AIMinds #038 | Sebastian Mourra, Co-Founder & CEO at Alphana
About this episode
Sebastian Mourra is the Co-Founder and CEO of Alphana, an AI content manager that helps creators turn videos and podcasts into 50+ pieces of viral content, enabling them to grow their audience and business. Previously, he co-founded and successfully exited Razz, Zeki, and Ezio, which were acquired by ResMan in 2019. He also led Product & Strategy at ResMan, contributing to its acquisition by InhabitIQ in 2021. Earlier, he spent five years at Universal Music Group leading digital marketing and product development for top Latin artists like Enrique Iglesias and Juanes.
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In this episode of AIMinds, Sebastian Mourra, CEO and co-founder of Alphana, shares his journey from Universal Music Group to the startup world, fuelled by his passion for innovation and a supportive network, including his wife who happens to be a co-founder too.
He discusses founding Raas Interactive, a digital agency known for immersive marketing experiences that led to the creation of two SaaS products, Zeki and a real estate marketing platform.
Sebastian then highlights Alphana, launched in July to automate social media content creation for busy professionals using AI. He explains how the platform transforms a single video or audio piece into various formats and enhances virality through AI cards.
He also shares insights from the strategic acquisition of his previous company, emphasizing key lessons in negotiations and the balance between entrepreneurship and practicality.
Throughout the episode, Sebastian expresses gratitude for his partners and discusses technology’s role in simplifying content creation and business growth, envisioning a future of fully automated client engagement. This episode provides valuable insights into technology, entrepreneurship, and content strategy in the digital landscape.
Show Notes:
00:00 Leaving job security for unknown music passion.
03:19 Went all in on company; gained industry support.
07:35 Niche real estate marketing for multifamily properties.
12:48 Considering VC funding to scale after bootstrapping.
14:21 Considering dilution, equity, and a future exit strategy.
18:22 Fair deal overall, ensures direct negotiation experience.
21:57 Turned away many clients due to costs.
26:00 Electricians provide helpful advice, enhancing customer trust.
29:20 Video repurposed into various viral content formats.
32:20 Create and deploy effective Instagram video content.
35:30 Automate business focus, simplify expansion strategies.
36:31 Prioritize content creation using AI and automation.
More Quotes from Sebastian Mourra:
Transcript:
Demetrios:
Welcome back to another AI Minds podcast is a podcast where we explore the companies of tomorrow built AI. First, I am your host, Demetrios. And this episode, like every other episode, is brought to you by Deepgram, the number one speech to text and text to speech API on the Internet today. Trusted by the world's top conversational AI leaders, startups, and enterprises like Spotify, Twilio, NASA, and Citibank. Today we are joined by none other than the CEO and co founder of Alphana, Sebastian. How you doing, man?
Sebastian Mourra:
I'm doing great. Always good to catch up with you. Appreciate it. Being on here, talking about how you.
Demetrios:
Are in Miami, her pairing for a potential storm. So it's good you're inside today and taking the time to chat with me. I know that you have a bit of a history of being an entrepreneur, and I want to get into what Alphana is in just a minute. But let's start with where you were working at a record label and then deciding to go all in on starting your own thing. And what was that move like?
Sebastian Mourra:
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it's never easy to make a transition that way, right? You know, I worked at a large record label, Universal Music group, big company. And obviously it's cool and it's awesome because you're working with artists and talent. I mean, a lot of concerts, a lot of events, and it's music, which has been a passion of mine for such a long time. But in the end, you're at a big company, you've got a fixed salary, you've got your plans, your health insurance, you have all of these different elements. And so to make that plunge of like, well, let's let go of that security that you have and go dive into something that is really the unknown, right? That's never an easy decision. But my wife always tells me I'm crazy because that's a who I am.
Sebastian Mourra:
I could drop in a dime and go do it. Even if it's risky, because you dive into it. But it's still in the back of the mind. It's kind of like, hey, if you're making that transition from leaving a gig to going into it, you want to make sure that you're going to give it your all. And I've always had side businesses, and so we've kind of figured out ways to always make money and revenue on the side. And so when we saw that, it was just, we can't do this on the side. You've got to, like, take a plunge in that's where, like, making that decision of like, look, I love what I do here. You love the team and everything like that, and, but it is that time.
