Creative Queue · through Nov 13, 2026
2026 11 03 ittai adrian
2026-11-03 — Ittai Korman and Adrian Nugent-Head
- When: Tue Nov 3, 2026, 48 minutes
- Who: Ittai Korman, Adrian Nugent-Head (the transcript labels him as both "Adrian Head" and "Adrian (He / Him)")
- Type: listed in Grain as Partnerships & Consulting
- Recording: Grain (captured by Adrian via Zoom bot)
- Raw transcript: transcripts/2026-11-03-ittai-adrian.md
- Ingested: Thu Nov 5, 2026 (America/New_York), from the exported transcript. Ittai's personal-scope Grain PAT cannot see this recording (not in the list; direct fetch returns not found), so the export is the copy of record.
- Products: Creative Queue marketing pipeline (from about 30:09). Voice Align mentioned briefly as a parallel marketing motion. Everything before that, and several side threads, is not CQ or Spark marketing — see Other topics.
This page was written by reading the transcript in full, in order, not from a skim or an auto-summary. Ambiguities are listed as questions in open-questions.md, not filled in.
Summary
The first half of the call is consulting diligence (Yuval / Gertrude, Caleb Szabo / ArtDai, an ice cream shop meeting Ittai had the next day, Nest). Those topics are filed under Other topics and were not acted on.
From about 30:09 they turned to Creative Queue. Ittai asked Adrian to sign off on next steps so "my bot" could start doing them, and asked him to look at "the Creative Q one" because they were trying to do LinkedIn first. Adrian's direction:
- Cold outreach is the place to start, not restarting KYODAN or Manhattan.
- For every cold-outreach brand, identify 3–4 people who are a good fit (not only the founder: head of production, head of marketing, and similar), with hyperlinked LinkedIn URLs and the company website on the table.
- Grok should find those URLs (Adrian: Grok has been doing a better job than Claude). Do not log into Adrian's LinkedIn yet.
- Adrian then connects, looks at feeds, and later sends DMs.
- Repeat that weekly: find the brand and the 3–4 people in the same pass.
- Rerun earlier Reddit work with Grok.
- The plan's weekly cadence and scoreboard "makes sense as a starting point."
Warm-list comments from Adrian, with Ittai agreeing on the KYODAN/Manhattan point (decision): KYODAN and Manhattan do not feel viable to reach back out to. UNCONFIRMED / proposals (Adrian only, pending confirmation): Rachel is not really a viable customer anymore; Alexandra Vasquez is also not really viable; mine Adrian's network again; it is probably time to talk with Claire Carter-Jenn again. UNCONFIRMED: during the call Adrian said he was connecting with James Alley on LinkedIn and that he sent her a WhatsApp because she had been willing to follow up (pronouns later conflict with "one of the guys").
They scheduled a Thursday follow-up at 12:00 (Nov 5) to look over Ittai's runs and "start just cranking this out." Ittai also said he would give an update on "Taylor."
They also discussed Ittai burning through Grok tokens after the Wednesday reset, and whether LinkedIn DMs could later be automated with Codex ("that's kind of the goal"). That automation line is recorded as a stated goal, not as permission to send.
