00:06:28 · Adam, Sachin, S3
[00:06:28] S2: Yeah. So we're just taking a quick break from the podcast, and we're here with our friend Ryan from Zed Law who's building a legal marketplace. And he's absolutely obsessed with helping startups access the top talent in legal. When we first got a coffee with Ryan, we thought [00:06:42] S1: he had something special. He had this kind of maniacal intensity intensity about really solving this problem properly. And it's something that we both resonate with. When I was in venture capital, I saw so many founders get burned by expensive law firms, and this was their runway. This was, you know, sometimes they mortgage their house and they were getting burnt with lawyers that didn't really do a good job. When did you first kind of realize that this was a problem? [00:07:01] S3: I think what we realized that for a while. I think other law firms have realized the same thing, but what we are trying to do is go, okay, well, founders at the early stage of their businesses don't wanna spend money on lawyers. Why should they? And so what we do is basically go, okay, lawyers that were a top tier firm have left. They're somewhere else. It could be a portfolio company. We're connecting those lawyers up to founders and they they just get startups in a way which lawyers and law firms don't. [00:07:26] S1: Yeah. That's that's fascinating. And what do you think has been the biggest challenge right now in building your business?
00:07:26 · Sachin, S3, Adam, Henry Innis
[00:07:26] S1: Yeah. That's that's fascinating. And what do you think has been the biggest challenge right now in building your business? [00:07:31] S3: I think it's getting... Like, the demand is outstrip supply right now. So, like, we are looking for top tier lawyers who are at startups who are happy to be connected to founders. Yeah. That's a good [00:07:42] S1: problem to have. And how can people find you? Zed.law. Just go to [00:07:45] S3: the website, zed.law is the best way to get in touch. [00:07:52] S2: And so like our mission is that we want to make the best tech content in the world. And we're just really trying to understand where the park is moving with it. How do [00:07:59] S0: you know objectively what you do? Like, because like early on in my business, right? Like it was very easy to bullshit myself and just sit there and I used to call it shit, fighting farts. Yeah. Like, you know, like you kind of get high on your own supply a bit. Like, you know, you're you're like sitting there and you're building stuff. How do you know objectively, like you're moving and improving week to week and stuff like that? Like what metrics do
00:08:23 · Adam
[00:08:23] S2: you look at? Yeah. I think like... So on on the media side, like, there is a lot of objective metrics, which are just updated all the time, which is amazing because you can run so many experiments. Like, for example, view count is just a really obvious one on certain channels. You can look at click rate of certain videos. You can look at retention. And so you can change like a title or thumbnail for a video, and you can see these like really instant AB tests. You can do all the same thing on social media, which is really, really great. But then there's probably something that's quite underrated about just in person feedback. How does someone's eyes light up when they talk about a certain type of content, or does it light up at all? For example, is... I think, like, what we're really trying to do is that you wanna get that first, like, you know, a thousand or 10,000, like, really true fans, people that absolutely love you. And I don't know if you get those true fans by people just liking your content, but by people absolutely loving it. And then you can see those reactions. Like, we're at an event on Friday with, like, 60 fans, and you could see certain people's reactions and their eyes really light up when they talk about this vlog or this podcast. And so that sort of like non data driven metrics can be really helpful as well.
00:09:25 · Sachin, Henry Innis, Adam
[00:09:25] S1: Yeah. And I think our numbers are going well. Like we only launched five weeks ago and like they've grown really well, but it's like, how do we get on the exponent? Because I think media is similar to almost, you know, anything in the venture capital landscape where it's power laws, and there's like those top one to 2% of creators that capture most of the economic value. And then there's gonna be like, I think a big tail in the future that make, you know, $100,150 k a nice living, but nothing to make like a big business out of. So, like, how do we get on those exponential kind of, like, kind of growth trajectories and what are the experiments we're run to get there? [00:09:57] S0: So, yeah, are you guys looking at merch at all? Like, because one of the things that I'd say, I I have a few friends who kind of do podcasts. Like one of the one of the people I know who like in podcasting is a group called Yes Theory. [00:10:08] S2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sachin's... [00:10:10] S1: Yeah. Love that. I love that. I usually wear the...
00:10:10 · Sachin, Henry Innis, Adam
[00:10:10] S1: Yeah. Love that. I love that. I usually wear the... [00:10:12] S0: Because I like... So my stepmother, she's the godmother to Thomas of Mysterio. Yeah. So funnily enough. So anyway, was at the wedding of my godmother, sorry, my stepmother and my father about three or four years ago. It was really 2019, I think. And I asked them how they make money because I was like, you know, I was genuinely curious. And and they said like, heaps of the revenue came from merch. And then I look at like podcasts like Hello Sport and stuff like that, which is another really, like, good podcast. Always doing workshops. Right? Like, seems like that's a cash cow. Are you guys thinking about that? There's a [00:10:53] S2: lot of people that ask for it. It just doesn't feel like that's the critically important thing right now. Yes. Like revenue is absolutely important, but like growing revenue while we can grow our channels and our view count increasingly. That's... Yeah.
00:10:53 · Adam, Sachin, Henry Innis
[00:10:53] S2: lot of people that ask for it. It just doesn't feel like that's the critically important thing right now. Yes. Like revenue is absolutely important, but like growing revenue while we can grow our channels and our view count increasingly. That's... Yeah. [00:11:06] S1: I also think that, like, that makes sense when you're a sports podcast or like a Yes Theory when you have maybe not the most monetizable audience in the world, but like all... Most of our audience will, you know, earn above a 100 k, work at a tech company, be movers and shakers in like the Australian industry and internationally. So we feel like there's better ways to monetize. And we also feel like it's probably too early right now for something like that. We have this kindling hat, which everyone seems to love. We might just give a budget, those away for free because that that hat's nice. But it's a it's a good point. Something we should think about more. And then the margins on merch are actually funnily enough quite high. [00:11:39] S0: Yeah. I feel they're not slight. And how do you guys think about, you know, you talk a lot about growing audience growing the situation on with the business. Right? How do you reach new audiences? Like, because that must be you mentioned the algorithm of YouTube and things like that and changing their thumbnails out. Like, what do you optimize towards to get there? How do expand the reach? [00:11:57] S2: I think like if we were to go, what is most important one is using algorithmic channels. [00:12:02] S0: Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. I was trying to get I was trying