Digital Alchemy: Yannick Veys on Transforming Followers into Fortune
In the world of art, a master painter captivates audiences not only with the visual beauty of his creations but also with the emotions they evoke, turning admirers into passionate investors in his masterpieces. Similarly, in the B2B SaaS landscape, the true art lies in crafting products and services that not only draw in a dedicated community but also compel them to become advocates, monetizing the profound relationships built.
Enter Yannick Veys, the CMO and Co-founder of Hypefury (a Paddle customer), whose expertise in cultivating and monetizing a social media audience is unparalleled. With Hypefury's noteworthy acquisitions, including the Elon Musk-acknowledged acquisition of Black Magic, Yannick showcases how to turn digital admiration into tangible success.
High-Level Overview
- Acquisitions Enhancing Audience Tools: Yannick Veys discusses how they strategically acquired businesses that added complementary features, expanding their suite of tools for audience growth and engagement.
- Challenges with Automation & API Changes: The challenges faced due to automation, especially with tools like chatbots and the implications of major API changes by platforms like Twitter, affect how businesses engage with and grow their audience.
- The Balance of AI and Human Touch: The conversation delves into the role and limitations of AI and chatbots in audience engagement. Yannick stresses the importance of a personal voice and human connection in audience building, predicting potential restrictions against over-automation on platforms.
- Effective Monetization Strategies: Yannick shares specific tactics they employ to help their customers monetize their audiences, such as creating urgency with countdowns, leveraging FOMO, and automated promotions that tactfully engage audiences without overwhelming them.
- Advice and Encouragement for Audience Building: The closing remarks provide advice for those starting on their audience building journey. Yannick emphasizes persistence, the importance of authentic engagement, and the idea that while beginnings might be slow, consistency and genuine interactions will lead to growth.
Digital Alchemy
In today's hyper-connected digital age, the potency of building and monetizing a social media audience cannot be overstated. Garnering a devoted audience is the crux of creating both brand loyalty and a sustained revenue stream. In the vast sea of online businesses, an engaged audience not only amplifies a brand's voice but directly translates to its financial prosperity. But how does one craft a magnetic social media presence and, more importantly, monetize this engagement effectively?
- Strategically Curate Content: Just as Yannick Veys emphasizes, the quality and relevance of content cannot be ignored. Ensure your posts resonate with your audience, offering value and establishing your brand as a thought leader.
- Authentic Voice and Engagement: Adopt an authentic voice and engage genuinely. Automated responses might be quick, but they lack the human touch that audience members yearn for. As Yannick noted, people want to interact with humans, not robots.
- Introduce Automation Strategically: While a genuine touch is invaluable, strategic automation, like the 'autopilot' function Yannick mentioned, can increase engagement and followers. Implement automation for actions like promotions without losing your brand's voice.
- Create FOMO (Fear of Missing Out): Limited-time offers, countdowns, and exclusives can drive immediate action from your audience. As Hypefury demonstrates, creating a sense of urgency can significantly boost sales.
- Monetize Through Diverse Channels: From affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, to online courses or webinars—ensure you're not putting all your eggs in one basket. Diversification is key to sustained revenue.
Building and monetizing a social media audience is as much an art as it is a science. It requires a deep understanding of one's audience, the agility to adapt to changing trends, and the creativity to offer value consistently. While the digital landscape might be ever-evolving, the fundamental principle remains: Understand your audience, offer them undeniable value, and the monetization will follow.
00:00:00:20 - 00:00:23:04
Ben Hillman
Imagine a master painter with every stroke he lays down on a canvas, the world around him shifts a little. People gather, whispers spread, and the tales of his work across continents. But what makes his paintings enchanting isn't just the blend of colors or the narrative he depicts, but the emotion each viewer feels is a desire to own a piece of this creation, to bring it home and treasure it.
00:00:23:09 - 00:00:47:03
Ben Hillman
In essence, the painter doesn't just create art, but he crafts an audience that yearns, cherishes and invests in his masterpieces. Now let's shift our gaze to the bustling world, B2B says. While our canvas is the digital space and our strokes are products and services, the core principle remains creating something so valuable that it beckons an audience. In this realm, it's not just about developing a tool or a service.
00:00:47:06 - 00:01:11:09
Ben Hillman
It's about fostering a dedicated community that not only uses your tool but becomes an advocate for it. The artistry lies in not only building this audience, but understanding how to turn your admiration into tangible rewards. Monetizing the rapport and the relationship you built. Our master painter today is Yannick Bass, CMO and co-founder of Hypefury Organics. Canvas is the vast realm of social media.
