Test ad formats with agencies, then hire motion designers to make variants in-house

David Barnard… example. How do you think about in generating these assets, when to use AI creative, when to lean into UGC, and when to just team create assets? On your blog post you talk about, put the founder in front of a camera and loom showing off the product. People don't often do those kind of things. But again, if you're building something worth attention, you can probably do a little video like that. So, how do you think about balancing all of those?

Luke HarriesYeah, 100%. I think this will change a lot in the next year or two, but now in Feb 2026, what we've found best is, normally actually you start with agencies. So we started with agencies, you're testing lots of different formats, you work out what fits, but then you want to bring it in-house, like really optimize the quality, but also scaling up the quantity. And so, we have two people which have the job title, AI creative producers, and their task is every day they're just obsessed. They're using tools like Motion. They're obsessed with, "Okay, what's the data? What's working so far? What are other companies in the space doing?" And then they're coming up with new creative ideas and then rapidly iterating and testing it. At the moment, what we found works really well for our core apps, our web app is they create with after effects really great motion design.

Luke HarriesSo, that's their background. They are motion designers, but then they layer in with text to speech, voiceovers using ElevenLabs with the music, and that enables you to do rapid testing because you can test different hooks with motion design, you can test different voiceovers, different music. So you get nice little variants, but you also are able to keep the quality bar really high. And other things we use to boost production is lots of the AI-generated images we also incorporate into the motion design.

David BarnardAre you still using UGC though? And how do you think about UGC in this mix of AI-generated creative or AI-assisted creative plus the in-house assets and you have motion designers on staff? You've got a lot going on. Are you also working with UGC?

Luke HarriesYeah, we do three main types of video production in-house. The first one is the motion design, and that's still the bulk of our ads and works really well. You can get the quick hooks and variants to really see what messaging resonates. And particularly with this AI abstract, UI-based flows, they're great ways to show it. The other team we have is a motion design team, but focused on brand videos and launches. And so they spend longer amount of time, fewer variants. And then we also have a in-house creator called Alec who has a YouTube channel who just shows how do you get the very best out of these tools? And it's more like person in front of the camera. I think there's definitely a world where we can try supercharging that in future for the educational side using the avatars. But for now, we really care about quality as well as quantity. …

David BarnardYeah. You shared with me before the podcast that you're on track to spend over $100 million in paid ads by the end of the year. How do you think about where to deploy that money with this fire hose of creative? Because one approach and what a lot of people are doing is like, "Okay, AI is now helping us create so much more creative. Let's just throw money behind it and just see what sticks." Is that what you're doing with 100 million or how are …