Hiten Shah coaches Cody on Swell AI, a content-repurposing tool that turns long-form audio into clips and posts. With 5% paid conversion and a 1.5-month payback period, the core question is whether to own podcasting first or expand into webinars. Hiten suggests a hybrid DIY plus done-for-you service at roughly $100 per episode could hit $40k MRR with 80 customers.
Chapters
We're building swell AI. Swell AI is a content repurposing platform powered by AI, basically helps companies turn themselves into media companies.
What's actually on your mind?
I mean I think that always the classic is like I need three more engineers that are full time, that are US based and I need basically like more growth capital.
Those are not real challenges, those are just like you're doing business. So what's the real challenge here?
The real challenge that I'm facing is like what is going to be the long term differentiation of all these schools?
Now you're talking.
I mean we've been cloned like nine times. I see the founders of the other companies signing up, they buy the domain and then like a month and a half later it's live. What I'm wrestling with is like, is this big enough right? If I see a path to a Billy, I'm going to 100% like go get money. But like right now it doesn't look like that. There's probably like a $10 million a year company.
I'm assuming your business is profitable.
First up we have Cody and he's got one of the most common problems, probably the most common problem that self funded founders have.
So we're building swell AI. Swell AI is a content repurposing platform powered by AI. Basically helps companies turn themselves into media companies. We have the opinion that this is the only way that you're going to be able to differentiate in the future is by building some type of media arm of your business, especially if you're a startup. And so that's what we're trying to build. So also what works is you upload a long form piece of content that could be audio or video. It automatically creates clips, blog posts, transcripts, show notes, basically any type of media that you could imagine. You can build those out as content, workflow templates and have your brand, voice, style, et cetera saved within that. So we work largely with podcast agencies, networks and solo podcasters. We're just starting to move into the space of YouTubers and B2B marketing teams and yeah, that's basically our, the, the high level of it.
Awesome. I'm assuming your business is profitable?
Yeah, so we are self funded. Both my co founder and I have had other things kind of just have annuities and yeah, we serving thousands of customers. We're about a year and a half old and entirely bootstrapped and you know, default alive at this point.
So I guess I have the obvious question is are you trying to raise money or anything like that or no.
Right now know there's like a clear path forward for us to do this without needing external capital. With that said, if I see a path through a Billy, I'm gonna 100% like go get money. But like right now it doesn't look like that. There's probably like a $10 million a year company.
So one sidebar that I'd say is that call it self funded, not bootstrapped, because you're essentially self funding the business. I've been saying this for more years than I can count at this point, and I think that might help you think of the business even differently if you thought about like, I'm putting my own money in to fund it.
Exactly. Like, I, I, I'm not an indie. I'm not, you know, out here trying to get three grand a month or whatever. I'm ramen. Profitability is not my goal. I've already done that.
Yeah, you're trying to make real money here and build something really big.
Exactly.
Yeah. I just wanted to clarify that because I'm going to beat that horse as much as I can with founders who I think will understand it and can spread the gospel, so to speak. So that was first thing. But let's, let's dive into like the interesting stuff. I have a lot of opinions and thoughts and questions about your business, but I think the big one for me to like focus, like where my thoughts are is basically what's actually on your mind, what's your big opportunity or challenge that like you'd love my thoughts on or to jam on.
I mean, I think that always the classic is like, I need three more engineers that are full time that are US based and I need basically like more like growth capital. Like right now it's like I spend, you know, $5, I get a sign up and we're getting about a 20% conversion rate on those to paid. Sorry, no, sorry. Getting a 5% conversion rate on those that paid. So our payback periods, you know, one point, like five. So about a month and a half, like right around there. I mean my biggest thing is like, how do I get more money? How do I spend more money faster? So I just stepped out, like, I don't need a salary. So I was like, all right, let's just like take more capital and we'll like put it over into specifically the influencer marketing piece. But I think that's the biggest challenge. The other piece is just like traditional media is very hard to get in relationship with. Like if you go and you look at like broadcasting or even any of these like podcast networks. That's been a finding. The entry point has been extremely challenging. Like we can get like a foothold with like a individual producer, but then getting that cross sell to like a decision maker with more revenue or you know, more capital to like to deploy leverage has been really, really challenging.
Yeah, you know, I always find this really interesting and the reason for that is you're not actually speaking to your real challenges when you talk about those two things. So I'm going to push you here and say, hey, what's your real challenge? Those are not real challenges. Those are just like you're doing business. Like these are problems you're gonna have forever. You didn't really describe something that's like either leverage or hair on fire problem or anything like that. I don't want to downplay your challenges, but I've been around long enough to know that both of those that you described are very classic. Someone's gonna say it, but you can't do anything with that. So what's the real challenge here?