00:01:11:10 - 00:01:37:01
Ben Hillman
And his strokes are ingeniously crafted strategies that not only captivate an audience but monetize them. Under his leadership, Hypefury, a proud Paddle customer, has navigated the waves of acquisitions and strategic shifts. The most notable being their acquisition of Black Magic, a deal so significant that it caught the eye of Elon Musk himself. In today's episode, we're pulling back the curtain on the master strokes of Gen-X techniques.
00:01:37:03 - 00:01:56:18
Ben Hillman
Dive into the world of Hypefury and discover the intricacies of building an audience in the SaaS world and unravel the mystery of their high profile acquisitions. From Paddle, it's Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator. I'm Ben Hillman, and on today's episode, Yannick Baze speaks with Paddles.
00:01:56:18 - 00:02:16:03
Ben Hillman
Andrew DAVIES about building and monetizing an audience. After you finish the episode, check out the show notes for a field guide from today's episode. Then, while you're leaving your five star review of the podcast, tell us what resonated most about our guest advice.
00:02:16:05 - 00:02:22:09
Andrew Davies
Let's just dive in. Yanick Why don't you give me a little background on yourself and then also on Hope Fury.
00:02:22:09 - 00:02:40:10
Yannick Veys
So my name is unique and my background. I have probably about 15 years of marketing experience, started a bank, hated it. Then I was luckily I was hired into a digital marketing agency and yeah, things really started. And, you know, I think in the first two weeks I had my first side project up and running and I've been entrepreneurial all along.
00:02:40:10 - 00:02:58:22
Yannick Veys
And then I figure I didn't even I didn't even start Hypefury Savvy started and I think after three or so months, he posted a topic on N.A. saying he wanted the marketing co-founder. I reached out. I spent a weekend in Paris. We hit it off, was cool, and co-founded a business together. That's it in a nutshell.
00:02:58:23 - 00:03:03:21
Andrew Davies
Fantastic. So why don't you just give us a little bit of the background behind what Hypefury does and who it does it for?
00:03:03:22 - 00:03:22:01
Yannick Veys
Baby, the first thing I feel you did was you could schedule your tweets and your threads on Twitter, which is called these days. But that was the first thing you did. Sammy was around like a couple of communities. He was in a couple of paid communities, and these people were all salespeople. They wanted more people in there, in their communities were more paid members.
00:03:22:01 - 00:03:40:09
Yannick Veys
And so it was also always looking like, how can I improve the sort of mind making side of being on Twitter? Because everybody's on there tweeting away but not really making any money. Hi for me basically is, you know, you could call it the creative suite that helps you post content, create content, but also like monetize your audience.
00:03:40:09 - 00:03:56:06
Yannick Veys
And so we've all these automations set up that helps you turn one piece of content into many different pieces. And we also help you, you know, build a newsletter, audience, sell things. If you, for instance, have courses on camera and stuff like that, we have a lot of automations behind that.
00:03:56:08 - 00:03:58:14
Andrew Davies
And how many customers do you have out, Fairy?
00:03:58:14 - 00:04:03:16
Yannick Veys
Thousands. I see. We don't mention any specific numbers anymore, but we have many, many thousands.
00:04:03:16 - 00:04:06:14
Andrew Davies
And what is the perfect customer of hope for your perfect customer?
00:04:06:15 - 00:04:26:16
Yannick Veys
Well, what we see is a lot of people, like below one or 2000 followers on Twitter, They just they give up pretty quickly because, you know, it's really hard to build an audience. You really have to spend a lot of time doing it. And so our ideal customer is someone who has over 2000 followers, has either its own agency or somebody who is like selling digital courses.
00:04:26:17 - 00:04:28:04
Yannick Veys
That's our ideal customer.
00:04:28:04 - 00:04:38:11
Andrew Davies
The story started when Sami wanted a marketing co-founder and his father on indie hackers. Tell me a bit more about what you were looking for, what he was looking for and why this worked.
00:04:38:12 - 00:04:59:17
Yannick Veys
I co-founded a business before was something like Uber for service professionals in the Netherlands. After three years, I sold my shares and I moved on. I started freelancing again, but I just had this. It's so I wanted to do something and I was just browsing on on any hackers as I was posting there as well. But also I was sometimes checking like the finding of partner section.
00:04:59:17 - 00:05:14:08
Yannick Veys
Yeah. I thought, why not want to respond to this guy who just built something on Twitter? I back then I had kind of like 600 followers. My, my posts were really shit, but I thought, well, I might not know a lot about like the Twitter thing, but I do know a lot about like marketing and growing a business.
00:05:14:08 - 00:05:31:17
Yannick Veys
And so I thought it was really interesting because I would learn how to build an audience, which was interesting to me and I could help the business grow. It was interesting for me to learn new things, but also I knew and that was part of the deal actually. So I went, I went to Paris and we agreed that we work on the business for two months for free.
