Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:03:47 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[01:03:47] S0: I love that. And I love that also part of this is giving them time to figure it out. [01:03:51] S1: Yeah. 100%. [01:03:53] S0: What's really interesting about this conversation so far I'm realizing is I don't think we've once mentioned AI as part of this work that you do, which is really interesting because it's, you know, it's it's all anyone talks about these days. And you actually had this tweet the other day, the best marketers are allergic to AI. Talk about just what you what you think with how AI plays into this and how AI should not play into this.
01:04:15 · Hector Serrano
[01:04:15] S1: I just think, like, overall, when you look at a lot of the work done, like, even, like, looking at the top labs, like, they are some of the people that have the most amount of humans actually working on a specific asset. And, like, maybe, yes, they have a lot of the research automated or a lot of different steps like internally automated, but the actual production of the asset, whether it comes to the video, the design in Figma, the editing, the post production, etcetera. It's all done by teams of a lot of humans. And I think there's not gonna be a real way to get around that, at least not anytime soon. And especially in, like, the environment we're in now where a lot of people are very, I guess, turned off by AI and it can be a scary, like, thing to talk about. If you're an AI company like Wispr, who, in theory, we enable humans to do better work, we don't wanna replace anyone's job. We wanna give them, I guess, the tools to be able to be more productive, to do more work, and to sound more naturally... And to sound like themselves more naturally. If we, on the other side, go out and start making AI slop ads and videos with AI influencers and, I don't know, AI designs and AI statics, it's probably not gonna be received really well, and it just... It looks off. And, like, when I say that, I think it goes more towards not automating the work that's gonna be the final product that people are looking at because I think you see it a lot of times, like, it'll it'll end up blowing back on on the companies where whether it's like an animation that they made with Claude or some sort of asset that they made and maybe there's typos or maybe the writing is like all jumbled up like what happens when you do it with with open... With ChatGPT or whatever. And, yeah, I think it's it's not worth it. Like, the risk versus reward is not worth it.
01:05:55 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[01:05:55] S0: So the alpha, what I'm hearing here is, like, don't use AI for this work. [01:06:00] S1: Yeah. For for the final output, especially on the creative side, like, what other people are gonna see, I I don't think AI should should touch yet. [01:06:07] S0: That is really interesting. Like, you [01:06:09] S1: know Yeah. [01:06:09] S0: People... It feels like everyone's hearing lean into AI. Yeah. Use AI watch videos all
01:06:13 · Hector Serrano
[01:06:13] S1: the Even one of the most bullish people on AI that I know, Matt, who is now at Viktor or at set of growth, he has the most automations I've ever seen in the whole wide world. But even then, like, that last, like, 10% that's the most important always has a human on the endpoint because you can't sacrifice as a brand having something blow up because you had something screw up or come out wrong or or whatever. And, you know, I think with everyone I think with everyone also just shipping so much volume and, like, whether it be on X, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on YouTube, Like, you're able now to make videos with Claude. You're able to to have the edited them. You're able to make... What's it called? They wanna make, like, a doppelganger of yourself with AI and and all these different things and get content out faster and have these automations for tweets and have it, like, post news articles and whatever and retweet it in whatever way. There's so much noise, like, you're saying that if you actually focus more on the quality and less on the quantity and less on building all these crazy automations and hitting volume for just hitting volume's sake, it gets so easy to cut through the noise. And, like, if you actually have real value, you package it well, and you post, like, not a lot. You post with with purpose and for actual reason, you can cut through really easily as a brand or as a company. I think another good example of this is also Tanay's YouTube channel. We started it around, like, what, three months ago, and five YouTube videos in were, like, millions and millions of views, 20,000 or 21,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is one of the hardest platforms to grow. And, like, a lot of people think, oh, we're starting a YouTube channel. We need to post three videos a week. And it's like, no. Like, if you actually put in the time and effort and you tell a really good story and you do everything with purpose and you package it really well and you have a really good team of humans actually touching everything in there, you get really good end product and people actually can see the effort you put into it.
01:08:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Hector Serrano
[01:08:08] S0: That's actually where I was gonna go, and this could be our final thread to chat through is just this other lever, which is, I don't know if you describe it as founder led growth or [01:08:17] S1: Yeah. Founder led content. [01:08:19] S0: Founder led content. Just give us kind of a sense of that growth opportunity, what you're seeing there, the opportunity to drive growth for your product through founder led content.
01:08:28 · Hector Serrano
[01:08:28] S1: Yeah, I think it also ties into what we were just talking about, so much AI and so much ads in companies, etcetera, And at the end of the day, it also... It ties back to everything in content creator and people. Like, at the end of day, people buy from people, people invest in people. And I think having a founder who can put his face out there, can talk on camera, you can use an ad, you can use to tell a story, it makes the company and the product feel that much more human. And, like, when you compare two products, I would much rather, like, even from my own experience, like, if I follow... I don't know. Let's say, I follow George Heaton, who's the founder of Represent. He has, a clothing brand. And then there's another ad that I see for a clothing brand. I'm much more gonna buy the product, George's product, because I know how he works. I know his routine. I know the type of person he is. I know what he stands for. I know how hard he works for his company and what he actually puts into it. And I think people really appreciate that. And, again, such a digital age, like being able to connect with the founder behind the product And you not only, like, create super fans and, like, people who already use your product but now also love you. You also bring in, like, this new group of people who have never seen your product. They don't really know who you are, and then slowly, they start to, like, like the content you're putting out. They start to buy into the mission. They start to buy into the company, and then they actually try the product. And it's like this long, like, horizon type play, or this, like, long term play that you have to make. And it's an investment because you can't just start a YouTube channel or found a lead brand and instantly start selling at people because people are just gonna switch off and be like, okay, I don't wanna be part of this anymore. But if you just give a lot of value, you overshare, you over deliver, and you just open up the doors into like what the culture is like, what you're building, people really appreciate that, and you get them to buy in and like drop their guards. And then maybe a year in, we actually, like, maybe have, like, a soft seller. Maybe we have Tanay have, hey, guys. Here's, like, some support. Thanks for getting us to a 100,000 subscribers. Just wanna drop this code, blah blah blah.