The State of Startup Distribution Artwork

Members of Technical Staff

Welcome to Members of Technical Staff: week-after-week of prestige narration from the hotbed of San Francisco tech culture. Featuring founders, funders, and fanatics, join Jayden (@creatine_cycle) and friends as they chronicle the culture, scandal, and humourlessness of the most important city of the 21st century.

All Episodes

Members of Technical Staff

The State of Startup Distribution

June 23, 2026 • Jayden Clark

0:00 | 45:06

You didn't ask and I delivered once again. Here is a full overview of the state of startup distribution and what weird and whacky methods some companies are using to get your attention. This time partially clothed!!

Think billboards, planes, intro posting and ABG UGC.

Watch on X; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Are launch videos over?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

distribution, startup distribution, what the fuck is happening? Um have launch videos died? Have launch videos died? They absolutely have not. Um for whatever reason, sort of Q4 last year seemed to be uh absolutely just roaring with launch videos. In fact, companies that I worked with, um, they would often come to me and be like, Jaden, how much money should we spend on a launch video? And oftentimes I say that that actually depends. That actually depends. Um I heard of a startup that paid up to $250,000 for a fucking launch video. Heh. Concerning, concerning. All I gotta say, if there's if I was an angel investor in that company, um I would I'd be concerned. I'd be concerned. That seems like a little bit too much for me. I thought the upper end of that spectrum was say 90 to 100 grand, which to me feels like way too much. The sweet spot seems to be in that sort of 20k mark for startup launch videos, at least VC back startup launch videos. Um, Motz's launch video, I paid zero dollars because I made it all myself and I edited it myself. I didn't even know what HDR to SDR conversion was yet, and so that's why all my videos were shiny as fuck. Uh in any case, in any case, yeah, 250k for a launch video seems kind of ridiculous. 90k seems kind of ridiculous. 20 to 25k, you know, if you gotta do it, you gotta do it. But a launch video is still a thing, yeah. I I definitely say they're still a thing. In fact, I told a company that they should probably do it uh for a for a round announcement, actually. Launch videos, round announcement videos, I think they start to make a little bit of sense if you're trying to build distribution as a company yourself. They really do, especially when it comes to X.com, the Everything app. Of course, there are other companies that I've worked with in which they've asked me how much should I spend on a launch video? And I say zero, zero. And the reason being is that in this particular instance, I remember that they were extremely technical, they were good at the technical writing, they're good at the engineering of the thing. And it was sort of one of those times in which everyone and their mother was releasing a launch video, and so I said spend zero dollars, just get a nice little graphic, put out a technical blog post, and have some really nice copy. I was gonna say tasteful, but uh we cannot be using the T-word in the big 2-6, I'm afraid. And that that did really, really well. That did that that launch did really, really, really, really well. Nice blog post. Of course, the product carries, right? But they're so engineering heavy. And so I figured, you know, don't get in front of a fucking camera. You guys are autistic. Get into the product, get into what you've built, break down the technicals, be a trustworthy voice for your customers who are also ultra technical, right? So, sort of give and take, and uh, you know, I again as a podcast, I'm probably saying a bunch of stuff that uh, you know, people have heard a ton of times. Um, the state of launch videos is that they still seem to be there. They still seem to be there. Um, but I have noticed that there's a lot more speaking in launch videos in as of recording. Uh, it is still we're we're still Q2. We're still Q2 of 2026. A lot more speaking, whereas I feel like towards the end of 2025, we just had a lot of these weird sort of like cinematic things. And I would get to the end of like a 90-second launch video, and oftentimes I still wouldn't know what the product fucking does. So there's that. Uh, totally based off of vibes, totally based off of vibes, but I wanted to give an update on the state of launch videos from the view of a terminally online unemployed podcaster guy. So, next thing that I wanted to actually get into, but before I get into it, I just do want to make a quick shout out to Zoe Computer. Of course, you can build personal apps and automations using Zoe. You can also host code with Zoe. Cool thing about GitHub uh being kind of fucked, right, with the amount of code that is being pushed. A lot of these self-hosting solutions are becoming much more viable. Uh, you're not necessarily having to rely on GitHub repos and making pull requests if GitHub is down, right? You can host it yourself with Zoe, you can make these apps with Zoe and host it with the theme. It's great. I have Zoe connected to my text messages, it's really, really lovely. So, quick shout out to them. Uh, I want to get into RageBait here now. RageBait in 2026. So I wanted to touch on launch videos in Rage Bait first because they were big in 2025.

