Curious about the challenges of transitioning from a corporate environment in China to the bustling startup scene in Barcelona? How has she created an AI company and is bootstrapping her way up? How is their marketing strategy? How do you build domain authority for your startup? Join us as Tania Van Gastel, CEO and co-founder of The Multiverse AI, shares her unique journey. Her insights shed light on building a product-driven company amidst the AI frenzy, the significance of transparency, and the art of indie hacking.
Discover how the vibrant startup community in Barcelona, bolstered by events like Startup Grind, fosters innovation and authentic conversations, providing valuable platforms for growth and reflection.
AI, however, couldn't fix Àlex not picking the right microphone for recording nor his mistaking multiverse for metaverse in the middle of the conversation, so there's that.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, I'm Alex, ceo and founder of
MarksFaced, and in this episodeof Live on Marks, we bring you
Tania Van Gastel, ceo andco-founder of TheMultiverseai.
Themultiverseai is a coolcompany from Barcelona.
It's very product-driven, andwe contrast her background in
Chinese corporates and the newreality of building this new
(00:20):
company from the ground up,having to apply everything she
learned doing marketing on aglobal scale at the previous
company and now trying it withthe new trends where everybody's
so hyped up about AI, buildingcommunity and building a very
interesting personal branding.
We discussed with Tania theimportance of transparency in
(00:43):
nowadays bootstrap companies,indie hacking and the tradition
of building in public, and alsothe hurdles of SEO nowadays or
marketing in such a clutteredmarket, and much more.
We focus on not only thetechnology, but much more on the
marketing, distribution side ofthings and the question of the
(01:06):
day are you using AI in yourproject already?
Is it embedded in the product?
Is it you're using it to buildit, or there are certain
functionalities that use AI?
Let us know in the commentsection below and, without
further ado, let's jump rightinto the answer.
Let's go, tani.
How are you doing Nice productplacement there?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Let me just do it again.
I'm really good.
I'm really good.
It's been a long time sincewe've seen each other, I think
since the last Startup Grindevent you know the one with the
one right after I went on thepanel panel which you guys were
so graciously to invite me tothat must have been june.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, I think it was like may we had the event, like
june we had we had.
Yeah, uh, that one was good,it's a feel.
So it's good to have previousspeakers that come as part of
the audience.
You know, and that's somethingthat I pride myself into, that,
because normally events are, youknow, invites.
You know, normally it's likebig companies and c levels and
whatnot and and they, they fuckoff forever and they never
(02:16):
remember your, your name or yourevent or something like that.
I know people I'm like oh, theycome for the talk, they leave
right after the panel.
They don't stay for thenetworking.
At least in StartBrand for 10years we've always had everybody
come before the chat, stay forafter the panel for the entire
networking.
A couple exceptions here andthere, but usually people are
(02:37):
very generous and they remember,and we've had at least 2,000
people or more I mean 30, 40speakers, thomas ads in these.
Some of them are regularattendees.
That's a great KPI for me.
So thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
No, of course, I honestly love going to the
Startup Grind events, because Ithink in Barcelona it's kind of
rare to be able to gather thatkind of community in such a
great space as well.
Like, there are some otherstartup events as well going on,
but I think really, startupgrind is, you know, very unique
in a way that it really doesgather people are just super
(03:11):
passionate, and I think a lot ofthe events that I've been to,
where you know you always do theintroduction and I think you
kind of like set the stage forpeople to be very direct in how
they answer you, and that'sreally nice because it makes the
people feel very comfortable.
Sometimes it feels like a veryintimate event even.
I remember when I did the paneland it was with Ray, and so we
(03:33):
were very on the topic ofbootstrap, because both of our
businesses, including yours, areall bootstrapped, and so it was
really this time for us to golike okay, let's get real and
let's get dirty.
What are we actually doing?
How are we making this happen?
Why is there this narrative ofit's not possible and how are
(03:54):
you breaking those odds?
And I really, really enjoyedthat because I think, as a
business owner, you don't alwayshave so much time to think
about.
Let's take a step back.
What have we actually done andhow can we move that forward?
But at events like this, Iactually almost see it as a kind
of like brainstorming, whereyou know, sometimes the audience
asks very smart, very goodquestions and it really kind of
(04:17):
forces you to take a step backand be like, actually that's a
really good point, maybe we cando that and and maybe we can
think twice about that.
So I loved it and I willhappily go to any other startup
grind event.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I particularly enjoyed that event.
We did something very specialbecause we normally invite
people who have got at least 10million in annual revenue and
100 people in headcount.
I made an exception in thatevent.
I do an exception here andthere, but I wanted to see
whether we could get moreintimate conversation and that
(04:55):
happened, but I don't know if itwas because the size of the
companies was smaller or becauseyou fall to a bootstrap, right.
Let me rephrase this.
Let me rephrase this I usuallyhave got very good conversations
with people and I say, oh, youhave to be a very good speaker
for startup brand.
They come on stage and theyenclose themselves, they just
(05:15):
like they don't talk, they don'tshare monosyllabic answers,
maybe because they're nervous,maybe because they cannot share
right, but you nervous, maybebecause they cannot share right,
but you know right, one-to-one,super, super insightful.
They go in front of an audienceand it's like man, you know
pretty bland stuff, and wheredid we?
We got really naked.
(05:35):
Like we said, oh look, no, I'mactually not making revenue, or
I lost a client last weekbecause of that, or I struggle
with this.
I've got my mental issues anduh, it was really good.
We received the best feedbackabout that event.
So, yeah, yeah, company scienceor bootstrap.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
let's get this started I think it's a bit of
both, I mean.
So I've worked in corporate I Iused to work at oneplus, which
is a really big smartphonecompany android smartphones and
so I was in the marketingdepartment, specifically in
public relations.
So a lot of my job was hey, ourCEO, our team lead, our C-level
(06:17):
is going out to talk in frontof these journalists and what
are they going to say?
We cannot just let them loose,right?
That's not a thing.
They need to be briefed on whattalking points you can actually
share with an audience.
How are you going to, like,media train somebody?
How are you actually going tolet them say things that they
are able to say, that they don'texpose the organization in some
way?
(06:37):
You know to like further anarrative about a company.
And so I think, when you're areally big organization, you
should do that.
You have to do that because youcan't just let everybody you
know go out like Elon Musk andlike just say whatever comes to
his mind.
And I think that makes a lot ofsense for big organizations
because they have a certain kindof responsibility to people who
(06:58):
are buying their products or topeople who are working with
them.
And so I think, unless youreally have like a super, you
know, independent founder or CEO, which in larger organizations
is so difficult to maintain.
It's really hard for people tojust go out there and kind of
like share exactly what theywant to say.
And so in bootstrap, you know,a big thing about bootstrap that
(07:19):
I always vouch for is that wehave absolute freedom over a lot
of our decisions.
We don't have investors when itcomes to talking about VC world
, we don't have to spend timemanaging those relationships and
stuff, and so it makes it a loteasier in that regard.
So I think company size forsure can really inhibit a lot of
(07:49):
free talking that we like to doat events like that, but also
because you know yourcompetition is listening right,
you achieve a certain size andeverybody's like, ah, how can we
gatekeep more information fromthe competitor?
When we're bootstrap, I think wehave probably had a lot of
learnings from the community.
Like I'm super embedded in thebootstrap community on Twitter.
I mean a lot of Slack channels,discords.
(08:10):
It's amazing, it's it's such agreat rush to feel like you know
, you're sharing your MRR,you're building in public,
you're talking about.
These are the things thatreally worked for me and it
feels like you're in it together, but then I think you get to a
certain size and people stoptalking about it because they're
like shit, if I can do it and Itell them how to do it, then
maybe they're going to do it tooand they'll become my
(08:32):
competitor, right?
So I think it's a weird littleloop that we're in, where it's
both company size and it makesit really hard for people to be
very straightforward.
Do you feel the same way withagency?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, for instance, when you mentioned that we're
able to disclose moreinformation, and I find this our
revenue is public.
Every year, we publish it andsome people are like why do you
do that?
Some competitors we have anadvantage.
What competitors?
We're an agency.
We've got thousands ofcompetitors.
I'm not having to worry aboutone competitor that they will be
(09:09):
like oh, they havesignificantly less revenue.
Therefore, I can raise morefrom my investors because I know
I'm number one in the market.
In this case, we're just a dropin the ocean.
Therefore, it makes little tono difference whether we publish
this or not.
On the contrary, it makeslittle to no difference whether
we publish this or not.
On the contrary, it's going tohelp me.
My reasoning is if I publishthat my revenue is 2.5 million
(09:32):
this year, or projected to hitalmost 3 this year, I will not
be hit by companies that mightinquire to buy me if my revenue
is not enough.
So put it another way like ifI'm private about that, a lot of
companies will come.
Oh, so let's have aconversation about M&A, for
(09:52):
instance, and once you get tothe specifics, they find out
that your revenue is below 10million.
Then they'll be like oh, we'renot interested and you're
wasting your time.
In this case, I'm just keepingit ahead, also because I'm not
interested in M&A or selling,but you know, I'm just saving
them and myself time.
Just an example.
(10:13):
There are probably more prosthan cons, but at least this one
is where I think it'sparticularly helpful to have
open data.
One thing that is not so goodabout that and that's going to
be another cocktail is a lot ofpeople building in public Not
only bootstrap businesses, butall the businesses that they
have raised funds and they'reopen about their revenue and
KPIs and metrics and whatnot.
(10:33):
They only do it on the way upBecause it's cool to show oh
yeah, we're drawing 40% yearover year, we have this KPIs
like here, it's always up to theright, we've accomplished these
new goals and whatnot.
However, it is very rare thatthey do these on the way down or
when they hit a plateau.
(10:54):
I'm saying this because theother day I saw the guys from
Buffer.
I think the CEO of Bufferpublished a tweet about that and
said like look, the metrics forthis year are like this we're
still super profitable, we stillhave a ton of money in the bank
, but we get a full show we'renot growing and I said promise
to you, because nobody does thatOnce you stop growing, you stop
(11:14):
sharing.
How do you feel about that?
You're still on the way up.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
As far as you know, alex, because I don't know.
I know we're fine, we're doingwell.
I think it's a really validpoint to make because, because I
think whenever you're being inpublic, you're always thinking
about the narrative.
You're always thinking aboutlike okay, what is the next
thing?
You know that is like happening, that I'm gonna make a linkedin
post about a twitter post orwhatever.
Because I think there's thisthing where people, unless they
(11:45):
can frame it as a learning, as alesson.
I learned from this lessonbecause I failed, but now I
fixed it.
I know the solution peopledon't share, because then
they're in that thing.
Right, I think the lesson isalways so good to share, but I
think it's only afterwards.
I think that's a solution and Ithink my take on this honestly
(12:06):
is I think, through a lot oftrial and error, I have shared a
lot more failures andchallenges, because I know that
makes me the most honest and themost trustworthy.
By extension, and I think thatis something that I've only
really started to value in otherpeople, as I really started to
(12:28):
pay attention to these lessons.
Because here's the thing, right, if you've never struggled,
then what do I have to learnfrom you?
If it was all easy, right.
Where's your story aboutyourself?
Where is?
How do you see yourself?
Are you always the winner?
Are you always this, are youalways that?
And I think, after you knowbeing very like, much more
(12:48):
embedded in this, in thisecosystem, I learned that you
can learn so much more fromfailure than from from success,
and I I genuinely like, I'm very, very serious about that
because I think you know a lotof people.
They see somebody who is alwayslike on the up, always.
All of that.
That's a social media narrative.
That's a social media narrativedesigned to gaslight you, and
(13:12):
that's okay.
That's not a bad thing.
I think that's like how a lotof people perceive that as well.
But I think the true honesty, ifyou're able to be very clear
about you know what was hard,what was challenging, what was
difficult and what have youlearned from that that is so
interesting, because that tellsme that you were smart, because
you had a problem that youneeded to solve and you solved
(13:32):
it Right.
So I think that's a it's a muchmore interesting, a much more
interesting thing to learn about.
And generally, the people whohave you know I don't know if,
with this, the people who've hadthe most success have failed
the most.
And I say that because thatmeans that for you, trying is a
habit.
It's not something you did onceyou lost and you didn't persist
(13:54):
.
You persisted in your failure.
I generally believe that peoplewho persist in this and keep
trying, at some point it willwork out great.
It might not be right away, butif you have a habit of not
giving up and working reallyhard to achieve your goals, it
will happen.
It just will, because that's atime thing, that's a when, not
(14:15):
if yeah, it's more like about.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
it's about trying.
You say, right, people who aresuccessful are people who drive
a lot.
As an analogy, for instance, Istopped using GPS when I drive
because I realized I couldn'tremember the way to places.
