The Exchanges

Q In this episode, I am going to include basically as many products that you've mentioned here in the show notes so people can actually go and try it. Um, but you still owe me an answer to a question, which is how much money did it, does it, you know, approximately how much money to create a Roberto Nixon-like studio?

A Okay. Um, my, what would you say, Elijah? In this studio, there's probably, I don't know, maybe like a hundred grand worth of gear north, maybe a little north. In my next studio, there's probably gonna be 300 grand worth. I mean, like, um, but if you wanted to build this setup without all the gear, you know, you could go with a used M one Mac studio, I don't know, for like a thousand bucks. You can use whatever monitor you want. Um, all of these lights are very cheap versions of, Because I think you can build a studio just like this for the same visuals as me for under Five K probably. I mean, you know, um, but again, you can just do it with your iPhone, but I like overkill. That's my game.

AI assessment note: “In this studio, there's probably, I don't know, maybe like a hundred grand”

Q In this episode, I am going to include basically as many products that you've mentioned here in the show notes so people can actually go and try it. Um, but you still owe me an answer to a question, which is how much money did it, does it, you know, approximately how much money to create a Roberto Nixon-like studio?

A Okay. Um, my, what would you say, Elijah? In this studio, there's probably, I don't know, maybe like a hundred grand worth of gear north, maybe a little north. In my next studio, there's probably gonna be 300 grand worth. I mean, like, um, but if you wanted to build this setup without all the gear, you know, you could go with a used M one Mac studio, I don't know, for like a thousand bucks. You can use whatever monitor you want. Um, all of these lights are very cheap versions of, Because I think you can build a studio just like this for the same visuals as me for under Five K probably. I mean, you know, um, but again, you can just do it with your iPhone, but I like overkill. That's my game.

AI assessment note: “In this studio, there's probably, I don't know, maybe like a hundred grand”

Q So if you were to redo it all, would you have started your personal brand earlier?

A A hundred percent. I think, um, now granted there is, there is a lot of benefit to having like these media brands as like sort of support or content that doesn't necessarily fit my personal brand. Or content that I think may cause diminishing returns. It's great to have those media brands to kind of like, you know, use those. Um, but yeah, man, I, I wish I started a lot, a lot earlier, right? Cause I've always been sort of posting content to the internet sporadically. Um, but I've never done so consistently and deliberately. Like now I'm, I'm creating content and there's a deliberate mission behind it, right? I want to capture all the attention I can at the top, funnel it down to my own products. Um, whereas before it was just sort of, you know, off the cuff, like I'd post a picture here, I go on a vacation, I post a cool picture here, but it was really nothing but kind of like vanity, right? Like this is my life. This is what I'm doing. Look how cool this picture I just posted was where now there's a deliberate strategy behind it.

AI assessment note: “A hundred percent. I think, um, now granted there is”

Q Walk us through like, what are the coolest product features about a Luna? And how are people using it today?

A Yeah, man. So the coolest product features I don't think are out yet, right? So the motion blend is one of these new ones. It's actually built on a tool called Deforum, unstable diffusion. I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's, um, you know, you're able to input several prompts, you know, one, two, three, five, however many prompts you want. And then the AI blends, right? Like the diffusion, uh, fills in like this blend, um, animation between all of these prompts. And so again, like I'm looking at the forum and I'm like, this is the coolest thing in the world. You can create your own music videos. Like imagination is limitless here, but like to interface with it, you have to be technically savvy. There's no, there's no interface right now that exists online for the average person to go in and create. So we've built that we've tweaked it. We've added our own animations and whatnot, and that's launching, uh, later today that I think is going to be one of our killer flagship products that we can evolve over time and our text to image. I love it. We have different models that we've tweaked and refined over time, and I think the output is almost as good as Midjourney, but Midjourney is the king, right, in text to image, and so that's why we're excited to release some of these upcoming tools. We have 10 in the pipeline that'll come out over the next six weeks, um, and which …

AI assessment note: “motion blend is one of these new ones. It's actually built on a tool”

Q So you start, so you leverage your account, started building Aluna the account, you're getting a lot of traction, it's starting to feel good. When do you know it's ready to actually go and build the product? And how did you know which product to build?

A Um, so I actually had the product in mind first. So we knew we were going to build a product. And I think the first actually commit to the repo was around 10 weeks ago. So it's like, we've just been really, uh, rapidly. And then the Instagram account was in January. So about 12 weeks ago, I want to say. Right. And so I knew I wanted to build the product that started with the IG account first, just to drive that attention. Um, to gather the team and the resources needed to build this product, but it was really a product comes first. And then it's like building an account to suit that product. If that makes sense.

AI assessment note: “I actually had the product in mind first. So we knew we were going to”

Q or an Instagram or a TikTok or a Twitter account, you know, it's a free account that you can just start inviting people and start with your friends. Right. Um, what advice could you give to people around Uh, maybe they're interested in a niche and they want to start an account. Um, it's pretty daunting for a lot of people. What advice could you give to people around starting?

A So, so that's the, what you just said. Starting start is always my primary piece of advice. And as like elementary and obvious that it sounds, it's actually not that like, it's very, very difficult for people to grasp. Right. And there's two, two, two things that I think hold everybody back. And these are the two mental hurdles that I think if you're able to Uh, jump over. If you're able to leap, then you kind of become invincible. Right. To me. And one is the ability to really, truly not care what people think. Right. And, and, um, I used to really care a lot. I was like, man, what's my boy going to think? What's this person going to think? What's this random person on the internet going to think if I try this, it doesn't work out if it fails. And something that kind of like freed me was this idea that nobody's thinking about me, man. Like I finally realized it. Like nobody's thinking about us. Nobody's thinking about anybody else. Everybody's really just Kind of consumed and focused on their own self, right? Then the other thing that helped me out was I realized, like, all toxicity and negativity on the internet, like, I started to really understand insecurity from an intimate level, and I think all behavior on the internet stems down to fear, like a healthy fear, but, but insecurity is like, uh, you know, any, any toxicity on the internet kind of stems from there, and so tha…

AI assessment note: “Starting start is always my primary piece of advice.”

