A Conversation With Erica Rench of Rasa.io

Is email AI more demanding than a 2-year-old? COO Erica Rench of Rasa.io has first-hand knowledge of both.

Rasa is a fascinating company in an unusual niche — email newsletters. The platform does some unusual things, to say the least! Rasa automates 'curation' — the painstaking job of collecting, summarizing and presenting disparate content. But instead of handing out the same content to everyone, Rasa's platform tracks individual subscriber interaction with newsletter content, and tailors an AI-driven "newsletter of 1" to each subscriber.

Erica joined host Matthew Dunn to talk about the opportunities and challenges of such a powerful toolset.

The reality is that nearly every organization either sends an email newsletter, or wants to — but grappling with the curation headaches of content and the production challenges of email make it tough. Rasa is rapidly expanding from its initial focus on associations to bring its 'curated 1:1' magic to broader business audience through integrations with marketing-focused ESPs like MailChimp and relationship-focused cloud platforms like HubSpot.

Erica also shares some of the personal challenges of the pandemic, juggling children and company while working from home. Email is like a fractal coastline — when you look closely, there's a whole universe on every corner.

Great conversation about a fascinating and innovative company.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Erica Rench: Okay, now

[00:00:11] Matthew Dunn: we'll click the very beginning. Here we go. Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the future of email. My guest today from Rasa dyo Erica wrench, chief operating officer, correct? That's correct. Welcome. Nice to, nice to connect with you live, I've talked with your, one of your colleagues frequently.

[00:00:30] We eat out a lot, but you and I first, first chance to meet right here.

[00:00:35] Erica Rench: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

[00:00:39] Matthew Dunn: You fill in people on, on Raza, you know, elevator size for. Absolutely.

[00:00:45] Erica Rench: So the very high level pitch about Rasa is that instead of sending one email newsletter to 10,000 or 20,000 subscribers, you're sending 20,000 different versions of an email based on people's prior reading preferences and behaviors.

[00:01:02] So in the same way for better or worse, your social media feed knows what content to serve you up based on what you've read in the past, we do that in an email that we make for a much more. Engaging email experience, you're providing value to subscribers so that when it does come time to buy, and when you are asking them to make a transaction, you've already provided value and you're already top of mind and a newsletter is such a valuable tool to do that.

[00:01:28] So we help you make your newsletter smarter.

[00:01:31] Matthew Dunn: It's it's come up in any number of of come past conversations that I've had the opportunity to have with people from other parts of the email space that. E there's this there's this sort of second, third 43rd life for email newsletter. Yeah, it's really taking off

[00:01:51] Erica Rench: and really taking off.

[00:01:52] I mean, when you think about the newsletter tasks, it's not necessarily like the sexiest thing,

[00:01:58] Matthew Dunn: right. But

[00:02:00] Erica Rench: an email sort of a dinosaur, but you're totally right. It's having a resurgence. There's a lot of cool stuff happening. Email and newsletter space and for better or worse email is a very effective channel to communicate with your subscribers for, for return on investment.

[00:02:16] I mean it's time and again, it proves itself.

[00:02:18] Matthew Dunn: Why do you think, why do you think that that, that swing with newsletters and emails is happening? Any thoughts?

[00:02:25] Erica Rench: This is just my idea, but I feel like it's a more. Intimate way to get someone's point of view on something and to interact with a brand. Then social media socials of course, is not going anywhere anytime soon.

[00:02:39] But I think when you're hearing someone's voice through a newsletter, it's just, you know, the, it's not, it's not like a crap shoot, whether or not you're going to see it, you know, that you're probably going to land in someone's inbox and it's an intimate way to communicate with your end user.

[00:02:58] Matthew Dunn: One of my thoughts is to tag onto that case.

[00:03:00] I like what you just said about it. The, the mech, the paywall mechanism that, that sort of backed its way into being. Content control started to matter for journalism. It's right. I, I I'll be reading something in the morning. It'll pop me the link somewhere and be like, oh, what's the, what's my, do I have an account there?

[00:03:26] What's the password. Oh, bugger it. I'll just skip it. Right, right, right.

[00:03:29] Erica Rench: Yeah. We, yeah, we worked with a few newspaper organizations that are yep. They it's a good way to disseminate their content and make sure that. You know, they're, they're sending people the right stories from their online

[00:03:44] Matthew Dunn: publications.

[00:03:44] Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and let's go a different direction. And this may be a, maybe a question I take up with with your colleague Paul later in a, in a, in a geek way, but you have to balance that. Well, he always reads stuff on X, Y, and Z. So Santa's more of that with. No, we also want him to get this, this and this right.

