Latest / Talk Commerce / Building the Influencer Marketing Platform Vidovo While Bootstrapping Through College with Elijah Khasabo

Transcript

Building the Influencer Marketing Platform Vidovo While Bootstrapping Through College with Elijah Khasabo · Talk Commerce

• Brent Peterson (00:01.774) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce, today I have Elijah Khasabo is the co-founder of Vidovo Sorry, Elijah. Hey, I didn't even ask you how to pronounce your last name. I hope I got it right, but go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions. Elijah Khasabo (00:16.793) You actually Elijah Khasabo (00:21.113) Yeah, of course, you actually did get my last name right. So I applaud you for that. My name is Elijah Khasabo one of the co-founders of Vidovo. We've been bootstrapping for about two years where you just see an influencer platform that essentially just connects brands with creators. I'm still doing this while in college, so it's a little bit tough to handle both, but I'm enjoying it. So I can't complain, but yeah, that's me. Brent Peterson (00:42.89) And how about passions? Passions in life? Elijah Khasabo (00:46.725) passions. I truly think that make me happy. So things I'm passionate about is helping others. I think it always just ties back to being able to provide for others. You know, I think the goal in life is to better oneself. And I think the best way to better yourself is how do you better those around you? So yeah, that's what I would say my passion is. Brent Peterson (01:06.702) That's awesome, perfect. Elijah, before we get into content, we'll talk about your founding story and maybe what school you're at and when you're gonna graduate and if you're gonna graduate. Joking, that part was a joke. But I'm gonna tell you a joke and all I need is a rating eight through 13. So here we go. What did the shy pebble say? I wish I was a little bolder. Elijah Khasabo (01:33.573) Is that it? Is that the full- That's it? I'll give it a 10, 10 and a half. Brent Peterson (01:36.237) That's it. Brent Peterson (01:41.378) You see the pebbles are really small and they wanted to get bigger so they're shy. Yeah, all right. I got one more that's really bad so we're gonna do two because the first one didn't land. Why did the candle quit his job? He was burned out. Elijah Khasabo (01:44.591) Yeah. Yeah, I... Elijah Khasabo (01:57.443) like that one. I'll give that one an 11.8. Brent Peterson (01:58.786) Yeah. Right. Yeah, we won't we won't we won't we won't go any further because it's clearly going downhill All right. So tell us how you came up with this idea and I know that I know that the Facebook was founded in in in Harvard and Boston, right? So are you on the same path as Zuckerberg? Elijah Khasabo (02:23.161) Yeah. So, yeah, I'd hope so. We, so I, you know, I found a bit of a, actually I wasn't even in a college dorm room. Everyone always says that though. And I kind of just went with it. I was actually in community college. So was, I was in my own bedroom, right? So it shouldn't say bedroom, not dorm room. I'm now I'm officially building a, well, I was building a dorm room, but I live off campus now. I, know, I I've always had a passion for video and creative in high school. I built this discord community to 30,000 people all through Tik Tok. Right. Brent Peterson (02:26.061) Ha Elijah Khasabo (02:52.769) And I learned the power of social media, the power of influence, and just the power of video in general. And I've always wanted to go that route. So, you know, after high school was over, I made a decision to not go to college right away. I actually was going to get a sales job, but that ended up not going well. So I just kind of opted into community college and I was like, okay, let me just figure out some business ideas while I'm here. I probably try like seven or eight different things. Nothing worked and I landed on drop shipping, right? So I was actually, I have a small e-commerce store. And it took about three stores. But for every store, I used the same marketing strategy, like used affiliates to actually market the product. And by the third store, I was struggling to find really good creators. The first one and second one had, I think, like zero sales. Third one had a couple thousand dollars. I'll never forget, I came across a creator who was actually a UGC creator. And they're like, hey, like I can do this for $50. I was like, well, I always tell the story. I went back and forth with him. I actually didn't want to pay him because we pay. At that time, I was paying based off like what you generate me. So for whatever you generate, you get a percentage of that. Right. I don't pay you upfront. But I learned the value. Like, hey, you're paying upfront for really good content. And it's content that you can keep and do whatever you want with. So I actually ended up