Builder's Growth Lab
The podcast where builders, founders, and investors talk AI marketing and customer acquisition for AI builders.
Join us (Conor Douglas, Mallory Loar, Charlie Hernandez) as we talk about the latest AI coding tools, interview the creators building them, and share real builder stories with AI founders. From Claude Code to cutting-edge startups, how to acquire customers for your AI app, we talk about AI code and keep you informed and entertained.
Perfect for builders who want to stay ahead of the AI curve without the hype.
New episodes weekly.
Builder's Growth Lab
AI Branding & Community Building Expert, Mallory Loar | Episode #22
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Tired of AI products that all sound the same? We sat down with brand and community powerhouse Mallory Lore (formerly Bolt.new and Discord) to unpack how real brands are built in a crowded market & why the “vibe” only works when it’s backed by clarity, consistency, and care. From picking a narrow target to speaking in users’ own words, Mallory shows how positioning and language can turn a tool into a movement people want to join.<br><br>We dig into practical brand metrics—awareness, sentiment, and that all-important word-of-mouth flywheel—and how to actually move them with social listening, focused messaging, and programs for superfans. Mallory explains why consumer trust craters when companies lean on jargon or fear-mongering (“AI will replace your team”) and how plain, human storytelling wins more hearts. We also talk community as a growth lever: rewarding loyal users, staying present in the channels they live in, and making CX the front line of brand experience.<br><br>You’ll get a rare behind-the-scenes tour of the world’s largest hackathon: how a month-long format, builder packs, heavyweight judges, and constant live ops brought 100k+ builders together. Plus, we reflect on the AWS outage and what single-point failures do to brand trust, along with the transparency playbook for when things go sideways. Mallory also shares her next chapter with Kind Of Sorta Agency, focused on brand, community, and content for consumer-focused teams.<br><br>If you’re building in AI and want your product to stand out, this conversation is your blueprint: define your wedge, speak human, reward believers, and show up when it counts. If this helped you think differently about brand and community, follow the show, share with a teammate, and leave a quick review—what’s the one phrase you want users to use when they describe your product?
Hosts Set The Stage
SPEAKER_01What's up everybody? Charlie here with AI Code Central Podcast. You've got Connor Douglas. What up, what up? Here. This is episode 22. And special guest, Mallory Lure. She is a boss, formerly from Bolt.new. She is a marketer, brand builder, and just overall badass.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It was great. Great conversation with her. I think a lot of cool insights, especially just being at Bolt. She really helped put together what the hackathon that they had that month-long hackathon, which was awesome to learn about and hear more about from her perspective.
Why Mallory’s Brand Insights Matter
SPEAKER_01Yeah. World's largest hackathon. She she put that thing on, which is um man, I I was in it. I had like four projects. I think, or no, I think you can only do one, but I remember like thinking, I have access to this thing for a month. Yeah. And then I was like, oh my God, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. I can, you know, that's and then I, of course, just got distracted. I probably went to go ride my bike or something like that. As one does, Charlie, as we both do. That's just the way our minds work. So yeah, not the end of the world. But she's awesome. She's great. Uh, learn so much. Like you will learn as a you know, app builder, um, entrepreneur, builder, what whatever it is, you'll learn the importance of a brand, how to build a brand, and what it can do for your app and your AI company.
SPEAKER_02Yep. And I I mean it's coming directly from somebody who's done it in the AI space. So you guys are getting it, you know, direct.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, she's she built bolts, so that's uh that's that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, awesome. But uh what's going on, Charlie? You you give me the spiel, man.
SPEAKER_01What's up in your world? So, okay, a couple things as I pull up my notes. Um, yeah, I shared that video with you of Red Bull Rampage that was over the weekend. Those guys are wild lunatics. Yeah, you're basically cliff jumping on mountain bikes. And um, I look, I I can't do that. Maybe like one of those, maybe like the smaller one. But uh um there was two big crashes. There one guy, I think he uh um broke his hip.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like so much fun, man. You're really selling me on doing this kind of stuff at some point in my life.
Weekend Stories And Creator Fuel
SPEAKER_01When you when you land it, it's there there's no and like one thing that like you know, because you're you're going down a mountain, basically. Like the you're going down these cliffs on these giant mountain bikes. One thing that people like don't realize, and you can't really train for it, like you just have to do it, is the g forces that you take. So when you go down something so vertical, and then you you get shot straight up, so like this, and if you're just listening, just pull over and pull out YouTube, just go straight down and then you ramp back up, and you have like a like a giant lip that'll just shoot you in the air. I mean, you will go flying in the air, and it's the weirdest feeling in the world. Um, I couldn't imagine. I do it like a smaller scale, I can imagine doing it what those guys do in the bigger scale. Like a roller coaster, but you're not strapped in anything, more or less. That's kind of the fun and the terrifying part because you can have really bad crashes. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, hopefully those guys are are okay. That was uh the women competed on uh Saturday and the men competed on Sunday. So that was over the weekend. That was cool. I watched that event. Uh again, that's Red Bull Rampage. Um great event. Hopefully everybody's okay. Uh I'm still waiting on maybe Google's being a rascal. I don't know. This Google Ads API that I'm I'm waiting on. Um, so we initially this is for campaign pilots, the app that we're building. Um so the the we're waiting on the API for Google Ads, and we initially got like the smaller API, and then as we're as I'm like, you know, integrating it, working with it, and everything, it's like, okay, nope, you're gonna need a bigger production API. So go back to Google, uh, request access. Now we're in like you know, it it's hurry up and wait. That's the stage we're in. So I've kind of got poopy pants about that. Um, hopefully get it in the next one to two days.
SPEAKER_02You think Google's a pain, man? Wait till we get over to Meta and try and do something with their APIs. That's gonna be that'll be a headache.
SPEAKER_01But um worth it. So waiting on that, um, and then we're we're like 90% there getting this thing launched out, which is super exciting. Um Friday night, the we uh girlfriend and I um we watched like a little marathon, maybe like two hours, you know, just stayed in because we're getting old.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh we stayed in and watched uh Keen Peel, and I forgot how unbelievably love that show that show is. That show is so funny, it's so good. We watched um I I don't remember the character's name. He's like, I'll have what I'm having, I'll have what I'm having. He's got the content for breakfast. I was dying laughing. I was like, oh my god, this is so great, this is so awesome. And of course, the proud thug. And it's funny because like his his name is Carlito, yeah, and uh yeah, so I of course I thought that was funny. Um, great show. The guy that doesn't waste the 40, he's like pouring it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. And he's got like the the little bowl under.
SPEAKER_02I love that show. There's a few good ones where I mean there's one where they're playing, I think what is it? Um, is it what's the board game you play? It's not World of Warcraft, that's the video game. What's the one where you sit down and you actually play with like all the pieces? Like, oh, I'm trying to remember. Um I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, I don't want to waste too much time. No, it's not risk, it's like uh man, I wish I could remember, but um it's just really funny. Yeah, I don't know. I wish I would remember to tell you guys, so I don't want to waste any more time.
