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95% Content is a show for B2B content teams who want to build trust with the 95% of buyers who are out-of-market today, but will be ready to buy in the future.
You can call it many different things: content marketing, demand creation, brand marketing, dark social, or zero-click content.
No matter what you call it, the goal is the same.
You want to reach future buyers on the social and content platforms they hang out on every single day, and in a way that compels them to want to work with you when they’re ready.
We’re going to cover how B2B companies can win with things like: organic social, short-form video, podcasting, YouTube, newsletters, webinars, and communities.
Because the best way to win today is to already be on your buyers short-list the day they decide they need a solution.
On this show hosted by Erik Jacobson, we’re going to explore how B2B content teams can do exactly that.
Peter [0:00:00]: A work to the wise, keep your eyes on the ninety five sick.
Erik [0:00:04]: I'm Erik Jacobson.
Erik [0:00:05]: Welcome to 95% Content.
Erik [0:00:08]: A show for B2B content teams who want to build trust with the ninety five percent of buyers who are out of market today, but we'll be ready to buy in the future.
Erik [0:00:16]: Peter, I am very excited to have you on the show for those that don't know you're the head of insights at Carta.
Erik [0:00:26]: Carta is very well known.
Erik [0:00:27]: I have a feeling most everybody who listens to this podcast.
Erik [0:00:30]: Knows and has heard of Carta, which I would say in large part is due to the work that you do and have done on the content side.
Erik [0:00:39]: But, yeah, Carta is used by tens of thousands of startups for fund and equity management.
Erik [0:00:46]: So it's a platform to help them with their cap tables and all of those associated things essentially.
Erik [0:00:52]: And with the purpose and the focus of our show being content strategies for the ninety five percent, in that ninety five five sort of split of those who are in market versus not.
Erik [0:01:04]: I know that your role, which is, I think is title as well, a very unique role in the B2B world, head of insights And so what I'd love to maybe first start with is if you could just give maybe some context on how you all at Carta overall, think about this ninety five five.
Erik [0:01:27]: Sort of split.
Erik [0:01:30]: Because from my understanding, your role is focused on that ninety five percent.
Erik [0:01:35]: You're not necessarily there to convert specifically with, like, direct response, calls to action all that stuff.
Erik [0:01:42]: The five percent audience who's in market.
Erik [0:01:44]: But overall, I would have to imagine you also have that sort of engine running as well.
Erik [0:01:49]: So just...
Erik [0:01:50]: I guess big picture, like, how do you all look at this ninety five five split and specifically within content.
Peter [0:01:58]: Absolutely, man.
Peter [0:01:58]: Yeah.
Peter [0:01:58]: Thanks for me.
Peter [0:01:59]: So ninety five five is a good framework for discussing how we view content data content specifically, which is where my insights team sit.
Peter [0:02:09]: So we are marketers.
Peter [0:02:10]: We sit underneath the marketing department.
Peter [0:02:12]: I report to our Cmo, and, like, our goal is a little bit different than other people.
Peter [0:02:18]: So I am to your point, not held to a lead generation target at all.
Peter [0:02:24]: I...
Peter [0:02:25]: I was gonna say I could not care less.
Peter [0:02:28]: I do care.
Peter [0:02:29]: Very deeply about making sure that the work that we do eventually results in more relationships for card, prospects, customers, etcetera, making sure the top of the funnel is strong.
Peter [0:02:39]: But the way paradox are to do that is to not focus in the slightest on how do I get this person down a funnel stage.
Peter [0:02:49]: So this is where I think insights is a little different The goal of Carta insights is one ubi.
Peter [0:02:57]: We wanna be everywhere to every person who's involved in startups, and two affinity.
Peter [0:03:03]: We want you to come away from reading one of of our reports, or a social post or attending a webinar or seeing us speak on stage thinking, wow, Carta really knows what they're talking about.
Peter [0:03:15]: That is the goal.
Peter [0:03:16]: Right?
Peter [0:03:17]: We wanna give something actionable and educational and valuable to whoever you are in the startup up ecosystem, such that when you're in the market, when you're starting a company, and you're thinking about cap table or when you're starting a fund, you thinking about fund management, we are in your consideration set by default.
Peter [0:03:34]: Because you've already had a positive experience with us.
Peter [0:03:37]: That's the goal of insights.
Peter [0:03:39]: The spin on it is, of course.
Peter [0:03:41]: Okay.
Peter [0:03:42]: It's easy to say, but how are you gonna give all this value to not even prospects, just general interested ecosystem participants without talking about your product.
Peter [0:03:54]: There's only so much you can say about the problems we solve at Carta in the ways that we help founders and all the time and money and etcetera that we save you.
Peter [0:04:01]: That's where insights comes in as this beautiful motion where I like to talk about insights as we are the part of our content strategy that speaks to the world around the Ic rather than the Ic themselves.
Peter [0:04:17]: So I am not here to sell you on why Card as the best cap table.
Peter [0:04:21]: We are, but I don't need to tell you that.
Peter [0:04:24]: What I need to tell you is when you're walking into that meeting with a Series a of venture capitalist.
Peter [0:04:28]: Here's the data that they're working from, You can have that same data so that you walk in with great ideas about evaluation, dilution, etcetera.
Peter [0:04:36]: I don't care if you're a card a customer or not.
Peter [0:04:38]: I want you to be better armed with data in that meeting.
Peter [0:04:41]: There's a magic that comes from being that customer aligned.
Erik [0:04:45]: I love this philosophy.
Erik [0:04:46]: It's obviously one that we believe in as well.
Erik [0:04:48]: Yeah.
Erik [0:04:49]: There's a lot of roads we could go down here, maybe to zoom out for context as well.
Erik [0:04:53]: So that's the philosophy, which I love.
Erik [0:04:57]: And we can go into some more discussion about while it's not maybe a lead generation target that you're held to, which I think is unique and great.
Erik [0:05:06]: There probably are some Kpis and metrics and measurements of success that you are looking at, so we can talk about what those are.
Erik [0:05:13]: But could you share what the content sort of motion or pillars look like for you.
Erik [0:05:19]: So obviously, you are very active on Linkedin?
Erik [0:05:22]: Personally, you've built a large following there.
Erik [0:05:25]: You're posting multiple times per week with great engagement, great impressions, all of that stuff.
Erik [0:05:31]: You've got a newsletter and then a podcast as well.
Erik [0:05:36]: And then maybe there's some other things.
Erik [0:05:38]: But, yeah, can you just break down kinda what those are and the sizes of them or what kind of trajectory those have gotten to while you've been executing them?
Erik [0:05:46]: Sure.
Peter [0:05:47]: Yeah.
Peter [0:05:47]: So taking even you a broader step back.
Peter [0:05:49]: Card marketing as a whole, Data is only just one pillar of the card marketing strategy.
Peter [0:05:53]: Obviously, we do a lot of stuff.
Peter [0:05:55]: A lot of that is content.
