Creator Zach Pogrob launches Share Aura, a fitness content tool with 20,000 waitlist signups on day one

Golden retriever. The the the dog panting and the horse noise deeply underrated. You know, I love the Ashton Hall, but the horse noise is is a close second. Anyway, we are joined by someone who can run as much as a horse, Zack. I would estimate Zack at like six or seven horsepower. That's Zack, you're live, by the way.

You're You're live. How much horsepower? About six horsepower. We were saying I think probably six or seven horsepower. I don't know what that means. I'm not a car guy. I'm sorry. I realize No. Are you You know, a horse has one horsepower. We're basically saying you're as strong as seven horses. Seven stallions.

I'll take it. Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about horses, but go ahead. Oh, what have you been thinking about? So have we. They're just like the most majestic creatures. The an unbelievable combination of beauty and grace, but this raw power and it's just like I don't know. Go ahead. Much like myself, much like you.

Anyway, congrats on the launch. Share Aura is now live in the App Store. If you're listening to this, go download it. Invite codes are going out to a wait list this week. There's 20,000 people on the wait list already. Wow. Probably. Yeah, probably more. So, so break it down for us.

Uh uh pitch the app and explain some of the launch strategies that you've been employing. I want to talk about media and and vlogging and actual uh and the app, of course. Definitely. Yeah. So, for some context, I've been posting on social media under my name essentially.

It actually started as like a synonymous account but that was like 5 years ago been publishing for almost seven years and have went from writing content to motivational content and then got really into running and the idea for the app started where a lot of you are familiar with Strava probably yep noticed that so I have a big Instagram account have 1.

3 million followers hit the gong for 1. 3 million followers on congratulations Zack and towards the end of last year I just, you know, I kind of accidentally became an influencer and just hated it. Hated doing other people's stuff and I was just I scrapped everything I was doing. It was all my partnerships.

I just want to build my own thing and and I just noticed all these people, every single [ __ ] runner I followed was posting screenshots of their Strava or their run or their workout on social media. I'm sure you guys see people who do that on Instagram all the time. Of course. And then I just started thinking more.

I'm like, screenshotting itself is just like this unbelievably massive user behavior. If you go look at screenshots on your phone, I would bet you have like 20,000 screenshots. Yep. It's an insane. There's even a separate folder for them now. It's really convenient. I love it. Yeah.

But so essentially, you have this user behavior of finish your run, finish your workout, post it to social media. Yeah. Hundreds of millions of people are doing that very specific thing every single day.

And yet these apps like Strava, you have to take a screenshot and then go to Cap Cut or Canva and remove transparency and do no, let's just build an app obsessively dominating that one user behavior. Cool.

And so that's what I started working on in February where essentially the app is a tool to share your runs and workouts. It's like a creative tool for fitness and running. Starting focused on running and we're expanding quickly to all the big stuff. Cycling like you'd expect.

And cycling like testosterone or what are you talking about cycling? We can we uh I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Of course, we're talking about bicycling. John's gonna start uh bicycling.

John's going to do a cycle and just every day just live on the air that's posted on or what was your strategy for actually getting uh feedback? It sounds like you were dog fooding the app yourself, but then did you have a small community of beta testers, friends, family, like who do you trust?

Who is actually going to give you good signal? Because if they're too close, they'll say they'll glaze you. If you ask chat GPT probably tell you you're, you know, the next Mark Zuckerberg, but uh yeah, you got to dial it in, right? You got to get the right the right feedback from the right people.

So, how how do you iterate? Yeah, I mean it's like you have so many yesmen and you have to just ignore all of them. We've had a beta. So, we've had a beta. Shout out to two developers of Ara, Kale Stewart, John O'Kim. Um for them. I love the developers. Thank you. Developers developers developers. Developers.

Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. I haven't watched the show that I've seen the clips, but I'm not just not used to all the things. We're really ramping it up. You're too You're too locked in. You're too locked in. I've been watching every day. But okay. Anyway, um we've had a beta since March.

