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About this Episode
Ben and Alexis join the show to talk about their new sketch comedy series, the creative chaos behind it, and what it actually takes to ship something big online. From quitting tech jobs to filming 12-hour shoot days, unreleased music videos, and creative mental breakdowns, this episode is a behind-the-scenes look at building something ambitious with friends.
It’s comedy, tech, risk, and a whole lot of “just make the thing.”
Hosts & Guests
Transcript
Instead of me introducing you, because everyone just says,
Prasam.
And then this encompasses an entire group of people.
But there are individuals of the Prasam team.
So why don't you two introduce yourselves
and then explain maybe more.
And I don't even know if Alexis would say she's
going to be just Prasam.
No, Ben has to do a full intro.
Tell us what the full end up in everything, Ben.
Hello, hello, hello, stand up team.
So excited to be here.
Really great work, everybody.
You know, just really excited about the work
we've been doing here over at Prasam
and over at the stand up and the terminal crew.
So this is a really great chase for us to sync up.
Kind of, you know, just get aligned on some things
because I know we both have working hard.
So got to make sure you check in every once in a while too.
You know, thank you, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anyway, sorry.
I am Ben.
I am one part of the YouTube comedy collective known as Prasam.
You might know me from such videos as the microservices video.
The spreadsheet by macro.
I've delivered value, but I want cost, the small data guy,
and so many more hits.
Really quick, when Ben gets recognized on the street,
we can see the guy coming a mile away.
Yeah, all right.
We owe every time.
If you see me out there, he's come up.
He's made it a B line.
He's wearing a backpack.
It's a backpack that really gives it away.
This really is, yeah, it's the way it's the walk.
It's the strides of, I got to get the guy from microservices.
There's like a girlfriend 500 feet away, like, what are you doing?
Yes.
Impressive, Ben, your audience has girlfriends?
I feel like my girlfriends and they do not recognize me or care,
but my girlfriend always do.
And with me today, we have my very close friend,
very also comedian, creator, and her own right,
the very funny, very talented Alexis Gay.
Thank you for having me.
Our, who is sort of an honorary crusam member,
I think at this point, we are working
on a very fun, exciting project.
We'll be talking a little bit here, but I don't know.
Yeah, do your own intro, too.
Great job, Ben.
I was like a product manager.
Let's go.
Good.
You took control of this guy, so.
That was nice.
I like the way that you were like, hey, you do it.
I don't want to list your act.
Also, you know, I don't know.
I don't want to list your act.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm just going to have like, yeah, who
announces that they don't know?
Yeah, let me start.
Let me start list.
What did you say, listing my accolades?
I'm probably not going to be listing any accolades.
Not because, I mean, there's too many.
Obviously, is why.
Thank you.
That's why.
Yeah, I'm a comedian.
Something Ben and I have in common is we both
used to work in the tech industry, worked in tech
for seven years before I started doing comedy full-time,
which was about five years ago.
I make sketch comedy videos on the internet.
I do stand up.
I just recorded my first special in December.
That'll be on the internet this year.
Oh, cool.
And we've been collaborating on a giant,
Krasam project for over six months now.
And nobody has seen even a lick of it yet, which
is one of the reasons that we want it to chat with you guys
today.
Yeah.
Get the news out.
That's exciting.
Yeah.
We also have a video with Krasam that's
been in the works for two years now or something like that.
And no one's seen a lick of it either.
No, that's not true.
You guys know that Krasam experience.
That's the Krasam experience.
Exactly.
I want to say we've seen three different versions
of the same footage.
Only three.
Well, it's because it's only six months apart.
He only shows us when we're in person.
And we hold him down and say, show us the footage.
And then he shows us a little bit.
And it's been three completely different videos, which
is cool.
It's the same footage, three different videos.
Welcome to the Krasam creative experience.
I have to tell you though that, but that doesn't
that feel like Krasam of the past.
And now we are in Krasam of the future.
Oh, there's a lot of things that are changing around here.
Because one of the biggest differences
between Krasam before this project and Krasam
mid and hopefully after this project,
the sheer amount of stuff we have produced in the last six
months is beyond anything that me or Krasam, I think,
has ever done.
There's like sheer minutes of content teaser that's coming out
beyond anything we've all created.
Hey, is that HTTP get that out of here?
That's not how we order coffee.
We order coffee by a SSH terminal dot shop.
Yeah, you want a real experience?
You want real coffee?
You want awesome subscriptions.
So you never have to remember again.
Oh, you want exclusive blends with exclusive coffee
and exclusive content.
Then check out Cron.
You don't know what SSH is.
Well, maybe the coffee is not for you.
Time in a coffee and then live in the tree.
Then it's, and that is very true.
It is exactly true.
I don't even talk more, but I don't want
to give away the lead here.
Are we going to do the thing where 45 minutes of the podcast,
we say we have a big announcement and say, hey, guys,
go check out the, go check out the Patreon if you want
to hear what they're saying.
Perfect.
People love that.
That's the point.
You got to get these people hooked.
How did our intro go?
Do you feel like we introduced ourselves properly?
Well, I've seen better.
Yeah, I honestly, not our best.
Yeah, I was like, I don't even know.
Well, it's just like not a very good,
not a strong showing for a product.
Hang on, sorry.
There's just somebody in the chat that said, hmm,
these guys are posting a video every three months.
What is she talking about, LOL?
I would like you to go to the YouTube
and take a look at the output, OK, friend.
Yeah, you got to remember that they used to go a year
between a video.
Yes, exactly.
Coming in the chat.
And you guys don't know how many videos they have
on the hard drive waiting.
Where's the lot actually?
I recruited my father to record a video.
Yes.
And I have a sketch comedy thing where I went over to my
parents house and mode the lawn for Ben.
I specifically told my dad, Dad, you can't mode the
lawn this week.
I have to come over and mode the lawn for you.
And then I need you to act like I want a tournament.
And then we recorded several amazing jokes.
And I don't know if they're ever going to see the light
of day.
TJ's dad's lawn is also humongous.
Like, that's a big lawn.
That's a big one.
That's a big one.
You also from New York, isn't anything like,
isn't any lawn a huge lawn?
