How to Build a $200M App Without Showing your Face w/ Chris Josephs

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: Sweat Equity
Episode: How to Build a $200M App Without Showing Your Face w/ Chris Josephs
Host: Marketing Examined (Alex Garcia & Brian Blum)
Guest: Chris Josephs, Co-Founder & Head of Creative, Autopilot
Release Date: July 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into how Chris Josephs and the team at Autopilot built a $200M+ fintech app, driving $1.5 billion in assets under management—entirely through organic, faceless social media marketing. The discussion unfolds as a creative brainstorming session on influencer marketing, content virality, creator-led growth, and the transition from founder-driven content to scalable UGC and paid growth. Chris shares detailed playbooks used at Autopilot, discusses the origins and mechanics of viral pages like the Pelosi Stock Tracker, and peels back the curtain on leveraging media relationships, handling compliance, and orchestrating high-converting social accounts without ever putting a founder’s face at the forefront.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. The Viral Playbook – Building Legendary Faceless Pages

• Genesis of Pelosi Stock Tracker:

  • Inspired by viral tweets on Nancy Pelosi’s stock trades, Chris saw an opportunity: “It was so new that every view that you would get, probably out of the thousand views, you'd probably get like, honestly like 50 to 60 downloads.” (03:03)
  • Originally launched on TikTok to promote Iris, the predecessor to Autopilot, the concept snowballed as audiences craved actionable notifications on high-profile trades.

• Founder-led Content to Scalable Framework:

  • Chris started by writing viral tweets, transforming them into posts, scripts, TikToks, and Instagram content, later scaling this framework across politics, hedge funds, and AI/tech verticals.
  • “We realized that formula works. Let's do it for a couple other industries… now we've… I have a team… the Avengers of content.” (13:10)

• Audience & Platform Expansion:

  • Grew TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram accounts organically, each reaching hundreds of thousands, with zero paid marketing initially.
  • “Cloud portfolio on Instagram and a cloud portfolio on Twitter… 0 to 200,000 followers in literally a month and a half.” (00:00, 14:44)

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2. Product Evolution: Iris → Autopilot

• Pivot Driven by User Desires & Cultural Context:

  • Iris began as a social stock investing platform during the COVID trading boom.
  • “As the world started opening up, more people just wanted to automate their portfolios… So the evolution of the app from Iris into Autopilot happened in 2023…” (04:05)

• Key Product Milestones:

  • Leveraged 'app pre-downloads' to rank high in app stores before full launch.
  • “We started building out the Twitter page… that thing went up to a couple hundred thousand pretty quick.” (05:10)
  • Hit number two in the App Store on launch, making several hundred thousand dollars day one.
  • “We have 1.5 billion (AUM) … things have gone great.” (07:40)

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3. Creator-Led Investing – The New Era

• Fintech Meets Creator Economy:

  • Autopilot allows top stock pickers (“pilots”) to monetize their performance. Followers pay for access and can automate trades.
  • “He’s getting checks from us for like $15,000 a month… and he's not actively doing it all.” (09:15, 09:49)

• Social Proof & Platform Dynamics:

  • “We now are allowing people to apply to launch their own funds… Some have 200 million+ following them…” (10:59)
  • “We're getting a tremendous amount of views a month… probably 50 to 100 million views.” (11:44)

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4. Content Ecosystem & Distribution Strategy

• Universe-Building Across Niches:

  • Built an interconnected network of accounts (Pelosi Tracker, Burry Tracker, Cloud portfolios) that cross-promote, echo authoritative voices, and compound virality.
  • “Accounts work with each other… the Pelosi tracker quote tweeting the Burry tracker… compounding.” (14:44)

• Ideation and Execution:

  • The approach: Identify viral ideas, rapidly spin up themed pages, recycle proven content/adaptation formats, and plug the main app after establishing authority.
  • “Virality won’t just happen, but virality will happen to viral ideas.” (14:44)

• Careful Niche Selection:

  • Focuses on massive “TAMs” (total addressable markets) for virality, e.g., politics, finance, AI.
  • “If you do too many, you'll fragment the universe a little bit.” (16:01)

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5. Paid Marketing, UGC, and Scaling the Next Phase

• Scaling Beyond Organic:

  • The 0 to $1M stage was founder-brute-force content. $1M to $10M: blueprint scale with a team. $10M to $100M: UGC and paid engines.
  • “To get from 10 million to 100 million, it's mostly just paid, it's paid in the UGC… it’s all scalability.” (24:32)

• Approaching UGC Armies Carefully:

  • Massive UGC campaigns face compliance hurdles in fintech; Autopilot’s “wrinkle” is a journey-driven approach focusing on high-quality, mid-funnel creators, not just mass quantity.
  • “If your investing app is seen everywhere, if it’s seen by a 21-year-old college kid…I think about it differently. The framing of who it comes from matters.” (26:04)

• Retention > Virality:

  • Most consumer apps fail on three-month retention (“absolute nosedive”), so Autopilot emphasizes utility and lifecycle.
  • “I just think everything converges into social media…you are inherently very discovered on social… so the app itself kind of just runs in the background.” (21:45)

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6. Long-Form + Social Shows: Building the Middle Funnel

• YouTube as a Trust Engine:

  • Investing is a trust game, and long-form middle-funnel content (podcasts/shows) builds conviction for app downloaders.
  • “We don't care about the massive audience…this is much…middle funnel.” (39:14)
  • “If you own the distribution… spent the time to build out your own influencers, it pays dividends down the line.” (41:13)

• On Trends in Content Packaging:

  • “The key to television…I think is movement, so like... podcasts…the bar is kind of leveled up… movement is the game.” (37:21, 37:36)
  • Discusses the role of split screens, “subway surfers” visuals, and dynamic set designs in holding attention and boosting algorithmic watch time.

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7. Media Playbook: Authority, Outreach, & PR

• Securing Mainstream Coverage:

  • “We’ve never had a PR person. We’ve never done any like actual hiring and paying of people… all these people just want stories… all the contacts are out there.” (45:18, 46:09)
  • Tactical outreach: Find reporters/producers, build relationships by feeding exclusive stories and trade alerts.

• Value of Platform Authority:

  • Mega-viral tweets and fact-first reporting make Autopilot a go-to source over mainstream TV for driving downloads.
  • “Mega viral Pelosi tracker Tweet and the Mega viral performance Pelosi tracker, Absolutely.” (47:54)

• Avoiding Rage Bait and Clickbait:

  • Commitment to long-term, credible content: “Rage bait is short term stuff that doesn't actually scale if you want to build these things for the long term. …it’s a trap.” (48:31)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Early Virality:
  • “At the beginning, the conversions were great… out of the thousand views, you'd probably get like, honestly like 50 to 60 downloads.”
    — Chris Josephs (02:46)
• Scaling Without a Face:
  • “The beauty of as a company, as a founder, owning the faceless accounts is you can hire people to come in and do it… and people still don't even know who is behind them, which is like so key.”
    — Chris Josephs (30:44)
• Authority & Distribution:
  • “If you own the distribution, if you spent the time to build out your own influencers, it pays dividends down the line.”
    — Chris Josephs (41:13)
• PR Hack:
  • “I would just search and I would find the producers… get their emails and I would email them saying, hey, I am Chris Joseph, run the Pelosi tracker… I'll be feeding you stories about interesting trades.”
    — Chris Josephs (45:23)

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:00 — Faceless page growth "0 to 200k followers in a month and a half"
• 02:21 — Origin & initial virality/conversions of Pelosi Tracker
• 04:05 — Transition from Iris to Autopilot: Product-market evolution analogy
• 07:40 — $1.5B in assets & key product milestones
• 12:38 — Page-building strategies, ideation, and the Avengers/content team model
• 15:04 — TAM selection, niche authority, and expansion into new verticals
• 24:32 — The scaling roadmap: organic to paid/UGC
• 26:04 — Framing, compliance, and UGC “wrinkle” for premium, trust-sensitive products
• 31:17 — Faceless accounts: scalable, swappable, and founder-light
• 34:00 — Dissecting content trends: movement, split screens, dynamic set design
• 45:18 — DIY PR: relationship building with news contacts
• 48:31 — Avoiding rage bait: “It's a trap.”

