YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Grenier

lines on the record: 76
first: 2022-09-15
most recent: 2022-09-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, just a Twitter aka Grinier and LinkedIn as well as aka Grinier. So yeah, look me up Connect. I'm always open to connecting and chatting with people and I just love digging into problems. So happy to abide.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say if I had to make a bet right now, I think a full time or closer to full-time investing world is what I'd like to lean more towards. But I'm very much a, let's just open up opportunities. And once the right one is in front of me, I'm going to tackle it. And so who knows? I may go back full-time somewhere or whatnot. But right now, like the advising investing coaching kind of hybrid is the term, I think it was Bezod at ReForge used was me as a service is my current world, but I'd be shocked if I eventually don't gravitate towards some kind of foundation because I thrive when I've got a little bit of an anchor.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, thank you. Good question. I'm constantly optimizing this matrix of what am I good at versus what do I love doing? And so what I found is that I just, I really love entrepreneurs and working really closely with entrepreneurs and helping them figure out all of these like funky things that I've been able to see over the last 20 years and maneuver it. And I've worked at a lot of places. And so I'm really good at context changing and helping connect the dots for people. And so a couple ways I've found to be able to do that is advising companies. So working with founders and growth leaders and things like that, and investing.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That it's probably not because you gotten bad at it, right? It's probably because you're just over it, like where you're like, I just don't want to deal with the BS around this. I want to go do the thing that makes my job easier, which again, most of the people that have chosen this career path want their jobs to be harder because it's more fun. It's more interesting. It's more rewarding. And so when you're looking for ways to minimize the challenge or the opportunity, I think that's like a pretty good signal that may be more burnout than just exhaustion. Because if anything, I see the opposite for people that are exhausted, where like they get remotivated by new stuff, by opportunities to go do something different and that kind of stuff.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One that I see the most is adaptability goes down really fast. And this is more me noticing, like I've managed a lot of people and coached a lot of people. And so when I see that from people that I'm working with, I usually immediately bring up. I'm like, look, your openness to change in the business or try new things or going back and trying things that maybe we tried before and didn't work, like has shifted from, oh, here are the flags that we should be aware of, but let's give it a shot to why are we wasting our time? Let's not do this. This just like energy around, like, let's just do the thing we're supposed to do. That to me is just, and I think that's maybe specifically applicable to our environment to like high growth and marketing and product where it's just like, that's just a key ingredient to doing this job well is adaptability and flexibility and exploration. And if you're losing.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm snacking more than I should be, and eating healthy can both help me identify that I'm in those spots, but also just make me feel better. One thing I would say is that the therapist that I found I found through a service that we had at Uber, and I think I was surprised how much stuff is covered by companies in terms of the ability to find a therapist, pay for a therapist or other tools. And so that's one thing is I would suggest like go look through your benefits, your healthcare provider offers a lot of that stuff too. Yeah, those are a handful. Listen to Lenny's podcast.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Waking up, right? Where it's like, Oh, I'm actually learning about meditation, not just learning how to meditate. And that's how my brain likes to do things. I'm like a lifetime learner. I love digging into things. And so that was the first time I actually like, I learned breathing techniques and things like that, but going through that program of waking up was the first time I actually really appreciated when and how and where to do it. I'm still not a everyday meditate person. I now use I'm an investor, so I'm biased, but Aura, A-U-R-A, which is like a marketplace app for it's like some of the other meditation apps, but it's a marketplace. So it's actually like coaches and stuff adding content. So I use that now as needed, which I really enjoy. Like exercise and diet and those types of things definitely tie to it. It's like eating is a pretty clean signal for me or snacking is a really clean signal at least for me of like, okay, this is.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think meditation is a good one. The startup people love to talk about meditation. And so you can find lots of ways to do that. It's kind of evolved for me. So there is It's in that tweet thread, and I can't remember it now. There was a meditation thing that was the first, it almost felt like Noom for me for meditation, where it wasn't just...”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now and those resources can help me get to that solution to get to that answer so that I can figure out, okay, what do I need to do right now? Is it, do I need to actually like take time for myself and dig deeper into these personal things? Do I actually need to change something with the shape of my career, like those types of things?”