Hank: Very choppy video was my take. So it feels... 

Gonto: Do you like electronic music?

Hank: I didn't listen to the music. Let me, let me give it a listen. Yeah, it's okay.

Gonto: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Code to Market. Today we have two topics to chat about. I'll start with the first one, which again, because Hank loves them, we'll actually talk about two launches.

Not really launches, like one is a funding plus launch announcement. And the other one is an acquisition announcement. So two things that happened this week, Cloudflare just bought Replicate.

Replicate allows you to run models on Edge and Cloudflare just bought it and they just announced it actually today.

Hank: First off, first criticism. I don't, I didn't really know these companies, either of them, but...

Gonto: You don't know Cloudflare? Are you kidding me?

Hank: No, I know Cloudflare. I didn't know Replicate or RunLayer. Okay.

Gonto: I haven't introduced RunLayer yet. But the other one is a, is a launch plus funding of RunLayer. Now you can go ahead.

Hank:  Okay. So my first criticism of Replicate was I felt like it took me a little bit, it took a little more than the average attention of like scrolling past and clicking in and reading to understand what does Replicate do. Whereas...

Gonto: But the criticism is about their website then, not about the launch in this case.

Hank: No, no, no. I mean in the launch. So I guess we're comparing the, maybe I jumped in too quickly here, but if we're comparing the Replicate launch and the RunLayer launch or announcement, news, whatever.

RunLayer, like the big news for Replicate is we're joining Cloudflare, period. The big news for RunLayer is we raised money to do X, period. 

Gonto: And they launched their product. They did two things. 

Hank: Yes. So they had the bundle.

The bundle is great, but I'm saying even without the product launch, just the clear statement of this is what we do, I think makes the announcement three times as good. Because joining Cloudflare or getting funding is just a pure pat on the back, patting your own back, but adding the extra bit of like, and “this is what we do. And here's how the money is going to help or whatever is a big difference.”

I felt like I had to dig through with Replicate on the, you know, they get to it, but like, why is this good? How does this help me as the self-interested user?

Gonto: I agree. I actually didn't like the Cloudflare one. I did like the RunLayer one.

I didn't like the Cloudflare one mostly because, and for those that are watching the video on Spotify or YouTube, we'll show the tweets now, but the Cloudflare tweets was something like, this just happened. That was it. And just a link and a short video that showed nothing. So it's like, you could use that space to at least tell something else. 

Similarly for Replicate, where they said like, oh, we got bots and that's it. Then you have to dig into the blog post to learn about what happened.

The attention span of people is so short that I think you need to use the tweet to put some info on it and not just making everybody link to the blog post. And then on the blog post, like if you read it, it takes some time to understand what's going on. And I think they should have talked a bit similarly.

Like Replicate just said that they're going to be a separate branch and they're not going to change names. But at the same time in Cloudflare, even though that Replicate will have a separate thing, they will also include them as white label inside their workers' products, which is something that wasn't clear from the Replicate announcement. So if you read the Replicate announcement and you didn't read the Cloudflare one, you wouldn't have got it.

So I think both teams should have agreed on what to put and what's the statement on both. They should both have used the space better on Twitter. And then even Dane, who is the CTO of Cloudflare, retweeted the announcement that they were buying.

And even the retweet from Dane was kind of shitty, to be honest. Like they said “we're building the AI cloud” and that's it. He should have, I think, gone a bit more into like, OK, everybody is using workers and he's using models on workers.

You're going to see a shitload more there. And they're going to be faster because they are on Edge. That's it.

That's what would have been the announcement that I would have made.

Hank: I agree. Yeah, I'm just looking at the Dane tweet. I think you have a good point there, too.

It was very high level. I mean, a lot of this just didn't answer what's in it for me, right? And you have to answer that so fast, because otherwise, what do people think?

Gonto: And then if you yeah, and if you go to the blog post, one of them answers, the other one doesn't like what the fuck. So I would give it a three out of ten to this announcement. 

Hank: on Replicate? 

Gonto: And I’m being nice. But with RunLayer

Hank: Well, what do you think? Yeah. What do you think of RunLayer? How did they do it better?

Gonto: RunLayer, I've never heard about the product until earlier today. And I think they did a really good job because number one, I actually like that the video was different, like the video didn't say shit. And I just watched it entirely because I liked the electronic music that they were playing.

And it was like moving my head, shaking my head and dancing. So that's why I saw it, even though I didn't learn that much from the video. So I think maybe the video, they could have done it a bit better on explaining the things.

But I don’t know I was dancing. I was happy. So it was good.