And yeah, I mean, I've had nothing else in my life besides this app. Luckily, I'm I'm the type to just burn everything down and just focus on one thing. And so, we've had a beta and you know, the product we had in the beginning of March is drastically different than we have have now.

And and yeah, I mean, look, I'm lucky. I have been creating content so long. I have people who um who were just hungry for something from me. And this app, it's so core to the DNA of everything I talk about that um I think I was able to get really good feedback.

Like there are some like there's a group chat, shout out to them, called the pit and it's it's like a group of like my my most real they're not just about me, but like a lot of like true obsessed savage and I've been following me for a long time. Shout out the pit. The pit. The pit is aligned. you back.

I was here for the pet. Yeah, created it since March and just been iterating rapidly on the product. And the one thing I've learned, which I'm sure you guys know, is just you have you have no idea what's going to work until you ship it. And uh it's been it's been fun to be on that journey.

Uh we have a question for the chat. Do you think Sam Schoffer is shadowbanned from Share Aura for not running with a beard or for running too slowly or for not running enough or any other reason I can make up trying to roast him? That's from John Xley.

He's only he's running under three miles a day and I put out a tweet that if you're a man running under three miles is very feminine and oh my god Instagram didn't like that one but uh yeah you're going to get deplatform for that roasted for that anyway what uh uh you're building you know it's an app but you're building a business are are you going to roll out are you monetizing already do you plan to what's the plan there no monetization yet um I I we do plan to however my thing is our app is essentially a a distribution product on drugs, right?

Where the only purpose of you go on Aura, the share Aura, the only purpose is to create content to share to social media. And so essentially the reason I am obviously bullish on my app and I'm essentially playing with three cheat codes.

That is the only purpose of the app is to post content on your Instagram story and social media. Number two, I have [ __ ] two million followers. I post a little I post a graphic for the app that we might make on my Instagram story. It gets 100,000 views. I I'm a pretty good designer.

I design a lot of it myself and or we have good designers who help. Yeah. And then Donna [ __ ] ships it, makes it, we ship it next week. So, okay, my audience is number two. And then my friend I have a lot of [ __ ] friends who are the biggest running creators in the space. Yeah.

I don't I don't pay I don't there's no payments. And we can get to that if you saw my marketing post. We can talk about it. But I'm not paying a single influencer to use my app. They are literally asking me right now. I just put out a tweet. I don't know if you saw it. I might delete it. The pit is here in the chat.

Greg Duncan says, "Shout out the pit there. " Colin Cornwell is in the chat. Cole Ryan. I feel like a lot of these guys came from your crew. I don't know if you know them by name, but I was just saying like there are big in Instagram influencers with millions of followers asking to use my app. Totally. Yeah.

And like I don't you know what I mean? And so for monetization, I just think if I was to charge money right now, we have essentially a creative tool, right? We could charge money for creative assets and special templates and all this stuff. Yeah, [ __ ] that. Let's just build the most ridiculous growth machine possible.

Get a fuckload of users and then I already have specific ideas. Like for example, let's say we have 500,000 users sharing with Aura sharing con. So, not just users on the app. You're kind of valuing the potential impressions on their content per day. Mhm.

That I think is worth something to a brand to have their assets in the app to serve as creative tools to spread their brand more. That's just one way. But the reality is guys, I will be super transparent. There is no ceiling, zero ceiling to my ambition with this app.

I think consumer health, consumer fitness is a very massive category. Even if you just look at running apps, you go back 10 years to when the app store launched. Runtastic, rune, map my Run.

Y when the store launched, all these [ __ ] apps were built, they got 50 to 100 million plus users and they were all acquired by AS6, Adidas, um there's more of them that were like five of them were acquired for 50 to like 300 million. And truthfully, I'm starting this the first act of aura share aura is sharing.

But I since the beginning since March, the reason I've been taking this so seriously is I am that is just the start. And I think there is a lot you told me you've told me off air some of your your moon more moonshot ideas and and they're very exciting. I won't I won't uh says 1 million users is the goal.

