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:Oh, and recording the recording is on. Uh, so yeah, before we start this meeting, everyone, let me just, uh, make sure I've got all the info here for John and anyone else who might be listening to this in the future. Oh,
Matt:sorry. So sorry. So sorry please.
Kate:No problem. No problem. We, yup. Uh, so we're in Meta Markets headquarters conference room. B of course Meta market is where we all work. Metta market has a couch marketplace and, um, well on our way to raising our series a, which is really exciting, we're trying to shape the future of trade. by giving everyone a more comfortable seat at the table. And, uh, today we really want to just dig more into that series a goal. So yeah, we touched on it briefly, Matt. I know you've had a busy week, so.
Matt:We still asked, uh, what, um, 47 hours. Uh that's how long it's been since I slept. So, uh, yeah, the last couple days has been, um, a thing we'll get into it. We'll we'll uh, talk more about that.
Calathea:Yeah do you, do you want some of my mushroom coffee? I forged it this weekend on the estate of Courtney Kardashian
Eric:What is that? What that smell is? Yeah. Yeah.
Matt:I've never had truffle coffee before or tea. I've already forgotten what. It's coffee.
Calathea:Oh, good. Yeah. Well, you can just have mine. Actually. My, my saliva does give people energy, you know, I just like it's imbued with my, my spirit.
Matt:Yeah. You know what I'm going to push through and I'll, I will take that. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Kate:Great. Yeah. I mean, we are going to cover a lot of numbers in today's meeting, so probably good to be as caffeinated or, um, Whatever essence mushroom has a fide as possible. Uh, but let's just, let's just do quick intros just for anyone who is watching or listening to this recording. And hasn't met us before. Um, Eric, you want to start? Uh,
Eric:yes. Uh, Eric joy Carter, uh, head of product here at Meta market, uh, and, uh, we'll get to it, but I have, I have some leads on some metrics we could be looking at for, for series a. So, uh, team's been working hard to come up
Matt:here. Yeah. Great.
Calathea:I'll go next. I'm Calathea not at Nararova I am the creative soul of Meta market.
Kate:I am Kate van Chet, uh, chief of staff to John, our CEO, who? Uh, yeah, he said he wasn't able to make it today. Um, something about a golf emergency, uh, but we'll just handle it from here. Yep.
Matt:Uh, oh, sorry. Um, hi, uh, Matt, uh, diet's, uh, my name and also my domain, uh, uh, dot yachts. I am, uh, the new, um, almost onboarded, uh, CTO. I think we've got a handle on a big chunk of the technology now, or at least the known knowns and the known unknowns. Um, well, yeah, the, the list of things that we're sure we've figured.
Kate:are we still working on the list of things that we are sure we've forgotten? Um, well,
Matt:what I find is at, um, any technology endeavor, there's always going to be new lists of things that someone tried and forgot and left running. Uh, but for now I'm just trying to get a handle on, um, well, I, I, I, when it's my turn to do updates, I can, I can do that. But, uh, sure. Needless to say, uh, things are a little more in hand in Des Moines.
Kate:Okay. Interesting. That's where you've been the last 47 hours
Matt:because you, oh God, sorry. Yeah. I didn't email anybody about this, although, um, Califia your, uh, your person on the ground there? Uh, it was Chelsea Chelsea. She's amazing. Uh, yeah. Um, really resourceful, really restored. Yeah, I know. She's, uh, she's splitting her time between marketing, uh, you know, directly for Metamarkets and working on the, uh, sorry. Is it oral? Is it? Yeah,
Calathea:it's a mayoral campaign for the couch. Yeah. She's really amazing. It's very rare. You get somebody like her, who's both a former Navy seal and an avant-garde artist.
Matt:Yeah. Just super helpful. Um, I guess, sorry. I'm I know we try to keep these meetings tight. I guess I've already started a bit of my update. I, so I could give a little more information on the last couple of days.
Kate:Yeah. Just dig in 30 seconds or less if possible. Okay.