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about this and like dissect it a little bit. And so again, I'll spend time with my therapist and work with one of the tools in my therapist has given me is to like open up with my friends and have these conversations with my friends. And so now I went from five, six years ago really just having my therapist or my wife to talk about this kind of stuff to I don't know, I have five or six different friends that were massively transparent with each other about this stuff. Because the second I shared any of this with them, they shared it with me. And now we've become like safe places to have those conversations where I can be like, hey, there's this thing going on, you know, like my dad has ALS. And so he's been really sick. And, you know, I've got three kids and I've got jobs and work and money and the market crash. Like, there's so many different things. It's like, okay, let me actually figure out which one of these things is causing this energy right now and having many years of therapy.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, it's almost the hard to describe. But like, I. I personally now can pretty cleanly tell the difference between exhaustion and depression. I'll still show up to work. I'll still execute. I'll still do those types of things. But I'm going to go and take an improv class, it's going to be a blast. I'm going to enjoy it. And I'm going to love it, right? If I'm depressed, I won't go to that improv class. Like I'll just cancel it. You know, I won't go to it. I won't. Or if I go to it, I'll go home immediately. Like one of the things I love about actual improv classes is the community, right? Is the like, hey, let's all go grab a drink now. And this is like a totally different group of people. It's not my family. It's not my, you know, it's not my work people. It's just me, right? And I wouldn't do that, right? And so it's kind of noticing like where else is this impacting to what degree and why like it can help me understand like, oh, there's like what's going on in my life is more often than not, I can then take those feelings and it'll be like, oh, I've felt this way for like three weeks now. I should.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. And so I was working in a world where I was dealing with a lot of politics and a lot of, and I love mentoring people, and I had this massive team of like 150 people that I'm like, I barely know any of them. And so I'm not mentoring people either anymore. And I just got to, I'm like, I'm working so hard on things that I actually don't enjoy. And so I'm like, I'm going to go work on flying cars, which is a whole other podcast. So that was kind of my like, okay, there was burnout in there. I know that was a fact, but like some of those feelings or things that I felt my entire life that I uncovered that I thought was just burnout. I was like, oh, actually, like, that this point in my life, this point in my life, and this point in my life, I felt this way too. And at those points, I wasn't burnt out. And so I actually have deeper work to do here and deeper understanding of myself so that I can actually like maximize my life and enjoy it, right? And because I'm going to keep working to some degree this hard. And yeah.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm having an impact and I'm working with people I like and people respect the work that I do. And that helped me identify that like, oh, I can work just as hard, but I can work smarter. I can work more on the things I have impact on. I can work more with people that actually respect the type of work that I'm doing. And that actually just started to relax me, right? And get me to the spot of like, oh, okay, that like I stilled some burnout in there. And like, that's part of the innovation part of my title was that I got to a spot where I'm like, I was traveling constantly. I had teams all over the world and I was the structure of Uber was working where every city had a GM and I was like the person they called when their spend was too high. And so 500 GMs dealing with it.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, that was kind of my man, I need to go to therapy to figure out the tools that I need to deal with me working too hard. And I just uncovered so many interesting things that I wouldn't have expected. So like, you know, one was that like I'm the youngest child in my family and I did something pretty different than a lot of my relatives and things like that. So like recognition is something I long for. And it turns out I get that it work. And I just hadn't gotten that like in other parts of my life. And so this thing that I'm like, this is my problem was actually like a solution to my real problem. And knowing that just helped me like totally just change my perspective of how hard I work. And it made me less like like I was getting judgmental about myself around like, man, I'm working too hard. I shouldn't be doing this, but I have to. And then I got in a spot where I'm like, oh, I'm working hard because I love it. Because I like it.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, she's good at it, and she's, you know, she said therapy and stuff like that. And just she's like one of the most empathetic, passionate people I've ever met in my life. And so she just feels poor people so much that I think it's something like really important to her. And then at Uber, I got to a spot where I was incredibly exhausted and tired and just down, not excited about work and things like that. And so I started going to therapy. And with this assumption that I was just working too hard.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so kind of the two biggest inputs for me in terms of like really taking the time to understand my mental health. Like one is my wife who's been a very strong proponent of like mental health resources for everybody since I met her. And so just being able to learn from her and get exposure to like, well, why is this important? Like what are the values of it? And seeing it pretty regularly of like, you know, family members or coworkers where it's like, oh man, like I bet there's something deeper here that like maybe it's important for them to figure out. Is that just something she's good at?”