This Week in Startups - Twitter adds podcasting, Chatter.dev Founder Pete Oxenham + OK Boomer with Danny Miranda | E1545
Episode Date: August 26, 2022Friday Variety Show! First up J+M break down Twitter adding podcasting to the platform and what this means for the product and for the podcasting industry. (2:14) Then, LAUNCH portfolio founder Pete O...xenham joins to discuss his SaaS startup, Chatter.dev, with Molly. (26:48) Finally, Rachel wraps the show with another edition of OK Boomer, featuring Danny Miranda. (38:25) (0:00) J+M tee up today's segments! (2:14) Twitter adds podcasting to "Spaces" (15:08) Babbel - Save up to 60% off your language learning subscription at https://babbel.com/twist (16:32) Explaining the value of adding podcasting to a consumer service (25:29) MicroAcquire - Sell your business with no fees at https://try.microacquire.com/twist (26:48) Chatter.dev Founder Pete Oxenham joins to break down his SaaS business! (34:18) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at https://Embroker.com/twist (35:25) Producer Rachel joins to tee up OK Boomer with J+M! (38:25) Danny Miranda joins OK Boomer to talk getting into podcasting, starting from scratch, building successful habits, AirPods' impact on podcasting and more! Check out Chatter: https://chatter.dev FOLLOW Danny: https://twitter.com/heydannymiranda FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, everybody, it's Friday.
We made it, Molly.
We got through another ridiculously dense August summer week of news.
What's the fall going to be like?
I mean, I guess everybody's, I got the first auto responder today, not the responder,
but the direct response that was like, can you ping me after Labor Day?
Because I'm going to be a burning man for 10 days.
So maybe things are going to chill out a little bit for the next 10 days, but I wouldn't count on it.
We got a big variety show for you because it's Friday.
And it's all in here today.
very excited to hear that Twitter is keeping up the product velocity
and they're going to be adding a unique spin on podcast players.
So you might be able to listen to this week in startups inside your Twitter account
while your Twitter app while you're replying and tweeting to people.
Twitter might be getting serious about the creator economy at long last.
Then I have a great interview with another fantastic launch founder
building something awesome for the real world with tons of value.
You love it.
Then producer Rachel is going to be.
back with another OK Boomer where she learned a lot about, you know, getting into podcasting of all
things. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by
Babel. Start your new language learning journey today with Babel. Save up to 60% off your subscription
when you go to babble.com slash twist. That's B-A-B-B-B-B-B-E-L dot com slash twist.
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All right.
Little dropping Friday news, which we're very excited about.
Breaking news.
Everybody loves podcasts.
As podcast pioneers, isn't it nice to see us validated after all these almost?
Almost decades, almost double.
You know what, decade two?
I think we'll pay attention to what you're doing.
Okay, sure, we'll take it.
Hey, guys, good idea.
We should totally do that.
Whoever we are up to and including Twitter.
What?
Which announced on Thursday that Twitter will be integrating podcasts
into its redesigned spaces tab.
Now, unlike everybody else, Twitter will not be acquiring or producing podcasts,
but they are going to start importing, it sounds like, RSS feeds,
then Redesign Spaces tab,
opens with stations,
which are topic-based playlist
combining podcast episodes
pulled from RSS with Twitter's
social audio events and recordings.
So like spaces,
but also podcasts.
Well, that would be interesting.
If we could put the,
this would be a great way to incent us
to participate in spaces.
So if they pulled in the
this being startups feed
and then you or I or both of us
or Rachel did a fan Q&A
or a pop-up space,
and then it,
integrated that in between our daily episodes as little hits,
I would do more spaces for sure.
And it would grow our subscriber base there.
And what is a follower other than a subscriber?
It's the same language.
Subscriber followers, all the same thing.
So, hey, now we're back to where Twitter started,
which was you used to be able to get an RSS feed.
I think it was as simple as like Twitter.com slash jason slash xml.r.
They had a, they were publishing everybody's.
They were publishing.
everybody's tweets and then they just like locked it up.
They say the quote from the verge is that it functions like a Pandora station but for spoken
word and is pretty different from they say the alacart listening podcast consumers are used
to on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
So I guess this grouping thing, the idea that it would be like you just said, if we did
spaces and the podcast that it would all kind of be rolled in together and you would just be
like, hi heart Jason.
Yeah.
Show me everything.
Spoken.
I hope that they have the common sense enough to know this is the
the official handle of the show and this is the handle of the host and the other host.
And then they integrated that together because then they could do it interestingly.
But the screenshot, what I like about the screenshot is,
they're using the card metaphor where you swipe left or right.
We had an investment in a company called Swell.
If you pull up Swell podcast player, Nick, you could find a quick screenshot of it.
This was their innovation.
They used cards like this.
And then if you swiped, Molly, this is why we invested in the company.
I think we put $250K, and then six months later,
they gave me back $500.
And they're like, we're selling to Apple.
Apps getting shut down.
I was like, oh, no, no, no, no.
Keep knowing.
You're like, please.
But I think they make up the Apple podcasting player team now,
which is why I think the Apple podcast player got so much better.
And what I like about this is,
I don't know if you found yourself doing this.
Often I would be listening to a podcast on my headphones
and searching on Twitter, right?
That's like a common behavior is to do those two things.
Yep.
Now, with spaces, I did find myself.
sometimes when there's Nix spaces and people are talking about,
oh, this Nix trade, that next trade.
I'll pop into a Nix space, I'll listen to it.
And then I'll be searching, I'll just be using Twitter as I normally would.
So this makes Twitter very sticky.
It will increase time.
When you play audio in an app, time in the app goes bonkers.
That was the big clubhouse sale.
They were like, look, we've got people three hours a night.
You know, the top 10% of users are on here 100 hours a month.
Well, it's a little bit disingenuous because they might be just listening in the
background.
So it's like saying Spotify has a thousand hours.
It's like, yeah, listening to a playlist while I work doesn't really count as capturing
my attention.
But still counts for something.
It's so, it's interesting to the idea that I'm going to describe something that has previously
existed on the internet.
But the idea that you could have, because they're going to have these personalized hubs
and it's going to be like all your next content or all your startup content, right?
And it'll have been trying to pull in all of this stuff and they've been trying to do that.
But I also like the idea that my Twitter profile.
could become a hub
for all of the things that I do in that way,
like a blog used to be
or a personal web page
or, you know, like,
there are all these people who come to my Twitter
all the time and are like,
I miss you on Marketplace.
I wish you were still podcasting.
And I'm like, well, it's in my bio,
but.
Yeah, no, no.
I didn't take the time to read it.
It's like, well, I mean, if you think about it.
But if it were somehow part of my fees.
Yes. You can do this manually.
You can create a Zapier
to any time your podcast is updated
to putting it to your doing a tweet.
Anytime you do an Instagram photo,
have it do a tweet, anytime you do.
But nobody sets that up.
And I'm thinking maybe I should,
but I always like to handcraft the tweet
and not have it be an auto tweet.
But Twitter would be wise to say,
what are your other feeds in the world?
And maybe we'll suck them in here, right?
And that would be super beneficial
if you could take the RSS feed
automatically of this week in startups.
And when it publishes, bink,
it just says, hey, episode, whatever's here.
Yeah.
Some people might not want to auto publish.
Some people have like, they want to be more crafted in their toys.
