This Week in Startups - MSG's facial recognition software, BuzzFeed's deal with Meta, The Creator Economy and more | E1667

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Please take our 90-second audience survey for a chance to win a $50 amazon gift card at www.thisweekinstartups.com/survey Molly and Jason chop it up about New York Attorney General Letitia James probing into MSG's alleged use of facial recognition to identify and target specific patrons (1:46). This segues into a great discussion about Meta's $10M deal with BuzzFeed and The Creator Economy as a whole (21:41). We cap off the week with two great interviews, one with LA26 graduate Nevsah Karamehmet of Breath Hub (36:17) and another with Brett Bauman, the creator of PlaylistAI (48:09). (0:00) M+J kick off the show (1:46) WLITF WTF: Facial recognition software at MSG (8:33) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist (10:03) More on the NYAG case regarding MSG's facial recognition software (20:11) Linode - Apply to Linode's Rise program for up to six figures in discounts at https://linode.com/twist (21:41) BuzzFeed's lucrative deal with Meta + Revenue share with creators (35:07) Crowdbotics - Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com/twist (36:17) LA26 Founder: Nevsah Karamehmet of Breath Hub (48:09) Ok Boomer with Brett Bauman FOLLOW Nevsah: https://twitter.com/nevsahf FOLLOW Brett: https://twitter.com/brettunhandled FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Okay, everybody, happy Friday. First up, we're going to talk about a dystopian. We live in the future. Yes, Madisonburg Garden seems to be tracking fans as they come in and out of the arena. Yeah. And the New York Attorney General and A.G. Letitia James are concerned that there could be some minor civil rights violations happening here of lawyers, of all people, violating the civil rights of lawyers. Yeah, never a good look. And then we talk about how Facebook has maybe missed the boat with creators and how YouTube recorded them successfully. We move on to a great LA 26 founder interview, an app that helps you breathe better and work on your breath work. And then finally, another edition of OK Boomer AI is coming for everything, including a thing I think that people get very precious about their art playlist making. The AI is doing that now too. It's going to be a great show. Okay, stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by lemon.io. Need to speed up your product development without draining your budget, hire vetted engineers from Europe at lemon.io. Go to lemon.io slash twist to get 15% off for the first four weeks.

Linode, applied to Linode's rise program for founder-led early stage startups and get a $500 credit up to $120,000 in infrastructure credits in one-year cloud construction. insulting and so much more. Apply at linode.com slash twist and crowdbotics. Great ideas can change the world and crowdbotics is the fastest way to turn those ideas into code. Get a free

scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com slash twist. All right Molly, it's Friday. There's some news here. Yes. That we should go over. Definitely. And in fact, we're just going to start with news slash a news

segment that we're calling we it's called W-L-L-I-T-F or we live in the future. What the frack? What the frack? The future goes wrong. It's pretty dystopian. It's pretty dystopian future. Yeah. Exactly.

So Madison Square Garden is being probed by New York Attorney General Letitia James over the use of facial recognition technology to effectively identify enemies and either harass them or kick them out of the garden is the short version of this story. Yeah. Yeah. So they're using facial recognition to find their enemies and kick them out of Knicks. Got it. Pretty much. So this started, the kind of background here is that in late December, an independent journalist, substack journalist Ethan Strauss, who formerly wrote for ESPN and the athletic, wrote this article about the facial recognition technology that was being used at the garden. And the background here is that as you well know, yes, everybody hates James Dolan, the owner of the New York Knickerbockers

for being bad at his job. And they yell like sell the team all the time. Have you ever, have you ever done this? Have you ever gone to your game and yelled sell the team? I'd like going to next game, so I'm not going to say because I'm scared of getting facial recognition. I can confirm. I don't want to I don't mean to genuflect here but I don't want to lose my access to Madison's Greg Garding and go to the Knicks games

but I have heard individuals I have heard individuals at James Nolan as they yell at many owners when they don't win championships to sell the team and New Yorkers are particularly verbose

and they have colorful language as I confirm as a New Yorker and the garden is a place where people may engage in such colorful language. Yes. It can be very wrong. This is the chilling effect in real life, by the way. It really is.

It really is. So Strauss in his article interviewed a fan who made a post on social media. It looks like Facebook to me. So James Dolan apparently is also in a band. And he put up a Facebook post about the band, JD, and Straight Shot. And this guy who's a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch commented, sell the team on the Facebook post, which I personally find hilarious. That is social media trolling at its finest. And he gave on the record quotes to this reporter and said that every time he's at the Garden now, he gets questioned by security.

And he's like, it's not an outright ban. Like they usually ask for my ID and my ticket, he said. they let me know that they're aware of who I am and my presence in the building and that they will be monitoring me. And they remind me of the code of conduct. And he said sometimes it's like short. Sometimes it goes on a while. And then this article, Strauss found out Madison Square Garden's code for how it treats fans from. Oh, they have a numbering system for their enemies.

Oh. This is where you know you've, I mean, listen, there is a valid use. Some how are you stuff? it's a little intense. There is a valid use of, I'm trying to be as charitable as possible here. If there were somebody who at the Hawks series two years ago, somebody spit on Tray Young, who was in a courtsite seat. It was absolutely horrific.

And, you know, if that person was caught or somebody ran on the court, started to fight, whatever it is, and use facial recognition to enforce a ban, to not have that person in the arena because they had been violent before. Yeah, that seems reasonable to me. But for writing a trolling comment, maybe not so much. Right. So it seems like this guy.

If I'm getting this correct, that means they took his avatar, his profile image, and then uploaded it to a database and noted it. So somebody had to go to a comment section and say, get this person's photo, right mouse click,

save it, upload it to the database and put this note in it. Yeah. That's an awful lot of work. That's an awful lot of work. Like, That is really personal as an amount of work.

