Meghana Dhar

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Okay, well, thanks, Blaine and Ramon, for having me. Hey, BTC Pod, super excited to be on. Yes, I'm a tech advisor and investor. I think my area, how I like to summarize it is creators, brands, social, and commerce. Like, those are the things I'm crazy about. I can talk about those things all day, and I think that space is kind of ripe for disruption and some innovation, so I kind of want to be part of that. I worked in big tech my whole life, so I was kind of a big tech girl. I was at Ebay for several years where I really found my love for e commerce, marketplaces, and DTC, in a way. I was in strategy and M A there early in my career and then actually got the cool opportunity to work as an advisor to the CEO on restructuring the business after we spun off PayPal. I was also formerly the head of shopping partnerships at Instagram, so really got to see that go zero to one, and most recently was the global head of partnerships at Snap. So, yeah, lots of war stories, lots of social commerce. So excited to get into it. You guys sweet.

And I'd love to go a little back. Let's go back and start with Ebay maybe, and then we can kind of talk through some of the other experience. But I'd love to know a little bit more. Why don't you just set the scene for us? What was the commerce landscape like? What were you working on at Ebay? What were some of the fun initiatives that you guys were taking on from an M A perspective? And maybe what were some of the early learnings in terms of how that started to influence your career?

And, you know, I really think Ebay is like the OG e commerce website. Like, they started this whole idea of a marketplace and this idea, know, where supply meets demand, where eyeballs meet supply on the Internet. And I sometimes feel like people don't give them enough credit, like they're OGS, they're ballers. And I think they disrupted the Internet in their time. But really what I learned a lot about is how they maintained that flywheel of demand and supply right? Like how they kept the incentives right, how they got the economy, their micro economy going. And so that was really fun to observe firsthand. At my time, what was important was they were trying to get away from the auction model because it was stifling them. So they were trying to move away from that classic auction model towards more like buy, know, buy immediately, again, making them more competitive with modern Amazon et trying.

So Ebay's core categories, which they're still really core, are like car parts and memorabilia and hard to find items. And they were at the time trying to move towards more mainstream items, fashion, toys, that kind of stuff. So it was a lot of that and a lot of just transitioning that model where Ebay started thinking a lot more critically about the inventory they maintained on the site and working closely with sellers to maintain supply and stuff like that. It was a really cool time.

Yeah, it's interesting because back then, community or creators weren't a thing, right? It was black and white, supply and demand. It was the buyers and the as a, as a previous marketplace founder, I'm curious, and given that Snap and Instagram, in a way, they're kind of marketplaces, but Ebay is a very wrong, like, your definition of a marketplace. What were some of the elements, what did you learn about flywheel and what were some of the elements that really made the flywheel go at that big part there, too.

Yeah, so PayPal was a big part of it. But it's funny because we had creators at Ebay they were just power. Like those were our know. It was these random people in the middle of nowhere who had World War II memorabilia and would make a lot of money on it. And they were part of this Ebay community. We used to go talk to sellers. There was this very avid community of sellers that kind of impacted sales, but not just that kind of like the feel and the look and feel, if you will, of Ebay. And that was a thing.

So I feel like the OG creator were these power. You know, Ebay did a really good job of cultivating their community and listening to them and honestly, they showed a lot of care to their creators. I don't think the same can be said about Instagram et cetera, right now, and we can get into it, but I think it was like they really start cultivating that kind of culture of care. And then when you think about the flywheel to your question, Ramon, I think it's like the chicken and egg. Right. So the classic marketplace conundrum, if you will, is what comes first, the chicken or the egg, the supply or the demand. Right? And I think a lot of people think of it as demand first. At least social platforms now prioritize demand, right? We need to go where the users are. Once the users are on a platform, then we can start doing partnerships, we can get content, we can do supply, that kind of stuff. And so I think the classic answer to the chicken and wheel is demand. But what I'd say is that Ebay really cultivated that supply base and I think they did it in a way that marketplaces don't do it now. They talked to their sellers, they incentivized them. There was a very tight knit seller community that I think is unique and probably what differentiated Ebay.

