#33: Alex Banks - Signal v. Noise

All right, welcome to another episode of Cyber Patterns. Today we have Alex Banks on. He writes a newsletter called Through the Noise. It cuts through all the BS, all the noise, and gets right to the signal on venture capital and startups. Alex and I had a great conversation. I hope you enjoy. All right, Alex, so, uh, curious about Through the Noise. Um, you know, not everybody understands what that title means. What is— what does that mean? What is the difference between signal and noise?

Sure, well, great question to kick off with, Jason. I think, you know, I, I've been writing on Twitter now for 9 months, and what became incredibly apparent from just a few weeks online was this abundance of chatter on my newsfeed, right? Some signal, others stuff that I'd probably pass by quite quickly. And at least for me, what became very, very important was being able to filter this. You know, how, how could I, through the sea of content creators and information online, how can I filter this effectively? So it was something that was always in the back of my mind, Jason, since really kicking off back in January. And then obviously treating Twitter more as a sort of formal partnership going through until April, it was really the impetus for me to go like, right, okay, now's the time to take this a little bit more seriously and build a little bit more of a media entity around it. So Through the Noise was born and really it does what it says on the tin. In the essence of, look, there is this abundance of noise on the internet, some good, others it could be memes, it could be jokes, but my endeavor was to really give you that high signal quality, uh, quality stuff really, all around the subjects of venture capital and startups, two topics that I've been voraciously passionate about now for really the, the last, the last few years. And since Writing on Twitter, it's only allowed me to hone that one level further, so to speak. So it really now takes two forms. One is a newsletter. The other is a podcast where I get to speak to incredible founders and funders who are sitting on both sides of the table, Justin. And at least from that, being able to garner the principles, the insights, their theses, why they're thinking the way they are, It just allows not only me, but also my audience to be a heck of a lot more informed as to sort of what's going on and how we can all take action.

Got you. 100%. I love the idea of that signal versus noise. There's a lot of chatter, like you said. And so keeping things like your newsletters are pretty short in a good way. Like you cut the BS, you know, just straight, straight the important stuff. So, so really love that. So you were in venture capital and the startup world before 9 months ago. What was kind of your background before starting on Twitter 9, 10 months ago?

Sure. So my background's in traditional finance. So I started off working for a group of high net worth individuals based out in Jersey and also London, working on sort of later stage private equity transactions there. And then I guess through that and then coming out of my undergrad, which I did in economics and finance, I sort of spent a little over a year actually through COVID sort of pondering on the fact of, look, what do I really want to get out of this? I know I have a passion for finance. It's what I did in my early degree. I've worked in the sphere for just over a year. How can I sort of take this up one notch. So through all the uncertainty that was surrounding the world at that time, I thought it would be a good idea to apply for a master's degree. And so I did so at Imperial, Imperial College London over in the UK, and was lucky enough to have been selected, of which I'm incredibly grateful to have had that opportunity and finish it up earlier, earlier this year. Jason Levin, and at least from that, you know, starting back in September last year, I was going, right, I'm starting this master's degree. Everyone is in the same boat as me. We are all here, we are all competing, we are all wanting to get these high-flying corporate jobs working as analysts, associates in, you know, top-tier investment banks, consulting firms, you name it. And it was ripe with competition, and I thought, right, okay, surely there is some other way to beat, or at least gamify this system and get in through the side door. So I know Alex Banyan has a great book, The Third Door, and really the essence around this is going, look, there is this traditional route in life that you can take. You can climb the corporate ladder, you can work your 9 to 5, you can grind your ass off, and you can be very successful doing that. Alternatively, there's this other door that's slightly less talked about, and that is the side door, I like to term it, where you get in halfway up the ladder. Now, the way you do that, I think there are numerous tools that you can leverage, Jason Levin, you know, through the, through the likes of code, content, where you're leveraging yourself, you're leveraging your platform so that you can stand out from the crowd. You're not just part of a company and you're leveraging that company's brand, you're actually building your own brand and leveraging that in turn. So I thought, look, I'm starting this master's degree. I'm going to see what this content creating thing is, because I know incredible people have done incredible things and have been incredibly successful. And I wanted a piece of it. I wanted a piece of the pie. So I was sort of lurking October, November time going, man, these guys are absolutely crushing it. I really need to properly take the plunge, so to speak. So late December, January rolled around. I was like, right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go all in. So I was building my Twitter audience whilst I was doing my master's degree over that, over that last year, and it's been an incredible, incredible journey to see and at least be part of where obviously full-time education coupled with full-time content creation, spinning all these, all these plates at once can get pretty hectic.