Decisions (CQ / Spark marketing)
| Decision | Who said it | Confidence | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn first for Creative Queue | Ittai at 31:24; Adrian worked from that | High | "look at the Creative Q one. So we trying to do LinkedIn first." |
| Cold outreach is the place to start | Adrian at 36:23; Ittai "Yeah" | High | Contrasts with restarting KYODAN or Manhattan |
| For each cold-outreach company, identify 3–4 people (founder plus head of production / head of marketing and similar) and Adrian will connect with them on LinkedIn | Adrian at 36:40 and 37:01 | High | Broadens the earlier "founder-only" send set without rewriting ICP |
| Put actual websites on the table as links | Adrian at 37:43 | High | |
| Flow: find URLs → connect → look at LinkedIn feeds → then DMs | Adrian at 37:43 and 40:43 | High | |
| Grok, not Claude, does the profile/URL finding | Ittai asked if Adrian's Claude should do it (40:55); Adrian said no, Grok should, because Grok has been doing a better job (40:59) | High | |
| Do not log into Adrian's LinkedIn yet; find URLs only | Ittai at 41:02; Adrian at 41:07 | High | "just find the URLs for now" |
| Weekly new cold-outreach list; find the brand and 3–4 people in the same pass | Adrian at 38:05 | High | |
| Weekly cadence and scoreboard in the plan is a reasonable starting point | Adrian at 39:21; Ittai "Okay, cool." | High | He referred to "number 5, the weekly cadence and scoreboard" |
| Rerun earlier Reddit work with Grok | Adrian at 38:05 | High as a research request | No approval recorded to post or comment publicly |
| Follow-up Thursday Nov 5 at 12:00 to review Ittai's runs | Ittai at 41:42; time confirmed at 42:20 | High | Ittai also offered an update on "Taylor" |
| Rachel is not a viable customer anymore | Adrian at 35:49 | UNCONFIRMED / proposal (Adrian's view) | See open question 7 |
| Alexandra Vasquez is not really viable | Adrian at 35:49 | UNCONFIRMED / proposal (Adrian's view) | He said "Alex Vasquez"; see open question 7 |
| KYODAN and Manhattan are not viable to reach back out to | Adrian at 35:49; Ittai "Totally" (36:23) | High — decision | Transcript spelling: "Kiodan" |
| Mine Adrian's network again; reconnect with Claire Carter-Jenn | Adrian at 35:49 | UNCONFIRMED / proposal | Claire is not identified further; see open questions 6 and 7 |
| James Alley: Adrian connecting on LinkedIn and sent a WhatsApp | Adrian at 33:40, 35:45, 46:31 | UNCONFIRMED that pronouns and ownership are settled; high that he said he did this | Pronouns conflict (her vs guys); older plan named Brandon as sender; see open question 5 |
Not decided on this call: pricing, the exact top-5 draft texts, Abbreviated keep-or-swap, big-brand ceiling, unvalidated categories, build-partner timing, MIKUTA, site overclaims, who runs CQ on X, or whether Codex may actually send LinkedIn messages.
Action items
| Action | Owner | Deadline | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send Grok to find LinkedIn URLs (and company sites, source links, and 3–4 people per brand) for the cold-outreach list | Ittai / Grok Bot | Ittai said he would run it "tomorrow" (Wed Nov 4) | 40:43, 41:42 |
| Look over that run and start connecting with the people that make sense | Ittai and Adrian | Thursday Nov 5 at 12:00 | 41:42, 42:20 |
| Adrian connects with the people once URLs are on the table | Adrian | After URLs exist; not "now" | 36:40, 41:07 |
| Rerun earlier Reddit brand-finding with Grok | Ittai / Grok Bot | Discussed alongside the Thursday review | 38:05 |
| Keep pulling Voice Align posts on X and start some Twitter DMs | Ittai / Grok (pulling); sending not specified | "tomorrow or on Thursday" (42:12) | 41:55 |
| Give Thursday updates (Ittai: Taylor + CQ runs; Adrian: his updates, including James) | Ittai, Adrian | Thu Nov 5, 12:00 | 42:39, 46:48 |
| Connect bots to the repos once tokens reset | Ittai | He said tokens reset "tomorrow" (Wed Nov 4) | 31:05 |
| James Alley: LinkedIn connection + WhatsApp follow-up already described as done or in progress during the call | Adrian | During the call / immediately after | 33:40, 35:45, 46:31 |
Changes to ICP, pricing, positioning, or process
- ICP: No rewrite. Connection targets per brand expanded from "the founder" to "3–4 good-fit people," including head of production and head of marketing. That matches the existing buyer-vs-champion distinction rather than changing who can buy.
- Pricing: Not discussed for Creative Queue.
- Positioning / offer: Not discussed.
- Process: LinkedIn-first cold outreach; weekly list; websites and LinkedIn URLs required on the table; Grok finds, Adrian connects. Reddit research rerun with Grok is a proposal (research only). Warm KYODAN/Manhattan de-prioritised (decision). Rachel/Alexandra de-prioritised and mining the network / Claire Carter-Jenn are UNCONFIRMED / proposals. Automation of DMs named as a future goal, not as the next send step (UNCONFIRMED / proposal).
People and companies mentioned
Links are included only when an existing CQ source already had one. No URLs were guessed.
