00;00;01;10 – 00;00;24;21
POV Host
This is the POV Hamilton podcast, where we’re sharing the Hamilton, Ontario point of view from businesses and entrepreneurship to life sciences and education to arts, culture and media. Hamilton is thriving and there are countless stories to be shared of the people, businesses and organizations making it happen. Here’s his point of view you’ll be listening to today.

00;00;24;23 – 00;00;32;05
Yuri Kaplan
Hello, I’m Yuri Kaplan, the CEO and founder of AdMass.

00;00;32;08 – 00;00;57;18
Yuri Kaplan
To introduce AdMass and kind of the overall journey that has happened about ten years ago when I started in the advertising space. This was 2009, and I was selling Google ads or a third party reseller, and it was quite difficult, to be honest, because everybody was showing up so well organically at the time on Google that a lot of people didn’t really feel the need for Google Ads.

00;00;57;18 – 00;01;19;02
Yuri Kaplan
It was a relatively new-ish product at the time, so I remember calling dealerships and various kinds of smaller businesses thinking that, oh, you know, the sales cycle is going to be much shorter. And as a telemarketer, you know, you’re trying to sell it as fast as you can and hopefully reduce those calls where they tell you to get off the phone as quickly as possible.

00;01;19;04 – 00;01;49;07
Yuri Kaplan
And we tried selling. It wasn’t really selling so well, but it got me into the first kind of dip of digital marketing. Fast forward years later, I spent some time working as an e-commerce manager, various digital marketing gigs, social media marketing gigs, as well as actually gaining some experience with development. Part time. As I was working, I was also trying to learn coding, and I realized there was a huge gap at the time.

00;01;49;08 – 00;02;10;19
Yuri Kaplan
This is 2020. This gap is even more prominent today. But this was 2020. And basically something that that is the term is called banner blindness. So you see banners, in fact, you see on an average of 6 to 10,000 of ads a day. It’s a shocking fact, but you were actually exposed to about 6 to 10,000 ads per day.

00;02;10;25 – 00;02;42;02
Yuri Kaplan
Now, this includes, you know, why are you googling something and ad on Google? This includes social media ads while you’re scrolling. This is every ad you’re walking down to get a coffee and seeing Barry’s billboard ads. This is about all the ads, right? Basically that you’re seeing. But if you think about banner blindness, what it specifically says is that you’re only really noticing about 2% of the ads that are on banners, but yet, you know, you’re getting charged for the clicks, you’re getting charged for the impressions is a business.

00;02;42;08 – 00;03;06;07
Yuri Kaplan
So it’s not a very cost effective way of advertising. And this is way around, you know, 2016, what happened is influencer marketing became very popular. But there is a challenge with influencer marketing. And people know that influencers get paid and people know that this is a living for them. Therefore, there’s kind of a little bit of a problem with authenticity and the belief of what’s really happening.

00;03;06;12 – 00;03;25;23
Yuri Kaplan
And you see this time and time again, you know, the most recent campaign is probably the Stanley Mark where, you know, they say ice doesn’t melt and water doesn’t fall out. Try that. Ice melts and water falls out of the cup. Right. But it’s sold millions of dollars because the influencers that were behind it did such an amazing job.

00;03;25;25 – 00;03;59;21
Yuri Kaplan
However, that’s not very truthful advertising. So what we try to do is go a little bit smaller, a little bit more authentic with influencers and basically the original concept behind AdMass. And I can touch base a little bit later in the podcast of how many times that actually evolved. But the original concept behind AdMass was to take local influencers who are much more authentic because of the range of followers and, because of the more intimate relationship that they have with their followers and actually have them promote the various businesses that would collaborate with them.

00;03;59;24 – 00;04;35;16
Yuri Kaplan
So the whole idea behind it was, first of all, taking the fact that influencer marketing is a more effective way in many ways, especially for product based businesses and direct to consumer businesses to promote their products than, say, banners. It’s much, much more cost effective in many ways, but also take that one step further and hyper focus on a specific demographic on influencers that now are branded as nano influencers, but are more localized and specifically, more authentic, therefore increasing the efficacy of those promotions.

