Caya from Slidebean on Mastering the Art of Startup Storytelling

00:00:01:17 - 00:00:21:05

Ben Hillman

Think of the value of your company as a unique treasure, something rare and precious. Now, how do you get this treasure into the hands of those who need it most? You could bury it and hope that someone stumbles upon it. Or you could create a delivery service meticulously designed to take this treasure and place it into the welcoming hands of your potential customer.

00:00:21:15 - 00:00:49:20

Ben Hillman

Like a flawless delivery system. Content marketing serves as the vehicle that transports the value of your company directly to an informed and receptive audience. Turning curiosity into engagement prospects into clients in the context of B2B SAS. This idea of a personalized delivery service becomes even more crucial. The goal is not to merely ship a product, but to translate the unique aspects that make your services resonate with specific businesses.

00:00:49:20 - 00:01:14:07

Ben Hillman

By crafting a content strategy that serves as this tailor made delivery service. You're not just pushing out information. You're sending carefully wrapped parcels of value each one address the particular needs of your clients. Leading this artful approach is our guest, Jose Caso, who goes by Kaia. He's the CEO at Slide Bean and has steered its YouTube channel to over 350,000 subscribers.

00:01:14:16 - 00:01:39:06

Ben Hillman

Kaia has managed to turn the delivery of content into an orchestrated, thoughtful system under his guidance. Content marketing is not a broad spectrum broadcast, but a targeted dispatch. He knows what each recipient needs and sharing the value of your company arrives at the right doorstep at the right time. With clear strategy, your content becomes a reliable delivery service for the worth of your company, creating an informed and engaged customer base.

00:01:40:16 - 00:02:04:08

Ben Hillman

Join us today as we delve into the world of Kaia, a mastermind who has transformed content marketing into a precise and empathetic delivery service. We'll explore how to create content that resonates. How to target the right audiences and how to ensure that your message is eagerly received. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the CEO of sliding himself and discover how to turn your content strategy into a route map to success.

00:02:05:04 - 00:02:27:03

Ben Hillman

From Paddle is Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SAS growth to make you an outstanding operator. I'm Ben Hillman and on today's episode, Kiah speaks with paddles. Katie Hannett about leveraging content marketing for startup growth and success. They talk about passion for content creation over monetization, welcoming and supporting the startup community.

00:02:27:07 - 00:02:46:11

Ben Hillman

Challenges and Lessons from Failed Content Series Content Strategy Differences with YouTube and TikTok, and the importance of honest feedback and idea validation. After you finish the episode, check out the show notes for a build guide from today's episode. Then, while you're leaving your five star review of this podcast, tell us what resonated most about our guest advice.

00:02:48:03 - 00:03:05:00

Katy Hammond

My name's Katie Hamann with Padel, and I'm here with Kayaks, CEO of Slide. Been so excited to get to talk to you today. So we're going to be focusing on leveraging content marketing for startup growth and success side. Being obviously has so much success with content marketing. So we're just going to learn everything that we can from you.

00:03:05:00 - 00:03:11:04

Katy Hammond

I'm going to clean everything out that we can, so let's get started. So to kick us off, can you tell us what's your name, company and what do you guys do?

00:03:11:05 - 00:03:31:10

Caya

I'm the CEO of a company called Slide Being. Most people don't know us because of the product that we build. Most people happen to know us because we stumbled upon a YouTube channel that really started growing. We started doing content really as marketing, as a marketing thing, but then creating content, especially on YouTube, ended up being so fun that we now sort of do that more than the average SAS company.

00:03:31:16 - 00:03:44:01

Katy Hammond

Awesome. And they do a really good job of it too. So can you tell us about that journey? So tell us about from conceptualizing the idea of slide been to where it stands now, tell us a little bit about how your role has evolved throughout that period.

00:03:44:01 - 00:04:09:22

Caya

I think the role of the CEO needs to sort of change with the times really quickly. Like I considered myself a sort of product or CEO that like product I, you know, need to do some UI design. I wanted to get involved the product and design and how it looked and how it worked. But soon enough I found myself in the situation with two other co-founders who were also proud people, where having a third opinion in most conversations was just creating extra work and agreeing extra work and voting problem number one.

00:04:09:22 - 00:04:28:19

Caya

And number two was nobody was really in charge of marketing, right? I have this thesis that the founding team of a company needs to have the skillset or the capacities or the competencies is to get their company to 100 K in rugby without hiring anybody else. If you have a team that has a designer and a marketer, but no, no one to build a product, it's not a great team.