Well, you don't want to drop it into the middle of a terrible breaking news event.
There's sort of stuff that there's stuff about auto posting that is a little bit awkward.
That is the problem.
Yes.
When 9-11 happens, God forbid, you know, whatever the next one is.
Or I had this because people were automatically tweeting the show or clips.
And the tsunami happened.
I was asleep somewhere when the tsunami happened because of in the Fukushima meltdown.
in Japan.
And literally one of those tweets came in.
They're like, really promoting your podcast?
Well, you know, 10,000 people died.
And I'm like, it was automated.
I'm sorry.
But you do have to have like a period if tragedy, don't tweet.
Yeah.
Unless it's thoughts and prayers.
Right.
We should just have one of those ready to go all the time, apparently.
An important, an interesting quote from the blog as they roll out this test from spaces and
podcast to newsletters and notes.
We're working every day to improve the way people connect.
with creators and make Twitter the home of the most engaging conversations in the world.
So almost like a mission statement.
Almost like a mission statement.
And a much bigger umbrella.
Yeah.
So this is a bad mission statement, but I could punch it up.
I know you can.
Even at the end of the longest day ever, J. Cowell will find a way.
Well, we're working every day to improve the way.
God, it's a little wordy.
This is a problem.
I know.
Too many people worked on this.
The home of the most engaging.
conversations in the world is a great starting point. That's great. That's great. Yes. So I would just
start with that. Twitter is the home of the most engaging conversations in the world and our mission
is to enable everyone to participate meaningfully in those conversations. Discussions.
Don't want to use the same word twice. There you go. And our
mission is to enable everyone to participate meaningfully in those discussions. Yeah, that's a nice punch-up.
Yeah. It's pretty good. They are doing super follows where you pay people. Yeah. They are doing,
they bought review, the newsletter thing. So on mine, you'll see there's a newsletter thing. Did you turn yours on your review yet?
Mm-hmm. But I haven't done anything with it. Oh, okay. Well, you just, then you're collecting emails as you go, right? Like, I have a substack. I've never published to it, I don't think. But I get like a couple of subscribers every day. So I was like, all right, I'll just get the free subscribers and then export them to my other mailing list.
It's definitely going to happen.
Well, I had my mailing list on MailChimp.
We were paying $4,000 a month for MailChimp.
I took my personal one off there,
put it on review,
and now I pay $0.
Right.
So, and that's actually the power move, I think, for Twitter.
Twitter already has a good business.
Take things like Patreon, make it free on Twitter.
Take email, make it free on Twitter.
The thing that would have been the biggest layup of all
would have been to let people post videos
like they would on YouTube,
make it a tab,
and then let them get 100%
the advertising from it, then you'd really incensed
the Mr. Beasts, et cetera, to maybe participate
more. And then why on earth
doesn't Justin Timberlake
mine and
they screwed it? Yeah, they screwed it. Yeah.
And Periscope. They screwed those up. But I mean,
think about this. If you wanted Justin Timberlake to meaningfully
participate here, or Lady Gaga, whoever,
why wouldn't you give them
the artist tab? So when I go
to their tab, instead of seeing their likes and their media
and their replies and tweets, it's like my four
choices. How about it's Lady Gaga's
tweets? Merch
tickets,
replies, whatever.
I mean, I don't understand
why the people of Twitter are so dumb.
But that's, yes,
like that's what I'm talking about
with our pages too.
Like have,
just make it be,
and it's a mat,
to be clear,
we're talking about a large pivot.
Like, Twitter moving away
from micro blogging, right?
That's all we do.
Now it's,
they're slowly starting to roll out these,
have these value ads,
but the idea of rolling all of that together
into one mega,
all of a sudden, they're like on a weird way, like they're MySpace.
They're actually a creator platform, which unlocks a lot of stuff.
I mean, if I could just, if it said add your RSS feed here to your podcast,
then it would have my tweets, my replies, my podcast, my media, my likes.
And I should be able to pick that order.
So if I want to have my podcast come up first, then my tweets, or I want my podcast,
pinned, whatever, just give me a little control over my feed.
Yeah.
And then if I had shop, I could pull on my Shopify URL.
And then I would have tweets, podcast, Shopify.
And then what if I put my YouTube URL,
then I embed my YouTube videos?
Yep.
This is the kind of control they could give to creators
that would make Twitter participation skyrocket.
Right now, you go look at some celebrities.
They're just not participating because nobody's thinking about them
and they have the tip of the sphere.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But because they're just not good of product, let's be honest.
I did like the guy, Bake Poor.
Was that his name?
He was on for a while.
I don't know.
Product manager who Parag fired.
Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah.
He was overseeing.
Remember that violent increase in product velocity?
That just all of a sudden happened one year.
That was him, you know, when he did spaces and they're like, yeah, we're going to get spaces out real quick.
But I think it seems to me that Parag does have a vision here and this is, and these are all part of that, right?
Like, all this stagnation, all the getting rid of, I mean, I know I keep beating up on the guy,
but all the getting rid of Vine and Periscope and then we're microblogging and that's it.
And it's just going to be this, like, monk-like.
like Craigslisty thing that never changes, that was Dorsey.
Like now they're like, guys, we're in the creator economy.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go.
And it's super interesting.
Well, you know, this all comes after YouTube, right?
We got included in their podcasting page.
So if you go to YouTube.com slash podcast, it's, it's, it's, they've announced
it.
it's just kind of hiding in plain sight.
You will get redirected to their listing of select podcasts.
So you should find us on there.
We are maintaining a, they don't do our RSS fee.
we make a playlist of our podcast episodes and it puts us up there.
So when we publish a new one, we should be up there.
It is, by the way, when you go to YouTube.com slash podcast, like exactly as chaotic,
random, weird stuff recommendations as you could possibly ever imagine.
Evidently, I have been delivered the Superbrough feed.
Maybe everybody gets the Superbrough feed?
I don't really know.
But I'm looking at this like, who is programming this?
I just scroll down three pages to see a lady, any lady.
Oh, interesting.
On any thumbnail.
Like, I've got like King in the Stink, the Pat McAfee show.
Lex Friedman.
Impulsive.
They're recommending to me that is this my, am I my son's YouTube?
Like, what is this?
I think, here's the thing.
People who are, I know what this is.
I'm off the rails.
People who are podcasters on YouTube are probably people who have video shows, not audio shows.
and 99% of podcasts do not do video.
Therefore, they don't participate in the YouTube ecosystem.
Oh, maybe.
Yeah, that's the issue.
Stereical.
Yeah.
I mean, it is about,
I would say it costs 50 times as much,
between 25 and 50 times as much to do a video podcast as it does,
just an audio one.
You can do an audio one without much help.
Like just an hour of cleaning up the audio feed,
maybe two hours if you're editing stuff.
you do video, now you're talking about 10 hours.
Yeah. And then the size of the files,
all that kind of stuff is just crazy.
But still, most people are doing some kind of video,
although looking at this, I would think it was only
other MMA fighters and
slightly disgraced comedians. Anyway,
moving on, though.
Moving on, everybody.
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Everybody loves podcasts.
I think it's a great thing.
You know, it's...
It's having podcasts in your service is like having news in your service or, you know, anything else.
It's just where the energy is and people expect it to be their audible has podcasts now.