I was going on autopilot and Iwas not trying to flex my
muscles, mental muscles, like oh, what do I have to do here, why
(14:41):
am I heading north when Ishould be driving east and
whatnot?
And I realized that I was usingit even to drive to places.
I knew where to go and how togo, how to get there right.
And so you become lazy, yououtsource that part of the brain
and therefore, if you do that,you start doing that with other
parts of your life and so youlose capacity.
(15:04):
And so for me, that's ananalogy, also for business.
If you go up the beaten path,then you will exercise other
parts of your brain, like how tosolve this puzzle, how to
overcome an economic downturn,how to fire an employee, how to
solve the conflict betweenpartners and whatnot, how to
fire an employee, how to solveconflict between partners and
(15:24):
whatnot.
But if you only do the you knowthe safe way, chances are
you're not going to learn muchand in favor of wins.
That's okay, but when theheadwinds come, you will be
struggling a lot or you will notbe able to solve even the most
basic puzzle.
So let's just give some contextto the others.
We still haven't talked aboutwhat you do, your company.
(15:45):
So people might be guessing hey, what is this?
Because, especially with peoplelistening to the audio version,
they haven't seen the coffeemug with a sticker on it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Hey, so I'm the co-founder of the Multiverse AI.
What we do is we create AIheadshots, and so why is this
important?
Essentially, when you're abusiness owner whether you're
doing agency or you're sellingsomething else maybe you have a
sales team, a marketing team.
You're probably going to have alanding page or a pitch deck
and you probably want to showyour team on it, and so those
(16:18):
photos are really importantbecause they are a first
indication of how you can buildtrust right.
Whether it's your Mars space,you have a team of developers,
or you are selling carcomponents and you have a sales
team, you want your sales teamto look trustworthy, because
that's a direct conversion point.
And so if you have a team thatis remote, like, potentially,
(16:38):
mars space does whether that isfive people, 50 people or 500
people you have a huge problem.
How are you going to get thosephotos?
You can go and send outphotographers to each one of
those people.
It's very expensive, it's veryannoying and also it's going to
be very difficult to get acohesive photo right.
So you want the same background, you want the same kind of
(17:00):
lighting.
It's not really feasible to getthat through any other means,
and so what you need is you needan AI headshot generator.
You need to go tothemultiverseai and you need to
upload 12 photos of yourself,and then we will give you a
hundred AI headshots.
You pick the one that you like.
You apply your background to it.
(17:20):
You apply the black t-shirtthat maybe you want Mars-based
staff to wear in their photo.
You put the logo in the back.
You're done.
You apply the black t-shirtthat maybe you want Mars-based
staff to wear in their photo.
You put the logo in the back.
You're done.
You've created a perfectlanding page for your 550 or 500
staff.
They all have great backgroundthe exact same background, if
you want.
They all have the same kind ofoutfit and they all have a
really great professional photoof themselves that looks like it
(17:43):
was taken in the same place,but actually it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I was laughing because this was exactly a pain
point that we experienced a fewyears ago.
For the first five years, mostof our people were in Barcelona
and so we, whenever we met, itwas, like you know, every
Wednesday we met in a workingspace and then eventually we
started enlarging the team andwe had some people outside
Barcelona, but we would gettogether four times a year, and
(18:10):
we still do.
We call it the Martian days,but for whatever reason, those
days like we were not in a roomwith a white wall or we didn't
have a photographer, right.
So then we had the first 10people in the company had
perfect picture of the same day,same lighting, same camera,
whatnot and then we had two orthree that looked like a patch
(18:31):
we did at home.
It didn't work out and so it wasalways a problem with the
previous website.
That's why, on this website,instead of going to AI which we
didn't think that was an optionwe didn't know we said like fuck
it, we had seen other companies, staff, more casual pictures of
them doing their stuff.
Right, we've got a guy doingthat weightlifting, another guy
(18:54):
just hiking in the mountains andyou know, our lady, our head of
people, is spinning in a parkand stuff like that.
You know, maybe it's less, lessprofessional, but it's more
humane, like I don't know.
It's a balance.
It depends on what you want,but it's a real pain point for
remote companies.
I give you that.
I give you that.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
We know, because we've tested a lot of different
pain points in this one.
It's because this is the onethat people are like, yeah, that
it sucks.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
It's this one I'm not like for corporates that they
have like larger teams and theyrequire more like structure and
they want they want to becorporate like, oh you know,
with the king t-shirt.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Actually it's a lot of startups, because we also do
casual photos.
It's not necessarily like asuit and tie Again, it can be a
t-shirt, can be whateverbackground you want.
The problem is that a lot ofpeople send in photos of
themselves that are terrible andare not really presentable, and
so it does persist.
I will say there are also, youknow, I would say personally,
(19:56):
for me, the biggest problem isthat I hate taking photographs.
I hate posing specifically fora photo.
I kind of freeze up and I do avery awkward I've been told,
very awkward laugh, and so Ifind it very difficult to pose
for a professional photo where Idon't look like I.
It just looks very strange.
I don't prefer it.
(20:16):
Also, anybody, I think, who'sever gotten professional photos
taken?
If you're, you know you need itfor your LinkedIn or your
keynote speaker or whatever.
It's a terrible process.
It'll probably cost you $400.
You'll need a full day.
You'll get the photos in liketwo months.
After editing, you need to getprofessional hair and makeup
done.
If you're a woman, it's anightmare process, and so for me
(20:41):
, I personally love solving thisproblem because I really think
it's something where you know,as you get more in the world of
social media and even thingslike LinkedIn, it becomes a very
important thing, the way thatyou represent yourself online or
offline, and so that firstimpression matters so much,
(21:04):
whether you're a job seeker,whatever you are, it's really
important.
It can really help you a lot,because we've all had that first
impression when we go to aLinkedIn profile and we think,
oh shit, this person looks solegit.
And it's a very short,instinctive thing that we think
right, and it's not evennecessarily based on the copy or
whatever.
A lot of the time it's based onthat photograph, which is such
a primitive lizard braininstinct thing of us, but it
(21:25):
does occur, and so being able tohave full control over that
perception, I think, issomething that's super valuable
that we are able to give all ofour customers.
Are you?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
finding, like the, the minute you mentioned the, uh
you, you know the thedifficulty of finding that good
photo.
Like you don't like posing.
There's like the issue withwomen having to wear makeup or
having to, you know, dress acertain way, or finding the good
lighting conditions, andwhatnot.
Are you finding people whoreject the idea of?
(21:58):
Like, oh, that doesn't lookexactly like me because it's AI?
Because I'll tell you somethinglike most people have got a
very outdated picture on theirwebsite and they don't look like
themselves nowadays.
So it's just people taking ashit on AI.
But like, for instance, I had apicture of me with 10 kilos
more, no beard, and I really Ithink I would look closer to my
(22:20):
real self today with an AIversion of a picture from two
days ago than a picture taken 10years ago, right?
So I don't know, maybe peopleare just, you know, beating on
AI just because it's AI, it's sobad.
Do you find that?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
100%.
So it happens.
So much, alex, it's such a goodpoint.
Here's the thing we alreadyintroduced self-bias when people
upload their photos, becausepart of our process is that we
can't guess what you look like.
Our AI model needs to trainbased on the 12 photos that you
input.
Guess what kind of photos thatpeople are putting up themselves
(22:57):
.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Super different right or the Tinder pictures.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
So very different, like it's the photos that you
think you look best, and sosometimes it's like you were
filtered.
Sometimes it's like onlywedding photos, sometimes it's
this, sometimes it's that, andyour results look like your
input photos.
This is the whole baseproposition, right, and so
people seem to have a verystrange idea of what they look
like, in some cases where it'slike I still found good photos,
(23:26):
but these are weird and we showyou, tell them, like it's one of
your input photos, like onewith beer, the other one with
sunglasses, the other one likeskiing and stuff like that right
yeah, it's part of it's.
Actually, this is one of ourfirst big iterations, because
we've done a lot, we've shippeda lot of updates to our product,
and one of the key things thatwe realize is that we really
(23:48):
need to guide people throughwhat is a good input photo.
How can we help you to uploadthe exact photos that you need
in order to get the best results?
And that's a very strong UXthing that you need to think
about, because you need toeducate your users in a short
amount of time and reallyalleviate that problem, because
they don't know it's an issueand you don't have any time to
(24:08):
educate them about how AI works.
So, yeah, it's a very goodpoint and it's.
Yeah, it's interesting howpeople's interesting, how people
will view photos of themselves,whether they are real or are AI
, because we've all seen badphotographs of ourselves, where
we're like I don't relate tothat person, but it is you, so
(24:28):
it's very interestingbootstrapping this.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
We briefly covered the topic of bootstrapping
earlier in the conversation, butmore specifically to your
company, when did you realize?
Because when you started, aiwas already a thing and you
probably were leveraging thefact that you're sending these
photos to a model and I don'tknow if you were using
third-party libraries or you'reusing your own models and
whatnot.
How did you figure out theeconomics?
(24:55):
I can bootstrap this versus Ineed to raise some funds to
train models and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
The big key thing here is that we have a super
clear, super clear valueproposition.
You give us money, we give youphotos, and so, in that sense,
it actually works very it's veryclear for the user what they
get out of it.
We're not a huge platform.
We're not a full photo studiofor everything that you can
imagine.
(25:23):
We are AI photography forportraits Super, super, super
specific, and that, from amarketing point of view, is much
easier to market than anythingelse.
Right?
You're talking about theeconomics of our product
specifically.
We are a one-time service.
It costs $29 now, but weactually started from it costing
(25:45):
$9 back when we launched lastyear in April, and we didn't
launch like a business, likestraight away.
We were hoping that, you know,hopefully by end of that year we
would have a couple of sales orsomething like that.
But very quickly, you know,after seeding the product with a
couple of websites and postingit to Reddit relentlessly, we
(26:10):
realized that actually we have areally strong product on our
hand because it is super clear,it is really good margins as
well, and so it really wassomething where we as a super
small team of like only threepeople, were able to scale this,
which was very surprising, Ithink, to all of us and, I think
, still very surprising to mostpeople who we talked to about
(26:31):
this, because people don'tunderstand how many users exist
out in the world and you don'tunderstand that unless you get
your first hundred or thousandcustomers that are names that
you don't have never, ever heardof.
But I still, to this day, get anotification on a Discord
channel for every purchase thatis made, and so that channel is
(26:53):
muted now, but I was followingvery, very closely and every
name you see, you're like Idon't know this person, who are
they?
But they exist out there.
People want your product.
It's really a key of two bigthings.
How will people who need yourproduct because there is a pain
point this is not a vitamin,this is a painkiller how can
(27:14):
businesses actually getphotographs for their staff, for
their teams, for themselves asa job seeker, as somebody on
LinkedIn or whatever?
How can they get thatphotograph?
And then, secondly, how canthey find you?
So you have to go through theprocess of if I'm trying to find
this kind of service, where amI going to start looking?
And then you put your productthere wherever they are right,
(27:36):
because this is really somethingwhere, if you're able to be
found and I think a lot ofmodern day marketing really is
about you know that there areusers.
If you have some degree ofproduct market fit now, how will
they find you?
What are you doing to be found?
And we did a lot of things tobe found, and that is something
that you know.
Really, for the first couple ofmonths was super, super strong,
(27:58):
still continues to be, becausewe are still not doing any paid
advertising.
I'm not of the belief that thisactually works very well for a
product like ours.
And so where are we?
Where are we putting ourselves?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
You mentioned Reddit, which is a very good starting
point to start talking aboutgrowth, right?
So most bootstrap businessesare product product-led growth.
Basically, they start with witha kind of like a growth
campaign a lot of content,inbound marketing and reddit and
product hunt seem to be theplaces to go to right.
But the fact that you mentionedthis thing about oh, I don't
(28:36):
know his name, so I know youknow you launch your product the
first day.
It's all your relatives, youruni friends, your you know
industry friends, ex-workers andstuff like that.
Fine, but they are a finitenumber of persons in this set.
But eventually you're like whothe fuck is this person?
(28:58):
Right?
I guess that also happens whenyou launch on Reddit which is
like, wow, we got 5,000downloads today.
The next day, zero.
Why?
Because there are otherproducts out there right.
So how do you deal with thepressure of?
It went really well on day one,day two no signups or no
payments.
I'm struggling with thisbecause I launched my website
(29:19):
today and I know I'm gettinglike a spike of subscribers
today and I know tomorrow I'llhave like two instead of
hundreds.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I love that.
I love that question.
Let me tell you how to marketyour website.
All humble, very humble.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Let's do it let's do it, any consultation.
So I think people very easilydiscredit the, the brainstorm,
and so here's what I mean withthat.
