October 8, 2024 • 37 mins
Ever wondered how new privacy initiatives by Apple and Google will reshape the marketing landscape? Discover how AJ Goyal, the founder and CEO of Fibr AI, is using AI to revolutionize digital marketing. As tech giants shift towards a privacy-centric internet, AJ shares groundbreaking insights on leveraging first-party data to maintain competitive customer acquisition costs.
AJ shares share his serendipitous story of how he met his co-founder and their plan for strategic conquest of the tech market. Faced with challenges like sales bottlenecks and technical integrations, they reveal their dual-pronged outreach strategy targeting both marketers and developers. AJ illustrates how connecting with the right audience can fuel remarkable growth using social media as a funnel.
In this episode, listeners will also explore the potential of AI in personalized marketing. While expressing skepticism about the impersonal nature of AI-driven outreach, we dive into the transition from building to selling in the startup journey. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone intrigued by the intersection of AI, privacy, and innovative marketing strategies.
All Links: linktr.ee/startup_recruiting
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/riecekeck/
Twitter/X: x.com/tech_headhunter
Recruitment: www.mindhire.ai
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@seedtoexitpod
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The good part of our entire sales process is that
when we pitch, marketersunderstand it more.
So I don't have to sell theproblem, I just have to sell the
solution right, and that's thefeeling.
Our solution is a couple ofparts right, like it requires if
you have used Mixpanel orAmplitude.
It requires a similar way ofintegrating a code in the
website.
I think that's our biggestbottleneck right now.
(00:23):
So we have so many marketers in, but getting the first meeting
with the tech so that this codegoes in, so that they become
tech-free, is where we arestruggling right now.
So typically we're seeing liketwo to three months of sales
cycle.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
After the tech bottleneck, it moves really,
really fast.
All right, welcome to anotherepisode of Seed to Exit.
As always, I'm your host, rhysKeck, and today we're diving
into the world of AI-drivenmarketing with AJ Goyle, the
founder and CEO of Fiverr.
Aj is a serial entrepreneurwith a fascinating background.
He's a Stanford MBA, asecond-time founder, and is
working on tackling one of thebiggest challenges in digital
marketing.
Today, we'll explore how Fiverris revolutionizing personalized
(01:06):
marketing in a post-cookieworld, aj's transition between
vastly different industries, andtalking a little bit more about
the recent $1.8 million fundinground led by Excel.
I really enjoyed thisconversation.
I hope you all will, too.
Thanks for listening and let'sget into it.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
You're listening to the Seed to Exit podcast with
your host.
Let's get into it the rightpeople and more Subscribe and
listen in for new episodes andenjoy the show.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Hey, jay, welcome to the show.
Thanks for coming on.
Hey, thanks for having me here.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, so super excited to chat with you today.
I love talking to early stagefounders, particularly when
you've just gotten traction andfunding, because it's such a new
and transformative time for thecompany.
So really excited to dig alittle bit deeper into Fiverr
with you today, learn a littlebit more about the company, what
you've done so far, your growthplans and what your overall
(02:13):
vision is.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Awesome.
Happy to share everything wehave gone through in the last
one and a half years.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Super.
So for the uninitiated, tell mea little bit more about Fiverr,
the problem you're solving, themarket you're serving, etc.
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I think Fiverr started.
When I saw this news in 2022that Apple kicking killing
cookies and so all the thirdparty cookies, Apple was saying
they will deprecate and theystarted pushing a lot on privacy
.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And sorry not to cut you off, is that where it will
say, will say like ask app notto track on a particular
application?
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, that's what apple did, and then apple may
like, if you, if you go aroundtimes square, you will see apple
board talking about privacyeverywhere.
Right, like is your browserprivate.
So I think apple did, didhammer on it a lot so that
google follows suit, and theysaid they will do it, although
recently, if you might have readthe news, they just backtracked
(03:08):
their words and said we're notgoing to do it but we'll figure
out some other way, because ofwhich both GDPR and CCP are
behind them now to tell us whatto do.
So I think privacy in generalis going to be here.
Cookies are gone.
That means all thepersonalization that people are
doing on gone.
That means all thepersonalization that people are
doing on other parties.
Content is gone.
(03:28):
So it's either your owncollected content on which you
can make the experiencepersonalized for the consumer,
or nothing.
Right, and so that's wherefiber started.
We thought, hey, how do we makesure that in this new, in this
new way of marketing, we canenable marketers to keep their
CAC low, to keep their CPCs low?
And CAC is customer acquisitioncost, cpc is cost per click.
(03:51):
How do we make sure that theseremain low for them so that the
way marketing has been done doesnot get disrupted continuously.
One of the key factors like2022 to 2024, cac across
industries is at least 2x andit's steadily growing and I
think this will continue to grow, like if Google would have
(04:17):
taken the bet and would havekilled the cookies.
My bet was that CAC would havebeen 5x of what it was in 2022.
But it didn't happen.
So fingers crossed when thatwill happen, but I think market
is going to change completely.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And so the reason why CAC is going up is because,
ultimately, they don't have thedata, so they can't accurately
segment the target that they'reshowing the ads to.
Therefore, they're showing theads to more irrelevant people,
but those people are clickinganyway and that's driving up.
Cac is ultimately the problem.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Exactly.
And then those people landingon your website are not
converting.
And then, yeah, you're crackingcases, because the best
business model is invented byGoogle and Facebook.
You pay by click right, youjust click it and you pay,
whether the customer who comeson your website buys or not, and
so that's the reason whycustomers and why marketers are
paying.
And if you think about it, it'slike.
(05:04):
One thing which is there is thatwe were so spoiled by
third-party cookies we cancompletely forgot the kind of
data we used to collect for ourconsumers right, who has visited
us, what they have visited,which ad did they click on?
Ad is still created by us andwe know which ad they have
clicked on.
But rather we will personalizeour website based on third-party
data.
So so I think we like as adthey have clicked on, but rather
we will personalize our websitebased on third-party data.
(05:26):
So I think we, like, asmarketers, we have been spoiled
a lot, and I think everybody isnow realizing that those
third-party cookies which theywere like betting a lot on,
might go away 100% in soon, andso they might have to figure out
alternate ways Got it.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That's certainly a big problem.
So what exactly does Fiverr do?
How does it solve that problem?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
So I think we are starting whenwe started.
We started pitching thisconcept of hey, okay, you don't
know much around the ecosystemabout your consumer, but you do
know a couple of things.
One which ad did they clickwhen you were targeting the ad?
Who would the customer profileso like?
If you, if you have ever runfacebook and google ads, the way
(06:07):
you define is, you go about anddefine an audience.
You say, hey, I want to target,uh, 50 to 60 year old people
who play golf, live in thisparticular city of america,
right.
And and then you show him, showthem a particular message for
your product.
So, for example, you're sellingcredit card, you might want to
show them free golf courselessons, uh, five times in a
(06:29):
year, right.
Or if you are selling, or youmight want to show them like 10
off on their favorite buffetpalace that they want to go on a
weekend, or like a brunchpalace.
But if you think about it, whenthe, when the customer clicks
both these ads, they, they go tothe same landing page.
This is not personalized,because earlier we were
personalizing with third-partycookies.
(06:50):
So Fiverr did a very simplesolution hey, you have created
an ad.
I know the audience you'retargeting with the ad.
I'll take that data and changeyour website dynamically and so
that what they have targeted on,I will double click on it and
show exactly that.
Like you know, when in aconversation you are with
(07:11):
somebody, somebody is justnodding their head and when you
just ask them hey, do you thinkthis?
They don't know what you talkedabout.
Right, like they're justlistening.
I think that's how, asmarketers, we have been treating
ads.
So what we are saying is notdon't just show and listen, but
also implement.
When they click it, doubleclick on the proposition you
have said, let it be the hook,and then go down and write
(07:33):
whatever else you want to write.
So that's what fiber is solvingright now.
The eventual goal is, over time, our ai will be able to learn
every click interaction.
Every time a consumer islooking at his screen, seeing a
text line, we'll be able tofigure out what to show in the
next fold, what to show in thenext fold, what to show him in
the next click, and so that'swhere we want to go as a vision,
(07:56):
but like starting up ads tolanding pages.
That's what we are solving.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That's fascinating.
So obviously your buyer personawithin a company is marketers,
head of marketing, VP ofmarketing, et cetera.
Is there a particular businessvertical or business size that
you're selling into?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yes.
So I think the solution iscommon, but we do want to be
very focused when you're goingout and solve deeply on it.
