YC founder: “I train my employees to post on LinkedIn” | #28

Transcription

Daniel: In the episode, we dive into what Akil actually thinks about YC. Also, how he's been able to raise $4 million for his company literally by just posting on LinkedIn and his unique LinkedIn playbook to grow from zero to 20,000 followers in a very short period of time. Now, it's an episode you won't want to miss. Let's get right into it. Welcome to the pod, Akil. Matt: What's going on, guys? Excited to be here. Daniel: Akil, for the people who don't know who you are, maybe it's their first time meeting you, can you just give the quick rundown of who you are, where you're from, and what you're working on? Matt: Yeah, we're based out here in New York. We have an office in Flatiron. We are building Fera, which is an ecosystem of apps to run a modern SMB. So we do everything from payroll to treasury to spend management and invoicing, but really just one platform to manage all of your businesses finances under one roof. Daniel: That's awesome. How did you come up with the idea with your co-founder? Matt: Yeah, so it's actually just me, but we started with global payroll. And through that process, saw this opportunity to build an all-in-one suite. And there's some really interesting second-order effects of AI, and one of those being, we believe, that we'll start to see a lot more of what I call ecosystem startups. So startups that are tackling more than just one pain point at once. Daniel: That's fascinating. Daniel: And before you started Fera, were you working full-time as a software engineer? Tell us a little bit about the path leading up to this point. Matt: Yeah, so I started my career at Capital One, and really that's where the seeds for Fera were planted. Had a front-row seat into the problems that everyday SMBs face. Post-Capital One, went over to Amazon, where I spent about three years. And that is kind of where I had a front-row seat into the culture that makes different companies successful. I was working on the transshipments team, which was in charge of optimizing warehouse products across warehouses in North America. And yeah, quit my job right around when COVID hit to start there. Daniel: That's amazing. And along the way as well, we know that you guys also were part of one of the YC batches. What was that process like applying? Did you have to apply multiple times or was it a very smooth process to walk us through? Matt: Yeah. Yeah, so I had applied twice before we got in the first time. Was still working and didn't have that much traction at all. Super early days. Quit my job with really no funding at the time. And luckily wasn't eating ramen for too long before we got into YC the second time around. So about three months after that. But yeah, I think they say something like 60 plus percent of each batch had applied more than once before they were accepted. Daniel: Wow. That's a that's an interesting stat. Matt: What do you think was different about the second time that you applied compared to the first? Daniel: Yeah. And that is one of the questions that they ask you on the application. It's like, what's changed? And for us, and I tell everyone that asks me for advice on applying that you ideally want to show a lot of traction between your applications. So if you're kind of in the same spot between applications, it's probably not a very it's not a strong point to highlight. But in our case, we launched the product. We had LOIs and design partners. I had added a few folks to the team at that point as well. So we just had had this kind of upward trajectory that I think definitely helped our case. Matt: Yeah, that's awesome. So it sounds like, you know, the second time you guys applied, there was a lot more evidence that people were interested or using the product with YC specifically. I'm curious to ask you, what's like, what do you think is the most valuable thing from the whole experience? Because obviously, you know, it's like a batch and there's like a demo day and a lot of people get funded. But from your point of view, what's been the most valuable thing about going through YC? Daniel: Yeah, I get asked this a lot. And I think the most important thing that we got out of YC was really credibility. And the analogy I always use is like, you know, if you were to go to Harvard, it's not like they teach you anything that's particularly special. There's no like secret sauce that they're teaching you. Right. Matt: But the network and the credibility certainly helps you in your career and your future goals. And so, like, in that same way, I think YC definitely helped us get our first set of customers, establish credibility with investors and also the general market. No one wants to be the first person on a new payroll company. And so we kind of needed to overcome that initial inertia. And YC helped us do that. Daniel: Equally as important, how quickly after getting into YC, did you change your LinkedIn personal title to YC and then the name of the batch? Matt: Yeah. I mean, I think I kept that pretty wraps for a bit until we were ready to launch our product, and you know, we had pivoted mid-batch, and there was an interesting tweet the other day about a startup raising capital, and they said, yeah, we're only going to announce it when we're ready to raise our next round of funding. And so now I think we're a lot more particular about when we make big announcements, especially around funding rounds and accelerators in this case. Daniel: Were there any classes in YC or workshops, whatever they're called, about social