- Duration: 17 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JFG2NZMYYBWMCWCG70WM63SM (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JFG2NZMYYBWMCWCG70WM63SM)
Transcript
[kunwar]: Got it, yes. So, like Max, I gave my introduction to Max, but I’ll quickly tell you. So we’ve been creating a lot of content on Instagram and LinkedIn for the last four years. And this year we started ghostwriting for a couple of founders and VCs in India and the US. And during that process, we discovered a lot of tools like Taplio, like a few others, and realized that inspiration is something that a lot of people struggle at who want to post consistently on LinkedIn and Twitter. So we decided to build our own tool because there were some features that we found that were missing. Initially we thought we’ll just make it for ourselves but then other people also started liking it. So currently we launched our product about a month back majorly in India and we’ve got like a decent number of signups around 3,000 signups and around 100 paid users have converted in the last one month. And during this process, while we were interviewing a few users, we discovered that one of our user is like a registered commenter on Megafone. So that is how I discovered your platform. And one of the founders who I was ghostwriting in the US stopped using our service. And I certainly saw that a lot of people were commenting on his posts, which was very odd. So I inquired with him as well. So he was using a commenting service in India, which is manual, not like a tool. So yeah, that’s how I came across your product. So I went to your website and set up a call. What I had in mind while setting up the call was a lot of people might need it who are using our product. So I was thinking if there could be an API of sorts that you could expose to us and we could integrate it in one of our plans. That was like the initial thought when I was when I set up the call with you, because I think a lot of people who struggle to post also don’t get a lot of traction initially. So to give them the initial boost, it might be useful. Like that was one of the thoughts that I had in mind. Yeah, makes sense. [Michael Houck]: And also congrats on the growth and the success so far. Sounds like you guys are really onto something, which is great. Thank you. But yeah, I think that doing it as an API obviously makes the most sense. Um, like how are you thinking about what you’d want exposed in that API? Cause right now you’d be, you’d be our first API like partner. So what would you want to expose in that? [kunwar]: So I was, so basically ours is also, uh, like a desktop only platform. So for example, in my third, like the top plan, if we could, like I saw your interface max showed like a quick demo I haven’t paid on the product I don’t know how it actually works but I could get some idea through the call that I had with one of our users and through what max showed me so for example if let’s say someone on an average people creates 10 to 15 posts in a month right so if they want an additional boost so we could add some sort of a plugin they can put it that they can put the link and we can send that through a webhook to you and you can then further so we can pass the tags also because during the onboarding process we take their information like if they’re a product manager or a founder or the interest that they have so we can pass that information to you and accordingly you can pass it to your community on whatsapp like you do for comments and I mean I know you’ve built a wall it also in your product. So we’ll have to do some development at our end because we don’t have a wallet as of now in the product. [Michael Houck]: So the the one the one thing I think we need we need to talk through it’s like the information sharing that that makes total sense seems pretty straightforward. Like identify the niches and things. The thing that would be maybe a little more tricky is so people pay us a subscription for access to the network. And then they also pay the creators out of it on the platform. So it’s, you’re a creator, I’m paying you $30 for a repost or something like that, right? So we, if you're including this in just one of your tiers, you know, the wallet part, I think we need to figure out how that how that would work. [kunwar]: Yeah, I mean, there are two, three tricky parts, actually, one is like, adding that to our subscription, how will we position it? And so I can what I can do initially is I so we currently ghostwrite for seven eight founders. I can try exposing this as a service first to them and see how the response is. Post that we can think of a deeper integration because doing development without proof does not make sense for both of us. It will waste a lot of time. So we can probably look at it that way. Understood. And I was also thinking is like for example I don't understand the commercials fully yet but do you also want some help or somewhere we can partner where we can build a community in India which will be very cheaper as compared to like I don't know how many people you have in India as of now who comment so if we can do like a like those won't be very