00;04;35;18 – 00;04;56;20
Yuri Kaplan
So why did I start the business? And I saw the need and I decided, hey, I’m the guy to try and solve this problem. Basically, I really don’t think it was as much as, like kind of one as a need for me personally. I don’t think it’s always that fact. But for me, my journey began, I think much, much younger.

00;04;56;21 – 00;05;16;22
Yuri Kaplan
Even as a kid, I remember playing with my grandma, this little lottery I was born in, like, the former Soviet Union. So our lottery was, you know, it was pretty low quality, but it was this kind of imagined, like a low quality bingo card. And you play bingo, and I’m playing. I think I was like 6 or 7 years old, but bingo wasn’t enough.

00;05;16;22 – 00;05;35;28
Yuri Kaplan
What I did is I actually created a gamification method. So every time you win, you earn points, then you can redeem those points in this marketplace. And this marketplace included like little dinosaur toys and things like this. So I was like, okay, how can I take this one step further then, you know, I tried to form a landscaping company when I was a kid in high school.

00;05;35;28 – 00;05;59;27
Yuri Kaplan
I, I’ve always had this urge of some sort of commerce, some sort of monetization. I even try to outsource work in various, you know, locations that would hopefully give me a better ROI. So I remember outsourcing some, the stuff on Upwork in India, for example. So for a couple thousand dollars, I made this like website and tried to launch it and sell it.

00;05;59;27 – 00;06;29;17
Yuri Kaplan
It was actually a kind of an early version of YouTube shorts where basically you would have short films and so imagine Netflix for short films, so various things like that over and over and over. The problem with outsourcing website development work in a different country, especially when it was such a different time zone, especially when you yourself have no technical knowledge, is that, and there’s like so many things that can go wrong and they probably like 80% of those things that could go wrong did with me.

00;06;29;22 – 00;06;51;03
Yuri Kaplan
So that’s why eventually I’m like, I don’t want to outsource anymore. I’m going to teach development myself. And at first it it manifested in me getting jobs like an e-commerce manager where I helped, you know, this company, revamp their website eventually. I was a web developer, where basically there was client work. And, you know, I did dozens of websites, in various frameworks.

00;06;51;05 – 00;07;12;28
Yuri Kaplan
So I got the feel of what it’s like to work with clients, and closely monitored and learned business from them. And, I mean, all that learning means nothing until you start your own. To be honest. But I think that urge was inherently in me so much that I needed to do something. Entrepreneurialism. It was just the right time for me.

00;07;12;29 – 00;07;30;20
Yuri Kaplan
Where you know, I met a co-founder at the job at the time and combined, I’m like, you know what? I’m going to go in. I’m going to try to take this thing seriously. I’m going to combine the two knowledges I have of marketing and of development. I actually put together like a business plan and everything tried to take it real serious.

00;07;30;22 – 00;07;40;08
Yuri Kaplan
That business plan ended up being totally useless, but I did it. And basically that was kind of me trying to jump in with both feet.

00;07;40;10 – 00;08;02;21
Yuri Kaplan
Now let’s talk about the evolution of Admass, the various pivots, and the specifically the role that Innovation Factory played in it. Well, first of all, it’s very easy to talk about Innovation Factory because it played a big role. So, but beyond that, let’s start at the beginning. So imagine this is February, even January and January 2020.

00;08;02;24 – 00;08;22;01
Yuri Kaplan
If you remember, January 2020 was right around the time that COVID and the pandemic hit. So that was right around the time we were launching the website. We were trying to, apply to Y Combinator. At the time. And so we we did this spring for two months. The application was due in March. We had to revamp the website to create the demo.

00;08;22;08 – 00;08;42;12
Yuri Kaplan
All of those great things we applied, we didn’t get in. In fact, I’ve applied to Y Combinator probably like five times, and I’ve never gotten it. But I kept applying, you know, around to April, the exact date was actually April 18th, 2020. We incorporated the company and we launched the website. We’re like, that’s it. We’re going to make so much money.

00;08;42;12 – 00;09;06;29
Yuri Kaplan
Everything is going to be great. And, you know, a month goes by, quarter goes by, eight months go by, a year goes by. Still no money at this point. We’re trying everything, every marketing channel we can think of learning. Did the startup school by Y Combinator trying everything that we can. We managed to actually with our first system, get quite a lot of influencers join.