Matt:I'll try. I'll try to keep it short. Um, we have been literally hunting the location of the two servers we use for all traffic, uh, through the Moines. And, uh, thanks to Chelsea. And, um, some late night surveillance, we were able to track it down to a garage on the east end of Des Moines, uh, where, um, I still don't know all the details, but I'm guessing a contractor was hired to set this up and it was running out of their parents' garage. Uh, so after a tense night in the garage, um, really tense night, uh, we managed to copy off the stuff. And, uh, get that stuff, move to a data center in the cloud. And I'm pretty sure that we went undetected. Although I do have a, like a real, like a real tickle in my lungs. Oh, um, yeah. I, I forgot to mention, uh, the parents have completely disavowed and disowned. Uh, the, the person who set this up there was a real schism in the family and, um, I'm happy to share. You know, some of the correspondence we've had, uh, if you want to see it, but a trigger warning. It's, it's very explicit. There were a lot of, uh, physical threats made. Um, so thankfully, thanks to Chelsea. We were able to just, you know, I want to say, get in and out, but there, but it was really long periods of waiting punctuated by moments of, uh, abject.
Calathea:Yeah, and I just want to make it clear, Matt, that we're willing to cover the tactical gear out of the marketing budget, uh, because Chelsea was able to record a lot of that. And I just think it's going to be really great for a tick-tock account.
Matt:That's really cool. Oh, and then it makes me really glad I picked, uh, the pair of that I did. Um, cause I'm, I, you know, after 24 hours of no sleep, uh, I don't, I didn't really want my face to be on our.
Calathea:Yeah, no. Yeah. And of course, I mean, this is the exact reason why we created branded Burke Clavis, you know, for a purpose of like this,
Kate:um, I thought we were just doing them for, for warmth and because they were on sale at the merged company.
Calathea:Yeah. Of course. Those are things that, you know, also was really important, but covert operations certainly. You know, felt, it felt like it was really critical for us to have
Eric:that we like multi-purpose here.
Calathea:Yeah.
Kate:Got it. Yeah. So, so I guess, um, all of this is making me think maybe our, our data center strategy is not the best. Um, Eric,
Matt:it wasn't, um, at least into Moines. I haven't been through the, uh, the major market cities yet, but we've, um, we're good on. Uh, no longer running out of a garage there and we've moved our assets up to the cloud so we can administer them from here, uh, which is going to be, um, well, it's going to be easier.
Kate:Great.
Eric:Yeah. That's um, that's fantastic. Uh, I didn't hear you say you destroyed the old server. Do you, do you know if it was destroyed?
Matt:Here's what I can tell you about the old server. Uh, I don't think anyone without a sledge hammer or a Jack hammer will be getting at it anytime soon. Let's just say their garage is about six square feet smaller than it used to be. I can work with
Eric:that,
Kate:but. Um, maybe as a followup a week, I can just put it on our list to go back through our records and figure out who we outsourced our data centers to in each of these cities. I know Eric, if I remember correctly, we just found some really new budding startups that were doing data center stuff and they had great discounts and now I'm very concerned. Okay.
Eric:Yeah. That's uh, that's fair. Um, I feel like, uh, maybe fewer records. Uh, in
Matt:this case, oh, uh, Chelsea did give me some advice on that and, um, burning. It was the advice, uh, and that's, that's what she did with the, uh, honestly like impressively thick dossiers. She had built, uh, on this developer's parents and, um, their extended families, uh, jobs, pets, past relationships. Um, she really had it all laid out. Uh, You know,
Eric:or output her outputs. Incredible. Did, did she, did she talk to you about the tattoo business? She runs on the side.
Matt:Uh, she told me that was a need to know. I'm not sure if she was just being polite. Um, but with Chelsea, I wasn't going to press it. It's good. Okay. Have you ever need
Kate:one? Yeah, she's, she's, she's
Calathea:really remarkable. I, we obviously, uh, the only employee I could ever think of that impressed me more than Chelsea was Victor.