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Takeaway Playbooks

• Virality Formula: Identify underexploited, culturally hot ideas → Rapidly spin up themed accounts → Proprietary, faceless content → Cross-promotion across owned properties → Plug main product at peak narrative moments.
• Organic to Paid Evolution: Founder-led content → Team systemization → Paid UGC/creator armies, with trust/quality curation over mass volume.
• Authority That Drives Growth: Being the “source” for media and audiences alike produces compounding returns in brand credibility, partnerships, and sticky, qualified users.
• PR Demystified: Build real relationships with media by offering unique source material—no agencies required.

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Final Thoughts

Chris Josephs’s journey exemplifies the new tech founder: creative-first, distribution obsessed, trust-centric, and relentlessly iterative. The success of Autopilot isn’t just the product, but the highly engineered network of content and relationships—all built without personal brand celebrity or endless ad spend. For marketers and founders, this episode is a blueprint on building enduring marketing moats in the age of the creator economy.

Transcript

[Chris Josephs]

A cloud portfolio on Instagram and a cloud portfolio on Twitter. Each of them have gone from 0 to 200,000 followers in literally a month and a half. And we did no paid marketing. Everything was completely organic.

[Host / Interviewer]

Imagine you could build $100 million business

[Sponsor / Narrator]

through content without ever showing your face.

[Host / Interviewer]

That's exactly what Autopilot has done. They built the viral Pelosi stock tracker account and have since grown several other pages to millions of followers across their portfolio. We brought on Chris Josephs, their co founder and head of creative, to share their full playbook. He talked about their ideation framework, some of the craziest trades that they've ever seen, and how they get booked weekly to talk on mainstream.

[Chris Josephs]

On the noose, I don't think is as hard as people may think. All the contacts are out there. It's just, are you going to go do it? So that's how we've gotten to 1.5 billion.

[Host / Interviewer]

So give me the story of the Pelosi tracker. This thing is legendary.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah. So it started in 2021 and funny enough, like we, because we got the 1.5 million on Twitter, 1.4 on Instagram, and then like my personal Tik Tok only has 300k, but it actually started on TikTok. And then we kind of like grew it into the other accounts. But it started back in 2021 when we were building an app called Iris. At the time it was a social investing app for your portfolio. So if you had a Robinhood, Ida, Fidelity and someone else had a weeble back when Covid, they essentially handed everyone money. Everyone went right to their Robinhood to start trading. We built a social layer for it. So it was like a social investing stock up. The Pelosi tracker idea stemmed from essentially me trying to grow the app. And I was, I was watching kind of a couple of tweets on Pelosi stock trades going viral and I'm like, it's not that cool to see the trades because it's like, okay, cool, I see that she's buying it. I would love if I could just automate my portfolio or at least like know what she's buying all at once so I could follow her stock trades and get notified for the next one. So the Pelosi tracker idea was a performance led growth stunt for our app because we recreated her portfolio on Iris. And then I went got behind a TikTok and said, hey, if you want to know Nancy Pelosi's next stock trade, go download Autopilot. And then next thing you know, we got I think top 50 in the app Store. I think it was PBS or npr. NPR reached out to us. We did our first interview with npr and then the whole thing just, yeah, rocketed from there.

[Host / Interviewer]

Well, I mean, what were some of the early numbers? Like how viral were some of those early posts? And like what was the, what was the conversion that you would say at the beginning?

[Chris Josephs]

It was, it was really, really good. And again, like I was telling you earlier, like I wear kind of two hats. So one, it's like I'm the co founder, head of growth of this, like, you know, we've raised $15 million startup and then I'm also the creator. So I learned firsthand the struggles of virality. Cool.

[Host / Interviewer]

You get a view.

[Chris Josephs]

But does it drive results? You know, that's the hardest thing to do these days. At the beginning, the conversions were great because it was such a novel idea, like no one knew about it. It was so new that every view that you would get, probably out of the thousand views, you'd probably get like, honestly like 50 to 60 downloads. It was that high of a conversion at that time. So the first video we did, we probably got I think a couple hundred thousand views, but it stemmed into I think like 6 or 7,000 downloads.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And then for the product, I mean they're loading in funds or no.

[Chris Josephs]

So at the time the product was just a social way. So the whole, the CTA for that video was. Nancy Pelosi's a world class stock picker. How does she do it? Get notified of her next stock trade by downloading Iris at the time and following your portfolio. And we, but that port, that account, that, that app, um, at the time. Cause we pivoted, uh, we were able to grow that. This was only on TikTok, so it wasn't even on Instagram and Twitter yet. We grew that to I think around like a hundred thousand followers. Uh, this is my personal. And then that app got around like 250 to 300,000 downloads at the end of it. And we did no paid marketing. Everything was completely organic at that point. Yeah.

[Host / Interviewer]

And then so I mean give a little background then on the product of Autopilot and the transition you made there. Because we're getting a marketing.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's. I, I kind of give the analogy of Pokemon where it's like you have this one idea and then it evolves into the next one. The same way a Pokemon evolves as they grow. The evolution was, it's honestly so obvious when you look back in 2020-2022, everyone and their mom was trading. Like I said, the everyone was home because of COVID A social app worked in that era because you could follow it. You were doing so much. But as the world started opening up, more people just wanted to automate their portfolios and they also wanted to just know who the best were. Because it's like, I don't give, I don't care about my friend buying Apple if he sucks. I just want to follow the best people. So the evolution of the app from Iris into AutoPilot happened in 2023 and it allowed you to, instead of just following Nancy Pelosi, you could take your Robinhood and automate your portfolio to trade alongside Nancy Pelosi. So we were building that for a year and that was when the Pelosi tracker on Twitter started. And I don't know if people know about the growth hack for, for. How do you rank high in the App Store through app previews?

[Host / Interviewer]

No.

[Chris Josephs]

So I don't.

[Host / Interviewer]

It does not work.

[Chris Josephs]

It doesn't work as well anymore because the biggest thing in marketing is once you say all these things, everyone copies them.

[Host / Interviewer]

Now sweat equity, we still got some edge. Yeah, this is still a borderline frontier.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, this is very much because again, I've been following a lot of your stuff. This is very much long term. Like we have a long life cycle to get a user to convert as an investing app. Like, it's just hard. So it's not like we can just throw it in a Whole Foods and then hope people will eventually find us through TikTok. But the, the way that we hacked, quote, unquote hacked to get to the top of the App Store is you can do a thing called App pre downloads. So a pre download would mean that you essentially can preorder your app the same way people upload Amazon Books to preorder. You could do that for the App Store and you have. You can constantly be pushing the deadline. So when we were having Iris, we essentially built Autopilot and at the time I'm doing marketing, we're not. We have an app we don't have to market. So what I was, well, we don't have an app that you can pay for yet, but you can market it, do the preorder stuff. So we threw the app on the App Store. We had it preorders. And then that was when we started building out the Twitter page. The Pelosi jackets is 2023. We started from zero and that thing went up to a couple hundred thousand pretty quick.

