SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, it's Friday. We made it, Molly. We got through another ridiculously dense August summer week of news. What's the fall going to be like? I mean, I guess everybody's,

Jason Calacanis: I got the first autoresponder today, not the responder, but the direct response that was like,

SPEAKER_04: can you ping me after Labor Day? Because I'm going to be a burning man for 10 days. So maybe things are going to chill out a little bit for the next 10 days, but I wouldn't count on it. We got a big variety show for you because it's Friday

SPEAKER_08: and it's all in here today. Very excited to hear that Twitter is keeping up the product velocity and they're going to be adding a unique spin on podcast players. So you might be able to listen

SPEAKER_09: to This Week in Startups inside your Twitter account while your Twitter app, while you're, you know, replying and tweeting to people. Twitter might be getting serious about the

SPEAKER_04: creator economy at long last. Then I have a great interview with another fantastic launch founder building something awesome for the real world with tons of value. I love it.

SPEAKER_14: Then producer Rachel is back with another okay boomer where she learned a lot about, you know, getting into podcasting of all things. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us.

SPEAKER_16: This Week in Startups is brought to you by Babbel. Start your new language learning journey today

SPEAKER_19: with Babbel. Save up to 60% off your subscription when you go to babbel.com slash twist. That's B-A-B-B-B-E-L dot com slash twist.

SPEAKER_16: Microacquire, the startup acquisition marketplace. Start the right acquisition conversations at your own pace. Get free and instant access to over 100,000 trusted buyers with total anonymity. Say goodbye to brokers and meet your ideal buyer today. Go to try.microacquire.com slash twist. And Embroker's startup insurance program helps startups secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off of traditional insurance today at Embroker.com slash twist. While you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer code twist.

SPEAKER_04: All right. A little dropping Friday news, which we're very excited about. Breaking news. Everybody loves podcasts. As podcast pioneers, isn't it nice to see us validated after all

SPEAKER_23: these almost decades, almost double? You know what? Decade two? I think we'll pay attention to what you're doing. Okay, sure. We'll take it.

SPEAKER_28: Hey guys, good idea. We should totally do that. Whoever we are up to and including Twitter. What? Which announced on Thursday that Twitter will be integrating podcasts into its Redesign

SPEAKER_04: Spaces tab. Now, unlike everybody else, Twitter will not be acquiring or producing podcasts, but they are going to start importing, it sounds like, RSS feeds. The Redesign Spaces tab opens with stations, which are topic-based playlists combining podcast episodes pulled from RSS with Twitter's

SPEAKER_29: social audio events and recordings. So like, oh, spaces, but also podcasts.

SPEAKER_14: Well, that would be interesting if we could put the, this would be a great way to incent us

SPEAKER_08: to participate in spaces. So if they pulled in the, this being startups feed, and then you or I, or both of us, or Rachel did a fan Q&A or a pop-up space. And then it integrated that in between our daily episodes as little hits, I would do more spaces for sure. And it would grow our subscriber base there. And what is a follower other than a subscriber? It's the same language, but it really is. Subscriber, follower, it's all the same thing. So hey, we're back, now we're back to where Twitter started, which was you used to be able to get an RSS feed. I think it was as simple as like Twitter.com slash Jason slash XML dot RSS. Like they had a, they were publishing everybody.

SPEAKER_04: They were publishing everybody's tweets, and then they just like locked it up. They say the quote from The Verge is that it functions like a Pandora station, but for spoken word, and is pretty different from they say the a la carte listening podcast consumers are used to on Apple podcasts or Spotify. So I guess this grouping thing the idea that it would be like, like you just said, if we did spaces and the podcast that it would all kind of be rolled in together. And you would just be like, I heart

SPEAKER_28: Jason. Yeah, show me everything spoken.

SPEAKER_08: I hope that they have the common sense enough to know. This is the hand, the official handle of the show. And this is the handle of the host, and the other host. And then they integrated that together because then they could do it interestingly. But the screenshot what I like about the

SPEAKER_38: screenshot is, they're using the card metaphor, we swipe left or right, we had an investment in a company called swell. If you pull up swell podcast player, Nick, you could find a quick screenshot of it. This was their innovation. They use cards like this. And then if you swiped Molly, this is why we invested in the company, but I think we put 250k. And then six months later, they gave me back 500. And they're like, we're selling to Apple. I was getting shut down. I was like, Oh, no, no, no, no, keep going. But I think they make up the Apple podcasting player team now, which is why I think the Apple podcast player got so much better. And what I like about this is I don't know if you found yourself doing this. Often, I would be listening to a podcast on my headphones and searching on Twitter, right? That's like a common totally behavior is to do those two things. Yep. Now with spaces, I did find myself sometimes when there's Nick spaces, and people are talking about all this next trade that next trade, I'll pop into a next space, I'll listen to it. And then I'll be searching obviously using Twitter as I normally would. So this makes Twitter very sticky. We'll

SPEAKER_33: increase time when you play audio in an app. Time in the app goes bonkers. That was the big

SPEAKER_38: clubhouse. So they were like, Look, we've got people three hours a night, you know, the top 10% of users are on here 100 hours a month. Well, it's a little bit disingenuous, because they might be just listening in the background. So right, it's like saying Spotify has 1000 hours is like, yeah, listening to a playlist while I work doesn't really count as capturing my attention. But still counts for

SPEAKER_04: something. It's okay. It's, it's interesting to the idea that I'm going to describe something that has previously existed on the internet. But the idea that you could have, because they're going to have these personalized hubs. And it's going to be like all your next content or all your startup content, right? And it'll try in all this stuff. And they've been trying to do that. But I also like the idea that my Twitter profile could become a hub for all of the things that I do in that way, like a blog used to be or a personal web page. Or, you know, like, there are all these people who come to my Twitter all the time and are like, I miss you on marketplace. I wish you were still podcasting. And

SPEAKER_55: I'm like, well, it's in my bio. But no, no, I didn't take the time to read it as well. I mean,

SPEAKER_56: if you think about it,

SPEAKER_08: you're somehow part of my fee. Yes, I can do this manually. You can create a Zapier to anytime your podcast is updated to putting it to your doing a tweet anytime you do an Instagram photo, have it do a tweet anytime you do. But nobody sets that up. And I'm thinking maybe I should, but I always like to handcraft the tweet, not have it be an auto tweet. But Twitter would be wise to say what are your other feeds in the world? And maybe we'll suck them in here, right? And that would be super beneficial. If you could take the RSS feed automatically of this week in startups, and when it publishes, bink, it just says, Hey, episode, whatever's here. Yeah, now some people might not want to

SPEAKER_61: auto publish some people have like, they want to be more crafted in there.

SPEAKER_04: Well, you don't want to drop it into the middle of a terrible breaking news event. There's sort of stuff that there's stuff that is a little bit awkward.

SPEAKER_38: That is the problem. Yes. When 911 happens, God forbid, you know, whatever the next one is, or I had this because people were automatically tweeting the show, or clips, and the tsunami happened. I was asleep somewhere when the tsunami happened. Because of in the Fukushima meltdown in Japan. And literally one of those tweets, and they're like, really promoting your podcast? Well, you know, 10,000 people died. And I'm like, it was automated. I'm sorry. But you do have to have like a period. If tragedy, don't tweet. Yeah, unless it's thoughts and prayers.

SPEAKER_04: Right. We should we should just have one of those ready to go all the time. Apparently, the an important interesting quote from the blog, as they roll out this test from spaces and podcasts to newsletters and notes, we're working every day to improve the way people connect with creators, and make Twitter the home of the most engaging conversations in the world. So almost like a mission statement, almost like a mission statement, and a much bigger umbrella.

SPEAKER_72: Yeah, so this is a bad mission statement, but I could punch it up.

SPEAKER_21: I know you can even at the end of the longest day ever, Jake, I will find a way.