Creative Queue / Spark marketing
| Person or company | How they came up | Link if already known |
|---|---|---|
| Creative Queue | Subject of the second half of the call | https://www.creativequeue.io |
| Ittai Korman | Participant; asked for sign-off so his bot could run next steps | |
| Adrian Nugent-Head | Participant; sender for LinkedIn; was connecting with James Alley during the call | Creative Queue Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/creative-queue |
| James Alley | Adrian connecting on LinkedIn; WhatsApp sent; "down to have a follow-up"; later "one of the guys you had on your list for CreativeQ" | Older plan: production voice, February email to Brandon. No verified LinkedIn URL in the pipeline files |
| Rachel | "not really a viable customer anymore" | Older plan: Apr 8 demo, nurture, willing to pay about $30/mo |
| Alexandra Vasquez ("Alex Vasquez") | "also not really viable" | Older plan: designer at an Amazon vendor agency, Bogotá; saw 3 demo videos Jun 4 |
| Claire Carter-Jenn | Adrian wants to talk with her again | No link in pipeline files; identity not given |
| KYODAN (said "Kiodan") | Not viable to reach back out | Older plan: Jorge, Montreal, April proposal unanswered |
| Manhattan | Not viable to reach back out | Older plan: Patrick (Operations Manager); closed Jun 9 |
| Good Content | Adrian's comparison: they send 50–100 LinkedIn connection requests a week | |
| Voice Align ("voice line" in the transcript) | Same URL-finding motion for posts on X; possible Twitter DMs | Not acted on from this CQ pipeline |
| Codex | Named as a way they could later automate LinkedIn DMs | |
| Grok / "Groq" | Ittai's bot; Adrian wants it to find URLs and rerun Reddit; token-usage discussion |
Other topics only (no outreach from this pipeline)
Yuval; Gertrude (art marketplace); Caleb Szabo; ArtDai (spelled ArtDai / ArtDye / ArtDay; Adrian: "D-A-I"); Nest; an unnamed ice cream shop / cooperative; Peter (Good Content, as a consulting-client contrast); Nish; Niche (Adian's money situation "until things settle with Niche"); Olivella (Adrian's 2019 e-commerce / fashion / philanthropy example); Urban, Free People, Macy's (past Ittai + Adrian consulting model); Taylor (Ittai's Thursday update); Adrian's mom (end of call).
Verbatim key quotes
[30:09] Adrian Head: Um, I have a draft of the message for the, um, or that response to the Reddit comment.
[30:30] Ittai Korman: Yeah, and if you could, um, only want to look at Let me see if I sent you the latest Basically, um, I want like a sign-off from you on the next steps. And then I'm just gonna have my bot start like doing those.
[31:00] Adrian: Did you confirm that your bots were connected to the repos?
[31:05] Ittai Korman: Um, I started doing that and then I ran out of tokens and it resets tomorrow.
[31:24] Ittai Korman: Um, was that Friday? Did I send that after we talked? Yeah. Yeah, look at the Creative Q one. So we trying to do LinkedIn first.
[33:40] Adrian Head: One second. Just connecting with James Alley on LinkedIn because we're not connected. So I just saw to reach out to her because she said she was down to have a follow-up.
[35:45] Adrian Head: I sent her a WhatsApp.
[35:49] Adrian Head: Um, Rachel, I think, is not really a viable customer anymore. Alex Vasquez, I think, is also not really viable. I think we can definitely mine my network again. Probably time for me to talk with Claire Carter-Jenn again. It's been a while. Okay. And I don't know, Kiodan, it doesn't feel like, I don't know, like Kiodan and Manhattan, it doesn't feel that viable to reach back out to them, to be honest. Totally.
[36:23] Adrian Head: Um, but I think I think what I'm interested in here is more like the cold outreach stuff to Yeah, the cold outreach feels like the place to start.
[36:40] Adrian Head: Maybe I think what would be good is if you can find if you can find for all these cold outreach folks, like maybe identify the 3 to 4 people that we think are good fits within the company, and then I'll connect with all of them on LinkedIn.
[37:01] Adrian Head: Um, and I think, yeah, beyond even the founder, like, you know, head of production or like head of marketing, people like that. Um, and just sort of see what's going on in their world.
[37:20] Adrian Head: Um, I think it fits into a bigger play about that stuff I'm learning from my interactions with Good Content, where basically they're really, they send like 50 to 100 connection requests per week on to like people who are in their, in their market.
[37:43] Adrian Head: Um, I think also it would be good to make sure that we have the actual websites linked through on this table. Um, and then I think we just do those connections, sort of like do an exploration of based off of the LinkedIn feeds, like who's a good fit. And then start sending some DMs.
