Everyone. Welcome to the Embiid podcast in which we discuss tech and entrepreneurship. Today, the nineteen year old startup founder, Campbell Baron, joins us to company mantra and how it makes it easier to create video courses. First off, how are you doing today, Camp Hill? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show.
Before mantra, you ran a podcast interviewing CEOs, founders, and VCs, and then built your tick doc account to a 100 k followers, which was later acquired by Workweek. Would you mind walking through that journey and what gave you the idea to create a podcast and then a TikTok account? Yeah. Sure. So I would say that, I think my interest generally in in the world of business and and startups have been in the center of of the intersection of media and technology.
And so when I when I started getting really interested in podcasts, at large and the genre of podcasts at large. It just became, you know, the the natural next step in my kind of, like, entrepreneurial journey when I was relatively young was like, hey, I should probably just start my own. And it's the thought that that many people have had even back in 2018, podcasts were starting to become way more well known.
There's kind of the beginning of the meme, which is like, ah, I should start a podcast. But I I thought that and decided I was gonna kind of gonna go right into it and knew that I wanted to use it as an opportunity to kind of test my content creation skills.
Or develop my content creation skills, but also be in a situation where I could potentially have conversations that I would really enjoy and potentially have conversations with folks that I would probably not be able to talk to on any given day. Right, these entrepreneurs, these heroes of mine that I really want to speak with. That was part of the goal, I would say. So, you know, I kind of just went right into it.
I just knew what I, you know, figured out that the best, you know, way to make this happen would be to just cold email a bunch of founders I looked up to, you know, hundreds of them at the time, and ended up interviewing 12 founders like, Chris Saka, and the founders of Soul Cycle And Dollar Shave Club And Headspace, to name a few. And, you know, did that over a 8 month journey. Right? So it took quite a bit of time. Funded this via a sponsor.
I I got Skillshare who who funded the 1st season of the show, so I was able to travel to these destinations and have these conversations. And, ultimately, I would say that kicked off my kind of interest and deep dive into technology and startups, as a result of these conversations.
I left each conversation feeling so inspired by these by by the by the contents, by the by the person themselves, and by the process of kind of cold emailing, you know, not getting I I was not, in in tech prior to this, my parents are not in tech. These were not introductions. Right? These were just purely cold emails.
I didn't know anyone going into this, but, you know, you interview a few people and it goes well, and they're generous and they'll introduce you to a few people and that kind of spirals on its own. And so I went into this not knowing anyone in tech and and came out having a network in tech, And that was meaningful.
And a few, you know, a group of people who like listening to the show, nothing crazy, but, numbers that, you know, I was, was relatively happy with as it pertains to, like, how people were consuming the content, etcetera. But again, nothing nothing viral much smaller than my TikTok account, but at the end of the day, the conversations really, really were the reason I was doing this. And then actually download a TikTok as a as a medium was interesting to me to promote the show.
That was kind of the original idea. But what I ended up realizing was that there was this group of people, this gen z group of people, and startups that I was not really aware of before I started, or downloaded TikTok that were that was all interested in kind of this business news genre, right, this figuring out the current events as it pertains to start ups and ultimately kind of stumbled upon that.
That niche and, went all in kind of converting these tech crunch articles, which I found relatively dry into content that would be engaging, for a Gen Z on in, including myself, almost like a a CNBC, but for a younger audience. And that account grew to a 100,000 followers. So nothing crazy, but a decent size in tech and was acquired by the media company, work week last summer.
And following that, I I decided I really want to kind of go all in on on some form of tech product and ended up founding mantra. But, you know, I would say that parallel was between the podcast and, the TikTok account and Modcher was that I'm just obsessed with the intersection of media and technology. And the podcast on my break into tech, the TikTok helped me hone my storytelling. And mantra is really testing my abilities to to run a tech startup and and build an actual product.
That's awesome. And you used to be a kid, producer for CBC. How did that experience play into creating your news TikTok account? Well, I would say that was probably my my first formal, media experience, maybe 1st formal journalism training, perhaps. The story goes as follows, which was a it's a little it's kind of funny, actually. So I, when I was thirteen, I had this idea for a show, where I wanted to, like, interview kid entrepreneurs.