Um I feel like you'll have strong opinions about AI, social networks, bots. We just heard from an investor who said that maybe there will be a new social network that's heavy on bots. We talked to Pico Labs yesterday. They want to build an app that's like a social media app that's entirely AI generated.

Share aura the vlogs you've been putting out. They feel uniquely human. Uh talk to me about the trade-offs between uh like AI content being allowed or promoted or demoted.

And Sher is shar great because you guys can use generative AI to give people these creative tools, but they still have to go out in the real world if they want to actually really use the product, right?

It's it's doesn't matter if they can Tesla Optimus, go run 17 miles and then come back and post for me under four minute miles, please. But yeah, what's your take on like AI on social media like its correct place? Yeah. I mean on social media like it's it can't be the heart of things.

Like I my writing gets tens of millions of views a month. I've never written with AI once. I've never made a vlog with AI once. However, my whole app like I just pulled it up like so for our app we have like stock backgrounds, right? Because it's like you've heard of stock images, right?

And like so we make I'll just pull it up. Like they look like that. Like they're super sick. It's a crazy percentage of our app use them. Like 40% plus use them. Um, which is wild. And and like, yeah, I think it should be used to expand a creative vision. Like my creative universe, [ __ ] yeah, I'm going to use AI.

I think AI videos, I'm so bullish on it. And like the [ __ ] we're doing for Aura, for the AI backgrounds I just showed you, I have a person named Nat who's cracked on it. It is going to [ __ ] break the internet. It is so good. It is so good. And and but the heart of everything is me [ __ ] taking Yeah.

filming this whole thing. By the way, what's up, guys? Nice. Hey, great to see you. Taking this 19 2000 1999 year old camcorder and taking it on a vlog and filming my entire life. So, the heart of it, I don't think you build a personal brand with AI.

It can't be the heart of it, but it should be you should use it to expand your creative universe. We're going to use AI to bleep out your mouth. I cursed. I didn't notice. I love it. quarter vlogs. Are they working on YouTube? Are they working on Instagram? Are they working on X?

Who what audience likes that more than the other? I They're definitely working. I'm not a YouTuber, so like I just don't know if they're working yet on that platform. It's too early. Yeah. My Instagram, it's funny. I have 1. 3 million followers. I don't think I posted a real for a year. Yeah.

Because I'm just a I was a writer. I was doing other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They're already working on reels and I just started them. And on X, they're 100% working. And the big thing is like look, the the thing I obsess over more than anything is just like how to get attention on social media, right?

And it's just like I've gone ridiculously viral in the past for some certain innovative things. And um the camcorder is the same thing. You're giving someone something new on their screen. That's number one. And then number two is you're tapping into just nostalgia, which brands know is an unbelievable weapon.

An unbelievable weapon for attention. Totally. And and when you combine that with someone actually doing something like I'm actually building my app, it's it's it's interesting. And so I think they're 100% working on X. Like look at the [ __ ] the vlogs I've done on X have gotten hundreds of thousands of views already.

And the little launch video mini one I did got has 144,000 views. It's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean we felt that early on with like we were printing out tweets and reacting to them and wearing suits and there was a little bit of nostalgia.

Tastefully the thing is brand you can't just [ __ ] use Apple Garam with three letter people to care. No one cares. You have to find You guys have the synth wave intro. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. You Yeah. You have to pull different things from different elements. We We're showing the We're using a camcorder ourselves.

Yeah. We have one in the studio, too. It's fun.

I I I I think these are just creative tools like the generative AI, like the gener I like the fact that you're saying generative AI backgrounds because I feel like the magic happens when there's when there's it it's like if you go to any any like Photoshop or like MS Paint like you'd always have like the template for like I want to just stamp a tree down and that's just one of the tools and it feels like these generated AI backgrounds it like they're not going to go viral by themselves.

the virality, the human element is going to be injected and it's going to be like a collaging effect on top of some of some base that's really going to be the thing that pops totally stands out. Anyway, well, I'm excited for more people in the world to get the app. Congrats on the launch and uh come back on anytime.

