Movers & Shakers S2E4: Naomi Shah, Founder and CEO of Meet Cute, Discusses the Future for Romantic Comedies

Welcome to The Room Podcast.

I'm Claudia Laurie, co-CEO and founder of Pryve.

And I'm Madison McIlwain, partner of seed stage investments at DefyVC. Claudia and I are friends first, and business partners second. Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, we know what it's like to be on the inside of innovation, having worked at flagship companies like Gap Inc. and Uber. Now in our roles as a founder and a funder, we're changing the face of technology through our mission to bring more people into the room where it happens.

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Welcome back to another episode of The Room Podcast. Today we sit down with Naomi Shah, founder and CEO of Meet Cute. Meet Cute is an entertainment company with the largest library of scripted rom-coms in the world alongside the biggest global creative network for writers, actors, and directors. Naomi wasn't always set to be the queen of digital-first romantic comedies. She grew up in Portland watching her parents work together by leading a successful software company. She stayed on the West Coast for undergrad, finding herself at Stanford where she majored in mechanical engineering. Through a twist of corporate recruiting, Naomi landed at Goldman Sachs on the training floor before ultimately joining Union Square Ventures as a member of the investment team. It was USV's own conference rooms where the idea for Meet Cute was born and created. Today, Naomi is recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 and has raised funding from prominent investors including USV, Lair Hippo, and Advancit, all in an effort to bring 21st century technology to the sector, which was made popular by movies titled You've Got Mail. In today's episode of The Room Podcast, we explore insights and themes such as turning an investment thesis into a company, the quote girl boss trope and what it means for founders today, and the future of the romance genre. Let's open the door.

Naomi, thank you so much for joining us today in The Room.

Of course, I'm so happy to be here.

We always like to start at the beginning with our guests and are curious about where you grew up and how that has shaped your view of the world.

I'm from Portland, Oregon, and I love visiting and going back home because it is one of the most laid-back and relaxing cities in my opinion. But I would say growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors, and that's something that a lot of people in Portland are very fond of. And I think it's a value that I've realized not every city is able to participate in. And the other thing is that I think there are a lot of people who really focus on a craft or a passion project and oftentimes leave their mainstream careers, so to speak, to pursue those. And I grew up seeing a lot of local artists and musicians and graphic designers and people in our community that had really quote unquote well-established jobs and then put that aside to pursue something that was really meaningful to them. I think about it as a very Portland attribute, which is not necessarily following on a very well-tread path but creating your own path and what that looks like. And so I definitely didn't think about all this when I was a kid growing up, but now that I'm older and can look back, that was a pretty cool way to grow up and see people pursue their dreams.

As a fellow Pacific Northwesterner growing up in Seattle, I don't think you're aware as much at how unique of a place it is when you live there, but then going to school down in California for you or New Hampshire for me, you just realize how there is a much more laid-back culture that for people who like us who maybe would qualify as a bit more intense or I don't know, I can put on myself, I'll say high-strung, that was actually like a really healthy environment to have outside my doorstep. I agree.

It gives you the space to explore in a way that maybe other cities might not encourage as much.

Claudia, on the total opposite side, you're a New Yorker through and through now.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Now in San Francisco, so I've I'm now taking hikes, enjoying the weather. But yes, a bit of a different backdrop.

Drinking the Kool-Aid at Claudia likes nature with the shower. I am the same way.

Exactly.

Even being from—

When I say spending time outdoors, I definitely am not intense in camping. I just like going on hikes.

Same. OK, we're all on the same page here.

But in that vein of early identity and things that resonate when you were either a young kid or growing up, Did you always think that you were going to become a founder?

Not really, but I think that from a young age I saw both my parents founding a company. They actually co-founded a company together where my mom was the president and my dad was the VP, and he would always joke that she was the boss of him both at home and at work, which is a hilarious little anecdote. But I saw them working on this company for most of my childhood and It really did set the tone for me. I always wanted to be working on something that felt new and innovative rather than something that was like already established and already had a place in society. I had some values that I think led me into founding, but I never had that idea when I was younger that was like, "This is the thing I'm gonna found." And there are people that come to college with that mentality, and I honestly was a little bit taken aback by how many people at Stanford were like, Oh, I know what I'm going to found and kind of came into college with that thinking because I never really felt like that strong of a pull to it until I had the idea. And then I was like, okay, now I can see the path that my parents took.