00;09;07;02 – 00;09;51;02
Yuri Kaplan
The problem is that we had a marketplace approach with marketplace. It’s very difficult because it’s a chicken and egg play. You have to balance things out. And the balancing act. Although we managed to get over 100,000 influencers on our platforms, we had a few businesses sign up, like maybe about 100. There was the collaborations wouldn’t work out because, for example, one business was excited to pay us money and use it, and then they wanted very specific influencers in a specific niche in Philadelphia that had specific demographics, that had very specific posts, and basically 100,000 influencers isn’t that much when it’s so specific.

00;09;51;05 – 00;10;10;01
Yuri Kaplan
We had like five people to choose from, and those five people didn’t actually want to promote this business. And this is just one of the many scenarios that basically we started thinking something’s wrong here, but add a little bit of distraction. And the fact that during Covid, we were trying to help local businesses eventually helped us get into the Hamilton Spectator.

00;10;10;01 – 00;10;34;01
Yuri Kaplan
When we got into the Hamilton Spectator, we basically got recruited by an incubator from McMaster University, the Forge. So the manager there at the time contacted us, said, hey, you know, saw you on the spectator. Have you ever thought about joining an incubator? We’re like, heck yeah, we did. Just nobody actually wants us. So, basically we did the interview process.

00;10;34;02 – 00;10;57;25
Yuri Kaplan
We got into the forge. This was May 2021, and within the first month, because of the amazing Hamilton community that exists and how everybody knows each other. And, you know, I must say, it’s, one of my favorite communities that I have seen in terms of how closely all the various incubators and accelerators work together. Somebody recommended, you know, hey, LiONS LAIR is coming up.

00;10;57;27 – 00;11;19;04
Yuri Kaplan
It’s a great way for you to refine your pitch, learn some stuff, put, you know, your, practice where your mouth is, so to speak, or where you startup is more so. And basically go through these motions that might even help you get a little bit of money if you went. So we applied, we got into the finals with LiONS LAIR and it was an amazing experience.

00;11;19;06 – 00;11;44;02
Yuri Kaplan
But what was even more amazing is the very journey not only was able to create great relationships with some of the mentors, but along the way we got ranked for our unique value proposition by one of the partners, Jan Kelly. And basically they, you know, did an evaluation of what our unique value proposition is, if it’s strong, if it’s not, we got the worst possible mark.

00;11;44;02 – 00;12;06;25
Yuri Kaplan
And it was one of the best things that could have happened to us, because what I did is I bugged politely the person who gave us the score to spend a little bit more time so that I could learn exactly what we were doing wrong. She was extremely kind, very, you know, polite with her time, considering how busy this person is, as she was one of the partners at Jan Kelly.

00;12;06;28 – 00;12;27;01
Yuri Kaplan
And she said, you know what? Talk to one of my head of digital, who knows the space very well, brainstorm some ideas with me. And my co-founder took a bunch of ideas, everything we’ve had on our roadmap and potential stuff that we were thinking of doing but weren’t sure how to validate, took the 30 minute or 1 hour call with as head of digital Jan Kelly, and he was extremely helpful.

00;12;27;04 – 00;12;46;18
Yuri Kaplan
By the end of the conversation, not only did we do our second or third pivot, which actually was the pivot that finally started making us money, but also it, helped get some introductions. So we ended up actually getting our first campaign because of it, which, by the way, went terribly because we just launched that pivot and we kind of rushed with everything.

00;12;46;21 – 00;13;07;26
Yuri Kaplan
But even though it went terribly, he saw our energy and he believed in our idea enough that that introduction led to another introduction, which led to another introduction, which actually ended up being the introduction to the CEO of sampler that ended up acquiring the company. So it’s kind of like the dominoes of Life or how I like to call it.

00;13;07;26 – 00;13;26;24
Yuri Kaplan
And I think that’s one of the reasons why I love to network so much. And I think that’s one of the great benefits of Innovation Factory, is that those connections, as long as you nurture them and as long as you appreciate them, and as long as you try to really leverage the opportunity that your provided can actually lead to a very beautiful unknown.

