The Meme Is The Message: Gregory Kennedy on Vibes. Attention, and Building a Business After Silicon Valley

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AI makes it easier to create content. Getting people to care is still the hard part.

On this episode of Signal & Noise, host Rio Longacre and guest host Krish Raja sit down with Gregory Kennedy, founder of Vibe Your SaaS, for a candid conversation about memes, founder-led marketing, creative talent, and building an independent business in the AI era.

Gregory traces his path from New York’s design scene and an award-winning website he built in 1997 to two decades in Silicon Valley and a move to Seattle. He explains how a founder-coaching idea grew into Vibe Your SaaS—a business combining content and go-to-market consulting, a newsletter, and startup pitch competitions—and why his Bay Area network remains central to his work.

Along the way, the conversation tackles what it takes to build an audience, develop a recognizable voice, and turn attention into an opportunity to do business.

In this episode:

• The anatomy of a meme: How recognizable moments, humor, and an unexpected twist make an idea travel—and why Gregory thinks the Drake meme needs to retire.

• Building an audience from zero: The posting, replies, persistence, and personal commitment behind Gregory’s presence on X, plus why your platform should fit your strengths and personality.

• Founder-led marketing with a point of view: How Gregory uses his voice to attract the right clients, why controversy carries real risks, and how he advises founders to stay in a lane they understand and can defend.

• Taste, brand, and AI-generated content: Why Gregory believes taste has always mattered, how consistent quality builds recognition, and why cheaper content doesn’t make attention easier to earn.

• "Become inevitable": The connection between founder conviction, a real customer need, a clear market story, and building an audience before you launch.

• Silicon Valley, Seattle, and startup culture: Gregory’s case for the Bay Area’s concentration of talent and ambition, and his perspective on how Seattle’s business policies have affected his own plans.

• AI and the human side of sales: Why automating outreach doesn’t automatically win customers—and the value of a founder’s ability to make decisions on the spot.

• Talent, careers, and smaller teams: A debate about leaning into your strengths, valuing individual contributors, and using AI to build more with fewer resources.

Plus, Gregory makes his pick between taste and distribution, questions the return on in-person B2B events, and shares why he’s optimistic about the opportunities opening up for solo founders and small teams.

For founders, marketers, and creators trying to earn attention in a crowded feed, this is a conversation about finding what you’re good at, showing up consistently, and giving people a reason to remember you.

Connect with Gregory: ⁠Vibe Your SaaS⁠ ⁠X⁠ ⁠LinkedIn⁠

Subscribe to Signal & Noise on YouTube or follow on Spotify for more conversations on marketing, technology, and the people building what comes next.

#SignalAndNoise #GregoryKennedy #VibeYourSaaS #B2BMarketing #FounderLedMarketing #Memes #AI #Startups #GoToMarket

Read the full transcript below.

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Rio Longacre (00:01.468)

Hi, this is Rio Longeker, Signal and Noise Podcast. I'm here with my guest host, Chris Raja. Hey Chris, good to see you, mate. And we've got a a special guest here today. We've got Gregory Kennedy, who is based in Seattle. And Greg, you and I met, I think we actually met on the the app formerly known as Twitter, which we currently call X. I think we we on that, didn't we? And then we actually got together in Seattle a couple months ago, right? Yes.

Krish (00:10.006)

You say yeah.

AI Rebel (00:23.269)

Mm.

AI Rebel (00:27.419)

Correct. Yeah, yeah. My my my entire social life is powered by X at this point, which I'm embarrassed to admit, but there it is.

Rio Longacre (00:34.238)

Yeah, well, for a lot of our viewers are in ad tech and they definitely appreciate that. I think all of us spend probably more time than we than we'd like to admit on that app. so Greg, it's it's gonna be a fun discussion today. And a little background on Greg. So he's the founder of Vibe Your SAS, which is just a super cool name. And I in my opinion, he's one of the more you are one of the more distinctive voices in in startup marketing today. my understanding of your creature, please correct me if I'm wrong here is you began as a designer.

AI Rebel (00:40.118)

Ha ha

Rio Longacre (01:03.206)

I know you spent a at least a couple decades down in Silicon Valley, right? Where you had senior marketing roles. I think you were CMO, if I'm not mistaken, across mobile advertising as well as SaaS companies. And you helped build a startup that was acquired. And since then you've been working with founders and different companies, helping them from early stages through scale stages. And then a couple of years ago, you did move up to Seattle and went rogue as you put it, and building your vibes, your

Building your vibe your SAS into a mix of go-to-market work, advisory work, startup work. You've built a really cool founder community that I see you posting about all the time. You hold events, you create lots of content. In fact, it's been a really meteoric rise of content and engagement. I I that's one thing I definitely want to dig into and generating earned, like earned

AI Rebel (01:53.871)

Mm, yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:54.216)

Brand awareness, right online. It's earned media is pretty cool. And along the way, you've dramatically expanded your online presence. And one of the ways has been with memes. and you the title of this is going to be The Meme is the message. we may change it a little bit depending on how the conversation goes, but I think that's a really, a really cool way to go into. So it's really good to have you here. Again, we met on X. so I think it's appropriate for this conversation to maybe may maybe we can dig into as as like a first question. If

AI Rebel (02:08.911)

Ha ha.

Rio Longacre (02:22.695)

So Greg, like welcome to the show. Is there anything in in your background that I missed or you'd like to add that think makes it a little more accurate?

AI Rebel (02:29.519)

Yeah, yeah. So I I I have like a really unique background. So I and let me tell the the I like to like pitch the origin story at this point. Cause I think it's important and it's it's really y it's really unique to what most people's career paths have been. And so like I went to like an art high school in New York and like I grew up in this very like liberal environment. My father was kind of like this beatnik character.

Rio Longacre (02:40.861)

Hey, go for it.

AI Rebel (02:55.599)

Like I said, like go and see Alan Ginsburg and like all those beat poets in New York when they still were around, like in the late eighties, early nineties. So I had this like very kind of creative experience. I joked that like it was the only career option anyone thought was was appropriate for me. and so I went right into like advertising and design like pretty young. and was very successful at it. Like won all these awards and did all this great work. but I was in love with the internet and it was like

the nineties. And so I created

Rio Longacre (03:28.999)

So this is right when things are starting to get going, in other words, kinda mid nineties, late nineties around there? Okay. Yep.

AI Rebel (03:31.307)

97, 97. So I literally like on a fourth floor walk up, I bought some really expensive Macintosh computer with my own credit card. And was like 19. And I made a website and it got featured in this book of the top 100 best designed websites in the world. And so based on that experience, like I got recruited all these design firms and stuff, and I I literally showed up for like they had like a meetup of all the designers in the book, and they all had like pretty big reputations.

Krish (03:49.709)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (04:00.066)

And I was like this kid with like a I had like a near I had like a near Yankees baseball cap pulled down and like like I was really from New York, right? And they were just like they're like that is

Rio Longacre (04:01.445)

No you were.

Ha ha ha.

Rio Longacre (04:10.599)

Did did you grow up in in in in Manhattan or in in the boroughs?

AI Rebel (04:13.73)

I was born in Queens and I lived in Manhattan. I went to school around Lincoln Center and stuff. And so, like, I you know, I had like New York's like a big part of me. And it's so funny because I showed up and they were just like not expecting that. They're like, You're the kid that made all this stuff. And I was like, Yes. They were like, What? It was wild. and so it was like my first taste of like startup culture. And I think that's why I stayed in it. That's why like to tell the story, because it was kind of like the first generation of like kind of the hacker ethos where

Krish (04:37.848)

Mm.

Krish (04:42.039)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (04:42.204)

Yep.

AI Rebel (04:42.838)

You could just do something at home and just off in your bedroom or in your apartment and do something really brilliant and get and get noticed, right? Without any kind of like official formal award or approach or whatever, right? It's just like, I found this great website and it's really cool.

Krish (04:50.016)

Yeah I was

Krish (05:04.258)

Yeah. I feel like that path is what you know, vibe coders chart now. You see all these like twelve, thirteen year olds that vibe coding plus YouTube makes them famous in a day and it seems like you you found that template a long time ago. Yeah.

AI Rebel (05:09.167)

Yes.

AI Rebel (05:17.912)

Yeah, so it was the that's why I like Telestore, because like the first it was like the first I of course I didn't know it at the time, but it was like when that just channel or way emerged, right? and then I saw the dot com collapse. And I was like, whoa, wait a minute, what happened? Like I was literally getting flown to France and stuff, and I'm like this little kid from New York. I'm like, this is great. And then it all yeah, it was pretty dramatic.

Rio Longacre (05:38.749)

Yeah, once the crash happened that you the greavy train stopped, right?

AI Rebel (05:44.078)

And so I I still had this great job and I was enjoying my life in New York, but my wife was from San Francisco. We were dating at the time, and she was one who's like, you have to Yes. She's like, you have to move to San Francisco. Yeah, yeah. She's like, look, you're so into all this stuff. Yeah, it's like we're just gonna move. So I literally quit my job and moved to San Francisco in 2004. So it's a little early.

Rio Longacre (05:53.691)

Also is that how you ended up out there? Was okay, well that's how I ended up in Denver by the way. I'd marry someone from Denver, so Okay, there you go. It's a recurring theme.

Krish (05:59.201)

I end up in New York.

AI Rebel (06:12.443)

and I worked for like a couple of big advertising agencies and

Rio Longacre (06:16.541)

But this was it this is in the fallout from the dot-com crash. I mean it was like it was new it was winter after that. That's funny. That's funny. I I'll tell you a quick story about it, but like I saw I was in New York around the same time and at a media agency startup tech company, right? And I remember we put out we wanted to hire salespeople to sell media. We put an ad out. This role like was not my idea. Well I was not my agency, but I remember the CEO put out a role, a JD, where it was no base salary, only

AI Rebel (06:22.427)

Yes. Yeah.

AI Rebel (06:39.109)

Uh-huh.

AI Rebel (06:45.925)

Wow, commission only.

Rio Longacre (06:46.011)

commission based on I mean, we had a line around the building. I mean it w it was d it was like s it was it was tech winter but then. it was crazy. So go ahead, I cut you off, Greg.

AI Rebel (06:50.233)

Ha ha ha ha.

Yeah. No, no, it's fine. Yeah, I I it's interesting because like for me, like you see these cycles, right? And so you and I remember that where it was like I would have say that like I tell everyone the dot-com boom was crazier than anything I've ever seen. Like the amount the the just the like people's ability to get funded on things that were like probably not great businesses, like companies went public with no revenue. I've never seen anything like it ever since, right? And I think that collapse was pretty dramatic, like it was very difficult to find jobs.

Krish (07:09.646)

Mm.

AI Rebel (07:24.127)

I the part about like moving to San Francisco, every single person I knew in New York told me it was a bad idea. They like literally believed in New York that like the internet will never amount to anything. Like the my boss, everybody believed that.

Rio Longacre (07:37.201)

Well I'd one I'd one guy I one guy was pitching told me I remember I was pitching this was a a a like a I don't know, CMO or head of marketing at a company. He told me the internet's a fad around the same time. It's so funny. yeah.

AI Rebel (07:49.413)

People really believed that, right? Yeah, it was a it was a really I'm sorry, go ahead.

Krish (07:49.888)

I'd have loved. I don't mean

No, no, I was just gonna say I wish I had my memory of it, but I was at school. So yeah, apologies. I don't I don't I don't have my own story, but I I remember the crash. The crash was intense.

AI Rebel (08:01.295)

Ha ha.

AI Rebel (08:08.495)

Yeah, and if you came if you came out during that, it was difficult, right? but for me, like the key piece was that no one believed in it. And I kind of see some of this with AI today, that like back then, like everyone just thought it was a bad idea and I moved to San Francisco anyway. And I like to joke that I was, you know, vindicated beyond my wildest dreams. Like like I knew it'd be big, but I didn't think what happened in San Francisco, would happen, right? And that was a just against everybody's advice.

Krish (08:22.22)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (08:35.761)

And then it would replicate itself. I mean, not only would it happen in San Francisco, but then like the the economy would become the the tech economy would become the economy, right? You look at a stock market today, yeah.

AI Rebel (08:43.051)

start to subsume everything, right? So I I see some parallels with AI today. I think there's all this fear, there's all this anxiety. Like the average LinkedIn user at this point seems to hate AI at this point. It's interesting, like

Krish (08:46.286)

Mm.

Krish (08:50.062)

Yeah, I was gonna ask.

Rio Longacre (08:59.261)

There's a backlash, there's definitely a backlash.

Krish (09:01.132)

Yeah, it's coming for sure. I'm interested in your both your opinions on this idea that the this might th the parallel of San Fran in New York is also happening the same way again. Everyone I talk to who's gone to Silicon Valley in the last year or so yeah, last six months to a year, seems to I mean me th these are like back end developers and AI engineers and things like that, but they seem to have that sort of cultish mentality about San Fran as the epicenter of what's going on and New York

I don't know, I live in New York, so people seem to be just getting on with their lives and and not so intensely fascinated by b by it. But I wonder if you guys see any similarities to how New York and San Fran deal with this next technology or not.

AI Rebel (09:45.4)

I I mean look, I'm I I'm still a believer in Silicon Valley and that it's a unique place. I mean, my events and all things that I do today, most I think all my customers, they're all in the Bay Area. So I I I still believe that the for some reason the concentration of talent and the combination of like that with the culture are really significant. and I still really believe in it. And I and I think it's

It at this point I'd say it it doesn't seem like it's ever truly been duplicated anywhere.

