Speaker 1You're listening to a Day One.fm show.
Speaker 2Just look around the world around you and look around what you do every single day. The things that you don't like doing, the things that make you nervous, the things that suck, the experiences that suck. Can you find a technology solution to fix that? I've stopped using ChatGPT. There's an exodus from ChatGPT to Claude going on right now. I'm not on that exodus because I've just kind of been using Notion AI where you can kind of pick what model you work with. I had a room full of like 2,000 people and they were like, we're here to talk about agents. Like who in the room is using agents? And like probably like three people put their hands up.
Speaker 3Look, let's talk about the fact that you've been in all the news headlines lately. You raised $2 million very recently.
Speaker 2That we did. The companies that show why the people behind the value are so novel but also part of like what the company does are the ones that are going to win. And then the ones that just become like a factory of outputs that don't really have any kind of distinction between them will be the ones that will just get lost in the whitewash.
Speaker 4Don't be those guys.
Speaker 2Don't be those guys. Don't be those guys.
Speaker 5Found a scale faster on deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere. Get visas handled fast. And get back to building. Visit deal.com slash day one. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash day one.
Speaker 3Hello and welcome back to In the Blink of Day. I'm Georgie Healy and today I have Freddie from Manifest who frankly I've been wanting on the show for ages. I have pulled back a little bit on founder guests, especially in the early days where businesses can evolve and change so quickly that the episode can get stale very quickly. And I really care about you guys getting lasting value, not just a good chat. And this is why I wanted Freddie on the show. Not only do they have real product market fit at Manifest and a standout seed raise, he has the hottest taste. Like at every tech industry event, whenever I speak to him, I'm like, I really need to get you under the microphone. Today, why automating your inbox with AI is actually a catastrophic idea. Barely anyone is using AI agents and it's not due to the technology. Why the saspocalypse is a myth. Why hyper growth hacking is a death sentence for companies. And why open AI's ads move is a huge mistake. I could have kept recording for three hours. You're going to see why. Thank you, Freddie, for coming on the show. And thank you for listening. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1You're listening to a dayone.fm show.
Speaker 5Founders scale faster on deal, set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deal.com/dayone. That's D-E-E-L.com/dayone.
Speaker 3Freddie, McKenzie, how's it going? Really good. I've been wanting to do this for a while.
Speaker 6We've been talking about it. We have. Here we are. It's great to be here.
Speaker 3We've got the great lighting. I feel like this is the moment to share all the hot takes that you've been sharing only for lucky ones of us who have been able to corner you at a tech industry event.
Speaker 2I like the very few like PR things where I've been able to speak, especially on mic. I've tried to be quite reserved, but today I think I'm going to open up the. Uh, open up my little magic book of tricks.
Speaker 3Now's the time.
Speaker 2I feel I'm excited. I've been excited about this one.
Speaker 3So yes, and you're off the back of a incredible raise, which we're going to talk about. But before we dive into that, do you have an AI hack or a workflow that you use or anything that you use AI for that you would recommend to people listening?
Speaker 2Um, well, it depends on the environment that you want to use it in. Is it a business environment is a personal environment. I think it's like AI is a great tool for both of those, um, applications. For me, like one thing that I've started doing recently, especially at manifest is like, everyone's got an AI note taker. Like if you don't, what are you doing? And they generate these amazing summaries and these like really good, like actionless off the back of them. But I mean, maybe this is just manifest, but from what I've seen is that like they get kind of put into a folder and then they just get like lost in like someone's notion or someone's like Google docs or driver or so on and so forth, which is crazy. Cause there's like all this really interesting context in there. And if you take like, you know, repetitive meetings. Like sinks and whips and stuff like that. And you like stack all of the, um, the, the AI transcripts together, you actually get a really interesting like image or picture of progress and what progress looks like. You know, did we solve the things we talked about in the last one? Did we discover new problems and new ways of doing things? And so for me, like my little AI hack, which is kind of tied to agents is like setting up a system on notion, which is great. When ocean had on, um, how much are they paying you to say that? So that, yeah, it just takes these, this like chronological evidence of progress and, and gives me like a, what are the problems that the company is working through and solving and what are the like common themes that keep coming up? Um, what are we getting stuck on? What are we really good at? And so I would encourage anyone that regularly takes meeting notes to like start to compile all that together and actually start to see and visualize progress. Cause we, you know, especially in a startup, like it can feel really hard sometimes to. Feel progress and to see progress, but it's actually hidden in there and the data, you just have to find it.
Speaker 3It's so funny you say that I was bitching for lack of a better word to someone the other day, because we're so fixated on the things that aren't working and it can feel very lonely and hard, whether you're a founder or have a side hustle or whatever, because you're always looking at the thing that's not working. And so you don't see that progress. So I think that's really, yeah.
Speaker 2And it can tell a good story. It can tell a bad story, but like, it's all there. It's all sitting there. We're just not using it. So use it. Like. Have a look, see what's there. And it can be motivating. It can be confronting, just depends on your situation.
Speaker 3But like insights, good, strong start, Freddie.
Speaker 2Lots of data chat today. We're in the data.
Speaker 3I expected nothing less.
Speaker 2Fantastic.
Speaker 3So where did the name manifest come from and what exactly do you guys do?
Speaker 2Absolutely. Well, to explain what manifest does very much speaks to the name. So we capture the value that is created throughout the creative workflow. So think about. It's like a creative agency, a marketing and advertising agency, specifically around, you know, marketing and creative outputs and value. We capture all of that in a way that doesn't require timesheets, thank God. And we bring to light how people and how I work together to create creative value. And so the idea behind manifesting something is to make it visible, is to show and clearly bring clarity to something. And so what manifest does is it brings clarity to. How important and how necessary humans are in the creative workflow and how harnessing AI and the human plus AI equation looks for agencies going into the future.
