Tell us what it's all about.

Well, it's a journey and a very long one, to be sure.

Yeah, it's been I started out doing comedy back in 2001, where I took my first comedy writing class.

And and then I took improv class, I fell in love with the art form.

And Five years later, I packed two suitcases and moved to New York City to pursue comedy there and fully immerse myself into the comedy ecosystem.

And then I stayed in New York for almost nine years and moved to the LA area in California and suddenly found myself spending more time in traffic than I did on stage.

And I was like, what? Whoa, what is this about? This is bananas.

What's one of the absurd human habit or fiction point you observe that directly inspired a text solution?

Now they have that confidence to get up in front of the audience and perform their show.

It's true.

There is this performance aspect of it, right? And like we said, everybody's had a podcast.

So many people have had a podcast.

And a lot of people learn very quickly it's an art form.

You can't just...

Not everybody can just get behind a mic and be interesting.

If you got it, run with it.

What did you notice early on that, on that, or that's only that you realized later?

Well, before COVID, when I was testing this, it was really interesting because when people came across it, they're like, "Whoa.

Well, this is a novel idea.

This is different.

This is great because it solves the same problems I was having." And it validated my idea of being able to bring people online.

Once COVID happened, suddenly everybody was doing what I was doing, which further validated it like, okay, if, if my small group of people was possible, now masses of people are possible and they're doing it.

And COVID was good.

Why is, why is, why, why is control over any opportunity such a critical issue for performers?

Mm-hmm

... that's, that's the joy of it.

That, that's what brings me pleasure.

It's not, um, having someone else...

Like, I take pride in what I write and the jokes I create because they're very personal to me, and so that's not, uh, that's not something I would assign to AI.

That's not to say, like, when I write business things or things for my site and stuff, I run it through AI.

I do, you know, grammar checks, editing, formatting, things like that that would, could take time and would be helpful, especially if I'm creating things for SEO purposes and stuff like that.

[laughs]

What made comedy the thing worth chasing in the first place?

Well, it was kind of interesting 'cause I didn't-- it didn't start out with like, oh, I'm gonna be a comedian, or I'm gonna even go into entertainment.

It started out with, I grew up in a funny family, [chuckles] um, my parents were very quick-witted, my brothers are very funny, and it was just something that was part of my environment growing up.

And, and then while I was going to school and stuff, my parents were always very encouraging and support-- helpful when it was time to do homework.

So when I had to do presentations or public speaking for a class or something, they would, um, have me practice, and then they'd give me feedback on what wasn't working or if I was saying "um" too much or things like that.

And then as I went off to college, um, I studied business and then I got a job, and in my job I had to do a lot of public speaking, so I naturally integrated humor into it because that's part of who I am.

But then as I started doing more events and emceeing, I wanted to-- I, I had this idea of like, oh, I'm gonna do a theme and I'm gonna do like a late night TV show host theme, so I needed to write a monologue.

I mean, why bother?

At what point did you realize there was a problem in the comedy industry that needed solving?

There's always a problem in the comedy community that needs solving.

I think for me, the first problem that I really – well, there are many.

I realized early on the people that were really getting somewhere were people who were not sitting around waiting for somebody to give them permission.

Right.

Right.

That's very important.

How does Plazable help comedians build sustainable opportunities?

I left stage and it's... a lot so it takes a lot of courage to actually go on and perform a stand-up comedy not everybody can do that it's different from when you're shooting a skit a comedy skit on facebook and instagram and your audience are actually seeing it like from social media but coming live on stage to do our stand-up comedy it takes a lot of nerve and a lot of you know courage

Yeah, yeah, it does.

Because you have to be willing, like, that's very vulnerable, right? So being able to put something out on video, there's that protection, because you're not there in real time.

And you're not witnessing their audience member, you're in that moment you you don't even know if someone hates it unless they comment on it right so like it could be seen by millions of people but you don't really know what people are thinking whereas in the room it's very vulnerable because you're all in the same place together and um yeah and and the thing with the way i view comedy is every every set, I may be delivering the same jokes, but the audience is different.

Maybe the situation is different.

Maybe the comedian in front of me was really funny and in comparison, I'm not as funny or vice versa, right? Or maybe something happened in the audience or maybe this one audience has served more drinks than another audience.

Like there's so many things that could change audience response.

So I can't.

Plausible, okay.

Plausible.

Yeah, so what I had seen is after doing things online with existing technologies is that...

Comedians are funny and our skill set is writing jokes

and delivering jokes, but our skill set isn't necessarily technical.

When we show

up at a show, we just trust that the microphone works.

How did that experience change the way you approach building your company?