Sebastian Mourra:
And, you know, this wasn't the first time I was, I was going to try to leave, but they all, you know, there's always something that helps you to stay. Right. But, you know, that last time was like, all right, this is like the moment. Let's do it. Let's go all in. We started picking up even more on business. And I know if you can allocate all your time to something, obviously you can put your all in. It doesn't mean it's going to be completely stable, but you can really push through, which is what happened.
Sebastian Mourra:
And so ended up going all in into the company. My co founder, so had a co founder, and she's also my wife. We've been married for almost 20 years now, and she actually quit her job six months before me, and so I held on to this one to keep going while she was there, and we ended up diving into it. But, you know, the week after, we literally had meetings with Universal and obviously they become our customers, so we turned into a customer afterwards for some other work that we were doing. And so many people were very supportive of it. I mean, we started meeting with other labels. There was artists that were like, wow, I can't believe you left. We'd love to be able to work with you now and see what you can help us do.
Sebastian Mourra:
And some brands, like, you know, we worked with like, Corona and Dunkin donuts and these different elements. It was cool to be able to have that experience, to jump into.
Demetrios:
What was the agency doing?
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah, so the agency, it was called Raas Interactive. It was a digital agency very focused on building product web development, app development, and building a lot of marketing experiences. So at that time, there was a lot of digital physical activations. Turn an entire courtyard into like, a huge experience for, like, brands and stuff like that.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
Or events. We would do very, we would do digital versions of these activations to be able to bring people and activate for like a corona or Dunkin donuts. And so some of the, a lot of things we did was in the gamification side, too. Like, we would incentivize people to do things, play games, earn points, and get like, beer, you know, collect beer bottles as an example. And so we did a lot of those types of experiences that helped from a brand level. But I mean, for anything from, like, web development to web apps, other startups or companies that were trying to build stuff we've done too. But yeah, think software, product ux design. And web development was kind of our bread and butter.
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah.
Demetrios:
It feels like you've got to have a ton of creativity to be able to a understand the client, what they're looking for and then translate what they're looking for into something tangible and also in a way that it is going to attract people and not just be a dud.
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we were, we were very much on the b two b two C side.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
So obviously a lot of our customers were business customers, right, in the b two b side. But all the experiences that we were building and creating were for their end customer, which were consumers out in the market. You see what im saying?
Demetrios:
Oh, yeah. Awesome. All right, so I resonate a ton with the idea of jumping almost like into entrepreneurial land and kind of not having that safety net going from having healthcare to now you're paying for your own healthcare, I imagine, and the expenses start racking up and you're like, all right, I gotta start invoicing, folks. It seems like you were able to quickly assemble the plane as you were jumping off of the cliff. And I love hearing about that. I know you grew the company and then ended up selling it.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Demetrios:
Can you tell us about the story of selling the agency?
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah. And actually, like, right in between that. So throughout those years, while we had the agency, we had built two SaaS products and launched them as individual ventures. So one was called Zeki and the other was called SEO. And one was a gamification platform that we then leveraged to be able to power national campaigns for, like, Sprint before they got acquired by T Mobile. So, for example, we did the first ever rewards program for Pokemon Go and Sprint. So that activated over 65 million Pokemon Go players leveraging a platform like that one. And so it allowed anybody to spin up like a loyalty and rewards program for just a small subscription versus back then it was so expensive to get something like that off the ground.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And the other one was a real estate marketing platform, but for multifamily real estate, I would say very niche. And it's because they're at the agency we started. You know, more than half our business at one point started becoming multifamily real estate and these property management companies because they loved what we were doing with the artist and the brands and these things, and they were like, wow. Like, you know, we're trying to sell a, you know, apartment or something like that, or rent, you know, rent an apartment and there was nothing really innovative in that industry. And so, like, can you make this cool? Yeah, like, can you make this cool? And that's what we did. I mean, our designers kind of approached it like art. Imagine you were. Don't think you're designing for an apartment building for a second, right? Imagine you were doing a campaign for a global artist.
Sebastian Mourra:
Like, one project we had was with Jay Balvin, and he was really taken off. Mi Gente went global. And, like, we would think of it in that way of like, wow. Like, what type of experience would you create and what people? But of course, towards the multifamily industry, because in the end, you got to convert whatever it is that we were doing. And that was, like, the approach that our team really took with projects that were outside of, like, the core as an example. And once it surpassed half, we just saw a huge problem. And so then I literally separated out a team and we built out a marketing platform, CMS website builder, like, the entire thing to be for that market. And we went out to, we were like, you know what, for this individually, like, we need to go fundraising for it.
