All-In Creators Showcase

The Besties open-sourced it to the fans, and these listeners answered the call. Meet the talented creators shaping All-In’s look, sound, and global community.

The Grammy Award-winning producer who turned the phrase “Wet Your Beak” into a hit theme song.

Yung Spielburg

The content duo responsible for making the Besties a TikTok phenom.

All-In Tok

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The animator who transformed the pod’s title sequence into the ultimate Besties poker game and is now the creative director of the All-In Summit—two years running.

Zach Smith

The community builders bringing All-In fans together in person around the world.

All-In Meetups

CREATORS WHO WENT ALL IN

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CREATORS WHO WENT ALL IN —

Yung

Spielburg

NAME Yung Spielburg LOCATION Los Angeles
CREATOR OF “Wet Your Beak”

“People ask if I intentionally composed the song to sound great at 1.5x.” Answer? “It was total luck.”

When Episode 16 of the All-In Podcast opened with the besties bobbing their heads to a new title song, ”Wet Your Beak,” Yung Spielburg, the Grammy Award–winning producer and songwriter who created it, had no idea how his life was about to change. “It’s the biggest hit of my career,” he says, “in the sense that millions of people listen to it every week.” In the two and a half years since the song first aired, All-In’s popularity has skyrocketed, and Yung Spielburg rarely goes anywhere these days without meeting someone who knows the pod and “Wet Your Beak.” What’s the number one question he gets from pod fans? “People ask if I intentionally composed the song to sound great at 1.5x.” Answer? “It was total luck.”

Yung Spielburg has been writing and producing music professionally since college, first in his native city of New York and now in L.A., which is where he was when the pandemic hit and he got a call from his brother, who works in finance in NYC, suggesting they both listen to a new podcast he’d discovered. All-In struck a perfect balance between accessible and technical that engaged them both, and the besties were hysterical. The brothers developed a pandemic ritual of recapping each week’s episode over the phone as they walked around their respective cities.

At the end of Episode 14, the besties started chanting “wet your beak!” and realized it would be a great tagline for merch. But they weren’t interested in monetizing the pod, so they open-sourced it to the fans. All-In merch shops popped up overnight, and Yung Spielburg got another call from his brother: “No one else is going to make a song...” The timing was good—Yung Spielburg had just masked up to fly to New York, and per pre-vaccine travel guidelines, was quarantining in a hotel. He had some time to kill.

He made the line “wet your beak” a core element of the song but decided the line “going all in” should be the main vocal. One problem: “I became a producer because I can’t sing,” he jokes. But no one else was around to cut the vocal track, so he layered his own voice until it sounded right. “The vocal is a million of me stacked.” The rest of the song came together quickly. He DMd Jason when it was done and soon had a reply: “This is awesome!” “Wet Your Beak” debuted on the next week’s show.

Yung Spielburg gives all the credit for the song’s success to the pod’s community and the besties: “The song was so well received by the fans, and the guys have been incredibly supportive—they said my name every week for like twenty episodes.” The song’s momentum spurred Yung Spielburg to keep making music for the show, including individual themes for each of the besties. Over the last two years he’s recorded an album’s worth of songs, all of which were dropped on the pod—and also sound amazing at 1.5x. “I call it ‘sweaty music,’” he says. “I love to dance, so almost all the songs are disco-infused bangers.”

“It’s been invaluable,” Yung Spielburg says of how All-In has opened up career opportunities that allow him to more directly explore and shape the intersection of music and tech. He now collaborates with Water & Music, a tech and music research organization, and writes their newsletter, Bit Rate, focused on the intersection of music and AI—a topic he’s well-qualified to cover after partnering with Grimes’ team to produce “Eggroll,” a song made using her AI voice model. He’s also developing production software using timber transfer tech (and looking for a technical cofounder to bring it to market...). Of course, he has no plans to quit his day job as an award-winning producer for established and up-and-coming artists— check out his work with MIYAVI, Michelle Treacy, and Dolly Ave.

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Spencer Tichenor

**Chris Madden +**

NAMES
Chris Madden + Spencer Tichenor

LOCATION
Minnesota, South Korea and Colombia

CREATORS OF
All-In Tok

STATS

440k

TikTok Followers

20.5k

Twitter Followers

"You can bemoan shortening attention spans, or you can use that trend to teach people."

Chris Madden and Spencer Tichenor have been playing off each other’s strengths since they first met as five-year-olds growing up in Minnesota. Chris is a natural community builder: “He was ‘Mr. Halo’ in high school,” Spencer says, recalling how Chris used to organize group sessions of the first-person shooter game at his house—with up to sixteen kids playing on four Xboxes and TVs.

And Spencer, “is the one in our group of besties who’s always on the leading edge of tech,” says Chris.