So one persona that we areselling very strongly is people
who are doing form fills ontheir website or calendar
booking right now.
These could be companies likecredit card insurance,
telecommunication, broadband,and or could be companies like
(08:35):
B2B software B2B softwareselling where, like you, you
have to fill form.
So these are the companies andI call them lead generation
companies, because theybasically take your mobile
number and phone number and thenthey follow up and sell your
sell you the stuff.
So that's where we are rightnow targeting um.
The reason I'm going after themis because I think retail is
very crowded everywhere.
Like personalization is also avery abused word in retail right
(08:59):
like, even a simple change incolor on a button is considered
personalization.
So so we're going after likemarket, which we feel is
underserved and which we feelcould get a much larger impact
if we do so.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So you and your co-founder, preetam am I
pronouncing his name correctly?
So you two?
How did you two meet and didyou identify the problem that
you've laid out together, orwhat was the origin of the
founding of the company itself?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I think that's a crazy story, right?
So I thought of a problem likethis whole CAG going up and I
was like, hey, I need to find atech co-founder because I come
from marketing 12 years onlydoing marketing and so I was
staying with a friend for aweekend and just looking for
(09:50):
co-founders, meeting a lot ofpeople, and then Pitam was a
common friend to that guy.
He visited the flat and we juststarted talking and I actually
tweeted about it and I wasjoking to Pit, to that guy.
He visited the flat and we juststarted talking and you know,
like it, just I, I actuallytweeted about it and I was
joking to peter, like it wasco-founder at first sight for me
and peter was already workingon a web3 startup and so I told
my friend that, hey, I want thisguy to be a co-founder, make it
(10:11):
happen.
And so, so it took us threemonths of courtship to figure
out that we are going to worktogether.
Eventually he called back andsaid, hey, ankur, do you want to
work together?
I think I don't want to do Web3idea.
Let's do what you were thinking.
I think I can add value.
I have some relevant experiencearound it.
And yeah, that's how ithappened for us.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I love that.
So what sort of?
So you founded the company andrecently just raised 1.8 million
seeds, so congratulations onthat.
What traction.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Have you gotten so far from a customer and growth
perspective?
Yeah, I think in terms oftraction we are still way early.
So we raised our capital, weannounced our capital recently.
We actually pushed our productout, especially india market, in
february, march, and then, whenwe have couple of couple of
clients there, we start sellingin a us market in july this year
(11:07):
and so now we have like coupleof paying clients like paying us
market value around twenty tothirty thousand dollars and
yearly, and now we are expandinginto Canada, us.
So I have a lot of meetingsaligned, but the point is we're
still converting a lot of themand still learning and building.
So I think for now we are stillfiguring out whether people
(11:30):
will pay for this or not and howmuch value do they extract from
it.
We are at like four or fiveclients right now and hoping
that we'll hit 15 by end of thisyear and then maybe from there
we'll see the growth and whatthe expansion looks like so what
does your sales processcurrently look like in terms of
how you bring clients on board?
yeah, so.
So we we actually are like.
(11:51):
So one thing which is workingwell for us is both pre terms
and my twitter and linkedinaccounts are working well.
Like us is both Prithams and myTwitter and LinkedIn accounts
are working well.
We are getting a lot of peoplecoming in, a lot of traction
coming in.
People are actually marketersare quickly.
The good part of our entiresales process is that when we
pitch, marketers understand itmore.
So I don't have to sell theproblem, I just have to sell the
solution, and that's thefeeling.
(12:14):
Our solution is a couple ofparts.
Right Like.
It requires if you have usedMixpanel or Amplitude.
It requires similar way ofintegrating a code in the
website.
I think that's our biggestbottleneck right now.
So we have so many marketers in, but getting the first meeting
with the tech so that this codegoes in, so that they become
(12:34):
tech-free, is where we arestruggling right now.
Right Like so.
So typically we're seeing likea two to three months of sales
cycle because of this bottleneck.
After the tech bottleneck, itmoves really, really fast.
One of our client is right now.
They are so hooked that everyweek when they launch ads, they
also launch landing pages withus.
(12:55):
So it just and we think, I think, like with Google and Facebook,
if you can just ride the waveof people making ads and you
making landing pages along, thatthat works, that works.
We just have to get in, and Ithink that's the biggest
bottleneck for us.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So, with that tech bottleneck, what approaches are
you taking to solve it?
What have you tried?
That's worked, what hasn'tworked?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, I think one approach now we have started
doing is a couple of things.
One is in the product we addedhey mail to your developer.
So directly from the workflowit goes to a developer that this
code has to be added.
Second thing that we are doingnow continuously is we are
figuring out in our ICP what isthe typical content management
system CMS people are using.
And then we are figuring out inour ICP what is the typical
(13:37):
content management system CMSpeople are using.
And then we are doing a directintegration with those CMS so
that once marketer log inbecause they own the CMS, they
can give us admin access and wecan put the code ourselves.
So that's the second thing, butit's a long game because it's
integration heavy, right.
And the third one which we aredoing is we are also doing a lot
more outreach to developers now, like just to talk to them hey,
(13:59):
it will save a lot of your timebecause you don't have to make
landing pages anymore, like yourmarketing team can do it.
You don't have to put yourbandwidth into this.
Do solve, like, better problemswith tech, with your tech.
And so that approach has beenbetter, like it's been helping
us going two prong one to theCMO or the head of marketing in
(14:22):
that company and also to the CTO, or like a engineer who is
working on landing pages.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
And which has yielded the better results so far.
Because you're a marketer, I'msure you're tracking in terms of
, you know, number of reach outs, conversions, et cetera.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
I think like the best one for us is right now.
The best one for us is rightnow, uh, the second one, which
is integrating with theecosystems, because that's
that's quickly help as soon asthe person learns and then say,
hey, I am on salesforce, I'mlike, okay, we are already
integrated directly, use it likeyou don't have to do anything,
give me access, I'll put thecode.
That's working really well,because most of the companies
(14:54):
that we are targeting in our icpare, uh, unfortunately,
fortunately, traditionalcompanies, right, like the
credit card and all, and so theyare on like old tech, and so it
becomes easier if we arealready integrated with these
folks so that they can directlystart.
That's been something that'snot working.
But the problem is, uh, thetech is very, very distributed.
(15:16):
Like only 30 people usesalesforce, then 20 use webflow,
20 use wix, 10 use somethingelse, and so it's like really
wide.
The way we are going after ishey, we figure out who people
are integrated with, integratethat, then make it open in our
product uh, ecosystem productpipeline.
Then we figure out anotherclient who is integrated, then
we integrate with that and thenopen it in the product pipeline.
(15:38):
But it's like a one step at atime process, and that's the
reason I was telling you, by theend of the year, the target is
to get 15 clients so that I have15 CMSs cracked, and then after
that we can go faster.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I love the iterative approach.
What sort of objections are yourunning into throughout the
process, beyond your typicalthings like now is not the right
time, we don't have budget forthis, etc.
You know, is it something inthe context of we're concerned
about, you know, using thislevel of AI at scale, or what
are the things you're runninginto?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, I think the first objection we always get is
hey, ai is not reliable.
How much control do do I have?
Will it like, uh, be on mybrand tone?
How's the content looking like?
I think that's the biggest oneand I believe like this is
common to the entire aiecosystem.
Everybody is getting this likeai outputs are really bad.
(16:30):
So we take a.
We took a lot of time to createa tool or a kind of like a tool
where we basically train the AIor we basically like teach the
AI on what the brand language is.
So the way we go about it is,as soon as the customer comes in
, they can put the website URLor the domain and we pull all
the data on the domain and makeAI learn what the tone of the
(16:52):
data is, what is the emotion inthe data, how the brand, how the
marketer has written that data,so that we understand the tone
and feel of the brand.
And after that, when we asksomebody to write, hey, this is
the headline, generate me asecond one.
It becomes much closer to whata marketer will write.
So that's the first thing thatwe have done.
The second one we have done iswe put a lot more control for
the marketer.
Rather than automaticallygenerating all the all the
(17:15):
landing pages.
We, what we do is we generatean Excel sheet and we show the
marketeers hey, look at it,verify everything.
Once you are happy, we'llpublish it.
In the backend already thepages are created, but just to
make sure that the content isright and the marketeer sees it
and he's happy about it, wecreate an Excel sheet for them
to go about it, and so that'slike the biggest one we were
(17:37):
getting.
But now, like with puttingthese small checks in between
and making sure that themarketer is happy about it, has
helped a lot.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I can imagine.
