I asked a $100M founder for LinkedIn advice

Transcription

Daniel: Give your product is free money, and nobody wants to accept it, I'm doing something wrong. There's nobody anybody hates more in this world. I get these DMs, like, I just like to pick your brain. And I'm like, for what? Like, I don't know. But if it's a podcast, like, all right, sure. I'm a LinkedIn top voice. Like, actually, that box over there, that giant brown box, that's from LinkedIn. They sent me the things you would send a creator. Just like cameras and headphones and things. I used to work at Instagram. I helped build out Instagram Live. I worked with a lot of different creators there. And I saw firsthand, wow. They're businesses. They're making millions of dollars. They have millions of followers, but they have no idea how to handle the business financial side of what they do. They're not incorporated. They haven't paid their taxes. They can't even get a mortgage. Sometimes they can't even get a credit card because they don't have credit history. And I was like, well, this is something I can help them with. And before working at Instagram, I used to work in investment banking. So I had conics in the financial side. And I also helped build out some very early financial products during my time in consulting, like Zelle. So I realized there is an opportunity here to build Square for the creator ecosystem. Matt: Tell us a little bit about how did you meet your co-founder? Where did that start? You were at Instagram at the time. Daniel: Yeah. So I think the most important thing, clearly, we had the mission, which is, hey, we want to help creators with their finances. We want to build products for them today. We do business credit, business banking, taxes. But I actually think more important than the mission is who you do it with. Because so many things when you're doing a startup can pivot and change around. But your teammate, your co-founder, should be there throughout all of it. And you have to find somebody who is in a similar life stage as you, that they want to take on a risk and do something new, who you genuinely get along with, but also complements you and has this different, with a different skill set. The combination of all those three, it's almost like finding a unicorn. And frankly, it's a lot like dating. I think that if you go out with a specific purpose of like, let me find my co-founder, it's going to be really hard and frustrating because you'll constantly be like, why haven't I found them yet? You almost have to put yourself into a mindset of deliberate abundance, where like, you know what, I'm going to find them. I'm just going to go out and just meet lots of people and do lots of interesting things. So to me, my co-founder, I had made the jump from finance and consulting into tech. I knew that I wanted to build products. This is even before I knew I wanted to do Carrot specifically. And I figured finding a co-founder in Silicon Valley would be way better. Daniel: But instead of going to like 5,000 networking events where frankly, you just meet tons of other try-hards who may or may not be a good fit. And it works for some people, but it's just not my vibe. I actually met him at board games. An engineer on my team, I was a product manager at Facebook and Instagram, and an engineer on my team invited me to board games. And this is a great case where it's really easy to just be like, no, I'm tired. I have a job. I'm locked in on finding my co-founder. I don't have the mental energy. And I said, yes, because I knew the best things in life you don't expect. And so I went to board games and my future co-founder was hosting it. And we just like really hit it off. We just talked about, hey, like what do you want to do in life? I was working corporate. He was about to start a VC fund. And I think it started a friendship that we knew each other as good friends for over three years before we ever thought about doing something together. Matt: Was it instant as soon as you guys met at board games again? I don't think so. I mean, he's just a dude. I'm just a dude, right? I think like that's one thing that's different than like dating. In dating, they say like, oh, the chemistry was palpable. Like I looked at her and she looked at me. Music played and doves sang. We knew this was it. I think it was just like, oh, this seems like a cool guy. Right? I do think we had a good initial conversation. One of the things we talked about, Ari, what do you want to do with life? He told me that he was quitting his master's program at Stanford to study computer science. And he was choosing between continuing a venture capital fund he had started, which I was like, wow, that's really impressive as a 23-year-old, or running off to the woods, pulling Henry David Thoreau, and becoming a pirate full-time. And I was like, that's even cooler. This isn't just a dude who just wants to like make money. This is a guy who knows there are other things in life that potentially are worth more and is creative and wants to do the arts. And somebody like myself, who's grown up with this expectation that you just find a job and make lots of money, that really appealed to me. That drew me in. So I was like, this is a guy worth getting to know better. Daniel: I love that you brought that up, Eric, because, and, you know, we were talking about this off the record, of course, like, especially, you know, growing up, if you're Asian. On the record now. On the record now with Asian parents, like there's this certain mindset that kind of gets drilled into you and a certain path that you feel pressured to follow. Matt: Yeah. It's a scarcity mentality. Like, God, we could all like die tomorrow and live in poverty. So get the stable job. Daniel: Yeah. A hundred percent. And it seems like your co-founder, you know, kind of had like a little bit of a refreshing perspective because he wasn't just interested in saying like, let's just build the biggest company possible and make as much money. Daniel: But hey, he had additional layers of depth to his personality. I mean, I think even to consider the arts, you have to be a little bit in an abundance mentality, right? You can't necessarily be like, let me go like make pottery or do something creative. It's like, oh God, like I'm not going to be living tomorrow. And so it was cool to see a guy who's grown up with a similar background as myself who, yeah, was like locked in on let me build a good career, but also was like, Oh, there's a career side of myself. I haven't got to express. I think it's because I never got to express that from myself. It really intrigued me. Matt: Fascinating. So you guys, you hit it off. You start Carrot. Tell us about like the early days. Like what was that like when you were initially trying to get? Daniel: I mean, all we knew was we wanted to work with creators and we want to help them with their finances. We didn't really know anything beyond that. And so the very