MarketBeat Founder, Matt Paulson - The Publisher Lab

♪ I turn to the publisher lab podcast ♪ ♪ Pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, pup ♪ Hello everyone, and welcome back to the publisher lab. It has been just a little while since we have published an episode. And the thinking behind it has been that, you know, once we had, you know, something to, you know, have a show about, it would make sense. And the show has been something that we, you know, we brought back multiple times. And mainly because I keep hearing from people that listen to the show that they liked it, enjoyed it, missed it. And, you know, for a long time, I do a lot of different things in my career and in my life. And it was really hard to make the podcast a regular thing. And whenever we would have guests on to host the show, I thought it was doing really well. Like I enjoyed the people that we had on and thought the expertise was excellent. But for whatever reason, you guys don't seem to have one of the lessons, unless it's me. So I'm, I think that is a huge compliment. I'm not really sure that I understand it. But nevertheless, I am going to start recording regular episodes again and try to bring on, you know, really good guests that I think have a perspective that's helpful and then unique or on the edge of basically where things are going. The digital landscape could not be any more interesting and opportunistic right now, in my opinion. I'm, it's the most excited I've been about the web, really in the last, probably like 20 years. I mean, like it doesn't seem possible that I've been, you know, doing things on the web that long, which I'm sure is a familiar sentiment to a lot of our audience. But nevertheless, I do see the emergence of AI being something that has, it's going to shift the web quite a lot. It also, you know, there's a cyclical nature to everything on the web that's beginning to emerge in it. And I don't think that that's going to change. I think it's just going to look different and maybe lessons learned are going to get slowly applied as these different iterations go throughout time, kind of like fashion trends. I mean, like it, the parallels there are actually pretty good. But being able to stay ahead of it, I think is going to get harder and harder. And for that reason, I think, you know, doing the podcast is merging leaf fund again from that standpoint is to talk about all these things. Because as you guys know, you know, I live on the internet. I find that, you know, the people that tell me they listen to the show and enjoy it. You guys live in the same corners of the web as me. And our guests that we have today, Matt Paulson comes from is the founder and CEO of MarketBeat. And MarketBeat, you may be familiar with. It's a financial platform on the web. It's been around for a long time. It's definitely a name brand if you've ever released. Press release is a good chance that it's showed up on MarketBeat. And, you know, he and I, before we even had a chance to record this episode, which was earlier today, you know, we connected in many ways, just similar sort of like talking about the same sort of like memes that are going on where you're talking about clawed bot and things like that, which may not be relevant by tomorrow, which is when this will finally be released. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed it. Because I think him and I share a lot of similar perspectives. So I really wanted to, yeah, wanted him to expand on that. 'Cause I was really interested kind of hearing, you know, somebody that maybe is sharing a mind space with me in many respects, but doing something different in this space, maybe they had something, you know, that I can pull from or something to learn from. And there was certainly a lot of things that popped up in this podcast that, yeah, we're sort of, yeah, they gave me, I came away with ideas. Also that and I think Matt has got a really, really good perspective and just a wealth of experience in this space as well to where I think you can take everything that he says in our conversation with the utmost credibility and know that it's somebody that's been there and done it and yeah, doing it right now. So without any further ado, I'm gonna take you into our podcast with Matt Paulson from MarketBee. - All right, and welcome to the show. Matt Paulson from MarketBee and I'll give you Matt a brief intro and I always think it's weird, you know, sometimes whenever a guest comes on a show and then you're like, intro yourself because everybody has a different threshold for what they, you know, what they're willing to talk about themselves. So, you know, I'll just highlight for everybody that so Matt Paulson is the founder and CEO of MarketBee, a financial media company based in, is it still Sioux Falls, South Dakota? - Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And you founded that in 2010. It's one of the largest, most prominent and been listed for the last eight years as one of the fastest growing by 5,000. Financial, like, you know, outlets on the web. I mean, it's a major platform that provides daily investment advice database for stock ratings, research tools, daily investment newsletter. And you're also a prominent member of the startup community there in South Dakota and you support a lot of the local nonprofits and startup community there. And you're one of the first to implement artificial intelligence into your platform. And so kind of a technology leader as well as it relates to your entire space and industry. So, Matt, welcome to the show. - Yeah, happy to be here. Great introduction and happy chat. - And, you know, I think one of the things that I often get to miss, you know, I know that I've got all kinds of different bios that people submit for me on various types of engagements. But I'm always surprised because there's so many things that I feel like it leaves out. You know, what's something that you feel like often gets left out of the bio that you're either proud of or something that you think is a big part of your life that maybe people don't get to see. - Well, a year ago, if you see that behind me, I got an honorary doctorate from the university that I went to, like, not many people get those. I'm pretty proud of that. - Man, you know, I'd love to get one of the honorary ones because, you know, the way that they make it, you go about it traditionally just takes so much time. - Yeah, initially I signed up. I did a master's degree in college for information system. So computer science undergrad did the MSIS and I like was signed up to do the doctorate and just like decided, like, this is not what my life's gonna go. I don't wanna teach computer science at a university and like, I just wanna go do work. But man, that would have been like another three years. So I'm glad I got the honorary one. It's much easier. - So I guess what side of you in terms of, I guess, you know, career pursuits with specifically with market beat? Do you have an interest sort of in the space as it relates to, you know, the financial markets or was it more sort of, you know, that was an outlet that you saw to apply a lot of the things that you had, you know, went to school for? - It was definitely following the opportunity more than it was like a strong interest in stock market. In college, I had a personal finance blog and then I identified during the recession. You could just write about stocks that might go out of business tomorrow and just get a ton of traffic on them and, you know, get your ad center. You're a Zoa company from that and it worked out pretty well and that just kind of led me down the investment path 'cause I figured out like SEO for Google Finance and Yahoo Finance and Amazon money. So you could, you know, just mention stock ticker and the article