And the problem with that show in hindsight was that they're just weren't really enough per per se. And I'm not sure the audience would have been big enough. Could have been interesting. Who knows? I I really didn't wanna do this by myself. I, you know, I also was in, like, I don't know, what are you when you're thirteen? I think I was maybe I think it was probably in the 8th grade. I was I was pretty young, I would say, and just be wanting to do the show.
And so I got a meeting with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I'm, from Toronto. I grew up in New York, but I I moved back to Toronto. And so this is kind of when I was in Toronto, for the coming back, I I, got a meeting with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and I pitched him on the show. I was terrified. It was my first real pitch I put together, like, a pilot episode that I made myself in addition to kind of like a briefer document that I handed to the producer.
And you know, assume that, like, I'd hear back from them and maybe with the show it got Madan, and that never happened. But I just kept following up and kept staying in touch with him. The guy who I pitched, I still remember his name. His name was Drew, and Drew, you know, was really helpful. Gave me tour of the whole building. I just felt really, appreciated, perhaps, and he was just very nice. And so he kind of kept replying to my emails and said, hey.
Look. Yeah. No. We're not not really into the show, but, like, you know, I would like to intro you to, this person named Lisa, who's working on this, this Kids news site that they're just thinking about getting up and running, and maybe you could help her with that. And so I was really interested in media at this time.
I was also interested in startup but, definitely, like, probably 60% media over startups at that point and was, like, very interested in, doing anything really because I was doing a bunch of freelance gigs at the side. I had a video agency.
That was my first real business I started when I was like, maybe 12, 13 doing videos for, like, Pinkberry, I think, was the biggest client, that would be recognized by an American audience nonetheless, I ended up getting introduced to Lisa and ended up talking with her a few times and and audition for this kids news role as, like, a journalist or reporter. And then I kind of brought this, like, vlogging style to the CBC.
And, they liked it, and they ultimately, brought me on, I think, was, like, the second journalist. They ever had, basically. So, you know, that was exciting. And I made, videos with them. I got to go into their office and conference rooms and brainstorm ideas and then go out to the field and shoot with their producers. And, you know, it was me, right, who's, I was, 14, 15 at the time when I actually got the when I actually got the gig. So it was I was, like, late 14, I think 15, maybe.
I was probably around the time when I actually did it. And, you know, I I was, like, go to, you know, work with these producers who were, like, in their thirties and forties, right, who had these established careers, and then there was just me. And we were making these videos together about the legalization of marijuana in Canada and, you know, hard hitting political news and climate change.
It was quite a whirlwind, but ultimately taught me, I would say, the fundamentals of storytelling, and it also taught me that I'd probably be more interested in covering you know, and and making videos about, you know, content that is probably a little more in line with startups and technology. But, you know, everyone has a starting place, and that was kind of mine. And, that's that's a story story for that random boy. I acknowledge that was a little lengthy. No. That's great.
The more details, the better. And transitioning here into mantra, you obviously have experience in creating video content. Where did you get the idea to create mantra. So what ultimately happened was I finished high school a year early and right after high school, right when I was about to graduate, everyone around me was like, so what are you gonna do? It's like, I don't really wanna go to college.
And one of the angel investors I knew offered me a job at his startup And a startup was making courses for kids, like actual courses. And I spent a year as the head of content of that startup, This is when I just started my TikTok account too. And I was I was this is just like in June of 2020. And so I spent a year And this company is my first actual job at a startup per se. I would not consider the Canadian broadcast incorporation a startup, probably the opposite.
So completely different environments. But what I was doing over and over again was working with course creators turning their content via my editing skills, if you will, and working with the the the team at the startup to make it more engaging. Yeah. And sometimes they would even just film videos on their iPhone, and we would, like, edit those and make them better. And what I realized is it was like, this is actually tedious. Right?
Like, They have a whole video production team that's in charge of converting these videos. And I did this over and over again, but really didn't think too of it because it was my job, and I was not necessarily like, I'm gonna leave right now and start a company. But ultimately after a year, I wanted to do something. Is getting a little antsy I wanted to do something. And the idea did not come to me. I it took a little bit of time, to kind of get around to it.
