This Week in Startups - Next Unicorns: Miso Robotics’ Mike Bell, $3 an hour fry cooks + MorningBrew’s Dan Toomey on TikTok | E1276

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

Jason chats with Miso Robotics CEO Mike Bell (1:07), about automating food preparation, filling the labor gap, the consequences of robots, growing with crowdfunding and more. Then, TWIST Producer Rachel Braun interviews Dan Toomey about the strategies he uses to run the Morning Brew TikTok account.

Season three of the next unicorns is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people and every hire matters. Post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com slash unicorn. And broker's startup insurance program helps startups secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off of traditional insurance today. at imbroker.com slash twist. While you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer code twist.

And Odo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever. And right now, Odo is offering $1,000 off your first implementation pack at Odo.com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist. Okay, everybody next on the program is Mike Bell. He is the CEO of Miso Robotics. And as you know, we have a shortage of people who want to work in manual labor, repetitive tasks. And I have been a big believer and investor in robotic companies. We have CafeX making coffee, which has been doing

great since the pandemic started to wane and their machines are back up and running at SFO. Thank the Lord. Man, the pandemic was hard on some companies. And then also we were investors in root. A.I., which was using computer vision and robotics to pick strawberries. MISO Robotics is working on a very interesting startup. Mike, tell us a little bit about what MISO Robotics does. Yeah, Jason, I'm happy to.

Thanks for having me on. So miso robotics, designs and builds, AI and robotic solutions for the restaurant industry. We're best known for Flippy. Flippy is one of our products. And Flippy is a robotic arm that goes on an overhead rail over a fry station or a grill in the back of the house for typically a quick serve restaurant and does just what the name implies. It flips burgers or cooks fries.

The company's been in R&D mode for the last four years. And right now, as we're talking, we're just entering the phase of the company. We're beginning commercial production and shipping and volume. So, which is harder? Doing the fries or doing the burgers, because looking at a robot and, you know, I've watched the video here. And for those of you who are watching on our YouTube channel, you can actually see us playing a video of the robot. It would seem to me that fries were a little bit more of a control. trained behavior and flipping burgers would be a little bit harder.

Describe how difficult it is to actually do this because you've been at work on this for four years or the company has at least. Yeah, robots are hard. There's a lot of technologies that are new and used to be brand new. And so these technologies are coming together and getting better and better all the time. Obviously, machine learning and AI is a big part of the equation. So is computer vision. And having a computer get really good at understanding exactly

where a burger is is one thing. But the next thing, and kind of continuing on that progression of technology is, our computers can, our products can tell the difference between a chicken nugget and a tater tot with four nines of accuracy. That type of improvement, that's not improving to me so alone. The entire industry is benefiting from this kind of technology improvement. That opens up all kinds of possibilities for what the products can do and how well they can actually solve problems for humans.

And so what is the state? of this, let's just take the French fry one, which to me, making the French fries seems like pretty constrained. You just scoop up the fries from the, you know, the hopper where they're stored. You dump them in the oil. And I guess you look at them and shake them off, right? And I guess it's a certain amount of time. Is it making the decision to take the fries out based on time or the view of them? Time. No, recipes, if you think about French fries, for an example, a lot of restaurant brands feel like it makes or breaks the brand. You will go back to a restaurant if the fries are excellent.

It's oftentimes the first thing you reach into the bag and putting them out. And so having these fries excellent has a lot to do with how precisely they're cooked. They're generally about a minute and 40 or a minute and 50 seconds. And 10 seconds too early and it's limp and it's not good. No way no. And if it's about 10 or 15 seconds too late, it's kind of brown and a little too crispy. And so hitting that nail in the head is important. And human beings, for as hard as these people work, full respect,

You've got a lot of stuff going on to back a house. They're generally not very good at following these recipes. Now, restaurants call them SOP, standard operating procedure. And they're not just timing. It's literally something as precise as at the 30 second mark, pick the basket up, agitate it to unclump them, put it back down, and then agitate it three times once it in the oil. This type of precision is what goes into making like a perfect French fry as one food type, example. And humans do okay at it. Computers do it great. They hit the nail and they hit every time.

Yeah, this is the promise of it. I'm not sure if you've ever read Ray Crocs grinded out or seen the movie The Founder, both. Yeah, I love that movie. Yeah. And have you happen to have read the book? No, no, I have not. So get the audio book or read the book for Ray Crox grinded out autobiography, of which the film, The Founder with Michael Keaton, is based on, which is based on the Mark Knopfler song, boom like that. Just a bunch of trivia. there. But in it, he was talking about the crazy arguments they would have, the Crock brothers, I'm sorry, yeah, the Crock brothers and or the McDonald's brothers would have over the coloring. And then they had an even bigger problem because they used to shuck the potatoes locally.

And then the amount of air, it turned out the McDonald's brothers had learned in San Bernardino that the amount of air flowing through the storage room was perfect in terms of preparing them, but they had a problem in Chicago in Detroit because they couldn't replicate it. And then they went to, you know, frozen French fries and then they went back to fresh ones. But let me ask a practical question here.

When the robot arm is swinging around the hot oil, et cetera, great. It's not going to get burned. So you're reducing the number of people who, you know, would receive a burn in fast food as an employee. Tragically, that must happen. Yep. Very often.

Mistakes get made with humans. and the robot by definition can't burn itself. But you do have a robot arm swinging around, and we know these robot arms are very heavy and powerful. How do you handle, because when I went to different factories and saw robots, they were typically in a cage and you couldn't get anywhere near them. When I look at your robot, it seems to be flying around with people near it. So how does that work?

Yeah, we actually put it in a sort of a cage as well. Now, a lot of the videos we put at our site, it's kind of hard to see. We have this plexiglass screen that goes in front, and of course, humans. And if there's every any human intervention, the robot just simply stops. So we've got like the robot zone and the human zone and never shell the two meat. And, okay, so if a human happens to get into the box where the robots working, it just turns off. It's got a fail safe. Exactly.

I actually set off one of the two failsafe at a factory making cars once because I was doing a tour. And they have a double line. And I put my foot on the long. and it made like the gentle beeping, which is the one before you actually turn the robot off. Yeah. Does that mean a restaurant has to be purpose built for these and it's hard to retrofit them? No. A little bit of both?

No. So restaurants, if you look at a frying machine as example, these friars last about 13 years and they're built in. And we thought if we asked the restaurant to like throws out and start over or put a whole new construction kind of, you know, piece of piece of, you know, effort behind it, it would just slow the adoption down. And also, as it applies to paying for this and affording this, we talked about RAS in the past, as we're doing the same thing. But in terms of construction, we simply stand up. Like, we'll truck the thing in a Sunday night right after they close.