media or LinkedIn specifically? Matt: No, we didn't really have much of that, and maybe we'll, maybe they do that now. This was like a few batches ago, but definitely looking around at several batch mates. Many of them did already kind of have a following, and they used that as a distribution channel for their startups. Daniel: I don't have the exact data, but I would argue that they disproportionately were succeeding. The creators that had a following already were disproportionately succeeding at their venture. And before you did YC, I know we're going back in time a little bit, but you did ODF or on deck fellows, to give the audience some context. Can you give us more an overview of what that program was like and what you learned from it? Matt: Yeah, I actually did, I think, three, you could call, accelerators. It was Launch House, if you remember those guys, and then ODF, and then YC. But yeah, we, I did the fintech fellows program with ODF, and I know they went through various shifts in, you know, being in person to going online. I think they're back in person now. At the time, we were still virtual. And so it was a lot of virtual kind of gatherings as well as a Slack channel to kind of create this sense of community around specifically FinTech founders. If YC is sort of telling founders to post content, I actually spoke with a founder who went through the YC batch most recently. I think like summer, it was either summer or spring of 2025. And he told me that they are very much heavily emphasizing it now, as something that all founders should probably be doing if they're not already. And I wanted to ask you, Akil, because you're very active on LinkedIn and you get pretty solid engagement. You've got almost 20,000 followers. Matt: When did you actually start posting? And let's go all the way back to the moment when you realized like, okay, maybe I should like actually post on LinkedIn because I imagine when you were at Amazon, you probably weren't posting as much online. Correct? Daniel: Yeah, no. Yeah, I mean, in the early days, it's very, and it still is somewhat cringy, right, to put yourself out there and to do it consistently. But I think once you've kind of made that part of your brand, it's like, well, it's kind of expected already. And so it becomes a lot easier to keep posting. But yeah, I think it's been maybe like a year and a half to like two years now of me like consistently posting, you know, some weeks are better than other weeks. And, you know, LinkedIn and Twitter have slightly different content that does well in each of those platforms. But yeah, I'd say, yeah, I think I started out like, I don't know, a thousand followers at the time to now, you know, almost 20,000 or so. Matt: At what point, though, were you like, I need to start posting consistently for my business? Daniel: I think Adam Robinson maybe was like kind of like the inspiration there. And I saw a lot of folks really getting on this bandwagon of building in public, you know, another one is Tyler Dank, a friend of mine who, you know, he's very big on building in public and newsletters. You know, they have a platform to launch newsletters. And so I think, I think he's right. Daniel: He talks about this a lot around, it helps with investors, it helps with credibility. In our case, like it really helps with our middle of the funnel. So folks that, you know, are deciding between platforms, people buy from people, right, instead of brands or from like an AE. So preferably, and I try to get as close with my customers as possible. It doesn't scale. I can't really get on the phone with everyone, but I certainly can make a post that people are going to read on some cadence. Right. Yeah. I would say about two years ago, we were like, all right, we need to kind of establish credibility in the market. And one of the best ways to do that is to throw in elements of building in public. Matt: Yeah. I'm curious, like, how do you guys think about your marketing strategy? I imagine the content is like one part of it. Does anyone else at Thera post actively on any social media platforms or is it mainly you as like the face of the brand? Daniel: Yeah, no, we do have, I'd say about three others that post on some cadence. Fernanda, who's kind of in charge of our sales at the moment, is also regularly posting. Yeah. I would say, yeah, I think more and more, I am even planning to have like on our new hire on boardings, a small guide on how everyone can kind of start. Matt: I love that. It reminds me of this term that I've, it's a relatively new term that I've seen, which is employee-generated content. Daniel: And you just keep going down and down. Yeah, I mean, we definitely think about it. It's something we're conscious of. It's one of those parts of marketing where you kind of have to do a little bit of faith-based investing, right? You put in the time and resources and hope that it leads to the right exposure and connections. But yeah, I mean, I'm interested in how you guys approach that too. Do you have specific strategies or tools you use to track it? Matt: So you kind of need to often just feel it out, like does it feel like it's helping? And yeah, there are some KPIs that are easy to track, right? Like we ask everyone, how did you hear about us? And we do get several every month that are like, oh, like I saw a LinkedIn post, you know, I saw a founder's LinkedIn post and stuff like that. So that stuff's easy to attribute. But right around the time that I'm posting, like even yesterday, I made a post around our numbers. I had an investor who