Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Startup Impact Radio, the podcast about entrepreneurs and their vision for changing the world.
Speaker: My co-host Scott and I are glad you've tuned in for another great episode.
Speaker: Today we're talking about elevating political discourse with Quinn Cotter, who is the CEO and co-founder of CenterClip.
Speaker: We'll discuss everything there is to know about the current state of political discourse and what needs to happen to improve it.
Speaker: Thanks for joining us, Quinn.
Speaker: What a timely topic we have today.
Speaker: My pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you both for having me.
Speaker: It certainly is a great time to have this conversation.
Speaker: So let's start with what's wrong with our political discourse right now, Quinn, in your opinion?
Speaker: I think this is one of the easier questions because unfortunately, I think that trust in political discourse is actually a bit lower than the approval rating of Congress, which is nearly impossible to do.
Speaker: Look, what we have right now is 30 some odd years ago, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes took the stage to announce Fox News was launching.
Speaker: And at the time, they confidently said that half of America wasn't being spoken to and they were going to build...
Speaker: a network to reach those people.
Speaker: And I think they were right.
Speaker: I think Fox News has had a great run.
Speaker: But unfortunately, here we are 30 years later, and now I think there's a full 60% of the country that's not being spoken to because you have cable networks on either side that are fighting for a 20% audience.
Speaker: And on the other hand, you have social media, which has no guardrails as the content that's out there.
Speaker: And this has left just an extraordinary middle market of common sense discourse, authentic discourse, and frankly, accessible discourse that just isn't being built.
Speaker: This is a huge topic.
Speaker: I'm curious.
Speaker: The big question is tell us about your company and how you solve this absolutely enormous problem.
Speaker: It's a good question.
Speaker: So look, we don't, we certainly can't solve all of the discourse in one and CenterClip just hit its 10 month anniversary.
Speaker: So we're pretty young at this, but what CenterClip is, we're a tech driven media company in political media specifically.
Speaker: And what that means is that there's a tech component to what we do.
Speaker: And then there's a political component to what we do.
Speaker: And the two of those go hand in hand.
Speaker: The tech part is, look, people love podcasts.
Speaker: They're growing in popularity.
Speaker: They're, here we are right now.
Speaker: They're fantastic.
Speaker: And but there are a few limitations to them.
Speaker: And certainly Center Clip does not exist to usurp them, but they're exceptionally long.
Speaker: A lot of the American public tunes out at five and ten minutes.
Speaker: They often come out two, three, four days after the topics they cover.
Speaker: When the rest of our media is in real time, your creators are used to tagging topics to gain discoverability on social media.
Speaker: You grow your podcast in a vacuum.
Speaker: And perhaps the biggest limitation of all is podcasts do not permit responses.
Speaker: On Twitter, if I say something you agree with, you retweet it and I meet your audience.
Speaker: If you disagree with something, you quote unquote fact check me.
Speaker: And that gets visibility as well.
Speaker: Podcasts are in a vacuum.
Speaker: So what we sought to do was to build a short form audio conversation platform where every clip is between 30 seconds and five minutes.
Speaker: That mirrors the average length of an op-ed piece or a song.
Speaker: They're accessible in real time.
Speaker: Creators can respond to one another.
Speaker: They can tag topics.
Speaker: And then that sort of ties into the content component, which we think, look, the modern tech-driven media company has got to have platform, it has to have distribution, and it has to have content.
Speaker: And you can't do it without all three.
Speaker: For us, that means that those features are wonderful, but to do elevated discourse in the climate we're talking about, there's no user-generated content on CenterClip.
Speaker: It's all vetted names from both sides of the aisle.
Speaker: There is no comment section that has often become a cesspool on other platforms.
Speaker: This is a clean and concise listening experience.
Speaker: That doesn't mean one side of the aisle or the other.
Speaker: It means that you have the opportunity to hear Jennifer Horne, who's one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project, hold Mark Lauder accountable, who worked for the Trump administration,
Speaker: And then had Mitch Rochelle from Fox Business back Mark up in the same conversation.
Speaker: CenterClip does not, we're not the umpire of that conversation.
Speaker: We look to amplify the best voices out there and give them instant access to the market that's looking for this type of new discourse.
Speaker: Quinn, what is it about audio that you think
Speaker: is most helpful for elevating the discourse because you didn't choose text or video?
Speaker: What led you to audio?
Speaker: This is a really interesting question.
Speaker: I was listening to a podcast actually not too long ago.
Speaker: And the host is a really well-known individual who does cable appearances, podcast, and New York Times bestseller.
Speaker: And he said that he can tell the difference between how somebody found him by how they greet him on the street.
Speaker: If somebody writes him a two-page email asking him questions, it's likely they read one of his books or an op-ed piece.