We'll stand it up over an existing fry station, but in the middle of the night, bolt it to the floor, bolt it to the wall, put it underneath the hood. No special electrical or plumbing is required. They open up Monday morning and they've got a robot cooking the fries. over the existing fry station that already existed there. So super easy for the restaurant brands to adopt. What does it cost them to install one of these? I know you have an interesting model of how you're charging for this.

Yeah, we looked at it and thought, okay, what is the cost of an equivalent full-time human being to do one shift for one month? And plus or minus, depending on a lot of variables, it's about $3,000 a month. Okay, now that's for one shift for, you know, four weeks a month. So we priced it the same way. And we thought if we have to ask restaurants to pull out, even if they're writing a $25,000 check, a lot of them don't have it. Even if the ROI is there, they simply don't have the funds. And so especially in a highly franchise industry like the restaurant industry.

And so what we do is we say, look, we're going to ask a restaurant to pay for shipping and insulation, which is a few thousand dollars. And then we stand the robot up. We train the robot to the type of food and the menu and everything. And then it starts cooking Monday morning. And we charge about $3,000 a month. And so it's an equivalent cost for the restaurant, but Flipy works three shifts. Flipy doesn't call in sick or, you know, or have any kind of employee problem. It doesn't quit.

And it's super reliable. And by the way, it cooks the food precisely every time. Before we get to the ad read, I want you to go to LinkedIn.com slash unicorn and post your first job for free at LinkedIn jobs. That's right. A free job posting from LinkedIn jobs, your founders, you're running a company you need to get talented there to help you out because your company is growing so fast and you're so busy. Time spent searching for and interviewing the wrong candidates for a job opening is wasted time. You could be putting that into your customers, your product, your team and your vision.

That's why LinkedIn Jobs has made it easier to get the candidates worth interviewing in front of you. And they do it so fast. You can create a job post in minutes on LinkedIn and reach the world's largest professional. network of over 750 million people. Focus on the candidates with the skills and the experience you need and use screening questions to get your role in front of the most qualified people. Then use the simple tools that are built into LinkedIn jobs to quickly filter and prioritize who you want to interview and hire. We love LinkedIn jobs here at launch and this weekend startups. We hired a third producer. We're going to hire a fourth. We got a curriculum

designer working on founder dot university, which is going to be a 12-week program. Every week, 40 million job seekers, visit LinkedIn. You get your first job listing for free. That's right, free. F-R-E-E, LinkedIn.com slash unicorn, LinkedIn.com slash unicorn to post that job for free. Terms and conditions do apply because they're giving you something for free. Just for turnover alone, if you charged the $10 an hour, minimum $11 an hour that people typically get paid in fast through it. I think it's 11 is the average that this person will get paid. You're charging three. So you're charging probably 25, 30 percent per hour of what a human would cost, correct? Yeah, it works out depending on the number of shifts. It's less than what a human cost on a monthly basis by about like, you know, I'd say

50% given the number of shifts. And then you fully load all that cost of hiring and training and workers, you know, compensurance and all kind of stuff. It pencils out really nicely. Like it's a no-brainer. We have brands look at us, Jason. They're like, why would we not do this? Right.

And for you, these equivalent arms, having been in this business myself, are now down to 15, to $25,000, depending on which one you get, correct? About. You know, we supply the entire frame and the rail and the motor, and of course, the software is really the, that's the value of what we provide. The arms are interesting because they're, this is, you'll love this. I know you know a lot about this space, but if you look at the arms that we use currently, they're generally made for manufacturing.

They're big and heavy. They don't move. They're generally not around humans. They're about 75 pounds. They're ready to go 10 years continuous use, 10 years, okay? And we look at those, like, that's great, but it's a little overkill for what we need. And so when we say, look, we want to, you know, if you look at outfitting factory and there are a bunch of factories of robot arm, it's hundreds of arms.

Okay. And that's, and so if you go into an arm manufacturer and you say, I would like to a bit and talk about volume and pricing, whatever, they literally don't work outside of the hundreds. It's just their field of play is just limited to manufacturing and things like that. When we go to a chain, let's just take any big, you know, normal chain, not the Uber big ones, but just the normal chains in America, they're average about 1,800 units or 3,000 units. When you ask these manufacturers to work with you on that kind of volume,

it's just outside of their head kind of explodes a little bit. They don't really have the manufacturing capacity, and they've just never done it. So we're taking the arm industry in a whole new place just by bringing this gargantuan restaurant industry into the automation space. And it's really correct, because I remember investing in Cafe X years ago, they were using the same like you are,

are the same ones that are used in factories. They're rated to pick up hundreds of pounds, and you've got them picking up, you know, one pound of French fries, including the basket or whatever it is. Exactly. These arms will do 100 years probably in these positions. I mean, you can't guarantee anything, but they're basically overkill.

Have there been, and the prices have been going down, I think, maybe 50% every year or two, is that right? Yeah, it's crazy. A little, one's working with a little less nap, but still, like, they're plummeting because volume's getting up there and everybody's getting better electronics. Are there any vendors now of, you know, robotic arms that are more suited for non-factory and just a more lightweight commodity arm?

I know there was somebody working on one here in America. I forgot the name of it, but there was a startup, yeah. No, please. Yeah, no, I just can't remember the name of the startup. Maybe you know it, but there was a startup working on robotic arms to kind of make them $5,000. Like, has the $5,000 arm showed up yet? getting close. There's a number of companies just getting their footing solving the same exact problem. And if you look at it, it's a lot of the same componentary. It's the same servo motors

and a lot of times that are robot arms that you're talking about. They're just a good plastic sleeve. It's super durable but super replaceable. They don't need to pick up, you know, the door of a Tesla. They need to pick up a latte. And so there's a lot of new company solving the same problem in this space because it hasn't really had demand until now. Tell me about flipping. burgers. Flipping meat seems like a harder task. Is it than French fries? It is, but you might find it's interesting. We approach it kind of in a different way, Jason. And that is, with full respect, a lot of robot companies become enamored by the technology. And can a robot do this? Yeah, sure. It can do anything. But can it do it cost effectively? Can it do it economically

in a way that really makes sense for the customer? And so when we looked at back of house or restaurants, it is a green field opportunity for automation, man. There are so many places you could go to solve problems. So we looked at it through the lens of really of a business person. So, okay, what is the biggest problem that's easy to solve that has the most impact for our restaurant customers? And it was French fries. It was French fries because it's so heavily manned. It's so, it's so intensive. And also because it is it is a really big labor offset. Now, what I mean by that is during peak periods, there's one or two and sometimes more people working the fry stations at all time. but there's really more than one person standing in front of a grill flipping burgers.

