20VC: What I Learned from 100 of the Best CEOs in the World | What I Learned from Staying with Mr Beast for 3 Weeks | How We Will Spend More on Tokens than Salaries with Cliff Weitzman, Speechify
episode
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
1h 44m
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 4 months ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What marketing strategy should you adopt before reaching $100K?
Don't even bother spending money on any platform that's not Meta until you reach $100,000 a month in spend on Meta. Companies go through cutting and bulking cycles like bodybuilders do. We test almost a thousand day generated ads a day right now. We're getting to the point where soon we're going to spend more in tokens than we spend on actual salaries. If you don't spend a thousand credits a day, I'm disappointed in you.
How do companies go through bulking and cutting cycles?
If you can really trust someone, you can afford to pay them significantly more. The world around us was built by people no smarter than you or I. You could do things.
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and in our show today, we have Cliff Weitzman, founder and CEO of Speechify.
What lessons did Cliff learn from meeting the top 100 CEOs?
So this is the guy who solved his dyslexia and ADHD by building a voice AI agent that's now used by over 60 million people and has over a million five-star ratings. I've never had a guest who has such batshit crazy stories. So check this out.
Why is it important for leaders to edit their own ads?
What I learned from sleeping at Mr. Beast's house for three weeks, this is the man that got hacked, went and tracked down the hacker, then hired him and got him to live with him also. He spent 11 days sleeping in a Walmart parking lot in the middle of America. There is the most insane amount of stories from Cliff, and this is one of the most fun and fascinating stories we've ever featured on 20VC. But before we dive into the show today, meet Ava, the first autonomous AI BDR built by Artisan to run your entire outbound on autopilot.
Hey, Jason Lemkin from Sastr here. Artisan is S tier. We've replaced our entire outbound sales team with Artisan. I believe we've sent over 50,000 highly customized emails to Artisan. The open rate is twice what it was with humans, and they close 100K deals day after day.
Ava's sources list. leads from over 250 million contacts, enriches every prospect with intent signals, then writes and sends personalized multi-channel outreach, self-optimizing over time. When a lead replies, she handles objections and books meetings straight into your AE's calendars without any human input. Artisan is backed by Y Combinator and has raised $36 million to build the first truly autonomous AI BDR. Hire Ava, the AI BDR, and put your outbound on autopilot at artisan.co slash 20VC. That's A-R-T-I-S-A-N dot co C-O slash 20VC. While Artisan scales outreach, Intercom helps you support faster. As AI agents become more common in customer experience, teams often end up juggling multiple siloed tools for every job.
Well, Finn was built to change that. It's a single unified agent that works across your entire customer experience from service to sales to success and beyond. Finn is the agent making perfect customer experiences possible for thousands of customers. It's powered by custom models, trained on years of real customer interactions, so it understands the nuance and complexity of customer service better than any other agent. That means faster resolutions, more consistent support, and just better experiences for every customer. It's also designed to be fully self-manageable, so you can easily improve and adapt it as your business evolves. No third parties required. Leading companies like Gamma, Asana, DoorDash, and Crypto.com already use and love Finn to deliver better customer experiences.
So see what Finn can do for your team at finn.ai forward slash 20VC. You have now arrived at your destination. Cliff, I normally ask for great suggestions beforehand. And honestly, most of the time they're like six out of 10. And I actually have to get really creative. I have to do so many references and I love that. But then you sent me yours and I was like, oh my God, I actually sent them to the team. And I was like, this is wild. So we have some of the most insane stories coming up. First, thank you for making my life easier with the schedule. Second, thank you so much for joining me in person. My pleasure. It's great to be here. Now, I do just want to start. University, you applied to 26 colleges when everyone else applied to eight.
Can you talk to me about this and just the strategy behind that?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What marketing strategy should you adopt before reaching $100K?
0:00–0:19
2
How do companies go through bulking and cutting cycles?
0:19–0:32
3
What lessons did Cliff learn from meeting the top 100 CEOs?
0:32–0:48
4
Why is it important for leaders to edit their own ads?
0:48–53:41
5
Why are performance reviews considered a waste of time?
53:41–54:34
6
How does Cliff Weitzman approach hiring and team dynamics?
54:34–56:03
7
What lessons does Cliff share from his time at Mr. Beast's house?
56:03–57:02
8
How does Cliff Weitzman view the future of AI and its impact on society?
57:02–1:44:38
Speakers
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