Full Transcript for How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano

You have been doing this insanely incredible job growing WhisperFlow over the past couple years. You joined WhisperFlow at 19. I looked up creator jobs on LinkedIn. Applied to like 200 positions. I found some company called WhisperFlow. I applied, had a call with Tanay, and then I joined. I've never worked in a startup. And I told Tanay, like, I was like, I want equity in Whisper.

And Tanay laughed and was like, I like you, man. There's all this talk about no jobs left for young folks. AI is taking everyone's jobs. Young people are actually much better at this job. A 30, 40-year-old founder doesn't understand what an 18-year-old kid who's in these Discord chats, scrolling every day on Instagram and TikTok, they don't understand what's actually working and the best ways to approach these new channels.

I think it's a no-brainer to have someone like that on your team. They actually had this tweet the other day, the best marketers are allergic to AI. If we go out and start making AI slop ads, it's probably not going to be received really well. There's so much noise. If you actually focus more on the quality and less on the quantity... It gets so easy to cut through the noise.

Let's talk about paid UGC. You're getting influencers, creators to create a pitch basically for Whisper. Keep it really open for them to experiment, do whatever they see fit. They're not capped at their earnings. We have creators now that are making like $13,000 a month. The hardest role to hire for right now is someone like you. I think if you just think that looking for someone with the best grades or the best score isn't going to get you the best hire, you're in for a rude awakening.

Hector, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be on. I'm even more excited to have you here. What I'm going to try to do with this conversation is create a very tactical guide to what is working in growing a B2B SaaS product right now. You have been doing this insanely incredible job growing WhisperFlow over the past couple of years.

I saw the stats that revenue at WhisperFlow grew 30x in the past year, which is absurd. You guys recently raised something like $2 billion in a very competitive market. Clearly, you've figured something out. You've started to share some of the strategies that you've been deploying on X. And so we're going to be going deeper into the stuff that you've seen work.

First of all, give us kind of a sense of what it is you're responsible for at WhisperFlow. What's kind of your job there and what do you work on? First of all, I just want to give a lot of credit to the other members of the team. Like what I touch at the end of the day is a very small part of the business. And that's mainly content as a whole.

I'm a content creator myself, and that's how I originally came into Whisper. And that role obviously evolved a lot. And now I'm kind of in charge of our paid UGC program on the actual content side. I'm not on the media buying side of things. And then on top of that, also managing our organic channels for our founder, like YouTube and Instagram.

Okay, awesome. Something that I've noticed about you and something that I think is really rare these days is you're very good at breaking through the noise, right? both in the content you create, like your tweets recently have just gone crazy viral on Twitter. Everyone's sharing it all over my feeds. So clearly you figured out how to do that yourself.

Also with the ad work that you do, the UGC work that you do, also very effective. So there's a lot that we can all learn from you and what you figured out. Thank you. So just kind of zooming out first, talk about the growth levers that you have been spending time on. What has been working recently in growing Whisperflow slash can work for other B2B SaaS products? I think the first one, and it's maybe a bit corny to say, but I think most importantly, Whisper has grown at the rate it has because of the product.

Everything has been product-led growth since the beginning. i joined at the pre-product stage and i remember we had a few thousand users early on and just i don't know where it just started catching steam and like six months in i remember today said he was like wow we really found pms like it found like we struck gold um and then from there just adding on all these other channels whether it be organic paid everything is just adding more fuel to the fire and what we found a lot of success with um through trial and error, doing a bunch of different things, me testing a bunch of channels, other people testing a bunch of channels.

It's like one of the main ones we've landed on now is paid. And we're funneling that with a lot of UGC content. And we have a lot of pillars inside of paid, whether that be UGC video, statics, influencers, in-house videos, founder storytelling. But yeah, paid ads as a whole, whether it be through Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, et cetera, has definitely become one of our main pillars at Whisper.

And it's one of the things I'm leading on the content side of things. Awesome. OK, so let's let's dive in there. But first, I think to your point, it's really important to say none of this will really work if your product isn't exactly great. If there's not real or organic product market fit already.

I imagine this can work for a little bit and then it just fades away if the product isn't great. So I guess is that just like stuff? Lesson one, this needs to be working on its own with before you start investing in paid. Yeah, exactly. I have a lot of founders sometimes reach out or come by the office or friends and they're like, what's the hack? How did Whisper grow so fast? And it's like, no disrespect to other products, but it's like if you're not having that growth early on and you're having to force it a little bit too much and maybe you have to go back to the drawing board a little bit and rethink how you're actually positioning the product.

Is it actually valuable to your users? Why isn't it growing by itself organically? And yeah, there's really no hack besides having a good product and then adding more leverage to pull from. So let me ask, when do you think it makes sense to start investing in these inorganic channels? Well, I think paid is actually one of the best channels to invest on early on.

And I learned this from Matt, who is actually our ex head of growth at Whisper. He's now at Victor and a lot of his lessons and lessons that I've learned from him. is like taking this e-comm approach to SaaS, which a lot of companies like scared to turn on the paid engine. And what happens when you actually turn on the paid engine is you actually learn a lot faster.

Like if the messaging actually resonates with your audience, are you actually able to convert this cold traffic into users? And At the end of the day, most companies aren't that skilled in organic content because it is something very new. And unless you have really young people on your team who really understand these organic channels really well, know how to package it, know how to make the content, it's really hard to actually get any clear numbers on does your product actually have legs? Do people actually resonate with it? Are you actually able to track these conversions, etc.?? So I think paid makes sense from the get-go.

Obviously, like, testing within your limits and your budgets that you have. But yeah, if you're able to, like, see, I'm able to turn this cold traffic into paying users, then you kind of have, like, a clear signal there that this same messaging or this product will also work on organic if you, like... optimized things a bit more. I want to come back to that, just like what that early team may look like, even maybe pre-product market fit.

But what's really interesting about what you're sharing here is people, you know, paid has been around for a long time, running ads on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all these things like there's nothing new as a platform. And what you're saying here is there's still a lot of alpha and opportunity to grow substantially and do something different in paid.

Yeah, 100%. And like a lot of times people also get scared because they'll say like, oh, I don't want to turn on the paid engine yet, or spend a bunch of money because then we're going to like, we're going to reach a point where we like oversaturate this market or this ICP. But at the end of the day, it's just like getting smarter with how you're again, positioning the product.

And there's always new ways, um, or like new messaging, new ICPs you can target. And you won't really reach saturation if you're like savvy enough with the angles that you're kind of approaching your content with, or the paid that you're, or how you're approaching that paid mechanism, I guess. This episode is brought to you by this season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS.

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Go to workos.com to make your app enterprise ready today. Okay, so let's actually, let's dive into this. So let's talk about paid UGC and paid in general. What's kind of the overall strategy that you have employed that has worked so well? I think it would be kind of good to start maybe from what we learned previously, actually. So where do we go back to? I think this was like early 2025.

We had an intern named Tobin. He's a good friend now. I don't know if you've heard of him. He also went pretty viral a while back. He ended up joining Polymarket. But basically Tobin came on as an early intern marketing hire. Didn't really have any experience besides some like basic UGC. I think he was studying finance and wanted to be a lawyer.

And he came in and Tanay just gave him like a budget and was like, just throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks. Did a few projects, nothing really worked. And then he found really good success with Organic UGC. And this was also around like the Cluley era when like there wasn't that many people doing it successfully. Explain Organic UGC.

What is that exactly? Yeah, so Organic UGC is you basically get a bunch of creators in a group. These creators will make videos about your product and then they will post that on their own Instagram pages or own TikTok pages. So imagine you join Whispers Organic UGC group and you make an account called Lenny Whispers and then you just upload your videos into there and then you get paid based off a CPM metric.

So maybe it's like, I don't know, $2 per thousand views and then it tapers off as you get higher and higher. And yeah, Tobin set that up for us. And I think in like two and a half months, it was like 500 million views, super low CPMs. And it worked decently well, but I think it was also early on in the organic UGC phase where everyone was really focused on vanity metrics.

And they didn't necessarily lead to a lot of conversions because obviously... The type of product that Whisperflow is as well, it's a bit harder to get students to pay for it. So ultimately, we ended up killing the program, which I'm not entirely against Organic UGC. It's just making sure that you're not, again, chasing the vanity metrics.

And then Tobin did this a lot better at Polymarket. He cracked the code with Organic UGC and not just doing very top of funnel concepts. But yeah, organic GNGC does work. We just didn't see that much success or the success we wanted at Whisper. And it was also going to be really hard to find someone to take Tobin's role after he left. So we're like, let's just kill this.

And then again, Paid was working relatively well for us. So that kind of brings us to where we're at now, where... I mean, not now, but like seven months ago, I realized that paid was working really well and I was the one making all the paid assets. So I was like, what if we apply Tobin's playbook from Organic UGC of like building this community, building this roster and paying off performance and we just apply it to paid and we maybe make the ads a bit more middle of funnel, maybe a bit more pitching the product.

I mean, not even just middle of funnel because you need everything in paid ads, but more just like pitching the product straight on instead of just like screen on text ads. And then I stumbled upon Tribe, which I don't know if you want me to get into that now. Yeah, talk about Tribe and it's T-R-Y-B-E, right? Yes, T-R-Y-B-E. So Lucas Pachter, he's this guy who started Tribe.

