This Week in Startups - Apple privacy updates cost social media giants $10B + BetterBrand’s Aimee Yang | E1316

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

First, Jason covers the reported revenue impacts for FB, SNAP, TWTR & GOOG caused by Apple's App Tracking Transparency policies (1:57). Then, Aimee Yang CEO & Founder of BetterBrand™ joins (16:18) to discuss her first product the "Better Bagel." The conversation includes bringing the product to market, the opportunity to reshape food, raising from 776 and more!

Okay, today on the program, we have Amy Yang. She's from a company, a startup called Better Brand. They are making low-carb versions of high-carb foods that we all love. The first one, the bagel. I saw this trending on Twitter. I ordered some of the bagels, and I was like, wow, these bagels aren't bad. Now, listen, I'm a bagel snob. They're not Brooklyn bagels yet.

And we have a big debate about what percentage is she to a Brooklyn bagel? Well, you'll find out in the episode where I put it on a very specific. I might have heard feelings a little bit. I'll be torn out because I kind of felt bad during the interview. She thought I gave it a low rating. I thought it was being very generous. We had to a Brooklyn bagel. But anyway, first up, we're going to talk about a financial time story that estimates

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube will lose about $10 billion in revenue in half of 2021 due to Apple's new privacy changes. It's a very big deal. It's a very intricate story. And, of course, we're going to talk about meetups because it's Meetup Monday. Stick with us. This week in Startups is brought to you by Novo Free Business Banking. If your bank charges outrageous fees, you need a bank account that's built for small business.

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and a free Friday to Sunday ski trip in Utah. all. Okay, everybody, in our first story today, Apple's privacy features that you've heard about from their iOS 14.5 update are costing, according to a third-party service, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat, about $10 billion in combined loss revenue in the second half of 2021. This is a story from the Financial Times. If you don't remember, Apple introduced app tracking transparency back in April as part of their iOS 14.5 update. I covered that in episode 1204, if you want to go deep. Basically, iPhone users are opting out of being tracked.

This means it's difficult to target advertising from the big advertising networks. The big two, where the majority of advertising occurs on the internet, are obviously Facebook and Google slash YouTube. Twitter and Snapchat are, you know, minor players in this huge advertising machine. that is the internet, but Apple has stopped their ability to target specific phones and track you and retarget you and all that good stuff that advertisers love. And so when users opt out of being tracked, it basically makes the cost go up because you're going to need more impressions and you're going to have a lower click-through rate. So the way advertising works on the internet,

you will pay typically for each click that happens. And a click for an app, usually, a dollar or $2, in some cases $10, $20 for certain groups of users. Now, who in their right mind is going to pay a dollar per click or $5 per click? Well, if it's a video game that has some kind of upselling in it or coins or mono, whatever it is, you know, and they have whales in the system who are spending $100 on coins a month, that means if they spend a dollar per person to click and they get out of 100 people, 50 downloads, the cost per click is a dollar, the cost per download is $2. And then if one out of 50 people spends more than $100, they're in the black.

In other words, they're profitable. And so this science is why you see certain types of apps constantly being advertised to you on Facebook and other services, Twitter. And it's typically games that are the ones that are really aggressive about trying to get you to pay to get to the next level. So all of this comes from an ad tech company I've never heard of called Lottomi. L-O-T-A-M-E. And they note that advertisers are responding by cutting spending.

So we knew this would happen. This would be a big tailwind for Apple in their ad network, because Apple does sell ads to promote apps. It would be a headwind against these large ad networks. And if you know more about the person, you can present ads to people who are more likely to click. What does this mean? There's a certain amount of.

inventory on, let's say, YouTube or a certain amount of ad inventory on Facebook and Instagram. If you get one out of 10 people to click on an ad today and then tomorrow you get one out of 100, that means the ad network is 10 times less efficient. In other words, you're using up more of the impressions, people seeing the ad, to get the same number of clicks. But if you know that your app works really well with a certain demographic, women who are 35 years old, who are using their, who have these other apps on their phone, who have visited these websites, you get the idea. Or this type of phone.

It might be that people who have older phones really like these bejeweled games. It might be people with the newer phones, might really like the first-person shooters. Who knows? The algorithm is actually trying to make sense of all this. And that's where all the gains in advertising and the money printing ad networks are getting their gains from. That's why Google bought, you know, the big AI company, Deep Mind back in the day. It wasn't that they wanted to win at chess or go. Those are just, you know, shiny little PR stunts.

What they really wanted to do was make the ad network smarter and give you better ads, target them better, so the same amount of inventory would make more money. That's known as efficiency, right? And that's why the money printing machines of Google and Facebook have done so well. Apple has decided we're going to stop letting people target, therefore the efficiency goes down. And according to Lote to me, they estimated that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat, quote, lost 12% of revenue in the third and fourth quarters or $9.85 billion. I'm not sure how they get to that.

Financial Times notes that may be conservative. They also note Google is not as impacted, which is interesting. Now, why is Google not impacted? Pretty obvious if you think about it. Google, you type a word in a box, and the word is typically what you're looking for, right? You don't search for something you're not looking for. Type in Volvo, you're not looking for chocolate chip cookies, and if you're type in chocolate chip cookie recipes, you're probably not looking for a Volvo.

Facebook and YouTube create a psychographic profile of you based on your behavior. Google has that as well, but they know the keywords you put in. If you type in first person shooter or angry birds or bejeweled, we kind of know that these games that are like bejewed will show you more of those, right? Pretty simple. And that's why Google is going to not be as impacted by this. YouTube will be, but not Google. So here's a chart for those of you taking a look at the YouTube channel.

Our YouTube is YouTube.com slash this week in. And if you go there, hit subscribe and then hit the little bell, which is the notification bell, and you'll be part of the Notie gang, notification gang, and you'll see when I go live. I tape the show live every day, and a couple hundred people watch it live. So if you want to watch This Week in Startups Live, go to YouTube.com slash this week in, click not just subscribe, but click the bell next to it. You'll get a notification once a day when I go live, which is kind of cool.

So you can just see it here. Facebook was the one that got murdered the most. And this is why Facebook is spending so much money on meta. They know that the next compute platform Apple is betting on is AR. That's why Facebook is now absolutely trying to beat Apple at AR and VR. That is the big battle we'll see in the next five years. Compute went from being your desktop. Then it went to laptops.

Then it went to phones and tablets. Next up, social media became a big platform, the internet before that. What's the next one? Most people believe it's VR and AR. I'm not going to call it the Metaverse. It's kind of corny. It's just going to be augmented reality is the big one for me. I think VR is a bit of a head fake.

But yeah, 8 billion lost by Facebook. Because Facebook, you don't type in a keyword. Facebook needs to spy on you and get all that data. That's why Facebook is so good at targeting and became so great. In the beginning, we all thought Facebook wasn't going to work for advertising because algorithms weren't sophisticated. AI wasn't sophisticated 10 plus years ago when Facebook came out. So the ads on Facebook used to be really annoying.