and then it would get picked up in those places, get lots of free traffic and then add revenue and it's kind of how it started. - Yeah, I mean, I can say like, yeah, very similar sort of background and story for me and just sort of like that period of time. I feel like, you know, there was a wild west back then and there was, you know, a handful of us out there that were pioneers and I think that, yeah, I can relate to sort of like that approach and where you came from in that regard. You know, looking at where you're at now, kind of going back, you know, I've seen history sort of like take us through, you know, a lot of different iterations of the web and one of the things that, you know, strikes me right now is that things feel a little bit, in some ways it feels like some things that are old are new again and in other ways, it feels like we're on the precipice of, you know, pretty significant change. And I think maybe both those things are true at the same time. I don't know, do you have kind of a similar sort of like sentiment that you've been able to kind of detect as it relates to maybe just looking back historically to where we are now? Yeah, I'd be interested in your thoughts. - Yeah, it is kind of this tale of two cities where like there's this 10 year period where Google was so dominant and you just wanted Google traffic and you wanted to run Google ads and like that was the game. Like before that, like people did a lot of different things and now I feel like that the big Google traffic error is kind of coming to an end and then that's causing everybody who does any kind of media to pursue like, okay, can't just rely on Google. Maybe I should have a newsletter or maybe I should do a YouTube channel. Maybe I should have a podcast and I feel like there's a lot more diversification in kind of the media channels that people are pursuing because like the SEO game is largely, it's kind of, you know, yes, people still get traffic in Google but the SEO game is largely like coming down. Like it's, it would be very difficult to start today from scratch and like go do that. At the same time, like new AI tools are coming out every week. We both set up floodbots last week. It's hard to keep up with everything. Like you gotta be on social media or it acts like every day to see what the new thing that's come out is and like, is it better than what you have now and if it is, you go adopted and if not, like, you just kind of let it sit. - Yeah, you know, it is, you know, we mentioned the Cloudbot thing. You know, this podcast will probably come out tomorrow and even by then, you know, there'll be things about it that feel that probably are dated and it relates to things that kind of, like, come and go quickly. - 'Cause it's not even Cloudbot anymore. Now it's boltbot. - Yes, that's what I'm going to say. - It's called your boltbot multi, yeah. - Yeah, which is, it's funny, you know, that that's an interesting, you know, revelation. It reminds me, there's so many things that kind of have come and gone in that regard. But some of this stuff makes it, like I remember back, you know, maybe 15 years ago, there was a thing called MIRCAT and it was one of the first sort of like, you can just go live on your phone and live stream wherever you're at and then all the platforms added it. And then you had during COVID, I remember what was it? It was the sort of like talk spaces, the same thing that X has. It was a really popular platform for that. And some of these things they don't necessarily take off, but, you know, like you said, having your finger on the pulse of those types of things, it pays off and it, you know, like, it kind of comes back to your story and the success that you've had of being able to sort of, you know, see opportunity and, you know, emerging technologies, how maybe it fits into a certain space and how maybe a space. You know, financial markets are a good example of something that's, you know, like it's a fast moving space, but one, you know, like that's very resistant fundamentally and foundationally to change. And so, you know, being somebody that kind of brings something that's new to those, I think there's obviously opportunities there. How have you been able to kind of pick the winners and losers over the years, you think is it relates to like, you know, emerging ideas, trends that, you know, take off versus those that don't. - Yeah, you know, it's a lot of, for us, it's been a lot of trying different stuff and like trying everything out. And if something like seems good enough, that's worth training employees on, we go do that. Like, or editorial team all use this cloud now and chance to be key for their workflows and that works out great for them. You know, it wasn't until probably last summer that like, I told all the dev team, like, okay, cloud code is it, that's what we're gonna use. And like, at least for the next year, that's gonna be the thing for us, but we need to get on it and try it. So, there is really kind of a filtering process of just trying a lot of stuff out and it's kind of seeing like, okay, is this better, like substantially better than what we have now and if it is, then it's like, okay, let's roll out to everybody and just kind of see how it goes. There's definitely been stuff that's like, common got over the years. Like, I remember at one point, we built like a forum for Market Beat where people could log in and comment about stocks and like, people, that's just that really a thing as much anymore. People, all the chatter was on social media. So like, having your own forum or even like, comments on blog posts, like, we used to have that and have since gotten rid of it. So, a lot of it is like ulting the new thing on to your platform and getting rid of the old thing and kind of adapting with the times. - Yeah, and I think, you know, there's a great point that you make, I see that, you know, all the time with people that have been successful, sort of on the cutting edge of things, where it's, like you said, you're kind of adapting as you go. And I think, you know, the emergence of AI a few years ago, you know, I think it caught a lot of people by surprise. And even if it didn't, I think this sort of like, it being the catalyst for a lot of things are going to change or about the change and trying to get ahead of it. It's a challenge and then also something that I think, you know, was abrupt in a lot of ways and disruptive to a lot of businesses. But I think those that have been able to adapt, you know, like, it wouldn't have mattered if it was AI or something else. You know, it's fundamental to the business. So one of the things that I'm interested in sort of getting your perspective on is, you know, what types of things it relates to this change? Like with AI, maybe has surprised you or what things have you picked up or initially had maybe good instincts on that have kind of panned out so far. - Yeah, you know, in five, 15 years ago, we built out a really advanced templating system to create articles for, let's say a public company and answer quarterly earnings. We would take that data and make an article out of it. So all of the articles are very similar 'cause it was kind of a mad lives deal. And now you can just feed the data to, you know, an LOM and say, here's the data, please write a story about it. And like, the quality is pretty good. We tried to do like pure AI articles using like SEC 8K filings where we would take like a company that loses news and then we would use AI to like make it into an article. The initial problem we had was that it turned, it just made up too many facts like it would try to fill and fill in the blanks to make an article, even if it didn't have all the information. So like that did work and like we'd publish them on like these kind of