00:05:31:18 - 00:05:47:10
Yannick Veys
I had no backup plan and in a sense that I was still doing freelance work, but I would just I was just going all in. I would say, Well, I'm just going to show Sami that I can grow as best as that. I'm not just talk, but also I can walk the walk. Then for two months, you know, the business grew rapidly.
00:05:47:10 - 00:06:04:10
Yannick Veys
And yeah, we, we also we hit it off. You know, it was a good vibe. Like every co-founder, it's like it's couples therapy as well. You know, it's a marriage. You have to get used to each other. And I think two months honeymoon was was, was good for us. And yeah, it's still working. We're still, we're still doing well.
00:06:04:10 - 00:06:10:16
Yannick Veys
And I've yet to meet another guy that's so young but so professional in his in his doing so and it's just great.
00:06:10:21 - 00:06:21:13
Andrew Davies
Talk to us about the stage and shape of the business now. So you're not saying customer numbers, but as many thousands. And you started off just the two of you. So maybe talk about team size or your morale or you are team size.
00:06:21:13 - 00:06:41:17
Yannick Veys
I think we're at about 20 people. We have two people who do customer success. We have about six developers and we have so but I think six or seven marketers and Sami and me and and a couple of other people at center floating around there. So that's the main thing. And, you know, the marketing team is pretty much channel based.
00:06:41:17 - 00:07:05:18
Yannick Veys
So somebody is responsible for affiliate marketing, some is doing email, somebody else is responsible for the website and the SEO, stuff like that and then less familiar with. But we have product manager, he does all the stuff and click up, you know, all the assignments and the user stories and things like that. We pretty much doing sprints. We weren't big enough, I would say six months ago size wise, but right now we are big enough to do sprints and stuff.
00:07:05:18 - 00:07:07:14
Yannick Veys
So we're we're starting with that.
00:07:07:14 - 00:07:26:01
Andrew Davies
Very cool. And your specialist topic is how you build an audience and monetize the audience on social you how many people through your own profile also fit the company profile as part of what your, you know, the alignment of yourself in the business. Now let's talk to our audience of thousands of SaaS founders who want to build their own audiences and monetize them.
00:07:26:01 - 00:07:32:05
Andrew Davies
Where do you start when someone starts a company or perhaps even before they start a company on this journey of growing and monetizing their audience.
00:07:32:05 - 00:07:48:18
Yannick Veys
The old saying of build it and they will come. That's completely false. So nobody will come. And they're like a million great businesses lying on the graveyard in the Silicon Valley and wherever. So you have to promote your business. And if you're not doing it, then nobody will do it, especially like if you're a solo founder or bootstrapping.
00:07:48:18 - 00:08:09:22
Yannick Veys
And I think many people are using panel R So it's really important that you build your own audience and get your own group of people who are interested in doing what you're doing. What I would do is literally zero followers anywhere is I would first see, okay, who talks about things. I'm also interested in who's maybe even as like a similar product of mine because I want their users.
00:08:09:22 - 00:08:35:13
Yannick Veys
And so you start following those people, start commenting on their posts. I see a lot of people, especially I go on Twitter, which doesn't have a real discoverability feature. They just tweet in their own timeline. But you know, if you don't have any followers, nobody will see your tweets. It's different on TikTok and maybe some other platforms. But if you specifically talk specifically on Twitter, it's really important that you just, you know, you have to punch your way into the crowd, you know, And a great way of doing that is just following a lot of people.
00:08:35:13 - 00:08:55:10
Yannick Veys
And I would say 50 people who are like really the legends in your in your niche in your category and then try to find like minded people, other founders who are in similar spaces as you. And really it's social media. So not just talk at them, but also, you know, slide in the DMS, tell them how cool you think their business is.
00:08:55:10 - 00:09:12:11
Yannick Veys
And I think that's the beginning of building your own audience. And then slowly you'll start to see, you know, you like to post like once or twice day in your timeline. So you'll see, okay, these types of posts tend to do better than other types and then you can start focusing on those posts, create better ones. And then there's a no whole world behind tweeting.
00:09:12:11 - 00:09:31:02
Yannick Veys
I still call it tweeting, even though it's something else. I don't even know how to pronounce it. But like some people share stories, other people share wins. Other people, they are more like the literary versions, like Real, that they, you know, they could be a writer. So there are all kinds of different ways of sharing things on Twitter and gaining an audience.
00:09:31:02 - 00:09:45:20
Yannick Veys
And I think you have to just find your way. It's not something that you'll you'll find on day one. It takes it took me a long time and I hired a couple of people to help me get there because I was a bad writer. My English wasn't that good, you know, I'm not an either native speaker, so I had to work to get it done.