I think the, the real challenge that I'm facing is like what is going to be the long term differentiation of all these tools?
Now you're talking like we're, we're building.
On the back of this and I don't know what motives, I think what it's going to be is like do we have a content library that they've uploaded into us that costs them some type of money that then they can query against and we fine tuned off of because then that creates stickiness and also like what people are really trying to do at the end of the day is like they're trying to automate social media production, right? Like the whole like what a social media manager did traditionally and like we think we can build that, right. I think that that is the thing that I'm really like focusing on because like tomorrow, like, I mean we've been cloned like nine times. Like I, and I say that because it's, I see the founders of the other companies sign up, they buy the domain and then like, you know, a month and a half later it's live and they're just like, it's a, they're just cutting it on price, right? Like, but my goal is not that like it's like, you know, build on, you know, wedge into a workflow and then like work our way out from that workflow. But the, I think the biggest thing is going to be the differentiation piece. Like how do you create it where it's like once we get that media, which again is going to be the only way to have differentiation long term. Like how do we and I, and maybe it's dams like going after like digital asset management systems what they traditionally were. Like you talk to any enterprise corp and like they hate these tools, like they despise them and they don't even use them. They can't find anything. And like what we're building is like a perfect like platform for that. And that's a multi billion dollar market cap. Right. So I think, I think it's like probably something in that, that space but we're, you know, I'm still over here and it's like that's the 40,000 vot and right now it's like how do I make this grow 10% this month and then pull any lever I can. Right?
Yeah, you're, you're talking about a classic dilemma which, which is you're opportunity is very clear to you because the world is changing in a way where technology is enabling you to actually realize this opportunity and you can like smell it.
Yeah, exactly.
I think if it were my business, I would win the podcasting category first. Anyone, anywhere with a podcast should know your brand and should be using your product in one way or another to do the job, period. I think you're aspirations make sense. This is not to actually depress those aspirations, it's actually to, to amplify them so you can own something first before you try to own more. And this is how I would do it. I would actually start mapping out what are the people that are required based on the tasks that are required to grow a podcast. I would very specifically, but the reason I'm saying that is if you map that, then you figure out where are you winning today, where you can just do the job completely, whether it's those tasks or that person. Because what you're talking about is what everyone kind of refers to as agents and this and that. To me it's not about the word agents. I think that's too loaded. It's actually about people and tasks. I think the AI thing is really about people and tasks and replacing people and tasks. And if you can replace tasks, you can bubble that up and replace people. But when you say I want to do dam or this and that or the other, you're still in the existing paradigm, which is not bad. But it's almost like the dam is an artifact of replacing people and tasks instead of the dam being the thing. That's where the SaaS disruption is going to happen. We're not going to disrupt it by saying we're going to build a better dam. We're going to disrupt it by saying the person using the damage now spends 10% of their time using the dam instead of 100% of their time using the dam or whatever it is.
I want to double click down on this because, like, I think to answer your question, do this live. Like, there's probably two parts of the podcast post production workflow. It's like you have a producer and like an audio engineer. Those pieces, I think there's better software out there that's like, you know, more well funded than we are, that is focusing on those components. I think what we can really differentiate out is the, the really the podcast marketing component. So, like where you would have a content writer, where you would have a social media manager, where you have a video editor, like, those pieces are what we can focus on, like a social media manager, et cetera.
That's why to me, it's all about podcast growth and you being the platform for that and making it so that the people who are doing, who are trying to grow podcasts today are able to grow it faster, are able to do it with less time. If you're actually a content creator, you're looking at it and like, why should I hire five people for a team and instead this product, pay for it and have someone own the responsibility of using it, at least for now, and you're done. You don't need to expand this to three people or five people over time. And as your podcast grows, this tool scales with you instead of you having to train new people on it or people coming onto it. So I think that that whole thesis of replacing people and tasks is really important today to put on, on the framework of you're building a SaaS product or you're building a disruptive SaaS product that's powered by AI. And I think, like, the more I think about these problems that folks like you are hitting on, because AI is what's able to give people the experience that you probably felt like when you started this. You couldn't if you started pre AI. It's not about tacking it on, it's about thinking about, like the case studies, okay, let's say a big brand like intel, just to call them out, could be Nike, could be anyone. But basically, if you're able to say that, like, if these companies are doing anything related to podcasts, they have social media folks today that are responsible for this. They have marketers that are responsible for this, basically what you're trying to come to them with is essentially a product that saves them a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time. And so what I said about people and tasks goes back to if you say we can make your team more efficient and here are the metrics around that, it ends up being a no brainer. Especially if the AI powered tools make you 3x5x10x more efficient. Which is all true, right? Something that took an hour now takes five minutes.
Totally.