Krish (10:20.12)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (10:20.996)

No, it hasn't. Okay, but but okay, counter counterpoint though. So okay, it's funny. When I was in the when I when I star in New York was at that agency, we j I tried doing a startup with a buddy at one point. I remember we tried we tried raising money. This is like 2005, I think. It was so brutal. I remember there were no VCs in New York really, and they were all finance bros. And I remember one guy actually said, I'm not kidding, are you profitable? He asked me if I was profitable. I was like, this is a PowerPoint deck. No, we're not profitable, right?

AI Rebel (10:24.314)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (10:31.332)

Ha ha ha.

Krish (10:40.75)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (10:50.34)

And then and then what one other dude asked if we had collateral. I mean, that's how bad this like the fundraising scene in New York. Now, granted, it's not like that way now. And in fact, there was a recent tweet, and this is a counterpoint by Andrew Young on X. For years the advice was to move to San Francisco if you wanted a career in tech. That advice is wrong. This is him, not me. New York has become the most exciting place in the world to build. A few reasons why I think a list of reasons why not San Francisco is definitely ground zero for the what's happening AI, no dispute. But New York has kind of

Krish (10:58.446)

Are you?

Rio Longacre (11:19.846)

come into its own in in terms of being a tech center.

Krish (11:22.85)

Hm. What did you say when he asked for what?

Rio Longacre (11:24.222)

There's no question there, but more of a comment.

AI Rebel (11:24.545)

I I d I don't I don't agree with that at all. I think that's just cope.

Krish (11:30.262)

Yeah, I can.

AI Rebel (11:31.716)

Yeah, I think so. And look, I have a really Bay Area centric worldview, so like I'm not gonna hide it. I think that like what we call tech has just like found its way into most of like the world and most jobs today and most businesses. Like the the like the need to understand those tools and some of the like methodologies and how people work is been

Krish (11:36.163)

Mm.

AI Rebel (11:56.292)

Widely adopted across the business world. I think that companies in Silicon Valley are quite innovative, not just in like the technology and tools, but in like how they set things up. A lot of the ideas we have about management came from there. but I I don't who said this recently? But I wouldn't call that tech. Like I think technology, a technology company is open AI or it's anthropic. Like they're actually making the platform.

Krish (12:20.526)

Sure.

AI Rebel (12:23.727)

I think what you have in most other places is like people who are really good at like using the tools that people from Silicon Valley are actually creating.

Krish (12:24.152)

Yeah.

Krish (12:28.138)

Using it. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I think I think I agree with that in the that when I go to San Francisco or the you know, the b you know, Silicon Valley, the people I meet and the things that people are talking about seem to be leaning more towards compute infrastructure and and frontier models and the the discussions that are having in New York are more like the application layer and like you said, what people are doing commercially with it, just as a a broad brush stroke.

AI Rebel (12:58.383)

Yeah, like, you know, they like it, look, they're they're they're all generalizations and stuff, right? And you can find people doing interest and things everywhere. but I do think it's I do think Silicon Valley is still the only place where you can get funded with a really wild idea that you maybe have like a prototype or something, and people will like encourage you to go for it.

Rio Longacre (13:17.476)

And not be asked if not BSed if you're profitable, not asked if you have collateral right no it's yeah, I no.

AI Rebel (13:20.453)

profitable or have collateral or like any of those things, right? And what I also think is quite fascinating about this is like over and over again those things work. That's the other piece that I feel like people really cynical or don't I think understand like the Bay Area always like to point out that like there's all these dumb ideas, they get funny, they all fail, but that's not true. Like Twitter if it from my for my perspective is the best example. Like

Krish (13:49.742)

Mm.

AI Rebel (13:50.434)

If if you came to me even today and were like, I have a 32 character micro blog that people are gonna like post on their random thoughts during the day and and the first version is gonna like connect with your messaging system and send you texts that you have to pay for, I'd be like, This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard, right? And that's why I like Twitter, because I think it really shows that it's a totally new approach.

Krish (14:12.439)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (14:18.743)

new technology, new media, and that it worked. It became like a massive company. It's an incredibly interesting and fun tool. I love it. I spend a lot of time on there. But I don't think it's the kind of thing that like is obvious that it would be a success until after it actually was a success.

Rio Longacre (14:38.875)

Well I think there's something to the California spirit, right? And so sorry, Chris, I'll let I'll let you go. But I I think I I think there actually is something about it that is a little different. Like New York, if you want to go into finance, certainly it's the place to go and for a lot of other fields as well. And and certain types of tech, maybe the health tech that tend to be more regulated where you have a concentration of bit of it businesses within an industry in New York, I think it does dominate and do pretty well. but gen but generally West Coast is you know certainly set into Bay Area is where most of it's at. So Chris, I I know you had a question.

Krish (14:39.485)

the qu Yeah. No, no, you got

AI Rebel (14:57.851)

Correct.

Krish (15:06.102)

Yeah, no, no, it's just full r full circle to what you were saying, Gregory, about the concentration of specific talent that you get there. You know, like I I have no doubt that there are tons of shit ideas that get funded out of there as well. But like the but like but by by you know, by osmosis of you know, and and sheer competition, I think osmosis of network and just sheer competition of ideas, I think they get weeded up pretty quickly and

AI Rebel (15:18.203)

Plenty.

Krish (15:34.206)

you know, in a place like that. Whereas I think they probably limp on a little longer in places like London or you know, a a rubbish idea would probably limp on a little longer. I just think if if you have a shit idea it gets funded in the West Coast, it would be fairly conclusive very fairly quickly, just because of the network effect and and the density of talent and competition.

AI Rebel (15:57.424)

Yeah, no, I I agree.

Krish (16:00.408)

Can you Greg can can I I no I had one question for Gregory, sorry mate. I just wanted to I I wanted to f finish off on that one thought, which was I always wanted to get onto Twitter, right? I always tried to like have my day with it and go, alright, I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna be a Twitter user, guys. never happened. For some reason or another, I would always screw up the first not dopamine hit, but what you wanna call it, the the first few times you use it and you're like, that's awesome, I wanna use it more.

Rio Longacre (16:00.453)

So Greg, let's talk let's talk vibe you got a question, go ahead.

Krish (16:29.728)

Never had that. what I obviously I know like I it felt to me after Elon Musk took it over that it you had to have an audience to have an audience. And maybe that's just me not being persistent enough, but what would you say is your modern day bit of advice for ex usage, Twitter usage, like to someone like me, like need wanting to be engaged in that channel but

AI Rebel (16:53.689)

Yeah, it's it's always been hard to get started on NX or Twitter and build an audience. So if you don't have a lot of notoriety or an audience that you can port over, it's always been really difficult. And I think like everyone knows is like across all social media though, like it's hard like to start from zero. so there's not really like a silver bullet or like a trick to it. Like you have to put a lot of effort in in the beginning.

And then there's plenty of guides out there you could read about like how to do that. But yeah, it's just being like really persistent. And I don't know, for me like enjoying it. So I tried a lot of different things. And you know, like I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on all these social social networks. But I started like I can't remember exactly why. I think like I was one of those people who like spent a lot time reading. That's what it was. So like read Twitter. Like maybe I wanted to have an account on there. I don't know. I just didn't I wasn't motivated to have a big audience on there for a long time. And there were some really like

Krish (17:43.404)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (17:52.836)

I guess strange is the term I'm gonna use, like accounts on there that don't exist anywhere. There are just people on there that like I think they're fascinating. I love it. It's really out there kind of stuff. And I don't know any other plat maybe Reddit has that, but I loved I loved that. There were a lot of like just oddball accounts I would follow, but the depth or the knowledge, the expertise was just so impressive.

Rio Longacre (17:57.436)

Still are, yeah.

Krish (17:58.882)

Very diplomatic dys description.

Krish (18:05.848)

Yeah.

Krish (18:10.146)

Yeah, read it.

AI Rebel (18:22.093)

And like they all at least ones I like, they were not only knowledgeable, but they were usually like funny and they liked sarcasm. And so it was a good fit for me. Cause I liked following these guys who would like not just ridicule the the Federal Reserve Bank, but they would do it in like a really funny way. And I'm like, this is great. Like you have to know a lot to be able to pull that off and make jokes about Federal Reserve banking that are funny. Like it's not an it's not like

Krish (18:22.434)

Yeah.

Krish (18:30.414)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (18:45.051)

They're funny, yeah.

AI Rebel (18:47.663)

I I literally he replied to me one day and he's like, You're my audience of one or something like that. Cause like I like I get all your d all your nerdy jokes, right? So it's just a good fit for me. And then I just decided one day, like, I'm gonna make the investment and do it. And it was really hard from the sense that like I had to post a lot, reply a lot, just put a lot of like time into building an audience on there and slowly like it it worked.

Krish (18:56.654)

That's awesome.

Krish (19:05.24)

Yeah.

Krish (19:09.701)

I love the advice, audience of one. I think I might be looking at it in a different way. Thank you.

Rio Longacre (19:10.074)

It takes a lot of time.

AI Rebel (19:14.352)

Yeah, I d I found some accounts I thought were great and just pfft. I'm sorry.

Rio Longacre (19:15.739)

Yeah. And and you can find your community. You can find your community, right? Like let's whatever your interest is. Like I I got I I've been on Twitter since two thousand nine, right? And then I think the last two to three years I got much more into it because a lot of ad tech people came back.

Krish (19:19.948)

Yeah. Yeah.

Krish (19:31.917)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (19:32.877)

And following a lot of them left and they came back and there's just been this cool engagement. So I find that's fun. And then I tell people, and a lot of some people stay away from it. I I even had a conversation on LinkedIn the other day. Someone's asking me, where can I go to have good Martech conversations? I said, You can go to X. I mean, there aren't as many Martech people as you think there there would be, but there are some. There's a lot of ad tech people. There's certainly a lot of just crazy people just writing that actually is kind of fun. And whatever you want to follow, you can find it.

Krish (19:57.9)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (19:57.963)

S but you you have to find your community, or whatever that is, and to your point you have to s you have to spend a lot of time posting, you have to follow people a lot, you have to comment on things, you have to create a lot of new content and s some of it's gonna land s most of it won't, but as long as some of it does, you will gain a following.

Krish (20:00.748)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (20:11.331)

I like I think it's I think it's really straightforward. Like anyone that knows me, like I'm extremely fanatical and co obsessive just in general. And so Twitter's a good fit for me, right? Like I went through a point where I like really into bicycle racing and it was just like ev like my entire life like for years like just revolved around that. Like everything I ate, everything I did, where I went on vacation, like it was just that was what I wanted to do and that makes me happy. That's just who I am, so it's okay.

Krish (20:11.342)

I love I love that I yeah.

AI Rebel (20:41.413)

So Twitter like great for people like that if you're like, I'm just gonna become like the expert and just go really deep and and do it all the time, weekends, like just never give up. Like if you enjoy that, it's great. I think like if you need a more casual experience or something not quite as fanatical, it can feel not like it's just not gonna be comfortable.

Krish (20:46.69)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (21:06.97)

Let's talk Vibe Your SAS. So why did you maybe you could tell listeners that what is Vibe Your SAS? And maybe explain like why did you, what was the impetus for starterness, Greg? Was it were you frustrated with current marketing approaches and strategies? Do you think organizations are too big and slow moving? Were they not using AI enough? What was the thinking behind it and like what is like what does it do?

AI Rebel (21:28.485)

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Vibers now consists of like my content and GTM consultancy where I just work with founders. So I work with founders on content, personal branding, go to market strategy, some sales execution, some automation stuff, but it's one hundred percent focused on founders and startups. And then I have a startup pitch competition I do every quarter in the Bay Area. Next one will be in September tenth at

Snowflake headquarters in Menlo Park. it's a really great community of people. You have to be approved to attend. So I generally accept founders, meaning like you have to have a founder on your LinkedIn profile. You can't just be a founder like in spirit. You have to be a founder in reality. yeah, exactly. There's some people that like I so I I vet all the attendees. you have to be founder or you have to be an investor.

Rio Longacre (22:17.036)

Andra can't be your spirit animal.

Krish (22:17.282)

Mm-hmm.

AI Rebel (22:25.945)

And we do let some kind of people that are tech professionals, but generally more senior. So either like they've had a startup, maybe they've sold a startup, maybe they've spent ten years at like a really prominent tech company. So you get a really great community of senior people that are just really excited about startups. We pick five, they get to pitch, they get ninety seconds on the clock with a panel of judges, and we give them a thirty dollar nano Pac Man if they win. And that's it.

Krish (22:54.646)

Love that. It's a great price.

AI Rebel (22:56.123)

And they get featured in the newsletter, of course, so you get the alkalade. It's funny, at one point I thought about putting prize money towards it, and then I kind of came to the conclusion that the winning the pitch was more valuable if there was no prize. Like if the prize was just that like everyone competes for it, because we get like a lot of submissions. and that you the fact that you beat everyone out is what makes it valuable. Like if people are competing for the money, it's like the wrong motivation.

Krish (23:09.262)

Yeah.

Krish (23:22.732)

The wrong precedent, yeah, for sure. You're probably getting a different type of person and a different Yeah.

AI Rebel (23:26.637)

So at this point I've kind of resisted it actually. And to some degree I'm against it. Cause I was shocked at like the quality of the presentations that we got in the startups who who pitch. and so at this point, not that I'm against it, but like I generally like that. I want people to do it because they really want to be the best, not because they wanna win money. So I have the pitch competition. and then of course like I have my newsletter.

