it. And like make sure they don't get inundated with a bunch of other crap. Or more often, you just have to figure out how to get work off your plate so you can do it.
37:18.12
Sean
yeah
37:24.43
Sean
yeah we're talking about ben and i were talking about like design ops and maybe like that might be like an interesting role to look for because that might be something but he and i have very different ideas of what a design i was person his is probably better than mine mine was like
37:31.86
Andrew
Interesting.
37:38.78
Andrew
I just listened to a really cool, have you listened to the episode of Lenny's podcast with the Every team?
37:45.67
Sean
No, but I will.
37:47.05
Andrew
I
37:47.26
Sean
I just listened the one with Airtable, and the last one listened to was with the Lexicon founder for, like, naming.
37:53.89
Andrew
haven't listened to either of those yet. The one with Every was really interesting because Every is just like so weird in how they operate. Like they're they're just so AI build that they're just like all the fuck in and it's interesting to see
38:05.88
Sean
Listen, it's it's not fair when your last name is Shipper. Okay? It's just not. It's not. The competitive advantage is too real.
38:16.52
Andrew
so one of the things they're doing that's really fascinating is they hired a role an internal like ops role that like their entire job is to build internal ai like tools prompts agents whatever like use ai to automate things and internally like find internal bottlenecks and automate them away with ai
38:14.78
Sean
I don't know what to tell you.
38:23.21
Sean
Mm-hmm.
38:37.85
Andrew
And so they were talking about that a little bit on the podcast and, and then just like how, if, if they're being totally honest, like the amount that they're using it and like, you know, he was saying like they write very little code, which is pretty, know, it's like,
39:00.90
Sean
yeah
39:01.06
Andrew
like everyone's using this shit, but like they're really, it feels like if they're being honest, they're taking it to the, like testing what it feels like to take it to the extremes.
39:12.04
Sean
they're they're like every time i think about them i was just checking monologue when you told me about it like the like everything ah ah like they are probably the best case study of vibe coding actually being a like a real thing right like
39:23.47
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.
39:25.55
Andrew
Although i am still really curious because they've been somewhat public about their revenue. like they
39:30.71
Sean
Sure. Right. Sure.
39:30.86
Andrew
And I am very curious how much of their revenue is actually coming from products versus like, and it's hard because it's they have this bundle thing.
39:38.65
Sean
yeah
39:40.61
Andrew
So like, it's probably hard to tell like how much products are driving the bundle versus content. But my hunch is that the majority of their revenue is like their consulting arm and their content.
39:46.59
Sean
right
39:51.55
Andrew
And the products are more like, a lever for generating interesting content and like they're almost it's almost like engineering is marketing
39:59.43
Sean
sure
40:02.55
Sean
Sure. I mean, I agree with you. I guess when I say like successful like successful case studies of VibeCoding, it's like at least it's a product.
40:12.40
Sean
you know At least it works. And it's not.
40:13.66
Andrew
yeah oh that's true yeah yeah i mean although i will say i tried to sign up for quora and it
40:15.30
Sean
like That's already like top 0.001%. Oh,
40:22.79
Andrew
bonked out on me and I did never get it set up.
40:24.40
Sean
I see. Oh, that's fair. All right, fine.
40:26.73
Andrew
You did not like it, right?
40:28.10
Sean
Yeah, I i hate it. like the design. Design's pretty.
40:32.16
Andrew
Yeah.
40:33.51
Sean
I don't think I will, now that I've tried so many of them, including Superhuman, I don't think any of it is better than just like setting up your Gmail.
40:42.58
Andrew
Just the Gmail inbox.
40:45.07
Sean
Yeah, yeah. Like, I think there's just like, like i ah ah Like I think it also is like the fact that my workflows are so integrated with the Gmail inbox.
40:54.58
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
40:55.30
Sean
And like, I think I use tools provided to me by the by Gmail that 90% of I'm sure that the users don't. But even from like just being able to see my calendar and clicking on and like scheduling events and like if I'm in an email and then scheduling makes it easy to just pull everyone in that thread into and to calendar, like that by itself is also super useful.