SPEAKER_74: Well, we're working every day to improve the way. God, it's a little wordy. This is the problem.

SPEAKER_70: You know, too many people worked on this. The home of the most engaging conversations in the world is a great starting point.

SPEAKER_08: That's great. That's great. Yes. So I would just start with that Twitter, Twitter is the home of the most engaging conversations in the world. And our mission is to enable everyone to participate meaningfully in those

SPEAKER_78: conversations, discussions, don't want to use the same word twice.

SPEAKER_76: Mm hmm. There you go. But our mission is to enable everyone to participate meaningfully in

SPEAKER_08: those discussions. Yeah, that's a nice punch up. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, they are doing super follows where you pay people. Yeah, they are doing they bought review the newsletter thing. So on mine, you'll see there's a newsletter thing. Did you turn yours on your review yet? Mm hmm. But I haven't done anything with it.

SPEAKER_51: Oh, okay. Well, you just then you're collecting emails as you go, right? Like I have a sub stack. I've never published it. I don't think but I get like a couple of subscribers every day. So I was like, I'll just get the free subscribers and then export them to my right. And then it's

SPEAKER_08: definitely gonna happen. Well, I had my mailing list on MailChimp. We were paying 4000 a month for MailChimp. I took my personal one off there, put it on review. And I pay $0. Right. So and that's actually the power move. I think for Twitter, Twitter already has a good business. Take things like Patreon, make it free on Twitter, take email, make it free on Twitter. The thing that would have been the biggest layup of all would have been to let people post videos. Like they would on YouTube, make it a tab, and then let them get 100% of the advertising from it, then you'd really incense the

SPEAKER_92: Mr. Beast, etc, to maybe participate more. And then why on earth, like doesn't Justin Timberlake

SPEAKER_78: mine, and they screwed up. Yeah, and Periscope, they screwed those up. But I mean, think about this,

SPEAKER_08: if you want to Justin Timberlake to meaningfully participate here, or Lady Gaga, whoever, why wouldn't you give them the artists tab? So when I go to their tab, instead of seeing their likes and

SPEAKER_38: their media and their replies and tweets, it's like my four choices. How about it's Lady Gaga has tweets, merch, tickets, right, replies, whatever. I don't understand why the people at Twitter are so dumb.

SPEAKER_04: But that's, yes, like, that's what I'm talking about with our pages to like have just make it be and if and it's a mat to be clear, we're talking about a large pivot, like Twitter moving away from micro blogging, right? That's all we do. Now it's, they're slowly starting to roll out these like have these value ads. But the idea of rolling all of that together into one mega all of a sudden, they're like, in a weird way, like they're my space, they're, they're actually a creator platform, which unlocks a lot of stuff. I mean, if I could just if it said add your RSS feed here,

SPEAKER_38: your podcast, then it would have my tweets, my replies, my podcast, my media, my likes, and I should be able to pick that order. So if I want to have my podcast come up first, then my tweets, or I want my podcast pinned, whatever, just give me a little control over my feed. Yeah. And then if I had shop, I could pull in my Shopify URL. And then I would have tweets, podcast, Shopify, and then what if I put my your YouTube URL that I put embed my YouTube videos? Yeah, this is the kind of control they could give to creators that would make Twitter participation skyrocket. Right now, you go look at some celebrities, they're just not participating because nobody's thinking about them. And they have the tip of the spear.

SPEAKER_51: Yeah. Yeah. Well, because they're just not good at product. Let's be honest, I did like the guy

SPEAKER_38: bake poor. I said his name. He was on for a while. I don't know product manager who Prague fired. Oh, right. Yeah, he was overseeing. Remember that violent increase in product velocity? Yeah, just all of a sudden happened one year. That was him, you know, when he did spaces, and they're like,

SPEAKER_61: yeah, we're gonna get spaces out real quick. And we'll see.

SPEAKER_04: I think it seems to me that Prague does have a vision here. And this is and these are all part of that, right? Like it all this stagnation, all the getting rid of I mean, I know I keep beating up on the guy, but all the getting rid of Vine and Periscope and then we're microblogging, that's it. And it's just gonna be this like, monk like Craigslist thing that never changes. That was Dorsey. Like, now they're like, guys, we're in the creator economy. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Super

SPEAKER_111: interesting. Well, you know, this all comes after YouTube, right? We got included in their

SPEAKER_08: podcasting page. So if you go to youtube.com slash podcasts, it's, it's, it's, they've announced it, it's just kind of hiding in plain sight, you will get redirected to their listing of select podcasts. So you should find us on there, we are maintaining a, they don't do our RSS feed, we make a playlist of our podcast episodes, and it puts us up there. So when we publish a new one, we should be up there.

SPEAKER_04: It is, by the way, when you go to youtube.com slash podcast, like exactly as chaotic, rando, weird stuff recommendations as you could possibly ever imagine. Evidently, I have been delivered the

SPEAKER_115: super bro feed. Maybe everybody gets the super bro feed. I don't really know. But I'm looking at this,

SPEAKER_117: like, who is programming this? I just scrolled down three pages to see a lady, any lady on any

SPEAKER_04: thumbnail, like I've got like, King in the stick, the Pat McAfee show, Lex Friedman impulsive, they're recommending to me that is this my my my son's YouTube, like, what is this?

SPEAKER_08: I think here's the thing, people who are, I know what this is, I'm off the rails, people who are podcasters on YouTube, are probably people who have video shows,

SPEAKER_38: not audio shows, and 99% of podcasts do not do video. Therefore, they don't participate in the

SPEAKER_72: YouTube ecosystem. Oh, maybe? Yeah, that's hysterical. Yeah. I mean, it is about, I would

SPEAKER_38: say it cost 50 times as much between 25 and 50 times as much to do a video podcast as it does just an audio one, you can do an audio one without much help, like just an hour of cleaning up the audio feed, maybe two hours, if you're editing stuff, once you do video, you know, you're talking about 10

SPEAKER_51: hours. Yeah. And then the size of the files, all that kind of stuff is just crazy. But still, most

SPEAKER_69: people are doing some kind of video. Although looking at this, I would think it was only

SPEAKER_04: other MMA fighters, and slightly disgraced comedians. Anyway, moving on, though, moving on,

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SPEAKER_33: off your subscription. B-A-B-B-B-E-L. Babbel. Language for life. Everybody loves podcasts.

SPEAKER_38: Luckily for us. I think it's a great thing. You know, it's, it's having podcasts in your service is like having news in your service or, you know, anything else. It's just where the energy is and people expect it to be there. Audible has podcasts now. So I think it's great if you can be introduced to things. And, you know, podcasting is really about consistently publishing high quality content over, you know, you know, years. And it's nice to see a bunch of people trying and a lot of new interesting things coming out. We're going to be launching our next podcast called Founder University, which will be more like a show, but it will be a podcast format as well, where we just have

SPEAKER_135: a founder. I think you were on the media meeting we had yesterday. This is, you know, my idea was,

SPEAKER_08: Hey, how about just a 10 minute talk, 15 minute talk twice a week on a specific tactical thing that founders need to know how to do. So, right. And so we'll see how that one does. And luckily, a lot of sponsors and our partners seem to like that idea. It doesn't fit here. Like you and I are not going to stop and like, here's how to do a landing page, right? We'd go find somebody who's the best landing page person to explain, Hey, the nuances of building a landing page are such in 2023,

SPEAKER_55: you know, 2022. So I love podcasting as a format. I love the fact that it's lightweight and anybody can try it. I love the fact that you can consume it anywhere.

SPEAKER_117: And just try to own just try to own your own podcast people just don't try not to rely

SPEAKER_69: on these platforms for your life or death. That is our only advice to you.

SPEAKER_55: Well, that's why RSS feeds are so powerful because, you know, Twitter wants to support because Facebook wanted to do pockets, I think they may have deprecated it.

