Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:04:35 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed, Farza Majeed
[00:04:35] S0: I I think a lot of people see videos that you publish that go viral and get a ton of attention, and they almost think that it happens by accident because you just seem, you know, so comfortable and natural and off [00:04:46] S2: the cuff. But that's not how you do it at [00:04:48] S0: all because you're trying to figure out the hook before you even do the video. So maybe, it'd be interesting if you could pull up a video, walk us through it, and then maybe walk us through the process of how you created that video. What goes into it before you've even actually started shooting anything? [00:05:02] S1: Totally. Totally. My philosophy on a lot of the launch stuff now is just how can we just show, like, almost like the process of what I'm doing versus show the ending of what I'm doing. I think there's a lot of value to being like, hey. I'm this founder person, and I just got this much money. And this is my product, and this this is my fancy DSLR, and these are my good... My my wonderfully edited video, you know, with me in front of a nice office. You know? But I'm sure we've all seen those. You see those every day. I saw, like, five today for sure. Yep. And those have a purpose. But to to me, that becoming, like, the kind of, like, that people are reaching towards is really annoying. And so I try to always do the opposite and just do what I think is right. Because, again, that's a one time thing. You want you want a channel. Because why are we even launching, Aaron? Why are we launching? What's the reason? [00:05:49] S0: We're launching to get users.
00:05:49 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:05:49] S0: We're launching to get users. [00:05:50] S1: Exactly. We're not launching to, like, get a bunch of clout on the Internet and make people think that we're smart. We're trying to actually get people to use our thing, and that means having a channel that we can keep on repeating and find users from. And so... Yeah. I'll show you one example here. This one's a perfect example. This is, like, the launch of click... Of of Hey Clicky. So this is Clicky. Clicky is this little blue guy that follows your cursor on as you use your computer, and it's basically an AI teacher that can teach you anything. Honestly, I thought the demo was not that good. I remember I showed it to you in office hours, and you're like, oh, you should post this. Like, it's actually kinda cool. Yep. And I I think one day you asked me again about it, and I ended up saying, okay. Yeah. Fine. I'll I'll post this. Yeah. Because even for me, I've been doing this for years, like ten plus years. And even I sometimes, I'm like, oh, I don't wanna post it. It's not good enough. But it was so wrong. It's so wrong of me for you to even think that. And so I record this video in the office five minutes before dinner, and I post it. And after dinner, it's just doing numbers. And now this is my company. Isn't that... It's a crazy thing. Yep. It was just a random side project that I then even just open sourced because I thought no one would even care about it. Mhmm. And here I am working on it six months later as a real company.
00:06:58 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:06:58] S0: Right? So And so this was nearly 3,000,000 views. How how important was this video in actually even giving you the confidence that you should keep working on this? [00:07:05] S1: I do not care about the traffic at all. Mhmm. The views looks really wonderful, and people will say congratulations. But what are the actual numbers? So I actually don't care about this number at all. I was like, how many people downloaded it? Mhmm. And so after this video, think 7,000 people downloaded it. And then I looked at who's, like, retained four days later. And if you ask me why I'm working on the product today, it's not because it went viral. It's because 7,000 people downloaded it, and about a 100 people of those 7,000 kept on using it every day for five days straight. That got me so inspired. I reached out to those 100 people. I talked to each of them, and I was like, oh my god. People are using this for things I would have never imagined. And the users are what inspired me to keep going forward. Of course, there's so many little things I could talk about, things I'm doing just subconsciously at this point. Maybe you could help me think through it. But even just the headline, just like... Just casual. I built this thing. Yeah. It's an AI teacher. What does it do? Why is it important? Yeah. It's like, that's how my brain thinks. I've been writing for, a decade plus. Yep. And so to me, it sounds dumb to call a tweet poetry. But, like, I care about how long things are. [00:08:08] S0: Yes.
00:08:08 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:08:08] S0: Yes. [00:08:08] S1: I care about the difference... The different parts of the story that I'm telling here. [00:08:12] S0: And I remember this even back to your Buildspace days when you would send your regular marketing emails Yeah. To the community. I would get those, and that's how you wrote too. [00:08:20] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:08:21] S0: It didn't feel like the typical marketing email that somebody would expect to get. It felt like Farza was writing to me Yeah. Even when, you know, it it wasn't like you directly sitting down and doing the thing. It felt like that. [00:08:34] S1: Totally. One thing I do a lot is... It depends on the platform. This is Twitter. I'll just kinda go, I don't know, to some random person's tweet here, maybe like this one. And I'll literally change this text to my my tweets text. And I'll just do this. I'll be like, did my eyes stop? I'll just ask myself, did I myself stop on what this is saying? And if I stop, that's, like, step one for me on testing if I myself would kinda check this out. And so Yep. That's kinda my number one rule regard... Regardless of Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, anything. Am I gonna stop on this? [00:09:06] S0: Mhmm.
00:09:06 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:09:06] S0: Mhmm. [00:09:06] S1: Am I even gonna read the first sentence? Because if I don't read the first sentence, there's no way I'm I'm going into this. Also, like, look at the first frame of the video. It's very purposely Xcode. Why? Because I know that initially, curious developers are probably gonna be interested by this, not like actual video editors. Right? So it's purposely Xcode. I purposely zoom in right here to this part to show... Because the part is so small. The part is like this little triangle Yeah. That kinda helps you out. Most people, when they're scrolling, see the first three seconds. Hey, everyone. So this is Clicky. Clicky. And I go, what is that? You know, at least at least while you're while you're scrolling. [00:09:40] S0: Yep. And you're moving it around so people can see that there's something moving there. [00:09:43] S1: I think that you can go into details all day, but the reason I got this... I know this stuff now is because there's hundreds and thousands of videos I've made that nobody has cared about. Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing. Like, yeah, I I don't want people to watch this video and think, oh, I gotta make this hook and do this and this.
00:09:43 · Farza Majeed, Aaron Epstein
[00:09:43] S1: I think that you can go into details all day, but the reason I got this... I know this stuff now is because there's hundreds and thousands of videos I've made that nobody has cared about. Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing. Like, yeah, I I don't want people to watch this video and think, oh, I gotta make this hook and do this and this. [00:09:58] S0: And so this was this first one off the cuff. This was almost entirely unplanned. Yeah. And so a lot of this was just you and instinct and how you put this together based on things you've learned. Walk us through another video that that maybe you planned out a little bit more in advance. Because one thing that's surprising to me, you actually write a script for all of your videos. And I think anybody that's seen one of your videos would be surprised by that because you seem like you're just talking off the cuff. How do you do that? Like, you... You're very prepared, but it doesn't seem formal and stuffy and like you're reading. [00:10:28] S1: Totally. [00:10:28] S0: How can you teach somebody else to do that? [00:10:30] S1: If I like reading it, then that means it'll probably sound good if I'd say it out loud as well. Mhmm. Not always, but sometimes. And so this is one example of a script I wrote for a video that I did yesterday. And, again, it's just super simple. Like, do I enjoy reading this? Like, would I read this if I just... Someone texted this to me?