Transcription
Sometimes a cold email changes everything. I sent him a cold LinkedIn connection. It was the day before Christmas, and I was like, “You know what? Screw it. Like, I’m just going to submit this.” And now Steven Bartlet is more than just an investor. I got a LinkedIn connect back about a week later. And it was from Steven himself saying, “Just got your application. Obsessed.”
Stan has grown from zero to supporting more than 70,000 creators over the last 4 years. I immediately started to see a lot of traction cuz it was clearly helping so many other people. First, we built it for my account, and then all my creator friends started asking to use it. Four years later, uh, 70,000 plus creators, we just crossed $300 million. And next up is a whole new chapter using AI. And what does it mean to be a creator in the age of AI? There is a very big opportunity to create a new category of products that would help them establish that clarity. This is the full story about how a cold email turned into an investment and how Stan is reshaping the future for the creator economy. [Music]
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Right, let’s get on with the show. Excellent. So John, let’s start with the big news. How did the investment from Steven Bartlett come together?
Well, I’ll be honest. The true answer is a whole lot of hustle, a whole lot of cold emails, which is what this business and most entrepreneurs’ businesses are built on. Uh, which is about a year ago, we realized that we wanted to really make a big splash with Stan. We were getting a lot of traction, and something I’ve always thought about building and the aspiration for the brand is to build the Nike for entrepreneurship. And so, you ask yourself like, “Well, how did Nike build itself? How did it build its Michael Jordan? You know, it’s LeBron, it’s Serena, who who have you?” and those ads that we watched as kids growing up, right? Like the way that those ads make us feel even today and and I and I think we’ve always imagined there’s an opportunity to do the same with entrepreneurship, like the way that anyone from anywhere, any socioeconomic class can actually just seize the opportunity. And so there was a short list of names that I put on the board of dream people to work with. And so Stephen was one of them. Um, and you know, we’ve got a much larger announcement coming actually kind of later in this year that we can tease. But, um, Stephen very much so represents all of what we stand for here at Stan. Uh, which is very much so how do you, as a self-made immigrant—and which was my story as well as his—build from nothing and build such a large enterprise, become one of the biggest podcasters in the world, and do so in a very, I think, values and mission-first way. Um, and so what I did was I cold emailed every single route I could find. So I cold emailed him; a cold I sent him a cold LinkedIn connection. Um, I got dozens of different warm intros to his team, his partnerships team. I even quoted him on his agent, his manager. No responses to anything. And then three months later, I submitted an application to his fund, flight fund. Didn’t get a response. And then on Christmas Eve day, actually, they sent out an email blast saying like, “I’m so sorry if we haven’t gotten back your application. If you could resubmit it.” And it was clearly like a generic blast to everyone. And I remember that day, I was on vacation. It was the day before Christmas. And I was like, “You know what? Screw it. Like I’m just gonna submit this. And it shows it goes to show you that just like the 50th time, if it’s worth persisting on, it could be worth persisting on.” And that email application on top of the 45 other ways that I I’d had conversations with the team, hadn’t gotten anywhere, hadn’t gotten to him clearly. Um, I got I got a LinkedIn connect back about a week later, like New Year’s time, and it was from Stephen himself saying, “Just got your application. Obsessed. Text me at this WhatsApp number,” and that was the first week of January, and it’s been a wonderful partnership since then.
So I love that dedication. So tell us, after all of those emails, what was the first conversation like?
Um, it was kind of surreal first of all, right? Because you you know you grew up just starting a business and making content and it’s very scrappy, and then you start meeting your heroes. You’re like, “This is absurd.” Like I remember the whole time I was like having to be like, “Wait, this is actually me in my body having this conversation with Stephen Bartlett, this guy who I’ve seen on social this whole time.” Um, but it was really, really cool, and Vitali was there too. He was he came in person to meet us in LA because we believe very strongly in doing business in person. You get a really strong sense for a person over time and their values. Um, and we just spent like four hours riffing on the business and the future. And it was very, very clear that not only did he share our vision but also he would uplevel us as people. So, for example, at the time he was already he’s already been testing AI and what does it mean to be a creator in the age of AI in a way that it’s not an existential risk but something that actually supports your creativity. And that’s what we’re so maniacal about figuring out because as creators ourselves, like we really don’t want to be displaced by AI ourselves. And that’s how we’ve built Stan is to make sure that Stan supports all of our creators to actually have AI at the forefront of their business in a way that’s actually empowering. And so it it was conversations like that um that that have been really exciting. But I think Stephen also sees the clear opportunity where at this point we’ve worked super hard the last few years to build by far the most affordable, by far the easiest, by far the most valuable product in the market for monetizing. And um the the question to solve from there is just distribution, which Stephen does incredibly well.
