$100M in Email With No Employees? Neil Isn't Buying It

0:00Eric Siu:You know that feeling when the strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is you, and it's due tomorrow. Breeze Assistant can help. It works right inside HubSpot. Drafting campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice. All grounded in your actual customer data. So you don't just create content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Yeah, let me show you something real quick. Let me go in a different direction.

0:34Eric Siu:I actually want to get your reaction to this. So there's this company called Eight Sleep, which I love, full disclosure. I'm a tiny investor in this company and I love their products. So I thought this was really interesting, Neil. I'm going to play the video for you too. So here we go. So, all right.

0:49Neil Patel:Before we had an email marketing team, now we have zero. Everything is done through AI and email marketing makes a very large amount for us and everything is run by AI. So what happened is we were forced to that, meaning the person leading, we had a team of two, then the person leading the team was leading. At that point, my co-founder, Alexandra, jumped in and said, okay, let me see how I can use AI to really make this work. And within three days, she was able to build multiple bots that now run all our email marketing. So now we have a team of zero and email marketing makes close to 100 million.

1:25Eric Siu:So what's your reaction to that, Neil?

1:27Neil Patel:So I saw it when it came out, and it started doing extremely well because everyone's like, wow, he's using AI to make email marketing generate$100 million. And what was his team size before? Two or something like that? Two people on email marketing. Yeah. So let's call it he was spending$300 ,000 max for$100 million in revenue. the first take on this is email isn't generating him a hundred million dollars a year in revenue he's collecting emails through facebook ads through organic through you know um i don't know google ads the list goes on and on so emails part email is responsible for part of the revenue but he's typically getting some of that traffic in direct some of that traffic through other paid media channels.

2:15Neil Patel:So other marketing channels are contributing to that a hundred million in revenue. That's the first thing I want to make clear here. So anyone who thinks like, oh, email, you can just make a hundred million with no employees. It's not really the full picture. The second thing is if he's getting a hundred million or similar amounts of revenue without those two employees, I would say he should, I'm not saying he needs the two employees. Maybe it's one, maybe it's a part-time, but they probably weren't doing the best of a job. And if he combines human with AI, I think you need to use both. He can probably generate more than 100 million in revenue from that channel.

2:53Neil Patel:Of course, some of that revenue should be partially attributed to other channels as well.

2:58Eric Siu:Yeah, so what I'll say is that I was actually talking to a guy who runs an email marketing agency yesterday at a conference. I'm not gonna name names, but he's just like, this like really pissed him off because he's like, well, you can't do really good email marketing, you know, without really good copywriters at the end of the day. Right. And to Neil's point, I think what you're just saying is like this hundred million, like there are other costs associated with it for the people that are running meta ads and things like that. Right. And so they're probably spending a health, a very healthy eight figures on this.

3:27Eric Siu:And I think my takeaway from this one is that I've been saying this more to my team recently. In fact, I told some of my team members this week, I was like, hey, how many of you are actually doing 95 % of your work inside of a harness right now? Which is like you're not logging into like a user interface, right? I'm like, okay, great. I'm gonna give you access to GPT-6 Ostra because some of them have been asking for it. It's an unlock, right? Because Claude Teams, like most of our team is using Claude Teams, but I secretly use GPT-6 Ostra on my own. So I was like, I think we're all going to be, when I interview people, when they get over to me, I'm like, hey, how do you think the future of your work is gonna look like?

4:02Eric Siu:He's like, well, I think we're just gonna be managing agents. I'm like, exactly. So you're going to be managing more close. And so I think this is kind of a microcosm of humans are going to be managing agents or workflows more. I think the whole with no employees thing is a bit overblown. I think you're still going to need people. But it's just a good headline that what we're saying to earlier, it will get you views.

4:22Neil Patel:Yes. And if you look at Harry, I follow him as well on Instagram. He's been creating and I'm not saying it's bad. I like his content. I follow him. He's been creating sensational content that just gets massive tam views, kind of like you know, Gary Vaynerchuk or Dan Martell or Alex Hermosi. And he's been going down more of that path, at least on social media. But when you look at, you know, what Eight Sleep is doing, what I hate in business, just in general, and especially in marketing, people don't call spades spades. They try to adjust the numbers or paint a different picture than reality. and I really hate that specifically when it comes to revenue or profitability or growth.

5:06Neil Patel:And if my team did that to me, they know I'll eat them alive.

5:10Eric Siu:Yep. By the way, I mean, let's just look at Harry Stebbings real quick, okay? You got to do it on Instagram. On Instagram? You want me to go to Instagram? What's wrong with his ex profile?

5:19Neil Patel:It's very different. Go look at his Instagram versus ex.

5:22Eric Siu:Okay, okay, let's go to, okay. Harry Stebbings Instagram. Uh-oh. Is it this one? I think it's this one.

5:31Neil Patel:I think it is.

5:32Eric Siu:Yeah, okay, great. Okay, let's take a look at this. Because I have seen one get by. Okay, let's scroll a little bit. Okay, so just, those of you that can't see the screen right now. So the first video I see has 500 views, and then the next one's 24 ,000, 5 ,500. So it's not like he's getting a ton of views, but let's go find a controversial one that has more views. What do you see, Neil?

5:55Neil Patel:Apple's latest launch is embarrassing. Where is it? A little launch.

6:00Eric Siu:This one?

6:00Neil Patel:Up, up. Scroll up.