I'm kind of thinking maybe I should do that when I get back comments in the YouTube comments. Let's start. Like, why not? Apparently, this is what you can do now. This is the future. We're air glasses. And then when you see somebody walking down the street, if they said some comment to you,

you would have it for all history. I mean, I wanted that. I was super like, I know that that was a massive privacy violation and it would have killed Google Glass dead. But that's all I ever want it for. Like, I just want it to have a running feed who this person is, you know, like my trolls or like their last couple posts or what? Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Continue. Let's go. Anyway. So it seems like. Numbering system here.

Yeah. Yeah. Seems like he's a number three. So the numbering system is a little all over the place because zero is like you're dead. Do not admit. Okay. And one is the only good code. One is for VIP.

Okay. Number one. Spike Lee. Exactly. Number one, Nick Fan. No matter what. Number two. Two, we know you're in the building all the time.

We're watching like the fuckers. Three. a conversation with the person letting them know that we know that they're in the building. So this sounds like what this financial advisor is on that do the cell. So level two, they know you're in the building, but they don't approach you. Level three, you have a conversation with a person letting them know, hey, we know you're in the building. We want to remind you of the code of conduct. So that could be maybe somebody used colorful language, you know, at the game.

And they said, listen, last time you used a little colorful language. I'm trying to be charitable here. Like what would be the best use case here? but okay. You know, like it's, it's all like logical right until it's

yeah, not punishing your enemies, right. And number four is a conversation letting them know that what they did is not tolerated and not accepted. This may, might mean that higher level security people approach you.

Like we're really watching you, I think, or maybe they escort you out. I'm not really sure. Five, though, is just a ban. Like as soon as if you get near Madison Square Garden or Radio City,

for example, Michael Rapaport is on this tier, the actor and comedian, he's always making like angry TikToks and angry Instagram real. So I think a lot of them were sell the team related. Ah, maybe.

So he's just out. As soon as he walks in the door. Really? Wow, they banned him for being critical. Yeah, I guess that is a little bit of a chilling effect. A comedian can't make a joke. Okay. Okay, imagine this.

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Visit lemon.com slash twist. So anyway, so this long article comes out, right? And it details all of the ways that they're using this facial recognition system called Ola, Spanish for Hello, to identify non-famous people that are on this conduct list. Okay. And that is creepy and weird. And then this is where the attorney general gets involved, which is that the AG's office is alleging that Madison Square Garden and Dolan are using this facial recognition technology to, this is like amazing, to forbid, I'm quoting from Lettisha James's letter here. To quote, forbid all lawyers in all law firms representing clients engaged in any litigation against the company from entering its venues in New York, including the use of any season tickets. Okay.

Now, hold on. I'm in a lawsuit with Madison Square Guard. I hire a law firm. One of the lawyers at that law firm represents me. So I don't know. I slipped and fell at a Knicks game. I twisted my ankle. I'm suing them.

they didn't clean up the ice outside of Madison Square Garden, whatever the case may be. Valid lawsuit, invalid lawsuit. Let's put that aside. Sure, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Putting that aside, what the claim is here, they went to that law firm's website, hold down every single image. Somebody went to the website, right mouse, clicked on the image, entered the person's name, entered their law firm into a facial recognition technology

platform called, Ola. What pass? Ola. Ola Yeah. Quite funny. It is. So they put them in Ola

and then when they come to the garden, you could be working in the patent department of this law firm, not the Slip-on-Ice department. Yeah. And they tell you your season tickets are no longer available or you can't see the Rockettes or you can't come to the Christmas spectacular and they stop you at the door.

Yeah. Even though you have not even be, because I'm trying to think if you were involved in the litigation, is there a reason why you shouldn't be in the building? Like you could be collecting more information or something like that. But these are semi-public spaces. Like these are available to the public. It's a private company, but this doesn't make a lot of sense.

You can buy a ticket to go there. The AG's office has reviewed reports alleging that they're engaging in this technology and that it affects approximately 90 law firms. 90 law firms, not 90 lawyers, 90 law firms Constituting thousands of lawyers If they're trying to show up at the garden And are getting the boot or, you know, radio city or whatever Get in the boot. Lawyers like to go to games, by the way.

That's like a big thing. Law firms have tickets. Yeah, partners have tickets. They might buy boxes. Yeah, yeah. There's like accounting firms, law firms, Pressworth House Cooper, Sherman Sterling, they all have boxes. And the chances that there's going to be a lawsuit is like kind of a hundred percent, right? Like, Madison Square Garden is a pretty big company. You got the Knicks, you got the Liberty, you got the Rangers, you got the Beacon,

you got Radio City Music Hall. That's a could be all kinds of lawsuits, valid, invalid, whatever. And then, so I asked this question of the producers before the show, just for people who are not familiar, Madison Square Garden itself is like, it's like a holding company that owns the venue, Radio City Music Hall, and then a portion of the name. mix. Yes. And that's how that, because that's how the, like, I was like, wait,

are James stolen and Madison Square Garden like colluding to, you know, target their enemies. No, no. He owns the garden. Yeah. Exactly. So it is a very, it is like arguably the most dystopian, maybe not the most, right? Rounding people up and killing them with facial recognition is the most.

Like the thing that they're doing to the Uyghurs is the most. But this is like pretty high on the list of, you know, wealthy people within skin. in controlling access to a literal venue. Yeah. And just being like, no, sorry, you can't come in. So the Attorney General's office is saying, if you try to dissuade lawyers from taking cases, if you're trying to create this chilling effect, for example, that violates New York City civil rights law. Yes.