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bad it is. I now know I need to go hire the right person to come in, and I'm going to listen to them. I'm not going to assume that I'm smarter than them and those types of things. And so I think same thing with product questions and data questions and experimentation questions for this concept of a growth CMO is like, well, if somebody's coming from a world where they've not had to work really closely with a product team, spend time with them to figure out how they plan on adapting to that. My guess is most won't have thought of that. The good ones will be able to figure it out together with you in that interview or afterwards or whatever might be.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People are churning constantly. Mobile. I got into mobile my first client ever was on microsystems early 2000s getting Java developers to make apps for flipped phones. So I just knew digital mobile world really, really well before a lot of people did. But then eventually I'm like, great, now I'm running an entire digital marketing team. Now I'm running an entire marketing team. Now I'm getting into growth. Now I want to learn product and like I've expanded. And so typically it's like going through that exercise of like find out their tea, like find out their strength and then spend time figuring out how they make up for those other things. So for me, at Lambda school, I ran our PR team for a while. I am not a PR person, but I'm like, I make it a goal in my life to get to the valley of despair of the Dunning Kruger effect to be like, great, I just need to know how bad I am at PR before, because if I still think I'm good at it, that's not a good place for me to be. But once I know how.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think First and foremost, obviously depends on the stage. Anything like, let's say, See or below, like comfortable with chaos and willingness to go do something they have not done for probably 15 years are like two huge signals for me because like the every company I've been part of at every scale now, which is all of them basically is that's the thing that a lot of people coming from more traditional marketing environments into startup worlds they're like it's a it's like a pace and the just the the unpredictability and change and those kinds of things are just at such a higher rate than they've seen for a long time that it can be really jarring for people I think it's totally reasonable like it's crazy right if anybody that's had the exposure on both sides and then the the willingness to go do the work is just that like you know like”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It. There's a bunch of new product led growth classes out in the wild. Like Maven, I think, has a couple. And yeah, there's a variety of those types of things that just going and doing it. You don't have to go and like operate it yourself. You don't have to go become a product manager, but understanding those skills and those systems will, one, I think, make you think differently about how to run your marketing team. And two, make you exponentially better at working with your product organization.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, honestly, I think learn product development, right? Like go learn agile product development. And there's actually a book called Hacking Marketing, I think I'll confirm, but it's essentially like how to run a marketing team on Agile. That to me is just like, again, any great marketing leader should be able to go and consume how to do product development, how to run a product like sprints and those types of things. And their mind, if they're great marketing CMO or CMO, like will be like, oh my gosh, I could do this with this big event that we want to host. I could do this with, you know, everything. There's nothing off the table when you actually learn those fundamentals. But, you know, as well as I know, like smart people can learn that stuff. Like there's lots of resources out there. Reforge has some classes on.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To get it going. And then it's like, well, now all the customers want Coke. Now you need to supply it, you'll pay for it. And that to me is just like learning that and understanding that is like really cool. And it's just interesting to me because I'm a huge nerd. But that to me is like all of the things that great marketing leaders have learned are right. It's the operating aspect of those insights and those skills and understanding your customer and their psychology. Like all of those things have stayed the same. It's the operating of it in the way a growth organization, like a product-driven growth organization operates, is very fundamentally different than the way a traditional marketing-run organization had run.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I would say that my sense is that there's very few marketing leaders that can't be a growth CMO. So I don't think you have to have come up as a performance-driven experimentation. It's more about adapting and growing. And again, the fundamentals are all the same, right? Like one of my pet projects that I haven't done anything with yet is that every time something new comes out in the growth world, I go back in history as far as I can to try to find the earliest example of that, just to be able to say like, look, look, this isn't new, but we can learn from the way that like Coca-Cola invented the coupon. Like the first known coupon was Coca-Cola giving away Coke for free. But it was actually a marketplace because what they would do is they would actually give they would go to a town and they would go to like the soda fountain and they would give a free coke like syrup to that side of the market and they would give coupons to the other side of the market to like”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think still, there's just like a lot of fundamental things that marketers think about that are stuck in that world because most haven't had a growth through the true growth of a business that's just being established today.