So when we look at it and say, okay, what's the labor offset and what's a really low-hanging fruit for making an impact for restaurants, fries stood way out, not because it was significantly easier, but because it is a little easier in some ways than burgers because burgers, you've got to be really precise about, you know, kind of how you get there. But burgers, we just simply haven't yet figured out a way to dispense a bunch of patties onto a grill in a way that's super fast and efficient and economical. Can we do it? Yeah. Restaurants really hate the price. So right now, our burger solution, it just simply flips burgers that humans place on the grill. Makes sense? Makes total sense.

So it flips burgers after humans put them on the grill. Right. Which is of like half value. It's not soup to nuts. So you might as well just finish French fries, get to scale on that, really make the impact. And then when the technology gets there, boom. Precisely. And so how many restaurants do you have it in now?

I know you were hired and brought on to be the CEO of this company, as opposed to the founder, which I think was Buck Jordan. Yep. So when you come into a company like this, you've got to get it to profitability. You've got to get it. You know, that's typically why they bring in the higher gun CEO is to get the company like operationally, you know, excellent and crank the revenue. How is the revenue doing? How are you, how many restaurants are you in? and what's it been like?

You're getting us right at the turning point. So it's a really good point for me, and a good time for your question. So when I came on board, which was about a year ago, we had one robot in one restaurant in White Castle. We have some other robots in baseball stadiums, like the Dodger Stadium and Chase Field and Phoenix, etc. But we put a unit in White Castle in Indiana

and like all technology immediately spotted a number of opportunities to iterate the next version. And these were kind of like big learnings right off the bat with that boy, the next one we can make significantly better. And so, uh, the new one is called Flippy 2. Flippy 2 is shipping this month, meaning August, meaning a couple in this week and more next week. And we're shipping about a dozen pilots. And way it works station is a lot of big brands say, this is great. We've come and seen it. It works awesome. We, we've seen the numbers. We need to see it our own environment, which makes perfect sense.

So what we typically do is we'll put a pilot for a 60 or 90 day period into a live production environment, so not just a test kitchen, but actual restaurant. And we'll run that for a given restaurant brand, and then from there, work on a rollout strategy for them. So we have so much demand for Flippy 2 that our next year, the theme of next year is going to be about supply chain and maximizing scale, because when we drop this into a restaurant and let it perform, it really changes the game for them. And you, do you, do you, send a team to monitor it and be there with the robot during these 60, 90-day trials, or are you at the point where they can just operate on their own and the

customer can manage it? For the first week or so, we have kind of boots on the ground, just making sure, just kind of watch and stuff. After that, we keep an eye on it with, well, it's not going to surprise you, with AI. Yeah. And with computer vision, because the robot station has eyes all the time on the arm and the food or whatever, we can then keep eyes, either with live human beings observing cooking or with AI that basically notices and tells us right away if there's a problem. For example, if a basket gets caught on something or, you know, any other problem like that, we're able to diagnose it like real time from our not from a network operating center.

So we're using, you know, we use the same technology we sell. So eventually some huge brand like McDonald's or Burger King could be have a command center watching 5,000 frying machines in real time, see the computer vision could see something like a basket that's bent and not working properly. And you would know about it in the command center before the people in the store would know about it and then send them an intervention,

hey, we need to turn the robot off and or, you know, friar one of four is out. So you're going to be on three friars. Tonight we need to replace the basket in friar one. Yeah. So it creates like a massive amount of centralized consistency, which is what Ray Kroc was always going for. And was at the core of the McDonald's franchise was consistency.

Exactly, exactly. And adhered everything, cooking procedures, cooking times. How long has it been since it was been changed? Like what you're describing is alive and well. We're doing it now. And granted, on a really teeny scale, I mean, we're just getting out of the gates. But we've built essentially what you described, Jason. And when do you, what is it going to take for somebody to deploy, you know,

not just 12 pilots across 12 customers, but somebody to deploy. you know, 120 of these. When do you think that will happen? I think it'll happen next year. I think it'll happen the first quarter of next year. So the robot is testing really well in our labs. We're just shipping it now to pilots. And so what the industry's never really done is said, boy, how do we roll out robots chain wide? They've done things like dishwashers and prime machines and grills. And so it's not completely new. But this kind of takes over some tasks. And so it requires, you know, change in operations and training and that kind of thing. It's really fun problems to solve, but it's not easy.

These are heavy lift items. I mean, we're talking to chains that have 3,000 locations that are, you know, they're raring to go. And we don't have none of this have we built yet. Again, I'm not complaining. It's really fun problems to have, but it's stuff we're here to solve. If you don't have business insurance, you failed one of the first steps of being an entrepreneur. Startups should look no further than in broker.

and broker's technology saves you time and money. Their prices are up to 20% lower with better coverage than the incumbents. And you can go from sign up to quote and purchase in just 10 minutes. So when you work with inbroker instead of business insurance incumbents, you're not dealing with large, low corporations. And the signup takes days, not weeks. The process is transparent with no opaque pricing. So let's talk about two very crucial types of startup insurance.

You'll know that these are very much in the news, especially the first one, cyber insurance. You have to have cyber insurance, which covers acts. And they happen more than you think. A lot of them, you don't hear about publicly, right? Because people are ashamed to have them happen and they should have done a better job, but mistakes happen. And sometimes software is imperfect, right? Or a human is imperfect and they make a mistake.

They use a weak password. They forget to put two-factor on. Well, you want to have cyber insurance just in case that happens. Plus, DNO insurance. This helps if your directors and officers do something dumb and you get sued. Very simple. very important to have cyber and DNO. So to instantly buy custom built insurance for startups, go to imbroker.com slash twist,

B-M-B-R-O-K-E-R dot com slash twist. While you're there, you're going to get an extra 10% off by using the offer code twist. TWISD. Okay, let's get back. This is the amazing episode. I guess the inevitable question you face in every interview is, well, what about the job destruction nature of doing these? What is your answer to that question since you get it?

And how do you personally think about it? It was a lot harder a year ago because this question came up a lot. But now there's so much data and so much press and exposure about this labor gap. We talk to the heads of all major chains all the time. And they call it labor crisis. It's the number one problem on their. It is the number one item for them to solve strategically as well as just making their number. can't fill you know, find human beings that want to do this position.

You look at this and it's like there's no other way to solve this on automation. We're not going to suddenly, you know, spawn at a couple, you know, 1.3 million people that just suddenly want to start frying, you know, French fries tomorrow. So it's a deeper societal problem that I think is not going to go away. We're, you know, so we're really in, in pull position here to solve this for the industry. And we take it really seriously in terms of it's a little bit of a calling. I know it sounds kind of corny, but it's like we, you know, it's really not about scaling miso and, you know, revenue or IPO. It's like, this is our industry. We've got to fix

this, you know. And so it's really important for us. And we understand how important it is for the industry. And we rarely, because you can open up any newspaper, any kind of website or whatever, and kind of hear about the labor gap, people understand more and more that it's not stealing jobs. It's solving a problem that risks jobs. If we don't solve this, jobs go away. Restaurants close. Yeah. I mean, we've got a serious problem in the economy. If there's 10 million jobs open. We're not in, we're not letting people immigrate into the country

to match that number. And so somebody's got to take somebody's order and somebody's got to make somebody's french fries. And right now it's turning out that a kiosk is going to take your order and it's faster and it doesn't make mistakes. And your french fries are going to be perfect. So you also have to balance what is the better consumer experience? I, at this point, I never thought I would say this as somebody who loves going to restaurants.