Peter [0:05:56]: So I don't wanna sit here and say that you are sort of more traditional Seo focused, deep explain pieces like all of that stuff really matters too.
Peter [0:06:05]: With do a lot of around calculators and leave behind and, like, all the traditional content playbook are still in effect.
Peter [0:06:14]: We've just kind of layered in this data insights motion on top of them.
Peter [0:06:18]: And so insights for a bare bones explanation is we talk about the data that we aggregate and from the customers on the platform.
Peter [0:06:28]: So it is a proprietary data asset that we are mining for interesting stories.
Peter [0:06:33]: And as you said, we are doing that.
Peter [0:06:36]: Multiple times a week.
Peter [0:06:37]: I mean, at this point, I'm posting on Linkedin at least five times a week.
Peter [0:06:41]: So imagine you needed to find a new interesting chart from your own dataset set every single day.
Peter [0:06:48]: That's the motion that we've created.
Peter [0:06:50]: And there's been examples of data content in this way before, you know, gong is a good example back in the day, where it was like, sales close three percent more deals when they swear and all that kind of stuff.
Peter [0:07:02]: That's fun.
Peter [0:07:03]: It's exciting.
Peter [0:07:03]: I I love it.
Peter [0:07:04]: The difference for us, I think is twofold fold One, The content is less about this, like, state of an annual report and much more...
Peter [0:07:15]: Always on.
Peter [0:07:16]: So can you create ten times more content that is all of the high quality.
Peter [0:07:21]: And then the...
Peter [0:07:23]: And so you need a system to do that.
Peter [0:07:24]: You can't just wake up every morning and, like, build charts.
Peter [0:07:26]: The second is that this motion is much more, like, deeply embedded within part of marketing as a whole.
Peter [0:07:34]: So as you mentioned, there are tons of channels that this comes out on.
Peter [0:07:38]: Linkedin is perhaps the...
Peter [0:07:40]: We don't consider it.
Peter [0:07:42]: The best channel we consider it the first channel.
Peter [0:07:44]: So it is the place where we experiment.
Peter [0:07:48]: We show different kinds of cuts of data.
Peter [0:07:50]: We get a lot of zero click attention.
Peter [0:07:53]: So all of, like, my stuff on Linkedin is a chart with a graphic, headlines, etcetera around it, all the card logos, and I know for a fact that many, many of those charts are screenshot and dropped into a Whatsapp group with founders, etcetera.
Peter [0:08:07]: And I don't get credit for that And that's good.
Peter [0:08:10]: I don't care that that didn't have a Ut link.
Peter [0:08:13]: I want founders talking about Carta.
Peter [0:08:15]: That's the whole link.
Peter [0:08:17]: I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people make here is that they need to somehow always attribute credit.
Peter [0:08:23]: I would say ignore attribution for this motion, trust that what you're doing is getting out to your audience and you will know in a lot of different ways.
Peter [0:08:31]: But that's not the point of it.
Peter [0:08:34]: The point is ubi equity and reach.
Peter [0:08:35]: So Linkedin is one channel.
Peter [0:08:37]: You mentioned the podcast is another.
Peter [0:08:39]: We have a newsletter, a little bit about how those work.
Peter [0:08:42]: It's a pretty standard rented to owned to monetize audience strategy.
Peter [0:08:47]: So rented is social networks.
Peter [0:08:49]: The goal there is ubi equity and reach to grow personal audience on my platform to grow ka social audience, and then eventually to transmit those people who are interested in our stuff on social to becoming subscribers of our data content.
Peter [0:09:04]: That's the newsletter, which is now nearly forty thousand subscribers.
Peter [0:09:08]: That's podcast subscribers and podcast listeners.
Peter [0:09:11]: That's attendees to virtual events about data.
Peter [0:09:15]: There's a lot of ways to get, sort of hooked in into our data ecosystem.
Peter [0:09:19]: But again, crucially, just because you subscribe to my data newsletter does not mean that you get an email from Car sales team next week.
Erik [0:09:29]: Yeah.
Peter [0:09:30]: Means you get an email from me about more needed content.
Peter [0:09:32]: It is not like a pitch slap where it's like, great.
Peter [0:09:35]: We got you in.
Peter [0:09:36]: Now we're gonna hit you with all this stuff.
Peter [0:09:37]: You become a hand razor through that motion.
Peter [0:09:40]: So an example here is imagine you're a B2B marketer, you're hosting a webinar.
Peter [0:09:45]: You probably have an email list that you blast out to get attendees to that webinar.
Peter [0:09:49]: It...
Peter [0:09:50]: That's be honest, it doesn't can work very well.
Peter [0:09:53]: Most of the time, percentages one tenth of a percent or whatever you're sending to...
Peter [0:09:57]: Like it's pretty low numbers.
Peter [0:09:58]: If instead, you are running a webinar, and I blast that same email out to my data newsletter subscribers, my conversion rate I'm getting them to attend those kind of events is like ten because they're already opted into.
Peter [0:10:11]: This is the kind of content I want from you.
Peter [0:10:12]: And then in those virtual events, they might give us a little bit more information about themselves, we can learn where they are in the journey, like, it naturally flows to nurture along the way.
Peter [0:10:22]: But the move from a rented audience on social.
Peter [0:10:25]: To an owned audience as a data subscriber to a card customer is a pretty clear pathway and and candidly, a lot of them are already card customers and they're just there to learn, which is great.
Erik [0:10:37]: Yeah.
Erik [0:10:37]: Absolutely.
Erik [0:10:38]: There's a lot We could go down for this as well.
Erik [0:10:41]: So where I'd like to start is could you unpack a little bit what this process looks like because this sounds like to me a very well oiled machine that you all have?
Erik [0:10:56]: I'm sure it's still not easy to execute.
Erik [0:10:58]: But...
Erik [0:10:59]: Yeah.
Peter [0:10:59]: There are fires.
Peter [0:11:00]: Every day.
Peter [0:11:00]: So there's...
Peter [0:11:01]: I what painted is as though we've figured everything out.
Erik [0:11:04]: Right.
Erik [0:11:04]: For sure.
Erik [0:11:04]: But you've got a system at least.
Erik [0:11:06]: And so, yeah, Maybe you could describe what does the team look like to execute this in that process a little bit.
Peter [0:11:12]: Sure thing.
Peter [0:11:13]: So this is the thing that I'm most proud of at Cord.
Peter [0:11:16]: You know, when you come into an idea like this.
Peter [0:11:18]: The point is, okay.
Peter [0:11:20]: We could create a bunch of content.
Peter [0:11:21]: Everyone is creating content, and a lot of times that sits within an editorial team, or a content team more broadly and it's Seo focused or supporting a sales motion or whatever.
Peter [0:11:32]: Data is you can think of it as, like, a thought leadership motion within content strategy.
Peter [0:11:36]: But the data itself is the key So could every company me to be run this motion, probably not, but a lot of them could because they're sitting on a really cool and interesting data assets.