first product we tried, we were like, well, this is Kylie Jenner, right? Peak era, 2018, 2019. Like, gosh, a lot of creators, well, they could be spinning out more products as well because they've built in distribution. We've since learned yes and no. Yes. There have been many creators who've launched their own products. They've been very well. Take prime as an example, right from KSI and Logan Paul. When you have the distribution and there's good fit between your audience and the product. Boom. Easy. And the no is, well, you also have to be able to build a brand that exists outside of just you, right? We've also seen with prime sales actually dropped the next few years because they were very reliant upon the novelty and the creators continue to promote it. Whereas there are companies like, you know, if we look at traditional Hollywood, the honest company, Jessica Alba, who was the invisible woman in the second fantastic four series that came out after the very initial one. And for her, well, you know, no one necessarily knows the honest company is Jessica Alba. She used her celebrity to boost the brand, but didn't necessarily have to stick around. So she was able to build, I would say a generational wealth legacy type company. And so we were like, well, let's help creators do this. Let's give them funding. Let's give them capital at better rates to launch their own products and companies better than normal bank would or normal investor would, because we actually understand what they do. And the main problem with that, we ran into adverse selection. It's infamously quoted by Groucho Marx. I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have me. Unfortunately, when nobody knows who you are and trusts you and you're just offering money, the people who want to take the money are not the ones you want to take the money. For instance, some person in a fucking trench coat came to you off the street and was like, hey man, sign here and I'll give you like a thousand dollars. You'd be like, absolutely not. Daniel: Because you seem both of you to be well-adjusted, smart people. You're like, I don't want to like sign away whatever terms are going on. So when you're initially providing capital, that's what we ran into. We literally went around in 2020 to creators and the government was doing PPP, which if you don't remember, were loans for COVID stimulus that would be forgiven. Actually free money. Businesses got millions of dollars from Their parents set us up on when we were like 12 years old. And I ask people all the time, what has your bank done for you lately? And the answer is, I don't know, nothing. Why are they winning? Because they exist. Because it takes so long to build trust. We're like, well, I've heard of XYZ bank, let me just stay on them. So if you wanna build a new financial product, and this is something everybody had to figure out, Robinhood, Venmo, PayPal, the very first thing you need to do is build trust. I still remember Robinhood came out, people were like, commission-free trading? Like, this is a scam, this can't be real. Like Merrill Lynch charges me this much, Charles Schwab charges me this much. How can you charge nothing? Of course, Robinhood, we know, is selling the orders to other financial institutions who needed the liquidity and trading volume. They were making money. But the point is, yes, like a creator, you actually have to build that awareness. So what do we do? We do two things. The first thing was we pivoted the product. We basically went around to creators and said, what's a product they understand right off the bat that they have a problem that is a hair on fire need? And that product was a business credit card. Seems really basic and obvious. Everybody can get a credit card. Ah, no. There are huge creators we're working with like Alex Botes, a chess streamer. Went to Stanford, started a YC back company, making very healthy income as a chess streamer, is a chess grandmaster, was rejected for a business credit card multiple times. And when you can't get access to credit for your business, everything sucks. Because you don't have purchase protection. You don't get any float, right? You're like spending money on your own personal cards or whatever. And so that was like the first product, which for a relatively small portion of creators, was actually their top need. The second thing was, okay, you need to build trust from a marketing POV too. And once we had a few clients on the credit card, we did collabs with them. We'd be like, hey, is it okay if we post you on our Instagram and feature you as a client, give you a spotlight, make you look really cool? They'd be like, yeah. So we'd do that. And eventually other creators would see it. And we'd be like, oh yeah, we work with Alex Botes. And they'd be like, hmm. They'd message her and be like, is this real? She'd be like, yeah, it is. They'd be like, cool, I'm interested as well. Daniel: So that's how we built the initial trust from, wow, nobody will literally take free money to, we've launched this business credit card and now people are actually using this. Now our goal is to go way beyond the business credit card. Our number one focus right now is business banking. We do business banking for creators. We do it better than anybody else out there. And we've been able to go into that because people know us for the business credit card. Because a bank account normally requires a lot of trust. So you kind of ladder up to that. Matt: Got it. So you kind of started with the credit card, which is something that's like easy to understand for creators, something that they actually needed and then now you're sort of like expanding. Daniel: Yeah, I mean like it is the most concrete encapsulation of a very abstract product, which is money, float, debt. Like what does that mean? I give you money. You give it to me back later. Okay. Like that's not something I can understand and hold in my hand unless it's a credit card. Matt: Yeah. And so was that kind of the genesis of the, like the awareness piece, the genesis of the podcast that you've been running where you have different creators come on and talk? Daniel: Podcast was actually very much like, hey, we work with so many amazing creators. It is really strong business development and customer research to get to know them better, right? It's strong business development because I can understand them. Think of it almost like an hour long session with a potential client of yours, like a marquee big deal client. And if you just went up to them and said like, hey, do you just have like an hour just like shoot the shit? Like, you know, I love just to pick your brain. There's nobody anybody hates more in this world. And I get these DMs like, I just like to pick your brain. And I'm like, motherfucker, for what? Like, I don't know. And so nobody wants to do that. But if it's a podcast, you're like, all right, sure. We'll get something out of it. So the