And then slowly, as they knew your circle group, they could say, hey, people in your circle are clicking on Volvo ads. Maybe we'll show you a Volvo ad and see what happens. Maybe your group is just everybody's got Volvo. That's why some people think that like devices are listening to us. You ever have this experience? A bunch of your friends were like, we were talking about, you know, uh, volvos and, you know, my friends are a Volvo's.

on their Instagram the next day. And so we know that it was listening to our phones. No. What happened was your phones were all in the same geography. Your phones and your accounts were all friends with each other, and you comment on each other's content. Then out of your friend group of the top 100 people, seven of you were talking about the Volvo and you searched for it or maybe there was a discussion threat about it, the other

93 may have been shown the Volvo ad when the Evo. AI was testing, if these seven people in this tight network of friends of friends, and maybe one degree or two degrees, wow, when we showed Volvo ads, another 40% of people, okay, so maybe you live in the Northeast, maybe Volvos are, you know, the hot new thing. You get the idea. So this makes you think that it's listening to you when in fact, it's watching your behavior online and there is obviously an overlap between the real world and the digital world. if your bank charges outrageous fees you need a bank account that's built for small business you need to check out novo's free business banking platform

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Again, Facebook has a lot of desktop. Google has a lot of desktop. kind of sucks for Snapchat, and so a lot of these companies are just going to have their valuations compressed a little bit until they figure this out. Some people might have so much traffic like Facebook

that they can just solve for this by showing more ads to people. And that, of course, ruins the consumer experience a little bit. But according to the Financial Times article, Twitter ads, quote, rely more on context and branding than on tracking consumers' mobile habits.

So Twitter's ad sales rose 41% last quarter, So they don't seem to be as impacted by this. That directionally makes sense. When they say they rely more on context and branding than on tracking consumers' mobile habits, you ever see that when you load Twitter, whatever the big movie is that weekend, whatever the big TV show on streaming is, so Dune or, you know, the latest Marvel movie will be there. That's because Twitter is such a part of the zeitgeist that all of those people who are trying to be part of the discussion, TV shows, movies, gadgets, they will buy out the entire run of the site. They want everybody in America

talking about the latest Netflix show or talking about Dune or talking about whatever streaming service it is. So that makes a lot of sense to me. When Tim Cook was asked about this by analysts last Thursday, he said, we believe strongly that privacy is a basic human right. And so that's our motivation there. There's no other motivation. So people are saying Apple is doing this to grow their own ad business and that's hypocrisy, that's just an added benefit. I don't think, I actually believe Tim Cook when he says that. My understanding is, and I haven't seen this, I don't know if any of you have, if you're in the chat room right now, tell me if you have seen ads when you're in the app store, but I haven't seen ads in the app store. I don't know

why, but has anybody seen them? I haven't seen them in the in Google, in Apple's app store. So is Apple's focus on privacy bad faith? No, it's a feature. If you look at VPN, DukDuckGo, all the different privacy-related browsers out there, VPNs and other software, people using email relays. Consumers actually care now. Consumers are starting to care. And it went from being a very niche thing to care to being something that now a broader group of people want their privacy back and Apple is brilliant for doing this.

If Facebook really wants to get ahead of this, I've been saying this for a decade, When you load Facebook or Instagram, it should say, would you like to opt out of tracking and have no ads in your feed for $9.95 a month across the suite of Apple products? We will not track any of your data. We'll delete all of your profile data that we have in secret, and you will see no ads. I wonder how many people would pay for that.

5% of users, I know I would. I want to get ads out of my life, you know, where I can if they're disruptive ads. and so, you know, I pay for NBA League Pass. There was an extra option for 20 bucks to take out ads and watch the feed in the arena. I pay for that. I like to watch them shoot cannons with t-shirts into the arena at MSG. It makes me feel like I'm there. Kind of a cool feature.

So really great job on Apple's part to execute on this. And, yeah, I really don't care if, you know, Facebook can't target as well. People on their devices have the right to do what they want. If you want to use the Brave browser or Duck Duck Go's browser or ad blocker or cookie track or blocker, that's your right. What you do on your device is you're right. And if those services don't like it, they should just offer a paid version and charge for the top features and give people an option. And that's really what this is about. If you want to avoid being regulated, give people options and be honest with them and communicate it simply. That's what Apple does. Fantasticly, that's what Facebook does horribly.

Okay, let's get to my interview with Amy Yang of better brands, making that protein. based bagel, she is going to solve for less carbs. All right, for years, I've been saying, make a better bagel, make me better pizza. Why can't we have pizza or burgers or bagels that help you lose weight? This would be an amazing thing for an entrepreneur to take on because think about how much it sucks to be fat. Well, you don't have to worry about that because I've thought about it. Man, I was tipping the scales at over 200. Now I'm down to a Schfeldt 182. It's better to be thinner than to be fat. Sorry, trigger warning. It's healthier to not be obese. I know we're not allowed to talk about this anymore, but how did I do it? Well, I just ate less food and a lot less carbs.

And carbs taste delicious, and our bodies love carbs. Well, I was on the inner webs, and I saw one of my friends had tweeted about a better bagel. And I was like, oh, there it is. Some entrepreneur is making a bagel that is, you know, less bad for you. I'm from Brooklyn. Bagels are part of the four food groups along with pizza and canollies. And so I actually ordered these bagels, and they were pretty good. So I said to my production team, producers, get me the founder. Well, the founder is here.

The name of the company is Better Brand. And you can find them at eatbetter.com. or you can follow them on Twitter, Eat Better Brand. And in her first appearance here on This Week in Startups, Amy Yang, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. And what an amazing, you know, personal anecdote and intro. And, you know, exactly why we created better, right, to solve that pain point that I think is so personal to so many people across the board.

Being fat is bad for you. We can all agree on that, right? It's bad for your health. Well, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say that. I think, you know, obesity, you know, certainly there are like numerous negative health implications associated with that. Diabetes, pain, suffering. Exactly.

Diabetes. Can't sleep. But I think it's more about that mindset of a freedom, right, and not having to worry about what you eat and how that's going to affect your weight gain or weight loss. And, you know, kind of breeding that world like you were saying. you were, you know, imagining and dreamed of for so many years of, you know, being able to eat all the foods that you crave and not have to worry about weight gain or negative health consequences. So let's talk about your first product. You made a bagel. How did you come to the

conclusion that you wanted to make a bagel? Yeah. Well, so, you know, I guess kind of taking a step back and talking about better brand as a whole, we're really looking to put our steak in the ground as leading innovators in the refined carb space. Right. And, you know, a way to think about that is beyond meat of carbs, right? And it's so interesting. Well, it's interesting also. You know, refined carbs industry is 10 trillion dollar industry, right? And you look at all the innovation that's happening in plant based at around, you know, 1.4 trillion. So it was just this huge open space that, you know, I was just shocked that no one has come in and doing this. So, so, you know, in putting our same ground as leading innovators in the refined carb space, what better way to do that than by taking the most

carb heavy food and reducing it to the carb equivalent of, let's say, two banana slices. So the carbs in a typical bagel are? About 50 grams of... Wow. Yes. And we've gotten it down to five. Okay. So how do you do that? What is the secret sauce? Yeah, I'm looking here, 48 grams in a typical bagel. It makes total sense you get it down to five. Is it just a just? a matter of putting protein powder in it?

