🔮 Live from Money2020 in Amsterdam - Content Is the Company: Rethinking Business in the Age of Media with Sebuh Mesfin

Speaker A: All right, it's on.

Speaker B: We are live. We are live and direct with the people of Amsterdam in the world. Globally. Right?

Speaker A: We are. Hey, Cebu M. How are you?

Speaker B: I'm good, Jan, how are you doing?

Speaker A: I'm good, I'm good. I was looking up. When was the last time you came onto the pod? And it was almost two years ago, which is wild. I thought it was shorter than that.

Speaker B: How time flies.

Speaker A: It's like August 2023. Yeah. Crazy. Almost two years.

Speaker B: 100%. We'll be back.

Speaker A: We'll be back.

Speaker B: Giving the people what they want.

Speaker A: Yeah, but got someone who's missing. Uh, Jake didn't make it.

Speaker B: Fallen soldier. The foreign soldier in our hearts always.

Speaker A: We, uh, we drunk one for the homies yesterday. Last night for sure. And sure with, uh, you in our. Your mind and all. Jake, man.

Speaker B: Shout out. Jake.

Speaker A: He couldn't make it to Amsterdam. Uh, you know, family reasons. Totally understand. So good. Uh, but yeah, we, uh, we're here back in Money 2020 a year later. Um, it's been great. This is still a huge event. Massive.

Speaker B: I'm overwhelmed and surprised every time I come back here. It's in my third year here and every time I step into the conference pool, I'm just like, whoa.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So many people, so much activity, so many things going on. And it, it always takes me like a, a good hour to just really decompress and understand what we're getting, what we're getting ourselves into. Because it's a lot, but it's a lot of fun as well. Um, what have been your highlights so far over the last couple of days?

Speaker A: Um, I was interested in what was like kind of the hot topic. And I think yesterday in the kind of side event that we went to, we were invited by Mickey.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, they talked about the obviously dimension of, uh, AI and um, open banking. And I was surprised in the way that open banking is still, you know, because the context for me is that, you know, I was in fintech for two years up to last year, uh, earlier in 2024. Um, and that was a hot topic then. And we were talking about, like, all the things that was going to happen to fintech with open banking, like variable recurring payments and all that stuff. Um, and I think it's still, I still on. And it's just surprising as every time, like things that evolves but also take time and like, you know, like, there's a lot of exciting things still on the way for the world of financial services that in stablecoins as well.

Speaker B: Stablecoins Is Stable coins is big. That was what the event was.

Speaker A: How about you?

Speaker B: Um, for me I think stablecoins was very, very interesting. Just coming off of a six week trip to Ethiopia. Um, it's a very unbanked region of the kind of world I haven't been there for, for seven years. It's where I'm originally from.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And uh, when I went back, everyone's using online uh, banking when before they used to use cash. But um, one problem that I saw. So I connected with a lot of entrepreneurs. I was hanging out one of the biggest accelerators trying to understand like what is like the one big problem that you're facing. And it kind of broke my heart when they were like bro, we can't subscribe to Chat GPT Pro because we don't have the financial infrastructure or the cards to really make those um, foreign payments or pay in US in US dollars. So the entrepreneurs are actually quite restricted to only using free, free products. And I'm like man, yeah that Chat GPT Pro, like you need that. It's, it's so helpful and it can unlock so much value. So when they were talking about how Stable Coins can potentially be a solution for these kind of problems problems, it really made me think like how much latent entrepreneurial capacity is going to be unlocked in the global south once we're able to connect these amazing entrepreneurs to some of these amazing tools that are kind of being, being created. And sometimes we take it for granted.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And the issue there that we're talking about just to like dumb it down for me, is that the payment system to subscribe to tools like ChatGPT requires a card.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And then people don't have cards the same way we do, um, in, in Europe for example. So that's the, that's the problem. And stablecoins will potentially solve that problem. I think they were talking about cards issued that you could pay. Use stablecoins with a card basically and then that would, that would unlock. Okay, okay, okay, yeah, I get that. Uh, that's cool, that's cool.

Speaker B: And I think uh, it's also important to note some people are calling us paid actors, a bunch of uh, marketers and growth marketers in, in a room full of uh, fintech. Although we, we are fintech nerds ourselves and we do enjoy it. Um, I would like to say like you've been mainly operating in the kind of B2C world you've been smashing it with, with AI apply. I've been more on the B2B side of things over the last few years. I was formerly head of market in for a VC fund. Just wanted to talk about just since the last year we came here. What are some of the trends and things that you've kind of seen in that kind of world that, that that's relevant for the kind of audience.

Speaker A: That's a good, that's a good one. So much, so much. Even though I'm not operating in the fintech landscape, I feel like some of the things that are happening right now are relevant to most industries. It's not all of them.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Um, and I think, well to kind of get into the topic of today, um, the big one would be for

