Agenda:
Takeaways:
Agenda:
Takeaways:
welcome to this startup is being recorded. This recording is improvised fiction. Similarities between it and the real world are entirely intentional. Now enjoy the recording.
Kate:Okay. Recording is on. Um, so I I'm glad you all were able to make the time today because. just have a few updates on how south by Southwest is going. Um, John did give the speech earlier today. Um, as part of, I mean, obviously he was on the, you know, climate change in tech panel, which was interesting. So I have some updates there.
Matt:Okay. Yeah. I tried to tune in, but their livestream wasn't working for
Eric:Yeah, Sam.
Matt:for whatever.
Kate:Yeah, no, I got a transcript. So I have, I have a hard time, I think deciphering some of the tone he was using. Uh, but
Matt:telling him like, when he practices these things, he's like totally legible. And then on the day he is, he talks like the micro machines guy. Like he's just so fast.
Kate:yeah.
Calathea:he definitely, I mean, we've had him in media training so many times to the point that our media trainers. Um, and it's just like, he is perfect in prep sessions and then he gets up there and it is like vroom, vroom, Indy 500, just as his words, just keep going and go in and go in.
Kate:Oh, before we get too, too into it, I know like a lot has been happening at south by Southwest, but we may have new employees watching this. Let's just quickly, um, intro ourselves. And, you know, obviously they'll know what they're listening to. It's a recording of our, our meetings, but I'm Kate Blanchet, uh, chief of staff here at CIT. We are a couch marketplace about to hit our series a are getting some great press this week. It gets. Press this week at south by Southwest
Calathea:yeah, I'll go next to Califia not Roba. Uh, I am the chief creatives are here at six.
Matt:Uh, all right, I'll go. I'm Matt, matt.yachts. That's also my website and I am the CTO here at CIT
Eric:and I'm Eric Joyce Carter, uh, chief product officer here at CIT. Um, and just to go back to the conversation, I think it, um, I think it's my fault, actually, that John hasn't been improving on this. we've been using his voice as a test case because it's so fast for our Alexa and Google home integrations, uh, for ordering, we can go find somebody who's speaks as quickly. We'll go look on like task rabbit or fiber, and maybe that will incentivize him to stop, you know, stop speaking to.
Kate:okay. Yeah, that's a good idea. Um, let me just real quick forward, you all this, uh, transcripts that I got, so you can, we can kind of scan through it together. Um, there's a few things that he committed us to.
Matt:Um, hang on. He promised my team that other than this bespoke VR experience that we were building for south by Southwest in a week, I will add, uh,
Eric:Yeah, I'm going
Matt:he wasn't going to sign us. Sorry. Okay. Um, uh, just going to scroll through this, I thought there were going to be no surprises.
Kate:right.
Calathea:I mean, I'm taking a look at it now and I proved all of the copy and there is almost none of it here.
Eric:what, where was this transcribed as it is it possible? This is just garbage. Is, is accurate training.
Kate:I we just need to accept the fact that John says things like this, for instance,
Calathea:I don't, think it's, I think this is exactly the case. I mean, I've been seeing clips on Instagram stories, um, uh, parts of the speech. So I, I think, unfortunately we're dealing with the real.
Matt:Yeah, all of this sounds like John. Okay. I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't get that, uh, activated carbon, like charcoal filters or are not carbon credits, John.
Eric:oh, no.
Matt:Sorry, I'm looking at the, um,
Eric:I see it.
Matt:yeah, he's, uh, he's referring to are in beta. They're not even announced are our charcoal odor absorbent cushions, uh, as if, as if they can absorb CO2
Calathea:Who even taught him the word carbon sequestration.
Kate:I don't know is that even.
Matt:it from somebody else on the panel. This is exactly the kind of
Calathea:Oh, yeah.
Matt:himself riled up and he, he was supposed to speak first and he didn't.
Kate:No, he
Calathea:Oh, yeah, Steven, Josh is before him. Uh, and I
Kate:Who's that?
Calathea:our problem here. Um, if he runs, um, rewatch up and, uh, which is that, you know, other big new tech darling that came out around the same time as we did, um, Fe they kind of have like a frenemy relationship. Uh, John tends to get super hyper competitive when he's in the room.
