Grant Shaddick on the Creator Economy and the Role of Videos

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In this new exciting episode of Growth Talks, I had the privilege of hosting Grant Shaddick, the visionary founder of Tella, a groundbreaking startup specializing in "Screen recording for creators — simple and powerful."

Grant is a serial entrepreneur with an impressive track record, he even sold his previous startup to InVision.

Join us as we delve deep into the dynamic realm of the creator's economy, exploring how entrepreneurs and freelancers can harness the incredible potential of video to cultivate a loyal audience.

Grant Shaddick shares invaluable insights, experiences, and strategies that can help you take your content creation game to the next level.

Whether you're an aspiring content creator, an entrepreneur looking to build your brand, or simply someone curious about the world of online video, this episode is packed with wisdom and inspiration to fuel your growth.

Tune in to the full episode of Growth Talks with Grant Shaddick, and start making your mark in the digital landscape.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Show, everyone, and welcome backto Growth Talks. I am rough your
host, and my guest today isGrand Shaddick High Grant. How are you,
Ara, I'm good. How areyou? Very very good, very
very good, Super excited about thisconversation today. Uh, you know that

(00:20):
I'm in love with with with Tela. I'm loving what you guys are doing.
Uh. And I was very youknow, excited to have a chat
with you and and also to havesome you know thoughts on the whole creator
economy, I would say, butbefore going into that, we start,
you know, on the podcast here, we start these conversations with a simple

(00:43):
one, with a classic one.So what's the story. Let's start with
that. So who's Grant? Who'sGrand? So the quick summary is,
I'm from New Zealand. I Yeah, I grew up in New Zealand.
I lived there my entire life.And then yeah, I studied. I

(01:07):
studied. I don't know really whatI was doing. I just studied business
because that seemed like the thing thatwe get to a job. And then
I got really shitty grades. Andthen I left university and didn't really have
like a defined path or career becauseI couldn't get into like the good jobs
that that that that that everyone wantedto get in with a business degree,

(01:30):
and so I just started doing kindof like odd odd jobs and things like
that. I would worked at ahardware distribution company where we where we where
we had to merchandise screws and toolsand things into into like New Zealand hardware
stores. And I guess that wasmy first taste of maybe wanting to do

(01:55):
something to do with marketing for real, because you kind of had to do
a little bit of everything in therebecause it was a small team and they
they basically were like a service forother for for other brands, like it
would just take your brand and thenput it into the into the country.
And so my my claim to famethere was that I wrote and directed a
radio ad that was broadcast on nationalradio about screws for boats, which was,

(02:20):
which was, which was, whichwas. It's kind of hard to
sell, isn't it. Yeah,I mean, I don't know. Look
the the the old guys that Iworked with, they got really excited about
all this stuff. But you know, I guess I was just following instructions.
But that was kind of fun.And then I worked at a barcode
company to a company that makes barcodes. For all the barcodes that you see
on products, they're all there's nobarcode on this one anyway, they're all

(02:45):
there. It's all generated from likeone organization, and every country usually has
one of these these companies. Uh. And I sort of worked there and
that was where I got interested insoftware, because they kind of had like
software and and built their own softwareto help make it easier for people,
you know, customers in New Zealandto start using Barco's properly. But the

(03:07):
software was absolutely insane. It wasjust the most archaic, horrendous, old,
just not inspiring at all. Butit was kind of like a chance
to kind of see, oh,like there's this you can like build the
stuff, or you can like workon this stuff. And I worked there
for a few years and then thenone day I got a chance to leave
New Zealand, and the chance wasto move to Europe. And all I

(03:32):
had to do was find a jobin Europe, somewhere in Europe, and
all I said was I didn't wantto move to the UK because that would
be too easy, And so Itried to find a job in like Mainland,
Europe, and I found a jobin Amsterdam in the Netherlands at an
actual tech startup called Binder, andthen eventually you know, started on the

(03:53):
client side and eventually became a productmanager and that was where I started actually
working on software and building products.And from there I had another little startup
with with my current co founder,and then we sold that to Envision,
which was which is a design softwarecompany. We worked there for a little
while, and then after after workingthere for a while, we thought we

(04:16):
should do a startup properly now insteadof like the sort of baby, the
sort of mini startup that we'd doneand sold, So let's do this for
real. And then we we cameacross the idea for Teller while we were
working at Envision, and then wequit our jobs and started Teller And that
was now about three years ago.So wow, is that is the whirlwind

(04:40):
tour of me? So what aboutthe previous one? So you said that
you sold it to Envision, Butwhat was that about? Yeah? How
software was that? Yeah? Sothis was a app to help copywriters.
So people who write write write foradvertising and things, but copywriters for design

