In this vlog, Ryan Shank walks viewers through a Saturday office visit at Techstars, sharing the day‑to‑day reality of building Kuloco. He discusses hiring a recent finance graduate for sales, the role of Techstars’ MD Alex in surfacing talent, and the launch of Kuloco’s first podcast using the Anchor app, highlighting how modern tools simplify content creation. Ryan and his teammate Nate debate the balance between high‑tech automation and high‑touch personal interaction, arguing that successful startups must marry both. He reflects on the evolution of their vlog style, describing the shift from heavily edited, multi‑camera productions to a more personal, selfie‑driven format to reduce edit time and increase authenticity. Ryan also notes the strategic advantage of working on weekends—when the office is quiet—to plan ahead rather than react to inbound leads. Throughout, he encourages viewers to work hard, be pioneers, and follow the daily grind of their entrepreneurial journey.
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Good morning, Wagoneers! I hope you're having a good day. Today we are going to go to the office. It's Saturday, so we're actually going to get to be able to do some stuff that we can't do during the week. So if you're new here, my name is Ryan Shank and this is the vlog. This is our journey building a company from the ground up because we're trying to get that Mark Zuckerberg money. We're going through Techstars this summer. I hope you follow along on our journey. I hope you're out there working hard. I hope you're out there being a pioneer, being a Wagoneer. Let's start the grind! Alright guys, so today is Saturday. Walking to the office right now. It's beautiful outside in New York City. I'm not sure, oh, it's open. It's always a good day. Ah shit. So I'm going into the office right now. How you doing?
Where do you go?
Huh? 6th floor. I'm visiting Techstars. Or like, my office is here. Huh? Okay, bro. Alright, thank you. So the guy saw that I was vlogging and then I think he thought that I was not supposed to be here.
Aw, this is so annoying.
Kane! Great to see ya. Just been out here vlogging. I really like that guy. Just interviewed him for a sales position. So he originally found us because Alex, the managing director of Techstars, put out a blog post and he put all of the companies that are hiring and the positions that they're hiring. He actually sounded really good. So he just graduated college. His background is more in finance and economics, so when I was reading his resume, it wasn't that good of a fit, but he sounded good on the phones. He sounds hungry. Alright, so I just recorded our first episode of the podcast. Check it out, it'll probably be on iTunes by the time this video drops. I used an app called Anchor. It was actually really, really sweet. The experience was beautiful. Things like that, like creating a podcast, pushing it out, publishing on iTunes, that's hard. You know, in your head you're like, holy shit, I don't even know how to do that. But the way companies and apps are winning these days is taking these things that used to be difficult and making the experience seamless. What it does is it lets the content creators focus on their content instead of saying, oh, I have to get all this equipment, then I have to figure out how to record it, figure out how to edit it, then I have to like call up, you know, Susie's nephew, you know, he works at Apple, to like put it out on iTunes and things like that. Now it's like you can just do it in 2 clicks. So that's awesome. Check out the podcast. Yo, I need 5 minutes of content. I'm gonna hit my boy Nate up. So let's just fucking talk.
This is the deal, and this is again my opinion for whatever it's worth. People are too far on one end of the spectrum. You got one end of the spectrum, which is this millennial generation that's so techie. They're all high-tech, high-tech apps, software, and Snap on those fucking tech stars, brah. And then you got the other end of the spectrum, which are the baby boomers, right? Which is still a shitload of people, and they're all high-touch, right? They're still interpersonal. They're shaking hands, they're grabbing a beer. So the companies that are gonna flourish in this day and age, the ones that make that perfect perfect marriage between the high tech and the high touch, and that's what you're doing. Because you're saying, hey, in one moment I'm talking about all this awesome tech stuff that we're doing, but I'm sitting down person to person, belly to belly, making connections with the team, you know, talking about what people want. In your last vlog, I heard you talking about, you know, people have different ways of responding. Your high energy, high D, high I personality on the DiSC form is perfect for some people. Other people are going to think you're annoying, that they hate you, that you're a sales leader, you're a fucking used car salesman, right?
