After spending time at some of the most complex organizations and companies in the world (White House, Apple, Lyft) Adam realized he was spending more time coordinating work than actually doing it.
Taking inspiration from how developers worked in GitHub and designers worked in Figma, he founded Almanac to build a tool to help teams collaborate in documents with structure and transparency.
In 2023, Adam launched his second product, Blaze, the #1 marketing AI tool for teams of one to create better content in half the time. Blaze is an innovative AI marketing tool, offers unique perspectives on how AI reshapes the business world, especially benefiting small enterprises.
Adam holds systems engineering and economics degrees from Duke University and an MBA with highest honors from Harvard Business School.
What you will learn
- How AI is making entrepreneurship easier by automating marketing tasks, so business owners don’t need advanced skills.
- How small businesses can compete with big companies by using AI to automate content creation, SEO, and ads.
- How AI reduces time spent on repetitive work, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on growing their businesses.
- How AI tools create content that matches a brand’s unique voice, making marketing more authentic and engaging.
- How AI helps entrepreneurs work smarter by improving decision-making, increasing reach, and scaling faster.
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:04 – 00:00:46
Hi everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas Show. Today here with me is Adam Nathan. After spending time at some of the most complex organizations and companies in the world (White House, Apple, Lyft) Adam realized he was spending more time coordinating work than actually doing it. Taking inspiration from how developers worked in Github and designers worked in Figma, he founded Almanac to build a tool to help teams collaborate in documents with structure and transparency.
In 2023, Adam launched his second product, Blaze, the #1 marketing AI tool for teams of one to create better content in half the time. Blaze is an innovative AI marketing tool, offers unique perspectives on how AI reshapes the business world, especially benefiting small enterprises.
Jeff Bullas
00:00:46 – 00:01:22
Adam holds systems engineering and economics degrees from Duke University and an MBA with highest honors from Harvard Business School. So we’ll explore how AI is revolutionizing entrepreneurship and by the sounds of its content. Welcome to the show, Adam, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you here.
Adam Nathan
00:01:23 – 00:01:24
Thanks for having me, Jeff.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:25 – 00:01:43
So, Adam, you live in the heart of the tech hub of the world, Silicon Valley, San Francisco. So what led you to sort of get into the whole world of startups and entrepreneurship? What was your inspiration?
Adam Nathan
00:01:44 – 00:02:11
Yeah, well, uh, I’m actually not from San Francisco. I was born and raised in New York City, and I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather started an insurance agency. My brother is also a founder, he runs a direct to consumer cookware company, and our parents run a small business together in New York City. We grew up, you know, watching them really successfully grow their business across the United States. Uh, they’re in that kind of outerwear and fashion market, and I remember my dad always flying out.
Adam Nathan
00:02:11 – 00:02:37
To stores they were opening in Texas and Colorado as a kid, but um as successful as they’ve been in the offline world, they also really struggled to make the jump to the internet and they still don’t have a website for they they don’t email their customers, um, they don’t run any ads or do anything on Instagram. And whenever my brother and I would go home for the holidays, we would always exhort them to get online and say things like, oh, it’s so easy to build a website or it’s so easy to send an email or um.
Adam Nathan
00:02:37 – 00:03:04
They make social media content, but the reality is, uh, for, for them and for millions of small business owners, it’s not. Um, my parents are really good at what they do, but they’re not professional marketers. And even though they know that they need to do great marketing to grow their business, and that the internet has a ton of opportunities to grow faster than ever for for small companies, um, you know, they don’t have the skills or the time or the money to um become experts in SEO or in social media. And so they, like many others have missed out on
Adam Nathan
00:03:04 – 00:03:34
Um, on this opportunity, and of course, my background’s in tech, uh, I worked at many big companies before starting Blaze, um, but the, the power, um, and the opportunity of AI is to really level the playing field, not for people who are in tech and who are professional marketers and know all the tricks and, uh, and tips around the internet, but for people who aren’t, uh, and what what Blaze really does is help uh people who aren’t professional marketers but have to do marketing, um, you know, within a, within a matter of months, um, 3X there, uh.
Adam Nathan
00:03:34 – 00:04:11
Uh, their revenue and sales online on average, and so we see our customers, um, you know, tripling, uh, their impressions, uh, their leads, their customers, their sales, um, through content that is generated and published by Blaze, uh, you know, for a fraction of the cost of hiring an agency or a full-time person or doing it themselves, um, and. Uh, the time it frees up as well, allows them to focus on all the other things they have to do, uh, in their business. People like my parents have, uh, we, you know, 10 hats every day, they’re serving customers, they’re coming up with ideas, they’re paying the bills. Marketing is, uh, you know, super time consuming and it’s also kind of boring to repeat work over and over again across different channels. And so,
Adam Nathan
00:04:11 – 00:04:33
Um, you know, I saw an opportunity, uh, to help automate that process and essentially build a virtual marketer for small teams, teams of one that don’t have the resources or time to do it themselves. Um, and you know, it’s been exciting to see that idea turn into the reality that for, for, you know, hundreds of thousands of users on Blaze every day and um start to level the playing field for customers like them.