00:09:45:20 - 00:10:06:15
Andrew Davies
So you had a special reason to make sure you got good at this, which was that you're also promoting a company in the space and you're authentic. You had to do that. We probably both know many, many people have started this journey and then dropped out before they saw any results. So how long do you think people have to commit to this journey of engaging, building followership, posting before they actually start to see that growth?
00:10:06:15 - 00:10:23:21
Yannick Veys
I think you're probably top point 1%. If you can reach like 1000 followers in 30 days, it's possible. But you really have to spend like hours a day to get there. And so not many people have that time. Some people say, I want to reach that goal in this amount of time. I would turn around, I would say, you know, just have fun.
00:10:23:22 - 00:10:45:03
Yannick Veys
Don't take Twitter or any social media so serious. Have fun, follow right people and, you know, let it be part of the journey instead of setting a goal and saying, I need 25,000 followers by then or 10-K by then, sell you down a little bit more. And on the way, just keep sharing about your product. You will find your way, which you have to stick to it and it'll take a lot longer for many people to get to a thousand followers.
00:10:45:03 - 00:10:59:21
Yannick Veys
Probably some will take probably six months. And then once you have a thousand followers, then it starts a little bit. Then you get a bit more of a organic reach, then you'll get a bit more likes and comments on your posts and then you'll start getting a smile on your face because of the notifications. But that's not how I would look at it.
00:10:59:21 - 00:11:13:00
Yannick Veys
I would look at it every time you post something, that's when you've learned something. And you know a lot of people don't post anything because they think, Yeah, I'm not going to get any likes on this anyway. But that's not the point. The point is posting and then, you know, whatever comes after that is a bonus.
00:11:13:00 - 00:11:29:05
Andrew Davies
We've now got 2000 followers. What's your playbook for the founder that's now crossed that magic thousand threshold? Maybe you're starting to see some notifications come back as a result. Why do they know that you should keep going? What's the kind of result that they should look for? And most importantly, what tactics should they follow in order to continue that.
00:11:29:05 - 00:11:48:20
Yannick Veys
Growth up until like 500 followers? Then it's mostly commenting on our people. Once you start to have like five or 10 to 1000 followers, then you can really start putting a bit more in your own time. And there it's more about quantity versus sort of quality versus quantity. Really, if you can do a lot of great posts and great threads or long form posts, then by all means do it.
00:11:48:20 - 00:12:03:17
Yannick Veys
There are people who do 30 threads in 30 days. Well, it's a lot of work and you need a lot of ideas to do it. It's more of a mindset thing. I would say act like you're not a consumer, but you're a producer. So what the producers do, they're constantly on the lookout. Okay, what's happening in the world?
00:12:03:17 - 00:12:24:01
Yannick Veys
What did I learn from this podcast? What can I back from? I don't know, something in the news or a blog I wrote, Keep notes. I know almost 200 drafts in my in my pre dress. So I could I could literally I could sit down right now and I'll have 100 tweets lined up. If you don't feed the beast, it's very hard to really get things on paper.
00:12:24:01 - 00:12:44:20
Yannick Veys
And so start by creating more drafts and that make they'll make it easier to write thread about threads about things or really helps is if you tweet about things and you get a bit of engagement on those tweets a bit more than others, you could dive into those topics and create threads out of that or longform posts. Then it's just basically finding what works and keep keep at it.
00:12:44:20 - 00:13:08:23
Yannick Veys
And what you see is that mostly threads do really well, long form posts really well. They tend to get just a bit more engagement than single tweets. If you're building, it's like especially satisfying those. If you're building something, you've literally made your first sale, you've got your first pal notification. Share that on Twitter. People love that. I was telling Andrew before the show, like Sammy and I, you know, we used to fight, quote unquote, who got to share this funds growth rate.
00:13:08:23 - 00:13:22:13
Yannick Veys
We were at ten K and then a 12 and a 15 K, And every every month we would share that. I would get hundreds and hundreds of followers because people want to know, who is this guy? What are they doing? I want to know they're doing something cool because they're growing every month. They must be doing something right.
00:13:22:13 - 00:13:40:23
Yannick Veys
I want to follow this person. That's what really helps, you know, other ways, maybe more questionable ways. It's more like, I would say, an honor system, but a lot of people do is they create something, they create something, a lead magnet. Probably a lot of people heard of it. It's just, you know, help somebody in a significant way, but don't charge any money and just say, hey, and you can do it on Twitter.
00:13:40:23 - 00:13:57:01
Yannick Veys
Say, hey, I just created this fantastic thing you can download for free, just like and comment on this post and I'll DMU And that's a great way of getting engagement. And once you have like 502,000 followers, that's when you know, those types of posts tend to start doing a little bit as well and you can just rinse and repeat that.