Yeah. And one of the power dynamics I think they had is that the supply can be the demand and the demand can be the supply. Meaning like, the buyer can become a seller finds out, oh, I can sell my stuff here. So you don't have to sort of set two go to market motions at the same time. And sometimes those are dynamics you don't think about when starting a marketplaces. And are some things that make it really hard to scale a marketplace. If you have to acquire both sides, you have to find product market fit twice to not make this a marketplace. Podcast.

I'm so down.

Yeah.

We could go on what you mentioned about, for example, Instagram being different with the creator side of things. I want to dive into that, but I want to take a step back at the definition of what a creator is. Right. I feel like it's thrown around so much today. And so what do you define as a creator? Is it a content creator or an example is like a creator can be a power seller on Ebay? How do you define mean?

I think creator is a term started with influencer, right? It was someone who's pushing out content and that kind of became the creator. But I think of creators as voices in the community, like who are big voices in your community and who's driving kind of movements in your community. And in Ebay's case, those were those big sellers, those power sellers. They also had really big buyers who were part of the community, who spoke up, who there were newsletters, there were like forums. It was like this very weird, quirky community and there was like drama. People would talk poorly about other power sellers. To put it simply, they were really tight knit and it was in fact a community. So yeah, a creator is a voice and a voice that impacts, I think, the marketplace or the platform.

One thing that I just wanted to kind of jump in on that you got my mind sort of going, Megan, in terms of marketplaces is I think we've seen so many startups try to go after these social commerce sort of plays, right? And I think the one point you made about Ebay is they spend so long cultivating a really strong seller experience and a really strong supply base of all these different sellers and it's something that's really hard to bootstrap overnight, especially when you're dealing with two sided marketplace dynamics. So it's just like a really good lesson, I think, even in terms of as we see all these social commerce platforms popping up and live selling and all these platforms that are trying to go after it, it almost seems like a good place to start.

And I'm curious if you ever saw this at Ebay. Were people ever building apps on top of Ebay's infrastructure or anything like that? Is that something that you guys ever thought about where you could have different formats like plug into Ebay's existing selling infrastructure?

Yeah, I mean, I don't remember ever working on APIs or white labeling the product, but I think there was so much opportunity with Ebay. And look, I mean, the reality is Ebay is still around. They do live selling, they're in the conversation, they're in the mix. But they lost a lot of market share. Right. And I don't know what caused it because the company was functional, the marketplace was healthy. I don't know where the strategy went wrong. I suspect a lot has to do with the fact that they lost PayPal and it kind of took the wind out of their system. It just was a lot of pressure on the bottom line and their golden goose was PayPal. That kind of enabled them to be creative and play and care in the business. And I agree that when you're kickstarting a marketplace for any other platform, it's really hard. Right. And I think say you're going demand first. How are you as a platform going to be considerate of and intentional of the supply. And something I write a lot about and speak a lot about is that the platforms today, they're not intentional about the supply. They treat the supply as just the supply interchangeable. And the reality is, I'm a former partnerships person, so I have a bias. But I think the reality is the more you minimize the importance of that supply, they're going to go elsewhere. And now going off track. But I still think it's part of the conversation here. Now, the suppliers, the content creators, the sellers, whoever they are, and the audience, they don't need instagram in a way they used to to be connected. These people can find them, demand can find supply elsewhere. And so I think it's a true marketplace in that it's getting democratized and these bigger platforms are going to have to fight harder to retain their demand and supply both.

So what are some of the ways that you suggest early founders to evangelize their community to find the unique traits? Because I don't believe it's like this article on how to build community. There has to be unique traits that you need to identify in your community to build it. So how do you suggest to founders to go about building their community and making it unique?

