Y Combinator Startup Podcast
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?
00:10:30 · Farza Majeed, Aaron Epstein
[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? [00:10:47] S0: Yeah. What's going through your head? Are you imagining the audience listening to this, or how do you evaluate if something is actually good and interesting?
00:10:47 · Aaron Epstein, Farza Majeed
[00:10:47] S0: Yeah. What's going through your head? Are you imagining the audience listening to this, or how do you evaluate if something is actually good and interesting? [00:10:54] S1: For me, it's always I'm the audience. Like, would I be interested in what what the script is saying? So, And honestly, this script is actually not that strong, but I still recorded the video because you gotta you gotta be launching. In the first kind of little bit, am I getting across what I'm doing? Why is it important? Like, you can get across so much in just ten seconds. What you're doing, why it's important, let's get into it. Know, that's what the first ten seconds of any kind of video should be about. Because most of these videos are one minute long. Right? It's kinda like a movie. You know, a movie is an hour and a half, two hours, and the first twenty minutes is just a setup. Mhmm. That's a two hour thing. So And for a video that's one minute long, you need a setup. But it should only be like 10, 20%. So I write this down. And so in this case, I said, hi. I wanna share a new demo of our new... A demo of our new agent interface when talking to our users, blah blah blah, and then getting into the demo. And so for me, this is kind of this is kind of how I think through it, you know, before I get in front of the camera. The worst part is when you're in front of the camera, and you're like, oh, what am I saying? You know? Like, you have you have nothing to ground yourself. Yeah. It's good to ground yourself. Yeah.
00:10:54 · Farza Majeed, Aaron Epstein
[00:10:54] S1: For me, it's always I'm the audience. Like, would I be interested in what what the script is saying? So, And honestly, this script is actually not that strong, but I still recorded the video because you gotta you gotta be launching. In the first kind of little bit, am I getting across what I'm doing? Why is it important? Like, you can get across so much in just ten seconds. What you're doing, why it's important, let's get into it. Know, that's what the first ten seconds of any kind of video should be about. Because most of these videos are one minute long. Right? It's kinda like a movie. You know, a movie is an hour and a half, two hours, and the first twenty minutes is just a setup. Mhmm. That's a two hour thing. So And for a video that's one minute long, you need a setup. But it should only be like 10, 20%. So I write this down. And so in this case, I said, hi. I wanna share a new demo of our new... A demo of our new agent interface when talking to our users, blah blah blah, and then getting into the demo. And so for me, this is kind of this is kind of how I think through it, you know, before I get in front of the camera. The worst part is when you're in front of the camera, and you're like, oh, what am I saying? You know? Like, you have you have nothing to ground yourself. Yeah. It's good to ground yourself. Yeah. [00:11:56] S0: You start with the script, and then you move on to some of the visuals. How do you think about what that first shot should be? It's so important. Right? It's the first thing people see when they're scrolling.