first thing is like business development. You get to bring them on and learn more about their lives, their problems, what you potentially can help them with, right? And the second piece is, yeah, it's really good marketing too. For example, both of you saw and mentioned like, oh, I did a podcast recently with Alex Hormozy. Alex is a killer. I love that man. I learn so much every time I'm with him. And if you see that podcast, you immediately implicitly realize, wow, Eric can't be a complete fucking dummy because if he were, why the heck would Alex agree to do a podcast with him, right? And so there's absolutely a level of brand building and credibility too that comes from doing the podcast. But like in the beginning, right, you can't be thinking about these things because you just have to start. And in the beginning, nobody watches you. You have no followers. You have no views. So you're really just reliant on people you know already. Matt: And you say, hey, come on, let's do something. The very first podcast I ever did was with a creator called Nas Daily. And it's because I was friends with him in college. Like we worked out together, right? We got lunch and dinner together. And the two of us, for whatever reason, ended up in the same creator industry. And that first podcast you go and watch, we don't really talk about the creator industry. We actually play, you know, 30 questions to fall in love. It's just like a very personal, intimate exploration of like random questions. And we posted some clips about that, which ironically weren't about creator finances at all. They were about attachment styles. And they got like over 5 million views on TikTok. And that was enough to be like, oh, there's like something here. Daniel: Now, obviously as time's gone on, we've like pivoted and evolved the style a lot. I don't really do that format of questions anymore. Like now it is, you know, I just filmed and put podcast out with Cody Sanchez. And yes, Hormozy. Those are both very business-focused pods. So, you know, I guess the takeaway is whatever you start with is whatever just gets you to start posting. It can evolve over time as the audience grows with you. Matt: How does LinkedIn and other platforms like make up your strategy of marketing at Carrot? I think there's two or three things that LinkedIn is helpful for. The first is obviously potential clients. Now in a perfect world, your clients are literally on LinkedIn. And you've seen a lot of SaaS companies, like the founder of Pylon, Marty, I believe, right? He posts so much on LinkedIn and it's brilliant because guess what? All his customers are other startups. They are also on LinkedIn. Daniel: And I am not even that familiar with what Pylon does. I think they're like Zendesk, but better. Matt: To be honest, I'm not that familiar either. Let me Google this really quickly. But I think this is a fantastic point where like, we're not even sure what Pylon does. And we have heard of Pylon. Daniel: Right. We've heard the name. We know they exist. Yeah. Actually, I'm completely right. It's a Zendesk killer. Yeah. That is literally what it is. And it's because Marty posts on LinkedIn and his customers are people like us. So that's like reason number one. For us, it's not as true because most creators are not on LinkedIn. Reason number two is finding potential partners, which is relevant for us. Even though our creator clients may not be on LinkedIn, a lot of their partners, like business managers, agents, merchandisers, people who help creators syndicate out their content, they're on LinkedIn and they see my content. And what do I post? I mean, obviously I post about Carrot, but I also post a lot of just thoughts about the creator economy. And so it builds a brand with potential business partners. Matt: Like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about, right? And I'd say the third and final reason is it's just fun, right? Like I've been in the creator economy, not that long, but like over five, six, seven years now. And I do have a lot of thoughts. And often I think these thoughts are advantageous to what I'm doing for Carrot's business, but sometimes they're just thoughts. Turns out other people like to hear these thoughts and it's like very personally gratifying to be like, oh, like I posted about clipping like before it blew up, right? Like now the Wall Street Journal's covered clipping. If the Wall Street Journal covers you, you're so mainstream, right? That like everybody knows about it. There's like 5,000 clipping startups, like all the big Hollywood agencies are doing it. I posted about it relatively early. And that post, I think out over a hundred thousand impressions. And I was like, see, that's a great case of, I'm deep in it. Let me reframe this in a way that people outside the industry understand what this is, which I personally feel very gratified for. This creator is huge on YouTube, like they should definitely post on LinkedIn. And more like, there's just creators who are starting from LinkedIn from the very beginning, and it's a very natural transition point for people who are coming from corporate careers like all of us have. Daniel: What social media platform are you spending the most time on? Matt: Instagram, because it's important for my clients and my business. Like I just said, most of my creator clients are not on LinkedIn. They are on YouTube. They are on Instagram. They are on TikTok. But most of the social media platforms lack a strong messaging community basis because of how they started. YouTube started for broadcasting, right? TikTok's all about the algorithm. Instagram started as a social network. Even despite all the things it's evolved and done since, DMs are still a really big part of what they do. So whenever I post on Instagram, I'm also potentially having people reach out to me or building the credibility so I can reach out to them. So I, by far, spend the most time on Instagram. Before Carrot, before doing this company, I was private on Instagram. I had like a hundred followers, right? And then I realized a couple of years ago, well, that's just really dumb. I'm missing out on potential business leads for my company. And I just started posting and doing stuff publicly. Daniel: Do you frequently get like leads from partners or brands through LinkedIn? Matt: I would say that oftentimes people will reach out to me with interesting business ideas and potential opportunities to work together, which aren't necessarily always going to be like, here's a creator client, but like, here's a great example. Our chief of staff is a killer. She started at McKinsey. She's worked at startups. She's made content herself and is so savvy and has done great work here at Carrot. She reached out to me on LinkedIn. Matt: It was just a cold DM, which she was like, hey, I watch your podcasts. I like them. I saw you posted on LinkedIn about like hiring a chief of staff. Like, let's chat. And I saw that. I was