So I think what's really interesting is the rise now of supply first platforms, and I'm referring to Patreon OnlyFans, et cetera, because what they're doing is they're switching the model from an instagram, right? And they're prioritizing the needs of the quote unquote supply the content creators. And so taking the content creators first in mind, they're now creating the incentives and benefits whereby the content creators can bring their audiences to the platform. So I think, like new founders, they just need to really think about where their sweet spot is. Is it in demand or is it in supply? And second, even if it's in supply, be really thoughtful and intentional about how you incentivize that demand in and how to keep them in that flywheel, because I think it's really easy and lazy if Patreon only cared about its creators and didn't think about the audience that the creators are to. So I think you have to be really authentic and intentional, and I don't mean those in a cliche way. I think it's really being thoughtful about that community you're building and the incentive you're setting up. Sorry. Why? I'm not on.

Now, Ramon, the other thing I was going to mention in like Megan, both Ramon and I have experience building supply driven marketplaces. And this was something that we like the first marketplace I started was restaurant booking marketplace, where rather than having every single restaurant, we needed a huge supply of restaurants, but we also needed to be very intentional with them. And Ramon, I think you saw this in trend as well. When you guys were building it, you actually filtered out the supplies who were creators in your stance. So rather than just have a whole bunch of creators, you wanted to prioritize the ones that were really good. Megan, in the scale of something like an Instagram or a Facebook or a like, the demand is like, you guys are clearly a demand driven marketplace because the scale is just so insane. But I think in terms of what you're saying and what you're seeing in some of these other creator platforms is they're starting to build these more authentic niche vertical marketplaces around the supply side of things.

Yeah, it's really interesting. You just reminded me of a trend I saw when I was at Ebay, which is Ebay was the supermarketplace right in the beginning. But then what started happening is niches started being created within that space. So Etsy started right, a marketplace for handcrafted goods, and then more recently, of course, but there were others goat for sneakers. And so basically all the verticals in Ebay became their own apps or businesses. And so similarly right, I kind of in real time and now am now putting that or conflating it with what's happening with Instagram, which is you're not satisfying the supply. The supply is going to go elsewhere. You're not satisfying the demand.

People are going to find more intimate social networks like be real or whatever it is right now. So I think it's going to be that spreading out of kind of people and supply and that's going to really change the dynamics. I mean, that's really what I'm betting my career on as well right now. Things are going to get really interesting.

Yeah, it's kind of like the unbundling of whichever way you want to use the word of Ebay and Instagram. But then you have platforms know even whatnot like is whatnot fashion only or are they horizontal? I can't remember exactly.

So I think they're focused on hard to find items, but they are expanding and they're trying to be global. But if you think about it, live shopping right now is pretty verticalized. You kind of have shops, which is luxury whatnot? Which is a lot of memorabilia, hard to find items, pop shops live, which I believe is more fast fashion. So yeah, it is kind of interesting that they start verticalized and then the question is, are they going to stay verticalized? Are they going to come together, merge or join or a big platform would kind of absorb that functionality or that company.

Yeah, it's interesting how I wonder if it's like so for Instagram shopping, for example, where it's like how has it been that long for Instagram to make it work? Is it a blessing and a curse that they already have the supply almost and they're trying to plug in a marketplace because whatnot and all these other are building the supply with the experience as it's growing and it's like, well, we have the biggest supply in the world, but it's like, is that also their.

How?

How has that played?

Totally. Yeah, I think that's such a good point, Ramon, because you think about where demand is and you're like, naturally we just layer on supply and that's going to be a functional I mean, I have the stories of Instagram shopping not working that way, right? And if you really zoom out, you guys probably are familiar with the concept of jobs to be done, right? And for your users or for your listeners, the idea is that a product has a specific job that its users are hiring it to do. Right? And so in Instagram's case, users are hiring Instagram to watch their friends'content or follow their content creators. And then when you layer on different jobs, you confuse the users. And I think at a fundamental level, with Instagram shopping, we were conflating our jobs to be done. We were confused. People were coming to the platform to interact with friends and creators, and then we were throwing a shopping experience at them when perhaps that wasn't in alignment. And so, yeah, I think that's a super fair point.