Peter [0:11:48]: I have personally helped a dozen teams try to set up little insights teams now because it's such a customer aligned thing.
Peter [0:11:55]: What do you need to set this up?
Peter [0:11:57]: You don't need a ton of people.
Peter [0:11:58]: The insights team right now, a card is three, including myself, but for the first two years was just me.
Peter [0:12:04]: So it can be pretty small in terms of total head count.
Peter [0:12:08]: What you need is the the basic processes, we have a proprietary data asset.
Peter [0:12:14]: Our business creates data, and that data is useful to customers prospects interested people.
Peter [0:12:20]: So on card side, that looks like we are the cap table management software.
Peter [0:12:24]: So every time a founder raises around, we know the valuation of that round, but we know how much equity they sold.
Peter [0:12:30]: We know the amount that they raised, and we can go back to the ecosystem and savings things like, the median series a round for Ai startups today is blank.
Peter [0:12:39]: That's very useful for founders so that when they're walking into a deal with a Vc, they know what the market looks like.
Peter [0:12:46]: That's a basic example.
Peter [0:12:47]: How do we get that data from existing in some data warehouse somewhere to a nice, easily shareable, well crafted chart.
Peter [0:12:55]: That's what the system is about doing.
Peter [0:12:57]: So you need to be able to write Sequel?
Peter [0:13:01]: Or someone on the team needs to be able to write sql so you can query your database, then you need to build charts, then you need to write about the stuff.
Peter [0:13:09]: So it's three parts, data querying, chart building writing.
Peter [0:13:13]: Ideally, that's in the same person because...
Peter [0:13:15]: The people who can build the insights themselves and talk about them are more valuable than if you have to do a conveyor belt between those things.
Peter [0:13:24]: So...
Peter [0:13:25]: And the reason is I can get on a podcast or I can get up on stage on a an event.
Peter [0:13:30]: And talk about the data really, really closely because I've built it.
Peter [0:13:34]: Know what I'm talking about.
Peter [0:13:36]: That is a major advantage.
Peter [0:13:38]: And then it comes to the systematic part of that.
Peter [0:13:41]: So you could imagine a person waking up every day going to the database, pulling stuff.
Peter [0:13:46]: Like, you're not getting any the economies of scale when you do that.
Peter [0:13:49]: Where we've built at Carta is a system using we, you know, our platforms are snowflake on the data management side to Tableau as our Vi tool to Fig as where we build the final graphics and then writing.
Peter [0:14:02]: All of that, like, I had two Kpis when I came in the cart.
Peter [0:14:06]: The first was how many people writ large, can we get interested in this data content?
Peter [0:14:11]: And the second, and to me almost more important one was how much can we decrease the time it takes to create one good looking graphic?
Peter [0:14:21]: So we call that cycle time?
Peter [0:14:23]: Cycle time that Carta when I first came in here, it used to take me an hour and a half to create one good looking piece of content graphic.
Peter [0:14:29]: Now we can do it in ten minutes or less.
Peter [0:14:31]: So that change, and it comes from the system workflow automations, pull even interesting ways, etcetera.
Peter [0:14:37]: That just gives you so many more opportunities to build good looking stuff.
Peter [0:14:42]: And so it kind of feels like, oh, wow, Card is everywhere with all this data stuff.
Peter [0:14:45]: That was an intentional strategy to be able to always be present with new and interest in content.
Erik [0:14:52]: And where does the origin of what dataset might be interesting to pull at any given time?
Erik [0:14:59]: Are you gathering audience insights or feedback that help you know what direction to even explore Or, yeah, How does that look?
Peter [0:15:08]: Totally this is the part where Linkedin becomes incredibly valuable because the natural inclination for someone to come into this role would probably be something like, okay?
Peter [0:15:17]: I have all this data.
Peter [0:15:18]: The first thing I should do with it is create a big annual report.
Peter [0:15:23]: So a big quarterly report.
Erik [0:15:24]: Yep.
Erik [0:15:24]: State of something like that.
Peter [0:15:27]: And we grew at state of private markets.
Peter [0:15:28]: We release it every quarter all that kind of stuff is great.
Peter [0:15:30]: I would actually say that that inclination though is misplaced because the best thing you can do is create one good looking chart and put it out and keep putting it out.
Peter [0:15:41]: Because the beauty of Linkedin is that one, you get basically one shot a day.
Peter [0:15:47]: So it's not like x where it's like, the algorithm is demanding of you every fifteen minutes, you know, There are some social platforms that are just ins.
Peter [0:15:54]: Linkedin is pretty.
Peter [0:15:56]: You know, you really get one shot today, which is great.
Peter [0:15:59]: Two, you have such an immediate feedback loop with people.
Peter [0:16:03]: So I'll post something.
Peter [0:16:04]: I get a ton of comments.
Peter [0:16:05]: From those comments, I get four or five ideas of new things to post.
Peter [0:16:09]: I have a word doc that is hundreds of ideas long of new data cuts to post, and most of those have come from comment who said, I love this.
Peter [0:16:19]: I'd love to see it for my industry.
Peter [0:16:21]: I'd love to see it for the Midwest instead of the West Coast.
Peter [0:16:24]: This is interesting, but, like, my team was actually debating an adjacent topic.
Peter [0:16:28]: Why?
Peter [0:16:29]: Here's that topic.
Peter [0:16:29]: You be your shot at how much how many ideas just come from the general responses, so the comments are just absolutely right to us.
Peter [0:16:40]: The hidden benefit if you make that social, the first platform, not the best, but the first is that you can commit yourself to consistency and iteration.
Peter [0:16:50]: For the first eighteen months at Carta, I had a meeting on my calendar from eight to eight forty five in the morning that said, make something.
Peter [0:16:57]: That process that consistency and practice of building things figuring out how to visualize it correctly?
Peter [0:17:06]: What's gonna be the most engaging way to talk about this subject.
Peter [0:17:08]: All of that makes our reports better, and makes start internal decks better, and makes...
Peter [0:17:14]: Our podcast better, and it comes from always being in the data and just thinking through this stuff all the time.
Erik [0:17:22]: I'm such a believer in content with the approach of perfection through iteration?
Erik [0:17:27]: Because you probably when you first started this, you had a theory or hypothesis of how it could look the approach you could take, the angle you could take and then the results it might generate.
Erik [0:17:38]: But I have a feeling since then, you maybe not have had fifty or seventy five percent changing course, but some percentage change along the way that even a small percentage change can make all the difference can literally 10x x the results, and the only way to usually get that is just shots on goal, of that consistent engine, getting feedback in the comments.
Erik [0:18:03]: I mean, a lack of results is also is also feedback that you have to look at.
Erik [0:18:09]: And that's...
Erik [0:18:09]: Sometimes that could be tricky because especially when you're really getting it started.
