Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:42:18 · Farza Majeed
[00:42:18] S1: And so I think if every founder could just invest in one of those super cheap DJI mics, find them used online, or just any mic that's not your MacBook mic. Your... It's... Or your AirPod mics. Those don't count. Yeah. That would be really good. And then for editing on my actual laptop, I use DaVinci. Yeah. And maybe the most important part of my stack, he's not here right now, but Vikrant. Vikrant has made all the Hey Clicky videos. And without that guy making me look good and making us look good, none of this would happen. And so I don't wanna sit here and be like, I made all these videos and did all this stuff. Every video we just looked at, apart from the the bad zip school ones which were made by me, are made by Vikrant. And so having a person that is actually talented at filmmaking, storytelling, writing next to you is the biggest bonus a founder could have today. So a big part of how I work with Vikrant, who's the person who helps me with all these videos, is we just brainstorm. We're like, hey. We made this feature. What should... How should we make the video now? Mhmm. What are we thinking? Where should we do it? And so Vikrant is actually the main guy that's like, I had this shot idea, or I had this hook idea, or, hey, I have this other idea. And often, I'm the guy that's bringing the script and the song and the vibe that I'm going for. Because as the founder, I think you'll slowly find what are the things that you're good at in video making. There's some aspect to it. Yeah. So for me, I find I'm really good at writing, and I'm really good at the music. And then Vikrant is good at literally everything else, from shooting to picking the set to editing after to, you know, all the little motion graphics he does. Just so talented. And then as the founder of me, Farza, I can go back to focusing on growth, hiring, making the product. I don't wanna spend all my time making videos. You know? I don't think any founder watching this wants to do that. And and look, I think a lot of these... A lot of people watching probably can't afford to hire a filmmaker or, like, an actual person on their team. They're maybe just solo with a cofounder. And what I'll say is, hey. Go back to my old Zip School videos. Go back to... Just scroll through any of my social media and look at all my old shitty videos and just start somewhere.
00:44:14 · Farza Majeed
That's the most important thing about making launch videos and launching today is you gotta start. And the more you keep doing it every day, the more natural it'll become. And slowly, hopefully, people check out your product. Hopefully, you can then hire someone that does it even better than you. So for example, I'm not the engineer at my company anymore. I'm not the core engineer. I have someone that's a lot better than me. And same with filmmaking, same with design, same with every aspect of my company. But the early days as a founder, doing everything. You gotta do it all. You're doing taxes. You're doing design. You're doing filmmaking. And so you gotta do everything. You can't be a little baby about it. You gotta take out your camera and start posting some cringe stuff. Because in order to not be cringe, you must first be cringe. So... Yeah. And then, yeah, for all of my writing, I always use this thing called Freerite. It's free to download, freerite.io. It's my app. I built it actually just for this purpose. Mhmm. Yeah. Free open source. You can check it out. Maybe this is one thing I should... I didn't mention at all before is writing is so important. So spend as much time possible before the video writing it. So before you get in front of the camera and maybe record it, if you've never made a video, don't worry about this. But if you're, like, on your fifteenth, twentieth, thirtieth video, try writing. Try writing for just ten minutes about what the... What it should be, and then record it. Mhmm. You'll find that the more you think through it before you get to the video, the better it can possibly get. Because then you can catch a bad idea before it gets here. Yep. And that's it. That's that's that's that's my stack.
00:45:41 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:45:41] S0: I think you you have a challenge for everybody who's watching for something they can do today to get started. Right? [00:45:46] S1: My challenge to everyone watching this is if you've never really made videos or if you have never really talked about your work online, but you've been hacking, you've tinkering, you've been working on something, super simple. Every day, just spend ten minutes, take your phone out, iPhone or Android. It's okay. And then just record yourself, talking about what you were doing to... What you did that day, and then post it to your social media of choice, Instagram, TikTok. You know what? Make it... Make a new Instagram account so your your existing followers don't even know. You do... Just post it somewhere, and do that for thirty days straight. And I promise you, within those thirty days, one of those videos will surpass probably a thousand views. And then you can look back and ask yourself, that one did a thousand views. Maybe the next one... And you can learn from that, and you can make the next one based off the one that got a thousand views. And you can slowly get better and better and better. That's the challenge. Yeah. Thirty days straight, every day, one video. Send it to me. I'll be I'll be I'll be one of your likes if you're doing this challenge, and, yeah, go for it. [00:46:47] S0: And it's never been easier to do this, right, to get that message out. [00:46:50] S1: It's never been easier. It's never been easier. [00:46:52] S0: Farza, thank you so much for being here. This is incredible advice.
00:46:52 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:46:52] S0: Farza, thank you so much for being here. This is incredible advice. [00:46:55] S1: Thanks, Ahmed.