Latest / 1 to 100 / E47: Building The World’s First AI Creative Strategist with Alex Cooper & Maneesh Apte

Transcript

E47: Building The World’s First AI Creative Strategist with Alex Cooper & Maneesh Apte · 1 to 100

0:00
I was talking to Zach about this the other day.
0:01
As you know, ad Creighton foreplay go back for quite a
0:04
while and are saying, oh man, I am so personally excited for
0:08
this call because you're building something in launching
0:11
something in 2026. It didn't just launch and kind
0:15
of like fizzle out. It was huge.
0:18
It went, you know, I mean, it was pretty much my whole
0:20
timeline for a whole week and it's a great product.
0:23
I mean, like it's a personification of like a labor
0:26
role, you know, which you guys have seen sometimes doesn't
0:30
work, sometimes works very well. But it's a yeah, I think it's a,
0:34
it's a great product with customers at Foreplay.
0:38
I love it. I think it's a great idea.
0:39
So yeah, I was super excited for this conversation as well.
0:43
Yeah, the same here. And I think we have an
0:46
interesting angle because I mean, if nothing else, like we
0:49
literally, we built the product that I, me and my team was
0:53
screaming out for. Like, that's why.
0:56
And I think we've had a lot of feedback over the last few weeks
0:59
of people saying like, this feels like it's been built for
1:02
us. It feels like it's been built
1:03
for strategies. That's because, you know, I, my
1:07
kind of core thesis is to have as many people on the team who
1:12
know ads close to the product and, you know, I was a big part
1:15
and well, and team are a big part and, and driving it to
1:19
where it is. And I think that's, you know,
1:21
that's we just literally just tried to build a thing that was
1:24
for ad credit and for the agency, which, yeah, I mean,
1:29
even if if no one else uses it, I still use it and I still find
1:32
it very valuable. So I hope to I'll be able to.
1:35
Yeah, what was the big? This is, I guess, a burning
1:38
question I've had in my mind for a while.
1:41
I wanted to message it to you, but I thought it'd be better to
1:43
leave for the podcast. What was like the motivation to
1:46
like personify it as like AAI creative strategist?
1:50
Was it to like place it as a labor replacement and help your
1:54
customer like understand it like that?
1:57
Or was it to actually become like a problem oriented tool,
2:02
right, as a solution oriented tool even because you can see
2:06
tools like brief writers, you know, AI brief writers as like
2:09
they're a tool, they're part of the stack, but they don't
2:11
actually solve the problem. They let people come in and use
2:14
that tool to solve the problem. But like we're using a
2:17
personified piece of software, AI piece of software.
2:22
It it kind of it's a little bit more related to the solution
2:24
that you would expect from an employee.
2:27
Yeah, I mean, I'll give one second.
2:30
I'd love to hear what you say as well.
2:31
Like for me, the the whole idea of, of Parker and what we're
2:37
trying to do is empower teams to make more and better ads.
2:42
So we wanted this to feel as much like another team member as
2:46
possible. Like he's inside your Slack
2:47
channel. You can talk to him inside of
2:49
Slack. And like, I just felt like it
2:52
would be a lot more personable if it's actually he's got a
2:55
human name. I mean, actually, a few people
2:57
have asked us this. Like, the origin for the name
2:59
Parker was because we had the the idea early on to be like all
3:03
the different Marvel characters would be their own agents inside
3:05
the Slack channel would end up being Parker because of Peter
3:07
Parker. And like, he turns your
3:09
strategist team into superhumans.
3:11
So, yeah, the whole idea is just, you know, a lot of the AI
3:15
tools in space are exactly what you said, Jack, Like that they
3:18
are tools. And we really want this to be
3:21
feel like having a senior's trash in your team, hence why we
3:26
brand it as such. I think also being a like having
3:31
the personified branding, it's, it's really like that's the new,
3:36
new wave of what's possible with all of the AI technology.
3:39
That's it, that's coming out and that's continuing to get better
3:41
and better. It's not intended to be
3:43
necessary like a labor replacement.
3:46
We we actually have a very I mean, I feel like what is maybe
3:50
a hot take, which is like we very much believe that humans
3:53
will be involved in the creative process.
3:55
At least some human will be like the process of creating a brand,
4:00
whatever, whatever service, you know, it's not just D to C.
4:03
It could be literally anything. We have SM BS using using Parker
4:07
being a power user users of ours and the the common thread here
4:11
is that you just want your team to be able to do more right And
4:16
Parker is that higher that you wish you could make that
4:19
essentially 100 XS. What's possible from the
4:24
perspective of creative volume quality and ultimately getting
4:27
customers in an efficient manner.
4:29
And so that's kind of the the back story and what Alex said
4:33
about the the personalities. We the V1 of Parker was actually
4:38
it was Parker and then a bunch of other names of agents.
4:41
It was like, so it was all from the Spider Man metaverse, like
4:43
things like Ben any. And so that was like the team
4:47
kind of like came together and somebody on the team, it was
4:49
like, hey, what about Peter Parker?
4:51
You know, like the metaverse And I was like, OK, maybe that's
4:53
yeah, yeah. That became very confusing
4:56
though, because then it was like, OK, Ben is in charge of
5:00
searching your customer. You're searching Reddit for you.
5:03
And then it got like confusing on how to.
5:05
So we're like, we'll just have one agent, but underneath
5:07
Parker, there is hundreds of agents working for you 24/7.
5:12
Yeah. I am also very bullish on the
5:14
idea of like making AI sound like a a teammate rather than
5:19
just a tool. Like for example, there's an
5:21
Easter egg in the product that actually, if you ask Parker,
5:23
like who he actually is, he'll he's actually based on all of
5:27
our Co founders, Jimmy, he'll say that like, I don't know,
5:29
should be showing this, but like he'll say that, oh, I've got a
5:31
wife and two kids. I live in Minnesota.
5:34
I support the Minnesota Timberwolves and I've been doing
5:37
creative attractive for eight years.
5:39
It's like we really tried to make him like an anti AI, like
5:43
sound like a human and and act like a human like I was I was
5:48
chatting with Parker a few weeks ago.
5:50
This I didn't even know we'd built this in.
5:51
But this is one of the most impressive things that I've
5:53
found from from the tool so far is I asked him to, you know, go
5:56
and create an ad like recreate A TikTok organic video that went
5:59
viral. And he actually said, no, I'm
6:04
not going to do this because this isn't a good fit for your
6:06
brand. And I was like, wait, what?
6:09
Yes, please go and do this. At this point I was just really
6:11
curious. And then he goes, no, this is
6:13
not a good fit for your brand and here's why because of XY and
6:17
Z. And I was like, wow, like that
6:18
actually feels like having a senior stretched on the team
6:21
who's telling me when not just always agree with me.
6:23
I'm telling me this is a great idea.
6:25
He's saying no, I don't think it's a good idea and why I
6:28
probably could have got him to do it if I'd if I'd prompted him
6:30
hard enough. But like the whole idea of
6:33
making him feel like a senior higher and a human, your team
6:36
we're just obsessed with. Other than like wanting to build
6:40
something that you yourself wanted, what was the what was
6:44
the goal behind building this company?
6:46
Yeah. The, I mean, what I mean,
6:51
obviously the very first and foremost is to solve an actual
6:53
problem for people, right? And so having Alex on board and
6:57
having, you know, that great experience behind that makes
7:00
that really possible, even like an ET connection with the
7:03
market. I think the the overall goal
7:05
here is really to be that missing that in in age of AI
7:10
there that you can pretty much create a business using all
7:14
these different tools, right? You can literally code, Jen, a
7:15
whole website. You can do all these, you know,
7:17
automations to run all your processes.
7:20
There's this idea of like a a one person, billion dollar
7:23
company that everyone's talking about now.
7:25
And there's, there's a missing piece in this whole puzzle,
7:29
which is no one's really solved with AI, the ability to get
7:32
customers easily, right? And that's still a hard problem.
7:36
And so from a like high level goal or vision perspective, we,
7:42
we envision there to be exponentially more amount of
7:45
businesses in the world simply just because it's getting easier
7:47
and easier for people to start them.
7:49
And Parker is the missing piece for every entrepreneur in the
7:53
world, whether they are very large or very small or very
7:56
large, to be able to get customers efficiently.
7:59
And in an age of AI, attention is what matters, right?
8:03
Everyone's been fighting for that and Parker is there
8:05
advising you, helping you do that.