But ultimately, in September, I planned a 1 month trip to New York. I was gonna go to New York, go back to kind of where I grew up, for a month, see some old friends, but also, like, work. And what I want to do is I was really interested in media tools, just how can we make video creation easier? That was kind of this this idea that I was just really obsessed with. And so I go to New York.
I get this co working space, this desk in the meat packing district at this start up studio slash venture firm called betaworks. And betaworks was this early investor in a Tumblr and, they they jiffy and they made I think they made this product called Bitly, which is a link shortener, which is relatively popular. And so, you know, Matt Hartman, who is a partner there, very nice guy. You know, kind of, like, offered me a desk. And so I was at the studio, Cohen of beta works.
I basically just lived at that office because my apartment was so small. And so I really enjoyed going in there. It was this very inspiring place. And, you know, I was at BetaWorks and just thinking, like, okay. What am what are we gonna do? How are we gonna make a media creation tool. And what what happened was that I was working on this site to make narrator presentations, the for in a I originally thought it'd be interesting as a sales use case.
What ultimately happened was that that user interface, which, we modeled after PowerPoint was very, very, very simple. And I also, and it kind of, like, exposed me to the fact that PowerPoint or or Google slides, I guess, is a really interesting user interface, because I think it's probably one of the most popular in the world in terms of one of the most well recognizable. And so I used that as a seed of an idea. And I said, well, what if you can actually turn a presentation into a video? Right.
Like, what if it didn't necessarily have to be just a presentation. And what if we actually built a video editing software that looked like PowerPoint? And what would be an interesting use case for this? Right? You know, what ultimately happened was I started having conversations with course graders. We kind of stumbled into that niche and just dozens dozens of conversations.
And through those conversations, we learn that video creation is is a major challenge for course creators that they can assign a value to a product because they're selling it. And thus, that existing screen recording software that they were using to make their courses were kind of subpar because they're not necessarily designed for long form video creation, right, that you want more control as a course grader.
And this realization was, you know, in part of these conversations, and I was pushed to have conversations by startup studio. I partnered when I was in New York, a studio called Crem Digital. And so and they've been incredibly helpful. I still work with them today. And so, you know, that was kind of the seed of the idea for mantra. And then what it ultimately became was, alright, how can we lower the barrier to course creation?
If you're gonna lower the barrier to course creation, you can't just solve for video version, which is the main the biggest obstacle, but you should solve for distribution as well. Like, you don't people shouldn't have to take their videos off your service to host them somewhere else. They should, with one click, be able to sell them with this very simple landing page that they could paste in their TikTok bio and direct their 1000 true fans to. So that was essentially the long iteration process.
And I'm summarizing over this relatively quickly, but, you know, like, in in hindsight, these things are not super obvious. And so you're kind of just, like, figuring them out. You know, and, like, there's still people today who who don't think it's that obvious.
But to me, it is, and to my team, it is, and and we believe that when you lower the, when you build a video creation tool and you allow people to create engaging content, especially in the industry of education, the impact is so dramatic. Because making videos for people from a for a from a learning context has maximum impact, right, making an engaging video on TikTok of a Coca Cola can exploding while entertaining isn't life changing, but a good piece of educational content is.
And so I'm really a 100% especially as someone who'd never went to college or whatever. Like, I'm super bought into the mission of allowing anyone with subject matter expertise to you know, easily share and create a create a monetizable piece of content. And, you know, we're just working kind of all day every day to make that happen. And so that was the that was the inception story of mantra.
And, you know, where where it's at right now is we're, kind of completing our our beta, and we'll be launching that in about a which is really exciting. That's awesome. And I noticed something that you said that caught my attention is that when you were working at a startup that you noticed creating the videos were tedious with editing and stuff like that. Why did you decide to go through the education ed tech route instead of creating a simple video editor? Yeah. That's a good question.
It's actually a question that investor to us too, which is kinda funny. Well, it's a, but it's a good question. And what I would say to that is, I think when you build something from my perspective, you can go wide and there are products that can go wide, but it's not like there aren't video editors out there. There are.
And, you know, I think that if you think about the course creator as a persona, that is someone who is incentivized to use and pay for a product because, you know, they're making money as a result. The challenge with going super wide is that you're trying to build something for everyone and thus theoretically pleasing nobody, and you're not really building something where there's a clear business model or use case around.