And you asked about the good.

Rio Longacre (23:52.859)

But if they have a good pitch, if they have a good pitch, it I mean that that's what they would then use to raise money just to s to sell their business, right? So

AI Rebel (23:58.769)

We feature investors, like we usually get two prominent speakers who are investors, right? So I have someone from Foundation Capitalist Time and a couple other investors. So yeah, like obviously they get an a captive audience of all kinds of people who are quite influential in Silicon Valley. So that's a great that's a great award. But it wasn't until I heard some stories about people that were doing like pitch competitions in other cities and then I realized like they were competing for the money. And I was like, mm, that's not really like what I want or what I think Silicon Valley is about.

Like we'll have great ideas by great people that are really interesting and innovative and people are doing it 'cause it's cool. And if you have something that's fantastic, like you'll find the investment.

Krish (24:40.355)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (24:40.772)

So despite being in up in Seattle, you're still running this in Silicon Valley. Do you do a version in Seattle as well? Or have you tried it? It didn't work? Or you just just that's Silicon Valley is where it needs to be?

AI Rebel (24:51.046)

Great question. I I did some things here. The market's a lot smaller. I do events every once in a while. But I just decided to like I already have like a network there. I'm excited about it. I I know a lot of people there. So it's just easier for me to ultimately do that. You know, flights are cheap, it's easy to get down there, it's the same time zone. That was part of the pitch when we moved here was like it's not that far. Same time zone's a big deal, culturally quite similar.

So that was an easy, easy one. At this point, like I'm so busy, I don't know if I want to do more events. so I refrained from that. But you asked about the the origin, like I was working at this AI startup and on it didn't work out. And so on the last day, I was like, what am gonna do? And I called some like buddy of mine, we're like chatting, and he's like, he was like, you should focus more on founders and coaching. Because at that point, I was kind of just

Doing anything marketing. I didn't really know exactly what I want to do. And he's like, You've got this like network and people really know you in Silicon Valley. And so why don't you just focus on founders? And he's like, I was doing this kind of coaching thing for founders, and like, why don't you do something like that? And so I'm like, that's an interesting idea. So I call them back and I'm like, okay, vibe coding just came out and I registered the URL, vibe your sass, and I'm gonna call that my coaching offering. And so I just threw up a splash page that had like vibe your sass coming soon.

become inevitable, sound up here if you're a founder or something like that. It was just really generic not generic, but like vague. It didn't really say exact what it was gonna be. And my bike's like, this is great. And so I launched it and then he Yeah.

Krish (26:22.646)

Mm.

Krish (26:27.168)

It's a bit you say you say that it's vague, but I also think how long ago did you launch that?

AI Rebel (26:33.244)

A year and a half ago.

Krish (26:34.744)

See, I said that's like dog gears in AI, isn't it? It's a year and a half ago, until now, I would look at that name, Vibe USS, and I'd like, that's quite forward thinking. That's something that has a bit of cachet to it, but also means number of things depending on how you read it.

AI Rebel (26:54.524)

Well yeah, that's why I liked it, 'cause I thought it was like ironic, right? Like 'cause people are like, you vibe code people's sass things like, no, I just like give them vibes. It's all marketing. And they're like, okay. It's so funny how like it like they don't get that initially, and then they get it, and then they're like, That and that was why it worked. I think like people if if they put that together, then they're the right fit for me. And that's kind of like my whole marketing philosophy now is like I do a lot of things that are like a bit different than what I used to do.

Krish (27:16.96)

Yeah. Yeah.

AI Rebel (27:23.676)

and my whole approach now is to just kind of filter for the people that are a good fit. And so if you don't get it, then like you're not gonna be a good fit for me. And I think that's why it all came together. So the great story is like I had 50 signups by Monday and I had sold the first two coaching packages like a week later. And you my wife my wife was like, She's like, You have a lot of yeah.

Krish (27:35.586)

Yeah.

Krish (27:44.472)

Perfect. you go. Like you gotta you you gotta be polarized like not polarizing, but like you give be having like you said, having someone have an opinion is better than ignoring it and I don't know, the word vibe has really like got people's backs up, generally for some reason or another. They're it was it used to be a nice word, not anymore.

AI Rebel (28:05.124)

It was great because like yeah, it all just it all came together. Like I kinda hit the vibe coding trend at exactly the right moment. and and yeah, and it and it kinda stuck. I even thought about like perhaps rebranding it, but like I've gotten so much cachet with this now. Cause I get a lot of like, well, what do you think about if like all SaaS goes away? And I'm like, well, I actually don't agree with that because I'm still getting customers now that actually in hardware, but they all still have a SaaS business model. So my opinion

Krish (28:11.725)

Yeah, you did.

AI Rebel (28:34.918)

the SAS model is gonna survive. And that's really what works, like even in like hardware.

Krish (28:41.56)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (28:41.805)

Yeah, the whole SaaS pocalypse thing. I mean, it's like SaaS is not dead, it's changing, like, but it's changing probably I think a lot of the pricing models are under pressure. And but you look at in fact recently there's been a rebound. I think Salesforce and ServiceNow, a bunch of big legacy SaaSes, who people have finally realized are not going to go away. Their stocks have rebounded quite a bit. So we have talked about that a lot in this pod. But but Greg, looking at

memes. That's something I wanted to talk about. 'Cause I you post a lot of them, you're good at it. I mean kind of the meme master, right? Like may maybe you can define what is a meme in your opinion and what makes you so good at them.

AI Rebel (29:16.642)

that's a tough one. defining a meme. I I I I don't know. I I I suppose they're like are they all are they always images? I don't even know if they're technically images. I think they have to be like a current trend that really captures the moment. And I think that moment just collapsed down, right? I I think we used to have more like catchphrases and things. I feel like there's less of that now. There's definitely like an image or a video.

That goes viral. And I think that that would be the average person's like definition of a meme, you know? and then what's become popular is to like I guess capture that moment and then like remix or change the meaning of it in a way that's interesting and clever and perhaps relevant.

What you're doing. least that's how I think about it, right? And I think that's what makes them fun, is like capturing some moment and then reframing it in a way that is unexpected. and that's why I think they're popular. So there was that what Sophie Cunningham like pointing meme, right? Where she was like pointing the other one. I did I did a ton of stuff with that one because I just thought that that the the video is just so great where she's and it could just you could just apply so many different things to it.

I think I did one on LinkedIn and it said, Yeah, that one I I wrote me pointing out CEOs who aren't spending enough money on marketing. I had like some comments that were just like that were just great. So yeah, I guess that's how I define it, but

Rio Longacre (30:41.421)

Yeah. You did, I saw that, yeah.

Rio Longacre (30:55.757)

What b what what what makes a good meme?

AI Rebel (30:59.888)

Yeah, that's a good question. I think they have to be maybe a couple of things. r wildly recognizable is good. So like the widely understood. So if people recognize the like Tom Cruise, like someone famous, you know, pol political people, which I try to avoid because there's lot of like stuff loaded up in that. But like people know who they are, and sometimes they work. So I think that helps. Or it's just like there's something about the moment that is like

Krish (31:11.126)

Mm-hmm.

AI Rebel (31:29.492)

communicating to people in the image or the video. So and used to have more of these I think where like kids doing funny things or those all those fail videos, right?

Rio Longacre (31:40.235)

One of my favorite one w ever was you know you ever see the movie with I forget the name of the movie, it's a German movie in Hitler's Bunker and people would take that, they'd put like diff different sound to it. It would do some of those were so funny. Like downfall some of the I could not stop laughing, some of those.

AI Rebel (31:47.169)

yeah.

AI Rebel (31:50.759)

Downfall. The downfall memes. I saw a downfall AI one recently that was really good. The downfall that one's been around for like a long It's it's funny. I joke like I sometimes have kids who come in and like they literally hire me as like a meme historian. Cause like there's memes out there. I know this is crazy. There's memes out there they're so old, like

Rio Longacre (32:00.537)

That's an old one, yeah. Several years, yeah.

AI Rebel (32:14.96)

Those th they don't know the origin or like perhaps what the meaning of the meme is. Like even that downfall, that movie is like fifteen or maybe twenty years old. So like not a lot of people understand the origin a lot of these news. So sometimes I've got some f goofy calls, yeah?

Rio Longacre (32:24.023)

Almost twenty years old, yeah.

Krish (32:31.662)

I mean y even no, even like the people that were featured in the original memes don't realise do you know what I mean? Like they're it was a few years ago there was someone who went round and like found a lot of these people that were in you know, the guy that's doing that and there's like there's all those famous memes and even they were like I'd barely any idea had that it would get like that or had gotten like that.

Rio Longacre (32:32.782)

Ha ha.

AI Rebel (32:39.87)

right.

AI Rebel (32:45.093)

Yes, I saw that.

AI Rebel (32:55.526)

The jealous boyfriend or jealous girlfriend one, like I saw them mu today, like they're like old now. It's that's fascinating.

Rio Longacre (33:01.273)

But that still makes the rounds. I still I every day I see someone posting something like that.

AI Rebel (33:06.096)

great. It's it's cool how they like they catch on and then they like take on a meaning of their own. I think it's like s super fun, really interesting. yeah.

Krish (33:06.21)

Yeah, that's a good one.

Krish (33:15.035)

What's the what's the format change to? Like was would you count s what so did you guys watch the World Cup and see like all of the social media like side f news and like would you count any of that as memeing or is that like what's it become?

AI Rebel (33:33.31)

Yeah. I I guess like for the purpose of this conversation, like maybe in like marketing, I would say memes are really specific. They're an image or they're like a 30-second video. They don't have a lot of like spoken part to them, or actually a better term is that there's no narrative. Maybe someone says something, but it doesn't have a narrative. It's just like a moment. and then what people do is they

Krish (33:43.469)

Yeah.

Krish (33:59.266)

Just a moment, yeah.

AI Rebel (34:01.243)

The reason that they they try to make them as generic as possible because then you can like add your own kind of context, add your own content, and you can change the meaning. Right. So I think that's that's probably like a really effective definition of like what is a meme on the on the internet. And so I think what you're talking about was like there was that, but there also was like a lot of other kind of like social media discussion around the World Cup, which I enjoyed. I mean, we had the stuff here in Seattle, it was fun, but there were some great videos that were

hilarious and entertaining. I like still like to think of it as like we had the greatest sleepover of all time in America. So so I would define my World Cup experience, but

Rio Longacre (34:42.091)

It was that German guy traveling around the South. There's a bunch of foreigners doing that. There's a guy, a Ali. It was great. He went all over the country. He posted like and eventually he was starting like people I know he s he posted stuff that pissed people off, so he had to hide his identity for a while. And then then he resurfaced a couple months later. Yeah, that was it's freaking wild. So so okay, but looking at like you've talked a lot, and I really like this by the way, about how like it's better to be a little controversial. I know a l a lot of founders really

AI Rebel (34:44.637)

That was excellent.

AI Rebel (34:54.557)

I didn't catch that part. man.

Rio Longacre (35:11.065)

freak out about this, they're so worried about saying the wrong thing, getting canceled, getting people pissed off at them. Why is it better to be too controversial than too invisible?

Krish (35:14.787)

Mm.

AI Rebel (35:21.873)

Yeah, this is an interesting discussion. Someone was asked me the other day about this. And I said, like, look, there's moments where like I'm uncomfortable. Like, that's part of what I think being online is about. And if you're gonna build an audience and open your life up in that way and be like an online person or something, you're opening yourself up to a lot of like feedback, perhaps criticism, and it can be uncomfortable. And I think that that's where people struggle is that like now you're gonna have to like get feedback.

Or people could take shots at you or say things that you don't like and and no one likes that. It's uncomfortable. So so I think that that's what holds most people back. I think a lot of people they're interested in like developing this persona or like promoting themselves or getting that there on social media, but it comes with a cost. And there's a lot of people that like can't handle or manage or or manage it really poorly, which like maybe is the worst outcome is that you put all this effort into it.

Krish (36:02.339)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (36:18.805)

Right.

AI Rebel (36:20.152)

And then you just do something catastrophic, which I believe can happen. I don't believe that all PR is good PR. That might have been like the old worldview. I think there are actually a lot of things you could do now that are not good for you and you need to be really smart about it. And not everyone has the like stomach or talent, I think, to manage the that part. Because like how you react to things matters.

Krish (36:35.116)

Yeah.

Krish (36:42.114)

become yeah how you react honestly like there's so many instances where I've seen something, you know, combated online and it's the defensive response of the poster that it makes it all worse. Do you know I mean they could have they could have they could have laughed it off, they could have taken the conversation down a different route, but they've gotten defensive and it's just yeah, it's made the look worse almost. Do you know what I mean? So I think I think you're right. I think you've got to prepare for

AI Rebel (36:57.595)

Yeah.

Krish (37:11.458)

what you do in those moments and how you're gonna react and own it.

AI Rebel (37:15.034)

It's hard I I don't have all the answers. Like, I mean, I can tell you for myself, like, I don't take myself too seriously and I like to joke around and I think that helps. So if if people take shots at me, I I th so okay, the couple of specific things. Like, if I get attacked or people are really critical of me, I will crush them. Like, and I think that part is super important. If you wanna if you wanna be effective and have a popular account on X, you need to understand that like

Krish (37:23.523)

Mm.

AI Rebel (37:44.946)

There, it's just like being a, I know if anyone you have ever been experienced being like teacher, going to like a classroom. Like you need to establish that you're in charge. And there's almost always a moment where someone will challenge your authority and you have to show very clearly that like it's your classroom. and once you do that, the entire like dynamic will change. And I think social media in general is like that. So if you go out there, you post something that's a little bit controversial, you need to like really show that like.