There's two big things that wereally did that, uh, helped in
an insane amount, and the firstof that was to start super
(29:58):
seriously on SEO, becauseanybody worth their salt.
If they have a problem, theywill Google it.
If you're not Googling theproblems that you have, you
probably don't want them as aconsumer, because that means
maybe for Mars.
Basically, they cannotcommunicate the kind of thing
that they want.
So hopefully your clients willbe Googling things.
Who are your clients?
Right?
(30:18):
So be very, very specific Formultiverse.
For who is it important thatthey look good on a photograph?
Who is having these problems?
Here are our SEO articles howto look great as a female real
estate agent.
Real estate agents care a lotabout their professional
(30:41):
representation because they arebasically freelancers slash
entrepreneurs who have to care alot about the way that they are
represented to their clientelebecause it's a very personal
relationship, specifically inthe US, and so this is a very
specific target audience, andit's a target audience that we
have a lot of success with,because we've created a lot of
content around this specifictarget audience.
(31:02):
Second, again how do I create alanding page for my team?
How do I create a team gallery?
These are all kind of liketopics where, if you really
think about, I'm a businessowner or I need a professional
photo what am I Googling?
Right, it's not just how do Iget an AI headshot.
That's not the only thing.
There are so many differentways that there are people who
(31:25):
need your product and they willgo and Google very specific
things.
It's your job to think aboutthat.
You can go and talk to GPTabout this.
You can ask for a hundreddifferent potential target
audiences and you're going to gothrough that list and you're
going to decide that maybe fiveor 10 of these are worth
building each like five or 10articles around, and then you
(31:46):
can go and build that.
And that's a very specificthing.
And I'm going to tell you it'sgoing to take about four to six
months for any SEO traffic toeven go through there.
But once that starts coming in,once people are actually
reading your content andengaging with the content,
you're going to see that there'sa huge difference in the target
audiences that are actuallyconverting into a click-through.
(32:09):
And so when I open up my GoogleAnalytics backend, I can see
very clearly who are actuallythe people who care enough,
where my hypothesis was correctthat they care so much that
they'll actually buy somethinglike this.
The second thing is to be verycreative when you have very low
budgets.
We are very creative when itcomes to having absolutely no
(32:30):
money to spend on marketing, andso you know, part of that is
going out to speaking events andconferences and putting
stickers on your mug, on yourpurse, on your whatever.
I was fortunate enough to do aspeaking event at the W last
week and that was great becausewe were able to connect with so
many people who actually neededsomething like this.
(32:52):
But I think peopleunderestimate very easily the
power of the internet, right?
I think of the internet asvirtual real estate.
What positions are beingoccupied in Google search
listings?
If I now Google softwarecompany Barcelona, will Mars
Base come up first?
Who will come up first?
(33:13):
Is there a list of the top fivetop 10?
If that doesn't exist, can I goand create that top five or top
10?
Will other software companiescome to me and ask to be put on
that top five, top 10?
Because that means that Icontrol all of the listings and
all of who is being found andwho is not being found, and you
can charge for those listings aswell, and so I think there's a
(33:34):
billion things to be done inthat world.
Here's another kind of tip.
One of the most, I think, funthings that we've done for SEO
is I've created a LinkedInvirtual influencer.
His name is Alan.
This is not actually a realperson.
This is me posting under adifferent profile, and the
(33:57):
reason that you want to do thatis because websites like
LinkedIn, like Medium, they havevery high domain authority.
Domain authority is how Googledetermines if a website is great
or if a website is shit, and soLinkedIn has built an amazing
domain authority.
The LinkedIn virtual influencerthat I use is constantly posting
(34:19):
Every week.
He's posting about AI headshots, about real estate photography,
about photography for businessowners, about different target
audiences that I won't share,because my competitors are
listening to this.
Competitors are listening tothis, but a lot of different
things he's posting about, andhe's posting about this
specifically, because you go andlook at a LinkedIn article and
(34:42):
you see this guy and you thinkthis is not created by AI.
This is created by a realperson.
It is.
It's created by me, though, andit's not on my profile, because
all of my audience is going tothink this girl is obsessed with
real estate and other stuff.
Why is she doing this?
(35:02):
And so it's a great way toseparate that out and still
build a great audience and bevery high ROI in the way that
you're spending your time.
So for Mars Base virtualinfluencer, thinking about your
hundred different targetaudiences, be as niche as you
can.
Get really really specific,weirdly specific.
If you think that it's weirdenough, then go and get that,
because the more specific thatyou are, the more that your
(35:24):
target audience thinks oh my God, they totally understand me.
I am totally looking to buildan AI project that combines Ruby
on Rails with Python, with thisfor a project management
software.
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
These answers are priceless.
Thank you for the freeconsultation.
You're paying me with your time, so there's so many great
points here.
My memory is that of a goldfish, so I'm trying my best to
remember everything you said.
But earlier in the answer youmentioned that you or you, you
(36:07):
assumed that you nailed theideal customer profile right off
the bat, or that's whattranspired to me.
Right, you said like yeah, wewent after this and we marketed
for them.
We created these specificlisticles, articles or how to
look great if you're a realestate agent and whatnot, right?
I said that's fucking brilliant.
But most startups, they don'tknow who the ideal customer is.
(36:28):
They still they haven't figuredout the product because they
haven't found the real or thedefinitive customer, right.
So in your case, how did youknow that was and were you
exactly like spot on on thefirst product iteration?
Or was it because you know,your years in corporate
marketing helped you to maybe doa more thought up profiling of
(36:52):
your icd and then say like I'mgoing to market for them right
off the bat?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I failed so much, Alex.
I really failed so much when itcomes to finding the right
target audience.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Got feeling, or was it like I'll?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
tell you exactly why.
This is how I data right,because I think most marketing
that is being done is honestlybeing done wrong, because you're
not able to distinguish betweenbranding and marketing, and so
branding is this very long-termthing, for example and I mean
it's not just branding but, likedifferent facets of marketing,
(37:32):
are not data-based it's verydifficult for you to understand
if something's working or not,and if it's very difficult for
you to understand if something'sworking or not, and if it's
very difficult for you tounderstand that it doesn't work
for Bootstrap.
Bootstrap is about surviving,it's about making money, it's
about building a business, andso I don't engage in the part of
marketing.
That is Sorry.
I try to minimize my time onthe marketing that is not
(37:53):
data-led, that does not resultin conversions that I cannot
measure.
So this is what happens I buildout five to 10 different target
audiences and I build somecontent around some of it, and I
make a hypothesis that at leastone or two of them will work.
It's trial and error, it'sspaghetti method, because the
(38:13):
point is you almost never haveenough information to know
exactly if you're right or not,and so actually, a lot of the
time, it's faster to go out andexecute, because by the time
that you've gathered enoughinformation to know, with 100%
interval or 95% interval, thatyou are correct, you're too late
(38:33):
.
So I really suggest, like, goout and execute on the thing.
You will get the data exactlyabout whether or not it will
work in your Google Analyticsbackend.
I built a team, 10 landingpages or 10 articles for
different target audiences.
My Google Analytics will tellme which one resulted in a click
on the website, in a click onthis specific button, in a click
(38:56):
on another specific button.
By the way, posthog is anotheramazing analytics platform that
I really recommend.
That is free, also, just likeGoogle Analytics.
But no, alex, I've beencompletely wrong about so many
target audiences and I think Imay still be wrong about the
target audiences that I haveright now, because do I think
(39:17):
that you know the 30K US revenuethat we're at right now is like
the upper limit?
No, I don't.
I'm sure that there's a lot ofhidden target audiences that I
don't know about, that are justin my periphery, but you know,
the biggest challenge inbootstrap is not your strategy,
it's time.
How can I split myself up in 10different people and go and
(39:38):
reach those target audiences,and so I think, yeah, it's very
helpful to have specific data.
The only way that you will getspecific data and that you can
be data-driven is if you go outand execute and if you get the
data that it actually works,because nobody can tell you.
That's the problem, it doesn'texist.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
How long did it take to get your first customer,
first paid customer?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
That was through Reddit, and the way that we did
it through Reddit was I searchedfor remote.
I think it was back then.
We weren't B2B yet.
We only started being B2B inDecember and I think back then I
searched for a neatprofessional photo look bad,
something like that.
Reddit, one of the more popularReddit posts and then we
(40:27):
commented oh, we built thisthing, it's called the
multiverse, check it out andpeople actually bought it.
It was very interesting.
The thing with Reddit is younever know how many people,
because Reddit doesn't sharethat.
You never know how many peopleare looking at a specific post.
You only know how many peoplecomment on it or upvote, and
most people on Reddit arelurkers by far.
It's like, I think, the stats.
(40:49):
I'm one.
I am one, exactly Me too, andyou know, in a lot of subreddits
I'm not vocal at all.
I'm there to get information,not share it, and so I think you
know people think of theinternet as this like vast place
.
It's not.
The internet is a village.
You can communicate withanybody and you can see
(41:13):
everything in a lot of forums,and I can tell you the amount of
you know posts.
I can tell you exactly whichposts will rise to the top when
you Google AI headshot Reddit,because I've commented on every
single one of those multipletimes, so it's one of those
things where it's not a blackbox.
There are SEO platforms likeAhrefs, which I highly recommend
(41:35):
, where you can track all ofthat, and I very specifically
track all the rankings that theMultiverse AI is on for a lot of
different keywords, and that'svery, very important.
It's really our main measure ofsuccess and main measure of
revenue.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
One question I didn't get to ask you on the Startup
Plan panel and then it's beenkind of like bugging me here for
months and I'm like next timeI'm going to ask this, and
especially now, because we'redrilling down on content
marketing, right and brandingand SEO and authority Yet your
(42:12):
company's called the MultiverseAI.
Why not avatars or great photosor something like?
Something that has got thekeywords embedded, yeah, in the
domain of your website?
Yeah, multiverse, which issomething that you know.
It was revoked by facebook backin the day.
Not saying like multiverse isnot a great name, but the
(42:34):
association is not direct.
Like my brain doesn't lead thisto.
I'm not.
I'm saying the name of yourcompany and there's like, oh, no
, it's professional AI and it'slike, okay, okay, okay, okay.
It's like I don't make theconnection.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, Is is because we were we were dumb I'm just
gonna go out and say it like westarted as wanting to create not
just professional photos, butalso photos where you could put
yourself as a star wars figure,as a marvel figure, and you
(43:09):
really wanted to tap into thisidea of, like you can see
yourself in a multiverseparallel to yours, right?
And you were like, oh, this isa great idea, let's you know,
see if it's available.
The multiverse dot ai, not eventhe multiverse ai, something
else, the multiverse dot ai beextra confusing.
I mean, I'm telling youstraight there's nothing.
(43:31):
There's nothing extra, there'sno hidden meaning for this.
We've thought about changing aname, but because we are also so
, because we've also spent somuch, you know, time on seo,
because that is one of our mainstrategies, that domain name is
actually super valuable, right?
So our domain authority isreally high.
(43:53):
We're like like 50 plus, whichis great for a website that has
only been in existence for ayear and a half and we've
exchanged a lot of backlinks.
It's really important to usthat that domain stays.
I also think there's anotherthing at play here, which is
when we started, we decided thatwe did not want to spend too
much time thinking about thename, because, as someone who
(44:18):
has thought before aboutstarting a company or has really
in the past only been workingin corporate, I think it's very
easy to get bogged down bydetails and so no amount of you
know extra kind of like thinkingabout this website name brand.
All of that was really aboutshit.
(44:38):
Should we spend two more weeksthinking about names, coming up
with different ideas, when, tobe honest, you already don't
know if you're going to make apivot or not?
Right, so you could usesomething super bland?
For us, it didn't work outbecause we didn't go with the
idea of living in a multiverse,except a multiverse where you're
more professional and you cantake good photos of yourself.
(44:59):
But no, there's no SEO, there'sno hidden domain thing here at
all.
Yeah, it's something that we'vekind of stuck by, and I'm
actually very happy that we didas well, because I'm not opposed
to this name and I think,honestly, the whole overthinking
about name takes a lot of timeaway also from the business
itself.
At some point of the brandingperspective sense, though, yeah,
(45:22):
100 and that's what?
Speaker 1 (45:25):
uh, maybe one thing about bootstrap businesses
because we're not running shorton time, we tend to do more or
do to waste more time on mentalwonkery like that, because it's
like, okay, yeah, we, we don'thave a vc pressing us to the
leaves and pushing us to wastemore time on mental wonkery like
that, because it's like, okay,yeah, we don't have a VC
pressing us to the knees orpushing us to spend more money
and time is not running out.
We don't have a countdown timeron the top of our head saying
(45:45):
like, oh, in 12 months you'regoing to die.