like, yeah, absolutely. So I think that like, there are always, I always check my LinkedIn DMs. Like you never know what can come up, right? It's actually a little bit, you guys reached out to me through email, but if I'm honest, that's like, we got very lucky there because I usually don't check my email. LinkedIn. I actually will check myself, right? I'm an assistant go through my email. I will look at LinkedIn. So I do think it's good, but like in terms of like, oh, here's a creator, they should work with you. It doesn't happen as much on LinkedIn because like creators just really aren't on LinkedIn as much. Note to self, we should start with the LinkedIn DM. Oh yeah. If you reach out to me with LinkedIn, that probably would improve your odds like 5X. Like I almost didn't even see your email. Yeah. And like your header was good down. I was like, oh, I just clicked down it. I was like, oh, this seems cool. Daniel: Sure. Yeah. The on the topic of LinkedIn DMs, have you ever actively reached out to brands or partners? Matt: I mean, we've, we've brought in creator clients because of it. I mean, to my earlier point that like emails, like who knows, but LinkedIn is still often more personal. So one of our creator clients who became an investor in us is named Marina Magoko. She started off doing content around learning languages, but has since expanded to do podcasts herself and talk about Silicon Valley. So I initially emailed her being like, Hey, we'd love to work with you, hear about you from a few friends. And I got an email back saying, we're not interested. And it turned out it was like her assistant's manning the email box. They're like, we don't care. I also reached out to her on LinkedIn. So I was like, Hmm, this doesn't feel like Marina. I feel like she would be interested. And on LinkedIn, it was actually Marina. She responded. She's like, yeah, absolutely. And we built a amazing, great relationship now. And the only difference was I was actually able to reach out to her directly past her team. And that was because of LinkedIn. And that was a cold DM. Or another good example, one of my very good friends, Chloe Shi, who I also do another podcast with, that was all LinkedIn. We had like vaguely known of each other, but she kept popping up on my feed. And I just DM'd her on LinkedIn one day. I was like, Hey, you seem really cool. Let's get coffee sometime. She said, yes, absolutely. And then I didn't respond. I left her on read. So I was just busy and I forgot. But it started something. And then she saw me later in an L.A. creator event. She came up to me and said, Do you remember who I am? I said, oh, darn, I didn't. But we became great friends off of that. So LinkedIn, great for outbound, great for getting to know people. You never know. Matt: And now Chloe literally interviewed the CEO of LinkedIn a few weeks ago. Daniel: Oh yeah, Chloe's killing it. Yeah, I've known her now for years. Matt: Yeah. And it all started from a LinkedIn DM. Same with Matt and us. Daniel: Yeah, because people actually check their LinkedIn. And it's got 100% deliverability rate. I mean, with email, it can go to spam, all those other things. Matt: Oh, that's true. With email, like you don't know where the heck it's going to end up. Daniel: Yeah. It's also like so much easier for someone to just like see your message, check your profile versus email. Instant credibility. Like someone DMs you on Instagram. If they're a creator, you can check and be like, okay, what content do they make, what do they post? But like any other industry, it's not like their Instagram is going to have anything. Whereas LinkedIn, to your point, you'd be like, okay, this is like a real person and it's worth somebody, somebody worth getting to know. Matt: I want to rewind back to when you were posting every day on LinkedIn for two years. What was that like? What were your goals? Daniel: Honestly, it was like pretty insane. This goes back to what I said when I started the podcast. Like in the beginning, you just need to frame it in your mind however and whatever just gets you to actually post. Because in the beginning, you're not going to get any of the views and followers. So for me, I was just like, oh, I feel like I see all these people on LinkedIn posting things about the creator economy. They're just like wrong. And it really bothered me. I was like, half the people posting here have never actually worked with creators and they're just saying like nonsense. They're like other people outside the creator economy are just like liking and reinforcing and approving because they don't know. And there are like so many real OGs in the creator economy, which now do post on LinkedIn. But at the time, like they weren't because it was very new. And so I was like, well, like people are posting this and like, this doesn't seem right. Oh, but like, if I post, like it's going to be like a whole thing. Like, I don't know. And so the first post I ever made on LinkedIn actually as part of this like creator journey, which started posting every day for a couple of years, it was from a friend of a friend. She had started as a product manager at Facebook and she also made content and she had been blowing up for content and people were criticizing her because they were like, wow, like how do you do your job as a product manager? And I was like, I want to defend her because it's like, people don't realize just as all of us have done and what you two are doing now, you can absolutely work a corporate job and create content on the side. Like build a following. Why not? And it's in fact becoming relevant for your business that people know who you are, whatever business you're in. So for me, when I see this product manager posting content on the side, I'm like, that's great. Like, that's not a bad thing. Daniel: We should encourage that. And I saw so many people jumping and like shitting on her. So I just made a post just defending her and it did really well and she found it and she reached out to me and she like thanked me. I was like, this is really cool. I was like, you know what? I do have perspectives. I think add value to the creator economy. And like when I do something, I like to do it properly. I used to post the podcast every week for like a couple of years. And so I was like, screw it. Like it didn't take me that long to write. You know, people, to be clear, I think there are people who like optimize their LinkedIn posts like way more than I do. My LinkedIn posts are like not optimized. I just sit there for 15 minutes and I'm just like, hmm, like what's something interesting? Let me just like write it out and maybe I'll like spend another 15 minutes like looking over it. So I kind of was like, well, I have thoughts. Let me just write more of those thoughts. And I stopped doing it because to my earlier point, I built enough credibility that like the incremental credibility just like wasn't that much. And like it was getting to