Jeff Bullas
00:04:34 – 00:04:42
So what was the inspiration to start Blaze, as you just said is hard creating content because you’re doing it yourself, is that, in other words, a problem that needs to be solved at scale?
Adam Nathan
00:04:44 – 00:05:13
Yeah, that’s right. I think, you know, before Blaze, um, and of course, Blaze is an AI tool, so really before, before AI existed, uh, there were products out there that helped you manage and get content online. So there were tools for sending emails, there were tools for managing social media content, there were website builders, but even though there are ways to kind of build those socials are like doorways onto the internet, but they, they didn’t help you actually create good content. So your email tool didn’t actually help you write a good email that people would open and click.
Adam Nathan
00:05:13 – 00:05:40
On, um, mail, you know, uh, Squarespace, uh, could, you could build a website on your own, but you didn’t actually didn’t help you figure out like what are good images or what’s a good brand or what’s good copy that can convert leads into customers. Um, of course, you could post on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, but actually writing a copy that would engage your community and develop fans or followers, you know, that there was no, um, there’s no feature that helped users do that if they didn’t have the knowledge themselves. And so,
Adam Nathan
00:05:40 – 00:06:18
Uh, the opportunity with AI that we brought to life with Blaze is that you now basically have like the world’s best marketers all at your fingertips working for you and we can combine that best practice knowledge from across the internet with really specific information about your business. So uh what you sell, the services you provide, who your customers are, how you. talk, the way that your brand feels, um, Blaze can combine best practice, technical knowledge that gets you more customers with um information about you and your business. And so, you know, in some ways, we built a new market that didn’t exist before because now we can help people create good content that didn’t have the time or knowledge or money to do so on their own before. Right.
Jeff Bullas
00:06:19 – 00:06:37
So there’s a lot of sites out there that are creating content with AI for marketing and a lot more for ads and everything else. What makes you guys stand out from the rest in terms of, Um, are you plugging into neuroscience to help you, you know, touch the emotions and create a better image? What makes Blaze stand out?
Adam Nathan
00:06:38 – 00:07:11
So, uh, the first thing that I mentioned that our customers really love, I think it’s our killer feature is what we call brand kit, uh, and so the problem with a lot of other tools, whether it’s Chat GBT or Canvas AI is that. Um, the content that produces looks and sounds like the internet and so on the voice side, it kind of has this kind of same tone that makes you always realize it’s AI from the first couple words of reading it. On the visual side, you often see weird images with multiple fingers or um weird looking texts that don’t fit your brand specific style. Uh and so the content that AI produces feels inauthentic and low quality and so people don’t end up.
Adam Nathan
00:07:11 – 00:07:34
Using those tools because it doesn’t look and feel like them. At Blaze, we’ve invested really, really deeply in a set of personalization features where if you integrate your social media account with us, or even just give us your website, we can analyze it for your tone, your audience, your purpose, your syntax, so that at a really specific level, the content, the copy we’re generating sounds like what you already write. And on the visual side, we can diagnose.
Adam Nathan
00:07:34 – 00:07:57
Uh, the photos that you use, your colors, your fonts, even your logo, so that all the visual content, whether it’s images or video, um, feels like you. And so all the content that police produce doesn’t look and feel like AI looks and sounds and feels like you. And so that’s what keeps our customers around, uh, you know, uh, I guess after the first day, after the first week, after the first month. But what I think really helps over time, uh, with our customers is that,
Adam Nathan
00:07:57 – 00:08:18
We don’t use AI just to automate steps in the process. We actually use AI at Blaze to complete work for you. So as an example, we have planning tools where you can use Blaze to schedule a month or even a quarter of social media content on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter. You can use Blaze to write 30 or 60 or 90 days worth of blog posts. All you.
Adam Nathan
00:08:18 – 00:08:38
To give us is a topic and then we will generate um titles and outlines and copy and images for you. Blaze is also a CMS so will schedule all that content for you and post it and analyze it. Basically, Blaze does what you would hire a person or an agency to do. Uh, and so we have customers who come in and within 10 minutes have scheduled an entire quarter’s worth of content. They can set it and forget it.
Adam Nathan
00:08:38 – 00:09:17
I come back to it in a month or in a quarter, see what um is performing best and then generate even more content like that. And so people can use Blaze not just to produce content but create a flywheel of growth that leads to more impressions, more customers, and more revenue. And so we have customers now comparing Blaze not to other tools, not to like Canvar, Chat GPT even, they compare Blaze to another person. Um, you know, Blaze costs $35 a month. We pay at Blaze itself to do our SEO marketing our blog posts. We pay an agency $20,000 a month, um, to help us move up in the Google rankings, that’s $240,000 a year. Um, we have customers who have gotten as good results using Blaze as
Adam Nathan
00:09:17 – 00:09:36
As our company has, uh, for basically like, uh, 11/1000 of the price. And so, you know, I think what makes plays really valuable, it’s not just that it produces good content that looks and sounds like you and it saves you time, but that it actually leads to more revenue and growth, um, in ways that you’ve never been able to experience before as a small business owner.