00:13:57:01 - 00:14:14:12
Yannick Veys
You can have that same lead magnet, but promote that in a different type of post and see which one works better and just repeat that. And that's one of the things we automate with how to reach all the DMS sending. You know, if everybody comments and we'll send an automated them and it's just easy way to grow, but it's not something you should do.
00:14:14:12 - 00:14:18:10
Yannick Veys
Like every day. It's probably something used maybe once a week or a couple times a month.
00:14:18:10 - 00:14:39:12
Andrew Davies
You mentioned publishing your MRA and that was something that really worked for you. And I know you've commented before on the power of building in public. I think, you know, young people in the different camps of loving, doing this and hating doing this. And often as people scale, they stop building in public. One You tell us a bit more about your experience of building public the positives, the negatives, and what you say to founders who are asking whether they should do this or not.
00:14:39:13 - 00:14:55:16
Yannick Veys
Yeah, so in the beginning it worked very well for us, but we got a lot of attention when we were also one of the few players back then. When you share your numbers, other people also see that and 99 out of 100 won't do anything with that, but there are a few that will see that and they will think, Well, I can also do that.
00:14:55:16 - 00:15:14:06
Yannick Veys
And that's basically what happened to us is like a lot of competitors came on the market. It didn't even hurt us that much. It actually quite the opposite. We our growth rate actually increased when competitors came because more people were talking about the things we were doing. So it was actually a good thing. But still we thought, well, I don't know if we want even more competitors.
00:15:14:06 - 00:15:31:01
Yannick Veys
So that was one of the reasons we decided not to be so open anymore about like all our our numbers. But I think up until like when you have pink hair, toe camera, it's only a good thing. Literally, a lot of people will literally want to know who is this person, What is he building? I want to know.
00:15:31:01 - 00:15:46:20
Yannick Veys
I actually want to try. I know like built so people are sharing like how a course did you know how many sales they had? And if you see that and you see like, oh, 100 people bought this course yesterday. Let me check out the course how it is. Course sounds interesting. I'm going to I'm going to buy it.
00:15:46:20 - 00:16:05:17
Yannick Veys
And the same goes for your product. Oh, that's interesting. 100 people started using this last month. That's interesting. Why would they do that? I'm going to check it out. So it's literally no brand to do it, you know, up until a point. But that's something I would say it's it's personal. And you probably see like there's a point in time, like right now we don't need to share public anymore.
00:16:05:19 - 00:16:30:01
Yannick Veys
We have like autonomous growth, I would say, but definitely in the beginning. And then I think and one of the parts what a lot of people shouldn't forget is like when we started of the first thing we did was, okay, we build in public, we shared the things we were working on, but we also started an affiliate program and that's like you hire like an external marketing agency, like an army of people who have a YouTube channel and blogs, and they also have Twitter accounts and other social accounts.
00:16:30:01 - 00:16:42:09
Yannick Veys
So and they were actually doing the talking for us. And that's one of the nice things about affiliate marketing is enough to pay upfront and people will also build in public for you. I think that's also a great tip to to enable early on in your journey.
00:16:42:13 - 00:16:59:19
Andrew Davies
I know one of the accusations against the build in public movement is of more inflation that people overestimate or overload to the morale in order to gain followership. Do you think that happens often, that there's a bias for people to overstate the numbers in order to try and drive followership? And how do you think about combating that?
00:16:59:19 - 00:17:21:16
Yannick Veys
I've seen one example where it happened, but for us, we've never overinflated it. We just showed our numbers as they were. I am a marketer at heart, so I think everything is marketing. And so there's a gray zone of, you know, if you're doing 10-K, IMR, you're sharing it, you have 100 K that's probably per deciles. But if you share that, you have 12 or 15, I would say, yeah, it's everything is marketing.
00:17:21:16 - 00:17:34:09
Yannick Veys
So I'm probably I'm bit more on the dark side, but although I haven't, I haven't actually done it myself. Why didn't, why didn't you tell me this before? I knew that people do this. I'm Bob on the dark side, but I didn't do it myself. But I, I would say it's all marketing.
00:17:34:09 - 00:17:51:22
Andrew Davies
It is all marketing, as you've said before, What do you do to help founders that are perhaps they don't bias towards sharing publicly or engaging in this way or writing content, or as you said, you know, English is not their first language. How do you think about helping founders or any of those situations with this doesn't come naturally.
00:17:51:23 - 00:18:13:11
Yannick Veys
It's very hard. But I would say you're not tweeting for for your audience. You're taking notes for yourself, you're not lecturing others, you're just documenting your journey. And so you could also see this as how many followers I have. I'm not looking at follower counts like comments, whatever impressions, I'm just documenting. This is just, you know, I know my GitHub for my mind up.
