Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:47:41 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:47:41] S0: So a big lesson here is treat them treat them like humans. Care about them. Help them feel like they're a part of this thing, not just feel like you're okay. You're gonna make money. Just shut up. Don't worry about it. You're gonna make money. [00:47:51] S1: And I think this is actually really good alpha as well is that I think the the companies that will wing long term are the companies that have the best relationships with creators because words word gets out really fast. And if you're a brand that treats creators bad, doesn't pay on time, doesn't pay them whatsoever maybe, or you just block them, etcetera, word will get out and creators probably won't wanna work with you or you won't get the best terms or you won't get the best quality creators. So I think one really big thing we focus on at Wispr is like not even just with creators, but any external agencies or anyone we work with, we always wanna treat everyone with a lot of respect. And and, yeah, I think I think it's the companies that do that the best will will win long term as well. [00:48:31] S0: What does the early team look like to start this initiative? Is it just a Hector that is running this solo, or is there a larger team that you'd start with?
00:48:31 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:48:31] S0: What does the early team look like to start this initiative? Is it just a Hector that is running this solo, or is there a larger team that you'd start with? [00:48:38] S1: Honestly, it's it's pretty lean. So our marketing team as a whole is pretty flat. Obviously, we're growing a bit faster now with Wispr. I think we've passed, like, a 120 full time employees now, which is pretty crazy. Because I joined, I think we were, like, four at the time. I I remember mess... I messaged Tanay the other day. Was at the office, and I was like, holy cow. Like, I just had, like, a moment where I was like, there's so many people around. Like, this is crazy. Blah blah blah. But, yeah, right now, we're a pretty lean team, and we were even more lean before. But for Trybe specifically, to get something like this running, all you really need is someone like me to kinda be the coms with creators, come up with new concepts, approve videos, kinda get everything kick started, and then you need a media buyer. It's pretty rare to find someone who's a creative and also a media buyer. I don't really like numbers that much. I'm not really much a numbers guy, and I don't like staring at meta ads manager. I've heard it's a headache, so I'm happy I don't have to do that. But, yeah, we have Eric on the media buying side of things, and he, like, structures our ad account and everything. [00:49:37] S0: So when this media buyer, is this kind of like a performance marketing person that just lives in Facebook's ad system? Or
00:49:37 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:49:37] S0: So when this media buyer, is this kind of like a performance marketing person that just lives in Facebook's ad system? Or [00:49:44] S1: Yeah. Exactly. So... Yeah. Yeah. Eric's basically just lives in our... On the media buying side of things on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etcetera. [00:49:53] S0: Got it. So you're kind of like the creative, you're like this the content supply and then this person takes it and then is responsible for running the ads, watching performance, optimizing the spend. [00:50:04] S1: Yeah. [00:50:05] S0: Got it. Okay. And then is there anyone else that you find important valuable on that team early on and even later on?
00:50:05 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:50:05] S0: Got it. Okay. And then is there anyone else that you find important valuable on that team early on and even later on? [00:50:11] S1: Early... Like, if we go back to the early early days, the marketing team was Daniel, our CMO, Matt, who was our head of growth before Eric came, and then it was me just, like, as a sole creator, kind of just making the ads myself. So... And then we had some external agencies here and there. And then slowly, we added on design. We added on an in house, like, director to help produce films and launch videos. Then we introduced, like, PR recently. And, like, even even now, I think we're still pretty lean. I think it might be, like, 15 people on the marketing team, like, full time. We have a creator partnership leads for, like, influencers. We have a celebrity talent manager who, like, helps us close celebrities and and things like that. So even then, it's still pretty lean, and everyone is, like, experts in their domain, and it's all very flat. We all just have free reign. We all do what we're best at. There's no real... There's no really middle management. And then tour... Our tour CMO, Daniel, who's an absolute legend, he just had a bunch of direct reports. So I feel sorry for his calendar, but, yeah, that's that's kind of how everything is structured. It's, like, very flat, nominal managers, and everyone just does their work. [00:51:22] S0: Is the core kind of takeaway from this conversation that when you're doing paid today, that UGC videos are the way to go versus your own ads that you're just kinda creating.
00:51:22 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[00:51:22] S0: Is the core kind of takeaway from this conversation that when you're doing paid today, that UGC videos are the way to go versus your own ads that you're just kinda creating. [00:51:34] S1: So are you kinda comparing to, like, what I was doing versus what we're doing now? [00:51:37] S0: You know, just, like, when you think paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, most people think I create a video promoting my product or create, like, an ad unit that is, hey. Wispr Flow isn't the best thing. And what you're doing here is you're having other people create the videos and then running that as the ad.
00:51:52 · Hector Serrano
[00:51:52] S1: Yeah. So the way I look at it is, like, I was basically a in house UGC creator, and it got to a point where ad spend was getting too high. And, like, I'm only human, and I couldn't I couldn't make that many videos. And I was also getting into, like, a year plus of making ads. So, naturally, I was getting pretty burnt out being a one man show. And, I was like, okay. I have the skill set. I'm a decent creator. I can spot, like, good creators as well. Why not just build a team? And that's, like, an extension of myself. And, yeah, that's that's basically what we did, and we're able to scale a lot faster, test more ideas. Since we have more ad spend, we obviously want more concepts running. And, also, like, once you get to a pretty high budget on ads, your ads are typically gonna reach fatigue a lot faster. And especially with Andromeda now, ads reach fatigue even a lot faster. Because before... In 2024 when we were running ads, I could have an ad running for twelve months. And I mean, my my output would be a lot less, but now an ad with not only the new updates, but also how much ad spend we're running, an ad... Once it hits, like, a $100,000 in ad spend, will be dead, and that can be hit in, like, a month or in two weeks, three weeks. So we constantly need more output, more volume, etcetera. And I think that if you look at our ad library, we might have, like, 5,000 lifetime ads and maybe, like, 800 live currently or something like that or 900 live currently. And it's because, again, they reach fatigue, and then we have to turn them off. But our ad our ad set or our ad library isn't only full of UGC videos. There's a lot of different things as well. And, yeah, everything from, like, statics to, like, high celebrity slash influencer videos to in house ads to, like, launch videos that we package as ads to, like, founder led things. So there's a lot of variety in there, and this is just basically, I I guess just having as many formats as possible because, again, we have a lot of ad spend, and we want... The more variety, the better at the end