Jeff Bullas
00:09:37 – 00:09:59
That sounds awesome. Like, um, the challenges are trying to get content that resonates. Some of the challenges are that the content that resonates based upon the algorithms of social media is things like anger and hate. Uh, in other words, you can get really great traction, but you got the wrong messaging. And I know that you’re saying that you got the brand voice. So, is there a view process that’s done by the program, or is it a human that does that?
Adam Nathan
00:10:01 – 00:10:35
So, yeah, you know, a couple things to say on that. One is that when I talk to our customers, I try and talk to 2 or 3 of them, you know, every day, they often don’t want to be like the next Apple or Amazon or Google, they want to be the very best version of their business in their local market and so they’re not looking to maximize. engagement and, you know, hope and probably get extra clicks or likes through fear or hate. They’re looking to connect with potential customers in their community. Uh and so really the deep personalization features we offer, um, to help you, as I mentioned, ranked number one on Google, uh, in your local market.
Adam Nathan
00:10:35 – 00:11:12
Uh, or develop, um, you know, tens or hundreds of thousands of the right followers on Instagram or Facebook. That’s what our customers are looking for. And, you know, we’ve had customers go from 0 to 100,000 followers on Instagram in 4 months. We had a customer go from the 50th page of Google to the first page, thanks to the blog content that Blaze. Uh, helped him produce. So, you know, I think our customers are looking to be the very best version of themselves. They’re super creative, uh, they have a ton of grit. They’ve made this bet on themselves that they’re really proud of, um, but Blaze is there to really help them like crack through, um, the level of growth that they’ve been unable to to reach before. The second thing I’d say, uh,
Adam Nathan
00:11:15 – 00:11:16
What is the second thing I’d say,
Jeff Bullas
00:11:17 – 00:11:21
um. Forgot what I was going to say. We’re talking about creating content, uh,
Adam Nathan
00:11:26 – 00:12:09
Basically that was for a lot of people to express a fear of like, well, what’s going to happen to the internet when there’s just so much content created by AI everywhere? I think there’s this 1984-esque vision of a world where no one’s content stands out. Um, our philosophy at Blaze is that, um, AI isn’t going to reduce the value of high quality content, it’s actually going to increase the value of high quality content and human creativity. And so we see AI as enabling you to focus on the stuff, the parts of your content where that is the only that only a human can produce. So. Uh, underlying our product is a real-time document editor similar to Google Docs and Microsoft Word for longform copy. Um, we also have a visual studio similar to Adobe or Figma or Canva for visual content.
Adam Nathan
00:12:09 – 00:12:32
Uh, and, and our goal is to produce a first draft of content that’s like 90 to 95% good that you’re happy with, but we still believe that that last 5 to 10% of the work should come from you. And what makes the content inimitable and unique, um, is, is, uh, the human brain and the type of creativity that only you can bring. You know, the way that AI works is that it looks at data in the past to predict what you might want now, but it can.
Adam Nathan
00:12:32 – 00:13:08
predict the future. It isn’t that only humans can come up with new stuff, um, that doesn’t yet exist. And so we think, uh, the magic is the combination of some automation to get you through the stuff that’s uh takes a lot of time and is boring anyway, so that you can focus, uh, your creativity, your energy on the part of the puzzle that has the highest value. We don’t believe in a world where AI Um, is doing everything for you. Our product has a lot of transparency where you can see what’s happening and everything along the way. It gives you a lot of control over the inputs and the outputs, because we believe magic happens with the combination of AI and human creativity.
Jeff Bullas
00:13:09 – 00:13:29
Cool. So, um, when you started the company, you have the idea of thinking we want to use AI to create the best content, to get the best engagement to help customers grow. And before that, you had the first product, which is more about helping with emails and that sort of thing. Is that correct? Yeah,
Adam Nathan
00:13:29 – 00:13:39
The first product was like a collaboration platform for remote teams. And so we were focused on helping really big companies that were operating across time zones and geographies work better together without meetings.
Jeff Bullas
00:13:39 – 00:13:51
Right. So, so basically something like a slack or whatever, or a trello or, yeah. Yes. So, which one’s getting the most traction? Is it Blaze that’s sort of giving you the traction, really?
Adam Nathan
00:13:52 – 00:14:25
Yeah, they, they, they couldn’t actually be more uh different businesses, even though they were built by the same team. um Almanac, um, you know, is a, is a product designed for large enterprises, as I mentioned. Um, I, I think the problem that we solve with the Almanac, which is reducing meetings and overhead work, um, it Almanac is very similar to GitHub, if you’re familiar with how engineers work, it allows for asynchronous collaboration on code. Almanac allows for asynchronous collaboration on documents. So whether it’s like PRDs or marketing documents or sales contracts, it allows you to see what other people are doing in a timeline and approve it.
Adam Nathan
00:14:25 – 00:15:07
get feedback on documents without meetings. And so it’s a valuable product, but it’s a kind of a champagne problem where, uh, you know, it’s designed for companies that are really big, already have product market fit or growing well and you know, want to reduce meetings and overhead, want to increase efficiency. Those companies would still be fine if they didn’t have almanac. Maybe they’d make less money, maybe work would be harder, but they’re not going to die. Uh, and you compare that to blaze. Which is designed for very, very small teams. We focus on teams of one, so solar printers, founders, small business owners, agencies, freelancers, um, really the backbone of the economy in most places, um, you know, uh, some of the industries that we serve, uh, I’ve talked to, uh, life coaches, financial.