Speaker: If they run up to him on the street and try to grab a selfie, they probably saw him on cable.
Speaker: But if they come up to him and say, wow, I feel like I've known you for five years.
Speaker: You feel like a friend.
Speaker: I hope that's not weird.
Speaker: He knows that they met him through a podcast.
Speaker: The problem, the thing with podcasts is that authenticity, that connection is, it's unparalleled because if you think about it,
Speaker: When you don't see somebody, when you don't visualize it, you do the visualization.
Speaker: And I think that authenticity, one, it's done extremely well in political media.
Speaker: It's no secret how much talk radio and podcasts have dominated the audio market, but it's just seen a massive amount of connection with individuals.
Speaker: And I'll tell you the other thing that's very cool for us to see is that as much as we pride ourselves in short form audio, five minutes or less,
Speaker: You'd be surprised when that microphone goes live and a creator has to speak for 30 seconds or more likely two minutes, three minutes, four up to five.
Speaker: You can't just share a hashtag in three, four minutes.
Speaker: You can't just yell at someone in three to four minutes.
Speaker: You have to, it cools the temperature of the discourse.
Speaker: And we have found that has had a very good effect on the CenterClip product.
Speaker: Fascinating.
Speaker: Very interesting.
Speaker: I'm curious though, who's sifting through the content and making sure that the discourse stays positive and what are your roles in terms of engagement?
Speaker: You said there's no comments, but can I leave an audio clip back to respond and how does that work?
Speaker: So only contributors, only invited content contributors via CenterClip have access to the microphone.
Speaker: With our policy, of course, we have a terms of service that's very similar to other media companies in our space.
Speaker: And we monitor that extremely closely and take that quite seriously.
Speaker: In our space, it's arguably as risky as it gets when it comes to misinformation or it comes to offensive audio.
Speaker: But our model is very different.
Speaker: What we've tried to do
Speaker: is free speech is phenomenal and free speech platforms certainly have their space.
Speaker: But what we're trying to do is identify the best names that represent diversity in every way possible across the ideological spectrum, who are vetted, who have brands they have to protect, and then trust them with the microphone.
Speaker: We have found that when they have to defend their brand, it cools the temperature.
Speaker: And I'll give you another example.
Speaker: Let's go back to that example of Mark Lotter from the Trump administration and Jennifer Horne, co-founder of Lincoln Project, and also Joel Rubin, the three of them.
Speaker: He worked for the Obama administration.
Speaker: Three extremely different political perspectives.
Speaker: If they disagree strongly but respectfully, they will each share it to their audience that's in the hundreds of thousands each.
Speaker: If they light up one another to the point that it's a personal attack, then the other one won't benefit from the other two resharing that conversation.
Speaker: It dies there.
Speaker: So we motivate them to collaborate.
Speaker: And if they don't, quite honestly, CenterClip's probably not the right platform for them.
Speaker: And to tell you the truth, we have had an exceptional, we've been very blessed to start with an incredible launch of creators.
Speaker: We just crossed our 40th invitation.
Speaker: to contributors were upwards of 300 original episodes per month.
Speaker: And I'm happy to say that it's been growing so well and so consistently.
Speaker: One of the big sources of new creators is referrals from new creators looking for a home that isn't just another cable network telling them what their point of view should be or begging for attention or fighting for attention on Twitter.
Speaker: So they're looking to buy into a new business model.
Speaker: And that's what's really helped the guardrails fend for themselves.
Speaker: Quinn, you mentioned some big, bigger names and political commentary.
Speaker: I wondered with a focus on audio over video, if that was an attempt at all to level the playing field in any way.
Speaker: I feel like video, high production video takes more money and resources than high quality audio.
Speaker: Was that a factor at all in the...
Speaker: The audio.
Speaker: Yeah, it was.
Speaker: One of the things we noticed is that, look, there are certainly opportunities for print.
Speaker: And I think there are other peers out there who have done a great job at democratizing print, whether it be Substack.
Speaker: And our space was certainly the big one.
Speaker: Video, you couldn't democratize it more than TikTok, a short form video.
Speaker: But what we noticed in audio was that, and this also comes from, I was in the think tank space before this, is that there's a tremendous middle market of contributors out there.
Speaker: which are people that have an audience, maybe it's 50,000 to a million followers on social media.
Speaker: They're regularly on cable networks contributing.
Speaker: They're regularly paid for their thoughts, whether it be conferences or books.
Speaker: And they want to monetize a podcast because everyone has a podcast and they want to do that.
Speaker: But they are shocked to find how hard it is to scale a podcast from scratch.
Speaker: Like we're talking about that vacuum.
Speaker: It is very difficult.
Speaker: The time it takes, the editing it takes, the scheduling it takes, not to mention just the sheer grit it takes and the consistency to make it scale.