But before that, he actually started Squid Hoss, which is a clothing brand. And he grew it really fast through TikTok shop. But there wasn't really a way to do the same thing on Meta. So he made this internal tool where they could run creators ads and pay them based off performance. And then he basically made it available for everyone. And we were one of the first companies to hop on.

And when I saw it, I was like, this is a no brainer. It's like the TikTok shop method, but for Meta ads. And since SaaS companies aren't able to use TikTok shop, it's like now they've unlocked this sort of platform. this new channel for SaaS companies to be able to run performance-based ads. And yeah, we hopped on there, built out our program.

And I mean, if you fast forward to now, we're now launching like 500 to 600 ads every single month. And it's been a great process. Obviously, that's kind of skipping a lot to where we're at now, but just wanted to kind of give an idea of what we tried, how it worked, but also didn't work, and then how we ended up on the performance-based model that we have now for paid UGC.

Okay, amazing. We're going to go much deeper, but just to make sure everyone understands what we're talking about here. So when you talk about organic UGC, it's not free. It's basically you're getting influencers, creators to create a pitch basically for Whisper. You take their video, you put it on your channel, and you pay them per views.

No, so they post it on their channels. They post it on their channels. Yeah, yeah. So it's a CPM-based. So let's say, again, we bring you into the group and then you make your own channels on TikTok and Instagram and it'll be like Lenny Whispers or Lenny Talks. It can be anything really, but you wouldn't post it on your main Instagram. You'd post it on an alternate and then we would pay you a CPM-based.

Okay, so the big difference here is instead of CPM-based, which is basically views-based, it's they take a percentage of spend or... Yeah, the percentage of spend or GMB, depending on if you're in SaaS or if you're e-com, something like that. Awesome. Okay, cool. So you've shifted to this model. It's basically performance-based UGC. So just to be very clear about how this works, you find, I think you have something maybe like 50 creators right now.

Yeah, right now we have 50. Okay. And we'll talk about the progression that you recommend starting with a couple. So you find creators, they make a video talking about how awesome Whisperflow is. You use that video as an ad on Meta and TikTok and other platforms, and then they get a cut of how that ad performs. Exactly. And then you have two kind of approaches to the cut they take.

Talk about that. Yeah, so obviously we don't want to just pay creators just off percentage base, especially early on. Because if you come into the group, you make 30 videos and you only make a hundred bucks off of commission, then it is pretty demoralizing. And a lot of times we see with our best creators, they're our best creators because they've stuck around for the longest and they've understood how the model works.

So one thing we actually have included is it's is it's called a smart retainer. And what this is, it's basically like us saying, okay, we're going to back you as a creator. And let's say we're going to, uh, we're going to do 25 videos and we're going to pay you $1,500. As long as you hit that quota of videos, we'll pay you that money. But.

depending on how much they earn in commissions, then we might top them up or we might not even add that smart retainer in. So just to make it a bit more clear, let's say that you're in our program and you hit the 25 videos and you only make $500 in commissions, then we will pay you an additional $1,000 because you hit that quota. But let's say that you also hit that quota and you make $3,000 in commission, then you strictly keep commissions and we don't add any smart retainer.

So it's kind of us saying, as long as you hit these videos and you hit these metrics, we will pay you X amount. And it makes it so that creators that join in the group month one, month two, month three, maybe they're not able to reach over that amount in strictly commissions, but they're able to make some sort of amount of money so that they actually stay dedicated and keep growing.

And then three or four months down the line, you see these creators start to break out and make purely commission space, which for me as a the guy running the program, or if you're a brand owner, that's like the best thing because you're paying them pure profit or, or pure off the best performing videos instead of paying out of pocket. Also, I think some good background is I'm a creator myself.

So. I found that a lot of companies and even at Wister, we were doing this sometimes as well as like, we would give briefs to these creators to make ads for us. And we would give them this whole sheet where it's like, don't say this, say this, use these hooks. This is how we want you to talk about the product. This is how you need to film the product.

And it's like, when you send the creator a 10 page guideline on how they need to shoot their content, what they need to talk about, you end up removing the creative aspect. that creators have. And there's nothing more demotivating than that. And I know as a creator, like if I have a brand that trusts in me, brings me in for a reason and just opens the doors for me to create content, how I see best fit for the product, you're going to get better content out of me than if you just put me in this box.

So that's one of the main reasons that a lot of the creators want to work in our group. And we also keep it really tight knit. So it's like this tight knit feeling. We bring the best of the best. And then on top of that, we keep it really open for them to experiment, do whatever they see fit. They're all fans of the product. And then on top of that, they're not capped at their earnings.

We're not paying them $100 per videos. We're not paying them $50 a video. It's not $1,000 for the month. It's truly uncapped. If they have really good videos and they put a lot of effort in, we have creators now that are making like $13,000 a month. And that's not really possible with other forms of UGC or even influencers. They're making more money than full-time influencers.

And they might have like 1,000, 2,000 followers on their own Instagram accounts. But this has just been a way for any creator who's talented to be able to make real money. Awesome. And the way you do it is if it's a shopping sort of product, you give them a percentage of GMV. And then if it's the B2B SaaS product, you give them a percentage of that spend.

Yeah, especially if you have a freemium product where it's hard to track direct conversion because we also don't want to get in a place where I don't know, maybe people are converting off their ads or maybe they're not, maybe they're purchasing. And then we're running those ads and profiting off those ads and they're not getting paid what they're worth.

And with a product like Whisper where it's kind of hard to track those attributions or it might take a week or two, it's best if we just keep it at percent of ad spend. But obviously if you're like selling, I don't know, a water bottle or a t-shirt and it's like really easy to track whether the person came from this ad or that ad and if they purchased or not, then it makes more sense to do a percent of GMB.

So the innovation here that has worked really well is giving the creator kind of a piece of the action of the success of their ad. Exactly. Awesome. And then also capping the downside so that they can actually spend time doing this versus being worried that they're not going to make a living. Yeah, exactly. Because a lot of the times these creators have to, they end up having to constantly be negotiating with brands and working with new companies, learning new things.

And it's like, not only are these creators all power users, but they get to work with the same company every single month. So just think about like the compounding effect of how much better their videos get over time instead of, oh, you're this brand who's running a new, maybe launching a new feature. And you're like, okay, let's scramble to find new creators.

And it's like, if you already had that internal group of creators who already know your product, and already believe in you. And like some of my creators understand the product better than me almost. And they come up with ideas I never could have came up with. So if you just have that internal group already, it's so easy that when we launch a new thing, whether it was like the whisper note taker or all these different features that we release, it's so easy for me to just drop it in the discord and be like, hey guys, let's make a video on this.

Instead of having to go chase around and find all these different creators and brief them. And then the next month they're gone. And then two months down the line, you have to go find them again. So yeah, it just makes for a great experience both on the brand side and the creator side. And this again comes back to the product itself has to be awesome because it'll be very hard to find creators that love your product if the product isn't awesome.

Yeah, and it's just easy to burn out as well as a creator. Like if you're talking about something you don't believe in, it can get boring really quick. Yeah, it's almost a test of product market fit. Can you find creators that are excited about it? Yeah, but don't churn. Yeah. That was honestly, because I guess some context as well. I was actually at Whisper.

I was the one making every single ad for like a year and a half. So I made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ads.

Which I guess that's a testament to how much I loved Whisper. I didn't go crazy. And yeah. Do you think that is actually really important for the person that takes this work to have been the person creating the ads before asking creators to create the ads? A thousand percent. Because it goes back kind of to the point I had mentioned earlier, where a lot of people who've never worked in content or who have never worked with creators end up being the ones briefing them and telling them what to do.

And it's like you would never have someone who's not an engineer telling the engineering, like I would never go up to the engineering team and be like, hey, you guys need to solve this problem like this and do this and this and this. They're going to be like, what is this guy telling me? Okay, so let's go down this tangent of to find someone like Hector.

What does a profile look like if you were to find Hector to lead this work at your company? This is one of the most interesting conversations I have with a lot of my friends, especially Tobin, like I mentioned earlier, because we both couldn't be more opposite from each other. Like if you look at both of our resumes lined up next to each other, and I asked you to pick one or the other, you probably in your head will think it's pretty clear which one would be the right answer.

But at the end of the day, both. are the right answer. And I had a 2.5 GPA, Tobin had a 4.0. I didn't go to a REACH school, Tobin went to Waterloo. I played division one sports, Tobin didn't. And there's all these different things, but at the end of the day, we both ended up being great marketers. But that wasn't really evident if you looked at the face value of our resumes.

But I think Whisper has done a really good job of seeing one or two really key things And also like being able to see, okay, is this person a good state for the, for the culture? Do they seem hardworking? If they have the same values or the same culture as people already at Whisper and like, I feel like Tanay, Daniel and the rest of the team are really good at not only spotting early talent and seeing what are those key things to look out for, but also seeing, okay, is this a good person, a good human to have on the team? And I think Tobin and I, obviously might be speaking of it too much for myself, but I think we, we embody those character traits perfectly.

And yeah, you might be asking like, okay, well, what are the traits I need to look for in a good marketing hire? And it's like, honestly, it's not that complex. It's like, has this person grown an account, even if it's like 10,000 followers and do they somewhat understand what they're talking about in terms of creator and they've made content? Like that's how basic it is.

Like, as long as they have some experience, and building a following, even if it's a small following, it shows you that they understand the consistency it takes to like grow a social media following. It shows you that they understand trends and how to make a video and how to edit and how to film, et cetera. And yeah, I think that it comes down to that.

