Founder content builds trust before it drives sales

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:08:08

   That's actually where I was going to go. And this could be our final thread to chat. There is just this other lever, which is, I don't know if you described it as founder-led growth or... Yeah, founder-led content. Founder-led content. Just give us kind of a sense of that growth opportunity, what you're seeing there, the opportunity to drive growth for your product through founder-led content. Yeah, I think it also ties into what we were just talking about, like so much AI and so much ads and companies, et cetera.

2. 1:08:34

   And at the end of the day, it also ties back to everything in content creator and people. Like at the end of the day, people buy from people, people invest in people. And I think having a founder who can put his face out there, can talk on camera, you can use in ads, you can use to tell a story, it makes the company and the product feel that much more human. and like when you compare two products um i would much rather like even from my own experience like if i follow um i don't know let's say i follow george heaton who's the founder of represent he has like a clothing brand and then there's another ad that i see for a clothing brand i'm much more gonna buy the product george's product because i know how he works i know his routine i know the type of person he is i know what he stands for um i know how hard he works um for

3. 1:09:22

   his company and what he actually puts into it and i think people really appreciate that and again such a digital age like being able to connect with the founder behind the product and you not only like create super fans and like people who already use your product but now also love you you also bring in like this new group of people who have never seen your product they don't really know who you are and then slowly they start to like like the content you're putting out they start to buy into the mission they start to buy into the company and then they actually try the product and it's like this long like horizon type play i'm really this like long-term play that you have to make and it's an investment because you can't just start a youtube channel or found a lead brand and instantly start selling at people because people are just going to switch off and

4. 1:10:00

   be like okay i don't want to be part of this anymore but if you just give a lot of value you over share you over deliver and you just open up the doors into like what the culture is like what you're building people really appreciate that and you get them to buy it and like drop their guards and then maybe a year in we actually like maybe have like a soft seller maybe we have and they have a hey guys here's like some support thanks for getting us to 100 000 subscribers just want to drop this code blah blah and then people are actually willing to support you um so i think again like in this world where everyone's just trying to get like instant growth and everything super fast and optimize everything from the start these like channels that maybe don't have any direct correlations in the present moment end up being some of the best long-term plays and also

5. 1:10:38

   brand building plays what are some of the kind of angles slash stories that seem to work well when you're doing this sort of founder-like content is it like here's the story of our company yeah is there anything so the way we kind of thought about it at whisper is it's like whisper honestly any company you're at is like every company is going to have some sort of story or some sort of mission that they're building towards for us at whisper it's getting to one being one billion daily active users and that's like everything everything we do at whisper is to get towards that goal and when we look at the content we make everything needs to play back into that story and it's almost like you're building this netflix series where each episode is obviously going to be different but it all ties back into the overarching theme and like whether you're

6. 1:11:19

   again building in uh medicine or um dev tools or whatever it is there's going to be some sort of mission that you're chasing as a company and you want to bring people along for that ride and if you tie that into every episode or to every linkedin post every x post um obviously like the formatting and the messaging is different on every platform but if you like kind of tie all this together, like brings everyone along for the journey and it makes it a lot easier to grasp and also a lot easier to build off of because you're like, okay, this is the vision, this is what we're building towards and this is how each step actually leads us to that submission. It's almost like a physical representation of like a product roadmap or what's actually happening to the company, like showing it on display to the world, the ups, the downs, the struggles.

7. 1:12:00

   Everything. That's kind of how we think about it at Whisper and how I think other companies can think about it as well. That's awesome advice. Basically, have like a... North Star, like a North Star metric that you're chasing. Yeah, and the journey there and things you're learning, things you're discovering, things that are surprising. And we'll point people to the channel to give them a sense of what you're actually doing there.

8. 1:12:16

   Yeah, it's just Tanei Kathari. And yeah, we just document everything on there. Like the episodes, we've basically done everything from like showing how we launched our new product, note taker to Tanay going to India and doing wedding shopping and like also working remote and how he balances that and his relationship with Sahaj to like just a week in the life of a founder. We also did a whiteboard breakdown where I spoke with Tanay. And it's like all these different formats that all might feel different and look different, but they end up like building towards this like bigger vision of what Whisper is building towards. I imagine there's already some innate interest in Whisperflow by when you started it. It's like a company people when they see it. Exactly. So there's probably a bit of like, you can't start that from the beginning

9. 1:12:56

   when no one cares what you've learned because no one cares about your company yet? I honestly think you can start it, though. Maybe it put us in a bit better position, but there's founders who don't have as brands as big as Whisper who have found success with personal brand content. And again, it's like a gateway into the actual brand. And it's like, what easier way to make that accessible than through a person who's just telling their story and giving value.

10. 1:13:22

    And so interestingly, this is just another, let's say alpha opportunity to grow which is the founder sharing their story in a really compelling way and you see like everything starts to tie in as well because the more places you show up organically and the more touch points you have with the customer the cheaper it's going to get when it comes to paid because what is i think a customer needs to a person needs to see a piece of content of the company like seven times before they actually make a purchase if you're able to hit them on youtube long form which is a bunch of trust built up since this is a long form platform and then you're also posting Instagram reels from the founder.

11. 1:13:56

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