getting the video. I posted it and it got 15 million views organically. Right, so in my head I was like, I mean, this is just a no brainer. Like I should probably like, why don't I just sell videos to other dropshippers, right? Because I'm never gonna sell this shitty product, right? Despite getting 15 million views, we only made a couple thousand dollars in sales from it, right? Weirdly enough, Shopify was like down that day too. So like, it kind of sucked for like the first two days that I was popping off. But I always, ever since that video, I've always been in my head, it took like about a month and a half, like, okay, how do I get into content? Like, how can I service this to people? Because I didn't want to do it by myself at the time. I was very scared to show my face on camera and stuff like that. Because the way I built that Discord server was all faceless. I never showed my face. So I didn't think I was ready for that yet. And I knew for an industry like this, for people to trust me, I knew I was going to have to my face eventually. So I tried partnering up with somebody. Elijah Khasabo (05:05.476) didn't work out. I ended up having a group of 13 creators by myself that I found all through Instagram. And I started like this pretty solo agency and I'll just sell videos for like 20 to $30. And from there, I met my co founder who was actually a customer at the time. We partnered up and we built Vidovo together. So he's a software guy. I'm I'm pretty much the entrepreneur guy. And yeah, we've grown. It was very humbling bootstrapping, but you learn a lot from it. I'm like, this is like very legit, right? Like this shouldn't be hard. Like that's what I thought, right? Until you realize like building a marketplace, building two sides of the business, creators and brands is very, very difficult. But it molded me into who I am today. So I'm very blessed and thankful. But yeah, that's kind of how we are. And now we host over 15,000 creators all organically. And we worked to probably north of 200 brands now. So it's been exciting times. Brent Peterson (05:58.306) That's very cool. So tell us what was the product that you were selling and why did it go viral? you know? Can you point to anything that the creator did that made it go viral? Elijah Khasabo (06:06.691) Yeah. controversy. He had his toe out in the video, right? And it was a door closer. So he was laying down in his bed and the way it was, was you put it like on the corner side of the door, right? So if you actually look like right here, you put it like somewhere right here. And every time the door opens, it just closes automatically. And I was like, this should be, it wasn't the best product, right? But in the video, was like explaining, he was laying down in his bed with his toe out and someone came into his room and the door just closed automatically. And everyone just kept talking about the toe and then you'd have half the other comments talking about like the actual product, right? So it's like, it's spinned up controversy where like, not everyone was focused on the product, but because of like the amount of impressions it drove on the controversial part, you did get the people who had noticed the product as well, right? So it was that's kind of why I blew up was just contra a controversial angle. It's kind of funny that his toe is just out But yeah, that's how that video did Brent Peterson (07:10.708) It's the idea is any traffic is good traffic unless you're paying for the traffic on your own site, right? So like if you're using a platform like TikTok, the goal would be to get that traffic converted to yourself or have a buy within TikTok, use a TikTok store to buy it. Is that kind of the goal there? Elijah Khasabo (07:29.38) Yeah, mean, yeah, I mean, for at the time I was very I built based off organic strategy. So my goal was like, we're never going to pay for ads. never going to pay to drive consumers to our actual website. We're just going to post content that can hopefully go viral. That was the game plan when I actually had the discord in 2021. It was so easy to go viral. I kid you not. I think we recorded probably over 100 million views across two and a half months. It was ridiculous. Versus now it's a lot harder to do that way harder, right? But yeah at the time with the goal was just organic Which is so funny now because like I'm on the opposite side where you know 99 % of our brands are used as for paid ads and paid only it's all driven traffic But yeah, that's that's kind of I would say there Brent Peterson (08:13.708) And how do you source the talent? Is there some kind of tool? And I have heard the same thing that a lot of brands won't pay upfront or some brands will pay upfront. And the other thing that I've heard is that they're really niching down and they're not necessarily looking at how many followers the