How Emergent Used Creator Marketing to Reach a $1.5B Valuation Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 You were one of the first few people at emergent. >> I took the plunge. Zero users, zero revenue to 12 million plus users, 190 plus countries, $1.5 billion company. Pretty crazy. >> In order of what had the most effectiveness for a merchant, how would that be? >> Both lobble and both were not running in marketing. So, we tested it. We saw the traffic and the signups and all of that spike up.

00:21 And that's why we went hard. We went from five creators to [music] 300 creators. >> I want to switch gears and get a bit into moment marketing. If I have hit $100 million AR in 8 months becoming one of the fastest to get there in the world then it's a moment that has the potential that you can build a narrative you can run campaigns across every single channel the trigger for most parts it should be the founder founder social mostly doing on Twitter or on [music] >> why leave [laughter] naturally that's the next

00:48 question right >> yeah um >> you were one of the first few people at emergent you were there was some tweet That happened right at your um previous startup. I believe the other co-founder of emergent >> was at your he was a student if I'm not wrong. >> He had my program. Yes. >> Yes. And then there was some tweet exchange and then you joined emergent.

01:13 >> Yeah. There's a beautiful story right like behind how I came to emergent. Um happy to share that. It is >> this is I actually started a company uh it was not supposed to be a company. It was learning program uh plus like cohort and community back in 2020 and 2021 during the covid wave when the covid you know like u first started obviously everybody was confined to their homes and I had moved on from my last role at a company called springboard.

01:37 So I decided to take a break and just like I used to love creating things and building products. This is before AI coding wipe coding everything and I you know everybody were using no code tools. is like glide, softer, bubble and like people were in love with those platforms because you could drag drop etc and build right so when I took a break I decided that okay why not let's just put together a program an online program 4 weeks will help people go from not even having an idea to actually building and launching the

02:06 product and getting users right so that became something called build okay uh so I ran that from 21 2021 to 2024 in fact fursa uh in the US uh started something called build space uh build and build space started exactly around the same time. Um so build used to be much more known you know like the in the India circle, Bangalore circle like the tier one circle cities in India uh build space was like all over right and the concept was very simple run cohort and you know like community that enabled people from to go from

02:34 and just like pursue their ideas right >> and this is before as I told you earlier before VIP coding uh became cool now 24 >> you know like it merged uh with another company uh which vibe uh runs growth school now they run something called outskill 2025 February because I was into enabling people to build and I used to you know like >> it seemed like a fit there right now you'd help this startup that's helping others build their ideas faster >> exactly right and because I was keeping a tab on this space I knew that

03:05 lovable had come up but I was a bolt maxi right I used to I used to take sessions on how to build on bolt right I was in this space and back in February March 2025 because I was doing you know like and writing and re running programs online offline everything. So build became a thing and I was like you know what India should host world's biggest wipe coding conference.

03:29 Uh so I made a landing page uh and all of that. There's a very interesting story. I was going to Mysore. I was on a card. I was talking to two of my friends and we were discussing this. I was like India should host this and people are like okay what should we call? I'm like Vipcon. I told my friend can you check if Vipcon.ai is available. It was available.

03:45 We bought it for $1,500. >> $1,500. Yeah. Okay. So, it was like a premium domain for some reason. >> Yeah. Okay. >> It is super premium. I'll tell you the story. It's mind-blowing. So, wipeon.ai. By the time I reached my s, the the person my friend had wipe coded on bolt, right? >> And when I reached there, I tweeted uh that India should host nice post and all of that.

04:07 >> Then Madhav who's the co-founder and CTO at emergent saw it and he wrote that you know Prashant let's chat we will see if we can we would like to sponsor it. I had no idea what mother was up to, right? U obviously he had done the programs he had done like the the biggest program of build which was a which was a flagship build cohort and then he had done other things.

04:24 So I was like okay like I saw emergent on his profile and it said YC backed and I was like okay let's chat at least like what >> that's the YC backed power in a way even though Y cominator is also [laughter] in a bit of the mud right now but um >> signaling the world works on signaling right like it is if I see that a founder is backed by YC >> you look at it for an extra 2 seconds at least >> yes I'll wait I'll notice I'll see what the person is doing right um so we started chatting and then he next day or a day after

05:01 that I met Mukun I met Sor who was the founding team member head of product uh Makun obviously the CEO there are a few things that happened right uh in that conversation because I was in this space I was obviously super excited about you know like what this opens up because I believed in it before the space existed right uh so and at the time when I was talking to them Even the companies like Lovable or Bold had not become a billiond dollar company, right?

05:29 So there was always I was convinced that there will be one, two or possibly even three uh billion dollar companies. I looked at the founders, they were hungry like Mukun is extremely ambitious, right? Like he is he's incredible like the kind of goals that he would set. You know this is not about Mukun but you know in the in the times that we are living in you need to feel a little delusional, right?

05:50 like like the ambition if it does not feel delusional probably you'll not make it right and when I met Mukun you know he his his presence is like that you know he talks like that uh and I was like okay check right space domain check naturally interested being there doing that uh product was good right uh and then I met the other I saw the other team members right like 14 15 people all cracked cracked tech people >> and I was like okay you know I like the space I like the domain the founders are great, the product is

06:21 good, there's no billion dollar company. Obviously, they are on the trajectory, the other two, but we can definitely make it. So, I took the plunge uh became the first person uh to join the company uh to do all kinds of growth and marketing. Yeah. And then 15 18 months later, uh zero users, zero revenue to 12 million plus users, 190 plus countries, $1.5 billion company.

06:44 Pretty crazy. >> Why leave [laughter] naturally? That's the next question, right? >> Yeah. uh [clears throat] when you do this right like and uh this kind of growth trajectory uh does not happen all the time right and when it happens there is a lot that goes in the background right uh obviously the front-facing story is always the fact that oh you know what emergent is you know like a company that is coming out of India like everybody's based out of India building a global product taken over the world one of the

07:12 fastest growing AI companies ever so all of that story right but when you come in as a first person and you know like you are behind so many of all of this uh that is happening 18 months uh will not feel like 18 months right uh there's there's there's so much of you know like intensity uh there is so you almost like every day at least for the first 5 6 months it felt like we were doing the work worth of two or three days right uh every single day uh so 18 months is probably 18 into two >> when were you even signing off

07:43 because I remember you know texting when I used to start working and that was about 10:00 p.m. 11:00 p.m. IST and you guys were always online. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like my average going back time uh for the first few months from the office was like 2 3:00 a.m. That's insane. Like and obviously like some people will be like, "Okay, this is this does not work."

08:03 Like when you have to make history, history is never made uh by doing the usual things, right? Like we knew that we have a chance, we have a shot, we have a product, we have a market, right? The only thing is can you execute and can you execute very very fast, right? And if if it be if it came to that right you'll have to do things that you are uncomfortable with at during the times that you are uncomfortable with right I had I had a six months daughter right like now she's 2 years old uh right like you will have to

08:31 right like do things because when like when I look at right now obviously very grateful that you know there's so much of respect uh for the work that has happened that that would not have happened if if we had not done uh you know things like this but coming back to your original question of why leave when you have done this 18 months does not feel like 18 months it feels like much more and you feel like you're on a treadmill right uh and when I was first joining and that's why I told you the story of joining there are

08:57 a few things that I had asked myself uh which was what are the three or four most ambitious outcomes uh that would make this journey absolutely worthwhile right one was can we become a top three player uh in the domain we did uh so now right now it is lovable replet emergent uh base 44 right like so top three in the domain size uh you know like user usage love uh funding valuation everything right uh can we script a global story which has not happened by the way AI B2C proumer global story with by people sitting from

09:33 India has not happened uh so we were like one of the first ones who pulled it off right so like incredible super proud so that also got ticked off right uh can we become a multi-billion dollar company uh in a very short period of time by growing fast that right so when you're and you combine the two things that I told you right you're on a treadmill and when you were coming you had these two or three things that you thought will make this journey absolutely worthwhile right so it feels like okay those things have

10:00 happened right um is it is it a time to get off the treadmill right and it felt like uh to me that you know like if for whatever I came here to do uh across the length and breadth of growth and marketing if that was done and the objectives are met like probably a good time uh to move on and do much bigger uh things. >> Did you have a set goal that you want to get it to this number or this point and >> definitely a multi-billion dollar company?

10:27 Uh I I feel that >> and I [clears throat] say this quite often uh it is if you are in the world of tech and startups like especially startups you have one job right which is either to build a rocket ship or join a rocket ship right um and if you're joining a rocket ship one of the best one of the greatest things that you can do in your career especially if you're in growth and marketing or any role for that matter is to take a company from absolute zero to multi-billion dollar right like in that journey the kind of

10:56 things the that you will learn the kind of experiments that you will run the kind of days that you will see both high and low is does not happen and that's why you know when I when I was leaving I made a video and the first line uh in that video says it does not happen often right it truly does not you need to be really lucky u to go through it once very few people I know who have gone through it twice right >> how was the 100 million ARR figure made >> controversies aside right first we need to fundamentally

11:26 understand ARR yeah >> and how is it being looked at in AI companies right uh and in the age of AI >> this I'm not saying because only we looked at it right and obviously I'm not going to be talking you know as any representative of emergent because obviously I have moved on uh recently but I'll still give you an overall picture right it is ARR in a traditional SAS world software world before the advent of AI always meant annual recurring revenue right and when all of these companies uh whether that was you know like

12:01 open aai chip or like anthropic or for that matter lovable xfield etc when they have shared that they are growing or reached 100 million 200 million 400 million ARR it has never been annual recurring uh revenue in fact when you read their press releases or their nodes around the announcement you'll always see it saying ARR that means annualized run rate so it is >> run rate Yeah, it is always the run rate, right?

12:27 Which is, you know, like let's say in a month, right? If you're if you're doing $2 million and you're consistently done that, right? Uh for, you know, like a few months and your projected growth will at least be that $2 million, you're definitely at $24 million. So that distinction is super important to understand. And that has come because the AI platforms especially let's say in the context of this conversation the W coding platforms or even generation platforms like Higsfield or anybody else is usage driven platform

13:00 right so there is subscription then there is top up right which is usage right >> so you know like you will be able to calculate you know obviously there's a you know like a mathematical thing that you put together and you're able to calculate right so it is not oh like these many subscribers multiply and the year are Right. Um by looking at the churn etc.