But the thing about marrying, you know, technology with old school stuff. So what I've seen recently is too many startups and businesses, they'll try to use like technology and automation for everything. But at the end of the day, people still, they want that attention from you. So they still want that face-to-face stuff and you have to do like unscalable things in order to actually build the business, get the business off the ground and do those sorts of things, you know? And I think you, you see that, right? Because when you go out, you're literally shaking hands, like touch skin to skin. No, we had a company called Coloco. That shit was tough. We had, we were in retail stores though. We were, he was is that he went to UPenn. I don't know if you guys have heard of Wharton or not. We had a clothing company in high school, and, and I guess in college too. It was mainly yours in college. It was tight. It was a good learning experience, guys. So funniest thing just happened. So as you guys have noticed that the vlogs have been in a certain format, they've been super, super polished, super edited. Uh, we've been having multiple camera angles, the, the, I guess like really chopped up. I'm not really like a filmmaker. I'm learning about all of this stuff. And it's, by the way, it's super fun to actually just start creating videos and to be putting them out and putting out content and getting your guys's feedback. So thank you so much for that. But by the way, so Kane met met him on YouTube, brought him out to New York. He's, uh, he's joining the team. He's been helping us. He's been doing amazing stuff with, uh, with one, filming, but then also he's been doing all the edits. And you know what, what I've been trying to do is provide as much feedback as possible, be like, hey, this is the style that I want. And we've been looking at other vlogs and we've been saying, okay, these are the, the elements that each of these vlogs have that is working for them. These are, these are people who are vlogging every single day. They're getting a lot of subscribers. And we're saying, okay, look at the structure of the video. I think I wasn't explaining it well enough, so we were kind of on a little bit different pages in terms of like the quality— not quality, but I guess the type of video that actually comes out. It's funny, we just had this conversation. Kane has literally been spending 10 to 12 hours— hours— on edits for these vlogs. Every single day, by the way, because we go 7 days a week. And we were going today and I was like, man, I don't want them to— you know, they're really, really good, but almost too good. I'm like, every single one looks like a movie, whereas I want it to feel more personal. I want us to have like selfie vlog cams and things like that and all that anyway. So we just got on the same page and basically I was like, hey, I want it to be more of like this style so it's more personal with this kind of like one-off camera, and then we could do other cameras. Why is he back there? Why? What are you doing, bro? We can do other cameras and things like that, but it was all— it was almost too produced. So I said, hey, how do we get to this style? And he said, look, this style, which I like, it's more engaging and I think it's more personal and things like that, gonna be at like a quarter of the amount of time for the edit. So he's actually gonna be able to vlog on his channel. Check him out, Kane's Thoughts, plug and a half. Call me an outlet because I'm a plug. So anyway, we're gonna change up the edits. I hope you guys like the new style and keep following along. We're new to this, so hopefully you're gonna see us grow. As our channel grows, you grow, we grow. Today was pretty tight. I actually really like Saturdays and Sundays because since there's not a lot of people in the office, you're actually able to do things that you wouldn't normally do. I feel like during the week, you know, you're just like, you're being reactive and you're sort of in defense mode a lot of times. You get like inbound phone calls and leads and things like that, which is freaking amazing. But you know, you're more reacting. And so, but anyway, I feel like on weekends you are able to actually be more like strategic and go about, you know, planning out the week. Just something that I'm not good at, but something that I'm really focusing on now. One, just kind of do things that I want to do, and then I'm not just like, you know, playing catch-up and things like that. So anyway, I'm going to the gym right now. Yeah, sun out of here. So freaking like so nice. And by the way, I feel like it's not 6:59 anymore. Alright guys, that's it for today's vlog. Appreciate you joining our journey. We're gonna be out here tomorrow. I hope you're having fun. I hope you're working hard. I hope you're being a pioneer and a Wagonaire. We'll see you guys tomorrow because we're out here every single day. Peace! That B-roll fire!