SPEAKER_08: But I think facebook.com slash podcasts, they were going to try to do this. Yeah, nope, they don't have podcasts. Facebook podcast might have been turned off.

SPEAKER_04: I think they did recently turn it off. Yeah. Yeah, I guess they were just like,

SPEAKER_13: yeah, what do we get out of there about creators? Pish posh.

SPEAKER_08: Facebook pulls plug on podcast business after a year May 2. So you know, I think you'll see a lot

SPEAKER_86: of people dip their toe and you know, like, what does podcast do for I'll tell you why

SPEAKER_38: Zuckerberg canceled it? You know why they get through? Why would put a Zuckerberg not pull the plug on the

SPEAKER_04: podcasting efforts? Because if you're listening to podcasts, you're not on Facebook. Right?

SPEAKER_70: Yeah, you just want time spent on that site to serve them.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, if you were okay, well, you're warming getting closer now. Why wouldn't he want to promote

SPEAKER_51: podcasts on Facebook? Like, okay, so if you're listening to our Facebook, you might be you might

SPEAKER_04: consume more Facebook, like we're saying earlier, right? But and you would know, he would know what you listen to, but not necessarily be able to serve you an ad or know the data about the podcast. Exactly. Like you can't we bake them in his own ads in there, right? So he can't get the ad

SPEAKER_128: inventory. So why would he do a menschie thing? Like help the community get more views? Because it

SPEAKER_04: doesn't help. Right? Like, right, exactly. It's sort of like you could have Facebook again, if Twitter, like pulls this off and becomes a place where creators can have their whole selves. Yeah, and all the things that they do and have this kind of like great hub and then be featured in their other like, topical hubs, then all of a sudden, that is super freaking interesting. And Facebook and Instagram do not have it. Do not.

SPEAKER_153: It is interesting when you think I remember I said on a podcast earlier this week, I just said like, you know, Zuckerberg never had a partner, he never helps anybody else,

SPEAKER_38: he never shares revenue. And podcasting is a perfect example. Twitter wants to help podcasters, you know, Microsoft wants to help developers, Apple, Google want to help developers, YouTube wants to help creators and podcasters and video creators. And you know, Twitter wants to

SPEAKER_128: help and Substack want to help newsletter writers, everybody wants to help everybody. It's the whole ethos of the industry who doesn't? Yeah, who wants everything for himself,

SPEAKER_28: the king of the metaverse, the guy king of the metaverse.

SPEAKER_33: I watched the first three minutes of that Joe Rogan interview, I can't thank you in my mouth. Yeah,

SPEAKER_38: it's just like, he's like, Well, you know, I always wanted to be able to look people directly in the eye and see their expressions. I'm like, you mean in real life? Like we're all doing every

SPEAKER_33: day? He's like, Well, you can't really do that. You can't really do that on a zoom. I'm like, Uh, yeah, we're kind of doing that all day. And he's like, Well, you know, I'm making a lot of faces right now.

SPEAKER_08: He's like, Well, the avatar like changes the look based on your emotional state. I'm like, so does my face. He's like, Yeah, but the copies your face and then represents that. I'm like, Oh, my God. I know I can't. This is hilarious. He Yeah. Now you see what the god king,

SPEAKER_55: you know, when you have the super voting shares, how this can go wrong.

SPEAKER_08: This is super appealing to him, because he doesn't have a same relationship with humans and emotions as he jokes about himself all the time with his, you know, robot kind of joking about himself and other people kind of have, you know, made fun of his peculiarities on interpersonal levels. I think it's like this actually to him feels like an unlock. Yeah. And the rest of it,

SPEAKER_70: we feel like we're in a prison, right? Also, he'll just be able to control it all. And we will be,

SPEAKER_113: we will be in a slaves in his metaverse where he doesn't share revenue, and none of us can make

SPEAKER_08: a living and wear drones, like literally, seriously, anybody buys me one of those oculuses or whatever for Christmas going right in the garbage, smash, smash, smash in the garbage, smash. Not interested. I

SPEAKER_56: can't. Oh, man, I hope Apple gives us a surprise in that September. Imagine if Apple was like, Oh,

SPEAKER_171: by the way, one more thing. And they just showed us like the Facebook killer. And that Apple screwed their revenue and screws their like $10 billion boondoggle to make headsets. And Zuckerberg's whole empire collapses and they got to sell it for parts. Lena Khan comes in and separates it. Ah,

SPEAKER_173: so delightful for everybody. Let's go. I love it. All right, everybody. Let's

SPEAKER_28: move on. What do we got next? Let's highlight a founder who is building in the real world. Yes.

SPEAKER_04: Because next up, I've got a great interview with LA25, our launch accelerator, 25th cohort, founder Pete Oxenham, who told me that you pronounce his last name ox and ham, which is awesome. Beautiful. Pete Oxenham is the founder of chatter.dev, which is a SaaS platform that helps factory machines run more efficiently and saves large manufacturers money. And it's the kind of idea where he was like, use he himself as a machinist. And he was like, I was building all this stuff. And I had a workshop and I had these like industrial sized machines, and they just weren't that efficient. And the software was stupid. So I made new stuff. And then it turned into a business. I'm like, you're gonna, you're gonna crush it, kid. Yeah, I mean, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_08: We love SaaS as a business model. Business subscriptions is a great business, whether you're Salesforce or Snowflake or lead IQ grand, whatever, slack, Canva. But then you have hardware enabled sauce. So this is like a very not expensive hardware device you put on fabrication machines, and then you get all this data from them. And you can imagine, in factories, like these machines are dumb. You know, you have to like, typically put us, you have to put like a serial connector, you know, with a crazy cable to program. I mean, it's like literally something out of like 1997, where you're, you're putting one of those serial cables in and then trying to hard code it. You know, why not put it in the cloud, be able to monitor and do all this stuff. So we took a chance on this one. And I'm delighted that they went to the accelerator. I'm delighted at the outcome they have. And if you would like to come to the accelerator, launch.co slash apply launch.co slash apply, you can apply for our accelerator, we'll spend 16 weeks with you get to be on the podcast. So you know, and you get to meet Molly and me and our whole team here. And you know, we try to pump you up and give you the best chance we introduce you to over 1000 investors over the 16 weeks, just to give a little plug about what we're trying to do. And then I'd say, five or six out of seven people who go through our accelerator, when we give them 100k Molly, we wind up sending them to the syndicate.com, which then puts another 250 to $1 million in. So

SPEAKER_38: it's kind of like going to tech stars or Y Combinator and getting a seed fund. So if you put angel list and tech stars slash Y Combinator together, that's what I built here with the accelerator plus the syndicate. So you kind of get to have us invest multiple times, which I'm very proud of, we can continue to support the company. And maybe we can build up a, you know, a 10 or 15% ownership in your company and be your earliest, best, and most frequent supporters. That's what we try to do here, your earliest, your best and most frequent supporters. Because we can. Yeah, we've got that great syndicate and the pod, you know, and thank you for doing this, by the way, Molly, you know,

SPEAKER_51: it's just great having you here to share the load. And then also like, you know, they get to meet you, they'll event they meet me already, because I do the first couple days. So it's just another touch point for them. And you're so good at interviewing them. It's really special.

SPEAKER_04: It's they're so interesting. They genuinely are like, I mean, I've been trying to keep these to 10 minutes. But trust me, it's a chore. That's why I'm not 45. I can't stop talking. All right,

SPEAKER_184: speaking of stopping talking, let's hear this great interview. Let's talk to Pete.

