AI for Agencies, Content From CEOs... What’s Actually Worth Doing? | Ep. 3033

So this was interesting. We've been getting some emails and calls from people, from venture capitalists in the United States, more so in the San Francisco-ish area. I think one of them came from New York, but it was mainly San Francisco-based VCs. And I wouldn't say they're the biggest funds. I wouldn't say they're the smallest funds either. Assume they can write check sizes from $50 to a few hundred million. And when I say $50 to a few hundred million, They would lead a round and they would bring in other people. So then that way, you know, you can end up having more firing power. But I don't know exactly what check size they wrote, but most of them say, hey, we want to lead a round, right? And when we're talking to them, and I'm more so the one talking to them, and we're not trying to do anything, I'm just curious to see what they're seeing the market going, or they have a different perspective than us. No joke. We're seeing a common trend in which people are like, Yeah, we just want to take AI and automate what a lot of people are doing, and we're going to make your agency like double or triple or more profitable. And to clarify on this, they're not saying the next day we're going to be double or triple, you know, increasing in profit. That would be their goal, and they're trying to figure out if they can help us do it, and they're not sure yet. And go ahead.

It's just, it's funny how, like, to assume that you aren't doing a lot of this stuff already, and they, to think that the VC firm knows what's better to do from an AI standpoint is kind of funny to me.

Well, they're asking us our margins and our margins are low, and that's one of the indications on their end that they think they can do better. But one of the biggest, or actually the biggest reason our margins are low is because we've been reinvesting a lot of our capital for future growth and expanding to different countries, which is expensive.

You guys are C corp, right?

No, S corp. Okay, keep going. Well, that itself is a problem if you ever want to raise money.

Yeah.

But going back to it, or at least with VCs, right? I think most of them prefer C-corps, but either way, when I was talking to them, I was, and I was like, so what do you have in mind? They're just like, oh, you know, a few of them technically out of the 4 we talked to, 2 of them specifically said, you guys spend a lot on account managers. Why can't we automate a lot of this with AI? And the first thing I said is, have you ever dealt with a service-based company and worked with enterprise brands? Both the responses were no. And I said, a lot of what your account manager's dealing with is politics. And both of them are like, what do you mean? And I'm like, when you're dealing with Fortune 100 companies, a lot of times you're dealing with internal politics and you're trying to figure out how you can actually get something done and convince people to not be a roadblock. And they're just like, oh, you know, how can we do this with AI? And I'm like, I don't see how you can do this with AI. You're just dealing with internal politics. And I hate to say it, a lot of big corporations work with outside consultants and agencies because they got to deal with politics.

Look, I think the one thing or things that aren't going to go away as easily are relational capital. And so salespeople have to maintain a relationship. Client services people have to maintain the relationship. I don't think an AI is going to, at least for the next couple years, take that away immediately. And so I think for some things you can say, "Oh, why can't AI just do that?" For for other things where it's a little more intangible, at least for the next five years, probably can't touch it beyond that. I don't know; it's it's anyone's guess. And so I think the angle is the correct angle. But I just again, I find it hard. This is why you haven't necessarily taken VC money or PE money yet. It's because. One, you want to have control. We've talked about this before. 2, it's like, you want to have control to do things your way. You don't want to have someone telling you what to do. And plus, you're kind of doing this already. So what is the angle? What is the value add here? The value add, I guess— go ahead.

No, it tends to be mainly Ivy League number crunchers. These people tend to have gotten degrees from Ivy League colleges. Number crunchers telling me how they have a better way of operating a business when most of them have never operated a business.

Or started one.

I'm not saying I know everything. I actually think there's a lot of things we can improve upon. So many I can't even count on 2, 3 hands, right? But I want to hear it from people who have tried and tested these things versus someone who's looking at a spreadsheet and just saying, you can cut here, you can cut there. Business doesn't operate based on a spreadsheet.

Yeah. Wisdom comes from, wisdom comes from experience and actually being, being in the trenches. And so for example, if Marc Andreessen reached out to you directly, you would take that call, right? Like he started Netscape, so he's been through the trenches.

Yeah. And he did another company after that sold as well. But Marc Andreessen is an amazing operator. Same with like Ben Horowitz. I don't think most VCs are like them. That's just my 2 cents.

Yep. No, 100%. So there's, anyway, I don't want to belabor the point here. So I'm assuming you took the call and you might take more calls in the future, but you're probably not looking to do anything imminently.

Yeah. And for anyone wondering why am I taking calls is because it's not even the money. Some of these people, if you do 20 of them, 50 of them, 100 of them, some of them are going to give you some amazing ideas that you can run with and they may have thought of some things that you never did. And that could change your business. The reason for doing meetings is not because you expect every meeting to be a hit. A lot of meetings will be duds and you don't learn anything. Very small percentage of them will be amazing, and you know what? Those make up for all the duds.

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I think there's nothing wrong with having people create content and I think it can help you out. But it's what type of content. So I've seen his content. Have you watched a lot of it, Eric?

I've only seen the Twitter stuff.