Yeah, because if there'ssomething wrong, it's much
better to just have that show upin an Excel file rather than a
live page.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, I think, like we sell our product as two tools
that marketers use the mostright, like as a presentation, a
PPT and an Excel.
If you know these two, you canuse the platform as easy as you
want.
Like it's just the combinationof these two tools and that's
what I tell marketers.
Because another concern and toyour previous question, another
(18:14):
concern that I get is hey, howmuch time of my team will go in
this?
Do like they are alreadycreating an ad.
Now they have to do this aswell.
And then when I tell them, hey,if you create one ad, the
amount of time it takes, that'sthe same amount of time it will
take for creating a landing page.
If you get 100 ads, the amountof time it takes like it's still
the amount of time it takes tocreate one landing page is the
(18:34):
amount of time it takes tocreate 100 landing pages.
With us, because our ai can doit really really fast, we can do
100 000, 10 000 landing pagesall in like less than two hours,
and so so that's the wholepitch, right, like there's
something, um, I do with b2bclients who do outreach, who
writes email and linkedincampaigns.
I say, hey, you write 100 000emails and you tell me the
(18:58):
content of those emails and theclient profile and the LinkedIn
profile and the website of theclient.
I'll generate 100,000 landingpages for those emails and you
really don't have to worry aboutit.
We can do it for entireoutreach.
Maybe only 50 will click onyour email, but those 50 will
see a super personalizedexperience for them and so yeah,
so that pitch has been workingreally well as well.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's great, yeah, because I think that the there's
a lot of talk about AI in salesoutreach right now and more of
it is around customization, butit's really more around
customization of the email textitself, and I really feel like
that's lost some efficacy,because at the beginning it's
impressive and that's impressive, and the only reason why it was
impressive is because,traditionally, sending someone a
(19:40):
personalized email means youactually did your research, you
took some time to look into them, and this is something that
only someone who's actually donesome research could have sent.
Point where now, if someonesays me personalized outreach,
all I wonder is, oh well, Iwonder what AI system they used.
But, to your point, making it alanding page.
Of course, I know that that'scustom generated, but it still
(20:03):
is looks and feels like a muchbetter experience, I would
imagine, than a run of the milllanding page.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Exactly right.
I'll tell you one of the keyuse case where I've used it and
it has resulted really, reallygreat output for me in terms of
bookings is events right.
When I go to events and I meetsomebody like, say, I meet you,
Reese, and I'll click a selfiewith you and I'll go back,
create a landing page and sendyou an email following up.
(20:30):
And when you land on thelanding page, it just becomes
easier because you meet so manypeople in events.
You don't remember anything inevents.
You don't remember anything andthen you don't.
You don't even remember whatpain points you've talked about.
In our landing page you willsee the photo with me so you'll
remember quickly like there's ameeting and then we detail down
the pain points that you talkedabout and the solution that we
have.
So that becomes very focusedand we have seen like a lot of
(20:52):
booking demos and a lot offollow-through happening of that
and it's just as simple as that, because then people don't say,
oh yeah, he has done justsuperficial research on me.
It's more detailed because it'sabout your pain point, about
the solutions to your pain point.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So what sort of data do you have in terms of results
that you've been able to get forclients, in terms of either
better click-through rates,lower CAC, et cetera?
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, I think, more than click-through rates and CAC
, for us, the biggest one thatwe've seen with the clients is
the increase in conversions.
We call it form fill ratesbecause that's the major focus
for us.
So we are seeing almost at aminimum of 25% increase in form
fill rate across our clientsright now.
And the second one, which wassurprising and which came from a
(21:40):
couple of our clients, is thatwhat is the actual conversion
after form fill rate, and I callit quality?
So form fill rate for me isquantity.
So we are seeing 25% increasein quantity, but what's the
quality?
Are people actually getting thebroadband installed after
giving their details?
Are people actually taking thecredit installed after giving
their details?
Are people actually taking thecredit card after giving their
details?
We realized we were actuallyimproving quality as well by 11
(22:04):
percent, and so that becomeslike a double thing for a brand,
because they see 25 percentmore people coming in and
overall 11 percent highersubscribing to the actual
product and not just the lead.
That is the that they've gotfrom us.
These are two things.
The other one that has beenvery interesting and it came
from a client only who said hey,all of my Google ads have high
(22:24):
quality score now.
So there is something calledGoogle ad quality score, which
basically determines whetheryour ad should show in the first
place and what will be the CPCof that ad, and we've been able
to increase the Google adquality score for our client by
at least seven and plus, so it'sa rating out of 10.
If you are five, then it's abad ad.
(22:45):
If you are like two, then it'slike a worse ad.
You should just shut it down.
So we've been able to get adsto like seven plus, and so
that's something that as anumber and as a result that we
are really that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Congratulations on all of the early success.
Obviously, there's still a lotleft to do, but it sounds like
you've gotten some awesometraction.
I want to switch gears a littlebit and talk about the recent
fundraise that you did.
So it was led by Excel.
What was the?
And it was 1.8 million seedround.
What was the fundraisingprocess like?
What did you have to do?
High points, low points.
Talk me through that.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, I know Cool.
It's been a while since I'vetalked about the fundraising
process.
I think, like going in becauseI am second time founder and my
co-founder, pitham, is also likethird time founder we thought
it would be a piece of cake.
I think, like raising a million, million or 2 million will not
be that difficult, but like itwas crazy tough, right, like so
(23:46):
we, we went in a couple of usualsuspects my previous uh mentors
, my previous investors,previous investors they were in
but we needed like a lead and wekept on pitching, kept on
pitching to people.
But you might have been seeing,like the macroeconomics right
now.
It's just really, really bad.
It took us almost three months.
I think three months is still agood time for us to close the
(24:11):
fund, but it took us aroundthree months to close the entire
round and when Excel came in,it got easily stitched up
together.
Like it becomes easier to geteveryone in one place and to
sign it.
But I think during the entireprocess, it's more like wait,
like oh, we want to wait, wewant to see some traction, we
(24:33):
want to see something and uh itwas.
It was a bit tough.
I think, uh, from what I wasexpecting and what I was going
through.
Um, but, but yeah, but like, uh, we did the usual stuff.
We created like our deck.
We created, we created pitches.
We personalized the pitchesbased on like, because our theme
was personalization.
We personalized the pitches forevery investor that we send out
(24:53):
, send it out to.
We also made sure that we aretalking to the right investors
who might see it through.
We are trying to figure outanybody who is a marketer in the
investment community so that wecan reach out to them.
So that's how we went about it.
But, but yeah, but yeah, solike, so, so that's that's the
process.
I think that's what I rememberright now.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
How many pitches were you doing per day?
How many pitches did you haveto do total to get the this the
round done?
Cause I know it's a full roadshow and you're doing, you're
doing multiple.
It's a pretty grueling process.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, and you're doing multiple.
It's a pretty grueling process.
Yeah, I think we did all themajor funds.
I think Axel was the one whobit the bullet and who was like
yeah, I think I want to take abet on you guys.
Overall, I think first twomonths we were almost pitching
one or two people every two daysor one people every day, kind
(25:44):
of.
So both small investors, largeinvestor angels.
So first couple of months, thatwas the day.
But like, when we are likeslightly closer, we have couple
of family and friends, couple ofuh, really small or micro vcs
come in, our number of pitchesreduces, because then we were
just looking for like a big, bigfund to come in and stitch the
round.
And that time, like the secondhalf of second half of the
(26:07):
second month and the third month, it was more like one or two
pitches every week and yeah.
So overall I think I did around30 35 pitches and totally
that's not bad.
Very nice, I know, I know.
But like when you, when you'recoming after running a startup,
selling a startup, you don'tlike you will get it, but
(26:28):
entrepreneurship makes youmodest, right, like you realize.
nope, whether your first time,second time, anything would
happen.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Absolutely.
And how would you say because Iknow that you've previously and
I was very interested in thealmost complete industry shift
that you did, because yourprevious startup was a women's
health startup what was?
I understand that you saw theproblem and made the company
around it, but what was the?
What was that like for you interms of transitioning from just
(26:57):
completely different industries, completely different problems?
Speaker 1 (27:00):
yeah, I think actually not just the, not just
the industry should.
It was like a entire shift formy career, because I've been a
CPG founder, a worker,everything over 10 years.
I started with Nestle, did anearly stage company, did a very,
very early stage VC fund, allthrough CPG and my brand as well
(27:23):
in CPG Women's Health.
I think the transition.
There were a couple of reasonsfor me.