the point where like many of my thoughts are like floating around. I'm like, do I have like more thoughts to add? Do I like have a new novel A lot of people get this, like, how do I do it? And the main piece of feedback he gave me was like, you can't just promote your company. Because I was doing a lot of carrot posts. And he's like, you have to like add value beyond just promoting your company. And that's why I started having hot takes on the creator economy, actually. Initially, it was like finding a piece of news, like resharing like a photo of it and be like, this is my take on it. And then eventually I was like, I don't even need the news article. I just started making my own graphics. I just like go into Keynote and like throw a photo, throw a headline, make basically my own like newspaper image and just paste it and react to my own thing. Matt: I do the same thing in Figma with all my posts. Yeah. It's like I need like an image and like, I can't find a good article. So I'll make my own. Add a little gradient on the image as well. Daniel: That's way more advanced than I do. I just like paste, title, boom, good. So there's like an actual team at LinkedIn that specific job is like, hey, let's find creators to give top voice badges to. Is that? Matt: Oh, I don't think that's their job. I think their job is LinkedIn knows it's important to cultivate creators and they're thinking through how do we support creators, how we take their feedback back to the team. And as part of it, I think they're also figuring out like who should be a top voice. Because that is actually editorially driven. For a while, LinkedIn has other feature. They would give you like a like top voice in a specific industry. And it wasn't editorially driven. You just had to respond to like 5000 community posts in a certain topic and you just get it automatically. Matt: And it's a different one, to be clear. But LinkedIn stopped doing that because LinkedIn realized it actually diluted the credibility of the real top voice badge when there's one you could earn by just answering like 5000 Yahoo answers. Right. Because people be like, oh, well, like this person is a top voice badge. I should listen to them. And it's like, well, they got it not because necessarily they have expertise, but because they're just willing to put the time in and answer like 5000 questions on whatever. Right. Like, how do I get a job? Right. And so I actually think it's the right way to do it is as you're doing now, which is like editorially, which is like, like, hey, you're adding something of worth to the ecosystem. Obviously, if that scales, I'll probably eventually have to change. Right. Like YouTube gives you the plaque if you're over 100000. So like Mr. YouTube, you know, like, hmm. But I think in the beginning, you absolutely should do it based off merit and editorially driven what we think makes sense. And then over time, they'll probably have to scale it out. Daniel: Did LinkedIn give you a plaque for the top voice? Matt: They didn't give me a plaque, but again, I'll show you guys after they sent me like a giant box of so many cool goodies. And yeah, I love the LinkedIn creator team. They're very supportive. Sometimes they'll like even for a while, I would do this. They like feature me in Top News, be like, hey, here's like a hot topic that's like trending. If you want to write about it, we might highlight you as Top News. And be like, yeah, I'm on it. I do it. But as I said, I just am busier these days and I'm tired. And so I just haven't done as much, but it's a great feature. Do you wanna? Daniel: No, no, no. OK, I'll go for it. I mean, we can just cut it out later. Matt: No, no, well, we have a little something for you later. Daniel: OK, sounds good. I love little somethings. Eric, so you have a lot of great ideas and thoughts. If you were able to talk to the LinkedIn CEO today, is there anything that where you'd be like, can you please change this or can you please add this to the platform as is? Matt: I think for me, I would love more IRL LinkedIn creator meetups. The best part of getting to work with creators you care is meeting them and building real relationships. It's why I do podcasts. It's why I host so many events. It's why I go to so many conferences. And I love meeting LinkedIn creators like Lorraine and Gene and Chloe and so many more. But I haven't done so as much through LinkedIn official events. I think they've done an incredible job building the platform and the program. And if they did more meetups, that'd be something I would welcome with open arms. I'd be really excited to meet other LinkedIn creators. Daniel: Yeah, that's a really good point. I feel like YouTube, Instagram, they do a really good job with a lot of these like in-person creator events. Matt: But come to think of it, I haven't really heard of too many LinkedIn specific creator events because it's a newer and a lot of LinkedIn creators have like corporate jobs. So they can't be like, all right, like Wednesday, let me just fly out and just like hang out with my guys and girls and people, you know, but I think it would be a benefit. I think there's a really strong LinkedIn online community. As more and more creators are signing up for Carrot, do you see one social media platform outperforming a lot of the others? Like, do you see a lot more LinkedIn creators coming? Or, I mean, I would say this, right. Obviously Twitch and YouTube creators have the steadiest monetization because it's built into the platforms. But Instagram and TikTok, often the monetization there can be part of a much bigger play. If you're doing really well on YouTube and Twitch, you probably don't have that much time to do 5,000 other things because you're always streaming, you're always making content. Whereas if you're on Instagram and TikTok, it's short form. So you have plenty of time for other things. So you might have your own companies, your own projects. So there's like a little bit of a monetization mix where it's almost like YouTube, Twitch in the beginning, if you're not making much, you're not making much. And then you're making a lot and it's like, wow, that's really cool. But you don't have time for anything else until you've reached like a level of stardom at which then like you can do tons of other things. Whereas for Instagram and TikTok, even from the beginning, you can have lots of different side hustles attached to what you're doing where the content serves as like the upper funnel to whatever you're eventually upselling to in a way that's a little bit simpler than it is on YouTube and Twitch. Daniel: If you were to advise a creator starting now, would you tell them to post a lot on LinkedIn or how are you feeling about the platform? I would say, figure out which platform and content type most matches with what you naturally want to do, right? There's some people, you know, who short form is very natural for them and they can just like record and