What we learned from making 100 rom-coms
Humans — for as long as we’ve known — have been storytellers and story listeners. Before jumping into the role of first-time founder, I centered my time in venture capital looking for companies telling stories that others were not. And then, I decided to work on my own.
Today, just a few months after debuting, Meet Cute released its 100th story. In other words, 1500 minutes of content, or over 16 feature-length films. Each story tugs on your heartstrings and makes you feel happy and hopeful in a different way. Before I jump ahead — as I tend to — I’ll start by defining the term our company is named after: a meet cute is a scenario in which two individuals are brought together in some unlikely, zany, destined-to-fall-in-love-and-be-together-forever sort of way (#urbandictionary). It’s serendipity, or a collision, of sorts. Not only is it a cute name, but it embodies our company and our brand as we build the first modern media company via short, fictional romantic comedy audio stories.
Why “modern”? For three reasons that we think are fundamentally new and allow us to make stories at scale: we are deliberate, distributed, and diverse. As a storytelling company, our story itself is that of flipping existing entertainment models and building something fresh and defensible. Time will tell whether we’re right or not; through this post I’ll bring you into the Meet Cute story as we embark on the journey to find out.
Deliberate, in this context, refers to having a viewpoint about what we are doing, how we are doing it, and why it matters. What differentiates Meet Cute as a content company is that it is not hit-driven — we will not sacrifice viewpoint to do anything to make one story a hit. Instead, by creating stories in a repeatable and consistent way and thinking about our content as a consumer product, we have developed a format-first media company that experiments, measures, and evaluates as new stories are added to our library. That said, we don’t believe the future of storytelling is automated — with AI — but instead will continue to be human, made by and for people. But to capture all that richness and feedback from listeners, the process of storytelling has to be done differently: data-driven and deliberate.
Simple formats, like simple products, matter. For the same reason a tweet is constrained to 240 characters and a pop song to three minutes, each Meet Cute story is exactly 15 minutes long, delivered in five, 3-minute chapters. The chapters are short and digestible enough that there is no listener stress when a story begins, thus you’re engaged quickly and can justify sticking around for the happily ever after. We know this because our story completion rate averages about 98%. An astounding amount of emotion can fit into three minutes — moments like a meaningful pause, or a regretful glance that are universally understood. The five chapters are structured this way to mirror a specific narrative arc: start with a Meet Cute and end with a Happily Ever After. As an early reviewer wrote, “A Meet Cute series is designed to be a small space of magic that delivers on making you feel good. The simplicity makes the feel-good transformation undiluted.”
The idea of distributed teams has been forefront since COVID-19 began, especially with tech companies that have tools and processes in place to continue working without being in the same spot physically. However, the entertainment industry has been hit much harder, either delaying in-person productions or re-writing scripts to be socially distant. Because Meet Cute sits somewhere at the intersection of technology and entertainment, and is based itself on using constraints to deliver a pleasing — and consistent — experience, we were able to shift all of our production operations in March to completely distributed and design around some more new constraints.
What happened next surprised us: during this period, we have operated more efficiently and effectively and, in fact, have produced more content and released more stories than before (we increased our release schedule during this time to 4 stories each week). How? For one, the team itself, which had been making stories based on constraints, and as a result could shift to a different setting and make those stories based on the same constraints. Moreover, our development and production process was designed around consistency and a feedback loop. Thus we could transition to fully distributed creative teams — indeed this only added flexibility as we are working with actors, producers, writers, directors, and sound engineers in 15 states, and counting.
Finally, something that has been rightfully present in almost every conversation recently is the notion of diversity. As a younger, non-white, female founder this is something on the top of my mind and experiences. Every person actively thinking about this issue in the entertainment industry — and podcasting, specifically — can make a difference. So, how does our team operate? For one, none of us comes from a traditional media company, and each person has a unique background that allows us to come into the world of fictional storytelling with a beginner’s mind.
We believe that diversity is important not only as a matter of principle, but because it results in better stories for our listeners. We want every person who comes to Meet Cute to hear themselves reflected in our stories and to break the mold that romantic comedies are meant for only specific types. By rapidly creating content, we experiment with diversity in romantic comedies that hasn’t been done before. Within our first one hundred stories about first loves and second chances are tales representing communities including Latinx, Black, Native American, LGBTQ+, all ages, as well as people from every region of the country (and soon, the world) besides just coastal cities. To bring forward diverse stories, we have a wide network of creative talent; through our 100 productions, Meet Cute has worked with over 127 writers, 135 voice actors, and 20 producers. Over 61% of our writers, 50% of our voice actors, and 50% of our producers are female and/or non-binary. By elevating minority voices and giving them a platform to tell fictional stories, we are seeing standout storytelling, production, and voice acting.
We are Meet Cute, the first modern media company, relentlessly doing things differently. The core principles outlined above are baked into the way we operate and we think it leads to better stories, and is potentially the only way to make stories at scale. Right now, stories are underserved because it’s hard to make just one (from ideation all the way to post-editing), and it might seem impossible to make 100. But we think these stories are important because they are not for learning alone, they also have the power to make people feel something, and usually feel happy. We are fascinated with storytelling and the subtle, yet nuanced, emotional components of a story that you can’t put your finger on, yet keep you coming back for more. July 17th is an important milestone for us because, with a core team of 5 people and in just seven months, we have produced 100 stories about human connection, love, and hope. Looking ahead, it’s also something to celebrate that we have only made 100 of the 7 something billion stories we have yet to tell. Stay tuned.
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