The Exchanges

Q But I would love to start there with a little bit about you, and I was chatting to our mutual friend, Alex at Javelin, before the episode, and he said the founding story for HitRecord is one of the most unique stories, so how can I not start with that? What is that story, and the journey to being a venture-backed Business today, Joe.

A Well, thanks. It's a long story, so I'll try not to make it overly laborious, but it begins not as a founding story at all, because HitRecord did not start as a startup in the least. The place to really begin the story is actually when I'm six years old, is when I started acting, and luckily I'll skip a number of years and say that I acted and had a great time doing it until I was 19, and then I quit for a while to go to college, and After I wanted to get back into acting, I couldn't get a part. No one would cast me, and this was a really painful time in my life, because I felt this really strong desire to be creative, and my creative outlet was acting, but if you're an actor and no one will give you a part, then you can't do your creative thing, and that's painful, and I realized at that moment, I have to be the one to take responsibility for my own creativity. I can't wait around for somebody else to give me permission to be creative. And at that time, hit record became this little symbol or mantra that I had for myself. The round red record button was this metaphor of, I'm gonna push it, I'm going to hit record, push the button, and I'm gonna get started, and regardless if anybody cares or anybody gives me a part or whatever, I'm going to be creative. And I started making little short films and songs and stories on my own, and this is a long time ago, back in the early mid-t…

AI assessment note: “hit record became this little symbol or mantra that I had for myself”

Q Alex is an incredibly good looking chap, I know, but in terms of the investor selection there, given the traction that you had, you know, you had your pick of investors, relatively speaking. How did you approach the investor selection element, Joe?

A Well, it was about having a lot of conversations with a lot of different people, and we were not just looking for money. If I wanted to raise money, we probably would have had an easier time in Hollywood, raising from media of Funds, because that's where my connections are. We spent, not exaggerating to say years, forming a new network in the technology community, and meeting various people, seeing what it would be like to work with them, because what I wanted, even more than the capital, was the guidance. I think I had grown old enough to do away with the hubris of my youth that would have said, ah, you can do it by yourself, you'll figure it out, I was like, no, there are people who are very good and experienced at doing this. I'm good and experienced at doing some things, but I've never seen this done, and I want to surround myself with people who have. That was really the litmus test for me. Who can I envision having conversations with that can really provide guidance, that can really put me together with good people, and who can be collaborative, and who are not purely motivated by profit. I know a VC has to be motivated Vaded by profit. That's realistic, and that's important, but Alex has a genuine passion for movies, for art. If you get into talking with him, you'll, it won't be long before you're talking about movies, Lord of the Rings. He had a million questions for me…

AI assessment note: “what I wanted, even more than the capital, was the guidance.”

Q But I would love to start there with a little bit about you, and I was chatting to our mutual friend, Alex at Javelin, before the episode, and he said the founding story for HitRecord is one of the most unique stories, so how can I not start with that? What is that story, and the journey to being a venture-backed Business today, Joe.

A Well, thanks. It's a long story, so I'll try not to make it overly laborious, but it begins not as a founding story at all, because HitRecord did not start as a startup in the least. The place to really begin the story is actually when I'm six years old, is when I started acting, and luckily I'll skip a number of years and say that I acted and had a great time doing it until I was 19, and then I quit for a while to go to college, and After I wanted to get back into acting, I couldn't get a part. No one would cast me, and this was a really painful time in my life, because I felt this really strong desire to be creative, and my creative outlet was acting, but if you're an actor and no one will give you a part, then you can't do your creative thing, and that's painful, and I realized at that moment, I have to be the one to take responsibility for my own creativity. I can't wait around for somebody else to give me permission to be creative. And at that time, hit record became this little symbol or mantra that I had for myself. The round red record button was this metaphor of, I'm gonna push it, I'm going to hit record, push the button, and I'm gonna get started, and regardless if anybody cares or anybody gives me a part or whatever, I'm going to be creative. And I started making little short films and songs and stories on my own, and this is a long time ago, back in the early mid-t…

AI assessment note: “HitRecord did not start as a startup in the least. The place to really begin”

Q that, you said the word pitching, in terms of the pitching process itself, Joe, how was that process for you, and how does it maybe compare to pitching for roles in the early days of your career, and really kind of presenting what you can do, and what you can do, both in terms of the technology, pitching for fundraising, and then in the acting world, how do they compare?