was interested in potentially investing. We had shared some chats and he happened to be in New York. He saw my post. He's like, hey, I want to meet for coffee, right? And just like things like that, you don't really know who is out there reading your posts, but, and you never know, you know, your post just needs to land on the right ears for something meaningful to kind of happen. And there's tons of examples of that. Or even as I mentioned earlier, like the people that are in the middle of the funnel, right around when I make posts, my phone tends to blow up like an hour after it'll start, like, and it's like, well, you just got, because you're top of mind now for a lot of people, for better or for worse, you know, um, you'll get a lot of noise in there as well. Daniel: But, you know, I'd rather be slightly annoying on social media than completely silent, right? What are some of those other examples of LinkedIn helping you grow your business? I mean, investors definitely, um, you know, I maybe want to cut this story up, but one of our biggest supporters, he reached out on LinkedIn. I thought he would just be like, all right, I want to do like 10K, right? And I'm like, I try to close this round. I don't have time to be, and I don't know what his check size is. And we probably want to cut this up because I'm sure he'll, he'll be watching this for sure. But we got on a call and he's like, all right, I want you to meet my partner. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, another phone call for a 10K check. And then after the call, he, he's like, I want to do a million. And this was like before we had raised anything. And so I'm like, that's insane that on LinkedIn, I just, someone wants to write me a million dollar check. Um, and we can cut this up a little bit where I can resay it, but then he basically doubled down over the past few years and put in an additional like 1.5. Like he's been insanely, um, you know, a big supporter for us. I put in another one over the years. That's incredible. Yeah, it's a crazy story. I definitely, um, you know, I tell a lot of people that one. Yeah. Daniel: But yeah, outside of that, um, I think from like a thought leadership perspective over, I think every founder probably, um, has some opinions and unique insights that they gain over selling their product for, for several months slash years. Um, and you kind of need some outlet to like put those out there, especially for fundraising. You don't really know who or which funds will agree on your thesis until um, you start doing that. I mean, yeah, you can kind of do that one-to-one sales motion and go out and try to find them, but it, it's much easier if you just start putting out content and they'll just naturally gravitate towards you. Matt: Akil, I've got another question. So you mentioned middle of funnel a few times where the content is kind of helping someone once they are already aware of Thera and they kind of like know you guys exist, but like they're not quite sold yet or they're on the fence. They come and they look at your posts and they see what you guys are doing and then, you know, it kind of moves them down the funnel a little bit further. Do you use LinkedIn for more so like actively like trying to convert people into customers? I know you mentioned like people are reaching out to you, so you're getting inbound leads, but are you also ever DMing potential customers or DMing potential investors on LinkedIn yourself? Daniel: Yeah, we'll do that. Our sales team will do that. LinkedIn is like a big channel for us to to meet folks. Matt: I think at least from what we've seen, it's far more effective than doing email outbound. I think that's increasingly become a saturated channel. So especially when you're selling with a profile, like people kind of can do some research on you, on the company, and very easily on like email where, you know, it's very spammy. So yeah, that's definitely been an effective channel for us. Do you guys have, or maybe this is more a question for like your head of sales, but curious like what the process you guys have in place to reach out to people is because there's a lot of different ways to approach it, right? And just curious if you guys have thought about that. Daniel: Yeah, and we have like various ICPs, and we have a lot of data around like what types of businesses are happiest on Thera. And so we try to get more of those types of businesses and, you know, we'll use Sales Navigator to do searches as simple as like who quit their job and changed their title to founder in the last like six months, right? Because they're likely to need payroll eventually and we'll go target those users or a lot of people will change their profile to, you know, stealth startup. So it's like who did that in the last six months based in New York, right? And we'll go out and reach those, reach out to those folks or who added YC, as you mentioned, to their profile in the last like three months. Typically, like they'll need payroll pretty soon, right? So we'll go after those. Matt: Love it, Daniel, I think you had a question. I was just like, LinkedIn DMs are clunky, but they get the job done. Daniel: Yeah, and you know, you have InMails as well. They're a little bit more similar to email, I would say, but you'll get a few from there as well. So LinkedIn has been great for you on the investor side, making you millions. Is it doing the same on the customer side or is another platform beating out LinkedIn for getting SMBs? Can you kind of give the audience a sense of who your customer is for those