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In this week’s episode, Stewart and Travis discover that AI and chatbots are a roller coaster. On the ride to the top, a new bot marketing company promises to close the loop and help chatbots pay their way, while on the rapid drop Facebook is pulling back from chatbots after news of massive failure rates.
Our interview this week is with the irrepressible Olga Kay, one of the original YouTube stars and founder of MooshWalks, who teaches us a thing or two about how to find your niche and leverage it for incredible success. It’s an interview you won’t want to miss.
By listening to this episode of VB Engage, you will hear:
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- Welcome to VB Engage episode 44! [0:10]
- There are over 600 Travis Wrights on planet Earth [00:30]
- Stewart is in SF at VentureBeat HQ on the corner of Battery and Market [01:05]
- SXSW was this past week in Austin, TX, one of the only larger cities in the U.S. to NOT have Uber or Lyft. [02:15]
- First world problems this caused in Austin during SXSW. [02:30]
- In the news, Larry Kim of Wordstream is leaving to work on his new startup, MobileMonkey. [04:45]
- Larry is still majority owner of Wordstream but wants to go back to his roots creating products. [05:50]
- MobileMonkey is a startup around chatbots. [07:55]
- Chatbots still have a discoverability problem. [09:05]
- There’s another problems with chatbots. [09:45]
- Chatbots don’t tap into the emotions. They aren’t very engaging. [10:25]
- Mark Cuban predicted that the world’s first trillionaire is an AI / machine learning entrepreneur. [11:30]
- How do you put a limit on what AI and chatbots can do, so that humanity will survive the technology revolution? [12:10]
- Facebook announced that they are cutting back on AI. [12:45]
- Travis randomly spouts off some headlines around AI. [13:45]
- Google Home users were getting hit with Beauty and the Beast “not-an-ad” [14:35]
- Be our guest. [15:25]
- Google was saying it wasn’t an ad. C’mon, Google. Don’t be evil. [16:00]
- Google is all about advertising, and they give us free things in exchange for the data. [16:35]
- Travis has Google Fiber in Kansas City. [17:05]
- YouTube is all about advertising, as well. And creators get paid for their creativity! [17:25]
- Speaking of YouTube, this week’s interview is with YouTube creator and entrepreneur Olga Kay. [18:30]
- Everyone on this podcast works in, on, or should be in the circus. [19:30]
- What’s the secret to creating content that is interesting and engaging? [19:55]
- Olga has been on YouTube for over 10 years. [20:15]
- The No. 1 YouTube channel back in 2006 had 10,000 subscribers. [20:50]
- When she first heard of YouTube, her English wasn’t so good. She went to U2.com. [21:20]
- She set up an account, and the first video she watched was a LonelyGirl15 video. [22:00]
- She didn’t have a camera or a computer, and couldn’t edit videos, and yet she turned it into her career. [22:40]
- Olga has many different channels, back then there were no playlist features. [23:10]
- Olga loves to play video games, and her fans love how emotional she is. [22:45]
- Knowing what Olga now knows, what advice would she give people to help them get started in content creation? [24:30]
- Find the gaps in the market, and what is your passion? [25:15]
- Discover your demographic and think what they would want to see. [25:45]
- Stewart is a teenage girl. [26:45]
- Facebook is catching up to YouTube, plus 360-degree and AR/VR coming [27:20]
- Be on all of the channels where your customers are. [28:00]
- Focus on Facebook, and don’t overlook Musical.ly [29:00]
- Olga runs a company that creates hilarious footwear, MooshWalks. [30:10]
- After years of creating videos, Olga pulled back from YouTube; she decided to create a sock company. [31:25]
- She googled “socks with ears,” and no one was making these type of socks. [33:05]
- Six different manufacturers turned Olga down, but the next one agreed. [33:30]
- Olga wanted to create something unique for her audience, instead of a logo on a shirt. [34:15]
- She would go to bars wearing her monster socks. Got an Amazon deal from it. [35:00]
- After 146 years, Ringling Brothers is shutting down. Olga’s parting word is to make sure that you continue to innovate!
Next week, we interview the one and only Michael Stelzner, the editor of Social Media Examiner and the organizer of Social Media Marketing World, which is later this week in San Diego. We will bring you some highlights from this year’s SMMW.
If you missed last week’s episode, VB 043, Travis and Stewart interviewed the CMO of IBM Watson Marketing, Stephen Gold. We talk about cognitive computing, AI, machine learning, and more, discovering how long we have before the robots take over and kill us all (just kidding, kind of).
As always, thanks for tuning in. We’d love you to rate, review, and subscribe to VB Engage on your favorite podcast platform. You rock.