(05:02):
and products. So they were calledux writers. So the idea was to
help ux writers and designers collaborate onsketch, and Sketch a few years ago
was the kind of main design toolbefore Pigma kind of took over and Figma

(05:23):
from the beginning had real time collaborationand it meant that, you know,
lots of different stakeholders could jump intoa design file and work and collaborate together.
But if you're on sketch, youdidn't have that, and so this
this app The idea was to makeit possible for designers and writers to collaborate,
so a designer could sync their filesto the web, and then a

(05:45):
writer could just log into the applicationon the web and they would see the
design and all of the text fieldsin the design were editable, so the
writer could just go in and starttesting out different bits of copy and different
texts and language translation even and thenthat would all get synced back into the
design on the designer's real design fileand then we could copy. There was

(06:08):
three of us that that worked onthis, and yeah, we kind of
launched it and it caught the attentionof Envision pretty quickly, and they were
kind of in a phase where theywere growing and trying to expand into different
areas outside of the original design product. They wanted to bring in, you
know, a copywriting tool, theywanted to bring in a proper design tool,

(06:30):
they wanted to bring in protato.They sort of wanted to expand,
and we were one of the areasthat they were interested in. So we
kind of said, yeah, cool, let's let's join you guys and do
this. I love how you canactually, you know, kind of connect
the dots between all these experiences.You know, there's the famous Steve Jobs

(06:51):
speech, you know, the oneat Stanford, I think where he said
that you can only you know,likenots when you look back. Yeah,
and you said, like you startedfrom you know, a shy job selling
you know, a screw and uh, and then you move to barcode and

(07:12):
then but each step it kind ofwas kind of, you know, an
important step to bring you where youare now. So you learned about marketing,
and then you learned about software,and then you learn about design.
You know, all these together yeahallow you to to to build you know,
one startup and then to the secondone. We tell, uh,
I think, yeah, I meanI think that it's it goes back to

(07:35):
the cliche of of of hindsight,you know, like everything becomes everything sort
of makes sense when you kind oflook back on the past. But I
guess, you know, if there'sany advice there, or like any kind
of confidence there is that if youdon't know what you're doing or it doesn't
feel like you know what you're doing, you probably are kind of you know,

(07:59):
there is kind of path that youare you know subconsciously, you know,
taking there or creating there. It'sgonna make sense in a few years
maybe, yeah, exactly, itmight it seem like that at the time,
but eventually it kind of it pansout. I think you just need
to you just need to kind ofjust keep trying to do what you enjoy
or what what feels like an interestingarea to explore, and eventually that's gonna

(08:22):
that's gonna add up to something.And how did you move from ux you
know, design and and and copyfrom that area from that world to to
video with with with Tadla? Whywas that? How? Yeah? I

(08:43):
mean in the I never really madethe So I joined our previous startup called
copy dot Io as a I wasa product manager, so I was not
a designer and I was not anengineer. The my co founder at the
time who kind of came up withthe idea. He was the designer and

(09:03):
my current co founder's he was theengineer on that, and I was there
to kind of, you know,do everything else marketing, you know,
writing and things like that. SoI've always been a little bit yeah,
I've always been a little bit kindof removed from that and just kind of
learned it on the job, youknow, So I had no previous experience

(09:26):
like really being a designer or reallybeing a copywriter. We just kind of
saw a problem and tried to solvethe problem and communicate the problem and learn
more about it. So I don'tthink there was like too much of a
It didn't feel like too much ofa leap to jump from that to video.
We just again saw an interesting problemthat we thought we could we could

(09:46):
solve, and that was kind ofthe that was kind of the leap.
The actual idea for it was thatEnvision was a fully remote company before the
pandemic. So we joined and wereworking remotely from our homes, and it
was really weird, you know,no one we didn't know anyone else that

(10:07):
worked at a remote company like now, we like we laughed at like remote
workings with like it's it's just reallyit's it's normal. It's it's almost weirder
if you're in the office now.But when we joined, it was strange,
Like my friends would make jokes aboutlike, oh, what are you
doing, Like what are you justlike sitting in your living room working?
The ones that still went to theoffice, like what do you do?

(10:28):
You just like get up roll atit. So there was it was really
strange. But you know, inthat strangeness, you know, you could
a company, like in a Vision, who had been pushing remote work so
hard for as long as they hadexisted. They had a bunch of interesting
practices to really make it work.They had to be very deliberate because no
one, no one, no onehad any experience in it. So they

(10:50):
really had to design a culture anda process and a way of working.
That meant that being you know,seven hundred people distributed across the world that
they could work together. Probably.So one of the things that we noticed
is that they heavily relied on video, and not just like live video,
but also asynchronous video and the wholeThe sort of spark for the flame is

(11:13):
that they had this channel in Slackwhich had the entire product team in it
and also the rest of the company, So everybody else in the company and
the product team were the only peoplewho could post stuff in there, so
product managers, designers, and engineers, and the idea was that those people
would make videos about what they wereworking on, posted into the Slack channel,

(11:37):
and then the rest of the companycould tune in whenever they wanted and
just like scroll down a list ofan endless kind of stream of videos seeing
what all the new stuff is,new features, new ideas, user research,
all sorts of things. But theproduct team kind of had to make
these videos first and then put themin there, and then everybody else could
tune in. And the channel,the Slack channel was called Product TV.