00:04:29:00 - 00:04:41:01

Caya

Yeah, right. So I don't think we have the marketing aspect when we started, but nobody was really planning to own marketing. I'm like, Well, somebody's got to do that. So Right, I'll just do that. And I started learning how Facebook ads were against the types of hardware.

00:04:41:07 - 00:05:04:17

Katy Hammond

Awesome. He's like, Fine, I'll just do it better than anyone else. So obviously building a successful startup, there's a lot of people here and listening who are building startups and that involves navigating numerous different challenges. And now when people are looking for funding, that's even more challenging now than it was previously. So can you share some of the biggest challenges you faced as a founder while growing slide being and how you overcame them?

00:05:04:20 - 00:05:26:10

Caya

So I mean, with funding, I think that that's a hassle like I sort of come from this school of no, not as well. This misconception of if you have an idea of you have a team, you can get it funded because you read about this a lot. You read about, Oh, I remember. I remember we started like being so long ago that the news of the day back then was that this company called Yo, I don't know if you remember that or you're too young.

00:05:26:10 - 00:05:32:11

Caya

Yo, which was this app that you could use to just send someone a message that said, Yo, I'm not like a text message, but just yo.

00:05:32:12 - 00:05:35:00

Katy Hammond

Oh, I remember that now. That was fun. We have that in college.

00:05:35:00 - 00:05:54:18

Caya

We're raising money when we were when, when this came out, yo raised like $1,000,000 just because it did these yo thing. And we're like, if you raised money we thought was really cool products Presentation builder it's going to be easy for us to raise money, right So I think that that's a big struggle, that we're a big wall that early stage founders have to overcome, which is that raising money is actually really hard.

00:05:55:04 - 00:06:13:09

Caya

The reason why your raise raise money is probably because their founders were really well connected with investors in the in the Bay Area or wherever yo was from know, or because they had a successful startup first and they had built some credibility but for average non serial entrepreneur is first come it is really hard and you probably need a product, you probably need some revenue to do that.

00:06:13:09 - 00:06:32:05

Caya

So understanding that and honestly stop wasting time trying to raise money before you accomplish those things was useful. I mean, the money you can raise before you have revenue as a first time founder is Friends of our. That's all you have. But we spent so many hours, so many months, so many trips trying to raise money from other investors.

00:06:32:05 - 00:06:36:17

Caya

Before we had sold our only thing, which was, hey, just build a product that makes a little better.

00:06:36:17 - 00:06:51:23

Katy Hammond

So the content on slide beans, YouTube has just gotten better and better over the past five years, and now you're really creating the best video essays for startups. So when you think back to those early days when you were, you know, like, okay, I got to handle the marketing, I got to get in here and figure out Google ads.

00:06:51:23 - 00:06:57:09

Katy Hammond

What kept you going when you may not have seen the views or the comments to encourage you?

00:06:57:10 - 00:07:15:13

Caya

At first? Disclaimer I'll give is we only really started making YouTube content once we had figured out paid content and a consistent direct way to acquire customers, one that we could control, one where, you know, we spent ten K on this channel, we get 30 K in revenue. Once we have that engine going, you can start doing a lot of other things, right?

00:07:15:14 - 00:07:46:20

Caya

And that comes first. And YouTube's probably not going to be that engine because it's too unpredictable. The learning curve is too high and there's a very good chance that people sounds okay, but there's a very as a people won't like your content that you won't figure it out, but it'll take a long time to figure it out. The only reason we were able to figure it out eventually it took us if you go to the very, very nasty history of our YouTube channel until like very, very early videos that maybe we've already had and maybe not, you'll see some really shitty on really, really bad content like trying to copy Scott Galloway for a while

00:07:46:23 - 00:08:00:01

Caya

we came up with a sitcom that was kind of like was like the office, but like in a startup office, it was like a, like a scripted sitcom. We would, yeah, we did a bunch of things that didn't work out, and the reason why we kept going was because it was a fun it was it was fun for us.

00:08:00:01 - 00:08:18:21

Caya

We really enjoyed it and it was a very cheap experiment for us. We, by coincidence, we had some people from the have background in filmmaking on the team. We're working on the customer success team, but they were willing to sort of carve out some of their time to do this thing that they were really passionate about. You know, three years in, went by any other standard, we should have stopped making YouTube content because it was an experiment that didn't work out.

