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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the SourceForge podcast.
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I'm your host, Bo Hamilton.
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Now, today we are going to be digging into how brands find customers in a corner of e-commerce that's changed perhaps more than any other over the past five years or so.
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So if we rewind back to 2020, I would say that the playbook was pretty simple, right?
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You pour money into Facebook and Instagram ads and you sort of let the targeting machine do its thing.
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And then we had Apple iOS privacy changes that hit.
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Sort of the tracking got murky, ad costs started skyrocketing, and the playbook just sort of fell apart.
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And brands needed a channel that didn't depend on third-party data.
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And the answer was really hiding in plain sight.
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It was the people we all know and love, the influencers that we all watch and consume content from on the daily, real customers, ambassadors, and creators recommending products they genuinely love.
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And that's called the creator economy, now estimated north of$200 billion.
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I think that's a pretty conservative figure.
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But while the money exploded, the infrastructure didn't.
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Most brands are still finding creators by scrolling Instagram at midnight, managing partnerships in things like spreadsheets and squinting attribution across five different platforms.
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Creator-led partnership ads are outperforming traditional formats across the board.
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It's just, I would say, the infrastructure or the plumbing to scale them that doesn't exist.
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And so that's the gap my guests are building into.
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Andy Cloyd and Anders Bill are the co-founders of Superaffiliate, a creator marketing platform that turns customers, ambassadors, and influencers into a real measurable growth channel.
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You've got co-branded storefronts, affiliate infrastructure, and an AI-powered creator discovery tool, all built directly on Meta's APIs with a YouTube partnership now in the mix, too.
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So really exciting stuff.
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Andy spent seven years as a VC before jumping the table to CEO.
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And Anders is a repeat founder who was building for creators before creator economy was even a phrase or a thing, really.
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So yeah, really excited to have these two here and chat with them.
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Andy Anders, welcome to the podcast.
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Oh, I wish thank you for having us.
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I wish you had were with us fundraising.
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I think you just hit our full pitch.
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Like the full iOS, I mean the iOS pitch is exactly why we started the business.
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And it was like, where is growth hidden?
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And so yeah, we're stoked to be here.
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Awesome.
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Well, if we've got a lot to get into, and um, you know, obviously we can lead multiple discussions around all sorts of different specifics here.
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But um, first, like you guys, you guys obviously came at this from two sort of opposite directions.
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Andy, you spent, you know, like I mentioned, seven years on the BC side.
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Um, and Anders, you already founded a company called Darkroom, powering creator storefronts.
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Um, what did uh you each see from your side of the table that just kind of made you rethink things?
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Like uh, you know, you realize like the tools brands use for creators, they're broken and something else needs to be implemented here.
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Yeah, I mean the the origin story was really we started asking brands what they liked and didn't like in their software.
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We focused on the creator stack, but also just word of mouth in general.
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And so we asked a dozen plus brands in the good for you CPG space just because we were personally passionate about that space industry.
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We knew it was gonna be very disruptive.
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You had the major conglomerates, it was so clear that consumer preferences were changing.
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And it was really funny.
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We were we kept asking them, like, do you like your tool for word of mouth marketing?
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Do you like it for creator marketing?
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And the answer was always no, but I pay them XYZ, or I'm in an annual contract.
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And I think for us as founders, that is a moment where you realize that you can go into kind of this evolving industry that's not entirely new, that has other dominant players in it that are doing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of revenue and really build something interesting that people love.
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And of course, that is like the nice version of the story.
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The actual, you know, how that actual happened was we were rawing on different theses for like six to twelve months, and it was like a total mess.
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And, you know, we were building things that just didn't make sense for the end user.
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Andy had quit his job.
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It was terrifying, you know, like all the classic founder stories in the beginning.
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And Andy and I were actually random roommates in Los Angeles, and I remember hearing him talking on a phone call one day and kind of had the early ideas for Superaffiliate.
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And I remember thinking Andy's gonna be a great CEO, and I'm just like not a CEO.
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And I asked Andy if he wanted to quit his job, which was a great job at the time, and he did it.
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And then we stumbled around for about six to 12 months, and it was absolutely terrifying.
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Andy lived below me, and like every day when we'd walk out, he's like, Is this gonna work?
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I'm like, I have no idea.
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And we're just like both losing money.
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So, like, we're everything has been great now.
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We're 80 to 100 people now.
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It's been five plus years, you know, we've grown so much, like a thousand plus brands.
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But for the first year, it was pretty chaotic and scary.
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So the timing wasn't obviously an accident either, because I know that like, you know, right around uh when you guys started kind of working together, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but Apple decided to kind of blow up the sort of marketing playbook.
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Andy, you've you've pointed to like the the iOS privacy updates as part of the the major spark here.
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Like maybe you could walk me through that.
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How did Apple sort of kneecap the paid attribution sort of issue here?
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You can definitely get into some of the macro stuff that we were seeing alongside that at the time, maybe even like from the venture and investor lens that we were seeing.
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But you know, when you to your point on the intro, you the playbook used to be you would create a product and then you would take a bunch of creative to meta.
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And you know, that was the sales channel.
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I can remember you know taking pitches from kind of V1 of your D2C Darling brands.
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And you know, people would always say, Well, when are you going to diversify beyond Meta?
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And they'd say, when we need to, whenever we stop seeing crazy returns from the best input-output machine in like the history of mankind, which was in the most scalable advertising and acquisition platform that you've ever seen.
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And then Apple decided to kind of double down their privacy thesis, which meant being reducing the ability for advertisers and platforms to track what was going on beyond advanced.
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So what that did is that messed up attribution.
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And all of a sudden, brands were a little more in the dark as to who was buying, when they were buying, what was the efficacy of the spin that they were putting in.
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And then you see this scramble for new channels.
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And whenever something like that happens, that's going to create some opportunity somewhere.
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And right about that time, yo, everybody is sitting on their phones all the time, scrolling TikTok and Instagram.
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And like we're still in like the tail end of COVID and things like that.
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And to your point, like the creator economy at the time, like the lines were there.
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And I think like when you're building a business or making investments, you're always trying to look at like where's the pub going.
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And like we were all starting to do a lot more content consumption on screens and in our pockets.
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And that content was not being created by huge media and production companies that was being created by the people that were down the street from us in Venice, California, you know, when they were talking about products and things like that.
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There was definitely a V1 of investment into the creator economy that a lot of companies got funded.
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And a lot of those companies have since failed because I think directionally investors were right in terms of creators and the creator economy is going to be a huge thing.
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But how that was going to end up manifesting from like the value accrual layer was a little less clear.
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And, you know, of course, a lot of value has accrued to creators, but now we're starting, as we start to see like what role do creators actually play in those growth playbooks.
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And then that has kind of dictated the software and the enablement layer to help brands do more of that.
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And, you know, for us, we've been able to kind of just like ride that wave and see a bunch of different eras.
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So like originally coming to market and having all of this like last click, like take this old existing model of affiliate marketing.
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Everybody knows the concept of like see a link, click it.
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Somebody's getting paid for it.
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You know, it used to be a reviews website or something like that.
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And then now you're starting to see creators being at distribution.
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So we started building a ton of technology to help on like not just the like trackability, but also like the scale of that.
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Because all of a sudden, you don't need to work with 10 partners.
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You need to work with a thousand partners.
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And they're, you know, the same technology doesn't apply to help people do that.
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But then as this market has matured, we've started to see creators play a totally different role than I think we were even anticipating two years ago or three years ago.
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And that's largely, you know, what's old is new again, back into the meta and the paid advertising pipelines.
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But creators' roles now are being like a content engine and like a scalable platform for people to do that.
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So, you know, you see a lot of playbooks nowadays where there are people are running things that people will say is whitelisting or partnership ads, things like that.
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And creators are the backbone of the creative engine for the brands that are growing really fast.
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And they and, you know, we just in the fortunate people are like, you know, better to be lucky than then smart sometimes, like right place, right time, and watch those things develop and build alongside those social platforms.
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Totally.
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Yeah.
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Uh well, there's a lot to unpack there.
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I think the um, like with with the for listeners and viewers, like the iOS sort of changes that help me visualize things.
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It's like when you're when you go to an app, I mean, basically any app nowadays, it'll there's a pop-up, right?
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That'll be like asked to to track or opt out.
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And then I'm curious, like during the COVID era, I mean, obviously that kind of with with the effects of COVID that jumped us kind of forward digitally in like by a decade or so, we were all kind of consuming more content on our screens and whatnot.
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Tech companies were were kind of overhiring.
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Did you notice kind of a drop-off afterwards, after kind of the economy started kind of going back to normal, so to speak?
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I imagine there's been just a constant up and down with kind of tweaking your model appropriately and like scaling, right?
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Yeah, I mean, I think you've absolutely seen that like normalization to your point.
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Like I think it was like even an e-commerce penetration, you saw it go, hey, all of a sudden this pull forward happened.
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And then the market said, oh my God, that's the new normal.
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We're gonna grow at this rate.
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Like I think Shopify's stock price is actually an amazing proxy for that.
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You know, you're trading, I think, like 160, 180 bucks a share during that peak.
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Everybody said this is the new normal.
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We went from, you know, 10% to 14%, and we're gonna be at 25% by 2027.
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And then, you know, what happened is we kind of normalized.
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So we did have a step function change, but then we got back on that steady track.
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And like I said, Shopify stock price, I think it bottomed out around 30 bucks.
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Now we're back up around 150.
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So we're just now getting back to where we were from like the hype side of things.
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I think the data and the numbers have always been there and fairly consistent up and to the right, but just people's perception of it has changed.
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And, you know, to your point, though, like that kind of up and down.
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I think even like the financing and funding in the ecosystem has been a huge, you know, exemplification where you see, you know, creator economy.
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If you're not investing in it, you're absolutely crazy in 2021.
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Then 2023 to 2025.
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If you're investing in the creator economy, you're an idiot.
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Everybody lost all their money there, boom, like nobody's looking at it.
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And then now all of a sudden we're seeing it again.
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And it's like, if you're not investing in the creator economy, you're an idiot.
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And I, it's just always funny to see these cycles, but I do think that that's any hype curve.
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Like we're gonna see it in AI as well.
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It's like, you know, everybody gets excited, then there's the trough of disillusionment, and then you hit the like the you know, steady state, like the world has changed.
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Not as much as we all said it was gonna change four years ago, but it's still like a huge part of the economy and like a continually up and to the right part of the economy.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, yeah, what's happening with with the AI and sort of AI personas and generated AI content is is is wild to kind of be in the midst of and see the changes on the daily and just the overall sentiments there.
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I I also know that there's kind of been a big push towards microinfluencers too, right?
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Like the channels that are, you know, 10, 10,000, have 10,000 followers to 100,000 followers or so.
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It's not just the big players that are you know getting all the brand deals.
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There's been all this like big push towards the smaller creators because they have a lot of the trust, the um kind of like the uh authenticity is high with them, uh, more so than some of the bigger creators that kind of, I don't know, are more uh controversial, rub rub people the wrong way or whatnot.
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So you guys are I imagine are helping brands target those influencers as well, right?
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Yeah, I I would say, you know, it's interesting because we fundamentally are classified as creator-led marketing company, right?
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From a software perspective.
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And the truth is about creator marketing is there's so many subverticals.
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There's like affiliate, there's flat fee influencers, creator-led advertising, in affiliate and in flat fee and in creator advertising, there's micro, mid-tier, and macro strategies.
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You know, and so we kind of break up, you know, how we recommend using our product and how the market thinks about the product in that type of playbook, you know, and so I think for us, yeah, we'll go after the micro creators where it makes sense.
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You know, for part some partnership ads, that makes sense.
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For others, we look at an ad account and only the bigger creators are working for them that have a higher following.
