Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:37:11 · Hector Serrano, Lenny Rachitsky
Like, one example of a really good ad that we had recently was this this creator had his keyboard outside his window on a roof, and it was raining. And it was like, okay. So it's like... It stops you because it's, like, a very interesting visual hook, and then it pans over. Then on the thing, it says, what is my keyboard trying to say? And it pans over to his laptop, and it's like the raindrops are typing, and then it starts typing random words, and then it says download to Wispr Flow. And that ended up becoming one of our best performing ads. It's like, I don't even know how he came up with that, so kudos to him. But that's what happens when you keep it really open ended, you have a fun product, and you let the creators have fun and just keep experimenting. And, yeah, like, no two ads in our ad library look the same. [00:37:49] S0: Wow. Amazing. Okay. Let me try to walk through the steps here because this was so much juicy gold stuff Advice. So step one, sign up on Trybe. Trybe is kind of where you manage creators and payout and all that kind of stuff. Your advice here is don't work through Trybe to find them because no one's gonna care about you yet, and your advice is go to Instagram, keyword search for things that kind of in your market, UGC, tech, lawyers that maybe wanna make money on the side to recruit the first five. The advice is start [00:38:18] S1: with five. [00:38:19] S0: Don't go too big. [00:38:20] S1: Yeah. [00:38:20] S0: Okay.
00:38:20 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:38:20] S0: Okay. [00:38:20] S1: And I would I would also... It's not even just start with five or start with lawyers or or whatever. It's like you have to look at your ad library and look at your product and be like, okay. What specific gaps do we have that we actually need to fill in? Because more isn't necessarily better, and, like, that applies to everything in life. But specifically in creators, if you just bring a 100 with 200 of the same creators, that isn't gonna lead to scale because, again, everything is gonna look the exact same. But when you bring in five creators that each speak to a specific audience, each speak to maybe a specific messaging of your product, you get five net... Five different creators that can all make net new concepts, and, like, it just exponentially grows the more different creators you bring on board. So it's like not just the the point about bringing a few creators, it's also being very specific about those few creators you're actually bringing in. [00:39:02] S0: And so when you say that, it's think about what customer kind of market, what ICP you're targeting, and what's a creative that will speak to that audience.
00:39:10 · Hector Serrano
[00:39:10] S1: Exactly. So at Wispr, we have everything from, like, moms to lawyers. We have... Like, the the awesome thing about Wispr is, like, when you have a product that people love, like, you get so many cool people wanting to work with your brand. We have, like, an 8 figure ecomm founder that loves Wispr so much that he just makes ads for us. And it's like, I find that pretty incredible. Like, some dude who has a successful ecom business, he loves Wispr so much, and he just wants to be part of the community. And he's, like, 45, has kids. And, yeah, like, we have basically anything you can imagine. Engineers, lawyers, moms, sales reps, agency owners, any any type of ICP you can imagine. And I get this question a lot as well from a lot of founders and different businesses reaching out, they'll be like, oh, well, I have a dev tool or I'm in the sleep space. I can't make content for for my brand or I haven't had success with UGC. And a lot of times what happens is people mistake UGC for thinking it's just college kids making content, but UGC is user generated content. And if you're a dev tool, your user is probably gonna be an older technical person, and you can't get you can't you can't get by bringing on 18 year old who isn't technical to talk about your product, and those ads might look a lot... Might look a lot different. Like, for example, our technical ads at Wispr, when you're speaking to, like, this older demographic who isn't really on Instagram that much or may... Isn't maybe a bit more serious, the more boring and the uglier the ads are, the better they will perform. And that can be something as simple as, a screen recording of someone using your product. It could be, like, a minute thirty seconds long. Like, it can be super long. Like, some of our best ads, you would look at them and you'd be like, holy cow. These are ugly. These are such bad ads. But they actually perform the best for those specific audiences that maybe are a bit older, maybe are a bit more technical. And it's like the same thing for for a sleep product. Like, if you have an expensive product in the sleep in... Sleep nature industry, whatever, and you have an 18 year old kid selling it, why are you or why am I gonna buy a $3,000 product from a kid? Probably, it's not gonna work that way.