[00:04:06] You w you don't want to create a complete email filter bubble around each

[00:04:11] Erica Rench: you're you're so, right. So one of our, one of our company values is to, well, actually our core purpose is to better inform the world. Our company values is to tell it like it is, so we have to kind of battle. Making sure that we're sending people content that is specifically recommended to them with, we want to expose them to content that is not necessarily just based on their prior clicks and behaviors.

[00:04:36] So we always reserve a portion of the email real estate for for non-specific recommended content. It's still from like the organization's pre-approved pool of content, but it's not going to be just based on their.

[00:04:49] Matthew Dunn: Okay. Okay. Gotcha. And, and, and having, having used Roslyn myself, holding, not in depth. I understand a bit about the control mechanisms that the the editor, for lack of a better word, right?

[00:05:00] No, that's

[00:05:01] Erica Rench: exactly

[00:05:01] Matthew Dunn: right. Yep. Right. Has to say no, no, no. That everyone should get this. That, that should definitely go out. Other stuff. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Fascinating. I was intrigued at Roz's starting point at least. What is it? Associations?

[00:05:16] Erica Rench: Yeah, that's, that's sort of our beachhead. We, we have a great we have a great following in that space and it kind of makes sense because for that, for associations and nonprofit organizations, it's not necessarily all about the bottom line.

[00:05:30] It's about engaging their community of subscribers, engaging their people, sending them value. And so newsletters are at the core of it. 95% of those ideation strategies to engage people. So it kind of, so being able for them to be able to personalize the member experience is extraordinarily

[00:05:52] Matthew Dunn: valuable.

[00:05:53] Yeah. Well, and without head count necessarily without adding someone whose job. Oh, exactly right. To tackle that impossible task of, you know, keep you know, keep up with the speaker cone industry and everything that's happening with supply, you know, whatever, whatever the association is all about. Right.

[00:06:12] Erica Rench: And you're so right. We, we very often lead with the AI, AI personalization, you know, really forward thinking tech, but a lot of the editors, the people who actually, you know, boots on the ground, putting together a newsletter really appreciate the time savings aspect because we're bringing curation into the platform it's curation and send all in one.

[00:06:33] So you're not having to scour the internet to find the articles. You're not having to piece together an email. Yeah, all of them, all the tedious stuff that comes along with newsletter, construction goes away.

[00:06:44] Matthew Dunn: I had, you know, this has just occurred to me. I didn't think of this before we had this under calendar, but I had, I had sort of.

[00:06:52] Jury rigged pieces of Rosa Roz's execution a few years back when I, when I first stab at a newsletter for, for this company campaign, like one platform for sand, a different one for consolidating content and just monumentally cumbersome. If you do the right copy and paste and hold your pinky up, it'll get into the.

[00:07:15] The same platform intact. It was such a pain in the button,

[00:07:18] Erica Rench: such a pain in the butt you might, and you know, sometimes folks are rewriting descriptions and like, you take the title of your blog and you're like, well, maybe I'll change that for the newsletter. And it's yeah. It's kind of a

[00:07:30] Matthew Dunn: pain. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:31] It's kind of a, and D D despite the length of time that email web and so on have been around, they're not really super connected. It's a lot of. To make something flow from here, into there, with the, you know, with pictures, formatting, whatever else intact

[00:07:48] Erica Rench: and not, I am the pictures yet. Yeah. So we've done a ton of work on our, on our templates so that the templates are super dynamic to account for different length of titles and different length of descriptions and different sizes of imagery.

[00:08:02] And so we're, we dynamically are placing all of that. Personalized formats.

[00:08:10] Matthew Dunn: Now, listen, I'm going to, I'm going to have some fun with you. Listen to you. You're like software terminology rolling off the tongue and you're not forever in this software space. You were, you were university gig for quite a stretch, right?

[00:08:23] Yeah.

[00:08:24] Erica Rench: Yeah. I guess that's when my love affair with email began. I suppose I worked. Yeah. I worked for two lanes admission office out of college and. And primarily recruitment role. So I was going around the country to get students to come down and selling new Orleans selling to lane. And and then, but I evolved in sort of into sort of a marketing role there.

[00:08:46] And one of the, one of my primary jobs was to use MailChimp to try to figure out. How to send emails that cater to different students' interests. Cause we have all different kinds of disciplines or majors, a two lane. So I was, so this is very, I've never thought about it from this perspective. I was manually figuring out segments of students trying to figure out which news was the hottest and matching that to the students all manually working on a spreadsheets.