You stand behind this, and if you do that, you win. And this still happens to me on things that I post. What did I post the other day? I've been very vocal about like not happy with some of the policies here in Seattle. And I've been very critical of it. And I've gotten some people that come in and like fight with me.

Rio Longacre (38:35.98)

What you you you mean you mean policies coming from your like super experienced mayor?

AI Rebel (38:40.729)

Yeah, just some of the like what I would call socialist policies.

Rio Longacre (38:42.584)

Well it and it and f it's her first job. Like she lives with her parents. Like for those who don't know Seattle, I mean it it's kinda sad. And I guess her policies have been I've been kind of crazy. So I have been following that, right? I've and and by the way, I shit post a lot. I I don't talk too much politics, but I'll sometimes veer into it a little bit. But mostly I like I like shit posting, I have fun and ex and I don't engage with every comment, Greg. Like there are people who will like say just things that are like super if someone says something super mean, I'll just just ignore it. But like

Krish (38:42.839)

Okay.

AI Rebel (38:46.907)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (39:10.092)

But if but if someone challenges what I'm saying in a thoughtful way, I will always respond. So I think to your point about you have to you have to take control of the situation and show that I'm not I'm not mindlessly doing this. I have opinions and if you challenge me I can back them up. I think that's the key.

AI Rebel (39:22.845)

Correct.

It that's exact that that exactly. So you need to stand behind what you say, which means you have to be very smart you have to take the time to make sure that like if you're gonna post something on this track that's like you anticipate there being pushback or feedback, that you're prepared for that and you can manage that conversation. That's the right way to say this. And what happens is people do that and then they get very timid and they go back and they delete it or whatever, and that looks terrible. So you need to be very clear, like

Krish (39:26.028)

Yeah.

Krish (39:46.658)

Mm.

AI Rebel (39:53.883)

Like so I said, like I've been very vocal about like I'm not supportive of like certain policies in Seattle and I think the data is all on my side. and I would say at this point, like no one challenges me anymore because I was proven correct. And so that was the po the tweet I posted like a week ago, which is about like real estate markers collapsing, which I would directly relate to like the fact that which not business friendly anymore. I would

I would directly put Starbucks leaving the city of Seattle squarely on the mayor. There are actual videos of her like protesting Starbucks, telling the Starbucks that she's not supportive of like what they do. And then there's other video where she's like waving by to millionaires. Like I think that's a direct line to what's happening now.

Rio Longacre (40:45.046)

Not supportive what they say like salad coffee is so evil, right? I mean just this is crazy.

AI Rebel (40:50.63)

Well, you know, like look, I you know, like she can have her opinion, right? And that's what and that's what I'm always that's what generally what I say is like look, if you guys don't agree with me, like w w Yeah, like where

Rio Longacre (40:58.562)

But you're the mayor now. You can have your opinion, you're the mayor now, right? You're representing the whole city

Krish (41:00.214)

Yeah. But what what was it? Was it Starbucks representing all franchises that she was against or was it I'm not so you have to fill me in a little bit here. I've been in London, sorry. What was the what yeah, what was what what was she against? instance.

AI Rebel (41:10.544)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, yeah, I don't know all that details, so I don't like misrepresent exactly what was going on. The videos that I saw on what I'm aware of is like there was a protest regarding how Starbucks treats its workers. And my guess is it was related to the unionization of stores. And the mayor was supportive supportive of that. And

Krish (41:28.044)

Right. Okay.

Krish (41:35.192)

Yeah, right.

AI Rebel (41:40.098)

accuse Starbucks of not treating their employees well. And so Starbucks was like, look, we don't you know if that if you don't think that it's a great place to work and don't think we treat employees well, then there's plenty of other places that actually agree with us. And I would agree with that. I think Starbucks is a great place to work and they do treat employees quite well.

Krish (41:43.638)

Yeah, right.

Rio Longacre (41:56.108)

They pay their employees well and they give them actually pretty good benefits when you look at what look at what they're doing. So

AI Rebel (41:59.568)

Yeah. And anyway, so that was my point. Like if you're gonna if you're gonna if you're gonna own something like that, you need to be really clear about like that you own it, right? And I and I I guess at a high level that that's what works is like if you're not confident in it, then don't post it. But if you're gonna say something controversial or polarizing, like you need to really believe it and be able to defend it. And so when people come in your comments and they they

take shots at you, you need to be able to actively like d at least demonstrate that like you believe it and this is why you believe it. And if you do that, then you'll find people who support you.

Krish (42:38.382)

Are you yeah, is that no, sorry, I was just gonna say, is that like is that where memes come in? Like where if you post a meme, do you feel more protected from your audience?

Rio Longacre (42:38.592)

Is that what you would tell a fa Go ahead, crush.

AI Rebel (42:47.333)

Ha.

AI Rebel (42:50.621)

I I mean, I don't know if they're related to some I I I guess at the highest level what I want to say is like I didn't enjoy that this became part of like what happened in social media for me. I like to joke around, I like to post funny memes, I like to talk about like high tech and marketing and cycling and just do like normal stuff. and I kind of felt like forced into this with the way things started to like play out here in in Seattle.

Krish (43:02.85)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (43:19.591)

And I wanted to do more with my business here in Seattle. And it became very clear to me that that didn't make sense. And I liter literally changed my plans based on some of the policy decisions that they made here. And I got frustrated because I saw a lot of people online, people that kind of new to and generally, who were like, they said this to me, without knowing, I guess, who I was or my plans were that, like, there's not gonna be any impact to business here. And I just looked at them and said, like.

What are you talking about? Like, I am literally changing my plans based on the business. I was like, this is the impact. And I saw they were like, and I so I just kind of felt like I had to be really clear about what I thought was the impact of policy decisions that were made on like my specific business, like what I'm doing. Like this isn't just some abstract thing. Like I am not hiring in Seattle. Like this is a bad thing for Seattle. I like it here. It's a great place. Like

Krish (43:49.507)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (44:18.715)

I love living here. I would love to be able to do a lot more here. But why would I do that based on some of the decisions that they have that they have made, right? And that's where that was the part that I saw was like people just didn't connect all this stuff. And and then unfortunately or fortunately, I became like someone who just became very vocal about it.

Rio Longacre (44:36.076)

Well

Rio Longacre (44:39.489)

It's funny you say that too. So I look at Denver, right? And Denver, actually, I like the mayor a lot. I think he's tried to like change a lot of these things. But you look at like there's there's a reason why there's 25% vacancy rate of pr prime commercial property in a town. Now some of it's work from home. But the fact that people here, you know, like whether it's real or perceived, they think downtown's dangerous. They think there are too many homeless people. They think there's too many drugs. They think there's too much too much crime. So they avoid downtown.

And companies are avoiding it. So it's it's like that that doom cycle, right? So I think some of it might be a little unfair. And the same thing with the the light rail here. You know, that you let people on for free. Well, guess what? And you let them live on the trains, you're gonna have a lot of problems with crime, people aren't gonna wanna take it. Now, maybe you could argue they shouldn't be afraid, but the fact is they are, right? So I think those are those are policy decisions that result in these problems, right? So I thought the fact you were calling it out was interesting. So when you talk to founders though, Greg, like kind of taking this full circle, like

There's risk, obviously, to your point you made earlier. That like doing like being f founder led communications, going out there, saying what you think, having strong opinions, it can generate a lot of authentic interactions, let's say, which are quite positive, but they could it could also be a downside. How do you coach founders through that? I mean, what cause obviously it's not something without risk.

AI Rebel (45:58.215)

Yeah, I mean, at the highest level, I just think you gotta be like true to who you are. And if you do that, then it j generally it works. So, you know, I don't I like I said, my interest is not being political. Like, I I actually had this conversation with my wife before I went down this path of like posting like not that many things, but they did go, they did go really, really viral, right? So so I'm glad that I I'm glad that I thought it through. Like I said to her, like, look, my strategy is like

Rio Longacre (46:21.463)

Right. Well those are the ones that they go viral, right? Yeah.

AI Rebel (46:28.059)

I'm just gonna focus on like what I think are like really specific, narrow set of like business topics. They're related to business, they're very quantifiable. I'm not gonna get into any of that other stuff. And and I felt really comfortable and confident in that lane. And so I would just do the same thing to any I would encourage any founder to do the same thing. And we think about it that same way. It's just like stick to a lane you know really well and you're comfortable with and just ignore all the other stuff. Like you don't have to get involved in in everything.

It was when I felt comfortable and confident. I had a very clear perspective and point of view. and so that's where I went, right? And if you don't feel like that, then fine.

Krish (47:03.106)

Did did did what went viral expect did you expect what went viral to go viral? Or w were you like well what the what the hell's going on here?

AI Rebel (47:13.349)

Yeah, I mean I I I I get a lot of tweets that are popular, but I didn't think that that would do what it did. Like I mean, if ha I've had like, I don't know, like five or ten tweets I've done over a million views. And I had one that did eight million. And the eight million I can't remember now. It was either making I think it was I think it was making fun of Katie Wilson, the mayor, or there was another one with like whether this was actually this might be better to talk about.

Krish (47:19.042)

What was it?

Krish (47:31.648)

Any pattern or like

AI Rebel (47:42.374)

I think the number one one was like AOC and Elon, which I can retrospect them like if if you wanted like a formula for going as viral as possible, if you can work AOC and Elon into a funny narrative with a meme on top of it, it's like the ultimate Twitter post, right? Like if you're like boil it down, like what works on Twitter? AOC, Elon, memes.

Krish (47:59.342)

Pretty big audience. Pretty big audience.

Rio Longacre (48:04.951)

Right, they both have their own audiences, both positive and negative, yeah.

Krish (48:08.588)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (48:09.435)

Make it funny. It ended up it just ended up having all of those all of those elements. Yeah. I thought it was quite funny, but yeah, so so I mean for founders though, like d just do what what you're comfortable with and what you're confident, what you can defend effectively. I think that that's really what it comes down to. And like I'm very comfortable with like the positions that I've that I've taken. That's why I was like

Krish (48:13.27)

Yeah. Big angry audience.

Krish (48:18.746)

Mm-hmm.

AI Rebel (48:35.101)

I don't want to like I'm gloating, but like I like the data's come back and like I'm I was proven 100% correct. Like the economy's not great here. And I think you can draw a direct line to the policies, right? And so that I'm not happy about being right. Like I'd like to see things work differently, right? That wasn't that wasn't the wasn't the goal. the

Rio Longacre (48:51.745)

Right.

Rio Longacre (48:56.695)

But honestly, like it shouldn't it's it's it's not that I mean it's it's not exactly rocket science to think, okay, like telling businesses to leave, increasing taxes, right? Like not not not not but not bust not cracking on a crime. It's it's it's not crazy to think that those things would impact businesses and their their decisions to stay in town. I don't know.

AI Rebel (49:06.875)

I think so too. I mean the last thing I'll s

AI Rebel (49:13.597)

Totally. The last piece I'll say on this, and then maybe we can move on, is like, the last the last the reason I did this, and I didn't do it a lot before, was that I felt that like someone like me, like I I would say I'm just an I'm an average tech person. I'm not Shamat, I'm not an all-in-podcast, I'm not David Sachs or Gary Tan or Mark Andrewson, and they all have a lot of opinions. And I even agree with a lot of their opinions, but I think the problem is like

The messenger isn't credible from them with a lot of the things that they're advocating for. And that became very obvious to me. And not that I wanted to like, you know, cloak myself in some kind of political agenda. I just thought that like it was important to hear from somebody who is like a regular person, who has like a regular business. And yeah, like I think these things are bad. That I think like all these crazy taxes are bad and they're hurting businesses. And I'm just a regular person. Like I'm, I don't have any.

motivation to stop the billionaire tax in California. I don't live in California. I'm not a billionaire. I'm still against it, right? And I have reasons why. So I I thought that was just like important for there to be other voices to help mitigate some of the criticism, which I think a lot of it boils down to like you're you're a rich tech greedy CEO. And it doesn't matter what you say. Like the logic, the ideas, they're irrelevant because of who you are.

Krish (50:19.03)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (50:37.675)

These guys don't come off well, Greg. These guys come off like like Robert Barrens and a lot of them, especially the AI AI leaders. I mean, like what they're building's amazing, but they don't they know coming the the outrageous things they're saying is gonna eliminate all jobs. They're backtracking on it.

AI Rebel (50:49.533)

Well that's why I was saying like the the messenger matters, right? And so that was part of and that and that's what I was like and the Seattle one is very personal and I was like, this matters to me directly. like I haven't s I don't feel like huge need to spend a lot of time on the banner tax, even though I'm against it. It's not like a passion project of mine. but like who is saying these things matters a lot. Sometimes it might even matter more than than the issue.

Rio Longacre (51:15.283)

talk about taste a little bit. You you've talked about that. You post about that quite a bit. I think it's an interesting topic because as AI makes the

Gives anyone the ability to generate content almost effort effortlessly. Anyone can be a designer now. Anyone can produce endless volumes of content and pump it out. We've joked about people being AI slop cannons a lot in this podcast. So knowing that it's easy to create content, the barriers and friction for creating content have have gone down, I think taste becomes more important. It sounds like something, at least based on your post, Greg, that's something you would agree with.

