The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:43:11 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:43:11] S0: What's it called? It's the cheat on anything. [00:43:13] S1: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So they've done... Gone for cheat on anything. Their founder led marketing is him getting offers for Amazon, for Palantir, for Google, and then telling them actually, oh, wait. So I cheated on it using my tool. And that gets fantastic marketing, but he's also posting a big black x on himself if he ever actually wants to sell to enterprise sales teams where you're like, oh, do I really trust this person? You know, I think it's a risky move. [00:43:38] S0: Do you think so? Or do you think it's just a good entry point to build that brand? Because, actually, do you know what? In six to twelve months time when he's got experienced sales reps in there who are actually selling real products going, hey. We work with Rippling and we work with ElevenLabs, you can get away from it. [00:43:53] S1: Maybe. But I think the core of your brand needs to be authentic, and it needs to come from a place where, like, you really believe in. And everyone is going to remember that company as the one which helps you cheat on their different tests, which is fine. If he leans into, okay. I want to sell the more consumer type or help people in their day to day life, maybe that's absolutely fine. But I think if you're trying to do, like, large scale enterprise sales where you want to be seen as the trusted partner, which often you do and that's the differentiator, then I think it is a more risky play. People often forget how difficult it
00:43:53 · Luke Harries, Harry Stebbings
[00:43:53] S1: Maybe. But I think the core of your brand needs to be authentic, and it needs to come from a place where, like, you really believe in. And everyone is going to remember that company as the one which helps you cheat on their different tests, which is fine. If he leans into, okay. I want to sell the more consumer type or help people in their day to day life, maybe that's absolutely fine. But I think if you're trying to do, like, large scale enterprise sales where you want to be seen as the trusted partner, which often you do and that's the differentiator, then I think it is a more risky play. People often forget how difficult it [00:44:26] S0: is to shift a tag being calm. Everyone goes to the meditation company. Yes. And it's like, that is not what they offer them. They really try and move away from that. And it's just very difficult when you become very well known for something to lose that original tagging. [00:44:41] S1: So I think you need to be really intentional right from the start. What's the different messaging? Who want... Who do you want to resonate with? Who do you want to stand for? And for us at ElevenLabs, we want to be the super trusted player in the space, both for voice actors and the large enterprises. [00:44:54] S0: How do you think about competition, and how do you advise founders on competition?
00:44:54 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:44:54] S0: How do you think about competition, and how do you advise founders on competition? [00:44:58] S1: I think it's a great way to counter position against other brands. Pretty much every space you go into, there will be existing large players. There's a couple of different options which works. The y c one approach, often works really well, is basically just kind of ignore them, put on your blinkers, speak to your customers, make an incredible product. I think that's really smart for product development, but I think what Ramp has done with their counter positioning against Brex is just genius marketing, [00:45:26] S0: which... So you said counter positioning twice. I love Seven Powers. And so, like, for me, it's, like, you know Yeah. Incredibly exciting. But what is counter positioning first?
00:45:26 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:45:26] S0: which... So you said counter positioning twice. I love Seven Powers. And so, like, for me, it's, like, you know Yeah. Incredibly exciting. But what is counter positioning first? [00:45:35] S1: Counter positioning is where you take what someone else's, like, core messaging or core positioning in the market, and you take the exact opposite, and you use that as your strength rather than your weakness. And so the example with Brex is Brex really stood for, like, hey. Spend as much money on your card as possible. We give you all these fantastic points, and it's kind of like, look how many, like, extra points and rewards and stuff we're giving. And then Ramp took the exact opposite approach, which was, hey. We're not gonna give you any points. Points are a waste of money. Points you end up spending on stupid things. Instead, we're going to pump that all back into software. As soon as they made points an actual bad thing and got the whole market to think about points being bad. Let's use it to invest in great software and the focus instead being on saving money and almost reducing the number of these imaginary points you're getting. They were really well counter positioned to basically every time Brex would do something, they'd be able to riff off the other way. [00:46:29] S0: I'm just thinking how we could use counter positioning effectively. Yes. I'm just, like, in a world of, like, really long podcasts with, like, three and a half hours of Joe Rogan pontificating about, you know, planetary [00:46:39] S1: Yes.
00:46:39 · Luke Harries, Harry Stebbings
[00:46:39] S1: Yes. [00:46:39] S0: Evolution. You could do, like, a three minute episode. You know what I mean? Like, just the best bit. Yeah. [00:46:45] S1: Well, I think you did that right from this... You were 20 VC. You were short. You were concise. You were counter positioned at the start. The interesting thing is you're now kind of the incumbent, and people have moved on or not moved on. [00:46:56] S0: But... No. Totally. The amount the amount of people I get that message me, like, we're gonna start the nineteen minute VC. [00:47:02] S1: Yes. Yeah. [00:47:02] S0: Yeah. And then you could keep going. I'll do the eighteen. Like, you know? [00:47:06] S1: I saw one great example recently was the... I think it's t p n... The new tech... [00:47:12] S0: TBPN. Yeah. [00:47:13] S1: Yes. Terrible name, but great content. And they were like... [00:47:16] S0: Okay. So this is interesting. Yes. And I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but fuck it. I think it's Clubhouse of our era. So they have a brilliant channel market fit, which is they crush it on Twitter for very specific clips. When you look at any of their view rates, very little. When you look at their retention on engagement rates, fuck all. But they have brilliant, and this is not a criticism, they crush channel market fit. They have brilliant for Twitter for certain types of videos, but they also do volume. Yep. It's a spray game. Clubhouse.
00:47:16 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:47:16] S0: Okay. So this is interesting. Yes. And I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but fuck it. I think it's Clubhouse of our era. So they have a brilliant channel market fit, which is they crush it on Twitter for very specific clips. When you look at any of their view rates, very little. When you look at their retention on engagement rates, fuck all. But they have brilliant, and this is not a criticism, they crush channel market fit. They have brilliant for Twitter for certain types of videos, but they also do volume. Yep. It's a spray game. Clubhouse. [00:47:50] S1: We will see. I think they're still evolving what their actual product is, but they found this, as you said, like channel fit. And to jump back to the counter positioning, they've done the really... The funky thing of they're like, okay. They've counter positions against All In, where All In was like no ads. They're like, we're gonna be all ads. And they're like, TechCrunch is going more the vibe or maybe not TechCrunch, but traditional media is going more the vibe of being, like, anti tech. They're like, no. We're going to be completely pro tech. Others are going like, oh, we're only polished, button up, the clean cuts. They're like, no. We're going to be, like, streaming live content, the raw stuff. So...