[00:09:15] I mean, this is. You know, 2008. Yeah. So if the tools existed, I certainly don't have that. But yeah, no, it was a very manual process to try to match students' interests, to like the latest news, but highlight, I mean, I that's, my, that was my first experience. And then I, then I worked in digital agency after that,

[00:09:35] Matthew Dunn: where we didn't touch email.

[00:09:38] You that's actually. In my experience. She's like, we'll do this, this, this oh email. Ah, no. Oh,

[00:09:45] Erica Rench: it's so hard to do. And in a quality way. Yeah.

[00:09:49] Matthew Dunn: It well put, yeah, I agree. Hard to do in a quality way and a bit of a, a bit of a specialized knowledge set to, to do it well.

[00:09:59] Erica Rench: Right. Right. Exactly. And, and, and it comes at the expense of so many other things where you feel like you get a better bang for your buck.

[00:10:08] Matthew Dunn: Certainly certainly agreed. And I think there's some, there's some efficiencies of action in other digital channels. Let's pick on social media. Cause I like picking a social media and email. Like there's a lot of corners you can't cut. It's hard. It's hard, detailed, fussy work for an agency. I would think it wouldn't be that cost could be not that cost-effective.

[00:10:33] Exactly.

[00:10:34] Erica Rench: Exactly because there is still, you know, there's the variable costs that goes along with sending it out, not to say that other digital services don't have variable costs, but it's, it's that. The amount of time it takes to format. And it's, you don't feel that instant gratification from it, even though it's so important to nurture through

[00:10:54] Matthew Dunn: email.

[00:10:55] Yeah. Yeah. I had I had a guest on a guest on this podcast, six, eight glitz ago, actually. He's he's from a small town, Louisiana, Wayne from ugly mug marketing. Great like amazing marketer.

[00:11:11] Erica Rench: That is unique and stands out. Yep.

[00:11:14] Matthew Dunn: He said their email cause their agency does handle email. He said their email function was actually with their you know, print and non digital media function, which I thought was kind of intriguing. Yeah.

[00:11:28] Erica Rench: I'm going to have to reach out to those folks. Ugly mug marketing

[00:11:32] Matthew Dunn: Rasa.

[00:11:33] I forget this. I forget the relatively small town where he was born and raised, but I'm pretty sure. It's Louisiana. I'm going to give myself an extra cup of coffee now.

[00:11:44] Erica Rench: Well, it's the contact us. They are knowing so curious. It doesn't say, well, not easily. I'll I'll look it up later. There

[00:11:53] Matthew Dunn: you go. One of the things that struck me about, about your company and platform, when I was getting to know it was, wow, this is.

[00:12:02] This is applicable in all the technology. The things you're doing are applicable in a whole bunch of new domains, and I've got to think you've got aims to expand and build further. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:12:17] Erica Rench: absolutely. So, you know, we, the association folks have been, we have so many great partners in that space. The next, and we also have a lot of great partners in the, in the marketing agency space, because what they do is they use Ross or they're managed for multiple clients.

[00:12:34] So we we've been really working hard on that over the past year is making it easy to. Manage, you know, 10, 20 newsletters from your one instance of Rasa, roll that all up. In some cases they can, they can white label it. And depending on the plan that they're on so that if they need to have a client log in to just their newsletter, they'll see their agency's branding as opposed to the Rasa branding.

[00:12:57] So we've, that's been another sort of sweet spot for us.

[00:13:02] Matthew Dunn: Big because, I mean, at hooks back to what we were just talking about, the challenge of email inside an agency, the, the workload you've got a straight up proposition. Right?

[00:13:13] Erica Rench: Exactly. So that's why I always say that it might the agency that I came from, I wish we had Rasa included email in our, in our clients packages and had it be not, you know, a super heavy lift.

[00:13:27] So now, you know, they can. Hey, the Rasa is sort of self service prices and then charge a margin on top of that for the newsletter management. I mean, just the management in general is a valuable

[00:13:40] Matthew Dunn: proposition. Yeah. And, and at the, at the same time, it it puts you guys in that, that endlessly fascinating about the email space.

[00:13:48] Every, every company finds a sweet spot. I was, I was talking with Andrew Kordich yesterday for my. Long time, a long time email agency guy, now part of an ESP, and there are well over 200 ESPs each with their niche and strengths and hundreds beyond that, you just described Rasa, having a really key and critical set of functions that meet that need inside agencies.

[00:14:17] That honestly a MailChimp does not.

[00:14:20] Erica Rench: Not not well, no, especially cause they're kind of going down that CRM path and they're starting to do that really well. And that's what their

[00:14:28] Matthew Dunn: focus is. Yeah. Well, we'll see, we'll see what becomes of a, I should try and get someone from MailChimp on for a conversation and

[00:14:36] Erica Rench: say, if you do let me know.

