The Twenty Minute VCHow to Build a $100M Growth Engine: Lessons from Wispr Flow & Superhuman | Matt Swulinski
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
85 min read · 16,663 words- 0:00 – 1:09
Intro
- MSMatt Swulinski
Probably fire most of your marketing team. My philosophy is that the e-com playbook is the right playbook for SaaS. Every single cent needs to equal a purchase or an add to cart.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Matt Swulinski. He's worked at Superhuman, he's worked at Wispr Flow, and now he's just joined Accel-backed Viktor.com, and he's looking to make it third time, I wouldn't say lucky, 'cause he is a master of growth. Look at Superhuman and Wispr. These are two of the fastest growing product-led growth products, and this is a masterclass in how you grow really fricking fast in a world of AI.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Paid is the easiest way to validate that you have PLG. I say there's the core three of any acquisition engine. You have Meta, Google, and lifecycle. You probably need at least 400 to 500 new creatives a month. We have kids that are, like, 17, 18, 19 that are making 20, 30K a month just making a couple ads for us.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Ready to go? [upbeat music] Matt, it is so good to have you on the show. So thank you so much for joining me, Matt.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, thanks for
- 1:09 – 2:19
PLG Is Still the Right Foundation Even in an Agent World
- MSMatt Swulinski
being here.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Now, you've worked with some of the best companies, from Superhuman to Wispr, now with Viktor, and we've seen these companies and a huge amount of SaaS companies rise with the product-led growth, PLG motion. And now we're entering a world of agents. What changes in the growth world when we shift from humans to agents with product-led growth?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, that's a great question. I think, uh, I mean, all of the, the startups I've worked with, uh, have been PLG, right? And I think i- in a world of agents, uh, there's definitely a layer where PLG still matters because PLG assumes you have a perfect self-serve funnel to the human, and in the same way you're d- you're definitely gonna want to optimize it for how is an agent doing research, how is it picking the tools and the APIs that it's actually using? And I think it just takes the same framing and diligence to why the product already worked from the human end, and just understand how are agents making decision-making. So the, the, the best companies in PLG focus right now will also be best positioned, in my opinion, for the agentic layer of essentially decisions being made without that human in the loop when tools are being selected for certain tasks.
- 2:19 – 4:36
Lessons From Superhuman: Taste, Craft & the Ceiling of Word-of-Mouth
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you look back at, say, Superhuman, if we go back in time chronologically, it grew very kind of craftsman-like with founder referrals. What's your reflections or lessons from that experience on Superhuman's growth that you've taken with you?
- MSMatt Swulinski
The, the taste-making of what it means to create, uh, a strong product, uh, like that for me was born while I was at, at Superhuman. Uh, because at the end of the day, n- no matter whether, you know, if you've used Superhuman, you've likely stayed s- using Superhuman just because every little element of that product is, is hyper-refined to make you want to continue using it. Um, but I think the, the difference of what was the early scale of Superhuman, where it was super founder-led, word-of-mouth referral, uh, there was essentially a, a asymptote that, you know, the, the product hit where they had it, they had to follow a different playbook and, uh, there was a t- like this was, you know, three years ago, roughly. Uh, and uh, back then, you know, w- what was SaaS now we call AI SaaS, uh, everyone was running more of the, uh, you know, just PLG motion referral word, word of mouth without doing paid. And they were laughing like, you know, e-com's been doing, you know, the, the UGC programs, hundreds of thousands of ads, like paid ad spend is the way to drive performance, and the resistance was definitely there while I, I was at Superhuman. Uh, but, you know, seeing what, you know, I've been able to do, uh, alongside a great team at Wispr and now Viktor, uh, my philosophy is that the e-com playbook is the right playbook for SaaS because, uh, if you look at e-com, you have every single cent needs to equal a purchase or an add to cart. You have hundreds of UGC creators, variety of creative, and you also have a ton of channels that you're essentially balancing to showcase the entirety of the brand. And that's the model that I took and applied at the end before the, the Grammarly acquisition at Superhuman to, to scale paid and then follow that exact same motion for Wispr Flow. Uh, and I think that's, that's really what put it on the map and got it to where it is. 'Cause like we were talking about before, uh, distribution to me is the only moat, and you have to have that strong of a playbook when it comes to marketing, 'cause, like in today's world, that's the only way to succeed.
- 4:36 – 7:35
Why the E-Com Paid Ads Playbook Is the Right Playbook for SaaS
- HSHarry Stebbings
Dude, I'm gonna love this show [laughs] because most people say the same thing, and what everyone tells me is that, "No, no, you should wait to do paid. You should wait to do paid. It's a dangerous drug that you can get hooked on." When is the right time, do you think, then?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Right away. Right? So like, uh, at the end of the day, uh, paid is the easiest way to validate that you have PLG, that you have a product that can scale in any way, shape, or form, right? Like, there, there's a ton of narrative that like focus on brand, go, uh, organic content, build all that base. That just takes too much time, and, uh, yes, do that motion while also doing all of paid because you can refine messaging, do creative testing, test your funnels, test your positioning, all within a week on paid. How long is that gonna take you if you do some content writing, you talk about it on a podcast, you see if it sticks, you're gonna do some user interviews? Great. Do all of that, but then you have a much faster engine of validation on the other side on the paid, paid amplification end.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When we actually break that down, if I'm an early stage founder, what should I actually do? How much money should I take to spend on paid? Should I do it on one channel versus 10 channels? If I'm an early stage company, I don't have mega budget, what do I actually do?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. So I mean, I would say it's, it's definitely start with what I say is the, the core two. Uh, so like, uh, I say there's the core three of any acquisition engine. You have Meta, Google, and lifecycle, and obviously like your site and all the rest is, is in the middle. Uh, because you have your, uh, strong video intent platforms both in Meta and like YouTube ads. You have the search intent of like people not knowing your product exists, but they're searching for something, right, the, via the keywords. And then, uh, I, I add in lifecycle as well because if you don't have a net- To like nudge people and show up in the right place, email, SMS, whatever it is, push if you, you have an app. Um, you want those th- three things spun up because you can scale to your first million, 10 million ARR just o- off of those three things. Uh, and then obviously, you know, you're, you're, you're investing into the site, you're investing into founder-led content. There's like the other things in there, but in paid, just focus on Meta and Google and you'll totally be fine. Everyone's like, "Oh, we have to do TikTok and Reddit." Like, there comes a time and place [laughs] to add in a million things because in the same way that like, uh, a lot of people get lost with agents is they like start doing a million things with agents and they do them all poorly. Same thing here, right? If you do a million channels and you do them all poorly, it's not gonna help you out.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay, so we have Meta, we have Google, we have lifecycle, and we start spending, I don't know, let's just put 100 grand on that.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So we've raised a ... If we raised a $3 million seed round, is 100 grand fair?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. I mean, I, I think it depends on like your average revenue per user and the unit economics, right? Uh, 'cause it depends how long is your funnel? What, what is that 100K gonna give you, right? I think that's, uh, but usually I'd say like, yeah, if you raise, let's say three to five million, that's like a good start budget to essentially validate that if we put money, people are gonna actually want my product.