talk into it. Then do that. There are other people like myself. I like podcasts. I don't like to just sit in front of the camera, just talk, do podcasts. So I would say worry less about the trends and just figure out which style makes most sense for the type of content you do and just double down on that because it is possible to succeed no matter what style and platform you're on. Matt: Yeah, I feel like it's like one, what style makes the most or what format or platform makes the most sense for the audience that you're trying to build or the customer base that you're trying to reach. And then second is probably like, for you personally, what can you do the longest amount of time? Daniel: Totally, I like that. It's like, what's have business value and then like, what do you actually like? Matt: Yeah. Daniel: Yeah. Matt: Like I'm not making like spectacle content. Like I gave 5,000 people a car credit card. Like, I don't wanna do that. It doesn't make sense. Daniel: Yeah. No, I really like that way of thinking about it. So what do you think about like video content on LinkedIn these days? Because LinkedIn's been kind of trying to push video content. Matt: Yeah, they're trending more into video. I'd say, I think it's a good push only because the newer generations are video first. Like that's what they understand. Obviously, LinkedIn also has an older demo on it, which is much more text focused and image focused. But like, eventually I think it will trend more toward video. I think the biggest existential question is the same one that like Instagram is facing, which is to what degree does that cannibalize your existing social media formats, right? Like obviously Instagram has played back and forth. Like there's Instagram IGTV, which is a totally separate app. Like obviously Reels right now is a tab, but like it could have been an app. It could have even been the main feed, right? I think there are experiments. Instagram, Adam Mosseri literally said they're experimenting with like, you open it and it's actually shorts. Sometimes I open up YouTube or it's Reels. Sometimes I open up YouTube and it's just directly on shorts. Daniel: So like LinkedIn, they absolutely should be doing video as they're doing. And they just have to think through how much do we prioritize that relative to everybody who's going to continue just to do image and photo? I actually don't really post a lot of video content on LinkedIn because I'm also not sure how well it does. And I know I've already built a following people who follow me for my Can I just say BCG produces so many people who end up making content, like Kelly Hisan, right? Taylor Bell, like all BCG. I don't know what it is. There's something in the water. Like I actually haven't seen that many people who are like, I'm at McKinsey and I post content, or Bain. Matt: I guess you're Bain. Daniel: Well, fun fact about BCG too is the mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, worked at BCG too, so some politicians too. I mean, also John Mudgett came from BCG. Matt: That's true. Right. So I don't know, maybe BCG just likes for people who end up doing creative content things. But you were saying. Daniel: No, I was just saying, like, I feel like the consulting firms are, a lot of the junior people, at least, are very hesitant about posting because, um… Matt: Yeah, because you're a cog in the machine. When you're an analyst in consulting, right, you're just a force multiplier. Everyone's like, how does this 22-year-old know anything that could benefit my business? Well, not really how it works, right? It's the senior partner who's coming with a hypothesis on what's happening with the business and has a day one answer, and it's the job of the analyst to, like, verify that, right? They're just force multipliers, extensions of, let's verify this hypothesis from the senior leader. Matt: And so, yeah, that means consulting companies do see you as a cog. And so I can see, yeah, if you're just posting stuff on the internet, it's like, they're not a cog anymore. They're like an individual, right? And to that, I would say, either it turns out really well and accelerates your development to partner, because eventually, partners are the people who actually do build a brand, right? Or accelerates you realizing you don't want to be in consulting anymore, you leave and you do something else, which is what I did and Taylor and Kelly and so many other people. And you. Daniel: And me. Yeah. Hey, this man still has a job, all right? We'll cut that part out. Matt: Yeah. No, it's so interesting. Because, like, at the senior level of consulting, you need to have a brand. It's massive to have a brand. Daniel: Yeah, totally. But you're just an analyst. You should be interchangeable. They don't want any client. They don't want to even risk a client being like, who the fuck is this guy? And he was on a deal. Matt: Yeah. Can't have the analysts, you know, making client decisions. Yeah, god forbid they have a personality. It's like, no, they sit in the team room and they just figure out my hypotheses. Hey, check, are they real or not? And then they turn into slides and decks and models. If you were to say, like, the one thing that you gained the most from McKinsey that has benefited you even to this day, like, what would it be? Daniel: Day one answer, right? Don't boil the ocean. It's like, no matter what the problem is, you theoretically can break it down instead of mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive bucket areas, which like, theoretically helps you figure out a problem. That's probably the most helpful thing. It's also in some ways, you have to remember, not always helpful. Sometimes there are just like, by very definition, structuring it that way means you're going to miss out on things you wouldn't have thought of, right? Sometimes you want to be a little more globally optimizing and before structuring into the narrow problem set of what you know or potential causes, take a little more time to be a little bit more creative. I think in consulting, you don't do that as much. That's why I like consultants versus like, I don't know, like YouTubers are a different demo. I think like creators are a little bit more on the creative side. So I think it's an invaluable skill set, but I think it needs to be the start, not the end of how your brain works. Matt: I think part of that is what makes a format so nice on LinkedIn or, you know, the podcast on YouTube or maybe even on LinkedIn too. Have you thought about having a consistent format on LinkedIn? Because right now, you're just posting whatever your takes, and I think that can be why it's so hard to post. Daniel: Well, I do have a format, right? It's like, here's something happening in the news, here are my thoughts. I don't have like a format as so much like they're like here's like the XYZ things. Daniel: But for me, like, if LinkedIn were more important to my business, I would, right? Like, I