8:08
That makes yeah, that makes sense.
8:10
I guess like so actually I don't know how you guys are
8:13
capitalized. Did you guys raise raise money
8:16
to build this or did you bootstrap it or like what do you
8:19
think is needed to accomplish this mission?
8:22
Is it is it a bootstrappable business?
8:24
Is it something that you want to capitalize have calf capitalized
8:28
like what is the what is the company building side look like?
8:31
Because like most most of the people who watch this are other
8:33
SAS companies. So like there's, they're like
8:37
honestly, most people get curious about like how do we
8:40
build the business? You know what I mean?
8:43
Totally we are venture backed and so we raised a precede
8:49
recently and are in process right now raising additional
8:53
based on the the excitement from the launch.
8:56
I, I think I mean this people ask us all the time, you can
9:00
maybe bootstrap this, right, because this kind of service
9:03
that we're offering, right, the margins are pretty good when
9:05
you're offering this level of quality or this, this level of
9:09
output. And then under underneath it all
9:11
is really, you know, what was once a service of people is now
9:14
actually AI doing it all the fulfilment, right.
9:16
And so there is a world where someone could build a bootstrap
9:19
version of this. I just think when, when me,
9:22
Alex, Jimmy, you know, the rest of our team, right talk about
9:25
this. The opportunity is so much
9:28
bigger than simply just just like the the, the part, the
9:32
wedge that we're in right now around research strategy and
9:35
planning for creating good ads for for teams, right?
9:40
There's the whole flow that we can do, right?
9:42
Think not just the planning, but also the production, the
9:45
performance, right? There's other parts of the
9:48
marketing funnel, whether it be like retention or organic,
9:53
right? That is all influenced from what
9:56
we're building with Parker, which is essentially is an AI
9:58
marketing brain. It's a, it's not just like it's
10:01
specifically for paid ads, right?
10:02
But like we're literally like trying to train AI to think like
10:06
a, like a top creative strategist.
10:08
And that's that from, if you're able to do that, you're able to
10:12
impact all parts of the marketing pipeline for
10:15
businesses. Gotcha.
10:17
Yeah, I mean, I, I think, I think most other operators who
10:23
would hear this would wonder two things.
10:25
Like I would wonder two things because it's like something that
10:28
I talk about with my friends all the time. 1 is, could someone do
10:33
this with Anthropic or is this in the like direct path of meta
10:39
and what meta is going to do with between their own tools and
10:43
manners or how whatever configure the like, what the
10:45
configuration doesn't really matter, but like one of the big
10:47
labs and then the other one is, if not, what is your view on
10:53
because it's a super competitive space, like this idea of the the
10:57
marketing brain. And I guess I'm curious how you
11:01
think about at what point do you worry about competition?
11:07
I guess like, yeah, those are the two things that I think most
11:11
company and I mean a big part of the reason why we're renaming it
11:14
from SAS operators is like, you know, I think it's like hard to
11:18
deny like what Anthropic is capable of at this point and
11:24
what you're capable of doing on your own in cloud Co work and
11:28
cloud code. So I'm really curious how you
11:31
guys think about those two things.
11:32
But Alex, you want to take the Co work part, like what are you
11:36
because I said, Richard, you're essentially asking like, how is
11:39
this different than you know, something that you could that
11:41
potentially Facebook will do or or you could do in Claude or
11:44
something like that, right. I mean, I well, I am curious for
11:48
you guys, but I'm even more curious at a meta level because
11:52
I will tell you that like everybody is talking about
11:56
whether or not Claude is going to kill their company.
11:59
Like that is like not that is like a thing.
12:02
There's just like, I mean, it's, it's silly not to talk about it,
12:05
right? As like if you're in like SAS
12:07
1.0. So I guess like that that is
12:10
yes, that is one of the questions, especially given it's
12:13
directly in line of what like Meta has said, you know, they
12:16
said like give us your goals and we'll take care of the rest.
12:20
And then and then the second part is I'm curious about
12:23
competition, right. So just like with increasing
12:26
businesses, everything is getting more competitive.
12:29
I mean like we have competitors that are sprouting up all over
12:31
the place, like competition is like a bound right now.
12:35
And so I'm curious how you think about that.
12:36
And I mean, of course I'm happy to share, but yeah, I'm really
12:40
curious how you guys think about that.
12:42
From the strategic perspective, what we're doing is we're
12:46
focusing on what we believe is actually the kind of missing
12:50
piece in this whole idea of understanding whether or not an
12:53
ad works or not. It's the actual process and the
12:57
strategy behind the produced asset.
13:00
And so it's almost like when you're creating ads on a team,
13:03
there's like this subjective that then goes into the
13:05
objective where there's this debate internally around saying
13:09
like, oh, is this actually a good headline?
13:10
Is this actually a good concept angle, whatever.
13:12
And you have data that backs it up, right?
13:14
And so, but it's ultimately subjective.
13:17
Like you can use data to inform it.
13:18
Right now. It's heuristic based or
13:20
experience based, right? And people are saying we'll use
13:22
AI right, to, to learn and, and essentially feed the entire
13:26
loop. But there's a missing piece in
13:28
that. If you just have the assets, you
13:30
don't actually have the process by which those those assets were
13:33
created, right? Like you, you don't, you don't
13:35
know that the way that that creative strategist actually
13:38
created that concept was they went to TikTok, scrolled it, saw
13:42
an organic ad that's actually organic post that's actually
13:46
ripping right now. And then they're they've
13:49
readapted that right? Like that's a good process,
13:51
right? And like creative strategist
13:52
know that, right? And so that's one thing that we
13:56
are kind of focusing on that then becomes actually applicable
14:01
for every part of the marketing funnel.
14:03
Because when you're talking about a world of hyper
14:05
personalization, the, the production is kind of, it's kind
14:08
of like it's just an API call, right?
14:10
Like that's where it's like, OK, Google will do it, Meta will do
14:13
it, whoever will do it, right? But that, that actual strategy
14:18
layer is actually very tough. I think Alex can speak to maybe
14:22
some of the stuff we're doing on the actual context engineering
14:24
teaching side, because this is actually one of our core theses
14:27
as well. We're not reliant on like we
14:31
definitely had those conversations internally as you
14:33
were saying, Rashad, I think a lot of people assume that Parker
14:37
is able to be rebuilt or like doesn't have that much of A Moat
14:41
around it, But the Moat isn't the features and accessibility
14:45
to the data. Like I could go and code code,
14:48
you know, something that pulls from Reddit, TikTok, YouTube,
14:51
all the different features, you know, this weekend, if I very
14:54
wanted to, what would be more difficult for me to to recreate
14:58
is the 12 month, the last 12 months that we've spent
15:02
researching and going through the, the thinking process of why
15:05
a strategist choose chooses to go after.
15:08
Like, why do you choose to recreate this Tick tock.
15:10
Why do you choose to go for this new persona that you've seen in
15:14
in on the 7th page of a Reddit thread rather than just studying
15:17
and rather than just saying, like, here are the three
15:19
successful outputs. Here are three winning scripts
15:21
with three winning headlines. We've spent a lot of time
15:24
putting together documents of the sometimes hundreds of pages
15:28
long to feed into this knowledge base that helps Park understand
15:32
how to think. And we could be wrong in that
15:34
bet. We could be wrong, and Manus or
15:37
Anthropic could find a way to learn that without necessarily
15:41
having domain expertise. Our bet is that by teaching this
15:46
thinking layer and by continuing to invest in the top strategists
15:50
and understanding not just what a weight output is, but how they
15:53
think that we will be able to get to the end goal, which for
15:58
us right now is good ad ideas and hence good ads better than
16:03
anyone else. And whether that be an incumbent
16:07
or whether that be competition of ours?
16:10
I'm keen to hear what you guys think about this in like
16:13
reference to what Rashad was saying about Mehta saying, give
16:16
us your goals and we'll take care of the rest, right?
16:18
TikTok shops, I'm not sure who you guys have.
16:20
I imagine Alex, you've spent a fair amount of time in TikTok
16:23
shops, recommends that you sell products that your brand doesn't
16:25
sell, right? It's like, hey, these products
16:27
are doing well right now. Why don't you start selling
16:29
these, right? And obviously, I mean, I'm not
16:32
sure about you guys, but every time I see that, I'm like, well,
16:34
I don't sell that. The friction there is my bias,
16:37
right And I don't think that that's going later.