And when you build from the ground up, like whatnot, you have that job to be done nailed as opposed to trying to just throw it onto your thriving marketplace. The reality is, though, it's like throwing spaghetti on the wall in Instagram where there's so many users that your numbers might still be higher than whatnot? Because even if the conversion is lower, the numbers, the raw numbers are higher. But then long term, do you develop or lose that relationship of trust and delivering to your users what they're looking for? And I think that's like the big question, the open question, if you will, with Instagram for the future.

Yeah. It's because the intent of when they join and the intent of when they use the platform is not the same than what you maybe want it to. You know, I think this is a valuable conversation for the listeners because there's all this talk about DTC brands even having media arms and properties and acquiring existing audience, et cetera. And it sounds really good in theory, but in practice, it's really hard to just turn on the switch and monetize the audience from and then haven't changed their consumer behavior to an alternate sacked when they were there to previously get educated or connect with other people, et cetera. I have one question on the commerce side of Instagram. Isn't the other side of the coin like, well, how do ads work if there's no intent there, then how are people buying things on ads? They must surely want to buy it from the shopping experience.

Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things there. First is with Instagram shopping, we were forcing checkout. And remember, when you force Instagram or Meta checkout, you're asking users to give Meta their credit card information, all this stuff that people have never done before. It's asking a lot from your users. And second, it's about how things are delivered, the algorithms that power the ad that's based on your interest. So a lot of the times the ads are really successful, right? Because we've all probably impulsively bought a sock or something stupid from Instagram ads, right, because the targeting is so good. But when you get Instagram Shopping organic content in your know, it's off putting. It's not what you were expecting in your feed, right? Again, back to that jobs to be done.

It's not an ad. This is a creator you follow, but then suddenly there's like a collaboration organic post where the brand is trying to sell you something with the creator in it. It's a confusing experience. Don't get me wrong. I still believe that Instagram Shopping can be a huge player, if not the main player in social commerce. It's just that it needs time. And I felt like the company was just getting impatient for revenue, but it needed more time to find product market fit.

One thing that I wanted to jump in and say, I know we'd been talking about whatnot Ramona? I was chatting with my friend who works there and whatnot actually had their retreat in Miami last week. So we were catching up and he was telling me all about how they build their supply and what their focus is on. And actually they said a couple of things that you guys had mentioned. One, they're really focused on things like Pokemon collectibles, like these sort of things because there's these niche communities. So one of the biggest areas that people are watching are these card unboxing where it's like sports car memorabilia and they'll unbox the cards. And then it's almost like this community layer too, where you'll get these big groups of buyers that come in and everyone's like, oh, I'm going to have card one in this opening. I'm going to have card two, I'm going to have card three. And they'll open it so that way everyone sees.

So it's like a really engaging thing. And the other thing, Ramon, that will probably resonate with you a little bit. They're really focused on monitoring their supply side of things. So they're not just letting anyone sell whatever, let anyone go live. So they have a really exhaustive creator vetting process. So that goes into what we've been talking about, know, building out that supply. And Megan, to your point, one thing that I think is really interesting, it's like we saw Instagram Shopping, which was really released within Instagram, but then we also saw Meta doing things like rolling out their Threads platform, which is almost like a different take. It's like, okay, maybe our jobs to be done isn't exactly text content, but what if we take a swing at it and take our user base and almost create their own community and whatever.

And I'd be curious. You're probably a little bit closer to the ground than we are a couple of months out after launch. I think what they launch in July, I want to say early July, but I'd be curious in terms of if you know anything of how the platform is progressing. When I saw it first come out, I was like, okay, wow, there's a lot of hype. Amazing onboarding, easy to get there. But the one thing about a social network is it needs to be organic and needs to be a real network. You can't fake or bootstrap. It's really hard to bootstrap or fake a social so, like, I think Ramon and I had a podcast and we were talking about it and I thought Threads was going to work.