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SPEAKER_00: directly and efficiently. If you're a founder, and you're looking to sell and there's nothing wrong with selling. Sometimes you got to secure the bag. Well, micro acquire is free for you. It's free. It's private. And there's nobody in the middle. To date, micro acquires helped hundreds of startups. Yes, they've helped hundreds of startups get acquired. I kid you not. And they facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in deal volume. Their platform has over 120,000 buyers who spend $390 a year for access. That's a big number for a subscription. But not if you're an acquirer spending millions to tens of millions to hundreds of millions to billions of dollars buying technology companies. Thousands of startups are currently listed for sale. So if you are a buyer, you're probably missing some great opportunities there. I encourage you to go become a subscriber

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SPEAKER_70: Great job to the micro acquire team. Next up, we have Pete Oxenham, who is the founder of chatter

SPEAKER_117: at chatter.dev. Pete, welcome. And tell me what you're working on. Yeah, so chatter is a machine

SPEAKER_189: monitoring and analytics platform that helps manufacturers collect their data and actually make their processes more efficient and quicker just based on harnessing the processing we do

Jason Calacanis: on the data we collect from their facility. So there's like 10 to 100 questions in there. What data and how do they need to get how to use it to make them more efficient?

SPEAKER_189: Yeah. So, you know, what we're focusing on is like super low friction, very easy setup. This is a really stagnated industry where right now a lot of the information is very human centric. You know, it takes one person looking at one machine going over to another system, inputting it, someone else looks at it, they go to another system. What we're doing is we're actually pulling data off the sensors that these machines, the manufacturers use already have built in right now. All that data is just sitting siloed in one device and someone has to look at it and think about it and do something based on that. What the chatter platform does actually pulls that data automatically, figures out what to do with it. Um, and then either prompts actions, uh, for, you know, a person to do based on that, or it automatically performs an action like say ordering a tool or

SPEAKER_196: scheduling a new job. So what types of manufacturing are you talking? Is it applicable? Like, do you

SPEAKER_189: have any beachhead market that you're targeting specifically? Yeah. So our, uh, main beachhead market is, um, CNC machines based in the U S so that's a massive market. Um, what's CNC machines? CNC machines are basically a robotic, uh, manufacturers. So think of the inverse of a 3d printer. Uh, so they take a block of metal, they cut away a bunch of metal. And at the end of the day, you've got a completed part. So, uh, that stuff that's going up into space. Um, that stuff that is going on airplanes and cars, uh, things like that. And, uh, in the U S manufacturing market, there are a lot of small and mid-sized businesses, um, that have these types of machines, um, and, you know, create, uh, the stuff, you know, essentially anything metal, uh, that we use in our daily lives came out of one of these automated machines. And what is it about them? That's inefficient.

SPEAKER_117: What's this, the problem that you identified in and like, how you, how did you, why you?

SPEAKER_189: Yeah. So essentially, um, these machines have a long history. You used to have factory floors worth of workers who would manually, you know, turn cranks and, and they would cut the metal away and they would read prints. Um, and over the years, the equipment itself has become a lot more automated, right? Now it's controlled by the computer. The computer tells the tool where to go, what to cut, uh, what to inspect. But the layer that hasn't kept up is the actual software that's managing all these processes. Um, right now the machines essentially just follow code line by line, go here, go there, but there's no thinking. They can't do any thinking right now. That's all still on the people who are running the facility. Now what chatter is doing is actually unlocking that data layer, um, and sort of doing, you know, we have the physical layer automated. Now we need to automate the actual software layer of this.

SPEAKER_117: So can you give me a specific example of what might happen that your process could improve?

SPEAKER_189: Sure. Um, so often you'll have a machine shop that's running a couple shifts, right? So you have a morning operator and an evening operator, and you have a tool that only has a certain amount of, of time it can cut, right? It'll eventually wear out. Uh, chatter is able to pick up on that tool, figure out when it's been changed, figure out how long it's going to last and actually have a warning to the operator. Hey, this is going to expire in five minutes. So rather than it breaking and everything going, you know, uh, all up in flames, uh, they can address the issue before it even happens. Beyond that, since we're integrating with other software systems, like purchasing systems and ERPs, uh, chatter can actually order the tool. So not only do we know it's going to break and we know when to, um, to change it, uh, before it goes out, um, it can actually be ordered, make sure it's an inventory. If it's not there, it's ordered. It's actually on site when it needs to be there. And we can prevent a lot of downtime, um, and gain a huge amount of efficiency just by doing that.

Jason Calacanis: Nice. Also not bursting into flames is a huge amount of efficiency. That's an improved process for sure. How, um, how do you make money?

SPEAKER_189: Uh, yeah, so we are purely subscription. Uh, we charge our users either 80 bucks a month per machine or 600 bucks a year per machine, which comes out to 50 bucks a month.

SPEAKER_209: So it's a very simple business model. Yeah. Love it. Totally. I was like, wait, you're done already. It's so easy. Um, and then tell me, so you've got,

Jason Calacanis: it sounds like some pretty early traction, some good traction, early 87 machines across 33 shops. What is your, in our kind of classic accelerator questions, what's your pathway to $10 million and

SPEAKER_189: then a hundred million dollars in revenue? Yeah. So, um, to get us to 10 million in ARR, that's a 14,000 machines on the platform, uh, which sounds big, but considering the size of this market, there's over half a million machines in the U S uh, just ones that are compatible with chatter already. Uh, so that's 3% of that market. Um, and then the path to a hundred million, um, essentially what we're doing is we're adding more functionality to the software. We're going to continue to sell out, uh, up to a hundred thousand machines on the platform. And we're also creating new functionality. Um, as we move on, as we fundraise, we have more development resources, um, and we're able to, uh, you know, push what we're doing with the data deeper and deeper, uh, sort of into the software stack of, of what a manufacturer uses. Um, we can actually upsell and, uh, have different, uh, you know, subscription tiers of, we have our basic product, you know, that we sell right now, that's never going away, but we have more capabilities that are going to make our customers more money. Um, and we can charge them more for that because it's, it's everybody wins

Jason Calacanis: in that scenario. How did you identify this market? Like what's your background that got you into looking at, you know, CNC machines, which I think a lot of people don't know anything about. At least

SPEAKER_216: I don't. Yeah. Uh, that's a really long story, but, but, uh, the short version of it is I got into this, uh, in high school, there was a really cool machining program, uh, here in Rockland, California.

SPEAKER_189: Um, and right out of high school, I started a machine shop that was seven years ago. I've been running that machine shop, uh, became, you know, that, that shop did pretty well. And at a certain point, I was looking at my shop and trying to, to, you know, do all this stuff on a day to day basis. And I realized that so much of what I'm doing, a computer could do. So I looked for, you know, cause it was just a lot of thinking, look here, do this, do that. You know, if a, you know, if this, do that. Um, and, and I looked out at the market and, you know, I had a few frustrations with what was out there. Number one, there were monitoring services that would collect your data, but they didn't do anything with the data. They just showed it to you and gave you just, you know, classic reports. Um, the other thing is that what was out there was super expensive and it being 2020 at the time, I was like, this software all looks like it's from like 2002, you know, and it's insanely expensive. I got to deal with all these reps. There's all this friction. And at the end of the day, all I'm getting is a report, like, come on. Um, so since that wasn't there, I decided to just start developing this thing internally, uh, just for use at my shop, never intended for it to become a company, but you know, in the community of, of machinists, other shop owners started seeing it and wanting it. And, and we started sending out to a couple of people here and there that I knew. Um, and eventually from there, you know, we're like, Hey, this thing actually has legs, you know, this can become a real company. So, um, I sold my shop and, uh, just dove into this a hundred

SPEAKER_117: percent. That's awesome. You gotta love a startup that exists to solve your own problem. Pete Oxenham is the founder of chatter, which you can find at chatter.dev. Thanks so much. Appreciate

SPEAKER_00: it. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it, Molly. I'm going to quickly explain one of the crucial types of insurance that every founder of every startup needs to understand. It's called cyber insurance. It's a, you know, it's a little cyberpunk name. What it basically means is hacks. You got to be covered in case you get hacked. And in these crazy times, you want to be protected. So if you don't have business insurance, you have failed one of the first steps of being the great founder and startups should look no further than in broker. This is the insurance company I use. Their technology will save you time and money. Their prices are up to 20% lower and you get better coverage than the incumbents. You can go from sign up to quote and purchase in just 10 minutes. When you work with in broker, not dealing with large, slow incumbents. No, you sign up is going to take just days, not weeks. And the process is so transparent. There is no opaque pricing. Everything's easy breezy, lemon squeezy. I use it myself. A lot of my startups use it. And you can instantly buy custom built insurance for startups by going to imbroker.com slash twist. That's E M B R O K E R.com slash twist. And when you're there, you're going to get an extra 10% off by using my code twist.