secondary news sites we have, but then like a company would see it and be like you're making a bunch of shit up here like don't do that. So like we had to count those. But now I think we've got it where like we, like the solution is to like give the AI out or it's like if you don't have enough information to make the article just like, I can't write the article and do that. And now it like won't try to make stuff up it would just say pass on this one, go to the next one. - Yeah, I mean, I've been a consumer of many of those articles over time and I think a lot of times I think, so I'm kind of a defender a little bit of AI in many regards. I have my own sort of like ideas and thoughts around sort of where I think there's gonna be challenges and where I think maybe there's applications of it where I think deserve like more scrutiny, but that all aside, I do think that, you know, there's this perception a lot of times that, you know, this moniker of AI Slopper, oh, it's AI generated, so it's a lower quality or something about like the level of effort goes into it that's lower. But like you just said, like the sort of Madlib's idea of these articles on earnings reports, it's like realistically, you know, like I look for stuff like that every now and then and that's exactly what I want. Like I want, I want basically like a thing, I want to read the same thing every time. I want to know the same information and I don't want there to be like fluff in it and if there's information that's not available, I don't want it in there, but at the same time, you know, I want it to be comprehensive. So that's a good example of something where it's like, I feel like a person can almost only get that work, make that worse and a machine sort of like standardizing it almost ensures that the product is better. I don't know if you have similar thoughts on that or yeah, maybe how, what's your perspective on sort of like that? - Well, in this like in the stock market, there's are a lot of small companies that they just don't get a lot of, they like don't analysts don't cover them, they're just kind of too small to matter in a grand scheme of things. And like nobody creates articles about them, so like there's no news. Like there's a company called Simply Wall Street that's very similar to us, terms of financial media company run by a guy named Owl out of Australia, it does a nice job, but he creates a lot of AI content for smaller public companies that maybe a billion dollar market cap or less that nobody's writing articles on. And he has a deal with Yahoo Finance and like they pick up all of his AI articles and they're super happy with them because he's creating content for small market cap companies that otherwise wouldn't have any news written about them. Like there's a company called Dectronics, an hour down the road that makes like big screens for like sporting stadiums, but it's like going dollar market cap. Typically people aren't like stocking or starting talking about them, but because of AI and they can read their SEC 5 to create content off that. And like now there is content for that company when otherwise there would be none. - Yeah, no, and I think stuff like that is great. I mean, having been somebody that is an enthusiast or had an interest in many niche things over the years that like either were small and number of the people that you know were interested in it or it was you know waning in popularity or gaining popularity, you know, I think that that's something that I've seen over the last few years where it's like you can actually get information and cover John on things that otherwise, you know, you might be stuck with an article or you know, small piece of information each month. So that is something that I see adding real value. Well, you know, what are things that I think, maybe not even a challenge, but what are things that you see maybe as a, I guess maybe challenge is better idea than threat, but it either works over the last few years where you look at it and you go, this is something that's changing or this is something that's a risk to us and you know, how do you approach something like that? - Yeah, I think that there are a lot of interesting tools coming out that are basically chat chpt for stocks with real-time kind of market data. And I always kind of wonder like, are these really gonna catch on and will people use these over more traditional kind of web-based tools like market beat? And they're really interesting, like perplexity is, you know, does really nice job with stocks and what has been kind of surprising is like, like I just, I don't think they've really been adopted and mastered, like not a lot of people use them and I don't know if it's like people just sticking with traditional tools they've always used, but the adoption just hasn't been there and a lot of people have like tried to make the next generation market beat or next generation Bloomberg, term and all that's got lots of bells and whistles, but what you find out over time is like, anybody can go vibe code a cool stock market research tool. However, like the real value is like your distribution, like how do you have an email list, SMS list, web traffic, like do people actually care about you? Like I get emails from people every, probably every couple weeks and like, hey, I built this cool new stock market tool, can you help me promote it? And just like, you know, they don't really have anything to offer, like yeah. So, but like people have these cool tools, but they don't know how to market them and they just don't really go anywhere. - Yeah, you know, it's somebody that, so I'm a great, you know, sort of like user use case or a market research person for you here, because so I use perplexity is I use comment and it's, I would say it's kind of maybe the default AI on my phone, mainly just because you can switch between the models. I have my own complaints about many things related to it, but they have, you know, they do have a really nice stock, like analysis to, I mean, it's always getting richer and richer, but at the same time, like you said, it's like, you know, I'm inundated with advertisements and you know, outreach from various financial outfits that are always trying to get me to use their app and stuff. And I actually do find myself actually on market beat, far more than I do any of the other stuff. And it's not that perplexity doesn't have a good tool. It's like I said, it's pretty robust, but there is something I think probably related to user behavior over time. When you were talking, I was actually trying to ask myself, like, what is it that makes me sort of like, you know, kind of stick to the things that I know there, but I do think that there is a certain amount of like, you know, like for me, it's a little bit of a standardization to where it's like, over time, this is kind of how I've gathered this information and I know that, you know, this approach works for me and you know, the second you start looking at things maybe differently, it's like you kind of feel like maybe in your memory you're playing apples to oranges. I don't really know, but I do find that kind of interesting. How much do you think that sort of building that brand or I guess you mentioned the distribution? Maybe speak to that a little bit more on, you know, where you see the value of sort of what you've built over time, you know, being competitive advantage? - Yeah, I definitely think there is kind of a muscle memory aspect of this where you kind of use the stock market research site and you're used to looking, you know, when you hear about a stock, you're used to looking up like these five to 10 things and if you have your website and you know where those things are at in that website, you can type in a company, click here to see the description