Speaker 3Strong vision, strong name. Was it hard to get like domains and stuff like that? It was, yeah.
Speaker 2One of my directors and investors, Simon Pound, and I spent a long time on like WhatsApp messages coming up with all sorts of names and then you get onto something that you think is going to work and you put it in front of someone else and they just like tear it to shreds. And then you get onto something that you think is going to work and you put it in front of someone else and they just like tear it to shreds. And then you get onto something that you think is going to work and you put it in front of someone else and they just like tear it to shreds. You know, I've got a very good sounding board of people that love to tell me when I'm wrong. And so we had a few iterations. And then when we sort of landed on manifest, I mean, we got the domain GoManifest.ai, one to kind of fit into the ecosystem where we come from, where a lot of these other MarTech companies have got like a Go insert name domain. But secondly, like, you know, GoManifest, something I thought was quite cool. I love it. We do get called GoManifest every now and then, but I don't mind.
Speaker 3I love it. Are you up for some hot takes this early in the show? Totally. Let's do it. Common AI opinion that drives you crazy.
Speaker 2That we need to automate everything, especially, I mean, one that I get really stuck on is like automating your inbox. Like, why do we need to automate our inboxes? I spent a long time like running an agency and now I run a tech company. And like your inbox is your interface to the world. It's your interface to your customers. It's your interface to your suppliers. It's your interface to your staff a lot of the times, especially if you've got international teams. And like if you're going to put an AI in front of that. Like, very strong interface, you're not only losing like clarity on what's going on inside the business and what's happening, but you're also not being able to think through or challenge yourself on how to manage situations and scenarios. You're offloading that to an AI. Like, I learned most of the biggest problems that were happening inside my agency through my clients giving me a grilling over email. But also, you know, you miss things by not being on the front line. So the idea that we need to like put an AI in front of our number one interface to the world. I think is like bizarre and I would strongly recommend against it. And I think that that sentiment kind of shapes down to the rest of the business of like, what are the core parts of the workflow where people are required, where people are necessary? Stop trying to automate those things. Automate all the stuff that we don't need to be doing. But like the whole workflow doesn't need to be automated so you can spend less time scrolling reels. Like get involved, get stuck in and deal with problems and learn from the communication you're receiving.
Speaker 3That is such a hot take. Because most people start with the email automation. Like in Gmail, it can just craft a response to you.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah. Like I love Gemini, but every time I give it a go, I'm like, that is just so far from what I want to say.
Speaker 3It sounds nothing like me too. Like I do not sound like that.
Speaker 2A lot of people like recently because we closed a raise have been emailing me and they've been starting it with like, hi, Freddie, like congrats on the most recent raise. And every time like Gemini like creates me the first draft of an email, I try it. It's like, hi there. Congrats on. your raise, it's like, hang on, I'm the one that raised. They're congratulating me. Like, where did you get that from?
Speaker 3it's like um like when someone buys you a coffee and they're like enjoy your meal and then you're
Speaker 2like you do it's the same thing like are we not past this now so um yeah it's uh you don't need to automate your inbox just write an email and speak from the heart and it doesn't need to you know i think being too punctual and being too perfect is now like a downside so yeah it's an
Speaker 3ick i totally agree own your comms right everyone's talking about agents you've already brought up agents you're making my point very clear but from where i'm sitting and maybe i'm in the wrong room almost someone's actually using ai agents is that true like like how many people are you noticing genuinely using autonomous multi-step ai uh not many yeah right yeah it's um it's definitely not
Speaker 2mainstream it's still very much in that like experimenting phase and then you know there's there's experimenting with something and then there's implementing it into your workflow and using it day to day and making it part of the way that you do things and like we're not there yet we're so far from that i believe like went to google cloud summit last year which i know you've got a great relationship with google and um that was all about agents it was about this time last year so it's probably coming up right anyway it's all about agents had a room full of like 2 000 people and they were like we're here to talk about agents like who in the room is using agents and like probably like three people put their hands up you know this is all about last year i reckon if they do that again this year they're probably going to get the same thing yeah uh it's not that there's a lack of like technology there like the technology is amazing and it's great and it can do that i think what's happening is that people that are experimenting with agents are like creating problems and then creating an agent to see how they would solve that problem but then when they're actually facing the problems in day-to-day not immediately going to hey what's the agentic solution to this just going oh this is annoying this is part of my you know my day-to-day or just like banging into chat gpt and seeing what chat
Speaker 3gpt yeah i agree and i appreciate you saying this because i feel like people are afraid to admit that they're not using agents but like i i speak to people that are bringing agents like like all the top companies have them salesforce google aws we're all talking about it and then i'm like what is the bottleneck that's stopping people is it like what do you think is it the tech itself it's definitely not the tech it's just like the
Speaker 2practicality of it and then probably like the first output from it like people that are experimenting with it i think ai is a beast that you have to work with to get what you want out of it and if you don't get what you want on your first try which you usually don't you know you probably get a drop off of 50 who don't make it past the first prompt making that up but yeah i wouldn't be surprised if it's true so there's a like actually getting it to do the thing you want it to do through persistence through trial and error and unfortunately in the modern day and age you actually have to think for once about how to command the system to do what you want but you have to think about the solution more uh which people don't want to do so there's your first problem uh and then the second one is like agents solve a problem for the here and now but the way that work is happening is changing so fast with new tooling with new ways of working with just like employee sentiment so that particular agent might also not be relevant in like a month or two because hey we're not using that tool anymore hey that's no longer relevant to the business and so there's also like the retirement of workflows that's happening so fast so smart i love that take thank you
Speaker 3this is a quote i've found 40 of ai agent projects will be abandoned by 2027 it's kind of talking about an ai agent bubble do you think that's because of the connectors that you're talking about being void is there something else or is it like the way i think about this is i'm lazy when it's fully easy to use then i'll start using agents i mean it's never been easier but um