Speaker: So when we went to these people with already a...
Speaker: busy schedule, whether it be their day job working at a think tank or working at a print publication or being an official cable contributor and said, for two, three, four, five minutes out of your day, you can collaborate with 40 other of your peers and get that shared audience and upload it in real time.
Speaker: That was extremely attractive to them.
Speaker: So yeah, that was one of the big things that we saw in audio.
Speaker: as just a way for these people to diversify their content without pledging half their week to get it done.
Speaker: So Quinn, I understand you're looking for people all along the political spectrum from far left to far right, I assume.
Speaker: And are you okay finding someone who's at the extremes as long as they are willing to listen to other ideas and have a political discourse that is functional and not, you know, devolving into screaming?
Speaker: Yeah, it's a fascinating question.
Speaker: It's one that we deal with every day.
Speaker: And I think that anyone who...
Speaker: pretends that they have a silver bullet policy or has it figured out completely they don't.
Speaker: For example, I was on a call earlier today and I said we do elevated discourse for the middle 60%.
Speaker: And the person said, what does that mean?
Speaker: What's the middle 60?
Speaker: To me, the concept of defining what moderate is in 2023 is not, one, I don't think I can do it.
Speaker: I don't think anyone who tries to do it for somebody else is right.
Speaker: Moderate is different to every individual.
Speaker: So the idea of voices on the extreme is a very hard thing to enumerate.
Speaker: What is possible is when you look at a group of creators who are willing to collaborate with each other.
Speaker: And that's something that we take not just seriously, it self-selects itself.
Speaker: Whereas if we uploaded somebody from a very far right platform,
Speaker: I don't think 25 or 30 or 35 or more of the contributors would want to collaborate with them.
Speaker: And that would make their experience less than enviable.
Speaker: They would look like off to themselves on the platform.
Speaker: So we do take the interview process seriously for new contributors.
Speaker: Often they are people who have collaborated with current contributors on other platforms.
Speaker: We're fortunate enough to be able to recruit from some of the most well-established outlets out there.
Speaker: But a lot of it comes to you need to want to buy into something different.
Speaker: We often say that we exist upstream from cable and we're certainly not social media.
Speaker: We are in the middle.
Speaker: And if it's not the product you're looking for, that's perfectly fine.
Speaker: And those outlets are out there.
Speaker: We're just not for you.
Speaker: But yeah, look, it's a case by case basis.
Speaker: It's something we learn as we grow.
Speaker: But I will say to focus on quality and established brands and branch out from there is the best rule of thumb.
Speaker: Now, Quinn, we want to talk about the impact we're trying entrepreneurs are having on the world to make it a better place.
Speaker: So we talked about at the beginning how political discourse, you're trying to elevate that.
Speaker: What maybe, what are some of the results or things we're experiencing as a country because our discourse has devolved into name calling and just not very functional back and forth of ideas?
Speaker: Can you just talk about the problem and what that's caused in our society a little bit?
Speaker: Yeah, I'll give you a very sad story that actually came my way just a few hours ago is one of our contributors was he had the idea, which is I think an exceptional idea, which is breaking down the similarities of Bidenomics and Trumponomics.
Speaker: And he said if he did that clip, he would get pushback from whether it be his boss, the donors, the investors, whatever it be from his brand, because and he was right when he did the list for me.
Speaker: I was like, oh, my gosh, that's pretty fascinating.
Speaker: But the fact that he would be deterred from that is it's unfortunate.
Speaker: I think that's a microcosm of a bigger problem, which is.
Speaker: We have gotten to the point where this, where our political discourse is a blood sport and it, frankly, it monetizes rage, which is very, which is what I see a lot on social media.
Speaker: And that's a very dangerous thing.
Speaker: When I was younger, I remember whether it be Bush Gore, which was certainly, I think at the time, the most.
Speaker: Contentious election possible with the fallout of that election still.
Speaker: I don't think it was my team versus your team in the sense that is now, whereas I see all the time conversations where on dating profiles, people say, I won't date somebody who voted for Trump or jobs where people have lost their job for working for a certain administration when they went on to do something else.
Speaker: And I think this me versus you is
Speaker: It has trickled down to the rest of our society.
Speaker: And frankly, it is not only isn't it healthy for our political discourse, but I think ironically, it does a tremendous disservice to those who politicians are saying they're trying to help.
Speaker: When I look at political fundraisers and the work they're doing, I see people in Congress who are
Speaker: the most talked about because they're incredibly good at memes and retweets and hashtags.
Speaker: And those who are looking to do pledge a life of service because they've had a great track record, whether it be the private sector or the public sector, they're not motivated to continue doing it at all because they have to buy into a rage economy.
Speaker: That is, it's rewarding noise.