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And so I always want to say if there's like some directionality, but often one net new brand proves us wrong, you know, and they're doing creator totally differently and they ultimately are driving XYZ sales by creating a community.
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What I can tell you that permeates across all of those subverticals is that if you treat the creator like an extension of your business, no matter how small or how big they are, you'll make the most money.
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And it's no surprise, right?
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It's like, hey, Bo, I want to work with you.
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I'm the founder of this company.
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I want to build a direct relationship with you, whether you're 10,000 followers or 100,000 or a million, because it's going to take 15 minutes of my time and I want to work with you for the next three years.
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You may have 10,000 followers today.
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You may be, you know, you may have a million followers in a year from now.
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You know, so we have no idea what trajectory you're on, you know.
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And so I think that there's Andy and I always say our ICP isn't necessarily like a brand type or size.
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It's an executive team that understands the channel.
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And I think that means they understand how to treat a creator no matter how big or how small.
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That makes sense.
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Yeah.
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I mean, there's there's there's all sorts of different uh companies and influencers of the sizes.
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Yeah, maybe you could, I don't know, just talk about some of the typical, what does a typical program look like for one of them?
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And then, like, I mean, I think you've given a pretty good overview of Superaffiliate thus far, but um, maybe explicitly, maybe you could just kind of provide uh your sort of elevator pitch of what it is you guys offer.
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Yeah, I think we obviously do really, really well right now.
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I think in like health, wellness, lifestyle, supplements.
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I think a lot of the industry is shifting there.
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So you'll see a lot of the brands that we have running programs within those categories.
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The average program, like I was mentioning earlier, really depends.
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What I was saying before on the sub-vertical.
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So for an affiliate program, it's a commission basis, you know, where you're paying X, Y, Z tiers of creators a certain commission.
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Usually you're gifting them product if they've done a certain milestone or just been accepted into the program.
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Flat fee is kind of a totally other ball game, which means, hey, I'm defining this budget to spend this month.
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I want to spend 100K on creators.
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They're usually bigger creators, let's say 75,000, 100,000 plus.
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They likely have an agent that you're interacting with.
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And maybe for that 100K, you can work with anywhere from, you know, five to 25 creators.
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You know, so it's a very different ball game there.
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And you're likely trying to get an organic post that drives direct response revenue, but also a paid component to it.
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And then there's some people that work with us that just do creator led advertising, which is mainly partnership ads.
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And that's just like totally separate.
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Sometimes it's supported by Flaffy, sometimes supported by affiliate.
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But I think the truth is that the influencer teams, the creator marketing teams, manage those within the brands.
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And then the paid media teams usually handle the creative for creator led advertising, right?
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They were used to go to kind of the UGC networks and creators they'd constantly come back to.
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Now there's a big question of how should we work with mid to higher tier creators when it comes to partnership ads.
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And so our platform, more to give you kind of like the elevator pitch, is really meant to be, you know, kind of pitched to the CEO, CMO, or CGO that's like, hey, I need a one-stop shop for all things creator-led growth in my business.
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Whether that's the affiliate program that's trying to push direct response revenue, whether that's the flat fee program that has the organic side and the paid side, or that's just the paid media engine with my paid team.
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We often pitch a brand and they'll come on and they start with affiliate, but they say we clearly want to go and expand into these other parts of our business.
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And then we'll expand kind of the product and surface area to do that.
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And we have now kind of partnered with every single one of the social platforms, so TikTok, YouTube, Meta, to create first-party relationships where we can actually build very unique things for those brands, where we'll have first-party discovery data, you know, or we'll have one-click permissioning for partnership ads or more partnership ad infrastructure that's built directly from those first-party relationships.
00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:42.640
Because our theory has always been that the real infrastructure built around a creator economy has to be built around the social platforms because they're multi-trillion dollar markets in and of themselves.
00:17:42.799 --> 00:17:47.279
You know, so that's really how we view ourselves as kind of creator economy infrastructure.
00:17:48.000 --> 00:18:00.960
The way I think of it, it's like you're like the operating system for the whole sort of word of mouth sort of operation, I guess, of like it's less so less so of like you guys are just uh another sort of affiliate link generator, right?
00:18:01.119 --> 00:18:09.359
You're you're creating the whole kind of start-to-finish operation of partnering with brands and creators and and everything that kind of goes in with that, right?
00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:19.279
Um so uh the the one I want to zoom zoom in on like the original sort of like wedge part of the um the company, because I think it kind of explains the whole sort of philosophy.
00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:24.799
You uh the thing you launched with was these personalized co-branded landing pages, right?
00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:28.400
So it's like a storefront that's that's sort of part brand, part creator.
00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:32.799
Um why why was that sort of the the maybe the starting point, the wedge there?
00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:42.640
And then what happens to conversion when someone lands on a page with their favorite like creator's face on it versus maybe a more generic sort of product detail page?
00:18:43.119 --> 00:18:57.519
So the the philosophy on why we wanted to do co-branded landing pages was more of a product philosophy that every 12 to 18 months, you have to likely invent or reinvent yourself to create some type of a net news standard in the market.
00:18:57.599 --> 00:19:10.960
And when I mean a standard, I mean you create something within your product that in a competitive sales process, if it's you versus another competitor and you have that feature, the actual buyer is asking the competitor, do you have that feature that Superaffiliate has?
00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:12.160
Because I love it, I want it.
00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:16.000
It seems like it's going to be something that all creators and all brands are going to need.
00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:28.960
And so four or five years ago, we just felt like the experience of driving every creator's traffic to a PvP that's optimized for the brand was actually not getting the most out of the partnership.
00:19:29.039 --> 00:19:34.640
Because if I follow you, Bo and I don't know what the brand is, you're actually the most important part of my buying experience.
00:19:34.799 --> 00:19:43.519
So the philosophy of the theory was really how do we embed the creator in the purchase experience ultimately to drive a higher conversion rate, to deepen the sense of trust.
00:19:43.759 --> 00:19:46.160
I think that really became true.
00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:50.319
We were kind of like the first mover in that space, particularly on like building it on your website.
00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:51.359
It seemed crazy at the time.
00:19:51.440 --> 00:20:06.000
We focused, we literally put all of our effort into building that after having our basic affiliate link and code tracking because it was kind of just flashy and splashy enough to say, hey, we don't have Superfilm, doesn't have all these other features, but it has this one thing.
00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:08.559
Could we sell that to some brand?
00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:13.039
And I think we really created a wedge.
00:20:13.119 --> 00:20:14.079
Like I think we really did it.
00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:19.680
And then we created the standard in the market where every single one of our competitors copied us over the next two to three years.
00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:23.279
And then it was on us to keep reinventing ourselves and pushing something net new.
00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:32.000
But it was ultimately to drive that higher conversion rate, but it was also to do something very nuanced, which is to deepen the sense of partnership with that individual creator.
00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:32.400
Right.
00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:44.640
So if you, Bo are working with a brand and they're like, yeah, here's your affiliate link versus, hey, we built you this co-branded landing page experience where your content's on there, your curated products, it just looks so much better for you.
00:20:44.799 --> 00:20:49.839
You feel more connected to the brand, to the actual surface area that you're driving your traffic to.
00:20:49.920 --> 00:21:05.119
And so it was meant to drive the conversion rate, but it was also meant to deepen the sense of partnership, ultimately to drive something that we call net creator retention, which is out of all the creators you're working with this year, how many of those creators are you working with in the following years and retaining?
00:21:05.839 --> 00:21:06.160
Interesting.
00:21:06.319 --> 00:21:07.200
Net creator retention.
00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:10.559
I haven't heard of that one, but that's that's uh um I love that.
00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:12.160
Thank you for the the philosophy there.
00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:18.160
I think that that helps me understand what it is you guys do better, and I think uh listeners are resonating with that as well.
00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:24.640
And um, I want to call out um the this this report um that you two wrote.
00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:28.240
Uh last November, I believe you published the Partnership Ads Unlock report.
00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:35.920
Um the the headline finding as I read it is is partnership ads outperform basically every other format, but brands can't scale them.
00:21:36.079 --> 00:21:37.519
And why can't they scale them?
00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:39.759
It's because uh a number of issues, right?
00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:44.000
Discovery is is often manual, creator authentication takes a long time.
00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:46.880
It takes, I mean, weeks, maybe months, I don't know.
00:21:47.359 --> 00:21:50.480
Attribution is is just all across the board with all these different platforms.
00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:52.240
Those are kind of the three main pillars.
00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:56.640
Of those bottlenecks, which one is like the most painful in reality?
00:21:57.359 --> 00:21:59.759
Yeah, hey, we can we can go back and forth here because I think.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:05.359
It's really a hard question that the industry is figuring out now.
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.400
I think Meta is pushing partnership ads very, very hard.
00:22:08.559 --> 00:22:15.119
You see it at all their performance donuts, you see it in all their marketing, you see it now they talk about the conversion rate in the row as of that ad format.
00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:23.359
But understanding which creator is actually going to produce that high quality content, in the end of the day, it's not about getting thousands of ads anymore.
00:22:23.440 --> 00:22:25.440
It's about getting the right creative concepts.
00:22:25.599 --> 00:22:29.440
And sometimes you may find five creators that create those creative concepts for you.
00:22:29.519 --> 00:22:36.559
And so, in some ways, discovery makes it seem like there should be thousands of people put in front of you, but it's more of like discovery and vetting.
00:22:36.799 --> 00:22:39.759
I still think that that is the art more than the science.
00:22:39.839 --> 00:22:45.200
And I think that is where the challenge lies the most today and will continue for the future.
00:22:45.359 --> 00:22:46.640
But Andy, what are your thoughts there?
00:22:46.720 --> 00:22:49.440
I know we've we've always gone back and forth on the partnership ad side.
00:22:49.839 --> 00:22:53.119
Yeah, and I think, yeah, there's, I'll go two.
00:22:53.279 --> 00:22:56.480
One is on the list that you mentioned, and one's off the list you mentioned.
00:22:56.559 --> 00:23:04.640
But one, I think I always say, as with any ad, you know, forever, it's been obviously you've got to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prints.
00:23:05.039 --> 00:23:19.200
When you're running creator ads, the unfortunate reality is it's more complicated and time intensive to launch a single concept because we need to do the things like find the creator, get the content, get the permissions, all these.
00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:29.920
And when you build this infrastructure and you reduce the barrier and the work to test more, you then can surface those gyms more and more and then double down on those partnerships and relationships.
00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:38.720
So I think just like the ability to get more shots on gold to then double down on winners, that is like the largest unlock that I would say we've seen.
00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:46.559
But then I think the other thing that has really started to evolve that has been a huge unlock to allow people to do more of that is actually creator education.
00:23:46.720 --> 00:23:49.920
And it's creators needing to actually start to understand.
00:23:50.079 --> 00:23:52.079
It's very easy to understand as a creator.
00:23:52.240 --> 00:23:59.119
I generated$1,000 of sales, I get 20% commissioned, I get$200, the brand makes$800.
00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:00.480
That makes a lot of sense.
00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:15.200
I think it started to get a little more confusing when creators are seeing that they're playing an important role in these brands' growth stories, but it's not actually from that direct response, like purchase right there, affiliate code redemption part of things.
00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:28.240
So what started to happen is you start to see a new model where brands are saying, okay, I used to pay this paid media agency 10% of spend to do asset production, media buying, all of that.
00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:31.839
That was a cost that they had baked into their model and it made sense.
00:24:32.079 --> 00:24:46.400
When creators start being the content production part of that and the media buying starts to get a little bit more automated, you start to have some like margin there where you're like, oh, like what if I took that model but actually applied it to creators?