Kate:Yes sex. Sure. Speaking of really none of those things, um, we are, our runway is quickly kind of shortening up, I will say, especially given some of the travel expenses, um, that the creative team has been allowing. So I think we really should maybe start focusing a bit on the series eight goal. Yeah. So Matt, we thought we would kind of start by taking you through some of the things we are tracking about Metta market, and maybe this could spark some ideas, uh, from your industry experience on numbers. We could pull in competitors. Great.
Eric:Yeah. Um, so, uh, I had the team pull together, all the analytics we've been, uh, been tracking, uh, they're going to work with somebody on the team to pull these into a dashboard that we can share with investors, uh, and also have for these meetings moving forward. Uh, but I wanted to highlight kind of five key metrics that I think may get us on the path to building a case for the investors. Um, so the first one, uh, is number of press mentions in print magazines. Uh, We've been highlighted in at least four, uh, local print magazines, uh, and garden and gun. Uh, so that's, that's actually more than, uh, Facebook or Amazon have been mentioned in. Um, so that's, that's a plus for us. Um, it does take some time to gather that information, but, uh, it's, it's compelling.
Kate:We have been, it's actually more expensive than you would think to buy all of these. Um, so we've mostly been getting local library cards in most of these markets renting out the magazines and then ripping out the pages, uh, that Metamarkets in. So if you're ever interested in that scrapbook, uh, you can find it in the break room, but it's in that laminate. Yeah.
Calathea:Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to mention, since we're talking about press mentions that all of this is organic because from the creative side, we believe that print is dead. And so we did a funeral for it and everything like that, but we don't actually recognize, uh, it's perseverance it's grip on life in our changing media.
Eric:Yeah, this, this has been a bit of a point of contention between Kathy and myself and the investors. You know, if we do get to the point where the investors kind of latch onto a print metric, uh, product is prepared to take on some of the print marketing aspects, as well as keep up a complete wall between product and marketing on those efforts so that we can maintain a posture of considering print dead, uh, but still get money into that into, you know,
Calathea:We've also been holding some seances to kind of open the door between product and creative so that we can speak back to a time when print was alive and give some advice on how to help their ongoing soul.
Eric:It's been pretty effective. Yeah. It's um, it's been a nice extra use of the screaming room. Yeah.
Kate:So I guess all of that aside, Matt, do you feel like print is a competitor? Stat that your past investors have been, you know? Oh,
Matt:um, when it comes to any of the past projects I've worked on, no, that would not have been useful. Um, but this is clearly a different company and we've got different goals specifically this 90 day. Well, a little bit less than 90 days now, but this 90 day goal of. Really taking some ambiguous wording and finding a way to, to square that circle. Yeah, exactly. So I think any, any numbers we can come up with, especially numbers that are hard to argue with. I think we need to really lean into that right now. Yeah,
Eric:totally. On the same
Kate:page. Yeah. That's the second metric is really hard to write.
Eric:Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's math, it's pretty straight forward. Um, we've been computing, the, uh, multiplicative mean distance between all the couches in our market, uh, purview. Uh, so basically we have a map of all the couches. Uh, we know the pairwise distance between every pair of couches and we take the average of that. Um, it's both helpful for us internally because we can understand kind of, you know, are we getting done? Uh, from a marketing point of view and from a distribution point of view, which helps with, you know, operations helps us figure out where we're going to put our next distribution centers, but also nobody quite understands the math behind it. And therefore again, um, you know, we're operating kind of in a category of one when we talk about it.
Matt:Right. Uh, that certainly sounds like a metric that no competitor, uh, even tracks internally much less would. Someone to treat competitively. So I think that one's certainly going to be interesting. Yeah.