(12:01):
In fact, there was two channels. It was Product TV and Product Backstage.
And Backstage was all the work andprogress stuff, and Product TV was
all the stuff that you were allowedto share with customers. So this was
interesting on its own, just thislike concept of like, you know,
a TV channel that the rest ofthe company could tune in to learn about
what's going on. But the thingthat we got really excited. My co

(12:24):
founder and I got really excited aboutwas that the videos that people were interested
in, the videos that people watched, were the ones that were better made,
The ones that where the person makingthem had like done a cool intro
and had like background music and effectsand like cool layout and you know,

(12:45):
background images and everything. The onesthat people like really put the effort into.
Like people were like, oh,seck, like so and so has
just launched a new video, likelet's go and watch it, or people
would just commenting on there, welove the video. The problem was,
you know, one thing that wasclear was that, like, if you
make a cool video, it's engagingand it helps with internal communication. But

(13:05):
the problem was is that, likeeveryone who was making these videos, and
I was one of these people whospent a lot of time making the videos.
The problem was is like you wouldhave to use traditional video editing software
like Screenflow or final Cut or something, and you would spend hours making your
like monthly update video about your likelittle feature or something. It was fun,
it was cool, and it gotpeople watching it, but it just

(13:28):
was just insane that we're using softwaredesigned for film editors or YouTubers or whatever
that was the tool that you wereusing to make these videos, and so
that the very sort of dumb ideawas, like, why isn't there like
a video creation tool specifically designed forwork and for people who don't come from

(13:48):
a background of video editing. Surelythere's just like a way that kind of
like takes all the core concepts ofvideo creation and just simplifies it, makes
it more focused on efficiency and easeof use and like the the use cases
that actually matter, the types ofvideos that matter to I guess non professional

(14:09):
video people. And that was thecore idea. And so in the beginning,
we started out trying to sell thisidea into big companies, but we
realized that a lot of big companieswere just like, why would we why
would we want to? We don'twant our team doing this, And so
then we switched away and further andfurther away out of companies and more into

(14:31):
individual creators and small businesses and thingslike that, where there was definitely there
was much stronger need and like theyalready had the need. Now we're starting
to see that bigger companies are startingto realize that there's like a benefit to
like giving giving their their team avideo tool that helps them create like this.
But in the early days, wesort of thought like this is this

(14:52):
is going to make a lot ofsense for those people, and it didn't.
And so we've kind of had tofigure it out since then. And
why is that? I mean,is it opening now? I'm thinking,
you know, because of the wholepandemic lockdown, you know, working from
home. So is it a topdown process or is it a vottom up
process. Do you think it's becausethe you know, the employee now want

(15:16):
to use videos to share, youknow, useful information with the rest of
the team, or is the otherway around? What's some second this?
Yeah, I mean, so ourexperience is probably that we we didn't have
a strong enough product in the earlydays when we were really trying to go
for these companies, and so therewould have been a little bit of like

(15:41):
people like individual individual people in thecompany not being radio or wanting to do
it. There also would have beenmanagement that not getting it. And there's
also like our product just kind ofwas was too early and not good enough
yet. I think, Yeah,what we see now is that there definitely
is the idea of asynchronous communication andthe benefits of that and the benefits of

(16:07):
making communication engaging actually creating something that'sgoing to get people consuming it, reading
it, watching it, whatever itis. That's now something that exists inside
of companies, and so there thenis one individuals who are like, that's
I want to be able to communicatebetter. I want to make something that

(16:30):
people are actually going to watch andlearn from. And there's also a management
now that are probably pushing for that. The challenge is that it's like kind
of an intangible thing, so likeputting your finger on exactly like the benefit
of super engaging communication like that isstill not super clear. So for management
buy in on something like that,like they'll want something to They'll want to

(16:52):
know what kind of KPI you're reallyimproving there. But the awareness and the
you know, the ability to communicateabout this, and the tools to measure
the effectiveness of people's communication and thevalue of that, that's getting better.
And so you know, our jobof selling Teller into larger organizations is going
to get easier and easier. Butthe flip side is that individuals like yourself