00:24:46.559 --> 00:24:53.839
What if I could pay a creator 3% of spend or 5% of spend and get them some upside on the performance of their content?
00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:55.279
It's a win-win.
00:24:55.440 --> 00:25:00.559
However, when people started trying to do that early days, the creator's like, whoa, that's over my head.
00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:01.839
There's no transparency.
00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:03.680
I don't even understand how meta works.
00:25:03.759 --> 00:25:07.039
What do you mean, ad spend, pay, you know, all of that type of stuff?
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:10.319
And over time, we've seen the creator get more educated on that.
00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:18.160
And now, so many times, some of the highest earning opportunities for a creator is actually that close alignment with the outcomes of the business.
00:25:18.319 --> 00:25:24.400
And the outcome that that business is trying to drive is scaling profitable ad spend on those platforms.
00:25:24.640 --> 00:25:35.920
So now, you know, think we've even built technology to remove that net new bottleneck, which is helping educate and show creators how that works and then compensate them accordingly.
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:38.160
And I think that's been a massive unlock.
00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:45.920
It's now like creators are actually coming to brands and asking for that, as opposed to being like offered that in this like nebulous black box.
00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:53.359
And like even agents too, like talent agents have to come about that because talent agents used to have a model of like, I put my talent in front of a brand.
00:25:53.519 --> 00:25:55.680
Yeah, here's$2,000 for the post.
00:25:55.839 --> 00:25:56.559
Great talent.
00:25:56.720 --> 00:25:57.279
There you go.
00:25:57.440 --> 00:25:58.240
Congratulations.
00:25:58.400 --> 00:25:58.960
This is great.
00:25:59.119 --> 00:26:09.200
Whereas now, like talent agents are saying, like, we're gonna do this, you know, hybrid model where we're gonna, they're gonna pay you$500 for the content, but then you also are gonna have some upside on the ad spend.
00:26:09.359 --> 00:26:12.559
And then, of course, you need things like trust and transparency to do that.
00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:14.799
And those are the type of things that that we're building here.
00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:20.559
So I think that creator education component's actually been like a huge part of this evolution of the market.
00:26:21.119 --> 00:26:21.359
Wow.
00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:21.759
Okay.
00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:30.160
So the uh it sounds like there's the demand, overall, the demand is there, the performance is there, and it's just like the the issue that's holding things back is sort of the infrastructure, right?
00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:32.319
The plumbing, which is what you're ultimately building.
00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:34.319
Um, and that's kind of what the report found, right?
00:26:34.400 --> 00:26:39.359
Like 83% of brands would invest more with a better sort of discovery system.
00:26:39.519 --> 00:26:46.880
And bigger spenders were even more likely to increase budgets uh with kind of a more of an infrastructure there.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:54.799
So I want to focus a little bit on um uh creator discovery tools built on Meta's Instagram creator marketplace API.
00:26:54.960 --> 00:26:59.759
Um so authenticated first-party data instead of the scraping that most competitor tools sort of rely on.
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:02.000
Um I guess two parts of the question.
00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:12.799
How hard was it to land that partnership with with Meta and like what can you actually do with with platform native data that this the web scraping that just scrapers can't do by themselves?
00:27:13.359 --> 00:27:19.359
It took so long for us to be in a place where it made sense for both parties to work together.
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:21.039
So for Meta and Superaffiliate.
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:27.519
And I think the timing was also great where it was very clear that Meta wanted to start working with third-party players in the space.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:33.440
And so like I think it was a mix of luck, and also timing on our side where like we were ready, it was the right timing.
00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:43.599
Once we started talking, it actually moved quite quickly, but getting all the way to authenticated creator data was a long journey because it was something on Meta's roadmap for a long time.
00:27:43.759 --> 00:27:46.079
And there's always this interesting question, right?
00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:51.920
Which is you have a partner like Meta that's giving you first-party access to data.
00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:56.240
And then you have all these other players who are allowed to exist who are scraping data, right?
00:27:56.319 --> 00:28:02.319
Who are saying, hey, I have 30 million people in a database, we're scraping at this volume, we're updating the data.
00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:07.839
So the question is like, what is the value arbitrage for the data that's within the meta side?
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:11.680
So we really had to ask that first principle question of, well, why does someone come here?
00:28:11.839 --> 00:28:22.240
What specific data that Meta can give us to actually make that really compelling things like reels hook rate, things like past brand partners, those types of pieces of content are very interesting.
00:28:22.400 --> 00:28:34.640
And then when we actually went to go build our discovery tool, which we just kind of relaunched as uh autopilot, which has been kind of like a whole new relaunch of what discovery even means in the creator economy, in our opinion.
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:45.119
We basically looked at all the other tools and said, they're really a database that you put filters on that gives you a list of 500 to 5,000 folks, and then you have to sift through them.
00:28:45.200 --> 00:28:52.400
And the ugly truth is that the best influencer and affiliate marketers still just go to the social platforms to find more curated lists of creators.
00:28:52.559 --> 00:29:07.200
So, what if we could leverage the first party data that we had with Meta, actually use agents, AI to actually watch the content and kind of shortlist creators and ultimately deliver a curated list of creators to any of these creator marketers or paid media teams?
00:29:07.279 --> 00:29:09.039
And that's exactly what we built, right?
00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:12.960
So basically, all people have to do is prompt our database.
00:29:13.119 --> 00:29:17.039
We will then have an agent go out and actually find creators that match that prompt.
00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:18.799
But then it does something very important.
00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:33.359
It selects, let's say, 500 to 1,000 creators and then watches tens of thousands of pieces of content, classifies them, ultimately to create a short list of creators that are between 20 to 100 folks for you to kind of say yes or no to.
00:29:33.440 --> 00:29:37.920
And then when you say yes or no, you give context as to why you accepted or denied them.
00:29:38.079 --> 00:29:47.039
And then the autopilot learns and goes out and finds more and more people that match your kind of like subjective sixth sense as to why that creator could be good for your brand.
00:29:47.119 --> 00:29:58.240
You know, so it's been a really interesting journey in thinking about what is something that people will wake up and want to use and then continue to use, and then can it get better over time?
00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:03.200
You know, and so that that was kind of the vision for what we could build on first party infrastructure.
00:30:03.359 --> 00:30:06.480
Um, same thing goes with how we're thinking about like YouTube, for example, as well.
00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:10.079
So we are really approaching discovery very differently.
00:30:10.400 --> 00:30:17.279
Yeah, that no, I just want to say the the visual there with having these agents go out and actually watch and consume the content, sort of take notes.
00:30:17.359 --> 00:30:31.920
Um, and that just gives me it makes me think of kind of this the robotics era where you're seeing a lot of these like, you know, robots kind of being trained on by watching videos and just kind of learning and and and learning how to do certain kind of basic skills by repetition.
00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:40.160
Um, but thinking about the scale of of what it is you guys are doing with kind of the AI energetic frontier here is is pretty wild.
00:30:40.319 --> 00:30:44.000
Um but like I can see I can see the payoff there.
00:30:44.079 --> 00:30:46.640
I can see the the actual sort of utility from that.
00:30:46.720 --> 00:30:56.319
Um can you like what is the what is the AI actually looking at when it sort of decides like that this this will work, like this creator will work for this brand?
00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:14.480
In the same way that a lot of Claude is a black box for Claude, you know, I think in the end of the day, we can give it specification, but it ultimately is trained on like your prompts, your filters, what your brand stands for, and then kind of makes its own subjective call as to whether or not that's a fit.
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:18.880
The question of like how does it get better and how does it actually have that subjectivity?
00:31:18.960 --> 00:31:26.160
The goal on our end was that we could deliver a first list to you that hits somewhere between like 40 and 60% of people you say yes to.
00:31:26.319 --> 00:31:30.640
And then you'd reject people, and then the agent gets your subjective taste.
00:31:30.799 --> 00:31:35.119
Because in the end of the day, we're actually really talking about taste and subjectivity here, right?
00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:43.359
I don't care what anyone says, like there is a six cents with the best affiliate and influencer marketing managers of is this person going to be right for our brand?
00:31:43.519 --> 00:31:47.440
Could they create content that really resonates with an audience that we're interested in?
00:31:47.599 --> 00:31:54.000
I think the AI can capture an essence of that upfront, but it really ultimately has to be trained on that individual's skills.
00:31:54.160 --> 00:32:00.480
If you think about the best skills that are built in Claude and built on all these other services, it's not the one-shotted project, right?
00:32:00.559 --> 00:32:07.039
It's the one that has the most amount of context, the most amount of reinforcement learning, the most amount of feedback on an ongoing basis.
00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:11.440
And so our perspective is always how can we get a great initialist?
00:32:11.519 --> 00:32:24.799
But then how can ultimately the agents learn from the end user and then go back out and and look at those videos and try to say, oh, they did have that thing that that person mentioned that they're looking for in the creator.
00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:26.000
So yeah, okay.
00:32:26.079 --> 00:32:33.680
So it's matching, it's matching on who's actually watching and not just sort of the, you know, who's like nominally following the creator, right?
00:32:33.759 --> 00:32:36.720
It's actually getting into the specific sort of niches and the similarities there.
00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:44.880
And um, yeah, that's the gonna, that's that's super valuable, obviously, for brands and and um yeah, and companies uh trying to partner with them.
00:32:45.039 --> 00:32:48.480
I'm thinking um, so the the meta is one platform.
00:32:48.559 --> 00:32:55.920
I know creators famously live uh a lot of they live on a lot of different platforms, but YouTube is is one of the new API partners.
00:32:56.079 --> 00:33:01.119
Um what's like you've talked about now being able to track performance per creator and per video.
00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:03.920
What uh what's sort of like the end game here?
00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:10.160
Like is it being the measurement and sort of the infrastructure layer across every platform where creators live?
00:33:10.319 --> 00:33:13.359
Um, or like is it is it must it something else?
00:33:13.440 --> 00:33:15.599
Like what's sort of the end game, would you say?
00:33:16.079 --> 00:33:17.920
End game is a funny concept.
00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:27.359
I think like I think the truth, the primitives is that we exist in an oligopic winner market where there's five, ten, twenty winners in different subcategories of the market.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:31.680
Like you mentioned before, creative marketing is like a$200 billion category.
00:33:31.759 --> 00:33:34.079
You know, so we're not trying to eat the world.
00:33:34.160 --> 00:33:39.200
Like we are trying to be what I always say to our team is we're not trying to be everything for everyone.
00:33:39.279 --> 00:33:41.759
We're trying to be everything for a very specific someone.
00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:48.880
And that specific someone is an influencer affiliate marketing manager and a pay media team that's working on creative content at a brand.
00:33:49.119 --> 00:33:59.359
And what they need is a cross-social platform creative marketing infrastructure tool to ultimately get more of creator deals done and brokered.
00:33:59.440 --> 00:34:02.480
And we I also tell us to my team too no one actually wants software.
00:34:02.559 --> 00:34:03.599
They want a job done.
00:34:03.759 --> 00:34:07.440
And the job to be done here is more creator relationships brokered.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:21.280
So RMO is like, how can we build software services, anything in between to ultimately get more creator deals done for brands that are high quality, that match their brand ethos and ultimately drive sales for those companies.
00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:29.039
As I uh mentioned earlier in the in the introduction, you know, the creator economy is is we're it's pegged at like$200 billion.
00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:33.199
I think it's I've seen it upwards north of like four or five hundred billion.
00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:37.039
I mean, it's just it's really kind of it's it's a fast growing um market.
00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:39.840
It's hard to sit put an exact dollar amount on it.
00:34:39.920 --> 00:34:49.280
But we have a big push towards brands working with micro influencers, which you know, content creators with 10K, 100,000 followers, but high engagement, high trust among their viewers.