Spencer was an early, enthusiastic adopter of the All-In Podcast and tried to convince friends to listen or watch, but an hour-plus pod covering tech and finance (and more) can be a hard sell with today’s short attention spans. His rave reviews finally intrigued Chris, who started watching at Episode 20—and instantly became a fan. He found the banter between the besties and their willingness to ruffle a few feathers refreshing, especially after the politically charged summer of 2020. Like Spencer, he wanted to get more people to engage with the pod.

Chris had traveled the world as an English teacher before the pandemic landed him back in Minnesota, so finding innovative ways to deliver information is a core skill of his. He recognized that TikTok videos could be an ideal medium for introducing a larger community to the pod—each show’s highlights could be packaged into easily digested and shared clips. Spurred by JCal’s credo of taking action, Chris created All-In Tok and started posting in September 2021. His very first video got 10K views, and things popped off from there.

“We didn’t even know how to edit videos,” says Spencer, whom Chris immediately brought on board to help. With Spencer’s tech background and a shared willingness to figure things out on the fly, the two learned to craft dynamic clips that quickly gained traction. The account climbed to 30K followers in just the first month.

It was a new idea—at the time, podcasters weren’t using video shorts to build community on social platforms. The guys were on to something, and the besties noticed, shouting out All-In Tok on the pod. Soon Chris and Spencer were in touch with Jason and running a TikTok account for his other podcast, This Week in Startups—it earned 70K followers in just a few months.

By the end of 2021, All-In Tok had soared to 150K followers. Chris and Spencer realized they had a strong business model on their hands—they’d figured out a formula for bringing impactful show moments to life for online audiences. “It’s a podcast discovery engine,” as Spencer puts it. “The conversion rate is insane.” When they heard that venture capitalist Harry Stebbings wanted editorial help to launch the video form of his podcast, 20VC, the guys pitched their short-form approach. They now lead a team and oversee a content program that’s grown 20VC’s TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube accounts from 0 to 250K followers.

Chris is excited to be part of the changing media landscape and sees what he and Spencer are doing as an extension of his time as a teacher: “You can bemoan the trend toward shortening attention spans, or you can use that trend to bring attention to the things you care about and teach people.” He likes the immediate impact short videos make. “People are watching, commenting, starting debates, thinking about things in a different way, and sharing clips with their friends.”

Chris and Spencer are always learning too, interacting with and sharing ideas from some of today’s most intriguing, forward-looking thinkers. Between running All-In Tok and the 20VC accounts, they hope their company—Good Future—is living up to its name, enriching people’s lives and making the world a little bit better place to be.

MORE FROM SPENCER TICHENOR

MORE FROM CHRIS MADDEN

NAME Zach Smith LOCATION Dallas, TX
CREATOR OF All-In Title Sequence

Zach

Smith

“I was freaking out in my office,” Zach says. His plan to go viral had worked.

Asked to describe his creative trademark, Zach Smith doesn’t skip a beat: “Win at all costs,” he laughs, displaying the kinetic energy he brings to his projects. Put another way, Zach goes all in. But his idea of “winning” is the opposite of zero sum—for Zach, a freelance film editor, creative director, and animator, success means reaching and delighting as many people as possible.

That was his express goal when he created the now-iconic All-In Podcast title sequence in 2021. Zach had discovered the pod a few months prior, after catching Chamath on a pandemic-era TV news appearance. At the time, Zach was working as a content strategist in advertising, an industry where many more people claim to know how to do impactful online brand work than have actually done it. Zach’s been going viral online since high school (one early project, made with a friend, has 22M views on YouTube at last count) — but he was new to the industry and needed a way to prove himself.

When Yung Spielburg dropped a new title song for the pod, “Wet Your Beak,” Zach was inspired. The show’s existing title sequence was a generic Envato Elements template— the new song deserved something more custom. Zach set aside a long weekend and got to work, pasting Chamath’s face onto a poker chip and building from there, tossing in every Easter egg he could think of to grab the attention of the besties and their fans.

When Zach posted the new title sequence on Twitter, he tagged as many people associated with the pod as possible to guarantee it would get noticed.

Within minutes, Friedberg responded. Sacks was next, with a like and a comment.

Then Jason posted a quote tweet and dubbed Zach a bestie. “I was freaking out in my office,” Zach says. His plan to go viral had worked. And soon he had a DM from the pod’s official Twitter account, asking to use the sequence for the pod.

A direct line can be drawn from Zach’s school days studying post-production animation, working with the art collective Meow Wolf, and just “making fun things for the internet” with a like-minded group of hypercreative friends to the 360-degree approach Zach brings to his creative work today. Zach not only designs eye-catching content but understands how to ensure visibility.

That approach and the success of the All-In Podcast title sequence have earned Zach a thriving solo career. To name only a few of his many projects, he’s created title sequences for other podcasts, including Justin Kan’s The Quest Pod, partnered with Yung Spielburg and Alexic Ohanian on a music video, and was recently hired by AT&T to creative direct their first organic social ads designed appeal to Gen Z.