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aren't operating that way. They're still operating as if they're too wildly different things, even if they say they're working together. It's still like there's not. And to me, it's just like, no, no, no. Like the product is like the company now. And the marketing is integrated with literally every single piece of it. And it's not just a, like a lot of traditional marketing got established in like the 1920s and the 1950s around products that took years to develop or try or thing or like a product team was like a science group trying new flavors of cereal not necessarily and like so the marketing team owned the box but like where it went on the shelf and you know like what the price was and like all those kinds of things was marketing right because product was such a wildly different part of the organization and i”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I think experimentation is just a huge piece of it and something that I see a lot of more traditional marketing leaders, like the idea of experimentation is like try a new channel. It's not like how do we experiment with our brand? How do we experiment with the funnel? Like the whole picture, not just the top of the funnel or the external elements of it. One of the things that I haven't quite figured out the right language to put against this, but the traditional model of marketing is the four P's product placement, promotion, pricing. And in my mind, the world that we live in now, like product is no longer a part of marketing, but it's actually, they're married at the hip. They're one in the same. And most companies.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The storytelling that your salespeople are doing to, you know, what are your landing pages look like, to what is the design of your logo, to the brand itself, like all of those things, like being more open to everything being...”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I would say data driven generally, like it doesn't have to be, to me, performance is like a very loaded word in our world because people think, especially in marketing, think that means not brand. But they're very data driven. And so when we take things like retention and even brand and like the consideration funnel, and yes, you can't measure those exactly like you can measure landing page clicks and sales, but you absolutely can measure them. And like making that part of the DNA of everything that's happening, like data being part of that, I think is pretty quintessential of being a growth-driven CMO. The second, I think, is the iteration process is not thinking about things and like, hey, we need to plan for the next 24 months. But like you can still do that and you can still have a vision and everything, but having that more of like a agile type approach to everything, whether like, and again, this could be.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the traditional marketing CMO isn't a good fit for some companies. Like I think direct consumer products are still very well suited to have a more traditional CMO. But I think product driven companies, product-led companies, if your CMO and your product leader aren't married at the hip, you're just missing out on just tons of opportunity and the likelihood of things actually working like very well consistently and compounding on each other.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From planning to execution to learnings, traditional CMO drive and identify learnings. And in my mind, I think a growth CMO is looking at each brand investment is how do you then immediately follow that up with the next one? How do you shift to this kind of like fast product iteration mindset with even things like brand? It's very possible, but it's so counter to a lot of traditional marketing DNA that it to me means that we have a lot of mismatch marketing leadership. And that quickly eliminates trust with the marketing organization. It means that we rename everything marketing to product-led growth or growth or referral programs. And everything that to me, it actually dilutes the value of marketing should be playing in the company. And it doesn't mean that like.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's something I've just spent a lot of the last few years thinking about, specifically because now I've been at a handful of companies where we've brought in CMOs that in all ways are absolute world-class CMOs. And they don't last. They don't fit. And they don't succeed, right? And so I've spent a lot of time figuring, like, well, why not, some of it coming because I'm spending time with those people being like, why are you doing it this way? That's not how a company at our stage operates, trying to do it the way that like a traditional CMO would have done, you know, marketing for a company, et cetera. Like one of the key examples I like to use is brand in that everybody, when they think about brand, they think about it as an action, not as a consistent ongoing investment. Or they think about it as a campaigns and things like that. And from like.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's another piece of it is that the audience changes aren't always just literal people, right? Like even right now, like one of the biggest pieces of advice I'm giving to people that are like, how should we adjust our marketing with the economic changes and things like that? I was like, start by assuming you no longer have product market fit because you had product market fit in a different market. It's a different market now. So you have to start over and hopefully you do, or it's pretty close to, and you just have to adjust a couple things and you can be right back on track. But like if you just assume you need to launch a new channel to fix this problem, like you're going to be wrong because your entire customer base change, not just the next 10% of customers that you're looking for. It's just a reminder.