I just thought it was going to take a lot more time because you're going to push it out to everyone and then you'd have all these groups sort of form and they need time to cook and bake and build their own thing. It wasn't going to be a Twitter killer overnight. But I'd be curious if you had any insight in terms of the company strategy. They're rolling it out and what your take is on that as a platform.

Well, here's a question. Do either of you use Threads actively?

I don't. I think that's the problem, that there was no onboarding. The onboarding was too frictionless. It was click a button, there's no buy in. And it's much harder to reactivate a churned cohort than actually have people be onboarded onto the experience. I know the question was if I'm using it on my personal take on it, but there it is.

No, I love it. What about you, Blade?

Yeah, I probably use it a little more than of I'm a lurker. I'll pop in, I'll see what's going on. I'm not writing and creating content. We were doing some stuff on it for a while, even from some of our business accounts and stuff like that in terms of creating content and testing it. But yeah, I put myself more in the lurker category, but lurker but interested.

Yeah, so it's really funny. I'm asking because I was so bullish on breads in the like I was out talking to the BBC, I was in the Wall Street Journal. I was like, guys, this is the next big thing and this is huge. And the frictionless onboarding and I'm kind of like biting my tongue a little because well, first of all, I stand by what I say, meaning that it was a great move, it was timely and the onboarding was great. But then there's the flip side to Ramon's point, which know, was it too easy to onboard and was it almost like a dow hack or like a growth hack. And I think that so much of what they do with threads is like growth hacking. Where with Snap, for example, if you guys still use Snap, they have memories, right? Those are growth hacks just to get you back on the platform to view your memories for over 30 seconds daily, active user. And so a lot of the thread stuff, it just feels like growth hacking now.

And I'll go on threads because I miss Twitter, I really miss scrolling, something text based. So I think it is satisfying that need and I think it's clear in its jobs to be done because it's a separate app, which is great. But I agree there was no buy in to download and install and I think that funnel is going to be really interesting to see where it goes and I don't know, I'd be really curious to see what their active users are right now.

Yeah, I was really bullish too. I hope it works. I really wanted to I think text is such a different form of media that we crave. Text is interpreted different by everyone. There's so many different dynamics of text as media that it has that I think there's definitely room. I mean, it's their best chance, right? It was a great move, is their best chance for creating a new media property, for getting more money from advertisers and I hope it works. My challenge was that I was being fed on my feet just like People magazine and things that I have no interest in. But don't underestimate having a huge audience.

Maybe they fix it around, add web app and go from there.

But I'm curious, that's the point. Really quickly, before I forget, sorry to interrupt. Is it's like the people you follow on Instagram you automatically followed on threads, right? But then those jobs to be done are different, right? So like I love people on Instagram because I get the pictures and stuff, but I don't really care what they have for sure. My Twitter is all politics and tech and that's what I would want my threads to be as well. But it's a lot more pop culture and shopping and brands than I would have wanted. So that's the other issue, right?

And it's really hard to revert that. I mean, you already had my account is like oh shit, my high school friends are also on here now. I don't want that. So what do you do? You can't undo that. And that goes back to the effortless one click onboarding of everyone, et cetera. I know you. Mentioned Snap, and I'm curious on the different dynamics. It seems like Snap really understands their job to be done.

Right.

They really drive almost to a fault, though.

Yeah, okay.

I would love to learn more.

Well, I think Snap is it's a classic example, in my opinion, of just this perfect understanding of their users and just a great simple app, right? Like, it really understands the demographics. Twelve to 21. It's fun, it's quirky. The UX is kind of weird, but it's like intentionally weird, right? Because grown ups can't be using it, adults can't be using it, and that kind of thing. But the problem is, when you're so good at that niche and you're so good at that specific job, it makes it really hard to expand. And I think during my time at Snap, we tried over and over again to build a business value prop, or to expand into deals on maps or try new products. AR shopping was a really big push. But the problem is, it was so hard for anyone to think of Snap as anything other than a silly messaging app.