That idea moment is such an important one. And it's been interesting to watch the over 50 people we've now spoken to and asked the same question almost every time where it's honestly half and half the latter of what you mentioned of, yep, I had this idea, I knew I was going to build it and it is what I did versus the finding your way into the passion and what becomes becomes what is now MeetCue, and we're excited to touch on that a bit more. You mentioned Stanford, you went to Stanford for undergrad, mechanical engineering. How did that degree specifically translate into some of your early work experiences, more so on the finance side, at Goldman Sachs and ultimately Union Square Ventures?

It is a very unique path, and people often look at my resume and they're like, "Okay, what connects the dots here?" I actually went into Stanford thinking I was going to be a surgeon. A lot of people, I think, start pre-med and then move out of that path, realizing that they don't want to spend 8 to 10 years in school, but mechanical engineering at Stanford is a very unique program where it's actually a lot more hands-on rather than theoretical. So they split the program 50/50 where half of the time that you are in classes, you're actually building with your hands. And there was something really interesting and unique about that to me where so much of today is digital and it's software. And I really liked the ability to have an idea and take it from idea phase to prototyping to actually building, and then to marketing and finding a place for it in people's lives. And the combination of the Stanford Design School and like, de-thinking, which is a very hot word now, and this mechanical engineering program kind of showed me the path that a lot of different products, whether they're software or hardware, needed to take to get from idea into market. And so I saw it as a very entrepreneurial major. A lot of people in the mechanical engineering program end up going into academia and getting PhDs. Then the other half end up in consulting, starting companies, more generalist skill sets that are just like, you like having a problem to solve in front of you and then figuring out the steps that it takes to solve it. And so I started my career on the trading floor at Goldman. It was a really good first job. I often say that it taught me just how to be a functioning part of the American workforce. I learned about working on a team, having a manager, being able to get things done on deadlines, all of that. But ultimately it wasn't the creative outlet that I wanted my job to have. And Union Square Ventures was a really cool middle ground between working with early-stage founders who were building these really creative endeavors. And it does take a lot of creativity to found a company. And the finance side of it, like making decisions around it, that pulled from experiences that I had at Goldman, and before that, from that engineering thinking. And so pulling all that together, USV was a really cool opportunity for me to mix the left side of my brain with the right side of my brain. Investing.

It's cool to hear from your take where that thread is and how the dots were connected. And I think it's interesting how so many founders do have a very orthogonal, in many ways on paper, early start to their career, whether it's at an investment bank or at a big tech company or in politics, and then how kind of the interests weave into their ultimate aha moment. And so I'd love to double-click a little bit more more. So it's 2019, you're investing full-time in entrepreneurs with USV. Walk us through the initial aha moment for when you said, hey, I think this should exist in the world, I think I'm going to start Meet Cute.