13:18 Right. So >> that distinction is super important for anybody you know like for for people who are listening is ARR is not >> it's annualized run rate. >> Yeah. Annualized revenue run rate. >> So does the annualized revenue run rate basically mean monthly revenue plus accounting for growth? >> No no no it doesn't account for growth. >> Monthly revenue into 12.

13:39 >> Monthly revenue into 12. And it's also sort of accounting for subscription revenue straight up plus credits average credits used in a given month. >> Yeah. The most simplified version is subscription and the credits. >> Credits. Got it. And does it account for churn or >> the most simplified version is if it is $2 million in a month, it is $24 million recurring.

14:01 But internally, right, you would know whether it'll be 24 or it will be 20, right? But for the sake of simplicity right uh it is always said that it is 24 right >> I think that is very helpful because there were some around >> so the controversy basically stems from the fact that it is very hard to make sense of it right it is like >> how can you have so many subscribers because if it was recurring revenue then you are only thinking of subscribers >> exactly >> yeah because that is the only thing that will that can get

14:27 you recurring revenue right and people are like how is the churn not happening right or you know like how are you able to get so many subscribers but the game is not about that The game is about the fact that you can get 10,000 people, right? And out of that, let's say if you're converting 10% of them, right? If you're converting 10% out of 10,000 and out of that 10%, let's say 5% or 2% are becoming your power users.

14:50 Like power users in these kind of businesses actually run the business because their consumption >> much higher than the others of course. >> So they buy credits like anything. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. You mentioned something bigger. Why not take emergent to number one, you know, because right now what it's being contested the top three, not top one. And I think there's definitely a path and the folks are going to continue to really strive hard and work really hard, continue those allnighters where need be to get to that

15:19 number one spot. >> Yeah. No, it's a very personal choice. It is like what do I truly truly enjoy doing you know when whatever has happened at emergent uh from zero to 1.5 billion like even more >> is a journey that I absolutely enjoy right obviously like would I have would I have enjoyed 2 billion to 1.5 billion to 5 billion probably yes right uh but it just does not come to me uh naturally right so it was a lot it was a very personal choice that if I have to do this, you know, like do I do a billion dollar journey

15:55 again? Right? It felt like that answer was yes, right? Uh that because because you know, like once you lose once you start losing that mojo of you know like growing through incredible grind and making a billion dollar outcome out of it, that mojo is forever lost, right? It doesn't come back, right? and the nature of you know like how systems work, how the companies work uh everything changes also at scale isn't something that natur like that I naturally enjoy right so I just felt like like time to move on >> I guess

16:32 the other question here is this is a very high level question which is how does growth fundamentally change from zero to a billion in valuation to now you know a billion or a billion and a half in valuation to the next whatever or change. >> I think very simply put um I would not even categorize it as 0 to billion or billion to later. It is more like how does growth change from a point that you know you have you have gotten to a very significant outcome right that significant outcome will look different for different

17:03 companies right uh but for the sake of simplicity even if we say okay billion dollar outcome in the age of AI because for especially for consumer companies or proumer companies you need to get there very fast till it is more about ensuring that you have channels on in which you are winning and your growth is coming right after that at billion dollar or more you would have likely gotten to a point where you will be able to sustain and just like optimize right a lot of what you do till billion dollars is about

17:34 experimentation finding scaling right after billion dollars it is about small optimizations will give you larger you know like results till that right you are running to find you know like places which is in the case of growth uh it is channels through which you and grow exceptionally. Right? If you were to look from the other lens, it is like if I need to get to billion dollar as an outcome and my thing is I need to grow get users very fast which is on the acquisition layer.

18:02 I need to get a lot of users right at the top of the funnel. What are you doing? You are experimenting very very fast. You're trying to get to product and channel fit. You know like ensure that your numbers are improving and all of that. after that once you have hit that a billion dollar scale right it if I do small optimization around conversion if I do small optimization around retention right like there are so many levers that you can use to actually keep increasing your revenue right so that happens a different

18:28 motions will also start getting kicked off right uh right from something as simple as sales right you will actually start doing that uh because you will see much larger outcomes uh with sales then with just like pumping more and more on acquisition right similarly you will kick off something like enterprise, right? You'll kick off very large value partnerships, right?

18:48 Uh so those things become much more important after that compared to just like in the you know like run uh to get to a billion dollar outcome. >> That makes sense. So it becomes more about these tiny optimizations that will end up having a massive impact just because of the scale you guys are operating at. >> And it's fundamentally different from when you're trying to find channel to product fit.

19:10 as an early stage startup, you're just experimenting, finding one and scaling that one. >> And I think I saw your tweet as well, which was like around if you're a seedstage startup, you just need one channel that you need to find and really double. >> Oh, yeah. I think I've come to believe that very strongly uh especially after you know like what we are seeing uh over the last in the last nearly two years uh especially with consumer proumer AI companies.

19:36 If you look at and trace back the growth trajectory uh of most companies that you know like people would know about care about and all of that or they would have hear about uh heard about it is like obviously everybody is super active on every channel right is lovable doing performance marketing yes. Is lovable doing influencer marketing? Yes. Is lovable doing SEO?

19:57 Yes. Is lovable doing events? Yes. Is lovable doing ambassador community? Yes. There is probably you will not find a no anywhere. Is lovable doing partner great partnerships with co-arketing? Absolutely. Right? Is immersion doing all of this? Absolutely. But there is one thing on which lovable has won big time PLG. Right? Like the kind of you know like word of mouth uh that they have been able to perfect one and they have done you know like template based marketing a lot through SEO right?

20:27 So like templatizing the same playbook that Zapier had used earlier uh and then the most celebrated Canva story uh around SEO right that lovable has done uh for this particular domain that is one example of you can keep trying to activate every single channel right but in today's date if you don't win extraordinarily big in one channel the likelihood of you getting to exponential growth is not very high, right?

20:55 Um because exponential growth does not come from activation. It comes from winning and winning so big that you become a case study. And that is why you know for another example right Hicksfield if you look at Hicksfield they are almost absent on SEO right uh if you look at you know like of and and the one thing that they do obviously everybody may know that okay Hicksfield does a lot of influencer marketing right I think everybody knows the thing that they don't know is influencer or they may not know is influencer

21:28 marketing Hicksfield does on every single feature right so every single feature for them is a new launch so they make and and if you look at the playbook right it's like when a new feature comes it'll be on short form it'll be on long form it'll be on Twitter it'll be on LinkedIn it'll be everywhere it it feels like you know Hicksfield has launched itself once again when there was a very small feature right again it's it's did this exist in the world earlier yes right had anybody done this playbook over and over again

21:59 in such a coordinate fashion no >> they became a case study for >> they became right you look at the number of conversation which people will talk about this right um emergent incredible influencer marketing I the kind of production line that we have set up right and the scale to which uh we took it um I I don't know of any other tech startup or AI company uh that has that has the audacity uh to do it uh or more importantly uh the execution chops to pull it off along with obviously that driving the business.

22:29 So ultimately my point is yes the role of growth and marketing is to activate channels and to keep testing and experimenting and seeing where you can start winning but your exponential growth in today's date will never get unlocked if you don't win big on one channel right >> so yeah >> I've got like two questions one of them is to close the loop on you know of course now you've left emergent what is next for pashant and the second one is when you find a channel fit for example for emergent it's been creator activation

22:59 influencable style growth. Why is it not that lovable can also do massive scale influencer and that would work for them because you guys are categorically in a similar playing field. >> Yeah. Uh to your first question which is what next? Uh [clears throat] no I I don't think you know like I when I moved on uh from emergent the idea was to move on get as I told you earlier you know like come out of the treadmill you know it was I whatever I came to do at emergent was done I was not moving on because I was moving on to

23:32 another opportunity or whatever right so what I'm doing right now is very simple I'm spending I'm loving you know like spending time with founders who are building an AI across I've spoken to incredible founders sitting in SF you know like some in Europe obviously a lot of them bunch of them uh in India and in Bangalore lots of excitement you know like incredible vision so what I'm doing is just like chatting with them seeing you know if there is something that excites me uh and the idea is you know like start helping

23:57 some of them uh maybe three or four of them in some capacity one of them turns out to be like super exciting uh in a 2 three month phase then probably I'll be back to the 0 to million 0 to1 0 to 100 whatever you want to call it uh game so yeah that's what you know the idea is to just like be helpful right now talk to as many founders as possible and with the experience that you know like we have gained and I have gained uh by doing emergent and whatever we could be helpful >> which conversation has excited you the most

24:26 or what space are you most curious about now >> I think there is there is a lot uh that needs to happen in voice uh there's there's a lot that's already happening I feel that when I was joining emergent there's so much excitement around wipe coding I feel the same if not bigger uh excitement around personal autonomous agents continuously running autonomous agents are going to take over the world.

24:48 Um it's going to become dead simple uh with and everybody will have like every single person uh will have autonomous agents running right like and there are so many companies uh who are trying to do this. Incredible, right? Um [clears throat] lots of you know like I I have seen people uh who are trying to build layers like inferral layers u and and these are not talked about because they are small right now.

25:10 Um the thing is if you look at from an India context right people would talk about serv people would talk about emergent because they are obviously billiond dollar companies but there's no other conversation about any other AI company. uh obviously Nessa like or some others here and there but in terms of just being out there like if anybody were to ask okay India AI story they'll be like yeah serv emergent right I have met in the last 10 days 12 days at least 25 companies that I'm excited about uh and they are all in

25:40 this bracket of you know have raised seed money $3 million $2 million $4 million no I don't think because I'm not I'm not sure if they'll be okay uh with me sharing but >> at least two or three or four of them uh needs to become big because if they don't become big right then the story would continue obviously it's great that the stories about serv and emergent or emergent and serv right now but it needs to be like five more 10 more companies probably the first time that I am seeing that for a technological evolution

26:08 uh obviously India has always played the catch-up game right if you look at when internet happened when mobile happened you know like all of the companies would come up in SF Uber would come up you know Door Dash would come up this that everything and then we will have our own Ola a while later >> but AI we are not even doing that in AI right like it's pretty incredible u and that's why like in the next like 12 months India needs to have its own like five more unicorns and that's why I'm excited about you know like

26:35 talking to founders seeing if I can be helpful >> do you think that will happen >> that should happen uh I've seen enough founders enough conviction enough vision they have the firepower they have gotten good investors u backing them should happen >> I mean a question here and I know we still have to get to that probable question. >> Um what do you think has stopped now people have their own answers to this what do you think has stopped um India from growing so far in AI >> in AI >> yeah or only having two outliers >>

27:04 few things um >> is it from what I've heard right on the field it's like investor skepticism that's a big part of it >> yeah so I was coming to that right it's it's like do we lack ambition uh as founders it's a 50/50 answer to that right like Um there is you know like there's a saying uh that people keep talking about at least on Twitter right now that young people are all right right uh actually all right like they're think they're thinking well the vision is there the ambition is there I think the one thing that

27:36 keeps pegging us back is benchmarking right uh in general the ecosystem tends to back based on evidence right and our conviction culturally gets built it's a cultural problem by the way it is not Indian investors problem, right? If you look at how you make decisions or how your friends make decision, you will see in most parts they're looking at benchmarking, right?