00;13;26;24 – 00;13;40;29
Yuri Kaplan
And that’s one of the most beautiful things about entrepreneurship, is the ability to network and grow your company. Because the best and most valuable resource of all is your network. It’s not time. It’s not money. It’s your network.

00;13;41;02 – 00;14;01;13
Yuri Kaplan
To talk a little bit more specifically about some of the tools and resources that Innovation Factory has provided, there’s a lot, right? I think I would put it into three main groups though. Otherwise I’ll be talking for much longer than an hour. And by putting these into three groups, I’d say one is mentorship. Mentorship can evolve in many different ways in business.

00;14;01;13 – 00;14;26;05
Yuri Kaplan
Basically, you have all those different areas that you would hire for. But as a, early stage founder, you don’t have money to hire anybody. You don’t even have money to, you know, pay yourself and hire yourself. But yet you have to do all these things. So you have to wear the hat of a, somebody who’s pitching to investors, somebody who’s potentially on podcasts, somebody who is doing sales and marketing and innovation.

00;14;26;05 – 00;14;56;02
Yuri Kaplan
Factory is really great at not only providing the workshop, but one on one mentorships that are required in each one of these areas. The beautiful thing is these mentors are mentors for a reason is because they’ve actually been places, done things. And therefore it brings me to my second area, which is community and network. Because not only are you tapping into the networking community of other entrepreneurs and you can ask for advice and you can collaborate with them, but each one of these mentors has their own powerful network.

00;14;56;02 – 00;15;13;08
Yuri Kaplan
And going back to, you know, being polite and appreciative of their time. If you are, you have clear asks. You take a look at their LinkedIn, you scour, you see, hey, I know you’re connected to this person, that person now because of the mentors, they want to help you. It’s because sometimes you just forget about your own frickin network.

00;15;13;09 – 00;15;35;11
Yuri Kaplan
You don’t remember what’s in there, know, especially if you have 20,000 followers or something on LinkedIn. So doing that due diligence, making sure that when you’re with a mentor, if there are potential connections, you ask them, I think it’s very valuable, especially with a great network of mentors such as Innovation Factory has. And the third one would be really just putting stuff into practice.

00;15;35;11 – 00;15;53;12
Yuri Kaplan
Sometimes you don’t want, just like the links layer really helps putting pitching into practice by pitching in front of lines later on in front of those investors. We don’t know when the prize. We were one of the finalists. We didn’t win the prize. But honestly, that didn’t matter because just the practice of pitching helped us get to the next steps.

00;15;53;12 – 00;16;04;14
Yuri Kaplan
And that’s ultimately valuation of where we were standers. And I think putting that into practice is definitely a very important third group.

00;16;04;16 – 00;16;31;06
Yuri Kaplan
So how Covid affected our business journey at first, I remember when we just started, I was extremely, what’s the best word discouraged because of Covid. So as mentioned, we tried various marketing channels and it’s kind of hard to promote a startup that says, you know, digital marketing doesn’t work with digital marketing. You know, you’re going to put up banners saying, you know, banners don’t work.

00;16;31;06 – 00;16;51;05
Yuri Kaplan
But here’s a banner about our website, right. You don’t have money to pay influencers because we started the company with like $1,000. Me and my co-founder had $1,000, saved nothing else, and we put it together and started this company. It was literally $3,000. So thankfully we knew how to code so we didn’t have to pay a developer because otherwise we would have never started it.

00;16;51;05 – 00;17;17;04
Yuri Kaplan
So, we did our money to pay influencers. We really didn’t have money for almost anything except our own labor. So one of the first things I did is I spent 100 bucks. Actually, I didn’t even spend 100 bucks because Vistaprint had this thing where you can get your first 100 business cards for free. So I did that, and basically, I took these business cards and I started going to every local small business in Hamilton.

00;17;17;04 – 00;17;37;21
Yuri Kaplan
This is right amidst the pandemic. They did not want my business cards and my germs on them. Right? Like, lastly, I kind of some politely took them, most politely refused. I pretty sure the ones that politely took them threw them right out after, as if it was like, you know, biochemical weapon or something. It was very challenging to promote the company.

