This Week in Startups
00:18:33 · Amanda Bradford
[00:18:33] S1: Well, Mark wrote the book on Dreamforce. I used to work at Salesforce, so that was a big part of his strategy, getting everyone together and they could talk to other people that also were admins of Salesforce. So he had the first developer meets sales conference together. For Replit, I think developers like to meet other developers, and it's similar to how NBA Singles wanted to meet other NBA Singles. You find a niche of the developers that maybe it's hard to find people that are specialized in this one thing, and you could create a meetup for them, or a startup hackathon or something that they get $100,000 Or if you're a startup, maybe it's $10,000 but you get some sort of award and a trophy. But I think, yes, finding that group of people, what their need is around who they're wanting to connect with that they can. Maybe it's investors and developers that want to meet those people. So then you bring in, you ask Jason to see if he can bring in some investors. They want to come to the event. So use your network, but find out what it is that they're not getting. And for our demographic, was they weren't getting curated mixers. You were going to a bar and everybody was either in a relationship or too old or too young. Was like the Goldilocks thing. If I could get everybody who's same age, same...
00:19:43 · Jason Calacanis, Amanda Bradford, Alex Wilhelm
[00:19:43] S2: So this is key, the hit rate in it. So if you're here, is anybody in the room not a founder? Anybody here not a founder? Oh, We'd People to kick you on my team are investors. So it is, if you're here and you're talking to somebody, they're 100% a founder. That's actually kind of a great thing. So now, I guess the way I could make this better is I could tell people I'm going to have 75 early driven founders here, and I could offer to have 10 investors Early [00:20:15] S1: stage because it's hard to get early... Find early [00:20:16] S2: stage. [00:20:16] S3: And then [00:20:17] S2: that could make the post networking, even even better. But... So... Okay. I'm unpacking it. Step one, everybody in the room has to be a match, so to speak. That's one thing. [00:20:28] S1: Yeah. I I guess, in target demographic of what you're going after, if you're going after, I don't know, rock climbers or something for some outdoorsy app, then yes, you would want to try it. [00:20:38] S2: Now, how do you get it to convert to a press hit, and how do you get it to convert to a customer? Let's unpack those, and we have a good example, I think we're working here, which is, say, Replit or some DevTool. You got the hackathon. [00:20:52] S1: You bought me the hardest one, DevTools. [00:20:54] S2: That's what I was trying to do. If I asked you to do it for a probiotic soda, that's also pretty hard. So do probiotic soda.
00:20:54 · Jason Calacanis, Amanda Bradford
[00:20:54] S2: That's what I was trying to do. If I asked you to do it for a probiotic soda, that's also pretty hard. So do probiotic soda. [00:21:02] S1: Our example for us was we would do some PR stunts. We had a helicopter, We had a party in Montauk in Upstate New York, and we flew people out on Blade, which is this elite helicopter that people take to the Hamptons. We put three blind dates on that. Then you invite Press. So that's the trick, is you got to invite Press to your party. Obviously give them a free ticket. Tell them there's going be all these interesting people that they're going to cover. Maybe if you have some sort of out there thing that might be controversial, it's good to kind of mix that in. Maybe you have, I don't know, Replit is doing something that, I don't know, they're gonna copy OpenAI or they're gonna go head to head against [00:21:41] S2: That would be actually a good one if you add a little controversy. This... What is... Not distilling or deconstruction, but a reverse engineering. [00:21:51] S1: Yeah. It reverse engineering? [00:21:52] S2: What's your better term for it? [00:21:54] S1: Distilling. Yeah. That's good name. Could have, like... You could [00:21:57] S2: be like, oh, we're gonna have a distillation of Photoshop, best distillation of Grand Theft Auto or something as a competition, You can actually watch people distill a piece of software. [00:22:07] S1: The best hit will be Silicon Valley engineers. [00:22:10] S2: Distilling photoshop kills trillion dollar company....
00:22:10 · Jason Calacanis, Amanda Bradford
[00:22:10] S2: Distilling photoshop kills trillion dollar company.... [00:22:12] S1: Together to overthrow the rest of the tech industry, and it's us against big tech. [00:22:17] S2: Alright. I I think this was too easy for you. Do the probiotic soda. It's mega hard. [00:22:22] S1: My gosh. I guess you'd find the people that are really into the probiotics and have all this- [00:22:26] S2: That's health. Healthy people. [00:22:28] S1: Well, not everybody believes in all that stuff. But I would, yeah, you would find your influencers that focus on this space, right? Obviously invite them if you can. But if you want to have someone that has a talk about maybe there's different schools of thought on probiotics, should it be in a drink, or maybe it should be in an injectable? Maybe it should be in a pill? And are there new pills coming out that think the soda has too much sugar in it? Or whatever it might be. And so I think having, again, fostering debates in more of a, don't know, what do they call it? A salon of where people are exchanging ideas that are maybe a little hot takes, I guess, I would say. [00:23:04] S2: Yeah. Actually, probably the adjacencies would be those people would be into those glucose monitors. They would be into GLPs, which means if they were into those things, they would be into, like, a Brian Johnson. They might [00:23:16] S1: not be into drinking your probiotics. I think there's some people that [00:23:19] S2: There's probably some people. Yeah. Brian Johnson might want a suppository or something. Don't know. He's into kind of weird stuff.
00:23:19 · Jason Calacanis, Amanda Bradford, Lon Harris
[00:23:19] S2: There's probably some people. Yeah. Brian Johnson might want a suppository or something. Don't know. He's into kind of weird stuff. [00:23:26] S1: Or like implanting poop inside you from someone else. Like, that's the hot That's what he's been doing. [00:23:30] S2: That's why I'm bringing it up. [00:23:31] S1: That would be good to show the press. Like, this guy is showing how he inserted someone else's feces, and it made him healthier. [00:23:37] S0: Because it [00:23:37] S2: took a turn. [00:23:38] S1: It took turn. Brian Johnson's But that's what [00:23:40] S2: we're trying to do is try to bait the press. [00:23:42] S1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you Show want to show them that sort of like a weirdness in your group or whatever. [00:23:47] S2: Well, actually, bring that up because did anybody see these peptide parties, Silicon Valley story trend? Who saw that story trend on social? Yeah, it looks like a third of the audience, a quarter of the audience. That was an example. They did a peptide party, and they're like, Yeah, people are shooting each other up. And you're like, With heroin? They're like... No, peptides. It's even worse. Your ACL is never gonna feel better. Your torn ACL will feel great. All right, let's give it up for a man. Well done. [00:24:22] S0: No Jason Kalicatis today. He's traveling the world doing many impressive, events, but you do have me, Lon Harris. I'm here in the studio and calling in from the East Coast, our old friend. He's back again. Alex Wilhelm. Thanks so much for being here, Alex.
00:24:22 · Lon Harris, Alex Wilhelm
[00:24:22] S0: No Jason Kalicatis today. He's traveling the world doing many impressive, events, but you do have me, Lon Harris. I'm here in the studio and calling in from the East Coast, our old friend. He's back again. Alex Wilhelm. Thanks so much for being here, Alex. [00:24:37] S3: Oh, it's such a treat. I love being Diet Coke Jason Standen. It's my favorite job to play. [00:24:42] S0: You're full sugar Coke, Jason Standen. How are you? [00:24:45] S3: Very sweet, Molly.