[Host / Interviewer]

But audience market fit.

[Chris Josephs]

Oh, my God, it was perfect. Yeah, it was. It's one of these. Like lightning in a bottle. We got lucky. We took advantage of the moment. And it's not even just me for credit. My co founder Brian had a lot to do with the way that the policy tracker initially started, but. So every time a politician would make a stock trade on Twitter, we'd just be like, hey, this is insane. Can you believe they're doing this? You know, Dan Crenshaw is buying xyz, Pelosi is buying xyz. Oh, my God, they're passing these bills. And then below the tweet, we would plug the app with the cta. Yeah. So we were able to grow a user base essentially on the app before we actually launched the app. And then in January 2023, we launched the app, made a couple hundred thousand dollars that first day. I think we hit number two in the app. So we couldn't pass Cash app. Cash app beat us. But we have dealers, favorite trends. I know. Yeah. And I, it's funny, I DM the cash app people because we knew them and I was like, I, I'm going to pass you one day.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

So we still had to pass them. But that's the initial origin or origin story of how Iris became autopilot in the first early era of the Pelosi tracker.

[Host / Interviewer]

And then now you guys have how many assets under management?

[Chris Josephs]

We got 1.5 billion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host / Interviewer]

So things have gone pretty well.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, things have gone great. And again, you know, the caveat is, like, the market's done well. The beauty of what we've been doing and not to get too technical on, like, the autopilot side, like, no, it's good technical. Yeah, we, I like my hot take is I think in two to three years, the same way it was, like, it's dumb for people to take taxis when their Ubers were around. I think it's going to be the same thing for buying stocks. Like, I think in two to three years, it can be dumb for the individual person to buy their own stocks when there's this new platform where you can go on and just find a stock picker vetted by their performance, figure out what they do, and if you like them and just had them do it for you, I would, I, I.

[Host / Interviewer]

So Michael Sakant, you know, good, good friend from Austin back in the day, he has a YouTube channel where he talks about stocks and what he wants to pick. And I just, I always DM him like, bro, I just want to tell you.

[Chris Josephs]

Guess what?

[Host / Interviewer]

I know it's on.

[Chris Josephs]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Host / Interviewer]

And because like I don't really have time to actively, you know, trade but at the same time I see this stuff and I would love for it to just, you know, run in the background. But I agree with you. And I think it's also fascinating because fintech in itself is becoming so creator led. Right. There's a lot of different stuff, whether it's Instagram, Twitter, like Substack, even, you know, I mean I can't imagine if someone has a big substack audience, how many people they could convert into autopilot. What do you call them? Like follower investors?

[Chris Josephs]

We call them. So we call the autopilot investors pilots and then we call everyone else kind of like investors.

[Host / Interviewer]

Okay, cool.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah. So that Michael Sikken guy, he has two or three portfolios on autopilot. I think he's got 50 million following him. And like the beauty again, that's insane. It's insane. And you know how much money he makes because like the thing that we're very open about this. You pay to follow him, you pay for his conviction, you pay for his stock picks. I will gladly pay 150 bucks to 200 bucks a year to put 30 grand with him. Yeah. And then he does the stock picking. I don't have to worry about it. He loves it because he keeps 60% of 70% of the revenue or whatever. Right. He's getting checks from us for like $15,000 a month.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

And he's not actively doing it all.

[Host / Interviewer]

He's just doing, he's just doing what he was otherwise doing as a.

[Chris Josephs]

Exactly. And all the followers on YouTube are loving it because who wants to, you know, Like, I think we've all been there. It's like you've seen these people on social media that do all these things and you know, whether it's like the workout people or the finance influencer saying like these stocks are the ones to buy, these are the ones to sell. You just can't keep up with it. It's just, it's too hard to track.

[Host / Interviewer]

Well, and there's even, I mean at a micro level, you know my, my buddy Tyler, shout out Tyler from Austin, you know, he's like this 42 year old dude, ex like hedge fund, you know, just incredibly smart. And bro, he's up like 70% this year. And I tried to just, I literally tried to just wire him money. I was like, bro, can I just wire it into you? And you just trade it for me and Like I ran into a situation with Charles Schwab. Like they, they like blocked the wa. I don't know, I just, I ran into the slightest amount of friction and ended up kind of forgetting about it. And then here he is just, you

[Chris Josephs]

know, popping off, still chugging along. And then you say to yourself, why I wish I could could 100%.

[Host / Interviewer]

And it's like, man, if I could have just like touch two buttons. And it's like, all right, I'm going to trail his portfolio and it's just done for me. That would be amazing.

[Chris Josephs]

That. So that's how we've gotten to 1.5 billion. So like we now are allowing people to apply to launch their own funds. And you know, Michael Sick and He's got a YouTube channel. We have unusual whales with 3 million followers. We got a couple other YouTubers and like the top guys on the platform. There's one guy named Peter Wolf who's like a normal dermatologist full time, but he's one of these classic substack Twitter guys that just shares a stock pick small amount, small account. He has 200 million following him and I think he makes like thou tens of thousands of dollars a month. We have a AI PhD from Morton who wrote a book on how to have ChatGPT pick stocks. He launched the Chat GPT Claude Deepseek Rock portfolio.

[Host / Interviewer]

Okay, so that was the thing I wanted to touch on next was because you've built this network of faceless pages and you guys are getting a tremendous amount of views a month. I mean, I would probably, my guess would be, I don't know, 50 to 100 million views a month.

[Chris Josephs]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like potentially a million plus with all four of them.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. And that's across Instagram, TikTok, you know,

[Chris Josephs]

Instagram TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And these are all faceless pages that are driving immense amounts of traffic. And it's this crazy thing where you tap into culture on one side, you tap into a desire on the other. Right, right. It's like, it's interesting because it's Claude trading the stock market. There's a desire to make money. You create the two and this new entity and it's very attention grabbing. And then it all kind of funnels back obviously to your product in a seamless way. How are you guys going about building these pages from the ground level? And that's ideation and execution.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah. So the approach that we have when we initially started, it was just me doing it all and, and I was, you know, we have A so you're

[Host / Interviewer]

writing the tweets on the Pelosi tracker?