Yeah, yeah, I guess a couple questions. How has Twitter kind of changed your, your life? I feel like that's a fun question to talk about. And then second question, uh, follow-up, I guess: how do you want it to continue to change your life? Like, what's the, what's the end goal here, um, long term?

Yeah, two really, really great questions. So the first part, to answer how has it changed my life, I mean, look, the world is driven by exceptional people, right? People are the face of change. They are the ones who build the businesses who are constructing this economic machine that is the society that we have right now and who are imparting huge amounts of change on the world. So being able to meet these people and have conversations with these people like you and I, Jason, are having now is phenomenal. I think the access it gives you is second to none, right? Where if I were to pursue that traditional finance route and work as an analyst for a few years, then an associate for a few years, maybe VP, executive director, director, and so forth. It— that takes time. And only maybe in 10 years' time I would be having these conversations with leading partners at tier 1 VC funds. 9 months into writing on Twitter, I can do that through my own podcast, which is completely wild. I mean, I just have to pinch myself. It's completely insane. So just taking that step back, because the process can often be hugely consuming whilst you're in the game, but taking that step back from time to time again Holy smokes, this is kind of cool and I'm really, really liking it. So I think the people is probably the, the biggest one, at least how Twitter has benefited and, you know, hugely complemented my life at the moment. At least to the second part of your question there, Jason, in terms of, look, how am I seeing this continue? How am I seeing this momentum grow? How am I seeing this, this brand develop over time? You know, when I started writing on Twitter, I thought, look, I, I was very open-minded. I knew I wanted to write. I knew it was in finance, but where that path laid, I, I was unsure. It was only through writing more that I quickly knew what I didn't like and what I in turn then did like. So I just wrote more about that, and that has massively shaped my, my content creation cycle and and the parts of writing and speaking and doing that I enjoy doing now. So where I see that going in the future is just doing more of what I love, more of chasing my curiosity. And, you know, Sahil Bloom obviously talks about this prolifically, you know, chase your curiosity in life where, you know, whatever sets you on fire, whatever you're passionate about, just do that and you'll quickly discover if it's sustainable, if you're imparting huge value on the world, or perhaps it's something that you should— you should give it a little bit of a miss and pivot and iterate. So, you know, within the remit of startups and VC, you know, I would love to continue obviously building, building out Tribe together, which I know we're going to be coming on to, um, the Through the Noise media brand, which I'm incredibly passionate about as well, and seeing where that goes. You know, if I can be Or at least if I could create some sort of vehicle where I can help support entrepreneurs who are incredibly passionate and solving huge, huge problems that are going to ultimately change the world, then I would be hugely, hugely grateful for that.

Yeah. Through the Noise Capital. I could see that. I mean, yeah, yeah, exactly. The Pakian. What's his name? Mario Gabriel Route.

Yeah, absolutely crushed it.

Yeah, something that I really love going back to the third door, completely agreed. Like, I'm a— I dropped out about a year ago from college, and now, you know, I'm a ghostwriter for general partners at venture capital firms and like founders of venture-backed CEO, like, uh, startups and stuff, you know. And it's absolutely mind-blowing to me, man. Like, I, I had trouble getting a job, and now I have too much and it's just Twitter and hard work, you know, and really back and also just the people, like it's such a meme to say, you know, it's about the friends we made, but it really is like my Twitter friends are some of my best friends and, you know, being in New York now, I hang out with them all the time. But yeah, let's jump into TribeScaler. I love the name first off for what it is. Like, I love it. It could have been like, you know, something a little cheesier, like with tweet in it, and I like Tribescaler. It's just like what, uh, I, I like the branding first off, um, but for the audience, uh, if you could describe what Tribescaler does, how it works, um, and like the goal, uh, and, and what customers would get out of using it.