00:08:18:21 - 00:08:21:13

Caya

Three years in, we finally found a format contract.

00:08:21:19 - 00:08:24:17

Katy Hammond

So what would you say to start with for the founders sitting here?

00:08:24:17 - 00:08:49:00

Caya

I'd say that to avoid our mistakes. You know, first understand who this content is for. Like who's going to consume it. Don't fall into the trap of making content that's too broad. Okay? Something that's very useful for one. Like you have all these, like, coding channels that just teach a very specific brand. Sure. Subbranch of Python, and those channels have a big audience and they're able to sell you know, that's the objective in the end, selling, they're able to sell because they've captured this niche audience with with very competent content.

00:08:49:12 - 00:09:06:07

Caya

So I'd say that's that's one. I think the other option is you can eventually play off of the YouTube algorithm like the YouTube. The YouTube algorithm will eventually reward you and put your videos in front of people. But a good or the more well, that's less risky way to start is just a target search. So find and this is what eventually worked for us.

00:09:06:12 - 00:09:27:18

Caya

The first big breakthrough we had was like, Let's find searches that our audience is probably typing into YouTube. Let's find if those searches have decent answers or decent videos that answer that question. And if not, and if we can make a better video than what's already out there, let's do it. So many of the searches that we targeted for founding starting a business, pitch decks and the like at TEDx videos as an answer.

00:09:27:18 - 00:09:40:02

Caya

Like we're not going to compete with the TED video, so not that. Let's find another one. So, you know, we'd spent, you know, a couple of days researching a search that had the number, the right number of searches attainable where we could bring in expertise. I mean, make them here and now.

00:09:40:02 - 00:09:40:15

Katy Hammond

You've been a Ted.

00:09:40:15 - 00:09:48:14

Caya

Sperry esthetic, Ted. I got it. I saw techno the other day about this. It's like like, oh, you're a tight speaker. No, I'm not really like Ted. It's it's not as prestigious.

00:09:48:15 - 00:10:07:18

Katy Hammond

I don't know. I think it's still very cool. So earlier this year, you posted on LinkedIn and I'm yelling at you on the microphone again. Earlier this year you posted on LinkedIn about making it your mission to find new freeways to help founders, which I totally love this. So what is the least discussed area that you've found that has the most impact on companies?

00:10:07:19 - 00:10:38:06

Caya

I think that one undiscussed topic is failure because there is this common and well justified approach of, Hey look, don't give up, keep trying, like reinvent yourself, blah, blah, blah, and nobody talks too much about like when do you give up on something? How do I suppose that I'm Costa Rican? The you know, I had the disadvantage of like the first company I started, which was not like we funded a Kickstarter campaign and got a lot of attention and everybody had a big expectation about what that company was going to be when we eventually ran out of money where they know like we have to keep going.

00:10:38:06 - 00:10:51:20

Caya

So I made the very bad decision of putting a lot of company expenses on my credit cards, which ended which ended me with a lot of credit card debt. And then when my credit cards would stop, literally like they would stop going to the bank because they were maxed out. Yeah, okay, maybe we have to close the business out, but I had no choice.

00:10:51:20 - 00:11:20:04

Caya

I wish somebody had told me that I had the choice of saying, hey, that the business isn't working. Let's stop. Failure is not only like closing the business and giving up and and not doing it again, but failure is also accepting that you need to pivot. Yeah. In our case, it's like being we're talking about this before, which was, you know, I mean, we we got really good at marketing, you know, product for a long time didn't really live up to what the marketing was and we sort of changed accept that and give up or accept that we were weren't as good and pivot.

00:11:20:11 - 00:11:26:11

Caya

But you know, if you only have the mentality of not giving up, then you're never going to be able to go through those decisions in peace.

00:11:26:11 - 00:11:35:13

Katy Hammond

I think that's really wise and that's good advice. It's just hard to know at what point to keep going and at what point do you decide, okay, maybe it's time to throw in the towel.

00:11:35:13 - 00:11:52:10

Caya

I like the this idea of of like deadlines, for example, like extend that to other aspects of your life. But you didn't try this year to try to be an actor or you're going to try to make your SAS company. You put it dead by now, you'll put that deadline of December 31st. If you do everything you can, you will you bring to it during that time and it doesn't work.