And Zach remains an All-In Bestie, working as a freelance Creative Director overseeing design for the All-In Summits—every banner, poster, and badge you see has Zach’s distinct mark on it. It’s a reciprocal relationship that pays off in all directions—Zach is always finding creative new ways to connect the All-In community, both online and off, and the community continues to bring boundary- pushing projects his way. Win win.

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All-In

Meetups

NAME Raechel Lambert + Ana Rivera

LOCATION Portsmouth, USA + San José, Costa Rica

CREATORS OF All-In Meetups

"A signup form for an Episode 100 listening party went viral. Weeks later fans gathered in 24 cities around the world."

How did Rae Lambert and Ana Rivera Schmidt go from hosting an intimate brunch at the first All-In Summit in Miami to organizing recurring meetups for 7,000 All-In pod fans in 40+ cities around the world—in less than a year? “By accident,” Rae says. The viral popularity of All-In Meetups, which the two started late last year, initially caught them both off guard, but they were quick to harness the momentum and launch a global community. “I could not have survived this year without Ana,” Rae says about the effort it took to pull it off. But it was 100% worth it. “Seeing this community come together around the world is so rewarding,” says Ana.

In early 2022, Rae saw a tweet from JCal encouraging more women to attend the first All-In Summit in Miami. She got herself a ticket and, knowing the summit would draw some dynamic, go-getter women, decided to host a women’s brunch while she was there. She asked Ana, her executive assistant and an event-planning pro, to help scout a restaurant and curate a small invite list. When a friend suggested Rae invite JCal to the brunch, she was convinced he would be too busy but sent him a Twitter DM just in case. The morning of the brunch, she pinged JCal a reminder. “Do they have waffles?” he replied. Soon after, he walked into the restaurant, and tables burst into applause—turns out other summit attendees were having brunch there too. He joined the women’s brunch group and stayed all morning, even picking up the tab.

The summit was the best conference Rae had ever attended, and she stayed in touch with a lot of the contacts she made there. A few months later, as the All-In pod approached Episode 100, Melissa Verrilli, a brunch attendee based in the Bay Area, shared the idea to host a listening party and invited Rae out west to join. Rae loved the idea and suggested they make it a bicoastal event. She’d just relocated to Miami and was having a hard time finding quality tech meetups: “It felt like every event I went to, someone was trying to sell me a boat... or bitcoin.” Maybe if she hosted a Miami All-In meetup, she’d find her people.

With Episode 100 just three weeks away, Rae and Ana threw together an Airtable to collect event signups. They added Austin as a third location, hoping folks there might want to host too. And, on a whim, they included an additional location write-in option—just in case someone from another city volunteered to host. Then Rae sent out a tweet...

Boston, New York, London, Cincinnati, Zurich, L.A.... Almost immediately they had write-ins for seven more cities. When JCal got wind and tweeted about the events, things went viral—Ana had to monitor the Airtable by the hour as the city and attendee numbers exploded. On the fly, Rae and Ana managed to assemble an ad hoc toolkit—a “How to Host” guide, Slack workspace, flyers in Figma, and Zoom for the Besties to call into the events. Facilitating the meetups, supporting the hosts, and herding attendees proved harder than expected as they sprinted to the meetup date. When Episode 100 aired just weeks later, it was celebrated at 24 near-simultaneous All-In Meetups around the world. Rae and Ana were in a state of happy, exhausted shock.

They give credit for the success of the events to the rockstar hosts that stepped up to make it happen. They recognized early on that the best hosts had no agenda other than to bring like–minded fans together and create a good vibe for open conversations. Rae and Ana also made sure not to give preference to larger cities—many of the smaller-city hosts were the most eager to put in the work to create stellar events that connected All-In fans in their area.

Episode 100 only fueled demand for meetups—more hosts signed on, some cities started meeting monthly, and everyone wanted to celebrate globally again for Episode 125. Rae and Ana were game to keep managing things, but they needed a much better toolset. Genesis Dayrit, a data engineer consultant, volunteered to build Airtable automations and hook into the Luma API. Things were a lot smoother, but even with the new-and-improved tech stack, there was still so much manual work to do.

When Rae told JCal about how the existing tools weren’t cutting it, he offered her $100K to build a platform as part of his LAUNCH Accelerator. With All-In Meetups showing no sign of slowing and other podcasts such as This Week in Startups and My First Million realizing the potential of in-person community meetups, Rae saw the market opportunity and said yes. After just six weeks of building, River launched to beta in August, in time to power dozens of “unofficial” All-In Summit 2023 events in and around L.A.—including the second-annual Women’s Brunch, which, a year later, has grown from 9 to 75 attendees—this time sponsored by Friedberg.

Next, River will be opening up the platform to other podcasts. “Deep connections are scarce, lots of people have relocated, and there’s a lot to talk about in the world,” says Rae. “The huge success of All-In Meetups is because of how niche it is—the whole world is online, but we’re lacking that in-person connection, and most tech meetups are too generic. Meeting 20 strangers in your city and feeling immediately connected to them is powerful.” That’s what All-In Meetups tapped into, and what River plans to scale.

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