00:18:13:11 - 00:18:33:00
Yannick Veys
But then the marketing side of of, of my, my, my journey and I think, you know, we haven't done the analysis on it. We could we could do this actually where we're going to do quite a bit big analysis on all our users. But I'm 100% certain that people who share things, who build in public that growth rate is just outrageously larger than somebody who doesn't.
00:18:33:00 - 00:18:40:07
Yannick Veys
So you're literally shooting yourself in the foot. You might think, yeah, nobody's going to care. Well, people will care and people will buy your shit.
00:18:40:07 - 00:18:54:00
Andrew Davies
So do share social media posting is the get help for your marketing journey. I love that. Who are the who? The creators? Who are the people you follow and you learn from? Who are the people who you think A stand out Examples of growing the social media audience for this purpose.
00:18:54:00 - 00:19:18:01
Yannick Veys
Pure Andrew. Alex Smithers. Justin Welsh. Of course everybody names who else? I have to check my teams and Erica Schneider is great. Caitlin Bourgeois, probably from Canada. She's great. West Kale So a couple of people I really admire and they've done brilliantly. They're great storytellers and that's one of the things like I've yet to nailed really good storytelling.
00:19:18:01 - 00:19:38:12
Yannick Veys
It's probably my lack of proper English, but the people who grow the fastest on Twitter are the best storytellers. And so if you can extract simple things from your life and tell a story about that, then people are going to feel attracted to that. You can tell many stories in a tweet. You can tell long stories and videos or whatever, but those people win the crowd for sure.
00:19:38:15 - 00:19:54:08
Andrew Davies
You mentioned you look up to people like Justin. I know that he's covered Pipe Fury and Black Magic before when he's talking about the tools that he uses. Have you done anything specific about reaching out to very well followed accounts to try and get them to use hope Fury as part of your own growth, or was that just happened organically?
00:19:54:09 - 00:20:11:23
Yannick Veys
Some happened organically, but some happened in organically. We're just Louis literally we started with Justin. I can remember who reached out to who, but I do remember that he tried a competitor and he wasn't happy with that and that's when we came into contact. But I don't know who reached out to like it was this was years ago.
00:20:11:23 - 00:20:33:16
Yannick Veys
I think this was probably three years ago, some two years ago. So that's also probably hard for phone, especially for for technical founders. This is do I reach out when I feel pushy? But the best thing to do is start with your own users. Just select star from database and whatever and literally see okay, who's on social, who's sharing things that are aligned with how I think about the world.
00:20:33:16 - 00:20:51:01
Yannick Veys
And then is this person talking about things that are, you know, closely aligned to my business, reach out and say, hey, I would love it if you would share something. I can do X or Y for you. We have an affiliate program. Some people don't care about it. Start there and then you'll slowly build trust in yourself saying, Oh, I can do outreach.
00:20:51:04 - 00:20:59:00
Yannick Veys
People actually want to share something about my business, Start there and then slowly you can reach out to other people like more and they cold.
00:20:59:00 - 00:21:13:03
Andrew Davies
Call that retweet a lot of your business is on Twitter. A lot of your work is on Twitter. That environment, that ecosystem changed dramatically following Elon Musk's takeover. And of course, the rebranding to X taught me a bit about, you know, how that impacted you, how that impacted your business.
00:21:13:03 - 00:21:33:07
Yannick Veys
Yeah. So this was a couple of months ago or I think February or March, April, we started hearing rumors that Twitter might really break up their API plans. Like back then, we were hardly paying anything and we heard some rumors from people that, you know, the minimum amount like a business our size we'd have to pay was like 42 came on.
00:21:33:07 - 00:21:55:01
Yannick Veys
And so we quickly reached out to Twitter saying, Hey, what's up? We want to know what's going to happen. It actually turned out to be true. So we were actually literally one of the first businesses in this sphere that said, okay, we will apply to the enterprise plan, we'll pay for it. Took, even though it's like a shit ton of money and we have, you know, better use for that, but we could afford it.
00:21:55:01 - 00:22:16:15
Yannick Veys
But a lot of other businesses couldn't afford it. A lot of a lot went under. They just abandoned their project. They just couldn't afford it anymore, which was really petty. There were a lot of cool mini tools like you could a B test your profile C like what profile picture was better? What had A was better. The world is cool tools, but, you know, they only had, I don't know, a 1 to 3 camera, so it was just not sustainable.