27:57 So, it is it is it is like we'll have to you know, like grow above this, you know, like culturally built, you know, thing that we have to be able to back because if there is no evidence of anything like that that has existed, how do you benchmark and back it? How do you build your own conviction right that okay this will work out and let's back it right obviously a lot of why we are not seeing is is rooted in that I also feel that you know there is so much more um you know like obviously I've seen ambition but I've

28:33 still seen ambition at an application layer right uh we are also lacking because we don't operate at the foundation layer right and foundation layer is you know we have the good thing is you know like if you look at the number of you know like incredibly talented technical skills you know skilled folks that we have or people that we have in this country is mindboggling right do we have that yes do we have the ecosystem that nurtures them that is questionable right u can you know like three people you know like somebody

29:07 who's at bits or nit obviously IITs right can you know like four of them just like start working on something breakthrough true right and not care about anything probably we have reached 60 70% of that of that place but there's still miles to go right uh to be able to do that so I feel because we are operating in the application layer a lot that's why the story does not become even more powerful if the difference is simple right like the stories that you're hearing from China is about models that are competing you know

29:34 like whether open source or whatever with the lab model that we have whether that's of open athropic right that story it's super hard for India right now right uh that's an ecosystem cultural problem right will we get over with it sometime I do believe right I feel that every single generation takes the ecosystem to another level right but we'll have to fast track I think the space at which we are moving in the age of AI when it comes to backing startups or just like thinking at the foundational layer it needs to speed

30:08 up because earlier during the internet era mobile era and all of that you could you could move slow and still catch up. >> Yeah, you it's difficult I'm guessing. >> Well, there'll be no time to catch up. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I guess onto that question um of lovable you know for them PLG worked for immersion there's influencer marketing/grader programs why can lovable not take creator programs why can emergent not take PLG cuz it's the same or similar fields of product.

30:34 No, so it is it's very simple, right? Like there's a saying that what you keep becoming great you become great at what you're good right like so if you're good at something try to make sure that you can become great at it right so emergent has become great at influencer marketing lovable has become great at that right have we not done or tried PLC or is it not working but it is right like there's word of mouth you know people talk about it is it a channel that can give us exponential return right now right it's hard

31:04 right obviously like we can we can keep trying but if I invest that effort that resource on the channel that's already working for me I'll get a better ROI right but if I want to stack my channels right so let's say I start you know like I obviously if I keep investing into influencer marketing or let's say for that matter Hicksfield market the what whatever Hicksfield is doing or other companies are doing I'll tap out at certain point right at that point I'll press the another pedal so if you look at lovable lovable

31:32 did only like it was only organic word of mouth PLG everything referral Then they started doing UGC. So it's not that I didn't get into influencer marketing, right? It's like I captured that channel as a brand in this domain faster, you know, like and you know I was the first one uh to capture, right? So it's like first move is advantage even in distribution channel right >> u obviously you can lovable can go back and start doing and get the ROI great right but >> as a brand as a company the objective that we had we in

32:01 fact there's a very interesting story here right when we were when we first started you know we're getting started with emergent and we said okay you know we need to get on the growth trajectory right you will look at channels right um obviously when you're first starting you will not start for most companies and most products you will not start doing performance marketing off the bat right so we like okay that's not there and We also knew that we needed exponential growth.

32:21 Both lovable and bold. Uh we're not running influencer marketing, right? Uh so we tested it. We saw the traffic and the signups and all of that spike up and that's why we went hard because it it it showed the promise and it repeated that promise two or three times. >> Mhm. >> And we were like okay could loable have come after 6 months and they did right.

32:43 They did like UGC is a big big program. uh UGC obviously is a little different form of uh influencer marketing but they did uh by that time we had gotten to the billion dollar outcome >> makes sense I guess on that note right you guys at emergent definitely had a lot of channels you tested um you worked on creative marketing which became the largest growth channel there was global PR >> there were socials Reddit community partnerships out of home campaigns events launches there were so many different >> performance.

33:15 >> If you had to rank them in order of what had the most effectiveness for emergent, how would that be? >> I think I would do that in stages, right? I would not, you know, like do a blanket categorization to get to from zero to $25 million like in ARR or almost like $50 million AR. It was influencer marketing, moment marketing which is in fact we should talk about this which is architecting this you know like treating every single milestone as a big event of the company and making making a marketing like a marketing

33:48 gala out of it right like that that we have done very very well from 0 to $50 million a year it is influencer marketing moment marketing PR u big launches/moment marketing and performance marketing right um from 50 million or roughly 75 million to you know like our last reported AR was like 120 um to there it is influencer marketing/performance marketing um and now you know we're getting to a point where it is above right performance and then influencer right uh continues to be moment marketing/pr uh then there is the

34:27 other things right see the other things are not necessarily things that give you direct input output right uh so when I'm on the channels that you will win big it'll it'll become an input output channel for you what I mean by that is you put in this much of effort you and you get this much of traffic this much of signup and conversion all of that right uh so the way we ran in fact we ran influencer marketing like performance channels so we could predict that oh you invest this much you'll get this much traffic sign up

34:53 um the other whether that's partnerships community Reddit events so these yeah it's it's a lot on the marketing brand side um which is building more visibility more trust trust uh you know and all of that right see can there are companies obviously which have gotten hundreds and thousands possibly millions of users also through Reddit right but you know have we not really like for example we did something called vipcon the thing is and that is a story uh that we needed to connect also right uh so one the first event

35:22 that we did uh was called vipcon right uh it's a flagship property hackathon right and when we were first thinking about. So basically what had happened is we are obviously partners with anthropic you know like and others. So there was okay we'll do a hackathon at Y combinator because we are YC backed there will be AWS will be partner anthropic will be a partner and then with emergent obviously emergent is doing like great right uh one month before this hackathon this was in November right and uh I was like yeah

35:54 hackathon great but there's nothing that's going to happen because of a hackathon and I knew that I had thoughts about Vipcon even before coming uh to emergent which I told you about so I told Makun let's call this Vipcon right uh like yeah let's do do this uh and I also told him can we go to Y cominator and ask them if they are willing to give the winner a direct interview so YC has its own process right like application interview >> uh obviously people are like mostly it won't happen >> why would they do >> you guys

36:23 made that happen >> so I wrote in we wrote uh NYC said yes uh it it became like I still remember >> huge marketing moment as well for >> I still remember Mukun's reaction he was like mindboggling right I went back to spoke. So there it looks like there was one or two instances where they did this >> but you have to understand that okay does everybody do hackathon?

36:43 Yes. But if you can think of what is the way in which you add an element that makes it one of the most talked about things right the vibecon SF blew up right like the for an SF edition we got like 4,000 5,000 applications when we did the India edition recently in April YC was coming to India for startup school and then we did in India we got 30,000 applications because we repeated the same playbook uh obviously the playbook my thing is you can in the age and times that we are living in obviously I told I talked about

37:16 the fact that it's super important to do activation of channels but exponential growth comes from winning big on one channel and also if you are not creative with things that you are doing and that's why I'm talking about this example I could we could have done hackathon but we said okay wipecon direct interview made it viral did a full-blown marketing campaign influencers Twitter LinkedIn everything right so in terms of to go back to your question right so the stacking change initially it was influencer um and then

37:42 moment marketing PR whatever and Then it became performance influencer moment marketing PR. >> So performance really kicked up after the 50M >> um AR mark. >> Yeah, >> that is super interesting. >> Um if now for example your next startup or wherever you join, right? And let's say the channel was again what really ended up working was influencer marketing.

38:06 >> How did you and how would you now start the program? How do you even start testing? Were there now you know maybe give you some more direction on this >> um how did you go about finding the best creators who converted >> um and then which platforms when you're talking about these creators are they on X are they on Instagram are they on YouTube where exactly are these creators um and yeah >> yeah so influencer marketing uh usually when you talk about influencer marketing people will be like oh Instagram res right the

38:34 usual assumption is Instagram res so I I'll talk about the different stages and how we have gone through them and that can you know like anybody you know who wants to understand that can you correlate to their own you know like settings. So when we were first starting in fact when I had first come uh obviously I told you we had zero users everything zero uh we went into beta so there was an invite code uh and the first few things that we did was influencer marketing but on Twitter LinkedIn and obviously newsletters are

39:05 not influencer marketing uh but newsletters right idea was very simple where was the platform where everybody was raving and talking about new AI products it was Twitter right uh and by In that time one and a half years back uh at least Twitter marketing or Twitter influencer marketing had not gone to a point where all of these even the conventional influencers on Twitter they were talking about things that were believable right that you could see oh new product has come right and if you look at now obviously it has

39:35 changed right because they have talked about the same things in same fashion over and over again that it's very hard for people to believe them anymore right uh so the world has changed obviously in the last one and a half year but at that point I knew because you know if you're Twitter native you will know what's So I knew that okay these are the ones who are creating conversations around new products and making them go viral right so one of the first few I still remember this I I think I remember the date also um so

39:58 there was this is this creator called lcene okay lcene uh he's based out of Singapore Twitter we were in beta invite code u so we put up a date and okay lcene will go live he made a product he actually made a Netflix clone uh okay very simple thing he made but it was so visually really appealing. It went viral on Twitter. It had some 700k I don't know how much it has today.