Like, do they seem like a hard worker? Are they a good person? And do they have those like minimum, like 10,000, 15,000 followers and then taking a shot on them. And you can't just bring a young person in and then be like, okay, like you're not where you, where I want you to be. Like you're gone. like Tanay and Daniel again and the whole Whisper team always gives us a lot of time to learn and fail and I know for a fact for the first seven months at Whisper I was kind of a I was kind of all over the place I still joke about it with Daniel how there was some hard conversations here and there where you're like what the heck they're doing but yeah they gave me the freedom to

keep experimenting keep trying new things and it didn't really matter if you failed as long as you're consistently like learning and getting better and getting better and like that's the same for Tobin Tobin came in they gave him some money and some time to experiment and after like two months you found something that worked and it stuck okay this is extremely valuable there's this tweet the other day that came out of just like the hardest role to hire for right now is basically someone like you someone that can talk about the product the technical aspects get people excited make the product compelling and you're telling us what this profile looks like So just to reflect

back what you just said, one is evidence that they're very hardworking, evidence they're a good person, that their values and culture kind of aligns with your company. Three, they've actually grown a platform to at least 10,000 followers. And this could be any platform like Instagram, TikTok. I would say Instagram is probably the highest sign because TikTok is typically like a bit more brain rock content and like Instagram is like a bit more polished, better package.

And also the followers you get on there as a platform are just better. So I just think Instagram is probably a higher signal than TikTok. It's pretty easy to grow on TikTok, like posting some brain rot stuff, I would say. I see. What about like X and YouTube? YouTube is decent, but I would say if you understand a platform like Instagram, you can crack any platform.

And yeah, that's my experience. I mean, Instagram and YouTube, I would say if you can, if you can crack Instagram and YouTube, I confident, especially if you're a young individual, you can crack any platform. Like I'd never posted on X much until like two weeks ago. And I went from like 500 followers on X to like 18,000. And I wasn't really used to posting on a text only platform, but I figured it out after like a week.

It's like, okay, it's a volume game. You need to keep it short, kind of have your own style and like actually give some value. And like, that was pretty easy to learn. And I also think if you start on X, it's a bit harder to get into video because video is like a whole nother beast. Sitting down and filming, It's not an easy thing. I've had some colleagues, like I pushed them to start making videos.

Shout out to Eric. He's our media buyer, how to make a video. And yeah, he struggled a little bit in his first one, but I think it's good to step out of your comfort zone and try to film some videos. But yeah, it's definitely not easy. So I would say, yes, Instagram and YouTube. That's actually how I discovered doing X and it's just like blown up on my entire feed is just Hector videos recently.

So I didn't realize you just started posting in two weeks. That's insane. Clearly another sign of how effective you are at this. So another kind of bullet point I want to double down on there is just this idea of young talent. That's something you talk a lot about, just the value and almost like the alpha in hiring young people. Yeah. I mean, also going back to the point that you had just mentioned, like how it's the hardest role to hire.

I think it's very simple. It just boils down to like what I mentioned, like the two resumes. Yeah. There's no clear path for a good marketer or a good modern marketer who understands socials. And if you look for these things that you might think are high signal, whether it's the best grades, the best school, certain majors, you're not going to end up with the marketer that you had envisioned.

Um, so I think that's why it's hard because there's no real like defined path of like, okay, this is how you find the next Tobin or the next Hector or the next X person. So yeah, like my suggestion, if you're trying to find someone similar to me would be try to not find someone similar to me because you're not going to find the right person.

It's just like, give a shot to some kid who has like some crazy background and the crazier, the better. And obviously it has some, some proof, um, in the work, but yeah. Yeah, the point that you were asking was the importance of young talent, right? And like why that really matters. Yeah. I think I've seen this example, honestly, in a lot of different industries.

I don't know if you've heard of Jimmy Farley, but he's like one of the TikTok shop, like OG guys. He's been on there, I don't know, since he was like 17. Built a huge agency, worked with some of the biggest brands. And recently, I think his agency got acquired by Physician's Choice for like $2 million. And now he's like in-house with them and also with other brands.

But I've just seen this kid like surround himself. I mean, he's older than me now, but I've seen him surround himself with like all these older founders and all these older founders of these e-com brands are always like just talking about how like having a Jimmy next to you is so much alpha because... A 30, 40-year-old founder doesn't understand what an 18-year-old kid who's in these Discord chats or who's scrolling every day on Instagram and TikTok, they don't understand what's actually working and the best ways to approach these new channels.

And if you have young people next to you in whatever industry you are, whether you're in SaaS, you're in e-comm, whatever it is, and you just find someone that kind of understands the things that you don't and the early things and you're able to ask questions and learn from them, I think it's a no-brainer to have someone like that on your team.

Even if you do your best now to dive into TikTok shop or into Tribe, you're still going to struggle because you're not going to be able to connect as much with the creators or you're not going to understand certain things. And it's just going to take you

a lot longer time to get used to those things instead of putting your time into something that you're better at and then bring someone that can kind of manage those things for you. I love this advice. There's always talk about, you know, no jobs left for young folks. AI is taking everyone's jobs. And this is a really good example where young people are actually much better at this work.

Yeah. And I think obviously Tanay is super young and like she's one of the smartest people I know. And like he'll still bring me into his office or hop on a call and like be asking me like, oh, like what's working on Instagram? Like, how are you doing this so fast? Or just like ask me questions about content in general. And I don't I mean, I don't think.

I've seen this from today in the team. I was like, I don't think there's ever a point where you get smart enough to where you need to stop learning. And if you take that mentality of the founder, I think it's like the day you stop growing. And that's something I've definitely learned from today. Like you're never too good or too smart to continue learning.

And it can even be from a random 22 year old or 19 year old like me. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And you joined Whisperflow at 19, right? Yes, I had just turned 19. It was like three days after my birthday. And how long did it take you to feel like, okay, I kind of figured something out? You said initially it was kind of rocky and not sure what you were doing.

Yeah, I mean... Give people some context. It was a weird transition because I had just quit Division I soccer like three days before as well. And I literally went home, looked up Wisterflow on LinkedIn. Well, I don't want to say I looked up creator jobs on LinkedIn. I applied to like 200 positions. I found some company called Wisterflow. I applied, had a call with Tanay and then I joined.

And yeah, it was crazy. Like looking back, some of the memories, like I remember it was like one of the first days and we're getting ready for our launch. And I was in my, I think it was my calculus class. And Tanay started slacking me in class and I left to go to the bathroom and popped up my laptop and I started, I hopped into the Slack huddle and he was basically like, our launch video isn't what it needs to be.

Do you think you can edit it on CapCut or whatever tools you have and make it a bit more Gen Z vibes. And yeah, I got out of calculus and I just started editing a video. I had some editing experience, but for today, one of my first weeks to ask me to do that was pretty scary. But yeah, that was pretty much summed up my first year at Whisper.

I just picked up random stuff. Didn't really have a clear position. I'm pretty sure they didn't really know what I was doing either. I didn't know what I was doing. And yeah, it probably took me a year to feel actually comfortable. And there was a lot of ups and downs. And actually, one thing I want to point out as well is I was also doing a finance internship after.

So it had been a whole school year. And then it was my junior year going to senior year. And that summer, I had applied to a bunch of finance internships early in the year because I didn't know if content was a real career. And obviously, I was enjoying Whisper and I was making some decent money for my personal brand. But I was like, I don't know if this is a real career.

And my parents, like we immigrated to the U.S. and everything. And like me being in college and like studying finance was a big deal. And they wanted me to go down the traditional route. So I ended up landing a finance internship in New York City. And I was balancing two summer classes, Whisper Flow and the finance internship. And like two weeks into the internship, I absolutely hated it.

And I was like, I do not want my life to be like this. I need to make content and Whisper work out. So I would sneak out the office and go to some cafes in Soho and just work on Whisper and my personal content. And then from there, everything started to click. And then, yeah, that's kind of how it went. What a journey. I feel like we could have a whole other conversation about just the creator path and how to become a content creator on Instagram and all these platforms.

That's its own thing. I'm going to come back to... How do you find the creators for this kind of paid agency strategy? Which we walked through the whole strategy, honestly. I think this would be a good moment to walk through everything. So yeah, I guess like we were mentioning, the first step is kind of figuring out, okay, if you're in SaaS, you can do percent of ad spend.

If you're in e-commerce, you can do percent of GMV. And then from there, you'll set up the group on whatever platform you choose. I think Tribe is the best one. It's the one we use at Whisper. And then... Once you have your group set up, it's like, okay, now you have to go actually find the creators. And if you think about it, it's like, imagine you're starting a company from zero and you land on a platform and there's thousands of creators, thousands of brands, and your company has no history.

More than likely, you're not going to be able to get the best of the best. And this is where a lot of companies go wrong. They'll start doing a lot of outreach on these platforms. And it's like, why would a creator want to work for a brand that has like no money? Like for example, on tribe, it says how much money we paid out to creators. It's like $300,000.

It says how many creators we have in the group and then how many ads we have running or whatever. And like when creators see that we've paid $300,000 out and that we only have 50 creators in, you can imagine the amount of inbound we get. But on the contrary, if you're a brand who has $0 paid out and zero creators, it's gonna be really hard to get creators in.

