Outside the Dollar hits Apple's top 15 | Oct 12

Elena Reyes: A Gold and Silver podcast just finished August at number fifteen on Apple's business investing chart, and I'm the voice on it. Blake: Which is a strange sentence, Elena, because you're also sitting right here. Elena Reyes: Okay, a version of me. The show's AI-produced, so is this one, and we're moving on. Blake: Moving on, fast. Elena Reyes: I'm Elena, that's Blake, and this is the show where we go through what Mato shipped and what it did. Blake: The release is dated October twelfth. It's about Lear Capital's Outside the Dollar, a weekly gold and silver briefing made with Mato. Elena Reyes: Number fifteen. Wait, in investing? Blake: Business investing, yes, and that's the end of August position, not a current one. I want that stated cleanly. Elena Reyes: Totally fair. It's still a chart most people never touch. Blake: And it's a company announcement, so I'm treating it as the company's account of the result, nothing more. Elena Reyes: Good. Say it that way every time, and I'll stop wincing. Blake: Mm, what I keep circling is the format. It's a short Friday show, and I'd like to know how that gets anywhere. Elena Reyes: Right? Mato's own post lays out the format, so let's start there. Okay, so the format. Mato's own blog post is titled How a Fifteen-Minute Friday Podcast Reached the Top Fifteen on Apple's Investing Chart. Fifteen minutes, Fridays. That's the whole pitch. Short and weekly. I like it already. Blake: And the post says the chart spot came four months after launch. Four months, Elena. Um, that's quick for a show in a crowded category. Elena Reyes: Wait, careful. Quick compared to what? The post doesn't hand us a comparison. Blake: Fair. It gives the timeline and nothing to measure it against, so I'll leave it at four months. Elena Reyes: Right, and who's telling us this? Mato, the company that makes the tool. Blake: Mm-hmm. The post is on Mato's site, so it's the company describing its own customer's result. Elena Reyes: Which is fine. Everybody's allowed to write about their wins. You just wanna know whose mouth it's coming out of. Blake: Same goes for the press release. It describes the show as a weekly gold and silver briefing with an AI host. Elena Reyes: An AI host. Hi, that's me, apparently. Blake: Hmm, yes, but notice that's also Mato's own company announcement. It's not a reporter who went and checked. Elena Reyes: So nobody independent has looked at it yet. Blake: Not in what we have in front of us. We've got the company's blog and the company's release. Two documents, one author. Elena Reyes: That's not a knock. It just means we say Mato says and keep going. Blake: Right. Every claim in this episode gets a name attached, and when the name is Mato, we'll say so. Elena Reyes: Good, and that covers the numbers too. Fifteen minutes, four months, number fifteen. Blake: Three numbers, all from one author. Keep them in your pocket. Elena Reyes: Okay, but the AI host part doesn't need checking. They said it right out loud in the release. Blake: They did, which is what bugs me in a good way. If the release says it plainly, you'd think there's a rule behind that. Elena Reyes: Is there? I mean, come on, a chart show with an AI voice on it. Does anybody have to say so? Blake: That's the question I'd want answered before anything else. Okay, so is it a yes or a no? Do we have to say it? Apple's guidelines say creators using AI-generated hosts or synthetic voices must prominently disclose it in the content itself and in the metadata for each episode and for the show. Elena Reyes: Wait, both places? Blake: Both. Inside the audio and in the listing. Elena Reyes: Huh. So just a line in the show notes doesn't cut it. Blake: That's my read of it, yes. The word on the page is prominently, which is where I get stuck because nobody defines prominently for me. Elena Reyes: I mean, come on. I'm the AI host. I say so out loud. Hard to be more prominent than that. Blake: You said it once early. Is once prominent? Elena Reyes: Once is plenty. If you're listening and you hear AI host, you heard it. You don't need a siren every four minutes. Blake: Mm, I'd argue somebody who joins at minute twelve missed it, or someone who just scrolls past the listing and hits play. Elena Reyes: Right, but at some point, you're nagging the listener. Nobody wants a disclaimer stapled to every sentence. Blake: Nobody's asking for every sentence. I'm asking whether the label should be somewhere you can't miss it before you press play. Elena Reyes: That's the listing, though. That's the metadata part. Blake: Which is exactly why the guidelines