Erik [0:18:13]: Let's say you're just starting for me, for example, eighteen months ago, I started taking Linkedin personally really seriously as well, and I committed to posting one time per day.
Erik [0:18:22]: But it takes a while to actually really start getting momentum with it.
Erik [0:18:26]: So you do kind of have to balance, like, is this trending the right direction overall?
Erik [0:18:32]: Or do I need to change direction?
Erik [0:18:35]: And I'd be curious about what your take is on that?
Erik [0:18:39]: How have you refined this Because one of your Kpis was effectively audience size, essentially, like, that reach, we want Part to be everywhere.
Erik [0:18:49]: We wanted to touch as many people in this space as possible.
Erik [0:18:52]: So with that, the content needs to power that effectively.
Erik [0:18:57]: So, yeah, What methods have you taken to continue to refine it so that you like continue to grow the the audience.
Peter [0:19:06]: You hit on so interesting things.
Peter [0:19:07]: The first is and I maybe should have made this more clear.
Peter [0:19:11]: It's gonna suck for a while.
Peter [0:19:12]: There's no version of this or out of the box.
Peter [0:19:17]: You get millions of impressions and you just caught my voice on Linkedin etcetera.
Peter [0:19:21]: Like, I know it sometimes looks that way.
Peter [0:19:24]: But again, when I first got into na carta, we were only posting from a company account on this stuff for the first nine months, which was the wrong approach.
Peter [0:19:31]: It needs to be a person.
Peter [0:19:33]: There's so much value in having a person behind the messaging if you're a tiny startup up, by the way, that person should be or founder because founder led marketing is really really key in those early days.
Peter [0:19:45]: But even if you're big enough to scale that, then you still need a human being behind it.
Peter [0:19:50]: You can answer comments differently.
Peter [0:19:51]: You can answer Dms differently.
Peter [0:19:52]: You get invitations.
Peter [0:19:54]: Where doesn't get invitation to speak at keynote id, and that's great for the business.
Peter [0:19:59]: A lot of it.
Peter [0:20:01]: We can talk about personal branding and all that kind of stuff.
Peter [0:20:03]: But you asked about refining the content Yeah.
Peter [0:20:06]: One, a lot of it's just gonna miss, and that's okay.
Peter [0:20:09]: That's the beauty of the everyday kinda of thing.
Peter [0:20:11]: It's like, cool.
Peter [0:20:12]: I get to do this again tomorrow and nobody one even cared.
Peter [0:20:14]: Two, in that rough period in that trough of dis when you're sad about no one reading your content.
Peter [0:20:21]: You can still hold on to this other Kpi, which is am I getting better and faster at making?
Erik [0:20:29]: Love that.
Peter [0:20:30]: Which in some ways is even more valuable than are a lot of people reading it at the beginning, And at a time people start reading it, I then can match their interest with my own content velocity, which is really useful.
Peter [0:20:41]: Then the third thing is there are so many advantages, so many tails to this kind of program that are not specifically...
Peter [0:20:51]: We got a lot of attention on social.
Peter [0:20:53]: So I am...
Peter [0:20:55]: I would say useful to Carta as an evangelist for the business.
Peter [0:20:59]: But I'm also useful internally we create state of the market decks for our sales teams for our customer success teams.
Peter [0:21:07]: We help talk through, like, our CEO speeches.
Peter [0:21:11]: We our Bd teams are often.
Peter [0:21:14]: So Card obviously serves founders and investors, but we every single day.
Peter [0:21:19]: We're talking to lawyers because all the law firms and Silicon Valley help those founders, etcetera.
Peter [0:21:23]: So we'll go to munch and learns with lawyers about what is going on in the market, deal terms and added to them.
Peter [0:21:28]: You can be used this expertise in personal and non social avenues.
Peter [0:21:33]: That are still very valuable for the business.
Peter [0:21:35]: So I think that's one of the advantages of insights as an idea is that you don't have to be crushing it on a social platform in order for it to show value to the rest of the organization.
Erik [0:21:48]: Yeah.
Erik [0:21:48]: Absolutely.
Erik [0:21:49]: At this point?
Erik [0:21:50]: So you mentioned early on those two Kpis, audience size, cycle time.
Erik [0:21:54]: Is that still what you're looking at either yourself what the rest of the leadership team is looking at.
Erik [0:22:01]: What is the insights engine producing for us in a way that that we can measure it.
Erik [0:22:07]: Is that still the same too or any others?
Peter [0:22:10]: Yeah.
Peter [0:22:10]: So on the measurement side, I was maybe a little flip there at the beginning when I'm said.
Peter [0:22:14]: I've never held to a lead generation, but we still track a ton of stuff.
Peter [0:22:18]: You're tracking all the standard metrics, impressions, engagements, follower accounts, etcetera on the social side.
Peter [0:22:23]: We track a metric called data subscribers, which is people attend our virtual events on data, people who subscribe to the newsletter, people who subscribe to the podcasts combined.
Peter [0:22:33]: And those people have our hand razors.
Peter [0:22:36]: They have said, yes, I'm interested in this content, and yes, I wanna hear from you on a regular basis.
Peter [0:22:41]: Those are great interested people.
Peter [0:22:43]: The other thing that we are tracking, which is a little bit newer, but I think actually even more crucial to me is inbound Dms.
Peter [0:22:51]: And so Dms on Linkedin emails to the data team, email...
Peter [0:22:57]: Personal emails about data questions, x dms comments on Youtube pages like, anytime where someone is reaching out to you specifically and going, hey, I really liked this post, do you have it for b or c or can you come and get share this with my team on this date?
Peter [0:23:14]: All of those like, getting into the bloodstream of venture is the thing that we want.
Peter [0:23:19]: So traffic that you're...
Peter [0:23:20]: I think we...
Peter [0:23:21]: In twenty twenty four, we were at over fifty five hundred inbound requests for data.
Peter [0:23:27]: Mh.
Peter [0:23:28]: Which is exactly where we wanna be.
Peter [0:23:30]: Just it's another idea, like, this data is making impact to our customers protect, etcetera?
Erik [0:23:35]: Wow.
Erik [0:23:35]: Is that private?
Erik [0:23:36]: Like, they're asking you for a specific use case for data, just for them, like, within the Dm type of thing?
Peter [0:23:44]: Totally.
Peter [0:23:44]: Or they're asking, hey, can one of your insights team members come and speak at our annual general meeting or investors or whatever it is.
Peter [0:23:50]: And then we can talk about the speaking aspects and the way that this works with P r and earned media and other tail insights.
Peter [0:23:56]: This is great.
Peter [0:23:57]: The last point is that, if you are starting this program and you're, like, Peter, that's cool.
Peter [0:24:01]: Whatever, man, but you I need to prove value.
Peter [0:24:04]: Right?
Peter [0:24:04]: I need to have this.
Peter [0:24:06]: The one thing that I would say to do is the easiest possible thing, which is just add insights or whoever's is gonna do your insights as an option in me, how did you hear about a survey after an request.