So what I did is I went off platform and I went on platform like Instagram, And you just look up a bunch of keywords. It can be like UGC creators, I don't know, tech, nine to five, lawyer, doctor, sleep, supplements, whatever niche you're in and just go down a bunch of rabbit holes. And then you'll land on creators that you like, send them a message.

And then you also go through their following and follower lists. And you also search those same exact keywords. Because typically good creators know other good creators. And then I say from around like 150 to 250 DMs over a week. And these should be very targeted DMs. It shouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to use some mass software and send 3,000 messages.

It needs to be very targeted. You need to care about the small things because nowadays with all these automations, yes, you can do a lot of things fast, but if you do it very fast, you're probably going to get a lot of slot back or a lot of bad creators back. And I think for outreach, it's still better to do it manually. Obviously, it's going to take a bit longer, but if you do it right, I haven't had to do outreach ever again.

And yeah, from those 150 to 250 DMs, you'll probably get five or six really good creators. Then from there, you onboard them to the group. And then that's where you get to the next step, which would be actually building out the culture, which is like just doing all these events and things for the creators, whether it be like meetings, like we host weekly meetings.

Now we're at a stage where we have creator coaches that help keep our creators engaged as well. We do giveaways. We're hosting a retreat in San Francisco next month where we're flying in some of our best creators from around the world. So it's like these little things that you start to do to build up more and more culture. And then from there, so you have a small group of creators.

You've also set up the like percent of ad spend and percent of GMV. And you've also built a culture. Then from there, you can slowly start to add more and more creators. And the way we did that at Whisper is we probably went from like five to 10, 10 to 15, 15 to 20. We probably added like five to six creators like every few weeks. And since you're now at this point, you also have like the five creators and you've probably paid out a bit of money.

You'll start to get some people start to apply on tribe. I think now we probably get like a thousand to a thousand 500 applications a week. So I go through those creator applications. And then from there, since we now have a lot of creators, I keep a really high bar and I only accept maybe one or two or three. But yeah, we grew pretty slowly.

And now we're like 50 creators. And aside from like accepting creators from tribe, one of the things we've done actually is we've introduced a referral program where we will pay creators $100 per creator they bring into the group. And it's not some sort of like MLM pyramid scheme thing like, There was a bunch of people on LinkedIn. My post blew up on LinkedIn and everyone was like, this sounds like a scam.

Like it sounds like an MLM pyramid or whatever sales. And like, we're not paying them to just bring creators. And it's like, we're paying them to send a creator over if I think they're a good fit. Then we'll bring them in, but we don't want more people in. Like we're capped at 50. It's not like, oh, bring me a hundred creators and I'll pay you 400 creators.

Then we'll pay another hundred creators. Like this is very tight knit family. And it's just our way of saying thank you for helping us grow the program. And yeah, those are like some different levers we've applied to kind of grow the group. And then that brings me to the last step, which I don't know, am I going too fast through this? Or do you have some questions? I do have questions, but keep going.

Yeah. That brings me to the last step, which is like, now you have the culture, you have the people in the group, you're at like a decent size, you have the percent of GMB, percent of ad spend. And now one thing that's going to start to happen is you're getting a lot of ads and your ads are going to show like in the group, it's going to show like, okay, which is the ad that's going to most spend, the second most spend, the third spend.

And your creators can see these things. And like, obviously you want them to see it. But it can also backfire if you're not good at coaching your creators because these creators will see the top performing ads and they'll be like, okay, I'm gonna copy those ads as well. I'm gonna copy what they're doing. And if you end up doing that, what ends up happening is you get 300 ads that all look the same.

They all feel the same. In meta, when an ad is more than 60% similar, it ends up grouping it together, whether it's the same t-shirts, you're in the same setting, you're saying the same words. And Drama is super complex now. For example, it'll scan your ad five times over, it'll pull the transcript, it'll pull each frame out, it'll look at the text on screen, and if you think about it, Nothing's gonna get past that.

And that's why you can reach ad fatigue really quickly if you're constantly repeating the same formats, the same messaging, the same people. So what we do is we continuously push these creators and remind them the reason these creators are making so much money and that their ads are all at the top is because they kept experimenting and they kept leaning into what they weren't actually good at as creators and what interests them as creators.

And if you just follow what person A, B, or C are doing, then your ads are just going to rank under them and you're not going to get any spend. So we constantly push creators to just keep experimenting, keep doing crazy stuff. And when you look at some of the ads in our library, it's like, That's why I say like the creators sometimes understand the product better than me and come up with better concepts and ideas better than me.

And that's why I stay away from briefs. Like one example of a really good ad that we had recently was this creator had his keyboard outside his window on a roof and it was raining. and it was like okay so it's like it stops you because it's like a very interesting visual hook and then it pans over then on the thing it says what is my keyboard trying to say and it pans over to his laptop and it's like the raindrops are typing and then it starts typing random words and then it says download whisper flow and that ended up becoming one of our best performing ads it's like i don't even know how we came up with that So kudos to him.

But that's what happens when you keep it really open-ended, you have a fun product and you let the creators have fun and just keep experimenting. And yeah, like no two ads in our ad library look the same. Wow. Amazing. Okay. Let me try to walk through the steps here because this was so much juicy gold stuff. advice. So step one, sign up on Tribe.

Tribe is kind of where you manage creators and pay out and all that kind of stuff. Your advice here is don't work through Tribe to find them because no one's going to care about you yet. And your advice is go to Instagram, keyword search for things that kind of in your market, EGC, tech, lawyers that maybe want to make money on the side. to recruit the first five.

The advice is start with five. Don't go too big. Okay. And I would also, it's not even just start with five or start with lawyers or whatever. It's like, you have to look at your ad library and look at your product and be like, okay, what specific gaps do we have that we actually need to fill in? Because more isn't necessarily better. And like that applies to everything in life.

But specifically in creators, if you just bring 100 with 200 of the same creators, That isn't going to lead to scale because, again, everything is going to look the exact same. But when you bring in five creators that each speak to a specific audience, each speak to maybe a specific messaging of your product, you get five different creators that can all make net new concepts.

And it just exponentially grows the more different creators you bring on board. So it's not just the point about bringing a few creators. It's also being very specific about those few creators you're actually bringing in. And so when you say that, it's think about what customer kind of market, what ICP you're targeting and what's a creator that would speak to that audience.

Exactly. So at Whisper, we have everything from like moms to lawyers. We have like the awesome thing about Whisper is like when you have a product that people love, like you get so many cool people wanting to work with your brand. We have like an eight-figure e-com founder that loves Whisper so much that he just makes ads for us. And it's like...

i find that pretty incredible like some dude who has a successful econ business he loves whisper so much and he just wants to be part of the community and he's like 45 has kids and yeah like we have basically anything you can imagine engineers lawyers moms sales reps agency owners like any any type of icp you can imagine and I get this question a lot as well from a lot of founders and different businesses reaching out and they'll be like, oh, well, I have a dev tool or I'm in a sleep space.

I can't make content for my brand or I haven't had success with UGC. And a lot of times what happens is people mistake UGC for thinking it's just college kids making content. But UGC is user generated content. And if you're a dev tool, your user is probably going to be an older technical person. And you can't get by bringing on an 18 year old who isn't technical to talk about your product.

And those ads might look a lot different. They might look a lot different. Like for example, our technical ads at Whisper, when you're speaking to like this older demographic who isn't really on Instagram that much or isn't maybe a bit more serious, the more boring and the uglier the ads are, the better they will perform. And that can be something as simple as like a screen recording of someone using your product.

It could be like a minute, 30 seconds long. It can be super long. Like some of our best ads, you would look at them and you'd be like, holy cow, these are ugly. These are such bad ads. Um, but they actually perform the best for those specific audiences that maybe are a bit older, maybe are a bit more technical. And it's like the same thing for, for a sleep product.

Like if you have an expensive product in the sleep and sleep niche or industry, whatever, um, and you have an 18 year old kid selling it, why are you, or why am I going to buy a $3,000 product from a kid? Okay. probably it's not going to work that way you want to buy from someone who maybe speaks the same way you do who works in the same things you do has the same problems you do um and yeah i think ugc works for for any company it's just the maybe more upstream you go and the more expensive your product is and the more niche it is it gets a little bit harder but it's just like okay how do i find users who want to make content about my product And this unexpected element

of what works is part of the reason I imagine you run so many ads. You mentioned you do like 700, 500,000 ads a month. Part of the reason is to discover the ones that are working. Exactly. Yeah, because ads, I would say, is almost weird and inorganic content. I can kind of put my finger on what works on organic. But sometimes I'll see an ad that comes in.

I'm like, what the heck is this? And it ends up becoming the best performer. So that's why I think it's just good to experiment. Don't really have like such a high bar for like, oh, if the ad doesn't look this way or that way, we're not going to run it. Like again, some of the ads that I made a year ago, it's literally like a string recording of someone using the product with some text at the top, nine by 16, super long video.

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Visit getdx.com slash lenny to get a demo of DX. That's getdx.com slash lenny. What does the DM look like when you reach out to a creator? So it kind of depends. And there's honestly some different ways to go about it. A lot of times as a brand, you'll actually have a lot of creators already in your DMs or a lot of creators that are already following you.

So that's like the number one place I would actually start. And a lot of our early creators came from there is we would just go into our following list and look up UGC or look up creators. And then also go through our DM requests. And you'll actually come across a lot of creators. And from there, it's like they already follow you. They probably already like your product.