of the company, the market cap, or Asia, whatever, like, you just get used to doing that over and over again. There's this site called FinViz where like they get, you know, not a ton of SEO traffic, but they, you know, so many people are just used to using it. Like they just get a ton of typing traffic and they've really done a great job at brand and the same way that we have and some others have and that's definitely a thing in our space. I do think there's definitely a distribution element to it too. Like, marketing in kind of financial media is complicated because you just have to be in a lot of different places. Like, yes, you have to be at all the social media channels, but then you also have to be in all of the like, the finance, the vertical things of like, you probably want to be on Stocktwits and you want to get your content in the Yahoo Finance, which requires a business dev deal. You probably want to be on a Robin Hood, Google Finance, MSN Money, like there's all these vertical places and you want your news and all of them and you have to go find the one right person at each of these places and go negotiate the deal with them. Then you also have to be big enough where like, you know, they don't want mom and pop websites, they want to do deals with professional outlets. Like, it took us time to get, you know, 10, 15 freelance writers and three editors and really built up market leaders like a true media outlet where we're creating original content that's good and not just stuff that's rewritten from somewhere else. So like, there is kind of a bar to this stuff where it's like, you've got to be at least a certain level of good and it takes time for a small publisher to get there. But like, once you do, you get access to some stuff that you normally like wouldn't get and it kind of creates a vote for your business versus somebody new coming off the street starting a competing brand. - You know, you mentioned that I hadn't really thought about, is it related to sort of your position. But I mean, I see it everywhere else so it makes total sense and that is this sort of idea of specialize in knowledge, you know, like I think. In so many ways, AI is the great equalizer. But in many ways, it, you know, when you get back the first principles, it does feel like there's only one way to sort of like gather data and information and sort of process and distill it down and that's experience. And, you know, when you've had experience inside of an industry or even, you know, like performing a role or a job or something like that, that over time, you get a chance to sort of like build up this specialized knowledge. And you don't really realize all the little ways that that can influence something in a positive way. And I would imagine that with business like yours being able to navigate, you know, sort of like this space 'cause I'm sure there's all kinds of both pitfalls and then also like, you know, little idiosyncrasies that, you know, come into play in ways that feel almost inherent now. But, you know, if you were just starting out would be something that, you know, probably wouldn't stick out to you. Over time, how do you feel like, you know, that experience is maybe evolved or what types of things would you say that you've learned to do differently because of that? - When I chat with like people newer, like doing digital media companies, they always want, they typically like ask like, what benchmarks they should be targeting, like, what is good website traffic? What is a good email opt-in rate? How much money should I make from running co-registration? Like, if I'm spending a dollar on ads, like, how long should it take to break even? What should my role as be after a year? And like, after a while, you just kind of learn these numbers and what they should be. And if something's way after benchmark, you know, you should try to go fix it. So I think those, like, just what the number should be is like a very kind of a specialized thing of like, something you just pick up over time. And I'd say the other thing is just relationships where like, if you know other people in your space and you've been helpful to them before and they've been helpful to you before, like, if you don't know, like, you can just go ask somebody, like, I was emailing back and forth with the head of business development at Motley Fool yesterday and just like, hey, we spent this amount in ad revenue last year. We're gonna spend this, like, do you think I'm crazy for trying that? Like, what do you guys spend? And like, he told me and like, we're getting to the point where, so we're gonna spend, like, my goal is to spend 20 million bucks in ads this year. And I just want to make sure, like, does anybody else actually doing it successfully? And like, they are. So like, that's a good vote of confidence that they figured out, I can figure it out. - Yeah, no, I mean, the ads thing, that's a good example of something to where it's like, you know, in almost every, yeah, every job that I've ever had, I always tell this to people, I hire all the time. I said, I'm the first person to do every job I've ever had. You know, and it's, you know, partially because I've created it. Or, you know, like, I'm, you know, one of the first ones inside of a business. So I'm kind of, like, leading the way. And when you have something like that, you know, and you're pioneering, a lot of times it is, asking that question of, okay, I'm, I think I'm gonna spend 20 million dollars in ads. Am I crazy? Is there anybody else that's doing anything like this? Or am I, you know, is the point of diminishing return? Gonna, you know, bite me really quickly on this. And I've been in a similar position before. I think, you know, kind of looking at it from the standpoint of, you mentioned benchmarks and things along those lines. I am interested to know, you know, these days, whenever you look at your business, is there something, you know, maybe not hard and fast, metrically, but, you know, is there something that you try to quantify or is there something that maybe is at the top of your list in terms of things or, you know, these are things that are telling us right now that our business is going in the right direction. - Yeah, I mean, I've got a dashboard that's kind of got all my key metrics on there. And, you know, look at it every day, multiple times per day. If I boil down to like two numbers that, you know, I care about the most, like, if I was in prison and I needed somebody to tell me what the numbers are, the two numbers I'd ask for is like, how much money did we make today in ads? And then, like, what's our email open rate? Like, those are probably the two things that I care about the most. And like, everything else after that is secondary. Like, if I know those two numbers, I kind of know how things are going. - Yeah. And so, you mentioned this sort of like, you know, like, if you're looking at your, whether it's the, you know, the users that are coming in and trending over time, or the maybe like the behaviors and things like that, as it's trending, if you see something moving in the wrong direction, or something maybe even moving in the right direction, what are you looking at? Like, how do you break that down and say, okay, these are the sort of things that we feel like we wanna apply as sort of like remedies or I guess like augment or accelerate the things that are going well. Like, walk me through a little bit of your process there 'cause I think that that's interesting 'cause I think that's probably where, you know, elements of your success probably stick out the most and maybe people don't get into as much. - Yeah, we're definitely a data-driven business and like keeping a good eye on the data and like knowing what to do with it. Like, it's probably one of my