Adam Nathan
00:15:07 – 00:15:25
Advisors, um, fitness trainers, real estate agents, mom and pop shops, you know, basically people who you buy products and services from every day, um, those are our core customers at at Blaze and um the problem Blaze solves is not a nice to have, uh, solution, it’s a must have if these um individual.
Adam Nathan
00:15:25 – 00:15:52
Uh, entrepreneurs and owners don’t figure out a way to grow, they will die. And so they know they have to produce marketing to reach new customers to convert them to serve them well, but they just don’t have the time and often the money to do that. And so, um, I think this is actually a much more gratifying problem to work on because um we have helped our customers survive and thrive in ways that they haven’t experienced before. Uh, and to your question, it’s, you know, there’s 200 million small businesses.
Adam Nathan
00:15:52 – 00:16:20
Businesses in the United States, there’s billions of small businesses around the world. Um, many of them are small, uh, not because they don’t have good ideas, but because they haven’t figured out ways to grow, and we believe that just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t be great. Um, we think, you know, the right, uh, all entrepreneurs need is the right set of tools to help them achieve that growth. And as we were talking about until really AI, they haven’t had a way to figure out how to create good content that helps them grow. So Blaze, you know,
Adam Nathan
00:16:21 – 00:16:57
Uh, we’re 14 months old, I think we eclipsed Almanac’s revenue within the first couple months of launching Blaze. Almanac had been around for a couple of years. Uh, we’ve gone from basically 0 to $10 million in revenue at Blaze within 15 months. Uh, you know, we’re one of the fastest growing companies, I think anywhere right now. Uh, and that just I think speaks to the, the, the need for a product like this, the hunger for small businesses to really make good on the bet that they made on themselves. And, and you know, it’s, of course, exciting to see the kind of growth in the business, but it’s also really gratifying to know that the product’s making an impact on people.
Jeff Bullas
00:16:57 – 00:17:23
OK. So that raises two questions for me. Number one, what is your secret source for breaking through? Um, because that’s, uh, an amazing revenue growth, you know, result. And then the other one too is uh next question I’m gonna ask before I forget is, uh, what’s the process of using Blaze for a typical business? You can take us quickly through that. Now I’m really curious about that. So, number one, what’s your secret sauce for growing your company so quickly?
Adam Nathan
00:17:25 – 00:17:36
Well, yeah, there’s unfortunately, you know, I probably know one silver bullet, it’s just a bunch of lead bullets that uh you need to correctly shoot in order to uh build the kind of growth we are seeing.
Adam Nathan
00:17:36 – 00:18:04
I think it starts with picking a really good market. Um, you know, you can have a great team and a great product, but if you don’t like in Almanac’s case, but don’t pick a really great market, um, you’re not going to succeed wildly. And the thing is, there aren’t that many good markets out there that haven’t been tapped. You know, most good markets by definition have great products and companies already in them. And so you often need a change in technology, uh, like AI to open up a market or create a market that didn’t exist before. And so great markets don’t come around all the time.
Adam Nathan
00:18:04 – 00:18:28
Um, I think also great markets often don’t look like great markets and in our case, many people look at small businesses as bad businesses, and they’re like, oh, you know, these businesses are small because they’re, they don’t know what they’re doing. Um, we believe something different. We believe that small businesses are great businesses. The fact that they’re even around with such, you know, limited manpower and resources is a testament to the owners’ creativity and resilience, and they, they.
Adam Nathan
00:18:28 – 00:19:02
But by giving them the right tools, you can actually build a huge business like Blaze to support them. And if you actually look empirically, some of the largest platforms in the world, whether it’s Square, Stripe, Canva, MailChimp, um into it all serve small businesses, and they often got to be these huge companies because they had limited competition on the way up. So, number one, I think as we picked a really good market that other people thought was bad, uh, and allows us to grow without a lot of competition. So don’t tell anyone about it. Uh. The second thing is that we invested, I think, in the right growth channels from the start. So if you go onto our website.
Adam Nathan
00:19:02 – 00:19:44
We have a really um pronounced brand, um, it’s very pop culture, it’s really fun. We use um sports and celebrity and comic book images, uh, and you know, people stay atlas because of how good our product is, but I often hear from customers that they try the product because of the brand, because um they connected and identified with the brand and what it means to them. Uh, and I think that brand is an underutilized lever for companies. Um, if you can connect, uh, you know, if you can build something that’s that connects with customers about more than just the functional value of the product, people will, uh, be more forgiving about problems in the product, they’ll stay around for longer, they’ll pay more, be less price sensitive and also talk about it with their friends.
Adam Nathan
00:19:44 – 00:20:12
Um, and that’s why the best, most valuable companies in the world, like Apple or Nike, or Starbucks are all foreign, correlated with having really great brands. So I think brand branding is something that’s underutilized, especially in tech companies, where of course, our product adds a lot of value to customers. It generates a lot of revenue for them, but um, We can also donate emotional value that you can actually capitalize on in the form of higher retention, higher prices, um, that people are sensitive to, and that’s something we invested in early that I think has really paid off.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:12 – 00:20:17
Right. So basically you’re saying secret sauces, finding the right niche #1, #2, standing out.