And silly I'm using intentionally, right? Like, to be funny with your friends or quirky. It was really hard to change users impression of Snap, but I think it's been easier with Instagram, with certain features.

Yeah, I agree with that. I feel like actually, it's funny that you say it's like the user base. Twelve to 21 and almost intentionally, because I was right in probably that first cohort of Snap users where I was in college. I downloaded it right when it came out. I think it was, what, like 2013 or 14, something like that. And then slowly, as the product evolved, I found myself, I was like, oh, man, I'm getting old. I don't even know how to use Snapchat anymore. But maybe that was a little bit intentional.

But it seems like I'd also love to have a better understanding of what you guys were trying to accomplish from the partnership side, right? Because as the product evolved, there was things know, the medias, the like, why don't you just cue me and Ramon and obviously the audience in on what Snapchat is all about. Because you've got the messaging, you can obviously send the disappearing messaging. I can see where my friends are on the map. I can see the bitmoji. But talk to me a little bit more about what the partnerships initiatives are, what are the media initiatives, all that kind of stuff.

Well, here's the thing, right, to talk about, kind of an underlying theme to our entire conversation is iOS 14. And I know us three have talked about it before, but iOS 14 has just changed the dynamics on these social platforms, but really all platforms. So anything ad revenue based so intensely that I think everyone's doing a little bit of a strategy pivot. So that was kind of the context in which I joined Snap where they're like, oh shit, this thing is going to take away all of our data. We have no PII anymore. We're losing revenue right and left. Advertisers are leaving marketers drop. Snap, they're the first to go from the share of wallet.

Right. Because it's a niche demographic. So Snap was hit really hard as compared to Facebook, et cetera. So the whole strategy was how do we expand our offering, how do we monetize beyond ads? And frankly, how do we, with the ads we have, get users to stay in the app longer? And I think that's a super reasonable goal. And I think you can say that all platforms were thinking about this, but all tried different strategies. So one of the things I was working on at Snap, for example, was AR shopping. So the idea with AR shopping is Snap truly does have best in class or very good AR technology. And so how do you leverage that to get someone into a buying experience? The goal, of course, is to have them spend more time in Snap, open the app more often, and then hopefully entice advertisers to use organic products so that they spend more on Snap.

Right. It's kind of this very simple strategy where every new product we launched or every new partnership we launched was about driving that bottom line number. And so that's what a lot of what I was focused on. And it's tough. I mean, we were prepping for iOS 14 at Meta years before it came out. And I think Snap didn't do that kind of work up front, candidly and they were struggling and scrambling when it launched to just, oh my God, let's try this, let's try that, let's try this, in order to drive revenue. And so that was kind of the context. And so that was a lot of the deals that I did and my time spent there.

Yeah. Miguel, it seems based on all of your experience with commerce and all of this, given all of this, what is it that excites you now? What are the commerce applications that you are most excited about today and get you fired up?

Yeah, well, first, being a big company, big tech girl my whole career, I took a big risk kind of going out on my own and being so embedded in the startup ecosystem. But I'm truly putting my money where my mouth is. I'm betting on the future generation of social commerce and creator companies. I think the reality is, as we talked about, these platforms aren't doing what they were supposed to do or could do to support their communities. So, like, a reckoning is coming and I'm trying to be in on that. The stuff specifically that excites me is I know creators were really hot a year ago and now investors don't want to talk about them. But there's still a lot that can be done to enable or monetize creators, and not just in the photo or image space. It can be podcasts, it can be creating businesses, it could be creating merch.

There's just so much there social commerce, I'm still like my passion is still social commerce and if anyone could have done it, it should have been Instagram and they didn't. So there's now a lot of time before they try again where someone new can kick start something and then just social networks, period. Right? I think it's been really interesting intellectually following the rise and fall of Be Real of Fizz is kind of a new emerging startup at Stanford campus that's expanding. So just all these new social networks emerging because know, Facebook is dead, instagram is more media than social, snap is super niche, YouTube is content consumption. So is like where am I interacting with my friends? Is it just, you know so I think that's going to be really interesting.