not familiar with SMBs with some examples? Matt: Yeah, I mean, we have several. I mean, SMB is a very broad bucket, right? And so typically we will sell to businesses that are run by owners. So that's in contrast to like mid-market companies, which generally have multiple teams running their operations or even enterprise. So really focused on like companies from anywhere from 1 to around 50-ish or 30 to 50 employees, I would say. And yeah, what channels might be effective outside of LinkedIn? For us, actually, referrals is our biggest channel. So every month, about 40 to 50% of new logos come from referrals. But they're great because people love the product and they're telling all their friends, but they're not scalable. Like how do you get more referrals, right? You can't really poke people into giving you more referrals. We do have referral programs. We have partnership programs, which I put in a slightly different bucket than referrals. Daniel: So we look at like a lot of the other channels that we've found success with LinkedIn, email, cold calling, and ads is a small channel for us as well. SEO is another big one. So we have like a lot of blog content that ranks well on Google and has increasingly been ranking higher. Now more and more, we actually get people from ChatGPT asking ChatGPT what payroll to use. So there's a whole world of like AI optimization as well. So now we're exploring that. Matt: Yeah, the AI optimization piece is pretty fascinating to me as well. Like how do you show up in the AI search results, I think is so important for every business to be thinking about. I want to shift gears a little bit to talking about your process, Akhil. When you write these posts, and just to be clear, you're writing all of the content yourself, is that right? Daniel: Yeah, and I'm happy to tell you, I did explore ghostwriters just because it's a tedious thing to do. It's just every time I worked with a ghostwriter, I would just rewrite a lot of it. Maybe I should have done some homework. I feel like that's, you guys are in that like space, right? Like, do you guys, and so I don't know if you wanted me to say that, but at least in my case, like every time I worked with a ghostwriter, I would just rewrite it. And so, and honestly, like editing. And so I don't know if you wanted me to say that, but at least in my case, like every time I worked with a ghostwriter, I would just rewrite it. Matt: And so, and honestly, like editing something and rewriting it is actually more effort than me just writing it in the first place. And so I would just, I stopped that and I was like, all right, let's just, let's just write posts and just get good at kind of just having them flow out of you. And I think in the early days, I was like super perfectionist about every little piece. To a fault, like I would have all these pieces that were like pretty much done, but I'd be like, ah, well, I don't like how that sounds. I don't like the tone. Like, what might people think if I, because I said this in this way? And now I'm just like, I'll just crank it out in the morning and just hit post and like, all right, whatever happens happens. I don't really know, some posts out of nowhere will perform exceptionally well, and some posts that I think are going to do really great won't do as well, but I'm not really as like, focused on the impressions and things like that. I'm just kind of like, let me just kind of be top of mind for my followers and the people that are middle of funnel and, and just keep doing that consistently. Daniel: Yeah, I think that's so important. And I love that you brought that up, Akil, because for you, you know, the type of product that you guys are selling, it's not very often that a customer comes in the market and is like ready to buy. Matt: Like when they do though, when they are looking for that, that payroll platform, for example, because they've just started their business or they're just getting off the ground, you want to be almost like top of mind for them and like the first name that comes to mind. So there's a ton of value in you just being like evergreen, sort of like present on their, not like on their mind, but like, you know, when they think about this topic of, Hey, what platform should I use to manage my, my startup's payroll? Like you want Thera to be up there. Daniel: So it makes total sense. Yeah, I think also my audience has gotten so used to like seeing my face so often, like that when I, if I go through a period where I'm not posting that regularly, like people will be like, is everything okay? You know, I'll get those kind of, those, that tone in the text. Is the company doing okay? Like, are you good? Matt: And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just busy. Like I don't have time to post, but I think, you know, having now done it consistently and I am able to kind of stay top of mind to the people that matter. And when you're writing these posts, like how long is it taking you to come up with a post? Are you doing it daily? Do you have like a time block on your calendar? Or are you just sporadically like typing on your phone? Daniel: Yeah. I mean, I try to actually do it as early as possible in the day because that's just, I think it's, it's better for engagement and I tend not to do it on the weekends. Matt: Um, I just want, you know, if I'm gonna make a post, ideally I want to optimize for as many eyeballs as possible. And if that means saving it for a Monday morning, I'm happy to do that. I do have like in my notes app, just a bunch of like, I guess, like starting