SPEAKER_01Um such a good show. So funny, so funny. Uh watched some of that that was Friday, and then Sunday. Um we did pumpkin carving. Oh, had to do the fall stuff with the girlfriends. Yeah, it's an essential. So we did uh so like you you stencil it out and then you get like the perforator, the little poker, and then you poke around and we have them sitting on our table right now.
SPEAKER_02We're we were supposed to carve pumpkins like two weeks ago, and and the carving kit is still sitting on our kitchen table, just waiting to be used. Okay, yeah, so maybe today, who knows?
SPEAKER_01Um, so knock that out. I have a uh badass carved pumpkin, thank you. And um that was cool. I mean, it's it's not it didn't take as long as I thought.
SPEAKER_02Would you carve in the pumpkin?
SPEAKER_01Just like uh like a jack-lantern, just like some teeth, and yeah. Um, and then we started to watch uh Hill, Hill House, Hill on the House, House in the Hill. Is that what it is?
SPEAKER_02It's on that isn't it like a horror thing? Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen it before. Yeah, a while back. Didn't that come out a couple years ago? Yeah, it came out like pre-covered. I remember watching it. It was pretty good. It was pretty good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it seemed pretty yeah, it's it's seemed pretty scary. Like, I mean you have a good like the the kids like falling asleep, and there's just like this thing just like right here. Yeah. If you don't like horror, don't watch it, it'll freak you out a little bit. But or if you have a problem sleeping, like I do. Or that.
SPEAKER_02How'd you sleep after that, Charlie?
SPEAKER_01Actually, pretty good. You know what? I lifted that night. You know, I always sleep better after I lift.
SPEAKER_02So actually, not bad. I was at the gym earlier. Like, I try and make a point to go like at least three days a week to the gym, and then I'll do like a run or a or a bike ride myself. Not like you're biking, it's like straight road bike, like cliffs. Yeah, no, that that thing would I would die if I went on any cliffs with my street bike and would just crumple, crumple.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I um I think uh I I don't know, just like maybe like after working out, I think my body just relaxes and then I can just kind of like pass out pretty quick.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm sure there's some science backing to that too. I think it's a thing. Like if you work out or whatever, it it helps alleviate stress and helps with sleep and all that good stuff. So I try to get to it as best I can.
SPEAKER_01The hard part now is like I'm getting into playing hockey again days of the season. And um I don't play in the summer. So, you know, if we have an ice time at like 10 p.m., we're off the ice at 11:30. Back, you know, you gotta have a beer with the guys, and then you're back home around 12:30, and it's just like you're so wired, and that's it.
AWS Outage And Single-Point Risk
SPEAKER_02I can never do that. I had a buddy who did that, like did like you know, the hockey league stuff, and he's like, Oh, you want to like come like you know, hang out for a game or something? They're a lot of fun. I'm like, Oh, what time's the game? 10, 11. Sometimes they start at 12. Like really in New York? Yeah, they would start at like 12 o'clock. Like, this is out in Long Island, so it's not in the city, but it's like, yeah, 12 o'clock game on like a Friday, it'll be at like 12. Jeez. And I'm like, you're nuts. Is that Chelsea Piers? No, no, no. It's somewhere in Long Island. I don't know specifically where they play, but I think it's a place called the ranks that's been around forever. I used to ice skate there as a kid and stuff, but okay, they'll have a couple different ranks and everything, and yeah, they'll just play through like 10, 11, 12 o'clock. It's it's insane.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that is brutal.
SPEAKER_02Like you said, by the time you get home, it's gotta be 132. And it's like I can never come back home from somewhere and just immediately go to sleep. I need to like come back, like kind of like reset, like you know, wind down, like you know, chill out, and then I can like really start going to sleep. But I can never just I don't know how people do that, just come home and they're like, Yep, wash up, change, get into bed, and fall asleep easily. It's just I wish I had that superpower.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's uh kind of I've been doing it for like 20 years, so um kind of yeah, yeah, a little here and there. So anyway, that was my exciting weekend. What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_02That's cool, man. Um, I mean, weekend was was alright. I'm trying to think of of anything major. I I really wanna I already spoke to you about this, but the AWS outage yesterday, did you did that impact you at all with anything? Um were you even aware of the AWS outage? It sort of sounds like you're like, I have no clue. Uh yeah, AWS had an outage.
SPEAKER_01I I knew about it, and then I think Greg Eisenberg tweeted, just reminder that every company is like a AWS wrapper or something, something like that. 100%.
SPEAKER_02Dude, there was um if you go like, you know, go on X or or wherever, you know, LinkedIn. It's like it's all over the place, but typically X, I think, is where I saw this. And Down Detector is what I typically go to. If an app's not working, I just want to make sure it's not me or my computer and other people are facing the same issue. And somebody has this pulled up and they're just scrolling on their phone through every company in Down Detector, and it's all flat. And then yesterday morning, every I'm telling you, everybody. This is Google, this is Asana, Clavio, MailChimp, Shopify. It's like everything, and you don't realize it, right? You're like, yeah, AWS servers are great. Like I even have things set up through their like middleware components and API calls, but it's you just don't realize how many companies are like Greg Eisenberg said, it's just rappers and it's all on AWS. Like they control so much, and it literally rendered like my job useless yesterday. Like there was nothing I could do outside of like Microsoft Outlook and some Microsoft programs, and I just don't run a lot on Microsoft, right? So it's like having to run something in Google Ads wouldn't work right, setting you know, DNS records in Google Workspace. Nope. Asana, that's my project management system. Nothing. I have 12 clients in Clavio who needed help yesterday, and it's like, can't log in there, and until I can, I can't really help with anything. It just it was a gift and a curse. It was nice to have a kind of some breathing, you know, room throughout the day and not so much of just like, okay, I have 20 things I need to cross off my checklist. But it did create a whirlwind and where today, tomorrow, the rest of the week is just going to be catching up because Monday was such such a disaster. And it's just funny to me because it seems like AWS didn't really like if something like that happens again and it happens over the course of a week, like what are you going to do? They like they had playoff baseball games yesterday, they had Monday night football, and the apps that run on AWS servers couldn't retrieve the tickets from people who had bought it. And thankfully they got it fixed in time or had some workaround. But it's like, what happens if that goes down for a week? Do you just delay sporting events? Do you just like everything goes on pause, right? It's like there's car dealerships who use that for their CRM and their sales data. And it's like, what? Like, I guess you're not selling cars for a week because AWS is down. So I think it was just very interesting, not only because of the impact it had on me, which I think is very minimal, but how much did that impact other businesses who rely on AWS to make money, right? How much profit did some businesses miss out on all day yesterday that AWS might be responsible for, or maybe not? You know, who knows? Is that a class action lawsuit? Is that just uh oops, it happened and it won't happen again? You know, I'm just very curious as to what the aftermath looks like beyond day one of fixing it. You know, what are they going to put in place to make sure it doesn't happen again? So they acknowledge it. They acknowledge it. They, you know, it's like they acknowledge it. Yeah, it's really funny because some of their updates, and again, you know, I'm I'm technical, but to an extent, right? I can kind of have my ceiling as well. And some of their updates were just so it was like this mysterious way of saying something of like servers and you know, degradation, and we're working on it. It's like you'd have to read it. And it was like reading Greek to me. I was just like, okay, it sounds like you're working on it, but you don't have any timeline of when it'll be back up. And the fixes that you're implementing, I I literally have no idea what you're talking about. So I think they could have done a better job in terms of plain speak, right? In terms of like, yep, we're working on it. We know there's an issue with our servers, and just try and make it a little bit more, I don't know, simplistic in terms of explaining what actually happened. But they were updating it, they were kind of on top of it, but so is every other platform. And again, it's just everything's fine now. I don't think it's the end of the world. You know, those things happened. I just do think it it makes you take a step back and say, okay, well, if AWS controls this much, is that really is that actually really something you want too? Like, do you want AWS to control all of it? Because if someone gets their hands on it and it's the wrong person, it's like, I don't know, they probably have all this data at their disposal to do whatever whatever they want with. So it just kind of brought up a lot of questions for me. I think really interesting topics of discussion with colleagues on just how that gets handled moving forward because it it was, it was a disaster yesterday, and the aftermath, it's still yet to kind of be figured out, I think.