Or something that took 10 hours now takes one hour with your tool. And if you can just map to that. I would go all the way on those concepts if I were building an AI product where you're essentially replacing tasks and people.
Totally. I think the challenge we're facing or like we're seeing is like in podcasting there's a huge discrepancy between like, who has money and who doesn't. Like you go to like any of these podcast networks and they're the only ones that have capital, but in reality there's like 300 or there's like 3200 of them that we've identified. So the challenge with that is like, I just don't know like if it. What I'm wrestling with is like, is this big enough, right? Because like the other set, the other segment we've gotten a little bit of traction with is like people that do webinars, which is like traditionally like this is, you know, you know, a B2B marketing budget will dedicate a huge portion, percentage of this to that. And they're also doing repurposing or they're, you know, they host a webinar, 10 people show up and they're like, okay, what do we do with this thing now?
Right?
And it's like, here, here's this. You know, our tool can basically be a vehicle to do all that content repurposing. The other one that I'm like wrestling with is like with this done for you service. Because for us we're looking at it as a couple of things. Like, we can increase our like, feedback loop for product, like way faster, right? Like if I have an army of offshore team members working basically within the tool, like we're going to get that back to Eng way quicker. Like, where are the, like, what, what do they hate? What can we improve, et cetera. It also increases our revenue. But the challenge with that is then it's like a people management thing. And in reality we'll probably like build the product good enough that we can like let them go over time, those two things are like the two things that I'm talking to. We're like, podcasting has no money and like, how do we. Does it make sense to do some type of layered on human service on top of this in the beginning so that the product becomes better? And I think the answer to that is like, of course, yes, but then how do you structure it?
Yeah, absolutely. So I think webinars and podcasts are so close to each other that I don't think it's a big deal to say you do content repurposing for any audio and video content. And that includes a webinar, that includes a podcast. It probably includes a few other things. And so then it becomes like this big pitch about audio and video. First content repurposing. You could do a big pitch there on the homepage. Then you can say it's for podcasters and for B2B marketers, because those are the two audiences you go after. And then you just split up your whole, your whole opportunity like that. And then on each of those you say you have a di. Do it yourself or we do it for you. When I think about what you said about the do it for you opportunity, what better way than you to prove those ROI and case study things? I was saying it's actually treating your. Every customer that wants do it for them as if these people you're hiring are like their people. And you're basically building out the case studies on that, which then should mimic the case studies on self service too. And the reason this is even more important is you get to hit a team augmentation pitch. We will augment your team with our platform and our services. So now you get best of both without being confused about managing this large team. It's like, no, no, no, no. We use our own product internally and do it for you with people that we hire for you that run it as if it's your people. But they're using our tool exclusively. And then your feedback cycles and everything goes so much faster because you have a lot of control about how those people use your tool.
I mean, they're asking for this already, right? And I priced it at like, you know, $100 an episode. And they're doing forma. I mean, I can add 40k in MRR and like 80 customers.
Exactly. And so why wouldn't you do it and why wouldn't you think about it as if everything works together? That's all I was trying to do for you. I was trying to take.
This is great.
You're like little things and be like, how does it get focused to be essentially one thing? And I think that's what I just did when I heard everything you said and then put these together. And that's why I wanted you to dig underneath those problems because there's always underneath those specific problems. You said. Because I've been running a self funded, self funded businesses for over 20 years now. And like I always used to say exactly what you did. More engineers, more money for growth. It's like, yeah, but why, dude?
Why?
What is the opportunity you see that makes you feel that way? And I'm really glad we got to it. So I appreciate you coming on and chatting about this.
Oh, thank you for your valuable time.
So I had an advantage with Cody where I already kind of knew his business and have looked at tools in the space and I've seen him on Twitter. But all that being said, like I needed to get the contest directly from him about his business. So it didn't really matter what I knew. What mattered was what he said and what he's dealing with. He did a classic thing that a lot of self funded founders do, which is I need more money and I don't have it. I need it for engineering, I need it for growth. And I was like, yeah, dude, but like, what's the real problem? Why do you feel like you need that much more money or that much more whatever? Cause this is like the self funded person's like constant dilemma. I've been there, I. I'm still there in my self funded businesses. And the bottom line is that I think he has a lot more opportunity to get that money than he was thinking sooner so that he can go put it in. The growth things that he wants to put it in is a very basic equation there that I think I got there with him through the conversation by helping him see things just slightly differently. He didn't need to see them very differently because he knows what he's doing. He's done growth before. All right, that's a wrap for today's pitch feedback session. It was fun for me. I hope it was fun for you. You can go to Heaton show to apply to be on the next show. Also make sure you subscribe now so you don't miss an episode. The show is produced by supermix. Thanks for joining.
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