secret sauces 'cause like, you know, whenever we try something else something out new, we measure it if it works. We'll just go do as much of it as we possibly can. So, a lot of it tends to be like, if there's a problem like say last week, Apple blocked our email. So we saw it show up on our data. We have a report that shows our ESP open rates by day and then big dip in Apple and it's like, okay, what's going on? So then we dig into the data and just say, okay, is it a certain type of message? No, it's all messages. Are we getting error messages? Yes, we're getting pounces like, oh, that sucks. That means they blocked us. So then you go fill out a form on the Apple website and then they will either say like, well, okay, we mitigated the thing you're gonna email us or get delivered again or like, nope, we still got problems. And then they say, no, you still got problems and I go call my email and deliver a body consultant person, got named Ashley, she's great. And just say, hey, Apple is blocking us, what do you think? And show a look into the data even more and just try to identify like, well, I think it's these crypto emails that you send out. Apple has been cracking down in crypto. So what if you just unsubscribe all of the Apple users from your crypto newsletter? And it's like, okay, we'll do that. And then show email Apple for us. And usually when the send great person email is they get more of a response than I do. So that is what finally got us unboxed. So it's really just kind of digging into the data. Like first having the data to identify a problem, but then digging into it and like, we were able to dissect it in a few different ways, just to see what's changed, why it's changed. Then from there, like, once you kind of know that, then it's pretty easy to figure out, like, okay, what do we need to do? - Yeah, there's two things that I very much can identify with that you've said, that in particular, that being able to know what to do with the data, I find myself, I have people come to me all the time whenever they have the hard problems looking at site data in particular as it relates to user traffic. And being able to dissect that. And it's, I think one of the hard things is, I really don't look at my data from a standpoint of like top down usually very much anymore, usually somebody else will identify a problem or something like that, if it's something that I'm running. But it's whenever you have to kind of do that forensic analysis and going, okay, so why is this? And is it a problem, you know? And I think you mentioned the thing about being able to identify quickly the Apple Mail thing. I think that that's key because I think, one of the things that happens, and I've seen this happen a lot, is people start to notice a problem. And they let it sort of like simmer over time or they don't notice it till too late. And the more time that passes, the more sort of like muddy your crime scene, if you will, is because it gets really hard to sort through, okay, is this primary or is this secondary that I'm looking at now? Like is this the cause or is this because this over time has led to some kind of change in user behavior? Who knows? And then the other thing was, you mentioned the thing about sort of like keeping, you know, keeping building, you know, ties within your space and building relationships. You know, I would not consider myself a networker at all. Always sell people, I'm a marketer through and through. I'm really good one to many. Not is great one to one all the time. And I'm not always great. I'm not the person that's always texting friends and being like, hey, how are you, you know? It takes effort for me to kind of keep relationships, but as it relates to my space, people come to me from my role of Dex and everybody always says like, how do you know everybody? And, you know, the realist's answer is this because, you know, like I do try to find other people that are doing something that's valuable or people that I can learn from or people that are interested in learning something from me. And, you know, the people that you see kind of like consistently, if you just kind of keep those doors open, you'd be surprised at like two, three years down the road. And the next thing you know, it's like, oh yeah, I remember, you know, Matt, we had a chat a couple years ago on a podcast. I can actually connect you with him or actually, that's really cool what they're doing now. Like we could probably work with them on that. And yeah, it's having those irons in the fire over time that I think really pays off long-term and just knowing that you're doing yourself a favor if you kind of invest in it now. You know, looking at, you know, that's kind of looking at things over time is, you know, these are the things that I've kind of like, you know, my fundamentals, my principles that have worked. It relates to things that are, you know, on your business right now, maybe even related to trends, maybe not. But what are ideas or strategies do you have right now that you think are, that you're investing in, that you're saying, hey, I'm hoping this pays off long-term, maybe things that you're more hire conviction on. But if there's something you like, hey, this is a total flyer, but we're gonna see, yeah, maybe that too. The two big growth levels in market bee last year, one was SMS and wherever we collect an email, opt in and we now collect a phone number and send people SMS content and ads and, you know, market material as well. And like SMS has become a third of our revenue overnight, like that happened pretty quickly and just fantastic results from it. So of course you've signed some of that work, she would do a lot more of it. So now we have three SMS lists, SMS lists and I'm just certainly trying to maximize the opportunity. The other thing that has been really surprising to me is Beehive as a platform. You know, all of our email comes from the same domain I thought, well, maybe we should diversify a little bit and I wanna put it Beehive anyway. So let's make a list on Beehive and like, they've got something special cooking over there in terms of just their platform in general, but their deliverability is next level like. Since everybody emails from the Beehive domain and they kind of pleased their behavior of yours just pretty well, like, you all benefit from each other's deliverability and that works with like, normally like, if you were gonna like email 50,000 emails from a domain starting from scratch, like you would have to start 100 a day and grow 10% a day until you hit 50,000. Not on Beehive, like, you can start with your list of 50,000 people and email them and like, you know, it'll get delivered. Like, that is very unique about them. - Yeah, I will say, probably maybe, yeah, I think it was last year I went to the, I was a speaker at the newsletter conference in Austin, Texas and you know, it was right about that time that we had started working with them as a little bit of a partner and so I had a relationship there but I was blown away by how many larger newsletters were there and it was almost like a given that they were using it and I remember coming back from that and telling them and telling other people at our business, hey, these guys, like you said, these guys got something cooking, it's something different. I don't think it's just like, you know, they're doing a good job of marketing and, you know, I mean, sending email, marketing, automation is just huge, huge industry. I'm always wanted to say, like, what is it other than email? You take away email, what do you got? But yeah, the deliverability and I sort of think the, the, the appleness of their platform where it's like, it just works. I think that that's something that's a huge advantage. I think a lot of times whenever it's