Ragebait

SPEAKER_00 6:15

They were big in 2025. I think RageBait, for whatever reason, made the comeback in the big two six with the ABG meetups. I'm not going to reference any particular posts because I actually don't want to give uh I don't want to give these people the attention. But people can, you know, uh, like this is a terminally online show. People who even listen to this are most likely online, they get the references, but of course there is the ABG meetup or the quote-unquote ABG meetup perpetuated by this, you know, Asian woman online in SF, which has got dragged through the mud, absolutely destroyed. Um, and you know, I respect the the conviction and the doubling down on the bit, but goodness gracious, it just you know, it's it's really hard for somebody like me to to comment earnestly. Right? There's a it's a very, very fine line between being uh, you know, like like coming across as if I'm being uh tough on women online, for example, versus just saying that no, it doesn't matter who you are, the thing is just cringe, and you know, it was probably always gonna happen. This this particular person that I'm thinking of, and the particular meetup that I'm thinking of, it felt very, very uh deliberate. And, you know, I've I've seen sort of the the posts following it. It does seem a little off to me. It does seem a little off to me. Of course, you know, it wasn't it wasn't just dragged by men, right? Of course, you know, I've got to be careful uh with my words here. It wasn't just dragged by men, it was dragged by a lot of uh those who might actually identify with being ABG in the first place.

unknown 7:59

Right?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

ABG, as far as I know, they originated from like Filipino gangs or some shit. So in like the 80s. And so, you know, I I I don't think the the uh product manager in San Francisco making sort of mid six figures, I don't think uh that is too close to say the actual ABG.

Intro posting

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Um, but other things that I'm sort of considering rage bait right now is all of these like intro posts. Although, again, it's one of those things in which some of them rage bait, some of them are just maybe like LinkedIn striver posting, others are totally earnest and a part of the strategy. I don't really know. I don't really know. I have uh tried to actually stay out of it. I am not one to kind of uh dunk on these posts. I dunk on them if they are so clearly, obviously, so cringe. Um, but those that I actually think a lot of these are uh are coming across as like earnest, and they're getting raked over the calls, they're getting raked over the calls, which is a little concerning, a little concerning. So talking about Rage Bape, ABG, UGC, ABG, UGC, right? This has kind of been a theme so for for this year as well. A B G U G C. I mean, there's a bunch of these startups, again, feels like they're looking for these, you know, like almost like the the prettiest women that they can find in order to shill software. It's it's bizarre. It's bizarre. I'm not gonna name startups. There are a few of them that I can think of off the top of my head. I must say that the the the UGC is not necessarily always ABG, or not, or you know, I mean I'm using ABG because that's sort of the the term that has been coined over the over the last few quarters, I would say. Of course, not none of these are actually ABGs, they're just a Asian marketing women making Instagram reels uh about software products. And, you know, also on TikTok and also now on Twitter as well. And so this does seem to be a trend. It's I don't know, I I just I I honestly find the whole thing a little bit strange. A little bit strange. So, you know, to kind of to kind of get into an example here of the sort of