Speaker: It's not rewarding
Speaker: service.
Speaker: And I think that is one of the reasons we see less and less people wanting to go into service.
Speaker: And it's becoming more of an extension on our entertainment industry than anything else.
Speaker: And it's been, it's been disappointing to see, but the flip side is this, the flip side is I do think whether it be the blood sport of the last seven or eight years,
Speaker: I do think that increased volume has given people more of a passion and a curiosity to read more, listen more, watch more.
Speaker: And I do think they care.
Speaker: And I think younger generations are showing that as they start to hit the age where they're voting.
Speaker: And I think other demographics are starting to pay more attention to politics.
Speaker: Now we just need to filter the discourse.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll tell you what, Quinn, to your point, my sister-in-law was very involved in politics and getting more and more involved.
Speaker: She worked her way up very high into the Obama administration.
Speaker: And from all of the stuff that she saw in DC, she was so turned off that she now works for a bank.
Speaker: And we'll never go back to politics no matter what.
Speaker: And it's such a shame because she's the exact type of bright mind and ethical human that you want to be serving our country.
Speaker: And there's definitely a problem there.
Speaker: And I hope you're right.
Speaker: I appreciate your optimism at the end there.
Speaker: So I was so excited about jumping into Center Clips that I was remiss in finding out a little bit about what brought you to Center Clips.
Speaker: So would you mind, Quinn, just going back and tell us a little bit about your story and how you ended up here?
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: I got my start in a very unorthodox way.
Speaker: I was more of a baseball player when I was a teenager than anything, but I was into politics.
Speaker: I loved reading.
Speaker: And I applied to a media company to get an internship the year I went into college.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I found the person who was hiring's Twitter handle and just applied and they called me.
Speaker: And I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.
Speaker: I remember leaving high school to go to a Starbucks to get the call.
Speaker: And it was the chief of staff at this media company.
Speaker: And he said, so I have some interesting news.
Speaker: You actually lied on your application.
Speaker: And I said, how did I lie?
Speaker: What are you talking about?
Speaker: And he said, you're not in college.
Speaker: I said, no, I know.
Speaker: I'm a senior in high school.
Speaker: I'm applying to do it the summer before I go into college.
Speaker: He said, okay, we're kidding you.
Speaker: But that being said, we can't hire you until you're 18.
Speaker: So I'll make you a deal.
Speaker: If you do free research with 26 other individuals, two of you will get an internship in New York City.
Speaker: unpaid for the summer.
Speaker: So I took the chance as my senior year in high school, and I was fortunate enough to land one of those positions, which ended up me working for four and a half years for this chief of staff and general counsel.
Speaker: I went to law school, passed the bar and became an attorney, ended up in an investment firm and realized I
Speaker: Did not enjoy it.
Speaker: I saw very much what we were talking about, but the change of the discourse.
Speaker: I saw things very much heating up around Washington's culture.
Speaker: And frankly, I wanted to get back involved with it.
Speaker: So I left that field, ended up at a think tank based in D.C.,
Speaker: And it was there, which I loved the work we were doing.
Speaker: I loved the programs we were hosting, but we would come across dozens of pundits who again had 50,000 followers and no way to amplify it.
Speaker: We, the think tank was plunging hundreds of thousands of dollars into podcasts with very little amplification.
Speaker: And
Speaker: suddenly this middle market became obvious.
Speaker: And I realized if this think tank has that problem, so do another hundred.
Speaker: And if these 16 pundits we work with have this problem, so does every contributor on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, et cetera.
Speaker: So to
Speaker: took a step back.
Speaker: Our co-founder, my co-founder at Center Clip, Lauren Williams, our CFO, she's very much the smart one of our partnership.
Speaker: She is the, the, she comes from the private equity venture capital track.
Speaker: She's the JD MBA.
Speaker: She's a true Pittsburgher, by the way, of the group.
Speaker: And, and we're very much opposites in the best of ways.
Speaker: And so she spent some time with me really studying the market and whether it be from the creator perspective and,
Speaker: creators that needed a home, content that needed a home, and frankly, users who were looking for a home somewhere between the Twitter rage economy and the cable news economy.
Speaker: And we agreed there was a tremendous opportunity here.
Speaker: So we both pursued it.
Speaker: And here we are 10 months later.
Speaker: Quinn, I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask a question.
Speaker: What political topic do you think we most need to elevate the discourse right now in 2023?
Speaker: Which topic we should elevate the most?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What's the biggest issue on your mind that because of our inability to talk through this where, you know, it's just not good for our country?
Speaker: Yeah, I think, look, I think First Amendment issues, whether it be freedom of speech, religion, et cetera, are always top of mind, but especially right now.