00:41:07 · Hector Serrano, Lenny Rachitsky
You wanna buy from someone who maybe speaks the same way you do, who works in the same things you do, has the same problems you do. And and yeah, I think UGC works for for any company. It's just the... Maybe more upstream you go and the more expensive your product is and the more niche it is, it gets a little bit harder, but it's just like, okay, how do I find users who wanna make content about my product? [00:41:28] S0: And this unexpected element of what works is part of the reason, I imagine you run so many ads. You mentioned you do 700, 500, a thousand ads a month. Part of the reason is to discover the ones that are working. [00:41:40] S1: Exactly, yeah, because ads, would say, is almost weird in inorganic content. Like, I can kinda put my finger on what works on organic, but sometimes I'll see an ad that comes in and I'm like, what the heck is this? And it ends up becoming the best performer. So that's why I think it's just good to experiment. Don't really have, like, such a high bar for, like, oh, if the ad doesn't work this way or that way, we're not gonna run it. Like, again, some of the ads that I made a year ago, it's literally like a screen recording of someone using the product with some text at the top, nine by 16, super long video, And they're our best ads, and they're our ugliest tweets as well.
00:41:40 · Hector Serrano, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:41:40] S1: Exactly, yeah, because ads, would say, is almost weird in inorganic content. Like, I can kinda put my finger on what works on organic, but sometimes I'll see an ad that comes in and I'm like, what the heck is this? And it ends up becoming the best performer. So that's why I think it's just good to experiment. Don't really have, like, such a high bar for, like, oh, if the ad doesn't work this way or that way, we're not gonna run it. Like, again, some of the ads that I made a year ago, it's literally like a screen recording of someone using the product with some text at the top, nine by 16, super long video, And they're our best ads, and they're our ugliest tweets as well. [00:42:14] S0: This season's supporting sponsor is DX. Now that everybody at your company is finally using AI, the question that engineering leaders face is no longer are we using AI, but is it paying off? With DX, you can measure and benchmark the impact of AI adoption across your full product lifecycle. DX shows you where AI is helping developers and where it's creating new bottlenecks. You can also use it to evaluate AI vendors, monitor costs and licenses, and see exactly what's limiting your agents. That's why hundreds of enterprises, including Snowflake, Sony, and BNY, use the DX platform to measure AI's impact on developer productivity. Visit getdx.com/lenny to get a demo of DX. That's getdx.com/lenny. What does the DM look like when you reach out to a creator?
00:43:07 · Hector Serrano
[00:43:07] S1: So it kind of depends, and there's honestly some different ways to go about it. A lot of times as a brand, you'll actually have a lot of creators already in your DMs or a lot of creators that are already following you. So I think the number one place I would actually start, and a lot of our early creators came from there, is we would just go into our following list and look up UGC or look up creators, and then also go through our DM requests, and you'll actually, like, come across a lot of creators. And from there, it's like they already follow you. They probably already like your product, so it gets really easy. And you can just be like, hey, Lenny. I saw your content. I really enjoyed it. I would love to have you be part of our creator group, and I don't necessarily pitch it... I don't necessarily pitch the performance based thing yet because it's still a pretty... It's still a relatively new thing for creators to, like, hear this new model, and a lot of them are skeptical at first, which I understand why. But even, like, seven months ago, six months ago, was even more, like, new. So even then, like, today, I still wouldn't start with that and, like, go straight into pitching super hard. I'd just be like, hey. Love your content. We'd love to have you be part of our creator group. Are you interested? From there, you'll get a response back. They'll probably ask you for some more details, and then I have, like, a PDF that's, like, super simple. I kind of explain the program structure, how much we pay, how much some of our creators are making, and then from there, I'll just hop on a call with them, close them, and get them, like, onboarded in Discord, get them with your flow code, and then get them making videos. And the other way is if they don't follow us and I'm doing outreach is I'll just send them a DM and be like, hey. If someone across your content really enjoyed it, I'd love to have you be part of our Wispr Flow group. This is the tool. This is how it works. Here's the link to it. Let me know if you'd be interested. And then from there, if they're interested again, I'll pitch them, and it's kind of the same sort of route.