Innovative Marketing with AI

David: Richard McBeath is here, and Richard, I’ll give you the mic. For everyone else, feel free to share thoughts and questions in the comments—we want to keep it interactive. So, Richard, why don’t you introduce yourself and what you’re working on?

Richard: Thanks for the invite, David, and great to meet everyone. I’ll give a bit of background about myself and how we got here, then dive into what we’ve built. I live in Los Angeles, in Redondo Beach, but I’m originally from Sydney, Australia. I spent five years in London working for various digital advertising agencies starting in 2005, then moved to Dubai, where I led what was the largest digital ad agency in the MENA region, with offices across Qatar, Oman, Abu Dhabi, and beyond.

Eventually, I landed in the U.S., where I noticed this rise in alternative investments and new ways of accessing them. My co-founder and I started a company called MoneyMade, an investment discovery platform for alternative investments. We launched in March 2020, right as the pandemic hit, and online investing took off. We had this huge platform with a large team for content, including writers, designers, social media folks, and analysts. It was resource-intensive, so about two years ago, we started looking for ways to automate parts of the process.

We began with optimizing our content for engagement and conversions, using various calls to action and tools. This gave us valuable data on topics and pain points resonating with our audience.

We then automated our content strategy based on these insights, producing more content around high-performing topics. As we fine-tuned that, the next step was automating the actual content creation.

Over time, we realized we were creating highly researched, insight-driven content that was performing really well, so we decided to package it as a product. We launched **Captain** last October with modest expectations, and now 99% of our focus is on this product, which I’ll show you.

David: Great, let’s take a look. It helps to see how it works. I can see your screen with the Outdoorsy dashboard loading.

Richard: Perfect. I’ll start with the Captain dashboard. Outdoorsy, a current customer, has been with us for a few months. Here, you can track various content activities across web and social channels, along with engagement data. What’s key here is that Captain identifies customer pain points and trending topics for the brand’s audience. Marketing 101 tells us to create more content around what’s resonating, so Captain uses engagement data to map out a content strategy that’s continuously optimized week over week. It also creates content briefs based on related topics and deeper dives into relevant pain points.

A core part of Captain’s function is the automated research engine, which goes to Google and does research on your behalf. It finds relevant data, statistics, and insights, showing you the sources. We had challenges with some AI tools providing erroneous or dead links or even linking to competitors, so Captain’s research engine gives you control over what to include. We also have a Research Hub where you can upload your own white papers or research, and the engine will filter and pull relevant info from it automatically.

So, to summarize, Captain maps out your content strategy, identifies pain points and trending topics, conducts research, and lets you decide what to include. A third important input to the engine is collaboration. We realized it’s valuable to gather expert perspectives or commentary, so we built a tool for that. You can request input by sharing a unique link with anyone—colleagues, customers, or other experts. They land on a page where they can record their input in audio form. Captain transcribes it and integrates it into the content as quotes or paraphrased insights.

After you input this data, Captain creates a suite of assets: a long-form article with research included, AI-generated images, social posts for LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook, an infographic, a newsletter, and a podcast. Once ready, you can edit and publish directly from Captain to your CMS, whether that’s WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, or something else. It also lets you publish across social platforms to distribute the content.

**(13:02)** Once your content is published, Captain optimizes it for engagement and conversions with various tools. It automatically includes the podcast, a clickable summary, product education through highlighted keywords, and contextual CTAs. For instance, if a paragraph discusses a certain benefit, Captain will explain why the product is relevant to what they just read. We also create a branded infographic as a lead magnet for downloadable resources.

Lastly, we have a floating control panel with the podcast, related content, and various CTAs to encourage engagement. All of this engagement data is fed back into Captain to continue refining the content strategy. We categorize campaign types by the customer journey stage—top-of-funnel educational content, middle-of-funnel company updates, and bottom-of-funnel case studies. You can even invite clients to give audio testimonials, which Captain transcribes and turns into full case studies with supporting assets.

**(19:16)** Another powerful feature we recently launched is **Identify**, which allows you to see the specific individuals visiting your site and content pages. We can identify U.S. visitors at about 20-30% accuracy, pulling their name, title, company, LinkedIn profile, email, and industry. You can connect with them directly, and we have Slack integration to notify you instantly.

David: Richard, this is great! I’m seeing some of the best feedback yet from the community here. This tool helps marketers prove the value of their work by showing its impact directly. I know we have some tough questioners here today, so let’s dive into the questions.

Jay-Z: Thanks, David. I love this product—it’s polished and close to being publish-ready. How does this tool help qualify high-quality leads that might convert, especially for B2B?

Richard: Great question! Since launching the **Identify** feature a week ago, we’ve seen a growing number of salespeople joining calls. Sales teams are notified via Slack, so they can quickly filter leads and begin outreach. Soon, we’ll integrate with CRMs like HubSpot so leads can go directly into sales sequences, which should streamline this process further.

**(29:15)** Kathy: How do you handle opt-ins for marketing and sales outreach from site visitors?

Richard: We use a combination of first- and third-party cookie data, device ID, and IP address, along with access to a publisher network. If visitors opt into cookies on a publisher site, we can access that data. If they decline, we won’t be able to identify them.

David: Are there plans to integrate with other CRMs like Salesforce?

Richard: Yes, HubSpot integration is currently underway, and we’ll add other CRMs. For now, you can export CSVs from Captain to upload into other platforms.

David: And how do you differentiate Captain from other tools like Jasper?

Richard: Jasper is more focused on high-volume content creation, whereas Captain is focused on quality and strategy. We create data-driven content, gather research from reliable sources, and include expert commentary, all while helping identify target audiences. We’re a bit different in that we emphasize quality over quantity and don’t aim to produce hundreds of articles per month.

**(35:30)** Aaron: What LLMs do you use, and how do you prevent hallucinations in content?

Richard: We primarily use Anthropic and OpenAI, with limited Google Vertex support. To avoid hallucinations, Captain’s content only includes research from our engine, and we have layers of QA to catch any errors. This prevents issues like misleading links or robotic language.

**(38:23)** Susan: Who’s the ideal user for Captain?

Richard: We’re still seeing a range, from large brands to solopreneurs and agencies. Many agencies white-label Captain to offer it as their own service or use it to scale their offerings for clients. While we work directly with some brands, agencies have been particularly interested in Captain’s white-label capabilities.

David: Jay-Z wondered, will Captain replace agencies?

Richard: I don’t think so. Captain is more of a tool to help agencies scale efficiently while maintaining quality. It’s most effective when guided by someone who understands content strategy and can ensure it stays on brand.

Kathy: Can manually created content help inform Captain’s brand voice and tone?

David: One of the most surprising things I found was how well Captain defined the brand tone just by analyzing the site content. It generated really accurate descriptions and IC profiles.

Richard: Captain scans the brand’s domain or content you provide and breaks down the tone into guidelines. You can also add domain-specific guardrails, like not making financial guarantees for a fintech product. This way, all content aligns with the brand's standards.

Mr. Cutler: This sounds like a dream product. Have you thought about doing a real-life project, like a societal or nonprofit challenge, that the community could support to showcase Captain?

Richard: Great idea! I think finding that balance is key. So much of my life is focused on Captain and my kids, so it’s about striking that balance between work and life. But your idea of tackling a meaningful project is compelling.