Adam Nathan
00:20:18 – 00:20:20
Correct, yeah, good summary.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:21 – 00:20:33
So, um, In terms of conversion, obviously you’d be measuring, so, uh, when did you realize that you’re into the right niche with the right branding, how, how soon after you launched did you discover that?
Adam Nathan
00:20:34 – 00:20:57
Uh, I’d say from the first day of our launch, we knew that we were on to something. I mean, even before we launched, we had already been testing the product with customers and the first very, very first version of Blaze, like our VZ product, was just a kind of a basic marketing AI product. What we were really testing for is who wants this thing. And as I mentioned, you know, when we showed it to large companies, marketing teams that
Adam Nathan
00:20:57 – 00:21:18
Um, Fortune 500 companies, they were interested, but it was kind of like, oh, we’ll think about it and we’ll do a beta project and we’ll get back to you in a couple of months. It wasn’t a burning fire, whereas when we talked to small companies, the consistent response was like, oh my God, I need this right now. Can I get access, you know, after this call. And so we could feel the pull from the 1st 100 conversations we had.
Adam Nathan
00:21:18 – 00:21:37
Um, that like, oh, there was a segment that was clearly underserved here. And you know, that we, that was replicated on our launch day, we were the number one product of the day, the week, the month on Product Hunt, which is a major site for launching stuff, um, you know, and then our growth just kind of exploded after that. Uh, and I think that’s, you know, a common definition of product market fit.
Adam Nathan
00:21:38 – 00:22:15
Which is what we call traction and startup land, uh, you know, if you are wondering whether you have product market fit, you don’t have it because when you do have it, you can feel the pull of the market. Um, people, even when there’s something wrong with the products, people complain about it, they don’t churn, they just yell at you and it’s kind of like a relationship where, you know, you, you know it’s. Over not when there’s fighting, but when the fighting stops and everyone kind of retreats away, um, to their corners in the same way, you know, even the things that customers didn’t like, um, they still engaged with us and asked us to be uh helpful on so. Yeah, I’d say it’s from the start we knew we were on something and it’s just grown from there.
Jeff Bullas
00:22:16 – 00:22:23
Cool. OK, so, uh, before we get to the customer journey, which I’m curious about, um,
Jeff Bullas
00:22:26 – 00:22:37
What was your go to market strategy and what were your key channels? You mentioned product hunters where you launched your initial product. What are the other channels and tactics you used to actually go to market?
Adam Nathan
00:22:38 – 00:23:20
Yeah, great question. Um, so I think there’s often 3 types of channels you have access to as a business. There’s, uh, organic, uh, marketing, which are things like organic social media, or SEO, uh, going viral, there’s customer letter product led growth where customers share the product with their friends or they’re sharing it embedded in the product flows, and then there’s um paid acquisition, uh, and As an early stage company, I think two of those channels you basically don’t have access to organic growth, even though it’s exciting and it’s free. And so it’s great if you can do it, you need an installed base of customers or awareness in the market to, to really leverage it. You can’t go viral unless you have a bunch of people who I’ve already followed.
Adam Nathan
00:23:20 – 00:23:42
You on social media and as an early company, you don’t have any of those followers. The same thing is true for product-led growth where um in order for it to really significantly contribute to your growth, you need a lot of customers already as an install base, um, having 5 customers share the product isn’t going to do much. So really, I think the place for companies to start when they’re at zero is with paid. Um, people look at paid ads as a bad thing. I think.
Adam Nathan
00:23:42 – 00:24:08
Uh, many, many companies I used to work at. Most of our acquisition came from paid growth, same thing for Airbnb and Uber. Most big companies you read about are huge paid programs. There’s nothing wrong with doing ads to start with. Um, the ads can also help you figure out who your customers are, what your real value prop is, what the hooks are. And so it’s really a way to experiment and on kind of your product marketing as well. So we had a lot of paid ads to start, but really, um.
Adam Nathan
00:24:08 – 00:24:56
Where we found a lot of traction with influencers. And so with uh influencers doesn’t work with everybody, but essentially, um what we did is built a huge program where we collaborated with um influencers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to talk about our product. Um, and it’s essentially the way that it worked is we essentially paid a couple 100 bucks to an influencer to review Blaze or talk about it. Um, we had a huge program, we, uh, compared to the ads we ran, the influencer program was much cheaper. I think we spent. In the first wave of this program, $75,000 was around $200 per ad. So we got, I think something like, um, I don’t know, hundreds hundreds and hundreds of ads, uh, from the influencer program or videos in this case. Um, and the cool thing about the influencer program is
Adam Nathan
00:24:57 – 00:25:18
Kind of like any type of content out there, many videos didn’t really work very well, but, um, let’s say 10% of them went viral, um, and some of them went super viral. So our top videos for this program that we paid again $200 for got, um, millions and millions of views, tens of millions of views even. And so we were able to use the influencer program to basically quickly raise awareness for.
Adam Nathan
00:25:18 – 00:25:40
Plays for really cheap. And then we use that content that basically was kind of a laboratory for how to pitch our product. We would use the organic content created by influencers as ads. And so we basically then put money behind the content we saw working from influencers, which is like our little creative R&D lab, um, into an ads program that went on over time. And I think to this day, some of our best performing ads.