SPEAKER_144: All right. Great job, Pete. And now because it's Friday, we have some okay boomer for you. Where are you, producer Rachel? Hi, guys. There we go.

SPEAKER_38: Hey, producer Rachel is here. She's camera ready. She's, uh, are you in mom's basement? Or are you, are you in? I am not. You're in New York.

SPEAKER_224: It's just really dark here. Okay. Three hour time, my friends. I'm just in my very dark apartment. She's like, it's bedtime, bro.

SPEAKER_38: We're a west coast company and anybody on the east coast who chooses to work for us, finds themselves working to seven, eight or nine o'clock. The good news is you get to sleep in. So I guess you go out for supper at 11, have a couple of cocktails and then show up for work at 11.

SPEAKER_225: What time do you guys start work on the east coast on our team, the east coast people? 10 or 11 east coast?

SPEAKER_227: No, I probably start writing the newsletter at like eight or nine. And then, your time, east coast time. Yeah, east coast time.

SPEAKER_228: Okay. Wow, that's early. Uh, all right. Who do you got for us this week? Okay. I thought you got a break.

SPEAKER_230: He's like, wait, so you're on your 12th hour of the day. Okay. Let's talk about, uh, let's talk about, let's change the subject.

SPEAKER_231: Since I am such a horrible, not at all, not at all.

David Friedberg: It's all broken up and built a following. So this will work out well for you.

SPEAKER_227: You know what? I'm not going into debt, going into grad school. I'm getting, getting paid to learn. So can't complain.

SPEAKER_236: That's a good way to look at it. I like your attitude.

SPEAKER_227: Thank you. And this week we had another person that is learning a ton in the world of podcasting. Um, his name is Danny Miranda. He is just a really great interviewer. Honestly, I was recommended to listen to his podcast by quite a few people. And when I finally did, it was super parent that I had to have him on immediately. He is the host of a podcast creatively named the Danny Miranda podcast. And he actually got to speak with one of the other. Okay. Boomer guests that just happened. Nate O'Brien, along with some other super famous, very cool. People are

SPEAKER_239: following your guests now. Look at you. You're breaking people here on the pod. I like maybe

SPEAKER_227: Nate needs Ben. Nate has been very cool. I will. I will have to say that, but hopefully, uh,

SPEAKER_243: we'll have people look, look soon.

David Friedberg: Are people pitching you by the way on getting on. Okay. Boomer now, are you getting pitches coming in or people like, Hey, you should have this person. Okay. Boomer sometimes, but I think

SPEAKER_227: it's by a lot of people that I don't think listen to the segment. Cause they'll pitch. They'll be like, Oh, we heard you had like bubble on. I think I'd be great. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know about that one, but, uh, like always, it's always nice when people like reach out. So I don't, I don't mind too much, but Danny didn't reach out. I reached out to Danny. Great. Yeah. And together we got to talk like a ton about why he decided to jump into full-time podcasting, his advice to other people. And I thought this was really interesting, but we also talked about why he does hours of research before each guest and why he posts 10 clips a day and how

SPEAKER_246: all of that really has impacted his show's growth. Sounds like we could learn something.

SPEAKER_249: I think we're doing three clips a day, 10 clips a day. Interesting. All right. Thank you so much,

SPEAKER_227: Rachel. Thanks guys. Okay. Boomer. I understood the assignment. Thank you so much, Danny Miranda for coming on this segment of okay. Boomer. For those of you who don't know, Danny Miranda is the host of the Danny Miranda podcast. And I actually met Danny through another friend named Danny. So if Danny number two is listening, thank you so much,

SPEAKER_260: Danny Miranda. Thank you for coming on. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having

SPEAKER_227: me here. So if people are living under a rock and don't see you all over Twitter and now TikTok,

SPEAKER_262: congratulations. I've seen you blowing up over there. Please explain what your podcast is and what

SPEAKER_264: you're all about. Yeah. So my podcast is interviewing creators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers, and that's all in a mission to help the world be a little bit healthier, happier, and wiser. And I started the podcast about two years ago, basically from just doing phone calls with people on Twitter that led to such wonderful conversations that I said, man, why don't I record these? Because some value could be given to the world by them. And I ended up recording now I've recorded 249 and it has been quite, quite a journey. So yeah, it's a little bit about me.

SPEAKER_227: That's awesome. And if everybody wants to know more about Danny, some of my favorite episodes of yours are actually the ones where you have a friend interview you. And in one of those episodes,

SPEAKER_270: you told the story of a taxi driver. And if you know what I'm talking about, I'd love for you to

SPEAKER_264: kind of tell that story. Yeah, absolutely. So there was this taxi driver in, I believe, October of 2019, who was just a normal guy, normal Uber driver. I went to Minnesota to see a Vikings game with my brother. And I'm on the way there by myself to the hotel. And I get into a great conversation with the taxi driver, the Uber driver. And it was kind of like an in-between moment of my life. I feel like everyone's had that period where you don't know exactly what the next step is going to be. And I ended up getting into a really deep conversation with the Uber driver about life and what I want out of it. And I was just like, I want to help people become better. I want them to grow. I want myself to grow. I want all these things. And he was saying, oh, I know what you should do. You should read this book, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. And I said, okay, I'm ordering it right now. You got it. Your wish is my command. I ended up reading the book. It transformed my life. It helped bring together so many concepts and ideas about love, about connection to yourself, about what trauma from childhood and passed down trauma from generations ago. And I was like, wow, this book is really amazing. It really helped me out. So, that was in October 2019. Fast forward at least a year or two. And I was rereading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. And I was saying, I got to have this Uber driver back on the podcast. And so, I ended up bringing him back on. We did a wonderful episode. And it's one of my favorite ones to date because it just, it shows that they're anybody, right? We look often like, what are the experts saying? What is the smartest people in the world saying? And this dude is really smart, but you would never look to him as a podcast guest. And I found his number, invited him on,

SPEAKER_274: and it was an awesome moment for both me and him. And I'm really grateful to have done that.

SPEAKER_275: So, where were you kind of in that period of life in 2019? Like, was this, you already had your podcast

SPEAKER_227: started? Were you still in school? Were you just graduated? I know that this is your job now,

SPEAKER_274: but like what, where were you, I guess, in life? Yeah. So, I was kind of, I was doing a job for money

SPEAKER_264: that I didn't really enjoy for the passion of it. And I had just made the decision probably a week or two before that I wasn't going to trade money for what I felt like was part of my soul. I heard Tim Ferris talk recently about life energy and how like, when you make money, you are giving a piece of your life energy to that thing. And that's all well and good if the thing is something you love doing and you're excited about, but if it's not, and it's taking away from you, I think we often don't think about that trade a lot, or at least I didn't. And so, I was in this place where I quit this job and I didn't know what was next. At the time, I thought it might be personal training and helping people improve their fitness. And I tried that out for a little bit, tried that character on. It didn't really work out. I didn't really enjoy the fullness of that character, but yeah, it was a transformative moment for sure. And just like an in-between period of my life.