points for a lot of posts. So I'll be like, Oh, I have, if I, if I have an idea, I'll just write it in there. And so I, if I haven't posted in a few days, I'll just go into that like little idea, notes note that I have in my notes app and be like, all right, which of these can I kind of flesh out real quick and make a post on? Daniel: You have the, the same process, Akil, as pretty much every other guest than Matt and I as well. We all have notes app or Notion with a bunch of ideas. And I like to even call it an idea bank. Once you take an idea from there or you come up with one, what are you then doing to flesh out the idea, trim it, or you're coming back with a fresh pair of eyes? Run us through that process from once you have the idea to posting it or you schedule posting it. Matt: Yeah, I tried the schedule posting and all of that. And I just, for me, I'm just like, let's just make it and, and post it right then and there. And, and now I'm like, you know, if it's 11 or 12, I'll still make the post. It's not a big deal if it's not at 9 00 AM. Um, so I'll just kind of do it. But lately I, I have been throwing it into ChatGPT as well as like a starting point. Matt: I'll kind of just dump my high level thoughts into ChatGPT and ask it to create a post. And it's far from complete, so, and I'll have to change it from my tone, but it's a good first, like rough draft. And so it definitely helps. And, or I'll ask it for like variations on like a certain idea and pick one of those or kind of have my own twist on it, but definitely good for inspiration. Um, yeah, and I'd say like previously, like ChatGPT has gotten much better with that. It, it really wasn't that good in the past and I would just kind of write it from scratch myself because, uh, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, but now it's kind of gotten a little bit better. Daniel: What about the graphics for your posts? Like for the one you did with your fundraise, for example, that was an awesome graphic. And how did you make that? Matt: Yeah. I mean, we have, we have a design team at Thera, so I'll kind of tell them, hey, I want this done and they'll go Figma it out. We also work with an agency for, um, animated videos. So you might have seen some of those around like feature requests. Those are actually quite involved because you have to script it, plan each screen and then they need to animate it and put it all together, figure out the music and the voiceover. So we kind of have like a few different videos being worked on at once. There's a bunch of unreleased videos that I have as well. So that's another kind of thing I can pick out of when I'm looking for a post to make any given week. Matt: Have you ever thought about making video content yourself, whether it's vlogging at the office or some late night? Daniel: Yeah. I mean, we, we We did, we do have a lot of unreleased podcast content with some of our customers, including like Chris Baki, if you know him on Twitter. Yeah, a few other folks. We just haven't gotten around to kind of polishing it up and putting it out there. And in a lot of ways, my like podcasting or video journey feels like my writing journey in that like it feels very cringe at the moment until I start doing more of it. And so yeah, hopefully, hopefully we'll get there soon. We're excited to be early in the podcast journey for you. It's only going to be up from here. Matt: Yeah. That's fascinating. OK, so you've got like a design agency that helps with the graphics, and you've got like some video content as well, potentially in the future. When you think about the different types of posts that you're making, Akil, I don't know if you have a structure that you follow or if it's kind of like every day you wake up and you're like, all right, I'm going to do, like today I'm going to write about Warren Buffett's farewell letter, or today I'm going to wake up and talk about like, you know, how things are going on the metric side at Thera. How do you think about like the mix of content? Because it's, I've noticed on your profile, there's different types of posts. Daniel: There's obviously the announcement posts, you know, when you're launching something or you're trying to hype hype up something that's coming up, or, you know, you raised your recent funding round and then there's other posts as well. Yeah, I don't have like a written down framework, but I feel like I have a mental model of what I'm going for and like some posts are really geared around like intellectual curiosity that I think would be valuable to just, you know, the general founder population, which tends to be a lot of my followers. And then some are focused on company building and just like interesting happenings that happened on my journey, fun stories. And I think, who is it? The Netflix founder does a really good job. I forget who it was, but he has some really good. Matt: Yes, Mark Randolph. Daniel: Yeah, he has some really good posts around just like good stories during his time building Netflix. And so I try to throw some of that in. And of course, like I do try to throw in as much Thera content as possible, but I don't want to overdo that because I think it might get a little bit too spammy, a little bit too salesy. I'd say those are kind of the things. And, you know, we try to promote a lot of our clients as well and try to help grow their business. And, you know, I think about Nike and really like in their ads, they promote the athletes. They don't really talk about the shoe and everything that's great about the shoe. They talk about the