And there's the allegation here. The evidence of that would be that this is so wide every attorney at this place. and every attorney going to every venue. It's not like there was an instance that happened at Radio City specifically and that this attorney might be going there to collect intelligence or secretly record something. Like there's, I'm trying to think of how you would even justify one lawyer not being able to come to

someplace. Yeah. Where I fall on this is, I'm glad we live in a society where we can have an open discussion about this. and then figure out, like, when somebody is overreaching with the technology, you know, people will investigate or take action or speak up. So I think this is a sign of a high functioning society. A tool comes out.

It has valid uses for technology. You know, you could have somebody who's a danger to the place. This person has spit on a player before. You don't want them in the building. They, you know, so that's valid. And, you know, then somebody abuses it and then they get caught. and then you get the Attorney General knocking on your door and it also is just terrible PR.

I mean, it's unbelievably bad PR. It's unbelievably bad PR. I mean, really, because at the end of the day, like, the lawsuits aren't going to take you down, but nobody buying tickets to anything ever again might. Like, that seems to sort of bad. Congratulations, though. To win season, people still went.

True, true. Yeah, they're like, I don't do anything wrong, right? I mean, congratulations to do Ethan Strauss, by the way, for some amazing journalism. Like, it's very possible that this would not have been picked up. It makes you wonder how else this is being abused. Yeah, right, exactly. Like, what's the next thing they could do?

Like, what are they doing that we don't know? So that's where I think you really have to investigate this. Maybe they're recording people. Like, they have that technology to put a microphone directly on somebody. So what if, like, you're at the garden and your Michael Rappaport and, like, they point one of those stick microphones at you because they know what seat you're in. and they just record your whole conversation while you're there. Like,

they can do all kinds of really mischievous things here. They, you know, you're in a public, basically you're consenting to be filmed. So they could be doing all kinds of interesting things with your likeness and image. And then they could be tracking people just to know that like this person's been to the garden so many times. Because now I have on my cameras and my home security systems, Ness will tell you, hey, this person, do you recognize his face? And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And then I put the name on it.

And then it keeps showing you images as people come to your house. So, like, that's the gardener, yes, this is the, you know, cleaning person. Yes, this is my wife, this is my daughter. And you give each person a name. And then it's like, unknown person is at the front door. Unknown person is at the back door. Undo persons is the side. So you're getting these things, this or known person.

This person's at the front door. This person's at the back door. Right. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and this is where... You're going to say, you're going to read that?

Wow. I mean... Nick might be trying to trick you. This is a pro-James Dolan podcast. It's a pro-Games-Molland-top podcast. We love you, James Dolan. But... Careful.

This is the front row. But I do think we could redeploy this energy into the Nix, you know, drafting, continuing to draft grade players and develop our talent. I'll leave it at that. Less time on the surveillance network, more time on prospecting great and developing great talent like we've been doing. Exactly. Less spying, more trying.

Let's just, let's back away from this minefield real quick, shall we, and talk about the creator of copy for a minute. I mean, how ridiculous would be if I, for even talking about the Scott Band. I mean, that would be kind of like next level. Right? It would actually be kind of amazing. It would be amazing for you. It would be a pretty great flex, yeah. Like, then I have to get like a mustache and like a giant.

mustache and if a security guard comes up to you just ask them hey what level am i by the way am i two am i three exactly totally just be like yeah where am i on the chart i mean this is all the stuff though you know when clear i i is that what they were called clear view or whatever the one that was just coming out and just hoovering up all the facebook faces and facebook itself was doing facial recognition right like you had all these it's funny because you always have all these privacy advocates who are like i get it like we're like everybody's really annoying it's really annoying it's really when everybody's just like, this could be horribly misuse. You should not be doing this.

There need to be rules. There have to be guardrails or whatever. And everybody's like, what's the harm? Like, nothing's happening. And then pretty soon you find out, oh, they're just literally throwing thousands of lawyers out of Madison Square Garden. And that's like the stuff we know that's pretty benign, all things considered. Less lawyers at a game might be better. You know, they're the worst.

The other thing they could do is they could connect you your social media accounts really quick. So that would be very interesting. They could scan the entire audience. then just say, give us every single person's Instagram account, put that into an ad buy, and say, these are all the people who were at the garden, these are all the social media handles, let's do advertising against them. I mean, that's already happening that and we don't know. They are doing that.

You think so? With this little location device that's constantly on you all the time, that's exactly that. Well, there's that, but they could also do it by facial recognition. If I see the, you know, we took a picture at the Warriors game during the playoffs, they could take that picture and then, you know, just start advertising towards us or whatever. It's really interesting, like, what we could be opting into here. We live in the future, whether we want to or not. Exactly. Sometimes we get a partner here that has an offer that's so amazing. I barely need to read you the ad copy. I just read you the benefits. Linode has a startup program. It's called Rise,

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and you will get $500 in free credits. And you can apply for their startup program Rise. Rise members receive up to $120,000 in free infrastructure credits during their first year and up to 50% off in the years after that. All right. Let's talk quickly about the creator economy. Just a really interesting story about because we've talked about when BuzzFeed, for example, might go up on the block. Well, it seems like they have a nice little revenue stream from Meta, according to Wall Street Journal sources, who say that Meta pays BuzzFeed. millions of dollars a year to, quote, bring more creators to its platforms.

Yeah. So since a BuzzFeed went public via SPAC in 2021, as we know, their stock has plummeted nearly 80%. It's actually up 119% today on this news. From a dollar to $2? Yeah, pretty much. But it's, you know, like, yay, we were making money. Evidently, there has been this program. BuzzFeed relies heavily on Facebook as a source of

traffic to their platform. The journal reported that in its most recent earnings report, BuzzFeed attributed the declining time users spent on its sites in part to declining traffic from Facebook users. TikTok, of course, has been growing wildly. And so they reportedly have this deal valued at $10 million in which BuzzFeed will create content for platforms like Facebook and Instagram train creators to grow their online presence.