Are you using some different type of flour, almond flour? Oh my gosh. I've seen all these different concepts. But what is the secret sauce going on here? Yeah. There's a lot that goes into it. And it's so funny. So Fast Company recently released an article and the title is, can food tech invent a better

bagel? And that's kind of, you know, what we did, right? And so, you know, in terms of like the how, oh my gosh. So one is proprietary formulation, you know, really novel ingredients that we've sourced, we've worked with, we understood. And so for example, if you look at our ingredient deck, the first ingredient is, you know, modified wheat starch. So what that is is it's a wheat, but it's not actually digestible in your gastrointestinal tract. So, right, so it doesn't provide that carb content, but what it allows for is that same visco-elasticity of a typical wheat that gets you that same chew and that texture. And so, you know, that's kind of an example of just the normal formulation that we've put together, you know, very kind of properly designed.

Or what is it called wheat what? Modified wheat starch. So it's, you know, you take, it's, you know, non-GMO, right? And it's just, it's processed in a way to where the fibrous content of the wheat is retained. But it still allows for, you know, the texture and it to provide, you know, the elastic properties of the wheat you would expect from a bagel just without the carb content. And then you, yeah, and then so, you know, that applied to so many ingredients across the board that that we worked with and formulated. And then, you know, the second part of that is our preparatory process in terms of development and working with the dough. So if you took this dough and you brought it to anywhere, no one would know what to do with it.

You know, if you tried to make it the same way. So everything was kind of custom designed from from inception to work with this specific product. profile. And then third, I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to say about this, but we really lean into, you know, enzyme technology and the biological catalysts, right, that are extracted from plants, but they help us, you know, and it's, I always think this is so funny because you use such a small amount of it that it's the last thing on your ingredient deck, obviously completely natural, but without it, the product would be completely different. So, you know, it helps us with texture, taste, you know, flavor, taste, chew.

There's so many parts that go into it. But, you know, that's kind of the how. Got it. And there's potato starch in it I see here. Chickory root fiber, extra virgin olive oil, yeast, organic brown rice flour, organic white vinegar, sea salt, and enzymes. Yeah. Seems pretty straightforward.

Very clean. Yeah, 375 a bagel when you buy a 12-pack. So, four bucks if you buy less, compared to 50 cents a dollar for a typical bagel. When you are trying to grow a startup fast, hiring engineers will slow you down like nothing else. Don't I know it? So many companies I invest in are telling me they can't get their next version out because they don't have a great engineer. Well, lemon.io will find you a perfect candidate in just 48 hours. It's a marketplace of engineers from Europe, and they test and interview every developer

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four weeks of work with that amazing developer well done lemon okay check it out everybody lemon dot i o slash twist so how do you get this cost way down yeah you know it's more accessible because let's face it like some families not going in and spending 50 bucks on a 12 pack of bagels I know. And see, and that's one thing I really kind of paid about the market and, you know, it's really kind of programmed us in a way to think that, you know, a bagel should be, you know, X amount, right? But if you think about it, like, there's so much cost that goes into producing a premium product that's good for us, right, and that R&D. And there's a reason why these kind of large conglomerate companies aren't making that investment, right? They're trying to push out product. And

And you just don't want to incur that cost up front. And, you know, I think what we're, well, not I think. What we are doing is we're saying like, you know, like this is important. Like human health is important, you know, like we want the consumer to understand that, you know, novel technology and natural ingredients and, you know, putting things that are good for you in your body. Like that, you know, it's expensive and it's more expensive a lot of times than the market dictates because the market offers a lot of stuff that's terrible for you and going to cause. Yeah.

And the good news is, you know, you have the same thing happened with Beyond Meat. They had burgers and the burgers were $16, $18. And you could go to In-N-Out burger for four bucks and get a great burger. And I passed on investing on that as a stupid decision because I just thought nobody's going to nobody's going to pay four times as much for a burger that doesn't taste as good. And it turns out there were a large number of people who would pay three, four, five times as much to get something that was healthier and better for the environment. Yeah.

But they've since, I think, as they got to scale, have lowered it. Are you able to even turn a profit? We're not profit. You're not going to be able to be profitable at $4 a bagel? We're not profitable right now. And so I just definitely want to make that clear. We're not profitable. But what we want to do is get this product in front of the consumer, take the consumer

on the journey with us, and, you know, really get real-time feedback. And that's the only way that people can start benefiting from the product, right? So it really is interesting. Like we get a lot of feedback that, you know, is that question of like, oh, why is this product so expensive? Like, you guys must be like profiting so much from this. Like how about making it more accessible? We're not, right?

Like the fact of the matter is we're early stage. We're not profitable. But, you know, we're so excited about this because we think it's going to be a game changer for so many people and provide that element of freedom that, you know, we've never really gotten before or, you know, that's never been possible before. We had the Magic Spoon Team on Gabby episode 1220, and he told me they spent a year doing the R&D for their cereal. I'm curious, how long did it take you to develop the bagel? Oh, gosh. Well, if you, so I started kind of the R&D process on my own in terms of understanding

the technology, what was happening in the market, et cetera, just like doing my due diligence, my second year of business school. So if you count that, well over a year, but if you count from, you know, when we actually closed our first round of funding and started engaging with, you know, the labs that we worked with, and it was a four-month push from that to launch. Four months from launch. And so- Which was a crazy, crazy time. It was fast and it was crazy. And, you know, I honestly think that a huge part of why we were able to do that is, is because, because of luck. And you know, and you hear about the, the impossible story, you know, Pat Brown, who's, you know, obviously such an inspiring person, you know, their first hypothesis of how

they were going to extract the heem, for example, to replicate that bleed of, you know, a traditional burger, it took them $9 million, right? And in a year to realize that their hypothesis was wrong. And then they had to start from scratch. So I think we just, we got so, so lucky in in just being able to get that right the first time. And, you know, I really think it's one in a million. And, you know, so grateful for that because it allowed us to get into the market, right? It allowed us to put this in front of the consumer. It allowed us to start putting our stake in the ground as, you know, the beyond meat of carbs. And, you know, allowed us to start making impact and feeling that. And are there competitors from the giant CPG companies yet? Are they even looking at this?

the Kellogg's, the Pillsbury's, all these giant brands. They're not even thinking about this yet? You know what? No. What's interesting is we've gotten a lot of inquiries from their investment arms and their venture arms. I'm trying to play a part in this early on. But, you know, in terms of R&D, it's just the focus on, the focus really just isn't on innovation, right, for these kind of existing large conglomerates. It's mostly on existing product proliferation and, you know, additional development on those of these.

existing product profile. So, you know, again, that kind of opened up this huge white space for us to be able to step in and really, you know, after feeling, you know, that very personal pain point of, you know, why can't I just eat what I want without guilt and feeling bad about it, you know, really opens up that white space for us. What's, what are neck carbs? I know that a lot of these packaging, instead of saying carbs, they say neck carbs, I think you say neck carbs. How does neck carbs work? And is that like a little bit of funny business going on there with the actual carb counts? Definitely not funny business.