40:22 700k views at that point on Twitter organically was pretty incredible. Uh and we saw the signups coming. We like wow. Right. So what I'm telling you is you know like all of you know like these creators who are the normal AI influencers used to drive actual usage. Um and we saw that because we ran you know the beta. Um then we ran with other creators uh who were there and with every like voice that used to matter or was mattering and people used to refer to them to discover new products we saw an uptick and we saw the

40:53 real usage coming. So we kept we ran the entire beta program on Twitter. So we ran it for like a month. Okay. Uh starting of May you know more than a half month to mid of June. Um when we came out of beta and we did the public launch. Uh [clears throat] it was all like going from one creator to another, perfecting the narrative, you know, figuring out what product they should talk about, how they should talk about it.

41:15 So you need to nail all of these things, right? How did we discover it? We ran, you know, one or two, we saw it was working. We saw the traffic, we saw the signups. Okay, great. >> How did you know this there was alpha in this? Because a year and a half ago, how did this come to you like this idea? >> So it'll this is a very typical marketing question, right?

41:33 It's like you need to understand uh the channels very very well, right? Like for example, for me it it it came to me very naturally uh because I am a Twitter native person, right? And I knew that I was discovering all of the upcoming products by seeing what these people are talking about, right? Um so and in any marketing it is like you need to understand where is the place that people are going to discover the product that you're selling.

42:01 >> Yeah. or the value on the product the value that you're selling right so I knew that it was on Twitter through these people so went to them we kept we we we like for one and a half month we would have worked with like 1600 easily 100 uh creators on Twitter right and it kept giving us result after result and then we did all the newsletters that you can imagine [snorts] >> how did you start or how did you know who to choose like for example that influencer you named at the start based in Singapore how did you know

42:28 this was the guy and then what was the conversation like do you just go into his DM or was this like a partnerships email that you found somewhere? >> Yeah, we did all things that don't scale. Typical Paul Graham uh stuff which is how did you find them? you obviously you know like figure out everybody who's talking about AI tech startups and all of that you know you can use a tool you can do it manually whatever we did the combination right found everybody made a list started reaching out in fact I did almost all the

42:53 reachouts uh initially so some things are are they talking about AI or AI products and are they being received well so you'll look at the comments you'll look at the quality of the engagement uh you would obviously and then for Twitter it was always DM because you know like if you have a good enough profile for example I had a good enough you know profile and then where two other people you know who also had a good enough profile so you use all of them to start DMing you don't do like emails for Twitter influencer

43:18 mostly right and u so the conversation would start there you would start you know like the first few things and this I'm talking talking only from influencer on Twitter point of view right uh you will look at the kind of content that they make the reception that it has the kind of engagement that they get the demography that they have right uh that's it right um because for us it was important that uh their views are mostly coming from western geographies let's say like like the European region and the North America

43:43 region uh because we were not prioritizing the other regions uh at that time and every creator who met these bars which is consistent good uh views consistently good engagement and not botted and at that time the botted phenomenon didn't exist much uh the kind of botted engagement that we see right now it was it was 10x lesser like at least 10x lesser right so it was easier to believe and then obviously you verify the demography good to go That's your point of how do you get and how do you get obviously some creators

44:14 we get on a call explain them because you're a new product nobody's willing to believe you right so you need to get them on a call you know and make them understand what the product is about get them to test it they will then develop conviction and they're like okay you know we should do a campaign great uh do a campaign um [clears throat] you know like this is only applicable uh for Twitter right there there's a the whole whole playbook uh works very differently for short form This is only till the point of you

44:41 getting the creator confirmed. The most important thing in any creator marketing, influencer marketing, irrespective your channel, whether that's a long form, Twitter, LinkedIn, short form, ace content, right? If your narrative does not strike and lands well, it'll never work. >> We were exactly on how folks are not giving influencers creativity a year and a half back and you guys gave it like the creators on X creativity and then they were posting.

45:07 The question was what content do they post? >> Yeah. So you know talking about content um it's almost like the highest leverage thing uh that you will do when you are running creator marketing of any shape and form across any platform. This is applicable across the board. So it it's like what are the things that you need to do with this is a very simplistic example.

45:30 It becomes much and much more complicated and sophisticated as you go to short form long form etc. So [snorts] my point here is before we get and dig deeper is if you don't have a dedicated team right so I told you that okay outreach was done creator was closed if you don't have a team set of one or two or whatever right people who understand your product very well who will invest time to understand the creator very well and who have this knack to understand the creator fit your product and tell a narrative right if

45:59 you don't do that then you'll be like every single creator is blowing a trumpet of your product, nobody cares, right? Uh if you're not able to build a narrative, if you're not able to tell a story and the story has to be about what? Like people, if you look at fundamentally people care about what like what do you care about? You will always care about your value, right?

46:18 Like am [snorts] I learning something? Am I getting something? Can I do my job better, faster, whatever, right? Like if it is not talking to people like them, you know, to people like that in a narrative that gets them hooked, it'll not work, right? And that is why content is the highest leverage thing. So you put two and that's why when we initially started to your question like I was doing this right so it was like okay this is the creator obviously we had the product and then we had you know two other people who had

46:43 joined the team uh and then we asked them uh to start doing because you know we could transfer that knowledge and they started right uh super important to understand who the creator is how the creator talks what your product is how do you marry all of this and create a narrative that flies >> and then how do you do attribution as well [clears throat] so how do you know that this creator got me this much especially when you're scaling and doing mult multiple creators in a single day.

47:05 So we we'll separate you know like the when so let's say when we were doing beta it was very simple because everybody for every creator every newsletter every LinkedIn creator whatever right like and these are the things initial things that we started doing uh you could just have different quotes for different creators and different newsletters and you can very easily measure it with activation right uh so that [clears throat] was clear uh activation in the sense with sign up you could see uh so you were you were

47:26 having codes to sign up right >> but with X and LinkedIn here if a creator gives a code then it is very obviously endorsed Right? Whereas for example, if they're organically using a >> because the narrative was I just found out a platform that blew my mind or whatever. Right? Like >> and this is what I created and I have you know like 50 quotes that I can give.

47:46 >> Here's my Okay, that's the angle. >> Yeah. And that's why working on the narrative is very very important, right? It's like oh you know what I came across this you know I'm promoting them whatever. If you talk about products in an advertisement driven fashion it will not work right. Um so coming back to your question again about attribution. Attribution is an unsolved problem in the world of influencer marketing.

48:04 Uh because on Twitter, LinkedIn etc. you can still do linking right you can have a UTM link uh let's say you're writing a thread the last post has your platform and the link is a UTM link. So you you use one link for creators on X you use another link on LinkedIn you use one link on newslet very nice right you can track it >> on short form you cannot track it right.

48:27 Um so the story is that uh we did all of these and then in the first 30 45 days um we had our actually 45 days we had our public launch coming up. So we were building massively uh towards a public launch. Uh it was supposed to go live on Y cominators you know like profile and then we had lined up all of the usual things that we do and then we said okay let's do creator or influencer marketing on short form also right.

48:50 Uh so there was a team that was working on it. They closed like you know three or four creators that were supposed to go live at around the same time that the announcement was supposed to go live which public announcement right which is coming out of beta and just being generally available. They actually one of the creators actually went live four hours before.

49:06 Four hours before >> classic you cannot manage these influencers. It is it's like hurting cats. went live, right? [laughter] >> And and we saw like suddenly a lot of signups started coming, right? And it was a lot of signups >> and there was nothing else that that was active at that point of time, right? So obviously very directly attributable and we saw that that content was viral, right?

49:28 It was just flying. Uh you know this this is a this is a creator that talks about illegal websites that you should know, right? like I'm forgetting the name but it it was the first viral content almost the first content that we did uh on short form was through this creator and it went viral and and people people are just coming coming signing up right great then a public launch happened and three four more creators went live see the thing is when the public launch happened it was it was massively Twitter LinkedIn

49:52 newsletters and three or four short form so all of the traffic was attributable to all of the social things that we did right but then after that we started because we saw the promise of short form and short form is scalable Twitter LinkedIn is not scalable. You will tap out like in in two weeks, right? Like and you cannot keep repeating the same things over and over again.

50:09 Social founder social is very scalable. But influencer on social is not scalable. >> Then were you guys running campaigns on X and LinkedIn also continuously or >> we did that for like every week we would do >> was it moment marketing or evergreen marketing? >> Evergreen marketing. So this is like what we were doing is for a platform like us you can actually keep coming up with different use cases, right?

50:27 Like so creator can talk about one use case, another yeah another use case that week, right? Uh so so we did in fact we used to track how many creators are going live on different channels every week and these are the very initial days right uh and then on short form because we saw the promise we're like okay time to go press the pedal >> how did you source these creators >> yeah so if you look at the life cycle of any influencer marketing the production line is very simple it is what are the things that you're doing

50:57 you need to find who are the creators how do you find them you must have as a business defined who are the creators who are going to be relevant for you geography wise, type and size-wise and then obviously budget wise right so as long as you have defined okay we knew that for us it was North America region and European region right we knew that you know we are mostly um you know going after creators whose demography uh fall in the age bracket of like most of their audience viewing audience of the content should be

51:28 about 25 significant percentage should be about 25 years and not in the other like young creators like that's why UGC for example has never worked for us. Uh so we looked at these two and then we knew for every any week campaign that we are doing and we will always build up for a week right we would need the we would know the budget uh that we have u and then you define the limit by ensuring that you're able to understand that for this market you know like what is the CPM you know uh bracket uh for this market

51:56 acceptable CPM bracket obviously with every company raising money the CPM also keeps evolving uh for creative >> for sure >> u we have faced a lot of that Yeah, it's pretty incredible, right? Like in fact, you know, every company that has done extensive influencer marketing has raised the CPM CPM. At the time that we started, the US CPM used to hover around you could actually get good enough micro creators for $12 also, like $10 also.