(17:17):
and small businesses, their needs area little bit different. Where they are
also not necessarily video export experts orvideo pros. They might know a little
bit about video, or know thatthey want to use video, but they
don't have time to like really snkhours and hours into video because they run

(17:37):
a business or they do a bunchof other things, and so they have
to kind of like find something that'sgoing to do the job of good quality
video, of interesting video and engagingvideo, but like without having to sink
hours and hours into it. Andthe added benefit, of course is that
when it comes to external content,stuff that's more aligned to marketing, whether

(18:02):
that's a YouTube video or a productdemo for your website or tutorial or something
you want to post on Twitter,all of that stuff's external, so you're
basically using it to like grow yourbusiness. You're using it to get customers,
to get leads, to grow yourcommunity. And so the value people
much more understand and associate the valueof like higher quality content, you know,
and the role that that plays inthat job. Whereas for internal communication,

(18:26):
you know, you can you candebate the kind of like how you
could debate like how how good qualityinternal communication is for the job that it
has has to play. But again, I think that's changing and the tools
are getting better to mean that peopleare going to be more encouraged by it,
but certainly like the initial thing rightnow is people like yourself created small

(18:47):
businesses and startups where they need videoto help them grow. I was thinking
maybe before internal communication is kind ofharder to show that there is an actually
an actual you know r I onthat. Uh, if if you're only
going to use the videos on yourSlack channels, you know, emails or

(19:08):
a private website or or whatever,maybe it's hard to get them there.
If you're a small business and youput that you know, on website,
on YouTube or you know, foryour clients, for your tutorial or something
else, you get value. Youcan easily understand why that's important for for
for you. You know, there'sthe famous one I don't remember who said

(19:33):
that that every company is now amedia company. My version of that with
my clients, with my student Iwere mostly you know, with small businesses
with freelancers. So is that everyoneis now a creator? H uh?
Maybe a few years ago a creatorwas you know, someone that you can

(19:55):
easily identify and you say, oh, that person is a creator. It
means that you know, has aYouTube channel, a podcast or a newsletter
or something like that. But nowadayseveryone is a creator if you want to
sell your idea, your services,your products, and everything that you're doing
at the moment. So I was, I was, I was thinking,
what's the difference that you see fromyou know, creators creators, So people

(20:21):
that do like full time creators andstart up small businesses, freelancers, so
people that are using videos that theyare actually running a business and the video
is just you know, just away for them to to to to sell
an idea and to to you know, to reach an audience. Yeah,

(20:41):
it's funny because we we will reachout to our customers and do like interviews
with our customers and we'll say,so, you know, tell us what
it means to be a creator.We'll say in like a user interview or
something, and then like I'm nota creator, Like what are you?
Then? And then like I justrun a business and I put out content

(21:02):
like ah okay, And we seethis, We see that some people like
really clearly self identify with the creatorand then and but then like maybe we
as teller look at them and thinkthey're not really a creator. And then
then we see the other way aroundwhen we see people who really you know,
do look like you know, creatorsor fit the fit that that that
persona and then they don't self identifyas as a creator. I think the

(21:26):
thing that we try and stick tothat prevents us from going crazy is like
everyone is some kind of like digitalentrepreneur or entrepreneur online, some kind of
business online, and you know,within that you can then you know,
find we can then find kind ofwhere we can be helpful. But I
think the difference between some kind oftraditional creator and businesses or entrepreneurs that just

(21:49):
kind of using content as a asa as as a as a sort of
side means it's it's it's hard tosay. I think there are yeah,
there are just people who all theywill do is put out content and that's
kind of it. But now we'restarting to see, you know, now
we're starting to see people kind ofput out content and use that to grow

(22:11):
an audience and then drive those peopleto some other product that they have or
service that they have. And Ithink, you know, that's probably the
more attainable, you know path oryou know, legitimate career for a lot
of people because it doesn't rely onhaving to have runaway massive viral success where
you get you know, you havemillions of eyeballs that you can kind of

(22:34):
use to to monetize purely by puttingout content. So I think that it's
it's getting it's getting it's getting blurrieras more people, as there are more
financial opportunities, and there are morepeople that want to to be able to
have this kind of freedom because youknow, it is quite a flexible it
can be quite a flexible career.The other thing as well, is like

(22:57):
I was at a conference with abunch of creators and I sort of I
would ask the people that I andyou know, we had a bunch of
customers. Then I was sort ofasking them like, what what does creator
mean to you? Where did theterm come from? Are you one?
Is it going to go away?And I think one of the best answers
I heard was like ten years agoor something, you were a podcaster,

(23:18):
or you had a blog, oryou sold an online course, and you
were one of those things, andyou would just do one of those and
now you are a creator because youknow that the tools have gotten better and
people's ability skills have gotten better,and now everyone can have a blog,