Matt:yeah. So, sorry, you guys, I didn't, I didn't read the list of other panelists. I, I would have raised a flag on this
Calathea:No, I, I didn't, he must have been a last minute addition because I would have caught that. I mean, this is because things like this happen and they're really bad for our brand. I mean, we can't do half of the things that
Matt:Okay. Hang on. I'm reading more about the carbon sequestration he's selling. He's selling carbon credits.
Calathea:what.
Matt:He's promised. Yeah. He's promised to open up, uh, in a B2B fashion for manufacturing companies. Oh man. Who need to
Eric:full marketplace.
Matt:carbon neutral
Kate:We wait, how, but
Matt:carbon sequestration power of our odor absorbing couches. Oh, wow.
Kate:can you even do that? Can you store carbon and cushion?
Matt:No,
Calathea:no. you can't. You definitely can't. I mean, we don't, we don't sequester carbon. Like we our
Eric:it.
Matt:I mean
Calathea:don't and like, I mean, those credits, those are things for like planting trees and kelp forests, you know?
Matt:the, the goal with carbon credits is, uh, I mean, look, let's be real. A lot of that market is a scam. There is.
Calathea:a hundred
Matt:There are, there are companies that pledge to not cut down trees that already we're never going to get cut down. There are, uh, places that promise not to, you know, burn coal that they already aren't going to get out of the ground. in our case, um, yeah, this is tough. I mean, this is activated charcoal stuff. It contains a lot of carbon that has been sequestered into a cushion that fits inside of our zip close covers. But it's not going to pull any more carbon out of the atmosphere.
Kate:I know, I mean, This doesn't make any sense to you cause we're actively cutting down trees, you know, to go after the, the pure wood couches that he thinks are going to just take off this year.
Matt:wait a K we're. Are, are we doing that? I thought we were still outsourcing our lumber. we're getting into lumber.
Kate:we're getting into lumber. Yeah. I mean, prices are just high right now for really everything. And you can. Hire people on the cheap who can be trained to cut down trees. I mean, not super safely, but they can do it.
Eric:we had some regulatory changes in. That made that process a lot easier to accelerate.
Kate:It's true. They have very little, uh, employee safety standards there. So.
Matt:And, uh, and I'm, I'm guessing. Lumber. Uh, they must have forests.
Calathea:Yeah.
Matt:a good old Iowa and lumber.
Calathea:Yeah. They're old growth forest. Um, so about as awful as, uh, logging could be.
Kate:Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like the, the Trump era policies, like made some like national land areas available for logging. So that's kind of where we've started.
Calathea:Yeah. Um, I don't know if you remember, I was gone last week, um, to go sit up in a tree after with an activist who's been living there, um, for the past month.
Kate:right. I think we've almost reached a deal with her though. She, um, she's close to coming down.
Calathea:I think so. I mean, it's,
Eric:see all the speech.
Calathea:yeah,
Kate:That's fair.
Calathea:yeah, that's true. I mean, I, we're not between the Amber grease and the logging. I mean, we are not the friends of environmentalist and maybe John thought that this would put us in this, their good graces, but this is just even
Matt:ah, wow.
Kate:he also pledges that are all of our workforce can work from home at least 50% of the time.
Calathea:Including
Kate:least half of our workforce are drivers. I don't know. Wait, what is he saying? Oh God, wait. No, he's saying that will, there'll be able to control the cars from their home as if they were in a video game. Yeah.
Matt:Jain.
Eric:just what the VR experience was supposed to be for your controller. Your avatar to sit on one of our couches. It's not designed for
Matt:Yeah, hang on. He,
Calathea:I mean, I know that
Matt:from our VR experience that that's just a bunch of couches, this oh, no.
Kate:Um, Matt, is that
Calathea:also, also the fact that he's showing this as if it's something that our drivers are really doing. I mean, that VR experience was supposed to. Crazy taxi S game. And this is very not safe in the ways that they're driving.
Matt:yeah, look, I mean, what my team built is, is a completely virtual experience. Okay. That's meant to be enjoyed in a purely imaginary space. Uh, I, I am my team, uh, have not been retrofitting any vehicles with the, the equipment necessary to do this. So, uh, if it is happening, like it's a skunkworks project, it's somebody, it's
Kate:know.
Matt:inside of set.
