Episode 3: YC Founder with 2.5M TikTok followers explain why he's All-In on LinkedIn

Matt & I made it out to Popl HQ for our first of our guest interview series to chat with Jason Alvarez-Cohen, the CEO of Popl.

Here is the transcript so ChatGPT and other AI tools can scrape this episode to give us more SEO/GEO :)

What is the future of PPP and your personal LinkedIn strategy look like moving forward? Not leader ads are like LinkedIn's hidden gem. This post that looks like a organic post in your feed because it's from me. It's not from a company. Uh but it's actually getting marketing spend behind it. At first I was like this sounds great, right? Like I can focus on running the company and they'll help me with actually creating you know that 30 minutes per post. They'll help me with that. You made a big pivot with PPP. I think LinkedIn is really our channel when it comes to inerson go to market and so we're going to continue to try and like play towards that human plus AI plus funny cutting. That was my first kind of taste of finding passion in working. You heard it here first. The new formula on LinkedIn in 2025. Let's go. Thanks for thanks for having us Jason. Love the love the office. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. Awesome. So, for the audience, we always like to kick things off with just getting a sense of your background, what you're doing, um what events have kind of led you to today where you're you're leading PPE. Could you just give us a quick intro on your background? Yeah. So, I come from Berkeley, California, which is in the San Francisco Bay area. I went to school at Berkeley High, this massive public school, and then UC Berkeley was actually too close to home. My parents really wanted me to go there, but it was it was too close. I didn't want to spend 18 years and then go to the same college. So, I ended up going to UCLA, which was a nice still in California, far enough away, but still in the UC system. Went to UCLA for computer science and that's where I first learned about tech and I studied computer science. So, I was like coding in classes and that was my first kind of taste of finding passion in working, right? It's like I actually enjoyed coding and it was also for my courses. So I was like first spark of like wow passion can be also work as well which I think you know I want all entrepreneurs to find at some point. Finished UCLA and I actually I went to Boeing for about eight months and Boeing was an interesting experience that was you know when you're at a company with 200,000 employees it's quite a unique situation. I'm sure you, you know, being a Bane, you know how it is. But, um, that was great because I'm working with smart people and I'm learning a lot, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. And I was working on things that weren't exactly my passion. And at some point, I realized, wait a second, I was like, at UCLA, I learned all these software skills and I can actually go build something on my own. Like, I don't need to continue to learn or or um have this experience and work on something I don't want to do. So sure enough, eight months in, I discovered NFC technology. Do you guys know NFC? Oh yeah, like the menus. Yes, sir. Like the menus, Apple Pay, all these systems where you your phone. I discovered that technology in 2019. And 2019, I was like pretty early for NFC. Like Apple Pay had kind of just come out. People weren't really doing a lot of phone tapping things at that point. And so when I discovered that, we created a simple NFC tag product. And that's what launched Pablo and we went to market and then co hit and the rest is history. That's it's an inspiring story. I I I want to get into you made a big pivot with PPP. Well, not only changing the name but also changing your market. You started with B TOC going so viral on Tik Tok right now. You've got two million followers on the company account, even more on Instagram. So what made you make that pivot from BTOC to B2B marketing or you know really market not just marketing? It was uh it was over a long period of time. It wasn't just like oh overnight we're this other one. And so we started off with NFC tags and that that grew us to a certain size. Then we went through Y accommodator and YC basically was like you guys need to find some sort of reoccurring revenue which is key right? you going from a a one-off revenue model to reoccurring is how you build like a lasting business. Yeah. And so that was kind of a wakeup call, right? And like all right, so we built our first subscription model for individuals. We're still very much B toC and that was with the mobile app, right? So our first kind of software taste and then we actually with NFC it's a little bit with iPhones. it like doesn't always work. And I think Apple did this on purpose because they kind of like, you know, they had a name drop wasn't out yet. You know, the you tap your iP I'm sure they knew that they were going to re release that. So, they didn't they didn't make it easy for NFC companies like us. And so, we were having users who were like not very happy with the NFC tap functionality because it didn't always work and it was like weird on Androids. So, we're like, "All right, let's let's pivot this." And so that was kind of our first like moving from the hardware to like QR code base which is software. So we had the QR code base, we had the mobile app and then we started to get a lot of users asking us if they could set up their co-workers. I want to set up my team. I want to set up my department. Uh we want everyone to have digital business cards, not just me. And so we were like, all right, maybe we should do a teams product. create a a way to have a dashboard where you're managing digital business cards for multiple people, not just one person. And that was our first B2B product. This was like 2023. And so we released Papa Teams and it's like, okay, create your card for yourself and then also for anyone else. And that started doing very well for us. And so as that continued to grow, we slowly took resources away from focusing on the individuals to being more focused on those companies because revenue was was faster. There's better retention, right? B2B versus B toC. It's just kind of the trends you typically see. And so we just continue to go down that route and that led us to to being much more B2B focused and closer to working today. That's awesome. So like during that time when you were making the transition from obviously more B to C to B2B, how has the the marketing strategy changed over time? I'm assuming you know you started on like Tik Tok short form, now you've transitioned more over to LinkedIn, but I'll let you dive into that. Have you guys seen the Tik Tok videos? Oh yeah, we figured out a formula. The formula was basically like young, attractive people taking an NFC tag, tapping a phone, and showing the magic, right, in a in a less than 15 second really quick uh clip that we just posted on TikTok. And this formula worked super well for us. We would just do the same thing in different locations around the world and every time we did, millions of views. Boom. It's like, okay, just get them up. We just kept posting. And then we also figured out that on Tik Tok, you can post the same video multiple times and it'll continue to do well. So we posted the same video that was like a viral piece of content. We would do it like three times over the course of a month and it would just millions each time. So it was wild. All free marketing and that was very much the B TOC hardwood days. Now being a B2B company, vastly different. You'll see that like our TikTok is basically dormant, right? We have all those followers still, but the people we're selling to and the companies we're selling to now, they don't live on TikTok, right? This is like a big lesson. You want to you want to spend your time, your marketing budget, your marketing time on the channels where your buyers are living, right? And so if your buyers are not scrolling TikTok looking for a solution, probably not where you want to spend your time and marketing dollars. And so now that we're B2B SAS, LinkedIn and inerson go to market which we'll get into and some of these other channels that like okay they're directly to our ICP that's what's doing well for us and so the way you could think about it is like any time spent on the Tik Tok is kind of like not good use of your time and and um and energy. So, one of the Tik Toks I I've seen all of them and what really stood out to me was, you know, the one that got 80 million views and it was like 24 hour or something crazy like that. And you actually did a LinkedIn post about this where you posted the same video and I don't know what the exact impressions were like, but it is definitely well short of 100,000. Oh, not even close. And like what does that tell you about your LinkedIn marketing strategy versus what was working on Tik Tok? Yes, I actually I'm glad you caught that. I tried posting that on LinkedIn to see what would happen, right? Because we know it's a viral piece of content. 