From Agency Angst to AI Experiment
My last apology (hopefully)
Hey there - It’s Yash. I know everyone is busy so a short note outlining what I’m doing and a much longer note explaining why I’m doing it.
The short note. What am I doing?
I’ve been running Spectral - an agency that helps founders and VCs craft compelling stories. This could mean writing a newsletter, producing a podcast, or writing thoughtboi threads on Twitter / X.
After countless existential crises and a three week sabbatical, I realized two things: One, it’s insanely hard and stressful to scale an agency. Two, the future of content marketing is going to be radically different due to the rise of generative AI.
To future-proof Spectral, we will be experimenting with products. Currently, we are working on our first product experiment - an AI powered podcast producer. We’re launching v1 later this week. Join the waitlist here :)
Of course, product building requires $$$ so I’ll use Spectral's agency (and my freelance consulting) revenue to fuel our product aspirations.
“But Yash, I signed up for a music x tech newsletter Wtf is this?”
I understand your confusion. Here’s the plan:
I’ve been reading and learning more than I ever have, so I could write about AI / consumer-tech / product building in general - more from a learning in public perspective, rather than a prescriptive one? The format and cadence is still TBD. Lmk by responding directly to this email.
I think many of the aspects that drive consumer tech can also be applied to the music industry. I hope existing readers will be able to derive value from these insights.
I still have some thoughts about the music industry, but they will be more ad hoc, inspired by the conversations I have with friends who still work there.
The AFD podcast is going strong, with Maarten and Steph as brilliant co-hosts. Check out the latest episodes here.
Of course, if you don’t want to come along for this new ride, opt out here. Just know that Substack sends me a notification with your email, so I know who you are - haha :) Jk no hard feelings.
The longer note. Why am I doing this?
I feel like every time I write an essay, I preface it with an apology for not publishing regularly. I see a lot of you stuck around (or probably forgot that you ever subscribed to this newsletter!) but I’ll take what I can get :)
A bunch has happened since the last time I wrote here. I’ve been busy building Spectral - a content studio that helps founders and VCs tell compelling stories about the future.
Initially, I kept writing this newsletter because it was a great top-of-funnel for new Spectral clients. But soon I felt this nagging uncomfortable feeling preventing me from doing my best work - After some thought, I realized what it was. I was focussed on building a business that was far removed from the music industry. As much as I’d have liked being an armchair critic, you can’t really write a music x tech newsletter if you don’t operate in the music x tech space. I felt too inauthentic. Yes, we worked with talented founders and prolific investors in music, but really—most of my headspace was occupied by the nuts and bolts of agency building—setting up processes, managing contractors, acquiring and onboarding clients, etc.
The decision was staring me in the face. I had to stop writing.
Tbh, it felt like a lost opportunity. Some really influential and established operators had subscribed, and we all know that the armchair critic space is a highly lucrative one. Painful as that was though, looking back, it was definitely the right decision to make.
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The journey with Spectral has been profound. As a first time founder, this is my first “serious” venture. So no fancy pitch decks and/or corporate cotton candy. Just cold and unforgiving numbers. How much iscomingin?Howmuch is going out? It’s funny how in the crazy venture backed world of tech, we forget the simple math that makes businesses work.
Spectral enabled a lifestyle that I had always dreamt about as a young kid growing up in India. I moved to Spain, travelled the world with my partner, freely crossed continents to spend time with my family, and ticked off all the fundamental requirements for a meaningful life. All while the world burned around me, with the pandemic first and a wider economic downturn after that. Extremely fucking grateful.
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First world problems (sorry!)
At the start of 2023, I decided to take Spectral to the next level. This is when things went sideways. You see, agencies don’t require capital to set up, so you can go from 0 to 1 pretty quickly. It’s just a freelancer-esque setup on steroids. But agencies are ridiculously hard to scale. Your time and your revenue are inextricably linked. You can setup systems, hire offshore, and leverage new tech, but the fundamental law of agencies remains constant: The more clients you take on, the more time you spend pandering to their needs in order to earn that increased revenue.
Initially, this was extremely stressful. I hated trading my time for money. Running an agency felt like running a hotel. Most guests are great, but then one annoying guest comes along, and you have to smile and cater to their whims anyway. It felt like a badly orchestrated scene from The White Lotus.
Context-switching across projects depleted my soul. I woke up without purpose, and had no energy to invest in other parts of my life. My lack of energy didn’t serve clients too well either; and the irony was I was netting the same amount of $$ I made as a freelancer, since our costs went significantly up. In other words, instead of running Spectral, Spectral ran me.
Something had to change.
A few months ago, I decided to clear my schedule and think long and hard about why Spectral was causing me so much stress and anxiety. I finally figured it out - Spectral was at odds with one of my highest values as an individual — Freedom.
Indulge me for 2 minutes as I unpack this thought:
According to me, freedom (in the material realm) has two deterministic variables: time and money. Money, because you can say no to things you don’t want to do, and time because all the $$ in the world is meaningless if other people have control over how you spend your time. So basically:
We spend our time to make money to reclaim our time.
The obvious goal then, is to work on projects that make more money while spending the least amount of time doing so. Easy right?
The way Spectral was structured (the agency model) was terribly ill-suited for this. In my mind, exponential monetary growth without exponential time spent can only be attained via software-enabled products. Of course, unlike agencies, these products need upfront time and capital investment, so a steady cash flow stemming from an agency business is important. Especially if you’re bootstrapping like I am.
In other words, the Spectral Agency -> Spectral Product transition will be a slow, non-binary, and co-dependant one.
If you’re still reading this, I really appreciate you indulging my rant on these first world problems. We all think we are the protagonists of our own lives, and our problems are the defining problems of mankind. Spoiler: they’re not.
So thank you for sticking around anyway. Really grateful for all of you :)
Yash