Everyone's demanding codes. Is this this isn't the first time, right? You've been on before. First time, I think. First time. This is crazy. When we do another big update, I'll come back on. Yeah. Yeah, come back on. The the honestly Verdusco says, "Zack looking yolked. Glad you went with the black tank," says.

There we go. Greg Duncan says, "Nostalgia is emotion track. You look good either way. You look good authentically. " Colin says he's cooking and making us feel. Next time you go on a on a long run, just just FaceTime us. We'll we'll drop you into the show. Yeah. Yeah. You can call in for a run.

We'll be your running We'll be your running coach. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Anyway, great chat. We will talk to you soon. Cheers. And you know what he should do to promote this? He should run from one wander to another. He should find his happy place.

He should book a wander with inspiring views, hotel, great amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 24/7 concier service because it's a vacation home. We should do a campaign with Zach and just have him run, you know, 100 wanders in a 100 days all on foot. That'd be great. That'd be great.

Uh, let's go to the timeline. The billionaire Porsche family prepares for war with new defense fund. German dynasty expands into weapons amid Europe's rearmorament drive. Uh so shank Josie says enter the 911 the 911 technical. Um this is just funny that like more and more people are p are pouring into uh defense tech.

We were kind of discussing this. It's not the first time that Porsche war. It's not the first time. Uh, oh, I you put this in the you put this in the feed and I didn't realize it was from John Summit, but John Summit said, "Uh, no, no, no. Let me give some context. " Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Take take this.

John Summit had he said, "Every great bender leads to an epic lockin. " And then, and then people, someone quoted this and said, "You're 31, big bro. " And went viral. Uh, obviously dunking on him. John fires back and says, "Do you do people think you just stop having fun in your 30s? Such a loser mentality.

" and then says David Ghetto is 57, Tiestto is 56, Carl Cox is 63, and they all still rip till 6 a. m. in Aiza while all these finance burner burners cry themselves to sleep at night. An East Village guy just says banger.

John Summit, I didn't realize he was just declared war on declared war on the timeline and put Lover Boy in the in the truth zone. Um, anyway, fun fun fun to have people back and forth. Show up at get backstage at at a Johnsummit show. You guys should make up and uh and send it. And John Summit, head over to getbasel.

com. Your bezel concier is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Seriously, any watch. Nick Carter, he says, "I'm increasingly convinced that a substantial percentage of kids brought up in the age of AI will be post literate.

like they won't really know how to write and I'm going to say or think and and will rely on AI to autocomplete their thoughts. I mean we have a friend who is illiterate and he's very successful. He doesn't know how to read. It's fine. Maybe maybe but because he doesn't know how to read it clarifies his thinking.

He has no one else is able to influence his thought with the written word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't oneshot him. No. I've been pushing people on this. I think I think if somebody is struggling with how to communicate an idea and they think I should go to Chad GPT and and work this out. Yeah.

I think that the more you do that, the more you're going to atrophy your brain and you got to be a little careful there. It's so crazy because if you can write a good prompt, job's finished. You can just send that as an email.

like very rarely does the result because I have GPT5 running in my brain in terms of like rewriting emails. You can just send me the bullet points. You don't need to send me the hey chat GPT turn these bullet points into uh a bunch of paragraphs. You can just send me the bullet points and I will expand it in my brain.

Uh, and so, um, I I I find that the, uh, I find that I find that the chat GPT for for email writing, uh, does not actually improve communication or save all that much time. Again, knowledge retrieval, knowledge retrieval, knowledge retrieval.

If you're thinking of something, it's on the tip of your tongue, type it into Chatt. It'll give you what you're thinking of. If you need five examples of something and you can think of two, it's going to nail the next five. Uh, speaking of which, I had an interesting thing that I pulled up.

We didn't get a chance to talk about this, but um are you familiar with the story of John Hinckley Jr.? No. So, we were talking about AI psychosis, AI making people crazy, maybe social media had a similar effect. Well, what about movies? So, in 1967, has anyone in this studio seen Taxi Driver? Yes. Thank you.