00;17;37;23 – 00;17;59;26
Yuri Kaplan
That said, I mentioned that we got into the Hamilton Spectator. We actually also got on channel 14, and we got interviewed by a number of very interesting and well-connected people that helped get a gain of some presence and ultimately helped drive some of the initial revenue. And it was the reason why I connected with Innovation Factory. So it gave us a lot of benefits.

00;17;59;28 – 00;18;26;01
Yuri Kaplan
The whole reason is because we took that weakness of, okay, it’s Covid. No businesses want to talk to us and thought, it’s Covid. Nobody wants to go to businesses. Started thinking, can we reposition it and realized, you know, marketing is really tough. And right now cost effective marketing is more important than ever because it’s Covid. That was our pitch to the news outlets, us helping businesses save money on advertising during a hard time.

00;18;26;07 – 00;18;46;23
Yuri Kaplan
That’s the reason we got on channel 14. That’s the reason we got on Hamilton Spectator. So by kind of repositioning it and instead of giving up thinking, okay, look, this is hard for a reason, but who else is this hard for? Is there something here in this hardship? I think that was actually the very discovery that helped us not fold, but get to the next step of the evolution within AdMass.

00;18;46;25 – 00;19;10;11
Yuri Kaplan
So was it bad? Was it good? I don’t think it was either. I think it was one of those things that happen in business that you have to overcome. You’re always going to have challenges. And ultimately, thankfully, we were able to learn for that one instead of just giving up. To talk a little bit more about lines, layer and the whole general experience and the great mentorship that it provides.

00;19;10;13 – 00;19;32;03
Yuri Kaplan
So our LiONS LAIR experience was very interesting because as mentioned, we were doing it during Covid. During Covid, it wasn’t in person. It was like on this green screen where you go and you know, everything is on zoom and it was very interesting for us. I think it had a lot of great values, right? Value one, we were not media trained at the time.

00;19;32;03 – 00;19;57;02
Yuri Kaplan
We had no idea how to talk about our company because as much as we tried to talk to people, it’s it’s difficult because people wouldn’t be open and it was Covid. So it was a great opportunity for us to learn how to better communicate. And some of the communication mentors were fantastic and helping us better communicate our messaging both through pitch decks, through our website, and just through general conversations.

00;19;57;02 – 00;20;15;13
Yuri Kaplan
Because sometimes when you’re just starting out, you’re feeling a little awkward to talk about your company, especially like sometimes, you know, they say, oh, friends and family around. In my situation, it’s not something I could talk to friends about. It’s not really something I could talk to family about because in all truth, they weren’t very supportive of this.

00;20;15;13 – 00;20;35;10
Yuri Kaplan
They thought I should just become a really good developer and get paid a lot of money. And entrepreneurship is a failed endeavor that’s just going to go nowhere. So it’s not something that I really had people to talk about. I started with zero people I knew in the business industry. Thankfully, now I know a lot more than zero, but at the time I didn’t, I knew zero.

00;20;35;10 – 00;20;55;11
Yuri Kaplan
My network was empty, so this was extremely helpful for me to refine my communication to meet with like minded entrepreneurs. I did believe there is a better future for entrepreneurs. Yep, that didn’t believe in the power of innovation and it helped me not feel so awkward talking about it and ultimately refine that instead of just practicing in front of a mirror.

00;20;55;13 – 00;21;23;13
Yuri Kaplan
The other part of it was, I think it’s very important that, you look at it not just a mentorship, though, again, as, kind of community experience of the LiONS LAIR. During LiONS LAIR, you had all these great sessions where ultimately all of you would pitch together. So you’re actually seeing what other people are doing, and then you’re learning what you should do or you know, sometimes not to do, you know, so you don’t make the same mistakes.

00;21;23;20 – 00;21;48;07
Yuri Kaplan
And then ultimately, that kind of synergetic learning experience is actually very powerful because each person is very individually different. And you could come up with a great potential view on things that were way to phrase something that you’re like, oh, why didn’t I think of this? Versus if you’re just one on one with somebody, you have never went down that path because you’re one individual and the power of many individuals is much, much stronger.