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, so I'd write the tweets on the Pelosi tracker, turn that tweet into a static, turn the static into a script, make the script of TikTok and Instagram real, and then repeat. And then we realized that that formula works. Let's do it for a couple other industries. So we have the. The politics we own. Then the other industry that we own is the hedge fund industry. So we run the Burry tracker on Twitter that has half a million. I think the one on Instagram is like 300k. But it's all the same formula and the ideas. And now we've. I have a team, so my team under me, we. I very much love the. It's nerdy, but I love the approach of the Avengers universe. So, like, with my team, I'm trying to build out the Avengers of. I got one performance marketing lead, I got a creative lead, I got an Instagram person lead, I got a Twitter person lead, and then I oversee them all. So that's how we've been doing it now. But the idea of the Avengers also goes into your question of how do we. How do we plan it all? And like, we're trying to build a universe of it and like, the universe of it works so well because it compounds. So when the Pelosi tracker starts, that's the initial hook that gets everyone in. But. And then we got an account with half a million followers. What's the next thing we could do? We can launch another one. We can launch the Burry one. And how do you grow the Burry ones? You make high quality content, which we already have been proven to do because we have the experts at it. And then we have our accounts work with each other. So now you got the Pelosi tracker quote tweeting, the Burry tracker being like, Michael Burry owns the same stock as Nancy Pelosi, then you allow. You do all that stuff and you do that through branded accounts. And most recently with the AI portfolios, we're able to scale a cloud portfolio. So we have a cloud portfolio on Instagram and a cloud portfolio page on Twitter. And each of them have gone from 0 to 200,000 followers in literally a month and a half because the content is viral. This is what the Roy from Cluey said, which is true. Virality won't just happen, but virality will happen to viral ideas. So the cloud idea was a viral idea, but it's not just going to go viral. You have to spark it. You need to kind of like get it running. And since we own this universe, we can interact with it and that's how we start growing and compounding what's.

[Host / Interviewer]

What's some of the roadmap like when. When you think about like what's a new account that you're excited to get into.

[Chris Josephs]

So we're very particular the. The way in going back. Like the big things that we try and do is try and tackle the tams of virality on social media. So the politics angle, I don't know, it's more viral than politics right now on Instagram and it's a massive tam. It just gets the audience.

[Host / Interviewer]

It works.

[Chris Josephs]

So we own that ecosystem. It could be about stocks, it could be about ice stuff, it could be about Trump. Like anything. In the politics angle, we at least can attach to the same thing. Now for the Bury tracker. The BUR tracker started out as just Michael Bur stock trades, but it's expanded now into this authority of like today there's a guy named Leopold. Of course. Yeah, Leopold. So we have an account for him. He's grown to 25 million a and his stock trades coming out today. So my team is waiting for his stock trades to drop. That gets posted on the bur tracker and it's again not just bur now it's all things finance.

[Host / Interviewer]

The a post that on the bur. You wouldn't start a new Leopold Ashburner.

[Chris Josephs]

No, because that's the key. Because if you do too many, you'll.

[Host / Interviewer]

You'll fragment the universe a little bit.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah. And you want to be the authority of it because like it. These things don't have. They have longish shelf life that they don't work. Like the Pelosi one wouldn't have worked as well if Pelosi wasn't a good stock picker. She is. Yeah, she's pretty d. She's pretty good. Yeah, she's pretty dial. I don't know what she knows.

[Host / Interviewer]

What's. What's. I think I know what she knows. What is she up all the time? Do you know?

[Chris Josephs]

So we track 220% since tracking her. Yeah. She's crushed the spy by like 80.

[Host / Interviewer]

That's crazy.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, I mean that's the thing about it. It's like we get. You know, did what I've expected us to be able to be where we are. No, because I didn't expect her to do that. Well, yeah, it started out as a joke kind of thing. Like we wanted to build it as a Way to see, like, what would happen. So, for example, funny enough, yesterday Donald Trump for the first time shared his stock fix. He's never. I've never seen a stock fix before in my life. That was never a thing that this is this new idea. So what did we do? We created the Trump Portfolio. We just launched it like two hours ago, and I think it's already got half a million a. And now we've gotten six or seven Instagram Twitter posts ready to go. And that fits into our political world. So, like, when we think about the next ones we want to do, we can get portfolios that go into the little ecosystem we have. But if we want to build up a new world, we're very picky with, like this. This idea has to work well or else we spread ourselves too thin on an idea that doesn't have shelf life.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

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[Host / Interviewer]

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[Host / Interviewer]

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[Sponsor / Narrator]

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[Host / Interviewer]

needs to make better decisions.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

I like to think of it as like, what Meta would actually show you if they cared about your success. All the key metrics, like three second stop rate, winning angles, formats, competitor research, it's all built into their platform so you can make quicker and better decisions. They even just launched their new AI agent, Runth, which functions as a 24.7creative strategist, providing recommendations to your ad account. Y' all make sure to go check them [e-mail] all right, let's get back to the episode.

[Host / Interviewer]

So we got politics, hedge fund guys, slash, like prominent investors, and then tech in the AI cloud stuff.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, even just more like anything around the language, learning models, doing tasks, and like the novelty around an AI picking stocks for you, I think is so unique that people will try it out. Of course. Yeah, so that's like the success we've seen with those ones.

[Host / Interviewer]

How is that one doing? Is it, is it performing well?

[Chris Josephs]

The cloud one isn't. So the cloud one is not performing as well.

[Host / Interviewer]

Grok, Nancy Pelosi is running laps around.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, you Know which one's beating them all? Inverse Kramer. Oh, yeah, the classic. Yeah, yeah, the classic guy.

[Host / Interviewer]

That's another account, right?

[Chris Josephs]

That's another account. Yeah. We don't own that one. That one's. That one's been done by a different guy.

[Host / Interviewer]

And then talk about that. Because one thing I wanted to ask you about, which I find very fascinating is like, you guys have your own media and then there's obviously these influencers. You mentioned Unusual Whales earlier. As a guy who is like, you know, very, very mega viral at all times. I mean, I feel like I see an Unusual Whales tweet four times a week.

[Chris Josephs]

Right.

[Host / Interviewer]

I don't even follow them. And similarly, Inverse Kramer, it's like, you know, just fade whatever this guy says, and you'll make money. How do you view, you know, your owned accounts versus working with these other accounts? And like, how does that kind of interplay with the actual app experience?

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, so the working with other accounts. Like in an ideal world, we have just only two examples.

[Host / Interviewer]

Examples.

[Chris Josephs]

We have partners that have launched their own funds, their own portfolios, and they're incentivized to grow their own books the same way a substack writer is incentivized to grow their substack. Substack at the end of the day is walking away with. They're seeing growth because they're doing well.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, the writer seeing growth.

[Chris Josephs]

So that's like the unusual whales. That's the quiver quantitative. That's the YouTuber. That's the Michael sickened relationship where we are trying to build a product where they monetize their own stock picks and they do all the growth for them. So when they do that, the beauty of working with Autopilot and for anyone that wants to launch their own fund is you actually tap into all of our resources and we'll retweet you. You know, a Pelosi tracker retreat would probably cost three grand. We'll retweet your stuff all the time for free. So the relationships with those guys is much more like, how do we give you the assets to be able to grow your own book? But we are very much in the mindset of we want to own all of our own decisions distribution. So like Inverse Kramer, we know him, he's a great dude, but he just chart. It's expensive to work with them. Right. And the. The shelf life of the life cycle of trying to get someone to download an app and use your app is much longer. It's just harder to do because, you know, I don't. How many Apps have you downloaded this year? Like personally, like aside from maybe using things for work?

[Host / Interviewer]

Well, I think I use, I download a lot of apps but I don't, they don't stick. Yeah, exactly what I've found. And this is where I beef with all these like viral consumer app bros on Twitter, all these like Gen Z broccoli heads trying to push like their viral UGC campaigns. I'm like what's your three month retention? Because I bet it is an absolute nosedive. There's just no way like these things are not sticky. And it's because generally I mean my thesis and probably pushback to a lot of these apps would be. I just, I just think everything converges into social media and that's where the dominant share of attention is. If someone's spending five hours a day on their phone, three and a half on social, an hour on messages and you're lucky to get anything besides a productivity app besides that. And then I do think what you've kind of done is like interplayed well with social.