influencer has, but more how well they're presenting the product. Elijah Khasabo (08:38.532) I mean, I think it comes down to what is your goal, right? It really comes down to what is your goal. So one, to answer your first question, at least the way we sourced it in the beginning, I would actually personally reach out to the biggest UGC creators in the space. Like, hey, this UGC creator has 10,000 followers, and it's like 10,000 UGC creators that are following that one, right? So my goal is like, If I could develop a relationship with this individual that has influence in this community, it would allow me to build Vidovo organically through that way. Cause if they could post about us organically or naturally or whatever, that'd be great for us. It's all community driven. Our creator side is all community driven. We don't run a single ad. We run maybe one ad for like seven days. He didn't really well, but we're like, what's the point of running this ad if we're getting good traction on the organic side. Ever since July of this year, we've gotten around a hundred creators per day organically. and they find us typically through Reddit or TikTok. So when another individual posts about their experience with us, which can be positive or negative, but there's been a lot of positive experiences that are being posted. I haven't ran into anything negative yet, which is really cool to know. It will happen eventually, right? But people in the comments are like, hey, what's that platform, Vidovo? I want to get on that. Where can I find Vidovo? So it's all through, it's all community driven, and that's how we're sourcing talent. And yeah, and to answer your question, I think it just comes down to your goals. Like, are you looking to have the creator post it? Is it influencers at UGC? I mean, nowadays, I feel like brands are more inclined in understanding why you have to pay for content. Like I said, I used to sell videos for $20, literally $20, sometimes 10, sometimes free, right? Whereas nowadays the average video on our platform is going for like $250, $300 per creator, right? And I've seen it as high as a thousand just for a UGC video, right? Which is crazy. Like you told me that in 2022, the I'd be like you're nuts, right? But that's just where the industry is going. brands are starting to understand like, if I pay a couple thousand bucks and put that behind meta spend and I generate X amount of revenue, like that's a win for me. So I've noticed to kind of sell those brands who just like, are like, Hey, we don't want to pay for content yet. I've noticed. Elijah Khasabo (10:50.948) the more I pushed them, I really just tested it out, just tested it out. If it doesn't work, just cancel. Once they've tested it out and it's actually worked, they've increased their budgets. That's something we see as a common trend on Vidovo which is awesome. Brent Peterson (11:05.462) And how do you look, I mean, do you look at the follower count or how do you measure the effectiveness of getting somebody, and I guess do you help your clients who are then, I mean, you're kind of the broker, right? You're helping to connect the UGC or the influencer with the brand. Is that kind of the idea? Elijah Khasabo (11:12.259) Yeah. Elijah Khasabo (11:23.556) Yeah, yeah, I mean, when it comes to influencer and you're talking about following, I don't look at the following. I personally look at the comments. What are people actually saying about this creator? Are they engaged with her video? they like listening to the video? Are they trashy on her? Like, are there any comments at all? Like, what are people actually engaged? I think engagement beats followers any day of the week. I have friends with hundreds of thousands of followers who just don't. have any engagement, right? Because they have followers for the wrong reasons. They built the wrong audience maybe two or three years ago. So you need to look at those like who has a legit community. And I think that goes beyond followers. Yeah, followers are great. But I think comments and likes and all the engagement metrics beat out followers any day of week. Brent Peterson (12:09.198) So my engagement on TikTok right now is, uh groan and that was such a bad joke. Maybe I'm building the wrong audience, or do you think I should continue down my path of building this audience of people that want to listen to dad jokes? Elijah Khasabo (12:24.612) I mean, yeah, you got to just find your target. I would say, you know, most of the influencers I know have done a great job in like understanding their target audience and what their target audience looks like. I honestly just make the argument go look at what other people are doing that you want to do and just do it in your own way. Right. But obviously follow that strategy. And it typically works out. as long as you're engaging, you're entertaining and