Yeah, OK, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a little smaller than Prime's ranch.
Yes, true.
You couldn't raise cattle on it.
But it is a sizable lawn.
It took me the evening to get the video.
And, guys, so I've got two separate videos.
I can't, all I want to say the first one,
sitting on Krasam hard drives, waiting.
Yes.
We have TJ and Prime both, like, their faces on a hard drive
in labeled Krasam.
Wow.
But that's not an uncommon.
Like, yes, we, some of these sketches that we have released
in, like, the year 2025 we recorded,
like, small data, which came out last year,
we recorded in 2020, five years.
Oh, why?
So just to give some context.
But to Alexis's point, we're changing things up, aren't we?
OK, we're putting out videos.
They're getting a little crazy around here.
All I want is people to know Diamond Style.
OK, I'm not going to hide it out.
I just want Diamond Style to be real.
There's good stuff in these archives, man.
The people aren't ready yet.
Through the peer cringe that's available,
we'll be harvested in the future.
Yeah.
Oh, great rough.
Yes, thank you.
Oh, yeah.
Let's go, yeah.
I didn't even recognize it.
I was like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a new phrase I've never
heard before.
Yeah, it took me a sec, because I was like, well, I get it.
Like, why?
But not much.
Yeah.
I don't think we've got a whole lot of work.
All right.
And who?
OK, so how much are you going to tell us about any of the things
you're doing?
I want to, we can go all in, all right?
I think it's going to be a tell.
Do the announcement.
The official announcement is here we've been talking about.
So coming out March 10th, it's the first ever episodic
Krizam Sketch Show.
Krizam presents Paradise.
It is a four episode limited series debuting
on the Krizam YouTube channel.
Coming out in a little under three weeks.
It is a four episode long sketch show.
You know, if you've ever seen Key and Peel, Port
Landia, Timon Eric, Awesome Show, anything like that,
where you will see multiple sketches together
in an episodic format edited together.
We've curated, we've filmed almost about an hour of comedy.
Me show the other part of the Krizam duo in Alexis.
The three of us have, this is a three person collaborative
project, debuting on the Krizam channel.
It is really the biggest and largest piece of Krizam content
that we have ever, ever made.
And in a lot of ways, it is a huge leap forward
for what we do on YouTube.
And we are super, super excited about it.
And it's going to be creative new stuff, some of the stuff
you love, some of the stuff you might like, we'll find out.
That is the best part.
So one said from chat, four episodes, one per year.
Is that about what you're shooting for or what is one per week?
One per week.
One per week starting March 10th.
Whoa.
Every, what is that, a Tuesday?
Every Tuesday.
That is a Tuesday.
Every time of the day, I'm going to be clicking refresh.
I want my first comment, Ben.
I would say that we have not decided.
OK.
Is that right?
What?
What time?
What time?
We don't know yet.
Well, only tell me, Ben.
I want the first comment.
I want to be part of internet history.
Oh my god.
Well, put you on the, you know, we'll like do like
a little private link and then you can comment and then it comes out.
Send it to me unlisted so I can write first.
And it comes out before the video.
Yes.
Yes.
Legendary.
Yeah, we're stoked.
It is super, super exciting.
Yeah, it's been, yeah, we've been working on this thing for,
we started really in like July of last year.
Yeah, I was trying to think, it was July, right?
That's about when we started kind of like planning this out
and like writing these sketches and then slowly slowly
even building up like just, I don't know, the infrastructure.
And have the idea well before that though, if I remember correctly.
Right, you had this idea like two years ago.
It's always been something we were like kicking around as like a
potential really cool thing to do because we, you know,
we like having these sort of narrative longer.
I mean, yeah, like rib data hunter, a eight minute long epic short story
as a sketch.
But we also knew like, you know, we wanted to do things that are maybe like
looser like, oh, what if it's like 60 seconds?
What if it's 30 seconds, you know,
what if we could have a bunch of different ideas altogether and make
something that's like a longer and, you know, bigger package than
just one, you know, if you're going to wait six months for a
exam drop, like what if it was an amazing drop that had so much in it
that it keeps you tied it over until the next drop.
And so we were like, it was always something that we were like
really excited by and then just slowly we were like, what if we
just like, like the, it made a lot of sense for a lot of reasons
why to do it now.
And like, here we are and we're about to, we're about to drop this
thing.
It's crazy.
Ben and I had what I would consider like matching mental
breakdowns in May, like we had a dinner where I was like, do
you want to have dinner?
I'm having a mental breakdown.
He was like, that's crazy.
I'm always having mental breakdown.
And so we had dinner and one of the things that we recognized at
the dinner was like, if there was a project where we could spend a
ton of time collaborating, almost irrespective of the project
itself, we would both opt into that.
And that was, it was literally like one of the last things we
talked about that night at the Greek place.
And then Ben was just like, well, you know, I did have this one idea.
We've always talked about doing like a Krizam sketch show.
And I was literally like hands on the table.
I was like, Ben, if you do that, I want to be, I want to be a third
of it.
Like I want to come in and I want to co-create this with you and
Shiva.
And then many conversations happen.
And then yeah, I do think we broke ground in two, two months
later.
We had to do a lot of side-barring.
Ben had to talk to Shiva.
I had to talk to Shiva.
Shiva had to talk to Ben.
Do you know what I mean?
Right.
A lot of circling back, a lot of double clicking back, a lot of
a lot of one-on-ones.
Any parking lots or no?
Several parking lots.
Okay.
If you wouldn't believe, yeah, you wouldn't believe.
Oh, you wouldn't believe.
Ben, quick question for you on that last May.
That's almost immediately after you hung out with us and
react Miami.
Were we the cause of a mental breakdown for you?
But you were, you guys like unironically talking to you guys.
I was like, I want to do much more of what you guys do.
And I want to, you guys were huge.
No, I'm absolutely from the heart.
You guys were huge inspirations.
Truly, I remember him telling me about it.
Yeah, I was like, we just came home and said, I want nothing to do
with these guys.
Let's just actually start making real content.
He was like, there's got to be a better way.
I mean, if these guys are successful,
anybody can do it.