like, something may or may not be fundamental to your business but if you don't need to be overly technical and need to be like very iterative and the different ways that it works, you really do just want it to be simple and, you know, I find that, you know, that's something that's true throughout many things and business and I think what are things that, you know, when you really break it down and looking at your company now and in the future, well, where are areas that you go, you know, I don't really know how or what types of modalities maybe we're going to apply here, but these are the things that we need to accomplish if we're going to be successful in the future. - Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to identifying like new channels as they become new channels and kind of being there before they're established, like going like, you know, we started on YouTube late, which was like three years ago now, but we spent a lot of money and a lot of time to like really have a presence and hour and a half million subscribers and if we had started five years earlier, it just would have been much cheaper and much more effective like to do that. So as like new things kind of catch hold, like we just want to get there early and be on all the places 'cause I think the days where like you're an emailist or you're a YouTube channel, like I think those are over, like you have to be everywhere. And like if you're collecting opt-ins, like sending traffic from Google, Google ads or meta ads to a landing page, like you better be collecting an email address, a phone number or you hopefully you're getting like browser notification opt-ins and after people sign up, you're sending to your YouTube channel, like you want people to sign up in as many places as they can. I want to follow you on social, whatever. You just need as many touch points as you can like that's how you get break even. So a new stuff shows up, we just want to be there. - Yeah, and I think there's a nice history lesson there too that you'd probably relate to where what I think we're seeing now is a second round of sort of like how trends move in these sort of waves where I remember back maybe, yeah, it was probably 16, 20 years ago when Google search was really taking off. Right around the same time, Google started implementing the first iterations of like their algorithm updates, like coming bird and panda. And so a lot of websites had gotten burned or people that had businesses or web apps that were formally getting traffic and maybe not now. And then you learned that this thing called Facebook had come about and you could start a Facebook fan page and you could almost get a million followers overnight and you could just direct all that traffic back to your site. And that's, so you had a lot of these sort of like Facebook driven platforms. But then everybody knows that Facebook kind of turned the tables on everybody. You couldn't, it didn't matter if you had a page with 60 billion subscribers, the reach was going to be pretty minimal compared unless you bought ads. And then now it's kind of like a non-thing. So if you missed that period in history, you wouldn't necessarily know that. But you can kind of see parallels in other places of the web now where like you said, if you're going to be focused as just a newsletter or just a this or just a that, email is probably safer than most because it's sort of like an open platform that's not controlled by any one party. But being hyper focused on one platform, regardless of whether it decides to turn the tables on your not, it's pretty risky because Facebook, for example, is something where it's like user behavior shifted a lot. You don't have a lot of young folks, sound old now calling them young folks, but like on a platform like Facebook, getting news and information, there are other places. So I do think that that's a depth kind of view that you've got. What are the little things that you would maybe identify as to when you are kind of like trying to pioneer or get into new things or experiment with new channels or really anything inside of the business? How do you like the experiment? Or how do you like to figure out, should we invest time here? Are there certain things that you're like, we just got to do it no matter what? Or there's some things where you're like, what is the threshold that you're looking at for like, hey, it's time to kind of cut ties on this thing and cut our losses? Yeah, like how do you evaluate something like that? - Yeah, the internet's a weird place 'cause like it moves so quickly in some places and so slowly in other places. Next week there'll be a new AI agent that's out there and already people are using. I think there's one called SuperH that came out today and like that, the social media kind of shadow world moves so fast, but like the business world moves so slow. So it's like your job to identify the trends that are moving with it quickly and like which ones are then we're gonna stick? So a lot of times it's me like trying out like the new thing, whatever it is on a weekend, when I'm bored and then like if something sticks and it's gonna stick around, then it's like, okay, who on my team needs to know about this? Like we think we're late to like AI stuff 'cause like it's happening, like, you know, this is about for a week, everybody already hasn't started like no, no, it's just now it works. It's the world will move so much slower than that. Like I have a buddy who is just a web design consultant and you know somebody wanted to pay him to write email copy and it's like, no, you should just have chat you can do it, you just have to do it and like the lady is like, I don't really wanna do it, can I pay you to do that for me? And like the actual bar like out in the world, like the real world, real business is, it's so far below like what's happening on social media that like there's that gap there. And you don't really have to be the earliest to things and you just have to identify the trend and like even YouTube we were late too, but like it's still erbing the grand scheme of things. - Yeah, no, no, I couldn't, there's something, I mean that's something that listeners of the show probably heard me say this at least once before, but you know the stuff that you think that maybe you're late on, you know if you're like looking at every, are you so we say listeners of this show? You're probably on the cutting edge 'cause you're listening to this show. It's an interest of yours. So if there's something that you're like, ah am I too late on this? You're probably so far ahead still. You know like a good example is like the cloud bot, you know thing or whatever, you know, it's like I could try to explain to my wife who's a professional athlete and just not paying attention to any of this stuff. And she's gonna have so many questions because it's gonna be like what is cloud then? And I'm like, well it's an LLM, what's an LLM? It's like well that's what chat GPT is. Oh so it's like a chat GPT? It's like well no, it's an agentic platform. And it's like to even just, you know it's like to even start off trying to explain to her all these things that are just like to me they're inherent. This is like the cutting edge, you know all this stuff, you know? It's like the general population, you know, like they're pretty far behind on this. And so even if you know your target audiences of people that are, you know, maybe in the know on this stuff, you're still gonna be way ahead of maybe competitors and the populace at all. So I do think that you are operating at a point of sort of like a pretty superior advantage if you are paying attention to this stuff. And yeah, if you feel like sort of like the flames that you're back, you know, that's probably like a personally, you know, beneficial