So excellent. And I know that he’s investing in the business, but how will Stephen also be involved in the strategy and the product development and engaging with the community?
Yeah, I mean, he’s been texting us constantly about AI stuff as an example for the product side. Um, you know, I I really see him as a true co-owner in the business, of kind of like a board member to us. I mean, we’re we’re constantly texting in a group chat. So, yeah. And and I remember from the from the first moment that we met when Stephen was visiting the office like in the conversation as you’re just jamming on ideas, um, I thought there was a very strong thought partnership when it comes to how we are envisioning the future and like all the excitement about AI’s and what it could be from Steven’s individual work on what he’s invested in and what he’s done himself and how we are thinking about AI. There’s just a lot of synergy and where we are trying to go, and a lot of ideas come from just those organic conversations like, “Hey, have you thought about this? I’m seeing those guys are doing that,” and it’s like this sparks the conversation and it’s like John and I being here like to a degree like was probably influenced somewhere in between the lines of of many of those conversations where it’s like the time to build that is now and we are now um moving forward.
Excellent. Well, I’m excited to get into AI and your focus and your thoughts on that. But let’s take a step back and tell us about Stan. What was the origin story, the aha moment that um that led to you starting the business?
Yeah, I think Stan as a story is actually pretty personal to all of us who work on the team. The whole mission of Stan’s very, very personal to us, and it’s really simple too. It’s just to empower anyone to work for themselves. And the reason why for me that matters so much is um you know I grew up single immigrant mom. We moved to the states when I was very young in the south where if you know anything about the states in the south, not many people look like me, at least at the time. And so you think about a typical kid, right? You just all you want to do is fit in. like you don’t want to get bullied for how you look, and you just want to succeed and be validated. And so um you have the dual cultural pressures of being this model minority kid and then also Asian-American immigrant culture is very much like, “Succeed, succeed, succeed! Like go by the book, get the societal stamps of approval, go to you know certain colleges,” and so I as a kid, you know, worked my butt off to do all those things because I thought they would make me happy and feel loved and validated in ways you ultimately find your career doesn’t necessarily give you. Um, but for me, what that manifested as was, you know, I worked my way into a four-year university, took on student loans, waited tables day and night outside of classes to pay off my loans, uh, and then ultimately cold call my way into a job on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs. And I was 19 at the time, and I remember that the swagger you feel as a 19-year-old kid like being, “Oh, I made it. You know, I landed an investment banking job at Goldman Sachs.” Um, and then you get there and you realize like, “Wait a minute, like this is miserable, and no one here is actually that happy. My bosses have like awful relationships with their partners.” Um, and so you make the same mistake over again, I think, when you’re younger. It’s like, “Oh, I just need a better job.” So, I went off to private equity, taught venture capital firm in SF. Really enjoyed a lot of learning there, but just distinctly remember the moment where I was like, “I could, you know, I’m crushing it as an associate, could make partner, but doesn’t feel right for me.” So, of course, I’ll just go to Stanford Business School, and then like that’ll be great. And so, obviously worked hard to apply and all that kind of stuff, but was lucky enough to get in. Um, all that to be said is I did all the things that one assumes would make you happy in life. And it was during COVID, I think we all had that reset. And I was in school during COVID, and we all just doom scrolling TikTok back in the day, right? And uh I was like, “This creator economy thing is really cool. Like I I want to try this creator thing.” And so I asked myself like what was what’s some form of value I could give to the world. Um and in that sense u I was like, “Oh, I’ll just post about career coaching stuff,” specifically, I just started posting about how I, as an underrepresented kid, got my first dream job because that was just my generally my story. And I I immediately started to see a lot of traction because it was clearly helping so many other people. And it was in that moment where I realized like, “Holy number one, this is the first time I’ve ever been creative in my life. Like, you know, I had such a STEM-focused background as Asian-American. The concept of being creative was actually novel to me, which is like a little bit embarrassing to admit.” Two, I was definitely helping people. I was getting all these comments like, “Holy like like your resume helped me get like this job or this networking tip. You got like actually I got my first service response to a cold email, which is terrifying.” Um but the last piece was like, “How do I make money doing this full-time? Like this is really cool,” and so um the story Stan came out of trying to solve that problem for my own account where I started building the first version of it uh pretty early on, you know, I was CS major undergrad but very, very mediocre coder, and so very shortly thereafter I was lucky enough to be my co-founder here who’s been the execution mastermind behind building Stan with me um and so since then it was like, first we built it for my account, and then all my creator friends started asking to use it, and now four years later, uh 70,000 plus creators. We just crossed $300 million made for creators. Uh and we’re really, really proud of that stat.