@catarina_chia reaction

SPEAKER_00 10:21

can't necessarily tell whether earnest, but also strivery, but also maybe has not spent much time on Twitter, I'm gonna go ahead and give this woman the benefit of the doubt and say it's quite earnest. And yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna leave it at that. But basically, uh Katerina Chia. Katerina Chia. She she has this post and this almost a million views, almost a million views. This was June 20, 2026, a couple of days ago. She says, Hi, it's Katarina, new to X, so here's an intro. Born and raised in the Bay, math and finance student, previous uh Crash Market and Eat Persana, I have no idea what the fuck any of them do. Uh go to market at some AI company, 7k on LinkedIn. That's that's a bold move. That's a bold move putting the LinkedIn followers there. Founding fellow at the collective. Um I just have no idea what any of these things mean. Oh, cello player and weightlifter. Honestly, pretty sick, pretty cool. Cello player and weightlifter. Uh rate, I I I I love the musician and the the weightlifting combination. You talk in my fucking book. You talk in my fucking book. Uh bullish on coffee chatting. Interesting use of the word bullish. Um again, I'm just thinking of like, you know, Twitter native surface area for attack. Um saying bullish on coffee chatting is probably up there. Personal finance and building sustainable communities. We'll be documenting the journey with the company and the collective, as well as monetizing and launching my first consumer app. Good for her. If you're in SF and want to talk startups, growth apps, or any philosophical philosophical conversation, leave a comment. Okay. So we got raped raked over the calls. Um, this was sort of used over the last few days as sort of the quintessential example of the striver slop intro post. Now, this is not new in the last couple of days. This has been happening for months. For months. In fact, I mean I have parody versions of this. In fact, in fact, I actually think I made a parody version of this even just a couple of months ago. Um, I can overlay it and find it. I I'm not gonna read it right now. But this has sort of kicked off this wave, and again, people have sort of thought of this as like, oh, it's just more, it's like another version of ABG UGC or Asian woman uh UGC. And you know, I want to give the benefit of the doubt to Katarina. There's definitely some others that are, you know, they they come on, and you uh there are companies, I'm sure, with particular directives, right? It's like, okay, here's a format that we know that works. We have this very, very good-looking marketing girly on the team. Here's a way in which you can get an instant, you know, few hundred, even in some cases, that thousands of followers. Now, while all of that, if the company's saying that, while all of that might actually be true, uh, what really icks me is when uh they like like these women who have probably not been on X before, they get totally fucking destroyed for it. You know, I would feel much better if the companies are like, hey, here's something that could work, because it will. Uh, but you need to know the downside, you need to know what you're getting into, you need to know what happens if your post reaches the insole crowd. Hell, you need to know if your post comes across as sort of LinkedIn strivery, you're gonna get flack from everyone. And unfortunately, this is what has happened with Katarina. Seems like a bit of a a comms issue, uh, but you know, she's got like a thousand followers from it now and kickstarted an entire format. So there's that. I really wanted to make a mention of it because it has been in the last few days. Uh do I recommend people do this? So uh I would only recommend that people do that, or companies with their little with their like marketing girlies do that, if the marketing girlies one have a thick skin and know exactly what they're getting into on X.com, the Everything app, because X.com The Everything app can be and is a lot of the time a very bad, uh, awful no good place, especially for women. I'm sounding like a fucking woke cuck, but you know, I I think these things are all worth thinking about because it really, really does look like some of these companies are just throwing these marketing girlies out and just like fucking feeding them to the wolves. I I it it just it feels it feels really off to me and I don't like it. I don't like it. Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer on that, uh get get getting passionate about it, but you know, we're talking about the state of startup distribution, and I think the tactics are getting a little strange. They're getting a little strange. Um, so there's that. Before I get into the next one, and again, we'll take we'll take a nice, uh, more wholesome turn uh here in just a second, but I first want to make a mention to blackbox.ai, blackbox.ai, the guys that have been with me for months at this point, push-ups, all of these sorts of things. We align, they have Navy SEALs on their team. Um great ad breed, just start by just fucking glazing the fuck out of the guys that work there. Um, but you know, blackbox AI, the coding agent that's used by over 30 million plus developers worldwide. They have all these cool little commands. I mean, you can you know use slash claudex, for example, or slash auto is one is is a cool thing that they that they have, in which depending on uh depending on where you are in your project or where the agent is in the project, whether that's like writing the code or reviewing the code, uh slash auto goes ahead and picks the best model for each given task, right? That picks the most suitable model for each given task on its own, right? Fully autonomously. Of course, their mission is full self-coding. Full self-coding. Uh, all of these cool things you can actually do with Blackbox, you can do it in the CLI, you can do it with the IDE, all these things. Uh definitely check them out. They are cool because all the mod sponsors are fucking cool, right? That is the idea. I don't take on many sponsors, uh, but I definitely take on the cool ones. So there is that. Now,

SF billboards

SPEAKER_00 16:31

jumping into something a little more wholesome, I want to get into billboards. Of course, we've all seen some of the chat GPT, codex billboards, whatever. I'm not gonna go ahead and actually air them because I just think they're they're a little bit played out. Maybe, I don't know, I'll overlay or whatever. It depends on how lazy I feel with editing at you know at what's going to probably be 11 p.m. on a Monday evening. But um, of course, we've we've seen them. Uh the chat GPT billboards are funny uh because you just kind of don't really know what the fuck's going on. But hey, you know, they make everybody take pictures of them. Uh another really funny one is like the Outset AI guys. They don't do the billboards, they do the bus stop ads, and they just ask like a random question. In fact, I walked past one of them uh today on my way to dinner and I took a picture of it because I was I was it because it's funny. It's funny. I I like I really like the founder of the Outset actually, she's fucking funny and it makes everybody take pictures of it. And it's also like it's not really rage bait, it's kind of happy bait, which I'm a fan of. It's just kind of like, you know, how do they how do they think of that? I like asking those questions when I see a funny tweet, for example. It's like, oh wow, how did they think of that? That is very funny. Anyway, um, so those sorts of things. Uh and we have the the cool thing about billboards is that they've been around for a while. Billboard prices are through the roof here in SF, through the roof here in SF. I think, you know, I actually don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but I'm, you know, I've heard numbers around sort of that 120k a month mark. That's a fucking lot. That's a fucking lot. And if you know how advertising works, that's all just dick measuring, right? Billboards are mostly dick measuring. Like you're not really going to be trying to look for attribution from a billboard. Yeah, you can't actually do that. That's why, you know, advertisers that work with media companies, right, the best ones that do it, they are they're they're dick measuring, right? They just want to be seen, they want brand awareness, all those sorts of things. That is what billboards are for. And that is why companies like Stripe, Notion, all of these people, you know, say people, all of these companies who, yeah, we already know who they are. And in fact, most people driving on the 101 from SFO to San Francisco also probably know what they are, but seeing them on a billboard just legitimizes them that a little bit more. It's like, okay, cool, they're the big dogs, we see them everywhere. Cool. That is how this works. That is how this works. And so that's why companies are shelling out a ton for billboards. Google ads, Facebook ads, meta ads, they've been dead for a while, right? They're just not exactly viable anymore. And so companies increasingly look to more of these traditional media plays, traditional billboards, fucking podcasts. Um, wouldn't say podcasts are necessarily necessarily traditional, but you know, media company, media advertising, all those sorts of things. I digress, I digress. But I want to get into um some of the hive minds here. I've got a bunch of tweets lined up that I wanted to just, you know, feature, feature. So here's one. Um I I thought this was a great post here from uh

