00:45:07 路 Trent Simonian, John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Farza Majeed
[00:45:07] S12: I was about to do this interview from my apartment and then I realized, hold on. Yeah. Has anyone done a TBPN interview live from the streets of New York? [00:45:14] S1: You gotta go to the sidewalks. This is the founder of Side Talk. [00:45:16] S0: This is amazing. Amazing. [00:45:19] S1: Know you. Take us through your media empire. Take us through your strategy. Break it down for us. [00:45:26] S12: Okay. So I have a little company called Sad Talk. You might see the logo and pardon the potential loss of voice from this Knicks crowd. But, you know, we kinda pretty much run around New York City and let people do and say whatever they want into our microphone. We created the Bing Bong trend years ago. We created these Knicks videos. Unfortunately, there's little bit of chaos outside of Madison Square Garden due to us. Mhmm. But, yeah, we're pretty much let people say what they want in New York, and it's it's pretty fun and entertaining. [00:45:54] S1: What's the secret to a good street interview? [00:45:58] S12: You gotta keep it shareable and engaging. It sounds obvious, but, like, why would you wanna watch an interview of someone talking about something boring or low energy or anything like that? What would you want to send to your friends? And that's kind of the difference. [00:46:10] S0: So you guys people about like language model diffusion and like that. Always. [00:46:14] S12: Always. Always. Always. [00:46:16] S6: That's what we love talking about. [00:46:17] S1: Token prices and that. Yep. Yeah.
00:46:17 路 John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Trent Simonian, Vinod Khosla, Bret Taylor
[00:46:17] S1: Token prices and that. Yep. Yeah. [00:46:22] S0: Yeah. Gotcha. The people wanna see. We're gonna start [00:46:24] S12: talking about that outside the Knicks game type thing. [00:46:26] S1: Yeah. Where where so I I understand that a lot of the, you know, man on the street interview format these days, it it it can be very prepped. It can be there's a PR person that's pitching some successful business person for the what do you do for a living. It looks candid but in fact it's staged. Do you ever participate in that or is everything candid? Is that part of the brand? [00:46:49] S12: We're a 100% natural on the streets. Don't know what you're gonna expect. Okay. Yes, sir. Organic. [00:46:55] S1: But it's [00:46:55] S12: been really cool too. [00:46:56] S9: Yeah. Yeah. Please. Bye. [00:46:58] S1: Then my my follow-up is like then if you aren't prepping and understand who you're gonna be interacting with like how do you vet like where is the bar? If you see somebody walking and they have a baseball hat on and they probably don't want to be bothered, is there some sort of social contract where you shouldn't like the the is there a doom scenario where everyone in New York is getting asked what do you do for a living 15 times when they walk to go get their morning coffee? [00:47:24] S12: Yeah. Honestly, it's it's a bit of an epidemic going on. I actually am kinda scared that I'm gonna get pulled up on right now and ask what I do for a living or what song I'm listening to. [00:47:32] S2: Yeah. But Oh [00:47:32] S1: yeah. That's another one.
00:47:32 路 John Coogan, Trent Simonian, S5
[00:47:32] S1: yeah. That's another one. [00:47:34] S12: The the people the people of New York, I think they distinctify side talk a little bit from that. Mhmm. They know we're not there to to ask them something like, I don't know, so so cookie cutter like that. [00:47:45] S1: Sure. [00:47:45] S12: And I don't know. Now people come to us when they see the microphone, which is great. And, yeah. We we we just go with the flow. [00:47:51] S1: How do you think about monetization? Short form monetization, notoriously hard, but you have some merch. Break break down, like, the business side of the business. [00:48:00] S12: Yeah. It's actually very interesting. You would think that you would that, you know, I would have made a dollar off in TikTok by now. [00:48:06] S5: I don't [00:48:06] S12: think I've ever gotten paid for TikTok or Instagram, literally, not a dime, which is which is fine. It's cool. I want TikTok pulled through. But now it's cool. We do a lot of branded work [00:48:16] S1: Okay. [00:48:16] S12: For companies. So we've worked with everyone from the NFL to Netflix, Nike, Google, Amazon, creating a lot of content for them. So they'll come to us with a product or an event that they wanna highlight, and they say, hey, you know, you know how to get clicks and views, and Yep. We kind of pretty much apply our formula to that and then create a really good video for them.