A There is a lot of overlap. It's a good question, and it's It's funny because I think my background in show business has prepared me in many ways for being a tech entrepreneur. And then in other ways, it's not prepared me at all. But one of the ways I think it's prepared me is in pitch rooms. That's something I'm good at. That's something I've been doing ever since I was a little kid is going into a room, understanding who you're in a room with, understanding how to connect with those people, understanding how to speak their language, understanding how to get them to understand what you're saying. Like I said, I've been doing that my whole life. Doing it in a pitch meeting is rather different than doing it in an acting audition, or even when you're pitching a movie as a filmmaker, because when you're pitching a movie, it's purely emotional. All that matters is that you get the story to resonate emotionally with the people you're pitching it to. That's it. When you're pitching a company, what I found is there's also this analytical quantifiable component. And what's funny is I thought at first that that's all it was going to be. I thought, I'm just going to have to be able to go in and present the math and the science of why this is a good investment. What I found, though, once I started going in and pitching is like, oh, this is actually more similar to pitching a movie than I t…

AI assessment note: “Doing it in a pitch meeting is rather different than doing it in an acting audition”

Q of hit record, and alongside it, your acting career also exploded in terms of success. I guess my question is, how do you define yourself? And what I mean by that is, would you say that you are first a tech founder? Would you say that you're first an actor? How do you define your own self in that respect, given the success of both dual roles in your life?

A That's very kind of you to say. I, I guess I would consider myself first eclectic. I would be sad if I had to give up any of the Wide variety of things that I am fortunate enough to do, and by the way, I never considered myself a tech founder, and we never really considered HitRecord a tech company until very recently. We always said, I don't have a tech background. Jared doesn't have a tech background. Our third co-founder, Mark, his background is in architecture and design. We're three artists, really, and we always said, technology is not our strong suit. We have a small team of engineers who have been able to build a website and an app based on what Mark draws, and that's Fine. Whatever is adequate enough to allow us to make the art that we want to make, that's good, and we're not gonna lean any further into technology than that. But then, after we sort of ticked all the boxes and accomplished everything that we had put on our list originally, what we noticed was we're hitting a certain limit of how many people we can really include in these productions when we're a production company, and we started thinking to ourselves, what if it wasn't always us leading the productions? What if anybody could come and have the tools to To lead their own project. We could take what we've learned as a production company leading these collaborative creative processes for all these years an…

AI assessment note: “I guess I would consider myself first eclectic.”

Q Alex is an incredibly good looking chap, I know, but in terms of the investor selection there, given the traction that you had, you know, you had your pick of investors, relatively speaking. How did you approach the investor selection element, Joe?

A Well, it was about having a lot of conversations with a lot of different people, and we were not just looking for money. If I wanted to raise money, we probably would have had an easier time in Hollywood, raising from media of Funds, because that's where my connections are. We spent, not exaggerating to say years, forming a new network in the technology community, and meeting various people, seeing what it would be like to work with them, because what I wanted, even more than the capital, was the guidance. I think I had grown old enough to do away with the hubris of my youth that would have said, ah, you can do it by yourself, you'll figure it out, I was like, no, there are people who are very good and experienced at doing this. I'm good and experienced at doing some things, but I've never seen this done, and I want to surround myself with people who have. That was really the litmus test for me. Who can I envision having conversations with that can really provide guidance, that can really put me together with good people, and who can be collaborative, and who are not purely motivated by profit. I know a VC has to be motivated Vaded by profit. That's realistic, and that's important, but Alex has a genuine passion for movies, for art. If you get into talking with him, you'll, it won't be long before you're talking about movies, Lord of the Rings. He had a million questions for me…

AI assessment note: “what I wanted, even more than the capital, was the guidance.”

Q that, you said the word pitching, in terms of the pitching process itself, Joe, how was that process for you, and how does it maybe compare to pitching for roles in the early days of your career, and really kind of presenting what you can do, and what you can do, both in terms of the technology, pitching for fundraising, and then in the acting world, how do they compare?

