- Duration: 19 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JBCJD6XFH4A2P2ZAJKQKBGR6 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JBCJD6XFH4A2P2ZAJKQKBGR6)
Transcript
[Max Palmer]: how you heard about us and why you’re interested in Megaphone? [Sachin Jain]: Okay, so I heard about this in one of the YC WhatsApp groups. [Max Palmer]: The YC WhatsApp group? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Oh, cool. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. [Sachin Jain]: In fact, the point was Megaphone is crazily expensive. And there was something a YC founder built internally, which we guys started using. So I thought maybe we should try out Megafon as well. [Max Palmer]: Okay so they said it was crazy expensive and then they said they should test it out? [Sachin Jain]: So basically I just got curious that okay that there is a similar tool that exists and I just wanted to try that out. So I just wanted to try out Megafon. I just wanted to understand how it works because maybe the quality of inferences could be better And how does it work in the context of developer tools? Because I think more than the tool, it depends upon the community. So that’s why I got interested. Great. [Max Palmer]: So I’ll explain how Megaphone works. And then you can let me know if you have any questions. So Megaphone is a creator engagement marketplace. So we have users who are people like yourself, who are looking to grow either their personal audiences or the audience of a company account so they can get more leads or sales. And then we have the creators who are people in a variety of different niches who have anywhere from 20,000 followers to hundreds of thousands of followers. 20,000 is our minimum requirement. And these creators will engage with your content on Twitter, or LinkedIn. And when they engage with that content, it will help amplify your content within the algorithm. So typically, when I say engagement, it’s going to be a comment. So they’ll comment something relevant on your post. And then that will help boost the post in the algorithm again. So that’s how it works in a nutshell. It’s a very simple piece of software. We have over 150 creators using a platform in a few dozen different niches. And then we have hundreds of users who are growing their audiences by amplifying their posts on Megafone. Do you have any questions? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Right there. [Sachin Jain]: Yeah, I have a few questions. I think I understand how this platform works, because this is how the internal tool also works. But a couple of questions, like, I just want to understand the quality of engagement. Reason being, because we’re building a technical product, it’s a developer tools company. So do you have creators who have developers as followers? [Max Palmer]: Who have what? [Sachin Jain]: Who have developers as followers, or essentially developers as creators. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Right. [Max Palmer]: So we have, I can list a few of niches that we have creators in that will be relevant to you. And I think we do have a good amount of creator coverage in your areas. So we have a ton of creators in the tech and startup niche. We have lots of creators in the business and AI niche as well. A few creators in the data niche and a few creators in the design niche. But yeah, a lot in the startups and tech niche. In terms of this specific software development niche and developer niche, our creators, it doesn’t get that granular. So, you know, we have plenty and more broader niches like tech and startups, but we don’t have more granular niches like software development. Makes sense. [Sachin Jain]: I think the most or the closest relevant category or niche for us is tech and startup niche. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Sachin Jain]: Right. Is it possible that you can share a sample of the creators in this particular niche? No, it’s not. [Max Palmer]: So for kind of obvious reasons, the creators don’t want it to be known that they’re using the platform. [Sachin Jain]: So yeah, I can’t share who they are with you. That’s fine. How do we validate the quality of engagement? Because that’s the biggest concern. I don’t want my credibility to get affected by someone adding a random comment I think a very young audience. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. So when you post, uh, something to megaphone, when you post a tweet or a LinkedIn posts, a megaphone, you’re going to add a, there’s a box where you add contacts for what you want the creator to comment on. And that way the creator will know how you want them to comment. And then that way they’ll comment something relevant. Um, that you, you know, want them to come. [Sachin Jain]: So are you able to add some hints that you can add a comment like this? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Sachin Jain]: Okay. That’s helpful. Uh, and, uh, how, and who is going to pick like, uh, so will that, will that be decided by your platform that this is a post that I have submitted on megaphone and most likely I will be connecting my link Yep. So here’s how it works. [Max Palmer]: Our software allocates your posts based on three criteria. So first and foremost, we’re going to send your post to creators that are in your niche, right? We don’t want to send your post to creators that are in the health and wellness niche, because that wouldn’t make any sense. We would send it to tech and startup creators. Second, we want to send your post to creators that are online. At the time you’re posting so that those creators can engage right away because getting instant engagement is really important for these algorithms. And then third, we’re going to allocate your budget most optimally based on a follower to cost ratio. So these creators, they set their own prices. You will pay per post. Besides the subscription, you also pay per post. And the creators set their own prices. So they charge, typically, they raise their prices for about $10 for every 100,000 followers they have. So for example, we have a creator with 370,000 followers, and they charge $35 for engagement. Whereas we have other creators with 50,000 followers, and they charge $5 or $10 for it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Sachin Jain]: And how does the pricing work? [Max Palmer]: So I just explained the price per post, you will allocate a budget for every single post. It’s entirely up to you. On average, people are spending about $30 per post. But you know, we've had people spend, you know, well more than that, if you want to really amplify posts and get a ton of creators to engage. The second part of the pricing is the subscription. So you have to pay a subscription just to use the platform. And that's either 49 or $89 a month. The only difference between those two is the $89 a month tier, your posts will get sent to creators as soon as you send them to us. Whereas with the $49 a month tier, your posts will be delayed an hour until they’re sent to the creators. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [Sachin Jain]: All right. Fair enough. And do you have any YCD or a startup deal Something like that. [Max Palmer]: Any what? [Sachin Jain]: Any YC deal or a startup deal. [Max Palmer]: Any advice on the startup niche? Oh, so a YC deal. [Sachin Jain]: So YC deal is a platform where most of the companies offer deals to YC startups. [Max Palmer]: Oh, oh, oh, sorry. Deals. No, we don’t have any discounts for YC companies. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Sachin Jain]: I’m actually genuinely interested in trying this out. But I’ll figure out, you know, the budgeting and everything for this, maybe at a monthly level and see, you know, whether it makes sense to spend just that much on the social media. So right now, what we are doing is like, we have a big network of all YC founders, like more than 100-150 founders. And we have created this internal tool where we help each other in amplifying each other’s posts. So we connect to, we have connected our LinkedIn profile to a similar platform. And whenever we post to that platform, we get notified, other founders get notified and they help spread the word. Right. Which is actually working fine, but I think that having access to creators can actually I just want to do this experiment. I don’t know whether you know how to work better or not. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: It’s worth a try. There’s no long-term commitment. So you can allocate a few hundred dollars for a couple of months and try it out. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right. [Sachin Jain]: I think that’s all I needed, Max. Thanks a lot. Is it a self-serve, right? I can just go and sign up and then… Yep. It’s all self-serve. [Max Palmer]: So you can just sign up on the website and shoot us an email if you have any questions too. [Sachin Jain]: Sure. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Max. [Max Palmer]: Thanks, Sachin. Have a good one.