AI Rebel (51:47.518)

I guess I've always thought it mattered, right? Like I that's what like like I don't know. I I like look, I got like a Bauhouse poster and public enemy you know, print print from Shepherd Fairy, right? It was funny, I was looking the other day and I like, it really summarizes who I am. but so I've always thought it was important, right? Is it more important now? I

Rio Longacre (51:51.199)

Or does it matter more? Okay. I agree, it's always mattered, yeah.

Krish (52:00.62)

That's taste.

Rio Longacre (52:01.813)

Love it.

AI Rebel (52:16.239)

I don't know. I I guess I would take the side of like I was someone who came to Silicon Valley and was always like a big fan of Steve Jobs and thought design was like one of the more exciting aspects that I loved about it. And what I found was that that was maybe more of an anomaly that people were not perhaps as like inspired by and believed deeply in some very specific, very narrow, I think, set of like Silicon Valley ideas and culture that

Krish (52:41.59)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (52:44.687)

has always been around and things that I really liked. And I think now people are waking up to the fact that like those things matter even more than people had realized because the yeah, because of the technology.

Krish (52:52.908)

Yeah. I d Yeah, I think the a I think the ac for a little while anyway, I think the aggregate will decline and it's not like taste will matter more, it's just I feel like we'll notice those who don't have taste more. Do you know what I mean? Like it i there's so many people that I know, I I have on, you know, my LinkedIn network and before AI they were producing LinkedIn content that was on par with

AI Rebel (53:10.715)

Hmm. Yeah.

Krish (53:18.06)

with everyone else. And I can actually see a lot of instances where people I've known for ten, twenty years, they're writing in that Claude voice now. And it's their voice now that that, you know, those two sentence stacks. It's like two choices, you decide. And it's like those those horrible sentence structures that Claude writes. And so I'm I'm noticing it's it's not like I'm seeing people that have taste more. I'm noticing those who don't have taste. and those who aren't like self correcting and

using AI to do the last ten percent as well as the first eighty percent.

Krish (53:57.828)

yeah, I don't know what you do you do you feel like you have a

Rio Longacre (54:02.401)

We lost him. Okay. So yeah, looks like he's Chrisha's having some connectivity issues in the UK he's in the UK jumping in to to cover guest guest ho co host from from Brett who's actually visiting colleges down in

With with his with his youngest son. but but but but I guess continuing a topic of of taste, Greg. I mean, I agree, it's always been important. But the ability to like everyone's just cranking out loads of content now, people who maybe shouldn't be, well I'm not saying they shouldn't be, but maybe they should be more discerning with their ta with their taste and how they're editing the content before they push it out. I mean, I know I'm using AI a lot to create content. I'm still being careful with what I with what I post. I think you kinda have to be. So

But looking at taste itself, is it something that I mean, so you don't think it's becoming more important it sounds? Yeah, y I maybe you're saying it's always should have been important and and b is that is that your belief? Love love to maybe drill down on that a little bit.

AI Rebel (54:57.845)

y yeah, for me like I would say it always mattered. I I don't think that like it it it it always mattered. I I think that some people are waking up to the fact that like it's more important now because the other levers that they were using to differentiate or build a mode or promote their business aren't as effective. And I think that that's what's changed for a lot of people.

Krish (55:19.583)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (55:23.653)

And so you're saying like if there's just this there's no barrier now to like content generation, like it's just basically infinite. Like what you say or the amount of or w what you put into that content is gonna matter. I I think it's always mattered. What's different is that if it's if it's infinite, then you just gonna end up with like just tons and tons of low quality stuff. And I I think that that's what's changed is like there's so much out there and it's all of like

rather low quality. So in some ways you could argue that it's easier to be differentiate because like higher quality content will rise to the top. The problem is that like there's only so much time that people have and there's a limited number of channels to get it. So you have to fight, fight on that front.

Rio Longacre (56:13.184)

But has the internet but has AI made made sh authentic human voices more valuable, do you think?

AI Rebel (56:19.153)

Don't I don't know if that's true or not. Like, I think there's I think we're in the early stages of this stuff. People have a lot of like early opinions that I don't know if they'll ultimately be proven true. I was writing my new newsletter about this, right? About like what matters in creativity with AI. Like, I think a lot of people just haven't

Krish (56:21.575)

I I reckon it's made

Yeah.

AI Rebel (56:45.369)

experience the technology enough to get great stuff results out of it. And that's why we think like the results are mediocre. So I I think we're gonna go through this whole thing and it's really gonna change. And I I I I don't know I don't know what it all means at the highest level, right? Like there's some things I would assume right is like like like brand, I think like the real like core definition of that in my opinion is going to be the most important thing going forward.

So the brand could be like you as a person, it could be as your company. But like when I was like really early in my career, brand I think meant like having it be singularly identifiable to like you. And I don't know if that's what people like think about brand anymore. It's like, is this you know, the kind of quality that our brand will put out? And I think that that will become more important or how people think about it.

and that that's what will be identifiable is that like, it's it's the same quality as what I'm used to from this brand, right? That that's what like brands meant. And if you were able to like do that on a consistent basis, like you'll be able to find people who care and follow what you're doing, right? I think we went through a phase where like the targeting and the channels were all new, and so that was like enough, like growth hacking, all of that stuff.

You're able to just like push enough stuff out there at a like a relatively low cost and capture a lot of attention or capture a lot of traffic. But now that the equation has changed where the channels are relatively expensive and then ones that are organic are just flooded with all kinds of low quality content, it's just it's very different. Yeah.

Rio Longacre (58:31.057)

yeah, I I I get probably ten ten bullshit like be like emails sent by Lee Gen, a all AI to per day. It's crazy the how much I get. It's all total like I just got one like five minutes ago while I was on this, sent to my work email, and it was like totally irrelevant. Like not my role. this company would never hire it. It's insane. How like but I guess the cost of pushing this crap out is so minimal.

Krish (58:51.99)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (58:58.397)

It's so low.

Rio Longacre (58:58.847)

Once you have these things set up, I mean why why not? I mean it's just a numbers game. But I can't imagine like that email was so bad. I can't imagine you're getting a single response back. But then again, maybe they are.

AI Rebel (59:09.221)

Even the ones that are good, I think that like it's just changed the problems. So now outreach is easy. Like you can find the people, you can find their channels, you can find their addresses, you can get like all the information is not hard to find. And like AI can even write a relatively relevant message. But it doesn't mean that sales has gotten any easier. Right. So we're just living in this new world where like

You can access all the people that you want to access, but how do you get them to care?

Rio Longacre (59:41.431)

But that doesn't mean you should access them either, right? And I'll give you I'll give you an example. So I posted I po a colleague of mine who's working for a client asked me, he said, My client's based in the city is looking for to hire a new marketing person for this role. Do you know anyone? I said I know a few people, but let me also post something in LinkedIn. I'm not gonna give the client name, I'll just say looking for marketing roles in the city, send me a resume. I'm not the hiring manager. It's it's like don't eat don't ask me about it. I'm happy to forge your resume. If they're interested, they'll be a dish. I posted all this, right?

AI Rebel (59:43.506)

Nah.

Krish (59:44.447)

Exactly, yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:00:11.274)

Five minutes later, some doofus calls me on my cell phone. Right? This this this jerk this jerk off found my number through Zoom, calls me, sends me his like texts me his CV. It's just, dude, I told you. Like, it's all you had to do was send it on LinkedIn. I would have like I I I I I I blocked the number, told the guy to F off. But I I I if he had just on on on LinkedIn sent it to me, I would have been happy to send it. But it was like he like

Krish (01:00:37.173)

Right.

Rio Longacre (01:00:38.159)

I never gave him consent to reach out like that. I w I thought that was so obnoxious.

Krish (01:00:41.259)

Did you did you get the did you use instantly or hear of instantly when they were launching? They they launched like two thousand and twenty two and by now they're almost forty million ARR it's bootstrapped and it's an email deliverability software that basically just it it automates the problems you incur when you're trying to hammer out like ten thousand emails to cold requests and it just shows that your their revenue increase at that level.

shows you how excited everyone got about just emailing random people. and it was a thinking that, you know, the AI machine can just handle it for us, you know.

Rio Longacre (01:01:22.454)

Yeah. I mean end of the day it's funny though you mentioned that too. Like everything is numbers. Yeah, remember back when I started media f I remember like there was there was only so much display inventory. This is like b like when we just everything was insertion orders, right? It was all res it was all r it was all basically like you you know, you would

AI Rebel (01:01:33.394)

I am.

Rio Longacre (01:01:39.325)

direct sold deals, right? And I remember we'd run out of display inventory, we'd buy, we'd buy emails for clients, buy we'd rent email lists from clients, right? And I remember some of these offers were so out so like off the wall. But I remember if this is 25 years ago, I remember, but if if if you people would send out enough emails, even for the create there would always be a few people who would buy. I mean one client, I've told this story before, was selling

Pants for $9.99. You had to buy three of them. You got a free belt. They like stain resistant. They had big creases. I mean, they were just the most the guy gave me free set free free pairs, they were the ugliest things that I would never have worn. I mean, these like you they'd probably survive like a nuclear war. I they were fireproof, right? So these things, they were like people would buy them, right? I would I was shocked how would any who would buy this from a random email from a random brand you never heard of?

Krish (01:02:23.893)

It's not great.

AI Rebel (01:02:24.478)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:02:27.68)

Who would take it across? People people would. Thousands of people. So I guess I so may I don't know, I I scoff for these random emails I'm getting, but maybe it works. I don't know.

AI Rebel (01:02:27.745)

I'm dying.

Krish (01:02:35.317)

Maybe maybe Instagram ads are the new version of that. Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:02:39.058)

I think it I think it so I mean that's one thing I think missed from this discussion is like there's a lot of products out there, there's a lot of segments, there's lot of people, and they all have different levels of like understanding and just goes to like knowing your audience and being really good about who you're selling to. and that still matters the most, right? Some of these like channels that that don't work for one business still work for another one. Like I was at one company for a while and like we'd have thought that our customers were generally like not that online.

So we did a lot more events and an in-person type of like approach, and that worked really well, right? So, so it just depends on who you're trying to sell to. I think that's one big thing that gets missed. That's why you hear a lot of this generic, like, email doesn't work anymore. Probably doesn't work for like the typical SaaS why combinator startup now. but there's still people that are, you know, use AOL email or Yahoo Mail and like maybe it works for them, but selling like crazy pants or whatever it is, right? So I think that part's I think that part's important.

Krish (01:03:25.623)

Mm.

AI Rebel (01:03:38.643)

But I do think that the infinite amount of content does change the game, right? And even with the people who might respond to offer like that, they're just getting like just so much email. There's so much slop in the feed. Like it's just really hard. It's really hard to break break through. I think it's really easy to tell people like, it's all about brand and having taste, but it's very difficult to actually execute on that. Cause like, what does that actually mean?

Krish (01:03:52.3)

Yeah.

Krish (01:04:04.595)

Yeah, I mean for your I like the way I would read your career and look at sort of where you've come from, the your fascination with memes as well. It seems to me like you're someone who would rapidly connect a lot of unconnected dots. You know, like someone that would pull things together in a way that maybe someone else hasn't, just purely on merit of your unique career and unique experience. And you're right, maybe that's not something you can just pick up and drop in someone's lap, you know, taste. It's like it's very

personal to to you and how you how you've lived your life, I guess, right?

AI Rebel (01:04:39.422)

That's really interesting. I mean, that's what I started with, and I I try to like explain my like worldview and context so that people understand where I'm coming from. Cause it's like it's really different than where a lot of other people are are coming from, and that matters. And so it just changes your your worldview. and you'll see things differently. And I think everyone has their own context. And that's what I meant with like coaching a founder, like on like they just need to be true about who to to themselves. I think that that at the simplest level.

Krish (01:04:48.191)

Yeah, it is.

AI Rebel (01:05:06.62)

If they do that, even if they make mistakes or like they post something crazy that people don't like, like your c or core audience is gonna totally understand you, right? If you like you're authentic and you're honest and you're within certain realm of norms, there are some things you can do that, like I don't wanna get carried away here. There's certain set of parameters that like are appropriate and that and things that aren't, right? So as long as you try do your best to stay within that, I I think you'll find that you'll get a good, you get a good response. And then we talked earlier about like

Krish (01:05:22.721)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:05:35.154)

When you do get challenged on things, like if you really believe in it and you have a really well thought out argument and maybe you have like data or ways to back up what you're saying, I think you're you're you're in a great place. Like then you sh you're you're free to be to some degree polarizing as long as it's what you believe. and and there's like some way that you can like at least back up your argument.

Rio Longacre (01:06:02.548)

Your recent I recently saw you post us some stuff about becoming inevitable. I I love that by the way. d like I'd love if you could e expound on that a little bit. How'd you come up with it? how has it resonated in the marketplace?

AI Rebel (01:06:18.024)

Yeah, that's when I like rebranded everything. So originally I was doing just like coaching and I it was fun. I was meeting all these founders and like really early stage founders. And I figured to figure out a way to kind of like grow the business, maybe bring on like larger accounts and stuff. And so I started doing a lot more content and ghostwriting. And that's when I came up with the whole become inevitable like tagline and campaign. Cause like for an early stage company.

Krish (01:06:18.57)

Great, touching.

Rio Longacre (01:06:23.51)

Okay.

AI Rebel (01:06:47.518)

it's an investor who actually said this to me. Was that he's like, Well, the way I judge founders is the ones who speak with an inevitability that this is going to happen. And I thought it was like I thought it was like I was young when this guy sets me in. I didn't actually get it. But then to go my business, like I talk to founders all the time. And so it's very clear to me right away, like their level of confidence and their ability to execute on it. And I

think that that's what becoming inevitable means. Like you have to actually believe it. And it's really apparent to people if you do.