Speaker 2it's still too hard yeah which is so right like i even sometimes get stuck in exactly what i just explained before like you know i have a few guys and it's like it's actually just easier if i do it myself um because i've got all the context right that's the number one thing that i think that agents suffer from is that they don't have a huge amount of context as to what you're trying to get done like we we run everything at manifested notion got my hat on uh and it's that living like beating heart of the company that you know it's plugged into into google into gmail into slack like it's got as much data as you could possibly get like where work is taking place it's got a way in and you still ask it things and it gives me back like the most ridiculous outputs like constantly and i have to try different models and so on so forth and then you finally get there and it comes down to to either like not enough context or too much context like there is stuff in our notion space that is like old and has not been updated like some of our like core icp work that we maybe did like two years ago and that's still part of the context base of our notion base and so i also have to be constantly updating that knowledge base to ensure that the ai and then the agents that we're using have good context and that we're able to do that in context so i think the problem is is that context moves and changes every single day and to be in the right moment of context with the right amount of new data with ignoring the old data and knowing what the right output is is actually possibly the the great problem with agents right now whoever solves that maybe it's us we'll win i think with agents and then make it again easy so that people like you and i don't get frustrated trying to get to the outcome
Speaker 3strong because i feel like the context window issue still isn't solved like i still feel like i'm starting a new chat every time like solve that before we start talking about agents yeah so i
Speaker 2think if we can solve that context window piece of like what's good information what's bad information then i think agents are going to be like giving much better results much earlier and then i think that people will start to use it more but the other flip side of that and we'll probably get into manifest in a little bit but i think that human nature is probably a little part of that as well a little slice of that like our business started off trying to automate timesheets it's a lot more than that now but the core problem was is that agencies were relying on self-reported data to make decisions around costing around resourcing tooling you know pricing you name it they were relying on this like the garbage in garbage out yeah do you know do you know that concept of like
Speaker 3yeah i used to do data analytics exactly like only as good as the excel spreadsheet you give me 100
Speaker 2and so like that concept of like garbage in garbage out you were you're only as good as the data that's coming in we understood that we had to take the human out of the equation to get access to that data now what we also discovered is that people just hate doing timesheets like they're so boring but they are really simple in concept it's like here's a little calendar and there's a few boxes and just put in how much time you spent like it's so simple and like in principle right but in practice it's like the worst part of everyone's jobs they absolutely hate it so what my concept around like agents are and and how ai is going to become part of the future of work is that it needs to be so simple that it almost needs to be automatic um and you like remove the human from the equation as much as you can like it's a huge product decision we haven't manifested can this be done automatically can this be done by the system without requiring a request from the user because if people like can't fill out a timesheet which i'm also one of those people like we're expecting them to create these like multi-connected agents that do very very complex tasks that in some cases may even replace their jobs so if you're expecting that from people when they can't get timesheets right that's why we are in the scenario where there's this whole like expectation to hype around agents the technology is great but human nature comes into play like we just don't want to yeah that's so true like it
Speaker 3doesn't matter how great the value proposition is like at the end of the day humans are the ones that need to be buying into it we're creatures of habit
Speaker 2it's like this is how i've done it for the last 5 10 15 20 years so let's pull the rule book out underneath us because we can do so much more and then you actually look at it from a practical sense and it's like someone might play around with something for curious you know out of curiosity and then drop it and leave it so that's why we're in this position where it's like yeah agent projects are being abandoned they're not being picked up and they're really just being used to like trial and to create linkedin content guilty that's right what's it like to run an
Speaker 3agency high level never heard of what an agency is never run one what is it well i ran a i ran a
Speaker 2production agency so we um we produced media and content and tv commercials and brand stories and music videos and boardrooms everything in between and it started off as like me and my camera as a freelancer and then i grew it to a to a you know decent size agency as chaos like on the best of days uh like working in an agency looks fun because you get to do something that you love and you get to just like tell stories and then get to do something that you love and then you get to do at the end of the day owning an agency is not fun it is like props to anyone that does it and does well out of it because it's like so stressful like there's so many unknowns and there's so many opportunities for failure and for things to go wrong especially when we were like in the media space of it where especially when we're shooting content like you get one shot to capture it there's a brief there's a client expectation that changes all the time by the way and and you get one shot to capture it and if you don't catch it it's like oh my god yeah it was um it was chaos i mean we had some great times like we shot some awesome campaigns my favorite one was one we did actually for jet star funnily enough uh you know may i fly quantus but this jet star uh campaign was i was
Speaker 3like you said music videos and all these cool sexy things and then you're like so jet star so yeah we
Speaker 2i mean we produced boiler rooms though like everyone's like what were those like and i was like those were the most stressful ones we ever did because what back to my original point like you got one chance to capture it's a huge international brand i'll get into that later but the jet star one was really cool we did it during covid when um there was that brief like trans-tasman bubble that opened up between australia and new zealand where you could fly between the two no one else could fly internationally but we could uh and we did this campaign for jetstar that was called um travel here while the rest of the world can't and it was all about us showcasing new zealand to australians uh and then there was one that was done in australia that was selling australia to new zealanders and we shot this like sick campaign out on the beach in piha which is in like west auckland uh you know like beautiful like long black sand beaches it was so stunning and it was one of my favorite campaigns it was so much fun to shoot and um it was everywhere it was so cool we saw it like train stations and billboards and stuff like that um so that was fun and then we had like other ones that um i was like in the middle of the central north island at four in the morning in the middle of winter in a goat farm like capturing goats for a for a um a company that made a bunch of goat milk products like that's kind of rad oh my god you know that's the that was the kind of like the the
Speaker 3ebbs and flows of it exhausting but like glamorous at when you see the final product it is like there's
Speaker 2so much that goes into it that like people don't see um and usually the projects that make you like the most money that we found were the like unglamorous the boring ones the simple commercial ones and then the like you know the audi campaigns and stuff that we did like we usually didn't have great budgets on those but they were fun to shoot and great to put on the portfolio yes sounds
Speaker 3similar to the tech industry it is a little bit like that and then you identified during covid so when you were shooting these um amazing campaigns and things you identified this agency return on effort problem is not ideal paint the picture of that return on effort like what we like to