So I think it's great.
you can be introduced to things.
And, you know,
podcasting is really about
consistently publishing
high quality content over,
you know,
years.
And it's nice to see a bunch of people trying.
And a lot of new,
interesting things coming out.
We're going to be launching our next podcast
called Founder University,
which would be more like a show,
but it will be a podcast format as well,
where we just have a founder.
I think you were on the media meeting we had yesterday.
My idea was,
hey,
minute talk, 15 minute talk twice a week on a specific tactical thing that founders need to know
how to do.
So great.
And so we'll see how that one does.
And luckily, a lot of sponsors and our partners seem to like that idea.
It doesn't fit here.
Like you and I are not going to stop him.
Like, here's how to do a landing page.
We would go find somebody who's the best landing page person to explain, hey, the nuances
of building a landing page are such in 2023, you know, or 2022.
So I love podcasting as a format.
I love the fact that it's lightweight and anybody can try it.
I love the fact that you can consume it anywhere.
Just try to own your own podcast people.
Just don't try not to rely on these platforms for your life or death.
That is our only advice to you.
Well, that's why RSS feeds are so powerful because Twitter wants to support,
because Facebook wanted to do podcasts, I think they may have deprecated it.
But I think Facebook.com slash podcasts, they were going to try to do this.
Yeah.
Nope.
They don't have podcasts.
Facebook podcasts might have been turned off.
I think they did recently turn it off, yeah.
Yeah.
I guess they were just like, yeah, what do we get out of this?
They don't care about creators, pish-posh.
Facebook pulls plug on podcast business after a year, May 2nd.
So, you know, I think you'll see a lot of people dip their toe and, you know, like, what does podcast do for, I'll tell you why Zuckerberg canceled it?
You know why?
Think it through.
Why would Zuckerberg not pull the plug on the podcasting efforts?
Because if you're listening to podcasts, you're not on Facebook.
Right?
Doesn't you just want time spent on that site to serve them out?
If you were, okay, well, you're getting closer now.
Why wouldn't he want to promote podcasts on Facebook?
Like, okay, so if you're listening to it on Facebook, you might be, you might consume
more Facebook like we were saying earlier.
Right.
And you would know, he would know what you listen to, but not necessarily be able to serve
you an ad or know the data about the podcast.
Exactly.
Like you can't put his own ads in there.
Right.
So he can't get the ad inventory.
So why would he do a menshees thing?
like help the community get more views
because it doesn't have them for him.
Right, exactly.
It's sort of like you could have Facebook again.
If Twitter like pulls this off
and becomes a place where creators can have their whole selves
and all the things that they do
and have this kind of like great hub
and then be featured in their other like topical hubs,
then all of a sudden that is super freaking interesting
in Facebook and Instagram do not have it.
Do not.
It is interesting when you think,
remember I said on a podcast earlier this week
I just said like, you know, Zuckerberg never had a partner.
He never helps anybody else.
He never shares revenue.
And podcasting is a perfect example.
Twitter wants to help podcasters.
You know, Microsoft wants to help developers.
Apple, Google want to help developers.
YouTube wants to help creators and podcasters and video creators.
And, you know, Twitter wants to help and Substack want to help newsletter writers.
Everybody wants to help everybody.
It's the whole ethos of the industry.
Who doesn't?
Yeah.
Who wants everything for himself?
The king of the metaverse.
the god king of the metaverse.
I watched the first three minutes of that Joe Rogan interview.
I can't.
Thank you.
I grew up in my mouth.
Yeah.
He's like, well, you know, I always wanted to be able to look people directly in the eye and see their expressions.
I'm like, you mean in real life?
Like we're all doing every day?
He's like, well, you can't really do that.
Can't really do that on a Zoom.
I'm like, uh, yeah, we're kind of doing that all day.
And he's like, well, you know, what happens is.
I'm making a lot of faces right now.
he's like, well, the avatar like changes the look
based on your emotional state.
I'm like, so does my face.
He's like, yeah, but it copies your face
and then represents that.
I'm like, oh my God.
I know, I can't.
This is hilarious.
Now you see what the God King,
you know, when you have these super voting shares,
how this can go wrong.
This is super appealing to him
because he doesn't have a same relationship
with humans and emotions
as he jokes about himself all the time
with his, you know, robot
kind of joking about himself
and other people kind of have, you know,
made fun of his peculiarities
on interpersonal levels.
I think it's like this actually,
to him, feels like an unlock.
Yeah.
And the rest of it,
we feel like we're in a prison.
Right.
Also, he'll just be able to control it all
and we will be.
We will be in a prison.
Slaves in his metaphors
where he does his share revenue
and none of us can make a living
and wear drones.
Like literally.
Seriously.
Anybody buys me one of those
oculuses or whatever for Christmas going right in the garbage.
Smash.
Smash.
Smash.
Smash.
In the garbage.
Smash.
Not interested.
I can't.
Oh, man.
I hope Apple gives us a surprise in that September.
Imagine if Apple was like, oh, by the way, one more thing.
And they just showed us like the Facebook killer.
And that Apple screwed their revenue and screws their like $10 billion dollar boondoggle to make headsets.
And Zuckerberg's whole empire collapses and they got to sell it for price.
Lena Khan comes in and separates it.
I love this movie.
Let's go.
I love it.
All right, everybody.
Let's move on.
What are we got next?
Let's highlight a founder who is building in the real world.
Yes.
Because next up, I've got a great interview with LA25, our launch accelerator, 25th cohort, founder Pete Oxenham, who told me that you pronounce his last name, Ox and Ham, which is awesome.
Beautiful.
Pete Oxenham is the founder of chatter.dev, which is a SaaS platform that helps factory machines run more efficiently,
and saves large manufacturers money.
And it's the kind of idea where he was like,
he himself is a machinist.
And he was like, I was building all this stuff.
And I had a workshop and I had these like industrial size machines.
And they just weren't that efficient.
And the software was stupid.
So I made new stuff and then it turned into a business.
I'm like, you're going to, you're going to crush it, kid.
Yeah.
I mean, that's amazing.
We love SaaS as a business model.
Business subscriptions is a great business,
whether your Salesforce or Snowflake or Lead IQ,
grin, whatever, Slack.
Canva. But then you have
hardware-enabled slash. So this is like a
very not-expensive
hardware device you put on fabrication machines
and then you get all this data from them.
And you can imagine
in factories like these machines are dumb.
You know, you have to like typically
put a, you have to put like a serial
connector, you know, with a crazy cable
to program. I mean, it's like literally something out of like
1997 where you're putting one of those cereal
cables in and then trying to hard-cote it.
You know, why not?
put it in the cloud, be able to monitor and do this stuff. So we took a chance on this one,
and I'm delighted that they went through the accelerator. I'm delighted at the outcome they have.
And if you would like to come to the accelerator, launch.co slash apply. Launch.com slash apply.
You can apply for our accelerator. We spent 16 weeks with you. You get to be on the podcast.
So, you know, and you get to meet Molly and me and me and our whole team here. And, you know,
we try to pump you up and give you the best chance. We introduce you to over a thousand investors
over the 16 weeks, just to give a little plug about what we're trying to do. And
I'd say five or six out of seven people who go through our accelerator when we give them the
hundred K, Molly, we wind up sending them to the syndicate.com, which then puts another
250 to a million dollars in. So it's kind of like going to TechStars or Y Combinator and getting
a seed fund. So if you put Angel List and TechStars slash Y Combinator together, that's what I
built here with the accelerator plus the syndicate. So you kind of get to have us invest multiple
times, which I'm very proud of. We can continue to support the company, and maybe we can build up
a 10 or 15% ownership in your company and be your earliest, best, and most frequent supporters.