@benhylak reaction

SPEAKER_00 19:20

my friend Ben Highlight, friend of the show, friend of the show. Uh he posted this today actually, June 22nd, and I retweeted it because I thought it was a banger. He said, Billboard prices in SF are truly insane right now. Our competitors are wasting millions of dollars for a fraction of the brand recognition we get for free on Twitter plus word of mouth. Now, of course, you know, Ben can say for free on Twitter because Ben and the Raindrop guys, they're really fucking good at Twitter. Now, a lot of companies are not good at Twitter. That's why you sponsor someone like Mots. Yeah, there you go. I turned it into an ad for Mots. Um, of course, Raindrop and those guys, they have it figured out. They have it figured out. Um, of course, word of mouth. Word of mouth is great uh when you're really good. Uh and so, you know, helps when you're good, helps when you're good. But I wanted to I wanted to bring that up here. We have a few more billboard tweets, a few more billboard tweets. Here is

@gabriel1 and @varepsilon reaction

SPEAKER_00 20:10

one from yet another friend of the show. Um, this is from Gabriel. Gabriel won. So this was back in September 2025. He says, SF has the most autistic billboards. And it has got the HTTPS and uh a bunch of numbers in it. Now, he also he also uh you know as I'm as I'm reading this, I've realized I've not actually done my research as to what the numbers mean, but in his thread, he follows up by saying, wait, these are tokens now, I'm curious. Someone post what they mean. Uh and then I think somebody actually somebody actually did. Oh yes. So decoded, it just reads, listen, labs AI puzzle. Cool. Thank you, Varepsilon. Uh so I'll I'll post all of these comments here, Var Epsilon. Yet another friend of the show. Friends of the show everywhere, right? Decoding the puzzles, getting the billboards, all these sorts of things. But yeah, SF does has the most have the most autistic billboards. Um I remember there was a Vercell one where it was like NPM I AI. I remember that one was there for a while. Uh I don't think I've seen that one for a while. You can just ship things. I remember that. I remember the Vercel ones because I'm terminally online. I I I wonder, I wonder if uh those that are not necessarily on Twitter would remember the Vercel ones. But hey, shout out Verseel, shout out Verseel. I still remember NPMI AI. I still remember that from like fucking 2023, 2024. That that one was a while ago. Uh but hey, memorable, memorable. Uh let's see what else we have here. Oh, okay. So on the

@andrew_reed reaction

SPEAKER_00 21:48

topic of billboards, somebody that has been posting about billboards since before it was cool is one of the greatest posters of all time, and it is Andrew Reed. It is Andrew Reed, right? Sequoia partner Andrew Reed. Um so this one. I found from October 2025. It was like 2008 type billboard. And this billboard says, Got five minutes? Get a hellock. Figure. It's like figure home home equity line. And if I'm looking at the building, it looks like this is somewhere in Soma. I haven't I haven't seen this one. I've not seen one this one before. I've not seen this one before. Again, this was end of 2025, so it's probably not there now. And I do think the billboard market has properly gone through the roof. I can't say that I've seen any home equity line billboards, maybe ever, in SF, but thankfully Andrew is on this. Let's see what else he has. Because I have another tweet from his. I have another tweet from him here. And so this is from okay, this is a banger, and this is a nuclear banger, and it is just, it's, it's, it's ancient. It's ancient, right? This is from November 19, 2021. He says, Bay Area Billboard Market Share. 75% tech companies, 20% personal injury lawyers, and 5% Shenyun. Now, I wanted to bring this up because I don't think I've seen a Shenyun billboard in quite a while. I think the AI companies have taken them over. I think maybe the billboard prices in SF have gone so high that not even fucking Shen Yun can afford it. Seems kind of concerning. Seems kind of concerning. Um, personal injury lawyers. Which one's Anne Fong? I remember Anne Fong because she also had a billboard at Oracle Park for a while. Actually, you know what? Let's fucking look it up. Anne Fong, Anne Fong, Anne Fong. Uh, let's see. Fong Law, personal injury lawyer, serving California. Yeah. Yeah. I just I just wanted to check the if sh check to see if Anne Fong is a personal injury lawyer. And the reason I know of Anne Fong is because I've seen her damn billboards. Now, I've not seen her billboard in a while and I've not seen Shen Yan in a while. Maybe SF is actually over. Maybe SF is actually over. Um, and maybe that also just emphasizes once again, I'm kind of hammering home on this point, how expensive billboards are now. Right? If Anne Fong can't afford it, you're fucking kidding me. She was everywhere for a while. If Shenyun can't afford it, all I'll say is that if anybody sees a Shenyun billboard, uh, please send it to me. Please send it to me or just like tag me in it because I want to know if they still exist. Because I'm not convinced that they are. I'm convinced that the VC-backed AI companies have just bid this market up so much in a fight for your attention, right? A fight for this distribution here in San Francisco, and they're paying $120,000 a month plus. Honestly, when they could probably just be, you know, paying uh maybe a podcast. Anyway, there's