52:21 And then I said the >> minimum is 20 now, I feel. >> Yeah, like minimum is 20 25, right? Uh and then the good ones are coming like $20, right? Uh CPM. So you would know okay like what is the CPM? All of that. Now what is a production line? The production line is once you know these once you have these you know like limitation like the set definitions then the first thing is discovery you need to find them so you can use tooling there and you can do hustle there so [snorts] multiple there's more dash there's nano

52:49 influencer right uh in fact right now there are there's there are funded companies that are operating in >> this for Instagram specific yeah >> across this is Instagram Tik Tok shorts mostly short form influencer marketing is always crossplatform it is single platform. >> Uh so there are funded companies in fact YC backed companies there's there's a platform called first collab uh that is backed by wild combinator uh that that will help you in the production line.

53:12 Uh there is something called passion fruit if I'm getting the name right. Uh there's passion fruit also in the business of enabling brands to run co coordinated influencer marketing. All of these are very new when we started. They didn't even mostly >> I've seen some of their rates though the rates on platforms are way higher. So we we never went the platform route right >> you sourced via platform >> we were like okay we know who we want we know in the geography that we want right so you can do two things you can use

53:38 you can for discovery you can use tools so I can use that on modash or whatever to figure out who are the creators because I can create I can I can always make a paid account in those platforms also because that's the need or what I can do is every single person so we had like four or five people we got them as interns from you know like different places and every Every single person has an Instagram account attuned to the geography right uh so it's like if you are working in in fact at that time everybody was working

54:07 in every geography which is Europe and US or North America right so everybody is like has an Instagram account that is attuned to that geography so once you start looking at a certain type of creators because you also would have defined the domain right so when we initially started we were like okay AI creators tech startup tech start tech starters business creators right people who talk about these because you know like the world has not even exhausted them at that point of time they had not spoken about AI so much

54:30 that people were fed up of them right once you create accounts for like four people their own Instagram where they have looked up four or five creators the algorithm takes over right so you're using two linking and you're getting the list in different geographies and you hustle where you and then everybody's adding to one let's say sheet or whatever you are using and you're looking at the unique right so your discovery is done now the second thing is reach out you can automate that you can manual whatever You can in

55:00 today's date run any right like reach out >> question here on Instagram it almost feels like a mafia though because a lot of these influencers are managed by a few agencies I'm not sure if you guys went with that route where like these are talent management agencies almost now or did you guys go through the route of >> smaller creators that don't have any partnerships or associations with agencies >> when we initially started uh because we didn't start at the scale that we operated you know operated that at in 6 months

55:27 time from the time that we started when we started it was all manual and we were going after creators who don't necessarily work with either like associated agency or talent management. Talent management is usually for super big almost like celebrity influencers right um talent management instead of talent management you would see agencies having influencer marketing agency having relationships uh with you know like creators so in fact we have done a combination of everything as we have evolved initially though and I'm

55:52 talking about this because you know like lot of founders want to understand how is the discovery happening how's the reachout happening so reach out is you know like you will use tooling to find their emails or you will do and not or you will do DM also right and you will obviously In today's date setup automation for follow-up till you get a response.

56:08 Um your job at response is negotiation right. Uh so obviously like negotiation will happen once you have understood that the so you will ask for the demography you will ask for uh you know how the content has been performing and all of that stuff. Great. So you are aligned okay the demography is good performance is good the creator in today's state verifying the authenticity of the creator has become much more important than what was one and a half years back right the a number of creators even on short form who are

56:38 running farmed engagement and it is very evident right >> short form as well this is a big problem >> yeah you look at the comments same type of a >> I thought it's more like an ex LinkedIn problem >> no short form also has like architected coordinated you know like >> get creative partnerships deliberately Like that's the goal. Wow. >> Uh it's a pretty crazy industry and that's why it's very easy for brands to lose money uh on influencer marketing.

57:00 You need to be really really careful. The moment you try to automate every single part of this, you will spend $200,000. You'll not get any result and you'll be like okay influencer marketing does not work for us. >> U [clears throat] so you verify the authenticity. In today's you will probably have to ask for videos of the demography because anybody can fake an image and >> and now there are tools that give you fake screen recordings.

57:18 We've found this with our clipping platform where we have to so >> there are tools that make people these fake videos. You said they just have to input. >> Yeah. So we're getting to a point where you'll have to get on a call >> and actually screen share and then verify. I don't even know where creators would would be. So obviously it's becoming harder and then these are also problems that you know like some product might actually solve it.

57:40 I don't know. The thing is as a brand you have to invest in verifying the authenticity and then you're convinced then your negotiation. So you know like the creative in the first email itself if the creator is responding by the way if you're reaching out to 100 creators if you're new brand you will hear back from 25 20 right if you're lucky you'll hear back from like 40 but that's mostly not going to happen.

58:01 So you hear back and then you're convinced you get the rates they would have mostly sent the rate you should never accept that rate at all ever right. Uh this is a market in which negotiation happens by default almost apart from celebrity creators. Celebrity creators don't negotiate. Uh unless the talent management negotiates on their behalf, the moment you try to negotiate with celebrity creator, you're done as a brand.

58:23 Like they'll not talk to you. Uh it's a very crazy >> any names [laughter] and I'll come to the names you know like u if I think of a name that is safe to share right now, but it's like you verified you negotiate. What do you negotiate on? That's also very important to understand, right? [clears throat] If the accepted CPM in the market is $12, uh the creator is, you know, like asking for $5,000 and the CPM is turning out to be 25.

58:51 Makes no sense. You might be like, "Oh, I'll get 50,000 views, right?" Like, you're getting 15,000 views by paying $25 CPM, right? Like when >> How are you calculating the CPM though? Because how how are you calculating the CPM? Because views are very variable post. >> No, median views. So, you take the median 3 days. >> Seven. So we actually initially when we started we started looking at 14 days.

59:11 Uh but then we cut it down to 7 days. Uh because most of the creators are like now everyday creators like >> uh the frequency has changed a lot. So it >> same formula on all platforms or different CPMs for different platforms as well. >> No no like same. So it's like you also have to obviously YouTube is very very different. So I'm not counting YouTube right now.

59:29 This is short form right? because short form >> usually you will look at you know like you'll calculate the CPM for the channel which is the most and the biggest channel for that creator >> for for a lot of the creators that we have worked with their biggest channel has been Instagram right and then they are obviously crossosting on YouTube shorts and Tik Tok in fact we have tried independent Tik Tok also but it has never delivered results for us like really >> like creators who are heavy on Tik Tok >> and not like

59:55 lighter on Instagram lighter on shorts >> why do you think that is >> um it's a lot to say about you know the product platform fit that you know like the kind of content that people go to for on Tik Tok. If I was running a gaming company, I would chances of me of you know for my product to work on Tik Tok is probably very high, right? Um if I was if I was to start a Snapchat kind of a platform today, right?

01:00:20 I might actually blow up on Tik Tok, right? Um very different purpose, you know, like Instagram is somewhere in between. There is value content also that people consume. There's entertainment also that people consume. There's learning also that people consume. If you look at your own Instagram behavior, you will see that you actually have different taste that you have curated, right?

01:00:39 Almost every three reels, there's a different type of content that comes, right? Uh so the behavior is very different on Instagram. So coming back to your question, you will you will have the CPM thing for the platform on which the creator is is the biggest, right? Uh so let's say and that's why negotiation is so important. you know that okay you the market is around $12 $15 and you will need to do your own research to figure out where the market is right now right probably talk to some agencies talk to you know other

01:01:03 companies who are running influencer marketing where is the average for that market right now you can't just randomly guess that okay this should be the CPM for this market when the CPM might have moved to $100 and you are trying to negotiate if you do that kind of a mistake with the creator the creator is going to screw you right uh because let's say the creator is saying $25 and you come and say $5 the creator will not talk to you after that.

01:01:24 >> Yeah. >> Right. Because >> you know like they tend to be people who are a little high on ego. Uh whether that's right or not that's a different debate. But >> so you negotiate. >> You know what I think it is? I think creators don't fundamentally understand tech companies. That is simply it. I don't think they respect tech companies as much as folks in tech.

01:01:43 >> Maybe or maybe not. It's like if if there are creators who talk about tech a lot. >> Yeah. I think they would more be more >> they are much more receptive and like respectful. Uh but you know RPN for example RPN made such a legendary claude campaign right if you remember uh he usually doesn't post on Twitter right of his short form it was so good >> it blew up of course >> he posted on Twitter he posted a real on Twitter and not like you know like 16 by9 he actually posted the you know the the dimension of the this

01:02:11 thing short form >> and it blew up on Twitter right >> I got like 700k or millionaires there. >> Yeah. The thing is RPN kind of creators are into tech right like so they they have a very but coming back to the point so it's like $25 you negotiate get it to around $15 at least right and then after that the real work begins right what is the brief right what is that you want the creator to make you cannot be a brand who's like okay this is my product make a content I it's funny the number of brands who do this by the way

01:02:38 right um obviously no brand does okay create a closed this is my product make a nobody will do that but the simplistic approach to telling creators what to make is incredible right it's like okay this is what we are this is the value this is the outcome this is how it works you need to understand okay who is this creator how does this creator talk and the marriage thing that I was talking about right think of a very very strong narrative in fact over time we have learned that you can use creators even better if you do

01:03:09 narrative building and narrative building drives even better performance and like search and traffic and sign up and all of that stuff right So you do content, you make a brief, right? The brief should be centered around giving creators the creative freedom. Don't restrict them so much that they just become, you know, like they're blowing the trumpet of your product.

01:03:27 Nobody likes that, right? They should be in their style, in their, you know, like in their in their arena talking the way they do and that in that fashion they're able to create an excitement about your product, right? They should still talk to their audience like the way they talk. They should not come out of their personality and have to talk about.

01:03:42 Usually people who have not done this they'll just tell the creators do this don't do that do this don't do that and they will screw up the whole campaign right so did that right now if you look at this whole and obviously it goes live so you measure right so measure optimize right so you measure usually you I've seen oh create event live what is the traffic like does not work so you have to give you know that settling time okay 24 hours 48 hours usually short form is a max max 72-hour window that is also like usually

01:04:12 it's a 24hour window like whatever has to happen for the best of the creators will get done in 24 hours but >> but if it's blowing up or if it's doing really well then >> it'll come 72 hours >> very rarely deals take off beyond 72 hours but that >> yeah very rare very rare I've probably not seen more than once or twice maybe thrice right in my own like having done this at such a scale >> now if so what are all the things that we spoke about discovery right reach out u which is reach out was the you know the email or DM

01:04:40 whatever right >> negotiation closure, content, go live, measure, optimize. Right? So there are stages or places at which you can use tooling. But there are places where you should not use tooling at all. Content please not like it's a qualitative thing. It's not a quantitative thing for you to oh you know like automate this. >> But how much of the content are you owning?