Speaker: When you have, I think, look, one of the things we try to do, and I think we do as management at Center Clip, and we take very seriously, and this goes to some of your earlier questions, is I view us as a bank for political discourse.
Speaker: We are not an umpire for political discourse.
Speaker: Every cable network executive feels the need to opine
Speaker: on the subjects on their platform, that dissuades opposing contributors from trusting that brand.
Speaker: We want our contributors to trust the Center Clip software, whether they come from the left or the right.
Speaker: We want them to trust us just like they're putting a $20 bill in their Bank of America account.
Speaker: And I think that right now,
Speaker: This election, when we talk about all the issues surrounding the 2020 election fallout, and we talk about the coverage of this election, there needs to be a conversation around how we get our information and how we trust it.
Speaker: And I don't think that answer is something that can just be a math equation.
Speaker: I do think that I look at Twitter.
Speaker: I look at Facebook.
Speaker: I look at Instagram.
Speaker: And there are no doubt they're here to stay.
Speaker: They're a tremendous force.
Speaker: But then I look at cable and they say we do fact checking.
Speaker: We do, we battle misinformation.
Speaker: What they really do is they actually umpire what information misinformation is.
Speaker: For example, let's say CNN or Fox puts up a chyron and said, actually, President Biden said this on this day.
Speaker: Someone decided what facts should go up at that time.
Speaker: We believe if you find the best names and trust them to hold each other accountable with the management being hands-off, that can engender true trust in the information that's going up.
Speaker: We had a clip about the border and it was instantly the numbers were called out as being false.
Speaker: And then another person came in and gave context to those numbers.
Speaker: CenterClip did not have their thumb on the scale.
Speaker: So our users truly trusted that was an unfettered conversation.
Speaker: Right now in 2023, there is a massive problem with that, right?
Speaker: When you have one candidate who's leading the GOP by a huge amount, who is, I was going to say not on Twitter, technically, as of last week, he is.
Speaker: And then you have the other eight doing a debate without the person who's way up in the polls.
Speaker: And then you have the opposing side, which, frankly, it seemed that they're covering the indictments more than they're actually covering the election.
Speaker: And I think that's causing a problem itself.
Speaker: So it's become entertainment culture.
Speaker: It's become, frankly, not serious.
Speaker: And I think, again, back to that middle market, that's the best approach.
Speaker: I love that analogy of being a bank.
Speaker: I think that's a great one for this commentary.
Speaker: Great way to think about it.
Speaker: Go ahead, Scott.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's okay.
Speaker: I don't think Quint, it would serve you probably to talk to us about where you sit on the political spectrum.
Speaker: So I'll ask the question this way.
Speaker: Does the management all sit in different areas of the political spectrum?
Speaker: And if the answer is yes, then how have you guys elevated your political discourse internally?
Speaker: Yeah, it's a fair question.
Speaker: First of all, we don't.
Speaker: We're actually pretty different, which I think has helped.
Speaker: But it's helped in the fact that, to tell you the truth, look, our thing is to put up very clear metrics as to what the platform is.
Speaker: We put up our terms of service very clearly.
Speaker: We recruit the way we outlined earlier.
Speaker: And then CenterClip really tries to step back from it.
Speaker: I think it's very...
Speaker: It's not as hard as it sounds.
Speaker: I think I listen to a lot of platforms articulating how they balance it, how they make things, whether it be fair and balanced or we show both sides.
Speaker: It's not that difficult if you don't have a dog in the race.
Speaker: And Centerclip's dog in the race is convincing opposing viewpoints to want to collaborate.
Speaker: The moment that trust is eroded, then we lose our self-motivation, if that makes sense.
Speaker: We are, quote unquote, monetized by having someone on the left trust us as equally as someone on the right, just like a bank is.
Speaker: The moment that's when we're putting your thumb on the scale, that's when coming from a certain perspective,
Speaker: That's when you change.
Speaker: And I think we've seen that in some of the niche political brands that have popped up targeting very specific audiences.
Speaker: And that's not what CenterClip does.
Speaker: You have to look just like business.
Speaker: You have to ask yourself, what are the founders motivated by?
Speaker: What are the creators motivated by?
Speaker: We have tried to create a platform where we are motivated to take our thumb off that scale, to just find the best on both sides and completely step back so they each trust they can have that conversation.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Gwen, have you seen results?
Speaker: Can you share any stories?
Speaker: You talked a little bit earlier about some of the different back and forth between people on different political persuasions.
Speaker: Can you share any stories of people changing their mind or acknowledging a good point on the other side or anything like that that you can think of?
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if that's too hard.
Speaker: No, selecting one is the hardest part.
Speaker: But one of the things that we love about CenterClip is the responses really results in connections being made that might not be made in traditional podcast form.
Speaker: And I'll give you one example is Ted Roll.