[00:14:37] I I'd like to join that

[00:14:38] Matthew Dunn: conversation. I huge respect for MailChimp. Like what, what did achievement as a company and, and some of their some of their innovations in you. I, I think had a really positive effect on the space like them doing the simplified block drag and drop editor and putting in front of thousands.

[00:15:00] And thousands of customers shoved everyone that direction. That's my read on it. Arm slate.

[00:15:05] Erica Rench: Ease of use, right. Everything's so user friendly and a lot of people, we have an integration with MailChimp. A lot of people use Rasa alongside MailChimp because MailChimp is great for, you know like sequence campaigns is last and then Rasa is the newsletter engine.

[00:15:23] And so you can just sync subscribers across your MailChimp and Rasa really easily.

[00:15:28] Matthew Dunn: Nice, nice. That makes a ton of sense. Although you have to keep track of a surprising amount of detail. About each subscriber to do the magic of, oh, she's, she's interested in this, this, this, this, this, this, yeah, yeah. Kind of a, kind of a reverse funnel structure.

[00:15:47] And I know from, I know from conversations with other of folks that HubSpot is an area of interest for, for you. Okay.

[00:15:53] Erica Rench: And a huge area of interest. Yeah. In the same way that you can use Rasa alongside a MailChimp. Okay. After an active campaign you can use alongside HubSpot. And now HubSpot is where we have the.

[00:16:04] The richest integration. So we have between, I think 20 and 30 integrations at this point, but with HubSpot, it's not just a subscriber thing, but so the concept data that we have about each individual subscriber, we're sending that back and HubSpot. So if you look up Matthew in your HubSpot instance, you can see what, what topics Matt is interested.

[00:16:26] Matthew Dunn: Rasa. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we felt philosophically very, I would say philosophically quite aligned Roslyn hub. Yes.

[00:16:34] Erica Rench: Yeah. Very

[00:16:35] Matthew Dunn: much so. Yeah. The API set would probably be a welcome relief after MailChimp. Like I being a geek, right. Like I know there's a whole lot of nouns and verbs in HubSpot land that you could work.

[00:16:49] Erica Rench: Yes. Yes. And we we're in close connection with the folks over there. Scott Brinker, who's one of the like the fathers of MarTech is even the name and the thing he was kind of in that

[00:17:02] Matthew Dunn: landscape graphic. Isn't it? Probably,

[00:17:06] Erica Rench: yeah, he was kind enough to meet with us. We have a great partner coordinator over there.

[00:17:11] And so we're in their marketplace now. So if you're a HubSpot user and you need a newsletter fast smart newsletter, go out, go use Rafa.

[00:17:22] Matthew Dunn: Well, like let's make that the lead line for this episode, because seriously, I would guess many, if not, most of the organizations using HubSpot. I want to do a newsletter or wanting to do a better job of the one they've got face.

[00:17:35] Exactly the struggles that you've worked to solve inside the platform. Right.

[00:17:40] Erica Rench: And now those two now, you know, you can get your daily, your Rasa data directly in the HubSpot. So it's, hopefully it's pretty seamless

[00:17:49] Matthew Dunn: for folks. Wow. Wow. That's exciting. When did that, when did that go live?

[00:17:54] Erica Rench: So the marketplace went live about three weeks ago, so it's very recent, but we already had about a hundred different about a hundred different downloads for API calls from Rasa.

[00:18:09] I just got one second night power cord just told me that it wasn't working.

[00:18:20] Matthew Dunn: I managed to get

[00:18:23] Erica Rench: that out.

[00:18:24] Matthew Dunn: We can edit that out. That's it snip out out. It comes now your new Orleans base now did a two lane is the whole company.

[00:18:35] Erica Rench: The majority of us. So when, when COVID happened, we pivoted to fully remote pretty quickly. It was a real, most of our customers. Most of our enterprise customers are in DC area, Chicago out west.

[00:18:50] So we were already zooming with clients and zooming with each other pretty regularly. So it was a natural transition for us. And then we kind of realized, well you know, being fully remote allows us to hire talent all over the world. So that's where we are now. And we're going to be, we're going to be remote, but we still have, you know, company gatherings in new Orleans and we can see each other pretty

[00:19:09] Matthew Dunn: regularly.

[00:19:10] Yeah. And as you said, you're Tulane day. So, you know, selling, selling new Orleans, like that's, that's not a bad, not a bad company pitch either. So you ended up in work from home. But juggling kids during panic mess.

[00:19:28] Erica Rench: Well, yeah, so I I have a seven year old and almost five-year-old and a one-year-old, but when the pandemic hit, they were five and almost three.