Sebastian Mourra:
And we did. We almost closed around, but we ended up getting acquired instead. No way.
Demetrios:
Not a bad outcome.
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah, not bad. And, you know, it was. But overall, it was a little bit different than we imagine. It was like, you know, first it started like partnership talks, right? And you're like, entertaining this thing. You're like, wow, I'm about to close this round. We can kind of go big. But when we started looking at the deal and we also met with the PE firm, like, in talking through this whole thing, they wanted to combine the companies. And because together we can actually go out and be able to take over a bigger portion of the market.
Sebastian Mourra:
They had a gap with the products that they were selling because they didn't have a marketing platform, so they were losing contracts. And obviously we didn't have the accounting and the property management software, so we just had the marketing aspect of it, which again, individually could still do well. And when they saw that we had an agency and we had this gamification platform, they're like, actually we want to buy all three because we can actually tailor the whole thing for the property management sector. So we were like, wait a second. So we're now in talks of like, wow, you know, we've been working for ten years building, and we have our clientele and all this stuff, and we're like, so now it was like, okay, this is actually a. Just the entire thing. So, you know, me and my co founders, we had to make a lot of decisions and figuring out, like, weigh all the options and figure out what was the best move, and not only just for us, but also for the team, you know, because even though you're running a company and we had all these great customers and clients, it's still, you're building a business and you're. We, there's always, you know, you have your ups and downs.
Sebastian Mourra:
Clients take time to pay like these. The bigger the client, the longer they take the play, the pay, it's, it's, it's ludicrous.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
So, you know, you kind of see all of these things. And so we, the acquisition for us was really important that, like, we could take care of the entire team. Nobody gets cut. And not only that, but we, we were looking to grow. We weren't looking to scale down and anything like that.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And so we even tied in, like, we literally, probably within the first year, almost tripled the size of our team to handle what we were working on.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right, right.
Sebastian Mourra:
So they were, what was great about was they were really willing to invest a ton to scale this out because they had, number one, they're much larger than us, so they had way more customers that they wanted to roll out what we already built to them.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And so when you go through the acquisition process, you know, some founders think like, oh, wow, they're going to buy a product and it's going to be easy and I'm going to have my team. But no, the team gets slashed, budgets get cut. They don't invest more on it. They pick apart what you need and all of those elements. So when you're considering an acquisition, and that's the things we consider is like, we're not going to let this kind of die. Right. We want this to be everlasting and to be able to build up and everyone's taken care of, and we could actually continue to innovate on what we were trying to do to begin with. Because if not, then it's like going back to corporate only and you're just working for somebody and not really enjoying what you're doing.
Sebastian Mourra:
Does that make sense?
Demetrios:
Yeah. So the thing that interests me the most, probably out of this, are what are some of the hard or the challenging decisions that you had to make when you were thinking about selling? And then how did you go about making those decisions?
Sebastian Mourra:
I think the challenge, so aside from the challenges of just making sure they're going to invest and scale, because that obviously was one thing we really had to think through. But the other part you kind of think through and, you know, it's in my nature. It's like we have an amazing team, we have a product that's been taking off, right? And we built it all bootstrapped. And for the ten years we bootstrapped the companies, right. Between us and the co founders, that's what we did. It's like, well, we're about to raise around and for a couple million dollars, it's like we could take that and go, just go big and scale, right? And it's like, so that was a critical decision because it's like, well, if we go the VC path and start raising after all this work, we could end up at a much larger outcome and work and do all these things. But the other side of it, and this is debate that we had between us as co founders is like, well, even though we just finished this new venture and we scaled it, we already had clients and revenue was amazing in total. Us as a group, we were already ten years into overall, even though this one was a little bit newer, but it's been ten years.