trait. But at the same time, don't let that maybe affect you from saying, hey, we shouldn't do this because we're going to just be, you know, too late. I've rarely found that to be the case outside of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember I was mining Bitcoin in 2013 and I thought I was late to the game because Bitcoin had already gone up to $100 a coin. And it's, I remember when it was a dollar and now it was $100 and like, yeah, so far behind. And like, if only you know, you'd known back then like. Oh, I know how it really actually was. Many of us, I'm sure I have the Bitcoin stories. I remember buying it at $200, it going down and just being a watch is permed $200. It's all right. And then it going up to 700 and selling it and feeling like I was like the smartest investor that had ever invested money in something ever. I was like, this thing was 200 bucks, it's 700 bucks. It's nothing. Man, I just really got over on this. What a smart guy. And now look at it, you know. You know, when you kind of make determinations about, you know, that's a good example of something where it's like, you know, I think we can all probably pat ourselves on the back and then at the same time give ourselves a little bit of grace when it comes to predictions for the future. I've seen no end of, you know, all kinds of predictions. One of the things I'm always cautious about is what we just talked about is the this idea of like, you know, something being late to the game or whatever. It's like things, you know, things emerge quickly, but then sort of like take hold slowly. But I guess what sort of like looking into the future, what sort of predictions do you have that you would say? Like these are kind of, this is where I think things are going and we're kind of operating under these assumptions. Or, you know, what are other predictions? Maybe that you see that people are making that you're like, I just don't agree with that. And I think it's strategic for us to sort of maybe not put that view. I do think we're going to have robotaxies like everywhere like five years to now. I think that's going to come quicker than anybody thinks. 'Cause, you know, I drive a Tesla model Y most of the days and like, that stuff is really like, I can go from my house to my office and never touch steering wheel like. You get kind of skeptical of like technology from like what you read on the internet and then you go try yourself and you're like, "Well, this is really good, like this is happening." And like, you know, it's like a six model drive too and like through traffic and like works just fine, like perfectly, like no, never have any problems. I think it's like, oh damn, like this technology's here. Like, the haters are wrong. Like this stuff is actually really good. So like there's that, like, I think that's happening like rear, you're going to happen very quickly. You know, you hear Tesla like, okay, we're going to the Model S, the Model X and like we're building robotaxies everywhere. It's like, "Oh, that's really interesting." So I think that's coming quick. I'm very skeptical that AI is going to destroy a lot of jobs. I think it's just going to rapidly increase productivity. We have, or not getting rid of anybody because our AI is just more like, that people we already have can do a lot more. I think it's definitely like slow down or hiring needs but it's not like people are losing their jobs. It's just like, oh, we can go do way more now and I think that's going to push the, like I think AI will push the GDP numbers up quite a bit in the next couple of years just from productivity gains. That's going to, I think that will really take effect like the US seeing five, six percent growth for a few years, like wouldn't be out of question. - Yeah, no, I agree with that. And you know, another thing, you know, long time listeners as show know is that, you know, like GDP closely aligns with ad revenue. They're almost tracked perfectly to each other and that's how advertising works. The advertising industry is a, it's basically a slice of the pie of global GDP and all the subslices of that work exactly how you think. Especially, you know, you break double industry, geo location. And so you can usually use that sort of information to kind of make predictions about, you know, like, where ad revenue is going to go. And so like, yeah, it's one of the things I think people have been surprised what I've given that answer recently but it's similar where it's like, I think that the market is going to be good for people that are providing value on the web. I think the, it might be exponential in some ways because I think you're going to have the cost of creating content is gone to almost zero. But at the same time, it's, you know, there's a lot of things that you don't necessarily want. AI can't create or the types of value required business, like market beats are really good example. But because of that, the sort of the device or I guess the operating strategy for all of all these businesses that used to be maybe, you know, really similar is completely different because it's, you really have to lean into your market and it's the people that have this sort of knowledge and expertise in their space over time that are going to be able to really thrive and take advantage if, you know, they're like yourself and being able to sort of say, okay, how do we apply? Maybe, you know, modern sort of modalities to the audience and the business that we've had. And I think, you know, that's exactly what it, you know, success looks like in the future. So I'm going to go rapid fire before we finish here and just kind of, we'll go through a list of maybe things and you can tell me if you're bullish or bearish on them. Is there really technology and, you know, maybe trends in the space? So I guess we'll start first with some of the social platforms. I guess overall social platforms, you know, kind of the traditional ones of you bullish or bearish. I'm bullish, mostly on X. I think it's going to make big comeback. - Yeah, no, we totally agree on that one. As it relates to, I guess like a lot of the AI generated, not just written content, but audio, video, bullish bearish on that for maybe your business and applications, maybe is one and then the second, maybe just overall, like, you know, and it's a short-term bearish. I think there's going to be a lot of junk out there long-term bullish, like, once it becomes something that like we can build Hollywood quality stuff with and then like actual like direct, like people that know how to make great content, like for a video and like TV, like once those people kind of adapt to the tools, like it's where it has some great stuff. - Let's go with revenue models for the web, you know, emerging revenue models, meaning basically things that don't exist today, things that are going to be new paradigms versus sort of like traditionally held, like modalities, subscriptions, ad revenue, you know, rewarded based experiences. - I think what we have now is going to stick around for a long time and I don't think all of them are going to change it. I think we'll just have Google AdWords on chat to PTE and Claude and all those things. - Yeah, the ad revenue industry might be the second oldest industry in the world. It's that there's stone tablets with the ads on them. So it's a great business. Yeah, it's with people all the time. Search engines or yeah, I'll just say search engines to start with. - I think they're going to be just fine. Nobody stops ever using the old thing, and just use the new thing in addition to the old thing. - So subset of that, then Google, is it really it's a Google.com? - Honestly, like out of any of the big tech companies, I'm probably most bullish on them. I think they have so much like deep AI tech