Adam Nathan
00:25:40 – 00:26:20
Uh, our content was originally created by random influencers. And so that helped us really start to scale for pennies on the dollar compared to just doing a generic Google or Facebook ad. And also then because it’s on social media, those ads led to more followers on our brand accounts. I think we now have over 100,000 followers on Instagram, for example, and that’s now led us, that’s now enabled us to do things like organic content. Um, on social media. So we basically went from paid, uh, a really efficient version of paid growth through influencers to organic growth, and the scale of a business that has allowed us to do things like referral programs and affiliates, um, for typical customer led growth.
Jeff Bullas
00:26:20 – 00:26:40
Right, awesome. OK, so let’s now go and move on to, um, what’s the customer journey from when they sign up. Um, when they start to see results, I’d be interested in the process and I suppose the onboarding through to, um, optimizing, I suppose.
Adam Nathan
00:26:42 – 00:27:23
Yeah, so, you know, there’s a truism, I think in tech, which is that you really have to provide value within the first couple of minutes of your product in order to retain people that so we call it time to value, but the product strategy always for new customers is how do you reduce time to value. Um, and you know, one fun fact about our business, we know that, um, on average, um, Basically, customers who turn from our business do so after only 17 minutes in the product. And so we have 17 minutes to convince a customer to stick around from their first session to their second session, uh, and then our goal, so a lot of our focus is on what we call the first time experience or the first session experience.
Adam Nathan
00:27:23 – 00:27:45
To figure out how do we provide as much value as possible to customers as fast as possible, so that they stick around for the next day, and then from that 2nd session to the 3rd session, from the 1st week to the 2nd week, 1st month to the 2nd month, you know, we spend a lot of money and time trying to convince customers to try the product. Uh, we don’t want to lose them, um, within, you know, the first couple of minutes. And so our focus is always on this time to value ideas.
Adam Nathan
00:27:46 – 00:28:15
And the way that we do that is by um asking you in the onboarding flow to integrate a social account or give us your website. And then right after that, we produce a piece of content for you in your brand voice and style. So before you do anything, um, with just one click, we generate content to show you that the content that Blaze produces is high quality and looks and sounds like you, um, you know, and, and we have this idea of of one click content where we want to make it as easy and frictionless and fast as possible for you to generate content that’s high quality.
Adam Nathan
00:28:16 – 00:28:39
Uh, and so all of the product is designed around this one click idea where even as you’re going through our wizards, which are our flows for really complex content, like long blog posts or 30 Instagram posts, um, everything in that wizard is prefilled for you. We pre-select images using AI. We even write the name of the document using AI. So all you have to do is look at it, make sure it’s OK, and then press next. And so,
Adam Nathan
00:28:39 – 00:29:06
Um, you know, for our customers who are busy and non-technical, often, we want to make the products, uh, really easy to use, really almost fun, and, um, and, and swift to get through. And so we do that, we simulate that in the very first steps, uh, of the product experience in your 1st 60 seconds. Um, and we’ve seen that make a dramatic, uh, you know, difference in whether customers decide to stick around with us and keep trying the product or whether they turn. OK,
Jeff Bullas
00:29:06 – 00:29:29
So basically you’re trying to make it as addictive as possible, so they actually stay and don’t churn. Um, so, The other two questions I have around that is, is brand kit where you start, or then you move on to creating the content, and then it’s on to the publishing, and then measuring the success of each piece of content?
Adam Nathan
00:29:30 – 00:29:57
So yeah, so uh in the onboarding flow, just from integrating an account or giving us a website, we generate a brand kit for you, and we also use that brand kit to produce a sample piece of Instagram content. So, uh, after you get that brand kit, it creates both the brand kit and then shows you what high quality content looks like in Blaze. Um, what’s one interesting fact about our customer base is that uh many people don’t even have a website, like my parents, uh, they may not have, they may not be doing anything on Instagram.
Adam Nathan
00:29:57 – 00:30:29
Uh, and so, you know, that process works for 60-70% of our customers. Uh, but one thing we’re investing in right now is actually using AI to build a brand for people that don’t even have one. And so we are using AI to generate logos for customers, generate colors and fonts that fit their vibe just from a paragraph or even a sentence. And so we’re trying to really make it easy for even people who are not at one yet are still at zero, with their brand with a specific channel to get started and get going. And that’s actually we think a significant portion of the market, uh.
Adam Nathan
00:30:30 – 00:30:52
On the other side of that, um, about 30% of our customers today are using Blaze as a CMS, so they’re not just generating content in Blaze, but they’re actually scheduling and posting it, uh, from our product, and that’s really where we see also a ton of value for our customers. Our most retentive customers, our best customers are not just using ways to generate content, but they’re actually using it, as you mentioned, to schedule and post and analyze that content.