you know, there is some level of influence in what you were saying or what you were telling. People will follow you. I mean, that's just, it's just natural as any, you just have to be consistent. My brother actually back in, I think May, he had like, you know, just south of 900 followers. He's a fitness influencer guy. And I told him like, dude, just keep posting like that. So you just keep posting good content. Now he's almost at 20,000 followers, which is just great, right? It's been like only a couple of months. So it's like, as long as you're consistent and you're learning who you're actually targeting, and you understand the importance of the content you're trying to get out and what you want people to perceive who you are as, I think you'll do a great job. Brent Peterson (13:32.375) Yeah, I mean, in all seriousness, you know, I post a lot of content about e-commerce on LinkedIn, and that's my channel. How about, so, you know, if I'm looking at that, the importance, if, and if you're looking at, and you have to look at your platform, right? So there's YouTube and all the different ones. And I've just recently, I'm also in a group called Entrepreneurs' Organization, and I just saw a post from somebody from EO that... Elijah Khasabo (13:39.16) Looking at that screen there. Brent Peterson (14:00.706) has gone and really niched down on specifically on YouTube and is able to in the last year to get to 100,000 or 200,000 people on YouTube. And he did it by really focusing on some things. Like one of those things is just focusing on that one platform. And then the second part he says is he's just committed to losing for 12 months. Is there some things that you would recommend that people do to get to get going. Elijah Khasabo (14:32.258) You know, I truly believe that the answer, the only answer is being consistent. I could be wrong, but I've seen it on my own end. I've seen it on influencers that we work with. I just saw it with my brother, right? I just think as long as you're posting content and you're being consistent in your understanding and your learning throughout the way, right? Like your first video is not gonna look like your 100th video. Right? I'll never forget. met with the I think he was one of the social media directors at TikTok. And he said the beauty of the creators diverse, the beauty of the beauty of the creators is their diversity of creativity. Right. So it's like, how creative can you be? How consistent can you be? And he also told me, like, don't look at anything until you have over 100 videos. See what's performing, see what people actually like and then go back from there. And I think all those rules, no matter what, kind of just fall in the umbrella of being consistent. Right. Because when you're consistent in doing something, you're bound to learn what's working, what's not working. Brent Peterson (15:29.922) Yeah, and I did comment on this person's post, but the last thing he said is, see yourself as a creator, and once you start seeing yourself as a creator, you become a creator. Elijah Khasabo (15:40.814) Yeah, that's a good one too. Brent Peterson (15:42.959) So what you focus on the videos, tell us a little bit about how you built your platform and how, you know, give us the idea of how people connect with the other people. Like if I'm a brand, come to you, like just say I sell a product and I have a product that closes your door automatically. I use my toe, but how do you get those, how do you connect those two together? Elijah Khasabo (16:09.764) Yeah, so mean on the software we built, we have a marketplace, we have our campaigns feature. The marketplace is pretty much where we list all of our vetted creators. So to be vetted, have to be either good at creating content, have attention on creating a concert, be an influencer. If you meet one of those three criteria, I'll typically approve you on. for the campaigns in the simplest terms to an individual listening, it's basically putting up a job application with a brief of what you are looking for. So basically like literally a job application and you're getting a list of creators who are applying to it, right? And you obviously get to dictate like who you wanna work with and who you don't wanna work with. So it's great for the brands and the creators. It's like a marketplace model. We have to have the creators, we have to have the brands. Brands launch briefs, creators apply to those briefs. Right, creators looking for brands, brands looking for creators, right? So it's like build the software around that and make it easy for both sides. Brent Peterson (17:03.106) And I have to ask about AI and AI video and AI augmented video using AI and how do people see that? Do they see that as just not authentic, especially when it comes to video? Elijah Khasabo (17:16.868) Yeah, I mean I would say that the word authentic