SPEAKER_227: How did you find your way into podcasting then? Cause I feel like you talk about working out and obviously physical health is extremely important, but now you've kind of like 180 and now it feels like you really push mental health a lot. So how did you find the, this space to kind of talk about mental health, mental awareness and things like that, especially in podcasting?

SPEAKER_264: Yeah. So what I found was from being a personal trainer that I didn't, I didn't get enough of that, right? Like I wasn't stimulated by ideas. I wasn't meeting interesting people in the same way I am today. And that was the part of me that didn't really enjoy the podcast, the personal training aspect of it. But how I got my way to talk about mental health was really just about going deeper on myself. I started the podcast about, I would say three months after I started a 60 day challenge of 60 minutes of meditation. And it was really in this time that I got to know myself better. I understood the importance of my own mental health and I understood what I really valued in life. And so from doing that, I understood what I cared about and then I did it. And so I don't think it's a coincidence that I started, my mental health started to get in check. And then the podcast started to

SPEAKER_274: occur because it was in alignment with what I really wanted at my deepest level.

SPEAKER_227: Got you. So did you go to college? And if so, did you graduate?

SPEAKER_274: Yeah. So I graduated Binghamton University in upstate New York in 2018.

SPEAKER_227: 2018 got you. So it was like a year after college is when you read the new earth. And what year did the podcast start?

SPEAKER_276: 2020, September of 2020.

SPEAKER_227: Very awesome. So during that time was the pandemic in like full swing, right? Because it started in March. If you were in this situation where lockdown was happening, and I guess this is a selfish question, because I kind of wonder the same thing for myself time to time. Do you think you would be in the podcasting space now? Or do you think being able to have like fully graduated college and kind of have like a year to step back and see yourself, which do you think made more of a big difference? Having that time after college to kind of really understand what you wanted to do, or having that time shut away from the world?

SPEAKER_264: Yeah, for me, it was shut away from the world that I could just go inward and spend time with my family, spend time reading. But I do think it's also a maturity thing of understanding myself better and being a little bit older. My mom likes to say, your brain doesn't fully develop until you're 25. And it's no coincidence, then maybe perhaps that I started the podcast at 25. So yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_274: I don't know which is more important, but I would probably lean towards lockdown playing a critical role in figuring out what I really cared about.

SPEAKER_279: Like, I obviously hope that we don't have to have another lockdown in that situation again.

SPEAKER_227: But especially for young people, do you have any advice to kind of get in that like forced lockdown period where you really, for lack of a better term, lock in like that so many people were doing?

SPEAKER_283: How can we do that now, younger people, when we're not being forced to do that?

SPEAKER_264: Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say spend more time by yourself. When you're young, especially, it's very easy to start taking on the habits and the mindsets and the perspectives of the people around you. I know I certainly did that. And it was only when I was able to take a step back and step away was I able to say, wow, this is what I truly value. I don't really care about this. I care more about that. And I think a way to build that in is to have some sort of daily meditation practice or some way of journaling, right? Of looking at your thoughts and saying, is this what I care about? If you can build that in, whether it's five minutes a day of literally just writing down your thoughts or 20 minutes of meditation a day or 60 minutes of meditation a day, doing that will help you. It's all about figuring out what's best for your own

SPEAKER_227: schedule and working that in. Gotcha. And I see from the books behind you, you obviously read a lot. I can tell you are journaling a lot. Why did you decide to do podcasting rather than interview people

SPEAKER_299: and maybe make it a blog format? Like why were you drawn to this medium?

SPEAKER_264: Yeah. So I actually started writing blog posts in March of 2020. I said, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I know that lockdown's happening and I've been a writer my whole life. Let me start writing blog posts. And so I did. And I found it enjoyable and it was great and helped clarify a lot of my ideas about what I think about the world. But I also realized how much I value human connection and talking to people through those phone calls, like I was mentioning before. So it was really from following the joy of each moment and saying, okay, am I enjoying writing? Okay. I am, but I'm, I'm enjoying talking to people more. So why don't I lean into the talking to people aspect? And that's why I'm still podcasting to this day because I love talking to people.

SPEAKER_227: Yeah. And you're a great, you're a phenomenal interviewer, which is one of the things that I was most, um, it's what made it is honestly what makes me keep going back to your podcast. A lot of the guests I might not know before they come on your show, but you yourself, phenomenal at interviewing. And while you were interviewing Sam Parr, which I told you before, I've had the pleasure of listening to twice halfway through. So I still am really excited to finish it. But from the first time I listened to it around, one thing that really struck me was you asked Sam Parr, like, who have you been like the most nervous to interview? And when he got talking to you about it, you told him you were like, you know what? I actually get more nervous when I talk to other interviewers than celebrities. Why do you get more nervous when you talk to interviewers rather than

SPEAKER_305: all these like hotshot guests that you're having on? Yeah. You got to tell me if this is true for you

SPEAKER_264: too. But for me, what happens is when somebody knows the craft deeply and is able to know the ins and outs of what I'm saying and what I'm saying is wrong. And if they would have gone down a different path, I get really self-conscious around that. And I'm like, wow, like, okay, this person knows the thing that I'm doing better than I know it in this moment. It would be like for an NBA player who's a rookie. Now they have to play LeBron James and LeBron is critiquing every one of his moves. It's kind of how I feel talking to some of these high level interviewers. And so I always feel like, okay, I got to really take it up a notch. And I really got to make sure my words are are precise. And yeah, that that's kind of why I, I view interviewers, I feel starstruck around them.

SPEAKER_274: But what about you? Like, do you feel the same way?

SPEAKER_227: Mine's definitely I feel I don't do as much. So okay, you have to answer this question before I answer yours. How many hours of research do you do per guest per episode?

SPEAKER_296: Yeah, so that's a great question. And this is what gives me confidence is like, it's 10 to 20 hours

SPEAKER_227: per guest. That is that's a that's crazy. So I think I get the most nervous when I have people on the show that don't have a lot of information about themselves on the internet that I can Google. And maybe I wasn't able to do a little pre interview with them or wasn't able to grab a coffee. Like I've met you in person before we've spoken. I know you we didn't have to do a pre interview. I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about when you came on. But there are some people out there that are super busy, super awesome. But especially working in the startup space, they write a lot about their companies, which is freaking awesome. But I want to know a little bit about them about their background. And when you kind of like approach an interview, and you don't have jumping off points, I find that to get it's like, um, that game, it's not ping pong, but you played an arcade, and there's like a ball that pings around everywhere. Yeah, yeah, pong, I think a good interview is kind of like pong, right? So the interviewers like putting in their two cents, you know, the guest obviously is taking lead of the

SPEAKER_299: show. And if that pong can't happen, that ball is just going straight down the middle and you're losing.

SPEAKER_263: Yeah, I find that it's about letting my curiosity run wild in those scenarios of like, okay, like

SPEAKER_264: anything that potentially grabs me, I'm just gonna go and pong on that angle. It's kind of how I think

SPEAKER_299: about it. Yeah. And who's been I guess your most your favorite guest on so far? Because you've done over

SPEAKER_264: 200 now. Yeah, I mean, it's like asking me to pick between my children. But I mean, it's, it's funny, because it's constantly changing based on what's interesting to me or who I'm interested in, in any given moment. And what's really cool about the podcast at this point is like, I am able to structure my recommendations based on the person. Oh, you're into meditation? Why don't you check out the one with Sharon Salzberg? Oh, you're into writing? Check out the one with David Perel. Oh, you want to get into business? Here's Sam Parr. So it's like a bunch of different, I cover so many different topics that it's really hard for me to pick one on, like, here's my favorite, but I like to separate them out into topics and just kind of do like that.