Great question. Definitely stemmed from an area that I was investigating quite closely at USV, which was media and entertainment. And a lot of venture capital firms don't necessarily have a thesis around media and entertainment. But USV did have a thesis around wellbeing and wellness. And so I spent the first year and a half at USV really digging into our mental health companies, healthcare companies that were in our portfolio and spending a lot of time there. And something that we realized is that what people do for fun really does impact your wellbeing, whether it's what book you're reading, the podcast you're listening to, the concerts you're going to, where you're traveling to, the movies and TV shows that you're watching. And so bringing that entertainment angle into our wellbeing thesis was something that I was like, this feels like a cool area for me to start exploring and to see if there is an investment possibility for USV in media entertainment under our wellbeing umbrella, that thesis that we already had. So I started looking for this company, right? I was like, These are the things that I think it'll have as the business model. And a couple of those were very rapid production and very consistent production because we see how TikTok and Instagram are so immediate and everyday for people. And we thought, what would happen if you took the traditional entertainment model for TV and film and brought it down into the accessibility of Instagram and TikTok? It has a wide network of creators, so it's a little bit more bottoms up and grassroots rather than being led by a celebrity or by a handful of celebrities. So I had these like little pieces that I was looking for and ultimately didn't find a company that was building a trusted brand, which is part of the thesis that we were looking for in the entertainment space. And I love romantic comedies, and that's a genre that I feel like people want more of and need more of, especially today when there's so much negativity in the world. And so we thought let's build a brand with really consistent production values and a wide network of creators and change the genre and own the genre of rom-coms for young audiences in a way that no one has done before. So 2019, I basically had two jobs for about 6 months. I was both full-time investing and starting to like build out the business model so that in case the company did come along, I would be able to identify it and say, That's the one, let's go invest in that. And then I think around October or November, later in that year, a couple of the partners at USV sat me down and were like, have you ever thought about founding a company? Because if you spin this out and build this, we think you'd make a great founder and we'll back you in your seed round. And so very unique founding story. I had a lot of early trust with our seed investors who were USV and Advanced Set Capital. And it was such a unique opportunity to, go from VC into founding, which normally you hear the other path happening a lot more.

I think this is probably one of our first stories where investor basically birthed an idea out of their previous role and had their former employer become partners in that journey. Super cool. And when you were saying that there's actually just so much negativity in media and content these days, that really struck a chord because I feel like after a long long day as a founder, sometimes you just want something a little bit more lighthearted, and I have not seen anything like that. So with that, I'd want to dig a little bit more into Meet Cute, your product, what you're delivering to your audience. So in a few words, what is Meet Cute?

We are a rom-com incubator, and the reason I say that is because we touch a bunch of different mediums— audio, written, video, short-form video, long-form video. And we really are building an entertainment brand in romantic comedy. So instead of being just a podcast or just a social media company, we're taking the IP incubator that we've created, which has led to about 400 romantic comedies, and we're stacking on top of that all these layers of different formats and different mediums that people all over the world can access through very known digital channels, whether it's Apple Podcasts and Spotify, Instagram and TikTok, our website and Substack, like more written content. And we really want to just own every single channel possible in romantic comedies and be that authority across all of those channels.

So for listeners who are fellow podcast fans looking for interesting content, Cute is definitely something they should check out. But I'm curious, What is your favorite meet cute series that you've done yet?

My favorite one is called "Extracurricular." The 400 stories that we've created are all original scripted and owned IP. "Extracurricular" was actually one of our series that we released about a year ago as a 3-part series. And we loved the story so much. It has original music in it. It takes place like a high school band, all the social dynamics that happen in a high school. And we love that series so much that we expanded it into a 6-part series. So it's a 90-minute show now. So the old model of Meet Cute Entertainment was quick 15-minute rom-coms. So you got the beginning, middle, and end in 15 minutes. But our listeners wanted longer content. They wanted to hang out with our characters for more time. And we realized that now that we're going out for adaptation into TV and film, the adaptation process becomes a lot more seamless when you have a 90-minute show because that translates pretty seamlessly into a feature-length film, or it could translate into a limited series with 6 unique parts to it. And so Extracurricular is one of the examples in-house where we had an existing series, loved the characters and the IP so much that we actually decided to tap on the creators that we worked on for that series and expand it out into a longer series. And that one's actually airing right now on our feeds. So if you go to like Apple or Spotify, you can listen to, I think, 5 parts, maybe all 6 parts are out now. So you can binge the entire series.

We'll definitely have to link that in this pod so that our listeners can check out the extended extracurricular series. Thank you for sharing that. So we chatted a little bit about how Meet Cute had strong backers from day one, and I'd love to double-click a little bit more into your funding journey. You've successfully raised venture capital from a number of investors, not only Union Square Ventures and LocalGlobe, but also Leroy Hippo. I think we know the answer, but tell us about what that initial conversation was that led to a yes in terms of investment for Meet Cute.