Speaker C: me

Speaker A: the bucket of content. Yes, like at large. And that means a lot of things. But I think there is uh, so much going on on the content side of things. I feel like I've been talking about it for years at this point, but it keeps evolving into new forms and ways of uh, defining itself. Um, and I think in the last 12 months for me the focus has been on how do I source content or get inspiration, generate that content and ways of putting in processes in place to make content and then how to distribute that content, measure impact and do more of it. Um, and I think yeah, there's so many like ramifications of this. Whether you're B2B, B2C if you're talking about founders led, um, whether you focusing on X versus TikTok. You know like there's so many um, ramification of this. But I think yeah, that was a big one for me. So to get a little bit more in details with that, um, currently at AI apply, one of the focus has been on organic content, uh, Creators account on TikTok and Instagram and with a goal to get to a million organic views a day. Yeah, you know, because we go big go. Yeah, yeah. Um, because you can pretty easily proxy what an organic a million views is worth to you as a business. Yeah, it's never going to be perfect but you can have a good idea. So like we focused a lot on that basically that, that was like the, the big focus for me in the last, the last 12. Um, what about you? What do you think of that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think um, content is, you know, as the famous quote from one of the partners of Andreessen Horowitz Software is eating the world. Content is definitely eating the world right now. I feel like it's, it's an all consuming sort of trend that's moved from the B2C towards the B2B world. As well. And I think the big thing for me over the last year, uh, um, notion for example was figuring out uh, community. How do we actually leverage community, how do we analyze the data and how do we build models and how do we build attribution that shows that investing in community, in events, in content, that kind of thing is bringing ROI for us I. E. We're able to invest in the best founders because we're putting on amazing events. We've built such an amazing community of you know, B2B operators and, and that kind of thing. So I think it's bringing some of the stuff around. Community based marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: From the B2C world we see it so much with um, with brands and you know like I, I feel like every running shoe now has a running club. Every, every sports brand has like a, a run club or some sort of community based form of. People see it as marketing. But I, I see, I'm like this is, this is marketing as kind of core. So yeah, it's like how do you, how do you bring that into the B2B world and how do you get the stakeholders involved, how do you get them thinking positively around how this can kind of affect roi? And I think you really need to bring data in, into it. So uh, yeah, I spent a lot of time building out some sort of like a, I guess like a founder uh, engagement tracking attribution scorecard basically.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Which was very interesting. Which um, where I basically assigned scores based on you know, how many events have the founders attended, what kind of content have they kind of engaged with and we started doing some sort of like modeling and stuff like that around there to figure out who's the warmest leads, who should we actually be spending our time and effort with or the investors to actually reach out and do the one to one communication with them. So that was very interesting and uh, it's actually working out very well. And I feel like a lot of uh, B2B companies, including a lot of our portfolio at Notion, they, they were taking on a lot of these strategies and hosting their own events and, and that kind of thing. So that, that I would say that would be one of the biggest things that we done. I think we must have hosted at least 30, uh, 40 events across a year which is uh, a lot both virtual and, and in person as, as well.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but I think it paid off a lot of dividends in terms of not just brand building. Yeah. And positioning but, but also like the actual value that you kind of can deliver to people in a real Life story setting. Yeah, it seems that ah, you know, when people form real connections in you know, cool spaces and that kind of thing, I, I feel like that's still a thing that AI or online still can't kind of like replace. So it's like for sure. How do we really put that on a kind of mantelpiece and, and make people feel really special so they can, you know, take investment from us, align with our brand, align with our kind of community and our kind of ethos of, of what we're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. Were you uh, doing. I'm assuming so, but maybe you can go a bit more into details. Were you doing content obviously during those events, especially the impersonal in person ones and then using that content to like fuel.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Online 100.

Speaker B: So when you were talking about a bucket of content, um, events is. It was a huge bucket for us. Um, yeah, we were using that. But another thing that we actually did was we didn't over leverage it too much because we kind of wanted to make the events, uh, you got to come here to see for your kind of self kind of thing, you know and we didn't want to give too much away. And for us events were like the bottom of the bottom of the funnel.

Speaker A: Yeah, essentially.

Speaker B: So the main thing that I would use in terms of marketing would be um, just photos and stuff like that from the kind of event and just actually one of the things that we did really well and this kind of, I guess this might link to the, to the B2C world was I guess in, in some way it was kind of like influencer marketing where we'd get some of the best B2B operators in Europe to actually be co hosting these events with us. Yeah, like real top, top, top guys who we kind of built a network of, of of people around, you know, go uh, to market people, organization, fundraising products, uh, pricing and monetization, all of those kind of things and those sort of, let's just call them ambassadors. Mhm. Would be enough of a draw to bring serious founders to the kind of table. So yeah, part of the marketing was actually identifying who are the best people in the kind of space that founders are uh, looking up to how do we get them to align with us and our brand and co hosting events with them was one of the best things that we can. We kind of did.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. While you were talking, I was thinking, I was trying to think of a B2B example of something that I've seen multiple times which I think Is really clever if you can do it on a B2C side which is community led growth from um, content generated using the product. So like uh, I don't know how they call it but like in notion you can go and see like a, like a whole marketplace of users that they created.

Speaker B: How I've organized my whole life using this notion. Yeah, I'm not gonna, I've been on those YouTube videos and I have seen the whole bunch of creators. It's a huge thing actually.

Speaker A: It's a big thing that can uh, it's been, it's been done a few times. That's not, not the only example, um, for sure but I don't have any B2, pure B2B example of that. I don't know if you can think of any um, what would be the

Speaker B: equivalent for community sort of led growth. Um, let me have a think.

Speaker A: Because the event, uh, the events that you guys were doing is a version of that in a way but it's tailored to B2B. Like you, you know, you attract people to an event, you capture some content, you put that back into the top of Funnel and so on and so forth. You know it kind of creates a loop itself like that to be done.