Adam Nathan
00:30:52 – 00:31:31
And the power feature there is not just that it’s all in one place, but that we can use AI to evaluate the results of the content you post from Blaze. So we can look at all the content you posted on Instagram or Facebook and figure out what your best performing posts are and then generate more posts like them. So if you think about marketing, Alright, content as a process where you come up with an idea, you draft it, you edit it, you schedule it, you post it, it’s kind of a process, a line, a funnel. Um, we turn that into a, into a virtuous flywheel of growth, where you’re just starting from scratch every time, but you’re actually using the best performing content to create even
Adam Nathan
00:31:31 – 00:31:49
More stuff that looks and feels like that for your customers. And so the growth can compound. And so when we look at our customers, um, using Blaze over time, we actually see their results, uh, have this kind of hockey stick curve where uh there’s inflection points because Blaze is learning from what’s working for their customers and their community.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:50 – 00:32:25
Go. So yeah, that’s one of my questions was gonna be that you, uh, whether you control the publishing and obviously that reduces friction for the customer because creating content’s one thing, publishing is another. And that then raises the next question is in terms of, you can create views and you can create engagement, in other words, how long you keep people on that ad, um, and so on, because that’s the key metric on social media. Um, the third thing out of that too is, do you also generate programs that actually generate leads, as in email leads and build lists? Is that also part of what you offer?
Adam Nathan
00:32:27 – 00:33:02
So, uh, yeah, we’re kind of working down the value chain here, as you can imagine, um, and if you try blaze, you’ll see that there’s a ton of surface area we already cover, um. You know, where we’ve started is really first with organic social media content, so helping you, um, even from the start, if you don’t know what to write, we can help you generate ideas uh for content based on your customers, your products or services, we can create a marketing plan for you. We can take that marketing plan, turn it into um all types of content, uh, we can again generate, we have advanced features where you can generate 30 or 60 or 90 or 200, uh, posts at once. We can schedule posts and analyze them for you.
Adam Nathan
00:33:02 – 00:33:45
We do that on social media content. We also do that for blog posts for SEO. Um, the third use case that we’re working on now is around ads. So because we already generate essentially the creative ads, we’re basically building internal tooling that replicates what you would do in Google AdWords or or Meta ads Manager, but in a much simpler way for our customers, so that they can run campaigns from within Blaze. And so those can be optimized for, uh, as you’re mentioning. Things like impressions or website clicks or conversions or even leads or sales. And so that’s using the pixel that you put on your website, um, but we can, you can manage that with AI in Blaze to optimize campaigns and content uh for specific metrics in your business. And so,
Adam Nathan
00:33:45 – 00:34:15
Um, you know, that’s like another huge use case, uh, besides SEO and uh social media content is ads, and we think that’ll really supercharge what people are able to do in Blaze. Um, already we see, you know, tremendous business results for our customers with the features we have, but, uh, you know, if, if Blaze can do everything for you that an agency would do or a full-time marketer would do for $35 a month, uh, you know, we think that’s providing even more value to our customers that helps them level the playing field against bigger competitors.
Jeff Bullas
00:34:16 – 00:34:23
Well, OK. So it sounds like you build a really good uh Swiss Army knife for a small enterprise to actually grow their business.
Adam Nathan
00:34:24 – 00:35:00
That’s, that’s the goal, you know, nothing again, I don’t think a product like these was possible before, um. Uh, you know, certainly, someone could have built a product that does all these things, but the reality is our customers don’t actually want to spend time going through every step of every process to manage their content and then their SEO and then their ads and then their emails. And what the real power of AI is not just to speed up steps of that flow, but actually to do the work for you. And so, yes, we want to give our customers transparency and control, but really our customers don’t have time or the knowledge to do it themselves. And so the game changer is that the AI can do the work for you like a human.
Adam Nathan
00:35:00 – 00:35:29
But often for much higher quality results that are much faster and much cheaper. And so that’s the difference between building, I think a product like if we were just building an all one product that you have to manage yourself, maybe that’s 5x better than owning 20 tools. But what makes plays, um, like I think 1000 X or 10,000X better is that it’s not just combining all those tools in one, it’s doing the work for you, much better, much faster, much cheaper. And that’s the game changer of AI is that if you’re early, I think of this technology wave.
Adam Nathan
00:35:29 – 00:36:11
You know, between I think us and our competitors, we all probably have a couple of million customers or users, you know, there’s 200 million small businesses in just America, there’s billions of small businesses around the world. If you have even tried a product like Blaze now, you’re already in like the top 1% of small businesses out there who are embracing this technology, um, it will be, I think, a game changer for the amount of money you can make as a small business, as a small team, um, in ways that were previously impossible. And that’s, I think what’s Uh, crazy to wrap my head around is, is, I think what the future will look like when even small businesses can compete on quality, uh, against much bigger teams, um, and actually win,
Jeff Bullas
00:36:11 – 00:36:37
yeah. Yeah, that, the story about blades is just amazing. Um, Adam, I’m, uh, blown away, frankly. And, uh, but that’s the promise of AI in terms of actually scaling our humanity, scaling our creativity, um, and scaling our efforts. So, um, it sounds like you’ve, uh, Just blown it away with blaze and uh, so you said what, you got 2 million customers?
Adam Nathan
00:36:38 – 00:36:39
Uh, we have about a million users,
Jeff Bullas
00:36:42 – 00:37:02
wow. So just to wrap it up then and uh. What is um the biggest, what are two or three biggest learnings you’ve had both with Almanac and now with Blaze, as an entrepreneur, what’s your 2 or 3 top tips you can leave for other entrepreneurs?