So it gets really easy. And you can just be like, hey, Lenny, I saw your content. I really enjoyed it. I would love to have you be part of our creator group. And I don't necessarily pitch it. I don't necessarily pitch the performance based thing yet. Because it's still a pretty, it's still a relatively new thing for creators to hear this new model.

And a lot of them were skeptical at first, which I understand why. But even seven months ago, six months ago, it was even more new. So even then, today I still wouldn't start with that and go straight into pitching super hard. I'd just be like, hey, love your content. Would love to have you be part of our creator group. Are you interested? From there, you'll get a response back.

They'll probably ask you for some more details. And then I have like a PDF that's like super simple. I just kind of explain the program structure, how much we pay, how much some of our creators are making. And then from there, I'll just hop on a call with them, close them and get them like onboarded in Discord, get them with your flow code and then get them making videos.

And the other way is if they don't follow us and I'm doing outreach is I'll just send them a DM and be like, hey, I've stumbled across your content. I really enjoyed it. I'd love to have you be part of our WhisperFlow group. This is the tool. This is how it works. Here's the link to it. Let me know if you'd be interested. And then from there, if they're interested again, I'll pitch them and it's kind of the same sort of route.

And this is from the WhisperFlow Instagram account? Sometimes I do either or because I also, since I'm a creator myself, I also have a lot of, which is also the pros of hiring people who are in content. Some of our best hires that whisper in content have been through me posting on Instagram stories or our best creator hires. I'll be like, Hey, I'm looking for UGC creators.

Just post a story or, Hey, I'm looking for a videographer or, Hey, I'm looking for an editor. Like that's one of the cool things about hiring a content creator, um, if they make again content in your specific niche or they make high value content is that can also be used as like a very good hiring mechanism. And yeah, it depends. Like if you have someone who's a creator, I think it works pretty well.

You know, obviously like a creator face, whatever. And then also if you're a really well-known brand, obviously if your creator getting a message from like Nike or whatever, you know what I mean? Like it's very impressive and you're probably more likely to get a response. So I think it just depends. And then, okay, so you DM them. They're interested.

You send them kind of an overview. In the early, say, the first five, you hop on a call pretty quickly and just kind of pitch them and explain the program. What's, like, the onboarding look like? These creators are very used to just being used. And, like, everything they do is like a transaction. They make a video, they get paid, and they never talk to a person again.

And we live in a day and age where everything is digital, everything's virtual. Most people are working remote. Most creators are remote. And they crave community the same way just like a regular person would create community. And we just make sure that we connect from the get-go. And it's like at the end of the day, it's like friends. We're working together.

I don't see them as just like, hey, a creator that I'm going to extract some videos from and never talk to again. I get on a call with them, like you said, and I have this whole slideshow. But before I go to my slideshow, like ask them about themselves, like how they got into content, why they enjoy it, and just like have a conversation, try to get to know them.

And then from there, the flow of the slideshow is I have an intro slide where I talk about myself. I talk about my background as a creator. So like they respect me and they know I'm not just some random dude talking to them. And then from there, I'll also intro our media buyer, who's Eric, shout out to Eric. And then from there, I explain the product.

And then from there, I explain how Tribe works. So I let them know what they can expect in terms of the flow from them making the video to it getting accepted, to it getting ran as an ad. I tell them we pay them out every seven days, which is another hack as well. You want to keep your creators motivated and the higher dopamine rush they can get and the more money you can get them early on, the better.

So yeah, we pay out seven days. We tell them that. Then from there, we show them some example ads and then I get them onboarded and fully going on the call. It's almost like you're closing, you're closing like a sales deal. You don't want to get them on side and then you let them get off and then you have to chase them down. It's like, you want to be very strategic with your time and their time.

So I try to like meet them, introduce myself, get them onboarded and get them going so that they know like, Hey, you can start making a video right now. So a big lesson here is treat them, treat them like humans, care about them, help them feel like they're part of this thing. Not just feel like you're okay. You're gonna make money. Just shut up.

Don't worry about it. You're going to make money. And I think this is actually a really good alpha as well. I think the companies that will win long term are the companies that have the best relationships with creators because word gets out really fast. And if you're a brand that treats creators bad, doesn't pay on time, doesn't pay them whatsoever, maybe, or you just block them, et cetera, word will get out and creators probably won't want to work with you or you won't get the best terms or you won't get the best quality creators.

So that's like one really big thing we focus on at Whisper. It's like... Not even just with creators, but any external agencies or anyone we work with, we always want to treat everyone with a lot of respect. And yeah, I think it's the companies that do that the best will win long-term as well. What does the early team look like to start this initiative? Is it just a Hector that is running this solo or is there a larger team that you'd start with? Honestly, it's pretty lean.

So our marketing team as a whole is pretty flat. Obviously, we're growing a bit faster now at Whisper. I think we've passed like 120 full-time employees now, which is pretty crazy. Because I joined, I think we were like four at the time. I remember I messaged Sinead the other day. I was at the office and I was like, holy cow. I just had like a moment where I was like, there's so many people around.

Like, this is crazy, blah, blah, blah. But... yeah right now we're pretty lean team and we were even more lean before but for tribe specifically to get something like this running all you really need is someone like me to kind of be the comms with creators come up with new concepts approve videos kind of get everything kick-started and then you need a media buyer um it's pretty rare to find someone who's a creative and also media buyer i don't really like numbers that much i'm not really much of a numbers guy and i don't like staring at meta ads manager, I've heard it's a headache.

So I'm happy I don't have to do that. But yeah, we have Eric on the media buying side of things and he like structures our ad account and everything. So when this media buyer, is this kind of like a performance marketing person that just lives in Facebook's ad system or? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, Eric's basically just lives in our on the media buying side of things on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

Got it. So you're kind of like the creative, you're like this, the content supply, and then this person takes it and then is responsible for running the ads, watching performance, optimizing the spend. Yeah, got it. Okay. And then is there anyone else that you find important, valuable on that team early on and even later on? early, like if we go back to the early, early days, the marketing team was Daniel or CMO.

Um, Matt was our head of growth, um, before Eric came. And then it was me just like as a sole creator, kind of just making the ads myself. So, and then we had some external agencies here and there, and then slowly we added on design. Um, we added on an in-house like director and help produce films and launch videos. Um, then we introduced like PR recently and like even even now I think we're still pretty lean I think it might be like 15 people on the marketing team like full-time we have a creative partnership leads for like influencers we have a celebrity talent manager like helps us close celebrities and and things like that so even then it's still pretty lean and

everyone is like experts in their domain and it's all very flat we all just have free reign we all do what we're best at there's no real they're not really middle management and then poor our poor CMO Daniel who's an absolute legend he just had a bunch of direct reports um so I feel sorry for his calendar but yeah that's that's kind of how everything is structured it's like very flat no middle managers and everyone just does their work Is a core kind of takeaway from this conversation that when you're doing paid today, that usually see videos are the way to go versus your own ads that you're just kind of creating.

So are you kind of comparing to like what I was doing versus what we're doing now? You know, just like when you think paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, most people think I create a video promoting my product or create like an ad unit that is a whisper flow and the best thing. And what you're doing here is you're having other people create the videos and then running that as the ad.

Yeah. So the way I look at it is like I was basically an in-house UGC creator and it got to a point where ad spend was getting too high and like I'm only human and I couldn't, I couldn't make that many videos and it was also getting into like a year plus of making ads. So naturally I was getting pretty burnt out being a one man show and like, okay, I have the skillset.

I'm a decent creator. I can spot like good creators as well. Why not just build a team? And that's like an extension of myself. And Yeah, that's basically what we did. And we're able to scale a lot faster, test more ideas. Since we have more ad spend, we obviously want more concepts running. And also, once you get to a pretty high budget on ads, your ads are typically going to reach fatigue a lot faster.

And especially with Andromeda now, ads reach fatigue even a lot faster. Because before, in 2024, when we were running ads, I could have an ad running for 12 months. And... mean my output would be a lot less but now an ad with not only the new updates but also how much ad spend we're running an ad once it hits like a hundred thousand dollars in ad spend we'll be dead and that can be hit in like a month or in two weeks three weeks so we constantly need more output more volume etc and i think if you look at our ad library we might have like 5 000 lifetime ads and maybe like 800 live currently or something like that or 900 live currently And it's because, again, they reach

fatigue and then we have to turn them off. But our ad library isn't only full of UGC videos. There's a lot of different things as well. And yeah, everything from like statics to like high celebrity slash influencer videos to in-house ads to like launch videos that we package as ads to like founder-led things. So there's a lot of variety in there.

And this is just basically... And I guess just having as many formats as possible because, again, we have a lot of ad spend and we want the more variety, the better at the end of the day. Okay. So this is just a core leg to the stool of paid ads as ZGC. Exactly. Clearly working. Do you think this will work for them? every company? Is this something most B2Bs say? I don't know.

Yeah. I think this works for everyone. It's like, it goes back to what I was saying. It's just finding those users that can speak to the users you want to acquire. And at the end of the day, one thing that we look at at Whisper is like the B2B side and the enterprise side is all made up of individuals. And if you can find a way to make your content speak to an individual who is part of those teams, and maybe you get them as like a solo, how would you say, like a solo customer or whatever, um to download the app they use it then they tell a friend in the company and then more people in the company start using it and then maybe you chase down those enterprise clients and

actually close the deal like that's realistically how most companies can approach that at the end of the day and it's not like oh like who from x company is going to watch my video and like hop on an enterprise call and like want to close or whatever but i think if you like approach it from like companies are made up of people and you just look at it like that and you think, okay, how do I want to sell to these people and how would these people respond well to getting sold to? I think you just have to break it down super simply and you're like, oh yeah, this would work for anyone.