Sebastian Mourra:
So it's like we did all this work and it's like, you know, is it going the venture route? We would have been signing up for another ten years for that specific product and industry. And so it's really hard because there's exciting pieces to both, you know.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And so those are things that come into like, that was very challenging and we had to way and the outcomes that it's like if you think about, well, if we have to raise three or four rounds of funding, what our dilution would be, it was four co founders, right? So we would already been diluted to a certain extent. And then, you know, great, we do sell for a great outcome for what the company would have been. But then when you look at the, what we had from the exit side and the package, and it was guarantees, there was no money. That was like, oh, you won't get this if you don't hit a certain benchmark right from the, from the deal. So we were like, all right, are we satisfied what the deal is? But not only that, we were rolling into the company with equity for the larger stake. And what helped with that was that the PE company had about 18 months to sell that company because they had to put a return for their fund. So they were already at that time period where everything needed what we had to so that we can combine forces to go for another exit in 18 to 24 months. That was a risky part too, that we had to consider because that was not a guarantee, you see.
Sebastian Mourra:
So we kind of had to look at all the decisions, like, are we happy with what we've got now? And would this work out? But I also knew that running for another exit still kept the entrepreneurial side in me, my co founder, because we knew that there was. Even though there was risk, it would have still been fun to figure out, like, are we going to be able to pull off another exit in 1824 months? Because that was like, the window that was talked about. So I think we looked at it internally as like, this would be great, this would be a challenge. We got to take care of the team. Everybody had jobs. We scaled up, added more resources, like, all these things. So you have to weigh both sides and kind of see what works for you and I. You know, we had a.
Sebastian Mourra:
Have a daughter, she's three years old. We were living in an apartment. It was even though we were entrepreneurs, we were paycheck to paycheck, because we always kept putting back into the company. We were always growing, and it's like, it'd be great to have a cushion and take some time, and then we could always do this again.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right?
Sebastian Mourra:
Like, I had a hundred other ideas that we just never got to because we were. We were really focused on what we.
Demetrios:
Were doing, which I want to talk about with Alphana, but a few tactical items on the deal and how you sold it, because this fascinates me a ton. Did you hire someone, like an intermediary? And so I'm going to kind of rapid fire you just take whichever questions you want to answer and in whatever order you want. Did you hire someone? Were you happy with how the deal eventually turned out, or do you think you could have potentially got more? And then did you sell everything, or were you still. Did you sell a percentage and then later in that 18 months later, you sold. Break that whole thing down for me, like, a little bit more color around the deal itself.
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah, a lot of the deal is still confidential, so I'll try to explain as best as I can without divulging, getting into trouble.
Demetrios:
Yeah.
Sebastian Mourra:
But even if, again, I want to help others, if others are contemplating, like, getting an investment or an acquisition or no matter where they are in their career, we didn't have an intermediary, but we obviously, we had our attorney, who was a good friend of my co founders. That's how I met him. And we become friends, and he's like, awesome. He handled a lot of big, big, real time acquisitions. So, you know, he was in our court, which was awesome. But I ran with most of the conversations and my co founder, like, we'd have but a lot of that directly into, like, the final negotiations when we had to get through it with the guidance of, like, what my co founders and my attorney, and, like, we would talk about, like, well, this is what we should shoot for. This is what it is. And what was good is, like, even our attorney felt like this was actually a pretty good deal.
Sebastian Mourra:
Like, so when you look at the numbers, like, you want to get gut checks and get talks and talk to people and just make sure, like, okay, is this good or is it unfair? And it's like, well, when you look at the whole picture, it was like, so far, it was a pretty fair deal. Now, again, could you shoot for the moon and go even higher? Possible again, but risk, is the deal at hand a good deal? And so a lot of times I think it's, I'm not going to say a lot of times because this was our acquisition that we did, and I haven't experienced a different side, but, you know, I liked it better when I was able to have the direct conversations and there wasn't someone talking on my behalf. But, but for me, it's because I love, I'm, I'm very big on negotiating, on doing deals, sales, on that part of it. I love the technical aspect of things, but I also enjoy that part. So, but for someone who probably has never had experience in negotiating or talking or anything or doing sales, you want to have somebody who really understands the help. Like, again, you still want to be at the forefront if you're the CEO, that's super important because those negotiations are, and those talks are also them doing more diligence on you at that point.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
Because in the end, they could not sign, they could let go of the entire deal. Right. If you're not doing it.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
So, yeah, I think with it, it was a total sale. We sold the entire company 100%. And what, obviously we negotiated equity stake into the larger company because of the way we were. It's just the way the transaction had to be handled.
Demetrios:
That's it.
