Why this Yale grad built a $500K ARR cold email killer | #6

Transcription

Matt: I've been running around the startup space for a while. LinkedIn is, you know, um, 10,000 engineers and 500 product managers. We honestly need a LinkedIn guide of just LinkedIn lingo. Literally everything else I do, except LinkedIn, where I'm still like stuck with basically a spreadsheet companion at any point in that time, if you had asked me for like 50 bucks a month to give me a superhuman for LinkedIn, I would have been like, yay, like here it is, let's go, right? And I was just assuming someone was gonna build it, but I guess I found the people who would have paid for it too, and then we went to build it. That's basically how we landed on Kondo, which is a superhuman-like experience, but for your LinkedIn messages instead of your email. Daniel: Awesome. So welcome to this episode of the Connection Accepted podcast. Today we have a really exciting guest. We have Mitchell Tan, who's the co-founder of Kondo. Mitchell, thanks so much for joining us. Mitchell: Thanks for having me. I accept the connection, I guess. Daniel: Perfect. Amazing. So could you just start with, like, giving the audience, for their benefit, a quick background on who you are, what Kondo is, what you're building, what even led you to the point where you wanted to build this tool. Let's just start there. Mitchell: Yeah, sure. So I guess I've been running around the startup space for a while. In one job, I was, you know, doing go-to-market at an early-stage startup. So I sent a lot of LinkedIn messages. Matt: That's really interesting, Mitchell. So that's what inspired you to create Kondo, right? Because you wanted to fill that gap and make things more efficient for people using LinkedIn in a professional capacity? Daniel: It's fascinating how necessity can really drive innovation. I think a lot of people can relate to that frustration when your tools don't keep pace with the rest of your workflow. How has the reception been so far? Are people excited about the possibilities with Kondo? Matt: And so I guess when the time came around and I was like, oh, let's go build a SaaS, right? This was one of the shortest ideas, right? Because it was like something I would have paid for. And then I guess I found the people who would have paid for it too. And then we went and built it. Yeah. So that's basically how we landed on Kondo, which is essentially a superhuman-like, you know, experience, but for your LinkedIn messages instead of your email. Daniel: And for those of you who are unfamiliar with what Superhuman is, you can look it up. It's like this email app, which basically helps you do your emails a lot faster than Gmail or others. Matt: It's funny you say, you know, for those who don't know what Superhuman is, we were talking in our previous podcast with Jason about how we're in such a bubble that most people, Mitchell, don't know what Clue is or a lot of things that we talk about every day on LinkedIn. So could you run us through, like, share your screen and show us what Kondo, how you use it, and the best tips for people to use it? Daniel: Yeah, of course. So basically, Kondo, let me share my screen. Oh, screen. Window. Okay. So Kondo plugs in. So this is my LinkedIn inbox in Kondo. Kondo basically like plugs into your LinkedIn inbox and turns it into something a bit more like email. So here are all my LinkedIn chats, right? And then we kind of build this app around this idea of inbox zero. Daniel: So instead of leaving all the messages piling up and having to scroll through them all the time, you can kind of take a few key actions here to, you know, keep this organized. So one thing I can do is I can label Cole as a customer. Cole is the founder of Helicone, so I can say customer, right? And then he's going to auto sort into this separate folder of customers. So you can prioritize different groups of people into different folders, right? So for example, If I want to go with this guy as a friend, for example, then I have a friend folder, right? So you can, just like emails, split your messages up into different tabs. So that's the first thing you can do. The second thing you can do is like, you know, set a reminder. So let's say I want to get back to Cole tomorrow if he doesn't reply me, right? Instead of having to scroll down and remember it or star it or mark it as unread, which is what you do in LinkedIn, here you can just set a reminder, say tomorrow, and he's gone, but he'll be back tomorrow or when he replies me, right? So this way, I don't have to remember or write down somewhere else when it's time to follow up. And then in your LinkedIn, there are probably some people where you're just done chatting with them, right? You don't have anything more to say to them right now unless they message you again. So you can easily hit archive to send them to the archive. So the idea here is you can sort your inbox out, set reminders, right? Keep it clean. Matt: And obviously, you can actually do the messages in here, right? So if you go into these messages, you can type and, you know, use keyboard shortcuts to write a bit faster and stuff like that. Daniel: Yeah, so that's what it is at the high level. Thanks for that demo, Mitchell. Curious, one question, because I know there's, you know, there's LinkedIn DMs and then there's Inmails. Does this work with both? Matt: Yeah, there are actually a few different types of Inmails. If you kind of like get Inmails in regular LinkedIn sometimes because you have an open profile and something like that, you do get that in condo. We are also finishing a sales navigator integration. So as you can see, some of my chats here are from SalesNav, right? So yeah, you'll also be able to get SalesNav messages in here as well. Daniel: Awesome. Do you have any formal relationship with LinkedIn or have you just made this totally on your own? Matt: Yeah, no, we don't. We're a third-party tool, so we don't have like a, you know, we aren't commercially related to LinkedIn in any way, just like other tools in the market, right? Yeah, so no, LinkedIn doesn't have a partnership program for like messaging tools. The only partnership programs they have are for like, if you're a greenhouse or, you know, Ashby or like have an ATS, or maybe if you're Salesforce or HubSpot, right? But they don't, there isn't a way we can like partner officially with LinkedIn if we want to build a messaging app. Matt: So Mitchell, I kind of want to switch gears a little bit. Daniel: Sure. Matt: Obviously, you're promoting a tool that is for LinkedIn users and, you know, you're a pretty frequent poster on your own LinkedIn account. Curious how you sort of approached marketing condo. Are you only marketing it on LinkedIn or are you guys going through other channels? I'm assuming LinkedIn is your main marketing channel. Daniel: Yeah, I'd say at least for now, actually, most people find out about us, not through any marketing we do, but you know, they just hear about it. I actually don't know how you guys heard about us, but like, yeah, the grapevine, right? Friends, something like that. Sometimes our users, you know, like, you know, we release a new feature. They're happy. They talk about us on LinkedIn or they tag us. So I'd say a vast majority of discovery of condos still happens like not because we do something, right? Like I post regularly, but I'd say like that brings in like, I don't know, 5% or 10% of signups. And most of the signups come, I don't even know, like, I often show up to a customer call and I'm like, How did you find out about us? Was it my post? Then they're like, nope. Definitely not your post, right? Like, I've never seen your post before. There's some other guy somewhere. So, yeah, we, I obviously post on LinkedIn because it's where our users are. Daniel: And like, you know, it's where people learn about updates in the product or, you know, how the company is going and, you know, like what we're learning along the way. But yeah, I would say most of demand is not marketing driven right now. It's just like, you know, um word of mouth driven, which is a blessing and a curse for a business. The blessing is like, yay, it's free and you know, you, you don't have to do anything to get it. But the curse is that you can't, like, you can't, if people are talking in product, you can't like make that grow exponentially by spending more money, right? It, it will grow, but by itself and on its own rules. And as, yeah, unlike marketing, you can't just like, uh, you know, scale inputs to scale outputs. Matt: Well, Mitchell, I think you have to give yourself some more credit. You've got, you know, nine, almost 10,000 followers. And that's how I first came across condo seeing one of your posts. And I've also seen you, uh, run those thought leader ads, which, uh, we're also talking to Jason about in the previous episode. Can you run us through your, your thoughts or I