And I guess somehow drive those users then back to BuzzFeed. some way. Okay. Yeah, I know Facebook was paying a lot of publications money to do things. So the New York Times was a recipient as well of some money. And I don't know if that's from licensing content, but there were some splashy, cashy deals going around where Facebook was trying, but I think they stopped doing those. And clearly, Facebook has to figure out how to share money with creators. The only website that's really ever done that at scale in a meaningful way is YouTube

and Mr. Beast and you know, the kid who plays video games over there forgot his name, but people make a decent living on 55% of the ad revenue split on YouTube. And people make money, you know, having a Patreon or, you know, a subscription service. But very rarely does anything else ever pay off? So you have to basically go off platform to make your money, right?

And that's generally how people do it. And I think what meta missed, like this is, this was, is it completely a like a Zuckerberg miss from a business perspective? They never took creators very seriously. So like creators would get famous, would appear on Instagram, but there was never any rev share.

There wasn't this nurturing like YouTube understood early that, yeah, we're going to share some revenue with creators, but the tradeoff is going to be the billions of views that we get because people will come here to see them. Whereas it took Instagram and Facebook forever, I think to realize the value of creators in that way. they never shared revenue with them.

They didn't build studios like Facebook did. They didn't have a program. So you'd get big on Instagram and then you would just have to rely on like merch to try to turn that into a living. And so they're finding that increasingly creators are like, okay, well, I'm going to TikTok. Or I'm going to YouTube, but more and more now you've got eyeballs and creators going to TikTok. So it's a double whammy for meta. I think you're right. They never really appreciated the creator class.

If you look at what YouTube did, you know, a decade ago, they were investing in spaces for people to film stuff. They were trying to get people to do collaborations. They really, really worked on a playbook. They published their playbook. I think it's at YouTube.com slash playbook of like, here's how to grow your audience. They sent people plaque. So if you ever watch a YouTuber, they'll have plaques on their walls behind them, you know, 100,000 subscribers, a million subscribers, whatever it is. So they really, really invested in appreciating them and saying, hey, the reason the platform is here,

and the reason we do all this is for you. And I think Facebook just never really thought about the creators appreciated them. And now it might be too late. It's not in their DNA to share revenue or to care about other people, to say it bluntly. It's true. No, it's totally true.

They're mercenaries. And I think, you know, they're so mercenary that I think creators realize it. But then on TikTok, I think, you know, it's very hard to make money there too. So people, there are reports that people are not making, money off TikTok, so you have to go off TikTok. You got to figure out how to do some kind of brand deal off of TikTok that gets you, you know, some kind of big win. Yeah, it's interesting because

TikTok, despite being the place that all the creators go and the place that all the eyeballs are, also has been a bit slow to create an ad sharing or revenue sharing deal for creators. And now, you know, they've sort of turned that on. But according to Fortune, there was a Fortune story earlier this week that said like TikTok is making $11 billion in ad revenue and creators are making like a dollar I think this woman's

this one creator Hank Green says she's making yeah yeah oh what did Hank Green say he said he's making 2.3 cents per 1,000 views so on a CPM basis is incredibly low

I think CPM's over at YouTube low single digit 345 net to the creator and some brand deal might pay 10 or 20 or something. So, yeah, this is... Right.

And the lady... The, like, kind of dog kennel creator who said that she made $1.85 at TikTok said she made $75,000 from Facebook videos. Okay. There's also this report... Should we be doing more Facebook videos? Like... Well, I mean, I...

There's also this heat button... No, I'm sorry. I don't think so. Something weird happened. There's also this heat button. Did you hear about this? that the TikTok can press a button, the employees there, and they just press, like put heat on this,

and they basically can pick which videos to make GoVira. In other words, to just expose them to a lot of people. So they're picking winners, basically, which makes total sense. This looks like an interesting video. Let's spread it, right? Not just because it got signal, but I think this is interesting. This is a high profile creator. So if a celebrity comes over, what they'll do is they'll goose it so that they're like,

oh my God, I got a million views. I should do more of these. So they're basically putting their thumb on the scale for certain folks, which then, of course, unlocks the issue if you're paying attention that, gee, I guess the CCP could do this too. So if somebody was critical of, I don't know, a candidate who was, you know, had an anti-China stance, they could be like, hmm, maybe, or somebody was critical, or it's pro-China, they could just press a button and make them trend, right?

So this is where I think people have to start understanding exactly how this could shape people's perception of the world, right? And they already have the button to do it. So if they have the button to do it, do you really think they're not doing it? Yeah, right? I mean, they're definitely doing it.

They're doing it. This is literally the Madison Square Garden story at a billion times scale. Precisely. If a tool can be abused, if there are people who will abuse the tool. There are the majority of people who are good people who will be like, I wouldn't abuse that.

Yeah, no, we have that here for security reasons. We're not trying to kick out people. This is just, you know, for people who are violent sociopaths, not just attorneys. I mean, this is where the conversation between, you know, platform and publisher has been fraught and ongoing for, I don't know, 15 years now and is nowhere near settled. But these are the kinds of things that muddy those waters

dramatically. It's like, well, okay, you're on one level, you're just a platform, but you're really not just a dump pipe. You're promoting this, stopping, promoting this. We were actually having this conversation in our social, like we have a Slack channel for where our social clips are posted. And we were saying like, oh, it's so weird on TikTok how something will, you know, for us, go really viral, have 400,000 views or 800,000 views or whatever. And then all of a sudden just stop. That's it. Like, no more. And it's like, did you turn off? Somebody hit the heat button.

