Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:14:03 · Hector Serrano
[00:14:03] S1: Yeah. So, obviously, we don't wanna just pay creators just off percentage base, especially early on. Because if you come into the group, you make 30 videos, and you only make a $100 off of commission, then it is pretty demoralizing. And a lot of times we see with our best creators, they're our best creators because they've stuck around for the longest and they've understood how the model works. So one thing we actually have included is is it's it's called a smart retainer. And what this is is basically like us saying, okay. We're gonna back you as a creator, and let's say we're gonna we're gonna do 25 videos, and we're gonna pay you a thousand $500. As long as you hit that quota of videos, we'll pay you that money. But depending on how much they earn in commissions, then we might top them up, or we might not even add that swai retainer in. So here's to make it a bit more clear. Let's say that you're in our program and you hit the 25 videos and you only make $500 in commissions, then we will pay you an additional thousand dollars because you hit that quota. But let's say that you also hit that quota and you make $3,000 in commission, then you strictly keep commissions, and we don't add any smart retainer. So it's kind of us saying, as long as you hit these videos and you hit these metrics, we will pay you x amount, and it makes this so that creators that join in the group month one, month two, month three, maybe they're not able to reach over that amount in strictly commissions, but they're able to make some sort amount of money so that they actually stay dedicated and keep growing. And then three or four months down the line, you see these creators start to break out and make purely commission space, which for me as the guy running the program or if you're a brand owner, that's like the best thing because you're paying them pure profit or or pure of the best performing videos instead of paying out of pocket. Also, I think some good background is I'm a creator myself. So I found that a lot of companies... And even at Wispr, we were doing this sometimes as well. It's like we would give briefs to these creators to make ads for us, and we would give them this whole sheet where it's like, don't say this. Say this. Use these hooks. This how is we want you to talk about the product. This is how you need to film the product.
00:15:56 · Hector Serrano
And it's like when you send the creator a 10 page guideline on how they need to shoot their content, what they need to talk about, you end up removing the creative aspect that creators have, and there's nothing more demotivating than that. And I know as a creator, like, if I have a brand that trusts in me, brings me in for a reason, and just opens the doors for me to create content, how I see best fit for the product, you're gonna get better content out of me than if you just put me in this box. So that's one of the main reasons that a lot the creators wanna work in our group, and we also keep it really tight knit. So it's like this tight knit feeling. We bring the best of the best, and then on top of that, we keep it really open for them to experiment, do whatever they see fit. They're all fans of the product, and then on top of that, they're not capped at their earnings. We're not paying them a $100 per videos. We're not paying them $50 a video. It's not a thousand dollars for the month. It's like it's truly uncapped. If they have really good videos and they put a lot of effort in, we have creators now that are making like $13,000 a month, and that's not really possible with other forms of UGC or even influencers. They're making more money than than full time influencers, and they might have like 1,000, 2,000 followers on on their own Instagram accounts. But this has just been a way for any creator who's talented to be able to make real, like, money.
00:17:06 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:17:06] S0: Awesome. And the way you do it is if it's a shopping sort of product, you give them percentage of GMV, and then if it's the b to b SaaS product, you give them percentage of spend. [00:17:15] S1: Yeah. Especially if you have, like, a freemium product where it's hard to track direct conversion because we also don't wanna get in a place where, I don't know, maybe people are converting off their ads or maybe they're not, maybe they're purchasing, and then we're running those ads and profiting off those ads and they're not getting, like, like, they're not they're not getting paid what they're worth. And with a product like Wispr where it's kinda hard to track those attributions or it might take a week or two, it's best if we just keep it at percent of ad spend. But, obviously, if you're, selling, I don't know, a water bottle or a t shirt, and it's, like, really easy to track whether the person came from this ad or that ad. And if they purchase or not, then it makes more sense to do a percent of GMV. [00:17:49] S0: So the innovation here that has worked really well is giving the creator a kind of a piece of the action of the success of their ad. [00:17:58] S1: Exactly. [00:17:59] S0: Awesome. And then also capping the downside so that they can actually spend time doing this versus being worried that they... They're not gonna make a living.
00:17:59 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:17:59] S0: Awesome. And then also capping the downside so that they can actually spend time doing this versus being worried that they... They're not gonna make a living. [00:18:06] S1: Yeah. Exactly. Because a lot of the times these creators have to... They end up having to constantly be negotiating with brands or working with new companies, learning new things. And it's like, not only are these creators all power users, but they get to work with the same company every single month. So just think about, like, the compounding effect of how much better their videos get over time instead of, oh, you're this brand who's running a new... Maybe launching a new feature and you're like, okay. Let's scramble to find new creators. And it's like, if you already had that internal group of creators who already know your product and already believe in you and, like, some of my creators understand the product better than me almost, and they come up with ideas I never could have came up with. So if you just have that internal group already, it's so easy that when we launch a new thing, whether it was, like, the Wispr notetaker or all these different features that that we release, it's so easy for me to just drop it in the Discord and be like, hey, Let's make a video on this instead of having to go chase around and find all these different creators and brief them, and then the next month they're gone, and then two months down the line, you have to go find them again. So yeah, it it just makes for a great experience both on the brand side and the creator side.
00:18:06 · Hector Serrano, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:06] S1: Yeah. Exactly. Because a lot of the times these creators have to... They end up having to constantly be negotiating with brands or working with new companies, learning new things. And it's like, not only are these creators all power users, but they get to work with the same company every single month. So just think about, like, the compounding effect of how much better their videos get over time instead of, oh, you're this brand who's running a new... Maybe launching a new feature and you're like, okay. Let's scramble to find new creators. And it's like, if you already had that internal group of creators who already know your product and already believe in you and, like, some of my creators understand the product better than me almost, and they come up with ideas I never could have came up with. So if you just have that internal group already, it's so easy that when we launch a new thing, whether it was, like, the Wispr notetaker or all these different features that that we release, it's so easy for me to just drop it in the Discord and be like, hey, Let's make a video on this instead of having to go chase around and find all these different creators and brief them, and then the next month they're gone, and then two months down the line, you have to go find them again. So yeah, it it just makes for a great experience both on the brand side and the creator side. [00:19:04] S0: And this again comes back to the product itself has to be awesome because it'll be very hard to find creators that love your product if the product isn't awesome.
00:19:04 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:19:04] S0: And this again comes back to the product itself has to be awesome because it'll be very hard to find creators that love your product if the product isn't awesome. [00:19:11] S1: Yeah. And and it's just easy to burn out as well as a creator. Like, if you're talking about something you don't believe in, it can get boring really quick. [00:19:18] S0: Yeah. It's almost a test of product market fit. Can you find creators that are excited if I [00:19:21] S1: can see someone Yeah. That was that was honestly... Because I guess some context as well. I was actually at Wispr. I was the one making every single ad for, like, a year and a half, so I made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ads, which I guess that's a testament to how much I I loved Wispr. I didn't go crazy. And and... [00:19:41] S0: Do you think that is actually really important for the person that takes this work to have been the person creating the ads before asking creators to create the ads? [00:19:47] S1: A a thousand percent. Because it goes back kinda to to a point I had mentioned earlier where a lot of people who've never worked in content or or who have never worked with creators end up being the ones briefing them and telling them what to do. And it's like you would never have someone who's not an engineer telling the engineer... Like, I would never go up to the engineering team and be like, hey. You guys need to solve this problem like this and do this and this and this. They're gonna be like, what is this guy telling me?