16:40
So I don't know, let's say you sell engagement rings and it
16:43
says, hey, you should sell these like tiny little keychain fluffy
16:46
dolls, right? Actually, maybe there's.
16:49
A Boo Boo Jack. They're called the Boo boos.
16:51
Right. The Boo boos might work for a
16:53
jewelry store, actually. But let's say it says popcorn.
16:56
Hey, how about you sell popcorn? Popcorn's trending right now.
16:58
And you're like, well, we're not going to sell popcorn.
16:59
We sell rings, right? And I think that that is the
17:03
role of the human in all of this.
17:05
It's deciding what you're going to do.
17:07
And maybe that isn't the role of Claude or Matter or Manus or
17:13
TikTok to decide for you to say, hey, you should sell popcorn
17:16
right now because popcorn's doing well.
17:18
It's entrepreneurial judgment. It's taking action without
17:22
knowing. It's sort of a consumer forecast
17:24
of what people are going to want, right?
17:27
And then how you go about that is where Parker steps in.
17:32
It draws that map. It's the strategist from A-Z to
17:34
get to your goal. And the doing part is completely
17:37
separate. That could be clawed like that
17:39
could be the API core, that could be whatever layer is
17:42
executing right. But still crucially, that bias
17:46
about what you're going to build or what you're going to sell in
17:49
the 1st place and the verification at the end that I
17:53
actually met your expectation, right?
17:55
Like in the world of Claude, this is the prompt, right?
17:58
Claude actually doesn't work without you setting it in a
18:00
particular direction, right? Then there's the markdown, which
18:03
is how it's going to go about doing the thing, the skill,
18:06
right, with, you know, increasing layers of complexity.
18:09
There's the SDK, which, you know, for all intents and
18:12
purposes could be an agent. It could be a human agent as
18:14
well. It's one of the execution power
18:16
you have. And then there's the review,
18:19
right? That cybernetic process of what
18:21
do I do next now that The thing is done right?
18:25
The thing being whatever step forward I took, right?
18:28
Actually, it surprised me and it did incredibly well.
18:30
Let's go in a different direction, right?
18:31
My direction has changed or it's, you know, it's done it
18:34
wrong and let's go and fix this, right?
18:37
I don't know. I can agree with you.
18:39
I think that's where humans fit in.
18:41
It's an intrapreneurial judgment.
18:43
And that that final review as well.
18:47
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've, I agree with you.
18:49
I just think that the rate at which at least clod is
18:53
improving, we can you know, we can, we can let's just like
18:58
leave meta AI and whatever may or may not be happening there.
19:01
Aside for a second, I just think like the single most existential
19:07
thing for any software company, software meaning SAS agentic.
19:11
What I mean, all software is like, what is it?
19:15
What is possible to do with just me and Claude?
19:19
Like that, that, that, that, that kind of is the most
19:21
existential question for any like, especially for people who
19:25
listen to this show, Like if they're not thinking that I
19:28
don't know what they're thinking, you know what I mean?
19:31
And so like getting getting Manish and Alex's perspective on
19:35
like, hey, there's this, there's currently like heuristic
19:39
judgment that is like slowly being taught to their system is
19:43
essentially a different way of saying proprietary data or it's
19:47
a cornered resource, right? The cornered resource is good
19:51
judgement on like how to think about the use of this data,
19:55
which today is not trainable, right?
19:57
And there was this like really good A16Z piece by Alex, Alex
20:01
Rampel. I think you guys should read it
20:04
if you haven't read it yet. It roughly boils down to their
20:07
own. Like all the other modes are
20:09
gone. There's like 2 modes left.
20:13
It's it's network effects and it's cornered resource, OK.
20:18
And I think that I mean you guys tell me if I'm understanding
20:24
correctly, but I think what you are arguing is that the dislike
20:31
this thinking to you is the cornered resource, right or like
20:36
the the resource that other people don't have access to so.
20:42
Yeah, that that's our, I think actually our business has
20:45
qualities of both frankly and I can, we can tell you more about
20:49
where we actually envision network effects to come in.
20:52
But from a resource, from a corner resource perspective,
20:56
spot on. I mean, This is why like This is
20:59
why if you go into Claude right now and you just add like give
21:01
it, even if you give it your customer reviews, which is
21:04
painful by the way, you know, upload all the stuff, you know,
21:07
go to TikTok, whatever, do a bunch of intermediate steps,
21:09
right. So people are using Parker for
21:11
the convenience of that as well. There's also something to say
21:13
with that, right? And actually having value there,
21:17
but when it when it's a actual corner resource around the
21:20
knowledge itself, right? Yeah, exactly.
21:22
So here, modes that matter aren't going away.
21:29
It's kind of funnily written. I will.
21:32
I will say that I mean, it's a great article, but it's a little
21:34
funny how it's written because actually switching costs are the
21:37
first thing he says under modes that matter aren't going away.
21:40
But then he says that switching costs are going away is the
21:43
TLDR. You guys don't have to read all of this, but trust me
21:47
that that's the case. Network effects, they're not
21:50
going away. Scale is going away, but it will
21:58
benefit bits and atoms over just software brand and yours.
22:05
But the problem is that agents are going to make decisions.
22:09
So actually the concept of brand is going to change.
22:12
So again, brand is going to change and then cornered
22:15
resource. And this is the key this this to
22:17
me is actually the biggest insight, at least at least in
22:26
the context of this article, right?
22:28
Again, we don't have to like agree with everything because
22:31
most businesses, it's like hard to create a network effect, like
22:35
a true network effect after the fact, right?
22:38
In in most cases, the idea of a cornered resource, I think is
22:42
going to become more and more dear.
22:44
And then it becomes a question of like how cornered is a
22:47
corner. So like, I'll give you a good
22:49
example. LinkedIn doesn't have an
22:52
official MCP, OK? And So what that means is I'm
22:58
sure you guys know this, but like effectively what that means
23:00
is that if I want to do something through cloud in
23:04
LinkedIn, I actually can't, I have to go into LinkedIn
23:07
otherwise I risk getting banned, right?
23:10
And so they have like cornered the resource on of their network
23:14
basically right now. On the other hand, there's a
23:17
bunch of things that are like no longer cornered resources, like
23:21
the data in your in your CRM that's now accessible freely,
23:27
right? And so yeah, it's, it's, it just
23:29
like makes it a lot harder for like, while the theory makes
23:34
sense to me, I feel like the practice of it is so much more
23:38
complicated now. Completely agree.
23:43
It kind of honestly, when we start thinking about all the AI
23:46
like how far things are going now, it really does put pressure
23:49
on all these. Like there's only a few things
23:51
that matter in terms of defensibility, right?
23:53
In a world where I can feasibly in six months, 12 months,
23:57
essentially just take screenshots of your entire
24:00
product and then just say AI go build the entire thing.
24:03
Like what do you have left? It is kind of like that's what
24:07
that's the discussion we're talking about, right?
24:11
And it's kind of, it's kind of crazy.
24:12
It's not even that you can. You can.
24:14
You can buy the product, interact with it, tell your
24:17
agent to interact with that agent, and learn everything from
24:20
that agent. 1 deep deep doing that with totally.
24:24
You can extract, you can extract the the system of record or
24:27
whatever is in there is what you're saying.
24:28
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, or you can do like, I mean,
24:32
like that's what a lot. I mean, that's, I mean, it's not
24:33
exactly this, but that's what a lot of these open source models
24:36
are that are like so small, right?
24:38
It's they're distilled models, which is basically like taking
24:40
advantage of the training that exists.
24:42
You distill it by like asking a questions and then you get like
24:47
you do like a 9010 type of thing right on the distilled model.
24:51
Totally, Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a whole new
24:55
world out there. I think it the way that we think
24:57
about it is in the immediate term it's very clear we have a
25:02
like what you're we're saying cornered resource.
25:03
We have proprietary knowledge that no one else has or at least
25:09
some people do have. But it's very hard to acquire it
25:11
right, because you have to have the right people on board and
25:13
you have to ingest that information in the right way,
25:17
all that kind of stuff. It's it's challenging to
25:19
accumulate, right? So, and that's the creative
25:22
strategy knowledge, right? And that's just by virtue of
25:24
having folks like Alex and all of our amazing creative
25:27
strategies on the team, we're able to then imbue that into the
25:30
AI. So it's not just like a generic
25:32
smart AIPHD sounding, you know, giving you ads advice, which we
25:36
all know is not really a good that's not a good creative
25:39
strategy. They can be very smart, but if
25:40
they don't know about creative strategy is not very good,
25:42
right? So that's immediate.