So, I love that. And Vitali, what’s your story?
John and I share a very similar um background spiritually. I I also came to to North America, to Canada originally, um in uh 2014 to to study chemical engineering. Uh it has nothing to do with with coding or with creator economy. Uh from Russia, didn’t even speak speak English. Um, and there was one thing that was driving me throughout this whole time. Like it was difficult to describe in the beginning, but I think the the foundational desire to be free, whether it comes to the freedom of what you’re doing, financial freedom, and just leave the life that you want, is the is the most core um pursuit that that I had. And throughout that experience, um, I graduated with a chemical engineering degree. I worked every waking hour uh, while studying. Studying was actually not a priority. It’s like, “I need to get good marks and not get kicked out of the country because going back would be dangerous.” Um, so I wanted to stand, and then the rest is just figuring everything out. Um, and I figured that coding is uh the the best thing you can do for yourself if you don’t have connections or capital is just go start building. And I just obsessed over that. Uh, the hard work got me into Deloitte Consulting where I learned the uh, client service and just how to be scrappy and really on top of things. Uh and then all the side projects that I just uh coded up myself got me into eBay to to do engineering for them, and I just built a lot of things on the side. John and I actually uh decided to work on Stan together one month into into meeting each other. I think we were in SF at the time, and I was in Toronto uh and we met because a shared customer introduced us. So John had an MVP built out at the time for Stan, and I was working on another idea. Um and um someone just kind of was like, “Hey, you’re guys building in a similar space. Do you want to like do you want to do this together?” And I remember when when meeting John, I I didn’t have a ton of clarity on what is that I was building specifically for. But John had a remarkable vision of what he saw Stan could be. Um and when we talked I was I was very impressed by him as a person as well as by where he thought the the world needs to go and how we can contribute towards that, and I knew that I I had all the building blocks in order to make that happen like in the fastest best style possible, and that we bet on each other and bet on the direction, and now we are here um heading $300 million for our customers.
Well, I love hearing that journey. I actually spent many years in the corporate world myself before coming to an entrepreneur. I studied engineering. I also worked at Deloitte Consulting. So, uh I know what that journey is like. Um but three years in, four years in, 70,000 creators. What’s been the key driver for that growth?
You know, VCs are always like, “John, please like give us your strategy like in this whole sector of the creator company like everyone’s struggled or hasn’t scaled. There was so much hype around the industry like why is your business continued to scale?” And the honest true answer is just because like we’re creators ourselves. I’ll be super honest. And you’re like, “Why does that make sense? How does that trickle down in the tangible business strategy?” Every single thing we build is something we would solve for ourselves, or the marketing language we use is because we deeply understand on an emotional level what it means to be a creator and therefore what resonates with our customers. And so every our culture, our values, the strategy that trickles down from that, the people we hire, the the bar is so high because this isn’t just like a business to us. This is deeply personal. These are also our friends. We’re we’re responsible for taking care of the bar is so extremely high for high performance for the sake of our customers that that like marginal addition of just caring way more than other people. I know it sounds so silly and woo-woo, but like that difference if you look at us and the 500 other LinkedIn bio companies that were started years before us, first-mover advantage, hundreds of millions of dollars raised, we’ve only raised $5 million in capital as seed round, and then we turned profitable, like why have we been a ripper of a company? I truly it starts with the fact that we just like care so much more deeply than everyone else, but then that trickles down to very tactically uh you know much more efficient go-to-market, much better content, much more resonant content, a much better product, much easier-to-use product, like much higher success rates on the product, all that kind of stuff that compounds as a flywheel.