is so funny to me because like at the end of the day is like is UGC truly authentic? Like is it right? Brands are paying for it. Should it really be called UGC? Like there's the word is so interesting to me. I really tried to avoid it. I really do. But one thing I will say about AI that when the AI videos came out, it's when I used I had I actually felt relieved that I could use the word again, right? Because I think consumers just don't find it authentic. I just don't think they believe in it. Like, yes, it will be engaging. It will get views. Will it convert? It's going to get views because it's so new. People are just like, what is this? Like, this is so cool to me, right? But is it actually converting? Do you want to be the brand that like, you know, maybe you lie in your ad and, you know, you say it's not AI, but it actually is and you get caught? Like, how do consumers perceive that? Right? So it's like, I it since AI videos have actually come out We've actually seen more business because of it because brands like we want real content We want real people at end of the day We don't think this is gonna work and don't get me wrong AI will get there It will be very powerful one day and it will look like you know, super real And you know, I'm assuming most platforms will crack down I'm like you have to make sure this is noted as AI or whatever But I don't know how effective is when it comes to you know, actually marketing. I do think brands who are using it to amplify their content needs are doing the right thing though. Brent Peterson (18:48.334) What advice do you give to an e-commerce or a merchant who wants to try to get something done before the holidays coming up? Is there still time to get an influencer on board? And is this the time you should start doing it and getting ramped up for that, for the holidays? Elijah Khasabo (19:03.638) Yeah, I would say there's still time. Funny enough, we've only been around, I've experienced three holiday seasons so far with Vidovo The first one we were babies, right? So we didn't really have much to go off of. Last year I had a little bit more data to go off of. we had a lot of people come in last minute for October, November. This year, this October has been our best month by far. Within 13 days, we blew out our numbers from September. It was it was ridiculous and our numbers in September are really good, too So I'm still shocked to look at it till this day, but I would say it's never too late because we have brands coming in right now Hey, we need content we need content, but you need to get on it pretty quick I would have made the art may was better to start testing months ago like three to four months ago at the very least Because you need to see what is working. What are consumers reacting to? Well, what does that type of concept we can test around black black Friday cyber Monday or you know the holidays? but it's never too late now to do any creative. I just think it's gonna be a little bit harder because you don't have enough data that you would have had if you started testing a while back. Brent Peterson (20:11.734) Yeah, that's true. I know that, I mean, getting somebody on board and you get a lot of data during the holidays too. So it's a good time to get something in the mix. Elijah, we have a few minutes left as I close out the podcast to give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today? Elijah Khasabo (20:29.602) I'd probably plug Vidovo. I don't know. It sounds like a good thing to plug. But yeah, I guys, I love creative. I love what I do. It's very fun. I truly am a believer in being curious and being willing to learn from others at all times. And that's the most interesting thing I've found while building Vidovo is I've been able to learn from so many other founders, so many marketers, learn about retail, video, photo, whatever it is, AI. And being a founder has been very special moment to me So what I'll go see you just see an influencer platform where we just connect brands with creators agencies or consultants so if you are one of those three feel free to head to vidovo.com and You can chat with me on a demo and we can run through the platform with you Brent Peterson (21:14.062) Awesome. And Elijah, I'll do a plug for EO. I mentioned it's an entrepreneurs organization. There's a Boston chapter. I've met loads of the people from that chapter. There's an accelerator version of it as well. So I would encourage you and the listeners, whatever city you're in, to look up that chapter as an entrepreneur. To use a good AI term, it's been such a game changer for me in my entrepreneurial career. yeah, anyways, Elijah Khasabo Elijah Khasabo (21:37.475) There we Brent Peterson (21:43.886) co-founder of Vidovo Thank you so much for being here today. Elijah Khasabo (21:47.841) Awesome, I appreciate it. Brent, thanks for having me.