25:44
Term, do you think, do you think the insight from this and I I
25:48
don't ask this as like a yeah, like I'm genuinely curious on
25:53
this. It's like, do you think the
25:55
insight from this is poorly documented?
25:59
Hard to systematize. Knowledge is the most valuable.
26:04
So let me give you the opposite example.
26:06
The opposite is like, like things are highly documented.
26:10
Tax law. I mean, actually legal
26:13
strategies are very complicated. They can be non documented.
26:15
But the reason why Harvey is so successful is that there's so
26:18
much that is documented, right? So is the insight that is more
26:23
generalizable to like to other companies to corner a resource
26:28
that is poorly documented? And, and like high variance,
26:32
basically, I would, well, my, my, my interpretation around
26:37
Harvey's success is that they're successful because, I mean, one,
26:42
because they have, they, they've taken a very complicated
26:44
workflow and then they've imbued AI to write essentially like
26:49
make it more efficient. But there's always a business
26:52
there because there's a human interaction.
26:53
Like I'm, I believe that someone, a person will have to
26:57
show up in court to to do like most things, you know what I
27:03
mean? So like in that.
27:04
In that exactly. Yeah.
27:05
Yeah. I'm like, OK, that feels like a
27:07
business that will for sure exist, you know, and like there
27:11
will be humans using an AI to essentially like enable that
27:14
process. And so it's like whoever
27:16
creates, you know, the the AI that essentially handles all of
27:19
those different edge cases around the system and then
27:22
starts to build up institutional process knowledge around it is
27:27
going to be the winner there, right.
27:29
And so that's kind of how we would think about it.
27:31
I'm curious, Alex, like when hearing Rishab say, I'm curious
27:34
your thoughts on that as well from the career strategy
27:36
perspective? Yeah.
27:39
I mean, I think the like I just said, our bet is on the, the
27:46
thinking layer of the, the context engineering inside of
27:49
Parker. And like we have spent like a
27:53
lot of time refining those processes and making sure it
27:57
thinks like a structural team. So whether it is done through
28:01
the Parker products, whether it is done through like some kind
28:04
of connection to chord, like our bet is that the, the hardest
28:08
thing to replicate is not actual connections to the features, but
28:13
like the brain and the thinking behind it.
28:15
And that's that's the bet we're making.
28:18
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it sounds like it is
28:20
hard to Oh, I was just going to say that.
28:22
So then it does sound like it's it is a poorly documented thing,
28:26
right? Like because if it was, if it
28:28
was well documented you would like someone else would just
28:31
connect to that to that documentation.
28:33
So exactly. Yeah.
28:36
And it's evolving too, right? Because like as the world
28:40
changes, there are new new techniques, new theories that
28:43
come up and it's like a pendulum that's that's swinging back and
28:46
forth, right? So it's forever a need in that
28:49
sense. It's also been able to do that
28:52
across, you know, 50 different industries for an account that
28:56
is spending $100 million versus an accountant that's spending
29:00
$1000. You know who it's it's rare that
29:04
you can get someone who is able to document and I can see it
29:07
across that many different use cases.
29:11
You know, oftentimes the people would be documented would be
29:13
working in house a brand where they might only have the process
29:16
for that one brand, whereas being able to document at scale
29:19
and then apply that to a brand regardless of industry or
29:21
regardless of size, right, I guess is a lot less common.
29:26
I think if we zoom out a little bit and look at the interest in
29:28
moats, it's because we're trying to set a good direction or
29:31
trying to make good decisions. A direction to solve a problem
29:34
that doesn't get solved by Claude.
29:37
Yeah, on a short time frame, right?
29:38
We want to educate good decision making.
29:41
We want to educate our bias because there's so many
29:42
directions you could go in. You could build a habit tracker
29:45
or another AI ad generator like Icon or I don't know, an ad
29:50
launcher. I know so many people who are
29:53
building ad launchers just like they're looking at the, the task
29:56
of launching ads in Facebook and they're like this is too long.
29:58
Either I do it or Ava does or whatever happens to be that we
30:01
need an ad launcher, but there's so many out there that we're
30:02
going to be free because they just want the user base, right.
30:06
So I don't know, I, I think that this kind of comes back to that,
30:09
that place and the reason why a human is still involved, right?
30:14
The reason it's Rashad and Claude and not just Claude,
30:17
right? It's because it needs direction.
30:19
It needs to decide what it's going to do next, right?
30:23
And I think in, you know, on any reasonable time frame, AI is
30:27
going to be able to solve a greater breadth and depth of
30:30
work at, you know, increasing speed, right?
30:32
But it's still going to require direction and verification,
30:36
right? What is our bias?
30:38
What are we doing? Yeah, totally 11 reaction I had
30:42
just is like, I do think that anything that is dashboard only
30:46
or workflow only is dead. So like a tool that like helps
30:51
you launch ads, that's a workflow tool.
30:54
I don't know what to say mad. Like if you're a dashboard only
30:58
or a workflow only tool, it's tough.
31:01
It's tough. It's going to be tough sledding.
31:04
Yeah, again, depending on how you capitalize, depending on how
31:07
you. You're saying as opposed to
31:09
being, as opposed to being an agent, is that correct?
31:11
Like as opposed to being an actual like, like not just one
31:15
workflow, but an actual autonomous like thinking layer
31:20
that can actually do a wide breadth of tasks and actually
31:22
reason about it. Is that correct?
31:24
Well, I guess what I mean is so this, this example Jack gave,
31:28
which is a great example of like launching Facebook ads.
31:33
There's no like cornered resource, There's no network
31:35
effect. It's like literally give me the
31:37
ads, tell me how to like in plain English, tell me how to
31:40
write them, how to, how to send them, which is like an agentic
31:43
workflow, but you could use cloud or mana.
31:46
I mean you could this. This is the type of company or
31:49
tool that I would worry about. Basically.
31:53
Like things that are or things that are dashboard only.
31:56
Like I gave the example I think in one of our.
31:57
Previous episodes where? I like don't buy anything that
32:01
doesn't have an MCP server anymore.
32:03
And so like, I don't give a shit what your dashboard looks like
32:06
because I'm going to call it through the MCP and visualize
32:09
it. However I want to visualize it,
32:11
right? And I think like, yes, I'm in
32:15
cohort 1 of this behavior, but like eventually, you know, this
32:20
is like what work is going to look like, right?
32:23
That that's, that's all I mean, is like, I, I think that that
32:25
like is the, but in the meantime, people are going to
32:28
make a lot of money with these like ad launchers, you know what
32:32
I mean? Like, so as long as they don't
32:33
raise any money, they can just like make money fast, which is
32:37
sort of why I asked like why you guys built the business, right?
32:40
Like otherwise these cornered resources, things like like it
32:42
doesn't matter, right? Like make something people want
32:46
that they pay for. Like the economy goes on like,
32:49
and we're all happy. Right.
32:51
Sure. Yeah.
32:53
I mean the, I mean the why I, I mean, I think the the idea of
32:58
going you're saying why, why venture versus versus bootstrap.
33:01
Is that what you're saying? Effectively, Yeah.
33:03
Yeah. I mean, yes, I mean, it sounds
33:05
like you guys are being very deliberate about wanting to
33:07
build a big company because you're thinking about things
33:09
like how does this thing stay durable?
33:11
What is the way that we. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
33:14
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
33:15
I mean, I think that then goes back to the motivations of the
33:17
founders, right And the kind of bet that you want to take,
33:21
right. And and the the kind of I don't
33:23
know, adventure, me and me and Alex and and Jimmy, right, we we
33:27
all talk about. I don't know, there's a lot of
33:30
we could spend our times on a lot of different things, right?
33:32
And and everyone. Everyone.
33:33
That's the beauty of life. I know, yeah.
33:35
And, and everyone, you know, we have a lot of lot of options to
33:37
do a bunch of other stuff. You know what, whatever it is,
33:40
right. So it's kind of like, what is
33:42
the adventure you want to take? And it's kind of like at this
33:44
point, we've all been like, hey, we're going to we're going to
33:47
spend the time. If we're going to swing, why
33:48
don't we swing big, right? And really big because I, and
33:51
then as we've built it, right, we think more and more that
33:54
there's an opportunity to actually build something that's
33:56
a like a generational, you know, Shopify level type outcome.