So what does that look like, the future of commerce that you.

Think? And I've written about this a lot too. I think the future of commerce is like the past a little where we were overly betting on Instagram and YouTube to solve commerce and dictate the future of shopping. Whereas now what I see with a lot of the brands I work with or businesses I advise, they want to take traffic back to their website and they're really interested in doing pop up shops like Omnichannel is it again, right. And Omnichannel was something we didn't talk about for five years, but we were talking about five plus years ago. So I think it's a little bit of this regression back into what used to work tried and true methods and then also dropping a lot of methods that used to work, like paid media. Right? The whole customer acquisition game on social is really changing and so marketers are spending less of their money on Instagram, for example, and redirecting that towards their creators, their communities beyond Yoga did like a walk in Santa Monica that had like 60 people show up and it was a walk, it was a free activation. But again, it's these hyper local community activations and again back to basics that I think brands are playing with and I think it's getting really interesting again.

Yeah, I lived for a few years in Austin and the founder of Outdoor Voices, Ty Haney I think is her name. It's crazy. She's doing another brand that's like a healthy energy drink and it's the same playbook. It's activations and runs and just getting really riled up. And it's just wonderful to watch her because it's a superpower and it's what we were talking about five years ago, but we went through sort of this gap and now that's what it is. Again, another interesting one I've seen is, and this is just for DTC brands to find ways to not depend so much on apps because of what you mentioned of iOS 14. What's that platform where you connect with all your neighbors. I forget.

Next door.

Yeah.

So next door. And I saw people hiring people on nextdoor to promote to their community, like a meal delivery service, et cetera. And so it's just brands need to think outside of the Facebook and Instagram world. However, on that note, I want to hear your thoughts on how you're thinking about content. As an arm of, you know, organic content is working so well. Creators are playing a part in that. You know, this is what my previous marketplace was, which is pretty much like hiring creators to do your own UGC so you can build your own distribution. So how should brands be thinking about creating their own content to build their own.

Think? I've thought about this a lot, actually. So thank you for asking that. And I think, really, the future of brand building and marketing in kind of a post iOS 14, post platform world is these three C's, right? It's content creators and community. It's not paid media, it's not Ads, it's not the Playbook 1.0. Like, I think this is the new Playbook, right? So it's about let's start with content. To your point, Ramon, it's about authentic content, not oversaturating your viewers or users with pushes to sell or random content. It's about authentic content that really speaks to your brand voice. It's about using the right creators that align with your community, that speak the same language as you, that spread the same message and values as you.

And then, third, it's about really putting that community first. Right? It's about what does that community want and taking that upwards. Feedback into the brand, building into the products, into the messaging, and staying really tight with your community. And to a certain extent, this all existed post iOS 14. But I think the importance of all of this is just on a much bigger scale now than it ever was.

Yeah. And that's where AI comes into play. It's like, well, if content is the move, how do you reduce the friction layers to generating more content? I get really excited about this because this is why Blaine and I are building Castmagic. It's audio we thought was the easiest way to remove friction. And even for our creators that we're hiring. At Castmagic, Blaine and I, if we have a product launch or feature launch, we will record a call between him and I, like, announcing, explaining the entire feature, and then we'll get the transcript and the outputs and send them to our creators. So they're really in touch with every single thing about the product. And I think brands should definitely be leveraging AI to repurpose a lot of content and continue to reduce the barriers to content because it is expensive to make content completely.

Agreed. And I think there's a real big nuance there, which is in terms of content creation, yes, AI can kind of make it more seamless and get it out to market quickly, but then at the same time, you have to really still be careful to embody that voice, know, carry that message forward authentically.

