The updates have slipped a bit here, but happy to share that I have been working on bringing some fresh perspectives to the newsletter. Soon I will introduce a series of interviews with other founders building in public.
I’m excited to say that the first guest will is the best-selling author, speaker, and founder of YouTopian Journey, Shaun Gold. As soon as I get the finger out and finish the edits, you will hear Shaun’s great advice for founders and specific advice on how to get to the next level of audience growth.
In other news, I moved to Lisboa to get an office with my co-founder. Remote is excellent and here to stay, but it felt like we could achieve more in the same room.
Also, the cover image for this post was created using Succinctly.ai. (Update - Substack ignored the upload for some reason but below is the image that should have been displayed.)
Now to the updates.
Things that went well
I.
0 Migrations from our Media Kits
As mentioned in the last post, we moved servers which required a migration of the application to the new server. Rather than just port everyone over, we emailed everyone about the change and asked them to respond to us if they needed their Media Kit activated again. Unfortunately, or fortunately, nobody responded to that email.
Interestingly, at the same time, MediaKits.com, who would have been our main competitor, got acquired. This shows there is value in the data that Media Kits would collect but maybe not as a business.
Takeaway lesson: If you want to test that what you built is valuable, try taking it away from users.
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II.
We released a tool to help businesses find relevant partnerships on Instagram faster.
Multiple inputs are required to improve the chances of helping brands and creators find the right partnerships. So rather than go into stealth mode until we have them all, we decided to release the first iteration of this matching process.
After talking to agencies and businesses, we found that most marketers used native search on Instagram to find people. However, there was no strategy for how they searched. For agencies, this becomes even harder when you are not an expert in your client’s domain.
To help speed up this process, we decided to scrape keywords on a client’s website to create an automated search for creators that align with those keywords.
The results today have an ‘okay’ hit rate, so we are working to improve the filtering and ranking of who we pull into the creator report. So feel free to give it a spin and let us know your feedback.
Takeaway lesson: Release early, release often
III.
Kicking off ‘The Unnamed Project’ Podcast group
Regarding podcasts, I only listen to fiction, but the standard is average at best. I thought it could be fun to make a more immersive podcast, but I also have zero skills in doing this, so I posted this on Polywork.
I got so much interest from writers, voice actors, editors, and musicians that we now have a Discord where the project is starting to take shape. If creating a podcast is your thing, then join us here. I will be capping the group at 50 people to make it manageable.
Takeaway lesson: Polywork is dope, and put your ideas out to the world; you never know what will resonate.
Things that didn’t go to plan
Nothing to report here outside of ordinary things like bugs and not having enough time to do everything.
A Question For You
What changes would you make if you were to take over from me tomorrow?
Misc
This section essentially abuses the structure I tried to commit to above.
Links to click on
FiP10 - 🎙 Guest Interviews Coming, 🚀 Release of our creator search tool and 🎧 Immersive fiction podcast project