34:00
And like the vision of enabling every like business in the
34:04
world, the definition of a business really changing over a
34:07
period of time, very, very quickly to be able to get
34:10
customers and connect with people online is pretty
34:14
compelling. And so we're we're on the crazy
34:17
journey of, of doing that now. So you're seeing.
34:21
In real time, did you, did you build a company before?
34:23
I mean, I know Alex's company, I know ad create so, but did you
34:26
build a company before this? Yeah, this is this is my second,
34:29
second go around with the founder journey.
34:32
Yes, yeah. Got it, got it.
34:34
Got. It yeah.
34:35
And I, I for by way of introduction, I'm a, I'm a
34:37
software engineer by trade, AI engineer.
34:39
So did I don't know every, every buzzword you can possibly think
34:43
of. Me and my buddies have been to
34:44
AI, crypto, all that all that kind of stuff.
34:47
Went to Stanford undergrad and like specialized in natural
34:51
language processing specifically.
34:52
And so come, come from the Silicon Valley tech like sphere.
34:57
And I've worked at a bunch of startups, a few that have
35:00
actually, you know, been on that ride of billion dollar companies
35:04
and I I was there kind of, you know, series, series B, series C
35:07
type type type. Yeah.
35:10
You know, so yeah, definitely that's, that's it's been quite
35:15
the journey for sure. That's awesome.
35:17
How did you and Alex get to know each other?
35:19
I actually have no idea because I I know Alex only through Ad
35:22
Crate and yeah, so. Yeah, we met through our our Co
35:26
founder Jimmy and so Jimmy and Alex as you know they like got
35:32
close last year did the did the course and Alex you can you can
35:35
tell more about how you guys met, but essentially Jimmy and I
35:38
grew up together in Fargo, ND. So we're, so the, the common
35:44
thread is this random fun fact that me that, that we're from
35:49
North Dakota, essentially me and Jimmy.
35:51
And that's how we know each other.
35:52
And then Jimmy and Alex know each other and then we all got
35:54
put together here. Got it.
35:58
So two guys from Fargo and One South African is like, that's
36:04
like the beginning of a joke, you know, in.
36:08
Fact. I'm actually not with African
36:09
country to popular belief. Everyone thinks I'm South
36:11
African. I'm actually a Brit living in
36:14
South Africa and I'm about to be a Brit moving to the state,
36:18
living in the States because I'm moving to Florida next month.
36:21
But yeah, everyone, people have told me that I've picked up the
36:23
accent since since I got here. No, dude, you sound so British
36:28
to me. So really.
36:29
Really. Yeah.
36:30
You you kept the accent. Yeah.
36:32
Really. Yeah, I mean like.
36:34
Dude, Jack, how do you? How can can you actually tell?
36:37
That's crazy. Yeah, for sure.
36:39
It reminds me of hometown. I imagine we're not from too far
36:42
away from each other, Alex. Where in England you got East
36:46
London, East London? Yeah, Or West London?
36:49
Kingston, if you're not. Yeah, yeah, I lived in
36:51
Hammersmith for two years. Kingston, if you know.
36:54
Dude, what a douche. That's like saying I went, I
36:57
went to, I went to, I went to Cambridge for college.
37:01
Kingston, if you know. I know I didn't.
37:04
I didn't grow clean. Oh, it's like a tiny town in
37:07
Surrey, half Surrey, half London, so there's lots of.
37:11
No, no, you were definitely a better area than I was, Jack.
37:16
I was in Dagnum. Not not the most pleasant area
37:19
to grow up. Well, guys, we got to do story
37:22
time. I can't believe we got, we got
37:23
this far. I think we got into like the
37:25
meat and potatoes of it, but we got to talk about this launch.
37:28
It was a pretty exciting launch. Yeah, I mean, we had a, we had a
37:32
feeling it would do well internally.
37:35
I mean, I said to the team internally like if we hit
37:37
1,000,000 views like total then it's it's a good launch.
37:40
And then obviously we had our targets, but revenue and
37:44
signups, it did 1.4 million in 24 hours.
37:48
And then crazy story about the launch, it actually got taken
37:53
down by Twitter and I don't know if you guys saw, but after after
37:57
24 hours, I woke up 1 morning and and the people like I got 10
38:03
texts from different people saying your post have been taken
38:06
down. Like what's going on?
38:07
So I log into Twitter and my account's locked.
38:10
And then I come to find out that we were working with shown media
38:17
for this launch map scene. They did a great job and they
38:20
were the ones who helping us cornet launch.
38:23
They help do the strategy for the video.
38:25
They help edit the video. They have a great team and Matt,
38:28
who's the founder of show media quotes and goes like, oh,
38:31
congratulations, Parker team. It was an epic launch.
38:33
You guys absolutely crushed that somehow gets to the head of
38:41
revenue at X because levels I owe does a post.
38:45
He doesn't have head of revenue at X.
38:48
His levels does a post saying like, oh, I'm done with these
38:50
paid partnerships. We like this is just such a
38:54
problem in the AI space. It's like the dude just
38:56
literally helps us to launch for you.
38:58
It wasn't it wasn't a big partnership.
39:00
So the head of revenue X just goes like, oh, DM me and we'll
39:03
get it sorted out. Then, you know, Long story
39:05
short, you know, they take our post down.
39:08
We end up speaking with Nikita X and then Elon's brother to get
39:13
my account back up. So it ended up doing 1.4 million
39:17
in 24 hours. In actual fact, it probably
39:19
could have gone to do quite a bit more, but it was a bit of a
39:21
blessing disguise because we had more demand than I think we had
39:25
forecasted. So, you know, we kind of got a
39:27
little bit of breathing space while that post was down for the
39:30
next two days. And it was stressful because I
39:32
was like, Oh my goodness. Like a lot of ad creates
39:34
business comes from Parker, comes from Twitter, and a lot of
39:36
Parkers will do too. But we got it back.
39:39
Everything was fine in the end. It was a hectic week.
39:42
What the fuck? Yeah.
39:45
Oh, it was. A dude, I mean Manish, you know,
39:48
I was up until 5:00 AM every night.
39:50
I barely slept that week. I barely ate.
39:52
It was it was a insane week. It was, yeah.
39:57
I mean, even, I mean, it wasn't just limited to that one week,
40:01
right. Because like things have
40:03
continued with with the volume of of demand and excitement and.
40:09
Alex was doing an incredible job along with the the shown team to
40:12
just do all the blocking and tackling and make sure that, you
40:16
know, people's questions were were answered and you know,
40:18
posts posts were, you know, you got to you got to keep on
40:21
engaging with folks to actually make it go viral, right?
40:24
Like that's, that's probably like for me as an engineer, like
40:27
engineering background coming in and seeing how Alex and like the
40:30
rest of these master marketers actually market something was so
40:35
sick. Like we're in like the war room,
40:37
you know, like under like the details of what to say and what
40:40
to do. And I mean, things don't just go
40:43
viral because, you know, I like you.
40:45
You need to obviously have the raw materials you need to hit a
40:47
strike, a strike a nerve. Obviously we did that with the
40:50
thesis of of Parker. But to actually like make it go
40:56
is a whole other thing. And so Alex did, they did an
40:58
incredible job with that. So yeah.
41:04
How did you guys keep up with the demand?
41:06
I imagine you know, what are the sales calendars you had up, had
41:10
to like multiply, What did that, what did that look like?
41:14
How did your sales team grow? In 12 hours, we turned around
41:18
and hired three people to join the team.
41:22
It was like the craziest turn around.
41:26
There's other layers of the story too that are just like
41:28
also kind of side side funny things.
41:30
So that also made it more stressful.
41:32
One of our is our the Co founder Jimmy, who we mentioned he had
41:36
a, a baby girl the same like the day prior to the launch.
41:39
So he was doing that and like the good father he is.
41:43
And, and then very stressfully for me, a week after the launch
41:50
or two weeks after the launch, I was getting married in India,
41:55
Indian wedding in India. And so we launched and then I, I
42:00
realized I was like, oh, man, this really went a lot better
42:03
than I, I had even imagined. Alex is, he's like over there
42:05
being like, yo, this can, this can blow up, you know, and I
42:08
think you can hear that. And then you'd like actually
42:11
feel it and you're like, well, this is really intense.
42:13
And so I was in India for like the week after the launch
42:17
working from, you know, on this like the worst time zone ever
42:21
relative to the, to the, you know, our normal time zone in
42:24
the US 12 hours ahead, working from like 8:00 PM to to 5:00 AM
42:29
and doing wedding planning before then.