Rio Longacre (01:07:23.776)

By the way, I really I really like that. And I know you've probably connected with Joe Zappa a bit. He's been a guest on here as well. I really admire what he's done with his with Sharp with his Sharp Pen agency. It's pretty cool. But one thing we've talked a lot about, especially the episode he was on, was how founders shouldn't just be talking about their product, they should be talking about how their product solves a need in the marketplace, how their mar their product really is an an inevitable solution.

Krish (01:07:24.02)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:07:29.176)

yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:07:53.161)

In an ecosystem. I think that's that's really what he was saying. That you it it should there should be a bigger story about the ecosystem, about a market, about the world even that your your that your vision fits into. And it almost seems inevitable that people would want to have your solution in order to address that. So I think there's a bigger, like there's a storytelling element to that of becoming inevitable or being inevitable. Does that make sense?

AI Rebel (01:08:16.584)

Yeah, no, I no I completely agree. Right? Like you've you've like just having a great product isn't enough, right? It's gotta be something that people have a real need for. Like you see products all the time, like it's a great product, but is there like a need for this? Like, do people really have this issue and challenge? Is it acute? Like, I've even seen like I mean you've all seen like there's products where like this is this is really clever, really fun, but like

Am I gonna invest the time? Like is it really important? Is it a priority for me? Right. So focusing on those things, I think is is really important, particularly for early stage companies with like understanding how they fit into like the larger, the larger landscape and the larger ecosystem, right? Like why now? Like why would someone buy this today, right?

Rio Longacre (01:09:05.962)

Yeah. In fact I saw recently someone post I'd rather have a medium pro medium product with medium go to market than a great product with no go to market. And I I think that's actually true, right? The power of go to market, yeah.

AI Rebel (01:09:15.858)

Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing I I guess like I the the last piece of advice or like the way I always like coach founders too early is like you still need to have an audience when you're ready to launch. And that's what like worked for me. So like I'd been like posting online for like a long time and I'd done a couple of different things, but like when I wanted to go and like launch Five Year Sass, like I had some kind of audience that I could go to. And you don't need a big one, right? Like if you have a thousand followers, you have two thousand followers, like that's plenty.

if they're the right people, and they're, you know, like minded and the people that are in your community who you can communicate to, right? So I do think like you wanna be really early to this stuff. The other thing I always tell founders is like a lot of the guys I work with are are quite young. Like you might have another company. Like think of this as your career. Like if you're really making this commitment to being a founder, like you need to have like a reputation and you need to have like an online persona that's gonna like

Krish (01:10:13.695)

Mm.

AI Rebel (01:10:13.768)

follow you through your career, right? So making this investment in it, I think to some degree almost like transcends the current product, the current company. Like you want to be able to participate and bring this forward no matter where you go. And that was may maybe my biggest motivation for putting like way more effort into social media than than maybe I want to was like it's mine, right? And I and I I could continue to like benefit from it no matter what, no matter where I go, no matter what I do, no matter how I work with.

Krish (01:10:35.05)

Yeah.

Krish (01:10:44.127)

Yeah, so it's almost it's it's a really good way of looking at it 'cause it's instead of you attaching yourself personally to the thing, you're it's just a ne the next chapter in your book and your brand sort of transcends that and that's a nice way of looking at it. It helps sort of distance yourself from the thing.

AI Rebel (01:11:00.318)

Correct.

Krish (01:11:08.864)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:11:09.372)

Yeah, exactly. Right. Like and I I think it's a really unique, maybe modern thing that's occurred. Like this definitely did not exist like fifty years ago, right? Like brands actually w concept was new. But now that everybody can have an online persona and have some kind of like public public life, like it's really different than what we had experienced before.

Rio Longacre (01:11:32.938)

Yeah. It's f i it it's funny, when I talk to younger people who are starting their careers, that's one of the things I tell them now. Greg and Chris is always tell that they should have their own brand. I mean look, like you want to obviously any place you're working, you want to try to kick ass and deliver the most value you can, right? But the end of the day, you know, companies, you know, jobs usually aren't forever, right? And you should be building your own brand. and then you should be you should have a reputation to your point, Chris, you just made.

When you leave one place, you're gonna have something you can offer the new place, you're gonna bring that there. Right. Obviously, you know, like if you work for a company, you do have to be careful to a certain extent and you're gonna have their own policies, but ultimately I I'm a strong up believer that part of what you're bringing is your is your network and your ability to generate conversations and generate generate your own media. So I think it's important. And Greg, you've you've done a really good job at that. I was like you tweeted something the other or you posted something the other day how you had gone from I'm looking at the chart here, August 2025.

Krish (01:12:04.704)

Yeah.

Krish (01:12:16.936)

Yeah.

Krish (01:12:22.368)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (01:12:29.011)

It starts at zero and then up to looks like 1.5 million impressions in a year. that that's that's really that's a fast that's a yeah, it's a LinkedIn one's a fast increase. I don't know what content you're referring to exactly, but I think it was just stuff you posted. I mean, if someone like let's say someone wants to get to where you are, like what would you w w and they're starting they're early in their career or they're at a new company and they let's say they have they have zero followers.

Krish (01:12:38.869)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:12:39.254)

is that on is that the LinkedIn one?

Rio Longacre (01:12:57.097)

What would be the first couple of steps it would take in order to start that journey that you've been on?

AI Rebel (01:13:02.366)

yeah, so like don't dilute yourself across too many social networks. I think that's the number one piece of feedback I have for people. I don't even believe it's actually in marketing. Like I I've come into companies where I'm like, why do you guys have so many initiatives? Like, get really good at like a couple of things. And so I think people are like, they're like on Instagram, they're on LinkedIn, they're like playing around on TikTok. It's like just pick one that you think is gonna be a great fit for you. And pick the one that's fit for you. Like I like X.

Krish (01:13:18.719)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:13:32.168)

It works for a lot of founders, but that's not everybody. You can you can have a big account on TikTok or you can have a big account on Instagram and still be like w whatever it is, like a a founder or be in high tech or whatever you want to be. Right. So I'd pick one platform and then really commit to the long term. So that's where everybody struggles is like they get excited about it.

They start posting stuff. They maybe even get some success if they're lucky. Most people start posting stuff and they have crickets. That's the most frustrating. Posting and like there's just no response at all. It's like, what? And like to just keep going, that's really hard. But even if you get a great response, it's the three-month mark, the six month mark where it starts to fade. And that's where it gets really hard for people. and you need to keep you need to keep going. So I guess the the

Krish (01:14:22.476)

Mm.

AI Rebel (01:14:26.717)

Best example I give for me personally was like I did not enjoy being on X during the election. It was not fun. but I did it. And there's a moment like I've really thought about quitting. But I was glad that I stayed on it, right? And I I've gotten a lot of benefit from it. And for me, like I think it's the ultimate example of like where I know a lot of people quit and I don't think it was a good idea to quit. And I would say that, like, you know.

Quitting and these things.

You'll have a really good reason to quit. And right. So that's where the real challenge here is like, how do you stay committed and do it in an almost like unreasonable way? Right. It's almost like not reasonable to continue doing it. But if you can find that inside of yourself and you can make that commitment, then it will it will work. That's how you become inevitable.

Krish (01:15:02.581)

You always will, yeah.

Krish (01:15:13.547)

Yeah.

Krish (01:15:22.528)

And and you're a yeah, I mean look I I literally went on your X as you were talking and you've done sixty five thousand five hundred and fifteen posts.

Rio Longacre (01:15:33.447)

Ha ha ha.

Krish (01:15:35.095)

There you go, mate. That is that that's the thesis proven. It's you know, show up even when you don't want to.

AI Rebel (01:15:35.368)

Yeah, it's true.

AI Rebel (01:15:42.912)

Yeah, like like that's why like I like I've I've heard a lot of excuses, but like the election was like a good one. Like I was like, this is like not okay. Like I'm real I wasn't getting any traffic either. Like it was all just like focused on Elon and like all that. And it it just was painful. And I and so many people I knew were like, I'm out. And I was like, I I get why people are tapping out, and that's why I like this example.

Because like there'll become a moment where like everything tells you to quit. The reasonable, the smart move is to quit. But the people who don't quit, I think, are the ones who ultimately succeed. And that's why I think being a founder is about, that's what I think all this stuff is about. Is like even when all the data is bad, even when it's painful, even when Emmerin Sony quit, even when like everyone I know in New York City at my high-paying job is telling me, don't

Krish (01:16:17.303)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:16:41.225)

quit and move to San Francisco because the internet is never gonna amount to anything.

Rio Longacre (01:16:42.333)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:16:46.013)

It's a fad, right?

AI Rebel (01:16:48.989)

And I quit my job. Like people were like, what? Like and had no job and just showed up in San Francisco and then like riding my bike around Clement and like having dim sum and stuff like and going through Golden Gate Park. It was fun, but it was like it was a controversial thing to do, right? And so I I think this is the part the point the part that people need to keep keep in mind is like make make a commitment and like and stick to it.

Rio Longacre (01:17:15.049)

I like that. And it's funny, but a lot of people ask me about c podcasting, right? They'll ask me about I mean everyone wants to start podcasts. Not everyone, but a lot of people want to start podcasts now or or or just like imp improve the social media presence. And what I I the sixty-five thousand tweets, whatever that number was, that's impressive. Right. I and I tell people, I mean, I think that's indicative indicative of what it takes. It you have to create a lot of content. You have to go on these platforms and you have to stick to it. You have to do it.

Krish (01:17:32.763)

Right.

AI Rebel (01:17:34.697)

Ha ha.

Rio Longacre (01:17:40.992)

Like for podcasting, it's a con it is a content game. You have some good content, right? But you have to create a lot of content. You have to post it, you have to post it again and again. And you slowly build your audience, right? You build your reputation. People engage you, they tell other people. Some things go viral, some things go semi-viral. and it's hard to I I I don't I personally have a hard time predicting what's gonna take off, what's not. I mean, some some random episodes will do a lot better, but but you just gotta keep keep at it. I think that's the thing, people give up too early.

Krish (01:17:47.479)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:18:02.761)

Totally.

Rio Longacre (01:18:08.245)

I mean most podcasts die after what eight or ten episodes. I think like three quarters of podcasts never make it through episode ten or some crazy stuff like that. So and there's a reason why. I think Chris to your point a minute ago, like people they they give up after a while and Greg, the the point you made about a plateau, people probably after a months are like, This is exhausting, right? I can't keep this up. So

Krish (01:18:15.497)

Mm-hmm.

AI Rebel (01:18:22.43)

Ha ha.

AI Rebel (01:18:26.057)

You gotta accept, I don't know, for me it's like you just have to accept like that this is what you're doing. There's a point where like I made it to the monetization program on on on X and I was at dinner and I was like, I have to take a moment to reply to this. And I looked at everyone on the table and I said, just so you know, I do get paid to post on X. And then I like left. Like, I came back to dinner. I was like, You gotta you you gotta be committed, right? I was like, you gotta be committed to this stuff. And everyone kinda laughed.

Krish (01:18:26.783)

Mm.

Krish (01:18:45.303)

That's such a good way to leave a dinner. Use mic drop.

Rio Longacre (01:18:51.231)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:18:54.835)

And then my wife's like, can you turn off the vibration? Because it's like just always like

Rio Longacre (01:18:59.029)

yeah, it drives my wife crazy. Yeah. I like in fact my my my commitment to X does drive my wife crazy. She does complain. She's like, Why are you constantly posting? I'm like, Well, I I the people need to know.

AI Rebel (01:19:05.289)

But yeah.

But I think that's what it takes, right? You know, like I I think it's like Chris Williamson does a good job with this kind of stuff, right? We're talking about the price of success. Like I think there's a lot of people out there who are like, I would love to have that or do that or be that. But what they don't see or what they don't understand or what they don't appreciate is the sacrifice required to be that, right? And it can be enormous. and not everybody wants to make make the sacrifice, right?

Krish (01:19:09.067)

Persistence. Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:19:37.011)

So that's really what it's all about, like at the end of the day, with like getting the type of success that you want is like, are you able to make the sacrifices required to do that? Right. And so like I said earlier, they're not always reasonable. Like sometimes like it's just like it's just like what it it's just like what it takes, right?

Krish (01:19:57.835)

Yeah, one of the one of the what's the Alex Hormozy does a lot of this like stuff and he he he was one of them on YouTube which I saw yesterday was the price of success is self cringe, you know, is the moment that you you have to push through where you you're like, really? Like I gotta alright, I've gotta do it, you've gotta post and that's kinda another way to look at it. It's you gotta be okay with that, seeing your face a lot, seeing your voice a lot and and letting people hear it.

AI Rebel (01:20:24.807)

Yeah, yeah, it's it's tough, right? But you know, it's gotta be it's just gotta be what you like you're what you're built for and what you're what you're good at, right? That's why like I've always pushed so hard and like all my advice in some ways is kind of like always comes back to like who you are. Like what are you good at, right? Do you like X or do you like TikTok? Like find the things that like work for you. Like, do you like writing or do you like talking on video? Right? Like there are things out there. I so them other good examples would be like,

There's all kinds of like GitHub influencers. Like I'm not, I don't write a lot of code, right? But there are other channels and other ways out there to like utilize social media and be on other platforms that are a better fit for who you are and what you're good at, right? Like if you can like do some open source thing and get like 50,000 stars on GitHub, like that's enormous, right? I know all kinds of businesses and people that have had a lot of success with that.