high quality commenters but the numbers might spike up if we can do a partnership there also, because we have access to a lot of students and a lot of working professionals in India, who have a LinkedIn account might not be like very huge following on their account, something can [Michael Houck]: be done there also. Yeah, so we don't accept any amplifiers who have less than 20,000 followers. If they have 20,000 or more, then we'd love to have them on the platform. If they don't, then we would need to hold off for now. [kunwar]: And what is typically like someone between 20 to 30,000 followers charge for that? [Michael Houck]: So like, for, for, generally speaking, every 100,000 followers that somebody has, they'll add another $10 to a comment. And then they can charge more for reposts and quotes and things like that. But someone with your 30,000 followers, depending on the niche is probably going to be, you know, three to $5 for a comment, maybe a little bit more if they're having like a high highly engaged audience. Got it. [kunwar]: Help me understand one thing like what happened. So we were doing some creator partnerships for our product like last month and one of the creators he has around 70,000 followers on LinkedIn. So initially he like we agreed on one post with a plugin of our product. The price we agreed on was around $70, right? He told me that give me $80 or $90 and I’ll promise around 600 likes and 150 comments on the post, right? So I’m like, it’s fine, we’ll pay you $10 extra if you're promising such high engagement. So we did that. And through this, the post got around 630 likes on LinkedIn and around 100 plus comments, more than 200 comments actually. But I wasn't very like, the number of link clicks were very low. I thought that there's something fishy. So I asked him for his number of impressions. There were around 9,000 impressions, which is very odd. [Michael Houck]: Many comments. Yeah. [kunwar]: So, but, but when I looked at the people who were commenting, a lot of these comments were very high quality people across the world, across the world with the blue badge, like a Linden top wise badge and, and like an influencer in India, who I know he had commented. So I reached out to him asking, did you actually comment or so he said that I gave access somewhere and it happened. Uh, I didn't even give access to this comment. So I was very shocked. Like if there are services or tools where, which, which have taken access from people on their behalf, they're commenting without their knowledge. That's where it was very fishy. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. That sounds very sketchy. Uh, we, we don't even have access to our users accounts. So. We don't use AI at all. It's all them actually commenting and things like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Correct. [kunwar]: Because when I spoke to one of your users, he told me how the process works. And my first question was, is it safe? Have you given your access? And when he told me it's through WhatsApp, that's when I set up the call, because I wanted to first check if it's guarded, I'll give you access, I'll give you the link to that post, which we had created with the creator, check it out, if you can figure out what happened that post how such how so many people have commented and he just charged $20 extra from me. [Michael Houck]: My my, I’d love to take a look at it. My hypothesis is that he may not have trimmed you know, when you share a LinkedIn post, it has that the UTM parameters at the end of the URL. If you don’t turn those off, then they track that, you know, everyone’s coming into this same link, it must be spam. Automatically trim that off. So somebody pastes in a link with that are so system automatically. [kunwar]: So they can’t figure out the source from where they’ve clicked. I used to build machine learning models at Uber and Airbnb. [Michael Houck]: So I am, I know how to get around some of these systems, which is simple, simple ways to do it. [kunwar]: Nice, nice, lovely, lovely chatting with you. I also saw your podcast recently with the Tapio founder was very insightful. The one that you posted. Watched it like day before yesterday before our call. Interesting. So Michael let me know whatever works. I don’t really have a clear agenda but I know there could be some synergy for sure. So I’ll first probably sign up to your product once to check it out how it works and then try exposing it to a few people who I’m working with as a ghostwriter first. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, well, let me know when you do. I’ll add a promo code to your account. [kunwar]: So you get the first the first month back. Got it. Oh, any if you have any other raw thoughts after call do feel free to ping me we can probably explore something that might work out. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I definitely see the potential here. Let’s let’s keep talking about it. I’ll send over some ideas probably over the weekend or on Monday. Yeah. And we’ll go from there. Got it. [kunwar]: Lovely connecting. Let’s stay in touch. Thank you so much for taking out the time. See you. Bye bye.