actually think, let's start with how you write the post, and then get into why you are using the Thought Leader ads and how those are going. So how do you write a post when you're going about it to your audience of 9,000 followers? Daniel: It's, I don't really have a kind of repeatable method, to be honest. Um I aspire to have one, but um and I, I, there are there are templates. Daniel: I mean, like if you go like do a LinkedIn course or like read one of these, you know, LinkedIn influencers, there are like frameworks around how to build one, but I don't use them. I don't have a framework of my own. I, um how I, I usually have some inspiration in the day of like what's like an interesting story or something that will be either entertaining or valuable, right? And then uh if an idea strikes, I try and write it down and I have like a small bank of these ideas and sometimes there are a lot of ideas. I go back to that bank. But it's really what I feel inspired to talk about that day. Um And sometimes that makes it really hard because sometimes, you know, I'm, you know, deep in something else and I have no inspiration. But yeah, I just try and find something, a story that's like, I feel will be educational or entertaining, um, and turn that into a post. Um And this tends to revolve around a few themes. It has like, as it's played out, it's revolved around a few themes, right? Uh One theme is like, we tend to like make fun of LinkedIn a lot. Um So, uh for example, a post that did really well is I said, LinkedIn has, you know, um, 10,000 engineers and 500 product managers. And if you know, you just took, you know, one product manager and 10 of those engineers, you probably ship a better inbox in a month or something like that, right? Um, but they do not. I wonder why, right? So that's a post I made. Daniel: And what was that inspired by? I was sitting in an airport and I was like, oh, like, you know, I, I wonder how many engineers LinkedIn employs. I didn't know the numbers, so I went to look it up and I was like, oh, this would be a cool post, right? Um, so that's one theme. Uh Another theme is like we try and like share how it's like building a company. So a lot of people don't realize this, but the condo is just like me and my co-founder and until very recently, that was it. Um now we also have an engineer. Um, but yeah, it's like three of us supporting now like uh more than a thousand paying customers, right? So um it, why are we in this situation? Because we chose to bootstrap, we chose not to raise venture money, we chose not to build like a bigger team, right? Um And so that's like, I'd say that's not like a one, one-person unique journey, but like that's a slightly different path from many other SaaS companies, right? And so we try and share some of the learnings or like, why, why that's hard sometimes, right? We're also doing this for the first time, we haven't founded multiple SaaS companies previously, so everything is kind of new to us and, you know, I try and like pick a story that something I learned this week or like, like last week I shared, oh, I broke my app, like we did something silly and we broke the app for a while and you know, that sucked, right? And then we try and talk about that. Daniel: Um, yeah, so that's another theme of, so there are like a few themes, right? Um And other themes like just like sometimes I random musings about like the world for, for example, a recent post I made was like, oh, um, you know, there's all this like buzz around like 9-9-6 and you know, startups like grind, like grinding really hard. And my reflection on that, like, which is my actual reflection, was that, hey, when I, you know, got my first job in Singapore, like everyone ground really hard and I wasn't even working with startups. It's like some random, like you guys know, like consulting, right? Like you, you people in consulting work a lot, but people in consulting don't go around the world saying, hey, like, the only way to be a successful consultant is to work, you know, like 10 to 12 hours. Like no one makes that big a deal about it, right? It's just like life, right? Um, and, but startups seem to make such a big deal about it. So I was reflecting on that and I was like, oh, I have like, I feel like I have like a like somewhat of a unique point of view on this. And so my post was like, hey, it's not that big a deal that that startups you work really hard. Like lawyers work really hard. Bankers work really hard. Doctors work really hard. Everyone in Asia works really hard because like the boss like makes you work really hard, right? So it's just like whether it's right or wrong, good or bad, it's like fine, right? You can go like debate that. Daniel: But that to me, from my personal point of view, that's not what makes a startup different, right? Like that's not special about startups. What makes startups special for me is like, hey, like some of the people working 12 hours a day actually enjoy it a lot and they choose to do that. Um, and they actually see that every extra hour I put in translates to like growth in the next week for the company, which translates like my equity getting more valuable or my career going a lot faster, right? And that, that kind of like immediacy of the impact of the hours, right? Other than like it being like just because your boss told you to or just because the way it is, right, like, to me, that that stood out when I first worked for a startup. So, um, anyway, uh, to circle back to your question, yeah, I kind of have settled on some topics that I feel like I have something to say, right? Um, and then, uh, I keep that in my head and then every day I'm like, oh, I wonder if there's anything, you know, new I have to say on one of these topics. And if I don't, then I don't post. And then if I do, then I post and see what happens. Matt: Yeah. I definitely agree with you. I think like in consulting, for example, and I worked at BCG and I'm no longer there, so I'll just say what's on my mind. Daniel: Yeah, that's exactly it. I think there's so much value in diversifying the format because, you know, different people consume content in different ways. Some people are visual learners, others prefer reading, and then there are those who would rather watch a video. But Matt, when you were talking about the cultural differences, especially in consulting, it's fascinating how much work culture can vary from place to place. I think anyone considering a move like that should really take into account what kind of work-life balance they're looking for. Daniel: So I'm curious if you've noticed any differences and engagement or uh trends with different types of posts that you put out there recently. Um, I don't, like, I have multiple formats, not actually not again, not out of deliberate experimentation again, like there, there is like a better way to probably run my content. Like if I was like a content agency, like trying to run my content, I'd like, you know, like, go like, be clear, like, be more like structured about the way we do this and like, you know, like experiment and and have like question answers questions like which formats work better. Um, I think the reality is I have different formats because I have like an idea and the idea like lends itself. Like for example, if I'm gonna like announce a new feature, it only makes sense that you see the damn thing, right? Like um it it's it's weird, like a text post is like weird. Like, even if you thought text posts are the best format, it'd be weird to like announce a new feature for your product without showing people like what it, what it does, how it looks, what but what's the button, right? Um, so that, so like, I think that's fairly simple, but like all all the product announcements, something is some kind of image or video. Daniel: And then I, and then with the video, at first, if you like kind of look back, I, I, this is like typical format where you screen studio and like, you know, founders have a square in the corner and then like they, you know, like they zoom in, it zooms in to like the buttons and it shows you, hey, here's a cool new feature. And then I was like, ah, the product there is like, I'm this square in a corner and then like, you know, like that you have to use the mouse to point at it. So like, and then I was like, why do we do it TikTok style? And so like I started experimenting with like the video software has gotten better. It can like remove your background. So it's like, if I'm going to point to a button, I might as well like be the head, the top, the head that's like with my finger pointing at a button. So I did kind of that style and I was like, well, if the button is at the top right, then I can move my head to the top right too, because like it's right there. And so I think That led to this whole like bunch of video stuff. Matt: And then in the same way, like um we, we do some customer testimonials and