So for example, my brother recently, who's in, in high school did a present, a project, and want to use the software for a presentation he did. And while that theoretically is an interesting use case, he's not gonna be a paying customer. His school isn't gonna be a paying customer. So what all they're gonna do is use it. They and we may have found product market fit for students, but who's paying for that? The school board certainly won't because he goes to a public school. Right?
And so he's not gonna pull he's definitely not gonna pay for it himself. Right? And so, you know, we all he is to us theoretically is just someone who's gonna run up our server costs with with no revenue associated with it. So there are a lot of people who would wanna use it for free. Beyond a trial, and that just wouldn't work for us from a business model perspective. There are people who may wanna use it for a sales use case, but they're gonna be asking for more sales specific features.
The course creators are then gonna be unhappy because now we're building sales specific features. So they may just decide to use a different software. And so you create all these conflicts. And it's a good question because we've thought about this extensively, but the act at the end of the day, we believe that by going all in on course creation, we can lower the barrier to it, and we can actually multiply the number of course graders.
So our, our goal internally is to 100 x the amount of course graders. And we think that that's kind of gonna be, something that is, like, you know, this this far, far out their goal, but is really aligned with our vision, I would say. As it pertains to your education or thesis and and the democratization of education. And so, you know, at the end of the day, it's also associated with a with a business model, which we believe is more sound than than going super wide.
So that that that answers your question. And, I mean, I would also like, the influence that working at at that startup that when we were making courses manually, I think that was certainly an influence as well. And there are also large platforms that allow creators, for example, even large ones on YouTube like Marquette Brownley, to upload their courseware and to buy their courses through platforms like teachable.
How do you plan to compete with those types of companies with larger market domination? Yeah. I mean, it's a good question, I would say. They are different, products. At the end of the day, mantras at the center of it is this video creation tool, right, teachable, thinkific podia. They don't they don't have that. And so when you go to use a service like that, you're essentially they have what we call a BYO V policy, right, or bring your own video policy.
The challenge with that is that the video is actually the hardest part to make for the vast majority of people. Right? And so you're going to the service and the hardest part when you confronted with the actual hardest part of the job, there's an upload button. That's basically it to help you out. With mantra, you actually go to our service and you could record your screen or you could upload slides. You have a lot more control from a video creation perspective.
When you wanna publish and distribute, you can download your videos and upload them to those services, but we make it very easy just to publish it with with one click. By stripping away the hundreds of themes and templates and plugins, etcetera, and focusing all our resources on making it very easy to monetize your content. And so I would say thinkific, teachable, Podia. Right? They're more they're far more robust distribution services.
They're like Shopify style, like real website builders, and we're not claiming to be that. We like to call ourselves Substack for course creators, right, allowing anyone what Substack did was they took this model of creating a newsletter where you would usually have multiple pieces of software and multiple different subscriptions that you'd have to bundle together. Right? You'd need WordPress to a Squarespace at the Mailchimp or whatever you want to do.
And you'd have to bundle them together and set it up yourself. And they just said, hey. Look. We're actually giving you no control from a distribution perspective. You can literally choose a color, a title of your newsletter, an upload, a logo, and that's it. There aren't themes or templates, but we're giving you a lot of control from a writing perspective. Allowing you to easily make a newsletter with the click of a button. And we think what we're doing with courses is is is, similar.
And if you see the effects stub, Stack had, you know, it seems like everyone these days has a newsletter. And it's the go to for someone who wants to create a newsletter for the vast majority of people anyway. And that's basically what we're trying to do with the mantra. Right? Like, course creator right now is not an everyday thing. You know, the average person isn't a course creator.
And I'm not saying that following mantra, the average person will, but I'm saying a lot more people will be because we're addressing the root problem, which is video creation and distribution is just an element of that. Gotcha. And you're currently building in public with your weekly updates and frequent updates on TikTok. What made you decide to build in public versus in private? Well, it's a, you know, it's a good question, and I'm definitely not, like, the only one doing this.
But what I would say is, when I sold my TikTok account, per the agreement, I was I want to make sure that I had my I could create another account for myself that was not business news focused, you know, I'm not really interested in doing that anymore. Right? I've done that for quite a while, and I want to move on, but I wanted an account where I can still share, but was that weren't separate from what I was doing at work week as an adviser there.