So great, and $300 million generated for creators. What are the key monetization models that are working well for them?
So top three things that I’d recommend that are also the highest GMV drivers for any creator that we see. Number one is digital products, right? The the first wave of I think influencer brands was very much physical products. And I think that for someone at scale, maybe in large massive creator like Mr. Beast that makes sense. But for your average middle-class creator who we intentionally focus on and serve, that is a logistics nightmare to source something now with like global tariff force going on or whatever is going on to a product and then deal with shipping and handling and returns and just like the the the brain image of a physical good, I think is very difficult. Um, and so digital goods is something that we really encourage all of our creators to focus on the most and what Stan’s the best in class at doing. So it’s whether it’s, you know, an ebook and a guide, a template or a course. Basically, how do you create something just once and then sell it many, many times? It’s the definition of leverage. And so, about 50% of our GMV, our gross merchandise value, comes from digital products or courses. Um, very, very high leverage and the best kind of entry product to get you to your first six or seven figures as a creator. Um, the second piece that we see a ton of that is really starting to build a lot more sustainable businesses for our customers is the recurring subscription model. So, a lot of our customer, we just launched community within Stan. So, like for example, Stan is for just $29 a month is just is everything you need like your checkout, your website, your courses hosted, your digital products fulfilled, your payments, and then your community, a bunch of other stuff, but your community as well, which is usually like hundreds of dollars for that stack. Um, and so we see a lot of our creators uh launching communities where it’s, you know, $19 month subscription or $100 month subscription where they’re providing some sort of recurring value and then more more importantly owning their audience and building that recurring relationship with them. So, those are the top two. And then the third one that’s also really interesting to talk about that people don’t realize that they can do immediately is actually just one-on-one coaching bookings or one-on-one time bookings in some way. So in Stan basically there’s a calendar booking feature that integrates with your Google calendar or what have you. It sends appointments on your behalf. Um anyone can just start those immediately like you don’t have to spend time building. You can just offer up your time and advice. Um and so those are those are the third best way to get monetized especially immediately.
That’s great to hear. I um having left the corporate world, I started a merchandise company selling products for creators and we had a lot of success. That being said, it’s really hard work, and it’s getting harder as you say.
With tariffs and various other things. I definitely, definitely wouldn't do it again.
When it comes to digital products, how do you advise creators on, like, the right price point to set? How, how do they know what's fair or where, where to, to set the price?
Yeah, I the truly honest is you know in your gut how much this thing is worth. Like, truly, the number one thing I think that we take to business is just your own integrity around it. Like, you, you know what the value is, and I think personally I seek to always build something that has a 10x value to it. Um, but everyone else has their different mental models on it. All that being said, there are different kinds of tranches to help give a prescription here. If it's like an ebook or a guide, it depends on your niche, but one of the ways to approximate how much your guide might be worth or your products in general might be worth is just the CPMs. So the ad revenue dollars per thousand views that you get for your content in general with your niche. So as an example, a guide or an ebook in the finance sector is going to likely be more pricey than a guide or an ebook in, let's say, the cooking sector. Um, and so within that, um, basically what you're going to be thinking about is, you know, an ebook, guide, some sort of entry-level product is somewhere between $5 to $100.
And what the most effective creators are going to do is they're going to do a ladder. They're going to upsell over time. So you have that entry product first, you do a freebie maybe, or then you do an entry-level product, which is kind of the teaser into your universe. And then as people go more expert over time, let's say maybe the entry is, you know, this is how you get in shape or you lose your first 30 pounds; the next level is like, this is how you, you know, this is how you actually get to the shredded six-pack or what have you with this intense routine. I'll actually offer more services through that; maybe that's part of my community; maybe that's the upsell. And then the last piece is like the most extensive; it's like this is how you super biohack your life in the way that I have as a creator because I'm obsessed with fitness or whatever that might be for you. And in that sense, that's like maybe the $5,000 ticket item that they actually spend time with you and you're giving them active services. So, um, it's really just a function of how much time and energy you're giving, how much value you're giving, and then figuring out what the pricing is based off of that.
