A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:43:31 · Pablo Srugo, Dan Novaes
[00:43:31] S1: But you, just to be clear, you make that, you make the video yourself or you just have an idea of what the video is and you let them know? [00:43:37] S0: I think to do this well, you need to have someone that like, it probably should be the founder if you don't have the time or you're a larger company, like you need to have someone that can really understand like the process of the script and the content creation and what you want to get. I think like, there was a good Twitter post around like one of the Cali iFounders I think posted where it's like, if you remove the app from this, the video probably wouldn't make sense to some degree. But it also has to like resonate where it can't be like a, an actual ad or feel like an ad because that's also not going to work. He had broken it down actually I thought in a really thoughtful way and I can't, I can't remember the name of the article, but I would just look it up like he was, he had posted about it and it gave a really good insight. [00:44:17] S1: But let's say, so you have this idea like, okay, let's figure out how to use AI for your business and you figure it out and you got the tools and like this is the general script. Where do you get these creators, especially creators like in your need? How do you find them?
00:44:17 · Pablo Srugo, Dan Novaes
[00:44:17] S1: But let's say, so you have this idea like, okay, let's figure out how to use AI for your business and you figure it out and you got the tools and like this is the general script. Where do you get these creators, especially creators like in your need? How do you find them? [00:44:27] S0: There's, yeah, I mean there's platforms out there like one of them that we use, not getting a referral fee or anything, SideShift is like one of the platforms that we use. There's a bunch dude out there. I mean, but if you look up SideShift as an example and then just look up like Asplod or something where all the competitors are SideShift, UGC creator platform and it'll give you like 10 of them. [00:44:48] S1: And then ultimately from there, like it just takes, it's kind of like the same, I mean there used to be these influencer marketplaces, right? It's the exact same thing but for people that don't necessarily have followers. So I assume the prices are just less, you just need more of them.
00:44:48 · Pablo Srugo, Dan Novaes
[00:44:48] S1: And then ultimately from there, like it just takes, it's kind of like the same, I mean there used to be these influencer marketplaces, right? It's the exact same thing but for people that don't necessarily have followers. So I assume the prices are just less, you just need more of them. [00:44:57] S0: They're just way less and then you can see how they, like what campaigns they worked with past, who they've worked with, et cetera. Then you could, it's like literally if you think about Fiverr, like Fiverr for UGC creator is the best way I can think about it, right? Or Upwork for UGC creator is the best way. And then like there's like managers that you could hire to help you do this if you, or even agencies, right? So you could start with an agency, kind of give you the guidelines. I think that eventually once you figure it out, you can bring it in-house, you know, to, and see if it works, you know, but. [00:45:26] S1: And then just like that was going to be my final question, like what's the benchmark? Like just like any channel, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work for you. What should you be looking for in terms of how much money should you put, how many videos until you can get gauge whether the strategy is working for you or for whatever reason isn't?
00:45:38 · Dan Novaes, Pablo Srugo
[00:45:38] S0: I think it really depends on your product. I mean, it's not easy. Look, I think like we probably spent about $30,000 on one of our apps. We got a ton of views, but we didn't have the script down. Like it wasn't driving installs. And so optimizing to the right metric is installs. And so that this, some of the stuff that why I'm telling you, it's like what I learned. It's like having a ton of views if the video is like a viral video that someone's going to click on anyways or watch anyways because it's the piece there and then having just like a brand. Like, you know, Stake did this, right? That's, that's I think the difference of clipping versus like this strategy because like Polymarket happens to do this probably one of the best. It's like, you know, the odds because the product is embedded into the underlying advert, right? But that's very unique to their business, right? Because they can stay on top of current events, which algorithms like. That's why clipping I don't think works for every other business because just having a brand on there with like some viral video, for at least at least it didn't work. Unless maybe if you're spending significant sums of money and then having a broader retargeting play around it. But if you're, if you're starting out zero to one, you know, it really should be founder led and I think, yeah, you'll know, I think within like 20, 30 grand. [00:46:46] S1: By founder led, you mean like the scripting of it and the first few videos like you want the founder to be part of it?
00:46:46 · Pablo Srugo, Dan Novaes
[00:46:46] S1: By founder led, you mean like the scripting of it and the first few videos like you want the founder to be part of it? [00:46:51] S0: It's not, he needs to be a part of the video but it's like he needs to understand like what am I selling really and then working with the creator and then yeah, you got to iterate and then eventually you'll find it. [00:47:00] S1: The second thing I want to spend some time on because you're, you know, you did this twice already, very successfully, it's crowdfunding. What did you learn about running a successful crowdfunding campaign? Like how did you do it?
00:47:09 · Dan Novaes
[00:47:09] S0: The main thing I learned about crowdfunding is like people think that you'll launch a crowdfund and people will just come. There are two types of companies that are successful at crowdfunding. Ironically, Revolut did a crowdfunding round. It was actually one of the best crowdfunding returns in history, right? A lot of people don't know that. Mercury Bank also did a crowdfunding round and the reason I mentioned some of these is like the people that use Mercury are well-to-do founders, right? Are well-to-do people, right? Same thing with Substack. They all did crowdfunding rounds and they were able to sell them out within a week because they could just send it to their like very well-to-do base that loves their product and they invest it. If you are a company like that, you should definitely do a crowdfunding round because it's amazing to be able to get your ambassadors and users and turn them into investors. Most new companies do not have that, right? And in my case, I had a lot of users but my users don't necessarily have a ton of money. You know what I mean? And so we allowed them to earn their shares which allowed me to actually remove some of the gross margin that I would have to put out, right? Going back to the underlying example but knowing that if people aren't going to come that are part of your user base then you need to think about this the same way that you would think about user acquisition and so we think about it in a way of like where do investors go? Like where do they find out about stuff? Like what do they read?