Having said that, what I actually think is really good from that one is the fact that they basically explained everything on the second tweet. If you go to the second tweet and the third tweet, they start talking about like, OK, people are using MCPs, but then there's no security, there's nothing. So there's this third option and talking a bit more about the product.

Like I didn't like the rest, like mentioning all of the investors and everything. Like I get it, like they are mentioning them so they get a retweet. But for the user, it's not that useful.

Instead of putting so many ads in here, I would have tagged people on the image that they actually have in there, which I think looks better on the tweets. But at the same time, it still tags them so that they can retweet. That's the only thing I would change on this one.

I also hate the command and control plane. Everybody says command and control plane, and I just hate it because everybody says it. But yeah, I don't know.

What did you think of it?

Hank: Interesting. What's the phrase that you're saying everybody's using? 

Gonto: Command and control plane.

Hank: OK, yeah, 

Gonto: it's it's it's pain, actually.

Hank: But yeah, I'm seeing control plane all over the place, too. That's, you know, so quick aside.

Everybody, I know it's hard. Try to find unique language. Otherwise you're just the same.

Oh, yeah, there it is. Command and control plane. Right in that tweet.

That tweet otherwise is pretty great. I like your idea of tagging all the people because people still do this, but you could have tagged them all in the video. That's a pretty good…

Gonto: I would tag some in the video and some in the image, because I think you have a maximum of eight or ten tags per each. So you can actually tag each of them separately.

And then it looks better. And not like you're begging for retweets.

Hank: Yeah, but I like that. It's it does look better. The thread was good.

And it's not just a hey, congratulate us thread. It's a let me teach you about our product while we have a little bit of attention.

Gonto: You know, what do you think of the video? Like, I like electronic music. But did you learn anything from the video?

Do you like it? Or did you actually learn more from from the text?

Hank: It's a lot of… I'm a sucker for like market texture, you know, marketing architecture diagrams. But it's too quick for me to actually comprehend anything here. And there's a lot of…very choppy video was my take. So it feels... 

Gonto: Do you like electronic music?

Hank: I didn't listen to the music. Let me, let me give it a listen. Yeah, it's okay.

My Twitter experience is perhaps a little different than yours. But uh, yeah, I mean, it's good.

But like, it's catchier than the Replicate one, which is just kind of like a gif of scenery, for example. But this one, it's it doesn't actually teach me anything. And I think it's because they're trying to cram all the concepts into one video.

So I talk about this with teams that I work with is hey, just like pick one important concept. And then at the end, you can say there's so much more, you know, maybe people should start doing a video where the video always starts, if we could only tell you one thing about our product. And then you can spend a minute on that one thing.

And everybody knows that you're the total end to end platform goodness that does everything in the world. But most people only care to learn one thing. But I don't know, it's a really hard concept.

So that's my feedback on the video. Sure, the music's great. But…

Gonto: And I actually have a framework that I try to use for these videos, where it's like, I start with a hook and the problem you're solving, then I move to introducing your solution, then you do one liner about your solution, then you talk about feature one, feature two, and then you basically finish with some closing. And that's it. I think something like that is probably useful.

And it gives you guidance on one sentence or two sentences. And that's it. That's the only thing you can do. I try to do that for most of the videos, which I think is good. 

One last thing I'll have on this Robo is Keith Robo is was one of the investors at RunLayer. And he actually retweeted the tweet from RunLayer.

And his tweet was so fucking good as well. Like he nailed in three lines, what is the problem and why they cared about, which I think also adds a lot more value because he has a lot of followers. And he basically explains a bit on what's going on with this tweet.

And then if you cared more about it, you would click on the tweet and then read the longer explanation. But actually, this idea of having somebody retweet you and quote tweet you with one or two liners with a really heads on “This is what we do.”

And then some deep dive. I like it as a framework as well.

Hank:  That is a very good retweet. I just looked at it. It's got a really interesting positioning angle, too, by the way, that I think people can learn from, which is it basically talks about how employees everywhere are connecting to Cursor and they're connecting to more than 15 MCPs without real security.

Enterprises can't suppress this movement. Just true. So it's kind of like taking this defeatist attitude, like, hey, guys, you can't stop your employees from doing all this unsecure stuff.

And then he ends, but they can now embrace it. And so it frames RunLayer into this thing of like, hey, you can't force compliance out of your employees. So just like add this layer.

Very interesting. Good positioning.

Gonto: I agree. Let's switch topics. Do you want to intro the next one?

Hank:  Yeah. So Kalshi and PolyMarket do something interesting, which is they share news. It's stuff that happens on their product.

And so they're constantly sharing these things and it gets them a ton of engagement. And you thought this was interesting. You brought it up.

I immediately liked the idea and started trying to think of, you know, how I could apply it. But what was your take? Like, how did you what's your observation here?