[00:19:39] And that's, that's, that's tricky. That's tricky with two full-time working parents to have two kids home from school.

[00:19:48] Matthew Dunn: You know, mommy's on a zoom right now. They don't care.

[00:19:52] Erica Rench: Yeah, there were there, there were some great, there were some great moments. There was,

[00:19:58] Matthew Dunn: Just send a Jax, just sit Arden, the prime minister, new.

[00:20:02] Who you look like sisters? She was on a call, like as prime minister was on a teleconference and one of her kids,

[00:20:12] Erica Rench: I mean, like the best, right? I mean, in some ways the pandemic divided us and in some ways, Brought us a little bit closer together. Being able to see each other's homes and families and dogs

[00:20:25] Matthew Dunn: and cats.

[00:20:26] Yeah. That's it's it's we've never had that experiment of, of con connecting the work place with, with the home space. We were at this scale, especially, but we've never done. Right.

[00:20:39] Erica Rench: Right. And it's changing. It's really changing the way people work. I've noticed on LinkedIn. So many people are putting their family situations and their headlines like dad or mom next to their titles.

[00:20:52] And I think that's a really cool progression that we're seeing happen

[00:20:57] Matthew Dunn: right now. Yeah. I gotta give, I gotta give a president Obama some props on that. Cause I noticed he did that early on. He was a Barack Obama husband father in a president. Third or fourth in the list you will add. Awesome, sir, like Dan, very cool dude.

[00:21:18] First, first, first things first. I like that. It, it has, it has made for some interesting side effects, so we will get back to emails sooner or later, but it's, it's, it's an interesting tangent because one of the things that strikes me we thought houses were big. As we start building more of them, right?

[00:21:34] Oh yeah. Gosh.

[00:21:38] Erica Rench: Well, we also bought a house during the past two years that was selling our first home and then buying a new home all during this madness in the real estate market. It's been quite the adventure

[00:21:52] Matthew Dunn: center as it is everywhere else. I'm assuming no crazy.

[00:21:55] Erica Rench: Oh, just, just crazy. And since we, since we bought eight months ago, it's only got.

[00:22:01] Worse in terms of how competitive it

[00:22:04] Matthew Dunn: is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, same here. And, and I, and I've got to think that the criteria when people are looking has, has to include. You know, home office space, not as a, maybe, but as a, as an of course in a lot of cases.

[00:22:23] Erica Rench: Isn't of course. Yeah. We actually the pandemic four star move a little bit sooner than I think we really needed because we had, I think it was at one point it was the guestroom, my daughter's room and my office all in one room.

[00:22:36] And that just is not sustainable.

[00:22:42] Matthew Dunn: I I'm going to have a change of scenery for the future of email. In a few months my older son is coming back and, and turning the bottom floor of our house into music teaching Stu. Oh, wow. That's so cool. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. He's going to rock it, but that means that my office space of twenty-five years.

[00:23:07] It's

[00:23:07] Erica Rench: not, it's

[00:23:08] Matthew Dunn: going to be no more. Yeah. I'm I'm yeah, I'm moving. And I'm going to take over the, what was their play room when they were three, four and five. And turn it into my office space. Cause I've gotta be long ways away from the, you know, bass guitar and whatnot. It's going to be, it's going to be an interesting experiment.

[00:23:26] And we, we picked it, we picked it. I was, I was, I happened to be early on this remote work thing, like try 1997 pick the house because. The floors and structure and office space was whether it was one of the criteria. So watching that happen now at where more and more people are, are, are making the decision on that basis or build on that basis, going to be fascinating.

[00:23:50] Erica Rench: And you can give them all the wisdom and all the advice.

[00:23:54] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It's it's as much social engineering as architecture. Did you have to work to get the kids to understand that. No, this is my workspace and I need you to respect it.

[00:24:04] Erica Rench: Yeah, that was hard for the, for when they were five and like two and a half at the time.

[00:24:10] Yeah. But to an extent, to an extent we could do that

[00:24:15] Matthew Dunn: eventually. Right. It's like

[00:24:17] Erica Rench: they get it eventually. Yeah. There was a point where I would wake up at. And then I would work from six till the end of nap, time around two, my husband would start work at the beginning of nap and then work through the evening and it was and then, you know, the game was just keeping them away from the working space,

[00:24:37] Matthew Dunn: for sure.

[00:24:39] Yeah. Right at mine, mine, mine learned that relatively early on. And I I'd be interested to talk to them about that now, because I know they had the rhythm down, you know, when they get home from high school, I love it when they drop by and fill me in on the day. But there was this unconscious, like that's a 10 minute conversation, but I'm not done.