actually do use formats. Like, for example, my YouTube podcast titles, I very much follow formats. There's only like three or four types of podcast titles that I'll do, right? Like, you know, I did this by doing this or like me on this, right? Or like, here's what X thinks about X. I think formats work when you just have to produce a lot of output. So if you have to structure it. But for me, like LinkedIn is helpful, but not necessarily like I have to post every single day. So I don't necessarily need, I think, to have those distinctive formats. I think if we're posting more, then yes, I absolutely would, just to be seen. Be like, here are my content pillars or whatever. Matt: This might be pretty meta, but when you're thinking about the podcast, I think when we think about someone like John Hu, we think about the road to a billion dollars. And a lot of other creators have started to use, like, you know, Rajan has his building the number one luxury Airbnb in Virginia. Have you thought about having a goal like that for a podcast? Because not many podcasts really have a distinctive format. Daniel: I agree. I actually do think it is important to come up with that framing. For me, it's a little different where I've never had the carrot podcast focused on much as, like, here's a creator, here's how you become a billion dollar creator. And I actually, that's something I'm figuring out, right? For example, when you look at the other really big creator economy podcasts that I admire, right? Colin Samir, I think are very much like, here's a really cool creator and here's what it means for the creator economy, right? John Yushai's, here's a really cool creator and here's the nuts and bolts on how they did it. I'm not really either of those. I mean, obviously, I touch on them. I think I'm more like, here's a really cool creator. Like, here's what it looked like for them to take this path, and here's what it looks like today. So you can learn and understand, is this a path that might inspire you in some way? It's a little bit different than both Colin Samir and John Yushai, and it's what's catchy because I haven't quite figured it out. But I do think, I guess this is a format to your earlier point. Matt: Yeah, I do think if like, there's a common pillar, you do need to have like a clear why they're watching. And I am in the process of developing mine. I think it's tough even for Colin and Samir and John, because there isn't a clear, I mean, you know what you're getting when you're turning on a Colin and Samir video, but you're not going on that same journey as you are with John's Road to a billion dollars. And I think it's tougher with a podcast format too, because it's harder to be part of that journey. You're not like in essentially doing something. Daniel: Yes and no. Like, at least there's some consistency in the podcast where like, the host's job is going to be the same. Matt: I do agree as a podcaster, if you are guest-focused, you have to figure out how do I add my own personality into this in a way where people don't get annoyed when they're tuning in for the guest, but builds that brand identity over time. If you are like a yapping style podcast though, where you don't have guests, I actually think it's much easier. You absolutely could be like, yeah, like, this is the podcast where we talk about getting a billion dollars or relationships or like, you know, healthy gut microbiome, whatever, right? Like if it's just you, it's just to your point, whenever you have a guest, you do have to be a little more thoughtful on like, you can't just be like, this podcast is only about this. Yeah. And then it's like, do you just want the goal to be, oh, we want to have the number one business podcast. Then it's like, is that overdone? I mean, my goal, again, because I do my podcast as a service to my company, Carrot, I don't need or want to be the number one creator podcast. In fact, I hope that continues to be Colin Samir and John Yushai because I love those guys, right? For me, it's about what podcast builds the most brand value for my company and builds my personal value as a good interviewer, relationship builder, and creator. That is different. I don't need to be number one for that. Daniel: You don't have to be number one for the company. Matt: Yeah. For the company and for my personal brand. That does not mean I need to be the number one, you know, most subscribed podcaster out there. How do you balance, you know, posting for the company and also yourself? Because I'm sure it's hard balancing the difference between. Daniel: I mean, most of it's, most of it's blended and it's the same. Generally, all the content I make involves creators in some ways, which ties into Carrot. The only thing I mainly do that doesn't touch Carrot is my yapping podcast with Chloe. That's like totally independent. But even there's so The ideas myself, I will write the first draft myself, but then I'll often have LinkedIn be like, hey, you understand my voice. I'll have ChatGPT be like, look over my voice and just like find and improve it. And I usually won't copy it word for word. I'll be like, oh, like this is a different framing that I like and like implement suggestions. I use it as a tool. Matt: Yeah, personally, I also use it in the workflow, but usually like, the idea starts from my head or a conversation I had with someone and then, you know, I'll probably take a first pass at the draft and run it through. Daniel: Yeah, pretty similar to what I do. I mean, it is a great tool. I think you'd be dumb not to use it at all, right? But I think it's important not to just be like, just generate random fucking slop. Matt: Totally agree. I'm ready to do a good idea about it. Daniel: Yeah, let's do the thing. Matt: Yeah, let's do the thing. I love this. A little something. Daniel: They got me a gift. Daniel: It is wrapped in what appears to be construction paper with a handwritten note that just says mew, which I love because I, I hope there's a side course too, but there, there's no side course. Oh, this is great. Wow. Okay, so first of all, they made me my own plaque, which is super fucking cool. It says presented Eric Wei for passing 25,000 followers, which I know is not that much, but I'm trying. Becoming a top voice and extending over 1.5 billion incredible lives help creators take control of their finances with a really lovely note about what they want to see about care from Daniel and Matt. This is incredibly sweet. I absolutely I'm going to put this in a place where everybody who comes in, it can see because I think it's cool as fuck. Also, how do you sound like Daniel and Matt versus Matt and Daniel? I thought, are you supposed to do it alphabetically? And then, so that's why I did it. Daniel's the one he made it. Daniel's like, so Matt, you know, courtesy dictates alphabetical. I guess we have to put my name first. Well, I shouldn't make all of it. Some friends at MIT Nithya was a huge