SPEAKER_01I I don't watch this show anymore, but wasn't there a South Park episode where they they moved to California for the internet? Oh, I don't know. That's how I don't know. I love South Park too. I just haven't seen Grapes of Wrath or whatever, and they have to like move across the country.
SPEAKER_02Maybe, maybe it sounds like it's something South Park would do. But you know what though? For me, it honestly was. It was a nice way to kind of like step back and get out yesterday. Yeah, it's like I wasn't getting a ton of emails outside of the ones like, well, what can we do? And it was like, well, I can't do anything, I don't run AWS, I just you know do your other marketing stuff. But um, yeah, when I played golf. I played golf for nine holes, and it was like, hey, I have a couple hours here. Let's enjoy it, as opposed to just sitting here and twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to happen. So love it. So it was a beautiful day, the weather's been gorgeous here, all that jazz. But but yeah, that's kind of that's kind of where I'm at. That was my update weekend was you know, kind of boring, which I I appreciate. It's always nice to have some downtime, but um, yeah, AWS man, crazy stuff.
Introducing Mallory And Her Reset
SPEAKER_01Well, um we're gonna wrap up here. Uh, we're gonna get to the interview with Mallory. And uh again, she was formerly with Bolt.new, uh built the brand there. She put together the world's largest hackathon. Uh, you will learn what is branding, the importance of it, why to do it, how to do it. And um, yeah, great, great interview. Sure. Let's get her in. What's up, everyone? We are here uh sitting down. We've got the goat of AI branding, formerly with bolt.new and Discord. Uh, we are pleased and very lucky to have her as a guest today, uh, Mallory Laura. Am I saying your last name correct? Laura Mallory.
SPEAKER_00Yes, you got it. You got it. What's up, everyone? This is so exciting.
SPEAKER_02What's uh we're excited to have you on here.
SPEAKER_01We're excited. So in the past uh it's been it's been a couple days, right? Maybe uh a couple weeks since um you know transitioning out of uh bolt.new. What have you how how's life been? Other than you know, Animal Crossing and a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00And Hello Kitty, yeah, Miphi. Yeah, yeah. And I have an intense uh collection or uh intense passion for collecting Miffy bunnies. So I'm doing that, spending time with family, friends, uh enjoying the semi-partial, unemployed life, um, which is not, you know, I'm not gonna complain about that. But um, yeah, it's been a few weeks since I left Bolt, and I'm kind of in the midst of, you know, resting, figuring out what's next, and then to some extent getting started on what's next, and then just having conversations with folks like yourself, which is also a good thing.
SPEAKER_02We love that. Have you been enjoying the the time off? Or do you find yourself like not really knowing what to do with all the free time? Because I'm sure at all previous positions you were just working almost non-stop.
SPEAKER_00Yes, pretty much. I mean, I will say I think I'm really lucky because after I left Discord, I had about like a six, seven month sabbatical slash time off, which was really as someone who is like an overachiever my whole life, always working hard, right? Like and taking pride in that to go from that, like like a unicorn fast-growing startup, to then being like, I have nothing on my calendar, I have nothing to do is a transition because it takes weeks to just get out of the uh of the sort of everyday routines that you get used to when you're at a company or a startup long term. And so I would find myself waking up going straight to my computer and be like, oh, no one's emailing me. Oh, wait, no one's messaging me on Discord. Oh, wait, I don't have 10 meetings on my account. Like, and it and you have to kind of, you know, uh, yeah, you gotta like change that up. And that's not easy to do. I think it takes weeks.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like a dream to me to just wake up and like not have the emails or the Discord messages, right? Because it's not real, right?
SPEAKER_00It's like No, it's not real. It's not real.
SPEAKER_02It's almost um it reminds me of like, you know, when you go on a vacation and it takes you like it all well, for me at least, it always takes like one or two days to really get into like vacation mode where you're just like, okay, there is, I don't have to answer work emails, I don't have to be responsible for this. And then by like day two or three, you're like, great, you're more accustomed to not answering the phone or answering emails, et cetera. So I'm guess it sounds a little bit like that, if anything.
Burnout, Creativity, And Boundaries
SPEAKER_00It is, and then it's filling up your time with the things that bring you back to life, the things that bring you joy. And quite frankly, for me, I and I'm still working through this, but most places I work at, I tend to just burn myself out. And it's because I really enjoy the work and I I put my all into it. And I think um, and that also includes my creative powers and what I've learned from jumping from place to place and all of my different experiences is that I kind of put all of my creativity into one place, and then there's nothing left for me. And so I had spent all of that time like post-Discord and even the end of my time at Discord and even at Bolt. Like after I left Bolt, I found myself singing again, which I I love to sing. I'm a very creative person. Um, very, very creative person. And to me, like I what I've learned is that uh you can't let your job take away all of your creative power and energy. Like you have to leave some of that for yourself in whatever way that works for you. And I find that um, yeah, it is weird to like, and it's the dream to like be like, oh, I'm unemployed for a specific amount of time and I get to just own my time um and do the things that'll bring me back to life. Cause if I do that, what happens is that I have the answer as to what I will be doing next. It comes to me, right? And I the only way it comes to me is by allowing that space. Um, and it is a privilege, and I and I know that, and I always tell people that like not most most people can't be like, oh, I'm gonna piece out and not work for six months. Like that's not that's not realistic. So I'm very lucky, but I I tend to that's kind of like the cycle I go through when I take these like mini periods of time off. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_02It it almost sounds like an entrepreneurial like like approach to things, like where you want to focus on some of the things you love, but not take too much time doing that and maybe have some other side projects going on on the side. I mean, Charlie, you you're the exact persona of that, right? It's like you have your focus and then you have your side projects that you're really, really passionate about that kind of keep you from going insane, I think, from the mundane day-to-day cycle of what you would call your nine to five.