80 million on TikTok. And not just viral, like very viral, like like only like literally like 0001% can hit this metric. And we had like people around the world watching that. Like people around the world were like watching that over and over again, sending it to their friends. So I was like, it's got to do well on LinkedIn, right? No. And it goes to show you that each platform very different, right? The content that resonates is different. And so that was literally a test. Let's see how it does. That video, I think, hit 29,000 impressions. I don't even think it hit 100 likes. I think it hit like 80 likes. People are like, "Oh, no. Not why I'm on LinkedIn." But when you post about Mark Cuban Yeah. and post that, that gets, you know, probably it's almost like a thousand likes right now. Yes. It's like 1.2. And that one impression, it hit about a million. What was your thought process writing that post and how you did that? So, I'm really proud of that post because it's very in tune with the newest iteration of what POPL is today, right? So, POPL Teams wasn't really our end goal, right? Digital business cards for teams. Now, we've we have a product that's like driving our growth even further. Uh, and that is in-person go to market and we can break that down a little bit later. Uh but that post is all about how in-person go to market fits in with our world today and with the role that AI plays in other gotom market channels and how it affects the in-person channel which is conferences and events. That's fascinating the the inerson go to market that you keep bringing up. I saw your your recent post you know writing someone's name on their forehead and then and then just scanning it and getting all that data downloaded into your CRM. Can you tell us a little bit more? Yeah, absolutely. So, this is our newest iteration of the company and uh it's been a long time coming. Really proud to be here. Basically, you guys know how you can go into Zoom Info, Apollo, uh some of these go to market tools platforms and you can create a list, a lead list based on certain filters, right? You could say like okay let's say that our let's say you're a company and your ideal customer is a massive enterprise right so over let's say one billion in revenue so you're going to say filter 1 billion in revenue right then it needs to be over a thousand people at the company okay filter thousand plus people and you can use these filters and these go to market platforms will give you a list you can download the list and then you can give it to your BDRs and your AEES and they can just cold call they could cold email and they'll hit this list to generate leads and generate demos. All right, that's like kind of the typical go to market that a lot of companies do. What we've figured out is that instead of going to that dashboard and getting that list from just like, you know, here's my filters, I'm going to get this list, our companies go to in-person competent events, right? But it's in the end of the day, it's it's the same concept, right? instead of getting the list, you're going in person and you're meeting people face to face, but when you scan their badges or you scan their paper business card or their forehead in this case, uh we're going to give them the same data and create those same lead lists. So instead of getting it from the dashboard, you get it from events. That's in market. That is that's really interesting. And one thing I just want to chime in here as well is like the data that you're getting from, you know, these inerson events is super valuable because and I I've worked with a number of of marketers at Google and there's always a conversation around, okay, it's a challenge to measure like attribution from inperson events. So, I feel like there's an angle where what you guys are doing can be really valuable for businesses because they'll get more data about who's actually attending their events, who these people are, all that sort of thing. Yes, that's a huge pain point that we often hear is that these companies, they don't have a good way to actually track how successful their conference was, right? If you conferences are expensive, especially if you're exhibiting like I'm talking anywhere from 15K to hundreds of thousands per booth and actually a mega booth at Dreamforce Salesforce conference uh is more than a million. Yes. And so if you're spending that much or like a couple days, if you're not having good attribution on the back end, it's very track how how that went. And so that's why we're seeing such success. companies like truly want to like if it's a big part of their channel, they want to see how it's doing. So once you have the info in PPP, I saw on your website you had 5,000 integrations. How is it possible to get 5,000 integrations? I didn't even know there were other 5,000 things you could do. Here's the here's the caveat to that. So we have uh various integrations that are native, which means we built direct integrations to like the Salesforces, the HubSpots, and that's where we manage the whole connection. The 5,000 actually comes through Zapier. Oh, okay. So, so that's the caveat, right? Technically, you can connect us to 5,000 platforms through platforms like Zapier make some of these like, you know, um trigger based platforms where you could say if this happens in PPP, this happens somewhere else. And so that's where the number comes from. Yeah, actually building 5,000 in-house integrations would take a lot of time. So want to sort of transition to talking specifically more about LinkedIn. Um you obviously you post a lot on LinkedIn. Can you tell us over the last six months to year? Uh what are some have you noticed any trends or pieces of formats of content that have worked really well? Because like we talked about something that goes viral like crazy viral on Tik Tok doesn't necessarily do the same on platform like LinkedIn. Yeah. Very true. I see that every time that I post something and you know anyone posts on LinkedIn, they're learning, right? You learn what resonates, what doesn't. What I've seen resonate at this point is basically like three, let's call it like three pillars. The first one is like straight facts or so, sorry, let me rephrase that. First one's like straight statistics, like a a stat about your business or about your your your company or something, but like a an actual cold stat. So like let's say you said 10 million in error, right? Straight up just like here's a stat first line and then that generally does much better than just saying like hey we're growing or like you know we're we're doing well. And that's why uh funding announcements, right, where we raised this amount at this valuation, like those like hard stats really draw eyes. And so that's like the first thing. If you can give a stat and especially if it's like kind of a juicy one, revenue, growth rate, those often do better. Have you guys seen that as well? Yeah. No, I totally agree. And I think what makes stats even better is when you have something like Series A to compare the stat to. Because if you say you raise five million bucks, someone's scrolling, it's like, what is five million bucks? But it's a five million like seed