00:34:49.360 --> 00:34:58.239
Then we have this obviously big rise in in AI influencers and personas, like the traditional the traditional revenue model too of the web is being appended with with AI overviews.
00:34:58.320 --> 00:35:00.559
So it's just like there's all these different things converging.
00:35:00.639 --> 00:35:03.280
It's a crazy time to be in this industry.
00:35:03.519 --> 00:35:12.159
Um my question is I think this would be kind of capped the whole conversation here is like five years out, what does creator marketing look like?
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:14.639
Like, and where does super affiliate sit in?
00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:15.519
Yeah, for sure.
00:35:15.679 --> 00:35:29.039
I mean, I I think like the very obvious question when you start thinking about like where are things in five years is like obviously AI and the continuous improvement of AI is going to be an important part of that answer.
00:35:29.280 --> 00:35:42.639
I think what we're seeing and like what I think logically makes sense to me when I play this out is like, you know, you mentioned the word, it gets tossed around, but just like authenticity and trust is ultimately, I think, actually increasing in value.
00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:56.000
And I think creators over time and their ability and platforms' ability to prove authenticity, to prove actual testimonial, not generated, all of these things, just it goes up in value.
00:35:56.079 --> 00:36:12.719
So I think not only is like who the volume of people who are creating it continues to increase, and the obvious through lines of like, okay, like cable and traditional media eyeballs are going to continue to move to these channels over the next five years.
00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:14.559
Of course, it's going to get larger.
00:36:14.719 --> 00:36:24.559
But then I think you think about truly it is that like authentic partnership, the verifiable, believable, you know, people that are speaking on behalf of brands.
00:36:24.639 --> 00:36:26.000
Like, do I see the product?
00:36:26.159 --> 00:36:27.519
Do I see them consuming the product?
00:36:27.679 --> 00:36:33.039
Are these actually longer-term partnerships where I'm seeing this product embedded in this person's life?
00:36:33.199 --> 00:36:40.079
Not the like one off, here's the cup, you know, whenever everybody knows that I could go on a prompt and show me a showing this mug right now.
00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:45.119
But you know, you are going to have to see like that the trust barrier is going to go up.
00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:53.599
And I think people who are really able to like capture and like really understand how to, you know, show that are going to ultimately win.
00:36:53.679 --> 00:36:58.559
And I think you're going to continue to see brands partner with creators more, not less.
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:06.159
And I think, you know, for me, it's going to just be like an amazing kind of democratizing momentum in the market.
00:37:06.320 --> 00:37:09.920
And I think over time, like most industries have gone that direction.
00:37:10.079 --> 00:37:18.639
Like riches are in niches, people, you know, not the large conglomerate, but that million, you know, thousand true fan people are going to be winning.
00:37:18.719 --> 00:37:26.159
And I think we're all going to, you know, continue to find as consumers of content and of products.
00:37:26.320 --> 00:37:30.079
We're going to find the things that we trust and rely on and see.
00:37:30.159 --> 00:37:34.000
And like, we're going to live that feedback of like, are these things improving my life?
00:37:34.159 --> 00:37:41.039
Is subscribing to this person's philosophy or, you know, their products, you know, products that they're using, et cetera.
00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:43.599
What does that drive great outcomes for me?
00:37:43.679 --> 00:37:50.159
And over time, those relationships will actually deepen, in my opinion, as opposed to just having like the vast volume.
00:37:50.239 --> 00:37:53.039
Because at some point you throw your hands up and you say, it's too much.
00:37:53.199 --> 00:37:54.480
I can't take it all in.
00:37:54.559 --> 00:37:56.480
And I just need to choose my laying.
00:37:56.559 --> 00:37:59.360
And I think you'll see more and more people start to do that.
00:37:59.760 --> 00:38:08.960
The only thing I would add in a simple framing is that the creator economy is ultimately shaped by the attention economy.
00:38:09.039 --> 00:38:13.920
And the major players in the attention economy are the three or four major social platforms.
00:38:14.159 --> 00:38:18.960
And the lion's share attention is headed continually in their direction.
00:38:19.199 --> 00:38:22.480
And so people will just be spending more time there.
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:28.719
And I actually think the rails and the infrastructure to how people are spending time there is laid down.
00:38:28.880 --> 00:38:35.440
And I actually think in five years, for people in the creator economy, things won't look that different.
00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:37.440
To be honest with you, like I really don't.
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:41.440
I don't think there's going to be huge rises of AI first creators.
00:38:41.599 --> 00:38:48.639
I think if anything, we'll just see more examples of where creators are taking over the attention economy.
00:38:48.800 --> 00:38:52.880
The YouTube, the YouTuber who made Obsession, one of the top 10 movies of the year.
00:38:53.039 --> 00:38:57.280
You know, like those are the types of things that will happen that we'll see more of.
00:38:57.519 --> 00:39:00.880
And I think it'll just become a larger and larger share of our life.
00:39:01.039 --> 00:39:04.320
And so, yeah, I'm we're Andy and obviously very invested in it.
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:09.760
We're investing our whole future on that being true, but it's also where I'm spending my time.
00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:11.920
Like, I don't go and use TV anymore.
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:13.360
I'm on YouTube and I love it.
00:39:13.440 --> 00:39:16.000
I love the time I spend there is actually high quality.
00:39:16.159 --> 00:39:24.480
And so I really, really think it will look different, but it will just look like a larger scale version of what we have today.
00:39:24.639 --> 00:39:32.159
And the final thing I'll say is the only X factor there is what the executives of the social platforms choose to do, right?
00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:38.400
When Meta chooses to do partnership ads, that's the biggest shift in the creator economy that happened in the last year or two.
00:39:38.559 --> 00:39:50.639
You know, so how they choose to treat creators and ultimately roll them into their core business models of advertising is going to be the largest tectonic shifts of how the industry may or may not change.
00:39:50.960 --> 00:39:53.599
Well, certainly a lot to a lot to keep an eye on.
00:39:53.679 --> 00:40:06.400
And I I think one thing that I would love to see you guys help tackle, and it sounds like you you are, is just this, you know, I've alluded to it too, is like the revenue model for the internet and how it's being kind of appended with these AI overviews.
00:40:06.480 --> 00:40:17.840
If you're able to kind of tackle that issue and pair brands up with, you know, high trust, high engagement creators and help tackle that that issue, um, I think that's going to be a win-win.
00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:24.400
And I think that you guys are gonna like reach new heights there because that is someone, you know, really needs to be focused in on that.
00:40:24.480 --> 00:40:26.960
Um, because that's something that I've really been paying attention to.
00:40:27.039 --> 00:40:44.239
And you know, it brings into like kind of the existential, you know, sort of questions of the internet, and like if people aren't able to to find that revenue model, then the whole sort of mechanics and internet that we know and love is just gonna be kind of start to die off, I fear, you know, in a way.
00:40:44.400 --> 00:40:46.400
Um this has been really, really insightful.
00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:50.880
I appreciate all the um answers to my uh questions that are all over the place.
00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:52.159
So thanks for bearing with me.
00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:56.400
But um I would love to have you guys back and maybe talk updates in the future someday.
00:40:56.480 --> 00:41:02.079
But for those listening, curious to hear more about superaffiliate, uh, where's the best place to visit?
00:41:02.400 --> 00:41:07.199
Superaffiliate.com is the best, not super affiliate, superaffiliate.com.
00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:09.519
And then always can follow along on socials.
00:41:09.760 --> 00:41:18.400
Look, we we if we weren't creators ourselves, I think we'd probably be missing a very important part of the uh empathy and experience of building in the space.
00:41:18.480 --> 00:41:23.280
So follow us on LinkedIn, um, Instagram, Twitter, you name it.
00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:28.320
We're we're there and we're you know giving our opinions in real time as things shift.
00:41:28.639 --> 00:41:29.119
Perfect.
00:41:29.199 --> 00:41:31.920
All right, we'll have all the links down below in the show notes.
00:41:32.159 --> 00:41:36.960
Superaffiliate.com, go follow them over on LinkedIn and all the channels, really.
00:41:37.119 --> 00:41:38.559
Thank you guys so much for everything.
00:41:38.639 --> 00:41:39.920
Um, again, love to have you back.
00:41:40.079 --> 00:41:40.559
Thanks, Bo.
00:41:40.719 --> 00:41:41.199
Thank you, Bo.
00:41:41.599 --> 00:41:44.960
And thank you all for uh listening and watching the SourceForge podcast.
00:41:45.039 --> 00:41:46.400
I'm your host, Bo Hamilton.
00:41:46.480 --> 00:41:51.039
Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts.
00:41:51.199 --> 00:41:53.360
I will talk to you in the next one.
00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:08.080
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the SourceForge podcast.
00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:09.679
I'm your host, Bo Hamilton.
00:00:09.839 --> 00:00:19.120
Now, today we are going to be digging into how brands find customers in a corner of e-commerce that's changed perhaps more than any other over the past five years or so.
00:00:19.359 --> 00:00:23.839
So if we rewind back to 2020, I would say that the playbook was pretty simple, right?
00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:28.559
You pour money into Facebook and Instagram ads and you sort of let the targeting machine do its thing.
00:00:28.879 --> 00:00:32.479
And then we had Apple iOS privacy changes that hit.
00:00:32.560 --> 00:00:38.719
Sort of the tracking got murky, ad costs started skyrocketing, and the playbook just sort of fell apart.
00:00:39.119 --> 00:00:42.719
And brands needed a channel that didn't depend on third-party data.
00:00:42.799 --> 00:00:44.880
And the answer was really hiding in plain sight.
00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:54.960
It was the people we all know and love, the influencers that we all watch and consume content from on the daily, real customers, ambassadors, and creators recommending products they genuinely love.
00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:59.280
And that's called the creator economy, now estimated north of$200 billion.
00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:01.759
I think that's a pretty conservative figure.
00:01:01.920 --> 00:01:05.359
But while the money exploded, the infrastructure didn't.
00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:15.359
Most brands are still finding creators by scrolling Instagram at midnight, managing partnerships in things like spreadsheets and squinting attribution across five different platforms.
00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:19.280
Creator-led partnership ads are outperforming traditional formats across the board.
00:01:19.359 --> 00:01:24.239
It's just, I would say, the infrastructure or the plumbing to scale them that doesn't exist.
00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:27.760
And so that's the gap my guests are building into.
00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:37.599
Andy Cloyd and Anders Bill are the co-founders of Superaffiliate, a creator marketing platform that turns customers, ambassadors, and influencers into a real measurable growth channel.
00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:47.920
You've got co-branded storefronts, affiliate infrastructure, and an AI-powered creator discovery tool, all built directly on Meta's APIs with a YouTube partnership now in the mix, too.
00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:49.280
So really exciting stuff.
00:01:49.840 --> 00:01:54.400
Andy spent seven years as a VC before jumping the table to CEO.
00:01:54.560 --> 00:02:03.200
And Anders is a repeat founder who was building for creators before creator economy was even a phrase or a thing, really.
00:02:03.439 --> 00:02:07.280
So yeah, really excited to have these two here and chat with them.
00:02:07.519 --> 00:02:10.240
Andy Anders, welcome to the podcast.
00:02:10.639 --> 00:02:12.560
Oh, I wish thank you for having us.
00:02:12.639 --> 00:02:14.560
I wish you had were with us fundraising.
00:02:14.639 --> 00:02:16.080
I think you just hit our full pitch.
00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:23.039
Like the full iOS, I mean the iOS pitch is exactly why we started the business.
00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:25.199
And it was like, where is growth hidden?
00:02:25.360 --> 00:02:27.360
And so yeah, we're stoked to be here.
00:02:27.599 --> 00:02:28.000
Awesome.
00:02:28.080 --> 00:02:35.280
Well, if we've got a lot to get into, and um, you know, obviously we can lead multiple discussions around all sorts of different specifics here.