42:31
So it was, it was a full, it was a full family endeavor for sure
42:37
to get through everything. But yeah, I think kudos with the
42:39
team like we have, we have a really amazing team.
42:42
But I mean, we have both on on, you know, Alex was the common
42:45
thread throughout kind of leading everyone while, you
42:48
know, me and Jimmy were out. But it was like, you know, we
42:50
have amazing creative strategies, amazing sales and
42:53
customer success folks. We have amazing engineers, like
42:57
the level of scale and demand, all the fixes, you know, people
43:00
are just pulling all nighters for many nights in a row.
43:03
And it's just, it's really the team, you know?
43:06
Wait, so are you got, have you guys disclosed what the ramp was
43:09
after, after the launch? I guess we haven't been public
43:14
about it, but. I mean, I mean, you don't have
43:17
to answer. I'm.
43:18
So if you don't want to answer, don't.
43:19
But if you're if you're willing to, I'm like very curious.
43:24
Yeah. We.
43:26
Actually, maybe Alex and I should have synced on this
43:28
before, but we, we essentially we onboarded hundreds, hundreds
43:33
of new paying customers. And so we blew past one mil ARR
43:39
kind of like almost 10X in overnight.
43:42
And then it was, yeah, it's still still ongoing.
43:46
So it's been pretty, pretty electric since.
43:49
And then like what's the ramp been since then?
43:52
The ramp I mean, it's now I mean, obviously like the the 48
43:56
hours afterwards were pretty like intense, but like in terms
44:00
of the actual ramp, but now it's kind of like linearly going up.
44:03
And so now it's kind of stabilizing around this like 1
44:07
mil plus north and then kind of going up from there.
44:10
We get new customers every day, few new few new ones every day.
44:14
And then there's also an interesting motion here too
44:16
around we have a really like actually strong land and expand
44:20
motion where so like half of our customers are like brands
44:25
directly, right and then the other half are actually
44:28
agencies. Agencies.
44:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like it actually makes sense
44:32
that like like we're actually realizing that from a
44:34
segmentation perspective actually potentially our best
44:37
customers are ad agencies because they really like they're
44:41
already set up to produce the ads.
44:43
And our whole, our whole thing with Parker is we're going to
44:46
come up with really good ad briefs for you, data backed
44:48
ideas and then you can go and do the production.
44:52
And so ad agencies are normally really set up well.
44:54
And so even during the launch and like right now we're having
44:58
ad agencies that have onboarded, they are landing and expanding.
45:01
So like we have, I mean, we, we work with very, very large ad
45:05
agencies. We work with very, very small
45:07
freelancer type folks, people in between.
45:10
And pretty much across the board.
45:12
Once somebody starts using Parker and they really start to
45:16
see the value, it's like pretty instant.
45:17
It's like onboard one brand and they're like, hey, I want to
45:20
onboard all my brands. And so that's another revenue
45:22
generation for us as well. I, I was just going to add the,
45:27
really the growth so far has been pretty much from that
45:29
launch post alone. I mean, we like because of how
45:32
busy it's been. I haven't done too much growth
45:34
outside that. If you look at my Twitter for
45:36
last month, I haven't really pitched Parker that hard since
45:39
the launch because we've just been so heads down on the
45:43
product sites. We've done all this like we
45:45
haven't activated, obviously haven't activated paid yet.
45:47
We haven't done any partnerships with people, haven't done much
45:51
affiliate programming rolled out like 2 days ago.
45:53
So there's, there's probably so much low hanging fruit that
45:55
we've still got to tap into and that we really should start
45:59
tapping into now. But most like pretty much
46:02
everything's been from the launch so far.
46:04
And how many surplus sales calls did you have to jump in onto
46:08
Alex when it first went live? I actually did a good job of
46:11
managed managing to keep out of most of them, but I know he had
46:16
like someone like the the guy that we had originally like on
46:20
his calendar. His calendar was gone within a
46:22
couple of hours, like for the next few weeks.
46:25
And then me, she had to jump into a ton.
46:28
Jimmy had to jump into a few and had another guy on the team who
46:31
who kind of had to be added as well.
46:33
So I tried to keep myself available to to engage on social
46:37
and and do stuff on the customer side, but we had like a four
46:41
different people jumping into sales course to help out when
46:44
sorry. And, and you learn more about
46:46
the business too, from the some of this stuff.
46:49
Like we realized that potentially, you know, we could
46:52
do a better job with qualifying folks, you know, and, you know,
46:55
people, we don't want people to have to wait for a call to get a
46:58
question answered in the, you know, when they're excited.
47:00
Like we should just have a better FAQ, you know, and like
47:04
we should just allow people to kind of on board and then, you
47:07
know, like see the value themselves and, and make that
47:09
process super easy. We, we learned a ton, you know,
47:12
from all this. But yeah, it was a essentially a
47:15
carpet of meetings across 2, two or three people's calendars for
47:19
pretty much until this week. Like literally we still.
47:22
You guys have to, I mean, I'm sure you're working on this, but
47:24
you have to have Parker be your sales agent, right?
47:30
Like the first step has to be you download Parker into Slack
47:33
and then he tells you which plan to select and what version of
47:37
him. And yeah, I mean, I'm sure
47:39
you've this is like obvious, but yeah.
47:43
But wait, my bigger question is actually why are you guys even
47:47
selling to SMBs? Oh, good question.
47:52
I mean it's it's a PLG motion there.
47:54
Wait, you're talking about SMPS as like like a non?
47:58
Well, you're talking about smaller, smaller businesses in
48:00
general and not going after enterprise?
48:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's AII think the
48:06
the PLG motion is just it's just so electric.
48:09
It's it's so cool to be able to I think, I think I think about
48:13
like the Shopify of the world, right.
48:16
Like you're servicing both smaller, right?
48:20
And that that's like that's really amazing, right?
48:22
And so that's kind of where we see Parker being and we were
48:26
going upstream right now too. I mean, we're actually working
48:28
with some pretty large, large brands, just even, you know,
48:32
during the launch, before the launch, you know, Grunes,
48:35
Legends, Lumi, right? And that that's actually just
48:38
the start. Like now we are actually going
48:40
into the largest brands in the world.
48:43
We literally were just meeting with some of them in LA this
48:45
past week and I'm starting to talk about enterprise level
48:49
level integrations. I think it's just from a market
48:52
perspective and and like product perspective, it's easy just to
48:55
get to market right quickly with smaller folks.
48:59
And we're realizing now with enterprise just the level of
49:03
integration and and bells and whistles that they need, it's
49:06
much larger. So it requires more time to
49:08
build, right? So.
49:11
Yeah, I'm really excited for you guys.
49:15
Yeah, this is sick. You know what I was surprised
49:19
about because obviously like I, I guess you could put it in the
49:23
E com SAS category, right, that it mainly serves, you know,
49:27
e-commerce businesses. But when we signed up and we
49:31
started asking it questions, we didn't even have to ask it
49:33
questions, which was nice. Didn't need an input from me.
49:35
It was actually just proactively sending messages into our Slack
49:38
channel without me asking anything.
49:40
And they were good. You know, I'm reading these
49:42
responses. They're somewhat a little bit
49:43
long at the start and I'm like, oh man, I, you know, this is
49:46
2026. I don't have this sort of
49:47
attention span, but you know, I was reading a few of them.
49:50
I'm like. It's for your E com brand or B
49:53
to B Sorry, just. This is for foreplay.
49:56
We're we're customers at Foreplay and.
49:59
Oh, for B to B. Oh wow.
50:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what I mean.
50:02
So I was really surprised like going through this and thinking,
50:05
you know, maybe this is and we're ecom SAS, right?
50:08
We primarily serve ecommerce businesses as a, you know, a
50:10
huge chunk of apps and agencies as well that we serve.
50:14
But it's a lot of ecom. But it was really good.
50:17
You know, the comment analysis was great.
50:19
I'm seeing like common thread between a bunch of different
50:22
comments and an ad angle that we haven't approached.
50:24
It's gone and looked into our ad account, realized that there's
50:27
this massive white space of like this whole angle that we haven't
50:30
approached. And I don't have to do anything,
50:32
right? I've just got that ad idea.
50:33
I can go and take it to production, right?
50:35
It was. It's incredible.
50:37
Yeah, I. First of all, I really
50:39
appreciate that it's, it's, it's super cool to hear like
50:44
different types of business getting value from Parker.