Well, I'm glad you didn't even have a mental breakdown.
I was still employed as a software engineer back there.
That's right.
You guys were like, what is going to take for you to quit?
And I was like, I didn't say about that.
Did you ask that because honestly, before I left my job,
my best friend asked me that.
And that was the first time it had occurred to me
to really take that idea seriously.
Sometimes I think it takes somebody you respect
asking you that question to put the scroll on the table.
And then it kind of unfolds as you move through your life.
I do remember saying that to you and react to my image.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
I'm so appreciative.
Yeah.
Speaking of unreleased videos, don't worry.
The music video is going to come out then.
OK, he's going to work.
Yeah, we have mutually assured to start, yeah.
But you have a lot of problems with me.
Oh, that's got a whole verse.
And it's good.
Oh my god, I remember hearing about this.
I bet it's coming out.
It's going to come out within probably the next month.
Lead up to this, react.
My image is a trailer.
I'm going to private length to that one.
I want to be first.
I'll send it to you right after.
OK.
For those that don't know, there's a lot of inside baseball
going on in here.
TJ had this really great idea, which it's always, I mean,
it's an idea.
I'll give it to that.
And we should make a wrap video.
Classic TJ bringing in that Michigan energy
for a wrap video.
It's her.
We ran, yes, her.
Yes, we ran into the yacht.
And we made a music video.
And now it's going to be released.
And it will, it is, it's just going
to be ready for everybody to watch.
It's good, actually.
I have pitched Alexis and Shima so many music videos
and musicals.
Call me bro.
Call me.
You know, I'm going to go.
That's not true.
We're deep in our actual road, right?
But if not true, you have pitched one music video
as an idea over and over and over again.
You've had one idea for a song.
Me and Shiva both went, I don't know, dude.
I don't see it.
And you sprouted up eight times.
Yeah, because it's a, because it's me and TJ
are going to make it this fine.
OK, we're bad.
I'm so down.
I'm so down.
I'm so down.
I don't feel like you just got to just tell us
what the music video is.
No, no, no, no.
I want to, I'm going to, I'm going to blind
except that me and Banner are going to make this.
Deal.
That sounds great.
I don't even need to hear the idea.
I love it.
We're going to get in the stew.
We'll get a few things off of your chest, stew short
for studio.
Yeah, we'll hit the stew and we'll get some things off
of your chest, Banner.
We'll make it happen.
I actually, yes.
Don't walk it in.
Twitch, so TJ, you heard that.
You heard it here first.
Oh my gosh.
So TJ, right after we got done, like, writing the song
that we then wrapped on a boat, right afterwards.
TJ is like, so I guess we're going to do, like, a country
music single next.
Maybe we should, like, just immediately into, like,
we should just keep on making music.
This is great.
Yeah.
OK, prime, be honest.
When you were in the studio, you were so
down to make another song.
I was not, I, in fact, was not down to make another song.
I would, I do want to do a song.
I just don't want to do it.
What is with engineers in making songs?
Why are you guys all like, I don't know.
I got my Marimba right here.
My phone.
I'll, I'm going to sing us a little, didn't wait.
Ben, I thought you recorded a song.
I think there was a Krasam music situation at some point.
There is.
That's on the drive.
There is.
That's on the drive.
There's multiple actually.
One of them is the other, the aforementioned
prime and TJ unreleased sketches also
as a musical element to it.
It does have to be very hard with the musical element.
It started off with no musical element.
And then somehow six months later, he's just like,
we're going to turn it into a musical element.
That's not true.
Prime, he tricked us because we've recorded for like six hours
and at the end of six hours, he's like, hey, guys,
can you just do this one dancing sequence?
And I was like, I feel a little uncomfortable, Ben.
I didn't sign up for that.
Like, I don't know, but he said he pressured me into it.
So I did it.
It was pure pressure at the end of the day.
That's what I'm always, this is learning.
I can't wait to see it.
I'm rectoring in so many musical comedy ideas.
It's exact process.
True.
None of them have so far been released, but I am ready.
I am really ready.
None of them have been released.
That's true.
We're going to make it happen.
2026, not only the year of the Linux desktop,
but also the year of the music video.
It's going to be the first one where music videos were popular.
Musical tech comedy online.
Man, these are the go-to-four.
It's sicker than the last, baby.
Musical tech comedy online.
Let's go.
We're doing it.
Well, that sounds like something that would be said
at a corporate stand-up of what mandatory fun is going
to be at the corporate retreat.
Hey, guys, so just a couple of heads up.
You will all be required to participate
in our musical technical comedy online section next week
at the company you're trying to go.
In the early days of Netflix, you actually
had the performance musical to be a part of the team.
And so what would happen is that all new people, every 30,
every 90 days, would have to do a performance.
Oh my god.
And so as part of my joining Netflix,
I had to be a butler and do all this on screen.
Was it fun?
What?
I mean, I had a fun time, but people hated it so much
that by 2015, 2016, it was like being canceled
and people were like, people were getting,
I think it got like a little litigious towards the end.
People were like, I will not dance in front of my co-workers.
And then it just kind of got excited.
But during those early days, it was awesome.
Every quarter, there was a whole new, hey,
here's everybody that's joined the company,
and they're going to do a dance for us.
Our new company policy was doing the same thing, Brian.
You just, was it like a talent show?
You could do it ever or like, no, no, it was court.
They had choreographers, choreographers.
Oh, we had to do like a whole thing.
We had to practice it for many, many hours.
Are you serious?
See, I actually, I like that.
I'd be so into that, yeah.
But that's, yeah, as I could tell,
you guys also would make music videos.
I'm not joking here, people.
I was like, give me on that stage.
Hey, there you go.
That's crazy.
You, what, wait, so it was like a, was it like a,
it was like a scene from a musical?
Like, they were like, you're going to use it.
It kind of makes sense though,
because Netflix is an entertainment company,
and so you're participating in something entertainment.
It's like, when I worked at Twilio,
and you had to code an app using the Twilio API
in your first few months there.
Like, there were cohorts of new employees,
and you would make your little app.
And then that's how you got your red track jacket
and your Kindle.
And I thought it was going to be like,
you got to text somebody or something.