Kate:And I want to be really clear about how we collect that. Right. Cause we, um, it's not just the address where the couch is shipped to. We put tracking devices and all of the couches. And so, you know, I am a hundred percent sure that couches on any of the other marketplaces don't have that. Um, we, we did a little project a couple of weeks ago where we bought couches from the other market. Ripped them apart and then scan them with metal detectors
Matt:so nobody else's is putting radio tags inside of their couches as far as we know, not yet. At least not that our teams have been able to detect. Right. Great. You know, Uh, I find this metric a little hard to juggle, but, uh, let me propose this. What do you think about mapping that data over time and comparing it to the densest population centers in Des Moines with the goal that that dot hits the center? I think if we're the most centered within de Moines, that must mean we're the top couch market. Oh,
Eric:that's great. Um, let me, let me just send a quick slack. Um, cause I think what we can do is we can take that same metric, slice it by, uh, metropolitan area and figure out which markets were most centered in. Um, that actually would be really, really interesting
Kate:and be taught. We don't need to be the most centered couch. Mark placement would be the top marketplace. Unless we're interpreting that as like elevation or something. Like, I don't think centering
Matt:is elevation actually is a, is a great idea. Um, yeah. Have you, uh, have you ever heard of the term, uh, statistical conflation? Yeah. No. Okay. Erickson. Sorry, Kate, I don't, I don't mean to throw words like this around. I'll just let me play in it. Um, I'm, I'm very tired. Normally I'm better at this. Uh it's it's when you take two measures that could be displayed in a similar way. And do you do so in a way that confuses the viewer? So let's forget about mapping these dots in 2d. Yeah. Let's map these dots by elevation and let's map that elevation to Alto. So we can take a topographical map of de Moines and, and using our central data place, those dots over the highest points in de Moines.
Eric:Yup. It's
Calathea:pretty flat. So I really feel like this is going to show some stark differences of our domination over at the city
Matt:of nine. I think so, especially let's put a focus on dense population centers. High-rise buildings, apartment. Those are all of those, all of those trackers are going to come out well above sea level. Yup.
Kate:I mean, okay. Okay. I mean, if we're just trying to confuse the investors, why don't we just go to higher elevation cities? I mean, Moyne is,
Eric:yeah, we're not we're we're, we're, we're crafting a narrative, right? We are, we are, we are, we are building a story that shows that we're the top marketplace in these markets. Um, I elevate this elevation, this elevation in central city combination is really interesting. Basically. We just create a category of metrics in which we are the obvious leader.
Matt:Yes. And I want to, um, oh, sorry. Califia go ahead.
Calathea:No, I, I just, I don't want to sidetrack us, but Eric, you just said about crafting a narrative. Okay. All of these. Other couch marketplaces have logos. Some of them have some sort of mascot or something representing them. What if now, now hear me out on this. We had bugs be challenge. These representatives of these companies and gladiatorial combat, or maybe a joust. I haven't decided what period we're really going for here, aesthetically. And we could show that. Let's be the brand is actually stronger than all of these other couch marketplaces bands in, you know, hand on hand horse on worse, you know, gut on gut, whatever aesthetic we want combat.
Eric:Yep. And what we, we do it in the, in the cities where we don't have the elevation advantage. We go to the, to the markets where we're behind and just, just take over via bugs me battle.
Kate:We, we couldn't even win the accelerator field day last year. How are we going to ever put together adjusting team?
Matt:Califia um, am I right? That I've seen, uh, some of the, the it staff playing fortnight, uh, with a Bugsby skin. Oh
Calathea:yeah, yeah, of course. That was one of our, one of our many, um, many things that we're doing. Really engage the gamer
Matt:audience. Okay. I think, I think I know what we need to do here, and that is we need a promotional. Uh, we need to run a promotion where if you show video streaming streaming on Twitch, YouTube, uh, make a Tik TOK of yourself playing fortnight. As Bugsby dominating altitude wise, take the high ground. We want to see bugs be literally towering over everyone else in the. I think that will give us the numbers we need to show that bugs me is on top in terms of mascots. You know
Calathea:what? This is really good. Also. I think that this is something like we could get Chelsea to do. What if bugs be literally was towering? What if we did a full takeover of the largest buildings in all of our cities and actually built a Bugsby skin on those buildings,
Eric:they wrapped the architecture. Exactly.
Calathea:Yes. Like they've wrapped those let's take the highest buildings and we wrap them in some sort of like bugs, be marketing wrapper.