50:46
That's a lot of, that's where I'm spending a lot of my time
50:48
right now trying to like further improve the product, having it
50:52
not be reliant on you going into the product to extract value.
50:57
Like us pushing insights to you, pushing ideas to you while
51:01
you're, you know, doing other things and not making like, I
51:07
think we've had a little bit of problem with activation of some
51:10
users where, you know, there's just so much you can do.
51:13
It's almost like where I start and it's relying on them going
51:16
to the tool to extract the value rather than just like, hey,
51:19
here's things you need to know. Here's a breakdown of what's
51:21
happened in your account this week.
51:23
Here is what's happening in your top performance.
51:25
You should do more like this, this and this and just pushing
51:27
the value to them without them having to do any work.
51:30
This is another, I guess piece of information that you guys
51:34
have that the rest of the market doesn't have.
51:36
And that's you've, you've run an agency, right?
51:39
You've run a team that's organized not or just around
51:42
coming up with the creative strategy, right?
51:44
Or I shouldn't say creative strategy, like the creative
51:46
concepts, right, that you should take to market as evidenced by
51:50
the best information possible, but you've also got the
51:53
operational piece locked down. You know how to get people to
51:57
then take that creative direction and take it all the
51:59
way to production, right? And I think that a lot of these
52:01
tools chat Claude, they don't do that piece for you.
52:05
Then go and check on your team to see if they actually launched
52:08
the ads, if they did something with the concepts or if it was
52:11
all just brainstorming, right? It's lovely to jump on a Zoom
52:15
call and come up with a bunch of ideas, but that doesn't launch
52:18
ads in your account. That doesn't create us with
52:21
scripts. It doesn't, you know, tell your
52:22
graphic designers what you want produced, right?
52:26
So, yeah, massive edge, right? I think the operational
52:29
complexity, the second order effects of like what you do
52:32
afterwards, after you've got that incredible information in
52:35
the direction of what to to launch is understated.
52:38
It's, it's endless, Jack. I really appreciate that, man.
52:41
You're hyping. You're making me feel even more
52:43
hyped about the business. I appreciate you saying that,
52:45
man. Yeah, I think the cool thing is
52:48
once you actually capture that, it's like the institutional
52:51
knowledge where you're talking about cornered resource, right?
52:53
Like there, once you capture this in an interesting like,
52:56
like no one's really doing this right now, right?
52:59
It's all happening, like you said, in meetings or it's it's
53:01
very, you know, kind of all over the board on all these different
53:04
tools. People use a whole different
53:06
stack of tools, right, to ideate on what ads they're actually
53:09
going to run and how they go about the formatting of
53:12
justifying and everything, right.
53:13
And so when you actually put that all in one place, right,
53:16
you can then run AI to essentially fit that mold for
53:19
that organization. And it's not even just like if
53:22
you're an organization, if you're an organization that has
53:24
many brands, you can start to do it across your brands, right?
53:27
Like that's where we want to go. Like make it as easy as
53:29
possible, Literally what your best creative strategists do,
53:31
right? And so it's a, it becomes really
53:34
interesting from a, from a, from a knowledge perspective for
53:36
sure. Yeah, Jack's keep Jack keeps us
53:39
all optimistic. You know, like the rest of us
53:43
can can, can get a little doomery about Claude.
53:48
I'm so pumped. I love seeing people launch.
53:51
As soon as I saw Alex's launch, I was like, incredible.
53:54
This can make my life so much easier.
53:56
I'm like, I'm super pumped to plug it into my brand and have
54:01
my team taking orders from Parker instead of me, right?
54:04
The amount of I just have a couple of VASI don't have
54:08
anything complicated going on at my brand, but like the amount of
54:11
hand holding that's necessary to get a good idea out of the door
54:15
and shipped is and I think we're pretty dialed.
54:18
Like I never have to look at the emails that we send, which is
54:20
nice. I feel like we achieved
54:22
something there if I if I'm not involved, but I love the idea of
54:26
wait, everything could be a little bit more strategic.
54:29
It can be based on data that I don't have to dedicate an hour
54:32
of my time sifting through my ad account or you know, our our
54:38
sales data, right. I could potentially have ads
54:42
given to whether it's like AI don't know API call to generate
54:46
or it's given to my team by AI. And that's, that's exciting.
54:51
Just an e-mail. Think of that whatever, whatever
54:53
format you want, it's, I mean, Rishabh is what you said, right?
54:57
Well, you want an MCP and you want to just pull in whatever
54:59
output into whatever UI or, you know, dashboard you want to have
55:03
and then go and do do whatever with it, right?
55:05
And we're even thinking internally now, literally just
55:08
the call before this was with the the whole team thinking
55:10
about what would it look like for somebody to use Parker
55:14
without ever logging into the web app because we have, it's
55:17
not only working. That has to be.
55:19
That has to be the case, yeah. We're we're working on it right
55:23
now. It's going to, it's going to
55:23
happen in just very short amount of time, right?
55:26
But I mean, we already have a version of right, like Jack,
55:28
like you mentioned, we have the the 10 day onboarding, right?
55:31
When you first sign up, just sock messages just being sent
55:34
right to you. And you, you can get value out
55:36
of that, right? But like where we're trying to
55:38
now make the entire product that way, right?
55:40
How can we justify the value for someone in this manner such that
55:44
they don't even need to ever, ever login anywhere?
55:48
Like there's no change in the workflow at all.
55:50
Whatever, wherever you want the, the outputs to show up, it'll
55:53
just show up like it's reading your mind and you're like, wow.
55:56
And then ironically, I think that'll actually engage more.
55:58
That'll cause more engagement, right?
55:59
Because then it's like, cool, I actually want to click through
56:02
and actually start to chat further and actually get more
56:06
insights out of this and maybe get more of this output, right?
56:10
Yeah, guys, I know we're over time, but I have.
56:13
Sorry, I had one more question. Just going all the way backward.
56:17
You said that you guys had raised a precede and that you're
56:20
considering raising is like considering raising a next
56:23
round. Do you guys know roughly when
56:26
you're going to do that? Doing it right now.
56:28
So we're in talks with some folks right now.
56:32
Yeah, I'm going quick. Yeah.
56:34
So yeah, we are you. Raising here.
56:36
Are you raising here? And that's sorry, Where are you,
56:38
Manish? I actually OK.
56:40
So yeah, yeah, we'll, we'll be raising yeah, here, yeah, here
56:43
in Silicon Valley. And yeah, we, we candidly, we've
56:47
already started the round. Existing investors have already
56:50
preempted it coming in on, you know, on cap safe effectively.
56:56
So we already have kind of made progress towards it.
56:59
And yeah, it's been, it's been pretty, I mean, it's been pretty
57:04
electric. It's been busy for all these
57:06
reasons, right? It's not just operating the
57:08
business, but also setting it up for this next level of growth.
57:12
I think we can move pretty quickly.
57:14
Like the market very clearly, like when we launched, right?
57:17
We hit a nerve and like, this doesn't need to be the only,
57:20
like this won't be the only launch, right?
57:22
Like we literally have the best marketers in the world, right,
57:25
working here, right? Like Alex, Jimmy Wright, Parker
57:28
himself, you know, it's like this is just the beginning,
57:31
right? And like Alex said, we haven't
57:34
even started any of the other growth motions that we intend to
57:38
do now that things have stabilized a little bit on the
57:41
on the product side. So.
57:43
I love it. I, I imagine in like a week's
57:46
time following Alia's suit, we're going to find out there's
57:49
this map of news again. Oh, wow, congratulations, guys.
57:53
I'm not sure if you heard we had like the episode with Alia and
57:56
then they they just sold I think for 30 or 60 million, I'm not
58:00
sure. It's incredible.
58:02
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, obviously if you guys
58:07
are well on your way, you don't need my help.
58:09
But Manish, if I can be helpful, especially as you're raising
58:12
here because I, I know most of the funds here.
58:14
So let me know if I can be helpful in any way.
58:18
Really appreciate it actually, we would love to take you up on
58:21
that. That sounds great.
58:22
Also, I'll shoot you a note after this.
58:24
Would love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
58:26
More than happy to. More than happy to.
58:29
Yeah, man, sounds like you got some things.
