Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
00:44:45 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:44:45] S0: And this is from the Wispr Flow Instagram account? [00:44:47] S1: Sometimes I do either or because I also... Since I'm a creator myself, I also have a lot of... Which is also the pros of hiring people who are in content. Some of our best hires at Wispr in content have been through me posting on Instagram stories or our best creator hires. I'll be like, hey. I'm looking for UGC creators. Just post a story. Or, hey. I'm looking for a videographer. Or, hey. I'm looking for an editor. Like, that's one of the cool things about hiring a content creator. If if they make, again, content and and you're just making sure they make high value content is they can also be used as, like, a very good hiring mechanism. And... Yeah. It it depends. Like, if if you have someone who's a creator, I think it works pretty well. You know, obviously, like, a creator face, whatever. And then also if you're a really well known brand, obviously, if you're a creator getting a message from, like, Nike or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, it... It's very impressive, and you're probably more likely to get a response. So I think it just depends. [00:45:38] S0: And then... Okay. So you DM them. They're interested. You send them kind of an overview. In the early, say, the first five, you said, you hop on a call pretty quickly and just kind of pitch them and explain the program. What's like the onboarding look like?
00:45:50 · Hector Serrano
[00:45:50] S1: These creators are very used to just being used and, like, just it's everything they do is like a transaction. They make a video, they get paid, and they never talk to a person again. And we live in a, like, day and age where everything is digital, everything's virtual, most people are working remote, most creators are remote, and they create community the same way just like a regular person would create community. And we just make sure, like, that we connect from the get go and, like, it's like, at the end, it's like friends. We're, like, working together. I don't see them as just like, hey, creator that I'm gonna extract some videos from and never talk to again. I get on a call with them, like you said, and I have this whole slideshow, but before I go to my slideshow, like, ask them about themselves, like, how they got into content, why they enjoy it, and just like have a conversation, try to get to know them. And then from there, the flow of the of the slideshow is I have an intro slide where I talk about myself. I talk about my background as a creator. So, like, they respect me, and they know I'm not just some random dude talking to them. And then from there, I'll also intro our media buyer, who's Eric. Shout out to Eric. And then from there, I explain the product. And then from there, I explained how Trybe works. So I, like, I let them know, like, what they can expect in terms of the flow from them making the video to it getting accepted, to it getting ran as an ad. I tell them, we pay them out every seven days, which like another hack as well. Like, you wanna keep your creators motivated and the higher dopamine rush they can get and the more money you can get them early on, the better. So, yeah, we pay out seven days. We tell them that. Then from there, we show them some example ads, and then I get them onboarded and fully going on the call. It's almost like you're closing you're closing like a sales deal. You don't wanna get them all excited and then you let them get off and then you have to chase them down. It's like, you wanna be very strategic with your time and their time. So I try to, like, meet them, introduce myself, get them onboarded, and get them going so that they know, like, hey. You can start making a video right now.