A There is a lot of overlap. It's a good question, and it's It's funny because I think my background in show business has prepared me in many ways for being a tech entrepreneur. And then in other ways, it's not prepared me at all. But one of the ways I think it's prepared me is in pitch rooms. That's something I'm good at. That's something I've been doing ever since I was a little kid is going into a room, understanding who you're in a room with, understanding how to connect with those people, understanding how to speak their language, understanding how to get them to understand what you're saying. Like I said, I've been doing that my whole life. Doing it in a pitch meeting is rather different than doing it in an acting audition, or even when you're pitching a movie as a filmmaker, because when you're pitching a movie, it's purely emotional. All that matters is that you get the story to resonate emotionally with the people you're pitching it to. That's it. When you're pitching a company, what I found is there's also this analytical quantifiable component. And what's funny is I thought at first that that's all it was going to be. I thought, I'm just going to have to be able to go in and present the math and the science of why this is a good investment. What I found, though, once I started going in and pitching is like, oh, this is actually more similar to pitching a movie than I t…

AI assessment note: “Doing it in a pitch meeting is rather different than doing it in an acting audition”

Q discuss. He obviously talked about kind of the book itself. I was chatting to Alex before the show, and he said, I had to ask About the current state of social media. How can I disobey Alex? Never a good idea, as you know. So how do you view and assess the current social media landscape, Joe? And what are your thoughts on it, maybe from a more macro perspective?

A Sure. Well, there's a lot being said about how social media is impacting the entire world, and I'm not really the expert with the authority to speak about how it might be undermining democracy or how it might be creating negative impacts on our economy. I'm not an expert in political science or economics, What I can speak to, though, I think with some authority is how social media today impacts creativity and the creative process, and it goes back to that business model that I mentioned Jaren is critical of. The business model of Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, all these companies is based on an attention economy. They sell attention. They sell the attention of their users to advertisers, and so it's in their interest for the users to Get as much attention as possible, and so when you're a creative person, and your destination for your creativity is these platforms, your whole focus, whether you're quite aware of it or not, you've been trained with very powerful behavior modification techniques. You've been trained to be wanting attention, and I know from experience that if your goal in a creative process is to get attention, you're never going to be satisfied. It's Always going to be a hollow and an anxiety-laden experience. In my experience, the attention that you get, the applause, or the box office, or the walking the red carpet, these things that I've been very priv…

AI assessment note: “how social media today impacts creativity and the creative process”

Q discuss. He obviously talked about kind of the book itself. I was chatting to Alex before the show, and he said, I had to ask About the current state of social media. How can I disobey Alex? Never a good idea, as you know. So how do you view and assess the current social media landscape, Joe? And what are your thoughts on it, maybe from a more macro perspective?

A Sure. Well, there's a lot being said about how social media is impacting the entire world, and I'm not really the expert with the authority to speak about how it might be undermining democracy or how it might be creating negative impacts on our economy. I'm not an expert in political science or economics, What I can speak to, though, I think with some authority is how social media today impacts creativity and the creative process, and it goes back to that business model that I mentioned Jaren is critical of. The business model of Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, all these companies is based on an attention economy. They sell attention. They sell the attention of their users to advertisers, and so it's in their interest for the users to Get as much attention as possible, and so when you're a creative person, and your destination for your creativity is these platforms, your whole focus, whether you're quite aware of it or not, you've been trained with very powerful behavior modification techniques. You've been trained to be wanting attention, and I know from experience that if your goal in a creative process is to get attention, you're never going to be satisfied. It's Always going to be a hollow and an anxiety-laden experience. In my experience, the attention that you get, the applause, or the box office, or the walking the red carpet, these things that I've been very priv…

AI assessment note: “What I can speak to, though, I think with some authority is how social media”

Q Can I jump in and ask, is it possible, given that the attention economy is so permeated into our media structure, Do you think it's possible to move away from it and to maybe disengage slightly from it? How would ideally the next steps play out for you in your mind?