- 7:35 – 11:00
Why 90% of SaaS Companies Set Up Their Analytics Wrong Before Spending a Dollar
- HSHarry Stebbings
What should we be looking for then? We have 100K and we put it across Meta and Google, I should say those two. What is a sign that it is working versus not working?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. So, uh, I, I'll, I'll also frame, I think, a, a massive gap in the SaaS space where like I'm waiting for, for startups to be made that fill this gap. So, uh, I'll zoom out and, and if you look at E-com, uh, there are companies like Triple Whale and Elevar that have existed for many years. And what those tools do is Triple Whale is, uh, essentially a mutual exclusivity platform that tells you, okay, you add a pixel to your website, it's out of the box. You plug in all your ad spend, and then it tells you, because there's usually overlap, right? If you run Meta ads and Google, they're double counting, right? And then lifecycle is also triple counting at that point. So what a tool like that does for E-com is say, "Great, I plugged in all my variables. Tell me exactly what is driving revenue from a new customer basis." And you have that out of the box. You don't have to set anything up. And the other side is conversion tracking, which is like add to cart purchase, server side. There's like a ton of technical stuff on, on tracking that's just like a massive headache, but it's, it, there's a solution in E-com that is out of the box. Takes 15 minutes to set up and it's done. You don't have to think about it. For SaaS, completely [laughs] different world 'cause you have to have an engineering team that builds this from scratch, right? When it comes to analytics, there's a DB, there's a BI layer, so maybe you're using ClickHouse and Hex, uh, Last Click, you know, First Click Attribution. All of this is homegrown at every single startup. There is no out-of-the-box SaaS that fills that. And th- that's why all of the companies that struggle don't do that first, that you have the right MarTech stack to understand if we're spending, what is actually moving the needle? Because the platforms won't tell you because you have the wrong setup for conversion tracking, you don't have measurement, and you're spending into the air. And I'd say 90% of companies don't do that as a first step. Before you spend your first cent, have everything set up.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do I set that up? If we don't have it in SaaS, how do I set it up as a founder?
- MSMatt Swulinski
This is what I essentially did both at Superhuman and Wispr Flow, now at Viktor, uh, is essentially coming in and defining what that looks like, right? And, and it comes, uh, to have a strong analytics leader, uh, as well as like a strong, uh, analytics dev that can essentially set up all of that on your website, set up all of that inside of your product to make sure that you are ... 'Cause most people stop at the, we have analytics to track our product. Are all the marketing platforms getting the same signals? There's like, there's a thing called match rate on like Meta, and then there's like a enrichment score on, on Google. If you're not maxing that out, you're, you're like missing 50%, like you're, it, it's just ghost people. Meta doesn't see them, it's not attributing conversions. And the way that the platforms work in today's environment is each platform's algorithm does what you tell it. So let's say we, we have poor conversion tracking, uh, that doesn't track when someone subscribes to our product, and it's like a 50/50 match, right? And if I optimize for that subscription, uh, the higher volume amount of events I have, the more data it has of what a subscriber looks like. And when I optimize for that, Meta will give me more of those people. But if you have poor conversion tracking, Meta doesn't know who those people are and it just randomly targets people and you, you'll have a super high CAC. You'll say, "Uh, paid doesn't work for me." I'd say most of the time people haven't done the actual setup correctly before they can say, "Paid doesn't work
- 11:00 – 12:31
What to Optimize for First and How to Know It's Working
- MSMatt Swulinski
for me."
- HSHarry Stebbings
So we get that analytics data, we get that set up in place. What are we looking for then? What is good metrics and what metrics should we be optimizing for? Is it acquisition? Is it retention? Is it spend?
- MSMatt Swulinski
When you're first getting started, uh, the main thing that you optimize for is like i- i- it's the most important event to you as a business. So at SaaS it's, it's the subscription or let's say the, the start trial or in Wispr Flow's example it was, uh, you know, the download, right? Super upper funnel event, um, because we had a desktop client and an iOS app, made it super hard to track. But, you know, pick what that event is and essentially validate that, okay, we spend 100K, what is traffic cost? What is our acquisition cost per user, right? And, and just focus on acquisition cost because PLG and the product team are gonna focus on retention as long as you bring in the quality user, right? And that's why over time you'll probably change the conversion action to be what the most important event is, right? So for example, at Viktor, uh, we have ... It's like a pretty hard funnel to go through. You either be an, an admin in Slack or let's say you're a smaller team and anyone can add apps, or you need to be a tenant in Microsoft Teams. You go through onboarding and then you add Viktor into Slack or Microsoft Teams. That's our conversion action. Super down funnel, but we know that if you optimize for that and like because we, we're super high ARPU, we can have a couple thousand dollars in CAC and the unit economics still work. Uh, but you need to like take the time to D- find that out, right? Like, what, what does success look like at, at the channel level?
- 12:31 – 14:10
LTV to CAC Benchmarks: What Is Good, What Is Okay, What Is Worrying
- MSMatt Swulinski
Uh, but it's just, just acquisition in the beginning.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay. So in the beginning it's like cost per download.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Exactly.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay. Cost per download. And so if we're thinking about good ratios, so we hear like five to one CAC to LTV or LTV to CAC can obviously. Um, in the early days is one to one okay? What is okay? What is good? What is great? What is worrying?
- MSMatt Swulinski
I, I think it depends how much you've raised, to be honest.
- HSHarry Stebbings
If you've raised a lot, you just burn a shitload doing one to one and that's okay.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. Yeah, 'cause I mean, uh, like, like, like we were saying, right? Distribution is everything in today's market. There's, you know, you, you open up, uh, X every day and there's like 100 new products, five that are in your category, two that have absolutely just cloned your website, right? This happens every single day. Uh, and the only way you out-compete them is, is distribution, right? And, um, essentially you want to run one-to-one to essentially get as many users using your product and believing in you as soon as possible. You don't wanna do it below that because then, then you are burning money. Uh, and then you have to analyze the website, the funnel, and, and try and get it to that one-to-one. And then I think there comes a, a, a room of scale where you have enough other channels, sponsorships, you're, you're pumping on AEO and all this other stuff starts to lift your, your LTV to CAC ratio. And I think everyone, um, in terms of economics is trying to shoot for like a three to one. Um, and, uh, it also changes depending on what kind of SaaS you are, right? Like LTV to CAC is usually not enough. You want to, uh, probably look at like LTV gross profit, eh, specifically if you're, you have token cost, uh, because your, uh, the biggest cost item is, is usage at the end of the day. So the economics are a little different depending like a Wispr
- 14:10 – 35:00
Token-Based Products Change Everything in Growth Economics
- MSMatt Swulinski
and a Viktor-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How, how, how does that change then with a Wispr and a Viktor where you do have a, a token cost being much more significant than you had in a SaaS world where there were no token costs?