Yeah. And I think, Megan, you hit the nail on the head there, and that's something we think a lot about. It's like, how can AI work alongside the creator? So you can maintain the authenticity right, where it's you you've screened everything and you're like, if I'm pressing on publish on this, this better sound exactly like me, and I better stand by everything this says. So, yeah, I think it's really interesting. And the other thing I'd say is this playbook that you're talking about, about what was it was community creators and content. Right. This playbook can be applied. And it's the same playbook that we're applying to a bootstrap, SaaS company that you can apply to a direct to consumer company that you can apply if you're a VC backed founder and you're founding a B to B company.

Right, totally. I think that framework is and that's what we see the best companies doing. It's been fueling our growth and it's fueling some of the fastest growing companies out there. So I love that in terms of how you're able to distill it, make it really easy to remember.

Yeah. I mean, I'm also predicting that it's a moment for DTC. Like DTC, it was really hot for a while, then it became not cool. And I think it's going to be very in vogue going forward. I'm betting a lot on it. So I think your viewership is just going to blow up. So everyone tune into the DTC Pod because it's the hottest podcast.

I love that. Well, anyway, as we wrap up here, Megan, are there any other things on the horizon for you? Other last things you're interested in? I know we didn't really get too far into TikTok. I'd also love as we wrap up, just to hear your quick take on how that fits within the commerce ecosystem, because a lot of the creator initiatives that we see, and that we see brands going after, especially in D to C, and their ad platform is TikTok. So would love to maybe hear what you have to say about TikTok. And if there's any other last things that you'd like to go over, happy to cover those as well.

Totally. So TikTok is you got to be there, right? So everyone needs to be on TikTok. All the brands I talk to are there. I think the real open question, though, is not about their viability as a platform. That's a given. It's around TikTok shops. And I'm really curious. I'm watching it very closely because they have a huge opportunity because there's so much trust between creators and their users on TikTok, that community is very strong.

So there's a big opportunity to translate that into conversions and purchases. But they can also fall into the same traps that we did at Instagram, at snap and every other platform that's unsuccessfully tried shopping. So I'm hoping they're going to be very intentional and thoughtful about how they approach shopping. I know they are getting a little more involved in fulfillment than other platforms. They have a lot of partners with Chinese manufacturers as well, so there's a lot of nuance to the way they're launching it. But I'll be watching closely to see if they fall into some common traps. Final words. I think everyone needs to go support their brands, their DTC brands and their creators shop on their websites for now.

And I think it's important you as a user, to just think about where am I spending a lot of my time? Am I spending less time on Instagram? I certainly am. And instead, I'm following my creators to wherever they go. I'm listening to more podcasts. So I think that trend is going to affect all of us, and I'm really curious to see how it all plays out.

I have one takeaway one prediction question for you before we go, which is you think X.com is going to become the Everything app and pull off the WeChat of the that?

I think Elon Musk has stated that's his you know, he is a you know, he could very easily or has the experience to bring in the payments infrastructure. And so I guess the answer is yes, it can easily become the super app. But then the other question is, who's going to be using it?

A bunch of words. Yeah, for sure. Well, we'll have to do a rerun in the future after and break it down after we see how it goes down.

I feel like I could talk to you guys forever. We need to hang out. This was so fun.

Well, we will at the event and we're shouting out here this will be the first episode that we're shouting it out. We are throwing a DTC Pod event in La. So if you're interested in coming, there's only a couple of invites left DM, me or Ramon, and we'll get you on the list. But Megan is going to be there as well as a whole bunch of other guests that have been on our Pod, so we're really excited for that. That's coming up October 5. And last thing before we go, Megan, where can our listeners find you and connect with you? Why don't you shout out your social so we know where to find you?

Yeah. So you guys, I'm really all about LinkedIn right now. I feel like LinkedIn is my new ex or my don't don't add me on Snap. Isn't that like a red flag? If a guy asks for your Snap, you're like, so yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram, but it's mostly my social stuff. I'm at Meghana and then LinkedIn is just my full name. So, yeah, check me out. I write a lot.

Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the Pod megan, we had a great time.

Thank you.