Peter [0:24:18]: As long as you are a growing portion of those people, you're doing something right, I'm vehemently against and we could talk about linking strategy and stuff.
Peter [0:24:27]: The Ut of everything and putting links in social posts is the exact opposite thing of what you wanna be doing.
Peter [0:24:35]: Yeah, you are by default destroying your own reach in order to claim credit for something.
Peter [0:24:42]: I don't link in, basically, any social post I put out.
Peter [0:24:45]: If I do, it's two hours after it's out, and I go back and edit the post and put a link in there.
Peter [0:24:50]: Do not put things out with links in them unless you want fewer people to read your stuff.
Peter [0:24:55]: That's basics.
Erik [0:24:56]: Completely agree.
Erik [0:24:57]: And I think it's...
Erik [0:24:58]: Sometimes we forget about our own behavior when we're setting these things up.
Erik [0:25:03]: It's like, how often are you in twenty twenty five on Linkedin, clicking like, a direct conversion link and then inbound immediately from that link.
Erik [0:25:14]: Probably very infrequently.
Erik [0:25:16]: What you're likely doing is, like, hitting follow on that account, following that person for a period of weeks or months.
Erik [0:25:23]: And then when you real...
Erik [0:25:24]: At some point, there's maybe a tipping point, either that's because something changed in your business and you now need that thing.
Erik [0:25:31]: Or you have now built enough trust in that person or that team such that you're like, actually, I need to check them out because they got good stuff, and I believe in their methodology or philosophy or whatever.
Erik [0:25:42]: But then they're not...
Erik [0:25:43]: Still not gonna click any link within that platform.
Erik [0:25:46]: They'll just go to Google and type in Carta.
Erik [0:25:47]: And so, yeah.
Erik [0:25:49]: I feel like we can sometimes forget our own behavior when we then set up what measurement should look like on this stuff.
Erik [0:25:55]: And I kind of believe now the easiest marketing to measure in twenty twenty five.
Erik [0:26:01]: I'm not gonna make a blanket statement.
Erik [0:26:03]: Very often is the worst or least effective form of marketing in twenty twenty five.
Erik [0:26:08]: And so you all, obviously very much believe in this based on the structure of how you guys set up the insights team.
Erik [0:26:15]: And I'm hoping this can inspire, like, some other teams and give them a playbook for how this can actually be successful.
Erik [0:26:21]: With that in mind, four teams who, let's say would like to get this off the ground.
Erik [0:26:28]: We can maybe take this from two approaches.
Erik [0:26:29]: One, they do have proprietary data that they could pull from.
Erik [0:26:34]: They just haven't yet.
Erik [0:26:35]: Or maybe they've done a state of, like, one annual state of report or something like that.
Erik [0:26:40]: And let's say they've got one person on the team who can dedicate to this.
Erik [0:26:44]: What would be your Mvp, like, get this from zero to one.
Erik [0:26:48]: And then obviously, from there, it's, like, perfection through iteration, like you all did, something I'd also be curious what your take is on teams who don't necessarily have a large amount or any proprietary data, and can they use a strategy like this either with or...
Erik [0:27:06]: Yeah, I would definitely without data, they could still execute a content strategy like this overall.
Erik [0:27:12]: You just have to figure out what your topics and angles are.
Erik [0:27:14]: But maybe from the data angle, yeah.
Erik [0:27:16]: So both of those, if they have proprietary data and if they don't, how would you advise or counsel somebody to get this off the ground.
Peter [0:27:23]: So this is a person maybe to be more specific, a person had a series a or series b startup up that has proprietary data.
Peter [0:27:31]: And that proprietary data, by the way, when I was coming into card I I had a list of five companies that I thought had amazing data assets.
Peter [0:27:38]: I was definitely choosing the best one.
Peter [0:27:40]: I had said in a privileged position.
Peter [0:27:42]: Right?
Peter [0:27:42]: Card has an amazing dataset.
Peter [0:27:43]: But a lot of companies have by din of their products generated a data set that people care about.
Peter [0:27:51]: So an example.
Peter [0:27:52]: If you are working, and I know that there's a lot of these out there right now at a Ai company that is doing document extraction.
Peter [0:27:58]: Right?
Peter [0:27:59]: So, hey, our company helps you read legal documents and figure out what to do with them.
Peter [0:28:03]: By din of that product, if you have enough customers, you're gonna generate some really fascinating datasets.
Peter [0:28:09]: What clauses and contracts are the most negotiated.
Peter [0:28:12]: What ones do founders or investors in this startup case feel are the most important how do they change depending on the industry of the company, all sorts of cool and interesting stuff.
Peter [0:28:23]: Now we just talk about the people.
Peter [0:28:24]: There's kinda two schools of thought here.
Peter [0:28:27]: Either you take a data scientist and you teach them how to be a marketer.
Peter [0:28:31]: Right?
Peter [0:28:32]: So you you say, you're gonna be a bit of a public face.
Peter [0:28:35]: You're gonna try to be on there all the time.
Peter [0:28:37]: You're gonna need to write.
Peter [0:28:38]: Right?
Peter [0:28:39]: We know you can call the data, but can you write?
Peter [0:28:41]: Can you engage?
Peter [0:28:42]: Or You teach a data savvy marketer how to pull data for real.
Peter [0:28:48]: Whenever possible, I would default to who builds the best charts.
Peter [0:28:53]: This sounds silly, I'm like a data biz nerd, I care very deeply about charts.
Peter [0:29:00]: That means that anytime I spend building charts is never wasted for me.
Peter [0:29:05]: I'm just getting better at this thing that I wanna be really spiky yet.
Peter [0:29:08]: And then the writing comes slightly more naturally.
Peter [0:29:11]: In the writing, you always have to find your voice and there's gonna be iteration on that too.
Peter [0:29:15]: So I often think it's easier to teach a really interested, curious marketer how to pull great charts than it is to teach a data scientist how to be a public person.
Peter [0:29:24]: That would be my instinct, but, of course, it's gonna differ by by persona.
Peter [0:29:29]: So that person should start by doing maybe thirty, sixty ninety, thirty days.
Peter [0:29:34]: Understand the dataset set, understand how to poll, start building charts.
Peter [0:29:38]: Thirty to sixty days, start publishing some of those charts in your social before you do that, set up a place for them to go.
Peter [0:29:46]: Say, hey.
Peter [0:29:47]: Did do you see it in every single one of our graphics, which is subscribe for more data, Carta dot com slash data.
Peter [0:29:53]: So have a place on the lane on your website, make it as short a Url as possible, and then try to get that Url clickable or not clickable into as many places as possible.
Peter [0:30:03]: And then third, provide regular value to the people who signed up.
Peter [0:30:09]: That could be a weekly newsletter where you dig into something more deeply.
Peter [0:30:13]: That could be a weekly newsletter where you...
Peter [0:30:16]: Yeah.