00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:39.680
But um, first, like you guys, you guys obviously came at this from two sort of opposite directions.
00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:42.879
Andy, you spent, you know, like I mentioned, seven years on the BC side.
00:02:43.039 --> 00:02:48.400
Um, and Anders, you already founded a company called Darkroom, powering creator storefronts.
00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:53.680
Um, what did uh you each see from your side of the table that just kind of made you rethink things?
00:02:53.840 --> 00:03:01.520
Like uh, you know, you realize like the tools brands use for creators, they're broken and something else needs to be implemented here.
00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:09.919
Yeah, I mean the the origin story was really we started asking brands what they liked and didn't like in their software.
00:03:10.080 --> 00:03:13.280
We focused on the creator stack, but also just word of mouth in general.
00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:20.560
And so we asked a dozen plus brands in the good for you CPG space just because we were personally passionate about that space industry.
00:03:20.639 --> 00:03:22.159
We knew it was gonna be very disruptive.
00:03:22.319 --> 00:03:26.479
You had the major conglomerates, it was so clear that consumer preferences were changing.
00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:28.400
And it was really funny.
00:03:28.479 --> 00:03:32.560
We were we kept asking them, like, do you like your tool for word of mouth marketing?
00:03:32.639 --> 00:03:33.840
Do you like it for creator marketing?
00:03:33.919 --> 00:03:38.639
And the answer was always no, but I pay them XYZ, or I'm in an annual contract.
00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:54.240
And I think for us as founders, that is a moment where you realize that you can go into kind of this evolving industry that's not entirely new, that has other dominant players in it that are doing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of revenue and really build something interesting that people love.
00:03:54.639 --> 00:03:58.159
And of course, that is like the nice version of the story.
00:03:58.319 --> 00:04:05.280
The actual, you know, how that actual happened was we were rawing on different theses for like six to twelve months, and it was like a total mess.
00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:09.919
And, you know, we were building things that just didn't make sense for the end user.
00:04:10.159 --> 00:04:11.599
Andy had quit his job.
00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:16.480
It was terrifying, you know, like all the classic founder stories in the beginning.
00:04:16.639 --> 00:04:25.600
And Andy and I were actually random roommates in Los Angeles, and I remember hearing him talking on a phone call one day and kind of had the early ideas for Superaffiliate.
00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:30.000
And I remember thinking Andy's gonna be a great CEO, and I'm just like not a CEO.
00:04:30.160 --> 00:04:36.079
And I asked Andy if he wanted to quit his job, which was a great job at the time, and he did it.
00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:39.759
And then we stumbled around for about six to 12 months, and it was absolutely terrifying.
00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:44.560
Andy lived below me, and like every day when we'd walk out, he's like, Is this gonna work?
00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:46.160
I'm like, I have no idea.
00:04:46.319 --> 00:04:47.920
And we're just like both losing money.
00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:50.000
So, like, we're everything has been great now.
00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:51.680
We're 80 to 100 people now.
00:04:51.759 --> 00:04:55.279
It's been five plus years, you know, we've grown so much, like a thousand plus brands.
00:04:55.439 --> 00:04:59.680
But for the first year, it was pretty chaotic and scary.
00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:12.800
So the timing wasn't obviously an accident either, because I know that like, you know, right around uh when you guys started kind of working together, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but Apple decided to kind of blow up the sort of marketing playbook.
00:05:12.959 --> 00:05:18.399
Andy, you've you've pointed to like the the iOS privacy updates as part of the the major spark here.
00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:19.519
Like maybe you could walk me through that.
00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:24.240
How did Apple sort of kneecap the paid attribution sort of issue here?
00:05:25.199 --> 00:05:32.959
You can definitely get into some of the macro stuff that we were seeing alongside that at the time, maybe even like from the venture and investor lens that we were seeing.
00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:42.079
But you know, when you to your point on the intro, you the playbook used to be you would create a product and then you would take a bunch of creative to meta.
00:05:42.639 --> 00:05:44.480
And you know, that was the sales channel.
00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:49.759
I can remember you know taking pitches from kind of V1 of your D2C Darling brands.
00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:54.160
And you know, people would always say, Well, when are you going to diversify beyond Meta?
00:05:54.480 --> 00:06:09.040
And they'd say, when we need to, whenever we stop seeing crazy returns from the best input-output machine in like the history of mankind, which was in the most scalable advertising and acquisition platform that you've ever seen.
00:06:09.279 --> 00:06:23.199
And then Apple decided to kind of double down their privacy thesis, which meant being reducing the ability for advertisers and platforms to track what was going on beyond advanced.
00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:26.000
So what that did is that messed up attribution.
00:06:26.079 --> 00:06:33.519
And all of a sudden, brands were a little more in the dark as to who was buying, when they were buying, what was the efficacy of the spin that they were putting in.
00:06:33.680 --> 00:06:36.480
And then you see this scramble for new channels.
00:06:36.639 --> 00:06:41.519
And whenever something like that happens, that's going to create some opportunity somewhere.
00:06:41.680 --> 00:06:48.160
And right about that time, yo, everybody is sitting on their phones all the time, scrolling TikTok and Instagram.
00:06:48.319 --> 00:06:51.680
And like we're still in like the tail end of COVID and things like that.
00:06:51.839 --> 00:06:56.560
And to your point, like the creator economy at the time, like the lines were there.
00:06:56.639 --> 00:07:01.439
And I think like when you're building a business or making investments, you're always trying to look at like where's the pub going.
00:07:01.519 --> 00:07:06.800
And like we were all starting to do a lot more content consumption on screens and in our pockets.
00:07:06.879 --> 00:07:19.120
And that content was not being created by huge media and production companies that was being created by the people that were down the street from us in Venice, California, you know, when they were talking about products and things like that.
00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:25.680
There was definitely a V1 of investment into the creator economy that a lot of companies got funded.
00:07:25.759 --> 00:07:36.000
And a lot of those companies have since failed because I think directionally investors were right in terms of creators and the creator economy is going to be a huge thing.
00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:42.720
But how that was going to end up manifesting from like the value accrual layer was a little less clear.
00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:53.279
And, you know, of course, a lot of value has accrued to creators, but now we're starting, as we start to see like what role do creators actually play in those growth playbooks.
00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:59.199
And then that has kind of dictated the software and the enablement layer to help brands do more of that.
00:07:59.360 --> 00:08:05.360
And, you know, for us, we've been able to kind of just like ride that wave and see a bunch of different eras.
00:08:05.519 --> 00:08:13.120
So like originally coming to market and having all of this like last click, like take this old existing model of affiliate marketing.
00:08:13.279 --> 00:08:16.160
Everybody knows the concept of like see a link, click it.
00:08:16.319 --> 00:08:17.600
Somebody's getting paid for it.
00:08:17.680 --> 00:08:21.120
You know, it used to be a reviews website or something like that.
00:08:21.279 --> 00:08:24.319
And then now you're starting to see creators being at distribution.
00:08:24.399 --> 00:08:31.199
So we started building a ton of technology to help on like not just the like trackability, but also like the scale of that.
00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:34.399
Because all of a sudden, you don't need to work with 10 partners.
00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:36.080
You need to work with a thousand partners.
00:08:36.159 --> 00:08:40.159
And they're, you know, the same technology doesn't apply to help people do that.
00:08:40.399 --> 00:08:50.159
But then as this market has matured, we've started to see creators play a totally different role than I think we were even anticipating two years ago or three years ago.
00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:57.200
And that's largely, you know, what's old is new again, back into the meta and the paid advertising pipelines.
00:08:57.360 --> 00:09:03.840
But creators' roles now are being like a content engine and like a scalable platform for people to do that.
00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:11.679
So, you know, you see a lot of playbooks nowadays where there are people are running things that people will say is whitelisting or partnership ads, things like that.
00:09:11.840 --> 00:09:16.639
And creators are the backbone of the creative engine for the brands that are growing really fast.
00:09:16.799 --> 00:09:28.399
And they and, you know, we just in the fortunate people are like, you know, better to be lucky than then smart sometimes, like right place, right time, and watch those things develop and build alongside those social platforms.
00:09:28.879 --> 00:09:29.440
Totally.
00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:29.919
Yeah.
00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:31.759
Uh well, there's a lot to unpack there.
00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:37.519
I think the um, like with with the for listeners and viewers, like the iOS sort of changes that help me visualize things.
00:09:37.600 --> 00:09:41.440
It's like when you're when you go to an app, I mean, basically any app nowadays, it'll there's a pop-up, right?
00:09:41.519 --> 00:09:44.320
That'll be like asked to to track or opt out.
00:09:44.480 --> 00:09:56.559
And then I'm curious, like during the COVID era, I mean, obviously that kind of with with the effects of COVID that jumped us kind of forward digitally in like by a decade or so, we were all kind of consuming more content on our screens and whatnot.
00:09:56.720 --> 00:09:59.200
Tech companies were were kind of overhiring.
00:09:59.440 --> 00:10:05.600
Did you notice kind of a drop-off afterwards, after kind of the economy started kind of going back to normal, so to speak?
00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:12.240
I imagine there's been just a constant up and down with kind of tweaking your model appropriately and like scaling, right?
00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:16.639
Yeah, I mean, I think you've absolutely seen that like normalization to your point.
00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:23.279
Like I think it was like even an e-commerce penetration, you saw it go, hey, all of a sudden this pull forward happened.
00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:26.639
And then the market said, oh my God, that's the new normal.
00:10:26.720 --> 00:10:27.840
We're gonna grow at this rate.
00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:32.320
Like I think Shopify's stock price is actually an amazing proxy for that.
00:10:32.399 --> 00:10:37.200
You know, you're trading, I think, like 160, 180 bucks a share during that peak.
00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:39.120
Everybody said this is the new normal.
00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:44.720
We went from, you know, 10% to 14%, and we're gonna be at 25% by 2027.
00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:48.159
And then, you know, what happened is we kind of normalized.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:52.320
So we did have a step function change, but then we got back on that steady track.
00:10:52.399 --> 00:10:56.399
And like I said, Shopify stock price, I think it bottomed out around 30 bucks.
00:10:56.559 --> 00:10:58.320
Now we're back up around 150.
00:10:58.399 --> 00:11:02.799
So we're just now getting back to where we were from like the hype side of things.
00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:10.879
I think the data and the numbers have always been there and fairly consistent up and to the right, but just people's perception of it has changed.
00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:14.720
And, you know, to your point, though, like that kind of up and down.
00:11:14.879 --> 00:11:23.360
I think even like the financing and funding in the ecosystem has been a huge, you know, exemplification where you see, you know, creator economy.
00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:26.639
If you're not investing in it, you're absolutely crazy in 2021.
00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:29.120
Then 2023 to 2025.
00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:31.360
If you're investing in the creator economy, you're an idiot.
00:11:31.519 --> 00:11:34.799
Everybody lost all their money there, boom, like nobody's looking at it.
00:11:34.879 --> 00:11:36.720
And then now all of a sudden we're seeing it again.
00:11:36.799 --> 00:11:39.919
And it's like, if you're not investing in the creator economy, you're an idiot.
00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:44.480
And I, it's just always funny to see these cycles, but I do think that that's any hype curve.
00:11:44.559 --> 00:11:46.159
Like we're gonna see it in AI as well.
00:11:46.240 --> 00:11:54.639
It's like, you know, everybody gets excited, then there's the trough of disillusionment, and then you hit the like the you know, steady state, like the world has changed.
00:11:54.799 --> 00:12:04.080
Not as much as we all said it was gonna change four years ago, but it's still like a huge part of the economy and like a continually up and to the right part of the economy.
