Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:20:48 · Farza Majeed, Aaron Epstein
[00:20:48] S1: Totally. I wanna be really clear. All my videos are, like... Looked very produced. Mhmm. But that's because it comes very naturally to me. Mhmm. To make a produced video, for me, will take, like, an hour. Mhmm. But for other people, it may take longer. So while I'm showing this, like, I wanna be clear, like, you don't have to produce your videos. It could just be an iPhone video and just go do really well. So this is one of those videos where I just knew, even when I when I when I wrote the script, that it was gonna go big. Mhmm. It does now 21,000,000 views on Instagram. Mhmm. And believe it or not, this one video is still driving a lot of our traffic. Mhmm. So that's how these algorithms work. Like, they'll keep serving the content to people... To more people that wanna see it. Also, I've made this video an ad now. So I'm running Facebook ads now on a video. So, yeah, there's lot of benefit to making videos of your company. Last week, I went super viral for an idea that I built that I thought was actually kinda terrible. And this week, I'm somehow in Y Combinator? Let me show you what... Okay. So just that hook. Yeah. Like, what what did I say? Last week, I went super viral for something I built that I thought was kind of ridiculous or whatever, bad. Cool. Like, that's interesting. And now he's in this thing called Y Combinator. I've heard of Y Combinator, so I was kinda targeting that niche. And then a very simple... Let me show you what I'm working on. I... It's... My formula is always the same. [00:21:55] S0: Yep.
00:21:55 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed, Farza Majeed
[00:21:55] S0: Yep. [00:21:55] S1: This is who I am. This is what's going on. This is what I'm working on. Let me show you. Show you what I'm building. It's called Clicky. It's a little AI buddy that lives next to your computer cursor and teaches you anything in real time for free. Let's say I'm learning how to color grade in DaVinci Resolve. Instead of going to a YouTube video, I just gotta ask out loud, and Clicky will literally tell me exactly how to get there [00:22:14] S2: and even point at it for me. [00:22:15] S1: So again, a little... Pretty produced, but again, this this took us, like, four to six hours to make Mhmm. Because we've just done this. But again, even if this was a simple video where I'm like, hi. This is what I'm working on. Check this out. And then I turn the camera to literally show my computer, I think the effect may not have been as big, but, again, you just start, and you make, like, 10 of those then. You get really good at talking about stuff. But, again, like, that video, super clear hook. A very clear, like, why you should why you should care right now while you're on your scroll. And so a big thing that I'd always do when I watch videos on the Internet, regardless if they're mine or not, is I ask myself, am I bouncing? When am I bouncing? So And if I go to Instagram Reels anytime... And this is what I do a lot, actually. I watch a lot of content, not for entertainment, just to kinda study. Mhmm. And so I can go to Instagram Reels. [00:23:01] S0: It's a page to block my long distance girlfriend and post my weight loss journey.
00:23:01 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed, Farza Majeed
[00:23:01] S0: It's a page to block my long distance girlfriend and post my weight loss journey. [00:23:05] S1: First of all, this is a random video we just stumbled upon. Right? There is so much to learn. Mhmm. Dark background, light on his face, kind of a cool little caption at the bottom where it starts with two months ago. Mhmm. You kinda wanna know, two months ago, what? You're just curious. [00:23:19] S0: Right. [00:23:19] S1: What happened? So I'll mentally take that as a note and be like, oh, cool. Like, maybe we can make a video that uses this as, like, a template. Mhmm. Maybe it's, like, two months ago, I was working on something, and I didn't really know what it was, and then tell the story. Yeah. And so, again, I'll just keep doing this. I keep, like [00:23:34] S2: Okay. So this song just hit 2,000,000 streams. [00:23:36] S0: You didn't understand what [00:23:37] S2: you You wanted to know where I've been. [00:23:40] S1: And it's off. [00:23:41] S2: Welcome back to teachers we should have released six months ago, but we're unreleasing them now. [00:23:45] S1: This is cool. This is what Starbucks should be doing. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm seeing a lot of this now, but mostly, like, younger founders, which is cool. [00:23:50] S0: There's almost something, like, self deprecating about it. You know, yours is like, ah, I had this thing that I thought was terrible. And they're, ah, this is the stuff we should have launched six months ago. And this guy's like, ah, broke up with my ex girlfriend.