Got it. It makes absolute sense. And you mentioned fitness there. Is there a particular type of creator that really thrives on Stan?
Uh, it gets to be all the above. It's sick. My favorite, one of my favorite parts about Stan is just the thousands of niches we serve. So there are big buckets that do really, really well. So health and wellness, spirituality is a really cool one. Business in general broadly, but my favorite part is we just have this massive bucket of other. And so in other categories that have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Uh, there's one woman named Selena Camaro. Her username is Milkade Farm. She sells a $37 recipe guide on how to make sourdough bread. She just recently crossed $750,000 made on Stan.
Wow. Um, we have someone who just crossed six figures doing crochet guides, like a $47 guide, like video guide on how do you make a crochet star or some, and like different templates. Um, we have so many people doing really cool stuff. We just had an immigration lawyer join, uh, and she's booking like thousands of leads through Stan. Um, there's so many cool examples. So, and you spoke about rolling out communities. What else is on the product roadmap moving forward?
We are exper we are experimenting a lot with, with AI. Um, and this is something that takes shape because one, one of the most exciting what we are realizing is, um, once you have cleared in your mind what is it you're trying to do, Stan is the perfect solution for you to get like, like it's super simple, and if you have like clarity of where you're going, we're going to get it done super fast and really well. But the problem that we think 95% of people are experiencing, they actually don't know what they want. Like, they, they come in with this directional kind of vague cloud of thoughts. It's like, I just want to monetize somehow, but they don't understand what is actually going to happen there. Like, are you prepared to spend the next month working on your course or do you just want to spend three hours writing a quick PDF document that you're going to sell for, for $5? And I think in terms of where the world is right now, there is a very big opportunity to create a new category of product somewhere along the lines of, of an AI agent that would help them establish that clarity that will make everything else matter and actually work, like, cover the, the gap in between. That's actually the product John and I are, um, working on together right now. Uh, so we don't know what exactly it's going to be, but this is where it is going.
And what do you think? What do you both think about generative AI content? How do you think that's going to impact the creator economy?
It's a big weedy question. I think it's going to be a lot of destructive chaos in the next few years, but I think net net at the end of the day, it's just a tool for more creative people to do things. Um, I think at the end of the day, like any technological shift, we all as established creators need to evolve. Like, as, as, as tired as we are in our old ways, I think the definition of adaptability is like, okay, whether I like it or not, this is happening, and it's gonna, if I don't start using and figuring it out, it's going to wipe me out. Because the reality is once someone figures out how to use generative AI in a repeatable way for themselves, they will completely outscale any of us artisans who are doing it one by one, at least in terms of volume. Um, I think quality will get there over time as well. Like the incentives you see from how quickly these models are, are innovating, I think is there. And so the only thing I can say is I have no idea what the future's going to be like; I just know that all of us, and this is what we're deeply thinking about for all of our customers at San, is we need to adapt and learn how to use this stuff for our betterment or else we're going to get wiped out.
Yeah, I agree with that. One, one thing I would, I would add towards this as we're thinking about generative in context of generating content, for example, because there's a lot of conversation where it's like, what's the value of creating content if AI, if AI can do that, and I think one of the common threads that we are seeing in like all the tools that help you with content generation, for example, that's meant to be the ultimate leverage for, for a creator, like it's just not good, and it's very similar, and it's like it's the reduction to the mean that eliminates creativity and uniqueness, like, of what makes the content interesting in the first place. And one side of it that I'm actually excited about is not necessarily creating, um, like the, the leverage and automating a lot of things, like this is going to happen, and, and we are going to get better. But I think the ultimate unlock is going to be when we learn how to use the, the tools that are there to get hyper-personalized to, to knowing what we are at because if you go to chat GPT right now and do something generic like based on everything you know about me, write a perfect, you know, LinkedIn post or Twitter thread, like it, it's just not going to be good regardless of how much it knows. Um, but I think once we're able to figure out how to prompt it in a way where it actually creates content that is amplifies our uniqueness as opposed to tries to fit it in with what generally considered good content, like that is going to be a category of killer products that is really going to scale creators.