Speaker 2think about it manifests as we don't like to think of um time as time funnily enough um we think of time as effort because if it is directly related to um you know what goes into something that can change based around the way that you get to the outcome i feel like i'm speaking of riddles right now but like uh time is is constant right and if you always look at time and you charge on time and you obviously your costs are associated with time you'll always be chasing like billable hours i think effort is interesting because effort you can look at what is the value that you're creating and then the effort to get there can come down to create the same amount
Speaker 3of value by utilizing tooling utilizing ai 100 with you and you yeah utilizing automations and
Speaker 2new ways of working right and so for us especially it manifests as like moving our mindset away from being a time tracking time shooting tool but to being something that captures effort and shows agencies how to reduce the amount of effort to create you know the same amount of value or more or how to create more value and directly relate that to effort and so effort you know i think it's really something that people can grasp is like ai has reduced the amount of effort to get to a lot of outcomes and so we want to carry that across into like how can i reduce the amount of effort that goes into something to achieve the same or greater value
Speaker 3um does that answer that does yeah that 100 does i'm already like thinking about all the things that it applies to in my life like things that are low effort high return that's right but it's
Speaker 2still the same amount of time like like yeah time on tools is kind of what i like my my equation for effort is time plus tool and so like same amount of time plus better tool could potentially equal more value or less amount of time on a better tool you know
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Speaker 3less amount of effort look let's talk about the fact that you've been in all the news headlines lately you raised two million dollars very recently that we did pre-seed rounds like i haven't heard those numbers raised for pre-seed
Speaker 2in years like genuinely i think me too yeah it's um quite surreal and we're in like i'll call it
Speaker 3we're in a bit of a hurry but we're in a bit of a hurry because we're in a bit of a hurry of a fundraising winter i feel like uh with this ai boom i feel like investors aren't really sure what has moats anymore and what to invest in clearly you guys at manifest showed and proved something to investors what do you think that was yeah i mean i will acknowledge it's like
Speaker 2definitely a tough time to raise capital especially at pre-seed stage and especially probably in ai which is funny that i'm saying that because that was all the rage for the last couple years and i think it was a tough time for the last couple of years for us like first of all we've got amazing investors like shout out to to all everyone that um you know gave uh gave us some capital and gave us some firepower like and believed in us which which we appreciate um but also i think the kind of formula that that we fit into that allowed us to raise you know a substantial pre-seed is that there's a deep level of domain expertise that that i have like i built this as a tool to solve my problem or we built this as a tool to solve my problem or we built this as a tool to solve my problem or we built this as a tool to solve a problem that i face every single day like i knew this problem through and through because i had been you know at the consequence of the problem um and that had cost me money that had cost me um clients in some cases it looked like it was going to cost me my business and so the pain for me was personal but also i thought a lot like the customer and that that idea of trying to automate something trying to remove friction trying to the user experience is kind of what separated us from every single other solution on the market where they still even the most automated solutions still require a lot of input and feedback from the user and i was like well the people are just not going to do that like i've seen it happen in principle like and and and in a practical format it's like people just aren't going to do that like oh they're just all they've got to do is click on a box and assign it and i'm like yeah but then they've got to do that 50 times on a friday and they just they just won't do that and so that knowledge of not only me being able to do that but also being able to do that on a Friday and the key stakeholder being the the agency owner but also me having been the creative having to track my own time i knew what the product had to do to be successful in the industry so the deep domain expertise was one thing uh and then the second thing was kind of like access to um to customer uh we we've got a really um strong pipeline like everyone loves to talk about pipeline because we're in a pilot um phase which is like a closed pilot we're not accepting new customers right now and so we are like loading up with the next series of agencies look like and you know i've spoken to most agencies here in australia and i'm still yet to find one that disagrees with what we do and so our access to market has has purely been by a the people that support us and back us but be the problem that we solve um most agencies that we've spoken to like we genuinely some part of our product solves the biggest problem for this customer segment um right now and possibly for the next five to ten years like the timesheet problem looks like a really simple problem it's like oh yeah people just hate doing timesheets but i can just like tell my team to um you know be better at it to do better at them and um they'll find out that doesn't work but it's the data that comes back from those timesheets that is like so important right now as to how much does it cost to create value and create outcomes how can i do it for cheaper how can i do it for better do i have too many staff do i have not enough staff what tools are we using are those tools working um subscription costs are out of control so how can i make sure that we're only making subscription decisions on things that work in value and how can i start offlining things that people use once and you know haven't used since so there's so many different like angles that our data and so many different stories that our data can tell for agencies and the agencies obviously i'm a bit biased on this but like the agencies that don't have that data and don't have it to a level of accuracy that we provide just are making decisions off like blind data that that really is not a very good depiction of what's going on so i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and i think it's important for us to think about what we're doing and how we're going to do that and so by solving the biggest problem for the customer like possibly for the next decade and and being able to back that up with like actual results to our investors and showing them this is what everyone is saying like this is like look at the pipeline look at the conversations i've had look at the caliber of customers um that gave them enough confidence to go yep great problem you know great founders and deep connection to to the to the industry and then a big enough problem to solve like the marketing creative advertising industry is huge like it's a big enough industry for us to make a substantial business if we just capture that but funnily enough timesheets are not just a big enough industry for us to make a substantial business
Speaker 3a problem for agencies right yeah as a consultant i had to do as a consultant as a lawyer as an
Speaker 2accountant as an engineer as an architect like anyone that touches timesheets which is like most of the like essentially most of the service-based industry especially digital service-based industries has got this problem and so for us like we think we can solve it much broader and wider than creative but creative is close to my heart and i know the problem really really well and i know the customer really well and so we've got a lot of work to do here um but but i think our goal is to see that actually this is this is a um this is a big enough problem to solve it's a it's a valid solution to the problem and i think that they can see that you know myself my co-founder already like are prepared to take it the whole way
Speaker 3I want to talk to you about your co-founder. I read that he, so he's ex-Microsoft. That's our CTO. CTO Tom Reid is who I'm talking about.