It's just about how your body processes the carbs. So, for example, on our label, we say, you know, we're 32 total carbs, but 27 of that 32 is fiber. Got it. And so fiber isn't absorbed by your body. So the actual carb content that's absorbed is, you know, the five grams remaining. So even though you're eating this product that, you know, taste so carb heavy, you're not actually, you know, incurring that blood sugar spike that's, you know, related to, you know,

a large refined carb consumption. You're not, you know, getting the carb content from it. I feel like you're 50% being a bagel snob. My assessment as a kid from Brooklyn of where you're at is about halfway there in terms of the flavor, the texture. Where do you assess you're at in terms of if you were to put a bagel in front of somebody from, you know, H&H bagel or whoever, whatever bagel you like in New York, you know, a nice buttered bagel, toasted, whatever, locks, cream cheese, and you're a bagel, where do you feel you are on that journey of like sort of competing against, you know, the most legit Brooklyn bagel, New York bagel? Oh, gosh, you gave us 50%.

I think 50%. Yeah, I think you're halfway there. It's, the mouth feels a little chewy, but in a different way than a bagel. flavors a little bit off. But when I toasted it, I'll give you this. When I toasted it with butter, I think it got to like maybe 60%. Of like what of my joy in eating a bagel, which by the way, that to me was phenomenal. My expectation was because I've had some funky stuff and, you know, I've had all the mock meats.

And, you know, you put up the steak that I get, if I'm getting, you know, Kobe beef or a wago or a, you know, great ribai, I would say like the burgers and the steak are probably 25% of satisfying. So I felt like 50, 60% was pretty great for a first iteration. So where do you assess your at? And then how do you think about closing that gap? Or maybe you don't even feel there is a gap. But for me, there's definitely a gap. Yeah.

Yeah. I did it hurt your feelings? I'm sorry. No, no. I thought that was pretty. I was a compliment for a one point of. No, no, no. Not at all.

This is, well, what if you also thought about, you know, when you eat a bagel or traditional bagel, you know, there's that element of guilt that's associated with it, right? You're kind of thinking like, well, like, should I be eating this versus a better bagel? I wonder what your, you know, experience was. Like, were you excited? Were you filled with joy? Were you relieved? Did you feel freedom? Um, I definitely, I came into it like an experimenter and a bagel snob, if I'm being totally honest. But that being said, I did in conversations with my spouse say, this is pretty great. You can have a bagel and be a little gil-free. So yeah, I can see getting a 20% bump in the joy factor of like, I'm not there. You just bumped us up to 80.

Yeah, 70, 80. Sure. But just in terms of flavor profile, are you studying what people experience when they bite into an actual real bagel versus this new formula creating? And then how do, how does one judge that? Like, do you bring people in and do a lab where you test it and you give them a line taste test. Do you have like five different versions of your bagel and you have them rate them? How do you refine a formula, sort of what I'm getting at when you're doing something so new? Yeah. So, I mean, I think I would agree with you. I think we're about 70% there. But, you know, I think people are really excited about the product and because of, you know, still like given the health content and the product profile, there's really nothing like it in the market. And, and, and,

In terms of how we're iterating and how we're getting that feedback is we're getting it directly from the consumers. And that's exactly why we wanted to get a product out there as soon as possible, right? Because, and one that people, we knew that people were going to be excited about. But we wanted to know, like, what were the pain points? Like, what do people want improved? And that's how, you know, you run an efficient company, right? What are you? What is the feedback people are giving you?

Are the things that you're narrowing in on and triangulating it on? What are you refining? Yeah. What will 2.0 be like? Um, 2.0 will be a little less chewy. Okay. There's definitely a chew issue. Yeah.

It'll be, um, it'll still toast really, really well. And what we focused on initially was, was that chewiness because a lot of people said, you know, it, it does taste a little bit more chewy than a traditional bagel. But, um, you know, the overarching feedback we've gotten from people is just like, excitement and this like emotional response that's almost illogical and just, it's so. special, right? We've had people kind of send us like hundreds of hundreds of messages saying, wow, like I'm a believer. Like I'm so excited about this. This really changed my life. I never thought this was possible. You know, we've had people say, you know, I've struggled with eating disorders my entire life and having something like this is, is such a game changer for me. And then think about how, you know, special and how powerful that is. You know, we've had people say, you know, I've had

type to diabetes and I've never been able, I haven't been able to eat products like this. And now that you've made this possible, it's so,

so special. Yeah. So for those folks, yeah, if you're, you can't have any bagel, a bagel that's 50, 60, 70, 80% is like,

that's amazing. It's a godsend. I know when I had George Zachary on the famous OG venture capital is from Charles River, he had a company Wilding that does sell-based

salmon. And they spent like a year just on the snap of the bite, you know, that mouth feel, wild type, I think is the name company actually. Okay, everybody, let's take a moment to talk about growth marketing and all the tactics and hacks that are out there with me today, Jake Badsgaard. He is the CEO and founder of disruptive advertising, which you can visit at disruptive advertising. com slash twist.

So some questions for you, Jake. When is too early to start marketing your Cyber Monday or your Black Friday? What's the right time to engage people and how do you engage them? Yeah, you know, that's going to depend on the audience. But the cheapest customer is the person that's already bought from you before. And it's time today to start warming up the audience that bought from you last year. With custom audiences on social or email, it's time to get on top of those right now and getting them warm and ready to engage.

as far as new audiences are concerned, there's a lot of opportunity to explore new platforms outside of the traditional Google, Facebook channels, like Instagram, TikTok, some of these other ones, LinkedIn, YouTube. Let's get some new audiences in place and test those out and find what's working so that we're ready to scale when game time comes. All right, that's great advice.

So if you want to sign up for a free digital marketing audit with Jake and his company, Disruptive Advertising, just visit Disruptiveadvertising.com slash twist. And if you go into business with Disruptive, you will receive a $250 gift card and a free Friday to Sunday ski trip in Utah. We'll see you on the slope. It's going to be a great season. It's so interesting. I think, you know, with any company that's innovating and pushing new products and innovation into the market, I think you typically see two approaches, right? Like one is, and this is also kind of like the impossible versus the beyond. Like one is, you know, you're in. a lab for, you know, a large amount of time until you're like, oh, like, is this product, you know, what about this and what about that? And you're doing your internal testing. But then

the consumer doesn't necessarily get to benefit from it, right? And you don't get to learn. And, and, you know, you don't know as a founder, if you can actually operate a business and excite that same amount of excitement in the consumer that, you know, you really aim to do. And then there's a second where, you know, you get your MVP and you put it in the market as early as you can, you know, and I firmly believe that if you're a founder and you believe in your product, that's what you should do. Because one, you know, you get it in front of consumers and you get to start making that impact, which I would think, you know, is the reason why most founders start companies, right? And the consumer starts to be able to benefit from that. Two, you know,

you get that state of points that are so real, so you're not just guessing. And then you get to iterate really quickly, get it out and get that real-time feedback. And I think it's just a special experience for the consumer too to see like, wait, yeah, like this is where you're at. And, you know, here was my feedback. And now 2.0 is this. And, you know, and again, it's all about kind of that emotional connection that I think it's just we get so much of. And it's, it's really energizing. What about the shapes of the bagels? I noticed they were kind of not perfectly shaped like a New York bagel. They were kind of twisted a little bit, a little hard for me to slice. Is there something in the baking process with that that you're working on?