- MSMatt Swulinski
The biggest differences are first in that like Meta and Google are not optimized for like B2B SaaS usage-based products. Like they go absolutely nuts with a, "So you're telling me there's a predictive revenue of a one person could be a 50,000, you know, annual contract while another person will be 50?" Right? There's just like huge variance depending on single person can be a high user and like the, the algorithm has no idea what to do with that. Um, but, but the other side of it is, um, we obviously have way higher average revenue per user, but, you know, average cost per user is also higher.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Right? So you essentially wanna make sure that you actually have a good grapple on what cost is. Uh, and a lot of people were like, "Oh, well that's my anthropic bill." But what about modal? What about inference costs? What about all the other things that is allowing you to service your products and like have a good finance leader that's gonna be able to essentially gut check, "Yeah, you've been missing these cost items. This is what you should be optimizing for so we don't burn money." And that's a lot, I think a mistake a lot of people make is not doing that analysis at first.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How much should I spend on creative for these paid channels? Like if we're gonna do Instagram marketing, we should do, we need, we need a video, we need, you know, creative, we need to... How much should I spend on that? 'Cause that can't be an afterthought.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. Uh, I mean, I, I would say you probably want to be spending, not at scale, but in the beginning as much in ad spend on creative, because creative is everything in today's environment where, uh, and like people have, you know, heard this buzzword thrown around. There's a, an update in Meta that was called Andromeda that essentially changed the targeting algorithm where the creative is the targeting. So what Meta did is, "Stop telling me in audience settings in the campaigns who people are, we're gonna analyze the creative and based on who we know you're trying to target, we will find those people for you." So essentially that removed like all the media buyers that were like tinkering campaigns and had strategies of how to do it, that went out the door and their whole job had to be creative strategy. So in the beginning, and that's like you'll, you'll see this for, for, for Viktor as well as Wispr. Um, we have hundreds of creators that are doing, you know, different demos, different use cases to different audiences, and that's the only way you can scale spend. Like if, uh, you, let's say you have 100K Meta budget, you probably need at least 400 to 500 new creatives a month, otherwise you're gonna plateau. You're, you're gonna get outcompeted.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you do 400 to 500 new creatives a month?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Uh, you have a creator program where like, uh, at, at, you know, at Viktor we have, uh, we work, we have our own creator program where we give a percentage of ad spend to people to essentially create ads for us. We obviously, you know, have some storytelling and they use the product, so it takes, you know, a little bit to, to acquire them. But once they do that, they create three to four videos a week and we have a couple hundred of them. We work with five agencies. We also have our in-house creative team. Uh, so again, E-Com model. E-Com has been doing this for over a decade. That's, that, that is how the entirety of E-Com has functioned. UGC, creator programs, hundreds of thousands of variations of creative and they've been doing that and that's like in their DNA. SaaS had to grow up to this and like, because I come from that world, that was the, the instilling factor that I always brought in.
- HSHarry Stebbings
A- again, I'm a startup founder. You're my advisor and angel investor. Well done. Um, this is gonna be a very unprofitable investment for you. Uh-
- MSMatt Swulinski
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
... how do I create a UGC network? I'm, I'm a startup. I need three to 400 creatives. Or do I just go and ask my, my, my daughter's friends at school to go and do it?
- MSMatt Swulinski
There's, so I mean there, there, there are a million agencies now, right? Like, uh, in, in all of these gaps and opportunities, the, the, the sheer amount of like aggregation service-based businesses, there's, there's hundreds of thousands of UGC agencies.
- HSHarry Stebbings
But most of them are shit. We get a lot of people. Every single day I get 100 plus messages being like, "I can create clips for you. I can create clips." What should I do as a startup founder to know which agency or marketplace to work with versus not?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, I, I think it comes from like asking peers who do you use? And that, that's the nice thing about creating UGC. It doesn't actually go on their page. So they can represent- Every brand, right? And they can, they can do ads for every competitor as long as, you know-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Ah, okay, okay. So in this case, I'm creating it for you, and then you use it across the channel.
- MSMatt Swulinski
As, as, yeah, I, I ju- I, I pump a million dollars on that ad.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Ah.
- MSMatt Swulinski
And it never shows up on your, on your channel, right? It, it's just pumping creative videos. And then, yeah, you can also run partnership ads. Those work really well. Like, you should have probably 30% roughly of your spend going to someone posts in collaboration with. Put spend behind that. But yeah, like, it could be someone that has no experience. Like, the kids are making bank [laughs] nowadays doing UGC for brands that will pay them a percentage of ad spend. Like, we have, uh, we have kids that are, like, 17, 18, 19 that are making 20, 30K a month just making a couple ads for us. And, like, the nice thing is, if we keep spending on it and it's a great ad, they don't have to make another one for a while.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Have you found that 80% of the ad revenue comes from 20% of the creators?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, 100%, right? And, and, and that's also just how the algorithm also works, is it, it, it finds the best ad and it pumps all the spend at it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Have you found there's commonalities in those 8- 20% best performing?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Uh, I mean, the-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Be, be it a girl versus a boy, be it direct camera versus not, be it... I don't know if you've seen this, but the trend of, like, cutting things in a kitchen whilst talking about something.
- MSMatt Swulinski
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
Making a coffee whilst talking about something. It's a hook.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I, I, I think the, the, uh, pattern disruption as well as, like, getting you to stop. 'Cause, like, the sheer amount of content that we digest in a day, like, if it all looks the same, then you're gonna get drowned out. So the best creative essentially is, like, a rough shake of the camera that, like, seems like it's a mistake, but it got your attention, right? And stuff like that works really well, where it's just, like, a messy start and, like, "Oh, hey, yeah," like, "what's up?" Like, uh, and then talk about the product. Uh, but at the end of the day, um, the, the key thing around creative is not the one creative, it's the package of all of your assets together. They have to be different. They have to, they, to the algorithm, they have to look and feel different, so different ages, different genders, different settings, different hooks. If you only focus on this is what works and you pump just that, performance will crater. You need to constantly be creating net new, completely wild, weird ideas, otherwise your acquisition costs will start to rise.