SPEAKER_01I guess. Yeah. I I think, and you know, I'll I'll back up too and say that there's a fine line between entrepreneurship and unemployment. And I have definitely watched that line for a couple months after my sales job. Uh oh yeah, I was on you know, unemployed. I got in really good shape, and then I got really, really good at hockey, and I got so stupid. And then just you know, I just wasn't flexing my brain, and then I I had to I had to learn to code. I I I did to learn something, just put your brain power towards something. But yeah, as far as like having something, uh some sort of purpose, but yeah, I was burned out. Like I totally get that, Mallory. That's yeah, yeah. I that's I I I know what that feels like for sure. So that that kind of takes us into our our first question, Mallory, as far as um what you're doing with with Bolton Discord and you know what you've accomplished in your career. What is it that got you uh into branding? Was it like a single event or was it just like maybe an idea that you had? And you're like, all right, I'm I'm going into branding.
What Branding Really Is
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a great question and a question that I've never answered. And now I'm sitting here and I'm like, what really did get me into branding? Because I was turning. I was like, well, I didn't really start as a brand marketer, and I I kind of just was a uh jack of all trades doing all parts of marketing, and I think both of you probably have had somewhat of a s similar experience. Um but I think it has to do with my start in community marketing and um and really sort of I think tapping into building a community for any brand, including myself. I did that for myself and then eventually would do that for businesses. And that does translate to branding because ultimately I think that uh a lot of community marketing is based off building relationships, vibes-based marketing, which is what I like to call brand marketing. Um, and I think over time what I had found was like I was starting to do community marketing, then I was doing content marketing, then I was doing event marketing. And I kind of was able to start really understanding all these different parts of marketing. But the reality is, is like you can't have amazing marketing unless you're able to take a step back and understand like how is this all consistent with one another? How do all of these things work together? What is the positioning with all of all of these things? And the way in which you do that is through brand marketing and just understanding the foundational elements of your brand and your company. And I don't think I was really able to understand that until I worked on my full brand project at Discord, which was rebranding the company to expand outside of games. But I was building the brand earlier on at my time there, but I didn't know I was doing it. I was just doing it. And what I mean by that is like, you know, I'd get some folks together in the office and we'd film a really silly vlog where we'd go around the office and we'd give people a tour, and that video got like millions of views, and people are like, oh wow, like they're like cool people that work here and I want to work there too. And and like that kind of helped build the brand and build the vibes of the brand, but I didn't know it was brand marketing. I was just doing it. Like that, so I didn't really know I was doing brand marketing until I think probably halfway through my time at Discord where it was like, okay, we are, you know, it's the pandemic. We are, you know, all these different people are using our platforms, whether it's like teachers trying to connect with students or artists that are, you know, they can't go on tour. So they need to find a way to, you know, interact with their fans. And so all of these people are coming to this platform and we're not just for games anymore, and our brand is so games heavy. So how do we expand that? So that was the first time that I had to take the work that I had done in the first few years of me building the brand, which is hard because I think brand marketing is so emotional, which is what I love about brand marketing because it's the one component in all of marketing where it's like you can infuse the humanness, the creativity, the passion, the energy. And look, not that you can't do that with SEO marketing. Okay. I'm I'm sure there is. I and I just haven't discovered that yet. I don't know about the I think that's like what brand marketing has. And so the for the first time I had to be like, wow, I've done all this great work, but now we have to redo it. And so I had to kind of take my emotions out of what I had just built so that I could rebuild um with the rest of the company. And that was kind of when I realized like, oh, this is what brand marketing is all about. It's it's about keeping things consistent. It's about like what are our values as a company? It's about what's our brand personality, voice, and tone, and how do we infuse that through everything, whether it's the way we talk to customers or the way we interact with each other or whatever, right? Like, yeah. Um, and that to me was when I kind of started being like, this is cool. Um, I want to do more of this.
SPEAKER_02So you just kind of fell in, like found yourself doing it without being cognizant of doing it. And then you're like, okay, I'm pretty good at this. And then, so was there like a moment in time where you're like, okay, now I understand what brand marketing is, or I know that this is what I'm doing, I'm pretty good at it. You know, um, how do I make it better? And is that when you really started like, you know, peeking behind the curtain of like, okay, how do I push certain buttons, pull certain levers to, I guess I use the word optimize, optimize brand marketing for, you know, whatever brand it is.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I think, but when I was able to start doing that work, I was then able to understand what are the components that make a really great brand, right? And the reason why I like to do brand marketing is because it's extremely creative and it's very subjective. And all the things I mentioned earlier about making people feel things. Um, and so yeah, I think it was like taking all of those pieces and then being able to approach various companies and startups and breaking that down for them. And most founders and companies don't understand brand. They think it's just like, oh, like it looks really pretty and the packaging's really cool and the websites neat and like and it's it's it's it is that, yes, totally. I think that's a part of that. Um, but it's also the way you position yourself in the market, right? Like, especially me just coming from Bolt. I mean, the amount of vibe coding tools that are in that space, you're competing against not just all of these other startups that are popping up overnight, but you're competing against open AI, you're competing against, you know, Google and Cloud. Like, and so positioning and branding are like one of the many levers that you can pull to be successful, but matter because it and you guys know this, right? Like you have what it's like half a second to a second to really capture someone's attention. And guess what? It's gotta be vibes-based. Like that's what it's gonna be, especially in consumer marketing, especially in consumer marketing, right? Like the first 0.5 to one second of that impression really matter. Like, um, especially like from where I was just coming from in a space where everyone's building a vibe coding tool. Um, so it's super important to stand out.
SPEAKER_01Perception is huge. Yeah, it's everything. Yeah, as as far as vibes based for our uh builder and vibe coding audience, what does that mean? And can you share a couple tips on that?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. I think first it's a few things. Um, it's about understanding who you're targeting, right? And it's interesting because I talk to a lot of folks and they're like, well, I'm targeting everyone. Okay, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking your product is going to target everyone, I really want to challenge you to go back to the drawing board and really understand who your customer is. Because when you're for everyone, especially initially when you're building a product, you are for no one, right? Unless you are a Nike, unless you are, you know, um, yeah, just a bigger company. It takes forever to build. Like you can't do that, right? So really understand who your customer is. Who are those like one to three personas that you're really sort of targeting? And to me, that is that's a very important step because you can't do all of the positioning and the messaging and the branding work without understanding who your customer is. So that's the first step. Um, another, another sort of tip that I tend to give founders and folks that are building is especially if you're lucky to have a lot of users. So, say you're a platform that has, you know, thousands of users, how can you tap into them to better understand how they talk about your product and your brand? Because I'm very big on utilizing the words that users say or customers say within your marketing, right? So, for example, deploying a survey and saying, you know, how would you describe XYZ brand? Brand to your friend, right? Just that question alone will get you all of these different answers. And when you start looking at those answers, you should ask yourself, like, what are the trends? Like, what are the frequent words that I'm seeing and how people are describing my product, right? And then take that and apply it to your marketing, right? It's because if if that's how people are talking about your product and perceiving your product and it's working in a in a way where it's like they're probably telling their friends or other folks about, you know, your product or your brand or your app, um, that will be marketing that will convert back.