So we're like, yeah, fine,whatever, we got recurring MRR
and we can spend more weeks onthe logo or the website,
whatever.
No, my general advice is alwayslaunch and you'll figure out.
I built my website in the spaceof a week.
It's the third version of mywebsite.
(46:05):
We've been together for threeyears, right, but I wanted to
give it a twist.
Not only like me, my blog nowit's something else.
But, as I said yesterday, twodays before, I was like I could
launch now, but there are somany bugs and I don't have the
name and I'm not sure aboutwhether to do like a free versus
paid subscription, andyesterday I was like I don't
(46:27):
figure out any of these.
Fuck it, I'm shipping it.
It's like a change of the mainon the web and today some people
are writing oh there's this bughere, this bug there.
I don't understand this.
Who's your ideal customer?
Like, I don't know, I'm goingto figure it out, I don't need
it.
This is a side hustle, you know,but to your point, we
oftentimes spend too much timeon this, especially for startups
, and they're like dude, youjust worth the funding.
(46:52):
You cannot spend a single minutethinking about the name.
Of course, the longer you gowith the wrong name, it's going
to be a hindrance at the end,right, and the longer you take
to do a rebranding, if the brandis not spot on, it's going to
hurt you.
But we'll cross the river.
When we get to the river andwe're not yet at the river, we
don't even see the fucking riveryet.
(47:13):
We don't even know where we areor if there's a river, right.
So in this regard, 100 spot on,and it's it's strange that you
have this realization.
Coming from corporate, weusually have all the time in the
world to do all the mental onecareer and involve 12 people in
the meetings to decide on thebranding and postpone these for
(47:34):
three months.
So like oh, you know we, youknow we haven't reached
consensus.
We need to sign off a wealthyfor people.
We'll figure out next year.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, I think the alignment thing within corporate
is such a big issue.
You know a lot of people liketo ask me don't you think AI is
going to take over?
Blah, blah, blah.
And then I try to ask them like, do you think that companies
are only about executing work?
I can guarantee you that theyare not.
You think about all the dynamicsthat are at play.
(48:06):
You think about really thequestion why isn't everybody
doing this?
Why isn't everybody on thelatest generation of technology?
Why isn't everybody usingGoogle Sheets?
A lot of people are stillsending PowerPoints to each
other.
What is that about?
Right?
That's a very real thing, right?
Like it's really interesting toanswer that question because you
(48:28):
realize two things, which is,first of all, management,
honestly, is a very challengingthing to do.
You don't just tell somebodywhat to do and then they do it.
That's not how it works.
You need leadership, you needteamwork, you need all of those
things to actually makesomething happen, and in large
companies, in largeorganizations, that is an
entirely different scale ofbeing.
(48:48):
Second of all, people who arevery smart in large
organizations are really aboutadvancing themselves and getting
promoted in that environmentand, of course, doing the work
of the company but doing thework of the company.
In between, having 60 meetingsthat week and talking to
everybody, getting alignment,getting stakeholders buy-in,
(49:11):
doing the prep before a meetingto convince a person it's very
challenging to get somethingdone.
Here's the thing that isdifferent, though I worked in a
Chinese company in China where Iworked 996 hours, and 996 is
the idea that you work 9 am till9 pm six days a week, and so
you might think that's a bitcrazy.
I didn't do 996.
(49:32):
I did like 9 am to 10am to 10or 11pm most days and not on the
weekend, and so it wasn't achill environment where there
were no deadlines.
It was a super intensity, highpressure environment where you
had to move fast, really, reallyfast.
Most people in this environment, by the way, are also under 30,
definitely under 35.
(49:52):
I think there were very littlepeople who were over the age of
35 in the companies that I'veworked at, and so I think it's
an amazing environment to reallylearn a lot, soak up a lot of
information, because they willgive you an insane amount of
responsibilities to push you tolearn how to manage those, and
you do, but it's very, verychallenging at first because
(50:15):
your learning curve is verysteep, especially in your first
couple of months, and so it'sreally something where it's yeah
, it's extremely challenging,but you grow through it, and so
I think that is something thatin Asia they do amazingly well.
You learn a lot, you're reallychallenged to perform.
You learn a lot.
You're really challenged toperform.
(50:35):
I think in Europe a lot of thetime it depends we're
generalizing at this point butin Europe a lot of the time you
only get more responsibilitywith seniority instead of with
performance, and so that's areally big challenge, kind of in
terms of like, howorganizations see different
things, and I will say Chineseorganizations does not generally
work.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Especially a Chinese, chinese tech organization does
not generally work like thecorporate that we are used to I
don't want to come across assomebody who takes a sheet on
corporates every time I speak,because I'm ex-lawyer and I know
I always blame them and I knowI always say that's where I
learn how to do things, butespecially how not to do things.
(51:15):
But there's something that weundervalue a lot, which is the
fact that you know, even if theyare, you know they are not
meritocratic, they're slow,they're sluggish, they're, you
know, full of politicseverywhere and whatnot.
They have something that isespecially useful, which is they
set you up with very bigchallenges and projects really
(51:38):
early on in your career, whichyou don't.
I mean, you take it for granted, but people who have never done
corporate, they start a startup.
They usually cannot scale acompany.
Why?
Because they don't knowpolitics.
They don't know how to scale aship.
They don't know how to managebig budgets.
They don't know legalimplications.
They don't know how to scale aship.
They don't know how to managebig budgets.
They don't know legalimplications.
They don't know how to managemeetings with 12 stakeholders.
(51:59):
They don't know how to listento clients or talk to corporates
right, and that's somethingthat you learn when you're 21
years old at freaking Deloitteand then.
So why most of our competitorshave been wiped out by the
pandemic?
It is because they wereextremely tech people, super
talented, and most of them theydidn't like business.
They were just enjoying thefavorable winds right, the
(52:21):
tailwinds of the industry, andthey had a good run for 10 years
.
And at a certain point they'relike oh, I have to figure out.
I didn't want to fire people, Ididn't know how to manage
crisis and stuff like that, orbig projects.
They got caught up in some kindof corporate bank and maybe
they I don't know they wereoverly optimistic and they
(52:42):
overhired.
We come from very bigconsultancies and we learn some
stuff there, and so that's whywe're ready to take on bigger
challenges at Mars Space.
So, that being said, I thinkthere's some credit to be given
to the corporates and especially.
I mean I'm not going to be infavor of these big crunches and
(53:03):
like these stupid long shiftsand working on the weekends, but
yeah, being able to take onreally big challenges right off
the bat, that's very positive ifyou have the right mindset, so
that's really cool.
I wanted to switch gears here alittle bit to going towards the
end of the update set, becausewe're running short in time, but
I want to talk about the future.
(53:24):
A lot of you probably face alot of competition.
A lot of big companies can dowhat you guys do Like to them.
You are a feature right Canva,freepic, adobe I'm thinking like
off the top of my head.
There are disks that they couldmaybe copy what you're doing.
So what's in store forMetaverse AI in the future, for
(53:47):
your company, in one, two, fiveyears from now?
Speaker 2 (53:50):
Yeah, I think for Multiverse, honestly, the best
case scenario would be that someof these bigger players start
doing AI headshots and I'm noteven joking about that and I
think at some point and why Isay that is because it would
help us so much to educateconsumers, first of all, and
second of all, being in thisproblem, I know exactly how
(54:10):
difficult it is, so I don'treally have that many illusions
that it would become a main keypoint for them to excel at this,
but I think they could beamazing for education and so I
do foresee that happening and Ithink, honestly, that would be
really a huge like growth pointfor us to go to, I think,
secondly.
(54:31):
So, first of all, I would sayyou know the awareness of
AIshots, the fact that it's athing you and I know.
You know because you're at theforefront of everything.
I know because I'm building it,but really not that many people
know that if I need remoteheadshots, where am I going to
go, I think.
Secondly, we're going to focus alot more on B2B, and the reason
(54:52):
for that is because it's areally, really challenging
problem to solve.
There's a lot of detail requiredand people need a lot of people
need to share a lot ofinformation and are very
specific about the type ofphotos that they want, and so I
see a lot of opportunity reallyin that area.
Also, because B2B is reallywhere we can get huge ticket
(55:14):
sales right.
That will change us from 30K to300K a month.
It's not going to happen withB2C only, so B2B is a huge
focusing point on us.
And then, thirdly, I think Idon't want to say too much about
this, but I think there aresome really exciting
developments in the works rightnow that you can kind of stay
(55:35):
tuned for on our Instagram orour LinkedIn and stuff like that
.
But I think there's a lot morecoming for AI in general, ai
photography or videography inthe next couple of years, and I
think we're in the primeposition to jump in on those
trends and that's really wherewe want to be.
So that's all I'll say.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
So that's all I'll say.
I wanted to hear some partingwords on the fact that I think
we are entering an era wherewhenever we see something
digital, we know it's going tobe fake or edited.
Look, with the Apple new iOSthat comes with cleanup, every
(56:14):
photo will be instantly editedWith AI, like remove that person
from the background, remove theclouds in the sky, make it
brighter, things like that.
So the benefit of the doubtwill not exist anymore, not in
video, nor in pictures, right,which I think is just a change
of paradigm, but I don't know.
(56:35):
It sort of stares the shit outof me as of paradigm, but I
don't know.
It sort of scares the shit outof me as a control freak that I
don't know the answer to thisquestion.
And so what's your perspectiveon this issue specifically?
Speaker 2 (56:47):
My perspective in general and has been for the
last 10 years as somebody who'ssuper online is don't trust the
internet.
Don't trust the internet, justthe internet because of the
nigerian prince scam right.
This is more than that, yes, no,I I think.
I say that because I think it'sa.
(57:08):
It's honestly a generationalproblem.
I think you know I understandwhat you're saying.
I and I totally agree.
It becomes harder and harder totrust.
But I see that as a generationalproblem because I look at you
know, photoshop has been aroundfor so long for our parents
versus how we are looking atemail, how we are looking at
(57:28):
social media, how we are reallylike observing things on on
reels or whatever, we have acompletely different approach to
this, right, right, and I seethat with people who are a lot
younger than me too, they have acompletely different approach
than I do.
My mom will send me a video onInstagram and she'll be like,
how come this girl is so skinny,what is she doing?
I'm like, clearly, this is thevideo edit, this has been video
(57:50):
edited.
She doesn't know that videoedits exist, but I do know, and
so I don't really believeanything that I see online.
That value loses a lot.
I think, if anything, it reallydoubles down the necessity of
institutions.
Right, we need good sources ofinformation, and those good
sources of information havenever been social media or video
(58:12):
or anything like that, and soit becomes all the more
important that we really investand look at good sources.
What are your inputs?
What are your sources ofinformation?
They should have never beenReddit or Quora or anything like
that.
So what is the next?
You know what is the next goodsource of information that you
are looking at and that you arepaying attention to?
(58:33):
And I think you know ourgeneration is already paying a
lot of attention to stuff likethat.
We now, you know, with, likerecent politics, have paid a lot
more attention to newspapers,to what they are doing, but I
think you know our kids andgenerations after us are going
to pay 10 times more attentionto that, because they will have
a lot of information about AI.
(58:54):
And so I think, yeah, it's goingto become a lot harder, but I
think that was always going tohappen, whether or not, whether
or not we expected it or not,right, and still, now it's it's,
it's the best it's ever goingto be.
In five years, in 10 years,it'll be worse.
In 50 years, who knows?
You know, we'll have fakeholograms of things.
So I think I think honestly,it's a generational thing and I
(59:19):
think always as soon as you findyourself going to I just had my
birthday two weeks ago, so I'mlike, ah, I'm aging, all right,
I think go there.
You understand that this is notthe thing that you can solve.
This is something that willhonestly become instinctive to
people who are younger than youand that you need to pay more
attention to as we get older.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
Perfect In 30 seconds .
How can we help you, Personallyor company-wide?
Any announcement.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
I am looking for more tech communities in Barcelona
or online to be a part of, and Iam also looking for people who
can mentor me when it comes tostartups or marketing.
Marketing startups would beamazing.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
There's a.
One of the bad thing aboutbootstrap companies is that we
usually don't have anyassociation to belong to.
Like startups.
They get into incubators,accelerators, they get into a bc
batch and therefore they havethis sort of natural communities
, whereas bootstrap companieswere like, fuck it, we're gonna
(01:00:25):
go on our own.
And so, yeah, we, if we wanted,we could never leave the cave,
we would never meet other people.
That's not a long-term strategy, but there are very cool people
doing amazing things inBarcelona.
You know Duane from Everyday,there's Amir from Duist, there's
the guy from Chessable, david.
(01:00:45):
There's all these bootstrapcompanies.
We know each other because wehave made this conscious effort
to meet, but we wouldn't haveknown about each other had we
not tried right, because we cango on our own alone.