00:22:16:15 - 00:22:33:23
Yannick Veys
And then there were those like black magic for example. They were doing quite a bit of Amara, but not enough to sustain themselves. And so we reached out. We said, Hey, this is coming, probably coming. Well, for sure. Have you thought about what you want to do, Tony? He wanted to sell it because, you know, he wasn't making for it to come out.
00:22:34:00 - 00:22:50:20
Yannick Veys
And so he was started to lose money on on this project. And so literally within I know within less than two weeks, we closed the entire deal. I think there was like a big time squeeze. We actually we told Twitter like, hey, we're probably going to acquire this tool. Can you already, like put them under our enterprise plan?
00:22:50:20 - 00:23:10:19
Yannick Veys
Otherwise, you know, they would lose access already. So it was quite a, quite a rollercoaster. And the funny thing is this actually went all the way up to Elan, this acquisition, because Blackmagic was doing so many API calls, they were like in the top 4% of API calls of all of Twitter. So probably open a I and then BLACKMAGIC.
00:23:10:19 - 00:23:31:02
Yannick Veys
But we actually had to, you know, juggle a little bit with with Twitter because they were doing about three or 50 million API calls per month. And on the enterprise plan, like you could do 50 million, you had to reduce the calls by at least seven fold. And you know, we also had our own calls. So that was quite a bit of juggling there.
00:23:31:02 - 00:23:54:22
Yannick Veys
We had to optimize a shit ton of of calls, but in the end that worked out and yeah, we got to acquire a great business that added fantastic features to our business, added some MRI that would compensate for the four we took a month and then yeah, we even did a couple more acquisitions. So in total we acquired four businesses in that good time for us, a bad time for people who had like an indie project.
00:23:54:23 - 00:24:10:13
Andrew Davies
The acquisition was actually signed off for Visible by Elan. You did another three or four as well. I'm not sure if you've disclosed all of those. Talk to us a little bit about how that's gone down post acquisition. So I'm sure you know, there was a good product fit in terms of the features it was adding as well as the revenue it was adding.
00:24:10:13 - 00:24:13:12
Andrew Davies
But any of those team members or founders stayed around too. Yeah.
00:24:13:12 - 00:24:32:04
Yannick Veys
So actually none of the team members stayed. One one team member stayed, but all the rest left. There was a great overlap for feature, so we were using an outside service that was hit also by a big API bill that was coming. They were going to change their entire pricing strategy to survive, but that would mean we would pay outrageous fees for them.
00:24:32:04 - 00:24:47:19
Yannick Veys
So we looked at like competitor tools and we for like I would say five or ten K, we could buy a competitor and we would probably and then three or four months we would make that money back because otherwise we'd have, you know, spent that same money on the on the service who we're using. So that was a good move.
00:24:47:19 - 00:25:12:22
Yannick Veys
And then the others, which are called High View and Inbox, it's basically like DMS, CRM and Legion in DMS. That's the gist of it, which also like we didn't have those features. It's not integrated yet. We've had to do a lot of work on getting our calls reduced. Twitter is deprecating a lot of end. So we have to like, you know, move all our end points to the new API versions.
00:25:12:22 - 00:25:25:04
Yannick Veys
There will come a time when we'll, you know, integrate more things. But right now they're pretty much still separate. But like it's a great suite of tools because they're all very aligned and they don't really overlap. So it's great.
00:25:25:04 - 00:25:26:16
Andrew Davies
And how did you fund those acquisitions?
00:25:26:16 - 00:25:40:15
Yannick Veys
So I'm just out of pocket and others were partly self-financed, so we're still paying off Blackmagic, for example. So paying Tony and we have a small part to pay still for inbox and, and Hively.
00:25:40:15 - 00:25:48:01
Andrew Davies
And looking back on that process, do you think you should have swung harder and looked at acquiring more tools in a row up role up there, or are there any you regret there?
00:25:48:01 - 00:26:07:15
Yannick Veys
No regrets? Actually, I think we ate all we could. I think we were very, very saturated at the moment. Like our workload is is very high. And I think like Blackmagic was a great deal for us. And the other two have an inbox as well. And then the other thing which we did in a way, but it's just it was just a copy paste of the old thing we already used.
00:26:07:15 - 00:26:19:15
Yannick Veys
That was more like a cost saving thing than anything else. I think by looking back, I think we've done a great job and I wouldn't actually I wouldn't have acquired any other business. I you know, we literally were we're very saturated at the moment.
00:26:19:15 - 00:26:29:17
Andrew Davies
And now as you think about, you know, the next 12 months, we're in a rocky time for B2B SaaS. How are you thinking about like Fury's growth and your audience growth and your revenue growth?