One, I was tired of operationsright, like there's so much
operations in cpg.
Like you're, you're chasingyour vendors, you're chasing
suppliers, you're figuring outwhere the material is, is it
delivered, not delivered, um.
The second one was like I thinka lot of like 2022.
(27:45):
If you'll remember, there wereso many crash crashes that was
happening in public and privatemarket, especially for d2c and
cpg brands, right and so so Ididn't feel like starting up
again in cpg was the right timeor the right macro for me.
And third, I always wanted totry something different,
especially software, becauseeverybody says, hey, software is
(28:05):
scalable, you can make likebillion dollar company in
software.
So I like okay, let's give it atry now.
The choice for me was whether Iwant to do b2b or b2c, and I
think this apple problem came tome and I thought, hey, I've
been a marketer, I have donethis for over 10 years, I
understand the problem.
Maybe I'll be I'll be able toget to a solution which is much
more better than somebody elsedoing it.
(28:27):
And so that's how I ended up.
B2b Could have been as equallya B2C tech company, but, yeah, I
think it was like a 50-50 odds.
I chose this one.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
I love the pragmatism and now that you're a couple of
years into it, how are youfeeling about that change?
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Now that you're a couple of years into it, how are
you feeling about that change?
Man, I have moments right.
I feel consumer was so muchfaster.
I think the high of consumer isthat you pitch, you push
something, whether it's aproduct or an app.
You get very quick feedback.
The customers download it.
You get to know it's working,not working.
B2b is slow.
It's like you really have to bepatient.
(29:07):
You send a mail out.
You have like a 21 day cycleprocess first mail, second mail,
one linkedin message, onetwitter dm, and it just keeps on
running.
And then you had one high andyou're like okay, now I have to
sustain this high for the secondone to come in.
I think that's the majordifference.
That's the kick.
I think the kick that's missingfor me.
(29:27):
So I keep on creating my ownsmall win kicks within the team,
like doing like some randomsmall wins, defining like micro
wins, uh, with the team to getthe kick going.
But I think that's the majordifference.
Like it's a lot moreperseverance, persistence and
and being like very, very calmin b2B versus B2C is like push
(29:49):
out, like have more features out, see what's working, change
like iterate, then push outagain.
B2b doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
No, it doesn't.
I mean, I've been in B2B mywhole career, obviously from
more of a services perspectivethan a product perspective, but,
yeah, it's slow, it's not thateasy to get feedback, and that
is the thing.
Yeah, exactly with consumers,they'll tell you very quickly
and they're not afraid becausethey're not coming from a, they
don't have their corporate voiceon.
They're much more likely tojust give you very blunt
(30:17):
feedback, and so, yes, I canabsolutely imagine how that's
been a little bit of atransition.
You mentioned the micro wins onthe team.
We haven't really talked aboutyour team much.
What does that look like?
How is it currently structured?
Where's everyone located?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, so most of the team is back in India, because
most of the team is tech.
Then we have one person inCanada I am in New York and then
we are setting up a team,somebody in US as well.
So the idea is like, because sofar we've been building, uh,
most folks are from tech, are inback in india, in bangalore.
(30:52):
So we have around 17 people onour team right now, out of which
10 are intact two in product,one in design.
Who's supporting tech again?
Um, yeah, so like 13 on that,then two of us founders and one
I have social media I think youmight have talked to Prerna
right like, so she takes her andone on the SEO side.
(31:13):
So that's a team structureright now.
Um, I'm hoping like, and thenthe sales guy in in Canada, and
then I'm hoping to add like moresales, a couple in New York and
a couple in India, like AEs,mostly in New York, and then
having BDR and SDR back in India.
I am still not a fan of AI, bdrand SDR.
(31:35):
I'm not feeling it so far, so Ihave not used it that much, but
I'm still going and maybe it'searly for us because we are
still learning, we are stilldoing everything manually,
figuring it out manually,working with the right partners,
right tools, but still doing itmanually.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, the AI BDR.
I mean I've seen them all oversocial media and it was a little
bit like I was mentioningearlier with the fully
personalized AI.
I feel like that once someonerealizes it's fully robotic or
an AI reaching out to them,there's just it's not a good
experience at this point andhonestly, I don't know if that's
something that can be solvedLike, even if you make the
personalization better.
I don't know if people, justfrom a psychological perspective
(32:15):
, are going to be okay withbeing reached out to by a robot.
But who knows, we'll see.
So, is that part of what you'reusing, planning on using the
funds to do is expand the salesteam, or what is your overall
utilization of the recentfundraise?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah, I think we are transitioning from the build
mode to sell mode now.
So far we've been building and,at least as a company and as a
CEO, now I've taken a call notto build anymore.
The whole idea is sell, sellwhatever.
Like sell the dream if you wantto, but sell it and then, once
you have the client in, youfocus on building it If there is
(32:51):
like additional asks, so thatso the entire focus of the
company, as well as theutilization of fund, is doing
sales and reaching out andmaking sure, like you have,
you're reaching to the rightpeople, you're attending the
right events.
Like I'm attending four eventswithin this month, this month,
one, one in October, so liketotal of four, three or four
(33:13):
events in total across us, andthen I'm also traveling to
Canada, but like the whole ideawith the entire team is sales.
The other thing we are investingmoney is on SEO.
Like we do want to ramp up ourgame.
We are already doing well inthat space, but we want to ramp
up our game.
We want to make sure that weare also creating additional
tools which are free of cost formarketers to use so that they
(33:34):
can do some of their day-to-daywork.
So that's something likegetting some marketer tools out.
There is something else as afocus for us in terms of users
of fund and, lastly, some bit onwhatever is happening as and
when we scale with our clients.
The AI cost increases, theplatform cost increases, aws
cost increases.
So that's the fund going in,but majority, if I have to break
(33:57):
it down like 60% to sales, 20%to 30% to tech and 10% to other
marketing activities.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And that is your job ultimately.
As a CEO, you got to be in sellmode all the time.
You're selling to clients.
You're also selling from atalent perspective to people who
are on the team because, as youmentioned, you've got quite a
bit of hiring to do, and so it'sa fun place to be.
I mean, personally, I loveselling, so being in sales mode
is great.
I'm curious.
(34:25):
I love selling, so being insales mode is great.
I'm curious.
So you mentioned that your goalwas to get to 15 paying
customers by the end of the year.
What is your overall vision?
I mean, I know you're instartup mode and three months
feels like an eternity at thispoint, but if you look past the
end of the year and you think2025, 2026, 2027, et cetera,
what is your ultimate goal interms of what you want to
(34:45):
achieve with this company?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, I think more than okay.
So there are two parts to anygoal with the company, like what
your product will do eventuallyand what scale that you see as
revenue in your company.
I think with the product, Ifeel that where internet is,
with AI, I think what willhappen?
It will become autonomous, andwhen I say autonomous, what it
(35:08):
means is the manual input andthe output that marketers are
doing right now will go away.
So once you create an ad, onceyou create a communication and
somebody visited that website,the website will start thinking
of its own, realizing what theperson is is doing, realizing
what they might be interested in, showing them that behavior.
You can see this in netflix,like the shows that you see, the
(35:32):
movies that you follow.
It start start realizing whatyou like and then start clubbing
it together.
I think that's what is going tohappen with the internet and
for me, internet plus ai is thethe 3.0 version of internet that
is going to come and we believethat we will be at the
forefront of it because that'show we are envisioning the
entire journey to be.
So that's on the product sideand that's where I think we
(35:54):
could add the highest value tothe market.
Yes.
Now, coming to the revenue side, I think if we could achieve
this dream of creating thisinternet, the whole idea of
having apps etc.
Goes away completely, becausenow it's basically one platform
where you can get everythingpersonalized.
The whole idea of app isbecause it's a local platform
(36:14):
where you can get personalized,personalized.
Web can't do that much, but ifinternet can do, that whole app
ecosystem goes away completelyand it becomes tough.
It becomes like verypersonalized focus plus
everything will be crawlable byai, so, like your chatbots will
work much better, it will giveyou a much better in outputs
from from the web searches, andso I think if we could achieve
(36:35):
that like in terms of revenue, Ithink we could grow really,
really fast.
For me, the typical idea rightnow is like hey, get to like 300
400k by end of this year, um,get to like a million by mid
next year, get to like two tothree million by uh, end of 2025
, and then then see where wherewe'll grow from there.
(36:57):
But but for now, like I, Idon't see revenue numbers so far
down, but I do see how theproduct vision looks far down
that people will start using andit becomes kind of like a
no-brainer, like if you arehaving a website you need to
have.