6:03Eric Siu:Backwards. Right there in the middle. Oh, this one. Okay. So yeah, 40 ,000 views on this one. Let's see.

6:09Neil Patel:Turn us. I thought you were meant to turn us back to Apple. But God, we saw a breakdown of Apple's latest innovative products. And all I can say is, oh, no. I mean, we just wanted serious.

6:22Eric Siu:Okay. So that's one. 40 ,000 views on that one. Look at the next one.

6:26Neil Patel:Sydney Sweeney, the next big tech investor, right?

6:30Eric Siu:Could Sidney Sweeney be about to become one of the next great tech investors? I see what he's doing. Okay, this one has a lot of sensation around this too. Like the people are terrified of AI.

6:39Neil Patel:He doesn't have tons of followers.

6:40Eric Siu:What is going on at Anthropic?

6:42Neil Patel:The last 24 hours have been wild and you cannot miss this. So first, this guy, Jacob, an AI researcher.

6:48Eric Siu:Okay, so it's really talking about, he's really just hitting on tech's most controversial stories of the day. He's getting on it quickly. And I think he's going to grow this account quickly. Very fast.

7:00Neil Patel:Yeah, when I said he doesn't have a lot of followers, he's getting a lot of views for the followers he has. His follower count will grow extremely fast.

7:06Eric Siu:Yeah, and by the way, Neil and I, we can play this game, right? But here's the thing. If I look at Harry as more of a pure content creator, like sure, he's an investor, but he started 20 VC first, it was interviewing other investors and that's how he got the audience and that's how he's got his deal flow, he's investing, that's great. His job is to generate more awareness so he can potentially generate more investors. He could also generate more deal flow at the same time. That is his business, right? And so it makes sense for him to go into this world and attract a wider town. So that's how I look at it.

7:34Eric Siu:More LPs for him, more investment opportunities. What do you think, Neil?

7:38Neil Patel:So when you look at the video in the middle, like 10 billion, I think 10 billion valuation and no revenue, I believe that's what it said. It was something like that, that he just posted the other day. I watched it and then he was breaking down all the previous investors like Mahmood, Sequoia, and all that. Yeah, that one. Yeah. And he's just bringing down a startup that ends up integrating AI into text messaging. So you can just text back and forth like iMessage and just get all your stuff done through an assistant. And why it's ballooning up or blowing up in a good way. Bless you. I don't know if this is the kind of content that's going to get him more deal flow.

8:19Neil Patel:I think the stuff he was doing before when he started 20VC going very specific and going after like the Peter Thiels or the entrepreneurs who are super successful I believe that kind of content it did get him known that's how I first learned about him that's the kind of stuff that's going to get him the right deal flow and LPs who are going to give him money that's my opinion I don't think this kind of stuff is going to help him as much so Neil let me share my screen with you because

8:44Eric Siu:this is actually what he's talking about. This is a startup. So he's talking about this company, Instinct. And I want to show you real quick because I actually use this agent. And Neil, I'll actually give you an access code if you want one. You probably won't because you're too lazy to do these things, but whatever. I'll give you an access code because this is really easy to set up, right? I actually gave one to one of our mutual friends. And so check this out. So what it did for me this morning, it's basically just set it up as iMessage. This is the startup he's talking about, Instinct, right?

9:10Eric Siu:So there's a$10 billion valuation on this one, which I think is way overpriced, right? But that's not to take away from the fact that this product works because you just open it up. You don't have to worry about what connectors do I need to add? What do I need to do here? What agent are we doing over here? It's just it works, right? So, Neil, let's say you have millions and millions of points, hypothetically, for travel. So what it's doing for me over here, I was like, hey, I have X amount of points over here through these programs over here. I want to book travel for this country over here by this date, and I want you to plan out the entire itinerary.

9:39Eric Siu:It can do that. Not only that, I've been trying to get access to this tool called JEV, which just came out. It's like one of the ex-guys that created ChatGPT. It's like a real fast AI. It can do huge swaths of data analysis within seconds, right? Like huge. And I'm like, whoa, there's big implications there. So I'm like, you know what? Today's Friday. I have a little more time today. Friday, I block out my afternoon. I'm like, I need access for that. And so I go to Instinct. I'm like, hey, I need you to find a person who controls the waitlist for JEV. And I need you to reach out to him. This morning, I checked.

10:09Eric Siu:It's like, I see, oh, he email replied, done. So I guess I'm in now, right? And so my point is, you can ask him to do all this. Hey, Neil, these are all the events I wanna speak at over here. These are all the podcasts I should be going on that are actually out there, have a good audience, it's an enterprise audience, right? Like you can have it figure all these things out and then just hand it over to your team. But that's why I think this thing is great. Is it worth$10 billion? I don't know about that.

10:34Neil Patel:And Harry's a smart guy and I get what he's doing on content and I don't hate him for it. he knows when people put money in at 10 billion in valuation and there's no there's no revenue there's a lot of fine print on the contract on their potential returns and what they're going to get in exchange and liquidation preferences and you know it's are they guaranteed two times their money three times their money etc right there's a lot of things like that that come into play here um that are you know important but he's creating the content to get the views i just don't believe this is going to get him the right type of deal flow.

11:09Neil Patel:And I could be wrong, but that's just my take because I've tried this enough, not in venture, but I've tried it enough in so many different industries, but it's very rare that our clients are venturing.