Adam Nathan
00:37:05 – 00:37:50
Oh, it’s a great question. Uh, yeah, I learn new stuff every day, um. I think one is just the power of focus. Uh, I think humans, especially smart people who often tend to be founders or executives, um, they like complexity. I like complexity, you may like complexity, but we like things that challenge our brains, keep us stimulated and interesting. Um, but complexity is actually the antithesis of growth and success at a startup. Um, the more you can focus first on who you’re serving, which I think is really the linchpin of everything, um, the easier everything else gets after that, the faster your business is going to grow because the more you focus, the more you essentially create trade-offs for yourselves, that makes it easier to make decisions, easier to execute, um, with quality with the limited time and money you have.
Adam Nathan
00:37:50 – 00:38:27
Um, the more successful you’ll be, I think a lot of people and and even I think we upfront, um, made it really hard on ourselves by trying to be a lot of things to a lot of people, and that, as I mentioned, reduced the quality of, of the product that we built, it made our marketing harder, it made us, therefore, uh, moves more slowly and with Blaze, you know, we’re we’re super focused on who we serve and it makes everything else so much easier. So, um. Most people won’t even listen to this advice if I tell it, but I think the more you can focus up front, especially on who you serve and what you do for them, the easier and more successful you’ll be. Um, I think another lesson is just around, um,
Adam Nathan
00:38:28 – 00:39:09
Persistence and grit, you know, we’ve been working as a team. I know this is our 2nd product. We’re in year 5 of building together. Uh, and you know, we’ve really just seen this explosive growth that we’re talking about in the last year. And so that means there were 4 years that we spent basically eating glass in the dark, you know, wandering through the fog in the cold. Um, and I think it often the dirty secret of startups is that it takes years to become an overnight success. Uh, it takes years to internalize these lessons and get basically punched in the face enough times where you’re like, oh, maybe I’m not gonna do that again. I’m gonna do this other thing instead. Um, those those that that iteration, um, and repetition leads to wisdom, hard won wisdom that you need.
Adam Nathan
00:39:10 – 00:39:45
Uh, to succeed, you can read all of the blog posts and listen to all the podcasts you want from smart people like Paul Grammer like me, but you won’t get it, I think until you’ve been doing it enough times, often with the right group of people, um. And, you know, I think the last thing is that I was talking about the difference between a business and an art project, a lot of founders, I think when they listen to stories of maybe really smart people out there, really successful founders, um, mistakenly interpret the lesson that to be a successful founder, you need to have a big vision. And of course, we have talked about really big ideas today, but
Adam Nathan
00:39:45 – 00:40:03
Uh, what makes you a successful founder isn’t having a big idea that you’re in love with. Um, that makes you an artist, uh, and lots of artists, you know, spend their time on passion projects that give them energy and fulfillment. But as we know, many artists aren’t successful. They don’t make any money, even if they try.
Jeff Bullas
00:40:04 – 00:40:07
A starving artist is tossed around a lot. Yes, exactly.
Adam Nathan
00:40:07 – 00:40:33
What makes a business a business is that you build for somebody else, and often the thing that somebody else wants is not the thing that you want. It’s not even the thing that you thought of. Um, it may be totally different and something that you don’t want to do. Uh, but the way that you build a successful business is by building products that people need and love and will pay for, um, and what makes you a successful founder is having the humility, um, to abandon something that you’re interested in in order to build something that others
Adam Nathan
00:40:33 – 00:41:14
People want instead. And I think a lot of founders sometimes can’t get over that. Uh, and so would rather die as a business than succeed, uh, for other people. And it’s, I think, great if you can build something for other people that they want that you also love. I think that’s, I feel grateful at Blaze that I love our customers and I love what we’re doing for them. Um, but there’s many businesses out there, uh, that people need, uh, products from that aren’t as exciting and And I think lots of founders have a choice between being an artist, and following their own dreams and hopes and being unsuccessful, because they’re building for themselves or building something for other people. And I think most founders experienced that trade-off at some point in their journey and
Adam Nathan
00:41:15 – 00:41:22
I would encourage people to, uh, they want to be a successful founder and CEO of a big startup to listen to their customers and build for them.
Jeff Bullas
00:41:23 – 00:42:01
Awesome. That is fantastic. And just to sum it up for everyone, um, the three top points for wannabe entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs is to focus. Show grit and persistence because it’s been a long game and number one. Don’t build something that you love, build something for businesses that they want and love, so, uh, thank you very much for that insight and wisdom, uh, Adam, it’s um, I just loved hearing your story and um, And you’ve uh. Basically an overnight success after 6 years, so congratulations.
Jeff Bullas
00:42:04 – 00:42:17
So thanks, buddy. It’s been an absolute pleasure to chat to you. And, um, we finally got to, we took a few different journeys to get to this podcast we book, so, um, and it’s been, I’ve learned so much just by listening to you, so thank you.
Adam Nathan
00:42:18 – 00:42:19
Yeah. Well, thank you for having me.
Jeff Bullas
00:42:20 – 00:42:20
Thank you.