I know you haven't, but Taxi Driver is a Robert Dairo film uh where um Travis Bickl the character becomes obsessed with a young woman played by Jodie Foster and attempts to assassinate a presidential candidate. So uh John Hinckley Jr. was 25 years old.

He was a drifter from Texas and he had developed an intense fixation on the actress Jodie Foster after seeing him in that 1976 film Taxi Driver. So in 1980, Foster was a student at Yale University.

Hinckley moved to New Haven, where Yale is for a time, writing her letters and calling her, even though she never reciprocated or encouraged contact. Hinckley believed that committing a spectacular act such as killing a US president would gain Jodie Foster's attention and impress her.

So he trailed he first was going after Jimmy Carter. He trailed President Jimmy Carter during the 1980 campaign, but was arrested on a weapons charge in Nashville. But when Ronald Reagan got elected, Hankley shifted focus to Reagan.

And so on March 30th of 1981 at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington DC, Reagan had just finished speaking and was leaving the venue when Hinckley fired six shots with a 22 caliber revolver. He hit Ronald Reagan with a ricochet bullet in the chest. Reagan survived.

He hit uh the press secretary, James Brady, in the head and left him personally uh permanently disabled. And he also shot uh a Secret Service agent in the abdomen and a DC police officer in the neck. And so later, John Hinckley claimed he did it to impress Jodie Foster.

He uh his defense argued not guilty by reason of insanity. He pleaded insane uh citing severe mental illness. and he was eventually acquitted on those grounds in 1982, but was committed to a psychiatric hospital for over three decades.

So, one shoted by technology, one shoted by new video, new imagery, a v a film, something that's not real, but told a story that convinced him. And he had delusions of grandeur and he went on this run.

He was effectively, you know, he he he he had film psychosis, but it was very very he was this is like the only example of something like that happening. And overall, I would say that films are fantastic and a major net good. Did he get Jodie Foster's attention? I don't think so. Hopefully, she paid a little attention.

I think she did address it at one point. Um but I don't think she was interested in him. Yeah.

But interesting rough way to get attention that this this idea of of seeing some sort of media, text, imagery, something on social media, something in in chat GPT, something on the screen could drive someone who's, you know, has mental illness to do something crazy. This is this is not entirely new.

The question is scale and the question is how can you resolve it?

um when the film industry you know I I think it was I think it was handled just by you know like they've made more movies like uh like Taxi Driver they've made uh Joker and people were worried about that having an effect but overall our society learned to adapt and and probably identify hey my friend saw a movie and he's acting weird like let me talk to him about that like no that just because Jody Foster's in that movie doesn't mean that she's going to love you if you do the thing that happened in that movie the movie is fiction Um, and so people developed kind of a mimemetic defense to uh the the imagery in films.

Uh, they'll hopefully do the same for social media and have in many ways. I think a lot of people are are are adapting to the age of of uh social media with like screen time and understanding that, you know, there's all these different incentives. Getting a notification. Wow, I used Tik Tok for 60 hours. Yeah.

Don't talk to Tyler. I gotta get those I gotta get those numbers up. Yeah. Um, well, we got to talk about a uh potentially the next Fed chair. What is going on here? David Zervos, who is a currently a managing director over at Jeff. Okay. And he has a fantastic wardrobe. Let's pull this up. This is wild wardrobe.

QC Cap says, "This might be the Fed chair. " And you're bearish. And this looks like a Burning Manesque outfit. Um, do you want to And then next up, he's got a fantastic orange suit. The orange suit is fantastic. Incredibly sharp. Uh, David put him on the McLaren F1 team.

Um, David was already an adviser to the Fed back in 2009 for a year and then has gone on quite the run. Something about David in finance because this David has fantastic suits and fashion sense and then David Solomon is a DJ. Something about being a David in in finance really puts you on the track for eccentricity.