- HSHarry Stebbings
To what extent will that be replaced by AI creative? We had Cliff White whose the founder of Speechly on the show, and he spoke about how essentially he did it once, and then they used AI to change background, change his clothing, and actually one turned into thousands of variations.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I think that, that is where AI creative, that's the superpower of AI in creative, is spinning up variations. But if you look at the, like, full videos that are AI, they're slop. Like, you can tell immediately that it's an AI video. I think there's a place for it. Maybe 5% of your account is kinda just, like, a [laughs] weird AI videos that just, like, are diverse. Um, but I think that's, that's the secret sauce, is being able to create variety. In no way, shape, or form is anything in creative to the point where you can replace real people.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I also don't buy that the algos don't denigrate AI content versus human content.
- 35:00 – 37:23
Wispr Flow's Growth Flywheel
- MSMatt Swulinski
it off.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What single channel worked best at Wispr, and what did you learn from that?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Uh, definitely Google. Um, in terms of-
- HSHarry Stebbings
As in traditional SEO?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Uh, uh, Google Ads.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Ah.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, Google Ads. Uh, Google Ads is, is still the, the main driver just, uh, and what's surprising, across literally everything, right? Non-branded search, PMax, YouTube ads, everything prints there. Um, and the reason why, it's like, it's, it's the middle of the funnel, but you have essentially all top to bottom right in one platform. And if you have like all the right conversion tracking, Google is a big marketplace with all, a lot of surfaces. And, uh, just optimizing for app download, because it's a freemium product, uh, we can, we, we have a lot more fine-tune control, uh, than we do in Meta when it comes to like, uh, CAC and how much we wanna spend in India versus in the US, 'cause a different price in those markets. Uh, we don't have as much fine-tune control in Meta 'cause like I said, it's like they've removed all the manual settings. Creative is your targeting. It either works in a geo or it doesn't. So like there's, like you just iterate on creative. It's a completely different job than like you have a pretty, like a structured beast to essentially understand how to scale there. So it was Google, and that's, uh, it's also because longer form video for like a pretty difficult product to explain. Like, okay, I talk, it turns to text, but where? In like text boxes? Like, explain that to like the, the average Joe that's walking down the street. It's gonna be like, they're gonna look at you weird. Like, yeah, voice notes. Like, "What do you mean?" I send them in WhatsApp, right? Like, there's, there's that education that needs to happen, so like the 30 second to one minute videos in YouTube that educated the base ran for a while. Got millions, hundreds of millions of impressions. Then fed into non-branded search PMax, different placements and display, and then eventually those people converted, right? Those, all those pieces work together
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is performance always best at the start of a channel or does it get better over time?
- MSMatt Swulinski
It gets better over time. I think, uh, but again, it hits, you know, uh, it has its own scaling laws where like there's a point where you have to diversify into other platforms before you see an, an additional unlock, um, when you hit like some kind of audience fatigue of like whatever you're, you're targeting. Uh, but in the beginning it's always shit because you're waiting for, uh, the conversions to, uh-
- HSHarry Stebbings
When
- 37:23 – 40:16
Audience Fatigue: When to Diversify and How to Unlock the Next ICP
- HSHarry Stebbings
you hit, when you hit audience fatigue, do you keep spending waiting for a next unlock or do you just go, "I've tapped out this channel"?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Well, uh, you wanna unlock the next audience, right? So it's, uh, who is... So like, you know, for example, uh, when, when we're looking at, at Viktor, uh, we, uh, when we, when we launched, we, we purposely had the, you know, the AI employee for everyone and we did this to see who c- came in the door and we had, you know, agencies, E-com brands and SMBs that first showed up. Uh, and essentially what we did is we went through in order, right? We went, okay, we have evergreen stuff. We'll continue that running, but now let's go agencies. Can we acquire them? What does the funnel look like? What does the creative look like? And then once we've let that, like once we unlocked one audience and it seems like the economics work, we can then, now there's a repeatable process to refine it then we can go onto the next audience. So you, you essentially want to, you'll hit audience fatigue in what you're currently targeting. You, like marketing now is very ICP specific. Like you, we, we have all of the latest and greatest tools that can tell you simulate as a pro- like in a prompt whether using Viktor or whatever tool, simulate this person. Like what do they read? What do they think about decision making? Run that prompt and then you have like the richest ICP research you possibly can have. Cre- create it for that person. Create an experience from a landing, onboarding and product experience for that person and you, you can continue scaling by just going down to the niche audience by audience
- HSHarry Stebbings
Because I don't think that a- as an investor in the company, I don't think that was a good tagline and you may hate me for that. But the AI employee for everyone, I don't know what the fuck that means. Uh, if you were to say the AI video editor, great, amazing. If you were to say the AI copywriter, amazing. The AI employee, are you doing my tax? Are you doing my creative? What?
- MSMatt Swulinski
I mean I, I think that the reason-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah, but my point is are you able to do horizontal taglines and then verticalize and that's the right approach?
- MSMatt Swulinski
So I, I mean I think because the category is so wide, right? Where it's like, uh, a- and I wouldn't say we're the first, but we're the first to like say AI employee and actually like deliver on that promise where like work is being given and, and it's at like the usage is actually ROI like positive, actually valuable and we started with that because it's, it's, it's again how do you, like how else are you gonna frame it as being different than Claude or ChatGPT and these other players where like you have to like for us it's the positioning around knowledge work. Uh, so it, like there was nothing, other than AI coworker and AI employee like there's no other positioning that like really makes sense and because it hasn't been used a lot I think it's confusing. But now that there are more use cases and stories to back it up then we can shift the framing to be a, "I hired Viktor and here's what he did." And then it's a, "Oh, it's a, you know, a guy's name. It's an employee. Oh, it's an AI tool." Right? There's, you can invert the process now, but we had to start with something to essentially build those use cases.
- 40:16 – 44:07
How to Build a Referral Program That Actually Works
- HSHarry Stebbings
One of the things that is supposed to be a growth engine as well is referrals-
- MSMatt Swulinski
Mm-hmm
- HSHarry Stebbings
... or referrals programs. Any lessons from Wispr, from Superhuman that are really important for me and founders to know on how to build great referrals engines?
- MSMatt Swulinski
I think it's one of the like core things like we talked about meta Google lifecycle. When you think about PLG like have that referral program set up and it be very front and center and easy to discover in the product to make it effortless for someone to share the product and get something, you know, for doing that, right? And, uh, at Superhuman it was, you know, give one month, get one month and, you know, we had, uh, we had people that had hundreds of referrals, hundreds of months they were never gonna pay for the rest of their lives, um, and because it was, it was delightful and it was easy to discover but it was, it was very tactile where like I'm getting something right for, for doing this. Uh, so it, it was a similar thing with, uh, with Wispr where, uh, when you hit your, uh, let's say 2,000, uh, word limit, so n- now that, you know, we're, we're changing a little bit of, of how that trial works, but, uh, essentially finding the right moment to show the referral program and make it tangible so like you're right about, you're like you're right about to hit your, your word limit. "Hey, did you know that if you share this with your friend you can get the next month free?" Okay, I'm gonna take five seconds and go and do that and I'll tell one friend, "Hey, sign up for this." And if they sign up I get that one month and now I have another person that can spread the word and, and that k factor is, is what makes or breaks that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So align referral program to usage limits?