Speaker: One of our contributors from the far left, as he would describe it, had an incredible, he's had an incredible journalistic career.
Speaker: He's won two RFK awards.
Speaker: He's a, he was a Pulitzer finalist.
Speaker: He's regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal op-ed section.
Speaker: One of our other contributors, Mitch Rochelle, for years, also a New Yorker, traveling in the same circles, quite conservative.
Speaker: would have never had anything in common with Ted.
Speaker: But because of our conversations, they say we actually have a fair amount in common.
Speaker: And now Mitch is a regular host, a regular guest on Ted's cast and Ted's radio show outside of Center Clip.
Speaker: So the fact that we're able to host those back and forths really has resulted in new connections.
Speaker: Sher Michael Singleton, who hosts the show also on SiriusXM, because of Center Clip, he has brought on guests ranging from the far left to the far right that, frankly, his audience has never seen before.
Speaker: And he has seen great success with that.
Speaker: From an audience perspective,
Speaker: One of the good friend of mine, who's an older gentleman, he's quite conservative, and he found Center Clip via Mark Lauder, one of our economist voices.
Speaker: And he was listening to Center Clip.
Speaker: And of course, he heard Ted Rall from the far left respond.
Speaker: He, in a million years, never would have gone to Ted's website, never would have gone to Ted's radio show, never would have subscribed to Ted's cartoons.
Speaker: But guess what?
Speaker: He heard Mark Lauder want to go back and forth with Ted.
Speaker: Suddenly he's a subscriber of Ted's.
Speaker: And he actually said that he finds his voice not only one of the most compelling on our platform, but frankly, he enjoys being provoked by ideas he thinks are ridiculous.
Speaker: That happens every day.
Speaker: And that's been, not only is that fun to see, that actually gives me more joy than any of the content we do because it really shows some, it shows microcosms of the bigger problems in our discourse that can be fixed.
Speaker: I know it's a good episode when I can't wait to get off of this and go check out more of Center Clip.
Speaker: You're building something incredible and important.
Speaker: So let's just fast forward five years and say it's a great success.
Speaker: What does it look like?
Speaker: I think what it looks like is that one of the things we talk a lot about are one, being upstream from cable, but two, we talk about homelessness, ironically, a lot in content.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is that there are stories that are homeless.
Speaker: Someone today called me about wanting to do more content on the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac legislation that's coming out because he saw it wasn't getting necessary coverage.
Speaker: And he said, would you guys host it?
Speaker: And of course, I told him it's your account.
Speaker: You can talk about what you like.
Speaker: because he wasn't getting the attention he wanted to from the legacy media brands.
Speaker: So he will now talk about that on Center Clip.
Speaker: In terms of content creators, homelessness to me does not mean, again, that they don't have an audience.
Speaker: What it means is they're looking for a new alternative.
Speaker: A lot of our contributors do work on whether it be Fox Business, CNN, MSNBC, and they get brought on to do a 30-second hit on a topic they're told about right before it.
Speaker: And that's great.
Speaker: It's high quality television.
Speaker: It's the programming that's on right there.
Speaker: But when they step out of that spot and they walk to the green room, that's when they record their center clip.
Speaker: And we always see ourselves as that green room.
Speaker: So look, if you want to hear
Speaker: Mitch Rochelle talk about what Fox Business wants him to talk about, that's great and he'll be there.
Speaker: But if you want to know what's on his mind and what stories he's passionate about that he doesn't have to get approval for, you come to Center Clip.
Speaker: And I think that in five years, that's what we're looking to amplify is suddenly what's
Speaker: 40 voices doing 300 episodes can hopefully become hundreds of voices doing thousands of episodes.
Speaker: But again, that would be great.
Speaker: And we were certainly a tech company hoping to scale, but in our industry,
Speaker: Quality matters over quantity.
Speaker: The elevation of the discourse is more important than the volume.
Speaker: And I think that we've seen that just in the first 10 months and the next five years will be no different.
Speaker: Lauren and I take great pride in running CenterClip very much like a traditional business.
Speaker: We don't just hunt for as many impressions as possible.
Speaker: We look for people to subscribe, people to, we look for return visitors, how long the visits are on CenterClip.
Speaker: For creators, are they growing with us?
Speaker: Are they contributing more than they did the previous month?
Speaker: Were they able to bring stories to us that other media outlets didn't host?
Speaker: Things like that.
Speaker: And I think that the last few years in political media has motivated impressions at all costs.
Speaker: And I think the next five years are going to, I think that there's a chance that real storytelling and quality of discourse wins.
Speaker: And I think we're very well positioned to host that.
Speaker: Quinn, one thing we'd like to talk to our guests about is
Speaker: and past experiences, challenges they've had in their careers or times that things didn't go like they expect, how they expected and how they learned from that or what they took from that and how they're applying it today.