help in making it. Nithya just really wanted to put my name first, Matt. Yeah, Nithya was a fan of me. This is really lovely. Thank you so much, guys. I appreciate this deeply. Hopefully that's better than a Forbes 30 under 30. Wish I could just paste it. Just stick it right here. I just want everybody to know. This is so lovely. Thank you so much. Matt: That's no problem. Set her up. Okay. I was like, they gave me the gift. Oh, there is a second. That was the main. Here's the secondary course. Yep. Wait. Oh, it's on printer paper. We love that. Little bit better than construction paper. This is like literally heavy duty construction paper. Okay. So, Eric, this is called good idea, bad idea. And I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ideas for you about carrot. Most of them are probably going to be bad, but I'm curious to hear your ideas. And they're going to start, well, we'll see how they go. The first one is a creator credit card. And I know you already do business credit cards, but this is a credit card that a fan can get that supports the creator and they get perks of that creator. Daniel: Yeah, so a lot of creators have tried this before. Kim Kardashian did one if you actually look it up. And now it is public, so I can mention it as well. Just Google Beast Financial. There's been stuff leaking around that now. So I can mention it because it's now in the public. Yeah, I think there's something potentially there, right? Like brands have launched their own rewards cards since the beginning of time. What is a creator but another brand? If someone implements this properly, I think it would do well. The next one is a creator slash carrot SAT. It would be a little viral marketing stunt for you where you'd ask creators terms like YouTube Studio, CAC, CPM, and then it's actually pretty good idea. Matt: Yeah, honestly, maybe we'll do that as a format. Daniel: It's not a bad one. It's like something fun. Man on the street content is also very fun. I host a lot of events. You can just go around and be like, hey, what do you think? And so that that could be a fun, like, Can you pass the creator SAT quiz? That would be fun. Yeah, totally. It's like, do you know what Vine is? No. Yeah. We were talking about a little bit of this earlier, but this would be carrot VC. And I think what would differentiate this, and I'm curious to see if this would actually work. But I know part of what magic spoon did is give a lot of influencers equity and somehow you'd need to get these influencers to post a lot of give equity for posts. Do you think that would work? Matt: So there's actually three different ways to structure stuff with creators. The first is you just give them equity as you framed. We don't do that. I think if you give people equity, they don't value it. They don't do anything. The second is you reward it for work, like they post or something. I think this is a very viable format. I think people do this. The third is what we've done, which is creators actually invest in us because that's the deepest form of commitment where a creator, because they're a part owner, are much more likely to want to do something and help grow you because they help own it. I'm actually most bullish on that format. Daniel: It's really funny you say that because it's in a way, like, like how you started Carrot. Like you can't just give out free money or else no one's going to value it. No one cares. It's like, Hey, I'm going to give you equity. Cool. I guess the fuck does that do? Yeah. Can I like buy Chipotle bowl with this? No. Cool. Great. Thanks guys. The next one is creator insurance. And this is betting against burnout or cancellation. Very hard to implement. Insurance thrives on obviously like law of large numbers and like actual science to figure out exactly how much something will cost and then how to price the premiums. I just don't think there's enough data on that yet. Matt: Good to know. This next one I'm really excited about is a carrot rating. So a lot of creators are getting worried about scam from companies. Are they going to pay, you know, net 30, whatever the payment is? And then companies might get worried about, you know, is this creator actually going to post this for me? So the thought behind this is that you're a middleman, almost like a credit score to both the creators and the businesses for brand deals. Daniel: It's a real problem. I've seen it both ways where creators renege on the agreements to brands and brands just don't pay creators. Uh, I think there potentially is room for somebody to figure this out. I'm not sure necessarily it's carrot. I think the right person is somebody who's brokering the brand deals. I think there are some great companies out there that are building these brand deal marketplaces, but I agree the idea is good. Matt: The next one is, this might not be a good idea for carrot, but another creator company, a carrot shelf and target with like Joyride, Feastables, Prime, all the creator stuff. I think it's a great idea. Probably not us because we're focused on the financial side more than the merchandising, but you absolutely could fill like a little shop with all the different products that come from creators. Maybe that, that could be something for Congo brands because I know you started a Valerian brand. Yeah. Congo did Prime and Elena Nueve. I sent her name wrong. Alani Nu. Alani Nu. Clearly I'm very knowledgeable about this stuff for those of you who don't know. I'm extremely knowledgeable because it's a Louisville, Kentucky company. Oh, there you go. And I know you're from there. Daniel: And what they, what they alluded to, um, is that my co-founder and I started a like sleeping supplements project food. It's legit. Yeah, we never really did anything. I think we sold like one bottle, but you know, it's a good way to like test what it's like to work with each other's co-founders. That'll play. And the last one is hinge for creators. You've been very open about your relationships and uh. I don't know if that would work, but it's funny. I just did a podcast with a creator who said she would want to have an app to match with people in the creator industry because you want someone more stable. So maybe the opposite of the idea. I guess maybe the hinge for creators is Instagram DMs. Matt: Yeah, that too. A lot of them use Instagram. Interesting. Awesome. Last question for you then, I guess, Eric, is anything else you want to tell the audience that we haven't talked about today? Daniel: I think that if you're on the precipice of figuring out, Hey, I have a job, but I want to post stuff, just post stuff. Like, yes, make sure you wouldn't say anything that you wouldn't say in earshot of your boss. But other than that, just go for it. And so you get started, especially in this day and age to even more important. Otherwise, it doesn't matter where you worked. People still might not really care. You heard it here. Thank you for your time, Eric.