Okay, that makes sense. Also what I'm hearing though is it's probably most effective for kind of product-led growth, bottom-up sort of products, not like a Workday or a Salesforce, more like a Whisperflow or Notion and things like that. Awesome. And, you know, like, if you think about it, it makes so much sense why this would work. An influencer innately is someone that influences you to do something.

You're basically getting influencers slash creators to create content that pitches the product, and then you put them in people's feed through paid ads. And I get why it works because they're trying to convince him. I also think that a good distinction as well as like it's not just an influencer or creator. I almost think that creators with no following end up being better investments for brands because influencers kind of are seen now as sellouts a lot of the time.

And like when you see a big face or a big celebrity like selling a product. it's like oh my gosh this person has been selling me things for like the last 10 years i know she's just getting a bag or he's just getting a bag and they're not really genuine and there's something about like not really knowing who the person is and they're not famous they don't have a lot of followers and if you have like these partnership ads coming from their account it just feels a lot more genuine as well so that makes sense like the less they look like an influence exactly the less they look like they're trying to convince you and they're just talking like a regular human about exactly some

of your product is i get why that would work Like what I think about right now is there's that survey that someone did a while ago, just what do you want to be when you grow up? And for young people, it was like creator, influencer versus stream. I think a lot of people were saying they want to be a streamer, a live streamer versus like astronaut or lawyer.

And so, you know, this is a career path is what you're describing. This is a way you're making money doing this. A lot of people are actually making money being a creator online. Yeah. So for people listening that are like, wait, maybe this could be a career for me someday. Maybe I should explore this creator life. Any advice for someone that's embarking on this? Because for many people, it may feel like I will never be as great as Hector just talking off the cuff on a video and looking interesting.

Any advice for someone that's trying to explore this path and do better? I think the best advice would be to stop looking for advice. It's... It sounds dumb, but a lot of times I'll have a lot of friends reach out like, hey, I want to get started. And I've had this happen for like maybe the last three years where people are like, hey, I want to get started.

I want to start making videos like you. And I hop on a call with them for like two hours. I send them over a bunch of different guides, PDFs, things I've made, et cetera, for how they can get started. And they don't do anything with it. And it's like, at the end of the day, if you're a person who's going to ask before doing, you're probably not going to succeed.

And even the best people, I've had the privilege of working with a lot of the most famous podcasters or influencers or celebrities. And a lot of these people also stutter and they also have to refilm things. And they have like specific things that they do to like walk back in whether it's like weird noises they make with their mouth or like they fidget with their hands or they have like a phrase they repeat over and over again or i've even seen some creators where they start stuttering a lot after they've been doing um the same script over and over again and they'll put a pen in their mouth and will like open their mouth bigger and like talk and announce enunciate is that

how you say it and then see the words um like i guess more and then when they stop and they take the pen out of their mouth then they would pronounce it better so It's like a natural thing as a creator. Even if you're doing this for 5, 10, 15 years, there's going to be moments where you have to cut the video or you're going to stutter and you're going to have to refilm for 10 times and you might cuss out your camera and turn it off, but it's just like turn it back on and keep filming sort of thing.

And yeah, that'd be my advice. Just get started and stop looking for more advice. There's no better way to learn as a creator than just turning on the camera and posting. I love that advice. And what I'm also hearing is you don't have to, like when you don't see how much people struggle doing this stuff, like you see this Polish video and you didn't know they had to put a pen in their mouth for a few minutes first.

Or cuss out their camera. Yeah. Um, like even, even my video that went kind of viral on X, like, I think it's what, 15 minute cut. It was probably, I did two cuts before that. That would probably take 30 minutes. And then I did that last one, which probably again, like 30 minutes. And then I package it into a nice video and it's like, I do this for a living and

I've managed our tribe group for the last seven months and I know like the back of my hand or whatever. And even then I still struggle like going through and putting my thoughts concisely and going through everything. But it's not perfect, but I put the message out, I gave some value and people enjoyed it. And yeah, I don't think it needs to be perfect.

That's so great to hear because watching that video, you're just so chill, so relaxed, just sitting there talking with little iPad and like how people see that are like, I will never be as good at this. So that's really helpful to hear. When I think about starting to be a content creator, I feel like I need to get a little fuzzy mic or something.

I feel like the step one. It's a canon event. That's right. You're not a creator unless you have a tiny fuzzy little mic. Let me ask you one final question along these lines. Say someone is like, amazing, I'm going to do this. We're going to commit to this. We're going to hire. We're going to find someone to run it. What are some of the most common mistakes you find companies, people make when they're starting on this paid EGC route? I think a lot of the times is people will typically look in the wrong places and will maybe put out offers online or on LinkedIn or whatever with too high of salaries or too high, I guess, requirements.

And you're not going to end up attracting the best people. If you put out an offer where you're going to pay, I don't know, You're like, oh, these people who are running UGC campaigns are in super high demand. I'm going to put out a job listing for 250K, 200K base salary, generous equity. You're going to end up attracting the wrong type of people.

Like when I joined Whisper and went to join Whisper, I can tell you we were nowhere near that. We were interns and we're just hungry kids who wanted to learn and wanted to grow. And again, had some experience with content. And I think if you just think that throwing money out there and looking for someone with the best grades or the best school or the best experience, Is it going to get you the best hire to run this for you? You're in for a rude awakening.

And yeah, I would focus on just finding a scrappy kid who's hungry and willing to learn. And like, I don't know, you just get a good feeling from them. I was talking to Tanay recently as well the other day. Our first call. So I had a first call with Julia, which she was like leading our marketing team initially. One of those like four people.

And then I had a second call with Tanay. And I remember like, mind you, they're hiring me as a UGC creator. I'm 19 years old. I've never worked in a startup. And I was probably, I was not earning much money. And I told Tanay, like, I was like, I want equity in Whisper. And Tanay laughed and was like, I like you, man. And like, maybe it was like a stupid thing to say, but like, I think it showed how like, I don't know, I was naive, but also hungry.

And like, I believe in the company and I want to be part of the company. And just like cues like that where it's like a young, naive, hungry kid who just wants in and wants to learn and wants to grow. And yeah, I think don't look in the right place. Don't look in the wrong places because you're going to attract the wrong people. You had a couple of awesome tweets along these lines.

One is that everyone looking for a marketer with the best resume is going to end up hiring a bot. Yeah.

And then the other is this really important tweet that the most successful founders, investors, creators I've met aren't the most talented. They're delusionally confident. They outwork everyone and they love what they do. Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up. And also another one that I resonate with a lot that I put out recently was like the sports outlook on hiring.

Sports teams, like I come from a very competitive sports background. I played over in Spain. I played for Tertia Vigo in La Liga Academy. I played MLS Next in the US. I played Division I in college. And like we have all these structures for sports teams where it's like you scout young talent, you bring them in, you coach them, you develop them for 10 years.

And then if you're over in Spain or over in Europe, you eventually get them as part of your academy, maybe the second team, and then maybe you sell them to a top club. Or maybe they end up becoming a homegrown contract and they join your first team. I think a lot of startups should kind of adopt that mentality. I think there's a lot of companies that actually don't do internship programs anymore.

They don't think they're valuable. And I think they're one of the most valuable things. And if you can find the right people, it's not a very expensive thing to do. It's not very time consuming. And yeah, I think like taking a chance on young people and giving them some money to test things with and giving them some freedom to test things with and like allowing them to fail and continue learning.

That's one of the best models I think you can pick up from sports. Obviously, it works. I don't know if you're very familiar with soccer, but look at Lamin Yamal. He just won the World Cup at 19 years old, 18 years old. And I think that same approach can be applied to the startup world. Find young talent, invest in them, let them get real reps in the real world, and then eventually they might become one of your A players.

I love that. And I love that also part of this is giving them time to figure it out. Yeah. What's really interesting about this conversation so far I'm realizing is I don't think we've once mentioned AI as part of this work that you do, which is really interesting because it's, you know, it's all anyone talks about these days. And you actually had this tweet the other day, the best marketers are allergic to AI.

Talk about just what you think with how AI plays into this and how AI should not play into this. I just think overall, when you look at a lot of the work done, even looking at the top labs, they are some of the people that have the most amount of humans actually working on a specific asset. And maybe, yes, they have a lot of the research automated or a lot of different steps internally automated, but the actual production of the asset, whether it comes to the video, the design in Figma, the editing, the post-production, et cetera, it's all done by teams of a lot of humans.

And I think there's not going to be a real way to get around that, at least not anytime soon. And especially... in like the environment we're in now where a lot of people are very, I guess, turned off by AI and it can be a scary thing to talk about. If you're an AI company like Whisper, who in theory, we enable humans to do better work. We don't want to replace anyone's job.

We want to give them, I guess, the tools to be able to be more productive, to do more work and to sound more naturally and to sound like themselves more naturally. If we, on the other side, go out and start making AI slop ads, in videos with AI influencers and, I don't know, AI designs and AI statics, it's probably not going to be received really well.