@paularambles reaction

SPEAKER_00 24:42

that. Uh let's see, what else do I have? Uh it wouldn't be a billboard segment if without Paula Rambles. So, dearest friend of the show, Paula Rambles, she says, one of my favorite genres of SFDMs is from startups that just put up a billboard and are like, hey, can we pay you to take a picture of our billboard and turn our offline ad into an online ad? Now, this is where I think the Outset AI guys have done really, really well. It's where our Monaco has done really, really well. Um, but this also ties into what I'll talk about next, and that's what I think is novelty, right? So they're using the whole billboard play. I mean, Monaco's not necessarily, they got fucking blimps flying now. Um, but outset, of course, with the weird little questions. Again, nobody really knows what it means. The chat GPT billboards, right? Nobody really knows what it means, but there's novelty in it, and you kind of ask the question, you go ahead and take the picture. It's not even really making when I when I see those things, I'm like, what the hell do they mean? And it's not even making me mad. The outset ones make me laugh. The chat GPT ones are like, huh, that's okay, that's a bit weird, but I'm still gonna take a picture of it, right? They fucking got my ass. Did I post it online? No, no, I did not post it online, and so it makes sense as to why companies might be paying people to do that. Because, yeah, like, I don't know. I mean, unless you're unless you're Andrew Reed finding uh uh home equity lines, uh,

Blimps and planes and shit

SPEAKER_00 26:00

yeah, you're probably not posting it online. Uh the Monaco blimp and the Monaco Plane, however, that is a different story. That is a different story because I did see that for I did see that a little bit. Um getting to Monaco. The breakdown, uh I won't go too far into this. Of course, uh Sam Blonde actually had a nice thread sort of breaking down the the economics of this sort of thing and why someone might actually be be doing something like this. Um but the

@samdblond reaction

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Monaco plane, uh, so he says it's $6,000 a day. This includes six hours of flight time, up to two of which are from the airport to SF. They have to refill once during the day. To put this in perspective, a premium billboard along 101 can cost 120k a month. So we can run this plane 20 days a month for the same price as a single premium billboard along the 101. And again, it's kind of like it's kind of yet if it's very unique, it's pretty hard to miss, and people are taking pictures of it. Um, let's see what else he says in this thread, because I do think the th the thread was really good. Out of home is priced in terms of impressions, the number of people expected to see the ad. But not all impressions are created equal. You may drive past 50 billboards along 101 and not notice any of them. When you're not used to seeing an aerial ad in downtown SF, you're far more likely to pay attention to it. This is high quality impressions. The impact is hard to measure. So, of course, he's talking about basically what I just said is when startups look for attribution from their advertising, they're fighting a losing battle, right? Um, there are sort of three types of advertisers that you can work with as a media company, as a you know, somebody selling impressions, basically, right? Which is what I do. Uh, three types of advertisers. One of those advertisers, they are looking for a dollar in, a dollar out. They are really bad to work with. And it's also just not how advertising works. I mean, you know, they're like, I mean, with mods, don't mind if I can flex for a little bit, uh, but with mods, there has been the case in which I have returned more than a dollar than what a company has spent. Right? There's definitely been the case in which that has happened. But of course, companies that work with media companies, most of the time they're not going in with that expectation that they're gonna return more than a dollar in, right? There are other companies that might expect, you know, put a dollar in, get 20 cents out. Of course, the the most the the the the best kind of advertiser are the ones that look for brand awareness, right? They they they know what they want, they know what kind of audience they want to target, and so therefore, you know, attribution, all these sorts of things, they they all they want is the brand awareness, and that they know that that will that will carry and convert into something, brand awareness, extra customers, right? Oh, I saw you from X, right? I saw you here, I saw you from this billboard, whatever. Um, that goes a long way. That goes a long way. So he continues here, he continues here. So I I I finished off with uh the impact is hard to measure, but the anecdotal evidence suggests this is far higher ROI than most $100,000 ad campaigns. We've received countless messages with pictures of the plane, and people mention it on seemingly every call we're having with somebody in SF right now. This rarely ever happens with paid advertising. So, there's that. There's that, right? So he goes into it a little bit more. Uh you know what? I'm gonna read the last one because it's a good thread. The biggest reason this is so effective is that no one has done this in SF. Uh, that's not true, actually. Uh I believe Paula followed, I I think there was like some beverage company that that did it. Um but but I'll but I'll leave that there. Maybe, maybe no tech company's doing it, but I I just don't think that's right. Um he says no one has done this in SF. We're the first, we're the first. It's just not right. Aerial advertising exists in places like Miami Beach, but I've never seen it in San Francisco. Okay, just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it's not existed. It has done be been done a bunch of times. There will be others that start now because of us, but people will still think of Monaco when they see new company advertising because we started the trend. In order to go viral with paid advertising, you have to try something new. Yeah. Take risks, be creative. Otherwise, you're paying a premium just to be like everyone else with a billboard on a highway. Yep. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more with all of that. Well, except for the, you know, the being the first, which is not true, but whatever. It's sort of a moot point, it actually doesn't matter. So this brings what be brings me to the last thing that I want to touch on. That is novelty. That is novelty, which is exactly what Sam was talking about here. Before I do that, though, I want to give a shout-out to Cappy.ai, your agentic IDE, multiplayer IDE. You can go ahead and connect it to your Slack and get non-technicals to make pull requests from Slack. Very scary, very concerning. Um, as far as I know, Cappy's also building itself. So, you know, I think maybe uh Cappy's probably gonna be the first to get to fucking uh recursive self-improvement. Also, uh important to note that a lot of the Cappy guys have girlfriends. So I do actually think that is very, very high signal when it comes to startups. Just saying. When a founder has a girlfriend and, you know, sets aside time for dating and you know, uh being happy, I think that's really good. I think that's really good. Big fan of the Cappy guys,

