The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:16:06 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:16:06] S0: I have not heard of this. Are we ring incarcerating Titanic? Like, why do we need motion designers? [00:16:11] S1: So video is hugely underrated as a medium for growth. And so every launch video we do, the keystone marketing piece we ship with it is the video. There's different types of videos you can do. You can do motion design, which is basically animated graphics. You could do a founder led video where they're speaking to the camera. You could do a more like screen share style video where they're kind of recording and interacting, and it's very product focused. But why I love motion design is it's abstract, so you can really focus on what are the core value props. You can make it catchy and attention focused and mix in the abstract UI elements. And the big mistake that I see with most people's videos is that they put the founder themselves. They do a full five minute monologue themselves about the company mission. And unless you have the editing skills of mister beast, you're just not going to keep people for the launch video. So make it short, get the key message across in the first thirty seconds, and motion design is fantastic for this. Just digging in because a lot [00:17:08] S0: of people will love that. Like, short is, like, thirty seconds, like, three minutes?
00:17:08 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:17:08] S0: of people will love that. Like, short is, like, thirty seconds, like, three minutes? [00:17:13] S1: The way I would do it is actually, like, nearly all your attention for your videos should be on the first thirty seconds. Very quick intro, then get straight to the core value prop. If you actually want to keep building out the video onto that to make it five minutes long, that's absolutely fine, but just recognize the majority of drop off will happen after that. So make sure you make that first thirty seconds truly incredible. [00:17:34] S0: You mentioned some different types there. We've got the motion design ones which are more animated. Is that correct? Yes. [00:17:39] S1: Yeah. Exactly. [00:17:39] S0: And we've got the founder led kind of narrative. Any other types? [00:17:42] S1: So motion design, founder led, and screen share. Those are the three. [00:17:46] S0: What are the different use cases we would use them for? [00:17:49] S1: Any big launch, we lean towards motion design. You can get very complex products across quickly. The founder led one, personally, I think those are really risky because it can become quite egoful. To slightly call out Superhuman, they are an incredible... I know you're good friends with them. Truthfully, Superhuman are incredible at growth generally, but their most recent launch video is about five minutes, very founder led. [00:18:13] S0: Did you not like the staircase?
00:18:13 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:18:13] S0: Did you not like the staircase? [00:18:14] S1: The staircase the staircase was beautiful, but, you know, you're watching Titanic scene. I was waiting for Rose to come. The staircase was beautiful, but you're watching Rahul walk down this beautiful staircase. And by the time he's walked to the bottom, kind of you've moved on. And so then in this, like, attention economy, you really need to make it short and snappy. I think that can work maybe if you have, like, a more boring product, like a consumer packaged goods or you're doing some sort of lifestyle or if you have, like, a prominent creator behind it already, fantastic. But in general, I'd be quite cautious of those. And then the third type is the more, like, screen share. And I think this really works well if you're selling to a technical audience who they basically want to nerd out on the details and the product itself and the craft, then those are great. They're very quick to make. Screen Studio is a fantastic piece of software to use for that. [00:19:06] S0: Fascinating. How do you think about using humor? Is there any world where quirky humor, or is it actually like, no. No. No. This is a b to b sell, or this is a professional tool. Yeah. Don't try and be funny.
00:19:06 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:19:06] S0: Fascinating. How do you think about using humor? Is there any world where quirky humor, or is it actually like, no. No. No. This is a b to b sell, or this is a professional tool. Yeah. Don't try and be funny. [00:19:19] S1: I think it depends on the brand of your company. So ElevenLabs, we try and do the core ElevenLabs brand. It's, like, pretty serious, very concrete. We'd like to see ourselves among, like, Palantir and OpenAI and SpaceX as we're, like, mission driven. We're going all in to build the world's AI audio models. If instead you have a quirky brand, yes, lean into it. And we try and get, like, glimpses of humor. For April fools, we did Text to Bark, which was a imaginary product where you type in text and you can speak to your dog through barking or bark to text and you can translate it. So, yeah, I think it can work, but if you're not funny, don't use it. [00:19:54] S0: Can you do text to wife? [00:19:57] S1: When you have a wife, Harry, yes. [00:19:58] S0: This this would be a hilarious product actually for the next April fools. Have you ever done one which totally flopped and you're like, and there was a lesson tied to it?
00:19:58 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:19:58] S0: This this would be a hilarious product actually for the next April fools. Have you ever done one which totally flopped and you're like, and there was a lesson tied to it? [00:20:08] S1: At the start, we didn't have good motion design contractors. We didn't have anyone in house. And so the main way it flopped was trying to work with contractors who just didn't have good enough contractors set up. And so I really actually recommend bringing in video in house really quick because when you're doing launches, you need to move super quickly. You have, like, a week from the product getting ready where you're running all this different marketing. So bring it in house. Yeah. The main mistakes are when we just don't have the right team in place to execute. [00:20:38] S0: I so agree with you on bringing it in house. But then founders say to me, I get it, but you have the resources and I wanna test. Is there a way to test in a non 50 to a 100 gram way of hiring a motion designer? [00:20:50] S1: Yeah. So most motion designers, they work with you on a specific project for about 5 to 10 k. And so that should be... For most people who have raised money, that should be enough to be able to test it. If you think of every launch we do, most launches get somewhere between 200,000 views and 700,000 views. And if you were to have to spend that on Facebook ads or any other medium, it's the CPMs, the CACs are gonna be way higher. So it's absolutely worth doing it.
00:20:50 · Luke Harries, Harry Stebbings
[00:20:50] S1: Yeah. So most motion designers, they work with you on a specific project for about 5 to 10 k. And so that should be... For most people who have raised money, that should be enough to be able to test it. If you think of every launch we do, most launches get somewhere between 200,000 views and 700,000 views. And if you were to have to spend that on Facebook ads or any other medium, it's the CPMs, the CACs are gonna be way higher. So it's absolutely worth doing it. [00:21:15] S0: Fucking nuts. Do you worry that the value of video is going down with the explosion of supply? It's something that I do worry about. And we have teams of video people, but everyone is fucking doing video. And I just worry that actually with the increase in supply, it becomes harder and harder to discover. [00:21:33] S1: Maybe. I don't think we're there yet, and I still think it's the most effective medium in order to get your message across to keep people's attention. People don't want to read blog posts now. Instead, have a crisp video. The platforms also love it, and they boost it. The way I could potentially see it moving is like Twitter now with their livestreams. I'm not sure if you've actually seen any time someone does a livestream, their entire audience has a bright red bar on top of the Twitter screen saying, bloody blah, it's live streaming. I could see the shift towards live streaming, but unsure whether that makes sense for launches. Maybe, like, post follow-up to launches is another great way to grab attention.