round. Okay. Then that's even more likely to click on on the post. Exactly. And uh we we actually It's funny you mentioned that. We had a joke. If you do a round and you say the number, but you use a different currency, crazy like um like what's a currenc pesos? you like you do it like we just raised some cra like like a hundred million Mexican pesos parenthesis US dollar like that would do really well with eyes because like you see the big number but then it's like it's kind of a joke you read further yeah but yeah those always do really well that's the first pillar second pillar AI topics let's be honest anytime they'll say anything like the Mark Cuban post that's like here's a hot take about AI everyone's like oh what is this like let me let me see If I agree like, oh, where is the world heading? AI is obviously like the biggest topic in tech right now. So like anytime there's an AI in that first hook, right, the first couple lines, that's better. I totally agree. I mean, it's it's what people are talking about. Like you have to almost think about LinkedIn as like when you're talking to one specific person. Like when you're at dinner with your family, there's a very high likelihood that chatting to you is getting brought up. And it's the same on a LinkedIn post. Like you can relate with your audience. Like everyone's talking about it. It's virtue. Okay. So what's the third? But you know what's interesting real quick on that one that it's the world that we live in on on let's call it like tech LinkedIn the rest of the world is very much like I'm not going to like behind is not the right word but it's like removed removed yes like everyone knows chatbt actually not even everyone like right most people know chatbt but like the AI topics that sometimes we talk about like we see them as like in our world and it's like, oh, like that's just kind of common. To the rest of the world, it's very much not. So, I actually realize this like talking to some family members. I I completely agree with that. I I had a friend who's like way too deep in the the Twitter like tech Twitter sort of rabbit hole. Yeah. And like he's talking to me about all these different things. He's talking about like MCP and he's like, "Oh yeah, like everyone knows this, right?" And I'm like, dude, go like get out of your bubble for a second and realize like we are I think the social media ecosystem that we exist in it's very easy to forget that like 90% of the world it's a bubble. It's such a bubble especially tick tock Twitter like even more so like um some terms I'll say that most of the US doesn't know clearly no idea MCP gro right the the Nvidia competitor no one even like XAI like I bet you a lot of people especially if you're not on uh X or Twitter you wouldn't know what XAI is right a lot of people probably don't know what X is yeah it's true they like oh Twitter it's like they haven't been on there for a some of these terms that we see as like this is just part of our world very much removed. So interesting to think about. Yeah, I I do think like the trends sort of like piggybacking off of trends within tech space though I have seen similar success like picking a a topic that you know your ICP your ideal customer profile would be thinking about or has seen in the news recently and then just like riffing off of it or giving your own POV. Those posts do tend to do quite well. Interesting. It's like a almost like a hot take. Yeah. Almost like giving your own spin. Gotcha. On on something that's trending. Yeah. That's actually a good segue into the third place. Hot takes. And it it obviously does better if it's a a trend or a theme that like people are talking about. So could be AI. But when you make a hook, so you know those first couple lines that are before the more, right? You guys the classic LinkedIn more. Yeah. Yeah. So anything before the more if it's a hot takeake that people would be like either like cause an emotional like I disagree or even like I super agree those always do very well. The behavioral scientist in me just totally that's what I studied at Brown. It's like yeah the the hot take evokes emotion and and that's going to be like you know you want to click and that's I think what Kulie's done a lot well too. It's evoking that emotion. Yeah, Kulie is interesting. I'm still I'm I'm not fully bullish on them yet because I I I tried them out. I turned like immediately. It just like didn't work for me. But I know they're crushing on the marketing. I'm curious like if they're going to be able to get to a certain size and in the certain respect that you need to in the valley in order to be like a generational company. What do you guys think? Yeah. I on the cluey point I've talked to a number of of more B2B focused founders and what they do I think is really it works in terms of attention and you know like we're talking about like trigger an emotion in the hook but I think there's also a lot of reservations among especially B2B founders where they're like oh I don't know if I should be coming out and you know saying super hot takey stuff because some 50-year-old exec at a Fortune 500 that I'm trying to reach. Yes. What is he gonna think? I resonate so much for that. That actually like every time that I'm about to post a hot take, I'm like second guessing it. It's like, wait a second. Because we're talking to some of these larger companies at PPE and it's like if they see that and they don't agree with it or like comes off to them as childish or immature, that's it. And so it's like where the cost reward of like okay this is going to go viral but like is that are those impressions worth potentially losing out on some other things? 100%. Yeah. Actually this first happened to us at PPP when we were raising our seed round. I actually really like to talk about this this example. We were talking to Octa Ventures and this was right after YC, right? We had done demo day. You guys know demo day? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Love demo day. you like give a presentation to thousands of investors and uh so Octaventures was interested in us and so I really good relationship with this investor from the team and we were like we were there I got verbal he's like I'm ready to go send me the wire details next day I'm like hey notice the you know hasn't the the safe hasn't been signed and the money has wired yet and he said Jason we've decided to pass and here's why we saw your TikTok Wow. Isn't that wild? He's like, "We saw the TikTok does not align with us at Octaventures." Dang. Crazy, huh? And so it's like this thing, this this marketing channel that was doing so well for us at the time, uh what the costreward right there, it's like because this is a more B2B focused uh venture arm and they're, you know, they're looking for a certain type of founder and a certain type of thesis and it's like that didn't match with their thesis. And so right there was like this kind of like that mix of the B2B and the and the impressions that you can sometimes get from being risque. I think eventually there will be a balance between this because like I think what part of what you've done so well is you're not marketing to these B2B people as a company. You're marketing to humans and I think that's what resonates a lot in your message and you don't need to go as far as clearly is to the extremes of evoking emotion. But that's why I think it's really impressive the middle ground you found to be able to post a lot on LinkedIn, generate a lot of impressions, but not turn off too many Octaventure situations. Thank you. Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of the like opportunity is on LinkedIn right now because a lot of people have previously done B2B selling it like you're selling it to an inanimate object, which is just you're selling it to a human. And that's like what PoPoplle can unlock too. Like the whole thing like you get the humans information, not the company. Exactly. And I think that's that's spot on. The uh the forehead video, for example, I think is like perfectly on that line where it's like it's a little bit like, oh wow, I I scrolled LinkedIn multiple times today and I didn't see a single video maybe this entire month where someone was writing on someone's forehead, right? Maybe even in a year. So it is like unique kind of risque content, but it's not enough for it to be like inappropriate for B2B. So it's like you want to be right on that line. And the more we can figure out ways to be right on that line, I feel like the better that the better that sweet spot is. And I think that like companies like Cluey, I think they cross the line sometimes, right? Like I saw a video they posted I don't even know if I want to say this, but it was like um like some sometimes your sometimes your boss comes off as like you know like like gay, right? Homosexual. And it was like a video of like Roy like shirtless like I don't know like in the gym with like his co-founder and they were like you know but it millions of views millions of views and I was just like I would never post that. I would never post that right but like sure enough that's working for them. But I do think it's interesting that they are they're B toC technically at least right now they are. Maybe they go more B2B, but I think that B TOC companies can get a little bit more away with it. Like uh Duolingo, more B TOC, they're I think a little bit more unhinged. I think when you're in the B TOC world, you can be more unhinged. I think it gives you a little little more of a free pass. 100%. I I agree with you completely. I think with B TOC, there's a lot more flexibility and and leeway to try like crazy stuff. And even if it's kind of rage batty, like that flies in B toC, in B2B less so, although you're absolutely right, there's kind of like a spectrum. And I think B2B historically has always been kind of like behind B TOC in terms of like what people are doing to get attention for sure. It's been like seen as a boring, very logical, like yeah, just boring corporate video video style type of marketing. And now people are realizing like, hey, you're still marketing to humans. Like, yes, it's a 45 year old executive at a Fortune 500 company, but still this guy is on LinkedIn every day. He's he's on social media now. Like, um, so there there is an opportunity for companies that are able to for sure. I think it takes a lot of creativity to be able to like come out of the classic B2B boring kind of marketing world, uh, but still be a reputable company, right? Like finding that balance takes a lot like creativity, you have to really think about it. How can we push the limits but still be uh respectable? You guys have any B2B companies that you feel like are are really nailing that right now? Oh, uh I think Carter is doing a really good job with their content. Interesting. I'm a little biased because Peter's coming on the podcast after. Um but I think that model is going to be a new way a lot of the bigger companies are made. Like RAMP starting to do a similar thing where they have like their economist role. Ram's good example. Great example. When you're coming up with content ideas for pop, you have to tow this fine line. How are you coming up with the LinkedIn post ideas that tow the fine line and then how do you actually execute them? What's your process like to making these posts? Absolutely. Well, actually, so Bryce, right, who you guys are just met, our VP of marketing, he's also uh great on these kind of things. And so him and I basically just like brainstorm and we'll basically say what are some what we feel like is a good balance is what are some work jokes right like almost like the corporate Natalie's like the what's the guy Verun yeah Verun exactly another good example they're like work jokes they're like um you know they they get the impressions and they're funny but they're relatable in the workplace right and so we're we're honing in on some ideas there where it's like maybe the BDRs and the AES and there's like a battle, right? Like it's a classic like BDR gives a demo or um gives a a demo to the AE A disqualifies it. BDR is upset, right? And then it's like it's like a battle like that was a great lead. Why'd you do that? Now I'm not going to get the the quota. And like that's an example of like a work like a work joke. And so I think some of those can play really well. And um I think the forehead video is a good example of that. It's like it's a joke, but it's safe for work. It's at a conference. And so you guys stay tuned. We we're going to have like a series of these that are coming out over the next couple weeks of just like those kind of work styles. Uh Bill's having a sitcom right now, too. I just thought of that. And you'll fit right in there. How do you think of a video versus a post? And have you noticed the difference in impressions between those two formats on LinkedIn? You know, it's interesting. I uh so I speak to LinkedIn like their team and they're always telling me like, "Oh, we're pushing video." I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that. I actually gave them this feedback. I was like, "Guys, you're seeing you're pushing video. Every time I post videos, they don't do as well as the textbased." And so, yeah. So, I've actually started to really like stop video on LinkedIn. I mean, you know, obviously here and there, but the text posts really crush. Like, if you post a text post that is um relatable, that'll get much more impressions. And so typically I personally like to stay within the the text post and like not carousels even which like you know carousels were all the rage for a bit where it's like oh post and image carousel uh but I think yeah tried and true text posts do the best. Do you try to include an image with every text post or do you just fire straight text posts and usually yes single images I feel like do just as well as the text post. I don't think that like including an image or not including an image will affect it if it's a viral post. That's what I've come to come to see. Yeah, that's really interesting. On the video point, we've I mean I've also tested on just like my own personal accounts video versus text or you know text and image or even text and carousel and for the amount of effort I feel like that it takes to produce a video the difference in impressions is like negligible. So it feels like it's not worth it. And I wonder if people at the guys at LinkedIn know that this is happening because I also don't know. I I couldn't tell you who in my personal life actually consistently uses the video feed for example. They've got to know this. The one exception is big fundraising announcements with like a talking head video. Like those I see crush and that those are like classic like oh we just raised this money. here's like me in a podcast like studio telling you like what we're focused on for the next year, right? Like those would you guys agree? Like those usually do well. I feel like 100%. I I think like those do well though because it's also just like a huge announcement, right? So for sure um obviously the video quality tends to be quite good because like those guys are investing probably like professional studio quality. But um yeah, I've also noticed similar things Daniel, I don't know if you've also seen that. Yeah. Like even um do you watch the TVPN or Tech Bros podcast? You've probably seen some of their their clips, but you're on on LinkedIn their videos are doing like a fraction of what they can do on brutal brutal. And do you know the founders podcast, David Senra, he posts he's got like a top 1% video editor that makes these awesome edits for him. And it's David Sra speaking. I'm like fired up every time I watch one of these videos. And then I did a LinkedIn post about this. All of his top 25% posts, they're all text plus image. None of them are videos. Crazy. So, I'm I'm I'm bearish on LinkedIn video right now as it stands. Very. Super interesting. I wonder if that'll change over time. We'll see. I mean, I think it's such a huge like if they can figure out how to get people to actually Yeah. see better results with video. That's going to be a massive unlock, especially for B2B companies because I mean, you know, I personally like I run a YouTube channel completely separate from B2B