Kate:Okay. This seems like a lot of work for operations, mostly. Um, and so I was just wondering maybe is there a way we could stress test this idea before we go all in to make sure the investors don't see. Laugh in our faces or take, take the contract away. Some of us really want to be successful. Sorry.
Eric:Yeah, yeah, no, this is good. We got to do an MVP first. How about, how about we, we construct the bugs be skin in de Moines in a fortnight map that we've created that represents the Moines. And we just show a video of that to the investor. And if they react positively, we can say, okay, we're going to go get the other markets and we can do it for real. I
Calathea:really like it. I'm thinking like that focus on investors just makes me really think, like, what if we use this bucks skin and. Figure out where investors, I mean, figure out, we already know where our adjusters drop their kids off, go to coffee. And we just skins some buildings around there with bugs B. This is what happens when you ditch the dying idols of print, you know, like they don't need to open up a magazine of garden and gun to know we're big. They could just literally see it on the side of the Starbucks. They go.
Matt:Yeah, I think, Kay, I'm, I'm a little nervous about your, your energy. I just want to be clear right now, in order for Mehta market to succeed or even continue functioning at all, we need to secure this series a round and yeah, if we don't do that, we can't move another couch. We can't help another customer. And we certainly will not be. To meet any of our 5, 10, 20 year goals. So we're getting into
Kate:Forbes, sorry. Yeah.
Matt:Yeah. Well, for sure. I mean maybe as a footnote in some of their also rans, if we're going to do this right now, our target is a full press disinformation campaign against our investors so that wherever they look there's Metta market, whenever they think about a couch it's ours. Whenever they think about a marketplace. And with that done, we can, we can roll it all back. You know, we can fix it, we can do things. Right. But until then, I think it's gotta be all stops. Pulled out.
Eric:I do want to mention real, real quick, the third, fourth, and fifth metrics, the other metrics are a little bit more standard, uh, monthly active users on the marketplace dollars, uh, sold, uh, per month. And, uh, No followers on the top four social media sites were second or third and all of those metrics, uh, but it's unclear how long it's going to take us to get to number one. So I really feel like we should invest in this bugs. Be fortnight takeover of Des Moines scenario as the fastest path to get some money here.
Calathea:Your piece about disinformation just reminds me of the time that I was an award winning children's author for Exxon. And I'm just wondering if we really bring the bugs B experience, uh, down low, you know, children are oftentimes a big influencer in the household, so maybe we need to think about some bugs speech children's books, you know, where bugs be. Is, you know, obviously the star of the story and we make all of the other like Facebook and all of those other places look really stupid. And we just ship those books to the schools that our investors, kids go to.
Kate:You know, we don't even need to do that. I, I babysit for four out of five of our investors.
Matt:Oh,
Kate:what's yeah, yeah, no. It was just like, it was just a footnote in the negotiation to help extend our runway by a month or two. Um, so yeah, I mean, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Friday nights, Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings I'm with any combination of them. So I could just bring this book directly to them or wait,
Calathea:we could whip up a curriculum for you. You know, if you have the time
Kate:they've asked me to homeschool, I just,
Matt:I thought that also means you're on premises. You're in their homes where they keep their computers, one
Kate:of their homes. Yeah., most of them have multiple homes, but yes, there are definitely computers in all of the homes.
Matt:Right. Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume if this is where their children are, uh, this is also where they are using the internet from many days a week.
Kate:Yeah. They're pretty much. All the time. Okay. Okay.
Matt:And the investors, I think our budget for this actually just went way down. Uh, Kate, um, how has your red team training?
Eric:Wow. Your son a lot like Chelsea, she rubbed off on you.
Matt:Yeah. She and I, uh, actually had a lot in common when it comes to computer security and physical premises, security, I'm going to make up some USB sticks for you. And what is red
Kate:team?
Matt:Oh, don't worry about that. It's a, it's a term in security
Kate:and Fortnite. Oh, well, yeah. I don't play video games, so that's why I wouldn't now.
Matt:Yeah, you can have all kinds of different team colors in Fortnite and red team is just one. That's really popular as a meme. Okay. Do these kids like. Uh, stuffed animals, you know, like a bear that could record your voice or a Barbie doll that, uh, can, can talk to you like Siri,
Calathea:do they have any pets?