00:23:50 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:23:50] S0: There's almost something, like, self deprecating about it. You know, yours is like, ah, I had this thing that I thought was terrible. And they're, ah, this is the stuff we should have launched six months ago. And this guy's like, ah, broke up with my ex girlfriend. [00:24:04] S1: Everyone wants a story. And so how can a demo just be a mini story or what you're saying be a mini story? [00:24:09] S0: Yeah. And you... I've heard you talk about this where it... It's not actually you in the video. It's the character, Farza. And and it's almost like all these people, they're a character that the audience can identify with and ultimately root for potentially. [00:24:22] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, like, when a founder talks to the camera, like, you come off as a certain type of way. And so totally, sometimes I'm like, yeah, I am not playing a character, but I'm a character to the people. When someone watches me on their little TikTok feed or their Twitter feed, I'm just a random character in their eyes. I'm not a real... I'm a person, but I'm kind of a character. I'll show you guys this too, which is just something we've been doing that our users have been loving. It's not going viral, but our users have been loving it. And there's just these little... Actually, some of them have been going viral, which is pretty cool. This is everything we built this week.
00:24:22 · Farza Majeed, S3, Aaron Epstein
[00:24:22] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, like, when a founder talks to the camera, like, you come off as a certain type of way. And so totally, sometimes I'm like, yeah, I am not playing a character, but I'm a character to the people. When someone watches me on their little TikTok feed or their Twitter feed, I'm just a random character in their eyes. I'm not a real... I'm a person, but I'm kind of a character. I'll show you guys this too, which is just something we've been doing that our users have been loving. It's not going viral, but our users have been loving it. And there's just these little... Actually, some of them have been going viral, which is pretty cool. This is everything we built this week. [00:24:56] S3: So Clicky had been... Had some problems about, like, the integration and orchestration of the agents. Now Clicky has a new brain, and it will feel way more smooth to spoil the agents, to control them, to pause them, and you're gonna see a lot of improvements overall. Lot of people complaining about, like, Clicky is keep following them, so I made a fix for them. [00:25:15] S1: So there's no there's no hook. Mhmm. There's no attention. There's no story. It's we're a group of people, and we wanna tell you what we're doing. This almost has a million views on Instagram. Why do you [00:25:25] S0: think these are so popular?
00:25:25 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:25:25] S0: think these are so popular? [00:25:27] S1: I think that... This is the most important thing I think about, like, companies making content. What we are doing on a day to day basis at our companies is so far fetched from what most people think is actually happening at a company. Mhmm. And to just give them an inside look of what's actually going on in your process is so cool, and it gets them excited. It gets them interested in what you're doing. What I'm so against and so anti is talking about my life as a founder on the Internet. Mhmm. You'll never catch me making those videos about this is this is my day as a YC founder. Never. Like, I'm not trying to, like, tell you about my life and tell you about, like, my my my... That stuff. I'm trying to show you, like, what I'm doing and why in new ways. And I think that most companies just never show their process. For most companies, big companies, Apple, Meta, you just see Mark Zuckerberg on the stage, and he's showing you his Meta Glasses. But a lot of people, especially early adopters of of products that, you know, that I'm sure many YC founders are working on, are interested in just like, who are this random group of four guys and girls that are making this AI product, and how are they doing it? And just telling... We make these videos in ten minutes. And it's just, hey. Just get up. What are you doing today? And, yeah, it's interesting. It's funny when we started making these, we just made them just to stay accountable because it was was good to kinda tell the people what... It's kinda like stand