Like, hey, press the heat button and just let it run hot, but it decays, right? Let it run hot for five days or whatever. Maybe they press it twice it twice and three times a three days. Who knows how their button works? I'd love to see it. Here's the source from Forbes. Sources told Forbes that TikTok has often used heating, is the term they're using, to court influencers and brands enticing them into partnerships by inflating their videos,

view counts. This suggests that heating has potentially benefited some influencers and brands, those with whom TikTok has sought business relationships at the expense of others, whom it has not. So it's unfair that some people got heated. Also, it sounds like they're saying that maybe the view counts weren't real, which I wonder if the view counts are even real. I mean, the Chinese government is notorious for lying about data and information. So, I mean, they can just press the button and tell you it's 400,000 or 800,000.

Who knows if it's real? Because then if you look at the clicks you get, you know, from your profile page, it doesn't seem like anybody clicks on links there. Very few traffic, little traffic leaving TikTok. So I wonder if TikTok is even worth the time, you know? I mean, we're experimenting with it, but we'll see. The view counts. I don't buy them.

I don't know if they're real or not. Me neither. Although I do know that the dirty little secret, I think, of all social is that there's, the engagement is like 18, 18, tiny, fraction of the views. And always has been. Like, I think I got, you know, and that you can be so artificially famous on one of these platforms.

And it can result in no new audience or like a teeny number of people, you know, coming to. What was it? Google Plus. Was that the Google social network for like a hot minute? Yeah, I had so many followers on there. So many. But not both of us. Yeah.

Yes. And then people would come and be like, oh, well, we noticed you have, you know, 750,000 followers on Google Plus. Like, would you like to write a column for us? Or, and I literally, I told some people, I was like, hey, um, no one is going to. Yeah. It's not going to drive me traffic. Sorry.

It's not. This is like, this is 749,000 Indian men asking me to marry them. And maybe like a thousand. That was my experience on Google Plus. It was weird. You did have people who were using it to spam or to get links and try to do page rank SEO stuff with it. Right.

So if it's a very easy way to test this is you just say, hey, anybody see this, hit reply. And you have 10 people reply out of 750,000. You kind of know it's not being exposed. And that's the other trick of all these social networks is you build up this huge follower account. And then they're like, you know what? We're not going to show it to your follow account unless you pay to reach them again.

And you're like, well, what's the point of that? This is where I think, you know, converting people into email addresses, starting a substack or a Mailchimp or whatever lists you choose to use or, you know, and just collecting emails. time, an email is worth like a hundred followers, maybe a thousand followers. So when you look at you, if you have 100,000 followers on Twitter, I think a thousand would be a thousand emails to be more valuable. I think so.

My son and I have this identical conversation in the car. He was saying that one of his favorite YouTubers did a video about unpopular opinions on Reddit. I mean, they're so genius, right? They generate like five million views by reading Reddit posts and then talking about them. But one of the unpopular opinions on Reddit was, YouTubers complain too much for the job that they have. And so I was like, well, that's an interesting point because on the one hand,

it is way harder than you think, right? These people, people who are doing this professionally are running a business. They have to be posting every day. There are no holidays, like many, sometimes multiple times a day, it's exhausting. Everybody yells at you. They're, you know, terrible in the con. It's a stressful job. And also, some of them seem to have forgotten that they're in, entire career is 100% dependent on the platform. And so complain all you want, but YouTube can change the rules any day of the week. You have to, if you use these platforms, you should assume

they're going to change the rules and you should be siphoning off as many direct relationships as you can and building your brand across many different platforms, knowing that some mix will build your core audience and you'll have their emails or their phone numbers and be able to text them, whatever service you use to directly connect. And that's really the goal. all over time is to build a direct relationship with folks. All right. Listen, a lot going on in the world and creators.

It's a tough business. It's a tough business. And we're still out here supporting our founders. We got an accelerator founder interview coming up. Oh, great. Yep. One more founder from our 26 cohort, Nevesha, is the founder of Breath Hub. Oh, yes, excellent company.

This is so interesting. It's an awesome consumer subscription company, personalized breath work that does, breath analysis and all of this stuff that can really like heal your body based on breathing. Also, if you talk to the founder of a breath company, all you think about is your own breathing. I'm just into, I just was like, am I doing it right? Yeah. Am I breathing at all? You'll learn a lot.

Probably the most common challenge I hear from founders is related to building. Either they aren't technical and they're searching for a technical co-founder or they can code, but they're spread way too then. This is one of the first obstacles you're going to face as a. founder and it can be discouraging, of course. Well, here's a great solution. Do you have a great idea, but you don't have a technical co-founder yet? Boom.

CrowdBotix is your CTO as a service. This means you can focus on building an awesome product and delighting your customers rather than planning, best practices, and architecture. CrowdBotics also offers professional scoping to help you flesh out your project at the MVP stage and beyond. Yeah, and listen, if you are a founder and you are under-resourced, you don't need to get into the weeds of all this. You can figure out what do your customers want. You can build the spec and then have CrowdBotics architected all for you. So stop with the hassle and get back to building the

perfect product. So here's a very easy call to action. Let the folks at CrowdBotics show you how this all works. You can schedule a free scoping session and get your detailed build plan at crowdbotics.com slash twist. That's crowd, B-O-T-I-C-S dot com slash twist. All right, everybody. I'm back. viewing founders from the launch accelerator's 26th cohort. Today, we have Nevesha, the founder of Breath Hub. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for inviting me, Molly. I'm going to let you in your own words and I think a little bit of your own demo tell us what Breath Hub does. Yeah, sure. Breath Hub, as Breath Hub, we're helping people breathe better and live better. And our app is the

world's first and only breathwork app that is fully personalized. And we have a system called breath analysis. We ask people some simple questions that are backed by behavioral health sciences. And with those simple questions, we understand how people are breathing. We understand a lot about their breathing habits. And there's an algorithm at the backhand working. And then we create a unique journey for them, a unique breathing journey, so that they can heal any dysfunctional breathing habits they have. They go on a journey, for example, a 71-day journey, and then our teachers lead them, guide them into certain sessions. People can go also around the app, try between 800 sessions and courses, and according to their needs, they can use breathwork to change

the body fluid chemistry and also their physiology to boost their energy, improve their focus, and heal migraine or headaches, and they can also connect with teachers and reserve one-to-one sessions. So talk to me about the science behind this. Like, how did you get into this and what are the benefits? And I think more importantly, how is it different from meditation, for example?