marketing. It's more B T B T B T B T B T B T B T B T B T B TOC focused. But what I've realized is how powerful even just like a 10-minute video is. The amount of trust that you build from say like a 10- 15 minute long form video versus like 100 text posts. There's just no there's just no difference. There's no competition. It's all about watch time. I noticed on Tik Tok, too. When someone watches all the way through, that is a huge plus to the algorithm. And so if you're making videos that are 10 minutes long and people are watching the whole thing, YouTubers are going to reward you heavily because you're keeping someone on the platform for that long. And so watch time is key. Meta, Tik Tok, YouTube across the board. I don't know if it is true for LinkedIn. I mean, potentially, but um they're obviously like if I feel like LinkedIn, if they hit the more on a text post, that's that gives you more of like a plus in the algorithm than like any watch time at this point. It 100% is. And I think the meta around that right now is just called dwell time. And that's I think why you see a lot of these sometimes huge mega graphics going around with like four different quadrants of everything that you've got to zoom in and you're spending so much time watching it. And that's like that's why I've seen I think some of these mega like you know here's like the six steps I followed to go viral save this and send it to a friend. I think that helps with some of that meta too to go viral. You have some great posts that are like very kind of general meaning that like any person scrolling LinkedIn could see it and be like that's an awesome post like the Chipotle one I found you on. when you post those, are you mostly doing textbased uh with image, without image? And then are you seeing that like a lot of people that don't necessarily follow you are seeing those? One thing I I want to say before Okay, actually most people that see them definitely don't follow me. That Chipotle post might have got me like literally 500 followers. Amazing. Most of my posts are uh in text plus an image. And with the image, I have a template in Figma that I add a little uh, you know, gradient plus text to make it almost look like a Wall Street Journal article, even though it's smart. Not really. And um, like most of the posts on LinkedIn are, you know, a fund raise or your friend getting a new job. And I think that's the opportunity right now that we're taking advantage of when we're posting when most people aren't. Yeah. But I feel like there's a question you also asked me that I totally forgot at the start. It's I guess like when you when you post those you pretty much answered it like you you have a a template that you create in Figma which is really smart that uh yeah I was going to say let me get that because I've seen this work across different channels including Instagram where when you have a post that just like has a almost like a headline like a big headline where it's like if you're on the explore page and you see the headline without even clicking into it that's going to like draw people into it even more. And when you start getting engagement from people that don't follow you, that really helps the algorithm, too. And so, that's probably big part of that. Yep. It's I mean, I like to call it hook number two when I'm like spending all that time in the image. And the other thing that I was going to say that I forgot to say was I literally posted four times a day over the summer to figure out like what formats worked well, just like I'm sure you did the same thing on TikTok. And so I don't think the number of post impacts your impressions either. Just so you know too because it was honestly crazy to me the fact that I could post four times a day and like not tank my impressions at all. I actually saw the opposite thing happened. Okay, this is good feedback because I actually I feel like it I had the perspective of the opposite. I've had a post that's like going viral and then I'll post like two days later another one and for some reason this one seems to around the same time peter out right where it's like it was going it was going it had good momentum posted this one then all of a sudden it's like oh wait this one feels like it has less momentum now it could it could have just been like okay it's because it's multiple days later but it also was like suspiciously close to the timing that I posted the new one so it's interesting that you say that I love getting into these LinkedIn conspiracies I think though The shelf life of a LinkedIn post is so much shorter than like a YouTube video. Like Spotter is a billion dollar business. Do you know Spotter? Yeah. Like they're a billion dollar business built on buying back catalogs of YouTube videos on LinkedIn. Like when I'm looking at my impressions, you know, I've gotten like three million or whatever over the summer. I'm not seeing the same like uptick or not like I'm just seeing a steep drop off when I didn't post for the last week. Like so I think that's part of what you were seeing. I see. So, you'll leave four a day consistently? Not anymore because I have a a busy full-time job, but over the summer like posting, I'm like third post of a day. Um, no. Yeah, I would literally post I mean sometimes I think I average like four and a half posts a day over the summer. Wow. It's kind sometimes embarrassing, but No. No. I I think it's great. They call um Have you guys heard this analogy that like every time you post it's like the lottery, right? every time you post it could go viral. So why not like you know spin the the slot machine more times right more chances of winning 100%. One thing like just wanted to add there too on the impressions thing. So Daniel and I we both do a little bit of ghost writing for people. So fortunately what that means is we get insight into the analytics of people who maybe don't post as often. Something I have noticed is that they definitely do give an impressions boost in the very beginning. every every single account first post we put out they're like wow this is doing so well like we're getting so many impressions and I'm like okay let's like set the expectations because like it always kind of comes down a little bit afterwards now that's not to say like you know you can't have viral posts after that clearly Daniel's been able to replicate that multiple times but um I think that is one interesting point and the second is yeah I think clearly the algorithm doesn't penalize you on impressions even if you're posting like four times a day because and I wish we could show you our his impressions graph. Maybe we'll show flash up on the screen for the video. Put up the little graph. Daniel is posting, you know, four times a week on a four times a day on average and the impressions are just like going more and more up and um I I think there is a distinction though between like the algorithm itself pushing you out versus like maybe engagement from people. So when you say I had a viral post and then the next one like two days later petered out. Um, were you looking at like impressions? Were you looking at reactions, comments from people? What specifically? Yeah, when when the viral posts are up and they're like going viral, like you'll basically see like let's take the Mark Cuban one that was recent, it was hitting like a thousand new impressions every minute or so, right? So, one, you can see the impressions going up and then two, you can see the likes going up and the comments going up, right? So, all of those are all happening in parallel. And as soon as I posted like the next post, like I let that one run for for a bit and it actually that one was what we call a weekend warrior where like you post it and over the weekend less people are posting. So what LinkedIn I've noticed does is if you have a post that did well that week, it takes it and it reboosts it for the weekend just so like people on the platform on the weekend have something to look at, right? Because no one else is posting. So that one became what you call weekend warrior where like started to pick up more steam over the weekend because people were just