Novelty and Media

SPEAKER_00 31:07

big fan of the Cappy guys. So, to get into this here, novelty, novelty. So, of course, same was talking about it with the Monaco blimp. Of course, I like to think this way. Uh, you know, bathtub episode. I mean, I I like to think this way for all of Mott's episodes just generally. Um, of course, you know, Corgi's doing a good job of this uh with the with you know with the cafes and the the bus route. Uh, you know, like definitely novelty. Uh I have I been into the Corgi Cafe, no. I walk past it all the time, though. I walk past it on the top all the time. And they also have like the sponsored drinks, which are pretty cool. Uh the same sort of thing with the jazz recital. Now, obviously, with me, the the the purpose there was there was a deeper, a much deeper purpose to throwing a jazz recital, but at the same time, you know, companies could justify working with me because of who they'd get in front of, and you know, just working with something that is cool, right? Is novel, right? The the idea of sponsoring sort of like a very, very high quality event, something that nobody else would be able to throw, uh, that was a very, very easy pitch. It was a very, very easy pitch, and it was very, very easy to uh to get that mostly covered. Um, and so I think there's beauty beauty and novelty. It's exactly what Sam from Monica was saying, right? It's exactly why the blimp works. I mean, the blimp again is a recent thing, uh, but the plane, the blimp, all of those sorts of things. Again, novelty in some of those billboards, all of those things, I think they are good. I think they are good. So I just wanted to make a brief mention to novelty. Um, I also have in my notes like being hot online. I actually don't really know why I wrote that down. Um, but I I guess, you know, it helps. Or just just having having an online presence in general helps. Um, but yeah, that's a that's a suspicious thing to to write down. Um don't don't really know. Maybe I'll actually cut that. Maybe I'll actually cut that. But we'll see. We'll see. This is authenticity at all costs. Um I probably just need help. It's 10.30 in the evening. But I think the last thing now, the last thing, so I've been, you know, I've been kind of rambling on about all these distribution, the state of distribution, all these sorts of things. I didn't really touch on, you know, podcast sponsorships, all of those sorts of things. I do actually lump them in to the I would say it's more sort of like traditional media advertising, uh, because that's what it is, right? You get an ad read, right? Or sponsoring YouTube videos and all those sorts of things. Uh, you know, now you just have plenty of different mediums. I mean, for tech companies, you have plenty of different mediums. Uh, you've got X native shows, YouTube Native shows, all of those sorts of things. X Native is going to be much more for brand awareness. YouTube is going to convert more, right? I mean, if you work with somebody like Theo, for example, um, you know, he he's one of those rare examples of advertising that actually does convert and you can actually get attribution. Uh, or you can, you can, you rather, you can attribute the the the some growth or customer acquisition to that sort of thing. Same thing with UGC actually. Same thing with UGC. I've spoken to a bunch of startups in which, you know, they might be geared more towards the consumer, they start doing the UGC sort of thing and they start seeing onboarding, right? Whether it's you know paid conversions and all those sorts of things, um, you know, that differs on a case-by-case basis. But with those sorts of things, you can definitely see some attribution. It's not to say that you can't see attribution from X native content, but the thing that I always like to say for X-native content is that X is, I would say, the world's greatest billboard, right? Because, you know, everybody can see everything, especially now, right? The the algorithm is much more TikTokified, it's much less siloed than it was, say, pre-Elon. And so therefore, you have uh you have much greater reach. But at the same time, you know, if you're in the tech space and you've built up that sort of tech Twitter native, teapot, however you want to fucking think about it, if you've built up that audience over time, uh startups want access to that. Startups want access to that, and it's actually it is just hard to build that organically. It really, really is. So that's why startups might partner with somebody like a mods, for example. A mods, for example. But yeah, world's greatest billboard, like a billboard, you're scrolling past the thing, right? You're not, you very rarely are you stopped looking at the thing. Uh, some people do, right? You might be stuck in traffic and you might be looking at the billboard for quite a while. You might actually really, for whatever reason, the piece of content on X just might be so, so great that you actually stop and watch the thing. But that's rare. It's rare on X. It's rare on X. Okay. It wouldn't be an episode by myself if I didn't do a fucking fan mail segment. Before I do so, I do want to give a quick shout-out. You've been you've been seeing them all over, right? Been seeing them all over. They worked with me for the jazz recital. Um, I start I I preach them at fucking SF parties now. Um, so cool becoming increasingly more insufferable. Uh, but superpower.com, get the care that billionaires can get for less than $200 a year. You can get blood tests, you get your diagnostics, get your biomarkers check, get your testosterone check, get your thyroid check, all of these sorts of things that can be done in one particular test, actually, right? You could they you send nurses to your home, yeah, one particular test, and they go ahead and take all of these biomarkers, and you can visualize it all and get recommendations, right? In order to check levels, uh, you know, for example, uh, I got all of my my tests back. And um, there were some there were some actually some thyroid biomarkers that were off. And oh, easy solution to that, maybe take some more selenium. Great. Selenium is a very, very easy supplement to get. You can get it through them. They can also, they also suggest places in which you can get them, but even just being on top of those sorts of things, super easy fix, super easy fix. And you know, works great for me, worked great for me, and works great for all of those who use superpower. Definitely get in touch with them, of course, the command center for preventative health, preventative health, big fans, big