Krish (01:20:58.103)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:21:22.611)

So just be like really honest about who you are and what you're good at. And sometimes maybe people have trouble with that, right? But you need to like accept like these are things that I'm gravitating towards, these are things they're good at. I guess like I'm a natural believer ultimately in talent. And maybe there's not it's not a popular thing, I think, to talk about anymore. Like we want to believe that everybody's equal. But I think that talent matters like a lot. Like it matters a lot more than than people think. Like I'm a huge fan of

Road cycling and endurance sports, and you get so obvious in that sport. There are just people that are just more talented. Like you have all of the training and coaching and techniques and tools and everything. And there's just some people that are just better because they're like better at it. Like we don't know why. Like cycling actually quite measurable. They can actually like take a rider early in their career, give them a test, and they know for sure.

Krish (01:22:10.751)

Mm.

AI Rebel (01:22:20.969)

This guy can win the Tour de France, this guy can't. 100%. Like, you can't get a good enough to win. You could be a pro, you could be on a team, like you can have a career, but you're not gonna win, right? To be the winner, you have to have just some like extra thing inside of you, right? So I think talent matters a lot, and people should think really deeply about what they're good at, what their talents are. You know, like I was identified really young as having a lot of creative ability and

It's just like a talent like I was born with, right? And so for better or for worse, like I have to like lean into that because that's what I'm good at. But I think like most people have this inside of them. And so just trying to like find that and then find ways to foster that. I think that that's where the real success is going to come from. Because like the the real like overachievers, high achievers, I think the the the people that are able to tap into their

talent and then foster or or create a world that enables that is how they become the most successful, which means like the advice I hear from everyone doesn't always work. Like the more generic it is, the less applicable it's gonna be to people who have a unique approach, right? So it's like one of things I liked about my bicycle club and one thing I always go back to see I think it's very easy way to understand was like in the cycling club, we were people that needed feedback. Like

Take a day off. Don't train so hard. Like, you don't tell most people that you're like, you should go out there, run a lot, train, like go on a diet, all that. Cyclists are like, dude, eat a cookie. Like you look really skinny. Like, are you okay? Right? So different groups of people in different worlds, like they need different coaching. It needs to be specialized for them.

Krish (01:23:51.935)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (01:24:07.588)

Yeah. Yeah. But it is funny. I'm I I I'm a big runner. I used to actually run a lot more. I used to run I don't I don't run full marathons anymore because of the pain and suffering and and the time it takes. but I I mean the the reality of running is generally speaking, the more you run, the faster you run. People don't like to hear that. They don't they don't want to hear that okay, if you want to really run six minute miles for a half marathon or full marathon, you probably need to like eighty hundred miles a week. I mean

AI Rebel (01:24:16.957)

Yeah

AI Rebel (01:24:25.695)

Correct. Yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:24:33.662)

People don't want to hear that, but that's really what it takes. But not everyone's body can take that, is I think the the key there. And even people who can, like some are getting like most of us will never like w even if we train that much, we would never run a two hour marathon, right? I mean it's just just not possible for most people, right? I mean, but it it is interesting too about talent. There was I don't know if you saw that like Brian Scal scalab scalabrine, right, who was

AI Rebel (01:24:46.088)

No.

Rio Longacre (01:24:56.308)

You know, I guess White Mamba, right? The you know, he may had that famous quote, I'm way closer to LeBron than you are to me. Did you ever I don't know if either of you saw the videos he put out when he he because basically he put that on, people were like, No, you're full of it. Like 'cause he look he d he doesn't look very athletic. He's just this big dude, but he was still made, he still played professionally for like 10 years, right? All of these really good amateur people challenged him. Or he challenged them. He said, Bring it on. It's wild. This guy, he's sitting there.

Playing like half court with these guys, they couldn't score on him. He would just block every shot. I mean, it was it was incredible. These are good, best, the best like pickup basketball players, the best amateurs who couldn't make the pros. He was so much better than them. So it is true what he said. I mean, like, you know, anyone can get better with practice. You're on 100 miles, but there it there is a a qualitative difference in how good you're gonna be. That that is wild.

AI Rebel (01:25:27.849)

Ha ha.

AI Rebel (01:25:44.616)

Yeah, I I mean I so early in my career when I worked on the creative side, like we would see this all the time. Remember we had this copywriter at this what agency and like he didn't do any work all day. Like he he literally he this is the old days, he literally brought in a poker table, put it in the middle of the like of like where all our desks were, and we would sit at this poker table and he would play poker like half the day. he was the best. But he's the only copywriter we had as a full time copywriter.

Rio Longacre (01:26:06.367)

But I bet he'd crank out the best copy of the rest, right?

AI Rebel (01:26:12.883)

He was the only one that just wrote copy and he only worked like an hour an hour a day. And we all loved him. And there were other it was that was that was really good. It's like kind of like the cycling thing. Like there's really obvious examples where people are just way more talented than other people. And where it really shined was like client pitches. So we're like creative people who like for whatever reason.

Rio Longacre (01:26:15.283)

Yep. You just crank it out, right?

AI Rebel (01:26:37.929)

People didn't like them or they were difficult to work with or whatever, but like you put in front of a customer and like dude, they would just light up and they would sell them all kinds of great stuff and the customers loved them. And there's just people that had that had that talent. And you would see things like that all the time. I see less of that in the business world. I think now I think we've done a good job at trying to make roles very similar and rating people in certain ways that like don't enable that in the same way. But yeah. okay, yeah, sure.

Rio Longacre (01:27:00.735)

But s sales. But but but sales. I okay, because but 'cause I really think this, having worked, I mean I've I've done a lot of s I'm an okay, I'm a decent salesperson, right? But like when you look at the best, I'm not talking a good sales person, I'm talking about, you know, the the the the 10x salesperson. And they are out there, right? When you see them, you don't forget, right? Someone who is so good at sales. Generally they're the most annoying, intolerable people. They're a total freaking pain in the ass, right? But you will put up with them.

You'll like you'll put up with their nonsense because they literally deliver 10x the results. I remember there's this one guy, my old company, he joined, and he was he was so annoying. And I remember this guy, he drove everyone crazy. He said to me, like after the first week, he said, Next year I'm gonna be the number one salesperson in this entire company. I was like, This guy is so annoying. But you know what? He was. He he 2x the next best. I mean, in one year. I mean, he was so like it was incredible, right? I I saw this guy.

Poor tequila shot down a client, so literally grab her head and I mean I was like, I I would get arrested if I did that. He was able to do it, right? This guy, he ended up being the number one salesperson. It was incredible. And then he now he's he's making millions. So like you will put up with a lot. So I think that's the one place where like I don't know, like the best salespeople really are that much better.

Krish (01:28:16.68)

It's persistence again, isn't it? Same as content.

Rio Longacre (01:28:20.787)

It's persistent, but there's something else. Like I don't like I would never Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:28:22.227)

There's some people that are just talented. Yeah, we had that. I there was there was I've so I in tech I see that on the engineering side where there'd be like a problem no one could solve. And then I remember like, I remember like like literally we're all hanging out at the start. I'm like, what are we doing? Like, why aren't we doing work? They're like, so and so's gonna come on come by. I'm like, why? He's like, cause he's seen this problem before and he knows how to solve it. So we all just sat around. So like this.

Krish (01:28:29.826)

Yeah. yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:28:44.341)

Watch this guy, right?

AI Rebel (01:28:46.937)

Random guy, like I don't know, they met him on Reddit or something. Like I have no idea. Like just San Francisco just shows up and he's like, yeah. And whatever the problem, like all these guys couldn't solve, he knew how to solve it, right? Which it there's just I don't know. I think it's very interesting. Like I think that there's a lot of like talent out there. And I guess my message is people should like r lean into that, right? Like whatever you're good at. Like try to uncover that and embrace that. Like it's okay, that like you're not great at everything. That's fine.

Like find the things you are great at. Like, I don't know, I'm a little embarrassed like I'm great at Twitter or something, but like it's okay. It's like I don't know. I wish I could have been like cycling or something but professional sports, but yeah, here I am.

Rio Longacre (01:29:21.941)

And memes, right?

Krish (01:29:23.808)

I you know, like I never thought it's gonna be like cycling or something. No. No, to your credit, I never I never previously thought about not just which platform do you like, but which platform suits your personality. I never thought of it that way, which until this chat, which was, you know, okay, obviously Twitter's or X has got a certain audience and it's got a certain user experience and do I like it, do I not? That is one question. And then the other question is does it suit how I want to show up?

AI Rebel (01:29:52.351)

Am I good at it? Yeah.

Krish (01:29:53.951)

Yeah, does it sh does it suit me, you know, that format and that audience and I didn't so that's kind of something to think on for sure.

AI Rebel (01:30:02.195)

Yeah, like I think there's people that like it on TikTok and they're fantastic at it and stuff, right? Like like and and like younger people, that's just how they communicate. it's more popular with their friends.

Rio Longacre (01:30:11.541)

They've probably been o they've probably been send shooting and sending video for most of their lives, right?

AI Rebel (01:30:16.105)

They've been doing it like I didn't grow up that way. So like, you know, I do it, but like it's not really my thing. and so yeah, I think like finding what you're suited for, mm, it's like is really important, right? Like, you know, I think your example of like of like sales, you know, you see that too, where like some people are just great in person. And so that's important, right? To just try to like understand and and foster those things. And and I guess like I would even go as far to say, maybe this is a little bit controversial, like

I'm not a big believer in like trying to fix your faults. And I think there's maybe too much of a focus on that in business. Like a lot of like HR, like large companies, there's a lot of like effort put into like trying to like make mediocre not just not just people, but just try to take mediocre and make it better. When we're I always would advocate for like good.

Rio Longacre (01:31:04.179)

Right. Make every

R perform performance reviews are the worst thing there, 'cause they'll look at you across these five or six dimensions and they'll say, instead of saying, you what, you suck at this, you're d even if you put in like right, right. It's like physics. Like my father's nuclear physicist, right? So I I I I felt like I should take physics in college. I busted my ass and I I I think I got like a B minus or C plus. It was I worked more in that course than all the rest put together that semester, and I realized I'm never gonna be a physicist.

AI Rebel (01:31:17.609)

So why do we have you doing that exactly?

AI Rebel (01:31:25.951)

Hmm. Yeah, not good at it.

Krish (01:31:31.64)

Jesus.

Rio Longacre (01:31:35.56)

If I even if I somehow got through this, I would be the worst physicist in the world. And I wouldn't have gotten through it, just to be clear. It was so freaking hard. But like you gotta like so it wouldn't have made any sense to spend any time on it, right? So so so so I think you're right. There's something about when coaching people, the stuff you're really bad at, maybe you can get better, maybe it's worth spending time to get better, but maybe just acknowledge this isn't your strength. Focus on your strengths. I don't know. I don't know, something to think about.

AI Rebel (01:31:59.775)

Yeah, I think I think like there there there's probably a a level of of dimensionality to this that that can be quite complicated. Like in some ways like I'm simplifying it, like fine from we get on, like there's there's more to it, obviously. but in general, yeah, like if you're not great at something, like maybe there's a reason why. And so putting a lot of effort into it, I don't know if it matters all that much. And I've generally thought that that was like at least how I looked at it, like why why do we need to be

great at at all of this stuff, right? Like like you're like like I was just laughing, like thinking like how like Amazon's website like doesn't look cool. It never looks cool. Like they just aren't cool, right? It's okay. Like it works for them. They built one of the greatest companies in the world. No one would look at it and say like they're gonna win a design award and they don't care. So it's just not a dimension that like matters for their business, right?

And I think having clarity on that is like really helpful because that way you put your effort and energy into things that are gonna move the needle for you and do and do matter.

Rio Longacre (01:33:07.817)

Like we're looking at employees employees, right? Or like some people love mentoring and are great at it. And, you know, maybe they should have teams that should be part of it, but some people are just terrible at it. They probably never should be. And you can want to coach them to like just not be jerks around people, but like I don't know. I I've spent lots of time with people trying to help them get better at things. And there are and there are some things that okay, maybe people don't do the building blocks. Like I I I've actually hired people, believe it or not, who couldn't write like at all.

Right, maybe AI like doesn't matter anymore, but this is before for AI. They they literally could not write copy. You could and these are people who had finished had an MBA. One person had an MBA and an A could not write anything you could put in front of a client. I said, just here, here's elements of style, go put this in your back pocket and and like read it every night for a few minutes and this per and this person got but got

became a much better functional writer because they they didn't have the building blocks. Like they they didn't understand basic grammar and which you c which anyone can learn, right? You don't have to be but but so I think there there is that there. But I don't know. But maybe AI changes that. Maybe we all have this like data center of geniuses in our pocket now, right? Maybe maybe it matters less.

AI Rebel (01:33:57.63)

Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:34:12.669)

I think so actually I'm glad you brought that up. So a couple of thoughts. I think one of the problems of business world is like we've made management as the goal. Like that's for whatever reason become where people aspire to go. and I think we have like in general not made the IC track of being an individual contributor exciting and valuable and not as com not as well compensated.

And then it's a big problem. I I've actually written a lot about this and I have really strong opinions on this. That I think that like individual contributors should be just as valued, if not more valued, than managers. and I think that AI is perhaps collapsing that and that's like changed some of that. The expectations are very different now on what individuals are supposed to do. and yeah, and like not necessarily aspiring to be a manager anymore. but I but I I I think that like

Krish (01:34:49.759)

No.