I think um if the point of the post is like, you know, someone's experience using the product, right? Then you do want to see the guy's face, like you want to see the guy's face and know who he is and know he's real, right? And know this isn't just some post I like some quote I manufactured and like got them to approve, right? Like you get it in their own words roughly and you see the guy's face. And so I think a certain type of format of post has like, it, it comes from like, at least for me, it comes from like what the post is about. And like, does the format like, you know, lend further to it or not? For example, if some posts where it's like, uh, you know, that there's like a really strong hook. If you said something, like for example, when I I think that post like LinkedIn has 10,000 engineers and 500 PMs, right? It would be like kind of weird or like the effect would have been really different if I gave you an infographic or, you know, like I put a video on it. The point of that post was like, okay, so what, right? Like, I wanna know more and then like it lends itself like a text post quite well. Daniel: So I'd say um there are, I don't know, maybe for me, like it starts with what's the idea, and then like what roughly is like the story, and then like what content format supports that story versus like, you know, what type, what format of post does well, and therefore, you know, what content do we fit into that format, right? Um, yeah, if that makes sense. Uh, I, I don't, I I think my overall reflection on this is I'm very like haphazard about this, right? Uh, I don't approach this like a content agency would. I approach it like, I have an hour of time. What do I do? I'm building a LinkedIn tool. Oh my gosh, I need to post something. What do I say, right? Matt: So have you seen, so I mean, and if you don't know the answer to this or, or have any strong opinions, because uh Matt and I might about this topic, but have you seen any difference in engagement between your videos and non-video posts? Daniel: No. I, I think I've seen a difference between like good posts and bad posts. Yeah, um. Again, I haven't analyzed as well, so, so, I mean, if you're trying to look at my post, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think the biggest difference is that you know, like if, I think it even comes down to like, okay, so number one, like if the hook is strong enough, you get like likes, right? Like you get reads and you get likes. So if it's, if you're not getting as many likes, probably the hook wasn't strong enough. Um, one of my strongest hooks was my co-founder spent $8,000 on a laptop. Daniel: Oh, I see what you mean. So, it's more about how you guide the audience into interacting with your post, right? Like making it easy for them to know what kind of feedback you're expecting from them. Matt: Exactly, yeah. It's about leading them to a point where they feel compelled or, you know, motivated to contribute something valuable to the conversation without them feeling lost or unsure about what to say. Daniel: Got it. So, do you think there’s a big difference when it comes to videos? Like, because they say videos do better? Matt: What do you think about the recent engagement bait posts that are like, comment word, and I'll give you this 10 step playbook, or, you know, I'll give you this guide and it gets like 2000 comments. What do you think about those? Daniel: Yeah, lead magnets. Um, the, I I think they obviously work, right? Um, and needless to say, the better the, the thing on offer, the, the better it works, right? For example, some of the best examples I've seen are this guy, this guy Yuri, he's a founder at um he's a YC founder building uh an app that helps non-native speakers learn like business English. I think it's called Fluently is the company. Um, so he does this quite well, like whenever he does something like, here's, I gathered all the decks that YC startups use to raise the seed round or something like that, right? Um like if the content is actually like valuable and like the guy put in work, got a bunch of stuff that you would otherwise find hard to get, um, does pretty well, right? Um I think the problem with that is like not everyone, like, okay, there are a few problems with that. One problem is I keep hearing like whenever people like leave that comment, they don't actually get the thing. Like some people just don't get the thing and like, you know, if you told people you'll get the thing, you should send them the thing. And so some people get upset because they do the thing and they don't get the thing. Matt: Um, Two, like a lot of, like, it's like very low investment for me to go like leave a comment if I really want the thing. So like, if your hope was that you'll get like qualified engagement or like you'd get a lead out of it, I'd expect like very few of these people actually be leads, which is why. if you kind of like play it out, which is why people don't send the thing to everyone, which disappoints some people, right? So there are some like bits of this mechanics, which, you know, feels a bit iffy or like leave some people with a poor experience, but it works, right? If your goal is like game the algorithm, right, to like get reach to go up because like it basically artificially manufactures like comments that are not like real comments, then I think it it will do better than like not doing that. But I think if you zoom out even further and ask like, is this like healthy for the ecosystem? I think no, right? I think the point of a comment thread is like a back and forth conversation where you can like see people, different people's views and like you can engage on it on a topic. A bunch of people leaving like, give me that, right? It's not like the comment thread for that thing is like useless. You might as well make it like a lead gen form where I fill in my email and I feel right. Matt: You get what I mean? Like, I, I don't think these having more of these posts, like if this takes up 10% of all posts, then it's like bad because I will spend a lot of time in like useless comment admin. Everyone will spend a bunch of time in useless comment admin basically rather than actually like saying what you think, right? Or like leaving an actual comment, right? So, yeah, I, I think you should do, like, if your goal is get leads, it's a great way. I don't, I don't do it because I think it takes a lot of time to make and whatever. I, I, I'm too busy and like we, again, most of our demand right now is organic. But if you're an agency or if you have a service and, you know, you have like a good resource, right? You should do it. It helps you. But I don't think, I don't, I think if everyone did that, like it'd be bad, right? So, um, I, I wish LinkedIn would move in another direction. Um, and that direction might be, I have this valuable thing. Get it for free. Like, don't need to leave a comment, right? Like, here it is. Like, here's the link. I made a guide on how do you do XYZ, right? Like, here's the link to it. Go to the link, right? The end. And then if I find it interesting, I'll like leave a comment and be like, oh, I read it and I have a question, right? Or like, how did you, like, I'm curious how you put this together. Or like, is this real? Like, you know, I think that kind of conversation is more interesting than please give it to me. Daniel: I agree. Matt: And there's no condo for comments, so it's hard. All those, you know, 2,000 comments will get, will get lost. So once you have that viral post Mitchell that, you know, you have your hook, you have your engagement bait, which is a great phrase that I love. We honestly need a, a LinkedIn guide of just LinkedIn lingo because I'm sure you have a lot. But once you have that post, what is your thought process like to, to push ads behind it? Because I've seen some of those on your page with one of those thought leader ads. We were talking to Jason Alvarez Cohen, the CEO and founder of Popol, how he does that. And I'm curious to hear how you use that in, in your marketing strategy and how it's gone for you. Daniel: I'm still learning, right? Like, uh, I'm very, I'm very new to like basically paid marketing. Um, my strategy right now is like to retarget people which sign on our website and our company page. So the idea is like, not everyone who comes to our website and like sees kind of LinkedIn, like signs up. You need like, you know, I don't know, 20, 30 touch like touch points to someone before they sign up if they're qualified. So, um, how do I, like one way to get more touches is like make more organic content and hope it shows up. Daniel: But like, thought leadership ad is a good way to take a post, like new post that might not organically reach like the same people and just get them to see it, right? Um, so that's kind of the overall theory for, for me, like, it's like, like, you're already somewhat aware of interesting