So let's make it happen.
Let's create these monthly,quarterly meetings of bootstrap
(01:01:06):
companies.
Bootstrap only, don't cheat.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
I think that would be amazing.
Absolutely, we can do a dinneror something.
I'll text you after.
Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Exactly All right.
Well, thank you very much,Sunny.
It's been amazing.
Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Thanks, alex, have a good one.
Hello everybody, I'm Alex, ceo and founder of
MarksFaced, and in this episodeof Live on Marks, we bring you
Tania Van Gastel, ceo andco-founder of TheMultiverseai.
Themultiverseai is a coolcompany from Barcelona.
It's very product-driven, andwe contrast her background in
Chinese corporates and the newreality of building this new
(00:20):
company from the ground up,having to apply everything she
learned doing marketing on aglobal scale at the previous
company and now trying it withthe new trends where everybody's
so hyped up about AI, buildingcommunity and building a very
interesting personal branding.
We discussed with Tania theimportance of transparency in
(00:43):
nowadays bootstrap companies,indie hacking and the tradition
of building in public, and alsothe hurdles of SEO nowadays or
marketing in such a clutteredmarket, and much more.
We focus on not only thetechnology, but much more on the
marketing, distribution side ofthings and the question of the
(01:06):
day are you using AI in yourproject already?
Is it embedded in the product?
Is it you're using it to buildit, or there are certain
functionalities that use AI?
Let us know in the commentsection below and, without
further ado, let's jump rightinto the answer.
Let's go, tani.
How are you doing Nice productplacement there?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Let me just do it again.
I'm really good.
I'm really good.
It's been a long time sincewe've seen each other, I think
since the last Startup Grindevent you know the one with the
one right after I went on thepanel panel which you guys were
so graciously to invite me tothat must have been june.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, I think it was like may we had the event, like
june we had we had.
Yeah, uh, that one was good,it's a feel.
So it's good to have previousspeakers that come as part of
the audience.
You know, and that's somethingthat I pride myself into, that,
because normally events are, youknow, invites.
You know, normally it's likebig companies and c levels and
whatnot and and they, they fuckoff forever and they never
(02:16):
remember your, your name or yourevent or something like that.
I know people I'm like oh, theycome for the talk, they leave
right after the panel.
They don't stay for thenetworking.
At least in StartBrand for 10years we've always had everybody
come before the chat, stay forafter the panel for the entire
networking.
A couple exceptions here andthere, but usually people are
(02:37):
very generous and they remember,and we've had at least 2,000
people or more I mean 30, 40speakers, thomas ads in these.
Some of them are regularattendees.
That's a great KPI for me.
So thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
No, of course, I honestly love going to the
Startup Grind events, because Ithink in Barcelona it's kind of
rare to be able to gather thatkind of community in such a
great space as well.
Like, there are some otherstartup events as well going on,
but I think really, startupgrind is, you know, very unique
in a way that it really doesgather people are just super
(03:11):
passionate, and I think a lot ofthe events that I've been to,
where you know you always do theintroduction and I think you
kind of like set the stage forpeople to be very direct in how
they answer you, and that'sreally nice because it makes the
people feel very comfortable.
Sometimes it feels like a veryintimate event even.
I remember when I did the paneland it was with Ray, and so we
(03:33):
were very on the topic ofbootstrap, because both of our
businesses, including yours, areall bootstrapped, and so it was
really this time for us to golike okay, let's get real and
let's get dirty.
What are we actually doing?
How are we making this happen?
Why is there this narrative ofit's not possible and how are
(03:54):
you breaking those odds?
And I really, really enjoyedthat because I think, as a
business owner, you don't alwayshave so much time to think
about.
Let's take a step back.
What have we actually done andhow can we move that forward?
But at events like this, Iactually almost see it as a kind
of like brainstorming, whereyou know, sometimes the audience
asks very smart, very goodquestions and it really kind of
(04:17):
forces you to take a step backand be like, actually that's a
really good point, maybe we cando that and and maybe we can
think twice about that.
So I loved it and I willhappily go to any other startup
grind event.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I particularly enjoyed that event.
We did something very specialbecause we normally invite
people who have got at least 10million in annual revenue and
100 people in headcount.
I made an exception in thatevent.
I do an exception here andthere, but I wanted to see
whether we could get moreintimate conversation and that
(04:55):
happened, but I don't know if itwas because the size of the
companies was smaller or becauseyou fall to a bootstrap, right.
Let me rephrase this.
Let me rephrase this I usuallyhave got very good conversations
with people and I say, oh, youhave to be a very good speaker
for startup brand.
They come on stage and theyenclose themselves, they just
(05:15):
like they don't talk, they don'tshare monosyllabic answers,
maybe because they're nervous,maybe because they cannot share
right, but you nervous, maybebecause they cannot share right,
but you know right, one-to-one,super, super insightful.
They go in front of an audienceand it's like man, you know
pretty bland stuff, and wheredid we?
We got really naked.
(05:35):
Like we said, oh look, no, I'mactually not making revenue, or
I lost a client last weekbecause of that, or I struggle
with this.
I've got my mental issues anduh, it was really good.
We received the best feedbackabout that event.
So, yeah, yeah, company scienceor bootstrap.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
let's get this started I think it's a bit of
both, I mean.
So I've worked in corporate I Iused to work at oneplus, which
is a really big smartphonecompany android smartphones and
so I was in the marketingdepartment, specifically in
public relations.
So a lot of my job was hey, ourCEO, our team lead, our C-level
(06:17):
is going out to talk in frontof these journalists and what
are they going to say?
We cannot just let them loose,right?
That's not a thing.
They need to be briefed on whattalking points you can actually
share with an audience.
How are you going to, like,media train somebody?
How are you actually going tolet them say things that they
are able to say, that they don'texpose the organization in some
way?
(06:37):
You know to like further anarrative about a company.
And so I think, when you're areally big organization, you
should do that.
You have to do that because youcan't just let everybody you
know go out like Elon Musk andlike just say whatever comes to
his mind.
And I think that makes a lot ofsense for big organizations
because they have a certain kindof responsibility to people who
(06:58):
are buying their products or topeople who are working with
them.
And so I think, unless youreally have like a super, you
know, independent founder or CEO, which in larger organizations
is so difficult to maintain.
It's really hard for people tojust go out there and kind of
like share exactly what theywant to say.
And so in bootstrap, you know,a big thing about bootstrap that
(07:19):
I always vouch for is that wehave absolute freedom over a lot
of our decisions.
We don't have investors when itcomes to talking about VC world
, we don't have to spend timemanaging those relationships and
stuff, and so it makes it a loteasier in that regard.
So I think company size forsure can really inhibit a lot of
(07:49):
free talking that we like to doat events like that, but also
because you know yourcompetition is listening right,
you achieve a certain size andeverybody's like, ah, how can we
gatekeep more information fromthe competitor?
When we're bootstrap, I think wehave probably had a lot of
learnings from the community.
Like I'm super embedded in thebootstrap community on Twitter.
I mean a lot of Slack channels,discords.
(08:10):
It's amazing, it's it's such agreat rush to feel like you know
, you're sharing your MRR,you're building in public,
you're talking about.
These are the things thatreally worked for me and it
feels like you're in it together, but then I think you get to a
certain size and people stoptalking about it because they're
like shit, if I can do it and Itell them how to do it, then
maybe they're going to do it tooand they'll become my
(08:32):
competitor, right?
So I think it's a weird littleloop that we're in, where it's
both company size and it makesit really hard for people to be
very straightforward.
Do you feel the same way withagency?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, for instance, when you mentioned that we're
able to disclose moreinformation, and I find this our
revenue is public.
Every year, we publish it andsome people are like why do you
do that?
Some competitors we have anadvantage.
What competitors?
We're an agency.
We've got thousands ofcompetitors.
I'm not having to worry aboutone competitor that they will be
(09:09):
like oh, they havesignificantly less revenue.
Therefore, I can raise morefrom my investors because I know
I'm number one in the market.
In this case, we're just a dropin the ocean.
Therefore, it makes little tono difference whether we publish
this or not.
On the contrary, it makeslittle to no difference whether
we publish this or not.
On the contrary, it's going tohelp me.
My reasoning is if I publishthat my revenue is 2.5 million
(09:32):
this year, or projected to hitalmost 3 this year, I will not
be hit by companies that mightinquire to buy me if my revenue
is not enough.
So put it another way like ifI'm private about that, a lot of
companies will come.
Oh, so let's have aconversation about M&A, for
(09:52):
instance, and once you get tothe specifics, they find out
that your revenue is below 10million.
Then they'll be like oh, we'renot interested and you're
wasting your time.
In this case, I'm just keepingit ahead, also because I'm not
interested in M&A or selling,but you know, I'm just saving
them and myself time.
Just an example.
(10:13):
There are probably more prosthan cons, but at least this one
is where I think it'sparticularly helpful to have
open data.
One thing that is not so goodabout that and that's going to
be another cocktail is a lot ofpeople building in public Not
only bootstrap businesses, butall the businesses that they
have raised funds and they'reopen about their revenue and
KPIs and metrics and whatnot.
(10:33):
They only do it on the way upBecause it's cool to show oh
yeah, we're drawing 40% yearover year, we have this KPIs
like here, it's always up to theright, we've accomplished these
new goals and whatnot.
However, it is very rare thatthey do these on the way down or
when they hit a plateau.
(10:54):
I'm saying this because theother day I saw the guys from
Buffer.
I think the CEO of Bufferpublished a tweet about that and
said like look, the metrics forthis year are like this we're
still super profitable, we stillhave a ton of money in the bank
, but we get a full show we'renot growing and I said promise
to you, because nobody does thatOnce you stop growing, you stop
(11:14):
sharing.
How do you feel about that?
You're still on the way up.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
As far as you know, alex, because I don't know.
I know we're fine, we're doingwell.
I think it's a really validpoint to make because, because I
think whenever you're being inpublic, you're always thinking
about the narrative.
You're always thinking aboutlike okay, what is the next
thing?
You know that is like happening, that I'm gonna make a linkedin
post about a twitter post orwhatever.
Because I think there's thisthing where people, unless they
(11:45):
can frame it as a learning, as alesson.
I learned from this lessonbecause I failed, but now I
fixed it.
I know the solution peopledon't share, because then
they're in that thing.
Right, I think the lesson isalways so good to share, but I
think it's only afterwards.
I think that's a solution and Ithink my take on this honestly
(12:06):
is I think, through a lot oftrial and error, I have shared a
lot more failures andchallenges, because I know that
makes me the most honest and themost trustworthy.
By extension, and I think thatis something that I've only
really started to value in otherpeople, as I really started to
(12:28):
pay attention to these lessons.
Because here's the thing, right, if you've never struggled,
then what do I have to learnfrom you?
If it was all easy, right.
Where's your story aboutyourself?
Where is?
How do you see yourself?
Are you always the winner?
Are you always this, are youalways that?
And I think, after you knowbeing very like, much more
(12:48):
embedded in this, in thisecosystem, I learned that you
can learn so much more fromfailure than from from success,
and I I genuinely like, I'm very, very serious about that
because I think you know a lotof people.
They see somebody who is alwayslike on the up, always.
All of that.
That's a social media narrative.
That's a social media narrativedesigned to gaslight you, and
(13:12):
that's okay.
That's not a bad thing.
I think that's like how a lotof people perceive that as well.
But I think the true honesty, ifyou're able to be very clear
about you know what was hard,what was challenging, what was
difficult and what have youlearned from that that is so
interesting, because that tellsme that you were smart, because
you had a problem that youneeded to solve and you solved
(13:32):
it Right.
So I think that's a it's a muchmore interesting, a much more
interesting thing to learn about.
And generally, the people whohave you know I don't know if,
with this, the people who've hadthe most success have failed
the most.
And I say that because thatmeans that for you, trying is a
habit.
It's not something you did onceyou lost and you didn't persist
(13:54):
.
You persisted in your failure.
I generally believe that peoplewho persist in this and keep
trying, at some point it willwork out great.
It might not be right away, butif you have a habit of not
giving up and working reallyhard to achieve your goals, it
will happen.
It just will, because that's atime thing, that's a when, not
(14:15):
if yeah, it's more like about.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
it's about trying.
You say, right, people who aresuccessful are people who drive
a lot.
As an analogy, for instance, Istopped using GPS when I drive
because I realized I couldn'tremember the way to places.
I was going on autopilot and Iwas not trying to flex my
muscles, mental muscles, like oh, what do I have to do here, why
(14:41):
am I heading north when Ishould be driving east and
whatnot?
And I realized that I was usingit even to drive to places.
I knew where to go and how togo, how to get there right.
And so you become lazy, yououtsource that part of the brain
and therefore, if you do that,you start doing that with other
parts of your life and so youlose capacity.