Fiber is where we want to reach.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I love that vision and when you say 400K a million
you're referring to ARR.
Yeah, okay, gotcha Well awesome.
I mean it sounds like you havea strong vision, love the
traction that you've gotten sofar and I 100% see the value.
So I'm very excited to followalong with Fiverr as you
continue to grow.
Aj, it has been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for coming ontoday.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Hey, thanks.
Thanks a lot, Rhys, for this.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Thanks for listening to See to Exit.
If you enjoyed the episode,don't forget to subscribe and
we'll see you next time.
The good part of our entire sales process is that
when we pitch, marketersunderstand it more.
So I don't have to sell theproblem, I just have to sell the
solution right, and that's thefeeling.
Our solution is a couple ofparts right, like it requires if
you have used Mixpanel orAmplitude.
It requires a similar way ofintegrating a code in the
website.
I think that's our biggestbottleneck right now.
(00:23):
So we have so many marketers in, but getting the first meeting
with the tech so that this codegoes in, so that they become
tech-free, is where we arestruggling right now.
So typically we're seeing liketwo to three months of sales
cycle.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
After the tech bottleneck, it moves really,
really fast.
All right, welcome to anotherepisode of Seed to Exit.
As always, I'm your host, rhysKeck, and today we're diving
into the world of AI-drivenmarketing with AJ Goyle, the
founder and CEO of Fiverr.
Aj is a serial entrepreneurwith a fascinating background.
He's a Stanford MBA, asecond-time founder, and is
working on tackling one of thebiggest challenges in digital
marketing.
Today, we'll explore how Fiverris revolutionizing personalized
(01:06):
marketing in a post-cookieworld, aj's transition between
vastly different industries, andtalking a little bit more about
the recent $1.8 million fundinground led by Excel.
I really enjoyed thisconversation.
I hope you all will, too.
Thanks for listening and let'sget into it.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
You're listening to the Seed to Exit podcast with
your host.
Let's get into it the rightpeople and more Subscribe and
listen in for new episodes andenjoy the show.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Hey, jay, welcome to the show.
Thanks for coming on.
Hey, thanks for having me here.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, so super excited to chat with you today.
I love talking to early stagefounders, particularly when
you've just gotten traction andfunding, because it's such a new
and transformative time for thecompany.
So really excited to dig alittle bit deeper into Fiverr
with you today, learn a littlebit more about the company, what
you've done so far, your growthplans and what your overall
(02:13):
vision is.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Awesome.
Happy to share everything wehave gone through in the last
one and a half years.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Super.
So for the uninitiated, tell mea little bit more about Fiverr,
the problem you're solving, themarket you're serving, etc.
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I think Fiverr started.
When I saw this news in 2022that Apple kicking killing
cookies and so all the thirdparty cookies, Apple was saying
they will deprecate and theystarted pushing a lot on privacy
.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And sorry not to cut you off, is that where it will
say, will say like ask app notto track on a particular
application?
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, that's what apple did, and then apple may
like, if you, if you go aroundtimes square, you will see apple
board talking about privacyeverywhere.
Right, like is your browserprivate.
So I think apple did, didhammer on it a lot so that
google follows suit, and theysaid they will do it, although
recently, if you might have readthe news, they just backtracked
(03:08):
their words and said we're notgoing to do it but we'll figure
out some other way, because ofwhich both GDPR and CCP are
behind them now to tell us whatto do.
So I think privacy in generalis going to be here.
Cookies are gone.
That means all thepersonalization that people are
doing on gone.
That means all thepersonalization that people are
doing on other parties.
Content is gone.
(03:28):
So it's either your owncollected content on which you
can make the experiencepersonalized for the consumer,
or nothing.
Right, and so that's wherefiber started.
We thought, hey, how do we makesure that in this new, in this
new way of marketing, we canenable marketers to keep their
CAC low, to keep their CPCs low?
And CAC is customer acquisitioncost, cpc is cost per click.
(03:51):
How do we make sure that theseremain low for them so that the
way marketing has been done doesnot get disrupted continuously.
One of the key factors like2022 to 2024, cac across
industries is at least 2x andit's steadily growing and I
think this will continue to grow, like if Google would have
(04:17):
taken the bet and would havekilled the cookies.
My bet was that CAC would havebeen 5x of what it was in 2022.
But it didn't happen.
So fingers crossed when thatwill happen, but I think market
is going to change completely.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And so the reason why CAC is going up is because,
ultimately, they don't have thedata, so they can't accurately
segment the target that they'reshowing the ads to.
Therefore, they're showing theads to more irrelevant people,
but those people are clickinganyway and that's driving up.
Cac is ultimately the problem.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Exactly.
And then those people landingon your website are not
converting.
And then, yeah, you're crackingcases, because the best
business model is invented byGoogle and Facebook.
You pay by click right, youjust click it and you pay,
whether the customer who comeson your website buys or not, and
so that's the reason whycustomers and why marketers are
paying.
And if you think about it, it'slike.
(05:04):
One thing which is there is thatwe were so spoiled by
third-party cookies we cancompletely forgot the kind of
data we used to collect for ourconsumers right, who has visited
us, what they have visited,which ad did they click on?
Ad is still created by us andwe know which ad they have
clicked on.
But rather we will personalizeour website based on third-party
data.
So so I think we like as adthey have clicked on, but rather
we will personalize our websitebased on third-party data.
(05:26):
So I think we, like, asmarketers, we have been spoiled
a lot, and I think everybody isnow realizing that those
third-party cookies which theywere like betting a lot on,
might go away 100% in soon, andso they might have to figure out
alternate ways Got it.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That's certainly a big problem.
So what exactly does Fiverr do?
How does it solve that problem?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
So I think we are starting whenwe started.
We started pitching thisconcept of hey, okay, you don't
know much around the ecosystemabout your consumer, but you do
know a couple of things.
One which ad did they clickwhen you were targeting the ad?
Who would the customer profileso like?
If you, if you have ever runfacebook and google ads, the way
(06:07):
you define is, you go about anddefine an audience.
You say, hey, I want to target,uh, 50 to 60 year old people
who play golf, live in thisparticular city of america,
right.
And and then you show him, showthem a particular message for
your product.
So, for example, you're sellingcredit card, you might want to
show them free golf courselessons, uh, five times in a
(06:29):
year, right.
Or if you are selling, or youmight want to show them like 10
off on their favorite buffetpalace that they want to go on a
weekend, or like a brunchpalace.
But if you think about it, whenthe, when the customer clicks
both these ads, they, they go tothe same landing page.
This is not personalized,because earlier we were
personalizing with third-partycookies.
(06:50):
So Fiverr did a very simplesolution hey, you have created
an ad.
I know the audience you'retargeting with the ad.
I'll take that data and changeyour website dynamically and so
that what they have targeted on,I will double click on it and
show exactly that.
Like you know, when in aconversation you are with
(07:11):
somebody, somebody is justnodding their head and when you
just ask them hey, do you thinkthis?
They don't know what you talkedabout.
Right, like they're justlistening.
I think that's how, asmarketers, we have been treating
ads.
So what we are saying is notdon't just show and listen, but
also implement.
When they click it, doubleclick on the proposition you
have said, let it be the hook,and then go down and write
(07:33):
whatever else you want to write.
So that's what fiber is solvingright now.
The eventual goal is, over time, our ai will be able to learn
every click interaction.
Every time a consumer islooking at his screen, seeing a
text line, we'll be able tofigure out what to show in the
next fold, what to show in thenext fold, what to show him in
the next click, and so that'swhere we want to go as a vision,
(07:56):
but like starting up ads tolanding pages.
That's what we are solving.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That's fascinating.
So obviously your buyer personawithin a company is marketers,
head of marketing, VP ofmarketing, et cetera.
Is there a particular businessvertical or business size that
you're selling into?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yes.
So I think the solution iscommon, but we do want to be
very focused when you're goingout and solve deeply on it.
So one persona that we areselling very strongly is people
who are doing form fills ontheir website or calendar
booking right now.
These could be companies likecredit card insurance,
telecommunication, broadband,and or could be companies like
(08:35):
B2B software B2B softwareselling where, like you, you
have to fill form.
So these are the companies andI call them lead generation
companies, because theybasically take your mobile
number and phone number and thenthey follow up and sell your
sell you the stuff.
So that's where we are rightnow targeting um.
The reason I'm going after themis because I think retail is
very crowded everywhere.
Like personalization is also avery abused word in retail right
(08:59):
like, even a simple change incolor on a button is considered
personalization.