Speaker B: To be honest, I've got a good example of where we kind of did that with um, some of our portfolio companies. So there was a company called Paddle which is like a huge sort of like payments kind of um, infrastructure player in Europe and globally. And their main ICP was uh, founders or companies that use PLG subscription based sort of software and, and stuff like this. So yeah, we did a, actually a whole event series and um, built um, one of the partners called a Chasso shout out Chasso. Um, but we built like a whole event series called productique.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: And the aim was to bring together all the leading people in products and product led growth across Europe. And we hosted uh, different events across Europe, yeah I guess you could call them fringe events. Um, so we did them in Paris, in uh, Madrid, in a couple of these places where big conferences were kind of happening. And um, we even did one in Milan which was cool. But throughout that time would gather content, would market, it would get local partners in the kind of region like a big SaaS company or something like that to help us partner with the kind of people. And genuinely I was actually quite surprised at how much hype it created. When you're very niche and focused it's like productique, this is just for product and POG kind of people. And when you put the calling out. You'd be surprised at how many people.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Or kind of in into it and felt like they were kind of part of that uh, PLG products kind of community. So that worked very, very well. We drew in loads of founders. It was a great opportunity to actually invite the best founders from Paris to come to this event all around product. I mean if you're a product led founder then yeah, you're definitely one of going to come here because you're going to hear from like Experts, there's other VCs involved and stuff like this. So that works really, really well. When we created a bunch of different sort of I guess, event series.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: And productiva is one that did really, really good. We would get so many signups, like so many quality leads. And the best thing about it was is that I would be using uh, a CRM system to really understand like who's coming. You'd feed this data back into the kind of team to understand are any of our prospects or targets come in? Um, not just that, actually, um, we kind of weaponize a lot of this uh, community based growth, uh, where it's actually a great sort of um, tool to give to your sales team to actually invite prospects. They feel very special. And you're just like, hey, we're doing this event for product people. There's only 50 spaces and I'm personally inviting you or someone from your team to come, um, connect with other leading product founders and companies and stuff like that. So it was very good. Like we were feeding that into the sort of outbound engine that we were kind of um, deploying, which was good. Which was kind of automated as well. But uh, founders would never know, would never know that. So.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the responses that we'd get was, was very good. Like for me community and events and for me events is probably like the best thing you can do in community and that's how you build like a real solid, strong community.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That was probably the most powerful asset in, in, in the funnel for us.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's cool.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I, um, I want to go back to this quote I think I sent you.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: On WhatsApp. Um, because I've got like a, a few different, A few different angles. We can tackle this.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A: But the quote was from andreessenovitz.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Content isn't just marketing anymore. It's product is distribution. It's your entire business model. Um, and I thought it was very interesting because there's been a lot of um, like key examples of what does that mean for businesses? And B2B and B2C. Um, and I want to talk about a few of them if you. We don't mind.

Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. Let's uh. Idiot. Let's talk about it.

Speaker A: Did you uh, did you see the kind of switch in communication that uh, happened at uh, Airbnb? Uh, and also like other, other people, like Meta with like uh, the Zuck going a lot more in front of camera with his new look, the gold chain.

Speaker B: And I do love the new look, I can't lie.

Speaker A: And the, the, the air, the Airstyle. Um, but I think even an even better example is uh, Brian Chesky at Airbnb and like the, the, the communication style, uh, going full on founder led on X, lots of videos, lots of like podcasting to like going on podcast tools and being like very product focused but very vocal about what's going on. Um, I think it's such a major shift to what communication like content was for companies before that compared to now. Like, what do you think of that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree. I think uh, it's. I find it very interesting because I've always been like tik tok native. Yeah, I've always been social media N. Like this is just the norm. And yeah, uh, when you're talking about Brian Chesky, there's also um, I think the CEO of Shopify, the. He basically, they're basically going on to Instagram and doing like really long form videos. And uh, I think I saw the CEO of Shopify doing his quarterly results on Instagram on an Instagram video. And it's like, yeah, yeah. Content is also changing how we do investor relations. Our uh, content is really changing so many different things. And before it was like cool, you would release a paper, you do like a PPR press release and stuff like that with your company earnings and, and all of the classic stuff. But now, yeah, it actually makes more sense especially if you're a public company. Yeah, your investors are the public.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: It makes more sense to just go, yeah, direct to consumer as. As you'd say and just really talk about your company, your results and just give people a direct line of communication. So for me, content is uh, is changing a lot of stuff and investor relations is actually a very, very interesting facet or point that I see with a lot of these public company CEOs, which I think will start to filter down into more and more private and startup. Because you know what the way that the technology is going and shifting is like nowadays, like the. You're actually able to invest in like later stage VC backed companies earlier and earlier through different technology platforms that let you get in on secondaries and things like that. So private investing and Investing in, in VC backed startups is actually becoming way more accessible. So CEOs and founders actually need to appeal to a wider uh, base of audiences who are going to potentially be their investors. So I, I find that very, very interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's so cool. It's coming from different uh, angles. So you've got the, the, the top dogs. Uh, even like you know like this guy Adam Mosseri on Instagram.

Speaker B: Yeah. I actually follow him.

Speaker A: He's uh, got 3 million followers and he's doing like ask me anything every week is right. He's like traveling, he's on the plane, he's like oh you guys ask me a lot of questions and he go through like 20 of them. Like ah, it's mad like that's, that that's a thing now and that's completely normal to, to the public. Then on the other end of the spectrum you've got the building public.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: You know, um, solopreneurs and like new founders that are just sharing everything.