00:11:52:10 - 00:11:57:17

Caya

The giving up part is less painful because you know that for that time you gave it everything you put. It helps.

00:11:57:18 - 00:12:03:06

Katy Hammond

Any. What encouragement would you give to founders if they are thinking, okay, I have to give up, or if they just gave.

00:12:03:06 - 00:12:16:19

Caya

Up, that's not bad at all. I think that again, as an early stage founder, you don't necessarily see failure as a good thing. I think that in hindsight or like future investors or future people you talk to, like having two failed startups under your belt is.

00:12:16:19 - 00:12:17:05

Katy Hammond

More.

00:12:17:05 - 00:12:21:11

Caya

Valuable than having no startups under your belt. You need much more value.

00:12:21:16 - 00:12:40:14

Katy Hammond

Absolutely. I agree with that. That's good advice. Okay. So it's I mean, you've created everything. And so, I mean, isn't just slightly you've done a really good job with creating different Series C, which has driven you a lot of traffic. So you've created successful series like company forensics and startups 1 to 1, which helped countless founders learn about the tech world.

00:12:40:15 - 00:12:49:19

Katy Hammond

So where did the idea come from to go down the route of creating specific series with their own sub brands instead of making Slide being branded blog videos?

00:12:49:21 - 00:13:05:18

Caya

We did this series thing, but we're really respected as well in the fact that the question like knows which series we've made, it makes me appreciate this more than than I than I expected. But as I told you, like, surge was the first thing that we targeted, right? So we wanted to make videos that target the targeted those searches.

00:13:05:20 - 00:13:29:10

Caya

Once that worked, once we got that engine running, two things happened. One, we felt that we understood you. Two, we felt that we understood how to make a video or publish it, how to promote it, how it would perform. So we felt more confident about YouTube as a channel. And two, we got greedier or we started to believe ourselves as creator and want to say influencers as creators in the sense that, hey, like if we made this video, that's such a niche topic.

00:13:29:15 - 00:13:51:09

Caya

Can we make a video that more people watch? Here's the pitch deck video, or like, how does a stock option pool for early stage companies like, Well, that video will get 10,000 views, but not that many people need that info, right? So we figured, well, can we make a video that more people watch? We did. And that's that's how this company forensic series started, which is this subbrand that most people know, which are these like teardowns of why a startup failed.

00:13:51:11 - 00:14:01:21

Caya

And some of the bigger like because some of them there was some schadenfreude here on like juice arrow failing because it was just like this overpriced juicer. But it was one of our most popular videos, then got me in trouble with the Y Combinator people.

00:14:01:22 - 00:14:03:10

Katy Hammond

You got you have one on Yo, we.

00:14:03:10 - 00:14:04:05

Caya

Did one on yo.

00:14:04:06 - 00:14:08:11

Katy Hammond

Okay, I'm so well, I'm going to have to go watch that one after the scientists, you know.

00:14:08:11 - 00:14:24:02

Caya

See a really bad. And I think that this is a fun aspect of it. Like any time you do content on YouTube, you go back one year and you will see how bad the content was and you be ashamed of it. So yo was probably three years old. My hair was short. I wasn't really good at speaking on camera.

00:14:24:02 - 00:14:28:19

Caya

You could tell that I was really reading from a teleprompter. Not allowed emotion. Not our best video, but it's still there.

00:14:28:20 - 00:14:48:22

Katy Hammond

Well, I think anyone can relate to that. They just look at their social media year back and they're like, Oh yeah, your series like company forensics and start ups one on one provide really in-depth analysis and valuable insights. So can you walk us through what's your process for choosing topics? So you talked about this a little bit, like you're thinking how can we get more broad, more of an audience?

00:14:48:22 - 00:14:54:00

Katy Hammond

So what's your process for choosing topics and how do you make sure that remains relevant to your audience?

00:14:54:00 - 00:15:16:20

Caya

That's a big issue, and I don't think that we're the best at picking topics yet because we've gone through this transition and our and our content where we made all this really deep dive content into tech startup technicalities start with one serves, one one, which worked great to sell and people watch that and trust your expertise there will continue to watch it and they will like they're more likely to convert because you've proven that you're an expert in this very specific thing.

00:15:16:20 - 00:15:34:09

Caya

But again, that's niche. So we wanted to be broader. So that transition, I don't think we did. We were great at it in a sense that we've probably gone too broad sometimes with content that didn't really resonate with the audience, right? So we did. Our video last week was on Help on the industry of replacing children with pets.

