Solvent — Internal · Draft v0.1 · 10 Jul 2026

Content Engine

System map & technical breakdown — the version with all the tool names in it.
Companion pieces: Document 1 (internal proposal, .docx) · public deck (deck-public/ — the one PE sees).

01 — Full system map

Bold boxes = we own/operate. Dashed = feedback loops. The public deck shows the simplified version of this — EditAssist and TryPost are internal names only.

02 — Intake & archive

Get everything. Lose nothing. Tag it once.

Shared Drive

One shared Google Drive per source (PE team · founders · shoot days). Founders upload from vlog cameras/phones with zero process — friction kills founder footage, so the pipeline absorbs mess.

Sync agent

Automatically copies every new Drive file to the 60TB archive drive (the NAS) and verifies each copy is intact (an rclone-style job on our server). Drive stays the friendly front door; the NAS holds the master copy of everything.

External ingest

Downloader agent for founder appearances elsewhere — podcasts, panel videos, other channels’ interviews (yt-dlp + queue). Everything joins the same library with source metadata.

Tag taxonomy

soundbite · hero shot · good still · expert moment + person, company, cowork/event, theme pillar. EditAssist auto-tags on ingest; humans correct, never start from zero.

Already live

Verified on Drive (10 Jul): shared “Project Europe” + “ProjectEuropeY1” folders exist, shoot-notes docs with timestamped soundbites (London ’26: Anthropic, CoreWeave, Zayne’s security talk) — the tag taxonomy is being practised by hand. The engine automates what we already do.

Year 1 corpus

Already on the NAS. M0 job: EditAssist analyses all Year 1 timelines + delivered videos → style/pacing/look model that keeps the whole fleet consistent.

Governance

Local-first editing — footage never leaves our machines. That's the GDPR answer and the client-trust answer in one.

03 — Edit layer

Two lanes: the fleet and the heroes.

Fleet lane

EditAssist drives Resolve/Premiere/AE from natural language against brand rules + motion templates + SFX library. Output: the daily 9:16 fleet, cut down the length ladder below.

Length system

Hook layer — 10–15s. Discovery, volume, reactive posts, soundbites, hook A/B. TikTok/Reels/Shorts/X, and the lead-in everywhere (LinkedIn avg watch: 13–15s regardless of length). Audience: the Gen Z scroll.
Depth layer — 30–90s. Story cuts, technical advice, GTM & expert moments — where 60–120s posts pull 3–4× the views of sub-15s, and where sponsor/investor conversion happens (LinkedIn talk cuts). Audience: founders deciding to apply, investors deciding to care.
Long-form. YouTube/LinkedIn — cowork films, founder/sponsor talks, Year 2 doc. Audience: applications marinating (YC 68%).
One asset, one ladder: film → cutdowns → depth clips → hooks. Every rung re-usable.

Gap fill

Higgsfield for AI-generated visuals, Suno for AI music beds. Both plug straight into the edit tools, and both are used to fill gaps, never to replace real founder footage.

Hooks

Payoff line first. 20VC front-loads the best 12 seconds into the first 36; IG now natively measures 3-second skip rate. Hook discipline is Jay's edit brief, systematised.

Hero lane

Hand-edited, full creative attention: cowork films, company showcases, Year 2 documentary. Narrative development, per-channel conforms, real thumbnails per channel (DOAC/MrBeast lesson: packaging is half the game).

Cutdown rule

Every hero timeline is analysed → 5–10 cutdowns minimum per cowork/big event/shoot day. Long-form is a short-form factory; value per shoot day compounds.

Cinema thread

Verified via inbox (10 Jul): Year 1 doc premiered Wed 6 May ’26 at the 250-seat “Art of Storytelling” screening (the Curzon Soho booking, their “best storytellers” night). New PE Soho space confirmed — house-warming at 75 Dean St, 6 Jul (Luma, host Jade Yarrow). Year 2 doc premieres on a Soho screen. Kitty’s own doc brief (Drive, Apr ’26) sets the bar: “a short, cult documentary that leaves people feeling uplifted and inspired by the potential of young founders in Europe” — cold open, 3–4 founders, real tension. The hero lane is built to that bar.