01:05:03 Are you just giving a brief and calling it a day and then letting them go live or are you reviewing their work after they send it back to you? >> Review is another thing right. So I see they it's sent and then they'll send it back right and you need to have people who are super aligned to the idea that okay we wanted this to be in this XYZ way the emergent is not landing emergent is not being shown you know like it just looks like an ad right plat that's why we have never worked with platforms right like because >> we

01:05:28 have to own it in house this part of course >> yeah like who is owning the fact that you need to win on influencer marketing a platform cannot own that right like How and why will they be? So their goal is okay you need to run influencer marketing this is the budget you have given this is the brief okay you have approved these creators great go live and they'll go live by the way I'll come to the other thing so before that right you have all of these stages in the production line or in the funnel your only job if you

01:05:55 want to scale it is how did we scale if I have to take 200 creators live next week then week before that I should have reached to to take 200 creators live >> thousand >> you are probably talking to how many do you think? >> Thousand. >> Yeah. Right. You are you are in conversation you know anywhere between 500 to,000 um and then you know like 200 have gone live.

01:06:19 How many would you have reached out to right? So you've reached out to like 2,000 3,000 kind of creators. So you have a team that is doing all this reach out and closure and you have a team who's doing content right and then go live measurement optimization. So it's like the moment you see some success you took in the model that I spoke about whether that's for Twitter or short form you take some creators live and you see you know like attribution because in our case it was an isolated thing so when we had started I

01:06:48 told you that we ran Twitter LinkedIn newsletter and then we moved to short form and short form was the only channel that we were scaling so we knew that if traffic and signups are coming and from the geography that >> it has to be from there. Now there's another thing that's very interesting about influencer marketing, right? Influencer marketing by default does two or three things to your brand.

01:07:06 It increases your organic quotient. So for example, if there's a creator that you look up to u who's a creator that you look up to like anybody, right? >> Let's say fire fireside or no fire ship on YouTube. >> Fire ship on YouTube, right? Let's say you look up to fire ship. Now it's if fireship is talking about, you know, like lovable. >> They take sponsors every video.

01:07:23 Yes. >> Yeah. Or they're talking about emergent. Yeah. It creates a perception of that brand in you. Right? My point is influencer marketing is a natural brand marketing also for in fact for most parts influencer marketing was always supposed to be brand marketing. >> You've made a performance. >> We made we turned that into a performance marketing engine.

01:07:43 Right. Okay. And then influencer marketing uh obviously contributes to your organic search because it is helping in brand. So a brand would result in organic search. Now if you need to so we saw this promise right and because it was isolated we knew that it was coming from influencer marketing because it was coming from the geography where we were running in the marketing and the funnel was holding up right from traffic to sign up to conversion to you know like to subscription to top up to everything after that right

01:08:09 it was holding up. What is the question a founder would ask or what is the thing that a founder would do who when we want to grow super fast right like your funnel is holding up you have a channel that is showing promise you have money to invest >> and you put the money >> you put the money right and nobody had one on that channel so we did that so we went from >> did you scale it >> five creators a week to at its peak we're doing >> no no this isn't a week this is like 300 creators this is just short 000 a month in a

01:08:42 way on short form alone. >> Yeah, it was just short form. >> How do you do that or how do you build the team to do that? >> If you look at if you look at what you're doing and that's why I spoke about the entire funnel, right, of the things that you're doing and this is again this is by the way this this funnel thing is applicable on YouTube, right?

01:08:59 It's applicable on any channel where you want to run influencer marketing, right? So you need to understand that the funnel would remain the same or the production line steps would remain the same. You just need to change the channels, right? And change some of the things. For example, the content philosophy would change on YouTube based on whether you're doing integration or you are doing dedicated videos.

01:09:15 >> Dedicated. >> In terms of the team, if you have people who have high agency can commit to doing and following the process that we have set up and be very upfront with integrity, it'll work out. The reason I say integrity is because there's huge budgets involved. No like I I feel that because you know a large part of our work is also hurting influencers on some of these platforms.

01:09:40 So >> um we have a very similar playbook of reach out do this do that do that do that and there is a lot of management involved and >> I think one of the things in the hindsight that uh you know like we we got to late is CRM I think >> CRM for influencers >> yeah scale that which we are running or we were running uh it's super important to set up it just makes your life easier right >> we just have a spreadsheet be on and then oh recruit influenc scale on spreadsheets >> that's what like I'm sure some influencer

01:10:09 marketing agencies must be doing it differently where they have like some tool but to be honest spreadsheet just >> spreadsheet just works like yeah >> for the C so the CRM is for closing influencers >> I tell you why CRM is important because once you have run it for one year you want to look at everything that happened let's say suddenly you were like okay who were the creators who went live 9 months ago who drove you know like incredible things right so there's a lot of things that get lost right what was the

01:10:33 conversation what was the brief so you will still you can still go back to in your sheet like okay this creator went live this date >> but every other context if I had a CRM would still exist. >> We have an ROI calculator. We did some stuff as well. Yes, I I get it. >> Yeah. So, you know, like that is how you set up and in terms of hiring, you just get people who are high agencies, smart, high on integrity, you this is a trainable skill.

01:10:56 Uh you don't the person who's leading it needs to understand it, needs to understand it very well and then ensure that the team gets trained. Now in the market, you know, like where where can you find these people? Anybody who has run influencive marketing inside companies prioritize looking for people who has run it inside tech companies and then only if you don't find them then go and talk to people who have run it inside agencies.

01:11:19 Uh it's a very different because for people who have run it inside agencies they run it they run from one product to another right. Um so they do it in a very transactional fashion. for people who have done it inside companies and done it long enough they know how to get invested in the product right and then run influencer marketing right >> we were on exactly how do you test for high integrity was a bit of vibes check their background >> you know like it's super important that when you are talking to somebody who's

01:11:49 you like super young um see integrity if somebody's experienced is ref check right uh so it's super simple and easy if somebody who is early in his or her career and past experiences decisions Especially tough times uh whether a person who's unwilling to you know like continue on a path that is tough for a long time when it gets >> shortcuts are a red flag.

01:12:10 Yeah, usually shortcuts are red flag uh to integrity, right? Like and you know it's super easy to give a situation and see what direction the person is inclined towards, right? Uh so like have three or four situation that's it. But yeah, like but my point is this is you don't need superstars in the team, right? You need a really solid owner of the charter.

01:12:34 You need very welloiled machinery who's trained super well across the funnel that we spoke about right and you set you know you set the boundaries of their operation right like okay these geographies these kind of creators this is the budget you know the expectation is that we generate these many impressions and keep measuring it to see that the channel efficacy remains obviously attribution as we spoke about earlier is hard right but if that is one of the channels that you are running because if you're running

01:13:05 performance marketing everything is attributable there, right? So let's say if you're running performance and influencer, you can discount you can measure everything from performance. So the total minus performance is influencer, right? So that way it's still attributable, right? The day you know that is not adding up is the day that you're like okay you're not able to crack this.

01:13:22 It >> becomes confusing when you have brand effects coming in right after you have a certain point of influence spend then you'll have a baseline just because of brand word of mouth etc. And then the incremental is influenc that point you don't really know if your yeah if your influencer is contributing to the organic or your organic word of mouth has gone to a point where it is so it becomes a very hard call by the way like it's like do I shut off the tap of influencer and see if that sustains right it's a very hard

01:13:50 call to make because if if that is a channel on which you have been growing consistently and if you shut it off for a week the whole engine shuts off and it's not very easy to restart the engine right so like like in like in a factory right like if you shut off the production line it's not like okay in the next 1 hour you'll start it again right you shut it off then you you know restart every single part of the line and then the you know production line starts functioning so in fact that was one of the reasons why we

01:14:16 have gradually gotten to a point where we have gotten it you know like scaled it down because obviously the other channel also start started working but you know it is important to you know like know that if you were to just discontin it random randomly like very abruptly you there is a fear but there will always be a point where you can do it also right let's say there's another channel that has picked up in our case let's say performance has picked up you know you're doing moment marketing and all of that stuff which

01:14:43 is adding up nicely and if you convincingly believe that to hit a certain number of traffic signups conversion etc you know you can hit that 90% 75% with performance then probably you should you know take the bet that okay let's half you know like this and see what happens Right. >> That is a good time to do it, not before that. >> Makes sense. I want to dive I want to switch gears and get a bit into moment marketing.

01:15:08 >> Yeah. >> And I know this is the next thing. So there's of course influencer evergreen. I think we've been talking a bit more about the evergreen style, right? But what about when there's a moment for example the 100 million AR announcement or any other coming out of stealth announcement? How have you approached that and created these massive moments around them?

01:15:26 >> Yeah. No, like it is super important to understand what are moments, right? And why is why has it become a big thing uh in today's date right? >> I think moment is also interchangeable with launches in a way. >> Yes. Exactly. Right. So what do you define as moment is also important. If I'm unveiling myself for the first time it's a moment that you know from from my perspective as a founder or as a startup it's a moment it's it's a big moment where I'm coming out of stealth.

01:15:52 So that is one kind of moment. If I have hit a certain milestone let's say in our kind of category of companies whether even for OpenAI for that matter right like they have launched a new model right claude has launched a new model it's a big moment uh I have hit a new revenue milestone or run rate AR milestone it's a big moment I've raised a new funding it's a big moment I have launched a new feature that fundamentally shifts how my platform and how my space operates is a moment right so first is what is a moment

01:16:22 right and then the categorization of of the moment. So for example, if if it's a incremental feature, then it's not a moment that every media will also write about, right? But if I have hit $100 million ARR in 8 months, becoming one of the fastest to get there in the world, then it's a moment that has the potential to be covered in traditional media, traditional, print media like whether that's television, newspapers, publication, digital, everything.