SPEAKER_02What about like social listening tools also, Mallory? Like, do you have you ever used that? Because like that's exactly what that reminded me of. You're like, yep, see what other people are saying. I use social listening tools all the time to help clients understand the perception of their brand, their offer, the value that it brings to somebody and what people are. I mean, you're seeing in real time what people are saying on any given platform with these social listening tools, which I think is really pertinent to understanding how to serve them better moving forward.
Positioning In A Crowded AI Market
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Absolutely. I I always tend to use any uh social listening tools anytime I'm working with a specific brand or company to not just understand that perception that you mentioned, Connor, but to also um understand uh how like the competitive landscape, right? So how are you know the users that we're trying to target talking about similar products as well? And how do users perceive those competitors, right? Because that the compet that's gonna help inform your positioning. And what I mean by positioning, right, is like, okay, if you know there are these many players in the space, where do you lie within that range, right? And how are you gonna be different? And you can't really know that unless you understand your competitors and how users are perceiving your competitors. So that's something that I really love to do with social listening tools as well.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Yeah, that's really cool. And then I guess on the topic of brand still and all this stuff, I think one challenge I would find or I have found sometimes it's like it's not measurable the same way performance marketing is, right? Like I'm a performance marketer through and through. It's like, okay, great, I'll go to the analytics and I'll show you attribution. Branding that seems so much tougher to kind of put a pulse on to say, hey, you started here and now you're here. I think there's a few things, but how do you prove performance? How do you prove that your branding has you know helped optimize everything for them?
SPEAKER_00That's such a great question and uh has been really uh a challenge, I think, for a lot of founders and builders that I have met to really understand the value and importance of it. Um and I'm not gonna sit here and say it's all vibes-based, it's a mix of two things. It's a mix of awareness and then it's also a mix of sentiment, right? So um you really, I think when it comes to consumer uh like apps and platforms, you really have to hit a user. I think it's I think it's like between or a person between five to ten different times for them to potentially convert. And that could be in a lot of different ways, right? That could be definitely from a paid ad, but it could also be from, you know, the organic social channels, your website, word of mouth, an ad that they saw while they were driving, whatever it may be. Um, an influencer that also talked about it. And to me, uh, the more awareness you have as a brand is great. Uh, it helps a lot with word of mouth marketing, which is the strongest type of marketing, I think, that will really uh especially for consumer marketing. Like you can't really have a healthy consumer product without um a strong word of mouth funnel. So I do think that um, so awareness and then of course sentiment, right? So how are users actually not just perceiving your brand, but how how engaged are they with it, right? Um, how like ultimately it feeds into the awareness part because if you're able to have really positive sentiment with your users, you best believe that your word of mouth flywheel is just only going to be stronger, right? And so it's not just about, you know, oh, how are our users talk, how much do they love our platform or how are they talking about it positively on all these social channels? Yes, it's that. But it's also right, like out of your subset of users, who are your super fans and how can you really engage and reward them, right? To, and that is a part of brand marketing, um, to really sort of get that flywheel going. Is it a program you need to build for them? Like, is there a way you can incentivize them? How can you better build that relationship? Because it is an upfront sort of investment, but it will uh result in in growth over time. And there are ways to measure that very precisely if you build like a community program or a referral program as an example, um, where you can better track that. Um, but yeah, those are I think some of the the ways. That answered it.
SPEAKER_02That was perfect. That was awesome.
SPEAKER_01Um, makes sense to me. How do you see Mallory? Uh how do you see AI companies positioning themselves now in in terms of branding?
SPEAKER_02And um I feel like that's such a loaded question though, too, because it's almost it's like everybody just slaps AI on the back end of their name now just to sound like they're am I not wrong in that? Like I feel like so many people are just like, yeah, we're just gonna put AI on it. Blockchain in 2018. Yeah, it's like because it sounds cool and everybody thinks it's like the modernized approach to things, and I just yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I feel like trying to plan for that is so hard. Sorry, go ahead, Mellie.
Vibes-Based Marketing Explained
SPEAKER_00No, no, sorry. I'm just I there's two things, okay? So it's either one, what you're marketing to me is so techy that I have no idea what you're freaking talking about. And I'm not just talking about like startups for developers or for engineers. Of course, that that type of marketing is gonna be more technical, and that makes sense going back to everything we've been talking about. I'm talking about like consumer AI platforms that are trying to speak to like folks like ourselves, and it I just don't understand like what is being marketed to me. So there's that. And then there's the other part of it that I see a lot of, which is, you know, um, AI is gonna replace like this is like the last piece of software you're ever gonna need, or you know, AI is gonna replace your CTO, or AI is gonna, and I just like it's just really tone-deaf, right? If if you have any idea on where the everyday consumer is at right now, you'll know that you know, many of them are afraid of this technology. They are afraid that it'll replace their jobs. And I feel like leaning into that narrative uh doesn't like it doesn't help, you know, consumers have uh it's not gonna want them, it's not gonna make them want them to use your product, is what I'm trying to say. Um, yes. So those are like the two sides that I see is like either it's too tacky or it's kind of like anti-human um type of marketing. It's a good point. So those are the two things that I see. I'm not saying that no one's doing it right. There's definitely AI uh brands that I think fall in the middle, but that's kind of like what I tend to see, especially living in San Francisco, where every billboard and every ad I'm being served to is a tech ad. So I see a lot more of it than the everyday person because of where I live, but it tends to fall in those two places.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that makes so I that kind of brings up Charlie. We spoke about this too a few weeks ago in terms of branding. It's either ChatGBT or Claude, Claude, Claude, I don't know how you guys say it, but um, it's either ChatGBT or Claude. And they had this commercial come out. I thought it from a branding perspective, great because it was a very soft entry point for somebody to look at and say, okay, I can use it for that. That's awesome. It wasn't this over your head, this is going to replace your copywriter or your PPC manager. It was literally somebody who was at a park, didn't have a lot of workout equipment, and it said, I needed I need a workout on the fly that I can do with a pull-up bar, a monkey bar, and you know, I don't know, big paving blocks. And it just kind of spoke to how simple it is to plug things in like that and kind of help ease your life in terms of some of those things that you have to look at. I thought that was great branding in terms of, hey, you can use AI for some of these smaller things and again kind of building that entry point for someone who may not be as comfortable using it for something more advanced just yet.
SPEAKER_01You know, I I saw that commercial. I was at a brewery in the mountains, and I it's just like, oh, it's like all Asia, and I, you know, it was during a bowl game, and I was like, oh my god, we're here. Like we're saying I was like grabbing my girlfriend, was like, look, look, look, look, look. She's like, would you calm the f down?
SPEAKER_02And well, it's I think it's such a great point, though, because I mean, maybe it's just me and how I go about things because I've been using Chad and Claude and some other AI tools for a while now, so I'm just accustomed to it. But I don't even go to Google for searches half the time anymore. I will literally do searches in in open AI to try and get like responses on things because I just find it it's so much more pointed to what I'm looking for. As opposed to Google, you still get the search results, you gotta kind of go through them until you find the thing that you like, and then you get an answer so much quicker, right?
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_02So it's just you know, I love it for that purpose, and I am finding myself go that way a little bit more. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so Mallory, your your expertise being in community as well. Um, when and how should an AI startup um build a community and how should they do that?