(23:41):
and everyone can have a newsletter,and everyone can put out a course and
everyone can run a podcast, starta YouTube channel, like, all of
these things are much more accessible,and the tools and you know, the
ways to grow these things are becomingmore accessible. And so I think people
are basically just kind of busting outof the side of being a podcast,
which you might have been as astandalone ten years ago. And now you

(24:07):
have a podcast and you also havea paid newsletter or so and so,
and then you kind of all ladderup to a creator and I think thinking
that then, you know, maybethe word creator will change. But you
know, every you know, peopleare still going to continue to make money
online, you know, make theirlivings online primarily through putting out content and

(24:30):
information that other people consume and payfor. It's almost like, you know,
on one side, every entrepreneur waskind of becoming a creator because they
had a need, and the needwas to you know, reach an audience.
And on the other side, creatorsare becoming more and more and more

(24:52):
entrepreneurs because now they realize that ifthey want to monetize, it's not enough
to be on YouTube or you know, TikTok or Instagram, but they can
have their own i don't know,e commerce or app or exactly, I
don't know, merchandising and whatever.So they kind of meet in the middle.
And that's why the line is blurrynow, because everyone is an entrepreneur

(25:14):
and everyone is also a creator atthe same time. Yeah, I think
the another kind of parallel to this, I suppose is around startups, which
is, I guess the other kindof world that I live in, Like
you know, I guess I wasmore familiar and had a better understanding of
kind of like you know, earlystage startups, you know, having you

(25:37):
know, kind of been interested inthat for a long time and and and
running my own and the creative thingis is something that I've kind of learned
and had to sort of like join, you know, to get to a
better understanding of the world. ButI guess what you were also seeing in
startups as a parallel is like,you know, maybe ten years ago,
being a startup founder was kind of, you know, quite specific thing,

(26:03):
like you were working on some weirdbut a software or app or something.
You probably had venture capital, andyou probably didn't have a lot of it,
and you know, your your yourjob was to kind of turn something
very small into something massive, andat least what it feels like today is
like everyone can be a startup.Everyone's a startup founder. Like the lines
have kind of blurred there, soeven just small business owners are running startups.

(26:27):
You know, even if you don'traise venture capital, you you were
bootstrapping it. That's also you know, you're you're also a startup founder.
So I think in the past theremight have been like much more siloed kind
of disciplines or sub sub disciplines orsomething, and now kind of like,

(26:48):
you know, the idea of ofbuilding a startup and having or building software
is something now that you know,there are the tools and pathways to growing
that are much more accessible for everybody. So I feel like there's there's maybe
some parallel there in terms of lookingat when a when a space kind of

(27:11):
we're in a space like the toolsget better, the opportunities get better,
the knowledge is much more accessible.Then you kind of see this maybe phenomenon
the same thing you see in creators. Maybe you see it and startups,
and potentially there are other places aswell. If you are enjoying this episode,
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(27:33):
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(27:55):
t oh, you'll find the linkin the description. And I was thinking
that also, the the founder rolehas changed a lot. I mean ten
years ago, fifteen years ago,it was quite quite of quite hard to
see, you know, a founderthat was kind of you know, that

(28:17):
had a strong social media presence,that was creating content. Yeah. Of
course, if you had, ifyour your startup was Airbnb or or Uber,
you know, one of those,you were kind of famous. But
everyone else was maybe I don't know, posting with stuff on red and that
was it. Yeah. Nowadays,and also see your content, for example,

(28:38):
every tutorial on your website is madeby you. Nowadays, I see
that every startup founder is kind ofI don't want to say it's an influencer,
but it's it's a creator at least. Yeah, So they want to
position themselves in that niche. Youknow, they want to be someone that
is you know that people can easilyrecognize and say, oh, that's the

(29:02):
guy from you know, from thatcompany. They he knows a lot about
you know, that topic, becauseI follow him, I don't know,
on on Twitter, on the website, on the blog, on newsletter,
on YouTube channel. Is it somethingthat I see in the market or you
see the scene, you know,from your perspective, Yeah, I definitely
see the same. Like we weat Teller. We sort of approached that

(29:23):
in in our own way as well. And there's definitely some kind of startup
law that exists around, you know, how the founders should build some kind
of personal brand or or have somesome kind of recognition, or build at
least as some kind of social presence. I don't have a particularly great social

(29:45):
presence and and and don't feel likeI am I'm great at that. But
what I do like and enjoy andand think it's it helps with Teller is
just kind of being the face ofthe products as much as possible, or
whether it's you know, every emailis addressed from me. You know,
I'm in all the videos. I'min all the videos on the website,

(30:07):
and so I think that's that's that'sour own interpretation of this. I think
if I can, if I canget Twitter famous at some point someday,
then you know that that'll that willhelp or build a YouTube channel like yours,
then then then that'll also add toit. But I think where this
all comes from is probably seeing maybetwo things. One is that you know,