41:17.02
Sean
but like
41:17.06
Andrew
Dude, I love the Notion calendar. And i really wanted to like Notion email. And I hated it. But
41:25.57
Sean
Gotcha. Same. Same. Actually, yeah, me too. I tried Notion Mail. Couldn't do it. Couldn't.
41:31.23
Andrew
it's awful. Yeah. Their calendar is amazing.
41:32.32
Sean
Yeah.
41:33.92
Andrew
Their calendar is genuinely fantastic.
41:34.57
Sean
Yeah.
41:38.21
Sean
I think we should do...
41:38.37
Andrew
It's by default calendar.
41:40.22
Sean
I think we should do an episode on like SAS tools or AI tool. I wanted to, and when you brought a monologue, and wanted to do an episode on like different AI products that we're using.
41:50.64
Andrew
an episode on like our stacks and like our personal stacks and what we use day to day.
41:53.18
Sean
Yeah. yeah Yeah. Yeah. And like how we're using them.
41:59.01
Andrew
feel like it's going to be a little bit boring. I feel like 90% of what I use is notion, Google meets, email, and Claude, Claude projects.
42:11.39
Andrew
I feel like that's 90% of what i use.
42:14.54
Sean
Yeah, same.
42:14.68
Andrew
I really do need to get into cloud code and like try to use it for some non-code tasks. I really want to experiment with it from, for marketing projects.
42:23.34
Sean
Yeah. Okay.
42:25.54
Andrew
Yeah.
42:25.76
Sean
Interesting. I didn't even know you could do that with Cloud Code.
42:28.88
Andrew
Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's just generating text. It like,
42:34.23
Sean
Yeah, yeah. I just thought it was like, i just imagined Cloud Code was like geared towards quote coding. So it had more. I don't know.
42:42.85
Andrew
I mean, their system prompts might be slightly geared towards coding, but like, you know, it's just reading text files and generating text and it's clawed under the hood, which is, you clawed's a general purpose model.
42:46.67
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
42:56.12
Andrew
So I think it would work pretty well.
42:56.59
Sean
yeah
42:58.93
Sean
yeah
42:58.96
Andrew
And I was i was even, i did a little research one day into like, what kind of markdown like editors could you put on top of it and just like sort of create like a local content management system with Cloud Code running.
43:12.30
Sean
yeah
43:14.25
Andrew
I think JCRAN is doing this with Obsidian. Like he's like, they're using, adopting Obsidian really heavily and using Cloud Code in the terminal, like within Obsidian, like in an Obsidian terminal plugin to do a bunch of like more like project management knowledge-based shit.
43:34.89
Andrew
But
43:36.98
Sean
Interesting.
43:37.02
Andrew
but Yeah. Yeah.
43:39.34
Sean
OK. I'll have to ask him.
43:40.10
Andrew
I want to I want to try it for like marketing and like content generation. but
43:45.60
Sean
Sweet. yeah I'm trying to pick up Obsidian again. but Anyway, think we have to get out of here. so yeah Time's up.
43:50.86
Andrew
cool. All right, man.
43:52.52
Sean
Bye. See you later.
43:52.94
Andrew
Glad to be back. We'll try to get back into a rhythm and and get these rolling out. get that 51 subscriber number up.
43:56.86
Sean
Hell yeah.
43:59.56
Sean
Yeah, yeah.
43:59.75
Andrew
Cause as, as that cold email said, we, we deserve more than 51 subscribers.
44:04.38
Sean
We do. We do. Cool. Episode one.
44:05.88
Andrew
i hated I hated myself saying that. it like I started to gag as I was...
44:08.92
Sean
I'm just going to cut it off. It's okay.
44:10.16
Andrew
Yeah.
44:10.55
Sean
I want to cut it off.
44:10.58
Andrew
Peace.
44:11.60
Sean
Yeah. Bye. See ya.
44:13.45
Andrew
this