(15:04):
And so for me, that's ananalogy, also for business.
If you go up the beaten path,then you will exercise other
parts of your brain, like how tosolve this puzzle, how to
overcome an economic downturn,how to fire an employee, how to
solve the conflict betweenpartners and whatnot, how to
fire an employee, how to solveconflict between partners and
(15:24):
whatnot.
But if you only do the you knowthe safe way, chances are
you're not going to learn muchand in favor of wins.
That's okay, but when theheadwinds come, you will be
struggling a lot or you will notbe able to solve even the most
basic puzzle.
So let's just give some contextto the others.
We still haven't talked aboutwhat you do, your company.
(15:45):
So people might be guessing hey, what is this?
Because, especially with peoplelistening to the audio version,
they haven't seen the coffeemug with a sticker on it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Hey, so I'm the co-founder of the Multiverse AI.
What we do is we create AIheadshots, and so why is this
important?
Essentially, when you're abusiness owner whether you're
doing agency or you're sellingsomething else maybe you have a
sales team, a marketing team.
You're probably going to have alanding page or a pitch deck
and you probably want to showyour team on it, and so those
(16:18):
photos are really importantbecause they are a first
indication of how you can buildtrust right.
Whether it's your Mars space,you have a team of developers,
or you are selling carcomponents and you have a sales
team, you want your sales teamto look trustworthy, because
that's a direct conversion point.
And so if you have a team thatis remote, like, potentially,
(16:38):
mars space does whether that isfive people, 50 people or 500
people you have a huge problem.
How are you going to get thosephotos?
You can go and send outphotographers to each one of
those people.
It's very expensive, it's veryannoying and also it's going to
be very difficult to get acohesive photo right.
So you want the same background, you want the same kind of
(17:00):
lighting.
It's not really feasible to getthat through any other means,
and so what you need is you needan AI headshot generator.
You need to go tothemultiverseai and you need to
upload 12 photos of yourself,and then we will give you a
hundred AI headshots.
You pick the one that you like.
You apply your background to it.
(17:20):
You apply the black t-shirtthat maybe you want Mars-based
staff to wear in their photo.
You put the logo in the back.
You're done.
You apply the black t-shirtthat maybe you want Mars-based
staff to wear in their photo.
You put the logo in the back.
You're done.
You've created a perfectlanding page for your 550 or 500
staff.
They all have great backgroundthe exact same background, if
you want.
They all have the same kind ofoutfit and they all have a
really great professional photoof themselves that looks like it
(17:43):
was taken in the same place,but actually it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I was laughing because this was exactly a pain
point that we experienced a fewyears ago.
For the first five years, mostof our people were in Barcelona
and so we, whenever we met, itwas, like you know, every
Wednesday we met in a workingspace and then eventually we
started enlarging the team andwe had some people outside
Barcelona, but we would gettogether four times a year, and
(18:10):
we still do.
We call it the Martian days,but for whatever reason, those
days like we were not in a roomwith a white wall or we didn't
have a photographer, right.
So then we had the first 10people in the company had
perfect picture of the same day,same lighting, same camera,
whatnot and then we had two orthree that looked like a patch
(18:31):
we did at home.
It didn't work out and so it wasalways a problem with the
previous website.
That's why, on this website,instead of going to AI which we
didn't think that was an optionwe didn't know we said like fuck
it, we had seen other companies, staff, more casual pictures of
them doing their stuff.
Right, we've got a guy doingthat weightlifting, another guy
(18:54):
just hiking in the mountains andyou know, our lady, our head of
people, is spinning in a parkand stuff like that.
You know, maybe it's less, lessprofessional, but it's more
humane, like I don't know.
It's a balance.
It depends on what you want,but it's a real pain point for
remote companies.
I give you that.
I give you that.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
We know, because we've tested a lot of different
pain points in this one.
It's because this is the onethat people are like, yeah, that
it sucks.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
It's this one I'm not like for corporates that they
have like larger teams and theyrequire more like structure and
they want they want to becorporate like, oh you know,
with the king t-shirt.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Actually it's a lot of startups, because we also do
casual photos.
It's not necessarily like asuit and tie Again, it can be a
t-shirt, can be whateverbackground you want.
The problem is that a lot ofpeople send in photos of
themselves that are terrible andare not really presentable, and
so it does persist.
I will say there are also, youknow, I would say personally,
(19:56):
for me, the biggest problem isthat I hate taking photographs.
I hate posing specifically fora photo.
I kind of freeze up and I do avery awkward I've been told,
very awkward laugh, and so Ifind it very difficult to pose
for a professional photo where Idon't look like I.
It just looks very strange.
I don't prefer it.
(20:16):
Also, anybody, I think, who'sever gotten professional photos
taken?
If you're, you know you need itfor your LinkedIn or your
keynote speaker or whatever.
It's a terrible process.
It'll probably cost you $400.
You'll need a full day.
You'll get the photos in liketwo months.
After editing, you need to getprofessional hair and makeup
done.
If you're a woman, it's anightmare process, and so for me
(20:41):
, I personally love solving thisproblem because I really think
it's something where you know,as you get more in the world of
social media and even thingslike LinkedIn, it becomes a very
important thing, the way thatyou represent yourself online or
offline, and so that firstimpression matters so much,
(21:04):
whether you're a job seeker,whatever you are, it's really
important.
It can really help you a lot,because we've all had that first
impression when we go to aLinkedIn profile and we think,
oh shit, this person looks solegit.
And it's a very short,instinctive thing that we think
right, and it's not evennecessarily based on the copy or
whatever.
A lot of the time it's based onthat photograph, which is such
a primitive lizard braininstinct thing of us, but it
(21:25):
does occur, and so being able tohave full control over that
perception, I think, issomething that's super valuable
that we are able to give all ofour customers.
Are you?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
finding, like the, the minute you mentioned the, uh
you, you know the thedifficulty of finding that good
photo.
Like you don't like posing.
There's like the issue withwomen having to wear makeup or
having to, you know, dress acertain way, or finding the good
lighting conditions, andwhatnot.
Are you finding people whoreject the idea of?
(21:58):
Like, oh, that doesn't lookexactly like me because it's AI?
Because I'll tell you somethinglike most people have got a
very outdated picture on theirwebsite and they don't look like
themselves nowadays.
So it's just people taking ashit on AI.
But like, for instance, I had apicture of me with 10 kilos
more, no beard, and I really Ithink I would look closer to my
(22:20):
real self today with an AIversion of a picture from two
days ago than a picture taken 10years ago, right?
So I don't know, maybe peopleare just, you know, beating on
AI just because it's AI, it's sobad.
Do you find that?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
100%.
So it happens.
So much, alex, it's such a goodpoint.
Here's the thing we alreadyintroduced self-bias when people
upload their photos, becausepart of our process is that we
can't guess what you look like.
Our AI model needs to trainbased on the 12 photos that you
input.
Guess what kind of photos thatpeople are putting up themselves
(22:57):
.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Super different right or the Tinder pictures.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
So very different, like it's the photos that you
think you look best, and sosometimes it's like you were
filtered.
Sometimes it's like onlywedding photos, sometimes it's
this, sometimes it's that, andyour results look like your
input photos.
This is the whole baseproposition, right, and so
people seem to have a verystrange idea of what they look
like, in some cases where it'slike I still found good photos,
(23:26):
but these are weird and we showyou, tell them, like it's one of
your input photos, like onewith beer, the other one with
sunglasses, the other one likeskiing and stuff like that right
yeah, it's part of it's.
Actually, this is one of ourfirst big iterations, because
we've done a lot, we've shippeda lot of updates to our product,
and one of the key things thatwe realize is that we really
(23:48):
need to guide people throughwhat is a good input photo.
How can we help you to uploadthe exact photos that you need
in order to get the best results?
And that's a very strong UXthing that you need to think
about, because you need toeducate your users in a short
amount of time and reallyalleviate that problem, because
they don't know it's an issueand you don't have any time to
(24:08):
educate them about how AI works.
So, yeah, it's a very goodpoint and it's.
Yeah, it's interesting howpeople's interesting, how people
will view photos of themselves,whether they are real or are AI
, because we've all seen badphotographs of ourselves, where
we're like I don't relate tothat person, but it is you, so
(24:28):
it's very interestingbootstrapping this.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
We briefly covered the topic of bootstrapping
earlier in the conversation, butmore specifically to your
company, when did you realize?
Because when you started, aiwas already a thing and you
probably were leveraging thefact that you're sending these
photos to a model and I don'tknow if you were using
third-party libraries or you'reusing your own models and
whatnot.
How did you figure out theeconomics?
(24:55):
I can bootstrap this versus Ineed to raise some funds to
train models and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
The big key thing here is that we have a super
clear, super clear valueproposition.
You give us money, we give youphotos, and so, in that sense,
it actually works very it's veryclear for the user what they
get out of it.
We're not a huge platform.
We're not a full photo studiofor everything that you can
imagine.
(25:23):
We are AI photography forportraits Super, super, super
specific, and that, from amarketing point of view, is much
easier to market than anythingelse.
Right?
You're talking about theeconomics of our product
specifically.
We are a one-time service.
It costs $29 now, but weactually started from it costing
(25:45):
$9 back when we launched lastyear in April, and we didn't
launch like a business, likestraight away.
We were hoping that, you know,hopefully by end of that year we
would have a couple of sales orsomething like that.
But very quickly, you know,after seeding the product with a
couple of websites and postingit to Reddit relentlessly, we
(26:10):
realized that actually we have areally strong product on our
hand because it is super clear,it is really good margins as
well, and so it really wassomething where we as a super
small team of like only threepeople, were able to scale this,
which was very surprising, Ithink, to all of us and, I think
, still very surprising to mostpeople who we talked to about
(26:31):
this, because people don'tunderstand how many users exist
out in the world and you don'tunderstand that unless you get
your first hundred or thousandcustomers that are names that
you don't have never, ever heardof.
But I still, to this day, get anotification on a Discord
channel for every purchase thatis made, and so that channel is
(26:53):
muted now, but I was followingvery, very closely and every
name you see, you're like Idon't know this person, who are
they?
But they exist out there.
People want your product.
It's really a key of two bigthings.
How will people who need yourproduct because there is a pain
point this is not a vitamin,this is a painkiller how can
(27:14):
businesses actually getphotographs for their staff, for
their teams, for themselves asa job seeker, as somebody on
LinkedIn or whatever?
How can they get thatphotograph?
And then, secondly, how canthey find you?
So you have to go through theprocess of if I'm trying to find
this kind of service, where amI going to start looking?
And then you put your productthere wherever they are right,
(27:36):
because this is really somethingwhere, if you're able to be
found and I think a lot ofmodern day marketing really is
about you know that there areusers.
If you have some degree ofproduct market fit now, how will
they find you?
What are you doing to be found?
And we did a lot of things tobe found, and that is something
that you know.
Really, for the first couple ofmonths was super, super strong,
(27:58):
still continues to be, becausewe are still not doing any paid
advertising.
I'm not of the belief that thisactually works very well for a
product like ours.
And so where are we?
Where are we putting ourselves?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
You mentioned Reddit, which is a very good starting
point to start talking aboutgrowth, right?
So most bootstrap businessesare product product-led growth.
Basically, they start with witha kind of like a growth
campaign a lot of content,inbound marketing and reddit and
product hunt seem to be theplaces to go to right.
But the fact that you mentionedthis thing about oh, I don't
(28:36):
know his name, so I know youknow you launch your product the
first day.
It's all your relatives, youruni friends, your you know
industry friends, ex-workers andstuff like that.
Fine, but they are a finitenumber of persons in this set.
But eventually you're like whothe fuck is this person?
(28:58):
Right?
I guess that also happens whenyou launch on Reddit which is
like, wow, we got 5,000downloads today.
The next day, zero.
Why?
Because there are otherproducts out there right.
So how do you deal with thepressure of?
It went really well on day one,day two no signups or no
payments.
I'm struggling with thisbecause I launched my website
(29:19):
today and I know I'm gettinglike a spike of subscribers
today and I know tomorrow I'llhave like two instead of
hundreds.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I love that.
I love that question.
Let me tell you how to marketyour website.
All humble, very humble.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Let's do it let's do it, any consultation.
So I think people very easilydiscredit the, the brainstorm,
and so here's what I mean withthat.
There's two big things that wereally did that, uh, helped in
an insane amount, and the firstof that was to start super
(29:58):
seriously on SEO, becauseanybody worth their salt.
If they have a problem, theywill Google it.
If you're not Googling theproblems that you have, you
probably don't want them as aconsumer, because that means
maybe for Mars.
Basically, they cannotcommunicate the kind of thing
that they want.
So hopefully your clients willbe Googling things.