Fan Mail and @NotTuxedoSam reaction

SPEAKER_00 36:50

fans. Um, thank you, superpower. So, fan mail, want to jump into this real quick. Let's see what we have here. Okay, so from Friend of the Show, we got Tuxedo Sam. Tuxedo Sam, members of staff, uh, members of technical staff, fucking fan mail. He says, starting a private club called technical staff. Who wants to be a member? This is a great one. This is a great one. Um, I would join the club. I want to be a member of the technical staff. I want to be a member of club technical staff. Beautiful stuff, beautiful stuff. I love when people tweet about um about members of technical staff. You know, it's quite it's kind of cool. Um obviously I could have called it MTS. The actual abbreviation for members of technical staff, not to be confused with monitoring the situation, which is a different X Native fucking podcast. But MTS, of course, is known as the members of technical staff abbreviation, but I have been seeing actual members of technical staff being put putting MOTS in their bio now, which warms my heart. Uh it makes me very, very happy. Also, Mots just sounds cooler. You can say the thing. You can say the thing. Um excuse me, I had an itchy nose because I just had a bunch of Korean barbecue. For whatever reason, Korean barbecue makes me sneeze. But anyway,

@RobbiePasquale reaction

SPEAKER_00 38:00

getting on here. More fan mail. This one here is from Robbie Pasquale or Robbie Pascal. Um, he's Australian, uh, dear dear reply guy. And he had a reaction to my tweet. Now I'm gonna try and explain this the best that I possibly can, but Twitter or X now fucking losing my mind. X has this reaction feature, uh, and so you can sort of do like the TikTok style reaction in which you know it has your face and then the tweet in the background. And so he's reacted to one of my tweets. One of my tweets, the original tweet says, AI guys will join a new lab and be like, it's time to build super intelligence. My brother in Christ, what were you doing at the other four labs? Recently I posted this particular screenshot. So the original tweet was from like July last year. I posted a screenshot when Noam Shazir, I believe he joined OpenAI. Now, of course, Noam, he's really only been at Google and character AI, so it was a bit of a drive by on him, but you know, thought it was appropriate. I screenshot it, said tapping the sign. Posted it out, that post went viral, and then there were rumors that uh Barrett Zoff had left OpenAI. I be still rumors, I believe. Um, and so I I I screenshotted the tapping the sign, and then I said, tapping the tapping the sign sign. And then Robbie's gone ahead and reacted to it and said, actually tapping the tapping the tapping the sign sign. And I thought this was pretty good. I only got eight likes and I retweeted it, so I wanted to boost it, but I thought this was good gear. He's also got no shirt on. So there's that, there's that. This is the kind of fucking content that you get on members of technical staff when um my my guests for the week fall through and I need to do one by myself. So this is what we're working with here. This is what we're working with here. I want to bring up um another

@severeengineer reaction

SPEAKER_00 39:49

friend of the show, Severe Engineer. It's not really fan mail, but um I just thought the take was really good. And he said, regular coke clears diet coke, but a lot of you aren't ready for that conversation. Now I must say, I was just a Korean barbecue and I ordered a regular Coke. Uh all calories are good calories for me. I want the carbohydrates, plus the flavor of regular Coke is simply superior. I think this is really good. He also said, um I I I also commented, I said, I agree with this. And he said, Wow, is this going to be on the next MOTS? And I said, this will go into my fan mail segment. Yeah. There you fucking go, Sev. You're in the fan mail segment. I'm a man of my word. I'm a man of my word. So