condo. How do I like increase the number of like impressions you have of my brand per time, right? So that if you would otherwise have taken three months to sign up, now you take maybe one month because like you've seen us in more places or something like that. Um, so that's why I spend money on them. Um, how, how they've went, uh, I think like not, I'm still figuring, like, we've gotten some signups attributable to that in some way, um, but I struggled in a, for a few reasons, like one with thought leadership ads, unlike like regular display ads have, have lost the attribution. In a regular display ad, there's a CTA button, there's a button that says like learn more, sign up more, blah, blah, blah, right? And then it goes straight to your landing page. Um, and then like that, like that funnel is like a lot more trackable in a thought leadership ad, you, there is not a CTA. You can put a link in your post or you know, sometimes people click through to your profile or something like that. But like, it's like harder to like attribute the clicks back to that ad. Daniel: So like, maybe you've got some signups because the person saw three thought leadership ads and then the next day they're like, oh my God, my LinkedIn inbox sucks, right? And then they go to our website and they sign up and they might have be having some effect, but it's like hard to like. Ask like how much that they are having compared to like a display ad where like the guy just clicks a thing and done, right? So we've definitely have seen some, like, I do see like examples where like people see the see thought leadership ad posts and they're like, oh, I saw it and then they sign up and I talk to them and I ask them, how did you find us? And then you see some of like, like you told me, hey, I, you know, I saw some of your posts, thought leadership ads, right? But it's hard to quantify, like, are you getting your ROI on, you know, the spend because it is like, you are spending money per impression, right? Unlike the organic posts. And so I'd say I'm still iterating and figuring out how to like, be sure, like, because if they're working, like, do I go spend 3x more, 5x, you know, like, like when, like, how do you decide if you're going to like increase your spend? You only increase your spend if you know that you are like, you have payback, right? You have at least like 100% ROAS, right? I don't know for sure my thought leaderships have 100% ROAS, so I don't know, like, whether I allocate more of my marketing budget on it or not. Daniel: And I'm pretty sure there are some ad experts out there who like, be perfectly qualified to like teach me how to do this, right? But, like, I'm still figuring it out, right? And so I think they're working to some extent. I don't know how well they're working, um, and I don't know if I should spend more money on them. And I think, but, you know, I have some ideas on how I can like get clear on this. One idea I have, which I haven't tried, is like incrementality testing, for example, um. We, like, let's say I know I get, say, 20 signups from San Francisco a week, right? We can, you can track like where, where people are when they sign up. If I targeted thought leadership ads only at people in San Francisco and spend, say, like a thousand dollars on it a month or something, does my weekly sign up from San Francisco go up like X percent, right? Um, If it does, and I wasn't doing anything else just in San Francisco, right, which I'm not, right, then that's one way to go about it, right? You don't care what the click stream is, like, you don't care, you know, you can ignore all the lostiness in in click attribution and multi-touch attribution. You can just say, Hey, if I go spend an unusual amount of money in distribution to like one like split place or like one type of job title, does my signups of that tiny bubble grow go up? Right. Matt: And then if it does, and the only thing you did was like, increase that spend on that thing or spend any ads at all on that thing, then that's one way to think about it, right? But I haven't like, yeah, I feel like I've learned that running ads is somewhat of a full-time job, especially if you're not an ad tech expert. And yeah, I got to prioritize it appropriately. Yeah. Daniel: Yeah. And actually, because this is really interesting, when you do run these thought leader ads, I'm assuming, you know, you're selecting a post that has performed really well organically, but like, at what stage are you like, OK, it's time to, it's time to put some money behind this. Is it like a week, two weeks after the post? Do you kind of not really have a span? Matt: Yeah, let's think about it the other way. I, I, I start from, Hey, there are some people who are landing on our website and like visiting a company page who are not like, like I know for sure, like not every single one of those thousands of people like see my content every week, right? Like sometimes they see a post and sometimes they don't. Um. But they are like somewhat warm and they have not signed up or made a condo account yet, right? How do I reach them? Well, I can buy a display ad. Well, I can like cold email them, right? Um, or I can show them a post of mine three times a week, right? And then, okay, like what post should we show them? Oh, right. Daniel: They, they know what condo is already, right? Um, they might be like considering it, right? Um, so I show them like a, hey, here's a new feature demo, or hey, here's what like someone who uses it has to say about it, right? Or uh something like that. I probably don't show them like a post like, hey, I broke my app and here's what I learned from the bugs in it, right? But like, like I, I think I start with like, who are we going after? Like uh what are they thinking about? What would help move them down the funnel? And then like sponsored uh sponsoring my own posts uh driving distribution in organically to them is just like one content path into it, right? It's like the the asset which you can like use for that funnel. Um, yeah, I don't think about when I posted it. Um, I think about, or, or even how well it did organically, actually. Um, I think even if it's like underperforming posts organically, but the content's like a good fit for like that stage of the funnel, I'd do it. Um, yeah. And why? Because ads work. By the way, like, some people buy display ads on LinkedIn and they work. Display ads have no organic performance. All the likes come from like their distribution through an ad channel, but, and sure, not all of them pay back, but some ads pay back. If not, no one's, like, if not, what on earth are CMOs doing? They're not just like burning money. Some of them are getting money back, right? So some display ads work. Matt: Display ads have no organic performance, but they still work. So like, even your underperforming organic posts would still work, right? Like, as long as the content is good enough. And then the organic performance is just like a litmus on like, it's like one signal of like, is the content good enough? Like, is the content like relevant enough to your ICP? If it did, if you have zero likes organically, it's probably bad content, right? But if it's 10 likes versus 20 likes versus 30, you know, maybe it was like really good content for the 10 people who liked it and maybe like something else, like the organic distribution when arrived or whatever you posted on a Sunday afternoon or something like that, right? But don't matter, like if the content is good, like just go try to spend some money on it and see what happens. Daniel: Yeah. So you're doing this for your thought leader ads, but there are a lot of other ads you can run on LinkedIn and other channels to grow, whether you're putting ads behind your company page or hiring a ghostwriter. Have you thought about doing those two things, Mitchell, to grow? And, you know, what was your thought process like that led you to thought leader? Maybe you didn't even consider these options. We also experimented with like display ads from the company page, right? So I think that's just like part of the mix. Daniel: And like, again, you evaluate them by asking like, what's the ROS and trying to approximate your way into it, right? So, yes, so and then my learning on the display ads is like, hey, the attribution is a lot clearer. You can see like the click sign up, but then like maybe you don't, it doesn't, some people get turned off because they seem like they look a bit more like ads and therefore your cost per click is like much higher, right? So yeah, I see like probably issue ads and other kinds of LinkedIn ads as the same thing. And like compare, we also tried some Instagram ads and then, yeah, so I think all ads should be like compared in experiments, right, with the same metrics. Hiring ghostwriter is a bit different. That's like saying, hey, like organic impressions actually very cheap, like they are free basically, right? So