00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:05.279
Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:18.399
I mean, yeah, what's happening with with the AI and sort of AI personas and generated AI content is is is wild to kind of be in the midst of and see the changes on the daily and just the overall sentiments there.
00:12:18.639 --> 00:12:23.679
I I also know that there's kind of been a big push towards microinfluencers too, right?
00:12:23.759 --> 00:12:29.200
Like the channels that are, you know, 10, 10,000, have 10,000 followers to 100,000 followers or so.
00:12:29.279 --> 00:12:32.399
It's not just the big players that are you know getting all the brand deals.
00:12:32.480 --> 00:12:46.879
There's been all this like big push towards the smaller creators because they have a lot of the trust, the um kind of like the uh authenticity is high with them, uh, more so than some of the bigger creators that kind of, I don't know, are more uh controversial, rub rub people the wrong way or whatnot.
00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:50.720
So you guys are I imagine are helping brands target those influencers as well, right?
00:12:51.200 --> 00:12:59.519
Yeah, I I would say, you know, it's interesting because we fundamentally are classified as creator-led marketing company, right?
00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:00.639
From a software perspective.
00:13:00.799 --> 00:13:04.399
And the truth is about creator marketing is there's so many subverticals.
00:13:04.559 --> 00:13:13.840
There's like affiliate, there's flat fee influencers, creator-led advertising, in affiliate and in flat fee and in creator advertising, there's micro, mid-tier, and macro strategies.
00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:27.039
You know, and so we kind of break up, you know, how we recommend using our product and how the market thinks about the product in that type of playbook, you know, and so I think for us, yeah, we'll go after the micro creators where it makes sense.
00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:29.360
You know, for part some partnership ads, that makes sense.
00:13:29.519 --> 00:13:34.720
For others, we look at an ad account and only the bigger creators are working for them that have a higher following.
00:13:34.799 --> 00:13:49.120
And so I always want to say if there's like some directionality, but often one net new brand proves us wrong, you know, and they're doing creator totally differently and they ultimately are driving XYZ sales by creating a community.
00:13:49.279 --> 00:13:58.720
What I can tell you that permeates across all of those subverticals is that if you treat the creator like an extension of your business, no matter how small or how big they are, you'll make the most money.
00:13:58.879 --> 00:13:59.919
And it's no surprise, right?
00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:01.679
It's like, hey, Bo, I want to work with you.
00:14:01.759 --> 00:14:03.360
I'm the founder of this company.
00:14:03.519 --> 00:14:13.200
I want to build a direct relationship with you, whether you're 10,000 followers or 100,000 or a million, because it's going to take 15 minutes of my time and I want to work with you for the next three years.
00:14:13.279 --> 00:14:15.039
You may have 10,000 followers today.
00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:18.639
You may be, you know, you may have a million followers in a year from now.
00:14:18.799 --> 00:14:21.279
You know, so we have no idea what trajectory you're on, you know.
00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:27.360
And so I think that there's Andy and I always say our ICP isn't necessarily like a brand type or size.
00:14:27.519 --> 00:14:29.759
It's an executive team that understands the channel.
00:14:29.919 --> 00:14:34.480
And I think that means they understand how to treat a creator no matter how big or how small.
00:14:34.799 --> 00:14:35.360
That makes sense.
00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:35.679
Yeah.
00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:40.480
I mean, there's there's there's all sorts of different uh companies and influencers of the sizes.
00:14:40.639 --> 00:14:46.799
Yeah, maybe you could, I don't know, just talk about some of the typical, what does a typical program look like for one of them?
00:14:47.039 --> 00:14:58.399
And then, like, I mean, I think you've given a pretty good overview of Superaffiliate thus far, but um, maybe explicitly, maybe you could just kind of provide uh your sort of elevator pitch of what it is you guys offer.
00:14:58.799 --> 00:15:02.240
Yeah, I think we obviously do really, really well right now.
00:15:02.320 --> 00:15:04.960
I think in like health, wellness, lifestyle, supplements.
00:15:05.120 --> 00:15:07.279
I think a lot of the industry is shifting there.
00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:12.080
So you'll see a lot of the brands that we have running programs within those categories.
00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:15.200
The average program, like I was mentioning earlier, really depends.
00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:17.200
What I was saying before on the sub-vertical.
00:15:17.279 --> 00:15:24.399
So for an affiliate program, it's a commission basis, you know, where you're paying X, Y, Z tiers of creators a certain commission.
00:15:24.559 --> 00:15:29.200
Usually you're gifting them product if they've done a certain milestone or just been accepted into the program.
00:15:29.440 --> 00:15:35.919
Flat fee is kind of a totally other ball game, which means, hey, I'm defining this budget to spend this month.
00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:37.759
I want to spend 100K on creators.
00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:42.559
They're usually bigger creators, let's say 75,000, 100,000 plus.
00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:45.120
They likely have an agent that you're interacting with.
00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:50.960
And maybe for that 100K, you can work with anywhere from, you know, five to 25 creators.
00:15:51.039 --> 00:15:53.519
You know, so it's a very different ball game there.
00:15:53.600 --> 00:16:00.159
And you're likely trying to get an organic post that drives direct response revenue, but also a paid component to it.
00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:06.159
And then there's some people that work with us that just do creator led advertising, which is mainly partnership ads.
00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:08.799
And that's just like totally separate.
00:16:08.960 --> 00:16:12.159
Sometimes it's supported by Flaffy, sometimes supported by affiliate.
00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:17.840
But I think the truth is that the influencer teams, the creator marketing teams, manage those within the brands.
00:16:17.919 --> 00:16:23.840
And then the paid media teams usually handle the creative for creator led advertising, right?
00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.320
They were used to go to kind of the UGC networks and creators they'd constantly come back to.
00:16:28.480 --> 00:16:34.080
Now there's a big question of how should we work with mid to higher tier creators when it comes to partnership ads.
00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:47.759
And so our platform, more to give you kind of like the elevator pitch, is really meant to be, you know, kind of pitched to the CEO, CMO, or CGO that's like, hey, I need a one-stop shop for all things creator-led growth in my business.
00:16:47.919 --> 00:16:59.039
Whether that's the affiliate program that's trying to push direct response revenue, whether that's the flat fee program that has the organic side and the paid side, or that's just the paid media engine with my paid team.
00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:06.079
We often pitch a brand and they'll come on and they start with affiliate, but they say we clearly want to go and expand into these other parts of our business.
00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:10.079
And then we'll expand kind of the product and surface area to do that.
00:17:10.160 --> 00:17:31.920
And we have now kind of partnered with every single one of the social platforms, so TikTok, YouTube, Meta, to create first-party relationships where we can actually build very unique things for those brands, where we'll have first-party discovery data, you know, or we'll have one-click permissioning for partnership ads or more partnership ad infrastructure that's built directly from those first-party relationships.
00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:42.640
Because our theory has always been that the real infrastructure built around a creator economy has to be built around the social platforms because they're multi-trillion dollar markets in and of themselves.
00:17:42.799 --> 00:17:47.279
You know, so that's really how we view ourselves as kind of creator economy infrastructure.
00:17:48.000 --> 00:18:00.960
The way I think of it, it's like you're like the operating system for the whole sort of word of mouth sort of operation, I guess, of like it's less so less so of like you guys are just uh another sort of affiliate link generator, right?
00:18:01.119 --> 00:18:09.359
You're you're creating the whole kind of start-to-finish operation of partnering with brands and creators and and everything that kind of goes in with that, right?
00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:19.279
Um so uh the the one I want to zoom zoom in on like the original sort of like wedge part of the um the company, because I think it kind of explains the whole sort of philosophy.
00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:24.799
You uh the thing you launched with was these personalized co-branded landing pages, right?
00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:28.400
So it's like a storefront that's that's sort of part brand, part creator.
00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:32.799
Um why why was that sort of the the maybe the starting point, the wedge there?
00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:42.640
And then what happens to conversion when someone lands on a page with their favorite like creator's face on it versus maybe a more generic sort of product detail page?
00:18:43.119 --> 00:18:57.519
So the the philosophy on why we wanted to do co-branded landing pages was more of a product philosophy that every 12 to 18 months, you have to likely invent or reinvent yourself to create some type of a net news standard in the market.
00:18:57.599 --> 00:19:10.960
And when I mean a standard, I mean you create something within your product that in a competitive sales process, if it's you versus another competitor and you have that feature, the actual buyer is asking the competitor, do you have that feature that Superaffiliate has?
00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:12.160
Because I love it, I want it.
00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:16.000
It seems like it's going to be something that all creators and all brands are going to need.
00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:28.960
And so four or five years ago, we just felt like the experience of driving every creator's traffic to a PvP that's optimized for the brand was actually not getting the most out of the partnership.
00:19:29.039 --> 00:19:34.640
Because if I follow you, Bo and I don't know what the brand is, you're actually the most important part of my buying experience.
00:19:34.799 --> 00:19:43.519
So the philosophy of the theory was really how do we embed the creator in the purchase experience ultimately to drive a higher conversion rate, to deepen the sense of trust.
00:19:43.759 --> 00:19:46.160
I think that really became true.
00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:50.319
We were kind of like the first mover in that space, particularly on like building it on your website.
00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:51.359
It seemed crazy at the time.
00:19:51.440 --> 00:20:06.000
We focused, we literally put all of our effort into building that after having our basic affiliate link and code tracking because it was kind of just flashy and splashy enough to say, hey, we don't have Superfilm, doesn't have all these other features, but it has this one thing.
00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:08.559
Could we sell that to some brand?
00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:13.039
And I think we really created a wedge.
00:20:13.119 --> 00:20:14.079
Like I think we really did it.
00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:19.680
And then we created the standard in the market where every single one of our competitors copied us over the next two to three years.
00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:23.279
And then it was on us to keep reinventing ourselves and pushing something net new.
00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:32.000
But it was ultimately to drive that higher conversion rate, but it was also to do something very nuanced, which is to deepen the sense of partnership with that individual creator.
00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:32.400
Right.
00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:44.640
So if you, Bo are working with a brand and they're like, yeah, here's your affiliate link versus, hey, we built you this co-branded landing page experience where your content's on there, your curated products, it just looks so much better for you.
00:20:44.799 --> 00:20:49.839
You feel more connected to the brand, to the actual surface area that you're driving your traffic to.
00:20:49.920 --> 00:21:05.119
And so it was meant to drive the conversion rate, but it was also meant to deepen the sense of partnership, ultimately to drive something that we call net creator retention, which is out of all the creators you're working with this year, how many of those creators are you working with in the following years and retaining?
00:21:05.839 --> 00:21:06.160
Interesting.
00:21:06.319 --> 00:21:07.200
Net creator retention.
00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:10.559
I haven't heard of that one, but that's that's uh um I love that.
00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:12.160
Thank you for the the philosophy there.
00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:18.160
I think that that helps me understand what it is you guys do better, and I think uh listeners are resonating with that as well.
00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:24.640
And um, I want to call out um the this this report um that you two wrote.
00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:28.240
Uh last November, I believe you published the Partnership Ads Unlock report.
00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:35.920
Um the the headline finding as I read it is is partnership ads outperform basically every other format, but brands can't scale them.
00:21:36.079 --> 00:21:37.519
And why can't they scale them?
00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:39.759
It's because uh a number of issues, right?
00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:44.000
Discovery is is often manual, creator authentication takes a long time.
00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:46.880
It takes, I mean, weeks, maybe months, I don't know.
00:21:47.359 --> 00:21:50.480
Attribution is is just all across the board with all these different platforms.
00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:52.240
Those are kind of the three main pillars.
00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:56.640
Of those bottlenecks, which one is like the most painful in reality?
00:21:57.359 --> 00:21:59.759
Yeah, hey, we can we can go back and forth here because I think.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:05.359
It's really a hard question that the industry is figuring out now.