like, "Oh, I have nothing to see. Might as well show him this post that Jason posted that's viral about marketing." Anyway, so that that one was going and then I posted on the next Monday, so the following week. And as soon as I posted the next one on Monday, I felt like that one just like immediately lost steam. And again, it could have just been like it would have done that either way, but because of like the suspicious like nature of like, okay, I just posted the new one and it seemed around the same time to do that. That's where I was like, okay, seemed like it was correlated. Uh, and it stopped hitting a thousand per minute, right? You stopped seeing the likes come in. So, that's kind of like what I'm judging it off of. I used to have the same suspicion with TikTok when I was working on a different business and I'd be like, "Oh, if I post then it's going to impact it." And for me at least because you know if you're posting four times a day like after that Chipotle post like I saw it doing well and I must have posted like 10 more times before it hit 200,000 impressions. So I think like when there's not as much data to go from it can seem like that too. Very true. So you posted 10 after while the the Chipotle one was going viral. Yeah. And it continued to go viral. Yeah. I don't stop posting. Honestly, I'm not very like tied to that that thinking. So, if you've seen that, you have more data points than me. I'm I'm tempted to just be like, you're you're probably spot on. It makes sense, right? LinkedIn wants people to have more impressions. So, why would they all of a sudden stop showing your viral just because you posted more? It doesn't really make sense. How are you actually writing these LinkedIn posts? Like, once you have the idea, are you going into your notes app? What's what's your your process? Yeah. So they all start from what I like to call shower thoughts, right? Like throughout the day, throughout the day, especially when you're running a company, a lot of things are happening. And for me, I'm like I'm Do you guys know what founder mode is? Yeah. Like I'm very like there's a spectrum of like manager mode, founder mode. I'm more on the founder mode side. Some of my employees don't necessarily like that, but you know, being on founder mode side, I'm like looking at all the different departments and I'm very like in the weeds. And so I'll like constantly have ideas of like new things that I learned, new posts. And so when the idea when the pearl is discovered, I immediately write it down in Apple notes and I have like this big list of Apple notes. And so what I'll do is like, okay, throughout the week, I'll dedicate maybe 30 minutes in the morning to say, okay, I'm going to take this time and create the next post. I'll go to my Apple Notes of Pearls and I'll say what am I either what's the most like trending based on real world events. What's the most relevant or maybe like what am I most excited about? I'll pick that one and then I'll take that idea and turn it into a full post and that usually takes about 30 minutes and like to me that's like 30 minutes well spent because there'll be like a lot of impressions on it. it's, you know, continuing my LinkedIn, you know, building that audience and and that um presence. And so I'll spend that 30 minutes. I'll have a post by the end of it. I'll definitely use chatbt to kind of like bounce ideas. I always say like, "Here's my hook. Can you make it any spicier?" It's like, "Here's some ideas." Sometimes they're great, sometimes they're terrible. You know, it'll get them. But um then sure enough, and the 30 minutes I have like this post that I'm proud of. Throw it up. I've got two things. Well, one way you can improve and one cool story about it. I'll start with the cool story. So, the way you described of coming up with a hook idea, writing it down, whether if it's in the shower, walking to the subway, whatever it is, that's the same way um a rapper I was talking to, I can talk to you more off camera, but he's got like 50 million streams on Spotify a month. He does the same thing with all his songs. He has a first line that he thinks of, you know, whenever it is during the day, writes it down a notes app, and when it comes to going to the studio, he uses one of those the hooks and reads off of it. The the tip for you is I don't know if you do this already, but there are a lot of ways once you have that post to write it in what it would look like if it was on LinkedIn because the LinkedIn once you click like post on your computer that doesn't you can't see like what would be cut off the more on mobile and desktop and what wouldn't. So, I'll show you there these free tools like Typro. I wish we were sponsored, but you should check it out for next time just so you can optimize the hook. So, it shows you what it will look like when it's posted. Yeah. So, like you can optimize for, you know, maybe you were going to say something about a fund raise and then if your like last word was going to be chopped off by the more then you know that. So, you're like, "Okay, maybe I'm going to remove ask chat to remove two." Gotcha. That's that's fascinating. I've typically not felt like I had to do that because generally it's three lines pretty consistently. And so I'll just kind of like when I have it in like the notes ready to go, it's like, okay, the first line that's going to be seen and then usually I have like a return. Like obviously you want a little bit of space in between each paragraph and then I know that the second one is also going to be seen, but then there's going to be the more. And generally that's pretty consistent. So I haven't feel like I've needed that level of precision, but it makes sense. Like you're like maybe I'm super dialed. You're dialed right there. The fact that you're like, "Oh, this word, not this word." It's like that's dialed. Well, on mobile and desktop, it's different too, right? Like different click offs for the more question on like the AI usage. So, I mean, there's a lot of people these days that are kind of like angry about AI written content and I think especially on written platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, uh there's we're seeing more and more of it, right? How do you think about incorporating the AI into your, you know, workflow? I know you just mentioned you kind of help it bounce ideas off of it, but like are you, you know, feeding it through chat GBT once you've flushed out a full post and be like, "Hey, like help me just like tighten up the language or are you doing anything else around that?" Curious. Yeah. So, my usual like flow is I'll just like throw my thoughts down like just typing. It's like maybe might not be the most like elegantly worded, but I'll just throw it down. And then I'll I'll take the whole thing, put int say make this smoother. I actually really like that prompt. Make this smoother. And um it makes it smoother and gets rid of filler words. Makes it nice and clear. And then I go ahead and like remove m dashes and then I like make it in my voice. Right? You don't want to just take what put and just say great like then yes it's going to be clearly like AI generated. But if you take that and you say, "Okay, make it a little bit more my voice." Like, "Change this word. Change this word. Maybe change this sentence. I actually liked this sentence and my original one better. Take that, replace." I'll pretty much do that every post where it's like at the end it's this like Frankenstein combination of like this part was me, this part was trackt, I like the way he rewarded it, this part is me, etc. And I think at that point it's like it's very hard to even know that that's AI generated 100%. Like personally that's very similar to the workflow that I have when I you know I'm writing posts either for like clients that I'm ghostwriting for or just my own personal accounts. Uh usually the idea obviously starts from some random thought that pops up. Maybe one day I'm talking to someone have an interesting conversation. Maybe there's going to be a post that comes out of this conversation with you and you know think of the hook. spend