athletes that are wearing it. Daniel: And so in a lot of ways, we try to gear our marketing towards like, let's promote the businesses that are being built on Thera and not Thera itself as much. Love that analogy. And I almost even see that in employee-generated content. Matt: Yeah, you're promoting a lot of the people behind the brand and something that's in a way bigger than the brand itself. Daniel: Yeah. That also reminds me, the thing you said, Akhil, about how you don't want to necessarily promote Thera directly in every single post. We, who was it, Daniel? I think it was Noah Greenberg who runs a company called Stacker. Basically, he's a LinkedIn top voice, very active. And he told us that for every five posts, he only allows himself to pitch the product or the service in his case directly one out of five times. Matt: So the other four, it's just giving pure value or just, you know, founder stories, personal content, things like that. And I think what he said specifically was like, you have to earn the right to actually pitch the product. You can't just go out there and assume that you can start pitch, pitch, pitching and people are going to be okay with that. Like maybe in the past that was okay, but these days you need to earn the right to actually pitch. Daniel: Yeah, exactly. Matt: And it's probably somewhat counterintuitive, but people aren't naturally going to be like, all right, this person keeps showing up on my feed. What does their company do? Right. So you kind of achieve the same goal without being too salesy. Daniel: You nailed it. Matt: And you also remind me, Akhil, just like Peter Walker, who we had on earlier, who's the head of insights at Carta, also a top voice. Great job. Yeah. I love his stuff. When you're going to buy Carta, it's not something that, you know, you're just making an impulse purchase on and it comes in two days shipping on prime. It's, you know, a more calculated decision and you need to be starting a business and you want to be top of mind, just like you are for your customers of Thera. Daniel: Yeah, I totally agree. I think Peter does a great job of, and we're looking into doing that as well. Like we have tons of data around like where are people hiring, what roles are they hiring for, like how much are they paying in those areas for each role and putting out content like that and leading with value kind of like what you mentioned earlier, I think is a great way to establish trust with the market, grow your brand, and eventually that will lead to more customers. Matt: Well, Matt's got a ghostwriting thing. You might have to add a little insights product to Forage, Matt. That's a good idea there, Daniel. The other thing I did want to say was, Daniel, was it deal that recently hired someone to be their, like, chief economist, kind of taking like a ramp approach to having somebody in-house who is going to basically produce content that leverages their data set from their customers and creates, um, I guess, like you could say top of funnel type content. Matt: But I could see something similar with you guys, Akhil, where maybe there's someone at the company who's really tapped into the customer data, the customer insights, and has potentially like a background in creating data-driven content, taking a page out of the Carta Peter Walker playbook as well. Daniel: Yeah, that's a great idea. And yeah, I bet that eventually we will do something. Awesome. Akhil, also, you know, you've been posting for a while now. What would you say, because there are still founders out there that don't want to be posting online and probably are feeling that cringe that you've mentioned a few times. What would you tell someone who's maybe like an early stage founder and they're kind of on the fence right now about whether they should be posting on LinkedIn, but they know their customers there, they know that there's value in posting. What would you tell them? Matt: I would say it definitely takes longer than you think it might to start building some level of like critical mass where you're going to see meaningful ROI. Start as early as possible and just keep posting. And you really only ever get over that cringe factor after you put in a ton of reps and then it just kind of becomes more natural and your posts also get better. You kind of see where, what resonates with, with your audience. So I would just start as soon as possible and making it a habit and trying to, you know, wake up and be like, okay, I didn't make a post in a little bit. Daniel: Let me do one today and then getting something out there. And it's also just adding on to what you said. I feel like one of the things that's been a big mental unlock for me personally is understanding that not every piece of content is going to outperform and that content almost follows a power law distribution. So you got to stay consistent long enough so that you can get the one or two or the 1% of content that's actually going to go viral or get hundreds of thousands of impressions on LinkedIn and understanding that, yeah, not every post that you put out there is going to necessarily strike, you know, lightning is just par for the course. Matt: Yeah, no, I, I think, yeah, that's exactly right. So yeah, we'll work with, you know, a ghost writing agency to get started if you want to completely offload that. So that's, that's probably a good good idea to get started, and then eventually you can take it over. Are there any LinkedIn conspiracies you have, Akhil? Conspiracies around like what, what gets promoted and what doesn't or? Daniel: Yeah. Like