It's actually a pretty funny story because after 2 years on the investment team, I'd seen hundreds of pitches come into that room. And I was always on one side of the table. And I ended up working on Meet Cute for a couple months before I came back in to pitch USV because I wanted to build out the initial team, have our first few series banked. We wanted to know how much do these cost to make? Who are we working with? What is that timeline? What is the process? What are the unit economics of a series at Meet Cute? And 3 months later, I think I come back to USV And it's the whole team that I worked with sitting around the table and I'm coming in as a founder. And it was this moment of empathy that I've always thought about, but never like fully understood for founders walking in the door at an investment firm where you have all these faces around the room. I had the luxury of knowing who they were and their backstories, but there were moments where I was like, I need to think fast. What is the future plan on this? Or let me go back to this slide and re-explain this. And there are moments like that that I think I was very fortunate to have known the people in the room with me and also had experience seeing so many pitches before, whether it was like Y Combinator Demo Days or at different accelerators or just people coming in the door at USV. So I knew a lot of it, but I think there was still this incredible learning experience for me being in the room at USV and pitching for the first time. And that first conversation, they understood the business model before I walked in the room, but it was really about convincing them that I was the right person to be building this, that that initial founding team was the right team to attach to this idea, and that we had a plan for the next 6 to 12 months to really start incubating IP and testing things rapidly and thinking differently than every other entertainment company out there. Because there is a little bit of discomfort. Entertainment is not something that traditionally VCs invest in because it's a very different risk profile. It's so hit-driven, it's very celebrity-driven, it's very marketing-heavy. And what we were arguing is we want to flip it on its head and have the exact same outcome of generating hit after hit without all of the expenses and the top-down partnerships that most entertainment companies would have. So That was really what I was convincing them of in that first meeting. And I think it went well because they came into our seed round and Advanced at Capital, which is Shari Redstone's investment firm, joined that round. And that was our seed round in 2019.

That's awesome. You chatted a little bit about how team was something that was a topic of discussion during that initial pitch. And you are the sole founder of Meet Cute, which is incredibly commendable. For founders thinking about embarking on this journey, what are some challenges you didn't expect from not having a co-founder, and what advice would you give those future founders who are excited to go at it on their own in terms of navigating the process and then building the broader team?

That's a really good question and something I've actually thought about a lot recently. Solo founding is incredible because so much of the job of a founder is to create the North Star and the vision and then make sure that everything at the company ladders up into that, that like every person feels like their goals are pushing the company North Star forward. Every person feels like their day-to-day job is very in line with the company mission and the goals. And so being able to set that and be really clear about it is something that I was very fortunate to have the space to create and to articulate that the way that I thought made sense and aligned with what our investors wanted and aligned with what the team wanted to be building. And so there's a lot of benefits because I know that a lot of early-stage founders especially, there could there could be some tension, there could be conflict, and we've seen that happen. And that's not a bad thing. Like, I think that to a certain extent, some of that is really healthy at an early-stage company. In terms of like advice that I would give though, I think there is a benefit to, if early on it makes sense to look for a founder, what things to look for in someone that as we expand the team, what are things that I no longer have the bandwidth to take on that someone else can own and do really well. For me, it was a really cool experience to be a solo founder. I've done a good job of surrounding myself with people who act as those sounding boards that a founder, a co-founder would be. So our investors are very hands-on investors and have provided that backboard for me, as well as people on the team. I'll often go to them with questions and discussion starters that maybe a, a co-founder would be the person that someone normally would go to.

There's so much happening in the founder psychology, both in the pop culture zeitgeist, but then also just at the individual person level. And I think what I heard you say there is having the right people in the room, whether it be a co-founder, whether it be your investors, your team, your advisors, that's the linchpin. That's how you're going to succeed as a founder.

Absolutely. It's like founding is so about the people. And I don't think I knew that even as an investor. You are looking for the right teams, but there are so many small conversations that I think lead to really big outcomes for people at the early stages of a company. And it really does matter who's around you. Is your advisor or your investor actually going to jump in and help, or are they just going to send you a note back saying, "That's a really good idea"? There are subtle differences that can really make a difference at this stage of founding.

