Abhishek Pinninti: I'll let you know if there's anything that you can do from your side. I mean, I've this reverse side has been awesome, man. The way to host podcasts. You've been using this before? seen it before. I've heard people talk about it, but most of the time that I've done podcasts myself, I've been just like you just screen record the Google. Right. Right. I've been doing the same, but this looks interesting though. ⁓ you My co-founder, she has done her undergrad from Melbourne ⁓ University. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. There's lots of good universities down in Melbourne. Yeah. Yeah. She's done it from Deakin, I guess. Yes. Deakin. Okay. Yeah. Done. Let's start. Let's do it. Yeah. Okay. So Cody, I've been going through side quest, man. But you know, it made me, you know, feel excited when I got to know how you, know, you know, integrated the both segments of the streamer and the user. You know, I just wanted to know what made you to get that idea. Firstly, Yeah, sure. So I'm actually a big fan of live streaming. It's one of the biggest, ⁓ I guess, one of the mediums that I consume as a user the most. something I noticed was ⁓ a lot of individual tips were just getting ignored by creators. ⁓ And when you spend enough time in chat, you notice that streamers They're hyper-focused on pleasing their audience and being really responsive to their community. that kind of, as I was donating to streamers and as I was seeing these donations coming in, I thought of the idea, surely I'm not the only one who wants to see this streamer do whatever that side quest idea is. ⁓ And what if there were 10, 15, 50 other people in the stream who also wanted to see this streamer do this side quest? And then that's, guess, where the idea was born for the ability of people to pull donations together and submit side quests for their favorite streamers. Right, right. So basically, let me ⁓ get in detail of it. So let's say there's a streamer, let's say there's a gaming streamer, okay. So there's a group of people who pull up funds for him and help him for his next stream? So in the current stream, so it could be for the next stream, but it also could be within the current stream. It's really just open-ended. Whatever the content that that creator makes, whether it's gaming, whether it's in real life streaming, the audience and the community can come up with ideas that they want to see the creator do. So maybe it is changing for a whole stream to go do a different game. maybe it's within that single stream to, you know, do something within the game in the next five minutes that they want to play. Right. So how are the payment integrations being integrated? Like the creator directly gets the funds or are you the, I mean, the middle man who, you know, gets, collects the fund and send it to the streamer? Correct. So the revenue model of SideQuest is obviously a platform. So at some point SideQuest will be taking a a fee between the creator and the audience. But right now, and I guess if there's any streamers listening, we are providing onboarding benefits for early creators so they can feel comfortable in lowering that platform fee. yeah, that is, I guess, the service that SideQuest is providing is that ability to pull funds together. ⁓ And then, yeah, we've just integrated your ability yourself and you've used some of the API, like the vibe coding tools, like we've integrated the Stripe payments infrastructure, which is kind of the go-to. Right. So I think it is going to become a marketplace for both creators and the users where they can find the creator, the creator they love and they can donate them. is kind of make a marketplace kind of thing, right? Exactly. Hmm. Sounds good. So I mean, What was your previous stuff you have done before or this is your first time? Yeah, so I've been involved in startups since I graduated from my degree in 2021. graduated in the middle of COVID. I studied a master's of business. Yeah, crazy time. yeah, I did an MBA at the time doing an MBA at 21. probably not the smartest decision. I probably should have had a bit of experience before going in, but I focused really hard on startups during that time. And then coming out of uni, I was able to win some competitions at the end of my degree. And that got the attention of a startup in Sydney, ⁓ a web three startup that was an options derivatives exchange. And I became the first employee at that startup. And I stayed there for two, three years, became the head of marketing at that company and, ⁓ and then, yeah, I guess got the, the knack to build something myself. And that's when I left to, go and build a side quest. Right. Sounds, sounds great. So coming to AI and marketing, as you said, you have been exposed to that particular, you know, industries. would like to know what AI tools you have been using. for your brand in terms of marketing or building or how are you building auto, mean involving automations in the whole process. Yeah. Basically the agenda of my podcasts are around these, you know, you to help new founders, how can they involve AI in their businesses and automations in their businesses in product building and grow to market strategy. Yeah. So these are the main two categories where a founder should focus on. Product market fit and go to market strategy. ⁓ And I've been seeing your socials, the way you're building the authenticity of giving a target to your own viewers. Like you said, you wanted someone to use your app and you want to create content every day. That builds excitement for both the viewers and yourself as well. You have kept a target and you're working towards it. And I really like that strategy. So can you break us down? What is your go-to-market strategy and what was your, you know, product fit, product market fit you're trying to build? Yeah. So I guess I don't think I've hit product market fit with SideQuest yet. But I guess just touching on the