Sure. So I guess from a high level, right, Tribescaler helps you write better hooks in seconds. So we can break down what this means, um, step by step for sort of non-native Twitter users as well. So A hook is the most important part of something called a thread, right? A thread is just a series of tweets where you're always replying to yourself. And threads have a tendency to do very, very well when you're looking at garnering, you know, significant exposure, significant impressions, and bringing more people to join your audience, so to speak. So what Tribescale does is it uses AI and it layers that on with really high-performing thread examples. To give you these hook generations that will then allow you to get more impressions, convert more customers, and ultimately make more money. That's really the game. So where we see this going, you know, there is an assortment of avenues with respect to AI content creation, which is absolutely the avenue that we see taking. Incredibly, incredibly exciting stuff. But I guess to give you a little bit more color on the background, right? Where did this idea come from? How did we see this problem and build a solution around it? Um, would love to just highlight that for, for one second, Jason. So I met an incredible individual called Alexander, uh, Levin. I hope I got that pronunciation right, uh, back in, back in late December of 2021. And, um, Alexander and I, man, we, we just got on like a house on fire. So he has incredible expertise within the domain of AI, machine learning, data. And it was very apparent that we clicked immediately. And both of us shared this real curiosity for what made the original gangsters of Twitter blow up. We were seeing them get 5K likes, 10K likes, 50K likes. Him and I was— we're almost observing from the sidelines going, how on earth is this possible, right? I wanted in. Whatever secret sauce they're using, I need to be part of it. So January came around and I actually found this really cool tweet by Magdalena Carla. I'm not sure if you— if you follow her on Twitter, Jason, but the tweet goes something like Effective data analysis and storytelling is the most powerful combo in the world of business, right? And those two skills, if you have both of those skills, that underpins, you know, raising money, attracting talent, building up the products, the marketing, everything. And if you can find that marriage of those two skills, then you'll do very, very well. What I found with Alexander is he had, you know, data analysis nailed to a tee. He was an exceptional software engineer, very, very adept in the world of AI. And so there's a siren. I'll let you cut that bit out there if you want to make a note. I'll start again. So at least in the world of AI and software development. So when we saw this marriage of, look, content creation, which I was trying my hand at, and his data analysis expertise, it's already had the foundation of a pretty cool partnership. So I started then creating content quite prolifically from January. Um, January rolled around, February rolled around, and I was lucky enough to have a little bit of traction on Twitter. I got something like, uh, 20 or 25,000, um, followers in the space of just 30 days, which is just mind-blowing in my head with respect to the threads that I was writing, Jason Levin. But specifically, what we noticed is that the best content doesn't get read, the best hooks get read. And as soon as I made that click in my head of going, look, we write this thread, the real way to capture their attention is to nail the hook. The hook is the first few lines that you see that will grab their attention. If you do it well, you'll win. If you don't, your content will just sit in the dark. The wombo combo is writing great hook and great content. If you can do that, you will build a deep trusted audience of individuals who know and like you. So at least the essence of Tribescaler evolved from that, right? And that is where the first iteration developed from. It was us setting out building this AI tool that helps you and it was almost your personal collaborator, right? This personal writing assistant that you can use, you can jazz with, and it lets you reach an outcome far quicker and to a better extent than if you were to go about it alone. So in essence, at Tribescale, we do the heavy lifting for you, but you add your flair. You add your Jason flair. I add my Alex flair, my— through the noise flare. And it essentially lets you reach that, reach that start line much quicker. So that's the essence. And yeah, we've had an excellent response so far, you know, truly, truly grateful for all of the early supporters that have, that have come on board and embarking on this community building project.