- MSMatt Swulinski
If that is your product, right? Like uh, like what is the thing that if you have more of won't frustrate you, right? So like for Viktor, right? The, the referral program that we have so it's, it's all token based. You get credits to essentially use in Viktor. Um, whenever you're near the limit we give you, uh, essentially a decision tree depending on who you are of what you could do to earn free credits. You know, we have a creator program so if you just post on LinkedIn about Viktor we give you a payout via CPM directly to your account in credits to any user and that gives us social and virality that we can essentially push forward on. Uh, or, uh, you can, uh, be a part of the re- the actual referral program where you can invite companies and you get a percentage revenue share of the referred company's paying plan in credits every month. So if I'm a company and I know another cool company that should be using Viktor and I know that Viktor's expensive, you know? We, we have like eight-person teams that are spending $15,000, $20,000 a month to use Viktor. Uh, and it replaced all their hiring. We can go into that later. Um, but like for example, if that's a cost item and I know that if I can bring, I have another friend that has an agency, they'll probably spend 5K, and I'll get 20% of that as rev share, and that lowers my cost. But to us, that makes sense from a CAC basis. You know, we're willing to spend 1,000, 2,000 depending on the, the, the cohort to acquire a customer. We'd rather have our customers finding those best customers for us.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah, fuck, if I'm a startup founder and I've got a load of founder friends in non-competitive markets, great. Game on.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yep.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, I to-totally get that. Okay. Any ways that founders fuck up referral programs that you, they should avoid?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Uh, I mean, it's, it's either not making them tangible, where it's just like a, "Hey, refer your friends," and it's a, "But what am I getting for it?" Right? Uh, or it's just like some like, "You get swag," or just like things [chuckles] that don't really matter. Uh, or they create these like hyper complicated 20 tiers, like do these actions and like, uh, gamifying the referral program, and then no one wants to use it 'cause it's just like, it's a pain. So I think like i-it's somewhere in that spectrum of like, you're either doing that or that. Like, you need to hit the sweet, the sweet spot of what that looks like.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Unless it's Palantir swag, in which case-
- MSMatt Swulinski
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
... that's really quite cool, and I would love that. Um,
- 44:07 – 46:21
Paywalls: Put It Right After the Magic Moment
- HSHarry Stebbings
we mentioned there like the timing of which you put that referral in front of people. The paywall is a difficult one, and it is also, it's like where to put it, whether it needs to be hard and immediate, whether you need to show value. How do you think about lessons, advice to founders on the immediacy of the paywall and where it sits best?
- MSMatt Swulinski
So, uh, I think even before the paywall analysis, the, the main thing you want to, uh, adjust for is like when that magical aha moment happens, and, uh, you want that magical moment happen as soon as possible. And, but you also don't want, like, you want the paywall near that moment, where like, uh, y-you, it, that moment is either your first discovery of, wow, this is amazing, um, but you wanna kinda continue that over time. So like you have that magical aha moment, and then you're, you're kinda, y-you stay in that kind of like honeymoon phase of like, "This is just amazing." And then within that phase, paywall, right? Uh, and that, that's like, whether it's words, uh, words per, uh, week or how many credits you get in Viktor. Uh, this is like a ga- you know, this is a, a big game that we're, we're trying to, uh, hyper refine now is how many free credits should we give you, and how do we nudge Viktor to show you really useful workflows? Because the moment you have one that goes, "This is game-changing," paywall. Right? Because then, then, then you, you wanna open up your pocketbook because you've, you've felt something magical that you haven't felt before. And because there's so many products, those true, unique magic, this is i-- "this product is insane" moments. And like the, this happened at Wispr for like when we had that first rocket ship moment, when like LinkedIn was going absolutely nuts of like, "There's this thing, Wispr, and I'm not typing anymore." And a lot of that was organic, right? But that's because people hit that magical moment. Uh, and that's like similar, like with the amount of posts that are happening, uh, about Viktor. A lot of, like, I'd say half of them are organic, half of them are like the creator program that I said you post and you can get credits, but it's all genuine, right? But it's the, that magic moment that matters.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Should credits go in marketing budgets?
- MSMatt Swulinski
We call this fully loaded CAC. So our free trial credits get summed with marketing spend. If, if you're not doing that, then you're not really calculating your acquisition cost.
- HSHarry Stebbings
No.
- MSMatt Swulinski
So yeah, uh, trial credits, uh, or like anything free that you're giving away is cost, and it goes under, it, it is a marketing cost
- 46:21 – 55:40
AEO: The New SEO Nobody Is Doing Well
- MSMatt Swulinski
item.
- HSHarry Stebbings
We mentioned another one that was very interesting. You said AEO, which is obviously kind of, um, [lip smacks] a kind of answer engine optimization. We invest in Peak, which-
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah
- HSHarry Stebbings
... essentially optimizes this.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Mm-hmm.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Um, how do you think about that as a new channel? How do we embrace it? What should we know?
- MSMatt Swulinski
AEO in general followed the, like, the core tenants of SEO in general, where, uh, y- what like used to be old school SEO, like pumping out thousands of pages came back again 'cause like Google, because they own the, the SEO algorithm, essentially penalized people that were just pumping out pages for SEO, so like over the last couple years people stopped doing that. But the sheer amount of pages that you have in AEO, that is also changing a little bit. But like, you know, if you look at, um, you, you can, you can ask any, uh, agent, uh, to analyze the sitemap and essentially do like cron. So we do this with Viktor. We look at every competitor and we, we look at their sitemap and we look at, uh, what... And like we see how many pages they're making. All these companies are doing like 100 to 200 pages a week and it's all, like a lot of it is just like generated AI slop. Um, so that's also what you don't want to do at scale. You actually like want valuable content that says valuable things because the, the AI crawler essentially ingests that, and then what you're seeing there is what gets written about you when like, "What is the best tool for this?" Or like, "I'm trying to do this," and it's, it's doing these citations. So the things that I'll say that are the most important in AEO now, it's like, yes, have an engine that you send content through your website on specific things, but the most important thing is YouTube, Reddit, and like the, the social narrative. So like, uh, one of the early levers that every founder should, should do when they're first [clears throat] when they're first starting, uh, with, um, you know, scaling is investing in good YouTube reviews. 'Cause YouTube reviews, because they're long form and it, the, the, they, they rank long tail, they'll essentially, um, be... They're one of the main things that get picked up by the answer engine. Um, so you'll have your website PR, external sources talking about you, and one of the biggest, best external sources are how many reviews and videos do you have on YouTube? They're a really high citation on ChatGPT, um, and that's like one of the early, I'd say, strong things that every founder should focus on.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Dude, is traditional PR and news fucking dead? And what I mean by that is like, you know, being in TechCrunch used to matter.