00:26:29:19 - 00:26:55:04
Yannick Veys
So with the acquisitions of the other tools, we're now building like more or less like some middleware, a gateway. So we have great insight into what all the usage is of the different tools. It a bit of a pause at the moment of like launching major features. But I do think like and this probably will be finished, I think this month, starting next month again will launch LinkedIn integration and will launch a couple of big features.
00:26:55:04 - 00:27:06:20
Yannick Veys
And I think I'm not word for the future. It's been a difficult ride like the last, I would say six months, but we're now slowly getting into like karma waters and I'm, I'm yeah, I'm very positive about the future.
00:27:07:00 - 00:27:23:11
Andrew Davies
What do you think about the future for your customers, those who are trying to build their audience? It feels like there's been a real Zakk ghost of the last few years of not just building public, but people seeing that they could build and monetize their audience across all different channels. Do you see that as a tide that's going to continue to rise?
00:27:23:11 - 00:27:26:19
Andrew Davies
Do you see any step change or challenge coming in that wider market?
00:27:26:20 - 00:27:51:13
Yannick Veys
It's a great time still to start chat. CBT helps, but I think what a lot of people will find out is that it can only help so far and there's a lot of content creation with chat CBT, but I think some services will start. I'm maybe even flagging any content or I think something, something will happen there because you see it is like on LinkedIn, it's like it's insane the amount of chat type of replies you you get.
00:27:51:13 - 00:28:12:00
Yannick Veys
And I think on, on Twitter, it's also pretty big. So I think something will happen there. AI is great to get you started, but you do need your own voice, your own story, your unique. You to share. And I think a lot of people are skipping this step. They just think, well, I'll just ask a computer and he'll help me, but you'll only get that far.
00:28:12:00 - 00:28:31:20
Yannick Veys
And so once people realize that, Hey, I can't do everything for you, you really need to know where humans are. We'd like to talk to our humans, not to robots. Maybe like a small subset of people would like to talk to robots, but I'm not one of them. So yeah, I live an interesting life. And I think, you know, a lot of people will find out that that's a prerequisite to building an audience.
00:28:31:20 - 00:28:54:15
Andrew Davies
Well, a panel, we love having you as a customer. And it was a real delight to see a customer acquire another customer. Whether you acquired Black Magic, maybe let's just end on the monetization process here. So Tony monetized magic in one way and then for his customers and then a second way, by finally selling that business to you, how else are you talking to and helping your customers and the customers of your customers to monetize the audience that you're helping them build?
00:28:54:19 - 00:29:14:05
Yannick Veys
Mostly? Well, there are two ways We help people get a lot more new subscribers. So we we call it Auto plug. So if example, if your tweet as ten likes will automatically comment with a plug. So we'll see a during my newsletter. You know, if you like this tweet, maybe you'll like my newsletter. And that's one thing maybe the technical founders will find interesting.
00:29:14:05 - 00:29:35:12
Yannick Veys
You're actually not pushing the self-promote button yourself. We're doing that for you. And so it's like a little bit further away, which will make it easier for you to promote yourself. That's one way we do it. We have other automations, for example, that's mostly, for course, course based sales, where a lot of our customers sell courses. For instance, on Gumtree, you could say, Well, this course I'm going to put it on sale right now.
00:29:35:12 - 00:29:56:02
Yannick Veys
So for the next hour it's 30% off. And then we auto comments saying 50 minutes laughs, 40 minutes left. And then once a sale is over, we quickly remove the tweet so nobody will ever see that you've done a sale. You can do that also on on quantity basis. You could say, well, for the next ten or the next 20, it's 30% off and then we count down 18 left, 16 left, whatever.
00:29:56:02 - 00:30:15:03
Yannick Veys
And so it really creates a bit of FOMO. And if people weren't online at our, then they wouldn't even have noticed that you did a sale. So it's a great way to do it. You know, it's good for Your honor system because not everybody will think, Man, this guy's selling something again. Yeah, those are probably the main ways we help people monetize their audience.
00:30:15:06 - 00:30:19:10
Andrew Davies
Are there any final thoughts you want to give to our audience of SaaS founders and go to market leaders?
00:30:19:12 - 00:30:37:07
Yannick Veys
Don't be afraid to get started. And when you start you have one or zero followers anyway. Maybe your mom or your or your best friend or girlfriend will will follow you, but all the rest you know, Bill, you'll be tweeting in a void or posting in a void. And it's also comfy. You can just start and see how it goes.
00:30:37:08 - 00:30:46:01
Yannick Veys
You'll get better. And the better you get, the more followers you get. And in the beginning you'll be pretty shit. But nobody's watching anyway. So to start.
00:30:46:02 - 00:31:00:17
Ben Hillman
Shout out to Yannick for being on the show. Make sure to give Protect our Store five star review and tell us what lesson from today's episode was your favorite. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Battle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SaaS.