(30:33):
individuals can do a lot more thesedays, and I think people,
you know, founders especially kind ofrealized that, you know, they they
don't necessarily always need a massive,massive team, so you can kind of
be you can be involved in alot more stuff and be much more visible.
And then I think the other sideas well is that people, probably

(30:56):
founders have probably seen the success ofcreators and influencers and the fact that you
know, these are people who fromthe you know, a founder and a
product and engineering side of things thatlike they're not making anything, what are
they doing that? Yet people arelike so engaged and they have crazy fans
and they're you know, making loadsand loads of money. And so I

(31:18):
think on the products are you sortof like they're not they're not, they
don't actually make anything, so like, what's what's the deal there? And
the deal is is that people likepeople want to buy from people, People
want to follow people. People wanta connection with a person. So it's
not enough just to have a coolproduct or a useful product or whatever you
want to be someone or your companyshould have some kind of personality or brand

(31:41):
or whatever that people are also interestedin in want to build a connection with.
So I think it's it's it's thosetwo things that it's kind of creating
this this trend or phenomena or whateverpeople want to buy from people. I
love it. That is so true, and it's always kind of, you

(32:02):
know, in twenty twenty three,for me, it's always kind of very
strange, very odd. Every timeI get an email from a company and
there is you know, in thesignature. You don't see a name.
It's like you know the team,the stuff or you know the brand.
It first kind of you know,I don't know, so far away from

(32:25):
me, you know, it's itwas normal maybe ten years ago, fifteen
years ago. Nowadays it's not anymore, tends to startups mostly, but I
still see you know a few companiesthat do the same, and it's I
don't know, Yeah, people wantto perform from people. I love it.

(32:46):
I love it, And how doyou see, you know, in
this whole scenario that you were describingthe role of videos. You guys of
course work with videos. Video isyour thing. What's the role of video
in that? I mean, Ithink video is one of the best ways,

(33:09):
two, if not the best wayto get personality across. Like it's
the most kind of like high fidelity, you know, real version of getting
a personality, you know, forsomeone else to understand a personality. And
so I think if, if,if that is important to you, or

(33:30):
if that adds value to your yourbusiness, or you know, you know,
you find some kind of advantage there, then yeah, video, video
is really hard to beat in termsof getting a personality across just because you
know, like if you can't bein the same room with someone, have
a conversation and engage with them likethat, which is you know, as
a startup founder, it's very difficultto do that with with customers all over

(33:52):
the world these days. Video cankind of be you know, fill in
the bridge the gap there where youcan kind of get yourself across and your
ideas us to loads of people.Uh, and so you kind of get
that distribution and you get that uh, that intensity of kind of connection with
with with your customers or with thefollowers, you know, if if if

(34:13):
you're if you're a creator or oror building some kind of audience. So
that's basically what we believe in thatwhat drives all the stuff that we do
with Teller is like it's the bestway to kind of get your ideas across
your personality. And that kind ofcomes back to the product with us trying
to make it easier and more easierto do that and give you more tools

(34:35):
and interesting ways of expressing yourself.And uh, and you said the beginning
of this conversation that for you,one of the most important thing was about
quality. I want to go backon that, because you started, you
know, everything started in the Slackchannels. You would see you know,
several videos and you would see thatthe best ones, you know, the

(35:00):
ones with more comments you know andinteractions, were always the ones that had,
you know, there was quality.Yeah, And of course if you
want to make great videos, youhave to be an expert. You I
have to know how to use youknow, software is like like super professional

(35:20):
video editing software. So I'm thinkingabout this. I always think that you
know, if you're building an audience, you also need quantity so quantity is
really important because if you make onegreat video every six months, it's completely
useless. So how do you findthem balance in that in both scenarios,

(35:49):
So if you are a creator andalso if you are you know, an
entrepreneur for lends, startup or runninga business in the In the earlier days
of Tella, we used to reallyheavily kind of put ourselves in contrast to
Loom, which is a screen recordingtool, because that's what was kind of
like the household name or the populartool for people who worked at companies,

(36:15):
people who worked in startups. Verysimple, very fast. You could just
record your camera, record your screen, perfect for that kind of thing.
And we would contrast ourselves and kindof counterposition ourselves as saying like, we
help you make better videos, andso if you want better videos, come
and work with you know, useuse Teller. And it sort of worked.