- MSMatt Swulinski
D- I, I still think it matters in the sense that like, um, like, uh, I, I have the opinion that, you know, when you launch, do a product hunt, get featured in TechCrunch Like, th-that's just like [laughs] it's like founder initiation
- HSHarry Stebbings
Short table stakes almost
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I'd say, like, it, it builds a level of credibility and trust that, like, you are on the map in the same way that everyone went through the process. But, like, uh, the reason why it's important, the PR is less of a, like, PR blows up and there's, like, a traffic wave. Really that PR is meant for citations, right, around AEO. Like, how many external credible sources are writing about you? Then you'll see your AEO traffic significantly increase because the more of a not owned narrative is being talked about positively about you, the better off the product is.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Should I bother doing TikTok?
- MSMatt Swulinski
[lip smack] Uh, I, I think there's a time and place for it. It, it depends on, you know, are you more B2C than anything else? Like, uh-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I've never met a CMO or a head of growth who's been able to crack it. I've never.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, I mean, like, it, it, just, just like in the way that the content gets digested, like, I think there's a time and place to, like, do some audience, uh, diversification. But yeah, to be honest, in any of the, the three kind of core companies that I've been at so far, it hasn't worked yet, but maybe I'll, I'll, I'll get a chance to change that at Victor.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Totally get that. Final one, again, before we move to team composition. But what happens if when we turn off paid as much, so we're spending really aggressively and it's working, it's working, and we get to 30, 40, 50 million in revenue and we're like, "Mm, probably got a bit of a paid engine now that we're a bit hooked on." Turn off the paid, dial it really right back, and growth [imitates flatline] down.
- MSMatt Swulinski
That means you have other problems, right? Like, I think, um, at the sweet spot for organic mix should be around, like, 35 to 45% of acquisition is word of mouth organic and, like, truly people just discovering it based on everything else that you've built. Uh, in the beginning, because you just started and there's not a lot of stuff out there about you, it is entirely tied to paid. But in the later stage, if you turn everything off, that means you have forgotten about the other half of the job, which is the SEO, the AEO, the reviews, everything being written. So, like, you sometimes wanna dial down and see how elastic it is, again, to the, the previous part that we were saying, 'cause that's like, uh, y- you definitely want a strong MMM model and incrementality when you're... Like, the moment you start spending north of a million dollars a month, uh, definitely have a model that says, "This channel is incremental. This is not." And, like, the model will in the beginning always be wrong. Make some changes, dial things down, do holdouts, whatever, and then see if the model proves true. Model gets better over time, and then you have... Y- you're, you're less in the dark, right? Like, you, you actually understand what levers go up and down and where you can actually spend a lot. So, I think spending down to understand how much drop-off you have is actually a good, very strong learning moment.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How many good growth leaders do you actually think there are?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Not a lot.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- MSMatt Swulinski
If I'm gonna be honest, um, uh-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Like, really not a lot. There's a lot of founders who'll be listening to this and going, "Wow." Like I, I, I'm thinking through, like, three companies in particular where I'm like, "Shit, I wish I could put Matt in there."
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. I mean, I, I think I've had, like... I've had an interesting kind of like grow up through marketing is because I started, I started in corporate consulting, which was an absolute life suck. I hated it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm.
- MSMatt Swulinski
And that got me to found my first agency where I had to learn how to do everything myself from zero, right? And because I had to do that, and I did that in both E-Com, SaaS, and enterprise B2B, my agency is still around today, uh, and, uh, j- just not involved in the day-to-day. Um, but, like, because I had to do that, I understand how to launch a meta ad. I'm not a s- you know, head of growth or CMO that, like, has no idea how to do execution, which is also, like, this is why also as head of growth at Wispr, uh, up until December of this past last year, I was the only person doing execution on a 3, 4, 5 million dollar budget. I was l- doing everything myself.
- HSHarry Stebbings
But this is what I say to all, like, university students and young people say, which is like, it's never been more important to be full stack.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yep.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Like, you need to be writing the creative, shooting the video, editing the video, putting the video on meta, whatever it is, Instagram, YouTube, you name it. Full barrel. Like, the whole, "Oh, I just do creative and copywriting," fuck that.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, I mean, uh, I think a lot of people have been saying this, and, and I definitely, uh, echo that, like, hyper specialists are dying a slow death.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- 55:40 – 1:08:25
Should AI Change Your Entire Creative Strategy?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Why are they failing?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Uh, uh, the, the people that are in those roles are not systems thinkers, where like if you're i-in a marketing or let's say ops role and you're not a systems thinker, you don't know-- you, you actually don't know-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you think about it? What does systems thinking mean?