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, Clubhouse might have been a good example in the sense that they leaned into the broader audience maybe quicker than they should have, right? Like if they'd given it more time to really understand their product market seemed to fit the moment in time. And could they have built some experiments or tools or features that maybe Stress test will this work like in an ongoing fashion? They were on such tear that it's a pretty hard decision to make for sure.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things like that. It's probably the biggest flag that I see with a lot of companies that claim to have product market fit, which is like you have a very, your TAM and your product market fit are not using the same definition that problem I think is often a, yeah, just a red flag for a lot of companies that I meet.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think the book Cross the Chasm is like a great place to start in terms of thinking about the broader topic of that. What I see missed a lot of the time that I like to spend time with people on is to really understand that those early adapters are actually like, or adopters are often just drastically different than the broad audience. Spending time to actually like figure that out and map out like what you need to see with those early adopters to have confidence that the product is actually going to have product market fit beyond them. Yeah, so that's I don't have anything like hyper specific to add to that necessarily or happy to dig in deeper to it, but it's probably the biggest challenge that I've seen with a lot of companies that I've worked with. And then as I do more investing.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were using Grin at a masterclass. We onboarded them. So there's probably like half a dozen companies in that same zone where they're building tools that allow you to do the discovery of influencers, the CRM of those influencers, and also often the measurement and payments and all that kind of. So it's like an all-in-one type of management platform. That being said, though, like I said, it's still super manual. Like it's nice to be able to go and find this list of like 50 influencers that are the exact right influencer for this class launch or whatever it might be, but it's still then I have to go like wait till they all respond to me and there's still a lot of manual back and forth. So that's probably one of yeah, I'm trying to think of it. There's a few other in that same category that are competitive with grin that are they all seem equally pretty good. I can't even remember the reason we chose grin over some of the other. It's like it was all pretty close. Yep.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like five percent of the time. There was new things popping up all the time. I think the area that I think of is emerging that I found more success in is taking things that exist already And make them. So the two slices of it are either it's existed for a long time, like podcasting. It's existed for a long time. And now we're finally getting to a spot where it feels scalable. The other is existing channels that introduce something brand new. So like the mobile ads, I described on Facebook, right? Like pre-mobile install ads and posts, like those first 18 months of mobile install were very like felt like an emerging channel, right? Because they were changing the product every week and like tracking didn't work. And like there are all these kind of funky problems with it, even though Facebook had been around forever. But brand spanking new channels, like, I don't know, they rarely work or are worth the effort early that you hope that they will be.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also come from a very consumer perspective. I'm actually stronger on B2B companies using podcasting because it has that exact same value I just described, but each one of their customers is substantially more valuable, so they don't need the scale that a consumer application or product would need.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Direct response ads, like immediate response ads. And actually, what I keep seeing as the effective strategy with podcast ads is treating them more like radio, where it's more about getting on the right program, making it personal and feel like it should be part of that program, and then repeating over and over and over again. And so, yeah, so I think podcast is super interesting. I think it's just hard to scale. Like it's likely not going to get people the same volumes as the Googles and Facebooks of the world.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel like TikTok's cross the chasm, whereas they actually have a formalized ad platform now. People are finding scale. There are still a ton to do there. And influencers is also weird because it crosses all of these other worlds as well. But I think TikTok is actually hyper interesting and everyone should be doing that. But I think of that less as you should be doing it as this should I do it, should I not? It's more, I need to figure out how to do Facebook if I'm at least mildly appropriately should be there. Like podcast ads, I think are great. I think that I bought podcast ads like 15 years ago. So it doesn't feel like an emerging channel to me. I think there's way more volume now than there's ever been before. One of the guys that was on my team at Uber has a company that's doing like programmatic buying and that type of stuff. And so I think there's more opportunities on podcasts. I think podcast people want to treat it like Facebook ads or like”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very new and different right now, and the ability, and it supplements the ability to do some hyper-level targeting that you've not been able to do, like that Facebook and Google are getting less open about at the same time I think VR is really interesting in the way that mobile was interesting before iPhone 3, right? Where it was like, if you've got a VR app, it's a really interesting space. But if you don't, it's not that interesting to me yet. Any that have come up for you that you're like, no, these are great.