AI Rebel (01:35:09.725)

It's an interesting problem, right? And I don't I don't know why that that's the way that the the corporate world decided it was structured. But like there's some companies that really defied that. You know, Netflix was famous for having individual contributors that were like extremely well compensated, didn't have teams and didn't have to be a manager, right? So you do have examples out there of people who like really embrace this. but I think it's really important, you know, and I think we'll see more of it.

going forward, particularly with the AI though, like you can just do so much. You don't need perhaps all this specialization and people to like manage people on top of it. That you can just have more kind of generalists who are able to kind of do things and execute and they don't necessarily need to be managed in the same way.

Rio Longacre (01:35:58.165)

What's your thought on that, Krishna? I know you've been in in IC in a lot of places, you've been a manager before, like you agree with Greg?

Krish (01:36:03.921)

I I I I've I mean it was I I loved being an IC. I ended up becoming a people manager and loved that I did it. I didn't like doing it. in hindsight I look back on it and I'm happy that I did it, but I didn't like doing it. Does that make sense? So I i in that way I you know, I I just I felt like the same as you say, Greg, it was like

the whole of my career is your whole aspiration to get your boss's job. And that was kind of as simple as it got really. And in a lot of, you know, hierarchical situation there's loads of layers on layers on layers and layers of people, that kind of logically is where people's minds go when they're looking for the promotion or the next big thing. I, you know, kinda like yourself, I I I w I was interested in too many horizontal things that yeah, I never got a lot as much joy out of people management.

personally and so I yeah I I'm I'm very delighted to be back in IC World.

Rio Longacre (01:37:11.186)

Yes, I've I pr I'm in professional services and in professional services everything's about like having your boss's job, right? Having people under you so can have that leverage. At least it it was. I think that's changing like really quickly now.

AI Rebel (01:37:11.22)

Yeah, I mean

Rio Longacre (01:37:26.3)

And w the downside of that was people always aspired to build these big teams and hire people and like go in these like tr blaze paths of destruction and and like in order to like steal other people's teams. Like that's been a big thing in consulting, right? like if you can't build your team, you steal a team, right? If you can't steal a team, you you merge a team and you force the other I mean, there was a lot of that, right? I think so these these incentives that big teams drove bad dri drive bad behaviors.

Krish (01:37:38.764)

Yeah.

Krish (01:37:42.199)

Yeah.

Krish (01:37:48.417)

But you but you have to you have to be a special character.

Yeah, and yeah, but y the the thing is it y in order to be an I C and continue being an I C, you have to have the imagination in order to design your next role. Because usually it's not just lying around. That's what I would find is if you're if you're an I C and you wanna go do something else, you have to pitch it to to the the hierarchy. You have to go and say, Look, this is a thing that needs doing, I'm I wanna move in that direction. I C roles typically don't tend to just pop up like that in adjacent spots. And that's kind of why the easiest thing to do is

Go for your manager's job. It's the it's the obvious sort of next thing to do. but like coming back to what you're saying, Gregory, it ties back nicely into your comment around f figuring out what you're actually good at and really analyzing that and and and doubling down on it because then you don't need to go and get your manager's job. You can you can probably figure out what value you offer out in and outside of maybe co your current role, you know? And that's kind of how I see, you know, you know.

Rio Longacre (01:38:50.388)

I think it's good point though, Chris. Like, yeah. IC roles, I I totally agree with that, are usually not going to be on an org chart or necessarily funded by a company unless someone convinces them this role is important, right? Because they're they're gonna have their org chart. It's not like they're gonna have all we these all these ICs there. Things are gonna be clearly defined. So you actually have to make the case. This role is important. We need someone to do this. And this person's gonna be a producer. They're gonna be evaluated based on their output.

But but what they're producing is very important. So it's a very different type of role. And I I think more I as a trend at with AI, I think we're gonna see more of those. I know Greg if you agree or disagree.

Krish (01:39:23.296)

I hope so. I hope more people will look at AI, take it and think to themselves, right, what value can I add into this business that no one else can add and go pitch it? You know, that would be awesome.

AI Rebel (01:39:34.783)

Yeah, I don't I mean, I don't know. So I've been doing this for a year and a half now. And I'm still basically like a solo founder. And then I and then I work only with like founders and small companies. So I just I just can't I can't imagine going back to like a big company. Just it just wouldn't be something I'd want to do. I don't know if I'm like well suited for it at this point. And then small companies, like sky is the limit. Like with the technology. I feel like I got very lucky. Like I did this at a moment where

you can just do so much as an individual. I mean, I've got companies that I coach and like work with, like it is like one two-man team that are doing like millions of dollars in revenue. Like it is breathtaking, like what's possible now. I I I had the chart in my newsletter, like solo founders like tracked through Stripe making ten million dollars. There's like thousands of them.

They didn't even exist like 15 years ago. So like there is just this like enormous opportunity right now to build like really, really big businesses from a revenue perspective with an incredibly small set of resources. And so I don't know for me, like that gets me really excited and motivated. And so I just think there's just such a huge opportunity.

right now, like going back to like corporate world, like doesn't sound exciting to me, to me at all. Right. And I just keep unlocking like more and more with AI. That's the other thing that's like I I like there's a point where I thought like, maybe this will like it'll plateau, I don't know, six months ago. And now like the stuff just does like so much more. I can't I can't believe it. I'm like it's unbelievable to me. And so I just see like just huge amounts of potential like

Rio Longacre (01:41:15.496)

Yep.

Rio Longacre (01:41:19.422)

It's so much better.

AI Rebel (01:41:29.416)

One of my customers, I yeah, I s I started with him and he was like just him and he was doing he just had hit like ten K a month. And so it's been, I don't know, is it been eighteen months? They're like in the millions. And he has like a few people, that help him as like contractors and stuff, but it's like unbelievable. And I'm seeing his other startups too, where they are like five, seven person team and just the revenue is scaling in a way that like I've never ever seen before. It's really exciting.

Rio Longacre (01:42:00.148)

Well good for them. That's the dream. What a lifestyle business, right? It's incredible.

AI Rebel (01:42:04.186)

It it's it's so cool. Like I I can't I can't believe it. Like even with my own business, like all the finance stuff is a hundred percent automated. I have like a bunch of tools linked up together, it just runs. I don't have like think about it, right? So you have all of that back office stuff that used to take a little bit more overhead, like it's a hundred percent automated. You want to go and create LC like I did that the other day, like it's just all online, you like.

AI can just do it for you, take you through everything. All of these things that used to take a like some effort, they're just like turnkey. Like you basically push a button and and they happen. It's it's wild. Like you don't really have to spend a whole lot of effort or energy on it, right? so that part's super cool. And then like vibe coding and

Krish (01:42:42.229)

Mm.

AI Rebel (01:43:00.594)

managing tools or building software. Like it's just it's just crazy like how fast people can execute and build things that are like really great. And I and I'm like even like with my startup pitch competition, like the stuff that I see submitted, it's better than ever. We get people that have like tiny teams that are doing like

really crazy companies where I remember like ten or fifteen years ago you basically need to raise like five million dollars to hire ten people like to get a prototype out the door. Right now like it's just it's just there. It's it's like it's the coolest ever. And I just see like this becoming like a bigger part of the of the economy. There'll be more people able to do more with with way less. It's very exciting.

Rio Longacre (01:43:32.82)

To do anything. Yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:43:54.516)

Yeah, number of new businesses created this last year was like the most ever. The millions. So I I I I forget the exact number. I think it was I think it five or six million. It was a it was a tremendous number. Yeah. So

AI Rebel (01:44:04.818)

Yeah, it it's super cool. I don't know what it means for like the larger world, but like what I'm seeing is that the productive, the ambitious, the people are like willing to put in hard work, like AI is like having like superpowers. Like unbelievable. Like I just cannot believe the levels of of productivity that people are able to get, right? And then if you don't have a big team and you don't have like to manage all these people and you you don't have a lot of that overhead, like you can just

You can just move at this pace that's just like very exciting. So I don't know. I'm really optimistic. And I think it's I think it's just great. I'm super, super excited to be a part of

Rio Longacre (01:44:44.445)

Sorry, Greg. if you don't want let's go to quick hits, you know, get towards the end the end here. We can go over that if if you're comfortable.

AI Rebel (01:44:53.448)

Let's do it.

Rio Longacre (01:44:54.995)

All right, so I will start then pass off to you, Chris. So what's one meme format that should be permanently retired or banned?

AI Rebel (01:45:03.708)

Drake memes.

Krish (01:45:08.565)

I love that.

Rio Longacre (01:45:08.571)

That's fair.

AI Rebel (01:45:10.4)

Who is he?

Krish (01:45:12.689)

What is it you mean that it is fun, yeah?

Rio Longacre (01:45:13.843)

I I yeah, th there were the th I'm not a big I don't know, I don't really like Drake's music, but this the memes are k they're kind of old. No no no disappear no no disagreement. All right, Chris.

Krish (01:45:26.136)

Okay. If finish the sentence. If no one dislikes your marketing

AI Rebel (01:45:39.102)

It definitely if if no one dislikes your marketing, then you're doing something wrong.

Krish (01:45:43.894)

Okay.

Rio Longacre (01:45:46.257)

What matters more in the AI era, taste or distribution?

AI Rebel (01:45:50.741)

that's a tough one. I'm gonna have to ultimately go at distribution.

Rio Longacre (01:45:56.083)

So even good taste with new distribution j still doesn't go anywhere. You know, like yeah, like just like we said about having a product with no go to market, right? Even if it's the best product's not gonna matter. Yeah. Yeah.

AI Rebel (01:45:58.386)

It's not enough. Not enough.

AI Rebel (01:46:03.744)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Krish (01:46:09.055)

The most overrated B to B marketing channel at the moment.

AI Rebel (01:46:15.776)

most overrated. in person events.

Krish (01:46:21.802)

Interesting.

Rio Longacre (01:46:25.053)

Think it's overrated.

Why's that?

AI Rebel (01:46:30.11)

why do they I 'cause I think they're really expensive and I think they make people feel really good. but the ROI I think is nebulous. I think it depends on your business. Like anything, it depends on lot of a lot of things. But I I think there's like this idea that like, it's it's all saturated, there's too much competition online. But the reality remains that like online is still the most scalable channel we've ever seen on the planet, and relative to its cost, it's it's it's

Enormous. Like if you get it right, you could just reach millions and millions of people. Even if your TAM is small, like 10,000, 20,000 people, if you get it right, you can reach all 10, 20,000. Like you're never gonna reach 10 or 20,000 per people at an event. Like let's assume that there's 500 people at an event, maybe there's a thousand people at an event. How many are in your ICP? 10, 20, you'd have to go to like, you know, a thousand events to reach 10,000 people.

Rio Longacre (01:47:27.613)

That's fair. All right. Last one, then we'll wrap here. So you said previously that or I've I've I've read that you've said that AI is automating sales, but not the sale itself. What's one great thing a human salesperson does that an AI agent won't be able to do in three years?

AI Rebel (01:47:45.633)

okay, so I guess I'll give you like a specific example. Like in founder-led sales, the founder can get on the call and the founder can make decisions right there that will close a sale. And so I think that's like a very, very good example of of how that works. I think you gave the other example, like the charming guy who's able to throw tequila shots down people's throats and get them to buy. Like, I don't know if it's the most Yeah, I don't know if it's like

Rio Longacre (01:48:11.227)

It's a scale.

AI Rebel (01:48:14.865)

If it's if it's if it's appropriate, but if it works, like I'm not gonna knock it right.

Rio Longacre (01:48:19.367)

Yeah. I I was horrified watching this happen and I was thinking we were gonna get escorted out of the building and probably sued, but the client loved it. The client thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Some people can do it. All right, Greg, this has been super fun. it's been cool having you on. Chris, thanks for guest hosting here. So, Greg, if anyone wants to get a hold of you, how can they do that?

AI Rebel (01:48:21.985)

And he c he close this out. Yeah.

Ha ha.

AI Rebel (01:48:33.77)

Awesome.

AI Rebel (01:48:41.323)

Yeah, just go to vibeyour sas dot com or find me on X and I have slash Gregory Kennedy on X.

Rio Longacre (01:48:49.747)

Cool. He is posting quite a bit of content, so I recommend following him, checking him out. For th for those of you who've made it this far, www.signal and noise.ai, that is our website. We've got all of our podcasts p ho hosted there that go back over a year. We've got we're actually approaching I think a hundred long form podcasts plus on our YouTube channel. We've got much, much more short form content. We've got great articles. We're on yeah, we're our

AI Rebel (01:48:54.081)

Ha ha ha.

AI Rebel (01:49:11.233)

Nice.

Krish (01:49:13.365)

Happy birthday.

Rio Longacre (01:49:18.429)

We we've been very prolific in this year. So we've got additionally we we post and I know we you you recommended not posting too many channels, Greg, but we do we everywhere you get your podcast material, including TikTok, we are now there. So Apple, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. We're on TikTok as of recently, yeah. And and and we are on X. So this this'll be everywhere. But so thanks, thanks a bunch for joining us, Greg. This is super fun.

AI Rebel (01:49:33.857)

This is on TikTok?

Hi, everybody.

AI Rebel (01:49:45.483)

Awesome.

Rio Longacre (01:49:46.427)

And I'm sure we'll be interacting soon on X or s or LinkedIn or something like that.

AI Rebel (01:49:50.943)

Yeah, thanks for having.

AI Rebel (01:49:54.977)

But guys.