Yeah, 100%. I signed up earlier, actually. I was like getting ready for the podcast, just talking about You know, through the noise, but then researching and reading, I was like, oh, this is gonna be fun to talk about. Yeah. No, it's, I don't know if you know Austin Schlesinger, but great guy. And he, I had him on my podcast like 5 months ago and he always was going viral with his health tweets.

Yeah.

And you know, stories about different companies. I was like, how do you do this, man? He's like, double down on the amount of time you're spending, whatever time you're spending, double it and focus on the hook.

Like, yeah.

You know, spent 2, 3 hours, maybe even 1 or 1, 2 hours on the hook. And so the next day my first thread went viral because, you know, yeah, it was very cool to see that happen. And I spent so much more time. I was like, oh, like they're just out hustling me at the end of the day. Like they're, they're, Like these guys are just outworking me. And so, you know, over the span of the next few months, I built up my audience, you know, gained 8K after that. And it's been really cool, man. Like I've been kind of resting on the threads and just doing so much ghostwriting, which has been fun trying to find the balance of like building up others' audiences and my own, which is always fun. But this is, no, it's really cool to see that, you know, the hook is the hardest part. To do it, you know, clear, punchy in a good way, you know, clear, succinct. And it's cool to see that there's somebody focusing on that. And I feel like there's so many avenues you could explore past Twitter with this even in the future, just because hooks are, you know, hooks are crucial for everything, whether it's, you know, ad writing or LinkedIn writing or whatever. It's, you know, the hook is key.

So yeah.

It's exciting. So speaking of noise versus signal, who are some of your favorite— it could be Twitter accounts, authors. What do you like to read? What content do you like to consume?

Really, really great question. So there are two books that I pick up time and time again that have been foundational into how I shape my thinking today, Jason Levin. One is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The other is The Almanac of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen. And both of these books, whilst quite different, separated by thousands and thousands of years, a very early, early century philosopher versus, I guess, a late century philosopher, if you want to term it in that frame. But no, both, I think, the principles and the concepts are super, super applicable to how you live your life and the value you derive from it to extract enormous amounts of meaning. So those would be the— really the two books that I see myself returning to again and again and again. In terms of the content that I'm consuming, to sort of nail my own content diet, I mean, the individuals that are on Twitter right now, I am truly, truly, truly I'm truly blessed to have come into contact with, you know, my first podcast guest that I had, individual called Dave Klein, the ex-COO over at Bridgewater Associates. He does some exceptional writing on leadership, going from intention to action, all about team building. I think his writing's incredible as well. If you want SEO backlinks, Barrett O'Neill is your guy. I know Sheila Gonzalez, who's also a copywriter, She— well, her and I actually shared a Twitter Space back in the day. We ran that for a couple of months from Puerto Rico. Incredible, incredible lady. Magdalena Kahle, who I also mentioned. Man, the list really does go on. And I think what's so wonderful now is with Twitter, you know, you can totally, totally tailor your content diet how you see fit, right? Whether that be limiting the number of people you follow versus using Twitter lists. It really allows you to sort of bucket them into different interests that you might have and then use those buckets as you see fit and to at least inform then the content that you're creating. I think that there's that excellent quote where it's like, good artists steal— no, good artists copy, great artists steal. And I'm a massive, massive believer, right? If you see something that resonates, you know, use it as that nexus of inspiration and then layer on your own character and persona, and you'll have an excellent story to tell.

Yeah, 100%. I wrote an article a while back called Content Kleptomaniacs. Yeah, just all focused on that. Um, yeah, uh, also I just, uh, recommended you on Beehive. Super cool.

Amazing. Oh yeah, I'll have to return the favor, Jason. I love that new feature.

Yeah, incredible. And then Beehive just Added like ad sponsors. They are just incredible. Like these guys ship so hard. It's, it's wild. So that was all really all the main questions I had for you. This was, this was awesome. Really enjoyed the conversation. If there's anything I could do, like any introductions or whatever, I'm always happy to, or yeah, help in any, literally any way.

So appreciate it, man. No, this has been really, really great. How long are they usually?

Yeah, they're usually— I'm just going to stop recording.