Listening To Users And Competitors
SPEAKER_00Uh the answer is yesterday. So really um not to not to put pressure on it, but it is yesterday. I do think that you don't need a product to build a community. And yeah, like you don't have to like get all those things started for you to kind of get going on on building that out. Um and so, and that was something that I kind of started doing when I was building my startup, like before we even had a product. It was like, how can I build a small community of testers and potential customers, right? So folks that I could already talk to to do some user research. Like, am I building a product that people really need or want, or am I just building in a vacuum, right? Um, and and so there's so many beneficial ways to tap into a community very early on, right? Whether it's user testing, research, um, I mean, also having them potentially like help be a uh like help spread the word about your product as well and be like a mini ambassador. Like there's so many different ways to tap into an early stage community if you haven't built one yourself already. And in terms of tips on how to build a community or what that's like, um, I feel like I'm about to dish out some advice that's going to be super simple, but I would say that building a community requires you to, is it's very much so like building a relationship with a friend or anyone else. Um it's the same, it's like that same sort of uh the same sort of thing you would do there is what you would do with a community, right? And you want to make sure you're engaging with them and chatting with them on a very uh normal basis. And there's so many ways to host a community. It could be through Discord, could be through email, could could be through Slack, or it there's so many different ways, right? But you need to be communicating with them and and and um on a very consistent basis. Uh, you need to be learning from them and not just sort of marketing to them. I think that's the thing. It's like, well, am I marketing to them? Or no, like you are trying to build a relationship with them over time um is really what you're trying to do. And I would also say that uh finding ways to reward them as well um is goes a really long way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I haven't really heard that too much from anybody we've had on the rewarding piece of it, right? I mean, everybody is incentivization, right? You give them something for it and they're typically gonna, you know, respond to it or engage with it. I think Mallory, too, what you're saying a little bit reminds me of like a storytelling aspect to build your community too. Is that something you would implement to to help build communities or build, you know, the brand up a little bit?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, when I was at Discord, a lot of the programs in the community that we built was a part of building the brand and a part of specific marketing activations. We would like we would be serving them specific content for that reason and we knew they'd hype it up. Um, and we knew they'd get really excited about it. For example, um every year we would run this event called Snows Giving, which was an event that would give back to the community. So we would drop specific product features or little cute things in the product that if they signed up for our program, they would be able to get. They'd also communicate with other members. We do like art contests, we do like private concerts where like one during COVID, we'd have like Snoop Dogg and Cascade and all these folks be like on YouTube and like and like um or like, oh, if you you know react this many times on the last day, we're gonna unleash this like really cool thing for all of you guys. Like, we found ways to like get them excited, get them pumped, right? Like make them feel special, make them feel special, right? And like, and that will help create the FOMO and everything else that I think you're looking to build when you're um creating a sick brand, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_02And that go ahead. I'm sorry, Mallory, if you have more to that.
SPEAKER_00No, and I was just and then we would like raise, you know, a lot of money for charity, right? So we were giving back not just to the community, but to causes that we cared about, and we did it every single year. And what happened was the community would look forward to it. They'd be like, oh my gosh, and I can't wait till snow's giving. What are they gonna do this year? Like, you know, um, and we did l little silly things too. Like we, you know, we did like a kids box karaoke session with hype squatters, and they loved that, like one of our community programs, or we just would give away very silly things, or we'd make silly content, and it's just and that's that goes a long way because you're acting like you care and you um you're engaging with them in an authentic and relatable way, right? That's not just like cookie cutter corporate bullshit, right?
SPEAKER_02So and I think that kind of goes into, I mean, you're building trust.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, I don't know if I can swear, but I don't know. Sorry. Okay, I was like, oh, totally good.
SPEAKER_02Let it go. You're you're great, you're good to go. I have said way worse on here. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_03I was like, oh no.
Measuring Brand: Awareness And Sentiment
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, you're totally fine. I guess too, that also kind of goes into, I mean, you're building trust, right, with your community and your group and credibility. And that kind of leads me to also say it's I think there is also that fine line a lot of builders and these, you know, AI companies need to um get better at is because there's just not a lot of transp it feels like there's not a lot of transparency into it, right? So it takes away from the credibility and the trust. Like, how do you how do you think about that and layering it into brands that you work with?
SPEAKER_00I love that. I think transparency is very important with community. So thank you for bringing that up, Connor. Like you, if you want them to be along for the journey, the only way that you can really have them do that in a positive way is by being transparent, right? About how a company operates, the behind the scenes, the product features that you're building. Like if you can be transparent about that and bring them along for the journey, but also when you mess up, when you mess up, you acknowledge it and you you and you own it. Um because consumers are not dumb. You know, they've seen how many brands get canceled or how many creators go, right? Like if you can just own up to it and be like, hey, we messed this thing up and we know we did, and we're gonna work on it, that is going to create so much respect and trust, and it's gonna go a long way if you're able to do that, right? Um so I feel like that's not something I'm seeing a lot in the AI space or a lot of tech in general.
SPEAKER_02Do you see some like do you see a lot of companies who are just totally disregarded or just don't make it a priority for themselves in terms of building that up?
SPEAKER_00I think that there are a lot of companies who are transparent in bringing the community along for the ride. But it's I think it's really hard for many brands to be very um vulnerable and honest when they messed up is really more so what I'm saying. Um but then yes, going to what you were about to say too, Connor, is like getting them involved, like getting them involved with your brand on a deeper level requires building that relationship.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um, and all the things we've kind of been talking about. And that takes time and that takes effort. Um, and that just, and if you're not building that and expect them to like act in a certain way or wonder why they're not showing up, perhaps it's because you haven't invested in much in the relationship. Perhaps it's because you're also targeting the wrong um audience. Like there could be so many reasons. Perhaps you're managing it incorrectly. Like I've met so many folks that are trying to build community but are not really present, um, are not creating, you know, um engaging ways to get to get people interacting, right? So there's so many ways to kind of look at it. Um, and and quite frankly, I will say, like as someone who's been a community manager, has done a lot of community marketing, it is a 24-7 thing. It is not a unfortunately, and I think a lot of companies that I've worked with get really um intimidated by by community marketing because it is one of those things that kind of just don't stop. And you know, a lot of folks kind of are just like, how do you really manage that? Right.
SPEAKER_02Um and you just have to be readily available almost 24-7 in order to keep that going. Yeah, that's a that's a behemoth to think about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that's not just like a community program or you know, a Discord server filled with hundreds of thousands of people, that can also include customer support. Um, I'm a very big believer in order to have a healthy community, you must also have healthy customer support. That's extremely important. If you show up in your marketing and you show up in your in your community, and then all of a sudden, like you're not showing up with actual customer support and you say you do, it's gonna leak everywhere. I've seen men, I've seen that happen everywhere. It's like, oh, this Discord server is supposed to be community building, but now it's turned into a customer support channel because we don't have these other channels in place or the resourcing in place to actually manage CX and and that support, and to me, that is an important part of brand building, community building, trust building. If you can't be there to fix their problems, they're gonna leave, they're gonna go to another platform.