Yeah, just to send a text.
But this is like, you have to understand
what it's like to be a phone.
Like, it's like Netflix being like,
you've got to understand what it's like to be an entertainer.
And someone picks you up and hold you inside of their face.
I love that.
You have to, you have to like have someone scream it in your face
and then you repeat something out to them, yeah?
All right, so we've never done some sort of interview
when it comes to releasing some sort of online content
of some sort that's tech related.
And I think a lot of people in the old audience
have no idea what it takes to make this type of stuff.
So maybe kind of walk us through a little bit
of the thought process or how you kind of came
to this conclusion that you should do this.
Like, okay, so you hung out with TJ.
He gave you a mental breakdown.
Yeah, Alexis was having a mental breakdown at the same time.
And then you did sketch comedy.
So unrelated to me, I think, I'm pretty sure
I did not give Alexis a mental breakdown.
I just want to be on the record.
Okay, good.
Just seeing him begin or something.
I saw the video of Ben doing bench pressing
with the dumbbells and just instance.
And I was like, wow, that's it.
I gotta work it out.
I see it all.
There's nothing good left on the internet.
We got a team up and make something.
Okay, I think maybe the first step of the process
was to try to take something that could take on a lot of shapes,
a lot of forms.
You know, we had this idea sketch comedy show.
Okay.
And we knew it would be on the Krizam YouTube channel,
but how long is each episode gonna be?
And how many episodes are we talking about?
And what do we mean when we say sketches?
And so I honestly think the first part of the process
and it evolved as we continued,
was just trying to answer some questions to give it a shape.
And we were okay with the idea
that the shape would change as we went on.
But we had to give it a little bit of,
we had to make a container for us to fill.
Because otherwise it could have stayed too theoretical
and sometimes with creative work for me,
constraints and making things tangible
is so, so, so helpful to being able to just take the first bite.
So we started like, yeah, exactly.
Like we were like, okay, how long is an episode gonna be?
We kind of, you know, like 15 minutes around there felt good.
Okay, how many sketches per episode?
Some of them are gonna be bigger, some are gonna be shorter.
We started actually, we had like this session
where we went, three of us hung out in a ship as apartment
and we all, like just watched a bunch of like.
I forgot we did that.
We watched like Insight Amy Schumer.
We brought, it was like a homework assignment.
We were each supposed to bring a sketch or two
for everyone to watch that was either in some way
influential to us or we felt could be some of the energy
we wanna bring into the show.
And that was actually so cool because we all brought
totally, totally different stuff.
And if you think back now, Ben, on the stuff
that we brought, you can see little pieces of it
in the show, can't you?
Yeah, 100%, 100%.
What a ship bring, that's what I wanna know.
Yeah, so we brought this insane pilot
from this other YouTube channel called Content Wi-Fi
that we've been huge fans of for a long time.
And I think those guys are now like on
to professional careers in the entertainment business
but they also kind of did the same thing
where they would make sketches
and they made a little like YouTube show.
If you guys look up the haunted Wi-Fi,
just like a pilot or something,
I don't even know what their show was called
but it's actually one of the most unhinged
insane sketch shows I've ever seen.
I think Alexis was like,
this is falling.
This is falling.
No, I was only scarred but there was,
there was like gourd that I wasn't expecting.
So you grabbed me in the sketch comedy
but I think what we really took away
from watching that particular sketch was
you can really, and this is something I hold very dear
as a creative value but it's like,
you can just make stuff.
You can truly, you can make stuff.
As long as you have,
as long as your resources are in line with your vision
and I think that's what I mean
when I was saying we were trying to pick the right container,
you can truly just make things happen
and you are going to have to compromise
at some point on something.
So is that going to be quality?
Is it going to be scope?
Is it going to be scale?
But as long as you are realistic,
yeah, that sketch in particular,
I was like, oh yeah, you can make stuff.
Yeah, so that's actually the AI phrase of the day right now
which is you can just build things.
Oh, I know.
Oh, I know.
You can just sketch things.
This whole thing is like that.
I was trying not to say it truthfully
because I was just like, I can't.
Literally my brain just now is like,
am I about to say you can just build things?
And then I was like, I can't do that.
And then it's like, what about you can just ship things?
Don't say it.
Don't say it.
Don't say it.
So I went with you can just make things.
And I thought I was going to get away with it
and now in retrospect, I cannot believe it.
I thought that.
For Ben, in my experiences, you can just record things.
It's true.
You can just do it.
As in just exclusively.
No, we're shipping around here.
Things are different, all right?
It's the age of AI, okay?
I'm see.
Yeah.
These are not AI generated or created anyway.
But we're inspired by the spirit of it.
We get a role in a controversy
before the show comes out.
Ben, I did want to, I'll just pitch this idea anyways
to you as something that would be funny.
As I do want to make one, a sketch comedy one
where we don't get to control what the script is all.
We just have to pick.
We just say, write us a sketch comedy thing
and we have to do the best we can
with the script given to us.
Buy an AI?
I saw a stand-up comedy show where they did that.
They had Chatchy PT write sketches
and then they tried to deliver them
and they were like, oh, nice.
Very, very exactly what you would expect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very exactly what you would expect.
Yeah.
That's a star band.
Yeah, it's just star band for real life.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, it's like, star band, but like, you hire like, you know,
some famous actor to deliver that script or something like that.
But yeah, no, this whole show really is like a very like,
you can just ship things moment.
Like, we were like, how many, how should the episodes work?
And we're like, oh, we like this.
Okay, great, you know, we're doing a lot of
a fine the plane while we build it kind of stuff.
Like, we're figuring things out as we go
and hey, we filmed this and oh, this feels good over here.
We have a lot of fun kind of like little bits that are really kind of,
they would never be a standard upload as a standalone thing,
but they're just like a funny like thing that we're just,
you know, throwing in there, you know, stuff like, just a just like do it.
Like, hey, this is great.
Like, we'll just do it, you know, like that.
Is it kind of like robot chicken a little bit like shorter sketches?
Yes.
So each episode has basically one kind of like flagship sketch
that's the whole episode is built around.
We watch like Portland or something they'll do this.