Who are your clients?
Right?
(30:18):
So be very, very specific Formultiverse.
For who is it important thatthey look good on a photograph?
Who is having these problems?
Here are our SEO articles howto look great as a female real
estate agent.
Real estate agents care a lotabout their professional
(30:41):
representation because they arebasically freelancers slash
entrepreneurs who have to care alot about the way that they are
represented to their clientelebecause it's a very personal
relationship, specifically inthe US, and so this is a very
specific target audience, andit's a target audience that we
have a lot of success with,because we've created a lot of
content around this specifictarget audience.
(31:02):
Second, again how do I create alanding page for my team?
How do I create a team gallery?
These are all kind of liketopics where, if you really
think about, I'm a businessowner or I need a professional
photo what am I Googling?
Right, it's not just how do Iget an AI headshot.
That's not the only thing.
There are so many differentways that there are people who
(31:25):
need your product and they willgo and Google very specific
things.
It's your job to think aboutthat.
You can go and talk to GPTabout this.
You can ask for a hundreddifferent potential target
audiences and you're going to gothrough that list and you're
going to decide that maybe fiveor 10 of these are worth
building each like five or 10articles around, and then you
(31:46):
can go and build that.
And that's a very specificthing.
And I'm going to tell you it'sgoing to take about four to six
months for any SEO traffic toeven go through there.
But once that starts coming in,once people are actually
reading your content andengaging with the content,
you're going to see that there'sa huge difference in the target
audiences that are actuallyconverting into a click-through.
(32:09):
And so when I open up my GoogleAnalytics backend, I can see
very clearly who are actuallythe people who care enough,
where my hypothesis was correctthat they care so much that
they'll actually buy somethinglike this.
The second thing is to be verycreative when you have very low
budgets.
We are very creative when itcomes to having absolutely no
(32:30):
money to spend on marketing, andso you know, part of that is
going out to speaking events andconferences and putting
stickers on your mug, on yourpurse, on your whatever.
I was fortunate enough to do aspeaking event at the W last
week and that was great becausewe were able to connect with so
many people who actually neededsomething like this.
(32:52):
But I think peopleunderestimate very easily the
power of the internet, right?
I think of the internet asvirtual real estate.
What positions are beingoccupied in Google search
listings?
If I now Google softwarecompany Barcelona, will Mars
Base come up first?
Who will come up first?
(33:13):
Is there a list of the top fivetop 10?
If that doesn't exist, can I goand create that top five or top
10?
Will other software companiescome to me and ask to be put on
that top five, top 10?
Because that means that Icontrol all of the listings and
all of who is being found andwho is not being found, and you
can charge for those listings aswell, and so I think there's a
(33:34):
billion things to be done inthat world.
Here's another kind of tip.
One of the most, I think, funthings that we've done for SEO
is I've created a LinkedInvirtual influencer.
His name is Alan.
This is not actually a realperson.
This is me posting under adifferent profile, and the
(33:57):
reason that you want to do thatis because websites like
LinkedIn, like Medium, they havevery high domain authority.
Domain authority is how Googledetermines if a website is great
or if a website is shit, and soLinkedIn has built an amazing
domain authority.
The LinkedIn virtual influencerthat I use is constantly posting
(34:19):
Every week.
He's posting about AI headshots, about real estate photography,
about photography for businessowners, about different target
audiences that I won't share,because my competitors are
listening to this.
Competitors are listening tothis, but a lot of different
things he's posting about, andhe's posting about this
specifically, because you go andlook at a LinkedIn article and
(34:42):
you see this guy and you thinkthis is not created by AI.
This is created by a realperson.
It is.
It's created by me, though, andit's not on my profile, because
all of my audience is going tothink this girl is obsessed with
real estate and other stuff.
Why is she doing this?
(35:02):
And so it's a great way toseparate that out and still
build a great audience and bevery high ROI in the way that
you're spending your time.
So for Mars Base virtualinfluencer, thinking about your
hundred different targetaudiences, be as niche as you
can.
Get really really specific,weirdly specific.
If you think that it's weirdenough, then go and get that,
because the more specific thatyou are, the more that your
(35:24):
target audience thinks oh my God, they totally understand me.
I am totally looking to buildan AI project that combines Ruby
on Rails with Python, with thisfor a project management
software.
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
These answers are priceless.
Thank you for the freeconsultation.
You're paying me with your time, so there's so many great
points here.
My memory is that of a goldfish, so I'm trying my best to
remember everything you said.
But earlier in the answer youmentioned that you or you, you
(36:07):
assumed that you nailed theideal customer profile right off
the bat, or that's whattranspired to me.
Right, you said like yeah, wewent after this and we marketed
for them.
We created these specificlisticles, articles or how to
look great if you're a realestate agent and whatnot, right?
I said that's fucking brilliant.
But most startups, they don'tknow who the ideal customer is.
(36:28):
They still they haven't figuredout the product because they
haven't found the real or thedefinitive customer, right.
So in your case, how did youknow that was and were you
exactly like spot on on thefirst product iteration?
Or was it because you know,your years in corporate
marketing helped you to maybe doa more thought up profiling of
(36:52):
your icd and then say like I'mgoing to market for them right
off the bat?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I failed so much, Alex.
I really failed so much when itcomes to finding the right
target audience.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Got feeling, or was it like I'll?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
tell you exactly why.
This is how I data right,because I think most marketing
that is being done is honestlybeing done wrong, because you're
not able to distinguish betweenbranding and marketing, and so
branding is this very long-termthing, for example and I mean
it's not just branding but, likedifferent facets of marketing,
(37:32):
are not data-based it's verydifficult for you to understand
if something's working or not,and if it's very difficult for
you to understand if something'sworking or not, and if it's
very difficult for you tounderstand that it doesn't work
for Bootstrap.
Bootstrap is about surviving,it's about making money, it's
about building a business, andso I don't engage in the part of
marketing.
That is Sorry.
I try to minimize my time onthe marketing that is not
(37:53):
data-led, that does not resultin conversions that I cannot
measure.
So this is what happens I buildout five to 10 different target
audiences and I build somecontent around some of it, and I
make a hypothesis that at leastone or two of them will work.
It's trial and error, it'sspaghetti method, because the
(38:13):
point is you almost never haveenough information to know
exactly if you're right or not,and so actually, a lot of the
time, it's faster to go out andexecute, because by the time
that you've gathered enoughinformation to know, with 100%
interval or 95% interval, thatyou are correct, you're too late
(38:33):
.
So I really suggest, like, goout and execute on the thing.
You will get the data exactlyabout whether or not it will
work in your Google Analyticsbackend.
I built a team, 10 landingpages or 10 articles for
different target audiences.
My Google Analytics will tellme which one resulted in a click
on the website, in a click onthis specific button, in a click
(38:56):
on another specific button.
By the way, posthog is anotheramazing analytics platform that
I really recommend.
That is free, also, just likeGoogle Analytics.
But no, alex, I've beencompletely wrong about so many
target audiences and I think Imay still be wrong about the
target audiences that I haveright now, because do I think
(39:17):
that you know the 30K US revenuethat we're at right now is like
the upper limit?
No, I don't.
I'm sure that there's a lot ofhidden target audiences that I
don't know about, that are justin my periphery, but you know,
the biggest challenge inbootstrap is not your strategy,
it's time.
How can I split myself up in 10different people and go and
(39:38):
reach those target audiences,and so I think, yeah, it's very
helpful to have specific data.
The only way that you will getspecific data and that you can
be data-driven is if you go outand execute and if you get the
data that it actually works,because nobody can tell you.
That's the problem, it doesn'texist.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
How long did it take to get your first customer,
first paid customer?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
That was through Reddit, and the way that we did
it through Reddit was I searchedfor remote.
I think it was back then.
We weren't B2B yet.
We only started being B2B inDecember and I think back then I
searched for a neatprofessional photo look bad,
something like that.
Reddit, one of the more popularReddit posts and then we
(40:27):
commented oh, we built thisthing, it's called the
multiverse, check it out andpeople actually bought it.
It was very interesting.
The thing with Reddit is younever know how many people,
because Reddit doesn't sharethat.
You never know how many peopleare looking at a specific post.
You only know how many peoplecomment on it or upvote, and
most people on Reddit arelurkers by far.
It's like, I think, the stats.
(40:49):
I'm one.
I am one, exactly Me too, andyou know, in a lot of subreddits
I'm not vocal at all.
I'm there to get information,not share it, and so I think you
know people think of theinternet as this like vast place
.
It's not.
The internet is a village.
You can communicate withanybody and you can see
(41:13):
everything in a lot of forums,and I can tell you the amount of
you know posts.
I can tell you exactly whichposts will rise to the top when
you Google AI headshot Reddit,because I've commented on every
single one of those multipletimes, so it's one of those
things where it's not a blackbox.
There are SEO platforms likeAhrefs, which I highly recommend
(41:35):
, where you can track all ofthat, and I very specifically
track all the rankings that theMultiverse AI is on for a lot of
different keywords, and that'svery, very important.
It's really our main measure ofsuccess and main measure of
revenue.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
One question I didn't get to ask you on the Startup
Plan panel and then it's beenkind of like bugging me here for
months and I'm like next timeI'm going to ask this, and
especially now, because we'redrilling down on content
marketing, right and brandingand SEO and authority Yet your
(42:12):
company's called the MultiverseAI.
Why not avatars or great photosor something like?
Something that has got thekeywords embedded, yeah, in the
domain of your website?
Yeah, multiverse, which issomething that you know.
It was revoked by facebook backin the day.
Not saying like multiverse isnot a great name, but the
(42:34):
association is not direct.
Like my brain doesn't lead thisto.
I'm not.
I'm saying the name of yourcompany and there's like, oh, no
, it's professional AI and it'slike, okay, okay, okay, okay.
It's like I don't make theconnection.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, Is is because we were we were dumb I'm just
gonna go out and say it like westarted as wanting to create not
just professional photos, butalso photos where you could put
yourself as a star wars figure,as a marvel figure, and you
(43:09):
really wanted to tap into thisidea of, like you can see
yourself in a multiverseparallel to yours, right?
And you were like, oh, this isa great idea, let's you know,
see if it's available.
The multiverse dot ai, not eventhe multiverse ai, something
else, the multiverse dot ai beextra confusing.
I mean, I'm telling youstraight there's nothing.
(43:31):
There's nothing extra, there'sno hidden meaning for this.
We've thought about changing aname, but because we are also so
, because we've also spent somuch, you know, time on seo,
because that is one of our mainstrategies, that domain name is
actually super valuable, right?
So our domain authority isreally high.
(43:53):
We're like like 50 plus, whichis great for a website that has
only been in existence for ayear and a half and we've
exchanged a lot of backlinks.
It's really important to usthat that domain stays.
I also think there's anotherthing at play here, which is
when we started, we decided thatwe did not want to spend too
much time thinking about thename, because, as someone who
(44:18):
has thought before aboutstarting a company or has really
in the past only been workingin corporate, I think it's very
easy to get bogged down bydetails and so no amount of you
know extra kind of like thinkingabout this website name brand.
All of that was really aboutshit.
(44:38):
Should we spend two more weeksthinking about names, coming up
with different ideas, when, tobe honest, you already don't
know if you're going to make apivot or not?
Right, so you could usesomething super bland?
For us, it didn't work outbecause we didn't go with the
idea of living in a multiverse,except a multiverse where you're
more professional and you cantake good photos of yourself.
(44:59):
But no, there's no SEO, there'sno hidden domain thing here at
all.
Yeah, it's something that we'vekind of stuck by, and I'm
actually very happy that we didas well, because I'm not opposed
to this name and I think,honestly, the whole overthinking
about name takes a lot of timeaway also from the business
itself.
At some point of the brandingperspective sense, though, yeah,
(45:22):
100 and that's what?
Speaker 1 (45:25):
uh, maybe one thing about bootstrap businesses
because we're not running shorton time, we tend to do more or
do to waste more time on mentalwonkery like that, because it's
like, okay, yeah, we, we don'thave a vc pressing us to the
leaves and pushing us to wastemore time on mental wonkery like
that, because it's like, okay,yeah, we don't have a VC
pressing us to the knees orpushing us to spend more money
and time is not running out.
We don't have a countdown timeron the top of our head saying
(45:45):
like, oh, in 12 months you'regoing to die.
So we're like, yeah, fine,whatever, we got recurring MRR
and we can spend more weeks onthe logo or the website,
whatever.
No, my general advice is alwayslaunch and you'll figure out.
I built my website in the spaceof a week.
It's the third version of mywebsite.
(46:05):
We've been together for threeyears, right, but I wanted to
give it a twist.
Not only like me, my blog nowit's something else.