earlier you were saying, you know, you try to post at 9 a.m. Is there any data behind why you like to post, because everyone practically we know says they like to post at 9 a.m., but I don't know who, who started this, what the data is behind it or either behind 9 a.m. or anything else like that. Matt: Um, I mean, that's a good question. Matt: I haven't really seen any concrete data around it, but it makes sense to me, right? Like I check my LinkedIn in the morning, and so I'm like, okay, let me get this out before people have their coffee and LinkedIn, you know, daily LinkedIn browsing. Um, and yeah, I mean, I think weekends also make a ton of sense because it's, you know, who's on LinkedIn on the weekends, you know, besides me, people like us, you know, that are always on it. Um, so, um, yeah, I do think that there is, are people that have actually tested this out, and I think they said like Wednesday is like the best day or something. You guys might know better than me about like which day sees the most engagement, but it's one of those days in the middle. Well, generally, I, I tell folks Tuesday to Thursday is like the sweet spot, but Tuesday and Wednesday, personally, and this is anecdotally based on my own experience, tends to do the best. Daniel: Is that why you saved your Google post for today, Matt, and not on not posting it on Friday? Matt: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, for context, Akhil, Matt just put, just put up his uh post on LinkedIn saying that it was his last day at Google, even though it was on Friday, but, you know, of course, you got, you got to optimize for these conspiracies. So that's why I posted it today. Daniel: Yeah, no, I mean, it feels like if I post at like 1 versus 9, like it just does better when I post at 9, and it makes sense. You have more hours in the day to get more engagement. Matt: Do you have any other conspiracies besides timing? Let's see, on LinkedIn? Text and posts, comments. Yeah, I have been seeing like anytime I have like a picture of like people, like me, with myself or anyone really, like I think those posts tend to do better. I think people naturally want to connect with, with people. Maybe that's why video does so well, is because they're able to kind of see everyone involved, versus like me putting up like some sort of graphic that my design team made. Daniel: Yeah, like I had one random post with a, it was me at dinner with one of our clients, and for whatever reason, the impressions on that were like 10x higher than every other post that I made over the past few months, and the only difference was like, I had a picture in there of like me and someone else, so I don't know, it was interesting to see, so I think maybe more organic kind of like, you know, natural pictures are the way to go to get more impressions, I don't know, or maybe it was just a one-off, I'm not sure. Matt: No, this is totally a thing. My, I read my dad's social media when he was running for office, and you could tell that any post he posted with my mom would get like 10x the engagement of just him alone. And it was a crazy learning for me to realize, you know, the more people, I think the audience can just connect with it more. Daniel: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And hopefully the clips from this do well. Let's see. Daniel: Matt, do you have any other questions or? Matt: Yeah, yeah, maybe just one more, and then we can go into Good idea, bad idea. Daniel: Perfect. Matt: If you were the CEO of LinkedIn, is there anything you'd change about the platform? Daniel: Anything I would change about the platform. That's a great question. I never thought about that. I generally prefer to see more of the folks that I follow versus other people. I think there's a lot of that, but definitely LinkedIn does a better job of showing me that than like Facebook or Instagram. Like there's a bunch of, you know, nonsense I'll see people that I don't even know coming up on my feed. So I might change that. It does feel like it's gotten a little bit more spammy than previous years in terms of the outbound that I get on there. And I mean, who am I to judge? Like we do outbound on there as well, but maybe some sort of spam filter would be good. And yeah, the whole inbox, my LinkedIn inbox is like such a war zone. I have like no idea how to manage that. And it's always constantly going off and it's not like email where it's a little bit more manageable. I just kind of, I'm not able to keep up with all the people messaging me on there because you have people that are outbound to you to sell you something and you have legitimate requests as well. It's just hard to manage. So maybe better tools around managing the messages on there. Matt: I think we have the product for you that I wish would sponsor this podcast, which is Kondo. Daniel: Akil, and it's just a superhuman for your LinkedIn DMs. You might like that product. Matt: Yeah, I'll check that out. That sounds pretty cool. One more question I had, I was going to ask Akil, and actually I'm curious of your answer to this question too, Matt. If you could remove the feature that when you like a post, it projects to your entire feed, would you do that? Like, make it make them anonymous like on X. Daniel: That's a good question. I feel like I use my, my likes kind of strategically because I know that they're going to be sent out to my audience. So it's like, if I see a post that I think would be valuable enough for the rest of my audience, then I might go like it, just so it kind of gets spread out versus like, I