Speaker 2CTO Tom.
Speaker 3He built you guys a proprietary AI model. Is that over-engineering, mate? Like, what are we doing? Can't you just use open AI in the back end? Like, what are we doing?
Speaker 2Yeah, the core system I manifest is proprietary that Tom has built for us. Like, it's not a foundation model. Like, I think AI and, like, models and LLMs, like, there's a lot of terminology flying around. But when you actually break down what it is, it's essentially like a pipeline, machine learning decisions that a system is making to get to an outcome. And so what our system does is it takes, like, the chaos of everyone's day and contextualizes that against what they're supposed to be working on, i.e. the projects that they're assigned and the tasks, right? So it's a really specific task, and it's pretty simple in terms of, like, this is, you know, 500 actions and here's 40 boxes. Like, do that. Now, if we were to run that for each user through, like, you know, an anthropic model or something like that, like, there's so much wastage in terms of the way that those systems work and the thinking that they have to do to get to the outcome that, first of all, would cost us a fortune, second of all, it potentially would be slow, and third of all, we are handling, like, quite sensitive data on behalf of our clients. We're handling, like, exactly what people are working on. And when you're sending that data back into, like, a publicly available model like that, like, you're potentially creating breaches inside, like, that security loop, right?
Speaker 3So you can't just, like, screenshot your calendar, be like, what's my time sheet? Why can't you just do that? It was that simple.
Speaker 2No, yeah, like, there's a variety of reasons why we had to do it this way, but the main one was that we needed to make sure that the, the privacy and security behind our customers' data was kept in as much of a closed loop as we possibly can. And so building our own pipeline was the best way to do that. And then the kind of happy consequences of that is, you know, it's really, really cheap for us to run the system and we're not reliant on third parties for the core functionality of the platform. And it sounds really good in an investor pitch.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, yeah, I liked it.
Speaker 2But it is true, you know, we can back it up.
Speaker 3Ad agencies or production? Are they, like, will they survive in a few years' time? Will they be better than ever? What do we think?
Speaker 2Production, yeah, I mean, look, I've got a lot of confidence for, like, the ad advertising and creative and marketing industries. Like, just from what we've seen from conversations I have and just seeing what our customers are doing publicly, as well as what they tell us in closed rooms, is that I think that the future for that sector is very much going to probably lie in the Indies for the short term, what I can see, like, there's some fantastic Indies here in Australia and also over in the US that are adopting new ways of working that are adopting AI into the way that they do things to create efficiencies, to expand capabilities, and just to generally make their system a more well-oiled machine. And because they are smaller and they are independently run, they can be a lot more trigger-happy with making these decisions around trialling new tools. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. And so until the larger, like, holdcos can do that, I don't think they're going to be as successful. doing things, communicating things, seeing the world. And as long as like AI is like retrospectively looking, you know, humans are a really integral part of creativity. So I've got a lot of confidence in that becoming, you know, or continuing to grow as an industry. Also, I think like having run an agency, clients just want someone to blame as well. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3Who's the human responsible? Exactly.
Speaker 2They've been able to buy a camera and shoot a campaign themselves ever since, you know, they've been able to do anything themselves down to copywriting, but they don't because I think clients like to have someone else involved in the loop, especially someone that is a specialist, because you're giving yourself the best chance of having a good outcome from that exercise that makes you look good. So I could try and learn how to do something, or I could get someone that only does this one thing. And then if they go wrong, I don't look bad. I can blame the agency. Yeah.
Speaker 3And it's like such a good flex. Like we've got the best, the best PR agency in the country. That's right. That kind of thing is so good. Exactly.
Speaker 2And so back to my original point around human nature, like human nature will dictate the limitations of these technologies and tools. And I think that like, yeah, as long as like clients need someone to talk to and someone to bounce ideas off and someone to scream at, like people are going to be going to be involved in that workflow. Production though, that's an interesting one. Like that's where I cut my teeth, probably shot a thousand campaigns in my lifetime. And I'm not as optimistic about production, unfortunately. I mean, we, we got hit with so many, so many like, you know, curve balls when I was running my agency. Like we, we grew so fast at the start because the kind of success criteria for an agency back when I started was like, can you shoot good looking content that, you know, works in some, in some cases. So I had a nice camera. I had a good eye for things I'd like to think. And so we had a lot of early success and word of mouth got around and the company grew really fast. But then, you know, polished looking videos weren't converting anymore because people were putting like jelly beans in a jar on some corporate TikTok account. And that UGC wave is now the way to grow and convert. And so when you quite literally, the antithesis of what you were creating becomes not the way of doing things anymore. Like we lost a lot of work when UGC had its moment in time.