01:16:51 One two is you can make a very very solid narrative around this that oh you know what lovable you know hits $400 million AR in like 24 months hypothetical right hits 24 months becomes the fastest company ever on the planet right it's a great story to tell which which would make more people aware about lovable because suddenly everybody's okay the fastest growing company on the planet has emerged right and they want to know which company is that right so if there's a milestone on which a very strong narrative can be

01:17:22 built right your first job is to decide the type of the of the moment. The moment is a moment that the media will be interested in that you can build a narrative around which the you can run campaigns across every single channel across short form long form stories. stories is short form stories right um PR the traditional PR right uh this is print digital all of that Twitter LinkedIn founder socials um all these all these combined now what is moment marketing so you have a moment okay we are hitting 100 million in our

01:17:55 case for example we hit $100 million AR right at that time in fact the AI summit was happening in India so we combined that also but let's say $100 million AR so you build towards that moment right the first thing thing that you do is okay we are going to hit that looks like we're going to hit that in the next two weeks right so you know the date so you fix a date right okay this date we are announcing that ABC lovable emergent whatever like emergent reaches $100 million a year in 8 months becomes one of the fastest

01:18:25 that's a core narrative and then you also need to decide which is the channel on which you trigger this announcement right so the world has become a place where the trigger should for most parts it should be the founder founder socials either doing on mostly doing on Twitter or on LinkedIn right so the trigger is the founder going live at a certain time right in our case for example we would always do 7:00 a.m.

01:18:48 PT 7:30 p.m. SD right um so you fix that date fix that time what is the next thing it's like there's a moment coming how do you make it big as we have been talking content is king and in content narrative is is god okay uh it's like how do you tell the story in a way such that like it's it's it is unmissable so you fix that you verify that with the founders everybody everybody's aligned on the narrative then you're like on this day the trigger is going to the announcement by the founder what will the founder need a

01:19:19 great video, right? So, you conceptualize that video, have a partner, whatever it takes, but your job is to make an incredible video. And obviously, you guys do that. Um, but it's like in today's date, if you're not talking, your founder is not talking directly on important milestones to people on socials, right? It's almost table stakes. You have to do it, right?

01:19:39 So, fix that then at that time. So, let's say it is hypothetically the date is whatever XYZ 6th June is the date, right? what 31st December is the date right if that is the date on which you're doing your socials are going to go live on the social 31st December 7 a.m. And at least in our case goes live then during and what we have done is around like one or two hours from that.

01:20:05 So we would have lined up like 300 creators with that narrative across the world right uh who would go live in a 48 hour time window and during the first four five hours right there will be the biggest narrative setters of the world will go live who are the narrative setter to give you talk from the India context for example Raj Shamani is a is a person who almost for so many parts right of so many instances he sets the agenda of what people are talking about what people are seeing right in the country, right?

01:20:35 He would go live. Similar kind of people would go live in North America and South America and, you know, Middle East. And so for the first like four, five hours, all of the biggest people are going live. Now, at 7:00 a.m. PT your founder social went live. You have to architect an incredible, you know, like machinery around it. Obviously, there's a debate between is it is it good, is it bad.

01:20:55 We we'll come to that debate later. But your job is to make sure that people see it and how do people see it if algorithm shows it, right? Algorithm will only show it if the post has momentum. How do you get momentum? By actually ensuring that there are people who are engaging with it. How do you get people? We would do like in like for every single big milestone I would get the entire company in one room, right?

01:21:16 Announcement happens everybody because there are things that m algorithm catches. How fast is the post moving up, right? So how do you get that 100 people in the company all go together, right? like all of the engagement buttons that are there do it >> dwell time stay on the post watch the entire video share click on copy link send it to someone >> yes all of that right like because you know how the algorithm you know like works >> so that is you know like the initial like 5 minute momentum then you need to increase

01:21:43 the signal quality of that post right which is so that's where all of the investors all of the founder friends everybody becomes critical and all of this work should you should be tracking every single thing that you're doing whether on short form stories traditional media and all of This breaks together by the way right >> how have you gathered the network if I may ask for example founder friends investors how have you consolidated the network >> you like everybody you know who's who's active on socials and narrative

01:22:05 builders you would tell them a few days before that this is coming up you know like and then when it goes live you would send it to them and then and this is a playbook that repeats with every company right so but you would send it to them you'll tell them hey it will be great >> you create like a luma or something >> uh sorry >> do you create a luma >> we don't create a luma we we we used to do it via emails and all of that the traditional uh way because these are like very high repute investors, right?

01:22:27 Uh we're talking about Vinod Kosla and all that. So it's like you cannot you cannot like put >> a calendar invite or an email or >> we we'll do that with a certain different kind of an audience but not necessarily with like the captive investors. Uh so that is on the so you increase the quality signal quality Gary Tan talking about it you know Nikico talking about it Vinod Kosla talking about it other you know like Jeff Dean talking about it like in fact one of the job of if you're fundraising as a founder you have to

01:22:54 get these investors who are very high signal on social platforms it's a very strategic thing that you have to do in today's date as a founder right like uh if I can have Sam al hypothetically Sam alman has invested in my Right? >> I just need to do an incredible crazy launch, right? Like founder video and all that. >> He tweets it. >> He tweets it. My job is done, right?

01:23:18 Like so founders need to understand the criticality of these strategic angels and investors that you need to get so that so you increase the signal then you add more to it by adding more founder friends. So what you would do is you know one week before that you would have pre for example in our case you know like in fact in my profile also I would look at everybody who's a founder you know like respected voice you know like uh people people actually their voice matters right like it's not like they are paid like they

01:23:42 take money uh they have an independent voice and they like to share so you make like a list of everybody who matters and who I know uh or who I can reach out and say this is important thing for us you know would you mind checking it you like what you're doing and then you draft everything for everybody you've drafted for investors You d partners, you d founder friends and then you send it and this we used to do manually.

01:24:02 We have actually sat and sent messages uh to people because it is just incredibly insensitive to be doing this in an automated fashion especially with high signal people. it it just it's just not good right uh so you would send it you know makun would send it you know like I would send it LinkedIn twitter everywhere this is like a pe set of 200 250 500 people and you're sending this for like 3 hours right uh so that is happening and then on top of that obviously it's a debated thing but I fundamentally believe that

01:24:31 it's something that you need to do for the algorithm right you should work with some partners through which you can amplify that even further right so let's say you know like by doing all this right if my post has organic technically caught up a lot of momentum then maybe I can skip but I will not take that risk as a brand right I would still line up uh things so that you know like my you know I I don't lose out to algorithm right that is the last thing that I would want to do so you know there are multiple partners

01:24:58 that you can work with you know to help you you guys do that there's others who do that but it's like do that as a layer on top of these three >> I sell it as insurance sometimes that listen you have a great moment >> like if there is insurance if there's showfire away to at least get it activation energy. Would you not do that? >> Yeah, exactly right.

01:25:18 Like otherwise there's so much of buildup and you know like you don't have anything to show for obviously you don't want vanity metric but at the same time right like it's if you do these three things and do that you'll always have an outcome right now please remember that we only talking about one thing right now. So we're talking about Twitter and the same thing you're doing on LinkedIn and the same thing on your brand socials on short form.

01:25:39 Right? So all these three go live at 7 a.m. PT and you have this entire machinery that should kick off and all of that should get implemented in a 2 hour like 1 hour window max like max 2our window everything should have gotten executed and then you have over time you know things that you have so you're talking to different founders in different time zones and aligning them so that the momentum continues hopefully your narrative and your product should be so good that more people start talking about it.

01:26:03 The goal is a lot of founders have gone to this stage where they're like, "Oh, I'll do this playbook and I'll just get views and I I don't have a great narrative and like an okay product and obviously it'll not catch on. Why are you why are you getting all these investors and you know like founder friends and amplification so that it reaches more people and if the product was good and the narrative was good people would start talking organically right and it has happened to us like when we reached 100 million AR we

01:26:27 made all this made a great video you know put founder friends you know company people and then the amplification like there's so many people uh who are talking about it but this is only still founder social brand social on LinkedIn Twitter and short form right a moment will never become big only because of this. Now you have to a moment marketing is basically activating everything in a very short period of time right so you activated socials and you've gone bonkers right and then you should have in our case for example

01:26:57 we would line up an incredible set of creators on short form as I told you 300 of them slated to go live in a 48 hour window or 72-hour window and the best of them the narrative builders goes live in that 5 hour window of you going live with the founder at the same time you would have lined up a mass passive PR traditional media right this is was traditional >> how effective is that yeah >> okay this is a very important question it is not effective probably at all uh from a traffic point of view it's super important

01:27:27 from a signaling point of view and everything adds up so and and that's why in fact I'll close a loop also right so you you you should come up on one of the biggest tier one publication in the US whether that's NIT WSJ you should come up there uh and then let's say for us in India we would we would come up in like 200 cases in India every single because in India or in other geographies now every single publisher has a great Twitter and LinkedIn presence so they write and then they tweet okay uh every single one of them

01:27:58 right now imagine 200 publishers in India one or two in the US because US works very differently with respect for traditional media you won't get everybody writing you'll get one writing and then you have so many that's getting published in European for European region for us like hundreds of them and all of this gets published in a very short period of time Right now what happens is at least out of those 300 400 publication 50 would have tweeted okay [snorts] and I have always made sure that my traditional media goes

01:28:25 live before my founder social going live. So traditional media embargo breaks 3 hours before because you have to align all the geographies, right? What that does is because these journalists are tweeting and they are respected voices, right? You start trending on Twitter even before you go live. Okay. Um like it has happened to us at least three or four times that we're trending >> in the before you >> before the founder social went live because you know like these voices who matter like they are talking about it

01:28:52 already >> and then did you manufacture some more folks to start talking about it >> and then the founder social and then we repeated that playbook and talked about it >> and then if if the the trend in the news was with 300 post we took it to 2,000 right or 3,000 uh so that that's why it's important and then you do across every interface and right only talking about print media who also has digital you do digital in the sense who also who are also on socials right but then you do digital you do like the number of

01:29:20 interviews that we would line up uh for mukun is in incredible right it's like every single media in India one or two in the US multiple in Europe so that's happening parallelly you're doing the social every short form is going live one after the other the biggest ones are going live in the 3 4 hour window um and then you line up independent people who are going to talk about you on LinkedIn uh with different narratives, right?