wouldn't repost a random post that I see. There's a way to kind of promote it without reposting. Matt: Yeah. My, my take on that, Daniel, is I actually like that it forces you to be more intentional about the content that you're liking, because you do know that it's going to show up in your feed. It's the same with the comments, right? Every time I'm commenting on LinkedIn, I know that it's probably going to show up and get potentially thousands of impressions even. Daniel: Personally, I like it because it makes me, it almost like forces me to be a little bit more thoughtful about what I'm typing up, but I could see the flip side of people not wanting that since sometimes maybe, one of the reasons why I think a very small percentage of the LinkedIn user base actually engages is because they don't want, say, their boss to see the content that they're engaging with. It's a little bit different for us founders, but I could see that other side of the coin as well. It was just a random idea I had. I'm now very excited, Akil, to share with you some of the good and bad ideas I have. So, for context, I've got, let's see right here, computer over here with my jank setup, one, two. I've got six ideas for you, and you're going to tell the audience and I if these are good ideas or bad ideas and why. So we're going to start with an instant hire, instant pay button. And the thought behind this one is that Thera can become the first payroll system, to my knowledge, that when a contractor is onboarded onto the platform, it goes into a Thera wallet. So you can get paid, in theory, instantly. Immediately. Maybe even earn interest on that money. And then by the time you load your bank account, you can do it instantly, but you can instantly see that money as soon as you're paid. Is that instant hire instant pay button a good idea or a bad idea? I mean, we kind of do that today. You send over an email and you can pay them even before they put in their bank details. Matt: In fact, even before they onboard onto the platform and we hold those funds until they do. So this is a special category of Daniel's been doing enough research. Daniel: Yeah. You're on the right side. This is what people want. We do earn yield on it. Matt: Do you earn interest? Daniel: Yeah, yeah. Dude. Okay. Yeah, yeah. The smarter you think that way, though, because it took us a lot to figure that one out. Matt: What about a payday streak? So if you're getting payroll on time and getting it every week, you'll see in Thera, like, you've gotten payroll for 20 weeks in a row now. Just like a, you know, a little Snapchat streak kind of vibe. Daniel: Yeah, no, that's actually a cool, cool thought or just metrics, KPIs around, like, your salary and, like, you've earned this much today and things like that. So that then we do do that for certain folks. But yeah. Matt: This ties perfectly into my next one, which sounds like it may exist, but the universal salary history ledger. I was talking to a friend in the UK, and it's your employer can see how much money you make from which source. And we don't have that in the US, obviously. So the pitch was, you know, it'd be cool to see how much you've earned, not just over a year, but over lifetimes. Like to see how much you've made over 10 years would be pretty cool. Daniel: Would it be like a public profile where everyone can see, like, all of your earnings? Or would it be, like, just you and your employer kind of thing? Matt: I was thinking more private. Daniel: Yeah, I feel like I'm not sure we're ready as a society to be gamifying income. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I feel a bit too sensitive. So it would be just for the contractor to see his lifetime earnings, essentially. Matt: Yeah, I mean, that would be cool. Yes, it is kind of similar to the last one, but yeah. Now, this one you may already do, and I'm not a foreign exchange expert, so you might have to explain some stuff to me and the audience here. But in theory, could you have banks and liquidity providers bid for the best FX rates? Daniel: Yeah, in theory, you could. Yeah. And we do work with eight different vendors and we do kind of choose the vendor that has the fastest and best rails from a cost perspective. But it's not like super dynamic that we do it for every single payout. Like we have established kind of partnerships with each vendor for each region. Matt: Makes sense. And this is not a good or a bad idea, but an open-ended question. And that's that if you had no legal repercussions for this action, whether the law is stupid or not, what's one product you would build for Thera that can't exist because of regulations, if there is one? Daniel: That's a that's a great question. What's one product built without regulation? Yeah, I mean, we have to turn away a lot of businesses that are in certain industries like cannabis and crypto. They're like pure pure crypto place because of the rules our bank puts on us. And so I'd love to be able to support those businesses. Matt: But unfortunately, we're not able to do that at the moment. Final question. Would you rather have IC or not post on LinkedIn for the rest of your life? Daniel: Wow, that's a tough one. I would rather not go through IC because if I were to do it the other way around, no one would know that I went through YC anyway. So it wouldn't matter. Matt: Akil, is there anything else you want to share with the audience? Daniel: No, I mean, you know, just start putting yourself out there and it'll pay off in the long run. Matt: Thanks for coming on, Akil. Daniel: Yeah, thanks.