I, even in a Michelin Star restaurant, would rather order from my phone myself. I would rather pull up the menu and order myself. The second I start talking to somebody who's a waiter or a server, I just think, what's going to be wrong in my order? Yeah. You know, like, there's going to be something lost in translation. And when you order from a kiosk, it's going to be right. You're not going to miss hear something.

And it's going to be faster, you know, like flagging down a waiter to put in an extra order of Brussels sprouts, because you're going to be right. kids just plowed through the first order, that could take 15 minutes and you're out of the restaurant by then. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and think about it. If you wanted to carry out, you can still telephone the restaurant and read the odor in, but, you know,

no one does that. You have an app. You just frankly open it up and in order and get it right yourself. All right. So your company has been using the equity crowdfunding to, I think, I don't know if it's a record or not, but I think you're amongst the top companies. What is the strategy there? Is it because venture capitalists hate.

hardware and the public is enamored and willing to take these kind of bets. And it's something that is easily accessible to consumers to understand as opposed to like SaaS software. Tell me about the strategy there. Yeah, yeah. Kind of the all the above, except for the fact, except that, you know, in my career, I've spent, I've done so, I've done a punch of fundraising, private equity, venture capital, debt, everything.

And we have that available to us at MISO. So a lot of people think you went crowdfunding because you kind of struck out with venture guys. Not true. Not true whatsoever. we have a ton of interest from institutional investors, as you can imagine. We chose crowdfunding, frankly, because we could. It is an incredibly efficient means of funding a company. It's very friendly capital, meaning it's just, as you and I are sitting here talking,

there's money flowing into MISO. People are making the average investment is around $3,000. We have almost 13,000 shareholders. And it just continues to flow in because people look at it and think, I don't need a broker and I don't need, I can identify a, a trend in a company I believe in myself and all of a sudden companies like MISO are not the sole purview

of venture capitalists. We can the average retail investor can now put money in a company they believe in. So it's really good I think for the economy, it's good for the, or the investment economy. It's absolutely good for MISO. So it's a win across the board. So

I can see if we'll go to invest MISOrobotics.com, there's kind of a landing page to do this. Are you doing this all on your own? It's white labeled. You're not using Republic or seed invest from one of those platforms? Yeah, we built it ourselves. Wow. Yeah, I know. It's what happens. You get a team of engineers, people look at it, say, we can do that. And so we built ourselves and it ended up being a really good decision. It's working really well. We built a lot of features, particularly around marketing and

marketing, you know, people that show interest that allows it to just, it's serving our needs big time. We've raised close to $25 million so far this way, and there's no sign of slowing down. And we've got, frankly, some big announcements coming up. They're going to goose that number, you know, even at a faster clip. So, yeah, it's a well-oiled machine. It's not just the platform, Jason. It's also, we've got some really good people that know how to market in position this thing and actually, you know, kind of handle investor communications. We're really good at talking to our investors as well as our perspective.

Do you have to be accredited or can you be non-accredited? You do not need to be accredited. You have to disclose some stuff and acknowledge the risk and everything else. I've read this, I acknowledge, you know, I can lose this money or whatever, but you do not need to be credit investors. So, you know, a lot of times people put in the minimum is $950. And some people just say, look, it's money I can afford to lose, but I believe in this technology. I believe in this company. Let's let's go.

Let's take a flyer. And it's $56 a share. What is the implied valuation for the company now? $350 million. Wow. So you're able to raise money directly at a $350 million valuation. and you had some venture capitalists in this latest round, is that right? No, in the earlier rounds.

We're in a series D. The A and B rounds were venture capital, and those guys are still in a cap table. They're delighted. We've grown the company really nicely. And Jason, we made a future round turn to, there's a good possibility in the future. We bring in a significant round from an institutional investor. So the strategies aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but right now we're funding the company very adequately. There'll be a point when maybe we'll need to go either a formal IPO

or bring in a big institution around or maybe both. But right now, it's working really well for us. And you can do up to, this is, I guess, under Regulation A, where you can raise up to $50 million. I believe it's, I thought it was 75, but it could be wrong. But any kind of rolling 12 months, I think it's $75 million you can bring in in a rolling. And so, you know, and so that gives us a lot of runway. It is the future, I think, of startup investing. And, you know, I think you made an interesting point.

It wasn't because you couldn't get venture capital. You chose to do this so you could build an army of people who are fans of the product and who are cheering you on. And it's a never-ending, as you're saying with this rolling rule, it's a never-ending funding process. You can leave this open for a year and just perpetually be raising money, correct? Yep, exactly. Exactly.

And then people just need to know, you're investing like a venture capitalist or seed investor, which means the majority of companies fail, it's high risk and ostensibly high reward if it does happen to work out. Yep. And you do have now this phenomenon of SPACs. So equity crowdfunding combined with SPACs, it's almost two themes on the, it's almost, you know, two themes on the same story here, which is individuals can participate earlier in companies and take more. risk and theoretically get more reward. Yeah, yeah. And it makes us really kind of, it opens a lot of options for us and makes us

attractive because we have an active investor base already. A lot of companies to go public, they're getting retail investor number one. You know, but you know, we're at 13,000 and cranking away. So it opens up a lot of possibilities for us in the future. And I see you advertise investing in the company. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. So we have a number of things going for us.

wonders, you know, robotics just tells this own story. You see a picture of it, but you're like, I get it. I know exactly what it does, and this is the future. So it lends itself well to kind of the narrative of why would I invest in this company. But also, there's a lot of people come in. They'll click on Invest at Miso, and they'll be like, put in my information, but they just want to keep an eye on it. And so we realize we've got to continue to get exposure to, you know,

to these people. And so the big part of what we do is digital marketing. will continue to push new messages and new news, and we rely heavily on PR. We've got a really effective public relations strategy because we're actually making news. Like the announcements we're putting out, especially the ones coming up in the months ahead, it's kind of a big deal. And so using that when we kind of get a headlines, we just announced a new product, for example, a couple weeks ago.