Kate:No, no. I mean, all of, most of our vehicles are still those like nineties era bands, you know, and I, I get the sense that those don't really have self-driving capabilities or
Matt:I'm on. Any, any car could in theory be retrofitted,
Eric:Sure.
Matt:but, uh, I mean, I haven't gotten the, oh, there it is. Okay. I okay. I just got a very hastily, clearly hastily typed out email. Uh, John. dictated from his phone asking what it would take to retrofit all of our vans to be remote drivable. Good.
Kate:Well, okay. So let's, let's play this out. Even over delivery drivers could remote drive our vans. They still have to unload the couches and load them. They do loading as well or wait.
Matt:yeah. Now He
Kate:He didn't
Matt:that, he, uh, he asked, um, and can you make sure that each one of them has a robotic forklift installed as well, which still does not actually solve the problem,
Calathea:Yeah. I mean, our delivery drivers carry the couch in the house. It's our, you know, no back problem guaranteed.
Matt:sorry. Quick reply. Uh, he sent me, he's just now sending me pictures of bomb, disposal, robots, and asking me how much I think they can lift.
Kate:Okay. And listen, we did that test last year, where we had some of our drivers dress up as robots to see if people would even accept a robot deliver in their couches. And it went very
Eric:are horrible.
Calathea:Yeah, it was, it was not good.
Kate:Oh,
Matt:Yeah. I'm going to remind him of that. Um, uh, I'll start constructing this email. Um,
Kate:is not ready.
Matt:I'll find that. And, um, I mean, I just, I'm also let me know, you know, if this is a bad idea, I'm just going to remind him like this didn't work out for any company so far, like Uber has shut down their self-driving car division. Um, like whatever flex he's trying to do, actually he know, you
Eric:no, no, that'll put, make him competitive Jose. We can do better than.
Matt:I think what I'm going to do is, um, Kate, could I get you to estimate what it would cost to just hire twice as many drivers on a temporary basis?
Kate:Sure
Matt:if we have 50% more drivers, if we have a hundred percent more.
Kate:right.
Matt:And each of them is working from home half the time. Then we have just as many drivers loaders on the road and we're just paying the rest of them to sit at home.
Kate:our budget for drivers. Almost a million, a quarter.
Matt:yeah. Well, I don't want to tell you the budget that he just gave me for this project. Um, but suffice to say, I think it's going to be a lot cheaper. To just hire twice as many drivers than it will be to try and outfit all of our cars to be remote drivable. And I think that's going to tip him over when he realizes that it's like 10 times cheaper
Kate:Wow.
Matt:you know, we'll do it. It'll be bad. And then the new cycle will pass and people will forget. And this will just be like another little start-up boondoggle that happened.
Kate:yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, we, we should talk about some of the other things that have been happening at south by Southwest. Um, obviously we. Donated a lot of couches to different booths, uh, try to get some kind of company partnerships going as well as we had like the couch display, um, that was included in the VR display. And yeah, I don't know if y'all have seen any videos, but, um,
Matt:I got, I got some messages, uh, from, uh, the dev team for the folks that went to install the VR stuff. Um, but mostly they were just pictures from like kind of sad looking rave parties with open bars. Um,
Eric:Yeah. Well, speaking of. No. We tried to integrate the VR experience with the physical couches that were on stage. And there was, there was a misalignment. Uh, so the couch was appearing in VR, a few feet to the side. And so it, DJ Khalid tried to sit down on the couch, but he sat on his own turntable and he has a pretty serious. Femoral artery injury.
Matt:he almost bled out.
Eric:almost bled out like, Hey, we got to the stage, you know, and of course, you know, he did a signature and another one sat back down and again, which exacerbated the energy injury. So
Matt:Wow.
Eric:we haven't gotten word that we're going to be sued, but it's not a good luck.
Calathea:it is, yeah, it has been trending on pretty much every hashtag related to our company. I've been on the phone with DJ Khalid's people. I mean, um, right up to this meeting, honestly, trying to figure out something that we can do to, you know, apologize publicly. Um,
Matt:my
Calathea:he wants a lot, I mean, he lost a little. Blood, um, you know, um, I, uh, the negotiation started at a literal pound of flesh. Um, and
Kate:he wants someone else's flow.