Yeah, it's definitely a tipping point that we're going to get to, right? Where it's just suddenly, as you say, amplifies who you are rather than just produces generic content.
And as you scale Stan, what are the key metrics that you're looking at? Is it creators? Is it revenue? Is it some other metric?
I think for us, our northstar is very much so the numbers of, of creators who are successful on Stan. Um, this is an insanely hard job that will just knock you on your feet so many times. Um, and so in that process, what the metric that we're most proud of is if you look at Stan success rates as a platform versus any of our other industry competitors, it's like 10, like at least two-x the magnitude, are 10% higher, uh, than many of them. And I think that's what we'll continue to hold our, our, our bar towards is what we're looking at right now is exact, like what we're focused on as a product organization is entirely around success and how many creators can we actually have succeed as soon as possible. Um, so that's the northstar metric because everything else rains down from that because if you have happy customers, uh, and our customers are fundamentally the world's best marketers in the world as creators, um, then you have everything else.
So that's excellent. Well, it's been great talking with you, John and Vitali. Before we wrap up, I just have one question. For a creator getting started, they're thinking about launching their own store. What's one thing that they should do and one thing that they should avoid before they do?
So, you want to go first or should I?
Uh, yes. Uh, I, I have one specific thing. The, the most common problem that we, we're are seeing is that people make things more difficult than they actually are and they spend weeks, months agonizing over what their first product should be before they actually do something about it. What I think everyone should do is to give themselves a constraint of you have five hours tops to create your first product. Go do it and launch it the same day.
Five hours.
Yeah. I love that. You know what's funny is my avoid is similar but different, and it's the number one thing that's going to prevent anyone from being successful, which is their lack of focus. Specifically what we see people do is like they come in and there's actually only two things you need, and everything else is just fluff and people trying to sell you stuff you don't need. All you need is to make consistently good content every day or every week. And that is number one because that is your traffic source. That is your audience. That is everything. Everything rains down from that. And then two, you just need a quality product with like a decent, like with like an optimized funnel. And so what people will do is they'll come in and once they start making money, they'll be like, "Oh, well, I have this product funnel. I need to add seven more products." And then someone else is trying to sell me on this like closing call thing that I should do on top of this because then I can do it's like, yo, you're totally good. You're getting distracted by all the fluff. Focus maniacally on the 2080 rule of what actually drives results for your business. Everything else is at the detriment of your focus of the one or two things that disproportionately generate your success. And so people often times get bogged down on that stuff once they start being feeling a little bit of that success and get distracted from the two main things that matter. Um, then that goes towards the do thing, like, so what's the one thing that they should do? At the end of the day, we have all the data on 70,000 creators who's been successful, who's not. We've personally worked with multiple people who've gone from literally zero dollars and made self become self-made millionaires, whether they're 18 or 45, like the demographic is everyone. It's just really, really cool. The one pattern that's different between them and everyone else who hasn't made it is the fact that the people who did make it just never ever gave up. Like truly, if you are listening to this and like you want to succeed, it's just a question of how committed you are to yourself. Because some of those people have been grinding for like five or six years on content before they ever truly made it. Or like they launched their first product and it totally flopped, which you should expect to by the way, and then they learned how to market it better and then they made it a little bit better and then they figured out why their audience would want it more if they repositioned it this way. Like they understood that this was a truly a marathon and they persisted through all the pain, all the insecurity, all the emotional struggle. And so my learning for myself, my learning for all of our most successful customers, my learning getting to work with someone like Stephen is it's the people who persist and are just like maniacal about that persistence. Um, they're the ones who make it. So I hope that we can give that energy to as many people as possible.
Very wise words there. Well, whenever anybody asks me that question, persistence is the one thing I say. And having spoken to hundreds of creators in my role at Electrify, thinking about investing into them, I see that same pattern that all of these creators started with nothing. Um, and they just kept going and kept going and kept going until, you know, that tipping point and finally people started to engage with their content and they built their business from there. So, I fully agree with that. Um, John, Vitali, congratulations on the new investment. Really excited to see the next chapter of the business and yeah, good luck.
Thank you so much, Ian. It's great to talk to you. [Music]