SPEAKER_02That is a huge takeaway for our listeners too, and talking about, you know, your first build or trying to deploy something and and get it out there. I I've worked with companies who in the past clients who just haven't had a great customer support setup and they failed because of it. And it happens very, very quickly, right? Like you can't eradicate any negative feelings or connotation towards it, and that community just kind of built that community builds upon itself and it's built by your customers, right? You're they're building it without you even being present for it, which is crazy.
Avoiding Techno-Babble And Fear-Mongering
SPEAKER_00And now you've got a subreddit community that you that's being built about your brand, that you you would want to be a positive place where people ask questions and talk positively about your brand, but now it's super negative because you are not actually helping solve their problems on the proper channels. And I've seen many companies and startups go through this. Um, the one thing I will also say about CX and customer support is that I think builders and founders typically think of it as a channel to only solve problems. But to have a really healthy CX team, you also need to make sure that they are engaging with customers positively. So, for example, in the early days of Discord, CX did not was not only responsible for the tickets in the queue, but they were also responsible for responding to every single tweet, every single Instagram comment, every like across every social platform and showing up there. And it's huge because not only are they help, not only are they, of course, solving those problems that users need to be solved, but they're engaging with users positively and they're and like it's hard to be in a CX spot sometimes because you're only dealing with frustrations. And so now you have this positive side to your job where you get to interact with customers positively. And now, right, like between solving their problems and engaging with them positively on social or all these other channels, like that's how you're starting to build a healthy community, right? Like, so that matters. Don't just build community marketing and forego customer support. You need to do both.
SPEAKER_01Reputation management, that's really it. One on one percent. Uh Mallory, you built, you put together uh the world's largest hackathon. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, nice. Oh my gosh, that's banana. Oh my gosh. Okay, so can you tell us about that? What it was like, what was the vision originally? And then was the end result like how you were thinking of it? Or A to Z.
When To Build Community: Yesterday
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. Okay, well, yes, I'm so proud of the work that I did at Bolt earlier this year on throwing the world's largest hackathon. And I think it was definitely one of the more positive marketing activations in the AI space this year that was very community-oriented. But when I joined Bolt, they had they had already planned to do the hackathon. So it wasn't like an idea I came up with. Like when I joined the team, it was like heads down running, like you're you're not only are you putting together this hackathon, but Mallory, you're pulling together this kickoff party with the chain smokers, and you're doing all these events with designers and all this other stuff. So I kind of just got thrown into the chaos, which is fun for me. I love being thrown into the chaos of of work and and problem solving and figuring things out. Um, but basically it came from the compute community. So there's this amazing, um, there's an amazing person on Twitter called KP who basically tweeted out um if Lovable or Bolt or any other vibe coding tool this year tries to pull off the world's largest hackathon, like that's gonna be the biggest marketing stunt of the year. And so Eric Simons, who's the CEO of Bolt, responded to it and was like, we're gonna do it, which is I love Eric. He's very much so like sees the idea on X and he's like, we're gonna do it. And now the team internally is like, okay, we're we're gonna we're gonna rally behind this. Um, so it started off very organically on X. Eric was like, let's run with it. We did a kickoff party, and then from there we had two weeks to actually plan the whole hackathon, which is insane. And our goal was to break the world record. And um, when I was talking to Guinness World Records, they said the world record was 66,700 participants that also created a uh project. So you had to participate and you had to create a project essentially. Um, so I was like, we've done no marketing for this thing, and now we have two weeks and we're gonna get home. So I was telling Eric, I was like, look, okay, I've done a lot of big activations, but I'm a little nervous about hitting this like 100K number that we've set up for ourselves, considering like we just started marketing and then we looked at our signups and it was like a few thousand. I'm like, we've got some serious, serious work to do. So within a matter of two weeks and uh a team of pretty much one person at the time, especially in the beginning. Um yeah, we uh our chief of staff um signed up to like work with 20 sponsors. So like there was a little bit of that work done, but it was like, okay, but how do we, how do they like show up during this? Like, what's the content like? What's the what's the run of show? Like what's so from there it was like, okay, we've got 20 sponsors, all these different companies in the AI space. We've got a panel of 40 judges. Um, you're talking about, you know, um, engineers, entrepreneurs, VCs, investors from and creators as well, and influencers from all sides of the tech world wanting to participate, which was really exciting for us. Um, and so yeah, I think two weeks we were just trying to figure out how we're gonna execute everything, pulling all the pieces together, creating a lot of hype-based marketing on X, um, and sort of like getting that started, uh, built some of that initial hype. But um, because I've gotten a lot of questions. People are like, How were you able to get 100,000 people to sign up? Like how, how, because that was what happened. So it was a month-long hackathon. So most hackathons are about a weekend or you know, a few days, sometimes 24 hours. We did a 30-day hackathon, um, which is a marathon and not a sprint. And so during that time, we had um different bonus awards, different milestones. We were gauging with, you know, all of our the folks that signed up through Discord. Um, and we were like, it was very, very fun. Um, and to go back to what I was mentioning earlier, like how did we get 100,000 people? I think it was like 120, 130 at the end of it, but it was through a few things. It was one, we we worked with 20 different prominent like AI companies in the space that were using their networks and their channels to um, you know, actually promote the event and create hype around it. But it wasn't just that. We created an AI builders pack where um when you sign up, you were able to get access to all of these different tools for free or at no cost, right? And that's huge. So not only were they able to use Bolt for free for a whole month, but they were able to also tap into all of these other products as well. And uh that was huge. So that drove, I mean, a lot of a lot of people to sign up, right? So it wasn't just like getting them involved and they had were a sponsor, right? And they um it was like, no, like they are their product is going to be integrated into the hackathon. Um, and so that made the difference. And then in addition, we had a massive panel of all these amazing judges that also have very strong networks. And then we did a lot of paid. So if you mix paid, right, with like the fact that we're tapping into these brands and we're tapping into this net, you have this huge beast, and that's that's exactly how we were able to drive like awareness and signups in a very short amount of time. Um, and then throughout the hackathon, because the CEO was like, okay, like now that it's started, we're good, right? It's all program magic programmatic marketing. I'm like, first of all, it's not sketched out.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00It's second of all, it's not programmatic. You have to how how are they engaging with the content? How are they how are they doing in the hackathon? How can we help them, you know, progress in their project? How can we like right? All of that stuff, yes, you can plan out ahead of time, but a lot of it requires you to be present with the community as they're building, right? And to understand that. And that's not programmatic. That's being present with them and then being like, okay, a week from now or three days from now, we're gonna plan this piece of content or we're gonna do this workshop with this speaker because there's so many of these questions that are coming up, or these different roadblocks that you know these builders are experiencing. So we got to find a way to address it. And that's not programmatic. Like you have to be present and understanding what's going on for you to create that and create that content within that 30-day window, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02That all comes back like for almost full circuit, just like the community management aspect of it. Like you really have to be on top of it.