It brings a big surge of people. The new product was an automated beverage robot. Okay. So when you go through, just say it's lunch and you're driving around, you need to find a place to, you know, to get some drive-through. If you see three or four cars in a drive-through lane, usually keep driving oftentimes. And if those cars are in the drive-thru lane,

it's often because they're waiting on drinks, drinks are fries. And so what we know from the restaurant industry is if you can speed up the drive-through lane, you boost revenue for that location significantly. And so what we're releasing is a robot-powered drink dispenser that takes orders from the point of sales. Ah, I see it. Yeah, you go to your kiosk or you go through the drive-thru,

and you say Dr. Pepper, large Coke, whatever else, it dispenses it, puts the lid on and marks the lid and shoves it to the human, and puts it out the window. It's a really cool product. It's basically a conveyor belt going around a drink dispenser. Is that the drink dispenser they already have, or is this a completely vertically integrated new product? It's a new one, yeah. It's a new one.

Wow. Did you make that or buy that or did you acquire a company? No, we are designing an integration into an existing drink dispenser that's made by a company called Lancer. They're the largest manufacturer of drink dispensers on planet Earth, and they're working with us exclusively to kind of have this integrated unit that does, because we don't want to be in the business of, you know, creating tubes and hoses and, you know, dispensers of ice. That exists.

Our technology and our asset is the IP that tells us the machine what to do, and then just kind of spits it out. Similar to CafeX, in that they don't make the actual. espresso machine, there's a zillion commodity espresso machines. The software that takes the order and fills the cup and gives it to the right person is, you know, is enough of enough work to do than tamping down the espresso grinds. Precisely, precisely. When does this one launch? This launch is in Q1 next year. Wow, great. This one seems like it's even easier than the fry station to put in. So I guess you're you're looking at each function figuring out which one will provide the most value, but also

which one is the easiest to implement, right? Kind of, yeah. It's kind of a combination of what's the intersection of those two things. What's pretty straightforward and easy to do reliably and what's going to make the biggest impact. And this one doesn't have a robotic arm. It's just a conveyor belt, so you could probably have humans interacting with it a bit more.

Yeah, big time. Unless, there's no danger of a human getting caught by an arm. Correct, correct. And what you might find interesting is that that machine and all the products we put out, they all connect to essentially a restaurant ecosystem, like an operating system that receives the order from the point of sale system and tells machines what to do about it.

So every new miso machine that gets plugged into a restaurant is already plugged into that intelligence and into that automation. And by the way, it collects a ton of really rich, useful analytical data that we can provide to the restaurants about, you know, what's being ordered with what, by what frequency, that kind of thing. It's amazing. And so you're hiring and you have job openings now for people in robotics and technology maybe we can give you a little plug there to fill some positions.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, we are hiring like crazy. We're building, it's an engineering culture. So it's a really, I don't say it's an easy platform to attract from because engineers are always going to do your best to attract engineering talent. But we're growing a ton. We're adding a dozen or more engineers every month or so. We have more open positions.

Are you in Pasadena? Yeah, we're in Pasadena. We hire people all throughout the country, our headquarters in Pasadena. You know, we're born through out of Caltech. And so that's kind of our heritage. And so we're going to keep the company in Pasadena. But we have people working all around the nation as most people, most companies do. All right.

Well, look, continued success. Everybody go to miso-robotics.com. If you want to invest and or if you're interested in working there, continued success. And we'll look forward to having some perfect French fries soon. Is there a location? People can actually go see it now? Well, watch the, watch the first. new. Watch our website because as we roll out to several brands, we'll make public of that.

All right. Continued success and thanks for coming on the program. Thank you, Jason. Appreciate you having me. How much time and money do you spend integrating a bunch of different software products together at your company? Let me guess. Way too much time. Well, Odu is here to help. Odo is a suite of business apps that runs your entire company on one platform. They'll streamline your workflow by bringing all of that information together. Plus, Odo's integrations, eliminate repetitive tasks and data entry. If you only need two or three apps to optimize your workflow, that's all you pay for. Odu won't stick you with the bill for apps you don't use.

Odu has an app for every business need. They offer 30 main apps that are updated regularly in over 16,000 apps from their active open source community. You can keep your books tight with their financial software and their sales and CRM apps will help provide a clear and organized view of your business. So here is your call to action. Your first app is free forever. And right now, O-Doo is offering a $1,000 credit on your first implementation package.

That's not a joke. That's $1,000. Just go to odoo.com slash twist to check it out. That's O-D-O-O-com slash T-W-I-S-T. All right, everybody, some fun new content we're going to be producing here at this week in startups. We hired a third producer. Can you believe it? We have three full-time producers on this podcast.

this week in startups now because we've gone four or five days a week and the audience is loving the show and so our third producer is rachel brawn she's with me today here on uh this first segment where rachel is going to be a twist correspondent yes we're going to have our first this week and start off as correspondent and we have charged rachel with uh educating us on topics around gen z uh and what founders in that uh generation are building and maybe some of the new products and services and marketing techniques they're using. So welcome to the show correspondent, Rachel. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, Jason.

This is definitely really cool. And you, of course, when we hired you, were doing your own podcast about venture capital. So you were out there doing some work in the space, correct? Yes, I had my own podcast. I had a bunch of cool people on, some of which were in venture capital. Very cool.

So for your first segment here, I know you got to talk to Dan Toomey, who is Morning Brew's TikTok guy. Tell me a little bit about what we're going to learn in this segment. Yeah, so Dan kind of goes over not only how to just make TikToks, but how to really grow an audience from scratch. So before Dan came on, Morning Brew did not actually have a TikTok account. And he applied in a very unique way, and I will save that for the show. And Dan was just a really great person to have and was an awesome first guest for me to speak too. And how important do you think TikTok is in terms of building brands today? How prevalent is it with millennials, Gen Z, or is it favor of one of those two groups? And I see a lot of oldsters now on

TikTok. I finally gave in and I have a TikTok account. I haven't produced a video for it yet, but I am now following some people and getting into it a bit and trying to understand it, which is, it's very weird and different, isn't it? It definitely is. And I think something that And it's really important to note when you think about TikTok is you're not just scrolling through people you already follow. They have something called the For You page. So people are basically in discovery mode all the time. So if you're really trying to build a platform from scratch, I think TikTok is a great place to

start. Whereas with Instagram, I feel like speaking as a Gen Z, I'm more likely to go look at people's information that I already know if that makes sense. I think it does. if we were thinking of an analogy here, imagine if instead of when you open your Instagram, you seeing your friends

and then convincing your friends to follow you, yada, and hoping for reciprocation when you follow somebody, if they just dumped you on the explore tab, and not just the explore tab, which is custom to you,

just whatever was initially trending. And what that does in reverse, if everybody starts with people they don't follow, then it gives people who are nobodies who have no following, the chance to get in front of everybody and you have these overnight successes. That is the big innovation, isn't it?