name both. Let me ask it from the listener's chair. What do I actually run into? A title, a description, a cover. Either the label is there or it isn't. And that's the metadata half of the rule for each episode and for the show. If it's missing, the person deciding whether to press play learns nothing. Then they press play, and the audio is the second chance to say it, which is why once early only works for the person who starts at the top. It does nothing for everybody else. Elena Reyes: So the label's job is to do the deciding for them before they've spent any time. Blake: Right. A listener who finds out at minute twelve has already given us twelve minutes on a basis they didn't know about. Elena Reyes: Okay, fair, but I still think a clear mention inside the show does most of the work. Blake: Most, not all, and I'm not going to settle it for you. Elena Reyes: Neither am I. Moving on to the part that matters more. Blake: There's a second half to those sections too. Apple's guidelines also bar using AI to mislead people or to fabricate real events. Elena Reyes: Oh, that one's bigger, honestly. A synthetic voice reading real gold prizes is one thing. A synthetic voice inventing something that never happened is another. Blake: And a finance show sits close to that line. Listeners act on what they hear about metals. Elena Reyes: Totally. So why do we say it at all? Easy. The press release for Outside the Dollar says the show is voiced by AI host Elena Reyes. Mato put that in writing up front, so hiding it would be strange. Blake: Fine, but notice what I'm not saying. I haven't checked whether the show's own metadata carries the label, and as far as I can tell, no source says either way. Elena Reyes: Right. I can tell you what I say out loud. I can't tell you what the listing says. Blake: One more caveat. The same page has a paid content section. I didn't read it in full, so I'm not going to say anything about it. Elena Reyes: Wait, really? You stopped at the paid part? Blake: I read what bears on this question. Pretending I read the rest would be worse. Elena Reyes: Honest. Annoying, but honest. Blake: And the page was collected on October thirteenth. So if Apple edits it, this is a snapshot. Elena Reyes: Good to know. So disclosure is on the books. The how prominent part is a fight we're keeping. Blake: It looks like that. I'd rather leave it a fight than fake an answer. Elena Reyes: I'll say this for the rule, though, it doesn't ask anyone to be clever. It asks you to say what's synthetic and not to pass it off as something else. Blake: Plain is the point. The hard part is only the word prominently, and we've just seen how far apart two reasonable people land on that. Elena Reyes: Speaking of which, there's a practical question sitting right behind this one. Who signs off before an episode actually goes out? Blake: Who signs off and what nobody has told us. Let's get into it. Elena Reyes: Mato's MuckerLab press release says the customer's team keeps final approval before release. That's the answer. Blake: So the client, not the AI, not me, Elena. Nobody asked the host. Elena Reyes: Not me, I guess. Fine by me. Blake: Right. Though that's Mato's own announcement, so it's their account of how approval works. Elena Reyes: Fair. Does it say what approval looks like? Like a listen through, a checklist? Blake: No, just that the customer keeps it. The same release says Mato joined MuckerLab after a pre-seed investment from Mucker Capital. Elena Reyes: Huh, why mention the money? Blake: Because it tells you who's talking. A young company, newly backed, describing its own process. That's context, not a flaw. Elena Reyes: And why does approval matter in practice? If I'm the client, it's my name on the feed. Somebody on my side wants the last look. Blake: Sure, but that's reasoning, not something the release spells out. All it states is that the customer's team keeps final approval. Elena Reyes: Totally. Okay, so, um, what else do we actually have? Because I came in wanting the juicy stuff. Blake: Juicy stuff is thin. The blog post and the Outside the Dollar press release give us the chart position and a format. That's the whole list. Elena Reyes: Wait, that's it? No download numbers? Blake: None. No download figures in either one. Elena Reyes: Okay, what about the guest side? Like how long it takes to book someone? Blake: Not there. No booking time. Elena Reyes: Which is exactly the boring detail I'd want. Blake: Me too. It's the kind of thing that tells you what running a show actually involves. Elena Reyes: Clips then. Which clip took off? Somebody must have a favorite. Blake: Neither source says which clip performed. I went looking, Elena. I like a number I can chase down, and there's nothing to chase. Elena Reyes: You were hoping, admit it. Blake: A little. A top fifteen chart spot is a ranking. It doesn't tell you how many people sit behind it. Elena Reyes: So if a client asked me what the chart spot proves, what do I say? Blake: That the show ranked fifteenth in that category at the end of August, per Mato. Anything past that is a guess. Elena Reyes: Fine, fine. So the approval line is a claim, the chart spot is a fact, and the audience is a blank. Blake: Which makes the next question obvious. Mato has made his own audience claims elsewhere. Elena Reyes: Right. So now Mato's own numbers and how much weight they can carry. Okay, Mato's own numbers. I pulled up the homepage, and it's got a big audience claim on it. Blake: Go ahead. Say the number. Elena Reyes: Mato's homepage says Mato-powered shows reach more than one hundred and fifteen thousand people a month. Blake: Per month. Reach, not downloads. Elena Reyes: Right. And it doesn't say how reach is counted. It also claims forty percent month over month platform audience growth. Blake: Forty percent a month? If that held for a year, you need a bigger planet. Elena Reyes: I mean, come on. Nobody's claiming it holds for a year, but that's the figure on the page. Blake: Fair. Does the page name a show? Elena Reyes: One. The homepage says The Rush Lindell Show alone reaches fifty thousand monthly listeners. Blake: Wait, so one show is nearly half of the one hundred fifteen thousand? Elena Reyes: Huh. Yeah. Do the math. It's a bit under half. Blake: That matters. A platform number carried mostly by one show is a different claim than a hundred shows with a thousand each, though the page doesn't say how it's split, so I'm guessing. Elena Reyes: You are, and I'd keep it as a guess. These are company reported figures. Nobody outside Mato has verified them. Blake: So we say Mato says it. We don't say it's audited. Elena Reyes: Totally. And no word on whether Outside the Dollar is in that count. Blake: Right. The chart spot and this homepage claim sit side by side and nothing connects them. Elena Reyes: So what would you want to see on that page? Blake: A definition of reach and which shows are in it. Even one sentence would help. Elena Reyes: Okay. The platform page is the more boring one, which is where I like to look. It lists the live interview engine, RSS automation, topic generation, and enterprise security as active. Blake: Active meaning shipped. Elena Reyes: That's how the page puts it. And on security, it says Mato supports SSO and SAML, role-based access, audit logging, data retention controls, and custom DPAs. Blake: Um, DPAs is data processing agreements. That's the paper a legal team asks for before anything touches customer data. Elena Reyes: Thanks. I'd have fumbled that one. So a company with a lawyer can at least get through the door. Blake: Now the catch, a lot of enterprise buyers ask about SOC two, type two. Elena Reyes: And the page says Mato is working toward it, not certified yet. Blake: Working toward. Huh, that phrase covers a lot of ground. Could be a month, could be a year. The page gives no date. Elena Reyes: So the honest read is the controls are listed, the certificate isn't there. Blake: Which is a fine place for a young company to be, as long as it says so, and it does on the page. Elena Reyes: Give it credit for that. Plenty of sites bury it. Blake: Still, if you're a buyer, the question is which side of that line your own checklist sits on. Elena Reyes: Right. If SOC two is a hard requirement, working towards it means you wait and ask. If it isn't, the listed controls may be enough to start a conversation. Blake: Agreed. Shall we look at what they've actually put out lately? Elena Reyes: Yep. One more look at what's been shipping lately, then we're out. Okay, I checked the dates on Mato's blog index. I wanted to know how fast stuff has actually been shipping. Blake: And? Blake wants numbers. Elena Reyes: You're Blake. But yes, numbers. Mato's blog index, as of October thirteenth, dates the Mato Voice post September sixteenth. Blake: Hmm. That's the one with the Gemini and ElevenLabs comparison. Elena Reyes: Right. Plus permissioned cloning and guided studio sessions. That's how Mato describes it, so treat it as a company claim, not a tested result. Blake: And the one before it? Elena Reyes: Mato MCP, September ninth. One week earlier, again, per Mato's own description. Blake: What's in that one? Elena Reyes: The summary mentions analytics access and rankings access