Speaker 3Music generated content.
Speaker 2Music generated content. When like really dumb content, which was what it was, was actually creating the most organic growth and brands went all in on that. How dare you?
Speaker 3That's all I do is dumb content on Instagram.
Speaker 2Oh, I like to think yours has got some kind of substance to it, Georgie. This show does, yeah. Instagram less so. Do you remember when people were like, they had like a jar of jelly beans and they were like, I don't know, putting 10 jelly beans in here until my boss sends me to Ibiza or something like that. You know that?
Speaker 3Oh my God. Yeah. The really, like, and so transactional. Like you could so tell.
Speaker 2But the problem is you attract the wrong audience. Like you had brands that like enterprise, resource planning platforms that were producing this kind of content. And then they have like 150, 200,000 followers of like kids, right? Because that's who finds that stuff funny. Oh, that's interesting. But then you now, your account is forever going to be like in free fall. Like you're always going to be losing. People can't buy your product. Well, you're just going to always be losing followers. You're always going to be dropping in engagement because like, A, that you're either not doing that anymore because it's a pretty silly exercise. But B, like your follower base is genuinely not interested in anything. You have to. You have to. You have to sell. And so then that negatively influences what the algorithm thinks about you. And so it's kind of like a death sentence. It's like hype writing just to get a bunch of followers or get a bunch of reach. I think is a death sentence for corporate accounts, especially in like the enterprise space, because you've just forever been a receding account that is receding in engagement.
Speaker 3Can I ask you a targeted question that has been playing on my mind? Absolutely. Do you go at growth at all costs? Like using these hooks and these viral. Hacking. Growth hacking. And I don't even care what platform, LinkedIn, X, social media. Or do you want users to reach out to your brand in smaller numbers? Like I know it's such a hard thing to answer, but do you want that loyal customer or do you just want to look impressive when someone opens your page?
Speaker 2I think the optics one, which is the like growth hacking. Well, I think growth hacking is actually like really, really smart. And I've seen some people do it really, really well. Like one of my good friends. Nick, he's super young and he's just kind of cracked GTM and he just finds ways to get a huge amount of like relevant attention relatively cheaply. And so like, I think that kind of growth hacking is like so cool. And I'd love to, to be able to do that myself.
Speaker 3Give him my details. Thanks. I will. I'll send you over Nick's details.
Speaker 2I think that hype writing is like quite dangerous for especially like B2B brands and enterprise brands, because I think the way that, you know, your brand is perceived, especially if you're trying to sell something, it's quite serious. And then you've got like your social team that's like consistently taking the piss out of the brand online creates, you know, well, creates the impression that you're designing a brand that's for Gen Zers or for like younger people when actually you're trying to sell like time tracking software, for example. And then, you know, you're constantly writing trends, you're attracting the wrong audience to your account. And then when you finally realize that it's not converting for you and it's costing you money and you try and change tech, then you're just going to be forever like losing following and engagement. And then the algorithm is going to have it out for you. Like. That's, that's how it works. And that's what people just see. Oh, like ClickUp's got 500,000 followers. Like we need to do that. And then you do that and then you realize why that doesn't work, but it's too late at that point. I mean, I come at it from like, I mean, I've done a lot of campaigns for my clients at Vivid when I was running the agency. But then now we are like an enterprise B2B company and like you've got me on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Speaker 3Like I post on my LinkedIn, not very much, just a little bit, I just don't post.
Speaker 2Like at all. And we're lucky.
Speaker 3It's serious, yeah.
Speaker 2Well, we're lucky that we've got a huge amount of pull on our product just from, the network effect throughout the industry and we're only in pilot right now so there's not a huge amount of agencies that are using our product currently but the product like the problem that we solve and word about how we solve that problem has gone around so that like i've got you know i'm very very blessed to say but like more customers than we could possibly um service right now waiting in our pipeline that you know given we were ready to start running which we're getting really really close we'd be able to capture capture all of them and and they'd all be able to get an incredible experience out of our product so for me i've never needed to ride the hype train with manifest i've thought about it like early days my co-founder and i had like fiddled around with a few things on like tiktok and stuff i had my own like tiktok um here's a here's a spicy one oh it's not spicy but it's actually quite funny um i just decided to start making like day in the life tiktoks of me and it was like oh yeah it was pretty tacky it was like day in the life of a i think i was 25 at the time day in the life of a 25 year old vc backed tech founder oh my gosh i already hate oh god yeah i hated myself um but like i was just like and i was traveling a lot during that period like i was down in melbourne three times a week and so there was lots of like airports and meetings and like it looked like i was kind of rock and roll which is which is quite cool um albeit it was actually just like lots of meetings and work but um i just started posting these tiktoks with a fresh account and i was getting like 10 15 20k views and like hundreds of likes across them which like i thought was pretty interesting but the work that went into producing them like i just couldn't justify it was like why am i doing these like it's actually i was like not looking forward to editing them i wasn't having a fun time editing them mainly because i'd spent my whole career editing videos and so um yes i was good at it but i um i didn't enjoy it anymore uh and then this one time i was at this like uh i was at this like drinks thing somewhere and someone came up to me they're like you're the guy from tiktok and i was like i am the fucking guy from tiktok
Speaker 3that's me i was like what that was the day that i i turned it off
Speaker 2someone literally came up to me they're like you're the founder guy from tiktok i was like yes
Speaker 3i'm that guy you've already made it worth the while oh my god it was i mean it feels great it
Speaker 2feels really cool but like apart from that like little pat on the back ego wise like i just wasn't getting any value out of it and i didn't need to be doing it and like a really targeted question
Speaker 3because you've obviously got product market fit you've got more customers than you need once i
Speaker 2was at pmf yet but we uh we're striving for it we've got problem market fit but um yeah product
