• Someone opens a private-company profile and scans the chart.
• Quick hits of the LONG button.
• The SHORT button.
• A trade confirmation flow.
• Hardware startup people testing prototypes in a warehouse.
• Builders in garages, spare bedrooms, small offices, coffee shops.
Production & Structural Notes
1. Cold open placement
Waymo beat currently sits AFTER the first "Are you in?" line, to preserve the original opening hook. Alternative structure: lead with the Waymo crash as a silent cold open, smash cut to the Founder in the Uber starting the monologue. Worth A/B testing both edits before locking — current placement keeps the monologue intact; alternative front-loads product visibility even harder.
2. Opening "something happens TO the founder" — alternatives bank
Waymo crash is the current placeholder for the opening beat. The "something happens to him → he shorts it" mechanic only fires ONCE in the video, at the opening — we don't want to repeat the gag and dilute it. Alternatives:
- Waymo crash (current placeholder) — AI-driven car clips the Uber door, crashes across the street. Shorts Waymo (or Zoox / Cruise / whichever private self-driving co fits the visual).
- Scooter pile trip — he trips over a tangled pile of dead Lime/Bird scooters on the sidewalk, recovers, shorts the scooter co.
- Delivery robot rolls over his foot or blocks the sidewalk as he walks.
- Cybertruck panel falls off a parked one as he walks past.
- Drone falls out of the sky and lands at his feet.
- Co-working door — struggling co-working space door swings open and clips him.
- Robot waiter drops a tray at an outdoor café he passes.
- E-bike battery sparks / dies as someone tries to start it next to him.
- DTC "Coming Soon" sign — faded and torn; he tears the last corner off as he walks.
- AI billboard glitch — overhead AI-generated ad shows six fingers / a typo.
- Self-checkout kiosk freezes / errors in the background as he passes.
Principle: the thing fails in his presence, he reacts by shorting it, we move on. Effect should feel funny and effortless — not bitter, not over-explained.
3. Long-side coverage
Script currently leans short-heavy. Long beats so far: model rocket / SpaceX, and the garage builders moment (which could explicitly include a LONG tap). Worth adding one more: a line wrapping around the block for a product launch → longs it. Confirm long/short ratio feels right in the edit.
4. Rolling headlines
Real chyrons from Bloomberg / TechCrunch / The Information / WSJ pulled during the "Anthropic voided every secondary trade" beat. Fake headlines will feel cheap. Confirm legal / IP usage before locking. May also be applicable behind the "you saw it coming last time" section for additional density.
5. Music
Emotional arc: resentment → indictment → inevitability → invitation. Likely needs more than one bed or one track with clear movements. Worth trying a drill / trap-adjacent bed with menace under the villain beats, dropping out for the product montage. A/B test against a more conventional cinematic build before locking.
6. Outstanding placeholders & TBDs
- "Cardboard-box apartment" — placeholder language; alternatives listed inline.
- "People with access already inside" — currently yacht-party pan; can revisit if it doesn't land.
- "Robinhood. Coinbase." visual treatment — left blank intentionally; billboards / bus-stop ads / branded merch on passersby are the earlier-floated options.
7. Dialogue compression from v1
Cuts made: the gold rush metaphor ("every gold rush ends the same…"), two redundant lines from the "who got rich" stretch, and tightening around the "you saw it coming" callback. Middle section is roughly 25–30% tighter, directly addressing the talking-head feedback.
8. Production lift vs v1
This revision adds: VFX (Waymo crash and any additional "happens to him" beats), more locations, more extras / passersby, headline composites, additional product UI capture, and tighter editorial work. Worth flagging to the producer that the shoot day plan changes meaningfully — particularly around stunt / VFX coordination for the Waymo beat and any vehicular / robotic gags.
Your existing teasers + the itstuyo inspiration you cited + recent launches in adjacent spaces. Top of the list = directly relevant to SOAR's exact thesis. Use as reference for the visual tone, structure, and amplification math.
The angle we'd recommend.
From your brief: SOAR is for the startup ecosystem — VCs, operators, founders, service providers in SF and NYC. The pitch is one of the cleanest lines in fintech right now: "long the companies you use every day, short the ones you think won't make it." That line should anchor the entire launch.
The audience you described already prices these companies in their heads. They don't need to be sold on the idea — they need permission to feel it as the obvious next move. The job of the launch isn't education, it's amplification.
The hook (lifted from your itstuyo inspiration)
Your inspiration video is a POV satire in a familiar setting — that's the right format. Not a corporate explainer. The hook is someone in SF or NYC doing something universal (coffee line, board meeting, group chat) and the rage-bait moment: "You use Anthropic every day. You can't own any of it. SOAR." Familiar setting, satirical bite, product reveal in 8 seconds.