like if I'm posting three times a week, what if I, a ghostwriter would let me post seven times a week and I'll get all these extra impressions, right? I think that's how I think about it. I actually asked, like earlier on, I shopped around and I was like, can someone ghostwrite my stuff? And then like I got someone and then I said, okay, step one, go audit all my stuff and tell me like what I'm not like, what I can be doing better. Matt: And then someone told me like, Hey, like actually, it's very, it will be very hard for a ghostwriter to like replicate like exactly what you're doing because some of these stories are like pretty personal, right? And like you have to spend a lot of time like talking to me and stuff like that. So I don't know, like just the style of my posts, like sometimes I come up with like funny meme posts, right? I'm sure that there are some meme post specialists ghostwriters, but you know, like it's not clear that you can repeat repeatably come up with like meme posts that I do, right? And so I think just because of how quirky the content has been, like, it's harder for me to imagine a ghostwriter like replicating the same thing. Um, but maybe, like, uh, like, I, I think it's like on the cards, but I'm not like, you know, priority number one to go find one because I'm able to write some of these myself, at least like three times a week, right? And it's not like a huge blocker, like it doesn't take up all my time. Like it doesn't really take up enough time where it's like a big problem. Um. Daniel: Yeah, that's really interesting. So recently when we talked with Jason Alvarez Cohen, uh, the CEO of Popple, he had also shopped around and also, I believe, worked with a ghostwriter. Daniel: And he found it helpful at the beginning, but then over time actually found that the amount of time that it took him to catch them up on business updates and things just happening on the day-to-day in his words was taking almost as much time as he could have taken to just write the post himself. And it sounds kind of like a similar situation, but also for you that some of the post ideas that you get are are very quirky and um, you know, it can just be easier and more fast for you to come up with the post, just send it and do that as opposed to to hiring someone to manage your entire income. Also, also like, it depends, like context is important, right? Like my goal is not to become a LinkedIn influencer. So it's like my business is not dependent on like me attracting all the eyeballs. My business is dependent on the product and the brand attracting all the eyeballs. So you could argue like if I can pay someone to write on my thing, why don't I pay someone to write on their thing? Right? Like, like the, the spend on ghostwriting is like not a different order of magnitude from paying an influencer to go post about condo on their own LinkedIn. And I get that, I get extra distribution, which is their following. And if the content is good, like, I mean, yeah, like, you know, they could write a story about how they use condo, right? Um, so I think that's... Daniel: Yeah, if I'm gonna spend on something, like there are other, like, again, there are other ways to spend on it, and so what if I, my account doesn't post all day, right? Like, that's okay. Like, yeah, um, think about like consumer apps. Like, do you see consumer app founders like posting on their own socials all day? No, they just like make random content and like get like, uh, you know, a whole bunch of UGC and like you don't even know who the founder of these DTC brands are, but they still grow, grow like crazy, right? So like, why is that so different from B2B? Matt: Um, right? uh And, and there are important differences, but I'm just just saying that it doesn't, like, yeah, I mean, founder content is like interesting, but founder content doesn't have to be like the only thing, right? And it, it doesn't have to be like the first thing you spend your money on or the only thing you spend your money on or the only way to spend money. Daniel: Yeah. That's fascinating. And you actually have been diving more into LinkedIn influencer marketing too. I saw Charlie Hill, who might be a future guest of the show. And he's someone who's been, you know, helping you market condo. How has that been going for you? Matt: Um, I mean, Charlie's great. He was like one of our early users. He was like one of the first to like pay us money for an annual subscription. So, um, yeah, we definitely didn't get into that thinking we'd end up like, you know, having any kind of partnership. Matt: Um, why, how is Charlie going? I mean, uh, he made a post for us, so I got, got us a lot of eyeballs. Um, right. And I think there is some kind of like, I mean, part of it is like, he's he actually paid for the thing and used this thing before we even like paid him any money, right? Like, um, and I think we like that kind of partnerships, like almost, I think basically all our, all influencers we've spent money on first like use our app themselves and like paid for it themselves, right? Before we like reached out and said, Hey, wanna do something together, or they reached out and say, Hey, like, you know, I have an audience, blah, blah, blah. Um, so that's probably why we, that's the context for like working with Charlie, how that's gone. Signups are like attribution is very lossy within influencer posts. Like why? Because you don't like, it's not like you, you don't know this thing exists. And then you see infils and post about it. And then everyone who sees and needs it, like buys it now. Right. Um, sometimes you see one influencer post about it, and then the next week you see someone else post about it. And then you see something else about it. And then you hear something about it, and then you go and buy it. Right. Like, and then which influencers should we credit that sign up to? They definitely didn't use the first influencers link. Right. Um, so I think that's what I've learned. Daniel: Like, I've like talked to users and say, where have you heard about us? And they said, I've seen a few people post about you and this seems like legit. And therefore now I'm here, right. But like the first influencer definitely did not get any credit for it in terms of like clickable attribution. Um, and I think probably with Charlie and like a vast majority of like the influencers we have worked with, like the answer is like attribution is lossy. Um, with uh so some influencers, like there's a lot of direct attribution and um, I don't know why. I'm still figuring out like like some people like they could do a post and like we instantly get like 10 clicks on the thing, which sign up and pay and all that stuff, right? Um, I, I don't know why, like some influencers like drive faster, like time to purchase and, and others less. Um, and just because you don't get direct attribution immediately doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in them. Um, I'm still learning how this works, but yeah, we'll keep doing some, you know, paid partnerships with people who already use our product and are our users and are talking about us anyway. Um, yeah, how much we spend, who we spend on is like work in progress. Daniel: I think a common theme Matt and I have been hearing a lot now is the difficulty of tracking these spends, whether it's a thought leader ad, whether it's an organic post, whether it's an influencer post, it's kind of impossible to know how someone came to condo because even if they told you, Mitchell, that they saw an influencer post or they saw Charlie's post, they might not know. but subconsciously, your thought leader ad could have come up in their feed before. So it's a really interesting problem to to think about, you know, how you're getting these customers because there's no total 100% surefire way to tell where you where they signed up from. Um, I got this advice from Gal Aga. He's one of our users. Um, and he, he spent a lot on ads himself at Aligned. Um, Aligned is like a digital salesroom, right? Um, but Gal told me that I should basically take whatever attributable signups I get through a link, a paid LinkedIn thing, and like 2x it. Basically, like, you would just assume that there's some kind of dark funnel going on. Like for everyone who clicks a link and signs up, there's someone who doesn't click the link, but still signs up because they saw the thing, and so you just like roughly assume that if you got 10 signups who clicked the link, then 10 signups, you've got 10 signups who didn't click the link, but still showed up anyway. And he said that's a good rule of thumb for him. Matt: And so, uh, I, I don't know how to measure whether the advice is right, but I just take it because I trust the guy and he spends way more money on LinkedIn, like paid stuff than I do, like 10, like a hundred X more or something. Um, but yeah, so that's one way to think about it. Um, like