Does he does look like in another life he would have dominated digital assets? Oh, I thought you were going to say uh Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Crypto, but uh he he definitely has the crypto aesthetic down.

But, uh the question is that could you imagine him going headtohead, backto-back in a boiler room set with David Solomon? I think he would give him a run for his money. Absolutely. What else should we talk about today? It's 2:30.

Should we get out of here or should we continue down the timeline down the rabbit hole deeper? You know, uh should we pull up this video? Uh Dylan highlighted Dylan Abuscato highlighted uh there is react to a movie trailer. Yeah, let's react to a movie trailer from A24. It's called Marty Supreme.

It just was released this morning. It features Oscar nominee Timothy Shalomé, Oscar winner Gwennneth Paltro, and of course, startup investor, Kevin, uh, Shark Tank Shark Kevin Olirri. Let's watch it. Hello. Hey, it's Marty Mouser. I'm in the royal suite. I saw you in the lobby yesterday. Okay.

Well, I never talked to an actual movie star. You know, I'm something of a performer, too. Are you? Yeah. You don't believe me? I What? Do what? You got the Daily Mail in front of you? This is you. Yeah, the chosen one. It's a nice picture, right? Are we going to get copyright for this? Probably.

And if you think that's some sort of blessing, it's not. Hopefully not. It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through. And with that obligation comes sacrifice. Everything in my life falling apart. Let me figure it out. Do you need help? I could help you.

I know it's hard to believe, but I'm telling you this game that fills stadiums overseas, and it's only a matter of time before I'm staring at you from the cover of a Wedies box. The Wedies box. [Music] Forever young. I want to be forever. [Music] All right. team movie night. When this drops, we're doing it.

They uh I guess that's just Josh Say, but his brother David Safty is also a partner in most of his creative uh endeavors. Benny Safy. Yeah. Yeah. Benny Benny Safty and Josh Say. That's the crew. Um but they are fantastic at finding uh like undiscovered talent that would do well in film.

I just like Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. He's known as a comedian. He'd done serious movies, but it was he was still kind of an odd choice for that.

They also cast Kevin Garnett as himself in Uncut Gems and that was like a fantastic performance and people kind of didn't expect uh an NBA player to just like jump straight into a prestigious Hollywood movie and do great. Uh Julian Fox as well. The weekend was in uh was uh was in um that movie as well.

And then there's been a couple others uh where he's pulled odd folks in. Benny Safty jumps in, plays. So I'm extremely bullish on Kevin. We're gonna end on this next post. It's from the account financial dystopia. Okay, we're playing this one. But this doesn't seem dystopian to me at all. I can see why.

The uh caption is a remote salesman makes a call while he's driving a boat. So let's spx maximalist. Thank you for the shout out. I'm glad you're tuning in daily. This is Maggie. How you doing, darling? Oh, we're blessed. We're blessed. I'm sorry it's a bit noisy.

We're out on the lake right now doing some surfing for this weekend. Oh, yeah. You ever done wake surfing before? I'm ready to buy. Get your ass out here. This is amazing. You scared of the water? Masterass. You can't swim? You're telling me an AI agent is going to be able to do this?

I'd like I'd like to see an AI agent wake drive a wake surfing boat on a call. We get you surfing no time. It's great. Did you have a chance to talk? Can we make an intro to Sam Bucket Ramp? We need to get this guy on the ramp, too. He's ready to close deals. Anyway, fantastic. I have some breaking news, please.

Okay, so um XAI co-founder Igor Babushkin is leaving to start a venture firm that it supports AI safety research and back startups and AI agentic systems. Huge news. Yeah, he he was number 24 on the menace list. He was number 24 in the new in the in the V2. Yeah, he's like super goated. Igor Babushkin. Absolute.

Uh, wow. 11 minutes ago this broke and you guys got the Good work so quickly. We have to get in the car and hit the road. And Eigor, open invite. Come on the show. Talk about your new fund. We'd love to hear from you on this. Let's make it happen. It's fascinating. Great stuff. fun show today.

Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify and we will see you tomorrow.