Calathea:yes.
Kate:Um, what would be, what a cadaver be. Okay. Or like a live humans? Flesh.
Calathea:Listen, I'm not planning on making anybody get a pound of flesh. Okay. Like, I, I understand mistakes happen. Nobody should have to, you know, cut off any part of their body for the. You know, we're going to negotiate. We were, we were very clear that we were, we were not okay. You know, doing an eye for an eye kind of approach. Um, you know, but we were willing to really do anything other than personal body parts and fluids to make it up for him. So,
Kate:it.
Matt:I w I would also like our, uh, our insurance people and our legal people. Um, Every piece of documentation about designing this experience. Okay. We did it on a crunch and it was the potential for error was there, but we can not let the event organizers off the hook for this, because it looks like in order to accommodate an extra row of porta-potties, they moved a set of stairs and. A big chunk of the stage by exactly three feet, would of
Eric:good news. That's good news.
Matt:off. Yeah, of course. It's going to throw off all of our VR sensing unless they, if they had sent us those specs, uh, we absolutely could have built that in, uh, or if they had been in touch with our engineers, we could have adapted for it at installation time.
Eric:Yeah, I mean, we, maybe we can avoid the financial penalty, but the, the brand impact
Matt:yeah, no,
Eric:sit down for what is not, not a good look for.
Calathea:Yeah. it's, it's, it's not really
Kate:for us though, you know, sit,
Calathea:It was, I mean, that's the problem, right? I mean, it it could have happened to anyone, but to happen to DJ Khalid, who is somebody that we put a lot of money and time into really cultivating that relationship with him and his fans. I mean, they kind of backlash that we're getting, it's not just normal, you know, we almost killed a celebrity, but like, It's, we were a beloved member of the college community and, you know, there's just this deep sense of betrayal. So I'm not sure what we're going to be able to do to make up with that. But I think it's pretty important that we, you know, um, really try to make it up to the Cal heads.
Kate:you think you would accept blood?
Calathea:I don't know,
Kate:I just, I,
Calathea:hummus. I,
Kate:I, this is something that I, I recommend everyone do, but just once a month or take some of your blood free. It will last for at least 18 months. Um, so if you ever do need more blood, like let's say you have an accident at your house, you can bring your own blood with you to the emergency room. Um, and it's great because it's sort of like donating blood to yourself. So I do have some.
Calathea:why would you do that? Kate? Why, what possibly
Matt:I see what you mean.
Calathea:possess you to do.
Matt:problems. There's no rejection. It's an exact type match. There's no lookups to do.
Kate:that's easy because you can take your own blood while watching Netflix at home. You don't have to worry about the red cross is ours, you know?
Eric:pick your own snack.
Kate:Yeah, exactly. Um, so anyway, I I'm a, I'm a type O I don't know if that would work with COVID, but.
Matt:oh yeah, that's a universal.
Calathea:I can, I can approach him about an offer of blood, you know, and see, you know, it could be, it could be a good thing for us. We could, you know, do a really public exchange of the blood and maybe tie in the American red cross and do a blood drive at the same time, show some sort of social impact there. Um, Yeah. I'll, I'll say check in about the blood thing.
Kate:Okay. But I would have to deliver it to him frozen, because if you want to defrost it, it kind of, you need to run it through special machines that otherwise it coagulates in ways that like really are not what you want. So it had to be like, I can bring a freezer. I solved my own problems.
Calathea:I think the blood exchange is mostly symbolic. Um, so, so, I'm not sure he's going to need to use it, you know?
Kate:oh, I just think it's important that blood gets used. Um, that's just
Matt:It seems like a waste to.
Eric:well, I mean, if he keeps it in freezer, he could use it in the future. He doesn't have an immediate need to use.
Kate:Or maybe the red cross wants it. Yep.
Calathea:Yeah. I can
Matt:Yeah. Donation
Calathea:about the red cross. I mean, honestly, to Kate, if we didn't really want to sneak into your blood stash, that you've seem to have worked really hard on. I mean, we could all just give blood to the red cross. There could be that, you know, our blood bags could just be given to DJ Khalid, you know, for a moment for a photo up, you know, with him holding it and. You know, with like the needle, so you can actually see that exchange and then we donate it to the red cross and that way we're not wasting anybody's blood and we're, we're doing a good thing.