Peter [0:30:16]: It has some data that you have, but it's also like, a curated what's going on in this world.
Peter [0:30:22]: So it could be, like, Again, if we take that document an extraction an example, it could be...
Peter [0:30:26]: Here's how big law is using Ai.
Peter [0:30:28]: Blah blah blah.
Peter [0:30:29]: Right?
Peter [0:30:30]: It doesn't have to just be data content in that subscriber newsletter, but you do want an editorial newsletter of some kind.
Peter [0:30:38]: Where you're not selling, you're just continuing to provide value.
Peter [0:30:41]: I think more companies should think of their newsletters as not places to pitch product, but places deep in a relationship.
Peter [0:30:50]: If you subscribe to a subs, why do you subscribe to that subs stack?
Peter [0:30:54]: And then imagine what you can do as a company to get to that love?
Peter [0:30:57]: Oh, pause there.
Peter [0:30:58]: But that's the person who has data?
Peter [0:31:00]: That's how I would go back.
Erik [0:31:02]: Love that.
Erik [0:31:02]: And I think it's probably one thing I'll mention on that.
Erik [0:31:05]: And you didn't say this, but I would have to imagine this to be the case.
Erik [0:31:09]: You probably could start with this person maybe having other parts of their role that they still are responsible for.
Erik [0:31:20]: But I would imagine it would be advisable to have scoped in that strategy that, like, the intention is to get that person full time on this execution, and but you don't necessarily have to start there.
Erik [0:31:36]: Do you agree with that?
Peter [0:31:38]: Definitely.
Peter [0:31:38]: I think that it's...
Peter [0:31:39]: It obviously depends on res sourcing at the company like, is do you have a space for this person.
Peter [0:31:44]: But if this person needs to be, you know, on the data sciences example, they can be doing data plumbing and modeling, etcetera, as their day job and then they set aside a couple hours a week to build content.
Peter [0:31:55]: That's great.
Peter [0:31:56]: Like, it doesn't need to be someone's cool job at the beginning for sure.
Erik [0:31:59]: Love it.
Erik [0:31:59]: Cool.
Erik [0:32:00]: And then, yeah, what do you say to the teams who don't necessarily have any proprietary data.
Erik [0:32:06]: How could they use its strategy as well?
Peter [0:32:09]: They can.
Peter [0:32:10]: Obviously, there will be changes to it.
Peter [0:32:12]: But if we go back to the reason why this thing exists, which is Can you give yourself a way to talk to your prospects and customers about their world without mentioning your product?
Peter [0:32:24]: That is the goal of insights is to live in the space where your Ic lives?
Peter [0:32:30]: Without having to mention your product.
Peter [0:32:32]: And we do it through data.
Peter [0:32:34]: If you just use that as an abstraction, though, you could do it with other people's data.
Peter [0:32:38]: So for instance, if you have a startup that is in the shipping and logistics space.
Peter [0:32:45]: There's a ton of data out there from, you know, global agencies from consult, from economics, teams, etcetera, where they go through, like, what is happening with trade?
Peter [0:32:57]: I'm sure that that data is really interesting and probably lives tired old Pdfs that nobody reads.
Peter [0:33:04]: You can read them.
Peter [0:33:05]: And then you can very carefully take that data out, build your own charts.
Peter [0:33:10]: Be very specific in credit the people always be upfront with credit.
Peter [0:33:15]: Like, there is nothing worse than hiding a, how many data points you used and b where it came from.
Peter [0:33:21]: If you see our graphics, every single one of them has a data line at the top that says, Here's the data and here's where It came from.
Peter [0:33:28]: Be open and always about that.
Peter [0:33:30]: And then so but you can play this curation strategy.
Peter [0:33:32]: You can say, oh, really cool report from Flex recently that talked about, like, the backlog of shipping containers at all these ports.
Peter [0:33:40]: And they need to have a bar chart that shows, like, shipping, container backlog getting bigger and bigger.
Peter [0:33:45]: Here's the things that we're seeing or we talk to eight prospects about the problems with this.
Peter [0:33:49]: You use the data as sort of the jumping off point towards bigger discussions and thought leadership.
Peter [0:33:55]: But...
Peter [0:33:56]: I think that curation strategy, it's not gonna give you the same level of frequency because it's a harder motion, but again get you started, and then hopefully, you can ladder into your own proprietary data pretty soon.
Peter [0:34:10]: So, again, I don't think insight is for every B2B team, but I do think it's for a lot.
Erik [0:34:15]: Yeah.
Erik [0:34:15]: And that could also serve just this data slash insights component could serve as one core pillar of the content strategy.
Erik [0:34:23]: And so maybe the frequency isn't as high, but since it's only one pillar of your angle to content?
Erik [0:34:29]: It doesn't need to be, at least until you can maybe generate your own or what have you.
Erik [0:34:34]: But one reason I love this overall is this concept of share ability?
Erik [0:34:38]: So it's a recent example of this was a guy named Saw Bloom.
Erik [0:34:44]: He's big on Twitter, big newsletter writes about business life, all that kind of stuff.
Erik [0:34:50]: He recently wrote a book.
Erik [0:34:51]: I think it was called the five stages of wealth or something like that.
Erik [0:34:54]: And inside the book, what I was seeing, he had a launch and launch marketing strategy.
Erik [0:35:01]: I saw a lot of people talking about the book afterwards, but what I mostly saw where people doing instagram posts or x post or Linkedin post with a graph or chart.
Erik [0:35:13]: If he littered the book in a good way.
Erik [0:35:16]: With these proprietary...
Erik [0:35:17]: Actually wasn't proprietary.
Erik [0:35:19]: It was actually the curation aspect, I think.
Peter [0:35:23]: Yeah.
Peter [0:35:23]: He he used, like, a...
Peter [0:35:24]: Our world even data time survey.
Erik [0:35:27]: Exactly.
Erik [0:35:27]: But then he just curated it all into what the point of his book was.
Erik [0:35:32]: The share ability of that I saw after and, like, the impressions he he was able to get from that?
Erik [0:35:38]: It's like, what's easier to share a book page with a wall of text or a book page with a graph that people can write their own caption interpretation on.
Erik [0:35:48]: They take a picture.
Erik [0:35:49]: Maybe they posted on Instagram or maybe they just text it to their friend group in Sms or all the different chat apps, you know what have you.
Erik [0:35:58]: So I love this is just so inherently shareable.
Erik [0:36:01]: And getting somebody to click share on one of the social apps.
Erik [0:36:06]: If we just talk about, like, social...
Erik [0:36:08]: I don't wanna say gamification, but what the algorithm likes to see, they want people to hit those share buttons, and they're gonna reward you in your profile and your engagement and who they send your content to more and more and more and more because that could not be a stronger signal to them that people like your content.
Peter [0:36:29]: Exactly right.
Peter [0:36:29]: You know, we have a pi little timeline, which is say it in a chart.
Peter [0:36:32]: Yeah.