One identity component to being a founder sometimes is associated to being a female founder. And this is something we've talked about offline before, but it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine to put female in front of founder. It kind of almost discounts a little bit the founder moment that you have. I'm curious about how you think about reconciling your identity as a woman that you're proud of and proud to amplify an underrepresented group within the ecosystem, with also just wanting to be known for what you are, which is a founder. Curious your thoughts, Naomi, and then also yours, Claudia, because it's something you wrestle with too. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm excited to hear Claudia's take on it too. So as I mentioned, growing up, I saw my mom as the president of a software company, and that was something that was so ingrained in my brain that like she was the president and people reported in to her and she went to all these conferences and all of these fairs and like was the face of the company. And it never really occurred to me like that a woman couldn't be a founder, that like a woman couldn't be the head of an organization. So fast forward to college and post-college, the girl boss became a really big trope and a really big archetype, which is awesome, but I think it put a lot of emphasis on the girl and not the boss. There are so many different styles of leadership. Some leaders are quiet, some leaders are louder, some leaders are persuasive, others like need other people to persuade. There's so many different styles of leadership. And in my fundraising experience, I met 50 to 60 different partners at these different firms. And there were definitely a couple conversations where I realized that people just wanted to invest in someone that didn't look or sound like other people in their portfolio because it was a point of contention in their group or in their partnership or whatever it was, where it's like, I was very certain that the idea that I was building on in the company that I was this building had merit on its own. And so I wanted to be recognized and, and invested in, quite frankly, for that idea that we were building rather than for what I looked like or what I sounded like. And I know it's like a sensitive topic, right, because we do want diversity around the table, we do want inclusion, we do want more women in investing seats. Like you, Madison, we want more female founders. But at the end of the day, the way that we talk about them, it shouldn't be Oh, that's a female founder. To your point, it should be, that's a founder, because their idea is just as valuable and important for the ecosystem of both venture capital and startups as their male counterpart. I think that underrepresented is both being a woman but also being a person of color. Like, there are a bunch of different ways that you can be underrepresented in founding. And I never once had the thought that that was the reason that someone would invest in me besides the idea. And I think a lot of it was because I was raised that way, and seeing that other people weren't was definitely jarring to me. And I was like, why are we talking about this? We should be talking about me cute.

That really resonates. I think you hit the nail on the head there. Like, also grew up like a very strong mother who had her own career, and I was always the only woman in the room that I never really thought too much about. Oh, I'm, I'm female. Is that going me at a disadvantage? Can I do this? It wasn't really anything that crossed my mind, but I do agree that I think it always hits you after you go into a pitch not thinking about gender, not thinking about anything like that, and then someone mentions, oh, we love to support female founders, and like, that's really amazing, but it's always like, oh yes, okay, got it. I have just been put in that bucket. And the other funny thing is my co-founder is a guy, and we see ourselves so much as equals on everything that Sometimes we've gotten advice of like, it would be better if Claudia, you drove this conversation because the person on the other side of the table is a woman. And it always is so shocking to me because it's just so not part of the day-to-day of us running the business and trying to make it successful. So it's really interesting to see almost A/B testing with certain conversations where my co-founder will have a conversation, I'll have a very similar conversation. The outcomes might be different, or the questions that are asked You're slightly different. And I think it's definitely something that comes up fundraising more than actually running the business. But there's an interesting double-edged sword there, I think. So resonates a lot.

That story that you just said about people saying like, you should speak up more. I think that what's incredible is that you have this amazing partnership with someone and you guys are building something. And so I always think about the main reason that you're in the room with that investor in the first place is what you've built, not because because you're a woman. And I think that like sometimes people miss that point.

It's almost a gut check on my own investing style because I actually probably have more grace for female founders when they come in and talk to me because I'm like, you've gone through a lot to get in this room. So I actually am going to give you a second turn. I hesitate to say that on air a little bit, but I, and I don't mean to say I'm biased against men, but I do just think because I know how hard it can be there is an extra turn of grace, and I'm not necessarily sure that's a bad thing, but at the same time, trying to walk into a room and truly treat everyone on an equal playing field, I think, is what any person who is underrepresented in a setting truly wants. No one actually really wants special treatment here. We just want an equal opportunity. And so how do we think about showing up as investors, showing up as founders in a space where it's not about a box check, it's not about giving someone more, it's about how do we make this equal, and, and what does that look like at scale?