SPEAKER_227: That's awesome. And I saw you recently, or at least since I've met, you have been starting to really incorporate video into your podcast. And you've been implementing TikTok. How has that been for the growth of

SPEAKER_274: your show? Yeah, I mean, I, I think the one opportunity right now that I see in the landscape

SPEAKER_264: of social media is short form content under 50 seconds. And whether that's TikTok, YouTube shorts, or reels. And that's just because I think that not everyone knows how to do them yet. And because of that, there's an opportunity. And you even see like people like Kylie Jenner, right? Isn't she posting about, I don't want Instagram to look like this. And it's the thing that's getting shared the most. So there's clearly an opportunity. She hasn't figured out how to do short form content, the best for her potentially. And so I think whenever you have a change, you're going to see people upset. I saw this in Facebook back in the day when Facebook changes layout, everyone goes crazy for a while. And then everyone's like, oh, this is the way it is. Okay, let's adapt to it. And I don't think we're in an environment when a lot of people have adapted to the short form content yet. And so I've basically said, let me do this as hard as I can. I'm trying to put out at least 10 clips a day of the podcast. Wow, 10 clips a day? Yeah. And the reason for that is because I know this opportunity isn't going to last forever, right? So if you're able to take advantage of a moment when everyone else is posting 10 clips a day, three years from now, well, I'm going to have three years ahead of them on that. And it's, it's like you notice an opportunity, it's not enough to notice it, you actually have to act on it as well. Yeah. And so that's what I've tried to do

SPEAKER_260: for the past month and have 3.6 million views to show for it. So nice. And how many do what do you

SPEAKER_227: find to be more important to get people to listen to your podcast? So I guess this is going into like podcasting tips, nitty gritty. Do you find that having those views have helped more or actually having follower count on like a different platform? Because podcasting, I find obviously searching for a podcast, as much as I found that Spotify is really helpful, it still sucks. And I love it when TikTok recommends me a podcast, but I don't follow every podcast, even if I like it, that's recommended

SPEAKER_299: to me when I see a clip, like, what do you think is more important having people go and follow that

SPEAKER_274: TikTok account or just getting eyes on it? Yeah, so I think what the TikTok account has done

SPEAKER_264: has allowed me to get on this podcast right here. And I think it all plays together in a beautiful way in that it's not just like you get 3 million views on TikTok and that exists in a vacuum. Then you can post about that on Twitter and people can say, wow, this is really cool. How do you do that? And then those people will say, yo, will you come on my podcast to explain to me how you did that? And so it all works in a cycle. People think of it like, oh, it's just TikTok and TikTok exists and people only find podcasts through TikTok. Well, kind of, but they also find podcasts through Twitter and they also find podcasts through other podcasts. So it's like, it all works in a beautiful way to help grow everything from my perspective, at least.

SPEAKER_227: Yeah, this obviously is like your passion. And this is, it's funny when I hear some people talk about podcasting, because I think there's a lot of people who do it as a hobby and don't see it as like a start to a business. I feel like whenever you talk about your podcast, you treat it like more seriously than I know a lot of other people do. And where do you want the Danny

SPEAKER_264: Miranda podcast to be in five years? In five years, I want it to be one of the biggest shows in the world. And I have no idea how that is going to occur, but I know that I'm treating it seriously. I love communication. I love studying how do, how does information go from my brain to my mouth, to your ears, to your brain? Like that whole process fascinates me. It always has. And I don't know, I just want to continue to build it and continue to put one foot in front of the other as best I can. That's really what I'm trying to do.

SPEAKER_227: And in five years from now, this was actually a question sent to us on Twitter. People were asking me to get the Mitch, who is another person that works kind of in this space. He is the creator of

SPEAKER_283: BeAuthenticIQ. He asked you, where do you see podcasting and media in five years from now?

SPEAKER_264: I mean, it's fascinating because I thought about that question and I said, imagine 2017, like put yourself in the frame of mind of 2017 right now. That was only five years ago, but it feels like decades. Like, I don't know, Caller Daddy probably didn't even start back then. Joe Rogan was very successful on YouTube, but hadn't had a Spotify deal yet. Modern Wisdom, one of my favorite podcasts, Chris Williamson, hadn't begun yet. So it's like, this whole world of podcasting and media, short form content didn't exist, no TikTok, no Instagram reels, no shorts. So the answer is I have no clue and I'm sure that it will go faster. Meaning that change has happened a lot in the last five years from 2017 to 2022, but change happened a little slower from 2012 to 2017. And I think it'll go faster from 2022 to 2027. And the point of that is that trying to predict what's going to happen in five years is like a losing battle, I believe. I think that honestly, NFTs will probably play a bigger role in communication, in media, than we understand in this moment. It'll be more accessible. It probably won't be called NFTs. It'll be easier for people to understand and people will feel more comfortable transacting with them, is my prediction for five years from now in 2027 in media.

SPEAKER_283: Yeah. And it's funny when you say 2017, thinking about it now, did you listen to any podcast back

SPEAKER_330: in 2017? So this is something that I talk a lot to my friends and family about. The answer is not

SPEAKER_264: really. And the reason for this, I think is so fascinating. It's because of AirPods. AirPods allow-

SPEAKER_334: Yes, you talked about this to me. Keep going, wait, go on this. This is a hill Danny dies on. And I

SPEAKER_278: thought this was so interesting. Well, the reason why podcasts have blown up over the past five

SPEAKER_264: years is because AirPods have become a lot more commonplace. You can put your phone in a different room. You can connect them to your laptop and you don't have to be there. But when there were wired headphones, you had to be in the vicinity of your phone and it would make it difficult for you to just do laundry and listen to a podcast. And so that is why the podcasting world has exploded from my

SPEAKER_274: perspective is because of the technology of AirPods. I love that because I was thinking

SPEAKER_306: about it and I was like, I guess I started up, my parents are really into audio books. Like we'd go

SPEAKER_227: to the library every, every week, you know, get the CDs and listen to them. And then as I got older, I started listening to radio where I would listen to things like car talk, which is literally like these two guys listening to a broken car. And I believe one of them's passed away, which is so upsetting, but they also did this broken car, like over the radio and they try to diagnose what's wrong with the car. And I remember a little bit later into high school, I got beats like over the head big. And I remember being like, Oh, because I have these really cool headphones, I can walk around with like my iPod touch and listen and listen to like my mom's like audio book, like credits, like while I was training for cross country. And I was like, obviously that's like the nerdiest thing ever. But it did start with like me thinking that headphones were cool. And then being kind of beholden to like the car with car talk and audio books on CDs. And I wasn't, I was not sporting like a CD player walking around when I was in high school. Um, but I, it's so funny how little pieces of technology like that changed the game. Like, what do you think then about having, like, I don't want to say Amazon Alexa, I don't want to like, like make mine go off. But what do you

SPEAKER_305: think about those like home devices? Yeah, I think Gary Vaynerchuk talked a lot about

SPEAKER_264: the future being audio, and they'll probably get better. The, those devices, they'll probably get a little bit better. And it's, I don't know, I also think about the directional arrows of progress. Have you heard of this idea, I believe from Josh Wolfe, which is that if you look at how the headphones have gone, like bulky over ear to then wired and cool, then just AirPods, it's like getting smaller and smaller and more inconspicuous. And so I think about that a lot with, not necessarily with Amazon Alexa, excuse me, but, but just more generally with the, just where audio and where technology is going more and more closer to you and in you. And I don't know, I don't know, we'll look back on this in five years and laugh. But yeah, I think just smaller and smaller.