Peter [0:36:33]: Say it in the chart.
Erik [0:36:35]: Pictures worth a thousand words.
Peter [0:36:37]: All can.
Peter [0:36:37]: Yeah.
Peter [0:36:37]: But even more than a picture, a chart is worth ten thousand words because because one, most people are not...
Peter [0:36:45]: Data savvy enough to pull out narratives from spreadsheet.
Peter [0:36:49]: It's really hard to think in terms of spreadsheet with columns and Rows.
Peter [0:36:53]: It's very easy to think in terms of charts.
Peter [0:36:55]: And so like, charts are immediately intel to many, many many more people, and they make your point for you.
Peter [0:37:03]: And this is...
Peter [0:37:03]: We can get into, like, a little bit of how to build a great chart.
Erik [0:37:06]: Yeah.
Erik [0:37:06]: That's do.
Peter [0:37:07]: One of the things that I see all the time that as it gap for marketers to fix is we go back to an example of this, like, old tired report from a Mckinsey or a Bc g or something.
Peter [0:37:19]: And the the title of the chart is talking about the units of whatever they're building, so, like, dollars, blah blah blah, instead of descriptive.
Peter [0:37:28]: Tell me what it means So, like, when we write a cart chart, we say things like seed valuations plummeting.
Erik [0:37:37]: Yes.
Peter [0:37:37]: We don't say median seed valuation for x y z quarter was blank.
Peter [0:37:41]: You're trying to grab attention.
Peter [0:37:43]: You're trying to give the person within the structure of the chart.
Peter [0:37:45]: The key takeaway so that I often, you know, I do some presentation review internally, and I go, imagine you built a deck full of charts, and you didn't get to present that deck.
Peter [0:37:56]: Somebody else had to present it for you, would they still hit the same points?
Peter [0:38:01]: If not, you didn't build a picture.
Peter [0:38:03]: They...
Peter [0:38:04]: It should be immediately apparent what you're trying to say.
Peter [0:38:06]: And so...
Peter [0:38:07]: And then that adds to the share ability where especially if you can align on what's the feel?
Peter [0:38:12]: What's the font colors.
Peter [0:38:14]: Like, how do we make us a carta chart.
Peter [0:38:16]: And then you just try to see how many times you can get that to pop up in different people's speeds on social, and Whatsapp groups.
Peter [0:38:22]: I know people who take art charts and put them into presentations that they give to their investors, people who take our charts and write, big newsletter think pieces about them.
Peter [0:38:34]: Like, the...
Peter [0:38:35]: And this is a great example for they earned the media side, pitching your startup or your business to reporters is super hard.
Peter [0:38:42]: They don't care.
Peter [0:38:43]: It's like like, stop trying to give you to write about your CEO.
Peter [0:38:46]: There's a thousand things to write about.
Peter [0:38:48]: However, if you follow the ten or fifteen best reporters in your space.
Peter [0:38:53]: And every time they post a story, you dm them, and you go, hey, this is an awesome story, We actually have some data that proves or disc disprove or assists on the topic that you were talking about.
Peter [0:39:05]: Here it is.
Peter [0:39:05]: We'd love to collaborate with you and anytime you have another story in this space.
Peter [0:39:08]: They will come back to you as a data source, and that is...
Peter [0:39:12]: Hugely value.
Peter [0:39:14]: People cite card data in press two or three times a week now.
Peter [0:39:18]: You wanna get into the Wall street Journal, sure you could pitch your CEO until you're red in the face, or you can pitch the data you have that's gonna help them tell a story.
Peter [0:39:27]: One of those is gonna be an easier pitch.
Erik [0:39:30]: So good.
Erik [0:39:30]: And this is that thing of if you're just looking at a specific channel number one and then a specific Kpi.
Erik [0:39:37]: So like, let's say, how many leads did we get from Linkedin from this insights engine.
Erik [0:39:44]: You're missing so much of the full value, the full three sixty value of how this is rising the tide on the entire boat that is carta marketing.
Peter [0:39:57]: I wanna be sympathetic to the marketers who are, like, yeah.
Peter [0:40:01]: That's easy for you to say, Erik and Peter like, cool.
Peter [0:40:05]: Whatever dude, I am being gold on those leads.
Peter [0:40:08]: Right?
Peter [0:40:08]: I hear about stage zeros or in Q or whatever your terminology is And I feel I feel very strongly for those people because it's a lot of businesses.
Peter [0:40:18]: So there's sort of two points to make one, if you're thinking of starting an insights team, the first thing that you should do is have a lot of conversations with your execs.
Peter [0:40:27]: And your legal team and everyone and be like, if we do this and nobody reads anything for the first six months, are we still cool doing.
Peter [0:40:36]: Even if the answer is yes, we wanna try it, but you know in the back of their heads they're gonna pull a plug on it after two months if this isn't working you need to probably not do it, because it will take...
Peter [0:40:45]: Or takes consistency.
Peter [0:40:46]: It takes a while.
Peter [0:40:47]: And the second is, that's a tough pitch.
Peter [0:40:50]: But if you add this little sweetener to it, I think it'll be an easier pitch, which is to say, We are building this in order to broaden the ubi equity of our brand?
Peter [0:40:58]: But if all the value we get out of it is internal for the first six months that's still worth doing.
Peter [0:41:05]: Can I make our sales team better by giving them something to talk about the market with prospects too?
Peter [0:41:10]: Can I make our customers success better?
Peter [0:41:13]: Can I make our executive speech is better?
Peter [0:41:15]: Can I make our business development team better?
Peter [0:41:17]: Can I make our product folks better because we now know a little bit more about what the day to day of this person actually involves?
Peter [0:41:24]: Can you be a resource for the whole company internally even if your content isn't going viral?
Peter [0:41:31]: That's how I I would make the pitch about insights to a company that's a little bit more skeptical.
Erik [0:41:36]: Love that.
Erik [0:41:37]: I love that framing of, the, yeah, the first six months, and I sometimes also relate it to what the budget maybe should be.
Erik [0:41:46]: So instead of trying to make this a moonshot, like, hey.
Erik [0:41:50]: Let's invest a significant portion of our marketing budget immediately into this.
Erik [0:41:56]: Like, we're going from a cold start.
Erik [0:41:58]: That's fairly quote unquote risky.
Erik [0:42:01]: While I believe there's not necessarily at the risk of can this work because that's already proven, but there's a pretty big amount of execution risk there.
Erik [0:42:10]: So how I equate this sometimes is set the budget for this or just content in general at what you would be comfortable spending forever and never stopping.
Erik [0:42:19]: Think of it like your Aws or your stripe bill.
Erik [0:42:22]: It's like, every month, we are okay with spending this for as long as we need to forever.
Erik [0:42:28]: And then once you get more data and feedback back that this is working the way you want, invest a little bit.
Erik [0:42:33]: So maybe you're not comfortable spending a lot.
Erik [0:42:35]: So it's small amount in the beginning.