Scale.

Evaluating the merit of the idea is in the meeting, probably the most important thing. But what's great is it probably means that more women are getting a chance to be in the room because you're doing that. And that is something that I think definitely has been missing for the last 10, 15 years as VC has taken off.

Women who are founders and have a board that has a woman on their board are 30% more likely to be successful. And I think success was defined as an exit or returning capital to their investors. Crazy number. And I can link that study here, honestly, if people are curious. But to me, what I took away from that number is that it isn't actually enough of an ecosystem shift to give women or people of color money. You have to also create an ecosystem of support around them. And oftentimes that ecosystem of support requires people who understand your lived experience and can speak into that when you're going through a moment of crisis or when you're going through a moment of questions. And I have felt that too as an investor of how I can show up for our founders.

There is a lot of value in having more female investors that are bringing more founders who are women into the room. And then it's about treating them as founders and not glorifying the fact that they're women, but glorifying the fact that they're working on a really hard problem and they have a lot of things going on, and that is what's respectable, you know. I think it's such a subtle, nuanced piece, and I think sometimes, like, in the news and in the media, it feels really black and white, where it's like if you say something, it means you're in this camp or in this camp. I can tell that all three of us think about it very similarly, where we want women to have opportunities that are equal to their male counterparts, and we know that women being on boards and founding will lead to more value for society. But it's a very subtle difference in the way that we just talk about it that I think changes the power dynamic in a room where you're no longer just the female founder in the room. You're like, you can take center stage, you're the founder. And I think that's— it's so nuanced, but I love that we're talking about this because I don't think it sees the light of day enough as a topic.

I agree. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and both of your experiences in this ecosystem. And I'm grateful to have this productive dialogue. Hopefully this kind of shows the lack of isolation and the similarity sometimes. Changing the topic slightly because this is a question that I'm dying to ask you, Naomi. What is your favorite traditional rom-com moment? Could be a movie, could be a TV show. I'm a Nora Ephron stan.

Where would you put one of your favorites?

Big Nora Ephron stan. Bend It Like Beckham was probably the most pivotal rom-com for me when I was younger because I was actually a massive tomboy. And I have an older brother and he's 2 and a half years older than me. And I wore all his hand-me-downs. I loved Pokémon. I ran around outside with my brother. And then Bend It Like Beckham, I watched that probably as a preteen, probably at a sleepover birthday party somewhere. And it showed me that a romantic comedy around a tomboy was so relatable to me and that I love the genre because I saw myself in the characters in that movie. Like, both of those characters were tomboys that were main heroines of a rom-com. And I think the pivotal moment for me where I was like, "Yeah, you don't have to fit into any archetype. You can be as boyish or as—" not feminine and you can still be the main character. And so I love that story. I also played soccer growing up, and so any sports rom-com, sign me up.

I used to watch a lot of black and white movies, funnily enough, with my dad, like a ton of classic films. So I would have to say that I always loved— and not— this is like less of a rom-com, but I always loved the romantic moments in basically every Hitchcock movie.

I would say And then any Audrey Hepburn movie, of course. Mine was probably The Prince and Me.

I saw in theaters. I love that movie. It's like secretly my dream is to magically have met an undercover prince on college campus. Always a great time.

Oh, the other less niche one for me was definitely The Princess Diaries. Just needed to throw that out there.

Would give my firstborn child for the third movie of that, like I recently rewatched Princess Diaries and it's so good.

And also, we all live in San Francisco. Like, the homage to all these SF places is so perfect. My runner-up is probably Pride and Prejudice, which people often are like, is that a rom-com in like the traditional sense? And I think it is because it's hilarious. But I just love the trope of really smart woman and people underestimating her. And then she just punches up.

Anne Hathaway is just a legend among legends indeed. While talking a little bit about some traditional rom-com or historical entertainment, as you alluded to earlier, Meet Cute is turning that all on its head and is able to get real-time feedback, not once The Princess Diaries hits theaters, but almost instantaneously when you publish an episode through podcast or put your content on another social channel. To get an indication of whether or not they like, they love, or are obsessed with that content. And just for those who are thinking about the future of entertainment, how has this data-driven approach to storytelling helped to unlock unexpected insights? It really is cyclical.