Q So sorry to interrupt you. So. When you came up with the idea for Aluna, were you like, I want to create this SaaS product and this is the vision? Or were you like, mm, I'm not sure what I want to build here. I'm just going to aggregate a bunch of people and figure it out from there.

A So that's part of it. So I knew I wanted to create a product, right? And for content creators specifically. And so that's when I sort of reverse engineered it and like something that I've just been doing over the last five to 10 years is like, I build these online communities through education, through information, through like, Really great visual content that really resonates with audiences. And then I put like a product underneath and with a Luna, that's it, man. It's like, we're trying to figure out now, like, I think we've sort of achieved product market fit. You know, we have 30,000 users. Now there's been 800 purchases, purchases on the site. Um, I think 200 subscribers. So I'm like, okay, we're something here, but now it's about trying to figure out that moat and trying to figure out what to build next. Right. And so what we've done is like, we've just put four really dope Builders under one roof, me, um, and my co-founders, Greg, who's a front-end developer, Suha, back-end wizard, uh, and then Efe, who's our mobile developer, and, um, you know, now we're just tinkering, and we're playing around, and we're seeing what's possible, and we're just building, building, building, shipping as fast as possible, and, like, the idea is that we'll, we'll, uh, we'll hit a home run on one of these products, right, and then put all of our resources behind that product, and so it's ju…

AI assessment note: “I build these online communities... And then I put like a product underneath”

Q You say, uh, grow slow. Um, but at the same time you're growing really quick. Uh, you've probably added 400,000 followers across your platforms in 30 days. How are you doing it and how are you dealing with it?

A Yeah. I mean, I think so. Uh, first of all, it's like people are like, oh, you, you blew up. Like, I'm like, yeah, maybe overnight success, 10 years in the making, you know, this has been nine years of trying everything as, you know, just like constantly being, you know, creating content. Um, yeah, I think for my personal, I've gone maybe 400,000 across all, uh, all my personal socials in the last hundred days. And then again, like a Luna in the last hundred days, uh, You know, 230 K followers. I think metaverse has added another 100,000 or so over the last hundred days, all of this, like people ask for the secret. The secret is just good content, right? It's just good content. And that's, and that's kind of it and consistency and quality. You know, people ask for like the cheat code was the cheat code was a secret recipe. I'm like, there is none. You just put in the work over a long enough period of time. You'll eventually have your breakthroughs and figure out. Um, and so just instinctively and like, sort of like innate to me now, I just understand how to resonate with an audience, what people are looking for. Um, so I've been able to crack a lot of these platforms, but the last sort of final frontier for me is YouTube, which I think is the, is the most important one. So this year I'm like going to focus on, on trying to crack that one because that's the one that's been eludi…

AI assessment note: “The secret is just good content, right? It's just good content... consistency and quality.”

Q I want to end with this question just cause it's a optimistic or pessimistic question depending on your view on AI, but what does the world of AI look like in five years from now?

A So I kind of, when it comes to tech, I'm sort of like an eternal optimist. And the reason why is like, what is sort of the point of focusing on the negative if it's inevitable, right? It's just sort of like wasted energy. The bet, the better exercise I think is how can we best harness it? How can we best be involved in the conversation to push it forward ethically, responsibly, et cetera. Um, what, what I think is going to happen, and I made a video about it today, actually, I just posted it, but like you are going to be able to generate anything that you want, enter any entertainment medium that you want. Curated to your taste. So like, yeah, maybe, maybe Greg, you come home and you say, man, I want to play a video game. I'm a, I'm a big RPG nerd. There hasn't been a good RPG in a while. I'm just going to generate my own tonight and play it. Right. Or maybe there's a specific software that you need for a specific purpose instead of browsing the app store and trying to find it, you just generate it. Hey, I need an app that can get me, you know, do this. So like almost any tool, any, any platform, any entertainment, Entertainment medium that you want to consume. You're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to generate it. But one thing that I'm also thinking with AI, like obviously by the end of the year, we're going to have fully AI generated streamers, influencers…

AI assessment note: “you are going to be able to generate anything that you want”

Q You've got these, you've got Aluna, you've got Metaverse. Tell people what they are and what type of content you post and why Like why even be focusing your time on that?

A What I've really been doing with some of these media brands is I, is I build up these communities and these audiences, and then there's usually a product to push underneath that with metaverse has not been so much that it's really just been like this educational sort of. Endeavor for me, right? Like I love, uh, to educate people on emerging tech paradigms and new things happening in the space. Cause I'm like, I'm a nerd, man. I'm, I'm geeking out about this stuff all day, like on Twitter, like chatting with like-minded people. And I just love to be able to present this to a more mainstream audience, like sort of what's happening, what's going on. And so like I lead really through education first in my style. Um, Aluna was always a, it's a SaaS, it's a SaaS startup, right? Cause I'm looking around, uh, the generative AI landscape and I'm like, man, this is incredible. Um, but it's, it feels pretty disjointed, right? Especially stable diffusion. Um, I'm a big believer that open source will prevail and that'll be sort of like the winning, uh, Foundational layer that AI is going to be built on top of because, you know, I don't want to go on a tangent, but even, you know, ChatGPT, I feel like every update, it gets neutered a little more and more and more and more. So like, as a builder, I, I, I feel a little bit, I don't know if I'd want to build on ChatGPT, right? They have too muc…

AI assessment note: “with metaverse has not been so much that it's really just been like this educational”