Speaker 3team's got a bit of work to do freddie it's fine but you've gone by like just genuinely having a product that customers want and need and can see the return on investment fully being there what do you say to founders that are like we're not quite there yet ai keeps like blowing us out of the water do you suggest they do usg like user generated content like what do you suggest they
Speaker 2do i think like especially in the age of ai like finding a problem that is so like so sticky but also um so like deeply ingrained into the way that we do things like one thing that blows my mind every single day is that like myself and my co-founder and my fantastic team are the only people on the planet that are solving like this problem like timesheets have been around since we started working off paper right so i think that's a really good point i think that's a really good one right like i don't even i should probably look this up because it'd be a great story for a podcast but like timesheets have been around for so long maybe for this podcast freddie thanks yeah exactly there we go i didn't do any research i'm completely unprepared by the way uh they've been around for so long like ages and no one thought to fix them like and and me and my team are the people to do that like crazy still blows my mind every single day like that we are the
Speaker 3people i was like this right where everyone's like i could have had that idea but you didn't
Speaker 2but the problem's been around for so long and like no one thought to just do it because the mentality is like this is the way we do things right yes oh this is just the way things work like people that can't find a problem to solve like and i actually spoke to someone on the weekend who was wanted to be a founder and they didn't know what to do and i was like just look around the world around you and look around what is what you do every single day and actually like the things that you don't like doing the things that make you nervous the things that suck the experiences that suck can you find a technology solution to fix that like people are chasing ai companies that you know generate imagery of all kinds of crap that we like just don't need yeah like oh someone was pitching me something the other day about like an ai like crm that was like super simple and it didn't have all the fluff of sales force and i was just like this is so uninspiring yeah we do not need another crm what i can ban like i can create one on notion i think like there's so many problems out there that that can be solved and um they're not sexy problems like we are not solving a sexy problem we're solving like the worst problem inside agencies like and service-based companies um and and we're doing it in such like a an intuitive way that it's a no-brainer to our customers and so the pull from the product like we're not a timesheet company i want to be very like straight up my board hates it when i say we're a timesheet company but we're not a timesheet company we we are a value capture company and timesheets is like one of the just one of the obvious yeah levers it's it's our competitor right so we're not a timesheet company we're not a right like we compete against that and like it's pretty easy to compete against timesheets um but like there's so many problems and so find something that's not sexy something that this is the way that we do things is like a clear signifier that there's a problem to be solved there um and then think up a really like like intuitive way to do that okay that's that's my that's my my goal like
Speaker 3the boring non-sexy ideas are the ones that pop off like anyone that goes i could market this by
Speaker 2posting brain rot on on tiktok like that's the right way to do it and i think that's a really the wrong problem to solve uh you still don't have a product yeah yeah that's i mean maybe it works there's probably some people that are doing that really really well but if you want to solve like a an industry-wide issue that has like billions and billions of dollars of potential like tam i think find like super unsexy sticky problems that um that this is the way we do things as like as your
Speaker 3competitor i want two predictions from you before we go to the rapid fire are you ready okay hit me i'm gonna be going down in history if you get these wrong okay pressure do you think open ai having ads
Speaker 2yeah it's a terrible idea um people are relying on open ai to make like decisions about especially purchasing decisions and you're now going to like sell it off to the highest bidder like fucking hate it fuck that's so stupid well they're just going to ruin their user base because people are going to like have bad product experiences and if you don't trust it like if you
Speaker 3don't trust the llm yeah like you're just not going to use it it's going to be like i don't know if it's
Speaker 2going to be terminal for them but like i've stopped using chat gpt there's an exodus from chat gpt to claude going on right now i'm not on that exodus because i've just kind of been using notion ai where you can kind of pick what model you work with and i i just go with whatever gives me the best answer but like chat gpt like i think even like my mum uses chat gpt it's that's how you know it's gone mainstream right but as soon as she starts like as soon as there's this like ads being rammed down you constantly like yeah no yuck i mean i remember it happened even like in other
Speaker 3pinterest and like you know youtube and then people are like paying for premium to get out of youtube but when there's such a good competitor like anthropic or even gemini or whatever why would i put up with that shit like i just don't understand i mean the argument to be made on it
Speaker 2is like you know we have sponsored content on like youtube some of my favorite creators like you know they've got sponsored segments and some of them are good products but what's the competitor to youtube like there is no anthropic it's a search engine right like i think that um people like read what comes out of chat gpt is like gospel and if they can't very clearly like differentiate that someone has paid for this answer and then provide like three answers that come from how the model gets to its decisions and make that differentiation very clear like in a google search yeah it's what's misleading but also it's like yeah i think people are just going to get sick of it
Speaker 3so that user experience you have to scroll past the ads to get oh totally all right second one do you believe we have seen the end of the saspocalypse or are we just in the beginning