So so we're going after likemarket, which we feel is
underserved and which we feelcould get a much larger impact
if we do so.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So you and your co-founder, preetam am I
pronouncing his name correctly?
So you two?
How did you two meet and didyou identify the problem that
you've laid out together, orwhat was the origin of the
founding of the company itself?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I think that's a crazy story, right?
So I thought of a problem likethis whole CAG going up and I
was like, hey, I need to find atech co-founder because I come
from marketing 12 years onlydoing marketing and so I was
staying with a friend for aweekend and just looking for
(09:50):
co-founders, meeting a lot ofpeople, and then Pitam was a
common friend to that guy.
He visited the flat and we juststarted talking and I actually
tweeted about it and I wasjoking to Pit, to that guy.
He visited the flat and we juststarted talking and you know,
like it, just I, I actuallytweeted about it and I was
joking to peter, like it wasco-founder at first sight for me
and peter was already workingon a web3 startup and so I told
my friend that, hey, I want thisguy to be a co-founder, make it
(10:11):
happen.
And so, so it took us threemonths of courtship to figure
out that we are going to worktogether.
Eventually he called back andsaid, hey, ankur, do you want to
work together?
I think I don't want to do Web3idea.
Let's do what you were thinking.
I think I can add value.
I have some relevant experiencearound it.
And yeah, that's how ithappened for us.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I love that.
So what sort of?
So you founded the company andrecently just raised 1.8 million
seeds, so congratulations onthat.
What traction.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Have you gotten so far from a customer and growth
perspective?
Yeah, I think in terms oftraction we are still way early.
So we raised our capital, weannounced our capital recently.
We actually pushed our productout, especially india market, in
february, march, and then, whenwe have couple of couple of
clients there, we start sellingin a us market in july this year
(11:07):
and so now we have like coupleof paying clients like paying us
market value around twenty tothirty thousand dollars and
yearly, and now we are expandinginto Canada, us.
So I have a lot of meetingsaligned, but the point is we're
still converting a lot of themand still learning and building.
So I think for now we are stillfiguring out whether people
(11:30):
will pay for this or not and howmuch value do they extract from
it.
We are at like four or fiveclients right now and hoping
that we'll hit 15 by end of thisyear and then maybe from there
we'll see the growth and whatthe expansion looks like so what
does your sales processcurrently look like in terms of
how you bring clients on board?
yeah, so.
So we we actually are like.
(11:51):
So one thing which is workingwell for us is both pre terms
and my twitter and linkedinaccounts are working well.
Like us is both Prithams and myTwitter and LinkedIn accounts
are working well.
We are getting a lot of peoplecoming in, a lot of traction
coming in.
People are actually marketersare quickly.
The good part of our entiresales process is that when we
pitch, marketers understand itmore.
So I don't have to sell theproblem, I just have to sell the
solution, and that's thefeeling.
(12:14):
Our solution is a couple ofparts.
Right Like.
It requires if you have usedMixpanel or Amplitude.
It requires similar way ofintegrating a code in the
website.
I think that's our biggestbottleneck right now.
So we have so many marketers in, but getting the first meeting
with the tech so that this codegoes in, so that they become
(12:34):
tech-free, is where we arestruggling right now.
Right Like so.
So typically we're seeing likea two to three months of sales
cycle because of this bottleneck.
After the tech bottleneck, itmoves really, really fast.
One of our client is right now.
They are so hooked that everyweek when they launch ads, they
also launch landing pages withus.
(12:55):
So it just and we think, I think, like with Google and Facebook,
if you can just ride the waveof people making ads and you
making landing pages along, thatthat works, that works.
We just have to get in, and Ithink that's the biggest
bottleneck for us.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So, with that tech bottleneck, what approaches are
you taking to solve it?
What have you tried?
That's worked, what hasn'tworked?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, I think one approach now we have started
doing is a couple of things.
One is in the product we addedhey mail to your developer.
So directly from the workflowit goes to a developer that this
code has to be added.
Second thing that we are doingnow continuously is we are
figuring out in our ICP what isthe typical content management
system CMS people are using.
And then we are figuring out inour ICP what is the typical
(13:37):
content management system CMSpeople are using.
And then we are doing a directintegration with those CMS so
that once marketer log inbecause they own the CMS, they
can give us admin access and wecan put the code ourselves.
So that's the second thing, butit's a long game because it's
integration heavy, right.
And the third one which we aredoing is we are also doing a lot
more outreach to developers now, like just to talk to them hey,
(13:59):
it will save a lot of your timebecause you don't have to make
landing pages anymore, like yourmarketing team can do it.
You don't have to put yourbandwidth into this.
Do solve, like, better problemswith tech, with your tech.
And so that approach has beenbetter, like it's been helping
us going two prong one to theCMO or the head of marketing in
(14:22):
that company and also to the CTO, or like a engineer who is
working on landing pages.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
And which has yielded the better results so far.
Because you're a marketer, I'msure you're tracking in terms of
, you know, number of reach outs, conversions, et cetera.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
I think like the best one for us is right now.
The best one for us is rightnow, uh, the second one, which
is integrating with theecosystems, because that's
that's quickly help as soon asthe person learns and then say,
hey, I am on salesforce, I'mlike, okay, we are already
integrated directly, use it likeyou don't have to do anything,
give me access, I'll put thecode.
That's working really well,because most of the companies
(14:54):
that we are targeting in our icpare, uh, unfortunately,
fortunately, traditionalcompanies, right, like the
credit card and all, and so theyare on like old tech, and so it
becomes easier if we arealready integrated with these
folks so that they can directlystart.
That's been something that'snot working.
But the problem is, uh, thetech is very, very distributed.
(15:16):
Like only 30 people usesalesforce, then 20 use webflow,
20 use wix, 10 use somethingelse, and so it's like really
wide.
The way we are going after ishey, we figure out who people
are integrated with, integratethat, then make it open in our
product uh, ecosystem productpipeline.
Then we figure out anotherclient who is integrated, then
we integrate with that and thenopen it in the product pipeline.
(15:38):
But it's like a one step at atime process, and that's the
reason I was telling you, by theend of the year, the target is
to get 15 clients so that I have15 CMSs cracked, and then after
that we can go faster.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I love the iterative approach.
What sort of objections are yourunning into throughout the
process, beyond your typicalthings like now is not the right
time, we don't have budget forthis, etc.
You know, is it something inthe context of we're concerned
about, you know, using thislevel of AI at scale, or what
are the things you're runninginto?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, I think the first objection we always get is
hey, ai is not reliable.
How much control do do I have?
Will it like, uh, be on mybrand tone?
How's the content looking like?
I think that's the biggest oneand I believe like this is
common to the entire aiecosystem.
Everybody is getting this likeai outputs are really bad.
(16:30):
So we take a.
We took a lot of time to createa tool or a kind of like a tool
where we basically train the AIor we basically like teach the
AI on what the brand language is.
So the way we go about it is,as soon as the customer comes in
, they can put the website URLor the domain and we pull all
the data on the domain and makeAI learn what the tone of the
(16:52):
data is, what is the emotion inthe data, how the brand, how the
marketer has written that data,so that we understand the tone
and feel of the brand.
And after that, when we asksomebody to write, hey, this is
the headline, generate me asecond one.
It becomes much closer to whata marketer will write.
So that's the first thing thatwe have done.
The second one we have done iswe put a lot more control for
the marketer.
Rather than automaticallygenerating all the all the
(17:15):
landing pages.
We, what we do is we generatean Excel sheet and we show the
marketeers hey, look at it,verify everything.
Once you are happy, we'llpublish it.
In the backend already thepages are created, but just to
make sure that the content isright and the marketeer sees it
and he's happy about it, wecreate an Excel sheet for them
to go about it, and so that'slike the biggest one we were
(17:37):
getting.
But now, like with puttingthese small checks in between
and making sure that themarketer is happy about it, has
helped a lot.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I can imagine.
Yeah, because if there'ssomething wrong, it's much
better to just have that show upin an Excel file rather than a
live page.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, I think, like we sell our product as two tools
that marketers use the mostright, like as a presentation, a
PPT and an Excel.
If you know these two, you canuse the platform as easy as you
want.
Like it's just the combinationof these two tools and that's
what I tell marketers.
Because another concern and toyour previous question, another
(18:14):
concern that I get is hey, howmuch time of my team will go in
this?
Do like they are alreadycreating an ad.
Now they have to do this aswell.
And then when I tell them, hey,if you create one ad, the
amount of time it takes, that'sthe same amount of time it will
take for creating a landing page.