You shared a few tweets like how here's one “just in Ford to sell cars on Amazon.”

Gonto: What I like about what Kalshi is doing is people use Kalshi to bet on news basically. So if they can be the ones that people trust for news and they start retweeting and quote tweeting and people start seeing the brands Kalshi with news, Kalshi with news are going to be like, what the fuck is this? They're going to enter because it's people who care about the news.

And they're going to be like, oh, I can actually now bet on the news. That's awesome. So I think it's fantastic positioning from them because in a lot of cases, they do this “just in” like news, very short with things that I care about.

And I don't have to read the full RTP. Most news placements now like New York Times, whatever, they do a lot of clickbait titles. So you click on them and read them because for them, you have to go into the platform for them to make money.

But I hate that because I don't know anything from what's going on on that clickbait. What Kalshi is doing, I think is basically understanding that for them, that's not what they care about. And they basically give you a one sentence of everything that would happen and would be told in one news article.

So for me, fantastic way to get news. And I think what they do a really good job is they have some tweets where they explain the news, like “Just in: Ford is going to sell cars on Amazon.” They got others where they talk about, okay, this thing that was bad now has like completely changed.

I mean, it's a new thing. So they link the news to what's going on with their thing and their bets. And I think they do a really good job of that.

The only caveat that I'll give you is Kalshi last week reported that ChatsGPT changed their terms and conditions and that you would not be able to ask it for health or financial advice anymore. And everybody started retweeting it and quote tweeting it because it's like, what the fuck? That's the thing I use it the most.

In the end, it wasn't true. So now the problem they have with me at least is because that thing they fucked up. Now I don't believe any of the things that they share.

So now I actually read the PolyMarket one instead of Kalshi because they fucked up once and they lost my trust after everybody started retweeting it, which is the one thing that I think they fucked up, but they started with a good model.

Hank: Yeah. But PolyMarket's going to do that too. Like you can't be a hundred percent accurate all the time.

That's Kalshi and PolyMarket's whole thing.

Gonto: I know.

Hank: I would take that bet with you on is PolyMarket going to be more accurate and keep your trust over Kalshi over time. How would we apply this in DevTool land? What's the takeaway here?

How can we go implement this for businesses?

Gonto: To me, what's interesting is what is one thing that people care about, but it's maybe hard to understand, hard to see and where you can do something special about it. And I'll give you an example. I've heard a lot about a lot of developers watching Fireship.

And Fireship is like a news program for developers, but you have to watch the YouTube video on paper, but sometimes don't want to watch it. So what if you actually started sharing on your Twitter, some of those news and you try to link them to your product? Maybe people would be like, oh, they started retweeting your thing and then they start coming.

And I think that's something that would work for overall development platform, maybe for a Cloudflare forever sale or something like that. For Clerk, for example, one of my customers, they do authentication. Maybe what they do is there's a place where people can publish vulnerabilities.

So maybe they could scan the vulnerabilities. And as soon as there's a new one in any protocol, any framework, they just share it so that people know. And it's the source of news for people who don't want to read it.

And those are the things that I think we need to think about.

Hank: Yeah. I mean, part of what you're describing is just sharing more when you have relevant information. I think information that you think is relevant to your audience, even if the information isn't necessarily about your company or your products.

But if you think your audience would find it useful, it could be good for you to do. 

Secondly, you also touch on the concept of zero click content. And that's this idea that you don't always need to get the click.

You're not a new site. Like people visiting your blog doesn't get you money, but people finding value from your social media does get you more reach when you have something to say that will make you money. So worry less about click throughs and that sort of stuff if you can provide value and deliver information.

Gonto: I agree with that.

Hank: I'm going to think about this one. It's interesting. I think there's high applicability.

Yeah. I'll say, especially in the like, like just to brainstorm a little, like if I'm Vercel, I have insights across multiple frameworks now, you know, React, Next.js, Svelte, Nuxt. People want information on that.

And right now the practice is change logs and there's not any like just firm updates on interesting practices, let alone like, I don't know, maybe they should talk about competitor frameworks. Another one is in any AI company can just there's so much interesting news in AI and you could just pick two topics that you're like, I'm always going to tweet about this first because I always have an insight. You know, your company is going to have some sort of angle.

And even if, say, you're always talking about Anthropic and their models or something, while your audience is more niche and you can always add your niche perspective to it. I don't know, something, something just to think about.

Gonto: Agreed. It's more about thinking about it, but I think they do a good strategy and we can probably do something like that for for DevTools as well.

Hank: Yeah. Cool. All right.

Gonto: I think that's it for today's episode. As usual, if you have any feedback, let us know, but otherwise we'll see you next week.

Hank: See ya.