from acquiring deep mind years ago, and now they're finally playing for Keats with Gemini, and they've got some really great stuff coming out. - Yeah, I think they're a good example of if you're not going to be first, all the different types of competitive notes that you can have, JetGBT put them on their heels, and I think that there was some internal panic there for a minute, but you can kind of see if they've gotten warmed up, the time and investment that they've had may eyes longer than just about any of the other ones, and it shows. - Like Sergey Brin's back, and when Fondo comes back, that's usually when good stuff happens. - Yeah, I mean, every time he's come back into that business, it's kind of like whipped it into shape pretty quickly. He's an incredible person. So it relates to, I guess, like webs, we'll go with the web, open web, meaning, like, browser-based forms of the internet. - I'm Polish, but I think it's going to get much more locked down, and that, like, I think everybody's going to use Cloudflare to block everything that's not a real person, because you just don't want anybody scraping your website, and powering our own with it. I think that's going to get a lot more locked down. - So then how would you look at maybe this sort of app, or sort of, like, closed software-based version of the web? - I'm very bearish on apps. I just feel like nobody installs new apps anymore. And a lot of stuff that used to be an app, like, you know, would just kind of be done by NLOM. So, like, unless it's very specialized stuff, I'm pretty bearish. - So in that regard, Asian browsers or tools, so browsers as they exist today, versus maybe something that's, like, an evolution of that, or, like, an AI-based browser, something as simple as, like, comment or atlas? - I kind of feel like that's more of a feature than a product where, like, Chrome will have good AI stuff built into it in a year, and then, like, there won't be a need for perplexity or comment. Like, I think that's more of a feature thing. I think what will happen more likely is, like, people that have AI bots, or AI agents of their computer, like Cloudflow is gonna block most of them from just, like, visiting a website, like, doing a HTTP fetch. So, like, I think, like, what our Cloud bots will do is they'll use our real web browser to visit a page, and then download the content. And that way, it's a real person, and they can actually go see what's on the page, and not get blocked. - Yeah, it's fascinating. Myself and one of our partners, we were talking about that here recently. You can kind of read the tea leaves on a lot of it. But, yeah, I agree with you very much that the current forms of what is passing is an agentic or AI browser. It really doesn't feel like a product, it feels kind of like a feature bolted onto Chrome, which is exactly what comment is. It's just the, you know, and I think that there is an element of it where it's like, over time, how are we going to make determinations about, you know, is this a real person, or is this a bot? And what is that bot getting from me? - I guess, I'll end with this one last question, which is, you know, looking at the AI from maybe through not even the threatening lens, but just from the standpoint of like, you know, there's gonna be elements of your business that you provide, that, you know, LLMs are going to naturally want to leverage in some way, shape, or form. How do you look at that and say, okay, there's obviously, you know, like, I guess it's the same sort of like, Sophie's choice that Google search and publishers had like long ago where it's like, how do you feed the beast without letting it eat ya? But in this case, maybe, you know, like it's a little bit bigger of a beast and you gotta, you know, watch your hands a little bit more. - Yeah, I think with Mark could be, it's really important to understand what business we're in, we're in like the attention, or in the attention business, like we have a huge audience and then we make money through advertising. And like, a lot of the original content on MarketBeat and the data on MarketBeat, we don't feel is that proprietary. So we let all of the LLMs scrape our website all day every day, hoping like, maybe those sends some traffic back to us and that will get some more, some more eyeballs. So like, I am personally not too worried about AI tools scraping our website. Like, you can get stockpices anywhere if they scrape them off our website, oh well. Like, our value is like the attention of six million people and like a big base of advertisers that want their attention. And like, if there was a way that an AI agent could scrape our email list, obviously I would block it like right away. - Yeah, and I would say if there's one piece of advice that I've given to others, start up so over time, it's basically that, which is, a lot of times I think people will think that their business is a lot more special than it is and they maybe don't recognize that they and their teams are maybe a lot more special than they might think. Meaning it's that expertise, it's that sort of like ability to navigate, make decisions and operate something and move as the industry is moving that really differentiate companies over time, being able to make the right moves and that sort of thing. And as opposed to like having some kind of proprietary, bulletproof type strategy or solution. And I think the web is a great example. There are just too many variables to account for. You're never gonna have a perfect business, but I think over time it's shown you've done a great job of being able to navigate it and continue to. And I think this conversation's been a lot of fun for me just 'cause you have many perspectives and views that I share almost verbatim. So it's a little bit of an echo chamber here today for me, but hopefully our audience is able to pull from this some information about where things are going and how they want to navigate it. Any parting ideas, thoughts that you'd share with anybody before we go? - Yeah, I think we both have been on the internet for a long time, like we remember the dot com era and then like the web 2.0 era and the mobile era and the app era and now the AI era. So we've kind of seen all of the waves come and go and like you can be successful. You just kind of have to understand what the waves are and like how to take advantage of them and where they just not get stuck in the last era. Like I wouldn't want to be just an app company today 'cause like that, like yes, there are still apps and people still use them, but like discoverability and apps that has really gotten down. People don't install new apps every day anymore. So if you can understand what the waves are and write them, like you'll do great. - Yeah, it's funny when we started Ezoic, actually the big question that investors would always give us was where's your app? Like apps are like the big thing and we're like, we're not an app, you know, so sorry. We're not as gonna be as sexy as some of the other ones right now, but you know, stuff shifts, things change and if you, yeah, if you stay focused in that regard, I think there's a lot of room for success. Thanks again, Matt. I really enjoyed having you on the show and hopefully we can maybe connect again and chat in maybe six months a year and see, you know, how things accelerated, how things changed, you know, maybe we're both like dead wrong about stuff, you know, in which case, you know, oops, you know, just keep moving. But I have a feeling that, you know, hopefully there's value in this conversation and people are able to draw out of it and I certainly know that it's been fun connecting and yeah, thanks again and I'll catch you next time. - Yeah, look it forward to it. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]