Speaker: Do you have any stories around failure or adversity that you can share with us and our audience?
Speaker: Yeah, look, I think one of the best skills for an entrepreneur is to have some background in sales because entrepreneurs are salesmen, whether we like to admit it or not.
Speaker: And I'm fortunate that I've had a lot of sales positions in my life, whether it be dressed up with a fundraising title or even in investment management.
Speaker: In the end of the day, when you manage someone else's money, you are selling to them.
Speaker: And so when I do that, the amount of failure I've endured, it's
Speaker: It's character building.
Speaker: I also played baseball in college where, of course, if you hit three out of 10, you're going to move on to the next level.
Speaker: But when it comes to failure, I don't think there's any book you can read or any college course you can do that competes with convincing your boss
Speaker: to send you to California to invest in the flight, the hotel, the rental car, the food, to do the meeting, have a go 30 minutes instead of the several hours you had hoped for to get a hard no and to walk out of that office and to get in the car and just have...
Speaker: just feel your chest tighten up and to know you have to make that call that you all that money was lost.
Speaker: And maybe the next time the same thing will happen.
Speaker: And maybe the time after that, the same thing will happen.
Speaker: But that hopefully you can hit get enough hits to make up for the strikeouts.
Speaker: And just doing that, frankly, hundreds and thousands of times.
Speaker: I wish I had a big one off story for you.
Speaker: But frankly, every day is full of failure and wins.
Speaker: And if it's not, then you're probably not pushing hard enough.
Speaker: So Quinn, talk to us about how you've been funded to this point and are you guys out there raising capital or are you bootstrapping?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So we, Lauren and I bootstrapped the initial phase of CenterClip, the IP protection, doing the blueprints and the wireframes to get this off the ground, the initial research.
Speaker: We got this off the ground.
Speaker: We are working full-time, Lauren and I, to do this.
Speaker: We were very lucky to do a pre-seed round, a convertible note, with people that Lauren and I have existing relationships with.
Speaker: Lauren has had just a phenomenal career and a great track record of success so far.
Speaker: So she was able to bring several individuals, family and friends to the table, and prior partners, and myself as well.
Speaker: I've had the chance to work at
Speaker: a great media company, and working in the think tank political media space for a long time.
Speaker: And I'm fortunate enough that some of those individuals wanted to come along with us on this journey.
Speaker: And I'm happy to say that we have a couple who are truly experienced tech investors who wanted to buy into CenterClip for the tech reason.
Speaker: But I think there's also several people on our cap table who are there for the reasons we've discussed in this call, and they want to make a difference.
Speaker: And they frankly, they could fund a debate
Speaker: in Ohio for half a million dollars.
Speaker: And that would be a wonderful night.
Speaker: And the words would die that night.
Speaker: Or they can try to build a new conversation that scales.
Speaker: And I think that's the attraction they found with Center Clip.
Speaker: And so, yeah, so we're leading up to this fall.
Speaker: We're going to do our first priced equity round.
Speaker: And we were able to, in the spring, bring on, Lauren and I are two non-technical founders.
Speaker: We brought on a guy named John Delacastro, who's just an incredible talent to round out the leadership team.
Speaker: And he's done an amazing job orchestrating a blueprint for the next six, 12, 18, 24 months of CenterClip.
Speaker: And with that and our early success, we're, yeah, we're heading for our first real priced equity round.
Speaker: Very exciting.
Speaker: Quinn, what advice would you give your younger self?
Speaker: We're going to switch gears here, lighten things up a little bit, bring it in for a landing.
Speaker: If you were talking to 18-year-old Quinn, who just applied for that internship, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker: Yeah, first I'd say hopefully you have more connections than me and can get better than just finding email addresses on Twitter.
Speaker: But I would say, one I would say is it's such a
Speaker: It's so overused, but I find it to be so true is read obsessively and write obsessively.
Speaker: I think that it is a skill that not only informs you from an educational point of view, but I think that it makes you a better storyteller.
Speaker: And I think it helps your communication skills.
Speaker: And the more you invest in, in being a strong storyteller, the ability to take a complex topic and simplify it and articulate it is perhaps the rarest skill in business.
Speaker: And I'd say any way you can invest in that early is important.
Speaker: And the second one is I would say if you have a choice between internships or jobs, if possible, and not everyone's in the position to make a choice for this reason, pick mentorship.
Speaker: Pick the job that you find you think someone's going to be a true mentor and an advocate for you.
Speaker: I have had...
Speaker: So many people in my life where I could have picked another job that would have paid maybe a few thousand dollars more a year when I was very young or an internship that paid a little more.
Speaker: And I went for the opportunity to work for somebody who was a mentor and a friend.