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.400
I think Meta is pushing partnership ads very, very hard.
00:22:08.559 --> 00:22:15.119
You see it at all their performance donuts, you see it in all their marketing, you see it now they talk about the conversion rate in the row as of that ad format.
00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:23.359
But understanding which creator is actually going to produce that high quality content, in the end of the day, it's not about getting thousands of ads anymore.
00:22:23.440 --> 00:22:25.440
It's about getting the right creative concepts.
00:22:25.599 --> 00:22:29.440
And sometimes you may find five creators that create those creative concepts for you.
00:22:29.519 --> 00:22:36.559
And so, in some ways, discovery makes it seem like there should be thousands of people put in front of you, but it's more of like discovery and vetting.
00:22:36.799 --> 00:22:39.759
I still think that that is the art more than the science.
00:22:39.839 --> 00:22:45.200
And I think that is where the challenge lies the most today and will continue for the future.
00:22:45.359 --> 00:22:46.640
But Andy, what are your thoughts there?
00:22:46.720 --> 00:22:49.440
I know we've we've always gone back and forth on the partnership ad side.
00:22:49.839 --> 00:22:53.119
Yeah, and I think, yeah, there's, I'll go two.
00:22:53.279 --> 00:22:56.480
One is on the list that you mentioned, and one's off the list you mentioned.
00:22:56.559 --> 00:23:04.640
But one, I think I always say, as with any ad, you know, forever, it's been obviously you've got to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prints.
00:23:05.039 --> 00:23:19.200
When you're running creator ads, the unfortunate reality is it's more complicated and time intensive to launch a single concept because we need to do the things like find the creator, get the content, get the permissions, all these.
00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:29.920
And when you build this infrastructure and you reduce the barrier and the work to test more, you then can surface those gyms more and more and then double down on those partnerships and relationships.
00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:38.720
So I think just like the ability to get more shots on gold to then double down on winners, that is like the largest unlock that I would say we've seen.
00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:46.559
But then I think the other thing that has really started to evolve that has been a huge unlock to allow people to do more of that is actually creator education.
00:23:46.720 --> 00:23:49.920
And it's creators needing to actually start to understand.
00:23:50.079 --> 00:23:52.079
It's very easy to understand as a creator.
00:23:52.240 --> 00:23:59.119
I generated$1,000 of sales, I get 20% commissioned, I get$200, the brand makes$800.
00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:00.480
That makes a lot of sense.
00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:15.200
I think it started to get a little more confusing when creators are seeing that they're playing an important role in these brands' growth stories, but it's not actually from that direct response, like purchase right there, affiliate code redemption part of things.
00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:28.240
So what started to happen is you start to see a new model where brands are saying, okay, I used to pay this paid media agency 10% of spend to do asset production, media buying, all of that.
00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:31.839
That was a cost that they had baked into their model and it made sense.
00:24:32.079 --> 00:24:46.400
When creators start being the content production part of that and the media buying starts to get a little bit more automated, you start to have some like margin there where you're like, oh, like what if I took that model but actually applied it to creators?
00:24:46.559 --> 00:24:53.839
What if I could pay a creator 3% of spend or 5% of spend and get them some upside on the performance of their content?
00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:55.279
It's a win-win.
00:24:55.440 --> 00:25:00.559
However, when people started trying to do that early days, the creator's like, whoa, that's over my head.
00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:01.839
There's no transparency.
00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:03.680
I don't even understand how meta works.
00:25:03.759 --> 00:25:07.039
What do you mean, ad spend, pay, you know, all of that type of stuff?
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:10.319
And over time, we've seen the creator get more educated on that.
00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:18.160
And now, so many times, some of the highest earning opportunities for a creator is actually that close alignment with the outcomes of the business.
00:25:18.319 --> 00:25:24.400
And the outcome that that business is trying to drive is scaling profitable ad spend on those platforms.
00:25:24.640 --> 00:25:35.920
So now, you know, think we've even built technology to remove that net new bottleneck, which is helping educate and show creators how that works and then compensate them accordingly.
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:38.160
And I think that's been a massive unlock.
00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:45.920
It's now like creators are actually coming to brands and asking for that, as opposed to being like offered that in this like nebulous black box.
00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:53.359
And like even agents too, like talent agents have to come about that because talent agents used to have a model of like, I put my talent in front of a brand.
00:25:53.519 --> 00:25:55.680
Yeah, here's$2,000 for the post.
00:25:55.839 --> 00:25:56.559
Great talent.
00:25:56.720 --> 00:25:57.279
There you go.
00:25:57.440 --> 00:25:58.240
Congratulations.
00:25:58.400 --> 00:25:58.960
This is great.
00:25:59.119 --> 00:26:09.200
Whereas now, like talent agents are saying, like, we're gonna do this, you know, hybrid model where we're gonna, they're gonna pay you$500 for the content, but then you also are gonna have some upside on the ad spend.
00:26:09.359 --> 00:26:12.559
And then, of course, you need things like trust and transparency to do that.
00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:14.799
And those are the type of things that that we're building here.
00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:20.559
So I think that creator education component's actually been like a huge part of this evolution of the market.
00:26:21.119 --> 00:26:21.359
Wow.
00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:21.759
Okay.
00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:30.160
So the uh it sounds like there's the demand, overall, the demand is there, the performance is there, and it's just like the the issue that's holding things back is sort of the infrastructure, right?
00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:32.319
The plumbing, which is what you're ultimately building.
00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:34.319
Um, and that's kind of what the report found, right?
00:26:34.400 --> 00:26:39.359
Like 83% of brands would invest more with a better sort of discovery system.
00:26:39.519 --> 00:26:46.880
And bigger spenders were even more likely to increase budgets uh with kind of a more of an infrastructure there.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:54.799
So I want to focus a little bit on um uh creator discovery tools built on Meta's Instagram creator marketplace API.
00:26:54.960 --> 00:26:59.759
Um so authenticated first-party data instead of the scraping that most competitor tools sort of rely on.
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:02.000
Um I guess two parts of the question.
00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:12.799
How hard was it to land that partnership with with Meta and like what can you actually do with with platform native data that this the web scraping that just scrapers can't do by themselves?
00:27:13.359 --> 00:27:19.359
It took so long for us to be in a place where it made sense for both parties to work together.
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:21.039
So for Meta and Superaffiliate.
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:27.519
And I think the timing was also great where it was very clear that Meta wanted to start working with third-party players in the space.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:33.440
And so like I think it was a mix of luck, and also timing on our side where like we were ready, it was the right timing.
00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:43.599
Once we started talking, it actually moved quite quickly, but getting all the way to authenticated creator data was a long journey because it was something on Meta's roadmap for a long time.
00:27:43.759 --> 00:27:46.079
And there's always this interesting question, right?
00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:51.920
Which is you have a partner like Meta that's giving you first-party access to data.
00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:56.240
And then you have all these other players who are allowed to exist who are scraping data, right?
00:27:56.319 --> 00:28:02.319
Who are saying, hey, I have 30 million people in a database, we're scraping at this volume, we're updating the data.
00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:07.839
So the question is like, what is the value arbitrage for the data that's within the meta side?
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:11.680
So we really had to ask that first principle question of, well, why does someone come here?
00:28:11.839 --> 00:28:22.240
What specific data that Meta can give us to actually make that really compelling things like reels hook rate, things like past brand partners, those types of pieces of content are very interesting.
00:28:22.400 --> 00:28:34.640
And then when we actually went to go build our discovery tool, which we just kind of relaunched as uh autopilot, which has been kind of like a whole new relaunch of what discovery even means in the creator economy, in our opinion.
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:45.119
We basically looked at all the other tools and said, they're really a database that you put filters on that gives you a list of 500 to 5,000 folks, and then you have to sift through them.
00:28:45.200 --> 00:28:52.400
And the ugly truth is that the best influencer and affiliate marketers still just go to the social platforms to find more curated lists of creators.
00:28:52.559 --> 00:29:07.200
So, what if we could leverage the first party data that we had with Meta, actually use agents, AI to actually watch the content and kind of shortlist creators and ultimately deliver a curated list of creators to any of these creator marketers or paid media teams?
00:29:07.279 --> 00:29:09.039
And that's exactly what we built, right?
00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:12.960
So basically, all people have to do is prompt our database.
00:29:13.119 --> 00:29:17.039
We will then have an agent go out and actually find creators that match that prompt.
00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:18.799
But then it does something very important.
00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:33.359
It selects, let's say, 500 to 1,000 creators and then watches tens of thousands of pieces of content, classifies them, ultimately to create a short list of creators that are between 20 to 100 folks for you to kind of say yes or no to.
00:29:33.440 --> 00:29:37.920
And then when you say yes or no, you give context as to why you accepted or denied them.
00:29:38.079 --> 00:29:47.039
And then the autopilot learns and goes out and finds more and more people that match your kind of like subjective sixth sense as to why that creator could be good for your brand.
00:29:47.119 --> 00:29:58.240
You know, so it's been a really interesting journey in thinking about what is something that people will wake up and want to use and then continue to use, and then can it get better over time?
00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:03.200
You know, and so that that was kind of the vision for what we could build on first party infrastructure.
00:30:03.359 --> 00:30:06.480
Um, same thing goes with how we're thinking about like YouTube, for example, as well.
00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:10.079
So we are really approaching discovery very differently.
00:30:10.400 --> 00:30:17.279
Yeah, that no, I just want to say the the visual there with having these agents go out and actually watch and consume the content, sort of take notes.
00:30:17.359 --> 00:30:31.920
Um, and that just gives me it makes me think of kind of this the robotics era where you're seeing a lot of these like, you know, robots kind of being trained on by watching videos and just kind of learning and and and learning how to do certain kind of basic skills by repetition.
00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:40.160
Um, but thinking about the scale of of what it is you guys are doing with kind of the AI energetic frontier here is is pretty wild.
00:30:40.319 --> 00:30:44.000
Um but like I can see I can see the payoff there.
00:30:44.079 --> 00:30:46.640
I can see the the actual sort of utility from that.
00:30:46.720 --> 00:30:56.319
Um can you like what is the what is the AI actually looking at when it sort of decides like that this this will work, like this creator will work for this brand?
00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:14.480
In the same way that a lot of Claude is a black box for Claude, you know, I think in the end of the day, we can give it specification, but it ultimately is trained on like your prompts, your filters, what your brand stands for, and then kind of makes its own subjective call as to whether or not that's a fit.
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:18.880
The question of like how does it get better and how does it actually have that subjectivity?
00:31:18.960 --> 00:31:26.160
The goal on our end was that we could deliver a first list to you that hits somewhere between like 40 and 60% of people you say yes to.
00:31:26.319 --> 00:31:30.640
And then you'd reject people, and then the agent gets your subjective taste.
00:31:30.799 --> 00:31:35.119
Because in the end of the day, we're actually really talking about taste and subjectivity here, right?
00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:43.359
I don't care what anyone says, like there is a six cents with the best affiliate and influencer marketing managers of is this person going to be right for our brand?
00:31:43.519 --> 00:31:47.440
Could they create content that really resonates with an audience that we're interested in?
00:31:47.599 --> 00:31:54.000
I think the AI can capture an essence of that upfront, but it really ultimately has to be trained on that individual's skills.
00:31:54.160 --> 00:32:00.480
If you think about the best skills that are built in Claude and built on all these other services, it's not the one-shotted project, right?
00:32:00.559 --> 00:32:07.039
It's the one that has the most amount of context, the most amount of reinforcement learning, the most amount of feedback on an ongoing basis.
00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:11.440
And so our perspective is always how can we get a great initialist?