Yeah, sure. I'm a global authority in breathing sciences field with 20 years of expertise, and I have been doing research around basically breathing habits. My background is behavioral health sciences, and we've been working on people's different breathing habits for a long time with the breathing sciences faculty and breath coaching federation. What we're offering to people is very different from meditation and also very different than any kind of breath work because each person is breathing differently and our breathing habits are unique.

It depends on how much we exercise, how we are eating, our daily activities, our environment, and not all of us have healthy breathing habits. are over 200 well-known, scientifically well-known symptoms of dysfunctional breathing habits like chronic pain, stress, attention deficit, problems, headaches, anxiety, asthma, sleep, apnea, depression, chronic fatigue. And these symptoms are actually well-known of, you know, well-known respiratory symptoms, and these symptoms occur when people breathe wrong during the day. So what we do is we analyze their breathing habits by asking them simple questions and lead them into customized journey so that they can change their unique breathing habits that is at the root of

most of their problems. So we help basically people to reach to optimal health and performance. So breathwork in our app is offering people more physical health than, of course, mental health is also part of it, but first physical health. Yeah. I'm so conscious, by the way, of my breathing while we're talking, which I would imagine people tell you all the time, like I'm like, am I just sitting here doing it wrong was I doing it well before and then now I screwed it up. How do then the app experience itself, you mentioned that there are kind of guided, breathing exercises already built in with specific purposes attached to them and then there are also coaches. Yes. Yeah, people also can connect with the coaches. They can get some support from the coaches. And we also work with physiotherapists and

psychotherapists and they lead their clients into certain sessions. They create lists in the app for their clients. For example, if you have neck pain, because you can heal your neck pain faster with breathing exercises, physiotherapists have been working with breathwork for a long time. So they suggest some sessions, they suggest some techniques. You can find all of those in breath up. Or, for example, you're working with a psychotherapist. They suggest some sessions for you. They can also track your breathing journey with the app. So we work hand in hand with physiotherapists, psychotherapists, fitness coaches, fitness trainers. And also we started working hand in hand with nutritionists. Is this something that people know about? Like when you're talking about

customer acquisition, is there both the usual customer acquisition challenge, but also an educational kind of aspect to this that has to go into? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have a huge responsibility on educating people, especially on the fact that if you go on a personalized journey, a personalized breathwork journey, you get the best results because not every breathing technique works for everyone. And there are a lot of breathwork apps being launched every day, but not every breathing technique works for everyone. So a breathing technique that is maybe relaxing you at one point may actually be causing a dysfunctional breathing habit. and then you might have neck pain just because you're practicing that technique. So I think it's very important to analyze breathing habits. And what we have realized is that people are not interested in learning about the techniques and methods.

They are more interested in solving their problems. So it has been easy for us to market ourselves just by talking about which symptoms we can heal, which symptoms our app can heal or which problems our app can help with and because we are getting solution like we're getting results I think that has been our like that's our

superpower because we are getting results right targeting outcomes as opposed to education yeah totally we are efficiency-minded humans after all what tell me how you make money subscription we are a sauce company and we

have monthly and annual plan. We have been trying a three-month plan, but that didn't work as we thought of. And now we're also building a premium video platform, which is being released just this month, this month and in a week, which is offering certification programs and breathwork courses and different courses, visual video courses. and that's another revenue model we have. And are you primarily B2C or also B2C? We also have, yeah, we're primarily B2C.

We have over 8,000 customers, over 8,500 customers. We are also offering B2B packages and we have been signing contracts with corporates. We also started working with some insurance companies, kind of like a trial and I think we'll get the best results with insurance companies because preventive health is very important for insurance companies and they have been

understanding the importance of adopting regular breath work and breathing because it's just basic natural way it's the most powerful natural way that can help us stay healthy and well and then how

do the B2B contracts, is it something where Breath Hub would end up being part of a prescription or a package of wellness recommendations from a doctor, for example? Yeah, we have been, I mean, we've been doing many different things. For example, we signed a contract with one of the biggest hospitals in Turkey and a private hospital and they included us into their pregnancy packages because, you know, pregnant woman during pregnancy and also during birth, they need the breathing techniques and learning breath work is very important.

And then we have an agreement, for example, with Wodafon. We are on their platform. They're offering Breath Hub as a wellness product to their customers, which we will be charging, of course, more or less than our usual price. And Wadafone will be paying us for every purchase. and then we have another model where a large enterprise is offering it to their kind of like they have a club of their employees. They have over 200,000 people in that club, employees and families, and they are offering discounted breathed up packages. So we've been trying different models.

And we are not only giving subscriptions because my background is being an expert and teacher. and I am very much focused on getting results and helping people. So we're not just offering subscriptions. We're also offering alongside with the subscriptions when we work with companies. We're also offering webinars, workshops every 15 days to keep talking about the importance of breath work and answer questions and help anyone who's using breath hub to get better results. I think that's kind of like that human touch. has been very, yeah, very effective in our journey. Yeah.

And then, of course, the thing that we're always asking our accelerator companies in the accelerator and on these interviews is what is your path to $10 million and $100 million? Yeah. So 10 million and 100 million, I believe we can get to 10 million in the next two years with around 78 million in B2C and around a million, a million, a million. and a health with B2B and with Breathab Academy, a million,

a million and a health as well. And that's the way to grow. We're also creating a marketplace because that has been the demand where people could, you know, go on doing one-to-one sessions. That's kind of like the new trend, you know, doing live sessions together

also through the platform. Our business model has been working great with minimum marketing budgets. And I believe from now on with the next fundraise, we are going to be growing much faster. Amazing. You can find Breath Hub at BreathHub.com. Or I would assume the Google Play Store or the Apple Store.