[Chris Josephs]

Right.

[Host / Interviewer]

Like you are inherently very discovered on social and so the app itself kind of just runs in the background.

[Chris Josephs]

It's us. If I were to kind of rank the three that have done it well and we haven't done it as well as these two, it's us Polymarketing Kalshi I think as like the tech ones and the reality, the reason why is if you really think about it, everything that you're reading about US polymarketing Kalshi, all the value is literally on social media. Everything is there. Like we, when Pelosi makes a trade, we tell you the trade, we tell you when she bought, we tell you the performance. Everything is right there. The last piece of it is if you want to automate your portfolio to do it.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

Polymark and Kali, if you want to bet on it, you go to our platform. But the product and the content is built to work in social media because we know that it's a, it's a losing game to try and go viral. It's a losing game to try and have virality be the only way that you, you grow your app. So yeah, I see all those guys all the time too. And the only ones that do stick are the ones that have life cycle around it. So there's us. Oasis app is actually pretty good.

[Host / Interviewer]

He's crushed it.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, yeah, Coric, he's, he's good at what he does. And if you think about it though first principally the reason why is like you can use these products without actually having to use them. So like whenever that time like with us and investing is a long term thing, you're not going to churn from an investing app in a month. You're going to stick around with it with that stuff. It's like you're not going to use the Oasis app every day, you're going to use it when it's convenient to you. So. And I think a lot of founders, at least like the viral consumer founder stuff, they make the mistake of trying to think like, oh, this one idea is amazing. Let me vibe code up an app and let me try and make you know, 60 to 70k in MRR. It's like, well first off, good luck. It's hard to even get the 30k. Second off, you're thinking only in a month. Like what happens after 6 months? You may hit 60k for one month, but every month after that it's slowly.

[Host / Interviewer]

And that's kind of the model that I've seen succeed is the studio model where they get really good at the quick pop, the quick viral, keeping them around for maybe like 3 to 6 month LTV and then they just rinse and do a new app.

[Chris Josephs]

Right.

[Host / Interviewer]

And I've seen those guys, actually there's like three of them in New York that are building these huge companies doing like, I mean allegedly like 35 million a year in revenue, just like launching and scaling apps via the mass udc, like all of that, which I think is a good transition. I want to talk about like because you mentioned before we started recording like, okay, we had this viral faceless channel, you know, and kind of cracked lightning in a bottle. It's like Pelosi's up 220%. That's great, inherently very interesting. But to build the next level of your business, you're going to have to crack paid, going to have to crack, you know, the UGC mass campaigns. How are you approaching paid first and then we'll get into UGC second.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, yeah. So the, the, the mental model that we have was to get from 0 to 1 million. It was just brute force founder led content to get from a million to 10 million in revenue. It was scaling out the content that works with a couple other pages with the same formula though. And that could be done by one person to get from 10 million to 100 million. It's just mostly just paid, it's paid in the UGC. You know, I, I see people say that the UGC armies aren't paid, like they're still kind of paid.

[Host / Interviewer]

It's paid yeah, it's clipping is paid.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah. The whole thing is like, it's all the scalability.

[Host / Interviewer]

The way that I would pitch it, like I was in rooms with like Target and Walmart and all these people trying to be like, hey Boomer, this is what's going on. And I'd be like, we finally invented an engine where you can pay for organic.

[Chris Josephs]

Right.

[Host / Interviewer]

This is performance marketing for organic. And I think that's clipping and mass ugc. It's just you have a budget, you want to go achieve a cpm, this person will go execute it and try and arbitrage the difference.

[Chris Josephs]

Yep. So where we are now is we, we're pro, we're in the mid 20 millions in revenue, 1.5 billion. A like things are working and you know, we're adding 250k of MRI day.

[Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Chris Josephs]

Now in this like it's kind of crazy. Like I think in the last month we've added 4 million. So the, the way that we approach like this next steps of what we're trying to do, I was telling you earlier, the two bets that I'm making is the social shows and the UGC armies. The problem with the UGC armies is compliance on our end. It's tricky, it's hard to do. But we have a guy, we're building it out now. We're going to try and do it. The and the thing that we are trying to solve for is not necessarily like scaling out UGC to a billion different people and then hoping, you know, maybe I get, I post 100 videos a day or 100 videos a week and I do the text overlay and maybe one video will pop off. We're still very much in the belief of we want to take users on journeys. So like we have these ideas coming where we're going to be getting small creators. And honestly if people out there, if anyone wants to be a creator for us, we will gladly. Like we have a cool little. We have a referral system, we have everything already built out. We have, we're going to be paying out like 5 to 6k a month. I think it's as the start to these creators. So if anyone wants to. We're looking for people now, but the idea is to seed them with a, with a concept that we have, give them our backing, our creative prowess, give them our playbook and then scale up only like 10 to 12 of them versus trying to scale the market with hundreds and hundreds of them. Mainly because compliance is one, but also two. And I'm curious To hear your take on it. We're still trying to control the narrative and like the idea of the premium quality around like an investing app. Like if you, if your investing app is seen everywhere, if it's seen by, you know, a 21 year old college kid. If I'm, I'm 30, I make good money. If I'm seeing an investing app being Talked about a 21 year old college kid, I think about it differently. Like at the end of the day you do. The framing of who it comes from matters. So we're trying to be careful with how we do the UGC army and the UGC scaling. But I have some ideas which we haven't publicly, we haven't posted yet, but we're working on it. Which I think is going to take the UGC army idea and add a new wrinkle into it that I think other people will copy us once we do it. I'm excited by it.

[Host / Interviewer]

What's the wrinkle?

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, I think the wrinkle is this journey stuff. So there's a couple that I think are already kind of doing it like Polymarket and Kalshi. They sort of do like the day one, day two, day threes of trying to, you know, bet until I, I can buy a Porsche kind of thing. We're taking similar ish approach to it and like that's where I think.

[Host / Interviewer]

So you're gonna have like a UGC creator basically say like this is day one of like following the Bury tracker.

[Chris Josephs]

We're gonna try. That's what I think. Yeah, we're not sold on that idea yet, but it's that sort of concept. Have you seen any of that stuff work like at scale?

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean honestly like it's just at bats like I, I, I'm like so agnostic to I, my, my approach is always like we're gonn concepts and like run with that for six weeks and then like measure what worked and then because you just never know, like I mean that might catch fire. It might be better if someone's just like, you know, product demo covers their face shocked and they're like yo, how AM I up 220%. YTD shows a Pelosi tracker. Like it was just like different things that are going to eventually be, you know, prove themselves to work or not.

[Chris Josephs]

Have you seen any that haven't worked like any companies specifically?

[Host / Interviewer]

I mean the graveyard is deep now.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

Y' all already know we are super skeptical on this show about most AI tools promising the world. They have flashy demos, huge Promises and ultimately underdeliver. But I do have to tell you about one that has blown me away and saved my team countless hours of time.

[Host / Interviewer]

And that's Rich Panel.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

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[Host / Interviewer]

all of your apps.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

That's not even to mention the cost savings. They're like three times more affordable than their competitors. I couldn't recommend this enough. So if you're a brand looking to turn support into an asset, go check out richpanel.com and tell them we sent you.

[Host / Interviewer]

You know, at Nibble, I worked with like 87 different brands, but we only actively had like 15 to 20 clients at a time.

[Chris Josephs]

Right.