Kate:I mean, they're getting really into NFTs, but I don't really know if they're into stuffed animals. I haven't seen any.
Matt:Okay. Califia. I just want to make sure you heard that right. That they're really into NFTs. Oh yeah. Okay. I think bugs being NFT, maybe our back door to this whole thing. Well, listen, I I'm feeling very optimistic now that we've got lots of ways forward. We are working on our numbers and we're going to, to make those metrics and use those metrics. We're going to be in the investors' ears, eyes, homes, and hearts through, through. Literally their children. And if it falls through, we could always just scam them within FTS. Sorry, this is recorded. Isn't it. We could always sell them a tokenized valued asset, a unique Bugsby that is guaranteed to increase in value across the blockchain.
Kate:I feel like we've made a ton of progress. This meeting I'm feeling so hopeful. Um, uh, before we wrap up, are there any last I noticed is that our official stand up? Are there any last like blockers or things that people want to announce? What all here?
Matt:Uh, I I've, I have one I'm sure I'm going to be unconscious for the next 12 to 14 hours. Oh, yeah, I haven't slept in, uh, now it is 48 hours and, um, on the point of hallucination. Okay.
Kate:Okay. That's fine. Uh, there are cots in the yoga room if you need those. Um, probably shouldn't be driving. Okay. Um, I, I did want to ask the, uh, uh, the placenta that's in the fridge. Is that definitely still good? It's been a few.
Calathea:I mean, it's still carries the energy of the mother who ceremonially birth that out of her I'm and it's like plant-based so it should last longer, you know?
Kate:Yeah, that's true. Okay, cool. Just, uh, Jen was not feeling great and I don't want the liability of something that we gave her being the cause for what happened to her stomach.
Calathea:Well, we can't be responsible for everything Jen decides to put in her body. I saw her drinking something from Dunkin donuts the other day.
Kate:Okay. Some people like Dunkin donuts, but yes. Okay. I also just,
Matt:that reminds me, uh, Califia this mushroom coffee is, um, it, well, it's not enough, but that's not its fault. It is very good. It is extremely earthy.
Calathea:I'm so happy. Yeah, you are going to have. Really wonderful dreams. Um, do you, I don't want to pry in your personal life, but when you go pass out, are you going to be passing out in the vicinity of anybody?
Matt:Uh, I was hoping not to, um, mostly for the interruption value. Uh, why do you
Calathea:ask that would be great. Um, and you don't keep any like knives under your pillows or firearms and proximity?
Matt:No. Okay,
Calathea:great. No, I'm totally fine. I'm just, there's just been, you know, the mushroom tea, just give some people, some crazy dreams sometimes. And I just want to make sure that you're having safe sleeping habits.
Matt:Um, the yoga room, I think, is mostly filled with soft props. So I don't think I can cause too much trouble there. Yeah,
Calathea:you'll be totally fine. Yeah, I'll just, I'll take out my coven blade before you go in.
Matt:Okay. That's great.
Eric:Some more, some more good news. I ju I just saw, I just saw we've raised enough money to save bugs being from the architect.
Calathea:Oh
Kate:yeah. What did we estimate that cost to be again
Eric:like$87,000 and we just hit 90 so we can afford a down coat to warm bugs. Be up. It's gonna be.
Calathea:Well, I will work right on that. Bugs speed. Thank you. Message.
Eric:Oh, awesome.
Kate:We are just a tactic that's ever worked to make money, but a great,
Matt:great day. Great day. Okay. Good week. Yeah. Go
Kate:get some sleep mat even
Matt:if, yeah, thank you.
Kate:Alrighty, I'm gonna stop the 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 the vulgaris. Eric has played by Barry. Right. Barry is a product manager at Spotify and a co-founder of high-wire improv. Find him by his name on LinkedIn, where he holds regular office hours or@highwireimprov.com. Matt is played by Martin Maguire. 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. Califia is played by Robin Stegman. Robin 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 our steaky. Thank you for listening.