Speaker B: I mean I've got one of my favorite founders, uh, founder of Plant Made called Amma. Um, she bootstrapped her business. It's like a skincare beauty business from 0 to 10 million three years.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And she does a lot of, she calls herself a baby CEO, which I, which I love. And she, she's basically sharing the lessons of building a company.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Just every single day on like TikTok. And she does like a lot of content and it's, it's really helped with the, not just the sales but you actually end up building such a, uh, an interesting community of not just consumers but potential investors, potential talent that might want to come and work for your company. So there's a lot of upside. Is there downside question?

Speaker A: I don't think so. I don't think there's any downside. I think I uh, think anyone should try and figure it out. Um, it's not easy. I think you need to find your, your way in your angle especially for your new.

Speaker C: And yeah.

Speaker A: People don't know you but like you said, it's very easy people to get behind someone they'd never met because the story is appealing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And because you're consistent and you show up every day or whatever the frequency there people will get behind you but, and they, the trust level will be so much higher than if you started your business and the first thing you did was putting ads on Facebook.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, which is straight away would not dilute your brand. Like you can also work that way but it would have I think uh lesser uh impact that if you manage to like go viral organically with your. I'm a founder.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: You know and this is my story.

Speaker B: 100 uh, 100. I mean so cool. I, I love the content that you guys do at uh AI Ah Apply. I already feel like I'm just so. I'm like I want this brand to win. So I would love for you to sort of break down a sort of how to in terms of content and content marketing for.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: A lot of the sort of B2B kind of crowd and kind of audience. Like where do you start with producing amazing content that's really going to land with the audience?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Um, that's a good question. So we also talking about. And we tried, we tried a couple of times already doing founder led content with. With Aiden. So the one of the co founder. Um and we're still trying to figure that one out because we gone other routes with like you know memes and you know like some viral formats on TikTok and that worked for us um, very well so far. But I think um to go back to what I was saying, like if I, if I were to like start I would first of all don't make it too complicated. I would just start. Um, you know, don't think about the technicalities too much of how you're going to execute. Like you literally just need an iPhone. Um.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think the more authentic it is the better if you, if you. No one knows you and straight away you think you need, need a setup and you need to look like super Polish even B2B. I think it's the wrong attitude because people are going to be like who are, who are you? Like what you know, why this production when you like just started. Um, maybe it's different when you already like fairly big and people know that they expect maybe a certain level of like um output. But even then I'd argue maybe they'll prefer the authenticity.

Speaker B: Yeah. Authenticity is key across especially if you

Speaker A: decide to go okay, I'm gonna do reels and reason tick tock. You know I just like you know that kind of format versus I'm gonna go all in on X. Yeah. And I'm gonna do some threads like Twitter threads and more written words. That's fine too. Um but what I would say is to not try and do everything. Um, um, that can be a bit daunting. Um, but I would definitely try without overthinking it too much and just tell the story. There's always a story somewhere. And even if you think that story is common or not spectacular enough or interesting enough, some people will find it interesting. And um, yeah, just sharing it will um, make a difference. Then there is a million ways to try and then processize there or execute uh, in the long run because uh, you can do it once. Fine. But how do you do that every day?

Speaker C: Consistency.

Speaker B: Consistency is key.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I mean in a simpler form you can just force yourself to time block half an hour of your day to day talk to camera. Yeah, there's actually a new trend um, in France. I haven't seen too many uh, UK, uh, or you know, other like CEOs doing now on YouTube. But YouTube for that is, is kind of brilliant. There's like three or four, um, I would say like tech business figures in, in France that now do daily video on YouTube. 10 minutes talking to camera, no cuts, no edits. Raw, straight, raw, straight. Like this is what I've done week and this is what I don't like. These are my challenges. Like super raw and like they, they're going fast.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: You know, like new channels, like three videos in. It's already like, you know, I don't know, 10,000 views average. Because it's like so behind the scene.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And unedited. That the AI isn't that, that's an, that's appealing. So that's another way to do it. And it's just like you're forcing yourself to do every day or block a day and just batch record you know, 6, 7, 8 piece of content and then have them like scheduled over the next, uh, the next few days I think. Um, so that's like some, some ways you could do that. Um, there was an interesting uh, podcast episode recently that came out from 20 uh, VC.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah. With the guy from the growth guy from 11, uh, labs. Uh, I can't remember his name. Uh, so sorry about that. But you can, you can find out on the 20 VC podcast like one of the last few episodes. And um, it was about their uh, content growth engine as well. And uh, he kind of gave like the checklist. They got like a checklist on how do they gain momentum for the product. And so I suggest, I recommend like going there and looking at that. The summary of it was like, you know, for every release in the product that they do and there's, they're changing every few days so every few days they technically have like a content pack or content drop or any little tweaks big and small that they do in the product and then they go and execute. This is the tweet for it, this is the motion video, this is the LinkedIn post. This is the uh, and it's like tick, tick, tick, tick. A lot of that can be AI generated too to go faster. So now you can leverage AI to do that stuff.

Speaker C: Ah.

Speaker A: And that's the short, the short of this is like this is how you build momentum, but that's a bit outside of founder led, but you can also merge that with the founder led content. But this is how you can really build momentum for your B2B or B2C company. And that's what we're trying to do. AI apply as well. Just consistently being there and communicate on either the, you know, viral type, uh, content or we made the product better. And you talk about that too.

