Tell creators to show the app as a fix or identity, not a novelty

Zack Hargett… I met with everyone one-to-one. I would say some of our competitors and some people or some founders that are building out similar creator programs, approach it very, very differently. So we always had the mentality, great quote by Brian Chesky, who I look up to very much as a design background CEO. He says, "We want to build the Navy SEALs, not the Navy." And we had that approach with our team overall and especially on the content team.

Zack HargettSo get to know every single one of the creators, make sure you spend time with them, make sure you're enabling them with what creative actually works and letting them know what converts. And it's not a perfect science, but when you have a video getting 20, 30 million views, you know what impact it has because you know exactly when it's going viral and then you can measure on those couple days that it's going viral, what impact did it have down funnel.

Zack HargettAnd so I think it's just a matter of spending time with the content team, making sure they know what converts, what doesn't convert. And at the end of the day, what we found is that if you frame your product as a novel toy, people are going to treat it like a toy. They do not want to pay for that thing. They are, for better, for worse, I think people are very entitled that if something's digital, it should be free, which is probably subsidized by a lot of the venture stuff built in the last 10, 15 years. But if you frame it as a solution to a problem, then people are much more willing to pay. It attracts a higher willingness to pay customer.

David BarnardI know you have a few stories related to that. There's one video that got 41 million views, four and a half million likes, massively viral video, but that didn't convert. I mean, I would imagine you had quite a few of those. Any lessons of why that one didn't convert specifically?

David BarnardBut it is interesting that those didn't convert well. You learned those kind of lessons around what didn't convert. Any takeaways from what did? I mean, you've shared the high level, but more specifically, were you better demonstrating the product in the video? Were there better hooks? What were the things that convert? Because I mean, that's what's so tough right now with UGC is to actually produce those converting videos and hooks.

Zack HargettYeah. I think at a high level, you want to make sure that your product is seen as a solution to an existing problem. Or as Brett mentioned, it resonates deeply at an identity level. So I am fit, therefore I'm going to use Ladder as an example, or I'm a runner, so I'm going to use Runna or Strava. And so you want content that is more identity focused, building brand affinity within a certain audience or market and/or shows your product as a solution to a problem. And those broadly speaking are what we see the best conversion with.

David BarnardSo much of what you did was UGC and trying to go viral, but did you take any of those videos and turn them into paid? And did you do any paid as you grew?