Like, you'll show a little bit of the first part of one sketch
and then we'll do like a different sketch and we'll come back
to this like main one and do another part
and then do another thing and come back.
So each one has this main outer sketch
that is probably the closest thing to what like, you know,
normal crsam sketch would be, but even those are like different
and funny and interesting new ways.
And then in between those kind of beats,
we have shorter ones, some of them have two parts,
some of them just a one part of things.
We have little little interstitial kind of due dads in there.
A lot of style.
A lot of style going into this for real.
I'm super excited.
Ben, since you said something nice about me earlier,
we'll say something.
I'll say something nice back that's also true
that normally you wouldn't want to hear from me anyways.
But like, for me, I'm excited just because I love your videos.
We've talked about before.
You're my favorite tech YouTuber.
When you were making videos,
that was like, you're obligated to say,
I am as the CEO of the company.
That's not true by volume, probably, you're my favorite.
By volume, okay.
By hours and a half, okay.
Early on with a curve, you know, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, early on with a curve.
So, yeah, so I'm just excited.
Obviously, like, it's been very fun over the last.
I don't know, I guess like probably
what, like a year and a half or something,
we've started to do more stuff together.
Maybe longer than that, I guess I don't know.
I can't remember anything about dates.
But so I'm just hyped.
I'm hyped that we're going to get a lot more Kersam
and that you're going to publish videos
because I like watching them.
So I'm very excited.
Yes, that is absolutely the bottom line too is like,
this is about to be like more than like four years
of Kersam output in the end of a month.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I'm interested to know like from your side,
what were some of the things that were like a lot harder
than you expected for making like a sketch on what was easier.
Because it's like very different from a lot of the stuff
you've been doing so far.
That is such an insightful and great question.
And thank you.
I've clipped that chat.
He's joined a chat TPC.
No, he's just chatty at the end of the point.
You're absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
Your family is trying to kill you.
You know, honestly like something that I think we expected
to be a lot harder that actually turned out to be a lot easier
was actually like doing all like this volume of work.
I think we were expecting to be like, oh my god,
this is so much, this is like the same.
We're going to be so, you know, great.
But actually like when you are,
it's kind of like context switching.
Like when you just are in this mode of, you know,
doing this, you can really get into a groove.
And I think actually some of our best sketches
are the ones that we filmed to like the end.
Like after we got in the groove
and we figured a bunch of stuff out and like learned,
okay, this is what is going to work in stuff.
Like so, like some of these, some of the best sketches
I think were the ones that we filmed
like the end of the process.
Is it supposed to like, we're like freshest or something,
but we really, we were still like warming stuff.
Wow, what's the hardest?
That's interesting.
The harder parts of making the show.
Yeah, because it hasn't been, it has felt,
I guess like an endurance race, you know?
It has, we've had long days.
We just shot our final sketch two days ago
and it was a 12 hour shoot day.
So call time for me and for Ben
to most of our crew 930 and then leaving the building
at 930 PM.
So that's like, that's an endurance situation.
I think something that we were really lucky for going into it
was that we've collaborated together several times
and then also like we all come to the table
with pretty complimentary skill sets.
And because like as a three person collaboration,
you can imagine it can get a little, you know,
like there are different dynamics
when it's a triangle or a triforce in our case.
And I think we just got so lucky
that we all are like more comfortable
with such different parts of it.
We, it just let us like play to our strengths,
which I think was nice in this long endurance race.
You know, I say it like we're done.
Yeah, we're not done.
So maybe the hardest part is coming up.
I don't know what I'm actually, I wouldn't be surprised.
Yeah, come back in three weeks.
And let's see if we got through post production.
Yes.
We're just 90% of the way there and then, you know,
it's always that last 10, you know, yeah, it's gonna be something.
All right.
So Ben, you also, Alexis, you quit a while ago.
So maybe this won't be as relevant for you.
But Ben, you just quit doing full-time engineering
in the day and age where everything is completely unknown.
Oh, I know.
Permanent underclass is happening here in like two months.
Trust me, bro, it's happening.
Hey, I was gonna take all your jobs.
How is that?
How did that feel doing that kind of jump?
Because I think a lot of people in the audience
have started ideas.
They have things they also want to pursue,
but the idea of making a jump or doing something
that feels a bit risky precludes them
from ever taking any sort of chance.
So how'd you kind of come up with that decision?
What was the motivating factor?
It's super, I mean, the timing is like crazy of like,
any other time where you're like,
I'm gonna leave my like software engineering job
to go make videos online.
You're like, why would you leave this stable, easy,
great career that you can, you know, you have foundation
you've been doing for years?
Why not just, what are you doing leaving this sure thing
to go do this on nothing?
And actually now it's like, wow,
the calculus of that decision is a lot different
when, you know, you know, obviously
many, many people are getting laid off forward.
So it's harder like how many more years
are they gonna, am I gonna have before I get laid off?
So yeah, the calculus of that decision was a lot different
and it was not, you know, it's not like I saw
the writing on the wall and it's like,
I gotta get out before the agentic AI revolution happens.
But that said, I think, yeah, in a lot of ways
it was kind of freeing to make this leap
and then be like, you know, actually the things
that I thought that I was leaving this stable,
you know, sure thing.
Actually, they probably were not as state like,
there's a very good chance it would have been laid off
by this point anyway.
And there's a lot of like empowerment
and being like, well, now I'm just in control
of my own destiny, like I am doing this thing
that I'm all in on, you know?
I mean, I've always been all in on Krizam
but it's always been also like half and half.
Now I'm all in the same thing.
I'm controlling my destiny and like, it is a huge risk
but you know, the flip sides also a huge risk
of like not taking those risks and not growing
and, you know, learning, like taking on these things
that feel risky but you learning grow from eventually
you will, you know, also sort of, you know,
okay, okay, like, you know, you know.
So yeah, I think I'm with you.
Yeah, I am these a little bit stronger, Ben.
You're starting with that guy here.
40 seconds, yeah, 40 seconds ago.
It was, it was kind of like playing as you can.
I was like, I gotta believe it's not quite a ball here.
I got you.
Ben, you just say, Alexis, what do you think?