A Well, look, I don't know about what it's going to take to have Facebook or Instagram or these other platforms become not so dominant in our society, but what I spend a lot of my time doing with HitRecord is building an alternative, where at least people who have the wherewithal and the volition to come and try something else And what we're trying to build on hit record is an ecosystem for creativity that emphasizes what in my experience is the more joy filled and meaningful parts of the creative process, which is not about how much attention can I get for this? It's about the making itself. When you show up on hit record, it's not about post what you've made and try to get attention. It's about, Hey, what can we make together? Find some people. Join a project. Start your own. Focus on the actual creative process. Here are the steps, and, uh, I think when people engage and focus on that part of the creative process, it makes a very different feeling, and I know I feel anecdotally, and speaking to our community, I know a lot of people feel it as well. If you spend 20 minutes looking at the HitRecord app, and you find a little writing challenge that you find amusing, and you end up writing a little poem or a little story, Or rewriting someone else's story, or drawing a picture based on someone else's story, or any of the other creative prompts that are going on on HitRecord all th…

AI assessment note: “I don't know about what it's going to take to have Facebook or Instagram”

Q of hit record, and alongside it, your acting career also exploded in terms of success. I guess my question is, how do you define yourself? And what I mean by that is, would you say that you are first a tech founder? Would you say that you're first an actor? How do you define your own self in that respect, given the success of both dual roles in your life?

A That's very kind of you to say. I, I guess I would consider myself first eclectic. I would be sad if I had to give up any of the Wide variety of things that I am fortunate enough to do, and by the way, I never considered myself a tech founder, and we never really considered HitRecord a tech company until very recently. We always said, I don't have a tech background. Jared doesn't have a tech background. Our third co-founder, Mark, his background is in architecture and design. We're three artists, really, and we always said, technology is not our strong suit. We have a small team of engineers who have been able to build a website and an app based on what Mark draws, and that's Fine. Whatever is adequate enough to allow us to make the art that we want to make, that's good, and we're not gonna lean any further into technology than that. But then, after we sort of ticked all the boxes and accomplished everything that we had put on our list originally, what we noticed was we're hitting a certain limit of how many people we can really include in these productions when we're a production company, and we started thinking to ourselves, what if it wasn't always us leading the productions? What if anybody could come and have the tools to To lead their own project. We could take what we've learned as a production company leading these collaborative creative processes for all these years an…

AI assessment note: “I guess I would consider myself first eclectic.”

Q Can I jump in and ask, is it possible, given that the attention economy is so permeated into our media structure, Do you think it's possible to move away from it and to maybe disengage slightly from it? How would ideally the next steps play out for you in your mind?

A Well, look, I don't know about what it's going to take to have Facebook or Instagram or these other platforms become not so dominant in our society, but what I spend a lot of my time doing with HitRecord is building an alternative, where at least people who have the wherewithal and the volition to come and try something else And what we're trying to build on hit record is an ecosystem for creativity that emphasizes what in my experience is the more joy filled and meaningful parts of the creative process, which is not about how much attention can I get for this? It's about the making itself. When you show up on hit record, it's not about post what you've made and try to get attention. It's about, Hey, what can we make together? Find some people. Join a project. Start your own. Focus on the actual creative process. Here are the steps, and, uh, I think when people engage and focus on that part of the creative process, it makes a very different feeling, and I know I feel anecdotally, and speaking to our community, I know a lot of people feel it as well. If you spend 20 minutes looking at the HitRecord app, and you find a little writing challenge that you find amusing, and you end up writing a little poem or a little story, Or rewriting someone else's story, or drawing a picture based on someone else's story, or any of the other creative prompts that are going on on HitRecord all th…

AI assessment note: “what I spend a lot of my time doing with HitRecord is building an alternative”

Q And then the final one, and perhaps the most exciting here, Joe, what are the next five years look like for you and for HitRecord? Just how big could this get?

A Well, our target with HitRecord is not people who are trying to break into the creative industry or people who are aspiring to, it's really not that. It's any, Human being with the urge to be creative, which I think is in many ways, any and all human beings. What we have found over the years of doing this as a production company is that when you invite people into a community, rather than saying like, hey, post what you have, you say like, hey, let's all make something together. It really brings people out of their shells and unlocks a creativity in a way that you don't see when people are doing it alone. And so I think that there is Literally billions of people out there who really have that urge to be creative. They want to write, or they want to make a video, they want to make a song, they want to draw, they want to do it, but it's hard to do it alone. And today's dominant platforms, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, they don't really offer a path for folks like that. Folks like that feel like, oh, I'm embarrassed. I'm not going to post my thing on Instagram. Like, no one's going to like it. But on HitRecord, it's not about that. It's about like, hey, come, let's do it together. And so I think That's what I want to build is, is a thriving ecosystem where everybody in the world who has that urge can find someone to do it with.

AI assessment note: “That's what I want to build is, is a thriving ecosystem where everybody”