100%. And it's really cool to see people that don't have a platform anywhere. I mean, you just think about the crazy big TikTokers that we know now. The first one that pops off to my head is Victoria Paris. I think she's really interesting and she didn't have a huge platform

on any social media before she was a content creator. And TikTok is really where she blew up. So I'm really excited. I hope I see more brands come to the space because right now I find that mostly it's individuals, and I'm kind of surprised that the startup community hasn't really dove into it more. I think that when you're over the age of 30, going on TikTok and doing a dance is so crazy that like, can you imagine me going on there and doing a dance or a meme?

I feel ridiculous as a 50-year-old going and doing that, you know? But I guess at some point I'm going to be doing that, aren't I? Feels like it's inevitable. I think so. The team wants you, too. that's for sure. And I think it's really smart that the Morning Brew team hired Dan. So, you know, Alex doesn't have to be one of those people out dancing on there now. They have Dan doing that. And you've been experimenting with a TikTok account for this weekend startups. If people want to go search for that, they can. It's TWA startup. So you've been talking about the show and doing memes on my behalf. All right, let's throw to your, uh, let's throw your segment here. And we'd love your feedback on this. Thank you so much, Dan, for coming on to the show today.

For us and excited to be here. For everyone that's listening, you might remember the Morning Brew from episode 1242 when Jason had an awesome discussion with the co-founder Alex Lieberman. So, Dan, I have to be honest, before we get into everything, I actually applied to a job at the Morning Brew right after graduation, and I've never heard back. I'm a huge Morning Brew fan, so much that I've definitely bugged people on Twitter. I've slid into their DMs and everything. So this is really exciting for me. And for everybody listening and who, for some reason, hasn't heard of Morning Brew, can you break it down for us? Yeah, also I was not a part of that decision process, Rachel, by the way. I was not hired. I was hired by Morning Brew in February. So I didn't touch any of that for what it's worth. Yeah, I mean, Morning Brew is we started as a business newsletter, kind of designed to make business news interesting for people to read, mostly geared towards college students. But once we really started to get more subscribers over the past year, we're now pivoting in the process of becoming a full on media company. So that

includes an audio division, video division, and actual articles on the grounds reporting that's done by us because newsletters are usually just aggregate journalism, but now we're moving away from that as we kind of beef up our staff. So we describe ourselves as a company for the modern business leader, but now we're expanding far beyond that to really anybody that could be interest in what's happening in and around the business world. So I'd love to know more about the actual creation of those TikToks. And I actually saw those TikToks that you make on Twitter, not on the app. And I thought that was really interesting because on TikTok, honestly, I almost never see

your guys' content. And I've noticed that Morning Brew and Planet Money, which are two accounts that I really, really like, I actually see most of their short form media content that obviously has been made in TikTok over on Twitter. And I think that's really interesting. So can you kind of explain to listeners your TikTok style? Yeah, hey, I'd love to know the reason for that, too. If there's any way, if there's any way we can show up on more people's TikTok feeds,

I would love to, I don't know if anybody from TikTok is listening to this, but I would love to know the hack that we can do to get that. Yeah, the, so I guess I can answer this in two parts. First being the creation process behind it. So I have an editor that I work with, Laura, and her job is just to manage social media in general, but she's amazing and she does work on our TikTok account as well. But my day basically looks like I get up and I start reading the news at around 7.30 in the morning. and that's when the first messages are really being sent in our Slack channel. We start talking about what stories might do well, what people are talking about. And at around 8.30, 9 o'clock, I usually have a list of pitches that I think would be great for a video.

And those pitches look like I have a summary of the news story. And then I have a premise that I think we can work off of there. So like something funny that I think we could do or a creative way to explain what's happening in the news. And then my editor basically says, like, this isn't funny. this is bad, this will never work, and maybe, like, maybe this last one could work. And we go with that one. Have a few morning meetings and then I try to write a script.

I hand the script to her, she looks it over. And after like going back and forth for a little bit, we have a full script and I film. And that filming usually takes me probably like 30 minutes depending on how complicated the video is. Sometimes they can get really out there and then it will take longer. But then after that, I'll edit the video down and again, go through edits, you know,

bring it back and forth with my editor until we get a video out, usually at around like, the goal is, is 2 p.m. But if you have like meetings and stuff throughout the day, because we're always trying to do more, sometimes we get it out at around like 3 p.m. and then like worst case scenario is like 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. And that's happened a few times more recently.

So that's what my day looks like. And we used to do that every day. Now we're starting to do that three days a week and mixing up our release schedule a bit. And then in terms of like how we upload them, we, if some, usually we try to upload all of our videos, if, because we hope that they're all like good quality, usually we try to upload all of our videos to TikTok, Twitter and Instagram as reels, right? Sometimes a video is more just, just TikTok centric and it doesn't really belong on Twitter. But it's funny that you mention that because I have had, at least what we've realized is that not everybody, TikTok is kind of a polarizing platform for people. and a lot of the people who subscribe to Morning Brew are not on TikTok

and we kind of wanted to find a way to say like, hey, people can still enjoy these videos. How can we bring it to them? And so usually out of Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok, somebody has like one of those. And so we upload them, at least the best of our videos, we upload to all three platforms and try to get people to see them. So I've had a lot of people actually say that.

They're like, I've only seen you on Instagram or some people have said, like, I only see your stuff on LinkedIn. We try to publish them across like multiple platforms just so like everybody can be in the party and it's not just people on TikTok. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So is that the same video or do you make any edits to that video? And let me clarify that. So you guys only put out like three of those a week? It's been three a week recently because we're also working on our YouTube channel right now, which is taking time away from like the whole video team.

It was at one point like one a day and we could go back to that probably once we figure out what we're doing on YouTube. but right now we're dedicating some more time to planning around our video future, I guess. But yeah, the edits that we do, we actually do less now because every social media platform is essentially becoming like the same platform. I don't know if you've noticed this recently,

but it's like every single platform is literally just becoming a singular thing. Like Instagram has stories, Twitter had stories at one point. Now TikTok might be having stories. And so we used to do a lot more. more edits for videos where a TikTok would have to be cut down into 30 seconds so it could be a reel, but now reels are a minute. And now TikToks can be like, like 60 minutes or something like

that. So, so we did have to make edits, but not as much anymore. They can really just be uploaded to every platform. I actually did see that. So we're starting to make a TikTok account for this week in startups. And I've noticed there's been a three minute limit on TikToks. And I'm like, that's kind of a lot trying to create that much content. I mean, obviously our, our, our show Shows tend to be fairly long, but trying to create super engaging content for three minutes sounds pretty difficult, especially because the app I feel like is really geared toward short attention span. Do you have any tips or tricks on making really engaging content in such a short amount of time? Yeah, I mean, like, I don't think we do it all the time, honestly.