00:15:34:09 - 00:15:36:22

Caya

Which is it? I think it's an interesting topic. It's like, you.

00:15:36:22 - 00:15:37:21

Katy Hammond

Know, yeah, this enables.

00:15:37:21 - 00:15:56:11

Caya

People no longer have kids. They have pets instead. And, you know, revenue from pet related products has tripled the multibillion dollar industry. And but that's not it doesn't have to do with tech. It doesn't have to do with startups that much. It's an interesting topic, but it's not for our audience. So you have to learn and sort of discern that into what will they actually care about.

00:15:56:11 - 00:15:59:02

Caya

If you do that, it'll it'll screw up the algorithm. So you have to be careful.

00:15:59:07 - 00:16:01:19

Katy Hammond

Let's get. So how do you measure the success by the content?

00:16:01:19 - 00:16:17:02

Caya

In starters, you would call this a vanity metric. The use I think that used are relevant. I think subscribers are, and that's relevant. My talk yesterday was just on kind of like how do we translate the success of your content to revenue or you know, if you're sponsoring content to someone else's channel, like can you really track the revenue that came from that channel?

00:16:17:02 - 00:16:34:11

Caya

Is is that possible? In my conclusion, after thinking about it for a while, was that to me, like if you draw a pie chart, like what? How much of your money, how much is your budget, how much of your brainpower should go to brand awareness versus conversions, right? Direct response marketing accounts. How do you split that? I think there was an early stage company.

00:16:34:11 - 00:16:53:18

Caya

Your focus should be 80% direct response. Getting customers that you can track, that you can get, have that conversion happen quickly and then you can spend a little bit of time that other 20% toying around with some things for brand awareness. Yeah, maybe that's sponsoring some content, maybe that's having some tik-tok channel. Maybe that's, you know, the post and stuff on social media.

00:16:53:22 - 00:17:00:05

Caya

It wouldn't directly drive conversions. If it does, then it's a direct response, but it has value. You can't track it, you can't know, but it has value.

00:17:00:07 - 00:17:04:03

Katy Hammond

So at what point in that do you kind of make the switch?

00:17:04:03 - 00:17:29:00

Caya

Yeah. So at the early stage, you know, we were spending like 2030 K a month on marketing, right? So in that world we can get away with spending maybe 4k in brand awareness and stuff that we can't track is for K enough to run a huge channel. No, so don't. But when you're spending 100 K in direct response, well then you can get then you have then your brand awareness budget could be ten K, could be 20 K, and in that case you're able to fit this right.

00:17:29:08 - 00:17:51:00

Caya

So to me, if you're sponsoring somebody else's YouTube channel or you're sponsoring a creator or you're sponsoring content, that is mostly going to be brand awareness, you can track conversions from it and you should you should do your best to track conversions from that content. But the biggest value of that awareness of that content is in its brand awareness to try to track it, how to, quote, aim for conversions and settle for brand awareness.

00:17:51:00 - 00:18:00:11

Katy Hammond

Aim for conversions and settle for brand awareness. I like that quote. My next question was actually going to be how do you track the conversions deeper into the funnel? And you really just answer that.

00:18:01:06 - 00:18:16:02

Caya

Just an add on to that. We tried our best, like when we first when we had our first YouTube breakthrough, we start to see a lot of people that would say, Hey, I watched your YouTube video on Pitch stacked and that's why I convert it. Great direct conversion where once you have 100 videos, it's impossible to know which video actually brought that conversion.

00:18:16:02 - 00:18:33:07

Caya

And you really in today's marketing day and age, chances are people are going to be touched by so many different points of your marketing that it's impossible to say which one actually drove the conversion. When we do instead is we ask them, we we still ask them, we try UTM tags and I mean, they kind of work, we use their metrics and CAM works.

00:18:33:07 - 00:18:53:02

Caya

The ultimate answer is asking people, How did you know about this? How did you discover us? But one thing that we do from the media side in our the way we structure the organization that the media team needs to justify its cost and its value to the rest of the team, We ask customers like, do you know, did you know we have a YouTube channel and about 70% of our customers do.

00:18:53:03 - 00:18:58:05

Caya

Maybe it wasn't the channel that drove the conversion, but it was a touchpoint in that, and that's the way we justify it.