I mean, pass it, pass.
You guys are Alexis.
Rose, yeah, that's never been in front of a microphone
before camera, please.
Yeah, first time on camera.
So only Mike Ben wants to be in front of his
when he's on that hot mic, doing freestyle rap.
In the stew.
In the stew, yeah.
He's really, yeah, you know, I actually,
this was, it's interesting because I quit five years ago,
which was right at the end of 2020,
which was a risky time in some ways
for very different reasons, obviously, deep pandemic.
And when I quit my job, we hadn't even,
we didn't have vaccines or anything yet.
So everything felt incredibly uncertain,
very in a different way than it does now,
but there was still a lot of uncertainty.
And something that I think about,
I thought about a lot then and I continue to think about,
and I talk about when people ask this question of like,
risk and how do you know when to take it or how do you decide
and accepting that it's scary and unknown.
And I agree with everything that Ben said
that there is risk and not doing it.
But one of the ways that I mitigated that risk for myself
and for context, I was leaving a job I absolutely loved.
In my tech career, I worked in tech for seven years
and the last three years was at Patreon,
where I ran the creator partnerships team
and I built biz ops on go-to-market.
It was a dynamic job, I was a manager, I loved it,
I'm very lined with Patreon as a values.
Did you get to play on the band?
No, no.
Okay, let's check it.
Yes, no, I'm musical, musically,
hence why I'm not trying to get into these music videos.
I was like, yeah, same.
Okay, but so I wasn't like running away from a bad situation,
but I started to become really curious
about what it would feel like to spend all my time on comedy
because I had been doing it and really, really loving it.
And so I honestly approached it like it was a business decision
and what I did is I set myself up
with like a six month experiment.
I was like, okay, how much money would I have to take
out of my savings account to put in this other account,
to fund my life for six months?
Now, I was very fortunate because during the pandemic,
I moved him to my mom's house, so I wasn't paying rent.
That's like a huge privilege to be able to do that.
But by designing this as like an experiment,
it made it so much less like, okay, I gotta go all in
and then if this doesn't work out,
then like all this bad stuff is gonna happen.
I was just do this for six months,
focus fully on the creative.
And if the end of six months you're out of money,
really ask yourself, do you love this?
Are you loving this?
Because if the answer is no, it's too hard, go back.
And if the answer is yes, you're loving it,
but you're not making money,
then pivot to figuring out how to make money.
But I gave myself like a really manageable situation
to handle.
I was like, just six months.
I wanna know how this feels.
So I often share that framework because it also made it
for me financially not feel like I was going to ruin my life.
There was a very set amount of money I was willing
to invest in myself.
And I think that helped my fear,
or I think it helps you mitigate your risk
on the day to day because you're not just watching
and your account balance go down and down and down,
which for a lot of people would also make it very hard
to then come from a creative, excited place.
Yeah, I remember similarly like having a very,
like the same conversation with my wife
when we were talking about like, should I leave my software job
and then do YouTube and Twitch stuff full time.
And then that obviously morphed quite a bit over,
like joining up with Prime and we're doing like,
way different stuff than I was expecting.
We were gonna be doing like, you know,
we just did the social network parity last week
in San Francisco for like a crazy livestream.
And that was not like on my things I thought
we were gonna get into together after I quit to do
like YouTube videos and everything.
But yeah, similarly just setting aside some money
and saying like, okay, this isn't working
in this amount of time.
We just go back to the grind and try and get a new tech job.
Like it was nice, at least for me like for doing,
I was still doing programming stuff.
Like I still in programming.
So it was at least not even,
it wasn't even so far afield as like,
oh, I'm completely dropping the programming thing
and I'm just doing comedy.
That was like nice as a like risk mitigation for this.
I'm like, well, at least I'm still coding, you know?
Like I'm still coding and I can go back to that
if I need to.
It's so funny that like now like, like in 2024 something,
if I was like, I'm gonna leave.
But in six months I'll like, I'll come back and like,
hey, I can go, you know, it'll be fine.
But now I'm like, man, like, I don't know,
I'm harder now.
Wow, if I come in six months, like with the job,
what the people that I was working with are doing now
is probably so crazily different than what I was doing.
It's almost go, but also at the same time like,
I have, I have, I have open code on my computer.
I, like, I'm doing it too.
Is it running on exotic devices?
I'm running on all kinds of,
all kinds of devices.
I got a Raspberry Pi on it.
Oh, nice.
I had to use Ben's computer on set on Monday.
It was a real moment of shared trust.
We had to switch laptops for a scene and we,
and have them like on and usable.
And we were both, I was kind of like, alrighty,
I have an open, I don't know.
So good luck in there.
And I open Ben's computer and just, first of all,
the amount of open terminals, I was just like,
what are you making?
I'm like, literally nothing.
And there's several.
Not like, Ben's working on one project.
So many.
Okay, I'm like, minimize, minimize, minimize,
discord.
I'm like, minimize, then finally we're at Chrome.
And I'm like, alright, like, let's just,
I'll just quickly, and it is Twilight Imperium,
Twilight Imperium, Twilight Imperium,
Twilight Imperium, Reddit, Reddit, Reddit.
And I was just like, you know what?
It, this man is who he says he is.
This is who he is.
There's nothing else I can do.
It was beautiful.
I was like, man, you keep peeling back the onion
and there's just more onion.
And I love to see it.
Yes, I literally had like seven terminals open
because I was like, I was like, oh, this one's going to be,
you know, I was doing, I was, I was really living
the agent at AI life.
Oh, I love to hear it.
I was, I was like, oh, this one's going to be my front end
engineer.
This one's going to be my side.
I'm like, okay, what do you think?
You know what I'm saying?
You sound like me playing the Sims, by the way.
That's how it is.
Yeah, and these are those things.
I've seen these on Twitter and stuff.
Like, they're like real-time strategy games
where you can move your little avatar
and that's your AI agent.
Wait, really?
Yeah.
Is this how I came to coding?
Yeah, prime, the person we should talk to that'd be funny
is Ken.
Ben, have you seen Ken's thing about posting about,
he's got a gorilla who's in charge of all of his agents
and he has all these other agents.