SPEAKER_01I remember that. I I remember seeing the email, I think it was an email, and it had uh Jason Calicanus. I was like, whoa, this is this is no joke. Like, all right. So I signed up and it was a month, it was a month long. I was like, this is freaking awesome. I'm just gonna go ham on some projects. And I think I I had like four different ones. Um, and we we actually had uh Adrian on our podcast uh after he won, and he he told us the story of the submission and everything, and uh, which is which is pretty wild. Was the submission deadline was that on a Saturday?
Programs, Rewards, And Storytelling
SPEAKER_00It was on a weekend. Yeah, I believe it was on a weekend, and um I I remember it really well because the day we kicked off the hackathon we were trending on X, and then the last day of the hackathon we were trending on X, and it was because DevPost, which is the site we were like the platform we were working with, um they like are they handle a lot of the logistics of a hackathon went down because there were so many people trying to submit their projects. Fun fact so in any hackathon, like most hackathons, 70% of submissions come through, come through within the last 24 hours. Um, so even though it was like a 30-day right hackathon, most submissions came through in the last few days, especially in the last 24 hours. Um, but it so the site went down, we were trending, people were pissed. They're like, I've been spending, and I I was reading the comments, like I've been spending 100 hours on my project, like I can't submit it. And I'm just like, I was like, oh my, and I'm like, it's not our fault that the site went down. Like there was so much traffic. So it was just a matter of getting all the right folks on the call. I mean, like, we have to find a way to extend this just so we can like and let's try and make it fair, like let's just say one more hour so that people have time to just get them across the finish line, and that really helped. Um, and then after that, it was like the judging process, which uh is very intense, and then like planning the awards ceremony, which was really fun. But um, and then getting to see like Adrian's reaction live and that's cool, yeah, yeah. And then we like went, we had like the winners in Times Square in New York City. Um, we did a whole like if you're really interested in learning more about the hackathon, um, we worked with Greg Eisenberg's team to do a five-part docuseries on both Bolt and sort of the behind the scenes on the hackathon. And I talk a little bit more about that. But I think what I really loved the most about the hackathon is just who participated. It wasn't just developers, it wasn't just your indie hacker on X. It was uh such a range of folks. One of the days we did a demo day where we'd have people kind of show off what they're building. And, you know, one second I'm talking to, you know, someone who went to school to major in AI and works as an engineer in Netflix. And the next minute I'm talking to a mom of two who, you know, um just had her second child and she's on maternity leave. And all of a sudden she's like, I need to build something that can connect me with other new moms, but like I don't know how to build. I've never coded in my life. Um, but I just decided to check this out because I heard about the hackathon, right? And I just want to try and build something here. So it it was really cool to see like the everyday person kind of use Bolt and use a tool like Bolt to create something that they couldn't find in the market. Like it was a a lot of the times it's a very niche problem that can't be solved by another app or platform. And so, you know, they are uh motivated enough as a builder to go and try and build it themselves. Um, so that was really cool.
SPEAKER_02That's so awesome. I love that. It sounds like such a blast. Um, all right, Mallie. Well, I know you know we've been on here for a minute, but I I want to ask you a little bit more about now that you moved on from BALT and you're kind of taking your time to figure out your next steps. You know, you did mention um your next venture is going to most likely be opening up shop for yourself, right? And I think it was kind of sort of agency was the name of it. You wanna give us a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I am in the process of building my own marketing agency that is focused on thank you. Yeah, thank you, thank you, kind of um, that's focused on uh brand marketing, community marketing, content marketing, right? So if you're someone that doesn't have a visual identity for your brand and you want to create something really cool, um if you're someone who's like, you know, I how do I position myself in this market, right? Or if you're looking to build your own uh community, especially a program at scale, or even just coming up with a content strategy, uh, I would love to potentially work with you. And yes, it's called kind of sorta agency. And I've been uh working on kind of pulling together the pieces over the last few weeks, and I've got a group of some amazing creatives that are kind of helping me bring it to life as well right now. And yeah, I mean, I've built a lot of things before, so we'll see how this goes. And um, but yeah, I just want to kind of create cool shit and and work with people in in the consumer space that are looking to do the same. So we shall see.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, based on your track record, you got awesome. You got a cool leg.
SPEAKER_00I oh yes, like if I can like help you launch something into space, um, I've done that as well. So if you're looking to like, yeah, can I tell the story really quick? Just really quick. Okay, sorry.
SPEAKER_02No, Melly, you're out of time.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, I know you can cut this out. I just want to say it. I need to cut it out. Tell us. Okay. One of my favorite marketing stunts that I've ever done is when I sent a plushie into space. Um, I think this was like in 2021, 2020, when people were brands were just sending things into space and filming it. So I hired uh two like YouTubers that were weather ballooners to take the plushie, the mascot, and put it on an air balloon with a GoPro and launch it into space. So we did that. As it's descending back through the atmosphere, it falls onto. I don't actually I'm not supposed to talk about this, but I don't care because it's been years. They told me not to. Okay. So then the plushie, you're like, who's they?
unknownWho's they?
Trust, Transparency, And CX
SPEAKER_00I know. The the plushie falls in the US Air Force base. And so all of a sudden the weather ballooners get detained. Um, and then they, yeah, they they get detained. And then I get a message from some colonel military in like all caps, it was very scary of just like, is this like what it like? Why would this thing just like fall on our air, our Air Force base? Like, are you trying to pull a marketing campaign? Like, just tell me about it. And at the time, Discord is a lot bigger. And I was like, if I tell Legal, they're gonna be so pissed. Like what I could get away with in the early days there with Legal versus when I so I did not tell them. Okay. So eventually, I think they ran some tests on the plushie, but um, they let go of the weather ballooners and then they sent the plushie back to me and the GoPro. What we found out when we looked through the footage is that they cut out the last half of the footage of the plushie uh actually landing on the Air Force base itself. So that doesn't exist. Um, but that video went viral and it was huge. Um, and then on my way out, because I was also leaving Discord at the same time. So I was like leaving Discord, my team like pulled off this great stunt. I was like, great, what a wonderful way to like end my time here. And I had a call with the CEO, and he's like, he's like, I'm so mum, you're gonna leave. Like, I feel like you are like the soul and the brand of this company. And I was like, oh my gosh. And then I was like, well, I just want to let you know that because he was asking about the stunt we just pulled. I was like, I want to let you know I was just talking to the military about it, and I decided to not include legal or anything. I wanted to, he's like, I think it was great, it was great. I loved it. I loved that.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00They end up finding about it months later, more pissed later. But, anyways, if you want to launch something into space, I'm your girl.
SPEAKER_02You're the girl, all right.
SPEAKER_00Or maybe, actually, maybe I'm not your girl.
SPEAKER_02I guess it depends on the objective, but that's that's okay.
SPEAKER_00I'm done with my random stories.
SPEAKER_01Mallory, uh, you're a badass. We've we've taken some of your time. So we appreciate you coming on. Uh, where can people find you?
SPEAKER_00Um, you can find me on LinkedIn, um, at Mallory Lore. You can follow me there, add me, or you can find me on X. I don't post there, but you can find me at Mallory Lore as well. So eventually I'll have a website and then you can really find me there. So love it.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Okay, okay. All right. Thank you, Mallory for for being on. We appreciate it. Appreciate it, Mallory.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Charlie. Thank you, Connor.