[38:05] Adrian Head: Um, and then I think the Reddit stuff. I think yeah, I'm kind of curious for you to rerun the Reddit stuff that you did before, but with Groq instead of what we did before. Yeah. Because if Groq's doing that much of a better job with the stuff from like finding the brands, but I think like what I would say is every week we should have like a new list of like the cold reach founder outreach that we do the same thing with. And when you, I think when you do that, if it's if those things are a good fit, then at the same time it should find find the brands and then find the like, you know, 3 to 4 people who we could connect with at those brands at the same time. And then we can like validate the brand, connect with those people, and then start to build the build the relationships there.
[39:03] Adrian Head: I think that's pretty good. And honestly, a lot of the like LinkedIn like DM stuff, we can also automate with Codex where it sends the messages for us.
[39:13] Ittai Korman: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's so That's kind of the goal here.
[39:21] Adrian Head: Yeah, I mean, your weekly cadence and scoreboard makes sense from that perspective. So say it again. You have a thing that's number 5, the weekly cadence and scoreboard, like there's a flow that's there. I think that makes sense as a starting point.
[40:43] Adrian Head: Well, I just need the LinkedIn URLs of all those people. So you need to just send Grok on finding what those profiles are. And then if they're, if they're linked in the thing, then we can do all the connection stuff and see.
[40:55] Ittai Korman: Do you want your Claude to do that on your end?
[40:59] Adrian: No, I think Grok should do it because Grok's been doing a better job.
[41:02] Ittai Korman: Okay. So I would just need to log into your LinkedIn.
[41:07] Adrian Head: Well, don't even— just find the URLs for now. Okay. Like the new pipeline that Grok should be running is every, every week when it's finding those people, it finds the company, it finds the URL, it finds whatever link you found them from. And then there's like a list of like here are the 4 people who are a good fit in the org to be connecting with and talking to and just hyperlinking their LinkedIn there so we can literally like open up their profiles and look at it a bit. And connect with those, the people that make sense. Okay.
[41:42] Ittai Korman: Yeah, send me this. I'll run it tomorrow. And then we can look over it on Thursday and start just cranking this out and rolling.
[41:55] Adrian Head: Yeah, I mean, I think I feel like the same for this and the same for the posts on X as well. For voice line, it's the same. Yeah. I keep, keep pulling those and we can start to do some Twitter DMs too.
[42:20] Adrian Head: So I'll just I might have to move us. Are you able to do earlier in the day on Thursday actually? Yeah. Let me look at the calendar. Yeah. And you do Can you do 12 o'clock? Yeah.
[42:39] Ittai Korman: Let's do that. Yeah, and I'll give you the update on Taylor. Do you give me the update on this?
[43:40] Adrian Head: How much are you paying for that? $200. Oh, really? I mean, I think, I don't know how Groq acts, but one of the things you should definitely be making sure that Groq is doing, and I'll literally give you the prompt that I use when I'm setting it up to do things.
[44:23] Adrian Head: that's one of the things I use to save the tokens. But it may be that part of the reason why Groq's doing such a good job is because it's token intensive. So, you know, it's the kind of thing where maybe for the moment we run you know, we run and then we run things so that it's like, you know, every 2 weeks for the moment until whatever.
[44:40] Adrian Head: Um, I just need to figure out like what my money situation is right now, but otherwise I'm happy to contribute to that piggy bank as well if you want to go into overages.
[44:54] Ittai Korman: Yeah, yeah, no, no worries. Um, um, yeah, I've, I've kind of done that. The, the thing that Grok doesn't have that that Claude and Codex do is like, I can't decide, like I can't manually decide lower token usage
[45:35] Adrian Head: like the skills pipeline or the pipeline that it's using is trying to be as efficient as possible. So you have to ask. Yeah.
[46:48] Adrian Head: James Ali. Yeah. One of the guys you had on your list for CreativeQ. Okay, let's talk on Thursday. Let me know how your runs go and we can both give our updates on Thursday.
Other topics
Do not start outreach, write proposals, or change CQ pages from this section. It is here so the ingest is complete and so nothing from this half of the call is mistaken for a CQ decision.
Yuval / Gertrude (art marketplace)
- Adrian had spoken to Yuval that morning (00:27). He planned more diligence but thought "it's not the right thing."
- He described a contradiction: Yuval wants to keep going and also does not want to spend more money. Adrian asked where the money would come from, and asked whether Yuval was prepared to spend something like $500K or $850K (07:50).