04 — Scheduling & hosting

TryPost, self-hosted. As the brief specified.

Confirmed

TryPost (trypost.it) — James's original call, verified 10 Jul: open source (github.com/trypostit/trypost), hosted app at app.trypost.it, $12/workspace, 500+ creators/agencies. The overnight pass wrongly swapped it for Postiz — reverted; Postiz stays as the evaluated fallback (AGPL, 30.4K stars).

Deploy

DECIDED (James, 10 Jul): Runs on our own small rented server in the EU (~€10–30/mo), kept separate from our main systems. If self-hosting ever becomes a headache, we switch to their paid hosted version ($29–99/mo).

Why it fits

Posts natively to all 5 target platforms (plus Threads/Bluesky/etc.) · built-in analytics · approvals + media library + automations · full API · and a chat interface (the official MCP server): PE and Solvent can ask the calendar questions or move posts by typing a request, no dashboard training needed. Open source, so the calendar data stays ours.

Calendar seed

Milestones · cohort announcements · country national days per founder · public holidays · anniversaries · reactive slots weekly (Earth Day → Lavoit green-energy clip). Reactive turnaround target: hours, not days — templates + gap-fill make that real.

Delivery

Clips that need to load fast anywhere are served through Cloudflare; quick share links go via Drive; final masters are archived back to the NAS. The live dashboard is hosted alongside TryPost.

Posting times

Seeded from Sprout's UK dataset (230M+ UK engagements) → re-derived monthly from our own numbers. Seed values: X Wed 4–10pm · TikTok Wed 3–11pm · LinkedIn Thu 11am–7pm · IG Sun 6–7pm · Thursday best day, Saturday worst.

05 — Measure · test · funnel

Every experiment gets one KPI.
Every clip can carry a funnel.

Dashboard

Live to PE at all times: per-channel growth, per-clip performance, funnel conversions. Michael presents the monthly read to Kitty & Jade; decisions go straight into calendar + edit briefs.

Testing policy

Trial Reels (Meta's official organic A/B — compare trials to trials) + YouTube native thumbnail/title tests (max 3 variants). No duplicate/mirrored accounts — zero evidence it works and IG's Apr 2026 originality policy penalises reposts. "Mirrored" = native per-platform re-edits + alternate hooks on the same asset. Strip watermarks always.

KPI rule

DOAC discipline: no experiment runs without a pre-declared hypothesis and a single KPI (watch time vs follows vs applications). Their cautionary result: doubling clip cadence 1→2/day reduced per-clip views; total flat. Test cadence, don't assume it.

Funnels

Every link we post carries a tracking code (a UTM), so each application, hackathon entry, event sign-up and mailing-list join traces back to the exact clip that drove it. Feeds straight into PE's CRM + Luma. Plus the YC move: "how did you hear about us?" on every application from day one. Content-attributed applications are the core metric, not views.

Access asks (PE)

Native analytics on their accounts (X/LI/TT/IG/YT) · CRM/Luma API keys · application-form question added. Goes in onboarding, M0.

06 — Numbers that matter (internal read)

The gap we're selling into

Channel	PE	20VC	YC
X	5,478	522K (Harry)	1.62M
LinkedIn	~26.5K	~270K (Harry) · 32.7K (co. page)*	~1.73M
YouTube	34	214K	2.3M
TikTok	—	268K	70K
Instagram	—	157K	~671K

*20VC LinkedIn resolved 10 Jul 2026: company page = 32,670 (live scrape of linkedin.com/company/20vc og:description); the old 8,924 snapshot matches no 20VC entity — treat as bogus. All counts 10 Jul 2026.