That's what we try to do here. Your earliest, your best, and most frequent supporters,
because we can. Yeah. We've got that great syndicate. And the pod, you know, and thank you for doing
this, by the way, Molly. You know, it's just great having you here to share the load. And then also,
like, you know, they get to meet you. They'll event, they meet me already because I do the first
couple days. So it's just another touch point
for them and you're so good at interviewing them.
It's really special that you do it.
They're so interesting. They genuinely are.
I mean, I've been trying to keep these to 10 minutes, but
trust me, it's a chore.
Well, that's why I'm not doing. You know me.
I can't talk to anybody. I go 45. I can't stop talking.
All right. Speaking of stopping, let's hear this
great interview. It's talk to Pete.
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Great job to the microacquire team.
Next up we have Pete Oxenham,
who is the founder of chatter at chatter.dev.
Pete, welcome.
And tell me what you're working on.
Yeah.
So Chatter is a machine monitoring
and analytics platform that helps manufacturers
collect their data
and actually make their processes more efficient.
and quicker just based on harnessing the processing we do on the data we collect from their facility.
So there's like 10 to 100 questions in there. What data? And how do they need to, how do you use it to make them more efficient?
Yeah. So, you know, what we're focusing on is like super low friction, very easy setup. This is a really
stagnated industry where right now a lot of the information is very human centric. You know, it takes one person looking at one machine going over to another system inputting it.
else looks at it, they go to another system. What we're doing is we're actually pulling data off
the sensors that these machines, the manufacturers use, already have built in. Right now,
all that data is just sitting siloed in one device and someone has to look at it and think about it
and do something based on that. What the chatter platform does actually pulls that data automatically,
figures out what to do with it and then either prompts actions for, you know, a person to do based
on that, or it automatically performs an action, like say, ordering a tool or scheduling a new job.
So what types of manufacturing are you talking? Is it applicable? Like do you have any beachhead market that you're targeting specifically?
So our main beachhead market is CNC machines based in the U.S. So that's a massive market.
What's CNC machines? C&C machines are basically robotic manufacturers. So think of the inverse of a 3D printer.
So they take a block of metal. They cut away a bunch of metal. And at the end of the day, you've got a completed part.
So that's stuff that's going up into space. That's stuff that,
is going on airplanes, in cars, things like that. And in the U.S. manufacturing market, there are a lot of
small and mid-sized businesses that have these types of machines and, you know, create the stuff,
you know, essentially anything metal that we use in our daily lives came out of one of these
automated machines. And what is it about them that's inefficient? What's the problem that you
identified and like, how did you, why you? Yeah. So essentially, these machines have a long history.
You used to have factory floors worth of workers who would manually, you know, turn cranks and
they would cut the metal away and they would read prints.
And over the years, the equipment itself has become a lot more automated, right?
Now it's controlled by the computer.
The computer tells the tool where to go, what to cut, what to inspect.
But the layer that hasn't kept up is the actual software that's managing all these processes.
Right now, the machines essentially just follow code line by line.
go here, go there, but there's no thinking.
They can't do any thinking right now.
That's all still on the people who are running the facility.
What Chatter is doing is actually unlocking that data layer and sort of doing, you know,
we have the physical layer automated.
Now we need to automate the actual software layer of this.
So can you give me a specific example of what might happen that your process could improve?
Sure.
So often you'll have a machine shop that's running a couple shifts, right?
So you have a morning operator and an evening operator.
And you have a tool that only.
has a certain amount of time it can cut, right? It'll eventually wear out. Chatter is able to pick up
on that tool, figure out when it's been changed, figure out how long it's going to last,
and actually have a warning to the operator, hey, this is going to expire in five minutes. So rather
than it breaking and everything going, you know, all up in flames, they can address the issue
before it even happens. Beyond that, since we're integrating with other software systems like
purchasing systems and ERPs, chatter can actually order the tool. So not only do we know it's
going to break and we know when to change it before it goes out, it can actually be ordered.
Make sure it's an inventory.
If it's not there, it's ordered.
It's actually on site when it needs to be there.
And we can prevent a lot of downtime and gain a huge amount of efficiency just by doing that.
Nice.
Also, not bursting into flames is a huge amount of efficiency.
That is helpful.
Yeah.
That's an improved process for sure.
How do you make money?
Yeah.
So we are purely subscription.
We charge our users either $80 a month per machine or
600 bucks a year per machine, which comes out to 50 bucks a month. So it's very simple business model.
Yeah. Totally. I was like, wait, you're done already. It's so easy. And then tell me, so you've got,
it sounds like some pretty early traction, some good traction early, 87 machines across 33 shops.
What is your, and our kind of classic accelerator questions? What's your pathway to $10 million
and then $100 million in revenue? Yeah. So to get us to 10 million at ARR, that's 14,000 machines on the
platform, which sounds big, but considering the size of this market, there's over half a million
machines in the U.S., just ones that are compatible with chatter already. So that's 3% of that market.
And then the path to 100 million, essentially what we're doing is we're adding more functionality
to the software. We're going to continue to sell out up to 100,000 machines on the platform,
and we're also creating new functionality as we move on. As we fundraise, we have more development
resources and we're able to, you know, push what we're doing with the data deeper and deeper
sort of into the software stack of what a manufacturer uses. We can actually upsell and
have different, you know, subscription tiers. We have our basic product, you know, that we sell right now.
That's never going away. But we have more capabilities that are going to make our customers more
money. And we can charge them more for that because it's, it's everybody wins in that scenario.
How did you identify this market? Like, what's your background that got you into?
looking at, you know, CNC machines, which I think a lot of people don't know anything about. At least I don't.
Yeah, that's a really long story, but the short version of it is I got into this in high school. There was a really cool machining program here in Rockland, California. And right out of high school, I started a machine shop. That was seven years ago. I've been running that machine shop became, you know, that shop did pretty well. And at a certain point, I was looking at my shop and trying to, you know, do all this stuff on a day to day basis. And I realized that,
so much of what I'm doing, a computer could do. So I looked for, you know, because it was just a lot of
thinking, look here, do this, do that. You know, if a, you know, if this, do that. And, and I looked
out at the market and, you know, I had a few frustrations with what was out there. Number one,
there were monitoring services that would collect your data, but they didn't do anything with the
data. They just showed it to you and gave you just, you know, classic reports. The other thing is
that what was out there was super expensive and it being 2020 at the time.
I was like, this software all looks like it's from like 2002, you know, and it's insanely expensive.
I got to deal with all these reps.
There's all this friction.
And at the end of the day, all I'm getting is a report.
Like, come on.
So since that wasn't there, I decided to just start developing this thing internally, just for use at my shop, never intended for it to become a company.
But, you know, in the community of machinists, other shop owners started seeing it and wanting it.
And we started sending out to a couple people here and there that I knew.
and eventually from there, you know, we're like, hey, this thing actually has legs.
You know, this can become a real company.
So I sold my shop and just dove into this 100%.