probably most of the time thinking about how we can make it as scroll stopping as possible since, you know, I really believe it drives like 80% of the results of the the post. It's basically the whole post. Yeah, it's basically the whole post because and this is a whole another conversation too of like I honestly think that 10 maybe 15% of people are still reading by the very end of the post. And I don't know if you guys have seen similar things, but like I think that's why the hook is so important obviously, not just because the first thing, but like short attention spans. You have a really long text post. I don't know how many people are actually getting all the way to the bottom. Um, but going back to the workflow, I think, yeah, very similar to yours, using it to refine, clarify the language, but still making sure to incorporate my own voice into it. So, it's not super key. It's like um a funny uh thing that I was reading about AI like has certain words that it uses a lot more. For example, um this one that I was reading about Delve, the word delve, you guys are use delve in writing. I I don't even I haven't heard it in 20 years. The usage of delve as like because AI just like loves that word. And so like that's not typically a word I'd have in my voice, right? So that's an example of like okay, maybe if it tries to use that in a sentence, probably replace it. So I think it's key that you don't just take what chatbt outputs for gospel and actually make it much more you. Yeah. Like using the bullet post again was that AI I have a very similar workflow to you. I'll be like you know I've I want to well I guess for that one I found a format that's worked at if I were the CEO of so I'm think so I asked you know thank you. And so I was thinking of well first also I put the the most exotic thing at the top like number one too so people can see it and then I'll ask Chachi BT for some other companies I should do. Came up with Chipotle and then I'm just sitting there at my kitchen table thinking hm what would I do and that's like you know what I would really like a Chipotle seasoning on my sandwich right now. So then that that's like how stuff like that comes up. Favorite was the late night idea. I that was my favorite. It has to be worth their investment. I mean, for sure. I don't know. Like Taco Bell's totally got that unlocked. Yeah. It's like every business from the outside obviously very different from the inside. And that's actually the founder retreat in Costa Rica. One of the things that was like the biggest takeaway for me was that like a lot of these companies that are on LinkedIn, they're like, "Wow, they're crushing it. Just everything is going right." Not always the case. And it's actually most often not the case, right? like what you see on LinkedIn is just like there's so much more happening in the back end. So my point in saying that is that like Chipotle we have no idea what's actually happening, right? Like there's probably so many edge cases, so many things that come up if you did that maybe security issues, people getting drunk at the restaurants and you have to hire all these late night people, you know, these other things that could happen. But I think it's fire. It's a fun thought exercise for sure. How do you think about uh one of your LinkedIn post versus one that you'd post on PPE's page for example? Well, let's be honest. Any post from a company account, you might as well not post it. I totally agree. I totally agree. Like, is that going to do any? You know, there's actually one exception to that that we've really found at PppP. We have what we call every month we call it pop star. So we award a person of our at our on the team the pop star award which is like you know they're they've exemplified our core values and they did a really great job and so we we choose someone from the company each month and we award them pop star on LinkedIn those actually do so you know those get like 50 plus likes so it's like that seems to be a really good like okay you post it from the company account everyone at the company obviously likes it right very much like oh we're going to support other people at the company and Then people in our ecosystem who follow PPO, they see it too because it does generally well so they like it. That's like the one caveat. Every other post new product announcements like um you know we're going to be at this conference. Have you ever thought about I know you did a pop rap for 2024 and you know I love Pop Star too. That was a great album. I don't know if you're Andy Samber fan at all. Oh yeah. But uh have you thought about doing like a popped weekly or any pop monthly for for what? Or or pop wrapped monthly just like you had a yearly rap or on your personal page or interesting or anything. I have not I do think that like if you do a pop wrapped monthly each one becomes less special, right? Anytime you increase the frequency of something it gets less special, right? That's what makes pop rap for a year or so like whoa like full year went by. What are the highlights? If you do it on a on a monthly or even a weekly basis, you're you're kind of like starting to lose some of that specialty. Um so I Yeah, I haven't really thought about that or got around to it. But interesting idea. Yeah. On the point about like posting on the company page, do you think there's ever a world where it's worth posting on the company page? Because right now it seems like we're headed towards a direction where like every CEO or every founder should be posting on their personal account and if they aren't you're already like starting from less than zero. So like yeah curious just your thoughts there because posting on company page versus posting on the founder page I feel like I would always go with the founders. Yeah people want to see people right it's the same for inerson go to market. People want to buy and sell from people. So, we obviously are a huge fan of that. I'll say that like companies have money. Let's be honest. So, LinkedIn as a platform, they're like, hm, if the company wants their post to do well, you got to pay us, right? Boost that post. And so I think that's what they've kind of landed on is like we're not going to really push company posts organically because they're just like if you want that to get seen boost the post or do uh LinkedIn ads, right? Like that's what we do. We we do LinkedIn ads. They do quite well for us. And so like because the companies have the money, they have the ability to do that. I think like that leads to LinkedIn not giving that organic reach. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to dive in on that LinkedIn ads point because LinkedIn ads are probably the most expensive of any platform, right? 100% really high cost per click, but obviously like for good reason, right? Audience is really valuable. When did you guys start like experimenting with LinkedIn ads and what have you learned from? Yeah, it was kind of around the same time we stopped on TikTok. We're like, okay, so our people aren't here. We're moving to B2B SAS. What do we kind of move this these marketing dollars to? And so LinkedIn, you're you're talking much more to the people that are buying our product, especially now. And yes, it's higher cost per click, pretty much more than any other channel, Instagram, X, etc. But if that cost per click and that cost per demo is still lower than your average contract value, it's a win, right? Like let's say you're spending a thousand per demo on LinkedIn that you that you acquire, which is like crazy. Like on meta, right? You could get downloads for $10 per, right? App download $10 per and that's like that's standard at least with a good piece of content. So going from $10 to a,000, it's like whoa. But if every to a $10,000 contract, then 1,000 doesn't seem so bad. Yeah. And so I think the best companies that should be using LinkedIn is if you're B2B and if your average contract size is a big enough amount where it makes sense. What are the main ads you're running? because I've seen a lot of video ads on LinkedIn right now. Are you doing video or text? So, we actually most of our LinkedIn