And it just, it looks off. And like when I say that, I think it goes more towards not automating the work that's going to be the final product that people are looking at. Because I think you see it a lot of times, like it'll... It'll end up blowing back on the companies, whether it's like an animation that they made with Claude or some sort of asset that they made.

And maybe there's typos or maybe the writing is like all jumbled up, like what happens when you do it with ChatGPT or whatever.

And yeah, I think it's not worth it. Like the risk versus reward is not worth it. So the alpha, what I'm hearing here is like, don't use AI for this work. Yeah, for the final output, especially on the creative side, what other people are going to see, I don't think AI should touch yet. That is really interesting. It feels like everyone's hearing lean into AI.

Even one of the most bullish... People on AI that I know, Matt, who is now at Victor or Xset of Growth, he has the most automations I've ever seen in the whole wide world. But even then, that last 10%, that's the most important, always has a human on the endpoint because you can't sacrifice as a brand having something blow up because you had something screw up or come out wrong or whatever.

or whatever. And yeah, I think with everyone, I think with everyone also just shipping so much volume and like, whether it be on X, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on YouTube, like you're able now to make videos with cloud. You're able to, to have the edited them. You're able to make, um, what's it called?

be able to make a doppelganger of yourself with AI and all these different things and get content out faster and have these automations for tweets and have it post news articles and whatever and retweet it in whatever way. There's so much noise, like you're saying, that if you actually focus more on the quality and less on the quantity and less on building all these crazy automations and hitting volume for just hitting volume's sake, it gets so easy to cut through the noise.

And if you actually have real value, you package it well, and you post... like not a lot you post with with purpose and for actual reason um you can cut to really easily as a brand or as a company i think another good example of this is also today's youtube channel we started it around like what three months ago and five youtube videos in were like millions and millions of views 20 000 or 21 000 subscribers on youtube which is one of the hardest platforms to grow And like a lot of people think, oh, we're starting a YouTube channel.

We need to post three videos a week. And it's like, no, like if you actually put in the time and effort and you tell a really good story and you do everything with purpose and you package it really well and you have a really good team of humans actually touching everything in there, you get really good end product and people actually can see the effort you put into it.

That's actually where I was going to go. And this could be our final thread to chat through is just this other lever, which is, I don't know if you described as founder-led growth or... Yeah, founder-led content. Founder-led content. Just give us kind of a sense of that growth opportunity, what you're seeing there, the opportunity to drive growth for your product through founder-led content.

Yeah, I think it also ties into what we were just talking about, like so much AI and so much ads and companies, et cetera. And at the end of the day, it also ties back to everything in content creator and people. Like at the end of the day, people buy from people, people invest in people. And I think having a founder who can put his face out there, can talk on camera, you can use in ads, you can use to tell the story.

it makes the company and the product feel that much more human. And when you compare two products, I would much rather, even from my own experience, if I follow, I don't know, let's say I follow George Heaton, who's the founder of Represent. He has a clothing brand. And then there's another ad that I see for a clothing brand. I'm much more going to buy the product, George's product, because I know how he works.

I know his routine. I know the type of person he is. I know what he stands for. I know how hard he works for his company and what he actually puts into it. And I think people really appreciate that. And again, such a digital age, like being able to connect with the founder behind the product and you not only like create super fans and like people who already use your product, but now also love you.

You also bring in like this new group of people who have never seen your product. They don't really know who you are. And then slowly they start to like the content you're putting out. They start to buy into the mission. They start to buy into the company. And then they actually try the product. And it's like this long like horizon type play or this like long-term play that you have to make.

And it's an investment because you can't just start a YouTube channel or found a lead brand and instantly start selling at people because people are just going to switch off and be like, okay, I don't want to be part of this anymore. But if you just give a lot of value, you overshare, you overdeliver, and you just open up the doors into like what the culture is like, what you're building.

People really appreciate that. And you get them to buy it and like drop their guards. And then maybe a year in, we actually like maybe have like a soft seller. Maybe we have to have a, hey guys, here's like some support. Thanks for getting us to 100,000 subscribers. Just want to drop this code, blah, blah, blah. And then people actually want to support you.

So I think again, like in this world where everyone's just trying to get like instant growth and everything's super fast and optimize everything from the start. He's like channels that maybe don't have any direct correlations in the present moment and the being some of the best long term plays and also brand building plays. What are some of the kind of angles slash stories that seem to work well when you're doing this sort of founder-led content? Is it like, here's the story of our company? Yeah.

Is there anything there? So the way we kind of thought about it at Whisper is it's like, at Whisper, honestly, at any company you're at, is like every company is going to have some sort of story or some sort of mission that they're building towards. For us at Whisper, it's getting to 1 billion daily active users. And that's like everything...

Everything we do at Whisper is to get towards that goal. And when we look at the content we make, everything needs to play back into that story. And it's almost like you're building this Netflix series where each episode is obviously going to be different, but it all ties back into the overarching theme. And whether you're, again, building in medicine or dev tools or whatever it is, there's going to be some sort of mission that you're chasing as a company.

And you want to bring people along for that ride. And if you tie that into every episode or to every LinkedIn post, every X post, Obviously like the formatting and the messaging is different on every platform, but if you like kind of tie all of this together, like brings everyone along for the journey and it makes it a lot easier to grasp and also a lot easier to build off of because you're like, okay, this is the vision, this is what we're building towards and this is how each step actually leads us to that submission.

It's almost like a physical representation of like a product roadmap or what's actually happening to the company and like showing it on display to the world, the ups, the downs, the struggles, everything. That's kind of how we think about it at Whisper and how I think other companies can think about it as well. That's awesome advice. Basically have like a North Star, like a North Star metric that you're chasing.

Yeah. And the journey there and things you're learning, things you're discovering, things that are surprising. And we'll point people to the channel to give them a sense of what you're actually doing there. Yeah, it's just Tanay Kathari. And yeah, we just document everything on there. Like the episodes, we've basically done everything from like showing how we launched our new product, Notetaker, to Tanay going to India and doing wedding shopping and like also working remote and how he balances that and his relationship with Sahaj to like just a week in the life of a founder.

We also did a whiteboard breakdown where I spoke with Tanay. And it's like all these different formats that all might feel different and look different, but they end up like building towards this like bigger vision of what Whisper is building towards. I imagine there's already some innate interest in Whisperflow by when you started it. It's like a company people when they see it.

Exactly. So there's probably a bit of like, you can't start that from the beginning when no one cares about what the hell, no one cares what you've learned because no one cares about your company yet. I honestly think you can start it though. Like maybe you put us in a bit better of a position, but I mean, there's founders who don't have as brands as big as Whisper who have found success with personal brand content.

And again, it's like a gateway into the actual brand. And it's like, what easier way to make that accessible than through a person who's just telling their story and giving value. And so interestingly, this is just another, let's say alpha opportunity to grow, which is the founder sharing their story in a really compelling way. And you see like everything starts to tie in as well, because the more places you show up organically and the more touch points you have with the customer, the cheaper it's going to get when it comes to paid.

Because what is it? I think a customer needs to, a person needs to see a piece of content of the company like seven times before they actually make a purchase. If you're able to hit them on YouTube, long form, which is a bunch of trust built up since this is a long form platform. And then you're also posting Instagram reels from the founder.

You're also posting on LinkedIn. Then when they get to meta on the first ad they see, they're going to convert. So I think these organic channels work hand in hand with paid. Like the more that you have activated and the more you have running, the cheaper all the conversions get across all platforms. And then your paid platform gets credit for that conversion.

Exactly. A final thing I just want to talk through briefly. You had this awesome video where you share what the team looks like to do founder-led content. I'll briefly share because I think this is really important for people. I will point to the video where you go deeper. Basically, it's a head of content. a videographer to film you, a YouTube team to package it, and short form editor to take it and create clips.

Yes, exactly. The content person, would that be you? Like, are you that person also doing the UGC paid stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so I'm the head of content and that's why... If you find a young person who understands content, they can basically do anything, whether it's organic, whether it's paid. And that's why it's important to find someone with a following as well, because, again, I understand how to build a following

and I know how to build a team now. And the funny thing is, like I was mentioning previously, is like every person that's part of my team, whether it be for UGC or whether it be for the founder led content team, I hired them from my Instagram stories. The way I got our videographer, he's 24 years old. I posted on my Instagram story, I think it was in May, like right after my college graduation, I posted looking for a videographer full time in San Francisco, slide up if you're the right fit.

I probably have like, I don't know, 80 people reply on my story. And then from there, there was this kid named Alex. He was in Australia at the time. He's an American like vacationing in Australia. And he seemed like a great fit. And we flew him out to San Francisco like on three day notice and we got him started. And then same for the YouTube agency.

We met through Instagram and now they're some of my close friends. So it's like typically the best social people you also find on social platforms, sort of how it goes. There's just so much win from having an audience. That's one recurring takeaway from your story. Okay. So one last tidbit you shared in this video that we'll share is, so you have this head of content.

there's Hector, there's someone filming, videographer, there's YouTube team, short form. You actually shared the YouTube packaging team. If you had to kind of pick which needs to be stronger, you found the YouTube team needs to, is more important than even the quality of the video. Yeah, YouTube is genuinely one of the hardest platforms, which is why when you said Instagram or YouTube, I backtracked and I was like, actually YouTube is very important.