Kate:Awesome. Okay. That would make my primary care physician happy because she feels like I'm giving myself too much blood already. Um, anyway, um, So that was the DJ Khalid couch fiasco. Um, we've had some issues with the other couches that we've donated to two other start-ups and the booths. Um, I guess there was a perception from a lot of them that we would be giving them a couch in the metaverse and so they weren't prepared for an actual couch. So there's frankly just like couches in the hallways and kind of. Scattered throughout the whole exhibition hall.
Matt:like, that seems kind of nice. I mean, I remember when south by Southwest was like just kinda chill, you know, it's gotten so corporate and so the startup broey, it seems nice to just have like places to sit and lounge.
Calathea:Yeah. I mean, I honestly think that this is a benefit. We've definitely seen a lot of people on social media posting, uh, from the couches. We have gotten a request from the organizer who's to remove some of them because there have been some rather loud nappers stereo. Sessions. Um, it's become a prime nap spot for a lot of people, as you know, you're just partying hard. And, um, there's just been a couple of incidences of like really loud snoring that they're trying to rectify and would like our help with.
Kate:yeah. I mean, and there's also the guy who like nap for almost 18 hours. And so they weren't actually sure if he was still alive or not. Um, that was a bit of a problem.
Calathea:Yeah, let's just say Wednesday of south by Southwest was not our best new cycle between, um, rip van Winkle as they call him and DJ Khalid. Uh, it definitely looked like our couches were killing people. Um, Um, I'm hoping, you know, with both of those systems rectified that we can get back on track with like a, really a much better brand narrative, or at least I thought that until John gave a speech this morning and I, I think we've completely lost the strands of what story we're telling at this event.
Matt:That's not that different from every other presenter, an exhibitor at south by Southwest this year, if I'm being honest, you know, unlike most of them were there with a physical product. You know, we show them that we have a supply chain, we can get things done, uh, in the real world, uh, using hard currency.
Calathea:Yeah.
Matt:hate to laugh too much at the crypto bros, but, um, N no, I don't hate that at all. Actually. I think even with all of this, like, it's a, it's a wind, like sit really showed up at south by Southwest this year.
Calathea:I would agree. I mean, we had a physical. Product, but show that showed up. So that was really great. Um, you know, accessibility even non-participants have been able to really appreciate our couches because they are just strewn about everywhere throughout the city of Austin. Um, and we didn't follow on our face like Corona with their free beer tent that turned out to just all be an augmented reality experience.
Kate:Okay. Did anyone else hear any updates about our couches or, or things at south by Southwest um,
Matt:have a brief update. So our, our VR experience, um, the crazy taxi style couch
Kate:um,
Matt:uh, and sitting, um, it's running fine. Uh, all of the interactive elements, uh, are we probably over-provisioned, uh, the number of servers we'll need. Um, so everything's going smoothly there. I think the, the issue is our location, um, within. All of the, uh, the exhibit exhibit halls, uh, the VR experiences, the AR experiences, um, people are all motion sick by the time they get to us. So, um, not a lot of people are playing. They're just like taking the time to chill out and sit on the couches in our space, I think, yeah, it was a huge waste of development resources and time that we could have been better spending, uh, elsewhere. But, um, you know, conversely, you know, they've thrown up by the time they get to us. So it's going to save on couch cleanup, uh, and it gives people a safe space.
Calathea:Yeah, I actually think this is a really great, uh, learn lesson learned for us about the user experience at south by Southwest. I think maybe our role next year, instead of having a VR experience is to have a actual personal like couch relaxed space and have some branded vomit bag.
Matt:Yeah. You know, combined combine that with, uh, the odor absorbing seat cushions. Yeah. And you've really
Calathea:Oh, yeah,
Matt:middle of, uh, this kind of chaotic sensory overload.
Calathea:that's
Matt:you an, uh, a real reality experience.
Calathea:Yeah. And you know, I'm thinking vomit bags are great, but. If we wanted to make that vomit experience better. I mean, we could think about, you know, ways that like maybe toilets are your typical way, but maybe there's some new innovation on a more pleasant, vomit experience. And it could really show how, you know, our brand is making everything comfortable. You know, sitz brand is really bringing comfort to the digital space.