They're round now. Oh, they're round now? Yes. Ah. Okay, so I must have gotten the point one version. So now they're round. Yeah, barely really. I mean, I ordered it the first day.

I saw I tweeted about it. I was like, I got to try this thing. Yeah, very interesting. You know what made that possible is enzymes. Ah. Yeah. And, you know, and that kind of goes to show like we were trying everything, like getting that shape.

But, and even with all the knowledge we had on the ingredient profile, it was so difficult to get. And then we were doing so much testing on the back end to try to get us there. And then the day we kind of practiced, it was like a very, very joyous day. Beyond Meat had like a really, I think it was Beyond Meat reported. They spent a lot of time on like the juices and the blood that would come out of a hamburger. Like when you squeeze it, the juices and that oiliness come out. And I think for a bagel, yeah, that chewiness mouth flavor and the shape that all is going to come in. Did you do flavors yet?

Because I just ordered plain. I didn't see any other flavors. We're not. And that's intentional. Oh, explain. So, you know, we have the recipes ready. We can start producing it. But what we really want to do is just highlight the innovation of the product and of itself, right?

And have people really taste it and really kind of appreciate the texture and how different and differentiated it is from everything else in the market. And rather than saying, you know, okay, well, here's X, you know, Y, Z and here's everything, you know, and I think that the product right now even, well, one, that also allows us to get clear feedback from the consumer and point exactly where we need to iterate. But it's, you know, it's such an innovative and novel product. And I just, we want to speak for itself for a little while. And, you know, we don't need to mask any kind of flavor, right? Like, you can put I don't know. I think if you had poppy seed and sesame seed, if you had a garlic bagel, you know, like, it is true that would mask it. So that would screw up the feedback. So I get that part. I agree on that.

But I also think, like, part of the great feeling of a bagel is, you know, some people are just team sesame and some are team Poppy. Me? Yeah. I, you know, I'm team all bagels. I don't discriminate against any bagel. I like all bagels. I'll even eat a cinnamon and raisin. I'm not down with the blueberry. That's a little bit strange. But I'm team. Give me the bag, the brown paper bag they all came in, and I will shake out every seed and pour it on top of my bagel with butter and cream cheese. So I'm team everything.

I love it all. But I think those flavors are going to really knock it out of the park. And, you know, putting rye in there. Because some people are making rye bagels now. They're very nice. Pumpernickel. Like, if you can get some of it. those flavors going like the really tangy ones,

pumpernickel, rye, sourdough. I think that's actually going to help a lot because you're going to, it's just going to help with the experience. So as soon as you can get those out, jalapeno cheddar is a good pull from producer Nick. I don't know if you've had the jalapeno cheddar bagels, but that's like a big thing in L.A., which, by the way, the bagels in L.A. are whack.

You know, I've dealt with them for many years. They're like six and sevens out of ten on their best day. It's just, there's actually a really good one. Where are you based? I'm based in L.A. You're based in L.A. So you understand. So do you think then if that bagel, an L.A.

bagel is like a six compared to a bagel, then in a better bagel is 60% than you would think that. I was putting you at 50, so I think you're right behind an L.A. bagel. Yeah. I think if you put the flavors in, people in L.A. would pick your bagel over the carb bagel because people in L.A. are like, you know, anti-carb and they're just obsessed with their body. and health and stuff like that. So I think LA is a smart place to launch this.

And people will, the uptick will be much stronger in LA where people are just absolutely reading labels and care. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true to a certain extent and how people definitely care about diet here a bit more. But I think, you know, it's not kind of prescribing to that certain way or certain diet or kind of promoting that diet culture in any way, right? It's more about saying like, we're overhauling it. in in like in totality so kind of saying that like you know imagine a world where you don't have to

count carbs and you don't have to count calories and just know that you know what you're consuming is is good for you and not have to extend any kind of mind space to that right so i think that's kind of like exactly what we're trying to do and and whether you know you're you know on the west coast east coast i think that's you know equally powerful of a mission and and takes up you know the equal amounts of mind space and, yeah, it's just, you know, really exciting. I think the L.A., having lived in New York for 30 years in L.A. for 10 and here in NorCal for a couple years, I really think the L.A. consumer is absolutely the perfect consumer for you because when pressed juices came out, they were more than happy to pay $8 to $12 for juice, and that didn't fly

in New York, and the same way would fly in L.A. New York's got like a bagel culture. They're going to be snobby about it. They're going to be elitist about it. Whereas in L.A., they're going to be much more down with, you know, how low can I get the carbs? Especially when we've got four bucks, because people in middle America are going to have a harder time with the price point, I think. I could be wrong. You know what's interesting is our largest consumer base is from New York. Really? Yeah, we ship more better bagels to New York than any other state. And I think more than L.A. or the third state, which is, I mean, I guess kind of a tie between Texas and Florida. But New York is like, what's the go-to marketer?

Are you trying to get foodies? Are you trying to get diabetics? You know, when you do your marketing, what marketing are you doing and how are you trying to find your customer for a new product like this? You know, it's so interesting is we always get the question, like, what's your target demographic? Initial demographic. Yeah, but I think for us, it was just, it was so special, you know, off the

bad because there were so many different groups of people that were gravitating towards the product, right? So you certainly got, you know, people who, you know, we're, are diabetic, you know, the people who are on low-carb diets, we had, you know, vegan, we had fitness and athletes, a lot of athletes, because they love just the protein content that's in the bagel as well, right? It hosts 24 grams of protein in. in a bagel. That's a big win. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you get people who, you know, are just health conscious but doesn't, don't prescribe to a certain diet. You get, you know, it really is just, it was all over the spectrum. And it was just so many diverse groups of people. And which I think, you know, that speaks to the fact that people are understanding our mission, right?

Which is kind of, you know, using this platform and saying, you know, if we can, you know, turn the most carb heavy food, a bagel into the equivalent of two bananas. the slices, then what can't we do? Right? It's kind of like pushing beyond these, you know, predisposed, you know, unnecessary limitations that we've come to accept for, for whatever reason. Are you going to be D2C or are you going to try to do retail? We are D2C right now. We, you know, right now I think it's just so important for us to protect the brand and get that connection from the consumer and make sure the brand experience is really special and great. And, you know, I think both grocery will get there eventually,

but you have to make sure you can support merchandising, right? Because then there's, you know, a third party in between you and the consumer and you don't get that real-time data as quickly. So that's why we're focused on D-To-C. We have started expanding to a couple, with a couple partners that we think, you know, would still be protective of the brand

and, you know, kind of aligns with our vision and our mission. And one of them... Earth Cafe in L.A.? That's a good idea. But we're at Ohio Valley Inn. Oh, sure. That's perfect. I was going to say that's a great one.