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I love that, um, I love that, I love that. I mean, and it's important to let people know that there's options. You've got founder led content all around you and the company. And you know what, I speak to so many B2B founders on a regular basis, especially coming from the sort of VC world. We had a portfolio of over 200 companies where a lot of people come to me for advice and I, I really tell them B2B is getting way more personal. Yeah, it's very important to really, I know we, I know a lot of people in this world don't want to get in front of camera, but it's, it's actually, it's not option, it's not optional anymore in my personal opinion, because people don't just want to buy from a faceless stop motion video, they want to buy it from another person. They want to understand the story and they, it's become so much more personalized. So I think don't shy away from the founder led content. But there's also company based content that you can kind of create and there's that whole strategy which I think we did really well at Notion where you're talking about an engine and we built like a really good value add, uh, content engine that kind of sat at the middle of the kind of funnel. So yeah, we did a lot of video stuff at the top of the funnel which was around partners, founders, testimonials, all of that stuff, all the good stuff that kind of makes you feel something. And then for us, especially in the B2B world, because uh, I'm not gonna say everything, but I would say 90% of things are based on value. You're not really gonna buy a product or align with a brand if you feel like it can't bring value to you. Because ain't nobody got time for that. Ain't nobody got time to waste on just things that are not going to improve the business, they're not going to improve the bottom line. So I think in the B2B world, value is also very important. I think in the B2C world, value comes for me in the form of like entertainment, that kind of stuff. But I think B2B you can kind of lean more towards learning, problem solving that, uh, that kind of stuff. But you can kind of make it, make it fun. So yeah, we had a whole world of just middle of the funnel value add content around. We did like a lot of articles, we did like a lot of. I called them resource packs actually where I would actually get a webinar that one of our experts did. So before I came, they'll just do webinars. And one thing that I see which just annoys me so much is when companies spend so much time and effort to create a webinar and once the webinar is finished, they don't provide it as an on demand video, they just let it go into the ether. And I'm like, how could you let all of that value go just like that? So we would repackage all of the webinars that we did. Yeah, I would repackage it, I would run um, it through AI I would run the transcript through AI I would get it to write an article for me. And then I would also have like a downloadable M. PDF guide as well of the slides and things like that. And that's how we would kind of package the middle of the funnel resource packs where you get a webinar, you get an article. If you don't want to watch the whole 45 minute length webinar, or you can just like download the slides. And guess what, when you click the download button, you have to input your name and email address and you get uh, an automated email which sends you everything. Yeah, but that also provided a signal for us on the kind of back end where it's like, okay, this person is interested in growth or this person is interested in how do I manage an expanded organization. Um, so that provided a lot of good data back to us. But I think um, the value ad was really good. It was actually a lot of value that we were, we were Giving out nice. Uh, and we just basically repackaged that from the expert webinars that we kind of did. And we, we literally had like a mountain of like value add, uh, content all around. It's just in my brain just how do you get from 0 to 1 mil 10, like and we'd buy like would, we would organize it across these different sort of revenue bands and stuff like that. Like if you're at 10 mil ARR, then this is the right sort of content and how to guide for you and things. So yeah, that was, that was really, really good. But I think it's got to be really value add. It can't just be like a random guide or a random paper or. It's got to be something that really gives people value. And I think the best way to do that is to add credibility via uh, operators or people that have been there and done it.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And as you were talking, I was thinking, um, as product get commoditized and like, you know, compete the competition for any product now with technology advancing with AI and stuff, like it's so easy for everyone to copy each other so fast.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, content becomes your moat.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So just to expand on the founder led, um, kind of evolution and content is like, that's what, that's what can't be taken away from you or copied.

Speaker B: They can't take your soul founders, they cannot take us all.

Speaker A: Exactly. So I think it's um, I think that's why it's important. More important nowadays one, um, hundred percent.

Speaker B: And is there um, is there anything founders can kind of do to prepare for this? So they may not be wanting to do content. If they've listened to this podcast, they're like, okay, cool. I understand that content is important.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What can I do today to help me produce amazing content tomorrow or in a month's time? Like is there any frameworks or ways they can think about it?

Speaker A: Well, you can either try and get better at like face to camera yourself and, and maybe you have confidence in that. You can start a podcast and do interview to other people. But m. Like you guys were doing in the event setting as well. Like it works online, offline, but like a podcast, a good example. That's how you can get your end. But having someone else, it's easier to like ease in the content that way. And for B2B, like podcast is uh, is a great Trojan horse into your ICP and you know, like getting, getting the world out there. Like people are a lot more interested in getting a Cold email with a podcast full of value than a cold email saying can we open a course I can sell you. You know, I love that.

Speaker B: I love that.

Speaker A: That's another way to do it. Um, another way to do that is maybe not being the actually being founder led but maybe finding like a mascot or another figure that can become. Yeah like a duolingo type thing. You know like which is M. You can. It's B2C but you know you can see that it could work on B2B as well. Like you have like an animal face. Like you know, some a mascot. I think that is a good decoy.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: To like do your contents through uh, someone else, uh, something else. And then um. I think that's it. I think those are like good examples. I think I had another one I forgot. But yeah, uh, those are, those are good. And uh, I wanted to mention something which I think is more. I think more relevant to B2C but is very interesting in the context of content today.

Speaker B: Hey, let's hear it.

Speaker A: Um, which we actually done tried and tested AI apply and I think is going to be more commoditized in the future. Is that you Distribution is so important. Content.

Speaker C: Ah.

Speaker A: And distribution in the back.