01:29:43 Like, oh, lovable hits $400 million. This is what they do which nobody understands, right? Not in a clickbaity manner, right? In a manner so that people see new perspective and understand something new, but still tries back to oh, emergent become became a $100 million a year company, one of the fastest to get there, right? And this is happening on LinkedIn and Twitter for the next 48 hours, right?

01:30:03 Different narratives with different people. You're just like repeating repeating repeating. You are on digital, which is print media. You are on TV. uh you are every single we will make a ghetto right like every single creator who matters in every geography he's talking about diversion in a 48 hour window for sure right uh then you do podcast right so what we would do is in fact for 100 million we had done this um we had gone live on a podcast which we recorded uh a little earlier right and then after that right within

01:30:32 within 24 48 hours of this announcement going live we clip we we do a clipping right of that which is which is good and spread it on the internet. Right? Now why why do you do all this right? >> You do all this so that you leave no chance for people to miss your message. Any interface that they might be spending time on you are there. Whether that they read newspaper, they consume digital, they watch TV, they follow creators, they are LinkedIn, Twitter, newsletter, wherever, podcast, you are there, right?

01:31:06 Like so you make it so big that every time we have done this we our baselines have shifted. Hypothetically, let's say if we are doing thousand signups, our baseline would go to 3,000 or 2,000, right? And then it would continue to be at 1500, right? So you achieve a new benchmark or a baseline, which is so this 360deree architecture, right? Like orchestration of activating everything in a very short period of time and and just humming the same narrative, right?

01:31:33 Same narrative like no matter what you're watching, what you're consuming, you still get the same message, right? And there's almost like combination of performance and brand. Performance because of the initial spike, right? So you can attribute some of it and then brand because the halo effect which is up the baseline just continues forward and the next time you do another brand activation >> you know again you get more and more and more.

01:31:55 >> So for our 100 million we combined it with outdoor you know like oh that we did there was a event happening. So you can actually bring together a lot of stuff >> and like I also think it's very important to bring the stuff into the physical world. I know some companies whenever they have like launches right they also throw events >> um they either throw like an event at their startup sometimes they even take their friends or investors to let's say go-karting race and it's very important to translate what you're

01:32:19 doing so for example a lot of people are like oh you know we'll not do billboard because you know like what what will you measure like whatever right billboard itself is not going to do much right know it's a branding activity visibility game right like trust game oh I've seen this I've heard this I know of is right it's that game right but if you are doing a if you're doing a moment and around that moment so for example AI summit was happening that's a time when we reached $100 million our announcement happened on the

01:32:46 first day one of AI summit in the evening okay before that in the morning we actually posted so we pasted del we took up like 20 25 places and we put our billboard you know where the event was happening outside the airport inside the airport everywhere right uh so did that and in in the morning around 10:00 a.m. posted the billboard from you know like Mukun posted about that and then people were like wow crazy like really good and people are talking about it obviously like to to capitalize more on the moment we did a

01:33:14 multiple things right like um some of them probably I can't talk about but it's it's like we got the narrative going before the announcement actually happened right and we turned so we we capitalized on the event that was happening we were doing our own event and we had this 360deree campaign client right across the board. Uh so if you combine let's say in your case for events right and you replicate that and you do something with it online then you will see the ROI much much better and much higher right for example if

01:33:47 we had just done billboard and like let it be and not spoken about that online we actually did clipping of the billboard right crazy like people absolutely loved it right >> yeah that is funny you know sometimes I've heard of companies they don't even buy the billboard >> they take a photo of the billboard they AI the image on top and then use the marketing dollars that they would have used to actually buy by the billboard to just market it online.

01:34:08 [laughter] So that is >> yeah it's a you know it's a very fine thin line uh >> deception versus marketing. Yeah. And that's why it's super important that the people who are at the forefront of they need to be the flag bearers uh of you know like integrity right like doing things doing things that are right right the same way that a product if a product doesn't do ABC and promises ABC right it's not very it's not a very high integrity way to build things yeah >> I guess last thing to you know just go into a bit would be

01:34:40 the team >> when you joined there was no one >> what did you build the team concretely to function as and how did that work? >> I think because we have spoken about this >> especially I I think even in your tweet you know you mentioned something around the fact that when you left the engine is still running. >> What is the engine? >> Yeah. Yeah. So the engine is very simple.

01:35:00 It's like >> because we were talking about earlier like the channels and how we discovered channels. >> So because for us and for others it'll be different for us it was okay influencer marketing started working. So we set up the team there and across right like we spoke about the funnel. So you have four or five people who are taking about taking care of the entire production line and the different funnel uh different steps in that funnel and then you have the content.

01:35:22 So you set up that you know like and then eventually as you start growing more and more and more and more right like you will need much more structuring much more measurement much more tightening of the screws much more control over budget and all of that. So you get a leader because you know like till then you're like hang running all over the place just making it happen and making it work.

01:35:38 So get a leader and just like okay you run influencer marketing this is your team set up that parallelly what you would do is see every channel will have all it's super important for startups to understand that you know like you can do only so much with hustle but to perfect channels you still keep needing expertise right so let's say we went so we hustled on influencer we made it work right and then handed it over and then for when we started performance marketing we actually got somebody who knows performance market

01:36:03 you cannot hustle your way to performance marketing like >> yes >> you cannot do that it's like this So you know you get somebody and then you start working on that right um basically what I'm saying is whatever channel activation that you're doing so you're winning on one channel you're activating performance affiliate and then there is this huge thing organic right so organic will have everything it'll have founder social brand social reddit partnerships uh YouTube long form your own content right um um yeah like all

01:36:29 of this into one and community right >> do you guys have an AEO machine >> yeah yeah and then SEO AO right uh >> we I won't say we have a machinery of sorts you know we're still working on that uh but there is a dedicated so my thing is >> you would go from one channel to another hopefully you would have you know cracked one of them by the time you would have tried three or four and then you would activate the channels on which you are seeing promise right so we saw a lot of promise on performance so you get people who

01:37:00 are experts you you will need people you know like who know how to optimize performance marketing you know how to set budgets how to measure all the usual performance marketing stuff both like Meta, Google and other places. Uh the same thing you'll do for affiliate in our case affiliate works pretty well. So you know you set up a team there uh to use the platform do the affiliate onboard you know like measure everything right same thing on affiliate u organic very interesting in fact that's where I was you know like I

01:37:24 was heading marketing uh reading all the stuff uh for organic >> it's [clears throat] a very different so many things there's founder social brand social as I told you like there's Reddit there's events partnership crazy things right like partner marketing is a big deal in our in our thing so >> what you do is every single thing that is acquisition layer, right?

01:37:43 Which is if I activate this channel, if I'm working on the channel, I'm running this channel, I'll need an expert and I'll need a team around that expert. So you have that and you categorize that into an acquisition team >> and they are just focused on that one acquisition channel. >> Their job is to get the people. So you define the boundaries. Okay, you know, we need people from geographies.

01:38:03 This is the persona. So define the ICP persona, all of that stuff. And you also defined who we don't want, right? So that you don't you don't like, okay, just get people. You cannot tell that to any acquisition team. But so influencer as a channel, let's say somebody might be reading UGC, UGC, AI, UGC, normal UGC, organic as a channel, everything should be a part of the acquis.

01:38:23 They are a part of the acquisition team, right? There is another team that you will need to be able to actually run a machinery, right? Which is a growth business team, right? Now you can get an acquisition, but they're not converting. So who's working on conversion? Who's working on activation? Who's working on retention? who's working on power user you know like ensuring that people become power users and usage and all of that all of this in terms of what's happening across channel across geography across different

01:38:53 time across different cohorts so there are so many ways in which you you like cut through you can cut a cohort in like 15 different ways right so there needs to be a growth business team these are people who are usually like founders office kind of people right like very smart uh very they they get high on data right like and analysis um and then they can very you know they very quickly tell you okay you know we did in lens of marketing we did performance marketing this this date this geography screwed it up right if

01:39:20 the acquisition team is doing that if the acquisition team is also looking at conversion and retention you're screwed an acquisition team should fundamentally be like really good with the channels that they operate on and let them run with the creativity right let them express themselves so that they can crack channels with freedom like the way you work with creators and let this team own everything after that and then there's a horizontal team that you set up which is your creative team now what I mean by that is

01:39:49 every company in today's date I believe needs to become a media company right now if you want to become a media company because your founder socials are so important brand socials are so important like it's become like table stakes so you set up a horizontal team why because performance marketing is about creative organic marketing is about content right influencer marketing is about content so who are the people that you need you You need creative writers, you need editors, you need AI filmmakers, you need designers.

01:40:16 So all of these people, they are not inside acquisition. They are like a horizontal layer, right? Probably you'll set up your own studio as a brand, right? The horizontal layer that serves into acquisition, right? And then there's this growth business team and you make them work very closely. That's like how I think uh with respect to how a fast growing >> I do agree like every tech company now needs a media arm becoming easier like all of this has been said a thousand times that's why I'm hesitating to say but again

01:40:44 you know building products has become easier not saying it has become easy um it's become easier or quicker let's say quicker is the right word that's the word I'm looking for >> so how do you differentiate when there are thousand let's say not thousand but at least like 10 um personal AI assistant apps that I can Right? Then how do you go to market the fastest and acquire that chunk of customers?

01:41:05 So >> this is all about that >> very very important. It's like as we were discussing this earlier if not visible you're considered debt right like >> u irrespective of the type of company that you are right you can be B2C B2B uh proumer right like you need to feel like every company should feel like a consumer company like cognition >> ramp it's it's a company that has offers cards like to like others >> the marketing is so crazy I love it >> yeah like look at the marketing any like if if somebody doesn't know that

01:41:37 they sell to other companies that make they'll think that it's a consumer B2C. >> Yeah. Like they sell t-shirts or something. [laughter] >> Yeah. Why is that important? It's a very important question for marketeers to think about like why is that important? >> Yeah. >> On that note, I think we could go on for another two hours if we continue. But thank you so much Fashant for joining um the podcast.

01:41:57 I hope you enjoyed the conversation and I hope that the listeners or viewers will also find this very useful tact and tactical to actually grow their startups. >> No, I do hope and thanks for having me. It's been lovely. I don't know like 2 hours have passed already. They flew. >> Yeah. Pretty incredible. Loved the conversation because there's so much uh to be done when it comes to distribution and marketing.