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Influencer is probably the one that I'm most intrigued by because similar to OTT, like the scale and services and the ability to go do it is still there. It's also got that hyper granularity that like when I get into influencer tools, it feels to me like early Facebook. When I used to go be able to target Lenny, right? Or 10 people that have exactly the same likes as Lenny, right? And that type of stuff where it's like, you can get so specific and find exactly who you need. It's incredibly tedious and manual and it's a lot of like relationship management. So I'm also keeping an eye on like the technology being built around influencer because I think that's a huge area of opportunity for entrepreneurs right now. But generally speaking, like the scope and opportunity there is huge and it's not going away. But it's very, it feels”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What do you feel? Yeah, so I mentioned. More long form storytelling type content, and a lot of it's not skippable if you buy it, right? And so you can actually like. And so those are reasons to be exploring that right now. It's hard for me to call that an emerging channel because it's been around forever. It's just there's more of it and there's the tools and services around it are way better now than they were four years ago. And so I think the sophistication and ability to scale OTT is much higher now than ever before.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think I define that going into it. Like, what am I looking for for this? So something like Clubhouse, I'm probably not going to see clicks, right? It's more about like, okay, are we able to start a room and increase the size of that room by 10% every time that we run it? Okay, great. That means that we're at least getting better at this and there's more reach available to us. But if we're getting 20 people every time we start a room and then it goes down to 15, then like we're either not doing this well, the channel's not doing well, or There's just not enough reach for us to actually expand versus TikTok, you might be able to say, great, this is all about, like, I can actually track clicks and conversion. So let's look at it the way we would any other channel.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That decision of how long based on what other opportunities you're missing out on by investing in that. But I would say most channels, especially new ones, are going to take more than a couple cycles to kind of suss out because there's no rules. There's no playbooks yet on how to do them well. So give it a little bit of time. But yeah, if you're going over a quarter and you don't feel like directionally it's getting better or it's interesting like I would you know put it back on ice for a while.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Variables that can change that timing. So, like, you know, if I'm exploring a new video channel, like the content I need to create is if I'm gonna have to create something that takes three weeks to produce and $20,000 to make, I may want to give it a little more time because I gave it more of an upfront investment, right? Versus if it's like, oh, I want to put text ads in podcasts like listings or something like that, actually great. I can like I can do that by myself at midnight and it's not distracting anybody or anything and if it doesn't work in three weeks, let's move on. But yeah, generally like Ideally what you're working through and we'll talk you can touch a little bit more on this with like the growth CMO is that like this should all be part of a roadmap, right? Like it shouldn't just be like randomly chosen and thrown at is this should be part of your like sprint process and you should have a backlog of other things that you want to try and so you're actually weighing”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Generally, I wouldn't let anything. Bleed past a quarter. Like, you can probably get some good signal in a month or less, like what I would call fishing. Like it wouldn't be, like you're just, you know, putting bait in the water to figure out where the fish are, not necessarily getting statistically significant repeatable solutions. The big”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that, you know, if you've got that half person working on it for a while and there starts to be some magic happening, sure, put a sprint or two against it, like as a whole team. But generally speaking, I think keeping it minimum at first is my typical recommendation.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think going through those three ingredients should help shape that answer, right? Because if you're like, okay, well, the first one is super strong. The channel DNA is maybe like really early. And I've got a small to mid-sized team and maybe only one channel working, then it may be like, great, put like half of one person into this because it's maybe interesting, but like don't put any more than that into it, right? Versus if it's like, man, this is a killer fit. The channel's a little further along. It seems pretty space. And I have a 20 person team. So I'm going to put like three dedicated people to this because we are in prime position to be the leaders in this new channel and like really push it. So I think it really is figuring those pieces out because it is a very like it depends answer. But rarely ever is it like, hey, this should be your entire team's focus for the next three sprints or five sprints.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be like a perfect fit where it's like absolutely you should be the person doing this, but like if you're not at least getting something out of the basic channels that everybody else is using, it's probably not the thing you should be putting your first energy into. It should be like, great, I've got a good foundation. Like you said, like now we're at that stage of trying to add things tends to be a better stage to do more risky exploration into new channels.”
2022-09-15 · Lenny's Podcast · When and how to invest in new acquisition channels | Adam Grenier (Uber, MasterClass) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source