Yeah. Wonderful. Nevshah, thanks so much. Thank you. Congratulations on what you've built. Thank you. All right. Up next, producer Rachel is back with another edition of OK Boomer.

And this week, she is in the generative AI space. Yeah. Aren't we all? Aren't we all? She is talking to Brett Bowman, who is a developer's created an AI playlist maker called Playlist AI, which is actually kind of awesome. It lets you create a playlist with a single prompt. Like, it's really sunny outside, but it's freezing and the wind is blowing.

So it's not all the way to like party music, but like something upbeat. Interesting. And then that it'll generate a playlist and then. Yeah, this is like we're going to be having our minds read over time. It's just going to know what we want better than we know. So very cool. We'll generate a playlist from a picture of my picture of my. a concert poster or something. So that's kind of cool.

Yeah, just take a picture and it'll give you a playlist. Just chip me. Just chip me already. I'm ready. All right. Okay, Boomer. Enjoy. Thank you so much, Brett, for coming on today's segment of OK Boomer. Brett Bowman is a senior iOS engineer at Loom, but I'm talking you today because I found Playlist AI, which you made. I think it's so cool. I found this on Twitter. And what really caught my eye is you were able to. to use opening eyes GPT3 to create playlists off a bunch of different things, one of which being

songs in TikToks. And I thought this was so cool because a lot of different songs that I like just come from little bites that I listen to when I'm scrolling. I was like, this is insane. Love this idea. I knew I had to have you on. So again, thank you so much for joining. Yeah, Rachel, thank you for having me on. So first things first, how did you get this idea? I want to know about like the actual words and stories of Playlist AI. Yeah, so like you said, there's a few different ways to make a playlist,

and the one that was the original way was through an image. So I was going to a music festival, and I wanted a playlist of the lineup like a lot of people do, but I couldn't really find a way to do that automatically. There's no service for doing that. So I kind of worked backwards from that, thought about taking a picture of the music festival poster,

and making a playlist of it, from that. And that was the first release of the app. It was originally called something different. And I since then tried to make an app that is kind of just like the ultimate playlist making app. And I've sort of added on different features over time, like the video one you mentioned and some other things. So cool. And what was the concert or a festival that you were at that really inspired you? Yeah, I was going to Portola in San Francisco. I think it was the first year they've done it, but it was a cool festival for sure. Okay, very awesome.

And I found you on Twitter after seeing, like I think it was like your first tweet where you were testing a beta possibly, which was really, really cool. Where are people like really finding out about Playlist AI? Are you using social media to like really share, share the platform or is there like other partnerships you're doing? I'd say mostly social, yeah.

I mean, I've been sharing on Twitter kind of just like as I release new things, it's kind of like each way to make a playlist is its own little mini app inside the bigger app. And kind of sharing my journey as I build it as well as recently some like more traditional press,

I guess you could say, like TechCrunch and Fast Company and stuff have picked it up. So that's been pretty cool as well. I could totally see you like partnering with I know there's like a venue, for example, like in the lower east side of Manhattan. It's called Mercury Lounge and a bunch of different types of like musicians come and perform there.

One of my friends performed there, which was really cool. Her name's Ashley Coucher, so shout out to Ashley. But it would be so cool to create a playlist by partnering with the venue, be like, okay, if you're going to like multiple different artists, you can carry a playlist based on that. So super excited to see where you guys go in the future. Making a playlist off an image is very, very cool. And how did you, I guess, like, what was the first step into the process of?

making this. You know, I really didn't know if it would work or it'd be possible. So kind of just like figure out what pieces I have that I can connect together and test things out and then, you know, walk down the street and find music festival posters to take a picture of. Okay. And what, what are people mostly using this for? Like, have you seen more people use that, that image prompt generator? Or do you think more people are using videos or I know that one feature rewind is pretty cool, which is where you make playlists on top of like other artists and tracks, like that Spotify rap does, right? Yeah, the most popular, most used one is the like AI prompts.

So kind of like dolly, but for playlists you could say, you just type in what you want and it goes from there. So, you know, whether you'd say like a playlist for running or working out or whatever. that's super I want somebody to make this for movies I'm sure chat GPT could probably do it but I'd like it to be even more curated once a week we have Lon join this week in startups and Lon has the best movie recommendations the best movie you refuse but unfortunately I have horrible taste in movies TV shows probably music too but I love things that are just

so below Lon's level of like critique like I love rewatching gossip girl and things like that. So it'd be cool if I could not ask long on those questions and go straight to chat, GPT. So definitely think this is really cool seeing this in the music sector. And if anybody's making this for movies, TV, things like that, also interested. And where do you see playlist AI going? Like, are you guys saying like there are multiple people? You're the solo creator right of this. Yeah, yeah. It's just me. And so where do you see this going? Yeah, I think expanding into other things other than music would be really cool, whether it's like movies or podcasts.