[00:25:03] I'm not done. See ya. Right. Yeah. But one last thing on pandemic and the work from home thing, I think kids getting to see their parents doing. It's a darn good social modeling thing.

[00:25:17] Erica Rench: Yeah. That is such a good point. And it's, yeah, it's been very valuable. I think for the kids to see what mom does, you know, her interacting with folks, you know, we have the, we have the, the internal meetings where I tell them the meetings where they, where they can say hi, and then the, and then the meetings with quote unquote strange.

[00:25:40] Which, you know, their clients aren't really strangers, but sometimes when you first meet them and their prospects, they are. So they, they know, they knew that difference. Like the meetings that they could come say hi, versus the ones where mommy was just meeting people for the first time. And maybe not

[00:25:55] Matthew Dunn: interesting.

[00:25:56] Interesting. We've all had to get over being camera shy as well, where this is where this is now. I mean, honestly,

[00:26:06] Erica Rench: Right. It is, I mean, it's been two almost, well, two years in change,

[00:26:11] Matthew Dunn: two years in change. Can I can't can't can't wait to get out, live, looking forward to live conferences, but will I continue to, of course, like, this is the way we're going to do business?

[00:26:22] I think so.

[00:26:23] Erica Rench: I think in a lot of cases

[00:26:24] Matthew Dunn: it's helped. I'd be curious, your perception, my read. And it is, it's actually really helpful when you're trying to grow us, you know, a small company into a bigger company. Like it's not, yeah. Erica, please get on a plane and fly for a one hour meeting in New York. So you can pitch us like you don't have to put up with that crap anymore.

[00:26:43] Erica Rench: Right. It made things a lot more efficient. I, I think. Yeah, it did make me realize how much time goes into conference preparation, because we're preparing for one of our first bigger conferences in quite some time, it's going to be next month, but Nan does a lot of prep go into that and we had to order a new boots.

[00:27:04] Flame and, you know, do all of, and figure out getting the booth display to DC and you know, all those logistics. And it was, it was nice to not have to do that for a couple of years. And I think you're right in terms of growth you know, focusing on other, not in person channels is probably more efficient.

[00:27:23] Matthew Dunn: Okay. There's also that that sort of presentation layer thing. Well, as you just said, now, you know, now it's, it's sort of normal to be seeing someone's home office or whatever space they happen to be in and you roll the clock back 3, 4, 5 years. I probably would have gone out of my way to try to make this look more like, you know, like a Microsoft office space.

[00:27:48] Right, right. You could, you can, you can sort of go deal with it. Why? Because they're going to be in their bedroom, even if they, even if they worked for, you know, general electric or so

[00:28:02] it is enough. Yeah. And it is always been an office and it's never been anything. W, you know, work-related stuff. And I have an ungodly array of monitors in cameras. Mine's

[00:28:13] Erica Rench: actually decently professional. I actually have it typed up here right now.

[00:28:19] Matthew Dunn: the choice of knickknacks and the choice of detail behind.

[00:28:22] Is really an intriguing yeah. Anthropology right now. Yeah.

[00:28:28] Erica Rench: My kid's room is actually behind, behind me as well. So when that door is open, there's, there's a lot more

[00:28:35] Matthew Dunn: chaos. Okay. Okay. I like it. I like it. Yeah, I did. I've always had a whiteboard there, but now I'm a little more serious about about clearing it up.

[00:28:45] We can talk with, depending on what's on it yet. I can't think can't think without a whiteboard. Well, let's start back to email for at least a few minutes before I stopped tying up your day. What are the, what are the, what are the, what are the unexpected opportunities that you think might go somewhere for Roger and for you for your.

[00:29:08] Erica Rench: Well, the nice thing, the nice thing about our opportunity is that everyone needs a newsletter. And for the folks who don't have a newsletter, everyone you talk to says, oh, but I like mean to do this letter. I mean, I know they know they need to do one. So, so in terms of the total addressable market, I mean, it's, it's pretty vast of course email is a competitive space, but I think we do.

[00:29:34] Differently enough that it sets us apart and we work nicely with a lot of the 10,000 pound gorillas. How many congresses? We, we talk nicely to a lot of them, so it's in terms of integration. So I think we have, we quite the, quite the potential.

[00:29:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, a big opportunities ahead. It's come up in some other conversations that I've had with folks in this space.

[00:29:59] And I've been using this as a conversation started with them for almost a month. Now, one of the big enterprise email platforms, ESPs acquired a pretty sizable email newsletter company about a month ago, and then Zeta global acquired Arkema. Oh, okay. And it kind of made my antenna stand up and like that very lateral.