If you get 100 ads, the amountof time it takes like it's still
the amount of time it takes tocreate one landing page is the
(18:34):
amount of time it takes tocreate 100 landing pages.
With us, because our ai can doit really really fast, we can do
100 000, 10 000 landing pagesall in like less than two hours,
and so so that's the wholepitch, right, like there's
something, um, I do with b2bclients who do outreach, who
writes email and linkedincampaigns.
I say, hey, you write 100 000emails and you tell me the
(18:58):
content of those emails and theclient profile and the LinkedIn
profile and the website of theclient.
I'll generate 100,000 landingpages for those emails and you
really don't have to worry aboutit.
We can do it for entireoutreach.
Maybe only 50 will click onyour email, but those 50 will
see a super personalizedexperience for them and so yeah,
so that pitch has been workingreally well as well.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's great, yeah, because I think that the there's
a lot of talk about AI in salesoutreach right now and more of
it is around customization, butit's really more around
customization of the email textitself, and I really feel like
that's lost some efficacy,because at the beginning it's
impressive and that's impressive, and the only reason why it was
impressive is because,traditionally, sending someone a
(19:40):
personalized email means youactually did your research, you
took some time to look into them, and this is something that
only someone who's actually donesome research could have sent.
Point where now, if someonesays me personalized outreach,
all I wonder is, oh well, Iwonder what AI system they used.
But, to your point, making it alanding page.
Of course, I know that that'scustom generated, but it still
(20:03):
is looks and feels like a muchbetter experience, I would
imagine, than a run of the milllanding page.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Exactly right.
I'll tell you one of the keyuse case where I've used it and
it has resulted really, reallygreat output for me in terms of
bookings is events right.
When I go to events and I meetsomebody like, say, I meet you,
Reese, and I'll click a selfiewith you and I'll go back,
create a landing page and sendyou an email following up.
(20:30):
And when you land on thelanding page, it just becomes
easier because you meet so manypeople in events.
You don't remember anything inevents.
You don't remember anything andthen you don't.
You don't even remember whatpain points you've talked about.
In our landing page you willsee the photo with me so you'll
remember quickly like there's ameeting and then we detail down
the pain points that you talkedabout and the solution that we
have.
So that becomes very focusedand we have seen like a lot of
(20:52):
booking demos and a lot offollow-through happening of that
and it's just as simple as that, because then people don't say,
oh yeah, he has done justsuperficial research on me.
It's more detailed because it'sabout your pain point, about
the solutions to your pain point.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So what sort of data do you have in terms of results
that you've been able to get forclients, in terms of either
better click-through rates,lower CAC, et cetera?
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, I think, more than click-through rates and CAC
, for us, the biggest one thatwe've seen with the clients is
the increase in conversions.
We call it form fill ratesbecause that's the major focus
for us.
So we are seeing almost at aminimum of 25% increase in form
fill rate across our clientsright now.
And the second one, which wassurprising and which came from a
(21:40):
couple of our clients, is thatwhat is the actual conversion
after form fill rate, and I callit quality?
So form fill rate for me isquantity.
So we are seeing 25% increasein quantity, but what's the
quality?
Are people actually getting thebroadband installed after
giving their details?
Are people actually taking thecredit installed after giving
their details?
Are people actually taking thecredit card after giving their
details?
We realized we were actuallyimproving quality as well by 11
(22:04):
percent, and so that becomeslike a double thing for a brand,
because they see 25 percentmore people coming in and
overall 11 percent highersubscribing to the actual
product and not just the lead.
That is the that they've gotfrom us.
These are two things.
The other one that has beenvery interesting and it came
from a client only who said hey,all of my Google ads have high
(22:24):
quality score now.
So there is something calledGoogle ad quality score, which
basically determines whetheryour ad should show in the first
place and what will be the CPCof that ad, and we've been able
to increase the Google adquality score for our client by
at least seven and plus, so it'sa rating out of 10.
If you are five, then it's abad ad.
(22:45):
If you are like two, then it'slike a worse ad.
You should just shut it down.
So we've been able to get adsto like seven plus, and so
that's something that as anumber and as a result that we
are really that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Congratulations on all of the early success.
Obviously, there's still a lotleft to do, but it sounds like
you've gotten some awesometraction.
I want to switch gears a littlebit and talk about the recent
fundraise that you did.
So it was led by Excel.
What was the?
And it was 1.8 million seedround.
What was the fundraisingprocess like?
What did you have to do?
High points, low points.
Talk me through that.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, I know Cool.
It's been a while since I'vetalked about the fundraising
process.
I think, like going in becauseI am second time founder and my
co-founder, pitham, is also likethird time founder we thought
it would be a piece of cake.
I think, like raising a million, million or 2 million will not
be that difficult, but like itwas crazy tough, right, like so
(23:46):
we, we went in a couple of usualsuspects my previous uh mentors
, my previous investors,previous investors they were in
but we needed like a lead and wekept on pitching, kept on
pitching to people.
But you might have been seeing,like the macroeconomics right
now.
It's just really, really bad.
It took us almost three months.
I think three months is still agood time for us to close the
(24:11):
fund, but it took us aroundthree months to close the entire
round and when Excel came in,it got easily stitched up
together.
Like it becomes easier to geteveryone in one place and to
sign it.
But I think during the entireprocess, it's more like wait,
like oh, we want to wait, wewant to see some traction, we
(24:33):
want to see something and uh itwas.
It was a bit tough.
I think, uh, from what I wasexpecting and what I was going
through.
Um, but, but yeah, but like, uh, we did the usual stuff.
We created like our deck.
We created, we created pitches.
We personalized the pitchesbased on like, because our theme
was personalization.
We personalized the pitches forevery investor that we send out
(24:53):
, send it out to.
We also made sure that we aretalking to the right investors
who might see it through.
We are trying to figure outanybody who is a marketer in the
investment community so that wecan reach out to them.
So that's how we went about it.
But, but yeah, but yeah, solike, so, so that's that's the
process.
I think that's what I rememberright now.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
How many pitches were you doing per day?
How many pitches did you haveto do total to get the this the
round done?
Cause I know it's a full roadshow and you're doing, you're
doing multiple.
It's a pretty grueling process.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, and you're doing multiple.
It's a pretty grueling process.
Yeah, I think we did all themajor funds.
I think Axel was the one whobit the bullet and who was like
yeah, I think I want to take abet on you guys.
Overall, I think first twomonths we were almost pitching
one or two people every two daysor one people every day, kind
(25:44):
of.
So both small investors, largeinvestor angels.
So first couple of months, thatwas the day.
But like, when we are likeslightly closer, we have couple
of family and friends, couple ofuh, really small or micro vcs
come in, our number of pitchesreduces, because then we were
just looking for like a big, bigfund to come in and stitch the
round.
And that time, like the secondhalf of second half of the
(26:07):
second month and the third month, it was more like one or two
pitches every week and yeah.
So overall I think I did around30 35 pitches and totally
that's not bad.
Very nice, I know, I know.
But like when you, when you'recoming after running a startup,
selling a startup, you don'tlike you will get it, but
(26:28):
entrepreneurship makes youmodest, right, like you realize.
nope, whether your first time,second time, anything would
happen.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Absolutely.
And how would you say because Iknow that you've previously and
I was very interested in thealmost complete industry shift
that you did, because yourprevious startup was a women's
health startup what was?
I understand that you saw theproblem and made the company
around it, but what was the?
What was that like for you interms of transitioning from just
(26:57):
completely different industries, completely different problems?
Speaker 1 (27:00):
yeah, I think actually not just the, not just
the industry should.
It was like a entire shift formy career, because I've been a
CPG founder, a worker,everything over 10 years.
I started with Nestle, did anearly stage company, did a very,
very early stage VC fund, allthrough CPG and my brand as well
(27:23):
in CPG Women's Health.
I think the transition.
There were a couple of reasonsfor me.
One, I was tired of operationsright, like there's so much
operations in cpg.
Like you're, you're chasingyour vendors, you're chasing
suppliers, you're figuring outwhere the material is, is it
delivered, not delivered, um.
The second one was like I thinka lot of like 2022.
(27:45):
If you'll remember, there wereso many crash crashes that was
happening in public and privatemarket, especially for d2c and
cpg brands, right and so so Ididn't feel like starting up
again in cpg was the right timeor the right macro for me.
And third, I always wanted totry something different,
especially software, becauseeverybody says, hey, software is
(28:05):
scalable, you can make likebillion dollar company in
software.