- MSMatt Swulinski
So, uh, uh, to me, that's being able to step back from, let's say, a task that is a part of my job, being able to take one degree of separation from the task itself and say, "In my role, what are all of the moving pieces that essentially I need to do on a day-to-day basis? What are the interrelationships? Where's the boring admin? Where's the reporting? What's all of that?" And being able to map that out and understand how your job as a system actually works because then you can actually say, "Okay, I can apply an agent or AI to this part. Now I can focus on this higher leverage part of my job." Right? And a lot of people go and go to ChatGPT and ask it a question, and then they go on still doing their job the manual way, right? And if you take a step back and say, "What would it take for me to fully automate, let's say, all of my job?" W- uh, of course, it's not gonna work. Things are gonna break apart. But run yourself through that thought experiment. And the thing is, is if you ask a lot of people that, it turns out they don't really understand their job and 'cause they're not systems thinkers. They don't, they don't actually know what are all the inputs and the outputs. Uh, so that, that's the line for me. So like when I, when I interview people to fill in the team, uh, it's just, it's like partially like an engineering interview where like systems thinking is the bar.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So what do you ask them to do? Well, I, I want a job with you, okay? Uh, you're clearly fucking brilliant, and I'm a podcaster. Um, what are you gonna put me through? How are you gonna test me?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. I-I so like, uh, the core question is more of like how do you use AI as a workflow in work? But I'm actually more curious, how do you use AI workflows in your personal life? Like, do you have any systems that you feed through AI that make you a better p- better person outside of work? And like maybe the line blurs of like what you do is also work is personal, whatever.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And so a good answer versus a bad answer would be?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. A good a- uh, I mean, a, a bad answer would be, uh, you know, I, I, I have a, a Skill or like a, a, a chat thread that's like a, a project in ChatGPT that I talk to, and it has like some context 'cause it's like that, that's-- yes, that's factually correct. That's how you should use, let's say, a memory layer and a context layer and y- you have one proactive chat conversation, so it works. Chatting with the thing is not a workflow, right? Where, uh, if there's no feedback loop where, uh, like one of the core things that I always test for is, uh, let's say an AI gives you slop. What do you do with it? A lot of people, what they'll do is they'll take the slop and then say, "This is slop." And you know, maybe it changes it, and they get frustrated. Then they take the doc and start writing it themselves. And if you don't go through the pain of giving it feedback, like that's the first kind of feedback loop that I test for. But the next thing is, is from let's say you have, uh, a loop and like I used this example before of like, uh, I built like a sponsorship system as W- at Wispr. But essentially the, the workflow is a self-improving loop where like, uh, if a s- you know, a newsletter sponsor emails me, uh, my agent essentially knows that this is a, uh, newsletter request. Um, it asks them for their rates. It does research on what their audience is. It does the first part of negotiation for me. I step in to approve the like, "Yes, we wanna work with them." We get a contract, and that's where my manual step in newsletter ends. I throw the contract into the agentic system. It, uh, ingests all the cost data into, uh, the, the file system. Uh, it does copywriting. It does all of the email sending. It send, it creates all the links. It creates all the conversion tracking. It sends everything out to the partner 'cause like a newsletter is like a boring, antiquated email. I will email you, and you will tell me the performance. Uh, and then based on the copywriting and based on the cost, it will essentially also know what performance looked like and then say, "Do we continue on with the partner?" That's also an, an agentic decision because I have CPM should be this. Conversion should be this. Let the run fi- fizzle out if it didn't work out, right? And again, that's, that's a workflow, right? Like I, I have, I have a couple human touch points but the things that I know that if it analyzes the data and same thing, if it generated a copy, we-- it knows all of every link's performance and can say, "This copy works. This doesn't." So the next time it generates copy, it's based on all historic data. It's not a-- and, and that's like an, a self-improving sy-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do you use for this?
- MSMatt Swulinski
So this was first, uh, the like marketing OS, uh, I built, uh, at Wispr. So it was like Claude code on a computer, uh, that's just the, the folder system and like Skill and .md files. Uh, that was the beginning of, of that system. So it would essentially be that, right? Where I have Claude plugged into my email with, you know, Cron set up to essentially check at 9:00, check at noon, check at 6:00. Are there any new newsletter requests? Do a workflow to, to respond to those things and then bubble up to me a message in Slack being like, "Hey, these need your decisions. Here's some contracts that got [clears throat] that got sent over." Uh, and then, uh, that system, uh, evolved. So that was like my own OS. I had to then Git control that folder to share that with the team so other people can use the workflow. So then for essentially a year and a half, I was the one person at Wispr doing all execution. So imagine a million a month on Google, hundreds of thousands of keywords, ads, experiments, landing pages. I owned every KPI from eyeball to download, and then product took it over, right? Onboarding. Uh, but then add meta, add newsletters. So at a, at a given point, I was working with between 70 and 120 unique newsletter providers that would send me emails, ask for copy approval. I needed to create unique images. So I said, "Well, why are newsletters still in the, in like the Stone Ages?" But there's no platform. Like, it's all through email, and you're negotiating and haggling with these people trying to get you on a CPM, right? So that was the, one of the first things that I created a workflow around. Uh, and like the way... Like I s- I don't code, right? Like, I learned how to do this by doing it. I want to automate this. Cloud code, how would you do this? And I started by I, I built the OS asking how to build an OS, right? Like, and then every single day, like I would say 90 to 95% of m- my work through the entire day was fed through the AI. So like, I wanna optimize the ads. Can you pull the reporting, right? What are the keywords? And I, I would make all the changes, m- see all the copy through cloud code in the terminal, because that allowed me to give feedback to the feedback loop. So every day got a little better, got a little better. And there came a point where I could, like the, the models also got good enough. Like, I was an early adopter of cloud code, so like, uh, December of '25 was when, you know, the cloud code moment happened. I, I adopted it in September before it was good.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And immediately you saw that insane ramp.
- MSMatt Swulinski
It, it was wrong a lot. Like, there was like the, the copy was poor, like things broke. It was early days, but like, I was curious. Like I, I'm a tinkerer and like I used that to essentially learn how to do the whole thing and like, I know we deviated from the team question, but the, that as me having to learn how to do the workflow essentially because I had to do it not knowing how to make that work going from A to Z, that's what I test for, is can you take a hard problem and build a system around it that you have solved?
- HSHarry Stebbings
How many candidates do you actually meet who have that level of depth?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Less than 1%.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Exactly.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. Uh-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can, can you even build a team on that? Like-
- MSMatt Swulinski
So but that's the thing, right? Like, um, I think the team composition of, of today and tomorrow is way leaner than it was before. So like we likely will like for, you know, at Grammarly, you know, let's say, you know, bigger startup in SaaS, startup is [chuckles] air quotes there, uh, big corporate, uh, SaaS, uh, they have a influencer marketing team, right? They have like three, four, or five people. Today and tomorrow, that is one really good person with an amazing suite of agents that will only ever touch, like n- imagine you scale to 100,000 influencers that are posting on you in a month. If you have an agentic system and you know how to weed through the data, understand where you need to be plugged in, you could do that. And that's why even though it's 1% of candidates, that's fine. If I find that one person that is gonna be able to fully own that, build the systems, and like right now, uh, and this is like my bet for the next, you know, three, five years, you know, 80% of our work is still manual, 20% is agents. Hence why like my bet into Viktor to like essentially solving all of knowledge work. I think in three years, companies will essentially be like board of directors, where 20% of the work is the strategy and the thinking, and then agents just do 80% of the execution, right? Like right now it's still like we're still, you know, uh, editing is manual. Sending an email is still manual. Even though we have the tools, like there's still a human layer into that. I think that will change as quality gets better, usage and like actual adoption towards an ROI basis gets there. That's my bet, and that's, that's also why this stuff is so important, right? Because if you can't understand how the systems work, you're never gonna be able to use your agents.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So less than 1% B2B CMOs today, are they fucked? I don't mean that too bluntly, but I don't know any B2B CMO i- in a traditional company, in a, in a scaled company, that has any fucking clue what you're talking about.
- MSMatt Swulinski
They hire those people around themselves, which I think like there's, there's still prob-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do they? Do they really?
- MSMatt Swulinski
They, they try to. I mean, I, I-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm not gonna name companies 'cause I don't wanna shit on people, but like if you look at some of the big providers, are you seriously saying in your-
- MSMatt Swulinski
No
- HSHarry Stebbings
... Ana Plans and your Coopers and your, that anyone has a fucking clue what you're talking about?