[00:30:29] Erica Rench: That's the one that Twitter, but the big one I'm blanking on it.

[00:30:33] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Re re something review, I think. And boy, did I pull that out of thin air, but review was a platform for the, you know, the, the sin, the sending of the handling of ArcaMax actually was was also they had the content and editorial stream.

[00:30:53] There's something like 300 newsletter. In the mix and I just thought, that's fascinating. I got to get one of my buddies at Zeta to come on and talk about it. Cause like, yeah. Interesting. More, more, if it's not more about the content, I'd be surprised because yeah, like acquisitions aren't cheap and

[00:31:12] Erica Rench: right, right.

[00:31:13] Like it's more about all the, the actual people that are using it. Like the specific. W

[00:31:20] Matthew Dunn: it says healthy things about the future of, of email newsletters. To me, it really does.

[00:31:25] Erica Rench: Yeah. There's this is a good time. This is a good time to be an email newsletters.

[00:31:29] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. And it gives a place for all of those out of work journalists to go do.

[00:31:35] Sorry, right? No,

[00:31:37] Erica Rench: it's true. There's I mean, there's obviously many, many big changes happening in that, in that space.

[00:31:43] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. There are we, I had a, I had a guest about a month ago. Pierre Lipton from a company called 1440. And I will connect. I'll connect you guys. You should, you should talk 1440 is journalism via email.

[00:31:55] So they, they would never apply Roz's AI. They want everyone getting the same, very objective and fact-based. Sure, which is, which is cool, but they have their own workloads and editorial headaches in sourcing and stuff like that. So who knows what might show up there?

[00:32:19] Erica Rench: Yeah, no, I, there are some people who do reverse engineer, the RAs of that.

[00:32:25] And use it primarily for the curation. And so they'll get like the 50 articles from their filter down sources, you know, in their content pool. And then they'll say, well, from these 50, I want everyone to see. These seven, let's say, instead of letting the AI select they'll they'll select, but then the value is in the curation

[00:32:47] Matthew Dunn: piece of it, which yeah.

[00:32:48] Which, which is an interesting market signal for you, right? Like, is there some decomposition, is there some pieces of the components that have their own standalone potential life? As a business Jim Barksdale co-founder of NetSuite. I said, there's only two ways you make money in business. One is bundling and the others and bundling.

[00:33:13] Erica Rench: That's so interesting. That's a good quote.

[00:33:18] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you see the streaming services grappling with that right now. You see the cable grappling with that right now. You see newspapers arguably grappling with that right now.

[00:33:30] Erica Rench: No, it's so true. Another in another really valuable component in the platform. Kind of tertiary thing that we just compiled because we've been now in the content creation business for awhile, and we just have this like trove of sources.

[00:33:47] We've just compiled all these RSS feeds from all of these content forces across the web. So we have this content library. And in the, in the platform that you can just draw from, it doesn't represent all the sources you can use, but it's just a good jumping off point for a lot of verticals.

[00:34:05] Matthew Dunn: I'm I'm, I am doubtless, not the only person to have done this, but I'm certainly not the first, but I have a whole bunch of Google search as RSS feeds.

[00:34:16] Nailed. Which is, it's kind of a, instead of me doing the same thing for the 44 fourth time, you know, searching for what's new in the world, like, look, just nail that up. And I'll look at it when I I'll look at, when I get around and log in to Raja and, you know, and then I'll cherry pick the ones that are actually interesting, not boiler plate and all that other stuff to do.

[00:34:41] What we used to call, press release services play a role in your sources is.

[00:34:47] Erica Rench: Yeah, I think that I think that the big ones have, have feeds. And, and if you, if you do set up a Google news feed, then theoretically that would pick up on relevant press releases. So, so yeah, a lot of, not, not a ton of our association clients use like the Google news feeds because they want to feel like the sources they input to RAs are very much in.

[00:35:14] And authoritative in this space, but but but outside of associations, a lot of people use the Google newsfeeds, especially in like really, really niche verticals. Yeah. And I'm, and I'm sure they would pick up relevant press

[00:35:28] Matthew Dunn: releases. Yeah. Yeah. That's well, it's like, that's why SEO is the reason for a press release these days.

[00:35:35] It seems like, and like,

[00:35:36] Erica Rench: yeah. Oh yeah. The Google of like PR Newswire. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:43] Matthew Dunn: PR webs decisions, whole cloud of a cloud of companies and so on. Yeah. It's no end to the no interest of the text processing.

[00:35:53] Erica Rench: Right, right, right. Well, and you have to pay for those. So Google knows that, you know, there isn't someone just like, while.