So I like okay, let's give it atry now.
The choice for me was whether Iwant to do b2b or b2c, and I
think this apple problem came tome and I thought, hey, I've
been a marketer, I have donethis for over 10 years, I
understand the problem.
Maybe I'll be I'll be able toget to a solution which is much
more better than somebody elsedoing it.
(28:27):
And so that's how I ended up.
B2b Could have been as equallya B2C tech company, but, yeah, I
think it was like a 50-50 odds.
I chose this one.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
I love the pragmatism and now that you're a couple of
years into it, how are youfeeling about that change?
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Now that you're a couple of years into it, how are
you feeling about that change?
Man, I have moments right.
I feel consumer was so muchfaster.
I think the high of consumer isthat you pitch, you push
something, whether it's aproduct or an app.
You get very quick feedback.
The customers download it.
You get to know it's working,not working.
B2b is slow.
It's like you really have to bepatient.
(29:07):
You send a mail out.
You have like a 21 day cycleprocess first mail, second mail,
one linkedin message, onetwitter dm, and it just keeps on
running.
And then you had one high andyou're like okay, now I have to
sustain this high for the secondone to come in.
I think that's the majordifference.
That's the kick.
I think the kick that's missingfor me.
(29:27):
So I keep on creating my ownsmall win kicks within the team,
like doing like some randomsmall wins, defining like micro
wins, uh, with the team to getthe kick going.
But I think that's the majordifference.
Like it's a lot moreperseverance, persistence and
and being like very, very calmin b2B versus B2C is like push
(29:49):
out, like have more features out, see what's working, change
like iterate, then push outagain.
B2b doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
No, it doesn't.
I mean, I've been in B2B mywhole career, obviously from
more of a services perspectivethan a product perspective, but,
yeah, it's slow, it's not thateasy to get feedback, and that
is the thing.
Yeah, exactly with consumers,they'll tell you very quickly
and they're not afraid becausethey're not coming from a, they
don't have their corporate voiceon.
They're much more likely tojust give you very blunt
(30:17):
feedback, and so, yes, I canabsolutely imagine how that's
been a little bit of atransition.
You mentioned the micro wins onthe team.
We haven't really talked aboutyour team much.
What does that look like?
How is it currently structured?
Where's everyone located?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, so most of the team is back in India, because
most of the team is tech.
Then we have one person inCanada I am in New York and then
we are setting up a team,somebody in US as well.
So the idea is like, because sofar we've been building, uh,
most folks are from tech, are inback in india, in bangalore.
(30:52):
So we have around 17 people onour team right now, out of which
10 are intact two in product,one in design.
Who's supporting tech again?
Um, yeah, so like 13 on that,then two of us founders and one
I have social media I think youmight have talked to Prerna
right like, so she takes her andone on the SEO side.
(31:13):
So that's a team structureright now.
Um, I'm hoping like, and thenthe sales guy in in Canada, and
then I'm hoping to add like moresales, a couple in New York and
a couple in India, like AEs,mostly in New York, and then
having BDR and SDR back in India.
I am still not a fan of AI, bdrand SDR.
(31:35):
I'm not feeling it so far, so Ihave not used it that much, but
I'm still going and maybe it'searly for us because we are
still learning, we are stilldoing everything manually,
figuring it out manually,working with the right partners,
right tools, but still doing itmanually.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, the AI BDR.
I mean I've seen them all oversocial media and it was a little
bit like I was mentioningearlier with the fully
personalized AI.
I feel like that once someonerealizes it's fully robotic or
an AI reaching out to them,there's just it's not a good
experience at this point andhonestly, I don't know if that's
something that can be solvedLike, even if you make the
personalization better.
I don't know if people, justfrom a psychological perspective
(32:15):
, are going to be okay withbeing reached out to by a robot.
But who knows, we'll see.
So, is that part of what you'reusing, planning on using the
funds to do is expand the salesteam, or what is your overall
utilization of the recentfundraise?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah, I think we are transitioning from the build
mode to sell mode now.
So far we've been building and,at least as a company and as a
CEO, now I've taken a call notto build anymore.
The whole idea is sell, sellwhatever.
Like sell the dream if you wantto, but sell it and then, once
you have the client in, youfocus on building it If there is
(32:51):
like additional asks, so thatso the entire focus of the
company, as well as theutilization of fund, is doing
sales and reaching out andmaking sure, like you have,
you're reaching to the rightpeople, you're attending the
right events.
Like I'm attending four eventswithin this month, this month,
one, one in October, so liketotal of four, three or four
(33:13):
events in total across us, andthen I'm also traveling to
Canada, but like the whole ideawith the entire team is sales.
The other thing we are investingmoney is on SEO.
Like we do want to ramp up ourgame.
We are already doing well inthat space, but we want to ramp
up our game.
We want to make sure that weare also creating additional
tools which are free of cost formarketers to use so that they
(33:34):
can do some of their day-to-daywork.
So that's something likegetting some marketer tools out.
There is something else as afocus for us in terms of users
of fund and, lastly, some bit onwhatever is happening as and
when we scale with our clients.
The AI cost increases, theplatform cost increases, aws
cost increases.
So that's the fund going in,but majority, if I have to break
(33:57):
it down like 60% to sales, 20%to 30% to tech and 10% to other
marketing activities.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And that is your job ultimately.
As a CEO, you got to be in sellmode all the time.
You're selling to clients.
You're also selling from atalent perspective to people who
are on the team because, as youmentioned, you've got quite a
bit of hiring to do, and so it'sa fun place to be.
I mean, personally, I loveselling, so being in sales mode
is great.
I'm curious.
(34:25):
I love selling, so being insales mode is great.
I'm curious.
So you mentioned that your goalwas to get to 15 paying
customers by the end of the year.
What is your overall vision?
I mean, I know you're instartup mode and three months
feels like an eternity at thispoint, but if you look past the
end of the year and you think2025, 2026, 2027, et cetera,
what is your ultimate goal interms of what you want to
(34:45):
achieve with this company?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, I think more than okay.
So there are two parts to anygoal with the company, like what
your product will do eventuallyand what scale that you see as
revenue in your company.
I think with the product, Ifeel that where internet is,
with AI, I think what willhappen?
It will become autonomous, andwhen I say autonomous, what it
(35:08):
means is the manual input andthe output that marketers are
doing right now will go away.
So once you create an ad, onceyou create a communication and
somebody visited that website,the website will start thinking
of its own, realizing what theperson is is doing, realizing
what they might be interested in, showing them that behavior.
You can see this in netflix,like the shows that you see, the
(35:32):
movies that you follow.
It start start realizing whatyou like and then start clubbing
it together.
I think that's what is going tohappen with the internet and
for me, internet plus ai is thethe 3.0 version of internet that
is going to come and we believethat we will be at the
forefront of it because that'show we are envisioning the
entire journey to be.
So that's on the product sideand that's where I think we
(35:54):
could add the highest value tothe market.
Yes.
Now, coming to the revenue side, I think if we could achieve
this dream of creating thisinternet, the whole idea of
having apps etc.
Goes away completely, becausenow it's basically one platform
where you can get everythingpersonalized.
The whole idea of app isbecause it's a local platform
(36:14):
where you can get personalized,personalized.
Web can't do that much, but ifinternet can do, that whole app
ecosystem goes away completelyand it becomes tough.
It becomes like verypersonalized focus plus
everything will be crawlable byai, so, like your chatbots will
work much better, it will giveyou a much better in outputs
from from the web searches, andso I think if we could achieve
(36:35):
that like in terms of revenue, Ithink we could grow really,
really fast.
For me, the typical idea rightnow is like hey, get to like 300
400k by end of this year, um,get to like a million by mid
next year, get to like two tothree million by uh, end of 2025
, and then then see where wherewe'll grow from there.
(36:57):
But but for now, like I, Idon't see revenue numbers so far
down, but I do see how theproduct vision looks far down
that people will start using andit becomes kind of like a
no-brainer, like if you arehaving a website you need to
have.
Fiber is where we want to reach.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I love that vision and when you say 400K a million
you're referring to ARR.
Yeah, okay, gotcha Well awesome.
I mean it sounds like you havea strong vision, love the
traction that you've gotten sofar and I 100% see the value.
So I'm very excited to followalong with Fiverr as you
continue to grow.
Aj, it has been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for coming ontoday.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Hey, thanks.
Thanks a lot, Rhys, for this.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Thanks for listening to See to Exit.
If you enjoyed the episode,don't forget to subscribe and
we'll see you next time.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.