AI side of things, I, yeah, I'm Obviously a huge proponent of AI being in our industry. I think it's pretty crazy to not try and utilize it at this stage, but ⁓ in the building side, that's obvious. I actually built a platform ⁓ in Lovable. I've used a lot of the vibe coding platforms and I feel like Lovable is the most intuitive out of all of them. The building side of things, That's one rabbit hole, but I'm actually really excited about the marketing side as well. I think what the marketing, like what AI I'm feeling with the build with Kodi account right now, like, so in the past I've done AI videos and lots of different things like that, but with the build with Kodi account, what AI is helping me do is personalize at scale and doing that using many chart ⁓ and That's like, think something that every founder and every product builder or every marketer should be doing at this stage is building automations to personalise interactions at scale. Yeah, I mean that is what it had made easy for us with AI. Yes. Yeah. Are you into AI cloning videos to get more reach or what do you think of cloning of your own personal face and building a page on it? I'm not opposed to it. I've done it a lot in the past. I don't think the models are there yet to across the uncanny valley. But I think for comedy purposes, it does work and it does. ⁓ And I think one area which is really interesting for me for B-roll for AI specifically is B-roll. some of the content that has gone well for me has been talking to the camera. And I don't think that that can be replicated super well with AI right now. However, having B-roll that is on brand for me using AI video and clone is something I would 100 % be interested in to looking into because that's not, yeah, that's not me talking to the camera, the way my face moves and my expressions. It's really just like me doing things. And I think that the video models are actually almost there to be able to replicate that in a way that you can't even notice that it's AI. What is your best video? mean, what is the best reach you have got through a video and what was it in the video? Did you expect that it is going to reach or what was the, you element in that? Yeah. So the best video for me so far in this journey. So I've had big videos in the past on different accounts and doing stuff for my brand, but for this account, the build with Kodi account, my best video. is has just passed 250,000 views on Reels. It's not massive for Reels by any means, but ⁓ it converted to a few thousand followers for me. And ⁓ I guess what I was experimenting for pretty much two weeks before hitting that video. And then now I'm consistently getting more reach with my posts and The most recent one that's going well is actually a carousel. ⁓ And I just crossed 2000 likes and I posted it yesterday. So I just feel that my account is now reaching the right audience thanks to the algorithm ⁓ from that first video. So was like two weeks of grind of like really no videos. I got like one good kind of video that reached was fed to like more people by the algorithm. And now, yeah, I'm kind of... think Instagram is understanding what audience to feed my content to. And then now I'm just going to be creating until I hopefully hit that million view, two million view video. Right. What was the content? What is the actual content that was in the video, which hit 250k views? So it was, ⁓ a comparison of what 10 users actually looks like in real life. So when you get 10 users and that's 10 real users, 50 users and 100 users. Yeah. Yeah. And a thousand users. So a thousand users is like pretty much a concert stadium. A hundred users is like a really full university lecturer and then kind of working upwards. And I think people were, yeah. The reason it worked is because people Don't often think about it in that frame of, well, I have, I have 15 users, but that's like 15 real people. And that's enough to fill a restaurant, for example. Right. If you're hosting a house party in your house, your living room is completely filled with those 15 people. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'll tell you what I've been doing a while till now. So I've, I've done my masters in marketing from Paris from Toulouse business school. So since then I've started my marketing agency called as Whittlesback. So from then I've been working with lot of brands, D2C brands and know, ⁓ managing the socials and majorly working on their Google and meta ads to scale their brands. So the last five years in social media, was always, you know, every six months it was optimizing. If you didn't know which is working. See, let's say I built a strategy for a brand for the next three months. By the end of the third month, the strategy used to change. Yeah. I had to, I had to completely change the strategy and I again work on it. So I think today's world, a founder led brand brings you more reach than a agency managing your social. That is my perspective. I mean, if anybody And now we have completely stopped working on the social media side of two clients and working on only Meta and Google ads. ⁓ That is where we have built an AI tool and I'll come back to that. But what do you think about it? A founder led brand to reach out. Somebody told me a lot of conversations have been opening up recently with this social traction. Someone told me last week, they said, look through who you follow on social media. Like look through who you're following on Instagram. And most of the time it's people and it's very rarely brands, maybe the odd fashion brand, because you want to see the latest launches and stuff. But for products that I use every single day, tech products, I'm not following their brand Instagram because it's pretty stale content. Normally it's not super personal, but I do follow the founders because the founders are funny. The founders have a good story. ⁓ So I completely agree with you that founder led brands are