[00:36:02] Spitting out a bunch of links that are not trustworthy.

[00:36:05] Matthew Dunn: Well, you opened the door to the question. One question I wanted to ask you about one, one of the things that concerns me looking forward, you've got this constructive curatorial employment of, of AI. What concerns me going forward is, is the amount of boiler plate that AI is, are going to start spitting out.

[00:36:26] Cause people won't get off their button actually. And I feel we're going to drown in texts

[00:36:34] Erica Rench: in bad content. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, yeah, there are some really interesting companies out there using all of the knowledge that they get from the entire web to generate content and yes. It's not awesome right now, but it's getting, it's getting better and better.

[00:36:54] It's getting

[00:36:55] Matthew Dunn: it. It is it's in a GP T3 and I think GP to floor is is on, is on the on the, on the board right now, apparently. And so it's going to get better, faster, and eventually most machine writing, you can S you can smell right now. But you just lowered the desk. That rocks

[00:37:14] Erica Rench: I did. I just lowered the deck because I go back and forth a lot.

[00:37:19] It's been a, it's been a godsend during work from home. Have you read the, the age of AI by Eric Schmidt and the other

[00:37:28] Matthew Dunn: Kissinger, right? Yeah. Yeah,

[00:37:32] Erica Rench: I know. Right. It's, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent through it, but I've listened to a ton of their podcasts about it too. And they talk about GPT three and.

[00:37:44] How AI needs to be treated very, very carefully. Yeah. Right. Like it's like a nuclear weapon, you know, because it could be very destructive. But also I guess, you know, the it's, it's an emerging. Emerging

[00:38:00] Matthew Dunn: technology. Well, and yet here you are. I mean, you, you guys employ AI algorithms in doing what Raza does.

[00:38:08] Like, like you've got to have some ethics conversations and some wrestling with yourself. We

[00:38:13] Erica Rench: definitely do in the same way that a lot of the social media platforms do where it's like, you know, people could come in theoretically and get started using wrath and disseminating content. Before we have a chance to kind of catch, if it's not.

[00:38:29] You know, good authoritative content that helps us better inform the world. So it's, you know, how do you catch those bad actors? That's, that's a tricky thing.

[00:38:39] Matthew Dunn: It's in a, in a relatively unregulated field, like email that is that's a, that's a constant problem and it's not going to go away. Right.

[00:38:49] You know, easily or any time soon,

[00:38:51] Erica Rench: all the ESPs have to deal with that

[00:38:54] Matthew Dunn: kind of thing. The TC. Have MC you've had to do that yourself. Like, did you want to have someone whose job was to be the content police, right. Right. But

[00:39:05] Erica Rench: it's

[00:39:06] Matthew Dunn: inevitable at a certain point. Well, if you get human beings alive, you know, a lot of human beings in the field of play, some of them are gonna do, some of them are going to hit each other.

[00:39:13] Apparently. Yeah. You're always screaming,

[00:39:18] Erica Rench: right. Oh my gosh.

[00:39:21] Matthew Dunn: Well, I should free you up, but I, I I'm so delighted that Paul connected us and that you made the time to talk about email. Yeah, I I'm going to be very, very intrigued to watch the, the, the company roll forward. I think there's a great horizons ahead for you.

[00:39:37] Erica Rench: Thank you. I appreciate that. We're excited about the future. That's

[00:39:42] Matthew Dunn: good. How big is the team now? How big is the head count wise? How big is the company?

[00:39:46] Erica Rench: About 10 of us, we have. Yeah. It's and what the nice thing is is that we as we grow, you know, that we don't have to scale the team as quickly because a lot of a lot of the work is done for people and our developers are so great they're they keep the product super tight.

[00:40:05] And there's not, you know, the scaling of the team doesn't have to have. Fast as the scaling of people using it.

[00:40:12] Matthew Dunn: Right. Let let, let let clouds do the work. So it did. Yeah, it did. It did. Oh, well, Erica, thank you so much. My guest is Erica wrench, a COO at Rasa. Where does someone go to find Razi?

[00:40:28] Theresa go to

[00:40:30] Erica Rench: Rasa.io. Enter your email. You can do a free trial of the, of the light version of the product. And if you're interested at the enterprise scale you can email there. There's a demo. Fill out, fill out a form and we'll, we'll connect someone with you to get

[00:40:47] Matthew Dunn: you started and I'll be your live testimonial.

[00:40:49] Roz's RA's is actually quite having used it. It's quite incredible. You go really? Is this possible? This thank

[00:40:55] Erica Rench: you. I appreciate that testimonial. Thank you.

[00:41:01]