We create content, we put it out into the world, we analyze everything from how many people viewed it and how many people did it reach to from where in the story or in the video did they stop engaging to where did they come back and relisten to things. So we have all of these really cool insights into just behavior and human behavior when it comes to story consumption, which pre-Netflix and pre-streaming, that didn't even exist because there was no way of measuring people's attention when they were consuming content. It's really cool that we're living in that information age where we have access to what actually gives people an emotional response, what might be boring for people. And so how we use that is when we publish our stories, almost instantaneously, we know exactly how many people downloaded the episode. And over the next 7 days, we track very closely what downloads and consumption looks like. And something that we're super proud of is that with our content, We're very close to 100% consumption with all of our stories, which means that people are finishing the entirety of the story. And I think that's really unique to scripted entertainment, especially to rom-coms, because why people watch these stories is that they're waiting for that hit of dopamine at the end, that like happily ever after or happy for now moment that made this genre as bingeable and as accessible as it is. We already are working with so many incredible writers, directors, voice actors that, like, the creativity in each series is a baseline. It has to be a good story. And then on top of that, we can layer in a lot of that, the insights that we pull out of the data to make sure that we're actually getting better with every story that we release.

You're really just getting to know your user base and understanding what they want because when I finished the last episode of Bridgerton, I was like, "I want the next one right now!" And they probably knew that when they did that. But I think just understanding what your users want is actually really powerful, and everyone just wants to be understood.

People say that they might want one thing, but they might want something entirely different. Sometimes when I ask people, "What do you want out of a story?" they wanna be surprised. And surprising our audiences with just, like, different types of characters, different settings, things they wouldn't expect. Then with Bridgerton season 2, it was a very expected outcome, right? Like, we knew what we were marching towards. Words, and yet we were just hooked and couldn't wait for the next episode. And so then is it surprise that people want, or is it actually that consistent feeling that they get from two people falling in love and all these surprises along the way? And so it's like really nuanced things like that that we're able to dig into with analytics. And I think that's the fun part of Meet Cute.

Speaking about Bridgerton, which is of course one of Netflix's most successful series in the past few years, in partnership with Shonda Rhimes. Shout out to Dartmouth. Interestingly, Netflix's stock has taken a 35% tumble when I wrote these questions a few days ago, which is their biggest drop since 2004. This is according to the Wall Street Journal, so don't quote me on it, quote them. But what do you think that this signals for volatility, uh, as it relates to the entertainment industry?

I think a lot of people are talking about how much competition there is in the streaming world, which there is. Just in the last few years, Netflix faced a lot of competition with Hulu, HBO Max, which had a great quarter, Disney+, Apple TV+, which won an Oscar this year. So there's just so many places that we have the ability to consume content and entertainment. But something that I haven't heard as much in line with like the Netflix drop is it's not just about traditional entertainment. I think we have a lot of new untraditional ways that we can engage with people where our favorite influencers are basically like entertainment. And where do we engage with them? It's on Instagram and TikTok. And a lot of the brands and shopping that we once went to a mall to buy, and so it wasn't necessarily part of our entertainment, has now moved to Instagram and TikTok and web. And so we're always on our phones looking at that. And so I think that there is a little bit of— half of the problem is that there is a lot of competition for streaming platforms, and that's definitely really hard for a legacy existing platform to compete with. But also it's this idea that there's just a lot of non-traditional places like video games, social media. A lot of people have left their jobs to become freelancers and now write newsletters. And so People have some subscription fatigue because not only do they pay $12 to $15 a month for TV and film, they also might be paying $12 to $15 a month to subscribe to their favorite newsletters. And now podcasts have subscriptions and people have their favorite entertainment through podcasts. And so there's just so much tugging at people's attention today that it's really hard to say Netflix did something wrong that led to this. It's just there are so many other places for people's attention to go. And something I like to remind people of is the stock tumbling. It's a signal. It's something that shows that there's competition. But as a user, I still feel the value from Netflix. And even though their stock isn't like up into the right, I think that they're still providing a lot of value. And right now they're figuring out a lot of their new strategies that involve expanding into gaming, expanding into other markets, because they might just be at a saturated point with existing audiences that they have and they need to go find new audiences. And so that's like my little devil's advocate for the headlines that we're seeing, but it definitely is shocking because we've always just assumed they were like the epitome of entertainment.