[Host / Interviewer]

And I was actually explaining this to this guy I was talking to this morning where I ran the same playbook for every brand, you know, and we had brands touch 2 million in TikTok shop revenue. We had brands never break 10k. The problem was just product market fit and audience market fit on the channel was just very variable. And so I think it's similar with UGC campaigns. Like, your variance is going to come in the quality of the creator, you know, the quality of the idea, but you just don't know until you put it out there. The method is always going to be there though. Like, that is obviously the method and

[Chris Josephs]

that's, I think like the we right now probably spend, I don't know, like 700, 800k a month on paid ads. We want to scale out the paid ads and go more towards creators. Ugc, I'm not the biggest believer in influencers. I don't know if that will work as much anymore.

[Host / Interviewer]

I feel like your influencer strategy is what I like the faceless stuff. I like the organic. I mean, and the other beauty of

[Chris Josephs]

the organic thing, Loki, is you can swap people.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

So, like when I started it, people don't know my face. By like, I mean, we've done podcasts. I could tell you about the Tucker thing. Like, that was a crazy one. But the beauty of as a company, as a founder, owning the faceless accounts is you can hire people to come in and do it, of course, which is game changing because, like, I can't make content anymore. I got a team of 10 I need people though, to be able to scale up these things. And now our content is hitting higher than it's ever been and people still don't even know is behind them, which is like so key.

[Host / Interviewer]

So you never showed your face?

[Chris Josephs]

No, I. So I showed my face. Not on Pelosi Tracker. On Instagram, I did. Okay, Instagram I did. And you know, we see the ebbs and flows of the content, but. But no one knows my name. I think on any of those pages

[Host / Interviewer]

when you were talking about social shows, is that, Is that hand in hand with ugc? Are you going to do long form content as well?

[Chris Josephs]

It's long form. Long form. Long form built for YouTube.

[Host / Interviewer]

Like. Okay, so it'll be like a virally packaged YouTube show.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah.

[Host / Interviewer]

What's. What's the concept there?

[Chris Josephs]

We have a couple concepts that we're thinking about. One is something to do with like bringing in people and saying, you know, the classic what do I do with my money? Like, we have all these things already.

[Host / Interviewer]

The Caleb Hammer.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, kind of. So the Caleb Ammer copied. You can copy. He stole from Dave Ramsey. Right. I. I think there's a different kind of fun viral element to I. I'm a big believer right now in that the environments is the differentiator between content that is working right now and content is like right here is perfect. It's like, it's a vibe. It's cool. Like it's the TVPN kind of thing. So social shows guys do get credit

[Host / Interviewer]

for just vibes, huh?

[Chris Josephs]

I know they do, yeah. Have you ever met them?

[Host / Interviewer]

No, no.

[Chris Josephs]

I have a.

[Host / Interviewer]

A DM out to John Coogan, so. Hit me sometime, bro. I think he mogs me in height, to be honest with you. Six, eight.

[Chris Josephs]

Oh, he's tall as.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, he's tall as hell.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, he. They're out in la, so I met them a couple times. Jordy is like the king of branding and then John is the king of just like the vibes of how do you put on an exceptional well.

[Host / Interviewer]

So I mean, we invested in our set design from the jump. Like our episodes from like probably January of 2024. We're like looking super viby. Like we. We really thought that video LED podcasts would separate us in terms of perception. And I think there's been a lot of podcasts since that have obviously leaned into that. But I mean it's a huge thing we try and offer a guest, right, Is like, yo, we're not just going to like zoom call you in. It's like you're Going to get some sick clips, good pictures. Like, everything's going to be very professionally done and you can, like, post wherever you want. Like, you look cool.

[Chris Josephs]

I think within the era of the zoom anything, I think specifically for whether you want to do a YouTube, whether you want to do a podcast, whatever, I just don't think they're going to work anymore. I think the bar is kind of leveled up so high. So, like, on the social shows, we're still working on a couple different concepts, but we're. One is we're going to be doing around, like, people like us. And then two is we're going to do like, sort of like, what did you do with your money? Kind of thing. And there's going to be no cta. It's going to be vibes, going to be fun.

[Host / Interviewer]

You the link in the description?

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, we'll have the link in the description, but it'd be built for YouTube. And then we'll clip it. Will clip it for social media. And the inspiration is he just had the Wall Street Journal in the New York Times. The subway takes.

[Host / Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

Brilliant. I think it's brilliant. And I read that article and he's like, this is essentially television. It's like people aren't watching television anymore. But the key to television that I think is the next evolution from the podcast. And like, the stuff that we're doing now is movement. So, like, if you think about subway surfers, we. We dissected this with our. With our team, like Deep the other day. The subway stuff for content. When you're putting your visuals over it and you got the subway surface in the back.

[Host / Interviewer]

The reason why, talking about, like the split screen.

[Chris Josephs]

And I'm talking about. Yeah, whether it's split screen. Split screen or brain rot.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

Or the, the game where the mind. We'll overlay it on this.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

If you watch low, it's insane. Why it works. And it works because it's worked. It's built for this. The algorithms and social media, the watch time. And when you, when you start, you get the initial hook. So the first two or three seconds of it has to be a good hook. But the good hook of, like me saying, you know, Nancy Pelosi made a trade that's going to hook you, but. And then in three to four seconds, maybe five seconds, you're going to be distracted. You're going to want to move on to the next thing. But if you put the. The Minecraft stuff and the. The subway surfers work because it's literally a distraction for the video. When you're watching this video and I tell you about Pelosi Tracker, your mind is going to wander and you're going to see the subway surfer stuff. Then you're already six or seven seconds in. You're then going to be like, wait a second, why the am I watching Subway Surfers? I'm here for this video. You're going to go back to the. To me talking about it. You're gonna be nine or 10 seconds in and then there's gonna be a different thing. And like the subway surfer idea I think first principled was just there's always like something that can distract you from the content. But you're go, you're going back and forth. The where I'm going with that though is the evolution of what the subway takes guy does is that subways car is always moving. You see it in the background, you see the people sitting down, you see conversations left and right. I think that's the next evolution of what the podcasts are going to be because that literally is television. Like the podcast stuff isn't necessarily television. It's more of like this might. This smaller scaled episodic scene, pre television.

[Host / Interviewer]

You know what I just watched was. I thought this was fascinating. Do you know Professor Jang?

[Chris Josephs]

No.

[Host / Interviewer]

This would be a good little character for you to get into the broader ecosystem because he's basically talking just crazy, crazy World War, World War iii, like implications, the Iran war and how it's a broader theater. And Stephen Bartlett just had him on Diary of a CEO and instead of Steven's like usual heavily edited episodes where he'll put up graphics and animations to demonstrate points, they had Professor Jank brought in a map, like had a map on the table, had a map of the globe, like Iran region just up there. And he was like professor style. You know, he's like getting up there like has a long stick. He's like pointing to different regions and he's like circling things on this map. And it was so interactive.

[Chris Josephs]

Right.

[Host / Interviewer]

It was not just a podcast interview, it was an actual show. And I think that played a huge. I don't typically consume a full version of his episode. I get the clips like a lot of other people. This actually stuck with me because it's just more stimulating.

[Chris Josephs]

I know in what you just described. Reminds me of CNN and Fox News and all them when they.

[Host / Interviewer]

Oh the cry on dude.