Speaker B: Distribution is everything.

Speaker A: It's everything. I think is more important than products. A uh, mediocre product with a great distribution will always be a great product with no distribution. So that's. Someone wants to argue that point with me. Um, I'm here. But um, I think that is going so far now that you can actually test out new products before building the product to m See the virality factor of that product straight into TikTok. And I think that is very untapped for good reasons because it's like kind of a new way of thinking about it. I get that. But so valuable. I've done that once already and that uh, made us prioritize a product that we didn't have.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: I mocked it up on Figma.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Made a clip for TikTok first video out. 600,000 views.

Speaker C: Damn.

Speaker A: I was like okay, cool. Now we need to build it.

Speaker B: 600,000 views will make you do that.

Speaker A: Huh? Huh? Yeah. On the 1st. On the 1 shot.

Speaker B: Damn.

Speaker A: So I think that is a way now on B2C to do. To test out ideas. Um, because distribution is not tied up to the amount of followers but only tied up to. Is it interesting to the audience that's being shown that video you can go viral on a one shot. Um. And validate an idea that way before spending a few days or a few weeks of your dev time, uh, to do that. And I think it's more important for B2C in that case because you want to be able to have, uh, the cheapest distribution methods possible. That's how you beat your competition. That's how you grow the fastest. Yeah, um, but, yeah, I thought that was sick. I was like. When I, when we tried, I was like, this is gamble, but if it pays out, like, I feel like a. I mean. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good one.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: Um, content for products. So, like, content. What would you call it? Content channel fit.

Speaker B: There we go.

Speaker A: There you go. Content channel fit.

Speaker B: CCP.

Speaker A: The CCP.

Speaker B: CCP model.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I wanted to talk about, um, LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: You're very active on LinkedIn. I'm, um, partially active on LinkedIn. Just took a bit of a sabbatical. But it's such an important channel for B2B founders even. A lot of people are actually coming onto LinkedIn from just all parts of the kind of, um, Internet, or even seeing Gen Z, Gen Alpha, understanding the importance of it. Um, what, what does LinkedIn mean for you as someone who is CMO, you're building your own personal brand, you're leading a company. How important is it for you?

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so it's a good question. I think it changed, uh, over the last few years because LinkedIn was, I think, more of a wild west a couple of years ago, but more rewarding when it comes to engagement.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but it has changed, unfortunately. It has changed, um, because of having the rise of like content creators. Ghostwriters.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: AI generated content, like all of that stuff kind of in the last 12, 18 months kind of diluted the impact of uh, the post on my personal level that the post that I used to do, the engagement I used to get versus the engagement I'm getting now has dropped for sure. For sure. And I think also LinkedIn is not 100% clear on what they actually want. I don't think they know they. Don't they. Because LinkedIn, we know their priority is not the content. They're already making money on subscriptions. It's M. A sales tool. That's how they make their money. And I think the content side of things, a bit of an afterthought. And they're doing a lot of things that are messing up, up for everyone else. They. In the last 12 months we've been told video is the next thing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And they started to put videos in the feed and when you in the video now you can actually scroll like a TikTok kind of format. But it's missing a lot of things. You don't see the engage when the videos are shown up in the main feed, you don't see the engagement of it. So you don't have the incentive to feel like it's a good one. Ah, it's missing like things like that. I think that the algorithm goes like, goes crazy every other month, you know, like feels like it's going better then

Speaker B: it's going bad again, it's going back. Yeah.

Speaker A: But having said that, I think in spectrum of what we're talking about here for B2B and B2C I think it's still important to be there as a founder or leading team again to build momentum. If you're going to create content for one channel, why not putting it on another? If it's easy to do and it's a lot easier to do nowadays, especially for like product announcements, uh, milestones, things that would make your company um, just show up and be out and you don't have to share everything but like you know, because like for example I apply, we don't do build in public so we don't share our numbers and things like that. But we do share, share obviously what we're doing on the product, what we launch and things like that. We actually have a process in place for one of the co founder to post every day.

Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is um, not AI automated was using people uh, in the back, uh, posting for him on his behalf every day. Uh, the classic uh, so ghostwriter. So we do that as well. It's a mix of company uh, post versus industry post. You know like for us obviously it's like job seekers. So like the job market. Yeah, finding a job, you know, doing your CV and stuff like that. Um, so we, the short answer is we play the game because we have to and there's still distribution to be. Ah, but it's a bit fucked up.

Speaker B: Yeah, no LinkedIn sort your shit out. A lot of people are complaining around the algorithmic changes and yeah all that stuff. But I would like to say for especially in context of the B2B world, whilst the organic side is, is kind of like hit and miss I would say I've been working a lot on the paid side on LinkedIn and LinkedIn ads and that has actually drastically improved. Yeah, honestly, um, it's still got a long way to go but compared to like two years ago, a year ago, the black, the backend ad manager platform has become really good and the targeting has become pretty amazing. So a lot of the advice that I give to people is actually you need to actually be looking at LinkedIn ads as well. Like LinkedIn ads is actually the sleeper. Yeah, that's actually the most powerful thing that me personally, I think that you could do on LinkedIn because, um, even if you don't get thousands and thousands of views on your kind of content that you're putting out there, you can kind of amplify that using LinkedIn ads with your exact ICP.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Literally. Are you looking for CFOs of, you know, fintech companies between 10 to 20 mil in revenue. You can literally build that exact kind of audience and make sure that your content is going directly to them. Um, and sure, of course you have to pay for these kind of things and, and whatnot, but there's ways to ensure that your CPM doesn't get too high and there's ways of kind of building that kind of funnel. Like video ads work. Like video ads have worked really, really well for me on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, like it actually, it's actually not that expensive. Um, on a platform that's very business formal, if you can create like a really good video and get it in front of like the right audience and it's speaking directly to them, it can actually add a lot of ROI to your kind of kind of efforts. And like, the awesome thing that you can kind of do as well now is you can kind of cross promote your employees posts using your company's LinkedIn advertising account, which is just really awesome because you can get that kind of affiliation where it's just like, if you've got like a superstar employee, there's, there's always that one person that's. These LinkedIn posts are always kind of popping. You can then start to leverage that and get that in front of a different audience and boost that using the LinkedIn kind of ads platform.