But, as I said yesterday, twodays before, I was like I could
launch now, but there are somany bugs and I don't have the
name and I'm not sure aboutwhether to do like a free versus
paid subscription, andyesterday I was like I don't
(46:27):
figure out any of these.
Fuck it, I'm shipping it.
It's like a change of the mainon the web and today some people
are writing oh there's this bughere, this bug there.
I don't understand this.
Who's your ideal customer?
Like, I don't know, I'm goingto figure it out, I don't need
it.
This is a side hustle, you know,but to your point, we
oftentimes spend too much timeon this, especially for startups
, and they're like dude, youjust worth the funding.
(46:52):
You cannot spend a single minutethinking about the name.
Of course, the longer you gowith the wrong name, it's going
to be a hindrance at the end,right, and the longer you take
to do a rebranding, if the brandis not spot on, it's going to
hurt you.
But we'll cross the river.
When we get to the river andwe're not yet at the river, we
don't even see the fucking riveryet.
(47:13):
We don't even know where we areor if there's a river, right.
So in this regard, 100 spot on,and it's it's strange that you
have this realization.
Coming from corporate, weusually have all the time in the
world to do all the mental onecareer and involve 12 people in
the meetings to decide on thebranding and postpone these for
(47:34):
three months.
So like oh, you know we, youknow we haven't reached
consensus.
We need to sign off a wealthyfor people.
We'll figure out next year.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, I think the alignment thing within corporate
is such a big issue.
You know a lot of people liketo ask me don't you think AI is
going to take over?
Blah, blah, blah.
And then I try to ask them like, do you think that companies
are only about executing work?
I can guarantee you that theyare not.
You think about all the dynamicsthat are at play.
(48:06):
You think about really thequestion why isn't everybody
doing this?
Why isn't everybody on thelatest generation of technology?
Why isn't everybody usingGoogle Sheets?
A lot of people are stillsending PowerPoints to each
other.
What is that about?
Right?
That's a very real thing, right?
Like it's really interesting toanswer that question because you
(48:28):
realize two things, which is,first of all, management,
honestly, is a very challengingthing to do.
You don't just tell somebodywhat to do and then they do it.
That's not how it works.
You need leadership, you needteamwork, you need all of those
things to actually makesomething happen, and in large
companies, in largeorganizations, that is an
entirely different scale ofbeing.
(48:48):
Second of all, people who arevery smart in large
organizations are really aboutadvancing themselves and getting
promoted in that environmentand, of course, doing the work
of the company but doing thework of the company.
In between, having 60 meetingsthat week and talking to
everybody, getting alignment,getting stakeholders buy-in,
(49:11):
doing the prep before a meetingto convince a person it's very
challenging to get somethingdone.
Here's the thing that isdifferent, though I worked in a
Chinese company in China where Iworked 996 hours, and 996 is
the idea that you work 9 am till9 pm six days a week, and so
you might think that's a bitcrazy.
I didn't do 996.
(49:32):
I did like 9 am to 10am to 10or 11pm most days and not on the
weekend, and so it wasn't achill environment where there
were no deadlines.
It was a super intensity, highpressure environment where you
had to move fast, really, reallyfast.
Most people in this environment, by the way, are also under 30,
definitely under 35.
(49:52):
I think there were very littlepeople who were over the age of
35 in the companies that I'veworked at, and so I think it's
an amazing environment to reallylearn a lot, soak up a lot of
information, because they willgive you an insane amount of
responsibilities to push you tolearn how to manage those, and
you do, but it's very, verychallenging at first because
(50:15):
your learning curve is verysteep, especially in your first
couple of months, and so it'sreally something where it's yeah
, it's extremely challenging,but you grow through it, and so
I think that is something thatin Asia they do amazingly well.
You learn a lot, you're reallychallenged to perform.
You learn a lot.
You're really challenged toperform.
(50:35):
I think in Europe a lot of thetime it depends we're
generalizing at this point butin Europe a lot of the time you
only get more responsibilitywith seniority instead of with
performance, and so that's areally big challenge, kind of in
terms of like, howorganizations see different
things, and I will say Chineseorganizations does not generally
work.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Especially a Chinese, chinese tech organization does
not generally work like thecorporate that we are used to I
don't want to come across assomebody who takes a sheet on
corporates every time I speak,because I'm ex-lawyer and I know
I always blame them and I knowI always say that's where I
learn how to do things, butespecially how not to do things.
(51:15):
But there's something that weundervalue a lot, which is the
fact that you know, even if theyare, you know they are not
meritocratic, they're slow,they're sluggish, they're, you
know, full of politicseverywhere and whatnot.
They have something that isespecially useful, which is they
set you up with very bigchallenges and projects really
(51:38):
early on in your career, whichyou don't.
I mean, you take it for granted, but people who have never done
corporate, they start a startup.
They usually cannot scale acompany.
Why?
Because they don't knowpolitics.
They don't know how to scale aship.
They don't know how to managebig budgets.
They don't know legalimplications.
They don't know how to scale aship.
They don't know how to managebig budgets.
They don't know legalimplications.
They don't know how to managemeetings with 12 stakeholders.
(51:59):
They don't know how to listento clients or talk to corporates
right, and that's somethingthat you learn when you're 21
years old at freaking Deloitteand then.
So why most of our competitorshave been wiped out by the
pandemic?
It is because they wereextremely tech people, super
talented, and most of them theydidn't like business.
They were just enjoying thefavorable winds right, the
(52:21):
tailwinds of the industry, andthey had a good run for 10 years
.
And at a certain point they'relike oh, I have to figure out.
I didn't want to fire people, Ididn't know how to manage
crisis and stuff like that, orbig projects.
They got caught up in some kindof corporate bank and maybe
they I don't know they wereoverly optimistic and they
(52:42):
overhired.
We come from very bigconsultancies and we learn some
stuff there, and so that's whywe're ready to take on bigger
challenges at Mars Space.
So, that being said, I thinkthere's some credit to be given
to the corporates and especially.
I mean I'm not going to be infavor of these big crunches and
(53:03):
like these stupid long shiftsand working on the weekends, but
yeah, being able to take onreally big challenges right off
the bat, that's very positive ifyou have the right mindset, so
that's really cool.
I wanted to switch gears here alittle bit to going towards the
end of the update set, becausewe're running short in time, but
I want to talk about the future.
(53:24):
A lot of you probably face alot of competition.
A lot of big companies can dowhat you guys do Like to them.
You are a feature right Canva,freepic, adobe I'm thinking like
off the top of my head.
There are disks that they couldmaybe copy what you're doing.
So what's in store forMetaverse AI in the future, for
(53:47):
your company, in one, two, fiveyears from now?
Speaker 2 (53:50):
Yeah, I think for Multiverse, honestly, the best
case scenario would be that someof these bigger players start
doing AI headshots and I'm noteven joking about that and I
think at some point and why Isay that is because it would
help us so much to educateconsumers, first of all, and
second of all, being in thisproblem, I know exactly how
(54:10):
difficult it is, so I don'treally have that many illusions
that it would become a main keypoint for them to excel at this,
but I think they could beamazing for education and so I
do foresee that happening and Ithink, honestly, that would be
really a huge like growth pointfor us to go to, I think,
secondly.
(54:31):
So, first of all, I would sayyou know the awareness of
AIshots, the fact that it's athing you and I know.
You know because you're at theforefront of everything.
I know because I'm building it,but really not that many people
know that if I need remoteheadshots, where am I going to
go, I think.
Secondly, we're going to focus alot more on B2B, and the reason
(54:52):
for that is because it's areally, really challenging
problem to solve.
There's a lot of detail requiredand people need a lot of people
need to share a lot ofinformation and are very
specific about the type ofphotos that they want, and so I
see a lot of opportunity reallyin that area.
Also, because B2B is reallywhere we can get huge ticket
(55:14):
sales right.
That will change us from 30K to300K a month.
It's not going to happen withB2C only, so B2B is a huge
focusing point on us.
And then, thirdly, I think Idon't want to say too much about
this, but I think there aresome really exciting
developments in the works rightnow that you can kind of stay
(55:35):
tuned for on our Instagram orour LinkedIn and stuff like that
.
But I think there's a lot morecoming for AI in general, ai
photography or videography inthe next couple of years, and I
think we're in the primeposition to jump in on those
trends and that's really wherewe want to be.
So that's all I'll say.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
So that's all I'll say.
I wanted to hear some partingwords on the fact that I think
we are entering an era wherewhenever we see something
digital, we know it's going tobe fake or edited.
Look, with the Apple new iOSthat comes with cleanup, every
(56:14):
photo will be instantly editedWith AI, like remove that person
from the background, remove theclouds in the sky, make it
brighter, things like that.
So the benefit of the doubtwill not exist anymore, not in
video, nor in pictures, right,which I think is just a change
of paradigm, but I don't know.
(56:35):
It sort of stares the shit outof me as of paradigm, but I
don't know.
It sort of scares the shit outof me as a control freak that I
don't know the answer to thisquestion.
And so what's your perspectiveon this issue specifically?
Speaker 2 (56:47):
My perspective in general and has been for the
last 10 years as somebody who'ssuper online is don't trust the
internet.
Don't trust the internet, justthe internet because of the
nigerian prince scam right.
This is more than that, yes, no,I I think.
I say that because I think it'sa.
(57:08):
It's honestly a generationalproblem.
I think you know I understandwhat you're saying.
I and I totally agree.
It becomes harder and harder totrust.
But I see that as a generationalproblem because I look at you
know, photoshop has been aroundfor so long for our parents
versus how we are looking atemail, how we are looking at
(57:28):
social media, how we are reallylike observing things on on
reels or whatever, we have acompletely different approach to
this, right, right, and I seethat with people who are a lot
younger than me too, they have acompletely different approach
than I do.
My mom will send me a video onInstagram and she'll be like,
how come this girl is so skinny,what is she doing?
I'm like, clearly, this is thevideo edit, this has been video
(57:50):
edited.
She doesn't know that videoedits exist, but I do know, and
so I don't really believeanything that I see online.
That value loses a lot.
I think, if anything, it reallydoubles down the necessity of
institutions.
Right, we need good sources ofinformation, and those good
sources of information havenever been social media or video
(58:12):
or anything like that, and soit becomes all the more
important that we really investand look at good sources.
What are your inputs?
What are your sources ofinformation?
They should have never beenReddit or Quora or anything like
that.
So what is the next?
You know what is the next goodsource of information that you
are looking at and that you arepaying attention to?
(58:33):
And I think you know ourgeneration is already paying a
lot of attention to stuff likethat.
We now, you know, with, likerecent politics, have paid a lot
more attention to newspapers,to what they are doing, but I
think you know our kids andgenerations after us are going
to pay 10 times more attentionto that, because they will have
a lot of information about AI.
(58:54):
And so I think, yeah, it's goingto become a lot harder, but I
think that was always going tohappen, whether or not, whether
or not we expected it or not,right, and still, now it's it's,
it's the best it's ever goingto be.
In five years, in 10 years,it'll be worse.
In 50 years, who knows?
You know, we'll have fakeholograms of things.
So I think I think honestly,it's a generational thing and I
(59:19):
think always as soon as you findyourself going to I just had my
birthday two weeks ago, so I'mlike, ah, I'm aging, all right,
I think go there.
You understand that this is notthe thing that you can solve.
This is something that willhonestly become instinctive to
people who are younger than youand that you need to pay more
attention to as we get older.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
Perfect In 30 seconds .
How can we help you, Personallyor company-wide?
Any announcement.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
I am looking for more tech communities in Barcelona
or online to be a part of, and Iam also looking for people who
can mentor me when it comes tostartups or marketing.
Marketing startups would beamazing.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
There's a.
One of the bad thing aboutbootstrap companies is that we
usually don't have anyassociation to belong to.
Like startups.
They get into incubators,accelerators, they get into a bc
batch and therefore they havethis sort of natural communities
, whereas bootstrap companieswere like, fuck it, we're gonna
(01:00:25):
go on our own.
And so, yeah, we, if we wanted,we could never leave the cave,
we would never meet other people.
That's not a long-term strategy, but there are very cool people
doing amazing things inBarcelona.
You know Duane from Everyday,there's Amir from Duist, there's
the guy from Chessable, david.
(01:00:45):
There's all these bootstrapcompanies.
We know each other because wehave made this conscious effort
to meet, but we wouldn't haveknown about each other had we
not tried right, because we cango on our own alone.
So let's make it happen.
Let's create these monthly,quarterly meetings of bootstrap
(01:01:06):
companies.
Bootstrap only, don't cheat.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
I think that would be amazing.
Absolutely, we can do a dinneror something.
I'll text you after.
Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Exactly All right.
Well, thank you very much,Sunny.
It's been amazing.
Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Thanks, alex, have a good one.
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