Sebastian Mourra:
So some deals they do instead of equity, they'll just do earnouts based on performance only. Right. And we were able to negotiate a good plan, but on equity. So we were really vested in, like, the overall company versus just like, a fixed sum that could come out. And we even contemplated what that would look like if we were to do a fixed sum. And to be completely honest, I love spreadsheets. So I put everything in a spreadsheet and I'm like, all right, what would be our worst case scenario? Our base case, and what would be our best case scenario? And we had to be comfortable with all three scenarios.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
Because this is what it is. And in terms of how it was. And when we finally got through the acquisition, I went back to the spreadsheet, and it was our best case scenario, which was amazing. The company kept their word, the CEO kept their word on everything that they would do. Everything was outlined the way it was. It took 18 months, and we sold in 2021, right before the crash. Yeah. So it.
Sebastian Mourra:
I don't know if it's luck. I mean, obviously, a lot of hard work, we're blessed, but it all worked out really well. But it's just super important for other founders. It doesn't always work out that way. And especially now, the environment is so different. But it all worked out really well. And so all the work that we did over the last ten years really paid off for us as a team. It gave us what we need to be able to take some time, you know, for what we need to do.
Sebastian Mourra:
And, you know, which, you know, I took too much time. Now I'm back into doing it all over again to go through the pain.
Demetrios:
So you went right back into it. What was the reason that you wanted to attack the specific problem that you're attacking now with Alphana?
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah, that's a great question. When we owned our past companies, we turned away a lot of customers, which even today, like you, at any company you're starting, you're going to turn away a lot of people that's not in your right fit. But we met with a lot of businesses founders, a lot of artists that were up and coming, that were trying to get their music out, figure out this whole content strategy so they can get plays on Spotify or anything like that. It was, it was a good range of people who we met with and that we couldn't take them on because our, you know, our hourly rates were, like, almost 200 hours at the time. Today might have been even higher. Stuff that people couldn't afford, but it's what we needed because we didn't. Our entire team was in house in Miami.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And at the time, so this was, like, for us, we saw, like, the problems that they were having, and it. And it came down to, it's like, well, I need to get more business for my company. I need to get more leads. I try to make more money. Like, we're to be able to grow. They know that they got to do stuff on social media, but it just feels like they don't know what to do, right? They don't know how many times to post. They don't know what type of content to post. They don't know what people are going to want.
Sebastian Mourra:
And then to make it worse is that there's all these different social platforms. Do I do Instagram? Do I do TikTok, do I do YouTube? What it is that I do? And so we saw that problem. It was just so overwhelming for them, right. Even for ourselves, like, as an agency, it's like, it's so hard sometimes to practice what you preach because you're so vested in doing the work for your customers, right? And so when we thought about content and we looked at video, I mean, billions of hours are being streamed on YouTube. All the different platforms, more people are spending more time on watching video. It's. It's insane. Like, think about it.
Sebastian Mourra:
Even apps have to control and give you notifications when you're spending too much time on. On video. It's just significantly increasing. So, you know, if. If you're a startup or a business or a founder and you're not leveraging video to help in growing your company, you're going to get left behind.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right?
Sebastian Mourra:
And so for us, that's why we really focused on, like, all right, we want to build a platform to make it super easy for others to be able to turn any video, audio, or an idea into over 30 or 50 pieces of content. And ultimately, what our vision is, the entire process is autonomous. You enter what your goals are, exactly what it is that you're trying to achieve. Like, hey, I'm trying to, you know, bring in another 100 grand this year. What do I need to do? And it outlines an entire strategy and automatically starts deploying it on your behalf.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right?
Sebastian Mourra:
And so that's our ultimate vision. And in its current state, it actually takes one video or audio, and it'll turn it into 50 pieces of content. And we make it super flexible for you to be able to leverage that until we can get to what our ultimate goal is.
Sebastian Mourra:
Wow.
Demetrios:
Okay, I see that vision, and I love it, because if I can get that know how from you and almost a tailored experience or a customer experience, that isn't you actually having to give me this custom write up or marketing plan or strategy document, and you're leveraging what is out there with AI, but it has your know how on top of it.
Sebastian Mourra:
That's very cool. Absolutely. I think it's got to be in your voice and your brand as it's represented. And again, you don't know. You might be really good at what you do. I mean, I'll just even go to like, let's say an electrician. They know what, how to, you know, install outlets, lights or whatever it is. They know how to, you know, revamp your entire system and your, and, and the box outside.