Speaker: And not only am I still close with those individuals, they were able to give me a boost in life and a personal education that I don't think any amount of money at a very young age can really make up for.
Speaker: That's great advice.
Speaker: I've heard that from a lot of people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I also love that mentorship advice and I'm very fortunate to have had some great mentors that are still in my life.
Speaker: And, uh, it's, I absolutely tribute a lot of my success to them.
Speaker: So I definitely agree with that.
Speaker: Uh, I was going to ask you, we were going to close out by asking you about your favorite drink, but instead you just mentioned, uh, that you're a reader.
Speaker: And so let's instead ask what was your favorite book of the summer that you read so far?
Speaker: Oh, of the summer.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: I read, gosh, the content trap, which is certainly about content and political media is a good one.
Speaker: But gosh, what's the there was a book.
Speaker: I'm trying to remember the name of it.
Speaker: It was Scott Galloway's book.
Speaker: on happiness and joy in life.
Speaker: I forget that his book, Adrift, was also one I read this summer that was very good.
Speaker: And that was exceptional.
Speaker: That broke down really where the state of our economy, culture, and media is as well.
Speaker: But the happiness book was really fascinating to me because it was his look, successful tech founder, at balancing personal and professional, I think in a very realistic way too.
Speaker: He did a lot of tech
Speaker: personal coaching books gloss over some of the hardships.
Speaker: I think he had a very real take on it.
Speaker: And it's something that I try to follow every day.
Speaker: By the way, if we're doing it, I will throw in a drink as well because I think startup founders will give you one for entrepreneurs here, which is the espresso martini.
Speaker: It's got to be because by the time you're able to get to a bar at the end of a day of work, you need something that has equal amounts of alcohol as well as a pick me up.
Speaker: So there you go.
Speaker: That's the classier version of Red Bull and vodka.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: That was the that was college.
Speaker: Now, hopefully we're passed by.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: How about you, Joel?
Speaker: What are you reading or drinking this summer?
Speaker: I just finished reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which I read every three years or so, just because that story, whole story fascinates me from...
Speaker: cover to cover.
Speaker: And now I'm reading a book called The Mythos about storytelling.
Speaker: And I was wondering, Quinn, what you do about writing, how you do that, if you publish your writing and all.
Speaker: But I'm definitely into the trying to do more reading.
Speaker: Haven't got to the writing part, though.
Speaker: Any advice on that?
Speaker: Yeah, I wish I were.
Speaker: more inspired to look, it's a hard thing to do, especially when we're all busy with a million other things.
Speaker: I do try to have an alarm on my calendar every day.
Speaker: At the end of the day, I do try to set aside 30 minutes to just summarize whatever's on my mind, personal, professional, summarize the meeting, summarize a win of the day, a fail of the day.
Speaker: I often try to outline a small goal, big goal, small win, big win.
Speaker: and just try to go from there every day.
Speaker: But yeah, no, I wish I were one of those people who could just sit down and words flow.
Speaker: And then in that case, it could be published, but sadly I'm not.
Speaker: I'm good at building the microphone for our contributors.
Speaker: I'm not good at producing the content myself, but I do find it to be an exceptionally therapeutic process as well as frankly, a very inspiring one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Scott, anything you're reading right now?
Speaker: I just finished rereading Ashley Vance's book about Elon Musk.
Speaker: Speaking of people that are putting some toxic words out there, he's someone I admire greatly in terms of business, but wish he would just stop talking.
Speaker: And if he was talking, that he would just be a little more open-minded and kind, but it is what it is.
Speaker: Still a fascinating book.
Speaker: And big one's coming out soon, right?
Speaker: The Isaacson Musk book.
Speaker: I'm excited for that one.
Speaker: I'm definitely excited about that.
Speaker: That's actually why I picked this up to reread it.
Speaker: Very good.
Speaker: Quinn, you're a great guest.
Speaker: And thank you for this microphone that you are building.
Speaker: And we hope that more and more people tune in and listen to these clips and that you guys are successful at elevating political discourse because our country needs that.
Speaker: Where can people learn more about Center Clip and follow you and so forth?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: If they go to centerclip.com, they can find everything from our email products to our app, which is still free, to a feed of all our clips and our contributors.
Speaker: I often say that we're proud to be a tech company and we're proud to build phenomenal tech, but the tech is the bones of Center Clip.
Speaker: The contributors are the blood.
Speaker: So I would say learn about who they are, learn about the stories they're trying to tell, the conversation they're trying to have, and that's all at centerclip.com.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Thank you, Quinn.
Speaker: Thanks everyone for listening to the episode.
Speaker: If you enjoyed it and would like to help support the podcast, please share with others, post about it on social media or leaving a rating and review.
Speaker: It all helps.
Speaker: Thanks everybody.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Bye.