Eric:Yeah. Could we make it, uh, uh, a compost add on to the couch
Calathea:Oh, I love that.
Kate:could we sell carbon credits if we compost? Is that enough?
Eric:better than what we're saying?
Matt:Yeah.
Calathea:actually a green alternative.
Matt:right. And
Kate:Compost smell like terror.
Eric:not as bad as vomit.
Matt:on the compost.
Calathea:Yeah.
Eric:But again, with our filters.
Calathea:We exactly we could do our filters putting in some Cedar chips help.
Kate:Cedar chips, uh, okay. Some of the forests or cutting down our Cedar.
Calathea:And we also have all of that old, uh, sent from our last brand that we haven't donated yet. So we could definitely, you know, pour that liberally.
Kate:Okay, well, this is great. We've got a plan for next year. Um, a lot of the issues we've identified that have happened this year, um, and there's only like one day left or south by Southwest. So fingers crossed not that
Matt:yeah, John's not speaking again. Is he in?
Calathea:yeah, he's giving a five minute ignite style presentation. Uh, Yeah. Um, again, I've seen the slides. It's only five minutes, but I don't know. He seems really amped up in this tech
Matt:don't do, uh, do y'all remember, uh, metal market started as one of those?
Calathea:Oh yeah.
Matt:Yeah, it was one of his south by lightning talks. I mean, there were to be fair. There were a lot of ideas that he threw out in there and I'm sure.
Eric:talks about.
Kate:That's
Matt:Yeah. Without, without like a slowdown playback of the tape, there's probably a lot that was missed in there. That's the first time I remember hearing him, uh, pitch the, uh, the seat at the table for everyone.
Calathea:Yeah. it was, it was great. It was like right in between, uh, a LA league soccer league. That's made entirely of llamas and, um, a new AME chat. That's just for robots talking to other robots.
Matt:Oh, yeah. I wonder whatever happened.
Kate:Okay. Well, isn't that still on our roadmap, Eric?
Eric:it, is, um, it keeps getting pushed back a year at a time though. And that's not by accident.
Kate:Um, okay, excellent. Well, I think we can wrap. Thank you all. And don't forget, we do have all hands tomorrow. Um, and I guess we should probably adjust some of our annual goals based on
Matt:Yeah.
Kate:speech.
Calathea:I'll do some, I'll do some social monitoring and see, you know, how much people have picked up on what he said. Just to get a sense of like how beholden we're going to have to beat.
Kate:great. Yeah. Well, it's hope they missed a lot of it because of the fast talking part.
Calathea:I mean, this might be a great thing about DJ Khalid is that honestly, we got a lot of attention in the news cycle on Wednesday that maybe they've missed this.
Matt:y'all seen by the way, the iTunes chart numbers for sit down for what.
Calathea:Yeah. It's uh, it's blow it up.
Matt:It's everywhere. There, there are some, uh, pretty choice remixes going around tick talk as well. Uh, you know, using the obviously tragic, but th the footage, um, yeah, I, you know, maybe he's angry with us now, but this is doing numbers.
Kate:Yeah,
Calathea:true. This could be our Oreo moment.
Matt:Reminds me having had lunch today.
Kate:Okay. Everyone go eat, uh, and set. All right, I'll stop recording.
Ben:This meeting has ended. To subscribe to this startup is being recorded. Go to the podcast player of your choice and tap a button that likely says subscribe. More content is on Twitter at startup recorded, or shoot us an email with ideas, feedback, or your personal startup horror story. At hello@startuprecorded.com. Kate is played by Valerie Garrison. Valerie is a health tech product manager and regularly plays with the improv troupe letters to chicken online. You can find her on Twitter at thevalgarris eric has played by Barry wright Barry is a product manager at Spotify and a co-founder of Highwire Improv. Find him by his name on LinkedIn, where he holds regular office hours or at highwireimprov.com. Matt is played by Marty Mcguire. Marty is a senior web engineer and improviser in New York city. You can find Marty's comedy code and cats on his website at M M G dot R E. Calathea is played by Robyn Stegman. Robyn is a digital campaign manager for ocean Conservancy and is a comedian mostly found at Highwire improv. You can find her on all the social medias. And she does mean all at rsteggy thank you for listening.