Perfect destination. And, you know, they care a lot about. Canyon Ranch maybe next. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, they, you know, and they care a lot about the quality of, you know, customer, consumer experience there, right? So what a better, like there's no better. Every time I say better now, I stop.

Way to make sure that our products is going to get taken care of really, really well, right? Because that's, you know, such an important part of their business. Yeah, it makes total sense to me. And people are starting to look at their health and looking at, I mean, started with whole foods, I guess, whole paycheck was, you know, like basically people saying, I'm going to invest in my life through the food I eat. And so that's why I think the tip of the spirit of people are great. Are you doing subscription stuff yet? And then what's the shelf stability? Because I just ordered it and I didn't actually unpack it when it got to the house.

So I don't know if it came, it packed an ice or something. but maybe you could talk a little bit about how shelf stable they are. I got to keep them refrigerated or not. How long do they last? So they're very, very clean label, you know, no preservatives. So they should be frozen. We ship them ambient. You know, the last four to five days ambient without issue.

So, you know, they're frozen. You put them into the box or and then they may over a couple of days in transit two or three days. Yep. Defrost a bit. Yep. And thawing and freezing doesn't affect the texture. So, you know,

when the consumer gets it, you know, should either consume it or freeze it. Right. And then if you're going to eat it, you could either, can you microwave it to defrost it or you just should probably

defrost it on the table. I'm sure you can, but you just leave it out for 10 minutes and it, you know, pop it in the toaster and it's... Yeah. I was really impressed. And so next up is what?

Are you thinking, more bread, so you think you're pizza. Where are you headed next? Or do you think you just got to do another year and get that bagel experience perfected? So we're using the bagel as kind of our hero product to really establish the brand, you know, get out there, widen our distribution. And, I mean, we already have a number of other products kind of in the pipeline in terms of R&D. Buns are ready, which is just great. And that's, you know, another reason why we started with bagels, because, you know, it's the most difficult, finicky product to get right, even from... A lot of bagel snobs, yep.

Exactly, from the consumer expectation standpoint. And also just from, you know, if you're, it's the most carbary product, right? The equivalent of multiple slices of bread. And I think consumers know that. So being able to take that and then reduce it to the carbureclimate to bananas. I say that it's an undertaking. And once we were able to crack that, then other, you know, products are easy. Hot dog buns would be great because you...

You get the burger. Yeah. You get the burger juices flowing into. You got the cheese. You know, you got condiments. If there were things that weren't exactly like, you know, the potato bun or whatever people's preferences are, you know, bleached white hot dog bun. You know, you're going to get the benefit of what's in between it, which I think when I

made yours, I don't know how you feel about this. But when I was growing up, my grandmother, we toast the bagel, put some butter on it, and then put cream cheese on it. And everybody says you're crazy putting both on. I'm telling you, you put both on, do not knock butter and cream cheese until your grandmother makes it for you. It is incredible. Have you ever done it? I have never done it, but I will.

I'm giving you the green light. I'm giving you the green light. Tomorrow. Maybe tonight, actually. I'm telling you that you just make it nice and toasted like golden brown or a little bit better, a nice layer of butter. You don't have to go too crazy. And then a nice thin layer of cream cheese, man, when you get both, because you get the butter absorbed into the, you get the, you get the, you get the, you get the, you get the butter.

butter absorbed into the bagel, and then you get the cream cheese, which is just a great mouth feel and everything. And that's where I think... That's great. I actually made an egg sandwich with yours, too. I forgot to tell you that, but, you know, I'm big on the bagel egg sandwiches. So then you're getting... I mean, how many grams of protein did you say you have? You know, 24. So now you put two eggs on or a scrambled egg or two, and oh my lord. So, so yes, so 24 grams of proteins, the equivalent of four eggs in terms of protein. So if you're adding another two, then, you know... Yeah. Now you're just done. You're going to skip lunch. You just had half a dozen eggs and you're not going to be hungry the rest of the day.

You're never going to eat again. Listen, continued success with it. I think you're off to a tremendous start. I highly recommend everybody try it. The easiest thing you can do is just go to the website right now, eatbetter.com, and just order a couple of dozen, give it away as a gift. I'm telling you you're going to love it. It's a really solid bagel.

Like I said, 50, 60%. For a bagel snob, I think L.A. people, you're going to be at 70, 80 percent easily. And then I'll give you the extra 10%, 20% depending on if you're diabetic. So I think you're closing in on the red zone. I think you're going to have an incredibly successful company. Thank you. And just stay in the bread zone. Man, you can really help the world if you just now bread.

Everybody loves bread. Bread. Can you imagine like a sourdough that you're slicing through and just eating as much of it as you want? There's no guilt. Keep talking. You're talking my language now. What else are you got? I mean, it really is like bread is like, I mean, if you can get a baguette going, a nice chewy baguette.

She's it. Cresants. Oh, Lord, now you got me. Pan or chocolate croissant. I mean, that's going to be hard because those are, you're talking about layer after layer of very fine dough. I don't know. That seems to me to be super challenging a croissant. You know what's interesting as we're testing it with a sheeter in the mix.

Yeah, we'll see. I wish you great luck with that. I mean, there are French people right now who are turning over Mondeur. They're absolutely appalled that you would ever even consider doing this to a croissant. But I'm with you. It's a lot of butter. It's a lot of butter. And you seem to be vegan.

Your team vegan. So there will be no butter in your croissant, I assume. There will be no butter in the croissant. But there are a lot of equivalents out there. Are there? Yeah, a lot of great vegan alternatives. Yeah. I haven't had them.

You know, that's the thing. My wife's got like five different vegan spreads at all times. And, you know, just none of them stand up. What's the best vegan spread? Is there a good butter one you like? I think mackanos is pretty great. We got the mechinos, yeah. Yeah, no?

No, not for me. Oh, my gosh, Kite Hill. If I'm out of, you know, my Irish butter, I'll do the mikinos. But only under pressure and earth balance. Producer Rachel says she likes earth balance. Yeah, no. Has anyone tried kite Hill? It's also great.

I feel bad for leaving that out. See, Nick and I are team, Kerry Gold. Yeah, Kerry Gold. He's got to, I go Irish. But, you know, listen, the more options that are out there, the more I'm going to eat healthier. And I really thank you for taking this on. And I knew some entrepreneur would do it.

And I'm really thrilled. Congratulations, I'm raising money from my friend, Alexis. Ohanian from, what's this new thing? 776. 776? What is 776? Is that a, does it stand for like an area code or something? Does anybody know what 776 stands for?

I never asked them. He's been on the pod so many times. I think it kind of dates back to the Olympics. And it's about kind of, you know, new and breaking barriers. And, you know, they're just such a special amazing group. And, you know, I feel like every founder there is so happy. It's crazy. Alexis is a special investor.

I agree. I agree. And, you know, I think, and now I'm just making a plug for 776 because I love them so much. They're great. But, you know, I think some really special thing that they did that I don't know if any other fund does. Oh, is that 2% personal match thing? Explain what that is. This is really an event.