Speaker A: Yeah, love it. Actually, we, uh, we do that, um, using the content that we post through the founder. Yeah, we, the best one. We use that as an ad, basically.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: Uh, I think it's the wild west. I agree. So that, that part of LinkedIn, there's a lot to be taken.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, except for grabs if you're, if you're early. Um, we, yeah, we also. So one thing that I did recently, you know, like you would always get some people tagging your company in a random. That are not your employees.

Speaker B: Yes, yes.

Speaker A: So I have that, um, maybe like a month ago, and it was a post in Spanish it was not even in English. It was like another language in another country. That post from that lady, I can't remember her name but shout out to, to her if uh, she, she finds her way into this podcast, um, and if she speaks English, um, but she had like, I don't know, 3, 400 likes. It was a big post. I was like, damn, like did well. I DM'd her on LinkedIn. I was like, hey, do you mind if I promote that uh, post? It's like win, win for you. You get more exposure, we get shit ton of impressions on your profile. You'll get the followers and stuff. She was like, yeah, sure, fine. I send her the request, she accepted it. Boom. Straight away. Like ICP targeted uh, job seekers on LinkedIn for us. Big because we're looking for people looking for a job. And uh, yeah, did very well for a while. I was like, yeah, ah, getting loads of sign ups, cheap traffic. Uh, it was a text post. Uh, and I think you can only do those kind of ads with text and video. You can't do it for uh, slideshow. Yeah, you can't do it for everything but text only and video. It works. And also the beauty of uh, those kind of uh, ads is that you can go back to an old post that you want to promote and you can edit it. You edit the copy and in the copy you put the URL of your post. So it's already, it's already got the engagement. You did the organic reach by putting a link. You know putting a link is kind of a.

Speaker B: No, no, it was a reach.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you don't do that first but then when you go back to promote

Speaker B: it, change the add in uh, the URL.

Speaker A: There's so many sneaky things. So like I'm in, I'm in groups on WhatsApps and like obscure select groups with um, geeks like me in the growth world. And there is a uh, yeah, when there is a platform that is a bit slow to update their platform, the algorithm, there's always gaps. You know you're going to find the glitches.

Speaker B: 100 uh, operating in the glitches. Is there any other glitches? Any other, any other glitches you can

Speaker A: share that I don't know if I can share now? There is one, there is one which doesn't last very long. But you, you can basically go. LinkedIn will force you to put um, LinkedIn will force you to put a minimum CPM, uh, or cost per results basically in your campaign and they will put like oh, we've got a new comma. Wait, wait, wait. Mickey, come on, let's see if we can hear you speaking the mic. Oh, you're not on there way away. Which one is it?

Speaker C: Uh,

Speaker A: maybe this one. Can you speak in the mic? No, wait, wait, wait. And now can you, can you hear us?

Speaker B: Oh, we've got technical support coming in.

Speaker A: Technical support coming in. I'll finish my story in a second. Yeah, which one is it?

Speaker C: Hello?

Speaker B: Uh, no, Yes, I can hear you.

Speaker A: I can hear you. Wait, it's fine. I'll, uh, I'll read your lips. How are you, man?

Speaker C: I'm good. I can't hear you though.

Speaker A: Oh, okay, fine, fine.

Speaker B: Okay, cool.

Speaker A: Yeah. Can you hear me now?

Speaker C: I can't hear you through the mic, but it's all good. How are we doing?

Speaker A: All good.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah, hot mic. Okay, speaker is hot. How are we doing, gentlemen? Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Good, good, good. Uh, we're about thing. We're about to wrap up soon.

Speaker C: Oh, no.

Speaker B: Talking about the glitches in the matrix that growth marketers are, uh, ah, finding to, uh, get those results.

Speaker A: We're talking about LinkedIn ads. And uh, so let me finish my story. There is basically when you launch a campaign on LinkedIn, especially a promoted post like that, a thought leadership post.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: You can ignore the big red warning that LinkedIn gives you that says you have to bid that amount on the cost per whatever the, the conversions you're looking for. If you go and put like 5p or 10p, like way below what they, they say it will still go through.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And for a few days, if not a few weeks, you might, you could get like $1 CPM, $2 CPM, which is on LinkedIn. That's like 20 to 30.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's so cheap. And then you run your organic post or your CEO post through that, um, and you get like crazy cheap traffic for a while. So that one's special. That's a glitch. They might patch it at some point, but, uh, for now, uh, it's a good one.