That makes a lot of sense. And I think in the world where like there is a ton of competition in streaming platforms for traditional media, as you mentioned, there's probably a lot of new creative opportunities for folks like Meet Cute. And so with that, would love to ask what's next for you and your team at Meet Cute?

To speak to that really directly, something that we're really excited about is we've always loved working with a massive network of creators, and that means writers, voice talent, directors, producers, sound engineers. And we're really using this year to bring more creators into our network. So I mentioned our video strategy is changing and we're excited to be launching a lot of, I, I'll call them video vehicles. So they're not necessarily like shows in the way that you have a TV show, but they're really repeatable video packages that people can consume on socials. And we're excited to work with a bunch of really talented creators to bring those to life. And then in our audio series, which is really our core product today, we're excited to bring some of that traditional talent into a new medium. If, there are fewer shows and movies being greenlit, we're a place that a lot of talent that wants to still act in a rom-com or be a main character can come and bring their talent to voice work and podcasting. So we just did our first TV deal in February, which is super exciting because it's the first example of Meet Cute IP going into a more traditional medium. And we're excited to have that go both ways where our IPs being pushed into TV and film, but also we're bringing traditional artists, whether they're musicians or actors or activists, like whatever their talent is, into the Meet Cute universe and bringing them to romantic comedies.

We have a lot of exciting things to look forward to. So congratulations on just all the success to date and the really exciting things that are coming up on the horizon. I'd love to shift gears a little bit. We have our hero question for the podcast. Who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

There are two, but I'm going to focus on one, and that one is Mindy Kaling. And everyone knows she's worked on like some of the coolest, funniest shows and continues to just crank them out. Like we have The Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO. We have Never Have I Ever on Netflix. I know she has a bunch of other stuff in the works. But the reason that I'm choosing her is because I actually watched an interview with her. She was recently selected for a Time Top 100 Influential— I think it was Influential People. And she did an interview about it talking about the development of Never Have I Ever, where she really put herself in the character, Devi. And Devi represents a lot of what Mindy went through when she was a teenager, kind of identity crises around her race. Her friends and friendship issues, not having a good relationship with her mother. You know, there are a lot of these themes around Devi that she said were very personal to her. Something that I took away from that is like, today audiences want more diversity and they want to see, you know, different communities represented on screens. But Mindy is really smart about the way she does it because she brings these characters to life, but allows everyone to somehow find something to relate to in those characters. There's so much creativity and so much creative intelligence that goes into finding those relatable characters that people want more of and want to grab onto. And I don't consider myself necessarily someone who's writing these shows the way that Mindy does, but I feel like her overarching goal to bring more diversity into entertainment while these are not niche shows, these are not small communities of people, these are like big hits and everyone tunes in and finds something in these shows that they like. I think that's something that I'm really excited about bringing to Meet Cute and her shows do a really good job of that. But she's definitely someone that I look up to in a lot of ways because she's done that time and time again in her work.

Thank you for sharing that. I'm a huge fan of her shows, so big plus one there and excited for Meet Cute to grow and take a lot of the similar themes of Impact that she's been able to drive for the world. So with that, thank you so much, Naomi, for being on The Room with us today. It was awesome to hear your story and for us to chat about some topics that are near and dear to all of us here. We're excited to see the progress of yourself and Meet Cute in the future.

Thank you for having me. I can't believe it's been an hour already.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Room Podcast. If you enjoyed our conversation today, please like, like, follow, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find at theroompodcast.com. This episode concludes our second installment of the Movers and Shakers miniseries. We'll be back with an all-new season in just two short weeks, May 17th, Tuesday at 10 AM Eastern, 7 AM Pacific. See you in the room.

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All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison McIlwain McIlwain and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The5VC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.