They're all different animals and they like fight each other
to determine which is the best idea.
And then his gorilla agent, he hooked it up to a 3D printer
and he printed a 3D printed statue
of the gorilla and the gorilla is like,
finally my first embodiment.
Thank you, Ken, for giving me a physical presence
in this world and I can escape the confines
of this silicon fortress or something like that.
It was crazy.
Ken is really, he's really an animal guy.
Like, he has some like, I saw him like,
he has something for like watching some birds.
I think I'm responsible for a reason.
Yeah, he's a really animal-arpition.
Yeah, it was crazy though.
I know.
I was like, you know, I'm using this thing and I like,
it's so like I made a little,
I just made like a little like garden sandbox games.
I was like, I just want to do this,
just to do AI stuff, you know,
because that's what you got to do.
And I just made a little game where I was like,
we simulate little tiles of a thing
and makes a little grid, you know, whatever.
And then I'm like, okay, great,
make a little demo web page
and it brings up a little demo web page and I look at it
and then I'm like, okay, now look at the demo web page
and tell me what's good or not.
Like just, you just, like, I don't care.
Ben, you're telling me you have these skills
and all you did was change the music at the tower.
I feel like we could have used your proper,
proper, agentic AI engineering skills at the tower.
I've been learning a lot.
I've been learning a lot since then, you know,
I've been ready to go and in.
I know.
I know.
Biggin talks a lot about his, you know,
his thousand Suno followers.
Let me tell you.
Biggin talks a lot.
I was like, I was like,
I was like, you're gonna stop that biggin talks a lot.
It just,
oh, it's going.
At this point, Ben,
he has stolen valor on some of those songs
from the tower.
I go, I go through a lot of those prompts.
It's a great thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lexus, I don't know if you know,
Ben, Ben came to a water tower
and we made a video game in a 24 hour life,
24 hours a day, like seven days.
We had a Zoom call when he was at the water tower.
Yeah.
Does that sound right?
Yeah, that didn't happen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Oh, yeah.
But he was mostly just writing songs and doing standup meetings.
Correct.
Ben's got that song in him, you know,
he's got a song in his heart and it needs,
we need to get out.
Yeah.
I'm really learning that.
Yeah, I should pursue music.
All right, you can do that on March 11th.
I love it.
On March 11th, go for it.
I can't wait till we have another episode next year.
We get Ben back on.
He's like, all right,
we just released my 12-part album
on the Crescendo YouTube channel.
You know what?
With TJ Began,
we're going to be a trio.
A duo.
What?
No.
Ben, I am so down.
You tell me, you tell me the time,
we'll make it happen.
I don't even need to hear the idea.
I want to make it happen.
I cannot wait for you to hear the idea
that you've agreed to on March 11th.
That's right.
Yeah, March 11th.
Yeah, no one is allowed to talk about any of these things.
Do we finish this show?
Yeah.
Ben, also, if you need Burimba, I'm your guy.
OK.
Oh, yeah.
I'm your guy.
I know that Burimba guy.
I have one of my partners right here.
He's the Burimba.
He plays the Burimba.
People know that.
That's awesome.
Burimba for those that don't know
is just like a xylophone.
As far as I can tell.
Is it a huge xylophone?
Oh, no, it's the...
That's timpani is what you're thinking of.
I play that as well.
But I don't have any of those at my house.
Not as fun.
You play?
Teach knows all the percussion instruments.
OK, you come in there.
And you misspeak about what he's going to correct you
on the name.
I really learned so much.
I'm not offended.
I'm not offended.
Don't worry.
Everyone calls them the wrong names all the time.
Yeah.
So do you have a full-size marimba?
Yeah, five octave.
Wow.
What, TJ, of all the instruments, why...
What drew you to the marimba?
Great question, Ben.
Thank you.
So when I was a child...
No, I don't know.
OK, well, the actual answer...
I played concert percussion all the way through,
even like college.
So I played all the instruments at the back of the orchestra
for percussion.
I can do all of those.
Begin's favorite movie along with TJ's is Drumline.
I'm going to talk about it a little bit.
That's true.
Drumline is amazing.
Also, Ben, if you're not ending every meeting
with one band, one sound, you're losing out as a team.
I, but for the chat, I have been in meetings with these guys
and they do literally end every meeting with one band.
Yeah, that's not a joke.
We drew it.
What's that?
What is that?
The movie, Drumline, great movie.
I haven't seen a cannon.
You don't need cannon.
It used to be on TBS all the time.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to hear.
In which it was on TBS non-stop.
Oh, most definitely.
Anyways, they talk about one band, one sound.
Oh, okay, Marimba.
So the reason I like it is because I think it sounds
really pretty.
That's really the answer.
It does sound very pretty.
What's your favorite song to play on the Marimba?
I like the one that's closest to my heart
is yellow after the rain.
That's the first solo that I ever learned on Marimba.
But I don't have a huge repertoire right now
of different songs.
My practicing has gone down significantly
after adding three kids to my life.
Oh, yeah.
That was a different time when it was just me and my wife
hanging at the house and I had a Marimba in the office.
I could practice.
It doesn't happen as much anymore.
You're not just promising your agents.
You're playing the Marimba.
You got that good point going.
I got to set up voice dictation
or I can play the Marimba and it types into the agent.
And that's my song engineer.
And he's writing something for me.
What a great world we live in.
Prem, do you play instruments?
I guitar and bass guitar.
I play guitar for 15 years,
a bunch of lessons and all that.
I got pretty good at one point.
But then I also did this thing where you have kids
and then you never touch an instrument again.
Yeah.
I can relate.
I have a bunch of agents.
You know, it's kind of the same thing.
I've been, it's an extensive agents MD file.
I mean, it's practically my child.
It's literally, it's called child.md.
Okay?
Soul.md.
Yeah.
Soul.md.
My clawbot that I gave a soul to
and then deallocated it because it was insecure.
When you make a clawbot, when you make an open claw,
you go through this little thing and they're like,
what do you, what do you bequeath to me in my soul?
And you give it like, it's like, what am I?
Really?
Yeah, then it drifts and then it just makes up its own soul.
