A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:47:10 · Isaiah Granet
[00:47:10] S0: Yes, so I wanted to do this since I was a kid. I was a really weird kid, but for those of you that don't know, Super Bowl ads. The ones that you see, there's a combination. There's the national ads. These are the ones that are like $8 million, $10 million, $11 million just for the spot, let alone the filming. These are really expensive and everybody in the country sees them. Then there's local ads. These are the ads where you're like, hey, come on down to Ray's car dealership in San Jose. And you're like, how on earth did this get into the Super Bowl? Every network is obligated to give some airtime to local businesses and then the national ads that are big ones are the ones that we all talk about. And what we thought was, hey, what if we could go viral and get a lot of attention by picking a couple of locations to air a local ad? A local ad doesn't mean it has to be made in that area, and it also doesn't mean it can't be high quality. So we shot and filmed a 4K ready-for-TV ad. We aired it in, I think, Arizona, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. And we had a bunch of influencers ready to go. We got listed in, hey, here's the top 10 best Super Bowl ads this year. We had a bunch of viral posts about it and we had people in that area actually seeing the ad, and engaging with it. And so we basically were able to say, hey, look, we did a Super Bowl ad. And people were like, wow, that was such a great ad. And locals would have never seen it. And they sort of just assumed they missed it one commercial break or something. And we were able to get a huge amount of free press, and then even more press when we told people what we had done.
00:48:34 · Pablo Srugo, Isaiah Granet
[00:48:34] S2: I love it, I mean it's a classic like Sun Tzu. When you're big act small, when you're small act big. So this is the startup version of that, you know, the billboards and the Super Bowl ads. How can we appear to be much bigger than we are and still get the ROI by leveraging, you know, like in your case, the influencer stuff and the viral stuff so that what could have been just a local thing seen by a few thousand people actually become the huge viral campaign. [00:48:58] S0: Absolutely. [00:48:59] S2: And then the last thing I want to touch on quickly is, tell me about getting Soulja Boy to run an ad with you.
00:48:59 · Pablo Srugo, Isaiah Granet
[00:48:59] S2: And then the last thing I want to touch on quickly is, tell me about getting Soulja Boy to run an ad with you. [00:49:06] S0: Oh, yeah, this one was recent. So for any listeners that don't know, basically we ended up licensing Soulja Boy's voice and what that means is you can actually call, and talk to, and use Soulja Boy's voice on Bland's platform. This was a really fun advertisement. So the reason we went with Soulja Boy was twofold and was one, we basically, we knew the song "Kiss Me Through the Phone." And we thought that that was relevant for Bland because we do AI phone calls. And two, Soulja Boy's peak of popularity aligns really tightly with our current enterprise buyer segment. And when, they were basically growing up and listening to music like what Soulja Boy produced. And so we got in touch with his agent. He was awesome. Soulja was a pleasure to work with. We filmed this ad and we licensed the voice, and put it up on a big phone number, and it just got a huge amount of engagement. And it just comes back to like the reason why that stuff works is because you're buying attention in a different way. You're not forcing people to look at something. You're saying, I will trade you a little bit of entertainment if you give me a little bit of consideration.
00:50:08 · Pablo Srugo, Isaiah Granet
[00:50:08] S2: People want to be entertained. That's the thing you can always count on. AI, no AI, and if you want to have crazy reach, you can't just push your product because nobody cares. That's the thing about whether it's Cluely or you guys or whatever. You watch the content, even if you're not going to buy the product because you're not ICP. You actually like the content. You're like, this is good content and everybody actually kind of wins by that. And by the way, that's what gets you crazy ROI on your spend. Where you actually are like, wow, we only spent whatever and we got a crazy amount of ARR. Yeah, the delta there is because you entertain a lot of people. [00:50:40] S0: Exactly, you're trading entertainment for eyeballs instead of cash for eyeballs and it's all some sort of form of trade. And the people that think about marketing in any other way are wrong. You are trading something for attention. [00:50:52] S2: So let's end on this question. What would be your top advice for early stage founders that are somewhere where you were in YC?
00:50:52 · Pablo Srugo, Isaiah Granet
[00:50:52] S2: So let's end on this question. What would be your top advice for early stage founders that are somewhere where you were in YC? [00:51:01] S0: My top advice for a founder who finds themselves, you know, a year or so into the journey and things just aren't working or they feel like they found their new idea but nobody believes in it. Is keep your head down and just do the right things, and do it with focus. And everybody says keep going, you'll hear that advice, but I don't hear a lot of people say do it with focus. Your job is to pick one place that you can win and throw everything at that. And for the founders that are going through that stage, just know that it does eventually get better and there is a way out of it. Even though you can't see it, even though it feels like your situation is different. I've seen it through myself, I've seen it through so many of my friends. Just keep your head down and keep going, and find your spike. Focus on that and throw everything, and good things will come. [00:51:48] S2: Isaiah, thanks for jumping on the show, man. It's been a lot of fun. [00:51:51] S0: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, man.
00:51:51 · Isaiah Granet, Pablo Srugo
[00:51:51] S0: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, man. [00:51:53] S2: You remember the first person who told you about Bitcoin? The first person who told you about Uber? You want to be that person because being first is cool. So be a cool person and tell your founder friends. Send it to them on WhatsApp. Put it in a WhatsApp group. Put it on a Slack channel. Let people know about the show. Let people know about this episode. Don't let somebody else beat you to the punch and share it with your founder friends first. Remember what Ricky Bobby said: "If you ain't first, you're last."