SPEAKER_257: I think you're right, because my dad has hearing aids, right? They're Bluetooth, super awesome,

SPEAKER_227: but they connect to his phone. And my dad will like be looking off into the distance, I'll fully be talking to him. And he'll be like, Oh, what? Sorry, I was like listening to something on his phone. And you fully can't tell. And I'm like, you know what, like, that as much as it pisses off my mother will be the future. Like that is so interesting to me. And I don't know, I'm interested about it. I also know that, um, like how we're talking about like the speed of technology, technology feels like it's a J curve. So, you know, the speed is definitely accelerating with less and less time, which is awesome. Um, like, I think there is this graph, I don't know if you saw it on Twitter, but it shows like how good life is now because of how quickly things have learned to progress. So if we have a problem now, we're able to fix it a lot quickly, a lot more quickly than we were, you know, 300 years ago. And I think that's really interesting. And I'm, it's so difficult for me to see, like, how can this get better? Like, how can podcasting and audio get better? And I guess you're right to just start with headphones. But is there anything else that you see that can really be improved like within the space?

SPEAKER_296: Well, discovery is one thing. There's one platform that has to come up, or I'd be shocked if it

SPEAKER_264: doesn't come up, which is like Twitter for audio, which was, I think, Ev Williams' original idea. Um, but yeah, I mean, I feel like discovery is one thing that we'll look back on and be like,

SPEAKER_268: wow, those were the prehistoric days. There was no X service that you could discover good podcasts on.

SPEAKER_227: Yeah. It's funny because now what I do and how I originated into finding podcasts like in college is I would listen to YouTube videos and kind of just like cycle, like just listen to them, not like watch them on my walks. And, you know, they're on a cycle. And eventually, like I got, I'm sure something was recommended to me that was a podcast. And I was like, Oh, these are kind of nice. Like there's no, they don't expect you to look at it anyway. And I feel like I've seen a lot of startups, like try to get into the space of kind of like this YouTube algorithm for podcasts, but it's not the thing that's blocking them. Isn't how like sexy the platform is, um, or how well it can recommend things. It is like user adoption. Like as a podcaster, how do you think we can get users to, and listeners to actually like adopt a brand new platform that is recommending podcasts?

SPEAKER_345: It's got to be really easy, right? For the consumer, similar to TikTok, maybe the platform

SPEAKER_264: gives them some sort of content that they will already like is a one potential way to get somebody in the door. Like you need to sell somebody when they open your app of like, this is going to be good. And I think, I think Sean Puri talked about this is the problem or was the problem with Clubhouse, where if you open the app, it wasn't like immediately you were hit with something that Clubhouse knew you would like. And so. TikTok for you page, open up and immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that's the problem. That's the gift and the curse of the TikTok for you page.

SPEAKER_324: Usually you open it up, you'll get something you want and then you'll get down the rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_227: Right. Now that we're talking, I have an idea for Spotify. If anyone's listening to this at Spotify, I want, I love like weekly discovery and I actually like subscribe to like my friends weekly discovery. Sometimes I have really good taste in music, but I love a weekly discovery of podcast episodes. And then I'd also love a different thing that maybe instead of a weekly discovery that they think I would like, but maybe make a filter and each week be like, I want podcasts that have like an average of 30 minutes a day. Cause that's like my commute that are hosted by women in the lifestyle content or hosted by like people in tech that are like originally spoken in German. And that I could put at 0.5 speed. Cause it would be a cool way to learn the language, like really specific filters. So Spotify, I want some playlist action happening. Well, that's such a good point because music

SPEAKER_264: playlists are so common and widespread and have even become memes in and of themselves. I don't know. I can't think of what's rap caviar is a huge, you know, Instagram page now and started as a Spotify playlist, I believe. And, and so why does, why doesn't podcasting have an equivalent rap caviar? Like I, I considered playing around with the idea of podcast caviar and just the best podcast I listen to every week, but I never really got that off the ground. So if somebody's listening, wants to start podcast caviar, please go for it. I will subscribe. It would be, that would be,

SPEAKER_227: that would be awesome. But, um, I, I think the world, we talk a lot about this on this week in startups about super apps coming up. And I really hope that, um, Spotify keeps branching out because even if their stuff sometimes kind of blows, there are just some things that totally hit. So the car thing, I didn't really get it. That's like their physical hardware that they came out with. But when they came out with like Spotify wrapped, which was literally just something to show on your story, to see, um, how much music you listen to throughout the year and then break it down by category and things like that. Being able to share that to your story probably did numbers for them. Like everybody's posting about Spotify, like free advertisement, absolutely crazy, you know,

SPEAKER_264: and the craziest thing about that too, is that I believe an intern is the one who created the idea for that and coded to that, which is unbelievable to think about. Like you would think, oh, this is a massive from the CEO or from a high up exec. It was just an intern who had an idea who was closest to the culture. It was like, oh, I'd like to share the stuff that I've listened to with my friends.

SPEAKER_227: Yeah. Yeah. And it's so, it makes me, it's actually made it. So now I've been more inclined to not listen to podcast episodes on Apple. I would try to only listen to them on Spotify because I do want to see like my data and it almost, it's similar to how Amazon is with audible where I get to see my listen time. But unfortunately I love, still love the library and they use Libby, which is a different app. So New York public library, all my stuff is over at a different platform. So I don't get all my hours, but, um, yeah, Spotify is just being able to see your data. I think people love that. So hopefully it gets incorporated to Spotify. And I do have one last question I want to ask you. And that is what is one question that you've never been asked that you would like to be asked in a podcast?

SPEAKER_264: Um, I think I'm not sure that's, I have no idea is the honest answer, but I do know that, you know, whenever, whenever somebody asks about like the greatest adversity or the things that the things that have really motivated me to keep going, I don't know if I've ever been asked, like, why do you keep, keep going? Like keep podcasting. So that's one.

SPEAKER_363: So I guess what's now you got to give us an answer. Cause I think that's a really good question.

SPEAKER_264: Yeah, no. And I think it's just genuinely about having, I'm learning so much. I feel like this is a free education from the smartest people in the world. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity because not only do I get to talk to them, I get to research them for 10 to 20 hours before. And so I'm learning so much. I'm learning more than ever in my entire life. I wasn't really a great student, but have been a great student of the people I'm interviewing. And I think that's

SPEAKER_274: the real reason why this is still going on 250 episodes later is because of the things that I learn and the people I get to meet through the process. Awesome. That is a wonderful note to

SPEAKER_227: close on. And where can people find you and your podcast if they want to check it out?

SPEAKER_264: Yeah. So it's the Danny Miranda podcast, where I talk to creators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers, and you could find it Spotify or YouTube and at HeyDannyMiranda on Twitter. If you want to shoot me a message, I would love to hear from you if you made it this far in the episode. Thank you so much for having me. Amazing.

SPEAKER_363: Yeah. Thank you so much, Dan. You're going to have to have you on again.

SPEAKER_08: Thanks for listening, everybody. Five great days of content, but Sunday is coming.

SPEAKER_04: That's right. We never rest. Make sure to tune in on Sunday for another amazing and super interesting edition of this weekend climate startups. And of course,

SPEAKER_08: BC Sunday school. That's right. We're going to discuss on Sunday, how a venture firm should deploy their reserves. So after you do your primary investment, you know, those those first couple of companies that the core set, maybe it's 30 companies in your fund. Hey, you have a little bit left over that dry powder, who should you give it to in your portfolio?

SPEAKER_04: And when do you decide like, I need to save this money for them. And so you can't have any and yeah, we're getting we're getting to 200 level VC Sunday school here. And then I have been trying to get this interview forever. Shout out to producer Rachel for getting it booked an awesome interview with Carlos Araque, the co founder and CEO of Quaze, who is developing deep, deep drilling systems to access geothermal energy, way down deep inside their score, he's either going to crack open the earth, or solve the energy transition. Amazing. Wow, what a great interview. I look forward to it.

SPEAKER_111: So we will see you all on Sunday, you get to rest on Saturday, do a nice hike, stay away from all of the rattlesnakes, Molly, please. But do your six, seven, eight, 12 mile hikes. And we'll see you all

SPEAKER_82: Sunday. Rest up everybody.