That's awesome.
You've got to love a startup that exists to solve your own problem.
Pete Oxenham is the founder of Chatter, which you can find at chatter.
Dot dev.
Thanks so much.
Appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate it, Molly.
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We have some okay boomer for you.
Where are you, producer Rachel?
Hi, guys.
There we go.
Producer Rachel is here.
She's camera ready.
Are you in mom's basement or are you in New York?
It's just really dark here.
Three hour time to my friends.
I'm just in my very dark apartment.
She's like it's bedtime, bro.
We're a West Coast company and anybody on the East Coast who chooses to work for us
finds themselves working to 7 to 8 or 9 o'clock.
The good news is you get to sleep in.
So I guess you go out for supper at 11, have a couple of
cocktails and then show up for work at 11.
Barcelona style. What time do you guys start work on the East Coast on our team?
The East Coast people, 10 or 11 East Coast?
No, I probably start writing the newsletter at like eight or nine.
Your time. East Coast time. Yeah. East Coast time.
Wow, that's early. All right. Who do you got for us this week? Okay. I thought you got a break.
He's like, wait. Okay. Sorry, I brought it out.
Sorry, I brought it out. Okay. Let's talk about, uh, let's change the subject.
since I am such a horrible...
Not at all, not at all.
You've learned a lot and built a following, so this will work out well for you.
You know what?
I'm not going into debt, going into grad school.
I'm getting paid to learn, so I can't complain.
That's a good way to look at it.
I like your attitude.
Thank you.
And this week, we had another person that is learning a ton in the world of podcasting.
His name's Danny Miranda.
He is just a really great interviewer, honestly.
I was recommended to listen to his podcast by quite a few people.
And when I finally did, it was super apparent that I had to have him on immediately.
He is the host of a podcast creatively named the Danny Miranda podcast.
And he actually got to speak with one of the other OK Boomer guests that just happened, Nate O'Brien, along with some other super famous, very cool people.
People are following your guests now.
That's it.
Look at you.
You're breaking people here on the pod.
I like it.
Maybe.
Nate's been.
And Nate has been very cool.
I will have to say that.
But hopefully we'll have people look soon.
Are you pitching you, by the way, on getting on OK Boomer now?
Are you getting pitches coming in?
Or people like, hey, you should have this person on OK Boomer?
Sometimes.
But I think it's by a lot of people that I don't think listen to the segment because they'll pitch.
They'll be like, oh, we heard you had like blah, blah, blah on.
I think I'd be great.
And I'm like, I don't know.
I don't know about that one.
But it's always nice when people like reach out.
So I don't mind too much.
but Danny didn't reach out.
I reached out to Danny.
Great.
Yeah.
And together we got to talk like a ton about why he decided to jump into full-time
podcasting, his advice to other people.
And I thought this was really interesting.
But we also talked about why he does hours of research before each guest and why he
posts 10 clips a day and how all of that really has impacted his show's growth.
Dang.
Sounds like we can learn something.
All right.
I know.
We got to step it up.
Yeah.
I think we're doing three clips a day.
All right.
10 clips a day.
Interesting.
All right.
Thank you so much, Rachel.
Thanks, guys.
Okay, Boomer.
I understood the assignment.
Thank you so much, Danny Miranda, for coming on this segment of OK Boomer.
For those of you who don't know, Danny Miranda is the host of the Danny Miranda podcast.
And I actually met Danny through another friend named Danny.
So if Danny number two is listening, thank you so much.
Danny Miranda, thank you for coming on.
It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me here.
So if people are living under a rock and don't see you all over Twitter and now TikTok,
congratulations. I've seen you blowing up over there. Please explain what your podcast is and what
you're all about. Yeah. So my podcast is interviewing creators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers.
And that's all in a mission to help the world be a little bit healthier, happier, and wiser.
and I started the podcast about two years ago,
basically from just doing phone calls with people on Twitter
that led to such wonderful conversations that I said,
man, why don't I record these?
Because some value could be given to the world by them.
And I ended up recording.
Now I've recorded 249.
And it has been quite a journey.
So, yeah, it's a little bit about me.
That's awesome.
And if everybody wants to know more about Danny,
some of my favorite episodes of yours are actually,
the ones where you have a friend interview you. And in one of those episodes, you told this story of a
taxi driver. And if you know what I'm talking about, I'd love for you to kind of tell that story.
Yeah, absolutely. So there was this taxi driver in, I believe, October of 2019, who was just a normal guy,
normal Uber driver. I went to Minnesota to see a Vikings game with my brother. And I'm on the way there,
myself to the hotel. And I get into a great conversation with the taxi driver, the Uber driver. And it was
kind of like an in-between moment of my life. I feel like everyone's had that period where you don't know
exactly what the next step is going to be. And I ended up getting to a really deep conversation
with the Uber driver about life and what I want out of it. And I was just like, I want to help people
become better. I want them to grow. I want myself to grow. I want all these things. And,
And he was saying, oh, I know what you should do.
You should read this book, A New Earth by Eckert Toll.
And I said, okay, I'm ordering it right now.
You got it.
Your wish is my command.
I ended up reading the book.
It transformed my life.
It helped bring together so many concepts and ideas about love, about connection to yourself,
about what trauma from childhood and passed down trauma from generations ago.
And I was like, wow, this book is really amazing.
Like, it really helped me out.
So that was in October 2019.
Fast forward at least a year or two.
And I was like rereading a new earth by Kurt Tolan.
I was saying, I got to have this Uber driver back on the podcast.
And so I ended up bringing him back on.
We did a wonderful episode.
And it's one of my favorite ones to date because it just, it shows that they're anybody, right?
We look often like, what are the experts saying?
What is the smartest people in the world saying?
And this dude is really smart.
But you never looked to him as a podcast guest.
And I found his number, invited him on.
And it was an awesome moment for both me and him.
And I'm really grateful to have done that.
So where were you kind of in that period of life in 2019?
Like was this you already had your podcast started?
Were you still in school?
Where you just graduated?
I know that this is your job now.
But like what?
Where were you, I guess, in life?
Yeah.
So I was kind of.
of I was doing a job for money that I didn't really enjoy for the passion of it. And I had just made the
decision probably a week or two before that I wasn't going to trade money for what I felt like
was part of my soul. I heard Tim Ferriss talk recently about life energy and how like when you
make money, you are giving a piece of your life energy to that thing. And that's all well and good
if the thing is something you love doing and you're excited about.
But if it's not and it's taking away from you, I think we often don't think about that trade a lot,
or at least I didn't.
And so I was in this place where I quit this job and I didn't know what was next.
At the time, I thought it might be personal training and helping people improve their fitness.
And I tried that out for a little bit, tried that character on.
It didn't really work out.
I didn't really enjoy the fullness of that character.
But yeah, it was a transformative moment for sure.
and just like an in-between period of my life.
How did you find your way into podcasting then?
Because I feel like you talk about working out.
And obviously physical health is extremely important.
But now you've kind of like 180 and now it feels like you really push mental health a lot.
So how did you find this space to kind of talk about mental health, mental awareness and things like that, especially in podcasting?
Yeah.
So what I found was from being a personal trainer that I didn't get enough of that.