Speaker B: Okay, I've got a cool. It's not really a glitch, but this is like a cool strategy that I've been doing basically where I don't know if you guys use these like, AI sales automation platforms. Like Apollo. Yeah, yeah. So it's essentially building your own custom audiences, leveraging the data. You can sign up for these things for like a hundred dollars and you can get what used to be, would be valued at like a Five thousand dollar list, a ten thousand dollar list now for like less than a hundred dollars.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: For outbound email. But um, what you can then do is just put the contact details and stuff like that into a custom audience on LinkedIn and actually be able to just target this niche group of exact people that you want. Like you just need to have them in that kind of list and that just cuts out all the BS and like um, you don't, do you, you never enable audience expansion. M. Because LinkedIn is just going to juice you and sweat you for more money. But um, the key thing that you want to do is really get those lists and, and leverage those outbound email lists but slap them on onto LinkedIn and really create like a tight audience of people that you can start.

Speaker A: That's a good one.

Speaker B: Sharing like the founder based marketing and a lot of these things just direct, just straight to the source.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.

Speaker C: Have you, have you guys talked about um, marketing and financial services? How much have you covered that so far?

Speaker A: Yeah, we did, we did, yeah, yeah, we uh, go through the lens of that. But wait, like let introduce ourselves quickly. Like we got five minutes.

Speaker C: Mickey's here for the wrap up. Yeah, I'm Mickey, 85 minute sub, um, uh, in the content team at Money 2020. I uh, program content and uh, work on our digital content as well.

Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, I was trying to figure that out to listen to you in my uh, in my uh, headphones. Oh yeah, that's it.

Speaker C: You can hear me? Yeah.

Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, I can hear you. I think it was just me because uh, I need to figure out the buttons in front of me. Um, great. How was the event?

Speaker C: It's been amazing. Um, honestly it's been very tiring as you guys have seen me. I've ah, been running around like a headless chicken all over the place. All over the place to box, my box, the box midfielder man, you know, you know what I'm saying? Uh, moving like a young Paul, uh, Pogba. Uh, but yeah, it's been great. It's been great seeing you guys. Um, I don't know, I feel like this, this one has been a really fun one. It's been very stressful for me, but it's been a fun one too. There's been uh, so many awesome podcasts. I've been able to do some, including this one, even if it's just for five minutes and um, you know, lots, uh, of great sessions, some cool designs, um, and there's lots of amazing companies represented here as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, 100. 100. We were uh, talking about just the different hacks and what we're seeing and uh, talking about what we're bringing in from the B2C to the B2B and stuff like this and we're talking about the events and community based marketing. What's one thing that you see in the world of growth and marketing that can be a hack for B2B companies, financial services, that. That sort of world that people ain't really talking about too much?

Speaker C: M. Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think one of the things that I would really say is like a big differentiating factor now is the best financial service companies don't think of themselves as either B2B or BTC. B2C when they're thinking about marketing. Yeah, um, I think ultimately, um, and actually earlier on today, um, Wendy, who's a acting CMO at Flutterwave, was making this exact point point. Um, ultimately marketing is about talking to people. Um, whether it's B2B or B2C. Right. You're, you know, you're still talking to people. Maybe that might change in a couple of. Maybe it might change by the end of the year when we have all of this agentic. Agentic, uh, commerce and all of these things. But overall, I think that's the biggest mistake that I think B2B brands make is that they, uh, they forget that they're talking to humans too. And I think, uh, bridging that gap is probably like a real big key.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one.

Speaker C: Uh, one final, one final question from me to you guys.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker C: out. Uh, of all of the companies you've seen represented at Money20 20, whether on stage and stands and conversations, who do you think is the best? The company that's cracked marketing. The best. Whoa.

Speaker B: I've got a couple people. But for me, recently, I've been loving Monzo and I think this. I don't know if it goes hand in hand with their turnaround story of growth and just bringing the company back from the trenches during COVID to what

Speaker C: it is today, but Tsnil was on our stage yesterday, FYI, the CEO of Monzo.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's done a great job, honestly. Um, 10x profits this year, literally, which is insane. But, um, yeah, I, I love Monzo. And then honorary shout out to, uh, Tanala Bunny. I, I love what they're kind of doing in terms of their marketing as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, before, before I, you know, I, I think that the, the Nala One is a really good example of another really like important marketing strategy nowadays which is like this founder led growth. Right. Where the founder is building or has built a big presence as an individual.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that becomes an incredible distribution channel. Exactly.

Speaker B: It's such a key thing that can really shift the growth prospects for your company. Believe it or not. Believe it or not, it actually can.

Speaker C: And don't believe it. At your own cost.

Speaker A: I was going to say Nala as well.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, so, yeah, shout out. I still need to, I uh, need to properly, uh, chat to, to Benji at some point.

Speaker C: Yeah, you do, you do.

Speaker A: And uh, yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's a good one. I think to be honest, like I'm very, I'm very uh, critical when it comes to fintech marketing because I was there for like a couple of years. Um, so uh, yeah, there's not that many to pick from like uh, in my head. So. Yeah, no. Shout out. Shout out. N. That's a good one. All right guys, I think we need to wrap up otherwise we're going to be kicked out of the box.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, really?

Speaker C: They won't kick us out while I'm here?

Speaker A: Yeah, no man, we got, we got the boss in here. So that's, that's all good. Um, thank you, Cebu.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Coming on again. Again. That was great. Mickey, thanks for joining as well.

Speaker C: It was short and sweet, but hey, it was great. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: No worries.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you as well. This was great. A nice conversation to continue on.

Speaker A: Welcome. That's a, uh, wrap. Thank you.