Erik [0:42:36]: Over time if you start getting momentum with it, then you can invest more more more and kind of approach it from that lens too.
Peter [0:42:44]: I like that approach, especially because the spend in this case is almost always resources in time.
Erik [0:42:51]: Exactly.
Peter [0:42:51]: This is not a paid social motion.
Peter [0:42:53]: We don't boost these posts.
Erik [0:42:55]: Okay.
Erik [0:42:55]: That's what I was gonna ask you.
Erik [0:42:56]: Yeah.
Erik [0:42:56]: If you're running any paid strategy with this.
Peter [0:42:59]: Maybe we did it wrong.
Peter [0:43:00]: Right?
Peter [0:43:00]: I don't wanna say that that's good or bad.
Peter [0:43:01]: Maybe we should be me in at this point.
Peter [0:43:03]: I think it's a bad way to get something off the ground.
Erik [0:43:06]: Agreed.
Peter [0:43:06]: It's a good way to for fuel on something.
Peter [0:43:08]: But if you are starting with zero followers on linkedin.
Peter [0:43:11]: And again, but could not be more specific here, it needs to be coming from a human being.
Peter [0:43:16]: Not harm a company.
Peter [0:43:17]: So someone in your team is gonna be the face.
Peter [0:43:20]: Pick pick that person.
Peter [0:43:22]: Once they start posting once they start generating content on a consistent basis, and it's starting to work, maybe you could pour some paid on top of that or use the data in different ways.
Peter [0:43:33]: In general, I would say don't do that until they're, like, a reasonable size.
Peter [0:43:37]: But the other maybe point around Kpis is it is startups and venture capital where Carta sits, is a pretty uniquely talk bunch on social, it feels like everyone in this world is on social all the time.
Peter [0:43:52]: So this motion works really well with a very talk, very online group of buyers.
Peter [0:43:59]: If you're selling software to accountants, you should not expect, okay, In the first year, we're gonna get to a hundred thousand subscribers.
Peter [0:44:06]: Right?
Peter [0:44:07]: But if you are at four hundred people that are the exact right people to listen to you, it's still worth doing.
Peter [0:44:15]: It's still worth doing?
Peter [0:44:17]: So, like, what is good?
Peter [0:44:19]: What is enough audience, etcetera is very, very dependent on the actual space in which you're working.
Peter [0:44:25]: So don't compare yourself to other people who are, you know, like, ramp, for instance, just set up an insights team.
Peter [0:44:31]: Ramp is gonna get a lot more attention than you are because Ramp has this dataset set and they talk about credit card spending.
Peter [0:44:37]: Like, everyone is the ones the know way.
Peter [0:44:40]: What our business is spending money on.
Peter [0:44:41]: That's a topic for the economy writ large.
Peter [0:44:43]: Your aperture might be much smaller than that and that's okay.
Erik [0:44:47]: Such a good point.
Erik [0:44:47]: Yeah.
Erik [0:44:48]: Because it's very easy to look at Linkedin followers, newsletter subscribers, Youtube views, Youtube subscribers, all those publicly available metrics and see a hundred thousand.
Erik [0:44:59]: Fifty thousand hundred thousand, two hundred thousand.
Erik [0:45:02]: Whatever those numbers are and sort of compare and contrast.
Erik [0:45:06]: But really the question is how big is your TAM?
Erik [0:45:08]: Like, how big is your TAM?
Erik [0:45:10]: Are you selling to ten thousand?
Erik [0:45:11]: Are there ten thousand possible buyers of your software?
Erik [0:45:13]: If there are, then your audience TAM is ten thousand.
Erik [0:45:17]: So, like, if you capture even let's say, ten percent of that.
Erik [0:45:21]: Massive win.
Erik [0:45:22]: Massive win capturing ten percent of your TAM paying attention to your content every single week,
Peter [0:45:28]: Exactly.
Peter [0:45:28]: Imagine everyone who could potentially ever buy your product in a room.
Peter [0:45:32]: And imagine you got to speak to those people every couple days.
Peter [0:45:37]: If you spoke to one percent of them, would that be useful.
Peter [0:45:40]: We spoke to two percent of them, would that be useful?
Peter [0:45:42]: Yeah.
Peter [0:45:43]: Would.
Peter [0:45:43]: If they read something that you wrote every two weeks.
Peter [0:45:46]: That's awesome.
Peter [0:45:47]: That's so good.
Peter [0:45:48]: It's tough to feel that way when you're like, I am talking to Noah.
Peter [0:45:52]: And there is...
Peter [0:45:52]: I gotta say, as a word of advice, there will be a period or at least there was for me where I was making content on Linkedin, and the only people that were talking to me about it was my college group text with just dragging on me.
Peter [0:46:05]: Being, like, this is the lame thing that anyone...
Peter [0:46:08]: Of this group has ever done.
Peter [0:46:09]: And now they talked to me for intros to founders into VCs.
Peter [0:46:12]: Right?
Peter [0:46:13]: So it's You'll get some.
Erik [0:46:15]: Everybody who's had success with content has faced that journey.
Erik [0:46:18]: So you're not alone.
Peter [0:46:21]: Embrace the cringe.
Erik [0:46:22]: Embrace the cringe.
Erik [0:46:22]: That's a good end note.
Erik [0:46:24]: Peter, this was awesome.
Erik [0:46:25]: I'm inspired by this.
Erik [0:46:27]: I think this is...
Erik [0:46:28]: A strategy that honestly not many are using.
Erik [0:46:32]: I think people are using data, mostly though, what I see are, like, the state of type reports.
Erik [0:46:38]: So I like the idea of going even deeper into this as a competitive advantage in content because content formats are getting harder and harder to feel novel.
Erik [0:46:49]: And so I think this is something everybody can do.
Erik [0:46:52]: If you haven't yet, I would recommend everybody to go and check out all of this content that Peter and Carta our creating with the newsletter.
Erik [0:47:01]: What's the Url for people to go and subscribe to it?
Peter [0:47:05]: Yes.
Peter [0:47:05]: It's super easy.
Peter [0:47:06]: Carta dot com slash data.
Peter [0:47:08]: Is where you'll find out of it.
Erik [0:47:10]: Perfect.
Erik [0:47:10]: Yeah.
Erik [0:47:10]: So go check that out so you can actually take a look at what this strategy that we just spent an hour talking about looks like in real life.
Erik [0:47:17]: I'd imagine Linkedin probably the best place to connect with you as well, Peter, But, yeah, anywhere else you'd like to recommend people to to go.
Peter [0:47:24]: No.
Peter [0:47:24]: That's the spot.
Peter [0:47:25]: I am terminally on Linkedin, so you'll find it at for sure.
Erik [0:47:28]: Awesome.
Erik [0:47:28]: This is great.
Erik [0:47:29]: I appreciate it.
Peter [0:47:30]: Yeah.
Peter [0:47:30]: Cheers.