So if his goal is to run acquisition or acquisition.com or venture, I think creating content is great, but I think he's creating the wrong type of content. His content is too broad and it's the type of content to go after Entrepreneurs who are just starting versus people who have established companies and are growing. And I think that's the mistake. People create content for views and reach instead of going after your ideal audience.

Yeah.

Now, if you look at Alex, Alex's content is going after people who are starting off as entrepreneurs, people who are trying to scale as entrepreneurs, right? But more the SMB crowd. But that's who he's selling the book to. I don't see enterprise companies wanting to buy his book. I'm not trying to throw shade on Alex. It's just a reality. And I bet you Alex knows this. So he creates content for his ideal audience. That president, the guy you're talking about, I've checked out a lot of his content. I don't think his content is the right type of content if he's looking for venture deals or private equity deals.

Yeah. By the way, I'm looking at his Twitter right now. So, Shiran, you can feel free to reach out to me. Neil and I are happy to talk anytime. I hope you don't think we're throwing shade. We're not.

No, this is more so To help you out and hopefully your content starts generating you more revenue.

So it's Shiran Shirvatsa. I think you would know better than I would, Neil, how to pronounce his last name. But, um, so here's what I see him posting right now. So, um, 3 truths about work ethic. It's harder than it looks. It takes longer than you think. And he's starting to get a lot more likes. Like, this is stuff that people can get— anybody's going to engage with this philosophical stuff. So 147 likes, 2,400 views. And the next one after that is the best investment you'll ever make is in yourself. It's the only asset that can't be stolen, taxed, or devalued by markets. Now, He's posting in 3-hour increments. I think he's posting 7 to 8 times a day. I think the problem that I'm seeing, look, if you're Marc Andreessen or if you're Ben Horowitz, or even if you're Gary Tan, or let's say you're Alexis Ohanian from Reddit, they're all venture capitalists now, right? And they're only posting about stuff that they're working on, stuff that they're investing in. They're talking about their investments. Maybe they're talking about things that they're building. Even Chamath Palihapitiya, sure, he's got a new SPAC going on, right? He's talking about—

Does he really?

Yeah, he has a new SPAC going on. People are like, why are you doing another SPAC? If he's so rich already, right? But my point is they're posting on what they're working on in the venture space. They're not posting this high-level philosophical stuff that I think can get views and followers. But I think if we're trying to get— if you look at all these people, the patterns are already there on X. Like, these are what the venture people are doing. All you need to do is emulate them. That seems like a— I hate using the word first principles because I think it's used so much, but that seems like a first principles thing to me.

Yeah, but if his goal is to get mass following and go a different route or sell books or something like that, then the type of content you're posting is great and you should do more of it.

Yeah, actually, so here, check this out real quick. I know we can move on to the next topic, but I want to share my screen because, you know, we can share our screens while we're remote. So do you see this?

While Eric's sharing his screen, because we don't see it yet, but keep in mind, we're giving this feedback assuming his goal is to be a venture capitalist, Or, you know, do deals like private equity stuff?

Well, dude, it literally says VC at Acquisition Ventures. So I'm managing partner over here too. And so it says My Next Billion, which is kind of a spin on My First Million, or— but then it's like my next billion. So maybe this is the angle. But I think, again, like, I think on Twitter, at least the VCs have already mastered the playbook. And so in my mind, I'm just like, I'm just gonna copy what the VCs are doing. And Shiran has a lot of great stories he can tell around that. And I'm looking forward to it. So anyway, that's my feedback. Again, hopefully that's no shade, but in my mind, I think if we're going to have executives creating content, it should be focused on driving business results. And who knows, we could be wrong here, but at least that's my feedback and that's your feedback.

And one quick thing I would love to give feedback is because I want to end it on a positive note. If you are going and you've already done publicly traded companies, I think he's done 1 or 2 publicly traded companies. It could be 2. Either way, you've had success. What I would love to see from content perspectives, if you shared what it's like going public, running publicly traded companies, how to grow, what to deal with when things aren't going your way, like sharing all of those insights, I think that's going to be really helpful and that's going to cause you to get more deal flow than more of the broader TAM content. Dude.

Okay, here, let me just read this off real quick and we can move on to the next one. So he has had— so he's a 4x Inc. 500 entrepreneur with 5 exits in the last 19 years. And he has helped build $2 billion companies. And then he's worked at Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. So very smart guy, very good speaker. He actually ranked number 2 when he spoke at the event. So I'm very grateful for that. So I'm actually interested in his experience shares and his stories that he can tell. I think those will get a lot more views and they'll get the right views.

Yeah. And even if it doesn't get a lot more views, he's going to be engaging with the right type of customer. Right. And I would, Love to read or watch content that breaks down what it's like to run, you know, 2 multi-billion dollar businesses, the ups, the downs. He created tons of content about that, working in the corporate world and how he transitioned to entrepreneur, or when he knew it was the right time to go do a startup or whatever it may be, right? That may be a little bit too early unless they're doing early stage checks. But I do believe He can just experience share and a lot of us would love that content.

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