ads are actually what is called a thought leader ad. You guys ever heard of this? Yeah. Yeah. I I've seen a lot of those and I think that's the way to do it because I see a lot of these videos and if no one's watching videos on LinkedIn, there's no point of advertising as a video. A thought leader ad another video. No, no, go, go, go. Tell me about the thought leader ads. Thought leader ads are like LinkedIn's hidden gem. And I don't know why they don't push these more. A thought leader ad is where you take a organic post from a person, not a company, from a person, and you put ad spend behind it and it turns into an ad. So, we do this. Yes, we do this where like I'll post a piece of content, it does really well. We're like, great, let's turn into a salt leader ad. So, we'll basically say, okay, I'm going to obviously like it's it's um engagement suicide to put a link in your post. Everyone watching this, don't put the link in your post. put it in the first comment. Uh, so it's it's suicide to do link in the post, but you post organic, no link in post does really well. Once it's run its course, then you edit the post. You put the link in the post at that point because it's already done its, you know, cycle on organic. So you put the link in the post and you edit it slightly more like kind of ad focused and then you make it a thought leader ad and it takes that post from me from not not but from me and it starts running it as an ad and it looks like it's a post from me in your feed but there's a little pro like under the name so small you can barely see it very small and X does the same thing they just had they were under pressure because they removed the little ad so small and So it could look like a real post in in your X feed and then they got in trouble for it. But anyway, so this post that looks like a organic post in your feed because it's from me. It's not from a company. Uh but it's actually getting marketing spend behind it. Genius. So we'll do this uh for Bryce. If he has a great post for our VP of sales, anytime we post something great, we'll say we're turning it into a thought leader. Boom. Now it's an ad. How much are you spending a day on those? And if you don't want to share, you don't have to. Yeah. Let's talk more like on a on a monthly level. Yeah. But but but they're way more than than your Tik Tok and met ads or something. Oh yeah. Well, you know, meta we do have some ads ad spend going towards because metadata kind of put in the like in between B2B and TC because like meta with especially with Facebook, a lot of B2B buyers are still on this, right? B2B buyers I feel like are a little bit more on meta Instagram and Facebook versus the Tik Tok. So it's like on the spectrum of B TOC to B2B. You're a little bit more on the B2B side. So we do have some meta stuff going. Yeah. But it's it's definitely more on on LinkedIn. And that's the right call. Yeah. Like if you guys are trying to get like impressions on this podcast or like any startups you guys create, create like a really engaging piece of content that like goes viral and then make it a thought leader ad. really great way to get impressions. Yeah, that's so interesting. I never really thought about that, but yeah, I now that I I think I I've been seeing certain folks and there's this one guy, I don't know if you've seen it, like the CEO of company called Haven, Cyrus Shirazi, I think his name is. I've been seeing him his thought leader ads where like there was a post that did really well organically and then I think I saw it again, but this time had a like a sponsored thing at the top and I was like that's kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah. So it it Do you think that's the most effective ad creative ad tactic in LinkedIn right now? 100%. Because it looks like it's the person, it's not the company, right? You will see some of those company ads. I scroll right past them. Like Fance has got an ad. I see a lot of like Yeah. Yeah. You see all those, but it's like from the company. It's like that's a scroll past immediately, right? But if it's like a person and you don't see the little promoted because it's so small, you're going to start reading that and then like you get to the end and you're like, "Oh, wait a second. This is an ad. You almost like didn't even notice." There's one company, Numeral. They um they took their uh series A announcement had this like huge uh headline number. I think it was like 20 million they raised. They make that a thought leader. So like I've seen it multiple times now. It's like in the feed and it has a big 20 million. We just raised 20 million. So it's like because it's getting marketing spin now you you'd think that like they're constantly raising 20 million. That's crazy. Yeah. So Jason, you had a ghostriter at one point for you at PPP. What was that experience like? What did you learn? And tell us more about it. The first thing I'll say is that the ghost writing firm that I used, they're great and I don't want to like talk bad on anyone. They they did a great job. But what I started to notice is that like at f Okay, let's back up. At first I was like this sounds great, right? like I can focus on running the company and they'll help me with actually creating you know that 30 minutes per post they'll help me with that so I don't have to like spend that much time on post each week and as we know right from your experience Daniel like posting four times a day is great right if I can get to that point I would and so I was like all right ghost writer this is an awesome concept and so I looked at the market and I talked to a bunch of different ones and I went with this one um called Napa and they were great very good writers they clearly understand hooks They're also like they were really good at like comedic content. They like actually made people laugh. So I was like, "All right, we're going with them because I wanted to prioritize the the content quality over just like other parts of, you know, benefits that these firms could have." So went with them and they did a great job. But what I noticed is that the amount of time as a founder that it took to like constantly get them up to speed on what I was learning, constantly get them up to speed on the new concepts that I was like discovering and and seeing and constantly getting them up to speed on my voice. It actually started to kind of like take the amount of time that it would have taken just to post. And so I got to the point where I was like, "All right, maybe I just kind of go back to doing myself, save the money, and sure enough, like I'm back to just posting on my own." And I'm posting about the same amount per week, and I'm not spending that amount per month, and I'm not spending that time educating them on the new things that I'm learning because it's like, you know, right here. I'm just kind of directly getting it out. And so it could work well for streaming workflows, but for me, that's what it came down to. So now that you're writing your post on your own, what is the future of PPP and your personal LinkedIn strategy look like moving forward? Yeah. Well, I think we're going to continue to go towards the finding that balance of like how can we get kind of unhinged, kind of hot, takey and um and kind of viral, but without being, you know, kind of disrespected as B2B company. So, we're going to continue to try and get that wedge. and someone working with Bryce, other marketing leaders on the team, and we're going to create content and then we'll post it organically. If it does well, make it into a thought leader, put ad spend behind it, and continue to drive people to booking a demo with our platform. Right? I think LinkedIn is really our channel when it comes to inerson go to market. And so, we're going to continue to try and like play towards that human plus AI plus funny kind of angle. You heard it here first. The new formula on LinkedIn in 2025. Let's go. Is the person opposed as thought leader or ad behind it? Yes. I think that's a great way to close it. What do you think, Matt? I think that's excellent. Thank you, Jason. Thank you so much. Hey, guys. Great comma.