(36:37):
You know, there were people whothere were people who felt that that
we're using Loom but wanted something morethat still was kind of simple to use,
but they could get the better,the better or more interesting output.
But what we've sort of realized nowis that the people who get the most
value out of Teller. The peoplewho are using something more professional already,

(37:00):
that are using screen flow or finalcut, and they have a certain quality,
but they're not kind of going forthe crazy super super professional, and
what they want is they want speedand they want efficiency. And those are
the people who actually get the mostvalue out of Teller because they still get
the same or close to a similarquality, but they can do it way

(37:22):
way faster, and the tangibility oflike saving much more time. You know,
it's an easier thing to communicate about. It's much less subjective. So
if you say that you know youcan make better videos with Teller, you
know, it's like you mean,you think they're better, but I don't
know if I think they're better,And you know, that's still something we
care a lot about. But it'smuch easier to be like, yeah,

(37:44):
you can save ten times a time, you can make this video five times
faster or something, or it's it'syou know, it's it's measurable. It's
much more measurable. It's just easierto communicate about, and it's much easier
for a person to feel when theysign up and use the product. If
you've been making screen records with finalquick time and then final cut, uh

(38:04):
and and and and creating a videoslike that. The ability of just recording
with our MacApp and then having alink that you can share or download or
whatever is like way way faster.And so that's how we've kind of shifted
now. And so going back toyour your original question around you know,
the differences here is that for us, we're trying to find a sweet spot

(38:29):
where we want to give we wantto give our target customer entrepreneurs, small
businesses, startup founders, creators.We want to give them a quality that
you know, they can they canthey can be happy with and keep we
want to keep making it more interestingand do more, you know, add
more more interesting fun features there,but make it efficient because again, a

(38:52):
lot of our customers they aren't theyaren't video editors. They're not people whose
job is to sit into sit intointo a into a video editor and spend
ages kind of crafting the ultimate videobecause there are other tools that do that
way better. You know, ourcustomers want to be able to churn out
good quality videos fast, and soit's it's all about this this balance.

(39:15):
So I think there are times wherewe do more to try and focus on
the creative side and give more creativetools. And then there are times where
we you know, try and makesure you know, we're keeping things fast.
And I think anytime we add somethingnew, we're sort of thinking about
like, well, here's how itcan be done in the traditional video editing
space. This is this is theway the tool works, Like can we
rethink this and give people like theshortcut to to to to adding this or

(39:40):
or using this tool. And doyou see any any trends on that?
So both again on you know,on the startup side and also on the
creator side, do you see anytrends on how people are using videos,
you know, to reach audience,to share they you know, ideas,

(40:04):
or to sell a product something interestingthat it's opening out there. Yeah.
I think where we see a decentamount is on Twitter. Obviously. The
benefit there is that Twitter is kindof going through a platform change where you
know, Twitter was Twitter now it'sX and they're you know, they're doing
things a bit differently now, soit's sort of becoming a new product in

(40:27):
a way. They're putting a lotof emphasis on video and so we've seen
you know, our customers and otherpeople just using video that are using it
as a way to reach to kindof build their top of funnel with small
product demos or small snippets of ofof video or miniature courses and things like

(40:49):
that that they're putting out onto Twitterthat can get a lot of reach and
then they can build a following orgrow their following, and then they can
drive them to you higher value products, paid communities or online courses or a
YouTube channel or something like that fromthere. And so yeah, I think

(41:09):
that I guess the is just peopletaking advantage of a new emphasis on video
in a place like Twitter, whichdidn't have so much of an emphasis on
video. How that relates to Iguess Teller is thinking about our customers.
They're usually people who are building somekind of software or they have some kind

(41:30):
of digital service, so lots ofwhat they're talking about and need to share
is on their screen, and sowe can kind of give them the tools
to be able to present something that'son their screen product a course of service
in a more fun and engaging way. So yeah, that's that seems to
be kind of like the one ofthe main patterns we're seeing at the moment.

(41:52):
And what about mistakes? Is thereany I would say, you know,
common mistake that you see people makeat least you know at the beginning
when they start you know, workingwith with with with videos and maybe they
don't have a lot of experience,you know, using that medium. What

(42:12):
would you say is like one ortwo most common mistakes on that. I
think the biggest thing is people justnot not starting, or like at least
the people who have the intention orknow that like there's value there, but
they're not really not really sticking withit. It is something where if you

(42:34):
can have a process that you're confidentwith, then it will just help you
put out more and more content,whether it's short miniature videos that you're you're
checking on Twitter, or whether it'slonger form form content. So I think
I think that's that's that's the biggestthing that that I think help me people
mess out on In terms of peoplewho are who I guess are are starting,

(42:59):
it's this weird, weird gap Ithink between having no process because you
don't want to like overload yourself withlike some elaborate process and all the best
equipment or whatever, and then youknow, use that ends up just being
an excuse not to make enough videosor or it becomes kind of like a