Okay. For me right now, I'm pretty focused on the music part of it. I think that there are like sort of two things to do. One is like improve that AI text feature because it's the, or like, prompt, I guess you could say text prompt because it's the most popular one. I think that there are some like natural things to do like following how other AI tools are expanding, whether it's like chat GPT, so you can imagine, you know, having that playlist creation be more conversational or even say, hey, like, I have this existing

playlist and I want you to make it more poppy or remove like some of these parts of it. But also I have a ton of other ideas that are completely unrelated to the AI prompt thing, whether it's like selecting some genres and then, you know, narrowing down the more musical details like acoustics or PPM or I had this weird thing I've been thinking about where you could kind of like swipe on artists sort of like Tinder style

and dating app style and build a playlists that way. So just random things like that that I'm really interested in. So do you have a background in music? No, not really. Okay. Is it just a big passion? In making apps, I guess. What other apps have you made

before Playlist AI? Um, I made a few in college that aren't really on the App Store anymore. Um, there was one back when like Pokemon Go came out that was, uh, sort of like finding Pokemon on a map type thing. And, um, had this website in college called Intern Supply that I worked on with some friends that was for computer science students to find internships. Why do you decide that, um, making apps just something that you're passionate about? Like, do you have a good story about?

how you got into the space? I mean, I kind of stumbled into it just through another friend in college who was making an app, and I thought it was crazy that we were able to do that. I didn't know how to code before going to college or anything like that, and kind of just grew up with an iPhone, you know, so it's pretty cool to be able to add stuff to it. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And what were you studying in college? You mentioned computer science.

Is that what was your major? Yeah, exactly. I went to Arizona State. Oh, that's awesome. Well, I went to Penn State, so another very fun school. Do you currently still live in Arizona? No, I moved to Seattle around five years ago, so I've been here in Seattle since. Do you think by going to a school like Arizona and maybe living in a place that wasn't so tech-oriented, I know Seattle, there's a bunch of HQs there, do you think that's impacted you at all as somebody in tech? For sure, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm sure that like a career fair at Arizona State's computer science program is very different than like a top tier computer science program.

And I don't know, I haven't ever really let that kind of like get to me or anything. It's, I think what's cool about tech or I guess you could call it is that if you just build cool things, like people will show up. So that's kind of what I've always done. Why did you choose computer science? You said you never coded before even going into college. That seems like a pretty big jump. Yeah, a great question. I kind of just was winging it, to be honest,

and found something that ended up, like, finding something I really like. I think I got lucky, I guess. I feel like that's like everybody's story. It's always like, yeah, I stumbled in or yeah, I accidentally found it. In the future, I know you're, like I said, to intro, you're a senior iOS engineer. Do you think that you see yourself going? down like an entrepreneurial path?

You never know. The app was kind of blown up in the last week or so. I guess recording this like around 10 days after launching the AI prompt feature, which has gotten a lot of attention. And I've had like over 10,000 downloads since then. And a ton of playlist are getting created. So kind of just taking it one day at a time, you know, we'll see. Awesome.

And for is first, I guess, is this monetized? Like, that's a lot of people downloading it. Like, are you making any money from it? Yeah, yeah. So I posted a bit on Twitter about that. I try to just kind of keep it public because I feel like a lot of people are, as I was making the app and wanting to monetize it, I reached out to a lot of people who are really helpful.

Like some people were really open to just sharing, you know, what their app makes or even like the like value of, their customers at different price points and stuff like that to help me decide what to do. But right now, it is $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year to create playlists. You get a few for free when you download the app. And so far, there's been like $2,000 in sales, and around $1,000 of that is monthly recurring revenue. That's very awesome. So congratulations on that.

And I'm going to pull one 80 here because I saw on Twitter. Twitter. Again, I saw that you tweeted about monetization. That's why I asked. And I saw another tweet that I thought was kind of funny that you tweeted earlier this month. And it was January is the month of launching newsletters. Do you have a newsletter? What was the tweet about? Let's hear it. Because obviously you're somebody that's pretty knowledgeable on AI. I'd be interested in hearing your takes. I just feel like I don't know if you've seen it. It could be my own like Twitter bubble, you know, but ever since the new year, I feel like all I see is different. AI newsletters on Twitter. And I don't know where they came from, but it seems like everyone just like, maybe I just found them, but it seems like

they all started in January. I don't personally have like a regular newsletter. I have one, like a substack for the app, but it's not like a weekly newsletter or anything. And definitely no shame to anyone doing an AI newsletter because they were all really helpful to me in sharing my app. But

yeah, that's what that was about. I was getting excited there. I was jump with the gun. So if you're not writing the AI newsletters, which ones do you recommend subscribing to? And I know you've even mentioned it quite a few. Oh, yeah. I think I don't want to say anyone's name

wrong, but Ben Tossel has one called Ben's Bites. It's a very popular one. Maybe a more underrated one that less people would know about is called the Market Bite. That one is by my friend, Andrew Garner. And yeah, that's what comes to mind.

I actually just subscribed to the first one that you mentioned, the vice one. And it has like a really interesting format. I definitely recommend that as well. It has like numbered different stories, right? Or it's like different facts about AI in each newsletter. And it's like a really digestible way to learn about what's happening in the industry. And it almost reminds me of like Axios pro rata, which is a newsletter that reports on like

the different races that happened in venture capital that day where again, it gives you like each individual stories. So it's just really digestible. You can read it on your phone. Our newsletter at the speaking startups is the same way, but about tech news. So I definitely like that one as well. So recommend anybody subscribe to it. I think it might be hosted on Beehive. And I'm like a huge Beehive fan. So obviously I have to shout out, shout out anybody with a newsletter over on Beehive. And to end our conversation, why are you optimistic about AI? I think it's for the same reason that people will say so loudly that they don't like how, you know, their Instagram is like this algorithmic sort of like non-chronological thing being fed to them or whatever the social media app is. It's kind of giving those algorithms to like the consumers and letting them tell the app what they want rather than just like being fed all these things.

And I think that's something people have wanted for a long time, but haven't really, there wasn't. really like a clear idea of what that looked like, but I think that this is kind of the start of that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Brett, for coming on the show. I'm super excited to see how AI generated content, you know, just like stacks up against other content in the world. I think this is a really cool stage as a consumer and as somebody that's really passionate about technology. And super happy that I came across a playlist AI. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. All right, everybody. It's been a great week. If you have a moment, Go to this week and startups.com slash survey.

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