Sebastian Mourra:
Or if you need to set up a charging station for your Tesla and they come in and actually do the installation and the wiring. And I mean, it goes very in depth and they know how to do all that, but they don't know what to post. Like, they're not gonna, you know, the electrician is not in the business of teaching other people to like, go very advanced in like, rewiring a whole house that requires an electrician like permit. But they could, they do have a lot of knowledge of like, here's some tips on how to avoid tripping your breaker. Just buy a, a search protector and make sure your devices are connected to it. And that avoids an electrician like me from coming to your house and paying me hourly rate to fix it. And so they can do a lot of this type of content that makes them feel like, wow, they're just helping and enabling me to do a lot of the stuff that I can do myself to avoid needing an electrician. And guess what? When they actually really need an electrician and something breaks, they're going to call a guy who gave them all that amazing advice on, let's say, Instagram or whatever it is and in order to come in.
Sebastian Mourra:
And that's just one example, right? There's so much types of content, but the electricians just at one point don't even know what content to even create or post. And nevertheless, to put the time to do it, because the time that they're doing content, they're not out actually handling jobs. As an example, right?
Demetrios:
I go so far down the rabbit hole on that kind of stuff on TikTok. I love those kind of videos that. And so I'm 100% with you on that. Right. Just the random things that I don't get to do with the, the piping or how's this made? Or what kind of tips and tricks can I have in my house to not mess up my house, basically. And so the, the thing that I was wondering is though, are you basically, if I'm an electrician, let's go down. How would that look for me using Alphana? Are you asking the electrician questions or are you just saying, hey, here's some prompts? Maybe you want to talk about this kind of stuff and record yourself doing it?
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah, that's a great question. Sometimes I mix up a lot of kind of vision versus what we've got in our current state. And so I'm going to switch to just making sure I focus on what we've got right now. That might be really helpful because the way that we built a product today, we wanted to get our product out. We didn't want to go another six months building and not have anything out in the market.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And so, you know, we made that decision and launched it officially in July. What it's helped the most with others are people who are already recording video, but they don't have the time to repurpose it and put it out on other networks. So they might already be recording a 62 secs video for Instagram, or maybe they shot a ten minute video and they put it on YouTube, or maybe they did a podcast. And now what we'll do is we'll take that and we'll automatically repurpose it for everything you need for Instagram, for TikTok, or to post on LinkedIn, on X and all these things. So we have a, we call it AI cards, and they're like these little cards on a page. It's almost like a drag and drop website builder. You can add as many cards on the page and as you add them, it starts generating that content. And those AI cards are things like Instagram clips, a viral x thread, blog post, a newsletter.
Sebastian Mourra:
So if you think about a video, like, you can turn that into a newsletter, you could turn it into a blog post. You can turn it into a thread for xdev or for the Instagram Threads app and all this different content. It'll handle all of your titles, your descriptions, your show notes, like all the details, and it's all written in the form to help that content be discovered and also to go viral, especially, obviously, if your content is good, right? And that's the way it's written. So, you know, you're not going to just post a really large block of text on LinkedIn like you want to break it up. It's got a certain style. Like if you see things on LinkedIn go viral, you'll see how it's written. Those are the types of things that we, we do, but each person can do their own workflow, right? So, like, you're doing this podcast and let's say you or your team has a very specific workflow. This is the type of content I like to do based on my brand this is how I like it written in every single format.
Sebastian Mourra:
You do that once and then you can save that as an AI template so that now for the next hundred videos that you upload, it automatically replicates that process for you.
Demetrios:
That makes sense, 100%. Yeah. And I appreciate you saying, hey, here's what we got, but here's where we're going. And so the, the understanding that I have is you're really trying to cater to the folks that are almost like too busy doing the work of their job to think about this sea of social media and how to do the marketing because they know they should. As you mentioned before, everyone knows if you have a company, no matter what the company is, you got to be doing stuff to promote it online. And so you're saying, hey, we're going to help folks that are almost in a disposition because they're doing so well, doing their actual job, and then they're thinking about all this other stuff and they're like, ah, how do I even, what do I do? I'm, I'm not good on camera or I don't know. Or they have one thing that they're doing, but then you get to fan it out into many things.