Right? Like I wasn't stimulated by ideas. I wasn't I wasn't meeting interesting people in the same way I am today. And that was the part of me that didn't really enjoy the podcast, the personal training aspect of it. But how I got my way to talk about mental health was really just about going deeper on myself. I started the podcast about, I would say, three months after I started a 60 day challenge of six.
60 minutes of meditation. And it was really in this time that I got to know myself better. I understood
the importance of my own mental health. And I understood what I really valued in life.
And so from doing that, I understood what I cared about. And then I did it. And so I don't think
it's a coincidence that I started, my mental health started to get in check. And then the podcast
started to occur because it was in alignment with what I really wanted at my deepest level.
Gotcha. So did you go to college? And if so, did you graduate?
Yeah, so I graduated Binghamton University in upstate New York in 2018.
2018 got you. So it was like a year after college. It's when you read the new earth and in what year did the podcast start?
2020, September of 2020. Very awesome. So during that time was the pandemic in like full swing, right? Because it started in March.
if you were in the situation where lockdown was happening,
and I guess this is a selfish question,
because I kind of wonder the same thing for myself time to time,
do you think you would be in the podcasting space now,
or do you think being able to have fully graduated college
and kind of have like a year to step back and see yourself,
which you think made more of a big difference?
Having that time after college to kind of really understand what you wanted to do,
or having that time shut away from the world.
Yeah, for me, it was shut away from the world,
that I could just go inward and spend time with my family,
spend time reading.
But I do think it's also a maturity thing
of understanding myself better
and being a little bit older.
My mom likes to say,
your brain doesn't fully develop until you're 25.
And it's no coincidence than maybe perhaps
that I started the podcast at 25.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know which is more important, but I would probably lean towards lockdown playing a critical
role in figuring out what I really cared about.
Like, I obviously hope that we don't have to have another lockdown in that situation again,
but especially for young people, do you have any advice to kind of get in that like forced lockdown
period where you really, for lack of a better term, lock in, like that so many people we're doing.
How can we do that now, younger people, when we're not being forced to do?
do that. Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say spend more time by yourself. When you're young,
especially, it's very easy to start taking on the habits and the mindsets and the perspectives of the
people around you. I know, I certainly did that. And it was only when I was able to take a step back
and step away was I able to say, wow, this is what I truly value. I don't really care about this.
I care more about that. And I think a way to build that in is to have some sort of daily meditation
practice or some way of journaling, right, of looking at your thoughts and saying, is this what I care
about? If you can build that in, whether it's five minutes a day of literally just writing down your
thoughts or 20 minutes of meditation a day or 60 minutes of meditation day, doing that will help
you. It's all about figuring out what's best for your own schedule and working that in.
Gotcha. And I see from the books behind you, you obviously read a lot. I can tell you are
journaling a lot. Why did you decide to do?
podcasting rather than interview people and maybe make it a blog format. Why were you drawn to this
medium? Yeah. So I actually started writing blog posts in March of 2020. I said, I don't know what
I'm going to do, but I know that lockdown's happening and I've been a writer my whole life. Let me start
writing blog posts. And so I did. And I found it enjoyable and it was great and help clarify a lot of
my ideas about what I think about the world. But I also realized how much I value human connection
and talking to people through those phone calls like I was mentioning before. So it was really from
following the joy of each moment and saying, okay, am I enjoying writing? Okay, I am, but I'm,
enjoying talking to people more. So why don't I lean into the talking to people aspect? And that's
why I'm still podcasting to this day, because I love talking to people. And you're a great,
you're a phenomenal interviewer, which is one of the things that I was most,
it's honestly what makes me keep going back to your podcast.
A lot of the guests I might not know before they come on your show,
but you yourself, phenomenal at interviewing.
And while you were interviewing Sam Parr, which I told you before,
I've had the pleasure of listening to twice halfway through.
So I still am really excited to finish it.
But from the first time I listened to it around,
one thing that really struck me was you asked Sampar,
Like, who have you been, like, the most nervous to interview? And when he got talking to you
about it, you told him, you were like, you know what? I actually get more nervous when I talk to other
interviewers than celebrities. Why do you get more nervous when you talk to interviewers rather than
all these like hot shot guests that you're having on? Yeah, you got to tell me if this is true for you
too. But for me, what happens is when somebody knows the craft deeply and is able to know the ins and
out of what I'm saying and what I'm saying is wrong and if they would have gone down a different
path. I get really self-conscious around that. And I'm like, wow, like, okay, this person knows the
thing that I'm doing better than I know it in this moment. It would be like for an NBA player who's
a rookie, now they have to play LeBron James. And LeBron is critiquing every one of his moves.
It's kind of how I feel talking to some of these high-level interviewers. And so I always feel like,
okay, I got to really take it up a notch and I really got to make sure my words are
precise. And yeah, that's kind of why I view interviewers. I feel starstruck around them.
But what about you? Like, do you feel the same way?
Mine's definitely, I feel, I don't do as much. So, okay, you have to answer this question before
I answer yours. How many hours of research do you do per guest per episode?
Yeah, so that's a great question. And this is what gives me confidence is like, it's
10 to 20 hours per guest. That is, that's crazy. So I think I get the most nervous when I have
people on the show that don't have a lot of information about themselves on the internet that I can
Google. And maybe I wasn't able to do a little pre-interview with them or wasn't able to grab a coffee.
Like, I've met you in person before. We've spoken. I know you. We didn't have to do a pre-interview.
I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about when you came on. But there are some people out there that
are super busy, super awesome.
But especially working in the startup space, they write a lot about their companies,
which is freaking awesome.
But I want to know a little bit about them, about their background.
And when you kind of like approach an interview and you don't have jumping off points,
I find that to get, it's like that game, it's not ping pong, but you played it in an arcade
and there's like a ball that ping's around everywhere.
Pong, yeah.
Yeah, Pong.
I think a good interview is kind of like Pong.
right? So the interviewer is like putting in their two cents, you know, the guest obviously is
taking lead to the show. And if that pong can't happen, that ball's just going straight down the
middle and you're losing. Yeah, I find that it's about letting my curiosity run wild in those
scenarios of like, okay, like anything that potentially grabs me, I'm just going to go and
pong on that angle. Oh, I like that. It's kind of how I think about it. Yeah. And who's been,
I guess, your most, your favorite guest on so far?
because you've done over 200 now.
Yeah, I mean, it's like asking me to pick between my children.
But I mean, it's, it's funny because it's constantly changing based on what's interesting
to me or who I'm interested in in any given moment.
And what's really cool about the podcast at this point is like, I am able to structure
my recommendations based on the person.
Oh, you're into meditation.
Why don't you check out the one with Sharon Salzberg.
Oh, you're into writing.
Check out the one with David Perel.
Oh, you want to get.
into business, here's Sam Parr. So it's like a bunch of different, I cover so many different topics
that it's really hard for me to pick one on like here's my favorite, but I like to separate them out
into topics and just kind of do it like that. That's awesome. And I saw you recently, or at least since I've
met you, have been starting to really incorporate video into your podcast and you've been implementing
TikTok. How has that been for the growth of your show? Yeah. I mean,
I think the one opportunity right now that I see in the landscape of social media is short form
content under 50 seconds and whether that's TikTok, YouTube shorts or reels. And that's just because
I think that not everyone knows how to do them yet. And because of that, there's an opportunity.
And you even see people like Kylie Jenner, right? Isn't she posting about, I don't want Instagram to
look like this? And it's.