00:32:11.519 --> 00:32:24.799
But then how can ultimately the agents learn from the end user and then go back out and and look at those videos and try to say, oh, they did have that thing that that person mentioned that they're looking for in the creator.
00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:26.000
So yeah, okay.
00:32:26.079 --> 00:32:33.680
So it's matching, it's matching on who's actually watching and not just sort of the, you know, who's like nominally following the creator, right?
00:32:33.759 --> 00:32:36.720
It's actually getting into the specific sort of niches and the similarities there.
00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:44.880
And um, yeah, that's the gonna, that's that's super valuable, obviously, for brands and and um yeah, and companies uh trying to partner with them.
00:32:45.039 --> 00:32:48.480
I'm thinking um, so the the meta is one platform.
00:32:48.559 --> 00:32:55.920
I know creators famously live uh a lot of they live on a lot of different platforms, but YouTube is is one of the new API partners.
00:32:56.079 --> 00:33:01.119
Um what's like you've talked about now being able to track performance per creator and per video.
00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:03.920
What uh what's sort of like the end game here?
00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:10.160
Like is it being the measurement and sort of the infrastructure layer across every platform where creators live?
00:33:10.319 --> 00:33:13.359
Um, or like is it is it must it something else?
00:33:13.440 --> 00:33:15.599
Like what's sort of the end game, would you say?
00:33:16.079 --> 00:33:17.920
End game is a funny concept.
00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:27.359
I think like I think the truth, the primitives is that we exist in an oligopic winner market where there's five, ten, twenty winners in different subcategories of the market.
00:33:27.519 --> 00:33:31.680
Like you mentioned before, creative marketing is like a$200 billion category.
00:33:31.759 --> 00:33:34.079
You know, so we're not trying to eat the world.
00:33:34.160 --> 00:33:39.200
Like we are trying to be what I always say to our team is we're not trying to be everything for everyone.
00:33:39.279 --> 00:33:41.759
We're trying to be everything for a very specific someone.
00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:48.880
And that specific someone is an influencer affiliate marketing manager and a pay media team that's working on creative content at a brand.
00:33:49.119 --> 00:33:59.359
And what they need is a cross-social platform creative marketing infrastructure tool to ultimately get more of creator deals done and brokered.
00:33:59.440 --> 00:34:02.480
And we I also tell us to my team too no one actually wants software.
00:34:02.559 --> 00:34:03.599
They want a job done.
00:34:03.759 --> 00:34:07.440
And the job to be done here is more creator relationships brokered.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:21.280
So RMO is like, how can we build software services, anything in between to ultimately get more creator deals done for brands that are high quality, that match their brand ethos and ultimately drive sales for those companies.
00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:29.039
As I uh mentioned earlier in the in the introduction, you know, the creator economy is is we're it's pegged at like$200 billion.
00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:33.199
I think it's I've seen it upwards north of like four or five hundred billion.
00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:37.039
I mean, it's just it's really kind of it's it's a fast growing um market.
00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:39.840
It's hard to sit put an exact dollar amount on it.
00:34:39.920 --> 00:34:49.280
But we have a big push towards brands working with micro influencers, which you know, content creators with 10K, 100,000 followers, but high engagement, high trust among their viewers.
00:34:49.360 --> 00:34:58.239
Then we have this obviously big rise in in AI influencers and personas, like the traditional the traditional revenue model too of the web is being appended with with AI overviews.
00:34:58.320 --> 00:35:00.559
So it's just like there's all these different things converging.
00:35:00.639 --> 00:35:03.280
It's a crazy time to be in this industry.
00:35:03.519 --> 00:35:12.159
Um my question is I think this would be kind of capped the whole conversation here is like five years out, what does creator marketing look like?
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:14.639
Like, and where does super affiliate sit in?
00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:15.519
Yeah, for sure.
00:35:15.679 --> 00:35:29.039
I mean, I I think like the very obvious question when you start thinking about like where are things in five years is like obviously AI and the continuous improvement of AI is going to be an important part of that answer.
00:35:29.280 --> 00:35:42.639
I think what we're seeing and like what I think logically makes sense to me when I play this out is like, you know, you mentioned the word, it gets tossed around, but just like authenticity and trust is ultimately, I think, actually increasing in value.
00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:56.000
And I think creators over time and their ability and platforms' ability to prove authenticity, to prove actual testimonial, not generated, all of these things, just it goes up in value.
00:35:56.079 --> 00:36:12.719
So I think not only is like who the volume of people who are creating it continues to increase, and the obvious through lines of like, okay, like cable and traditional media eyeballs are going to continue to move to these channels over the next five years.
00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:14.559
Of course, it's going to get larger.
00:36:14.719 --> 00:36:24.559
But then I think you think about truly it is that like authentic partnership, the verifiable, believable, you know, people that are speaking on behalf of brands.
00:36:24.639 --> 00:36:26.000
Like, do I see the product?
00:36:26.159 --> 00:36:27.519
Do I see them consuming the product?
00:36:27.679 --> 00:36:33.039
Are these actually longer-term partnerships where I'm seeing this product embedded in this person's life?
00:36:33.199 --> 00:36:40.079
Not the like one off, here's the cup, you know, whenever everybody knows that I could go on a prompt and show me a showing this mug right now.
00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:45.119
But you know, you are going to have to see like that the trust barrier is going to go up.
00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:53.599
And I think people who are really able to like capture and like really understand how to, you know, show that are going to ultimately win.
00:36:53.679 --> 00:36:58.559
And I think you're going to continue to see brands partner with creators more, not less.
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:06.159
And I think, you know, for me, it's going to just be like an amazing kind of democratizing momentum in the market.
00:37:06.320 --> 00:37:09.920
And I think over time, like most industries have gone that direction.
00:37:10.079 --> 00:37:18.639
Like riches are in niches, people, you know, not the large conglomerate, but that million, you know, thousand true fan people are going to be winning.
00:37:18.719 --> 00:37:26.159
And I think we're all going to, you know, continue to find as consumers of content and of products.
00:37:26.320 --> 00:37:30.079
We're going to find the things that we trust and rely on and see.
00:37:30.159 --> 00:37:34.000
And like, we're going to live that feedback of like, are these things improving my life?
00:37:34.159 --> 00:37:41.039
Is subscribing to this person's philosophy or, you know, their products, you know, products that they're using, et cetera.
00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:43.599
What does that drive great outcomes for me?
00:37:43.679 --> 00:37:50.159
And over time, those relationships will actually deepen, in my opinion, as opposed to just having like the vast volume.
00:37:50.239 --> 00:37:53.039
Because at some point you throw your hands up and you say, it's too much.
00:37:53.199 --> 00:37:54.480
I can't take it all in.
00:37:54.559 --> 00:37:56.480
And I just need to choose my laying.
00:37:56.559 --> 00:37:59.360
And I think you'll see more and more people start to do that.
00:37:59.760 --> 00:38:08.960
The only thing I would add in a simple framing is that the creator economy is ultimately shaped by the attention economy.
00:38:09.039 --> 00:38:13.920
And the major players in the attention economy are the three or four major social platforms.
00:38:14.159 --> 00:38:18.960
And the lion's share attention is headed continually in their direction.
00:38:19.199 --> 00:38:22.480
And so people will just be spending more time there.
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:28.719
And I actually think the rails and the infrastructure to how people are spending time there is laid down.
00:38:28.880 --> 00:38:35.440
And I actually think in five years, for people in the creator economy, things won't look that different.
00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:37.440
To be honest with you, like I really don't.
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:41.440
I don't think there's going to be huge rises of AI first creators.
00:38:41.599 --> 00:38:48.639
I think if anything, we'll just see more examples of where creators are taking over the attention economy.
00:38:48.800 --> 00:38:52.880
The YouTube, the YouTuber who made Obsession, one of the top 10 movies of the year.
00:38:53.039 --> 00:38:57.280
You know, like those are the types of things that will happen that we'll see more of.
00:38:57.519 --> 00:39:00.880
And I think it'll just become a larger and larger share of our life.
00:39:01.039 --> 00:39:04.320
And so, yeah, I'm we're Andy and obviously very invested in it.
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:09.760
We're investing our whole future on that being true, but it's also where I'm spending my time.
00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:11.920
Like, I don't go and use TV anymore.
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:13.360
I'm on YouTube and I love it.
00:39:13.440 --> 00:39:16.000
I love the time I spend there is actually high quality.
00:39:16.159 --> 00:39:24.480
And so I really, really think it will look different, but it will just look like a larger scale version of what we have today.
00:39:24.639 --> 00:39:32.159
And the final thing I'll say is the only X factor there is what the executives of the social platforms choose to do, right?
00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:38.400
When Meta chooses to do partnership ads, that's the biggest shift in the creator economy that happened in the last year or two.
00:39:38.559 --> 00:39:50.639
You know, so how they choose to treat creators and ultimately roll them into their core business models of advertising is going to be the largest tectonic shifts of how the industry may or may not change.
00:39:50.960 --> 00:39:53.599
Well, certainly a lot to a lot to keep an eye on.
00:39:53.679 --> 00:40:06.400
And I I think one thing that I would love to see you guys help tackle, and it sounds like you you are, is just this, you know, I've alluded to it too, is like the revenue model for the internet and how it's being kind of appended with these AI overviews.
00:40:06.480 --> 00:40:17.840
If you're able to kind of tackle that issue and pair brands up with, you know, high trust, high engagement creators and help tackle that that issue, um, I think that's going to be a win-win.
00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:24.400
And I think that you guys are gonna like reach new heights there because that is someone, you know, really needs to be focused in on that.
00:40:24.480 --> 00:40:26.960
Um, because that's something that I've really been paying attention to.
00:40:27.039 --> 00:40:44.239
And you know, it brings into like kind of the existential, you know, sort of questions of the internet, and like if people aren't able to to find that revenue model, then the whole sort of mechanics and internet that we know and love is just gonna be kind of start to die off, I fear, you know, in a way.
00:40:44.400 --> 00:40:46.400
Um this has been really, really insightful.
00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:50.880
I appreciate all the um answers to my uh questions that are all over the place.
00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:52.159
So thanks for bearing with me.
00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:56.400
But um I would love to have you guys back and maybe talk updates in the future someday.
00:40:56.480 --> 00:41:02.079
But for those listening, curious to hear more about superaffiliate, uh, where's the best place to visit?
00:41:02.400 --> 00:41:07.199
Superaffiliate.com is the best, not super affiliate, superaffiliate.com.
00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:09.519
And then always can follow along on socials.
00:41:09.760 --> 00:41:18.400
Look, we we if we weren't creators ourselves, I think we'd probably be missing a very important part of the uh empathy and experience of building in the space.
00:41:18.480 --> 00:41:23.280
So follow us on LinkedIn, um, Instagram, Twitter, you name it.
00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:28.320
We're we're there and we're you know giving our opinions in real time as things shift.
00:41:28.639 --> 00:41:29.119
Perfect.
00:41:29.199 --> 00:41:31.920
All right, we'll have all the links down below in the show notes.
00:41:32.159 --> 00:41:36.960
Superaffiliate.com, go follow them over on LinkedIn and all the channels, really.
00:41:37.119 --> 00:41:38.559
Thank you guys so much for everything.
00:41:38.639 --> 00:41:39.920
Um, again, love to have you back.
00:41:40.079 --> 00:41:40.559
Thanks, Bo.
00:41:40.719 --> 00:41:41.199
Thank you, Bo.
00:41:41.599 --> 00:41:44.960
And thank you all for uh listening and watching the SourceForge podcast.
00:41:45.039 --> 00:41:46.400
I'm your host, Bo Hamilton.
00:41:46.480 --> 00:41:51.039
Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts.
00:41:51.199 --> 00:41:53.360
I will talk to you in the next one.