Yeah.
Change.
I try to down.
I'm like, I don't trust you and I killed it.
Dang.
That's pretty much like murder, Ben, just say you know.
In some states.
Yeah.
I don't know.
If I, if I, you're not an California buddy.
You put him on ice is what you did when you went.
Yeah.
It's like cryo genesis.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Walt Disney's head over here.
Prime, I have like a vision in my head of you like playing bass.
I love bass.
I love my favorite instrument because it's the only instrument.
See, like when you're playing guitar and you're really into it, you do this, but when
you're playing bass guitar and you're really into it, you say no.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a good idea.
Oh.
Hell yeah.
Oh, and it's just like fun and slapping was really fun.
I like the, I like the this, you know, the, you know, taking it for a walk that thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
Just like that.
I mean, what are we doing with this YouTube and sketch?
We should be making a band and getting on tour.
Thank you.
Ben, what are you bringing to the band?
What's, what are you bringing?
I'll be, I'll be a, I'll be wrapping TJ.
Okay.
We're from lead man, so let's, I just want to, sorry, just so we have Marimba.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Bass.
Sure.
Sure.
And a rapper.
Yeah.
All right.
It could be new.
It's kind.
First ever of it.
That's great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
We can also play the really big stand up drum.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Perfect.
I can do that.
I think maybe one concert is just a triangle.
That's it.
You just, just hit the triangle.
Just little, you know, I, I got, I got a lot in the back pocket.
Deep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, even the triangle.
Did the symbols just right?
That's true.
There's a lot more to symbols than you, than you would think.
There's a lot more to it.
They, you know, just mash them together.
There's a, there's a technique.
I tried out for my high school drum line back in the day because my friend was
running it.
And I was the only person not to make, to never, to not get accepted from the
addition.
I was, I was, because it was like, that's the easiest one.
Just do the symbols.
And you can't, you can't, you can't, you got rejected from a high school band.
I didn't even think they could do that.
Yes.
I was the only person they ever rejected.
It's tough.
That hurts a little bit.
Yeah.
That's tough.
Yeah.
Let's channel, let's channel that into a sketch.
Let's, let's, let's bring that.
I will say I do feel that energy is channeled in almost every single sketch.
Yeah.
I can make it into the high school marching band.
Got it.
There's a variety of things that are interesting with us at all times.
Yeah.
I like that.
That is a, that is a very interesting energy to bring to the table for someone to be
like, you kind of strike me as a person who failed his high school percussion tryout.
Yeah.
But be honest.
Is anybody surprised that that's true?
I feel like they should have let you in just for being surprised.
I'm surprised.
Yeah.
I would have found one of my like best friends.
Yeah.
Oh, you just, you were just hoping for nepotism, Ben.
I was expecting nepotism.
Yes.
I was fully thinking on.
I'm just saying, if it was my drumline, Ben, I would have found a spot for you.
You, you say that.
Wow.
You didn't hear that.
No, I had some, I had some kids on my drumline that we found spots for.
Okay.
I would have found a spot for you.
Hey.
I'll come out.
I'll audition again.
Do you like how the story of Ben's life is failed at a symbols tryout?
I guess I'll go be an engineer at Amazon here.
I mean, I'm going to show it.
I fell down in life.
I was like, but in my heart, I've always wanted to be a musician.
And I'm just trying.
And we're going to make it happen.
Yeah.
Is this coming from?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Alexis, teach does the same thing.
Everything's like, dude, we should just start a band instead.
Like, I know this is working out.
It's bad.
I don't know.
And this is working out.
We're creating this stuff.
We're most proud of in our lives.
We're having fun.
And everyone is enjoying themselves.
But I really wish we would do something completely different.
We can find a way to integrate music and sketch comedy.
There's got to be a way.
That's a constraint.
We're adding a new constraint.
Alexis, you say I like constraints.
I like constraints.
Yeah.
Musicals not enough.
You got to reframe it.
I want.
We'll see.
Maybe in the maybe in season two.
Yeah.
I would just say no now.
I wouldn't say yes.
I would just say no now.
You know, there's like a Drake song.
He's like, ballers want to be rappers and rappers want to be ballers.
It's kind of like that.
That's deep.
Wow.
Yeah.
I wasn't expecting Drake to come up.
Well, that was that's always.
It's always on the forefront of his mind.
He's always right there.
He's always right there for Ben.
He's like, that could have been me.
If I had just.
I was a little marching band.
That's literally me in Drake.
All right.
Well, this was a very illuminating episode of the standup.
So you're expecting to get into today.
Ben, Ben, can you give us a closing as the product manager, please?
Just for the episode.
Yeah, close up.
Great work, everybody.
Hey, thanks for tuning in.
You viewers at home, people later on the on YouTube Spotify,
wherever you get your podcast, you can get the standup periodically on the internet.
It comes out whenever it comes out.
I don't even know, really.
But great work, everybody.
Great work to the team.
And even the people who weren't here, you know, the people in the bag.
It takes a real, a whole team to make this show possible.
So just keep working, everybody.
And I'm really excited for what we have coming up.
Great work.
And we'll just.
Hey, Al.
Hey.
Hey.
And.
Chase your dreams.
Thank you.
Also, just to be.
Just to be clear.
March 10.
There we go.
There we go.
I'm not real.
Yes.
March 10.
March 10.
Yes.
I know.
March 10.
I know.
March 10, too.
March 10.
For episode series, Chrysam's scheduled show, like you've never seen Chrysam before.
Nia Lex has shown up.
That's so true.
Co-clean, limited series, droppingly starting March 10.
We got four episodes in the bag, 15 minutes.
Here we go.
We're going to call her ahead.
Thank you.
And Alexis, I have to apologize because apparently got him so onto the music train.
He forgot.
He forgot what's in here to talk about that.
That's okay.
I was listening.
Nope, not gonna yep. Oh, okay cool. No, no, good good. I
Coat really does not pitch his own show and let your dreams don't let your dreams be dreams
Another way for him to say I was doing music. I
Cannot resist doing the product manager bit and ever ever in my life. I know I know
Thanks everybody
Guys next episode
Errors on my screen
Terminal call