@Danny_ reaction

SPEAKER_00 40:25

um last thing in the fan mail segment, I just want to give a shout out to uh Danny. So Danny Phantom, uh I was just with him for dinner, and he oh, he's not he's actually not Danny Phantom anymore, he's actually just Danny underscore. Uh he said, you know, he was just kind of like, he was just up my ass a little bit for not having given him a mention yet. And so I said I would. I said I would. So Danny, um, if you're listening to this, there's your mention. Welcome to the Mots Empire. Uh Danny, of course, a friend of the show, has been for a while, but I've not mentioned him until now. So there we go. We've fixed that. We've rectified this, we've rectified this. Uh, last thing that I want to mention, actually, in the in the fan mail segment, um,

My workout routine and @beffjezos reaction

SPEAKER_00 41:05

for a while I've actually been asked for my workout routine. Now I've done an episode sort of breaking down bits of my workout routine. Um, and of course, you know, Beth Jason's here, he said, uh, we need a full workout vlog in Yapco Lab. Of course, is in reply to Cena and I. Um, but his sentiment is shared by many. And so, you know, if I can sum up my workout routine very, very briefly, uh, without going too without going on for too long, basically I do push-pull legs. Very, very boring. I've been doing push-pull legs since about 2021, and I do push, pull, legs, rest, rest. I train on different days of the week, right? Because that is a five-day split. And so naturally it doesn't really line up. Sometimes I go push, rest, and then pull legs and then rest. Or do push, pull, and then rest, and then legs and then rest again. Various different uh orders of that five-day split. Sometimes I'll actually add another rest day because I feel like I need to recover. But all of those days, they consist of a heavy compound, at least one heavy compound. So my push day, I do flat bench press. And then on my pull day, I will often do some sort of deadlift variation. I don't I don't do comp deadlifts anymore. Um, but on my heavy pull day, I will do heavy stiff leg deadlifts. On my light pull day, I'll do uh bent over rolls, uh rows, rolls, I'll do bent over rows. So again, still think of it as a compound. And then on my leg day, I'll always do front squats. I never back squat anymore. I'll do front squats. Um, my heavy leg day, I also include heavy RDLs. So there's a lot of heavy compounds in that split. Uh and of course, the rest of it around it is a lot of bodybuilding. I've been doing a lot of incline dumbbell press, so the thing has been adding a lot of volume to my chest, which is something that I've always lacked. A ton of side lateral raises, a lot of people ask about my shoulders. Uh, that comes from a ton of side lateral raises. I actually do no overhead pressing. No overhead pressing. Um, I found that, you know, I do so much pressing as it is, a lot of horizontal pressing, I'm hitting my front delts enough. I found that uh overhead pressing was just, it was just too much pressing for me, and I can get far more stimulation out of heavy lateral raises, heavy side lateral raises, than I do out of overhead pressing, and I get a lot less of the, you know, the the the CNS, you know, whatever effects. So there's that, there's that. So yeah, a lot of front squats, a lot of heavy RDLs, a lot of weighted pull-ups, really, really like weighted pull-ups. Um, and I and for biceps, I love straight barbell curls. Uh controversial opinion uh in Pride Month, using the straight barbell, not the bent easy bar, um, the pride month bar. Um that's a little bit of a drive-by. Um, but yeah, that's the gist. That's the gist. Maybe one of these days, you know, if I get so insufferable, I can make an entire episode breaking down every single one of my workouts, right? Because I have a memorized my entire program is memorized. Um who knows? Maybe I can fucking sell my program or like figure out some other grift in that regard, in that regard. But anyway, I think this is actually a good place to wrap. We've kind of rambled a little bit. Uh, a lot of things on my mind, a lot of things I've been seeing, the billboards, all of those sorts of things. Very, very in the moment, and you know, very much a part of the SF culture, right? People taking pictures of billboards, people taking pictures of the Monaco blimp, all of those sorts of things. You know, the the the slightly less optimistic take is that the the the corporatization of SF is back, right? The the 2018-2019 period, right? The Salesforce B2B SaaS fucking cloud era, in which you had a lot of these conferences with, you know, sort of middle-aged dudes with blazers and jeans on, all those dudes are back, right? All of the strivers are back in SF, right? Chasing the AI money, right? A lot of the AI companies that were started when SF was the Wild West, they're printing now. They're printing now. So the strivers are back. And so naturally the culture has devolved uh onto billboards and distribution a little bit. So, you know, maybe not the happiest take. It's not necessarily bad. I think some of the billboards are really funny. Um, but it's just an observation. It's just an observation. So I'll leave you with that. You've been listening to another episode of Members of Technical Staff. I'll go ahead and see you on the timeline again real soon.