How special is that? So, you know, the whole mentality of the fund is, you know, as a founder, you are, you know, making. personal sacrifices across the board, right? And you're sometimes negating, you know, care for yourself. And, you know, it's, it's their job. And this is how they see it to take care of you as a founder. And the way that they do that is they set aside 2% and that's on top of their investment. You know, that's allocated to the founder for personal growth. And I think it's 1% directly to the founder and another percent that's, you know, doing things for people who you care about. So, you know, you know, you know, whether that's child care, if you have a child or, you know, friends or, you know, and it's just, it's so thoughtful and it's so special. And I think that's just kind of indicative of the environment and the fund. Yeah, it's, I mean, you guys raise $2.5 million. So it's 50 grand, 25 for you to go to, you know, yoga or a retreat or mental health or whatever you need.

It's pretty dope. And, you know, they get 10, when you have a fund, your management fees would add up to about 10%. So he's basically saying is, hey, of the 10% on our $300 million fund, we would have 30 million in fees. We'll take 2% of that, you know, whatever that would wind up being 30 million, which is 20% of 30 million. So you probably just hear Mark 6 million to give to the founders. Isn't that so special? It's really a neat idea. I mean, other people do interesting things.

They send shwag or they have retreats. You know, like people do take a portion of their management fees and they'll host a retreat, let's say, and take everybody to Hawaii or something. They're founders. But, yeah, I mean, he's, he's, he's, I, Alexis, the more I've watched his career, the more I've appreciated, like, he's a special individual. 766, 776 BCE, the first year of the Olympics, the Olympics were held. And I think his daughter is named Olympia, Olympian. Is that right? Yes, and she loves better bagels.

Ah, very cool, very cool. That's all kind, Olympia is the name of his daughter, yeah, because she was actually on this pod. she jumped in in the middle of a buck. She was super cute. All right, listen, I got to let you go. Get back to the laboratory. Get to work on the sourdough. Get to work on the croissant.

We're all really excited you're doing this, Amy. And everybody go to eatbetter.com right now and try it out. Thanks, Jason. Okay, we're doing this week in Startups Meetups and Producer Rachel is running them. If you want to see all the information on our meetups, go to this week in Startups.com slash meetups. and with me again today, Rachel reporting. How are you, Rachel? Hi, I'm doing well. How about you? I'm doing great. Every Monday we try to talk about our meetups. The meetups are by founders, four founders. We're going to let some angel investors in as well. But we've had some great success. We started this program, I think, in September. It's now October or maybe it's November or just the past, yeah, it's November 1st. So I think we've been doing this for under two months. Which cities, have completed Mission One and explain what Mission One was for meetups.

So the first meetup, there were five to ten founders. And basically the whole thing about that was get comfortable. So five or ten startups, excuse me, five or ten founders meet up. Everyone pays their own way. You have a meal, grab a drink, grab a coffee, really casual, no reservation needed. And the cities that have completed that are L.A., New York City, London, Tokyo, Austin, Boston, and Chicago. and L.A., New York City, and... Oh, keep going.

That's seven cities have already done their first mission. Yes, seven cities and three are on. Three are on Meetup, Two, London, New York City and L.A. Great. So do we have any photos of those meetups? I asked everybody to take pictures so we can put them on the website. And they are on the website. They look great.

So here we go. This is beautiful. Here's the website, everybody. So Meetup One was complete by Los Angeles, New York, London, and you have the photos up there. And so we tried to make it like, we gamified this. And we said, you're going to do three missions. The first one is to just have a breakfast or a lunch with just a handful of founders.

Can't buy a ticket to it. Everybody pays their own way because one of the things we're trying to do is make this for founders, by founders, and keep it from becoming a sales event. Do you ever go to those events? They're like, oh, there's a startup event going. And like every four to five people you meet are trying to sell you something. And then one person's an actual founder. We wanted to do the opposite.

100% founders. at least for these first couple. So that's amazing. Great job, Rachel. And we're getting to know all these people and they're on the Slack coordinating and they get to know each other. So that's a lot of fun.

And are there friendships being made and people are starting to get to know each other? I think so. And I think even if you're just attending the meetup, I would recommend joining the Slack, not just organizers because I've noticed that sometimes people show up to the events and they can't find the founders

that they're supposed to be meeting with. So I'd recommend everybody sign up for the Slack. It says that on our website, but I've noticed that that is a step that some people have been skipping, and I'd hate for people to go all the way out there. I've had two people now reach out to me that have driven quite a ways to meet up. And they didn't know. So we've got to be more specific about where and when. So when they say they're doing it at a bar, everybody should wear like an orange shirt or do name tags.

And just put twist. So they can make their own name tags and just put twist in the first name on it. And that'd be fine. So now, if you complete Mission 1, we give you. your own URL as well. So if I go to this week in startups.com slash London is a good one to look at right now. You have a London page up. And then the people who are actual founders who are the founder coordinators, the founder organizers, I think we're calling them, they get to be on that page and link to their company and link to their social media. Is that what we're doing for them?

Yes. So I'm going to give them a little bit more range. I can show you as an example of what London looks like right now. This one has not, none of them have been given yet to the founders. But once they get access to these, I'm going to let them do what they want with them. Yeah, and then I just added this infographic that explains one of the tweets and this is information on their next meetup. What is that infographic? You made an infographic? It's just a little one that in case they want to send it.

That was actually recommended from a founder in London. So John, shout out to you for having this idea that he said it would be nice to have something just as an attachment to send to people. And I included that in everybody's page. So if they complete Mission One, they get their. own notion page at this weekend startup slash their city and they get to edit it, put their own information on. So we'll trust them to edit their own page and be stewards of the brand. And so that's really the issue here we're trying to mitigate in real time, Rachel, is they're

representing us to a certain extent. I mean, they obviously represent themselves. But as we've seen already, we've had a lot of people want to do this who have an ulterior motive, which is marketing, which is to get free advertising on this weekend service. This is not an end run to get advertising to reach the audience. This is for founders, by founders. If you're a lawyer, accountant, SaaS developer, salesperson, selling insurance, you know, human resources, headhunter, all that great stuff. We appreciate you in the industry. But you don't get to organize the This Week in Startups event. You can buy ads on This Week in Startup and maybe we'll have a sponsorship on Mission 4. Mission 2 is 25 to 50 person event and RSVP, but all founders still.

So we're checking that you're a founder. How do we know if somebody's a founder or not when they are SVP for an event? I will ask you for your LinkedIn and I will ask you for your startup's website. And if you don't have either one of those and you still are saying that you're a founder, I'll have to follow up via email to see if you have anything you can show me. And right now, we are kind of focusing if you're becoming an organizer on people that are post-launch for their startup. So I'm sorry if your startup isn't launched yet, this would be most beneficial for

founders meeting if you guys have already launched. startup. Now when we get to mission three, we're going to open it up a little wider. Founders will come free. We're going to also let Angel investors go and we're going to give bracelets. Green bracelet if you're an investor, confirmed investor from our network, and then the orange bracelet if you're a founder. And we're going to get those rubber bracelets made and send them like the Livestrong bracelets for people, right? Yes. Exactly. Any drama or issues at the events yet? No, not at all.