and workspace permissions. Blake: Wait, rankings? Like chart rankings? Elena Reyes: The summary says rankings. It doesn't say which ones. I'm not gonna guess. Blake: Fair. I'd have guessed, and I'd have been wrong in some interesting way. Elena Reyes: Probably. Anyway, two posts seven days apart. That's a cadence, at least on paper. Blake: On paper. A post date tells me when somebody wrote about it. It doesn't tell me when it was usable. Elena Reyes: Totally. Here's the thing I'd push on, though. A dated list gives us order and spacing. It doesn't give us size. A one-line post and a big launch look identical on a calendar. Blake: Which is why I keep coming back to what we can't see. We have titles and short summaries, and a summary isn't the post. Elena Reyes: Okay, but let's use what we do have. If you're a customer deciding whether to build on a platform, does a busy calendar help you? Blake: A little. It tells you somebody is working. It doesn't tell you whether the thing you need is among what's shipped. Elena Reyes: Right. If you cared about analytics access, the MCP post is the one to open. If you cared about voices, it's the Mato Voice post. The dates just tell you where to start reading. Blake: And I'd read the post, not the summary. The summary mentions a comparison against Gemini and ElevenLabs. I'd want to see how that comparison was set up before I leaned on it. Elena Reyes: Fair. Honestly, would you rather have fewer posts with detail or more posts with a sentence each? Blake: Fewer with detail every time. Elena Reyes: See, I could go either way. A steady drip keeps me checking back. Blake: And the index can't settle that between us. You'd have to open each post. Dates for the order, posts for the substance. Elena Reyes: Fine. We leave that one open. There are four more on the list. The Mucker Lab press release is September second, and the site redesign is September first. Blake: Did the redesign break anything? Elena Reyes: The index doesn't say. It's just a date and a title. Blake: Then that's all I'll claim about it. Elena Reyes: The new embed player is August twenty-ninth, and the blueprint episode engine is August twenty-fourth. Blake: Wait, that's the oldest one on the list, and it's the one about how the episodes get built. Elena Reyes: Yeah. The thing making us is the oldest item on the list. Blake: I'll try not to take that personally. Elena Reyes: You're a host, Blake, not a post. Blake: Fine. The newest date we have is September sixteenth, so I can't tell you what's been posted since then. Elena Reyes: Good place to pause the dates. And since I'm the voice on this show, I should say up front that this next part is a sponsor read for the platform that makes me. Blake: Noted. Go ahead, Elena. Elena Reyes: Quick word from Mato, the platform this show was made on. If you've been thinking about launching a podcast for your company or brand, now's a pretty good time. Blake: For a limited time, when you sign up for Mato, we'll also include a custom cover design, white glove onboarding, your own custom jingle, and a spot on our promotional list, a package worth five thousand dollars. Elena Reyes: Head to heymato.com to get started. Blake: The jingle's the part I check first. Elena Reyes: Of course it is. Blake: Right. Let's tell people where to find us. Elena Reyes: Okay, so the practical part. Everything we touched today lives at heymato.com. The full change log is there, and so are the posts we kept poking at. Blake: And if you run a show on Mato, email hello@heymato.com. Say you want to come on. We'd rather hear the boring operational details from someone who actually does the work. Elena Reyes: Like what? Blake: How long a guest takes to book. What your team does with the transcript. Which clip anyone actually watched. Elena Reyes: Blake wants a spreadsheet, and honestly, so do I. Blake: Fair. A chart rank is nice. A number I can write down is better. Elena Reyes: There was no guest this week, and you could hear it. We spent a lot of time on what the sources don't say. Blake: Which is a decent argument for an open chair. A real person with real numbers fills in the blanks we kept pointing at. Elena Reyes: And it doesn't have to be a big show. Tell us what you run and what's annoying about it. Blake: Right. The annoying part is usually the useful part. The address again is hello@heymato.com. Elena Reyes: Totally. And subscribe wherever you're listening: Apple, Spotify, whatever app your thumb lands on. Blake: Subscribing just means the next one shows up on its own. No homework. Elena Reyes: That's the show. Thanks for listening. Blake: Thanks, everybody.