And what ultimately happened was as I I started kind of seeing a lot of people build in public on Twitter. So there's this guy named Andrew, and he runs this company called Microw acquire. Which is a a startup acquisition marketplace that I'm sure you're familiar with. And he's lead I would say leading the way with, with building in public.
And I would say that that definitely served as an inspiration, but also there's a podcast called startup, which is what got me interested in startups by this guy named Alex Bloomberg, who documents the inception of his company, Gimlet Media, who's back in 2014. And he kind of was building in public before building in public was was even was cool. Right? Like, that would consider, one of my podcasts I interviewed, Matt Hackett, who co founded Beam with Casey Neistat.
And I would say Casey Neistat was building Beam in public before Building in public was even cool elements of it, at least. And so kind of I had the those I had Andrew and Mike require Casey at Beam, Alex at Gimlet, kind of all in all in my subconscious, I would say.
And I figured that, as a video creator myself, which is what I just love to do, you know, I used to think, like, content and technology had to be separate But now I subscribe to the notion that every technology company has to be a media company. And phase 1 of our plan to build a media company is for me to have TikTok presence and be the face of the company.
Phase 2, 3, and 4, which I just shared with my team, via a strategy document, today is, you'll you'll start to see more of, but it does really involve a robust content strategy. You'll start to see a lot more of mantra.
Via podcasts, via the press, and via TikTok and and blog, etcetera, really making engaging content about the joys of course creation, not necessarily my brand per se more in the company's brand, but being up with the go to spot, if you are an aspiring course creator to learn about, the ins and outs, not just how to use our service. And so I would say, like, this is phase 1 of of building in public, showing what I do. But at the end of the day, a company is much bigger than than one person.
And as we expand our team, it's relatively important to me that, you know, more people are highlighted. So what you'll also see on my account more is, you know, features of of kind of our team, etcetera, because they're doing amazing, an amazing job and, like, certainly, you know, 99% of the actual work. So, you know, I would say, balancing that out is is certainly on the road map. For sure.
And to wrap it up here, what are your takeaways for the audience on the ed tech industry and your startup. And where can people find more about your startup? So you can find more about my startup at, our site mantra doc co. You can join the wait list VR type form. We'll be launching a Discord relatively soon, actually, which I'm really excited about. And will be onboarding people in about a month.
Anyone who's on the waitlist, will obviously get 1st first dibs on the product, whether you wanna make a course or just try it out. What I would say about the ed tech industry is I'm certainly not an ed tech expert. I've actually just I'm delving into this industry. And I would say, like, the realities of it are it's not the sexiest industry to to work in, I would say, you know, I would have a lot easier of a time.
I would say generating venture hype venture capital market fit if I picked an industry like web 3 or fintech. The thing is I believe what's what education has to offer is the satisfaction.
And sometimes, a wonderful business Madan, if you stumble stumble into it, the Shamus, but the satisfaction of really actually making an impact And it's corny to say, but at the end of the day, like, you know, is another, there there are a bunch of there are a bunch of startups that are all kinda doing similar things, which is totally fine. But I think, like, when you have a, oftentimes when folks zig, it's not a bad idea to zag.
And right now, it seems like we're out of 3 and, you know, there's a lot of around that and the blockchain and crypto and fintech and decentralization, which is super cool. Don't get me wrong.
But I also think that there's still a lot of so a lot of work to do in in web 2 and in particular in the ed tech space, especially if you believe in, you know, building tools that allow people to teach and so I would even say we're in the intersection of edtech and the creator economy because, you know, some of the edtech startups that I'm familiar with really target schools and professors and more formal institutions. They were kind of like the rebels a little bit. Right?
We're targeting folks who don't have degrees, but who have subject matter expertise and wanna, you know, monetize that subject, subject matter expertise is a side hustle. But at the end of the day, I would say that building for educators, whether it's in schools or independent educators that it's very gratifying, and I'm I'm very lucky to be a part of the industry. And, you know, hopefully, actually have an impact.
So, you know, I'm definitely not a spokesperson for the EdTech industry, and there are some really smart people I would recommend speaking to, but definitely excited to be part of it. That's great. Well, I appreciate your time to coming on the podcast. I wish, you and mantra had the best of success in the future. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.