The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:59:37 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:59:37] S0: No. I... I'm with you totally. I remember when they were the hottest company. Yes. Yeah. Actually, I haven't heard anything. [00:59:43] S1: Yeah. It's tricky. It's tricky. But I could imagine that, you know, Lovable, you sell to a large enterprise, you get behind their firewall, and you just keep as an internal app, then you can, like, massively expand within that with far less risk. Maybe make it read only seats as the primary use case, but Anton's super smart. I'm sure he'll work out. [01:00:00] S0: I totally agree. I love Lovable, and I think they're fantastic. Do you enjoy angel investing? [01:00:05] S1: It's fun. I missed ElevenLabs, so I'm not sure how good I am. We had Runna, the running app, and they just did fantastically well. That's my first exit. They just sold to Strava. [01:00:16] S0: Yeah. It's [01:00:16] S1: a Incredible team. So I just find it as a really fun way to partner with people who I really back. [01:00:22] S0: Dude, I wanna dive into a quick fire. So I say a short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? [01:00:26] S1: Great. [01:00:27] S0: Number one, what's the most common or expensive mistake that you see early founders making?
01:00:27 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[01:00:27] S0: Number one, what's the most common or expensive mistake that you see early founders making? [01:00:33] S1: The biggest mistake I see early founders making, particularly for b to b, is doing paid marketing too early. Because if you don't have PMF yet, you're not going to get paid marketing working, and you're gonna spend all your time and all your engineering time optimizing funnels and conversion and creating these different creative and ads and caring about your rankings and your your meta... Metrics. None of that actually matters apart from just build an incredible product. And I think the core loop of do incredible launches and build an incredible product is enough for any b to b or prosumer product to get at initial product market fit, and then you can start testing out different paid channels. The caveat though, I'd say, is if you are consumer, distribution. With b to b, you basically know if you build an exceptional product, you can staff the sales team to it, and they'll be able to scale it. So distribution is not as much of a risk. With consumer, it's very different where distribution is a key part. You could create an incredible product, but if no one hears about it, then you can't scale it. And so instead, you may want to consider performance marketing earlier, but, I would try and lead to other channels which also increase brand. [01:01:40] S0: I totally agree with you. The one thing I find paid really helpful for is if you're strategic around how you use it for testing. Mhmm. And so if you use it for testing on different messaging.
01:01:40 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[01:01:40] S0: I totally agree with you. The one thing I find paid really helpful for is if you're strategic around how you use it for testing. Mhmm. And so if you use it for testing on different messaging. [01:01:48] S1: I've never seen that work. Have you? [01:01:51] S0: I mean, I've seen [01:01:53] S1: people waste a lot of time [01:01:54] S0: when It runs it on immediate business on like different title optimization True. And different color optimization, different font optimization. [01:02:01] S1: Yes. But when you were making your first episodes Yeah. Should you have spent more time AB testing different podcasts? And maybe Harry instead of 20 VC could have lent more into product or growth earlier. [01:02:13] S0: No. It's just like No. Brute force more shows. [01:02:16] S1: Yeah. Exactly. Build a better product first Yeah. And then lean into paid. [01:02:20] S0: Totally. That was a shitty suggestion, Harry. What's the most underappreciated growth channel today? What do people not do that you like? [01:02:27] S1: The most under appreciated growth channel I see is organic LinkedIn. On Twitter, you're competing against the best writers in the world. You're competing against Harry Stebbings running shorts. [01:02:38] S0: Ackman. I [01:02:39] S1: mean Bill Bill Ackman. Like, it's really tough. On LinkedIn, you're competing against Freddie from Deloitte who got a promotion. And so the bar to creating great content and standing out and being authentic is so much lower. [01:02:52] S0: That is so true. LinkedIn is unbelievable as a content engine today.
01:02:52 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[01:02:52] S0: That is so true. LinkedIn is unbelievable as a content engine today. [01:02:56] S1: Think 100%. Really. [01:02:58] S0: What's the most polluted channel that you're like, ugh, stay away? [01:03:01] S1: Actually, LinkedIn ads. So LinkedIn organic is fantastic. The bar's so low, you can get stuff super viral. LinkedIn ads, the CPMs are so high. Yes. You can do great targeting, but actually, I would argue invest a lot more time into creating excellent content that you distribute organically. Maybe you want to layer on ads on top, but particularly the kind of people that have been running LinkedIn ads. You're doing enterprise. You're doing heavy products with long sales cycle. It's really tough to get that working, and instead, I would just focus on the organic side. [01:03:32] S0: What's your advice to someone starting a new role in growth tomorrow? [01:03:36] S1: The biggest advice I would give is get great at copywriting. When you think, like, the actual writing copy, writing words, how do you make something engaging, how do you get your message across is so fundamental to any bit of growth you do. So whether you're running LinkedIn ads, if you're doing organic LinkedIn, if you're doing a blog post, a tweet thread, if you're doing copy for your landing pages, get great at copy as that's the foundation for all other growth.
01:03:36 · Luke Harries, Harry Stebbings
[01:03:36] S1: The biggest advice I would give is get great at copywriting. When you think, like, the actual writing copy, writing words, how do you make something engaging, how do you get your message across is so fundamental to any bit of growth you do. So whether you're running LinkedIn ads, if you're doing organic LinkedIn, if you're doing a blog post, a tweet thread, if you're doing copy for your landing pages, get great at copy as that's the foundation for all other growth. [01:04:03] S0: It's fucking fantastic podcast. You know why you're actually a brilliant podcast guest as well? And this would be a big advice that I should actually tweet, and I probably will do later. You repeat the question at the start of your statement, which is so helpful for Shorts. Do see what I mean? [01:04:19] S1: Yeah. Distribution in mind. Totally. [01:04:21] S0: But you say the biggest problem people make with x. [01:04:24] S1: Yes. Because [01:04:24] S0: the worst thing is when people just go, oh, they do this. Yes. That's really hard to short formify. [01:04:29] S1: Yes. [01:04:30] S0: Do you see [01:04:30] S1: what I mean? Yeah. [01:04:31] S0: Yeah. Many reasons why I'm single. It's because I get excited by that. What would you most like to change about the world of growth?
01:04:31 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[01:04:31] S0: Yeah. Many reasons why I'm single. It's because I get excited by that. What would you most like to change about the world of growth? [01:04:38] S1: I'd most like to... You've made me aware Come I'm now doing on. No. Exactly. The thing I'd most like to change about the world of growth is you just should not launch products which aren't actually ready. The biggest villain I see doing this at the moment is Apple. And so we've always held Steve Jobs in our mind as just like this beacon of marketing and product and engineering. And now you have Apple pushing that the reason you should upgrade to the newest iPhone or upgrade to the newest laptop is because of Apple Intelligence. Well, there's no one actually knows what Apple Intelligence is or how to use it or gets any value from it. [01:05:12] S0: And it's not coming out until 2026. [01:05:13] S1: It's still not out. So why are they pushing in their marketing? Instead, make sure your product is actually ready, that it performs great, and then ship it and push [01:05:20] S0: it hard. They did kind of change their whole AI team, I think, as a result of What have you changed your mind on in the last twelve months?