Keep on hand

68%of accepted YC founders watched YC YouTube pre-application; video = #2 source of accepted applicants

23%of 20VC's net-new podcast subs from TikTok after going in-house; 80+ deals/month sourced there

~3×fewer views for sub-15s vs 60–120s clips (Socialinsider: IG ~2.8–3.1×, TikTok ~3.0–3.15×) → run both length layers

+450%engagement/post for creators consistent 20+ of 26 weeks (Buffer) — consistency beats bursts

−31%TikTok avg per-post views YoY (volume +72%) — saturation favours hooks + reuse over flooding

30–200×Kitty's Agnessa post vs her typical engagement — founder moments are the format

PE's own wordssite promises founders "world class media and distribution across our platforms"; their Apr '26 post: builders "doing a crap job of telling the story"; Kitty on the cohort TikTok: "crazy spiking application from people we would never ever have met" — the pitch quotes all three

07 — Proof the pipeline already ran

London ’26 went through the engine in June.

Transcripts

$ sqlite3 edit_assist.db

> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM transcript_segments;

3,991

> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM clips;

374 — 25 hrs of rushes, word-level timing

Auto rough cuts (EDL/FCPXML, generated)

pe_london_2026___top_5_rough_cut.edl

30s_best_moments_roughcut_v1.edl

founders_entrepreneurship_60_90s_v4__punchy.edl

pe_london_2026___interview_moments_60s.edl

anthropic_interview_rough_cut___tighter.fcpxml

Interviews_30s_Roughcut.fcpxml

+ 28 more

Entity sweep (agent notes, 77)

cluster: CoreWeave / Ben Richardson —

"hero quote: essential cloud for AI …

AWS for AI" @ C1541.MP4

cluster: Anthropic fireside — select

5.2s @ 01:21:22 → rough cut, tighter

3,991transcript segments, word-level karaoke timing — captions come straight from the DB

34auto-generated rough cuts (EDL + FCPXML), openable in Resolve

77agent analysis notes: entity clusters, hero quotes, select reasoning

5example frames in the public deck were pulled, graded and captioned by this pipeline today

The examples in the public deck aren’t a promise — they’re output. Same pipeline, pointed at Year 2.

Receipts pulled from the EditAssist project databases on our JRSSD drive, 10 Jul 2026. Internal only.

08 — Cautions (why our editorial line is the safe one)

Hype without substance backfires.

Cluely

10–13M-view launch → $15M a16z → 700 paid clippers pushing ~800K views/day. Then: Mar 2026 public admission the $7M ARR claim was fabricated (~$5.2M real). Attention bought capital; the lie bought a permanent asterisk. (Also: the brief's "Cooley" = Cluely — auto-caption mishearing, evidence on file.)

Icon

$12M domain as a content stunt, 10M+ impressions, Founders Fund money — shut down within a year when the product missed.

Friend

26.1M-view launch, $950K subway takeover → ~4,000 devices. Views ≠ revenue. (His pivot: a self-financed documentary — stunt graduating into media property, same as Bryan Johnson → Netflix.)

Our line PE's genre is documentary-truth, not rage-bait: real founders, real numbers, chaos only when it's genuinely theirs. "Europe is the character" isn't just positioning — it's the risk model. It's also why the public deck carries one soft caution line instead of these case studies.

Other watch-items: attribution is genuinely hard (only 37% of marketers find social→outcome linkage easy — hence UTM + application question from day one) · X hides view counts from tools (need native analytics access) · TryPost is a young OSS project (mitigation: open source + exportable data; $12/mo hosted tier; Postiz evaluated as drop-in fallback).

09 — Ops & rollout

Three lanes, one loop, four phases.

James

Technical infra & build-out: intake/sync, NAS, EditAssist pipeline, TryPost + MCP hosting, dashboard, UTM/funnel plumbing

Jay

Edits & creative direction; each channel's unique strategy and copy; hero edits; hook discipline

Michael

Shoot production, footage procurement, monthly performance presentation to Kitty & Jade

All three

Recap films + Year 2 documentary, creative collab

M0Foundations — brand rules locked · MG templates built · EditAssist Year-1 analysis · TryPost live · calendar seeded · access asks to PE

M1Engine live — intake syncing · first fleet ships · daily posting starts · baselines captured · trial posts begin

M2Funnels + dashboard — tracked links everywhere · dashboard live to PE · CRM/Luma verified · first monthly presentation

M3+Steady state — monthly tune to sweet spot · cowork films + 5–10 cutdowns each · Year 2 doc thread → Soho cinema premiere

Costs: we already own most of the kit. Incremental spend is small: a rented server (~€10–30/mo), clip delivery bandwidth billed by usage, and Higgsfield/Suno credits. Commercials handled separately, not in these docs (James, 10 Jul). Table in Document 1 §9.