[Chris Josephs]

When they do the. They get the maps in and they're

[Host / Interviewer]

pointing at the cortisol maxing too.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it, it is. I Think like what is interesting. I'd be curious and like a year from now when you, when you have your sayings like this eventually is going to become the thing that everyone else does. So how do you do it next? How do you do it different? I think movement is the game.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

And that's what we're trying to bet on. The problem is it's hard. It's hard and expensive. I have a hot take. I think about like consumer apps specifically. This is not cpg, just consumer apps that the brand Loki doesn't matter for the first 100 million bucks. And I think it's because the brand, it's expensive as hell. To make a brand you need a high quality production, you need a lot of time, you need the team and there's not enough touch points to be able to sell your product to someone. That everything should be focused on just getting users to your product and the brand. Low key doesn't matter as much.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I, I totally agree. I, I think especially with stickiness, right. I mean at the end of the day it's. There's so much not thought about in the UX piece that. That's always been my feedbacks. I just feel like so many people have good ideas for SaaS and they'll be like, will you try this? And like, you know, onboard for free, whatever. Just like, oh my God, like I don't even want to use this thing. It's so the thing I want to do is not immediately available and so I'm out. Like my attention span can't handle this, you know. And I think that's way more important than brand at the consumer. A consumer app level and particular B2B SAs. Yeah. I think with as.

[Chris Josephs]

As it pertains to like social shows

[Host / Interviewer]

though, like when you're thinking packaging.

[Chris Josephs]

Right.

[Host / Interviewer]

Because I think one thing that you clearly understand to me is virality equals huge tam. You know, to go viral you have to be in these clear like applies to everyone's spaces. So with the social show, I guess Dave Ramsey's good inspiration, but are there other elements that you're thinking about in terms of getting it to a massive audience?

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, honestly the answer to that is we don't care about the massive audience.

[Host / Interviewer]

This would be more niche.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, this is much. This is like we want 50 to 60,000 views on YouTube middle funnel. Because what we realized, and we just know this, talking to a ton of users is with investing, there's so much trust that goes into it that people aren't downloading and paying you right. Away, they're downloading the app, they're going to read it, they're going to YouTube, they're going to accept like all these different spots. And we don't have anything that lives for the middle funnel person to be like, hey, not only are we human, but we also are talking to other humans about the experience with money, the experience with, with investing and this content is built for them. So if we were to think about like in the, in the grand scheme of things, we got the top funnel content. That's the Pelosi tracker, that's the, the Burry tracker, that's the Claude stuff that will get people to know about the product. But when they eventually get into it in the nitty gritty and they, you know, they get over the joke of the Pelosi tracker, it's like, okay, am I actually going to do this? That's this new content layer that we're trying to invest and build out now, which will capture the people that do the research to convince them to do it. Because I see on social media like people comment, it's like, has anyone used this app? I searched this on Reddit. I read about one horror story. Like, is like how like, is this app trustworthy? And I think that's because we don't have any autopilot owned content for the middle funnel of the experience of a user searching the brand.

[Host / Interviewer]

Really smart. Yeah, it's really smart. I mean that social proof layer is present in anything. You know, we were, I was running a GLP1 business for a long time and you know, obviously we can acquire customers but like what made them sticky was trustpilot reviews and you know, the peer to peer referral piece. And I mean that's obvious but like it's not just that. It's also a life cycle marketing, right? Being like this is what to do when you have this side effect month two, you know, like that's like going to build trust people want to actually continue working with. You think it's similar with investing?

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah. And like the, the piece of why we own the distribution, like why I'm just obsessed with it is like if we have a YouTube with a couple hundred thousand subscribers, we already have the other accounts that we can actually manufacture views to that account automatically. So like that, that politician trade tracker on Instagram in particular, like we barely even use the stories. Imagine if we had these stories of people coming in, you know, talking in a scene like this, like what do you do with your money? This and that, having these fun little interviews, 15 minute 10 minute, 12 minute segments and we just start plugging them on the politician trade tracker page. It works two ways because not only now are people going in and viewing and following the YouTube page, it also though is showcasing that Autopilot as a, as a company. It's like a premium brand. Like, like Premium brands have YouTube channels. You know, if you don't have a YouTube channel, you're, you're not as premium. And by doing that, it's also, is so kind of niche. And it works because we were talking about this morning, people don't even know we have that Politician Trade tracker Instagram account that is owned by Autopilot, that is like our distribution. So we can start plugging in and people will naturally be like, oh, this, this big account is following and talking about Autopilot. I'm going to trust Autopilot more. And it all comes back to like the first principle. Like if you own the distribution, if you spent the time to build out your own influencers, it pays dividends down the line.

[Host / Interviewer]

So not to pivot too hard, but you mentioned before the show that you went on Tucker. Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

How was that? Tucker Carlson. He was a good, interesting character. He's exactly who you would think he would be.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, he just glares at you for two hours.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah. Glares at you, make some jokes, has a high pitched laugh. Yeah, yeah, we were kind of like

[Host / Interviewer]

probably a satisfying laugh to get. Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

Sounds like a good guy to make laugh.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

And it was, it was cool because he's smart. Like what you again, aside from the controversies, aside from like, I think like a lot of people in the politics world, specifically on YouTube, it, they have to drive views and views is rage bait. So like I don't take what half of these people say, Republican or Democrat,

[Host / Interviewer]

that like seriously because once you understand the incentives, everything. Exactly.

[Chris Josephs]

So, so aside from the Tucker Carlson kind of controversy piece we went on back in 2024. No, early 2025. We got invited in 2024 and we did it because he wanted to have the Flowsy tracker on. We talked about the trades and skyrocketed the app. We hit top 10 in the app Store. It was great. And we wanted to roll that to Rogan. We haven't gotten there yet, but I think Rogan would love what we're doing.

[Host / Interviewer]

I think he would. I mean he's, he's obviously like someone who would get a lot of value. He'd be a lot more shock and awe too.

[Chris Josephs]

I know. Yeah, I know. And we have some crazy stories for him. Like around the specific trades we had the. What's going on right now with the Trump people don't know. And this is a side tangent. Then we'll get back. Like, people don't, like people don't want the banning of congressional stock trading. Right. That's the classic kind of thing that everyone's reading about. But, but the, the details of it actually can do more harm than good if that bill gets passed a certain way. You would have to sell out of your own private, private businesses to even become a politician. So if you wanted to become a politician at some point and you employed like 60 people, you'd have to sell out of the private company. Like, how are you going to do that? It's hard, but. So that's another story. But the way we got Tucker was we were just the authority on Twitter and their producer reached out to us. They flew us out to where his studio was. They picked us up in these kind of like SUV vans with the, the USA license plate under it brought us right to the studio, opened up the doors in like rural Maine.

[Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Chris Josephs]

He has a couple. Yeah. I don't know if he likes people. Nowhere is but one. I don't know if his studio is in rural Maine, but he has a, he has a house up in rural Maine.

[Host / Interviewer]

Okay.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, yeah, but. And then he's just like a little like a frat guy. The button down shirt.

[Host / Interviewer]

Vineyard Vines action.

[Chris Josephs]

Straight Vineyard Vines action. So we, we did that podcast that was great. And the way that we get all these news pieces, which I would recommend this for people if they want to do this. Like we've, we played this part playbook, but we've never had a PR person. We've never done any like actual like hiring and paying of people.