super important and have always been super important, but for some reason now people have picked up on that they are. Right. So a recent study that I've gone through that, you know, all content creators are getting into their own brands. Let's say Mr. Beast have started Beastables, if I'm not wrong, some candy stuff or, you know, all these content creators are building their own brands. Do we know? let's say ⁓ to generate their audience as revenue indirectly. So, and I think the next wave of founders are all content creators. ⁓ I mean, even if you are a tech guy, you have to put it out. You got to push yourself. Yeah. Yeah. You have to entertain people. You have to dance for them. It's funny, like, I genuinely enjoy making the content and in the past, there's been the mental barrier of what are people going to think? What if I post all these videos and no one ever sees them? it's only when I was able to get past that, that I started getting videos that got any views anyways. And then now I think it's just a matter of being consistent until, you know, it pays off. You know, it was same for me. mean, I was not even consistent from the beginning and I am a shy person. So it was really hard for me to put myself on media. Oh, but when I got to know the potential, this is the only way I'm going to get my users. And there's no other way that I'll get my users and I have to do it. You have to, you have to do it. And the day I've seen my first user coming in, I didn't see back. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's I mean, man, I think you there'll be lot of marketplaces, there'll be paid marketing, which you can invest and there'll be influencer marketing, which can invest. There are a number of ways that you can market yourself. But I think a founder led band is the highest return on ad spend, I feel, to promote your product. it's just I think it's just a necessity at this stage. Exactly. So I'll just, I'll come back to widgelsback.ai. So we are building a tool where, you know, we are trying to improve return on ad spend through paid marketing. So brands usually spend on Meta and Google to promote their brands. You know, their product images or any stuff that they promote. So usually the market, current market stand is there is a $64 billion of ad wastage. That means brands are not able to convert the ad which they have spent on particular ads. So that is because of there's no optimization which is going on regularly from the brand side optimizing the brand. Usually marketers do that. They set up the campaign, they leave it and they wait for like one week and see what's going on. But that's not the way it works. They have to check up every 24 hours to know what's happening with the campaign and set it up, set that right. ⁓ So we are building a platform where, know, the user gets to know what's actually going wrong in the campaign and what changes they have to make to know, to optimize their ad spend. ⁓ So, I mean, we have all, we are in the beta phase and we have been testing it out with our previous clients and we have achieved our goals. Like 70 % of our goals have been achieved and we are trying to get A maximum ROAS to entry level brand is up to 6 to 7x. Using AI. Using AI. Before it was, let's say if they have kept $1000, they used to make only $1500 or $2000, which is just two times of their ad spend. But now we are trying to take it up to six times, which is like $6,000. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. We are working on it and we are trying to launch it like in the next month. And yeah. Meanwhile, I'm trying to build a whole network of founders and marketers ⁓ and AI enthusiasts too. I'm trying to build a community and bring them under a hood so we can get to know. Yeah, well, I'm glad that we got to have this conversation and I look forward to kind of ⁓ continuing to watch your journey into the future. Thanks for the support and thanks for the invite anyways. Yeah, yeah. So the main, and also I would like to end this on a note that see, the reason why I'm trying to build a community is that AI is changing every day and we have to know what's going. See, you might find a new technique and I might find a new technique. Yeah. So it's basically more of sharing. There's no space that nobody's going to teach us how to make, how to use. you gotta, yeah. No one's gonna, no one's gonna give you it. You you gotta get out there and learn. So have to just trial it out and yeah. So. I mean, I think we had a good conversation, Cody. also Cody, what is your goal for the next year with SideQuest and what are you trying to achieve? Yeah. So my goal for the next year with SideQuest is to validate that this new medium for creators is something that they actually want to do. And starting to see early signals for that. And I know that when that is validated, creators are gonna start wanting to use the platform. And the good thing about SideQuest is that it has inbuilt viral loops. So as soon as a creator wants to, ⁓ or starts finding interest in SideQuest and pushes it to their audience, immediately you're attracting all of the users within their audience. So it's really just getting over the line of ⁓ kind of moving from. you know, reaching out to creators to them actually seeing other creators on the platform using side quest. And then hopefully then we get some, really nice organic growth. Yeah. I've seen, I've seen them directly tagging them in their bios and all of that. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, that is more that that is the best organic, I know say that you have found a product which is really solving a problem. Yeah. I mean, that's the dream, right? Yeah. That's the dream. Thanks for your time, man. And you know, hope, you know, we'll get back again, reaching your girls and I'll see you soon. Yeah, it was great to meet you. Thanks so much for the time and it was good to chat. Thank you, man. I'll see you. Bye.