Coffeez with Joe Shalaby

Wirestock co-founder and CEO Mikayel Khachatryan joins Joe Shalaby to break down how Wirestock went from a stock photo platform to one of the leading suppliers of AI training data, and how creators are getting paid to teach AI.
When AI image generators exploded, Mikayel's investors texted him the same thing: it's game over. Wirestock helped photographers sell to Getty Images and iStock, and AI was supposed to kill it. Instead, he noticed AI labs were licensing his creators' content as training data and went all in. Today Wirestock supplies top AI labs with consented, human-made data. It has paid over $16 million to a community of 700,000 creators, grown revenue 30x in 24 months, and closed a $23M Series A.

Mikayel explains how to make money on Wirestock, why AI is creating more human work instead of less, what he calls the AI economy, why he ignored the NFT hype, the hiring mistake every first-time founder makes, and why physical AI and robotics are next.
Connect with Mikayel Khachatryan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkh/
Wirestock
Website: https://wirestock.io
Earn as a creator: https://wirestock.io/creators
Sell your content: https://wirestock.io/creators/sell-your-content
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wire.stock/
X: https://twitter.com/WireStock
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wirestock/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Wirestock

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Former supermodel Nicole Murphy and Hollywood’s networking queen Bubbles Brunson sit down with Joe, 30 years into a friendship that started at the parties at Bubble Hill. Nicole talks Paris runways, raising five kids in the spotlight, co-parenting with Eddie Murphy, launching YFOY skincare as an empty nester, and looking this good at 58. Bubbles went from welfare lines to running doors for Puffy, throwing the 1997 party that shut down New Orleans for Gary Payton, and calling Master P every day until he hired her. Now she runs a family office and hosts Industry Game Day, the room where Hollywood connects.
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Talent agency founder Pam Zapata sits down with Joe. A Dominican immigrant kid from Massachusetts who worked her way through E!, Ryan Seacrest’s team, Disney Channel casting and Univision, then quit and filed her LLC the same week to build a seven figure creator agency. The pay gap between Black, brown and white creators, the perpetuity clause that steals creators’ likeness, why a million followers can still be broke, the Caitlyn Jenner bathroom story, and freezing her eggs while building the business.
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Celebrity performance coach Nick Cooper sits down with Joe. The man who taught Beyoncé three songs in French for the Oscars, coached Usher, and learned from the mentor who produced eight of Michael Jackson’s biggest hits. Why he turned down his own show from Oprah, the Mirror Theory, raising four kids with no devices in the house, why communication is the human superpower, and the phone call to his dad he almost didn’t make.
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KERACELL founder Ekin Ozlen sits down with Joe. Ford model in New York, Miss Turkey at 19 without speaking Turkish, and a mom who was a NASA aerospace engineer. Losing her first husband, a plastic surgeon, to cancer, and turning everything he taught her about regenerative medicine into a stem cell skincare and haircare brand that landed in 275 Dillard’s stores. The IVF journey, marketing with music videos instead of ads, why aging is a wound, and the microneedling hacks she swears by.
New episodes every week. Pour up.