[Host / Interviewer]

So how are you getting on cnn, Tucker Carlson, all these things for free without a PR agency.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

So getting on the news, the news channels, I don't think is as hard as people may think if you really kind of roll everything back. All of these people just want stories. They want unique stories. They want stories that kind of move the needle and on top of that, they all have their contacts on out there. So what I did was when I was running, before even the policy tracker started, I would just search and I would find the producers and I would find the news reporters what, looking up their, what they previously wrote, get their emails and I would email them saying, hey, I am Chris Joseph, run the Pelosi tracker. Or at least was talking about politics, stock trades. I'm also the co founder of an App let you copy them. I will be feeding you stories about interesting trades. Would you be interested in getting that? And they would all say yes, because what news reporter would not want.

[Host / Interviewer]

Of course, the free story built a relationship.

[Chris Josephs]

I built the relationship.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

So over time, I would just say, hey, this is a suspicious trade. Hey, this trade. Let me know if you'd like to know more. Let me know if you like to know more. I was living in L A time L. A at the time. Hey, I'm in New York City right now. We're about to do this big announcement around X, Y, Z. Let me know if you would like to chat. Next thing you know, Fox and Friends is like, yes, we'd love to have you. Let's have you in the studio. That's how we started building out the relationship. So all the contacts are out there. It's just, are you going to go do it and are you going to build a relationship? Which quite literally is what the PR people do anyway.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chris Josephs]

It's not like they do anything special.

[Host / Interviewer]

I have a friend in PR here in New York. Her name's Juliana Martins. She's incredible at what she does. And, like, that was exactly what you said, because I basically went through. I was like, alex and I have a lot bigger followings than a lot of these people who are getting mainstream press. Like, what are we doing wrong? And she was like, well, have you ever talked to a reporter? I was like, no. Never even thought to go chat.

[Chris Josephs]

You would think that they would reach out to you.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And like, I'm just such a. My ego just makes me. I'm like, they should reach out. It's like, no, like, they don't do that. You know what I mean? Like, they have people coming to them, and it's like this concept of information. And she said exactly what you said. It's like, go find reporters covering the things that you would want to be featured in. Find their email, establish a relationship, and when you have something ready for them to actually distribute for you, that's when you kind of pull the card. And I'm thinking, yeah, like, we. We are constantly thinking about how to do that. What do you find is more effective at, you know, driving a lot of eyeballs to your app, mainstream stuff? Or like, you know, Fox and Friends and CNN and Tucker, Whatever. Or, you know, mega viral Pelosi tracker

[Chris Josephs]

Tweet and the Mega viral performance Pelosi tracker, Absolutely.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

Because the one underlying piece that is important that ties everything together is like, we really try and be the authority of it. So like, I honestly think like our Pelosi tracker, us tweeting is in the same level as a mainstream Fox News person talking about it. It's just a different medium. If we weren't though the authority in it, I don't think people would look at us the same. And like the thing that I would recommend to people and not fall out in the trap in is like I'm not a believer in rage bait. I think rage bait is short term stuff that doesn't actually scale if you want to build these things for the long term. And I'm not a believer too much in the clickbait stuff.

[Host / Interviewer]

It works.

[Chris Josephs]

But like it's a trap and like that. Yeah, it's such a short term thing that Pelosi tracker, we could have rage baited it to 3, 4, 5 million followers. I really think we could have, we could have been doing all these things that like, can you believe this? Not a shot.

[Host / Interviewer]

But unusual whales is certainly more rage baiting.

[Chris Josephs]

Exactly. Than what you're doing.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, you kind of, you're like, you know, trade made unusual, like strange. Yeah. You know, upcoming trade made by politician, upcoming bill. Like and that's a really strong fact based authoritative content format versus like unusual whales will like report something pretty sauce that's like not verified.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, well dude, exactly. And UFO drops like. Yeah. And that's the thing I think that a lot of people fall into the trap of because the now Twitter is paying you for views. So I was like, of course you're going to do all these things to get your views. If you stick to your like your principles, it will pay off in the long run. Because now the news people see us as the authority and they know that we're pretty reason level headed. We're not doing this for clicks. They then start inviting you on on a weekly basis. So like I think for the last three weeks we've gone on News Nation every single Friday talking about at the time the poly market insider trader guy went to jail. Most recently we talked about how Trump people are front running his oil trades and then we don't have one set up. But I'm going to, when I get back to the office, I'm going to email all my news people and say, hey, here's the breakdown of Trump's newest trade. And also by the way, we just launched a portfolio about him. Let me know if anyone has any questions.

[Host / Interviewer]

The lead time when they get you on tomorrow morning, like is that kind of how quickly it can be?

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, the lead time is usually 24 hours. But we've never done anything on the weekends except for Fox and Friends Saturday morning once. These usually are like two or three minute hit pieces, but in like, they're quick. Like, these are quick. They put you. You're talking. You got a minute and a half, two minutes of lead time. The biggest ones that we want is we. I love the podcast stuff because I think the podcast stuff is like, I like to try and show people how we did it without us giving away all of our secrets. Cause I think some. I know founders that have given away too many secrets that people copy them and then they get mad that people copy them. Like, well, why'd you tell the world? But so it's like that happy medium of. Of providing the value. Because I'm a big believer in like, the things pay off where it's like, I don't know, someone might be watching this and they want to come and be a creator at Autopilot. They want to be a tiktoker. Or then someone would be like, oh, I know this podcaster guy. Maybe I know the Sean Barley podcast and they want to have me on. That's the game, I think, that you always have to play as a creator and co founder as opposed to just like a pure creator. It's like you and I, like, we are running businesses here. We have bigger things than just even just like a social media page.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. A follower account. Like I'm trying to put dollars in the bank.

[Chris Josephs]

Exactly. Yeah. Like you got teams. I think it's a different kind of like approach. But being able to do both allows you to play the game of chess, to be able to get farther than your competitors.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, dude, I think that was awesome interview. I mean, a lot of, lot of insights. The faceless stuff I think is crazy. What we just. I'm so enamored with theme pages and ways to generate traffic that are not, you know, paid media. And I think I've done arguably one of the most effective jobs last few years. So thanks for coming on. Yeah.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

Where.

[Host / Interviewer]

Where can they support you?

[Chris Josephs]

Twitter. Instagram. Twitter and Instagram. So you can follow our social media. Like my personal. At Chris J. Josephs. I'm trying to get into this game. I'm trying to get more in my face out there because we need to do education. So you can follow Chris J. Josephs, we answer all the DMs, or you can follow our politics page, which is politician trade tracker on Instagram or police tracker on Twitter.

[Host / Interviewer]

Cool. And then sign up for autopilot, obviously. Um, I need to get on there and start, actually.

[Chris Josephs]

Yeah, but you.

[Host / Interviewer]

I gotta tell Pelosi, man.

[Chris Josephs]

The 220Michael Sickens crushing her.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chris Josephs]

Michael Sikken, I think is. He's one of the top guys. And we have. I mean, we have a wait list of like 2,000 people waiting to launch, so.

[Host / Interviewer]

Become creators.

[Chris Josephs]

To become creators. Yeah.

[Sponsor / Narrator]

Yeah.

[Host / Interviewer]

I think I'm so bullish on that. I don't even like. It's crazy. I know.

[Chris Josephs]

I'm excited.

[Host / Interviewer]

Such a great career economy product.

[Chris Josephs]

Exactly.

[Host / Interviewer]

Biggest tam of all time, too.

[Chris Josephs]

It honestly is. Yeah. Everyone needs stocks. Cool.

[Host / Interviewer]

All right, man.

[Chris Josephs]

I appreciate it.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, thanks.