(43:22):
mental block. But then on theother side is like you still want to
be able to You still want tofeel like what you're going to get out
of this is good or at leastyou know you can find practical ways to
improve yourself. So if you haveno process, then maybe you can kind
of feel weird to like figure outwhat you need to do differently or what

(43:45):
you can change in order to geta better result the next time. But
equally, if you have like asuper complicated process, it's not going to
encourage you to want to make videos. So I think finding some kind of
balance there if you if you're juststarting that the simplest thing to do is
just to record yourself and and andand share something and and put it out

(44:07):
there and see what happens. Isaw a guy who who has just,
yeah, recently started making videos.Maybe he didn't recently start making video,
but he's at least recently started kindof blowing up on Twitter. And he's
just a guy, and he's likesat on a couch and he's talking about
seo tips I think, or marketingtips. I think I forgotten the account's

(44:29):
name, but like he's just saton a couch. There's no editing in
the videos. It's just him.He's just talking and that's it. So
yeah, he he he he hashe has just built a process where you
can just sit down and record andand turn the videos out. My camera
has just gone to sleep. Yeahwhat up? And then yeah, let

(44:52):
me let me just restart it asecond. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
I was thinking, you know,there is that famous quote done is
better than perfect, So that's that'sthat's the case again. So yeah,
it's definitely, it's definitely some therewe go. I've opened a window because

(45:15):
it's it's getting quite hotly. It'sdefinitely it definitely comes back to that that
perfections the enemy have done. Soyeah, just just put stuff out there.
Yeah, Grant, before you know, closing this conversation, you sually
the last question is about books andtools. So do you have any cool

(45:37):
books that you want to share withus with my audience, something that you
are reading right now or something youknow very cool that you have read in
the last few months or the lastfew years. Yeah, I'm not reading
anything right now. I'm a readerthat sort of goes in like bursts.
I'll read a few things, andthen like I just won't read for ages

(45:59):
and I read a few things.But my favorite book, my favorite book,
which I think is just like agreat book too to appeal to anyone.
It's it's well read in it's gotlots of fun examples and things in
it. As one called Ways ofSeeing by a guy called John Berger.
It's an art history book, butit has aspects of politics and history and

(46:25):
and kind of you know, ifyou have some slight interest in art history,
it sort of provides like this otherside to art history or a way
to or a way to understand artthat you might have not before. Basically,
it sort of says, instead ofkind of just looking at a painting
and you're studying the painting, apainting is just a piece of history.

(46:47):
So if you you look at apainting through the context of like when it
was, from where it came,you know who the person was that painted
it, what time was it,you know, the much like bigger picture
around art, and it's yeah,it's it's just a fun, simple,
easy read and yeah, opens upwhat's the name again, Ways of Seeing?

(47:09):
Okay, nice guys. You findthe link in the description below,
of course, and what about tools? Of course, uh tell but what
else do you have any like cooltools that you use with your team,
you know, and your day today work and you really love it?
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure this is not going to

(47:31):
come as a surprise to anybody,but we tell all big fans of ARC,
the new browser from the Browser company, it's great. It's it's no,
it's no secret or undercover thing,but like, yeah, my most
of my work life centers around thebrowser and the Browser company have have rethought

(47:54):
so many aspects of it as atool that we spend so much time in
h and yeah, I love it. It's great. It combines like it's
practical and there's lots of like functionalthings that are really good, but it's
also just fun. And if youare building software, or you're building a
product, or you're even just youknow, building any kind of business,

(48:17):
it's it's great to be able tolike see and appreciate the craft and creativity
that people put into like all thedifferent you know, like nooks and crannies
of the product. I think we'vegotten really used to this on a from
a hardware perspective because of you know, Apple's you know prevalence in the market
and and kind of like people understandingthe craft that can go into two hardware

(48:42):
and technology, and there's it's stillnot a super I feel like it's still
not quite a super widely accepted orappreciated thing in the software world. But
ARC is definitely ARC in the Browsercompany are definitely one of those teams that
are putting care and craft and creativityinto into all aspects of the product.

(49:04):
And I think it's great. Nicegreat grant where they can find you,
follow you, Do you have anylink you want to share with us?
Check out teller teller dot tv.That's uh, that's the best thing.
You can also find Tella at onon Twitter on x at Teller HQ and

(49:28):
you can find me on x twitterat nine R A N T. Y
okay ye are going to be inthe description below. Grant. Thank you
so much for your time. Itwas great, grap it was a pleasure.
Thanks for having me. Thanks forlistening to this episode of the podcast.
I hope you enjoyed it and youlearned something new. Make sure to

(49:52):
subscribe to us on YouTube and Spotifyto stay updated on new episodes. With
your support, I can continue tobring great content a great guest to this
podcast, So hit the subscribe buttonnow and I'll see you in the next episode.