58:32
On, on all of, on all these questions that we're discussing,
58:34
I'm curious, Rishab, your, your thoughts on, you know, in the
58:38
AI, maybe there's a decent place to just kind of end with on AI,
58:42
Don't know a thought around like with AI, right, the, the few
58:46
motes that remain right. I'm curious how you think about
58:48
it from, you know, because like you're also running a business,
58:51
right? And I'm curious how you think
58:53
about it as well. And we, we would love to learn
58:55
from folks that are in the industry as well like you.
58:58
You know, I like, there have been different moments in my
59:04
life where I'm like, I feel like I understood the game.
59:08
And then it's like, wow, I don't understand anything.
59:11
And this is like one of the, this is like close to one of
59:14
those moments where it's just like you have to rewrite all of
59:17
your priors really fast. And so everything that you
59:21
thought you knew, you have to like the first job is delete
59:23
everything you thought you knew, which is already pretty hard,
59:26
right? Because we're like, as humans,
59:28
we have egos and like all of this stuff, which is also why I
59:32
love this podcast because I can just like ask people questions
59:34
and ask how they're thinking about it.
59:36
And like, I can just like hit delete on a bunch of things that
59:38
are in my, in my, in my head. So like, I will admit to you,
59:43
like in my view, the first job is hit delete on a bunch of
59:45
things. I think that and and this goes
59:50
to my enterprise question actually, I think something that
59:53
is really underappreciated is so I was just in New York, OK for
59:58
the last four days and I'm sorry if this story goes a little
1:00:01
long, but I was in New York for the last four days and I met
1:00:04
multiple people who had not even opened clot OK in, in like our
1:00:10
broader industry. I'm not going to name who they
1:00:12
are or where exactly, but they didn't even opened it.
1:00:16
And I realized, and that's why I made this like very small
1:00:19
comment earlier that like, you know, we're probably in cohort
1:00:21
one. It's like the, the way AI will
1:00:25
sort of permeate the industry is going to be in multiple cohorts,
1:00:29
right? Cohort 0, as it were, is the lab
1:00:32
itself, right? Like people inside of Anthropic
1:00:34
or open AI or like they're doing it like before it even goes out,
1:00:40
right? So that's like Cohort 0 and then
1:00:42
cohort 1 is like as soon as it's out, there are people who are
1:00:45
using it and replacing their workflow with the thing as soon
1:00:49
as it launches, right. And I feel like our organization
1:00:52
has managed to put itself in cohort one as it were, which I
1:00:55
think is pretty good, right? Not I mean, I think for I think
1:01:00
any company like any Silicon Valley company who wants to
1:01:03
build a large company has to be in Cohort 1.
1:01:07
I think that the job of people in Cohort 1 is to bring the rest
1:01:12
of the cohorts along for the ride as quickly as possible.
1:01:16
And that's actually why I asked the enterprise question.
1:01:20
So I actually let, I'm not, I'm not asking it like the way ABC
1:01:25
would ask it, which is like revenue quality and this and
1:01:28
that. And I just think that if you are
1:01:32
helping an individual operator, they're probably in cohort 3 or
1:01:36
cohort 4 anyway, or like AD to CE com company, probably cohort
1:01:41
4 because you can like just look at what they're doing on what or
1:01:47
again, it's not a fair manifestation of their reality.
1:01:51
But like if you believe everything that's being said on
1:01:55
on like D to C Twitter, they're in like the 1st 4:00-ish
1:01:59
cohorts. OK.
1:02:00
Again, not that you should believe everything that's being
1:02:02
said, but let's just pretend you believed everything there within
1:02:05
the 1st 4 of cohorts. A lot of these larger companies
1:02:10
are in later cohorts. And so if you believe the job of
1:02:14
cohort 1 is to pull forward and accelerate everybody's ability
1:02:18
to live in the agentic future, the place that's going to be the
1:02:22
most useful to do that is going to be in in the later cohorts.
1:02:27
And you have to go find those later cohorts and, and, and, and
1:02:31
that's sort of my biggest reframe on all of this is as I
1:02:37
because like our business largely serves large enterprises
1:02:39
now. So like honestly, like all
1:02:42
multibillion dollar brands and retailers, right?
1:02:45
And and what I realized is like our job has become to be in part
1:02:53
in addition to product is to be there like Sherpa to like making
1:02:57
sure they identify as quickly as possible.
1:03:00
So that way they out compete whoever their competitors are,
1:03:03
right, right. And that's because like your job
1:03:06
is to make your customers as successful as possible, right?
1:03:08
And you do kind of in some senses, you want to do whatever
1:03:11
it takes to make sure that happens.
1:03:15
Anyway. That's like the way I think
1:03:17
about this is like in the biggest technology waves, the
1:03:19
people who can bring people along the fastest.
1:03:23
And then there's different motions like you can do it a PLG
1:03:25
way, you can do it as enterprise IT like there's different ways
1:03:28
to accomplish this outcome. But I think that that's like
1:03:32
ultimately the framing that I have started to use for myself
1:03:35
or how to think about what the job is.
1:03:38
Fair enough. Yeah, I think there is an insane
1:03:41
amount of value like low hanging fruit to be had when you go into
1:03:45
enterprises and you hear the like there is so much desire in
1:03:50
these huge organisms. And literally like what
1:03:52
reference that we were, we were just having meetings with folks
1:03:54
this past week on this where you hear their AI champ, they've
1:03:59
designated AI championing champions internally and they're
1:04:02
signing up for like some of the best tools out there.
1:04:05
What they're hearing, right. But it it's, it's hard like the
1:04:09
the the way that internally in a large organization they're
1:04:11
trying to adopt it is they're saying they're like mandating
1:04:14
saying, hey, you need to use AIX percent of the time or something
1:04:18
like that, right. Because like, it's even unclear
1:04:21
of how to even get people to use it and be efficient and the
1:04:24
space is moving so fast. So I agree, like literally part
1:04:28
of the value of going into larger, especially larger
1:04:31
enterprises is just being cutting edge.
1:04:34
And they can just like sound board with you and then be like,
1:04:37
is this BS or is it not, You know, like what I'm seeing on
1:04:39
Twitter, I'm seeing people create clod, clod code bot, clod
1:04:44
bots, whatever to do XY and Z, Should we be doing that?
1:04:47
And it's like, no, you shouldn't be doing no because.
1:04:51
Yeah, yeah. That's like my first.
1:04:53
Yeah. That's like the question I get
1:04:54
asked the most often. And it's just like, Oh my God,
1:04:57
guys, what are you? Yeah.
1:04:58
And I think it goes back to like we're, we've been talking a lot.
1:05:01
We talked in the beginning of this about moats, right?
1:05:03
And I do actually think there's a very underrated idea here,
1:05:08
which is just around all of the nitty gritty edge cases for all
1:05:12
of these businesses that exist that a generic AI will not
1:05:14
solve, right? It's like there there's a big
1:05:18
issue around, you know, whatever ad copy you put out.
1:05:21
Is it actually like a plot, like applying by the air, like
1:05:25
abiding by the regulatory, whatever the concerns are, or
1:05:28
like the personality of the brand or the, the foundation of
1:05:31
the brand, right? It's not even, again, it's
1:05:33
information that might not, that might not be exactly out there,
1:05:35
but it's in the mind of the org, right?
1:05:38
And it's important to them and it blocks them from doing work
1:05:41
efficiently, right? These are like random edge cases
1:05:44
in this complicated workflow that actually matter as well,
1:05:47
right? And I feel like you're right, in
1:05:49
an enterprise, those become even more magnified, right?
1:05:52
It becomes even more important, right?
1:05:53
The dollar amount of like making that mistake.
1:05:56
So totally. Yeah, see your point there.
1:06:00
We're going to stop talking about moats.
1:06:01
We're going to start talking about boats.
1:06:03
How do we get over existing moats?
1:06:05
Because we're disrupting, right? We're not, we're not, we're not
1:06:08
trying to defend this tiny market share, all right.
1:06:11
We're trying to disrupt. Jack, I absolutely love that.
1:06:15
That. That is cool, man.
1:06:17
Yeah, let's talk about boats. That sounds great.
1:06:22
OK, it was it was great to have you on.
1:06:23
This was a fun conversation. You're like you're yeah, this
1:06:26
was amazing. All right, Yeah.
1:06:29
Manish, you know, you have my e-mail, so yeah, whoever if you,
1:06:33
if I can be helpful, but otherwise this is amazing.
1:06:36
Thank you guys for coming. Yeah, great conversation.
1:06:38
Appreciate it, guys. Talk soon.
1:06:39
You guys take care. Bye.