00:18:58:06 - 00:19:10:03

Katy Hammond

So obviously you interact with numerous founders all of the time. So what are some of the common concerns that you're hearing and how do you incorporate that feedback into swiping and your services?

00:19:10:03 - 00:19:27:18

Caya

I think that the biggest lesson like we've been around, I like saying it and then I hate saying it, but so we've been around for about ten years. It's too long for a starter to exist ten years. I think that what we would learn through this time is the original premise of swiping was like, people suck at design, people suck at designing presentations, and that's why they need this product.

00:19:27:18 - 00:19:44:01

Caya

What we learned, pivoted or learned that we were wrong was it's not so much about the design, it's about kind of capturing the story. Yeah, summarizing what you have in your head as a founder into a story. I think that that's the hardest part. It's the part that up until recently I think needed like a human storyteller to solve.

00:19:44:01 - 00:19:48:11

Caya

And it's a part that today I think we're really, really close to air assault.

00:19:48:11 - 00:19:49:07

Katy Hammond

For us, that's a.

00:19:49:07 - 00:19:51:13

Caya

Tiny hint at some stuff that we're working on.

00:19:51:18 - 00:20:12:01

Katy Hammond

Ooh, very exciting. Everybody catch that limit. We're definitely going to talk about air at some point in this podcast, right? It's 2023, so obviously you guys have done a really good job helping founders with pitch debt creation, financial modeling and providing resources for capital raising. What are some of the other areas you think startups need help with that you might be considering?

00:20:12:01 - 00:20:20:13

Katy Hammond

You know, you just talked a little bit more about the A.I.. What are some of the other areas that you think they might need help with as they're getting started looking for funding that maybe aren't being addressed today?

00:20:20:13 - 00:20:36:07

Caya

I think my coming I was not coming of age, my coming of founder or coming of tech person story is that I'm a foreigner. I'm Costa Rican. The first time I set foot in the US was I was like 21. First I was in New York, I was 23. And the first is a shameful story, but a true story.

00:20:36:07 - 00:20:49:12

Caya

My first company was this mobile game that we put on Kickstarter, and this guy Josh constantly called Friends finds it calls me up on the phone. He's like, Hey, like I story your game. I thought, you know, I was really cool. I published an article about it, but when I go check it out, it was like, Oh, cool, Where did you publish it?

00:20:49:17 - 00:21:03:14

Caya

Oh, in TechCrunch. I'm like, Oh, can you spell that for me? I had never heard of TechCrunch in my life at this point, and the guy just called me up. So I was, I was complete foreigner to this started what? I didn't understand anything. I think one of the reasons why people have enjoyed the content is because I've sort of worked to bridge that gap.

00:21:03:14 - 00:21:20:05

Caya

But if you were born in probably Austin now, but you're born into in the Bay Area or in New York, you understand about this, you have connections, you know, you know who to talk to. You know, this language probably exaggerated for me coming from outside the U.S. You don't understand any of this stuff. And I think that maybe if you're not from one of those major start ups, you probably don't.

00:21:20:09 - 00:21:55:07

Caya

That for me, one of the very first experiences of how does startups and venture capital work? It was the social network, but the film before that I didn't understand how tech wouldn't. I think that's that's one thing that I'm really passionate about, sort of like helping sort of bridge that gap for outsiders and the beginning accelerators, which I've been part of far more accelerators, and I have to say, but the reason why I still see value in those experiences and that equity that I had to give out was that I needed a crash course like like this bridge to come from not knowing anybody in the ecosystem, from not understanding anything of how it worked,

00:21:55:07 - 00:22:09:06

Caya

from not speaking the language to being able to sit in this stage with you. I think that that's that's that's a bridge that we I don't think that I can monetize, honestly, other than the ads that run before you watch a video on YouTube. But that I think that I'm passionate about.

00:22:09:06 - 00:22:17:01

Katy Hammond

Yeah I love that passion. What can we all do to better help that everyone in the space community, how can we be better, more welcoming? Maybe.

00:22:17:01 - 00:22:37:09

Caya

I do think that startup communities are well, I've always felt really welcome any in any community. I was like, nobody's ever treat me as a as a stupid because I didn't understand what what STEM was or what not. Like, I think that that's that's valuable I think to honestly, you know, stuff that you can do every day like one of the biggest issues that ever the seed founders struggle with is validating their ideas.