if an influencer makes a post and they put a link and zero people click the link and sign up, then probably like close to zero people who clicked the link and sign up. And if 10 people click the link and sign up, then possibly like some people didn't click the link, but then saw the next guy's thing and then the next guy's thing and then like, and then sign up, right? So I think that's how I approach it. Like, um, the, you must see some evidence that it like leads to like a full funnel conversion. The magnitude might not be like correct, but like, sure, like if the guy, like if the post gets like a hundred likes, but zero clicks on the link and zero signups, then Don't do another one, you know, like, don't do another one. If it got like 10 and you wanted 20, maybe you actually got more, so I like do it again. Um, That's how I think about it. And then another thing is like, we ask in our signup flow, like, how did you hear about us? And then one of the things says influencer and there's like a field where you can fill in a thing. And some people actually feel, like you mentioned Charlie, some people like click influencer and type Charlie Hills in the, in the box. Daniel: And I'm sure not everyone does, but some people do, and you get some, you know, you get again some indicator that if people are doing that, then I'm sure Charlie sent us more people, but only some subset of them chose to go write Charlie Hills in the box. Uh, but if no one, like if people are writing Charlie, but no one's writing like Tom, right? Then probably like, and we're spending the same amount of money on Charlie and Tom, then probably like Charlie's working better, right? I don't know, right? Um, so I, I, I think it's a precise science. And I think if I, you know, if you're a head of marketing, like this is your job to go figure out how to like approximate the right signal to make the right decision on allocating spend. Um, but as a bootstrap company with a limited budget, I just like try and err on the side of like, if it, is it yielding like results on an order of magnitude I can see through like whatever attribution I have in place that suggests I could possibly be making my money back. And if like the answer is like, it's a long stretch, then like don't like I, I stopped that spend. Um, and then I find, which means I missed some things that could be working, but I just like missed it because I don't have the right tracking in place. But I kind of err on the side of like, what's the thing that I confirm I'm definitely making my money back. And if I'm definitely making my money back, then I'll like go do more of that. Um, why? Because I have a limited budget. Matt: I didn't raise VC money, right? I'm, I'm, I'm optimizing for like short returns rather than like, you know, total returns. Daniel: Yeah. 100% agree with you, Mitchell. And like, I, I think the word is multi-touch attribution. Like how do you, uh, determine who actually influenced a buying decision, right? And as, as someone who has run sponsorships before on my, my YouTube channel, uh, completely separate from my LinkedIn. Every sponsor provides me with a UTM unique tracking link, but besides that, there's no way for them to really know if someone saw a video that I posted and then like later clicked onto someone else's video and then bought through that link. Uh, they have no way of knowing. Matt: So I think that's one of the biggest challenges that, you know, marketing in general and CMOs have, uh, currently today is like, how do you do that? And, and obviously we're seeing like, like Popple, for example, we keep bringing it up today because we, we talked to Jason recently. They're trying to tackle the issue of, you know, attribution from in-person events, which for a long time was really difficult. Like, how do you know someone who attended an event where you invested, you know, if you're sponsoring the event, throwing like tens of thousands of dollars. How do you know what the real ROI on that is for your business, right? But then you know for a fact that you probably should be investing in these types of top of funnel uh activations. But it's a difficult question for sure. Daniel: Uh, Mitchell, I wanna switch gears a little bit now actually because so you've been quoted, you know, saying, and I'm gonna read here, cold emails are in the gutter unless it's someone you know or a very well crafted note. People aren't responding anymore. And I think that's a really interesting uh idea that, you know, cold email versus LinkedIn outreach. It seems like today LinkedIn outreach is is doing much better than cold email, but curious your thinking when you wrote that and uh any thoughts you have. Matt: Yeah, um, just final point on like the, the the measurement. I think we should like mention Pranav Pierce here. Um, he runs a company called Paramark and like Pranav is really big on like incrementatility testing. So I think he would say for the events thing, uh, what's your like last month's baseline if you go sponsor like three events this month, like in some city or in some country or something, like what, what went up? Um, you know, like throw away all this like kind of You know, technical attribution models and just see what happens. Um, so I think that's another way to do it. And like, yeah, I think that's how Pranav would advise CMOs, but like, yeah, go check his stuff out if, you know, you're like thinking about like attribution problems. Um, and then to your question here, um, I think cold email is. I think cold email is just like really hard and um right like right now. Daniel: And it doesn't mean that it doesn't, like some people still make it work, to be clear, right? Like you like some sales reps go book emails through cold email, right? So like it, it it kind of, it's not dead, but it's just really hard. Uh, and like every 10 founders I talk to, like one or two are like, oh, yeah, cold email is my main channel and it's working, right? But like eight, eight are like, we tried it and we got, we sent like every 1,000 emails we sent, we get one positive report or something like that, right? Like it's just really like, um that's the sense I get, um, especially if you are like sending lots of that, like, I don't know how like, I, I, I, I don't know like if you are handwriting like one by one email, 100, what, like how well do you do? Um, I suspect not as well as you would have done if you did the same thing three years ago or five years ago. Um, so I think it's just like emails like super spammy. There are all these like, a, there are all these technical barriers to getting into people's mailboxes. You gotta get the right infrastructure set up and then let's say you've done that and it got in the primary inbox. People are still getting lots of mail in there. And then like, you know, like people have seen every variation of like, you know, personalized subject lines and like, you know, like clickbaity subject lines and like we're so inundated with these things now that it's like really, really, really, really hard to stand out. Daniel: And then after, after you like get me to open it, you have to get me to read it. Uh, you're giving me like, like it's just. Yeah, and, and there is no limit on who you can, like, and I don't know who you are. Like I open a cold email, like I have no idea who you are. I don't know if you're real. I don't know if you're fake. I don't know if you are like a fake persona. I don't know if you, who your CEO is, right? Like, like there are all these like barriers to trust and relevance, right? And, and noise that I think that's why cold email is hard. Um, why is LinkedIn like less hard on those same dimensions we just talked about? That's you have no like technical issue like that you have your deliverability of a LinkedIn DM is 100%, right? Like it will always land in the inbox. Um, I mean, with some maybe small qualifications there, but like you send a DM, it will show up. Whether the guy reads it or not is a different story, but at least we've like crossed one hurdle that you don't cross cold email. Number two, the people you send to, like, could, like, you have ways to let them know who you are before they read your thing. You have a headline. Uh, you have a link. You have like a real profile. People can, if they want to, like, go click your link to see where you worked, who you really are, that you're a real person and that you are really like, I don't know, the founder at a company or like a sales person in the company, right? Um, so like there is. Matt: And you can push content into their feed if you make good enough content and you're connected with them, right? And so they could have seen you before you send your DM. Um, and so I think for those reasons, um, and then once you get people, you can follow up with them and you know, like you'll you'll keep being in the inbox. Daniel: So I, I think basically LinkedIn has like less hurdles to like