Speaker
Chris Josephs
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Nancy Pelosi's portfolio has returned 220% since Autopilot began tracking it, beating the S&P 500 by roughly 80 percentage points.
Autopilot reached $1.5 billion in assets under management, driven almost entirely by organic content marketing.
Autopilot's Claude and cloud portfolio pages on Instagram and Twitter each grew from zero to 200,000 followers in about a month and a half with zero paid marketing.
When Autopilot officially launched in January 2023, the app made several hundred thousand dollars on day one and hit number 2 in the App Store.
The original IRIS app hit 250,000 to 300,000 downloads with zero paid marketing, purely through organic TikTok content around the Pelosi tracker.
In the early viral phase, the Pelosi tracker TikTok videos converted at 50–60 downloads per 1,000 views — an unusually high rate due to the novelty of the concept.
Autopilot currently spends $700,000–$800,000 per month on paid advertising and is looking to shift more budget toward UGC creator campaigns.
At the time of recording, Autopilot was adding approximately $250,000 in monthly recurring revenue every single day, gaining $4 million in the prior month alone.
Autopilot is currently generating revenue in the mid-$20 million range, all built on the back of organic faceless content.
Autopilot has raised $15 million in venture funding, positioning it as a serious fintech startup beyond just a content play.
Peter Wolf, a dermatologist who shares stock picks on Substack and Twitter, has attracted $200 million in AUM on Autopilot and earns tens of thousands of dollars monthly.
Autopilot can get booked on cable news shows within 24 hours, all without a PR agency, by having pre-built relationships with producers and reporters.
Autopilot has a waitlist of 2,000 people waiting to launch their own investment funds on the platform, reflecting strong demand from the creator economy.
Rather than running one viral account, Autopilot built an interconnected universe of faceless pages — Pelosi Tracker, Burry Tracker, Claude Portfolio — that cross-promote each other. When Michael Burry and Nancy Pelosi hold the same stock, both accounts amplify the story, compounding reach without paying for a single ad.
Founder-led brute force content gets you to $1M. Scaling that content formula with a small team gets you to $10M. After that, it's all paid. Chris Josephs breaks down the exact mental model Autopilot used — and why conflating these stages is a fatal mistake most founders make.
Autopilot is in the mid-$20 millions in revenue with $1.5B AUM, and is adding $250,000 in monthly recurring revenue per day. In the last month alone, the company added $4 million in MRR. This is what hyper-growth looks like when content compounds into conversion.
Owning the Pelosi Tracker account — not 'Chris Josephs' — means you can hire anyone to run it tomorrow. Faceless brand accounts are transferable assets. Personal brands are not. This is why Autopilot's content engine keeps performing even as the founding team grows.
Unusual Whales rage-baits for Twitter view payouts. Autopilot chose fact-based authority content instead. The payoff? News Nation books them every Friday, reporters answer their cold emails within hours, and they appear on shows without paying a PR agency. Rage bait has a ceiling; authority compounds.
Nancy Pelosi's portfolio is up 220% since Autopilot started tracking it, beating the S&P 500 by roughly 80 percentage points. Chris Josephs admits he never expected her to perform that well — the tracker started as a viral stunt, not a genuine investment thesis.
Going viral gets people to download the app. But then they go to Reddit, YouTube, and Google to validate the decision. Autopilot has top-of-funnel content in spades — but nothing waiting for that skeptical user who types 'Is Autopilot legit?' at 11pm. That's the YouTube show they're now building.
Chris Josephs didn't set out to build a media empire — he needed downloads for a social investing app. One TikTok video saying 'want to know Nancy Pelosi's next stock trade? Download IRIS' sent the app to the top 50 in the App Store and kicked off a journey to $1.5 billion AUM.
Before Autopilot officially existed, Chris Josephs was posting about politician stock trades on Twitter and driving app pre-orders. The result: on launch day in January 2023, they made hundreds of thousands of dollars and hit number 2 in the App Store — losing only to Cash App.
Just as Uber made taxis feel absurd, Chris Josephs believes peer-led investing platforms will make DIY stock picking feel outdated within a few years. When you can find a vetted stock picker, see their track record, and auto-copy their trades for $150 a year, why would you ever do it yourself?
Autopilot has never hired a PR agency. Chris Josephs cold-emailed producers and reporters, offering them a steady stream of exclusive stories about suspicious congressional stock trades. By the time Fox and Friends called, the relationship was already warm — it's exactly what PR firms do, just without the invoice.
Subway Surfers overlays aren't random — they're engineered to loop attention back to the main content right when it would otherwise drop off. Chris Josephs applies this logic to argue that the next evolution of podcasts and social shows will look a lot more like television, with dynamic environments that keep viewers perpetually re-engaged.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Business 100%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