Why this creator mix specifically
- VC tier (Garry Tan, Logan Bartlett, Packy McCormick, Harry Stebbings, Jason Calacanis) — they validate SOAR as a serious product to the founder + operator ecosystem. Garry Tan is the highest single-shot reach for the SF startup audience.
- Operators (Welsh, Isenberg, Wilkinson, Lavingia, Corcos) — they ARE your audience. When they post about SOAR, it's not influencer marketing, it's peer endorsement.
- SF/NYC native (Nikita Bier, Aaron Levie, Naval, Lulu Meservey, Mike Solana) — local cultural credibility. SF tech reads "Aaron Levie posted about it" as something to take a look at.
- Meme / satire (Litquidity, itstuyo, Daily Upside, BowtiedBull) — directly matched to the POV/ragebait inspiration. Litquidity in particular is the highest-leverage single meme placement for finance virality. itstuyo himself is option zero — get him.
- Markets-native (Cobie, Jordi Alexander, Hsaka) — they natively understand prediction markets and synthetic exposure. Crypto-trader crossover is real for SOAR.
- Agent-native (Theo Browne, swyx, Logan Kilpatrick) — make the "agent-callable" angle land with builders so the developer ecosystem reads SOAR as future-proof.
Sequencing for the waitlist push
- Wave 0 (T-3 days) — itstuyo collaboration drops. POV satire video lives or dies here. Set the tone for what the launch feels like.
- Wave 1 (launch day, SF morning) — Garry Tan, Aaron Levie, Nikita Bier, Greg Isenberg post. SF tech wakes up to SOAR in five feeds simultaneously.
- Wave 2 (launch day, NYC morning) — Litquidity meme drops. NYC finance Twitter explodes.
- Wave 3 (day 2–4) — Packy McCormick / Mario Gabriele long-form pieces. Canonize the narrative.
- Wave 4 (week 2) — Harry Stebbings (20VC) and Jason Calacanis (All-In) founder interviews. Deep credibility for the long tail.
- Wave 5 (week 3+) — Theo Browne / swyx / Logan Kilpatrick on the agent-native angle for developers.
The video Flowjam would make
Founder-led, SF, iconic landmarks. Per your brief: ~60 seconds. POV satire in familiar settings, not a corporate explainer. Cold open with a scene the SF/NYC audience instantly recognizes — VC pitch meeting, post-board-meeting bar, group chat blowing up about an OpenAI rumor. The product reveal happens organically inside the scene. End frame: the SOAR username reservation, plus the line "long what you use, short what you don't."
Cut from the same shoot: a square edit for LinkedIn (lands with Welsh's audience), a vertical for TikTok/Reels (Litquidity audience reposts), and a 15-second clean reveal for the X launch tweet itself.
Your feedback, applied verbatim
Everything below is pulled directly from Ramsey, Tom, and Alex's notes. Every point is reflected in the v3 script and creator selection — none are still open.
- Ramsey — "We dont want to villainise the VCs / insiders, we want to raise people up, open their mind to the idea of 'why havent we had this before'." → middle of script rewritten away from indictment toward inevitability and invitation.
- Ramsey — "Ideally we have some point where we show the app/person using the app." → SOAR UI overlay introduced in scene 2 (SpaceX LONG tap), full product POV montage in the back third.
- Tom — "Gold rush metaphor isn't really sharp + I think the second portion we can do better." → metaphor removed entirely. Direct cause-and-effect framing in its place.
- Tom — "Permanent underclass framing" + the Deedy Das post. → woven in via the "you saw it coming last time. did you do anything about it?" beat without targeting people without income.
- Alex / Captain Cheese — "Building story around the person as opposed to here's our product." → entire script is founder-POV. Product appears as the natural response to lived moments, not as a corporate showcase.
- Ramsey — "I like th vibe of 'are you in'" → preserved as the opening AND closing line, callback structure.
Client brief, verbatim
From the Airtable form + the kickoff call transcript:
Pain point — "Most value is made before a company goes public. Companies are staying private longer and very few are able to make economic upside in their growth. The asset class of this generation is locked behind closed doors, and those who work day in and out with these companies seldom get to reap the rewards."
Solution — "SOAR allows anyone to trade startups, using prediction markets under the hood and a UX that feels like trading on Robinhood. Long the companies you use every day, short the ones you think won't make it."
Ideal result — Signups for public waitlist and multi-million views.
Inspiration cited on call — itstuyo POV video (satire, ragebait, familiar settings). And the Deedy Das permanent underclass post (Tom).
Inspiration also cited — The 2U bank/BNPL crypto launch ("masked it well, person-led storytelling"). Founders speaking, product as facilitator, emotional arc through the human not the chart.
Filming — SF preferred, iconic landmarks. Oliver leading on the ground. Alex welcome on set without interfering.