Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:29:29 · Farza Majeed, Aaron Epstein
[00:29:29] S1: Oh, yeah. [00:29:29] S0: Using these platforms that are real humans that happen to work at companies where they could be your customer [00:29:35] S1: Oh, yeah. [00:29:35] S0: And would be interested in seeing your product. Right? [00:29:37] S1: Yes. Everybody in the world is on... Not everybody in the world, but a large majority of the world is [00:29:44] S0: browsing through these platforms. Billions. [00:29:46] S1: Yes. We found that design agencies really loved our product. Like, three of them that found us naturally. So the question became, how do we get more design agencies? Now I'm curious. What what what would you do if you take yourself back, like, to founder mode Aaron? [00:30:01] S0: Oh, I don't know. Probably the default for a lot of people is, like, go look on LinkedIn and Yeah. You know, try to find people that list the place they work as a design agency or go to communities that they hang out in or, like, specialized design [00:30:13] S1: Totally. [00:30:14] S0: Websites or something.
00:30:14 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:30:14] S0: Websites or something. [00:30:15] S1: And those are all actually really good. You should do those things. But at the same time, do you think a design agency founder is on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube? Do you think they're on these platforms? The answer is probably yes. It's probably a lot of them. And so we started making TikToks, I remember. I don't have the account pulled up here, that was just targeting design agencies. I would literally say, hey, are you a design agency? Or hey, are you the founder of a design agency? Stop right there. Let me show you something really cool. And then that's how we found 50 design agency leads, just through TikTok. And these videos didn't go viral. They each, on average, had, like, 4,000 views. [00:30:49] S0: But it's probably 4,000 targeted views. [00:30:50] S1: 4,000 targeted views. So the goal of my goal is never to go viral. It's just I wanna talk about what I'm working on, and I wanna make sure it's listened to by an audience that would be interested in... Actually interested in what I'm doing. [00:31:02] S0: How do you think about the different channels? [00:31:04] S1: Every channel is different. I'll say off the bat, Twitter is our worst... Is... In historic... I've I've been making stuff on Twitter for, like, ten years. Mhmm. The worst conversion of any channel. Like, this video, the original Clicky video, got 7,000 downloads on 3,000,000 views. Mhmm. If you do the math there, it's, like, less than 1% or some crazy low [00:31:22] S0: number. Less. Yeah.
00:31:22 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:31:22] S0: number. Less. Yeah. [00:31:23] S1: It's very low. Screen aware dictation, this video. Right? 2,900,000 views on Twitter, but the conversion rate onto those people actually making accounts was horrendously low. This YouTube video has 20,000 views. But do you know what the conversion rate on this video is? It's, like, 20% to them actually downloading the app. Wow. So the chances of you watching this video and downloading my app is 20%. [00:31:44] S0: Do you think that's something specific to the channel, or is it something
00:31:47 · Farza Majeed
[00:31:47] S1: I don't. Every channel is different. Think about it. I'm on Twitter. I'm just, like, doomscrolling, basically. Not really doomscrolling. I'm just scrolling through random stuff all the time. And so for YouTube, I I... It was so surprising. And so historically, actually, YouTube is, for most companies, the best performing channel in terms of conversion. But, look, our numbers are very low. Eight seventy two subscribers, 20 k views. Like Mhmm. I'm not mister beast. Mhmm. You know? But, again, if you do the math, this leads to a very real number of sign ups, and this video will keep on performing. That's the most important part. Yep. This... YouTube is a library that will last for decades. Twitter, you got your moment once and you're gone. Mhmm. Instagram is another one. That's so important. All of our traffic, I think 70% of our traffic is Instagram. This is where you gotta be smart. You're like, I'm not trying to go viral. I'm trying to make... Tell people what I'm doing. But I'm, again, down the funnel, how many people actually converted? It's worth checking out. And so that's why I think people should always make their video and then make the first couple of videos, but then start to ask themselves, maybe I should make my... For example, our link in bio is IG. Why? Because then I can track, wait a second. What was the conversion rate of people who hit IG and downloaded my app? Or if it landed on their phone, sent it to the we have a little button that lets them send it to themselves over email. How many of them click that? What's the conversion rate? And so by posting on all these channels, you start to see not only where I'm performing views wise, but actually just, like, who's... Where is my best channel right now in terms of the audience that I'm looking for? And, again, for us, it is by far Instagram, and it's it's not even close.
00:33:21 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:33:21] S0: And you're basically using the same content for every channel? [00:33:24] S1: Yes. I I do make videos for specific platforms. So most of our videos, we make for Instagram Uh-huh. But then we post to Twitter, whereas some videos, we make for Twitter and then post to Instagram. [00:33:34] S0: What is the difference between one that targets one versus the other? [00:33:37] S1: So simple. I mean, Twitter generally doesn't like vertical videos. Mhmm. It likes sixteen nine. Yep. So then this... For example, we have this drawing video. So we built a system that can draw directly on your screen. It can draw polygons, arrows. This is super optimized for Twitter because just look... Let's let's just watch it muted, and imagine I'm scrolling my feed. Ready? Okay. Guy in front of Blackboard, AI, draw screen. I'll watch. It's like... It's that quick. It's like AI, draw screen, blackboard. He's drawing things, see plot opus, demo, click. You know? Like, my brain thinks like that. Mhmm. What are the quick... Because nobody's reading this entire this entire damn thing. And so this is optimized for Twitter. This video is optimized for Twitter. But what was surprising is we posted the exact same thing to my Instagram, and it performed even better. And you would think that, like, this type of video wouldn't perform that good, but it has, like, millions of views. And it's a vertical video because on their phone, it looks even worse. It looks like this.
00:34:33 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:34:33] S0: Well, one thing that I... Maybe a couple things that I know about you are you have a very high bar for yourself and the things that you put out there. And while at the same time, almost ironically, you're very comfortable putting a lot of things out there. Yeah. And so you... I hate to use the word taste, but, like, you've been doing this so long that you have a high bar and a good sense of of what you would be excited to watch, and you just naturally have a very, short attention span. You get bored, and you, like, want the next thing. And if you're not getting that, then you move on. And I think that serves you very well with the videos that you're creating here. [00:35:09] S1: Yeah. Either I have good taste or I just put out so much stuff and some of them just hit. [00:35:13] S0: That's how you get it, I think, is you you put it out... You put out a lot of things and you continue to improve, and that that levels up your work. [00:35:20] S1: Totally. I I think I have more of the latter where I just put out so much stuff and some of it some of works. And and, again, we're looking at the stuff that's working, but so much hasn't worked. [00:35:27] S0: Right. [00:35:27] S1: Like my old zip school videos, like, nobody cared. [00:35:29] S0: Yeah.