actually like show up in people's inboxes. And also like you overall get less spam in your LinkedIn inbox and like your email inbox. Um, and that, that doesn't mean it works for everyone. It just means that like if you have a relevant message, a, a credible and relevant profile for the right person, and that person happens to check their LinkedIn inbox, like, somewhat regularly, I would bet on that instead of cold email. Um, if that does not apply to you, then, yeah, sure, you know, maybe not. Uh, if you are prospecting people who aren't on LinkedIn, then don't go LinkedIn DM them. But if you're prospecting, say, founders, right, who are on LinkedIn all day, right, and definitely check their LinkedIn inboxes, and you have something super relevant for founders, yeah, go try that instead of cold email. I'd try that first. Yeah. When you're DMing people on LinkedIn, one of the things that can make you stand out is having LinkedIn Premium, that uh iconic orange, maybe yellow badge. I see, Mitchell, you have LinkedIn Premium too. Matt: Do you think that makes a difference in cold emails? Daniel: No, I don't think so. Uh, I don't think anyone, like, I wanna, I, like, maybe, I maybe I'm in the wrong bubble, but I wanna go meet the people who are like, oh, if you don't have premium, you're not legit. Right? I don't like, some people who don't even know what on earth the the premium badge or the verified, there's also a verified badge, right? Like, I, I don't think so. Like, I, I think what matters more, like, okay, and I stand to be corrected, maybe I'm in the wrong bubble, but, like, I think what matters more is like, it's your headline, like your headlines, like the description under your line, right, especially connection request, you see like that thing, right? Um, I think that, I think your, your first chance of showing, like, your relevance or legitimacy for me as a person you are reaching out to is like your headline, right? Um, so I think that matters more. I mean, whatever, the, the picture, you should have a picture and the picture should be like your face, and, you know, it should look like a real whatever, right? But beyond that, I think the headline gets you in. I think like the preview of your message, if you're sending cold message, like matters more. I don't actually think these like extra badges and stuff like that matter that much, but. So I personally, and I don't know about you guys, but I do have premium, but I actually hide my badge, so you can't see it if you go on my profile. Matt: Uh, I don't know if you even knew that was an option, but like The, I honestly think the verified badge that shows up next to my name is probably more impactful than like a gold, hey, he paid for premium that pops up. Daniel, I don't know if this is a hot take, but I, uh, yeah, that's just, I agree with Mitchell. Daniel: I think like the description, the headline probably matters the most, and then uh And then maybe the verified badge, but I, I haven't, whenever I see someone with a gold LinkedIn badge, it's the first thought that comes to mind is just like, oh, okay, he's like paying for LinkedIn premium. Maybe he just wants to see who's viewed his profile. Why would you pay for LinkedIn premium? Matt: Oh, why, why would you? Why do you, Mitchell? Daniel: Oh, wait, wait, the answer, the answer to that is like very clear. It's that you get more connect requests every week. Um, like if you are, if you are, uh, and I think there are some other fields like maybe some enhanced search or something I haven't looked into the details of that recently, but um if you are a salesperson or you're whatever, if you're trying to like connect with more people and that makes you money in some way, like, even if you're trying to like get a job and, you know, you're trying to like build relationships with hiring managers, uh, you get 200 connects a week instead of 100. And uh that's why you pay for premium because you can 2x the number of people you connect with. Matt: Whether they actually accept your connect request or whether they reply to you is like a downstream problem, but um 100 people is not a lot if you're a salesperson a week, right? So like 200 feels like a lot more. That's why you should pay for premium. Um, that, and then the other reason, which, uh, I don't know if LinkedIn is happy me saying this, but who cares, is like, it's a, it's a pay to play, right? Like LinkedIn has, I think actually LinkedIn writes this somewhere in their terms. I, I don't have a link, but like there are certain like basically soft rate limits, like if you don't have a premium profile and you like send too many messages or something like that, right? Like they get mad at you. They're like, oh, you know, you're not like a, you're not like a serious business user. You're like doing too many things for a regular casual user and therefore we're gonna like lock your account or something for a while because it must be like some bot that took over your account. So if you're sending a lot of messages or um viewing a lot of pages, I think if you like open a lot of profile pages, there are some limits on that where LinkedIn will kind of shut your account down temporarily if you don't have like premium. Um, so yeah, that's why you pay for it. Matt: Yeah, just chiming in, the main reason that I have premium is I, I run an agency and so the sales navigator subscription is actually pretty useful because a lot of the times I'm, you know, building lists of like a thousand prospects for my clients and then we're, you know, going off of those lists. And even for myself, like when I'm prospecting for potential clients, like I'm going on sales navigator building a detailed list. They have way more filters than just the native search bar and all those filters. So like you can way more in depth. So it's really valuable for like BD, salespeople, all that sort. Daniel: Mitchell, you've sold me on LinkedIn Premium. I'm gonna have to get it right after this. I had it and then I was, you know, I'm not sure about the connection rate limit as I'm about to check out right now, looking at all the features that they sell me on and I think there are way too many options as well, but that's a separate point. But even for like the slight chances of an algorithm or message boost, in my opinion, I think it's probably worth the $20 a month. Matt: No, I'm pretty sure like on right now, you can only send like around 100 requests a week. You would just go test it yourself. And then when you get a premium, you get 200. You just go count the number. Like if you send the request, if you hit the limit, like they will tell you, no, you can't connect with more people, your free trial limit. Daniel: And I'm pretty confident that like, if you don't have premium, like that limit is lower. And again, you can like, like everyone can go test this for yourself. If you don't have premium, just go max out your connection requests and roughly like how many did I send, right? And then like go get premium and then like do the same thing, right? Like, like don't take anyone's word for it, just go experiment and see for yourself. Do you know which version of premium you have? Matt: I think any version of premium unlocks the 200 connection request limit. Yeah, and then, yeah, like Matt said, the like sales nav gets you like better search within sales nav, that kind of stuff, right? But I think the connection request is just like premium or not. Yeah, the sales nav is the most expensive, Daniel. So it's like, it's like $120 a month or something. And then, uh, one thing on the, on that point, like the connection request limits. So I probably send, I don't know, 25 a day, so that's like 175 a week, I think if I'm doing my math correctly. So I'm right under that 200 limit, haven't run into any issues, but I was working with a client that didn't have premium and he kept hitting the connection request limit, but he was, he was pretty, I think he was trying to do 25 to 30 a day and he, he hit that limit and we had to wait until like the end of the week to refresh. So that's an interesting, interesting point there. I didn't realize that with premium, they probably increase it. Daniel: This is why this goes back to why it's easier than email. It's actually not easier than cold email. Like, uh, it's just like easier to get a reply because um there is no 200 request limit in email. Like you can email as many you need people as you want, but you can only send 200 requests in LinkedIn a week. And so it, right? And therefore like less people get message, like if you think about it, like less people are getting messages because everyone can only reach out to max 200 people a week. Um, and this, I think actually LinkedIn built this probably like well, like it does reduce like the noise on the platform and people have to go accept your connection request before you can send them or you can send them an in-mail, but you can't