00:22:37:11 - 00:22:53:20

Caya

Like is this idea good? Will people pay for it? And often, more often than not, when you're pitching someone an idea or a friend, they'll say, Oh, that sounds really cool. When it doesn't. There's this good, really good Reddit thread the other day, not the other day really, a couple of years ago. You can find it. It's like it was something like an ask Reddit of Engineers of Reddit.

00:22:53:21 - 00:23:11:09

Caya

What do you how how did you say no to your friends with the next big start of ideas? Yeah, right. Because engineers get pitched about this all the time. And I think it was a really good thread on like how we as maybe non-tech founders kind of like come up with these ideas and imagine that they're going to be huge and nobody's stopping that.

00:23:11:10 - 00:23:23:18

Caya

Nobody's saying, Hey, maybe this is not a bad idea and maybe that's not a good idea. So I think that honesty is valuable. I think that's one thing that we all can do to it to help our fellow founders. I like not waste too much time on what they're doing.

00:23:23:23 - 00:23:42:04

Katy Hammond

I like that. I saw something once that said, if your friend founds a product to buy it and then churn it, that's not me. But I was like, exact that actually, that's pretty helpful. That's a good friend, you know? So I like that. So another question on the content. So there's a series on your channel that it looks like you guys aren't making videos anymore called Five Minute Tech.

00:23:42:04 - 00:23:50:17

Katy Hammond

Really? So I'm just curious, what have you learned maybe from series that didn't work out or from something that you've retired that you can pass on to founders?

00:23:51:00 - 00:24:13:22

Caya

That's a good question. That series we did maybe three years ago, pre-COVID was way before it was just like a daily, like a weekly sort of crunch of the startup news. The reason why I didn't work on YouTube is because it wasn't evergreen, the good and then the real value of YouTube content is if you produce something that's ever been something that it's going to be valuable and useful and people will continue to watch it two, three, four or five years down the line.

00:24:13:23 - 00:24:28:19

Caya

We have videos that I mean, are most of our one on one videos still get thousands of views because they're still useful and nobody's taking the time. Nobody. I mean, yeah, no, it's taking time to make a better video, like to rank our own video. You know, if you do evergreen content, I think that you're you're standing to win.

00:24:28:19 - 00:24:45:05

Caya

I think that also with TikTok now I think the value with with YouTube as a platform is that if you figure it out, you and me, we have a really big moat around it because for somebody else to catch up with your content on YouTube, they need to spend the time, they need to spend the money and the production.

00:24:45:09 - 00:25:01:14

Caya

There's a certain level of production value that people expect. There's a certain level of quality of content that people expect. And if you're new, you're it's going to take time to capture. So even though a company with all the resources they want to do it, it'll still take them time because they still need to figure out who the host is going to be in the format and so on.

00:25:01:15 - 00:25:20:06

Caya

The difference with Tik-tok, right, there's no on Tik-tok anybody can get on. And I think anybody, you know, as a company, you should try TikTok as a format. Absolutely right. That's essentially what we're where we're going at. The fact that it's evergreen, the fact that it's protected by this moat makes for an expensive but really monetizable bet long term.

00:25:20:07 - 00:25:23:08

Katy Hammond

Okay. I really enjoyed talking to you today. Where can everybody find you?

00:25:23:11 - 00:25:35:08

Caya

I always struggle what to say here. You should look into our channel like if you remember something, you should check out our site being a YouTube channel. That's we have some really cool stories there. I guess if you want to find me, you should find me on Twitter. I'm out here on Twitter.

00:25:35:13 - 00:25:45:09

Katy Hammond

Awesome. Well, really enjoyed talking to you and love your passion and totally love what you said as well about making things more welcoming and open. And I love that. So thank you for your time.

00:25:45:11 - 00:25:47:22

Caya

Thanks for having me. Thanks. Thanks, everyone in the audience.

00:25:48:03 - 00:25:49:01

Katy Hammond

Thank you, everyone.

00:25:51:19 - 00:26:14:11

Ben Hillman

Shout out to Kaya for being on the show. Now you have a better understanding of leveraging content marketing for startup growth and success. Today, we talked about passion for content creation over monetization, welcoming and supporting the startup community challenges and lessons from failed content series content strategy differences with YouTube and TikTok, and the importance of honest feedback and idea validation.

00:26:14:17 - 00:26:28:14

Ben Hillman

Make sure to give us a five star review and tell us what lesson from today's episode was your favorite. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect Hustle, a podcast from Paddle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SAS.