00:48:16 路 Trent Simonian, John Coogan
[00:48:16] S12: For companies. So we've worked with everyone from the NFL to Netflix, Nike, Google, Amazon, creating a lot of content for them. So they'll come to us with a product or an event that they wanna highlight, and they say, hey, you know, you know how to get clicks and views, and Yep. We kind of pretty much apply our formula to that and then create a really good video for them. [00:48:33] S1: Okay. I I have like a hot take and I want you to walk me through whether you agree or disagree. I think you should just do a mid roll ad in a three minute Instagram reel because I see the branded integrations. It's like, oh, there was this example on Subway takes where someone's take was Android's better than iPhone. It went massively viral on rAndroid. And then the second and then Google was like, oh, we'd love to work with you on another take that's the same thing but it's branded. And those sponsored takes, often don't go as viral. It's hard to get branded content to go viral. But in some of these longer three minute videos, if I'm locked in after two minutes, I would sit through a ten second mid roll of like, hey, this was brought to you by this. Thanks for sponsoring this video. And then it's just all organic content around it. Does that work? Is that already happening? Are you thinking about that? What's the deal? [00:49:28] S12: Definitely. We one thing we really like doing is kind of like a natural integration. Mhmm. So we just did something with Nike, which is really cool, where they hit us up for these Knicks colored shoes. [00:49:39] S1: Okay.
00:49:39 路 John Coogan, Trent Simonian, Jordi Hays, Vinod Khosla
[00:49:39] S1: Okay. [00:49:39] S12: You know, okay. Who better to get word out about these Knicks colored boots than side talk. So we had people wear them in the episode. We were talking about them. We had to react to them. I think that feels authentic because that's kind of something we would do anyway. Mhmm. It it did really well. [00:49:53] S1: That's good. [00:49:55] S0: Predictions for tonight. [00:49:56] S12: We know if you're losing me by the way. [00:49:57] S1: A little bit. Yeah. It's a little patchy. [00:49:59] S0: We are losing you, but the energy is still there. Predictions for tonight. [00:50:06] S12: Nixon five. [00:50:07] S0: Nixon five? [00:50:08] S9: What's the plan for [00:50:09] S1: covering the game? Is this any isn't [00:50:12] S0: it in your Isn't it kind of in your best interest for it to be all seven games? Like, you know, more more [00:50:18] S1: More content. [00:50:18] S0: Yeah. More attention. You kinda want, you know, you we we obviously want your Knicks to win, but you don't want them to win too fast. Got [00:50:28] S12: a win in seven, I would like seven. If we can guarantee seven, that would be great. But listen, we need to get the win more than anything. [00:50:35] S1: Okay. What what the process of a shoot day? How early are you getting there? Who are you bringing with you? How big is the team?
00:50:35 路 John Coogan, Trent Simonian, Jordi Hays, Bret Taylor
[00:50:35] S1: Okay. What what the process of a shoot day? How early are you getting there? Who are you bringing with you? How big is the team? [00:50:45] S12: Definitely. It depends on what we're doing. We do such a wide variety of stuff. We can randomly go to a hot dog eating contest in Coney Island. We can go highlight a random character in Brooklyn. We can go obviously film these Knicks games. It was pretty dependent on what's going on, but with the Knicks games, we kinda show up in, like, the third quarter as it's ending. Unfortunately, we can't bring our equipment into the stadium, so we look. You just have to stand there and watch the game on our ESPN app and hope that the Knicks win or we hear, you know, someone just scored, something like that. And then the chaos erupts. We go into the chaos. We're there for, like, hours and hours at a time. And at the end of the day, people see, you know, fifty five seconds, but we're out shooting for, like, eight hours throughout these playoff games. [00:51:25] S1: Got it. Wild. Well, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate you. Good luck. [00:51:30] S0: Yeah. We will we'll feature some of your videos in in tomorrow's episode from tonight. Good luck out there. Have fun. Be safe. [00:51:38] S1: Yeah. We'll talk to [00:51:39] S2: you soon. [00:51:39] S0: I'm hoping for I'm hoping for Knicks in seven personally. Let's do it. But can't guarantee it yet. So have have fun out there. Thank you for thank you for this walk and talk. [00:51:49] S12: Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. [00:51:51] S0: Yeah. Great to hang, dude.