10 — Open questions for the morning

Decide, then we ship.

01Mount the Project Europe Content Engine folder — it wasn't attached; I worked from the brief text

02TryPost ✓ (reverted to the brief’s original pick, 10 Jul) + hosting decided ✓ — self-host on aux VPS, EU region (~€10–30/mo); Postiz = fallback

03Zuck meme dropped ✓ (James, 10 Jul) — public slide 07 now runs Kitty’s application-spike quote + reactive/signalling blocks instead

04Public deck carries one soft caution line — want the harder Cluely/Icon receipts in it, or keep those internal?

0520VC LinkedIn number needs one manual logged-in check before we quote it anywhere

06Zayne Zhang · Suna Health confirmed ✓ (James, 10 Jul) — adopted everywhere, incl. public deck

07Retainer/budget numbers for Document 1 §9

08Deploy: run the Claude Code handoff (CLAUDE-CODE-HANDOFF.md) when you've reviewed — it finishes assets, QAs, and ships deck-public to Cloudflare Pages at pitch.solvent.studio (decided 10 Jul). deck-internal never deploys.

09RESOLVED ✓ — Gmail + Drive connected (10 Jul): Year 1 premiere = 6 May, 250-seat Art of Storytelling screening; house-warming = 75 Dean St, 6 Jul (Jade, Luma); Drive intake folders already live

11 — Pricing calculator (sales only)

Set the retainer in the room.

Move the numbers live with the client. The structure flexes with results: scope reviewed at the monthly call as returns compound. defaults — adjust in the room

Coworks filmed / year × cost per shoot (crew + travel)

× £

Editors × monthly cost each

× £

Creative direction, days / month × day rate

× £

Equipment & infrastructure amortised monthly — cameras, drives, rigs, founder vlog kits

£/mo

Documentary reserve include

£/mo

Margin 25%

25%

Monthly cost base £0

+ margin £0

= Monthly retainer £0

Annual — £0

Per cowork film

£0

Per clip (40 / mo)

£0

12-month engagement value

month 0 / 12

£0

The maths, worked (defaults)

coworks (6 shoots × £4,500) ÷ 12 months = £2,250/mo

editors 2 × £3,800 = £7,600/mo

direction 4 days × £550 = £2,200/mo

equipment cameras · drives · rigs · vlog kits = £1,200/mo

documentary reserve (edit time banked for milestone films) = £2,000/mo

cost base £15,250 → × 1.25 margin → retainer £19,063/mo · £228,750/yr

per cowork film: annual ÷ 6 shoots = £38,125 · per clip: retainer ÷ 40 clips = £477

Each slider feeds this formula live. Margin is profit, not padding: it covers overruns, reshoots and account time. The documentary reserve toggle removes £2,000 if the client funds films separately.

12 — Sales crib sheet

Say this in the room.

How to sell it

Open with Lavoit. One founder film, and in the founder's own words: "over 20 inbounds, closed about 25%". That is an estimated €150K–€800K of year-one value against a retainer of around £19K a month.
Break it down per clip. At 40 clips a month, the default retainer works out near £477 per finished clip. Ask what their current agency charges for a single day of filming.
The archive is already shot. Anthropic, CoreWeave, Tink and 11Labs are on our drives now. Month one starts with output, not a kick-off meeting.
The pipeline has already run. London footage went through the engine in June: 3,991 transcript segments and 34 automatic rough cuts.
Anchor on outcomes. Applications and inbounds are the value, never hours. If the conversation drifts to day rates, bring it back to what one film did for Lavoit.

Pricing guardrails

Never quote below the monthly cost base shown in the calculator.
The margin slider is the negotiation room. Move it, not the cost lines.
Coworks per year is the biggest cost lever. If they need a smaller number, cut shoots first.