I mean, we always try to get better with every video that we put out. Usually, I mean, none of our videos have gone over, maybe one or two have gone over a minute. everything we try to keep under 60 seconds. And some people have said, oh, you know, if it's shorter, then that will do better with the algorithm. But I'm kind of a believer in, if you just write a good video

or if you write a good script, people will stick with it for at least a minute. Like, I have faith. I have some faith in our attention spans as like humans. Like, I have a little bit that I'm holding on to. So for writing, I mean, you have to get to the premise immediately. You have to get to what you're talking about immediately. And this is just notes for like,

for writing in general. I mean, whether it's journalism or comedy, like, you, people want to understand what the situation is, like, within the first one or two lines. And I've made that mistake a lot before with videos where I'll, like, maybe throw in a joke or throw in an extra note in the beginning, but then people get bored. And most people, if you look at the stats, they watch videos for half the time. Like, the majority of people watch for half the time or less. And so people are like, oh, my gosh, you can only watch a video that's a minute long. It's like, no, people only watch 30 seconds of that one minute video. People look at, like, the timeline at the bottom and see.

how long it will take to scroll across and they're like, no, I'm not doing this. And then we scroll the next thing. So tips for writing engaging content. Yeah, get to the premise immediately. I mean, I personally think humor helps create engaging content. I mean, it doesn't even have to be like a capital J joke. It can be like a funny aside or just not taking yourself too seriously.

And then using effects or like visual effects always makes it compelling. But I've also seen videos that don't do any of that, but they're talking about something that's interesting. They're educating people on something or they're just generally entertaining with a special skill that they might have. Those are really like, if you get down to like the core of it, I think the three things that that really create engaging content. It's really interesting hearing you talk about how quality kind of trumps everything when creating these because I was just

listening to this podcast with another TikToker named Victoria Paris on the Colin and Samir show. And her thing was more about if you create content consistently. So she actually said she made like 30 videos a day or something incredible like that, that the algorithm really just loves you. And that really does facilitate growth. And so hearing you kind of talk about the opposite and say, as long as you're creating quality and engaging content, that will facilitate growth is really interesting to me.

So what is more important, I guess, for TikTok, especially when considering a brand, the fact that it is like authentic or the fact that it is interesting? Yeah. I think if you're a brand, it's going to be a bit of a different game. Because I have seen, like, for example, I've seen comic writers and I have seen people who are like more so performers go weeks without releasing something, but every time they release, it will be a hit because it's a great video and

anybody will want to watch it and share. If you're a brand, though, you want to be front of mind for people. So posting consistently should be more of a priority, I would think, rather than saying, like, oh, we can drop one every month and it will be great, because then you won't immediately like be thought of by people who are scrolling through TikTok normally. I mean, there are so many brands I see on TikTok. Like, Jim Shark is all over TikTok. They're so good at TikTok. Like, they are amazing at it. And it's because they just crank out videos. And part of that is because they, they use affiliate marketing. They find other fitness influencers. I mean, like, I think something probably like 40% of TikTok is just like fitness influencers who are

making a killing off of it. And that's awesome for them. And Jim Shark basically just found a way to capitalize off of that. So if you're a brand, And, yeah, I would say that the priority should be consistency, which goes into things like following trends and making sure that you're collaborating with people because, I mean, yeah, look, I'm sure that's great that she's making 30 videos a day and I applaud her for that. But for anybody's sanity or mental health, I would encourage you to collaborate as soon as possible with other people. Because not only does that make you more creative as a person learning how other people think and make their own work, but also that takes some of the weight off of your shoulders because, you know, you have another person lifting the load for you. So creating consistently is definitely a priority for a brand. When I think of Morning Brew, I really do think of you because of, I guess you're the person that I see most on the internet affiliated with the brand, not even Alex, not Toby, not the other co-founder either.

So that's got to be very, very interesting. And I guess, like, what I'm trying to get at is how did you create this video platform from scratch while maintaining that company voice? Okay. So the reason why I applied to Morning Brew was, because they already had a voice that I resonated with, and their voice is so strong on the newsletter. I mean, it's, I think that's, it's biggest value at as a company is that people like to read Morning Brew because it's an enjoyable experience. And all credits to Neil Fryman,

by the way, he is the managing editor of Morning Brew, and that guy is incredible of what he does. And he really has a great sense of what our voice is. And when I applied to Morning Brew, I literally said, you guys write like how I write, and I would love to come work for you or something like that. And I basically said, like, I feel like this is how I naturally would go about writing a script for a new story. What if I just tried to essentially take that voice and put it on to video? So I really felt like it was much more so of like, we had the same voice and they had already had like a whole company based off of it. And I just had me. And I was like, how can I put this into video? Yeah, that's so interesting because when Jason talks to me,

and the other producers, he talks about whenever we write something that he ends up reading. He's like, just write it, how I would say it, write it in plain English. And I found myself in the beginning, that was really difficult to me. So how important do you think voice consistency actually is? Oh my God. For a brand, it's everything. Are you kidding? Like, I mean, especially right now at a time where it's like, if you don't seem like a human

on social media, even as a brand, people will be like a little sketched out by you. You know, like people love the fast food companies on it on Twitter, because they just tweet like how people tweet. And a really great thing, this is a shout out to Toby, but an excellent thing that Toby once told me when I first joined Morning Bureau is that he said, we have to use social media like how people use social media.

We have to use Twitter like how people use Twitter. We have to use TikTok like how people use TikTok. And that was like incredible to me. That was like so prophetic because I was like, yeah, that's social media was created for people. It wasn't created for brands. And so that's why brands try to seem like people on it. And at the end of the day, we would just make the content that we enjoy making that we think is cool.

So, yeah, I forget what your original question was, but that's kind of like how we've transferred the voice across like different platforms. Oh, it was about the importance of voice. I wouldn't think people would feel comfortable with Morning Brew if it didn't seem like the same voice that was in the newsletter was the same one talking to you across platforms. And I think we do a really good job of that. And so, yeah, I think it's really important for any media company or brand to keep track of. Yeah, you'd definitely do.

an absolutely amazing job at that. Was it difficult, though, to take those really complex topics that occur often in the newsletter and kind of break them down into really digestible TikToks? Yeah, it still is. I mean, it's a challenge. The thing is it happens, the news that surprises you will happen every single day. And you're like, oh, I guess I got to learn about this today that I didn't know about before. It's definitely a challenge.

We don't always do the stories that are in the newsletter because we often do the, we often do the news that's the day of. So if something breaks, we will have to make a video. about that in a few hours, whereas it won't show up in a newsletter the next day. So that the story that we do may or may not end up in the newsletter, oftentimes it will, because it's usually an important story. But yeah, it's a challenge. Like, one of my favorite videos that we've done is the one about the Archegos collapse or

archegos or archegos, I've heard it pronounce a bunch of different ways, but there's the archegos scandal. And I had no idea what a family office was when we started reading this. And essentially I read more and more about it. And I was like, oh, what if we essentially did a video about this collapse, but explained what a family office was? Because I had just learned about it. And so I feel like a lot of people would be coming from the same perspective as me.