It's the thing that's getting shared the most. So there's clearly an opportunity. She hasn't figured
out how to do short form content the best for her potentially. And so I think whenever you have a
change, you're going to see people upset. I saw this in Facebook back in the day. When Facebook changes
layout, everyone goes crazy for a while. And then everyone's like, oh, this is the way it is. Okay,
let's adapt to it. And I don't think we're in an environment when a lot of people have adapted to
the short form content yet. And so I've basically said, let me do this as hard as I can. I'm trying to
put out at least 10 clips a day of the podcast.
Wow.
10 clips a day?
Yeah.
And the reason for that is because I know this opportunity isn't going to last forever, right?
So if you're able to take advantage of a moment when everyone else is posting 10 clips
a day three years from now, well, I'm going to have three years ahead of them on that.
And it's like you notice an opportunity.
It's not enough to notice it.
You actually have to act on it as well.
Yeah.
And so that's what I've tried to do for the past month and have 3.6 million views to
show for it. Nice. And how many do, what do you find to be more important to get people to listen to your
podcast? So I guess this is going into like podcasting tips nitty gritty. Do you find that having those
views have helped more or actually having follower count on like a different platform? Because
podcasting I find obviously searching for a podcast as much as I found that Spotify is really helpful.
It still sucks. And I love it when TikTok recommends me a podcast. But I don't follow every podcast,
even if I like it, that's recommended to me when I see a clip.
Like, what do you think is more important?
Having people go and follow that TikTok account or just getting eyes on it.
Yeah.
So I think what the TikTok account has done has allowed me to get on this podcast right here.
And I think it all plays together in a beautiful way in that it's not just like you get
three million views on TikTok and that exists in a vacuum.
Then you can post about that on Twitter and people can say, wow, this is really cool.
How do you do that?
And then those people will say, yeah, well, you come on my podcast to explain to me how you did that.
And so it all works in a cycle.
People think of it like, oh, it's just TikTok and TikTok exists and people only find podcasts
through TikTok.
Well, kind of, but they also find podcasts through Twitter.
And they also find podcasts through other podcasts.
So it's like it all works in a beautiful way to help grow everything from my perspective,
at least.
Yeah, this obviously is like your passion.
And this is, it's funny when I hear some people talk about podcasting because I think
there's a lot of people who do it as a hobby and don't see it as like a start to a business.
I feel like whenever you talk about your podcast, you treat it like more seriously than I know
a lot of other people do.
And where do you want the Danny Miranda podcast to be in five years?
In five years, I want it to be one of the biggest shows in the world.
And I have no idea how that is going to occur.
But I know that I'm treating it seriously.
I love communication.
I love studying.
how does information go from my brain to my mouth, to your ears, to your brain?
Like that whole process fascinates me.
It always has.
And I don't know.
I just want to continue to build it and continue to put one foot in front of the other as best
I can.
That's really what I'm trying to do.
And in five years from now, this was actually a question sent to us on Twitter,
people were asking me get the Mitch, who is another person that works kind of in this space.
he is the creator of Be Authentic IQ.
He asked you, where do you see podcasting in media in five years from now?
I mean, it's fascinating because I thought about that question and I said, imagine 2017.
Like, put yourself in the frame of mind of 2017 right now.
That was only five years ago, but it feels like decades.
Like, I don't know, call her daddy probably didn't even start back then.
Joe Rogan was very successful on YouTube, but hadn't had a Spotify deal yet.
Modern Wisdom, one of my favorite podcasts, Chris Williamson, hadn't begun yet.
So it's like this whole world of podcasting and media, short form content didn't exist,
no TikTok, no Instagram Reels, no shorts.
So the answer is I have no clue, and I'm sure that it will go faster,
meaning that change has happened a lot in the last five years from 2017 to 2022.
but change happened a little slower from 2012 to 2017.
And I think it'll go faster from 2022 to 2027.
And the point of that is that trying to predict what's going to happen in five years is
like a losing battle, I believe.
I think that honestly, NFTs will probably play a bigger role in communication, in media
than we understand in this moment.
It'll be more accessible.
It probably won't be called NFTs.
it'll be easier for people to understand and people will feel more comfortable
transacting with them is my prediction for five years from now in 2027 in media yeah and
it's funny when you say 2017 thinking about it now like did you listen to any podcast back in
2017 so this is something that I talk a lot to my friends and family about the answer is
not really and the reason for this I think is so fascinating it's because
of AirPods.
AirPods allow...
Yes, you talked about this to me.
Keep going.
Wait, go on this.
This is a hill Danny dies on,
and I thought this was so interesting.
Well, the reason why podcasts have
blown up over the past five years
is because AirPods have become
a lot more commonplace.
You can put your phone in a different room.
You can connect them to your laptop
and you don't have to be there.
But when there were wired headphones,
you had to be in the vicinity of your phone
and it would make it difficult for you
to just do laundry and listen to a podcast.
And so that is why the podcasting world has exploded from my perspective is because of the
technology of AirPods.
I love that because I was thinking about it.
And I was like, I guess I started up.
My parents are really into audiobooks.
Like we'd go to the library every week, you know, get the CDs and listen to them.
And then as I got older, I started listening to radio where I would listen to things like
car talk, which is literally like these two guys listening to a broken car.
and I believe one of them's passed away, which is so upsetting.
But they also did this broken car, like, over the radio, and they try to diagnose what's
wrong with the car.
And I remember a little bit later into high school, I got beats, like, over the head, big.
And I remember being, like, oh, because I have these really cool headphones, I can walk around
with, like, my iPod Touch and listen to, like, my mom's, like, audio book, like, credits while
I was training for cross-country.
And, like, obviously, that's, like, the nerdiest thing ever.
but it did start with like me thinking that headphones were cool and then being kind of beholden to like the car with car talk and audio books on CDs and I wasn't I was not sporting like a CD player walking around when I was in high school.
But it's so funny how little pieces of technology like that changed the game.
Like what do you think then about having like I don't want to say Amazon Alexa.
I don't want to like make my go off.
But what do you think about those like home devices?
Yeah, I think Gary Vaynerchuk talked a lot about the future being audio, and they'll probably get better those devices.
They'll probably get a little bit better.
And it's, I don't know, I also think about the directional arrows of progress.
Have you heard of this idea, I believe, from Josh Wolf, which is that if you look at how the headphones have gone, like bulky over ear to then wired and.
cool than just AirPods. It's like getting smaller and smaller and more inconspicuous.
And so I think about that a lot with, not necessarily with Amazon Alexa, excuse me,
but just more generally with the, just where audio and where technology is going,
more and more closer to you and in you. And I don't know, I don't know, we'll look back on this
in five years and laugh. But I think just smaller and smaller.
I think you're right because my dad has hearing aids, right?
They're Bluetooth, super awesome, but they connect to his phone.
And my dad will be looking off into the distance and I'll fully be talking to him and he'll be like, oh, what?
Sorry, I was like listening to something on his phone.
And you fully can't tell.
And I'm like, you know what?
Like, that as much as it pisses off my mother will be the future.
Like, that is so interesting to me.
And I don't know.
I'm interested about it.
I also know that, like, how we're talking about, like, the speed of technology, technology,
feels like it's a J curve.
So, you know, the speed is definitely accelerating with less and less time, which is awesome.