like bug people not repeatedly if it's just an in-mail, right? Um, there's some constraints on like these on who you can message, how much you can message them in LinkedIn, which reduce the noise overall versus email, which gives you a better chance to like reach people if they're there. Matt: So live podcast update about LinkedIn Premium. I just got the premium subscription. I paid $20 a month. And so I, I was out of weekly. I hit my weekly connection limit before this podcast started. And now after buying premium, I still hit the connection limit. So it might go in next week and I will keep you posted how things go. I bet LinkedIn takes like time to refresh these things because like their systems are like slow. So. Daniel: Okay, so what Mitchell, what else are your LinkedIn conspiracies or algorithm things, if you have any, like LinkedIn having a certain amount of connection requests for people who have Premium? LinkedIn conspiracy. Well, the biggest LinkedIn conspiracy is like, why do they want you to play Sudoku and like Zip that much? Like, like, you know, like the thing that LinkedIn seems to push the most, like, okay, uh, there was a recent like change in like post analytics and something like that, and they made some noise about that, which is great. Um, but yeah, like everyone, like every like loud thing I've gotten like is like, have you played Zip yet? Or like, check out new Sudoku. We got like the people who made the real Sudoku to make this thing. So, um, I, I think that it, but yeah, why does LinkedIn push game so much? It's like, interesting. Uh, I mean, there are some obvious explanations for it, which is like, you know, it gets you like more like usage time. Like if you get people to play a game, they're likely to go like play it more. But then like, what has games got to do with like, you know, everything else you do on LinkedIn, like finding a job, or like, you get what I mean? Like, like, it's not, It's not like, you know. is this now an entertainment app? Like, why, why does, why do games belong on LinkedIn? Right? Like, is it because they just want more ad space and time? Maybe. Daniel: Like, like, why should you pay? Like, I don't know, like that continues to puzzle me and I post every now and then about it. Um, but, yeah, why does LinkedIn have games? Before we wrap up, Mitchell, and have a very exciting segment, is there anything else we didn't cover in this podcast that you want to cover either about LinkedIn, about Kondo, anything else? Matt: Uh, no, I feel like I've said too much. Might piss off with the college. Any other, well, okay, I'm actually curious too. Is there any other good LinkedIn lingo we should be aware of? I just learned the term engagement bait today from you, and I'm going to start using it. Daniel: It's not LinkedIn lingo, it's like clickbait. It's like not LinkedIn lingo, right? So, I mean, same thing. Uh, what? Yeah. Uh. Matt: No. Okay, well, we can move on to the good idea, bad idea segment if you want then. Daniel: Let's do it. So, how this is going to work is I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven ideas for you. Okay? And you're going to tell me in the audience if they're a good idea or a bad idea, and feel free to either give a one-word answer or give some explanation as to why. Matt: So the first one is an idea for Kondo. And I've used it. I'm now a user of the platform. And it's to auto-complete your message just like on email. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Daniel: Uh, neutral. Matt: Neutral? What are the two options, Mitchell? Daniel: Uh. Okay, we can move on then. Next. Schedule sending messages. Matt: A good idea, but we will likely not do it in Kondo out of respect for the LinkedIn terms of service, which prohibit automating message sends. And so, if you think about it, like if you can schedule messages, then you can schedule 100 messages to send at the same time, right? Like, and then, like how different is that from an automation tool? Like, I can schedule to send you three successive messages at different times, and maybe if you don't respond, if you respond, it stops, then isn't that basically and, you know, the same like kind of automation that you do for like cold email? LinkedIn very explicitly says they don't allow any third-party tools to automate messages, and so we don't do that. And we're trying to like stay in line with their general approach of like trying to keep interactions on the platform authentic. And so, yeah, that that's the problem with scheduling. It's like a great idea generally, but then it can like be, you can turn that into an email gun or a LinkedIn DM gun. And we think that's bad, or at least like LinkedIn thinks that's bad. And, you know, like we try to respect them. Daniel: That is a good call. My next idea was to schedule connect with people for when people hit their rate limit like me, but now I understand that that would be against the terms of service, and I'm going to move that into the bad idea. I'm going to answer for you, Mitchell. Okay, the next one is replying to comments. Matt: When I'm scrolling on desktop on LinkedIn, I, out of habit, want to hit command return every time I'm replying to a comment. Any thoughts there on replying to comments on your own post? Daniel: It could be good with the meta too of, you know, comment for this guy. Yeah, there are good ideas, but like for a different tool. Like there are some tools which like have tried to address this like, you know, workflow on the feed kind of problem. Um, and yeah, we're not focused on that at Kondo now, but yeah, I think it's a good idea. I would like that. I respect it. You know your, you know your audience, you know your product, and you're sticking to the core. The next one is an auto excuse generator. If someone asks to have a call with you and you don't have an idea as to why you need an excuse for you can't make it, it comes up with excuses for you. Thoughts on that? Matt: Great. I mean, yeah, uh, why not? It it it it it will probably give the person a laugh and like remind it, like, very clearly indicate that you don't want to talk to them ever again. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, good. Why not? Uh, better than non-funny excuse generator. Okay, perfect. Second to last one here. I use Software called Typegrow, which is free, that I can preview my LinkedIn posts, how they look before I post them. Daniel: So the thought here for Kondo is you can see what the notification would look like on a mobile phone or on a desktop before you send the message so you can optimize that almost like you would optimize the subject line of an email. Good idea, bad idea? I think like it seems good, but not like, I wouldn't pay for this. Like, very marginally good. Like, net positive, but like not by much. I was thinking more of a feature idea for you and Kondo in case you wanted to add it. So I can optimize my DMs in the future. I would rather we help people write shorter, more concise, more like to the point. Like, I'd rather like we build like a coaching feature to help you like write better rather than like optimize technically for like how the thing appears. Or to be like, another response is like, well, the first five words of your thing should be like good, right? And then like that way you optimize for all the notifications and all the where it appears and then like just do that. So yeah, you can do it yourself. Just the first word counts more than the second word, which counts more than the third word, which counts more than the fourth word, and so on, and just optimize for that. And you'll be good. I don't know why I'm not the co-founder and CEO of Kondo. Matt: Okay, the last one, Mitchell, is more of a wild card. And it's Kondo for TikTok. We all know TikTok's messaging needs to be upgraded. It barely works. It's laggy, and it needs a Kondo. Daniel: Are we going to see TikTok for Kondo anytime soon? That's a great idea. My answer to that is like someday we will Kondo them all. Right? We'll Kondo the WhatsApp. We'll Kondo the iMessage, like someday. like like everyone, every DM platform has like its power users, and I'm pretty sure like none of them have like an awesome UX for messaging. And yeah, it's kind of generally, like it's definitely a good idea to have it. The question is just like who will build it and will Kondo build it before like Daniel builds it for TikTok? Yes is the answer. And build it better. Matt: Yeah, appreciate the time, Mitchell. This is, like I said, super interesting conversation. And if the audience does want to, you know, check out Kondo or look at your socials, is the best place for them to go your LinkedIn profile or the Kondo homepage? Daniel: Yep, trykondo.com, or like, yeah, look for Mitchell Tan, T-A-N, on LinkedIn and look for the guy with the postbox, the red postbox next to his name. Yeah, and then tell me how bad my posts are. Amazing. Well, that's a wrap.