But that took a while to write. It took like 12 minutes to film. But writing that and making sure that you're accurate too, which is the important thing, because people want to make sure that you're telling the truth with all this and they're actually learning from it was a huge challenge. But it also like, you know, the challenges are what make it fun too at the end of the Timeliness sounds like it's super important for you guys. It definitely is for us as well.

Jason has been in Italy for quite a while now. He actually just got back today, thankfully, but we've been recording the news and we've been having to turn around pretty darn quickly and it's been a really interesting and fun experience. I know when we weren't doing news, the producers really missed it. It's definitely one of my favorite parts. Do you ever find yourself having to try to become like a subject matter expert day of? Or do you work with a team to kind of understand those things that maybe you don't understand? Like the Artegos being the family office where Bill, what is it, Bill Hewig, Hewang,

something like that, was trading billions of dollars at like five times leverage? Oh, I mean, that's the best part about working for a media company. I think in the age of this whole, like, greater economy discussion that's happening right now, I'm very thankful that I work for and with a group of people because with that, as like somebody who was trained as a journalist, I guess, one of my biggest worries is that we'll come out with something that's factually wrong or we'll get a piece of a news story incorrect. And God forbid that video like does well or it blows up for the wrong reasons, right?

Like people didn't learn something from that. So I am so, like I definitely do not consider myself a subject matter expert on the or, I mean, maybe I will after I report on it for a while, but I've been working for Morning Brew now for around six months. And I am so grateful for every moment where I've been able to reach out to Neil or Maddie or Sherry or like Alex, hey, or any of these people that are on our team and basically be like, is this right? Like, am I, is this like a good explanation?

I talk to the emerging tech group people about this all the time if I like get things right. So, um, no, I very much lean on our team for to make sure like everything is fact checked. I guess to finalize everything, what specific tips do you have for brands trying to build a presence on TikTok? Especially for companies whose team members have like no experience on the platform, which was similar to ours. To be honest with you, I'm the one who's trying to get our TikTok up off the ground right now. Yeah. Shout to the class of 2020.

That's like we get all the TikTok jobs. I feel like we're getting the jobs that like all of the millennials were hired as like social media managers when they graduated. Oh my gosh. is like, oh my God, those companies hire me to run their Twitter account. But then, like, five years passes by and now, like, a social media manager is a really important position. Yeah. Advice for brands that are on TikTok. I mean, look, I said earlier, collaborate with other creators as much as you can if you can afford it.

I know some people charge a lot, but there will be times where no matter how creative you are as a person, there will be times where you just have, like, nothing. And you need to pull from something. And that's where collaborating with other people, creators comes in. Be okay with crazy ideas because people appreciate that on TikTok's a weird place. It is a weird place. It's such a strange universe to hop into. And it's sometimes the craziest ideas. Like Washington Post does a great job of this.

And again, that's a media example, but he's just, he's killer on it. His ideas will be so weird and they'll be brilliant. So be okay with weird ideas. And be consistent too with posting. Also,

don't be afraid to experiment. That's four things. And that's a lot. But being consistent, obviously, we mentioned that earlier. But what I mean when I say be okay with experimenting is that people get it. If you're a brand and you're out there and you're posting different things and it looks like you're figuring stuff out, like, that's okay. You don't have to be nervous about, oh, like, they don't think I'm good or something like that. It's okay.

Everybody knows what you're doing. You're posting on TikTok because you want to get more people to see your brand. And that's totally fine. So it's all a part of just being honest on social media and people will recognize that. So say those are my big pieces of advice. I hope that helps somebody. No, that's definitely helpful for people.

The MorningBere TikTok guy has no idea what he's talking about. No, no, you agree. You're right, though, on him. And I would like to say shout out to, I think it's Planet Money, who has another one that, you know, like another one who's telling it. No, they're amazing. Washington Post, Planet Money, all those guys. They're awesome. You're up there, man.

You are, you're like my top three for sure. We're climbing. Thank you for not telling me which of what order of that three I'm in. but it's okay. I know I'm in the top three. I appreciate that. What about brands that want to start a TikTok but have no idea how to start it? What advice do you have for them? Talk to somebody who's already on TikTok. Don't go on and be like, oh, maybe we'll figure out TikTok by just watching other TikToks because all that you're

going to learn from watching other TikTok is how much time you can waste and how fast time can go by. Talk to somebody who actually uses it and enjoys being on the platform. If you don't have fun, if scrolling on TikTok gives you anxiety, which like I get sometimes, just reach out to somebody who actually. enjoys it because there are a lot of people who do. And they'll be more than happy to give you advice on it because a bunch of brands are on there already. It wouldn't be weird and it wouldn't be awkward for you to hop on it as well. So I guess people have no reason to not make a TikTok account. Is there a reason why TikTok, why Morning Brew has decided to make a TikTok? Or was

TikTok just the one area that they haven't really explored? We had not really explored video in general. With TikTok, it was just kind of where everybody was, right? I mean, if, This past year has been defined by anything in social media. It's just that TikTok has exploded. And it's really become like one of the most dominant. It's been like the most downloaded social media app for something like over a year now. And so when I joined, it was like, it wasn't you, we want you here to make TikToks. But it was like, we need you here to make video.

And I was like, well, there's one video platform that's just kind of dominating right now. And literally at one point, Rachel, honestly, I was making like 12 minute, like YouTube long things for Instagram. And like, nobody was watching those because who watches anything like that's 12 minutes on Instagram. So, uh, I mean, but that's just like an example of something that we,

we decided to abandon pretty quickly. But, uh, yeah, after a while, I was like, what if I, what have I made a TikTok? Actually,

the first TikTok that we had that ever went like pseudo viral was made as a promo for a longer video that I did that like, nobody watched, but then, oh my goodness. And so then we were like, this might be, this might be what we want to do.

So yeah, that's how that got started. Thank you so much for being on the show. This was super helpful. Definitely for me, and I'm sure for everyone listening, I know it's definitely been an experience trying to make this weekend startups kind of and establish them on TikTok. So I will be taking a lot of what you said and trying to apply it to our own TikTok account.

Where can people find you? They can find me. I'm at DH2. Me pretty much on every platform. So Instagram, Twitter is where I'm at and TikTok. I have my own account fairly used. It's like a Morning Brew burner account. And then Morning Brew is just at Morning Brew on every platform too.

Well, thank you so much, Dan. Yeah, no problem, Rachel. This is a blast.