- MSMatt Swulinski
No, no, no, I mean, yeah, I mean, that, that's, that's also why I think the companies that do will quickly gain market share against those that don't, right? And, and that's why I think we live in very interesting times in terms of competitive environment, where the incumbents that don't adopt this at the senior level will essentially, their growth rates will, will s- stand still while the hyper growers that are doing exactly this framing will essentially gain that market share and out-compete them, right? So I, I think you're right. Like, I think leadership needs to change. But, and like I said, I think a lot of teams, and, and my hot take was probably fire most of your marketing team that is not a systems thinker. Like, stop brute forcing people in. Hire the right people into the roles 'cause the, the role has changed. The JD is no longer the same what it was a year ago, right? And, and, and people are still brute forcing people into these new J- JDs. I think, uh, there needs to be a bit of a shakeup.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay. I'm a founder. I'm looking at my marketing team today. There's 10 people. I'm like a Series A, B firm, whatever, uh, 10 people. Who should I fire? How do I test it?
- MSMatt Swulinski
When you're not looking and you come back and there are suddenly now systems and that one person is 10X themselves, you're not gonna fire that person, but then you will very [chuckles] clearly see who hasn't done that, and that like, that difference is being felt where like the A players are becoming S tier players and the people that were B players are becoming D players and that, that, like that rift is created.
- HSHarry Stebbings
The other thing I just think is like consumer marketing is not consumer marketing and B2B marketing is not B2B marketing. It's just marketing.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah.
- 1:08:25 – 1:20:36
Quick-Fire Round
- HSHarry Stebbings
Dude, are you ready for a quick fire? I've loved this. Um, what is the most underappreciated growth channel today?
- MSMatt Swulinski
There's a channel we haven't mentioned, and I think a lot of, uh, people do this poorly, and it, it actually compounds if you do it well, and that's affiliate, where you're, you're paying, let's say, a percentage of revenue or some kind of, uh, CAC to people that are not your customers, and they go out of their way to create content and reviews and, and all of that. And it, it, you... And so like at Wispr and, and Victor, um, it is the highest ROI channel, and if you set up a strong affiliate program and you bring people into the door and they feel like they can earn money, uh, even before they're your customers, they will become your customers. Uh, and it's one that like, it's a little bit outside of the referral program 'cause you're not, it's not through the product. It's how can you make this, you know, sexy external program that someone that is just an affiliate wants to... Like, they have a surface area, they have a website, they have, they have some audience that they have, and they wanna sell your thing to that audience. A- acquire them that way, and like that's, that's one of the highest early ROI channels that if you start doing in the beginning, it ramps, right? Like, so like for, for, for Victor, a, a good 10 to 15% of our acquisition on a monthly basis comes through our affiliate program. Uh, and that's, you know, people that want to earn money because we give them, uh, between 10 and 15% revenue share. So if you're, you know, you, if that affiliate gets a company that pays 10K a month, they're making 1,500 bucks a month from one sale as an affiliate. That's also like, uh, get, create a program that wants people to earn money, and this is the other thing that we said, like-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I do this creative program? [laughs]
- MSMatt Swulinski
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
Swear I've sent like 10 companies to Fred. [laughs] Mom, I'm retiring. [laughs]
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah, I mean, we, we have, we have some affiliates that are making 20, 30K a month.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the most polluted channel? What's the, ugh, this is just shit pit?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Ugh. I mean, I'm gonna say X in the sense of-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Just the launch videos are boring. They're boring.
- MSMatt Swulinski
That, that, that's exactly what I mean, right? Where, where like everyone is trying to do exactly the same launch viral thing and like, uh, and it's also polluted in the sense that like X ads don't work [laughs] no ma- a- and like that, that to me just means the platform is still-
- HSHarry Stebbings
They don't work?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Gi- gi- I have yet to meet a SaaS head of growth or performance marketer that says that X ads print. So if some- someo- someone has, uh, gotten X ads to print, please tell me because I would love to be challenged on that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
That's fascinating. Okay, so X, I'm with you. I'm just so bored of this. I don't know if you saw, there was one video yesterday, and we're talking about it, so it obviously worked, but it's this company Iconic Weave, I think it's called, where they jumped out of a plane and did the like copy-
- MSMatt Swulinski
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
... jumping out of a plane. And you're, it's like have we got to that stage? Like is it that mature a market that you like have to jump out of a plane and read it while doing that?
- MSMatt Swulinski
I, I mean-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Fuck. [laughs]
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah. I mean, 'cause like the, the, the formula of like shock and awe launch videos, a- a- 'cause to be honest, and then like specifically those are the ones that like, "Well, we don't really, don't really have a product." And I'm not saying maybe in their example, but like the, the sheer amount of like we launched this for that, and we spent way more time into our launch video than actually any time in our product. And like I see so much [laughs] of that, and that's why I say polluted.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What would you most like to change about the world of growth?
- MSMatt Swulinski
Have more [laughs] good growth leaders. Uh, I mean, but, but, uh, in, in honesty, I think-
- HSHarry Stebbings
My request for startups would be I don't know why we don't have a school which basically says, "Hey, completely understand you need to be AI pilled. Great. What the fuck does that mean? Come to our school, and for six weeks we will teach you how to get jacked up on every system, process, model for six weeks. Nine to five this is your job, and you pay 10,000 bucks." I would say that's more valuable than university, say, for teenagers or-
- MSMatt Swulinski
I, I'll go start another company. I mean, [laughs] I-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you-
- MSMatt Swulinski
No, no. I mean, you're 100% right, because I mean like-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I would fund that company today with millions of dollars.
- MSMatt Swulinski
[laughs]
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm being serious.
- MSMatt Swulinski
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Like if you're JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs, and you put that at the bottom of Canary Wharf, would you not send every single employee there?
- MSMatt Swulinski
'Cause then you, you, you built the hyperscalers of tomorrow. I mean, what, what's... I mean, super interesting. Uh, so like I, I went to NYU, uh, for, for college. Uh, what's interesting, I did not take a single, I mean zero marketing classes, and I learned everything via doing. And, uh, I think what's interesting is like the, the education around marketing I think is also like sit still. And I'm like, again, I, I haven't been into a college today. I mean, maybe that has changed, but like are they teaching you how to install a Facebook pixel and... No, right? Like, uh, the, the application, uh, the, the f- like the, the framing of how it works comes after you start doing the execution, right? Like you can do and then understand verse understand and sit in a room and learn, and then go and try to do the thing. You're gonna, you're gonna learn so much faster just via doing. So I, I agree with you. I, I've yet to see like true A to Z boot camp of what it means to be a growth leader. And I mean- Like Reforge and Brian Balfour, they, they've tried to do this, but like it's still-
Episode duration: 1:20:46
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