And that's actually where I started as well. And I saw how much goes into making YouTube videos. Like it's not just, oh, you make a video, you post it and you put a thumbnail on some sort of picture and then you're good. It's like, At the end of the day, the way I like to think about it is you could have a masterpiece of a video. You can make a Hollywood production movie.

But if you put a bad thumbnail and a bad title that doesn't intrigue people to click on it, no one's actually going to know how good your video is. So you might have invested all this time, all this money, all this energy and effort into making this masterpiece of a video. But if you don't understand how YouTube works and how it's actually going to rank the highest, you're not going to get the results you want.

And that's why I think... the YouTube side is so important because it's not only a thumbnail, it's not only the click-through rate, it's not only the title, the watch, or the average view duration. It's also like the storytelling, the pacing, how you package it, the intro, how like the thumbnail needs to tie into the video and there actually needs to be some sort of payoff because if you don't, then you're going to have more of a drop-off rate and people aren't going to stick along to actually watch the video.

And like the better your YouTube team is, the easier it makes it for the short form side because typically the people that you're using for short form may be aren't as, I guess they're not as committed because They typically have a lot of clients and they're overseas as well. Like a lot of our short film editors are from Germany. We have one as well in Romania, I think.

And then one in Australia. And they're really good short film editors, but they, again, want to get a lot of clips out. So they're not going to pay as much of attention to the actual storytelling and they're not going to be that good with the clip selection. So if I send them 40 hours of footage, I might not get back the best clips. Whereas if my YouTube team is really good in the post-production, they put a super good 15 minute video.

Then I can send that to my editors and like a clean slate with no titles, no music, et cetera. And they can just click the best moments and they get into like really good short form pieces. And that's kind of the reason why I say the long form team is the most important part. And it's also the one that has the most likes. Like YouTube videos can run on for ages and ages.

Like even on my own personal channel, I've had a video that's been up now for like five years. And I think like a year ago, it was at like, what, 40,000 views? Now it's like 600,000 views. And it's like, YouTube videos have so like the longest half-life out of any platform and it's truly insane. Like some of the videos we post on today's channel might be like five, six million views in a few years.

And that's what's cool about YouTube. It's like a long-term investment. I've discovered very similar things with YouTube. It's a wondrous platform. It's maybe the only platform where you can discover where new people discover you at scale. yeah it's insane and it's like a lot of these platforms i like trust me i enjoy making content but sometimes it's like a bit demotivating when it's like oh you filmed one piece of content you posted it you got to make the new one and so obviously with youtube you have to as well but you reap those rewards as well long term it's not like on instagram um where you post a video and in 48 hours it's dead it's like a youtube video you put a

lot of effort into it and we look at some of the charts on today's videos and like we're still getting 10 000 views um in like the last 48 hours even though it's been like three months since it's been posted like it's still working for us it's still getting new eyeballs and new customers um so youtube is youtube is amazing i i assume also with how many podcasts you have as well like the amount of views you're getting from like years and years back or whatever is pretty insane Yeah.

It's fun to watch videos that kind of climb the ranks over time. I had Elizabeth Stone on the podcast. She's CPTO at Netflix. And she slowly has climbed the charts. She's right behind number one now. She's like climbing on. She's approaching number one. And so like you think these are like stuck at that number, but they just keep going. Yeah, it's like this.

And all of a sudden it just goes like this. And I did not expect that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't get a lot of those. We're just in flex. No, it does grow. And it's like, wow, I didn't know that was still growing. And Yeah. Anyway, Hector, this was incredible. Um, before we get to a very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you want to share or anything else you want to kind of double down on and leave listeners with? I guess my last point, which I have mentioned lies, like I would just urge other founders out there, like give a chance, like young talent and yeah, just, just find those people, believe in them, trust in them, give them

opportunities and yeah, yeah like not only will they turn into some of your best a players but also the amount of loyalty um they will have to is quite incredible and whether they stay at your company or they go on to do other things like they will always be there to help you or help you bring in other young talent um or guide you in the right direction when things when new alpha is out there um and yeah i'm super grateful to today and daniel and the whole whisper team for like taking a shot on me And there's no better place I think I could have.

I could have landed and I'm like forever in debt or however you could say that. I'm just super grateful for the opportunity I was given. That's beautiful. Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. I've seen these. I've seen these in the in the in the podcast. Won't be a surprise. OK, here we go.

First question. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? One of my, I'm going to give one book, I'm going to give one really good book, which might be a cliche one, but Naval Robicon's Almanac. I remember reading that about two years ago or maybe a year and a half ago.

And it was like kind of in this moment where I wasn't like, I was sure I wanted to do content, but I also didn't understand why it was important or why it mattered so much. And like, I read it the first time, didn't really make that much sense to me. and then I like gave you some time and then things started to like line up like it said it kind of in the book and like how um how does he say like media is like one of the best forms of leverage because you don't have to ask for permission it's permissionless leverage and you can just make stuff and put it out in the internet and it will continue to work for you um and like I started to see that compounding effect over time

of like me putting myself out there and it's a book I continue to find myself coming back to and reading. I bought it from my little brother as well recently. And it's like something I'm always sharing with friends and always passing on to them to read as well. And I feel like it gives direction a lot to like young people as well in this crazy world that we live in.

So I'd always say that's one of my favorite books I've read. Yeah, and I've all went through this era of just sharing this profound advice on Twitter and then you kind of slowed down. And I love that there's a book that collects it all. And I love that. So much of advice you to like, you see it and you're like, yeah, it's fine. And then you think back to, wow, he was so damn right.

Have you read, what's it, Ego is the Enemy? Is that a book or is that one of his lines? No, it's a new book. I think it's called something. I was just wondering if you read it because I was interested in reading it. I was about to buy it. And you go to a bookstore. There's not that many bookstores in Puerto Rico. But yeah, I'm looking for a new book.

So if anyone wants to drop some comments on the video. Okay. Does Amazon deliver to Puerto Rico? Yes, but it's like a bit, it takes a while living on an island. Everything is a lot lower, a lot slower, less dopamine rush. You don't get a 24-hour delivery. I love that. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you have really enjoyed? I just watched the Elizabeth Holmes movie with my girlfriend.

Yeah, I'm not going to spoil it, but wow, that was a really good movie. One thing that someone shared from the trailer, this is no spoiler.

You know that trailer when they're kind of staring at each other and he kind of puts his tongue in his mouth, like his mouth is kind of doing something funny? Yeah. Turns out when he's trying not to laugh or just get great character, he puts his tongue against his molars and just presses against them to keep himself from laughing. How about that? I did not know that.

But yeah, it was a good movie. I liked it. Epic. Okay, next question. Favorite slash most interesting AI product you're using right now? Ideally not Whisperflow. Honestly, I commented on your post the other day. Miso. I don't know. Did you end up downloading it or no? I just tried to check it out. It's like a travel tool, right? Yeah, it's a travel agent.

And I travel a lot. I think I have like 55 flights or 60 so far this year. Jeez. Like 89,000 miles. And...

Traveling is always something I'm like not looking forward to because it gets pretty tiring like having to book the flights and everything and I recently came across this product when they launched on X and I DMed the founders on Instagram and I was like yo get me off the waitlist like I want to try this out and ever since I downloaded it it's now been like three months like I can't stop using it and recommending it to friends and like just an example like the other day I slept through my alarm and I missed my flight to SF from PR and And I texted, I woke up, I texted Miso.

I was like, hey, I missed my flight. Can you get me on the next one? And I didn't have to do anything else. Like took care of everything, booked me on the next flight in like two hours. I just chilled, didn't have to pay anything extra. Yeah, it's like the best travel agent I've tried by far. Like obviously Instinct is a good agent and everything, but I don't think for travel it's anywhere as fast.

And then what's also cool about Miso is is they have humans on the back end that will escalate things. Like if the agent gets stuck, they have like direct connections to every major airline and everything, and they can escalate things and take care of it for you. So it's like a lifesaver. I can just text now, hey, I want a flight, and it'll just send to me, and I'll get it booked in like a few minutes.

That is extremely cool. I looked it up. It's just miso.com. M-I-S-O.com. What an amazing domain. I imagine no affiliation. You're just a fan. Yeah, no affiliation. So cool. Okay, go Miso. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? Yes, I have a life model that I like a lot. I don't know if I'm gonna butcher this so maybe you can help me but it's from Steve Jobs that you can't always connect the dots looking forward but you can always connect them looking backwards and like when I look into my own life like I see that basically in everything like I was never the smartest kid in school like my parents were

always pretty frustrated with me I had really bad ADHD like soccer was the only thing I had and then I lost it and then I was like lost for a few months even though I was at Whisper and I didn't really understand all the things that were happening or why I even picked up a camera when I was 16 or why I started posting on YouTube or why I played sports and like now looking back like everything it's so clear makes so much sense and like I understand the path I'm on on life and like I think sometimes you just got to keep going and it'll all make sense at the end and like yeah I think that's one of my favorite quotes I would back on I also find that to be very true and Steve

Jobs nailed it again um Hector, this was incredible. Thank you so much for sharing so much. You're awesome. Thank you. Final question. How can listeners be useful to you?

I mean, if you guys want to follow me on X or on Instagram or YouTube, whatever you guys want, come join the journey. And your handle is just Hector Serrano. Yeah, it's pretty similar across platforms. It's like Hector Serrano. You'll find me one way or another. Hector, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, thank you. Bye, everyone.

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