Like, I think there is this graph.
I don't know if you saw it on Twitter, but it shows like how good life is now because of how
quickly things have learned to progress.
So if we have a problem now, we're able to fix it a lot quickly, a lot more quickly
than we were, you know, 300 years ago.
And I think that's really interesting.
And I'm, it's so difficult for me to see, like, how can this get better?
Like how can podcasting and audio get better?
And I guess you're right.
It just start with headphones.
But is there anything else that you see that can really be improved, like within the space?
Well, discovery is one thing.
There's one platform that has to come up.
Or I'd be shocked if it doesn't come up, which is like Twitter for audio, which was I think
Ev Williams's original idea.
But yeah, I mean, I feel like discovery is one thing that we'll look back on and be like,
wow, those were the prehistoric days.
There was no ex-service that you could discover good podcasts on.
Yeah.
It's funny because now what I do and how I originated into finding podcasts, like in college
is I would listen into YouTube videos and kind of just like cycle, like just listen to them,
not like watch them on my walks.
And, you know, they're on a cycle.
And eventually like I got, I'm sure something was recommended to me that was a podcast.
And I was like, oh, these are kind of nice.
Like there's no, they don't expect you to look at it anyway.
And I feel like I've seen a lot of startups, like try to get into the space of kind of like this YouTube algorithm for podcasts.
But it's not the thing that's blocking them isn't how like sexy the platform is or how well it can recommend things.
It is like user adoption.
Like as a podcaster, how do you think we can get users to and listeners to actually like adopt a brand new platform that is recommending podcasts?
it's got to be really easy right for the consumer similar to TikTok maybe the platform
gives them some sort of content that they will already like is a one potential way to get
somebody in the door like you need to sell somebody when they open your app of like this is
going to be good and i think i think Sean Puri talked about this is the problem or was the
problem with clubhouse where if you open the app it wasn't like immediately you were hit with
something that Clubhouse knew you would like.
And so, I don't know.
TikTok for you page.
Open up and immediately.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
And that's the problem.
That's the gift and the curse of the TikTok for you page.
You'll open it up.
You'll get something you want.
And then you'll get down the rabbit hole.
Right.
Now that we're talking, I have an idea for Spotify.
If anyone's listening to this at Spotify, I want, I love, like, weekly discovery.
And I actually, like, subscribe to, like, my friends weekly discovery sometimes.
that have really good taste in music,
but I love a weekly discovery of podcast episodes.
And then I'd also love a different thing
that maybe instead of a weekly discovery
that they think I would like,
but maybe make a filter.
And each week be like,
I want podcasts that have like an average of 30 minutes a day
because that's like my commute
that are hosted by women in the lifestyle content
or are hosted by like people in tech
that are like originally spoken in German
and that I could put at 0.5 speed
because it would be a cool way to learn a language.
Like really specific filters.
So Spotify, I want some playlist action happening.
Well, that's such a good point because music playlists are so common and widespread and have even become memes in and of themselves.
I don't know.
I can't think of what's rap caviar is a huge, you know, Instagram page now and started as a Spotify playlist, I believe.
And so why doesn't podcasting have an equivalent rap caviar?
Like I considered playing around with the idea of podcast caviar and just the best podcast I listen to every week.
But I never really got that off the ground.
So if somebody's listening wants to start podcast caviar, please go for it.
I will subscribe.
It would be, that would be, that would be awesome.
But I think the world, we talk a lot about this on this weekend startups about super apps coming up.
And I really hope that Spotify keeps branching out because even if there's stuff,
sometimes kind of blows, there are just some things that totally hit. So the car thing,
I didn't really get it. That's like their physical hardware that they came out with. But when
they came out with like Spotify Rapp, which was literally just something to show on your story,
to see how much music you listen to throughout the year and then break it down by category and
things like that. Being able to share that to your story probably did numbers for them. Like everybody's
posting about Spotify, like free advertisement. Absolutely crazy. Amazing. You know? And the craziest thing
about that too is that I believe an intern is the one who created the idea for that and
coded that, which is unbelievable to think about, like you would think, oh, this is a massive
from the CEO or from a high up exec. It was just an intern who had an idea who was closest to
the culture. It was like, oh, I'd like to share the stuff that I've listened to with my friends.
Yeah, yeah. And it's so it makes me, it's actually made it. So now I've been more inclined to
not listen to podcast episodes on Apple. I would try to only listen to them on Spotify.
because I do want to see my data.
And it almost, it's similar to how Amazon is with Audible,
where I gets to see my listen time.
But unfortunately, I still love the library,
and they use Libby, which is a different app.
So New York Public Library, all my stuff is over at a different platform.
So I don't get all my hours.
But, yeah, Spotify's just being able to see your data.
I think people love that.
So hopefully it gets incorporated to Spotify.
And I do have one last question I want to ask you.
And that is, what is one question?
that you've never been asked, that you would like to be asked in a podcast?
I think, I'm not sure.
I have no idea is the honest answer.
But I do know that, you know, whenever, whenever somebody asks about, like, the greatest adversity
or the things that,
the things that have really motivated me to keep going,
I don't know if I've ever been asked, like, why do you keep going?
Like, keep podcasting.
So that's one.
So I guess what's, now I've got to give us an answer because I think that's a really good question.
Yeah.
No, and I think it's just genuinely about having, I'm learning so much.
I feel like this is a free education from the smartest people in the world.
And I'm so grateful for the opportunity because not only do I guess to talk
them. I get to research them for 10 to 20 hours before. And so I'm learning so much. I'm learning more
than ever in my entire life. It wasn't really a great student, but I have been a great student of
the people I'm interviewing. And I think that's the real reason why this is still going on 250
episodes later is because of the things that I learn and the people I get to meet through the
process. Awesome. That is a wonderful note to close on. And where can people find you and your
podcast if they want to check it out?
Yeah, so it's the Danny Miranda podcast where I talk to creators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers, and
you could find it Spotify or YouTube and at Hey, Danny Miranda on Twitter if you want to shoot me
a message.
I would love to hear from you if you made it this far in the episode.
Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, thank you so much, Danny.
You're going to have to have you on again.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Five great days of content, but Sunday is coming.
That's right.
We never rest.
Make sure to tune in on Sunday for another amazing and super.
interesting edition of this weekend climate startups and of course VC Sunday school.
That's right. We're going to discuss on Sunday how a venture firm should deploy their reserves.
So after you do your primary investment, you know, those first couple of companies, the core set,
maybe it's 30 companies in your fund. Hey, you have a little bit left over that dry powder.
Who should you give it to in your portfolio?
And when do you decide like, I need to save this money for them? And so you can't have any.
And yeah, we're getting to 200 level VC Sunday school here.
And then I have been trying to get this interview forever.
Shout out to producer Rachel for getting it booked.
An awesome interview with Carlos Arake, the co-founder and CEO of Quays,
who is developing deep, deep drilling systems to access geothermal energy way down deep inside the Earth.
He's either going to crack open the earth or solve the energy transition.
Amazing.
Wow, what a great interview.
I look forward to it.
So we will see you all.
all on Sunday. You get to rest on Saturday, do a nice hike. Stay away from all of the
rattlesnakes, Molly, please. But do your six, seven, eight, 12 mile hikes. And we'll see you
all Sunday. Rest up, everybody.