Speaker 2there's more dead bodies coming i reckon the saspocalypse is a myth i'm strongly yeah it's it's such a myth it's something that like journalists love to throw around to like scare investors or whatever but i don't believe in the saspocalypse and it goes back to a common theme that i've been uh um banging my drum on about around human nature right like back to my original point around people not being able to do timesheets if if the whole thesis behind saspocalypse is that people aren't going to be buying off-the-shelf solutions they're going to be creating their own bespoke solutions because it's more understanding of the outcome they're trying to get to or the business and so on so forth and it is way cheaper someone's got to go and create that tool like and then it has to work and then they have to either like if you're working inside a company like hang your career on this tool if we're going to get a thousand staff members inside the agency to use this instead of using insert x tool like and it goes tits up which they do especially when you don't understand how to code and you don't understand how to problem solve and you don't understand anything about the technology that you've created other than i'll just ask claude to fix it if it breaks like people aren't going to a take that risk b hang their their reputation and their career and a potential meltdown inside of a large organization on it and see they just can't be bothered they can't go out of time sheet this is the way that we do things and so like the off-the-shelf solutions make sense they solve the problem and they work and there's someone else to blame right that's my common themes that I think that the SaaSpocalypse is not true I think that like there was there is still plenty of opportunities to create tools to create platforms that operate in a SaaS model and for them to grow and have a huge amount of success and not feel like they are challenged by someone creating their own solution and the people will and they'll have a great amount of success with it but when you don't understand the technology that you're creating and you're potentially relying on that technology to get an outcome for a business big or small things go wrong you've got no one in there to ask apart from the thing that created the problem in the first place yes so that they make
Speaker 3our lives easier but it's also safe and reliable to have like traditional b2b SaaS yeah and there's people behind it that you can call up and be like hey yeah had this issue fix it for me that's right
Speaker 2but they're also they're like tried and tested right like there's thousands of people using this tool and so someone else is already broken it before and it's been fixed if you're deploying something for the first time like you haven't had that exposure to edge cases like the way that people use manifest every day blows my mind like you did that and then that like but the button's there and people do strange things on your system and when you like when you hedge that exposure over thousands hundreds of thousands of people you get a rock solid reliable system when you have a bespoke tool that's been created by an individual that doesn't understand technology doesn't understand troubleshooting and and we're expected to rely on that to do a thing um i think you can you can see why like
Speaker 3the SaaSpocalypse is a complete fad there's your hot take there we go strong rapid fire you got to answer these like yeah fast i can't like waffle well i mean i'll just yell at you all right well let's go one ai tool you can't live without notion you mentioned it a million times it's notion it's valuable because of ai creativity no questions asked agi before 2035
Speaker 2probably true but also like i don't think anyone knows least of all me um like okay i know i know
Speaker 3i'm ruining the rapid fire do you think open ai and anthropic focusing on ipos means they're not focusing on agi right now like i feel like they're distracted i mean if agi makes commercial sense
Speaker 2then it's all like complimentary but um yeah focusing on ipos is definitely distracting like focusing on fundraising is super distracting for my business so times that by a billion and put in all of the like audit trails and scrutiny
Speaker 3that goes into an ipo trying to benefit humanity guys yeah come on why do we really think that's
Speaker 2what they're here for come on um yeah i i don't i actually agi is not something i get super excited about or like i worry too much about to be honest with you um if it happens it happens if it doesn't
Speaker 3it's pretty boring two more one thing founders should stop wasting time on um automating their
Speaker 2inboxes uh no i'm fixating on fundraising like fundraising is great and it serves a purpose but also like it is a lot of work it's really hard and it doesn't define the success of a company um also like it doesn't yes it gives us more opportunities to do more and opens up capabilities and extends runways but it's like i think not enough founders obsess over revenue um and excess over like customer growth and problem um so so like my recommendation to to founders that want to do it is like don't think about the fundraise and then try and create a product or a problem to get there like find a problem solve it and then if fundraising makes sense
Speaker 3to you then do it last question oh no i was having so much fun i know you're on a roll now just getting into it yeah yeah who wins in the ai era business wise um that is a good one i actually
Speaker 2get this far down the uh down the questions who wins in the ai era well obviously ai companies um i think like from a business type i think it's going to be companies that can tie like their purpose and their ip to something that is um human something that can't be democratized something that you know my my 18 year old cousin can't create on a weekend uh and is in his um uni hall but also like the ones that will win are the ones that can make like a very very clear distinction that of the value that they create and you know not trying to bring it back to manifest because it's the last question but like what our core thesis is is like how we can capture and demonstrate and and manifest human value and show how ai accelerates human value or complements it or expands it um like that the companies that do that the companies that show why the people behind the value are so um novel but also part of like what the company does um are the ones that are going to win and then the ones that just become like a factory of outputs that don't really have any kind of you know distinction between them will be the ones that
Speaker 3will just get lost in the whitewash don't be those guys don't be those guys how do you how
Speaker 2do listeners find you and how do they follow you now uh it's a great point actually um i have a linkedin uh that i use sometimes yes um you're not gonna reinstall the tiktok no i actually deleted tiktok funnily enough i've been off tiktok for like a year mainly because like i didn't want to scroll but then like i feel like you just end up on reels um so uh you can follow me on linkedin my name is freddie mckenzie i'm the founder of manifest so you can find me on there uh you can follow manifest along there um we have an instagram that we don't use so probably you can follow that if you want to uh you can't follow my instagram because it's private but you do uh but yeah i mean we're pretty we're pretty stealthy about what we do and how we operate and we will be probably for a little bit longer but um we'll be making some noise in a few months time um once we've achieved what we want to achieve at this stage of the business but um it's pretty exciting so i can't wait to share it with you so much for coming thank you for having me george's it's been great and um look forward to the next one hopefully uh post series a maybe
Speaker 3thank you so much for listening to in the blink of ai if you want to go deeper on anything we've spoken about today i write a weekly sub stack called attention is all i need yes it's hilarious it's a pun and essentially i go into ai rants tech news events i'm going to and more it's bite-sized i hear it's awesome uh the link is in the show notes below
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