Sebastian Mourra:
Exactly. So if, so, when I look at, like, what we're really doing, I learn about your business, what you do, and we have best practices already baked in. We know what your goals are, whether it's a revenue target, a views target, or whatever it is. We can even go even more niche. And what's some of the expertise that you have? What are you really good at in this sector versus what are you not good at? You start to learn a little bit more about the person. And from that information, we then are able to be able to build out what an entire content strategy would be for you based on the platforms that would work best on your behalf.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And so let's just start with like, say something like, let's just say Instagram for a second and it's like our 30 days of content. Well, you know, if you're willing to be able to record video, then we can actually put together the entire content plan. Here are the titles for those videos. Here's the viral hook that you need to say for each individual video that already works and is tailored for that platform and proven to get content to go viral in your industry. And then here's what the framework of the body of the content and the call to action you're going to put at the end and have that already so that all they got to do is go in and hit record so that they can put that video. So now we've taken away the I don't know piece. But on the flip side, if you don't want to go on camera, then we'll create the entire video for you and deploy it on your behalf. And so I think the piece of this is for them to be able to have the ability to be able to either be them, they themselves, to become the creator, the person who can talk about this content.
Sebastian Mourra:
But there's still a lot of people who are just, they're just not going to record video.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right.
Sebastian Mourra:
And so what do you do in that case? You sometimes hire another agency, you hire another company, you hire an AI, you hire a content creator to do it on your behalf and let them record the videos, but on behalf of the company. And so, you know, for us is to be able to automate the entire process so that you're completely hands off. But we do, we're always going to have individuals who want to be hands on so we can automate the entire workflow of the parts that, again, you may not be good at. You might be fine at talking on screen. You know, I would love it if somebody gave me the perfect script every single time. All I do is hit record and I'm done because I'm fine with being on camera. You see what I mean?
Demetrios:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen one. Just as a bit of a tangent, I saw one feature that I think TikTok has where you can create your script, and then it's like a teleprompter that's coming up on your phone as you're talking to your phone. So it's like you're looking at your phone, you're reading the script, and it's there for you. Feels like that's something easy to include in that. What you're trying to do, too. And the other piece that I was thinking about is undoubtedly from your days in the agency. You saw that it's not just the social media part.
Demetrios:
And so I can imagine that you're already thinking about, okay, well, this is one part of the funnel or that acquisition channel, right. How can you go and then scale that out? This is just the wedge to get you in. But then somebody's got to have a place where they can capture leads. So what are you going to be doing there? Somebody's got to have somebody that picks up the phone and answers it when someone calls or that replies to emails, et cetera, et cetera. And I can imagine the grand vision, as you mentioned before, is really trying to help those folks and going end to end on it.
Sebastian Mourra:
Yeah, it's funny. And I rarely get asked going that far from people. And so that's a great question. Cause we don't talk about that because it is very forward looking. But in the end, I need to be able to solve the problem where you absolutely have nothing you need to do when it comes to being able to handle the content, the conversions, and growing that part of the business. I want you to focus on your craft, whether that's, you know, performing music, whether you're the electrician that's going out and doing the jobs or running the team, or if you're a SaaS startup founder who is more technical and you're trying to focus on that part of the business versus content and what your marketing strategy is. And so, yeah, as we think about the future and expansion, who knows where it goes? But there's a lot of room to be able to expand into areas to automate the entire funnel.
Sebastian Mourra:
Right?
Sebastian Mourra:
Because I think for us, that's super important. We built a lot of funnels. In our past companies, we built these campaigns, we saw the conversions in the analytics, but what we avoided in the company was content creation. In our past companies, we really focused on the other side of things. We had a partner who worked on content creation video, and we would leverage them, like introductions type of thing. But I think seeing that shift, there's so much more opportunity to be able to handle this piece of it and then be able to handle that entire process and how that looks like, whether it's within our product or we're leveraging partnerships with other tools to just automate the process. The point is that it shouldn't be a difficult tool for you to use. It should be more like, hey, I've got my AI content manager, or your content studio that kind of handles everything for you.
Sebastian Mourra:
You wake up every morning with your report of either how many leads you got, how many views you got, what the measurements were, and because of, you know, how everything's performed. Here's some new content I created, and I'm going to put this out tomorrow for you. Like, you should just wake up with that, drink your cup of coffee and move on.
Demetrios:
That's incredible. Well, I love the vision. Sebastian, thanks for coming on here, mandy.
Sebastian Mourra:
No, I appreciate it. Thank you, man. And always good catching up with you guys. I love deepgram. You guys really helped us out when we made the switch. So anything we can do to continue partnering together.