- Next step Adrian stated: talk to Yuval and the founding group in mid-November when they are together in London (video call), speak to a few of the artists and probably one long-term customer, then leave it as "I don't think it's a good fit, but here's what I think you should do" (00:27). In a day or two he would send Yuval a list of about 3 things he would need in order to figure out how he feels (07:50).
- He told Yuval he does not think they need a CEO; they need to validate (06:57, 14:48).
- Unit-economics critique: relationship between number of artists, what they charge artists, and piece price points does not feel sustainable, especially with insurance and shipping; e-commerce-like exposure at that price point (11:43).
- Stated revenue: "they're making like $15,000 a month." Adrian said he does not even believe that figure, based on price points on the site (19:52).
- The differentiator he argued for is editorial / storytelling about the artists (an "Architectural Digest video version"), not more e-commerce table stakes. Prototype the editorial layer at a low production level, distribute it, and see the reaction before spending more (13:23, 14:48, 25:07).
- He used Olivella (2019, e-commerce meets fashion and philanthropy, 20% of profits) as a cautionary story about not knowing customers (14:48).
- Ittai: Gertrude's value to artists would be reach they do not have; artists can already sell to their own audience (23:33, 23:45). Adrian agreed, and said building that audience is where the editorial work comes in.
- Ittai noted Yuval is "just so money-driven" (20:14). Adrian distinguished artists wanting to sell work from Yuval mixing that up with the website (20:45).
Caleb Szabo / ArtDai
- Adrian had just come from speaking with Caleb Szabo (00:27). Helpful; good to reconnect for the network. "That family is like, they know a lot of people."
- Company name: Ittai asked; Adrian said "ArtDai, D-A-I" (09:34). Later Ittai said "ArtDye or ArtDay" (16:27).
- Caleb offered access to their art-metrics platform (09:25).
- Middle market around $100,000 to $200,000 per piece is "booming"; higher market (Adrian said he was "sort of making up numbers" around $500k–$1M) is not doing as well, except legacy artists like Picassos (09:42).
- ArtDai sells a platform that helps family offices; they are analytics, not a retail marketplace. They have accumulated sales and price data (16:44).
- Caleb, per Adrian: if you revamped and relaunched the whole website you might have a better chance — but Adrian's view is that the website is not Gertrude's real problem; relationships and retention are (20:45).
- Alignment with Yuval's claim that the gallery model is not working, but "extremely hard margins" (17:22).
Ice cream shop
- Ittai was meeting "the guys from the ice cream shop" the next day (Wed Nov 4). He had already sent questions and planned a short meeting, then a take-it-or-leave-it proposal (05:24).
- Adrian: learning how their cooperative operates, and where they think it is going, matters; that is "one of the major like holes" (05:51).
Consulting practice, Nest, and related
- Adrian is looking at Yuval-style work through the lens of a larger consulting practice and how to do client diligence (02:24).
- Contrast: Good Content and Peter as "really good clients" vs Nish and Yuval (02:37). He guessed a customer-profile variable of founders "under 45" (02:37).
- He would like to get back to a model like the work with Ittai on Urban, Free People, and Macy's, selling something different but with the same kind of model (02:37). Ittai: those are the conversations they want, and they need the reps (04:04).
- Creative Queue has "its own version" of being handcuffed by where the platform is; more open-ended consulting would not have that constraint in the same way (04:38).
- Nest: Adrian skipped a meeting the day before because he was not feeling well; planned to see him the next day. Framing: "this is full-time work. So either you're paying or you're not" (25:54). They had a good call with an editorial advisor; "the clarity on what we would be doing, I think, has been created" (26:14).
- Ittai offered that there might be AI consulting work beyond Yuval, with "no tie" (06:26).
Tokens, Thursday logistics, personal close
- Ittai is "blasting through" Grok tokens; he named $200; usage resets on Wednesdays and he blows through a large share on Wednesday and Thursday (43:28, 43:55).
- Adrian offered a prompt he uses to save tokens, suggested the quality may be token-intensive, floated running every two weeks for the moment, and said he would be happy to help with overages once he knows his money situation after things settle with "Niche" (44:23, 44:40).
- Efficiency ask: make the skills pipeline as efficient as possible; "deploy dumber agents for certain things" (45:13, 45:35).
- Close: Adrian having dinner with his mom and helping her change summer/winter clothes; Ittai sent love (47:39).