Polymaths Pod

Malik Mbaye spent years in product marketing at Meta, Lyft, Upwork and LinkedIn while running his own agency on the side. Around New Year's he quit a $350K job at LinkedIn to go all in on AI, and last month the company he's scaling did $660K.

He tells Matt and Gera how a post with 20 likes led to a $10K deal with a startup that later raised $20 million, why a big tech team paid $350,000 for a WordPress website, and how AI cut his builds from 15 months to 4.

Watch the video version on YouTube: [LINK]

Music: "Bookworm" by Purrple Cat (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/purrple-cat/a-good-book/bookworm/), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

THE POLYMATHS POD

Founders and builders break down exactly how they built what they built.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/polymathsmedia/

FOLLOW MATT & GERA
Matt: https://www.instagram.com/nonstop.matt/
Gera: https://www.instagram.com/gerraai/

Eric Zhu started his first company at 13, raised $2.3 million for Aviato, and co-founded Sperm Racing, which raced USC against UCLA in front of about 5,000 people.

In this episode:
(0:32) Welcome, and who Eric is
(2:01) Thrown out of the Palladium
(4:18) Why he started Sperm Racing
(5:32) The Sperm Racing World Cup
(8:47) The marketing playbook behind going viral
(11:26) Buying out meme pages, and the iShowSpeed deal
(13:42) His secret sauce on fundraising
(16:36) The big bet, and drunk NASCAR
(20:15) Running five brands like a PE firm
(22:45) Hiring: old resumes vs. underpriced talent
(25:03) Marc Andreessen, David Dobrik, and getting celebrities to show up
(28:04) Advice to his 15-year-old self, and the priciest lessons
(29:44) Two decisions from rich, or homeless, and the company everyone calls cringe
(33:14) If he had to restart

Eric on X: @ericzhu
Sperm Racing: spermracing.com

FOLLOW GERA AND MATT:
Gera on Instagram: @gerraai
Matt on Instagram: @nonstop.matt

Faiz Imran is 24, has built and sold six companies, and is now building Dripseed, which turns founders' Slack threads, emails and sales calls into LinkedIn posts that bring in pipeline. His last company, IntentPost, reached $840,000 in pipeline in six weeks from posting alone.

In this episode:
(0:30) Welcome, and who Faiz is
(1:24) What Dripseed is, and why AI slop fails
(4:42) LinkedIn vs. TikTok and IG hooks
(9:18) Building IntentPost in public
(13:04) Test before you build
(18:33) His path, from a Kickstarter to Backspace
(22:03) Meta ads for B2B
(28:50) Conferences, and talking to real people
(30:13) Why it's a service, and the pricing
(35:00) The state of cold email
(37:15) A day in Dripseed, and what's next
(40:53) If he had to restart

Faiz: faizimran.com
Dripseed: dripseed.ai

Kawser Khan is the founder and CEO of Beige, which he calls the Uber for content. It started when he was 18: he rented a Lambo to shoot a music video for his first song, and his friends started asking him to shoot theirs.

In this episode: his first paying client, dropping out on his professor's advice, building Beige with his wife, the $30,000 deal that changed things, pitching Logan Paul, how Cedric the Entertainer became an advisor, selling two supercars to make payroll, and his most expensive mistake.

In this episode:
(0:38) Welcome, and who Kawser is
(3:10) From a Lambo shoot to a business
(4:43) Dropping out
(5:43) Building it with his wife
(9:26) Lunchables, Pokémon cards and a restaurant
(13:06) Never show up empty-handed
(15:12) The numbers
(21:29) The $30,000 moment
(23:28) Getting customers
(30:10) Pitching Logan Paul
(31:21) The cold start problem
(33:04) How a Beige shoot works
(34:33) AI and hybrid production
(36:09) Selling the supercars
(39:38) Raising the Series A
(41:37) Make money with your camera
(44:05) Data and AI
(45:53) Cedric the Entertainer
(50:58) The most expensive mistake

Find Kawser on Instagram: @ceokawser

Beige: beige.app

Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/mmjOIkc1ZRU

Tobie Azeez is the COO of Clair, a nasal hygiene device his father, a doctor, invented and patented. It's his third company in about ten years.

He started out selling gum and candy from his high school locker. At 20 he walked up to Nick Cannon at a Waffle House, pitched his restaurant app, and raised about $650K that summer. Swiftdine grew to about 150 restaurants before COVID shut dining rooms down, and the payments tool behind it became Xeemo.

Tobie tells Matt and Gera how he signed an allergist with millions of followers years before Clair shipped, how they got the tooling down to $114K and a factory cost of $19.65 in China, what his most expensive mistake cost, the patient that led his dad to invent it, and how the numbers work: a $119 device, refills every 90 days and 87% subscription retention.

FIND TOBIE
Instagram: @tobieazeez
Clair: breatheclair.com

THE POLYMATHS POD
Founders and builders break down exactly how they built it.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UC6F_w33wgxEisd9M_fEKlww
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/polymathsmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/polymaths-media

Hosted by Matt Smith and Gera Baano.

Kash Zubair grew up on Section 8. Last year, one of his e-commerce brands did just under $4 million.

Kash, co-founder of Bet On Yourself Ecom, breaks down the real numbers behind the brand (a $400K Black Friday month and a 20 to 25 percent margin), how he tests Meta ads after Andromeda, how AI makes his ad creative without running the business, the hunting product that became his first winner, and what he kept from a $500K exit.

Chapters

0:00 Cold open

0:26 Welcome, and who Kash is

3:19 The real numbers

10:58 Know your customer

20:46 Testing ads after Andromeda

37:24 The first $100K product

46:50 What AI should run

52:22 From Section 8 to an exit

Follow Kash on Instagram: @kashanzubair

The Polymaths Pod: https://polymaths.media