So for Chicago's, though, I felt bad. I saw some people from Chicago. Maria was on the live. So hi, Maria. But I saw that they had to actually leave their intended meetup place because only two people could sit at a table. They made an update to the location. So that's another reason to join the Slack because if an update like that happens, you know, and they leave, you guys better find them. They relocated, though, to a Starbucks close by.

And it looked like it went well. Perfect. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, COVID, depending on the city you're in, we'll have different things. So go to this weekend startup slash slack. If we can get, I mean, my goal is I want to have 10 of these up and running this year.

You've already done that. And it's only November 1st. So you're way ahead of schedule. Congratulations on that. And by next year, so September of next year, we'd like to have 100 chapters of this weekend startup's meetups. So we're at 10. We just need a 10 exit. Actually, we have more than 10, right?

We have like maybe another 10 that we're trying to collect founders for. So where do the cities that need founder organizers? The cities that need founder organizers, Berlin needs is so close. Let me bring up a list because there's actually quite a few that only have three founders. And something that I would like to know for those is if you guys give me a company that isn't your own company, I still look you up on LinkedIn. So I saw a lot of people from St. Louis were giving me companies that weren't that they weren't founders of. So that's a little drama, I guess, happening on the RSVP side for the organizers.

Yeah, so sometimes you'll get the salespeople know this, like the people who are trying to sell into founders, they know how to play this game. So they say they're a founder or they'll put their founder's name in, they show up and da-da-da-da. You know, so people will try to do this. And, you know, for the people who are the founder organizers, you can just tell people like, hey, listen, it's just four founders by founders. Eventually, like by Mission Three, what we're going to do is we're going to let founders come for free, investors come for free. Anybody else can buy a ticket is my plan. Okay. And we're running the sign-up form.

So we'll have a ticket price. people will buy a ticket and we'll give that money to the local organizers to spend on the space or food or whatever they want. And so I could see this. I don't want it to be a business for people. I want them to do it as a labor of love because they want to meet other founders and support of the founders. But if it did generate a little bit of income or revenue to underwrite it, that's not the end of the world. So we have a sales team here. If we do get a 100 cities, what we'll probably do is we'll ask Twilio or, you know, Amazon Web Services or

whoever's got a international footprint LinkedIn or whatever if they want to sponsor the 100 cities and if they do maybe we can send a little bit of money for food to each one or something I don't know I really don't care about the sponsorship so awesome I'm just putting it out there for down the road that sure you know

if a sponsor did show up and they wanted to buy everybody donuts or hamburgers or pizza I don't mind that but I just want to keep it from getting overtly commercial so like TEDx seems to done a good job with this by the organizers are the key, Rachel. So if we have the right organizers in it for the right reason, that everything should flow perfectly. And then we're collecting all the emails.

So we're not having people spam because that's the other thing that happens at these events. You know, you have a bunch of founder organizers. Then some salesperson gets the list and they start sharing with all their friends and everybody starts getting spam. And then people who are founders put Jason Plus twist at calicanus.com and they have that little thing where you put the plus in your Gmail account. so you know you sign up for each service specifically. And they're like, look, I caught this person spamming.

You're selling the list. You're breaking can spam. And it's like, oh, that's the shit I want to avoid whenever possible. I think. Really excited. Yeah. With the amount of people that are signing up that are actually founders and that salespeople, I think that'll be hopefully, hopefully we'll be able to keep that under wraps.

We haven't gotten that many salespeople coming in. We have gotten, though, you mentioned lawyers. We've gotten a lot of lawyers. But Berlin, Portland, and Seattle. are the next three, along with St. Louis. So those four places, if there's just one more person that signs up for those cities, they can start planning. So we should put up the sign up form. This event is only for founders.

If you are a service provider, then put in parentheses, lawyer, accountant, headhunter, we will be having a larger event that you can be invited to sign up here for our announcement list. So every city should have an announcement list and then also a sign up form for specific events. So I know there's a lot of work. So we have to figure out how to just build these lists and manage them. So start thinking about if we had 100 lists, what service would we use to manage it? Do we have a group sign up list or where people pick what cities are interested in on type form or something? Yes, it is there.

It's an interest form. And so far, there are quite a few cities down. but most of the people that wrote in the interest form, there are actually, there are no cities in the interest form that don't have also have organizers. So that makes sense. So there's not any stray cities. Yeah. I would actually put the stray cities in. So I'd put all cities.

Like if there's going to be 100 cities, I would put which cities and, you know, which regions are you interested in? Asia, North America, South America, Europe, and then put the cities under them. This way people can start, you know, signing up for the cities we don't have. And then we'll email them. Sounds good. Great job, Rachel. This is a really exciting. I think it's, you know, I want to do it for the fans of the show and for founders, so it's great.

And then who's going to have the first mission to? Who's going to have the first mission to? That is a great question. Let me go back to the website. If you guys want, by the way, this week and startups.com slash meetups if everybody is looking along. I believe the next website is going to be at London, but I'm going to have to check over. Yeah, New York City meet up to November 9th. LA meet up to November 4th. So okay. And those are occurring at restaurants, bars,

cafes or like co-working spaces. Do you know? Some of them have some of the founders have offices. So for example, London, that startup has its own office. New York City has been doing a great job on finding reservations for places. So it really depends on the city and the availability. Most places, I think doing restaurants do have to make reservations beforehand. So that's something to know to some people, for example, like San Francisco, that sign up sheet is. is limited. So if you don't sign up within the first 15 people, they're not going to, you can't go because it's a reservation. They won't have a seat for you. So these are, these are a little time sensitive for people I'm wondering. Well, and then eventually, you know,

just as a general rule of them, pick a dive bar or, you know, a pizza joint, someplace that's large, you know, a beer hall comes to mind, a barbecue joint. You don't got to go fancy here. No private rooms. Let's keep this real. Keep it affordable. You know, a place that's, It's got, you know, pitchers where you can, you know, I always did Mexican pizza, burger joints. Those places, you could have a large group of people. You could order three pies for 20 bucks each. You could order a couple of pictures of beer or, you know, sangria. That's the vibe we're going for.

We're not trying to be fancy here. This isn't like Chamoth and sacks ordering, you know, $5,000 bottles of wine. Like, I want a $500 bill split between 20 people. Everybody puts it in 25 bucks. You're good, you know. That's kind of fine. that London's at beer, I mean, I know New York City is at Beer Authority,

which is kind of cool. And I know Austin actually did theirs also at like a beer hall. Did Nick and Justin go to the New York one? I don't think so, no. That's not cool. Well, you got to go to meet up too, boys. The first one, isn't there only supposed to be like eight people? All right, listen, I don't want to hear any excuses.

Also, I'm not a founder. I'm not a founder. I know you're a producer of the show. Go and take some pictures and meet the audience. It's a great idea. You guys got to go to the next one, for sure. And then I am going to zoom in. to some meetups.

So what you should do is give me the founder's phone number, Rachel, when it's occurring and SMS me, and I will maybe FaceTime with them, just randomly. We don't have to record her or anything. And then for Mission 3, we will have an AV setup and do it officially. But I could just, you know,

FaceTime in and just say hi to everybody. But I'm really excited about this. Awesome. I love that. Great job.