00;21;48;09 – 00;22;10;05
Yuri Kaplan
So that was one of the great things about LiONS LAIR as well. And I think the general experience of it all just going through the motions of every week, you got to do A, B, C, you got this deadline, you got this, you know, great opportunity to potentially win something. It’s a pitching competition in order to survive you got to pitch.

00;22;10;07 – 00;22;30;00
Yuri Kaplan
And even if you want to bootstrap, you still get to pitch sales. You got to pitch something. It was a really great experience. It really was. I mean, I covered a few things, but honestly, it doesn’t do justice to just how much value the LiONS LAIR did deliver on. So I’m super happy that that competition exists.

00;22;30;03 – 00;22;53;22
Yuri Kaplan
If I was to pick one thing about the Innovation Factory that I think would be the greatest value, for any entrepreneur wanting to join, I would probably say that it is the mentorship. The reason behind it is that there is a number of times I mentioned network and community, and I think the entrepreneurship community is very, very valuable.

00;22;53;22 – 00;23;17;05
Yuri Kaplan
But I think through mentorship you can actually tap into the networks of all the mentors as well, which often includes the very enterprise nurse, as well as other opportunities, financial opportunities such as investors and so on. So I wanted to say network, but I think the mentorship actually leads to the network. And on top of that, you get the mentorship.

00;23;17;07 – 00;23;36;26
Yuri Kaplan
So I think that’s why the mentorship, I would say is actually the greatest resource. But again, it has to be leveraged correctly. If you’re just going in, you’re not prepared. You don’t have an ask from a mentor. They’re not magicians. You need to come with an ask. You need to study what I have done. And why is this specific conversation very valuable for you?

00;23;37;01 – 00;24;00;24
Yuri Kaplan
Because they’re busy and you shouldn’t waste your time. You shouldn’t waste their time, and at the same time study their network. Because tapping into their network is one of the most powerful, resources that you can have. To talk a little bit more about AdMass’, journey and ultimately what led to the acquisition and the states today, if you will.

00;24;00;26 – 00;24;24;06
Yuri Kaplan
Basically, I briefly touch on the fact that I met the CEO of Sampler through that introduction of an introduction of an introduction of an introduction, and, basically once I met her through the set introduction, we had a conversation and they actually became one of our client. We worked with, on some really large, you know, Fortune 500 companies, running campaigns.

00;24;24;06 – 00;24;49;02
Yuri Kaplan
What I didn’t quite touch on that, I think is very important, is that pivot that I mentioned after talking to Jan Kelly. And the final evolution was actually it took us from that marketplace. Hey, let’s connect local influencers to companies and evolved it into something totally different. So at the time I was not as popular as it is today, but it started to be a little bit more popular.

00;24;49;05 – 00;25;10;26
Yuri Kaplan
But investors wanted to tap into that already. This is now 2021 that we’re talking about. We did a little bit more analysis on influencers and did a little bit of more analysis on our brands, and we realized that, yeah, nano influencers are great, but they’re still influencers. A lot of them are actually not authentic at all because they’re still trying to make it.

00;25;10;26 – 00;25;30;00
Yuri Kaplan
So they’ll promote anything and anything just so that they can get a little bit more, you know, money in versus at least sometimes macro influencers might actually even be more authentic because they have money and they’ll stay true to themselves. It’s not always the fact, but what we realize generally is that influencers are still influencers, no matter what the size.

00;25;30;02 – 00;25;50;07
Yuri Kaplan
But there is something about the fact that the lower you’re following, the higher the engagement. And we came up with this concept of what if it wasn’t an influencer at all? What if you are right now wearing a sweater that you really love and that brand emails you saying, hey, post a photo of our sweater on Instagram and we’ll give you 20% off on the next sweater.

00;25;50;12 – 00;26;19;22
Yuri Kaplan
That is the most authentic promotion you can do because you’re actually enjoying the product. There is no issues with shipping that product, which brands often have with influencers when influencers don’t actually use those products. And there is no kind of enough authentic, relationship here at all, because your followers, unless you’re an influencer, are most likely your friends and family, and friends and family are 90% more likely to listen to an advice of each other versus any other form of advertising.

00;26;19;22 – 00;26;45;28
Yuri Kaplan
The problem with that is that the average person doesn’t know how to talk about brands. So this is why I mentioned AI because what we did is we actually we realized that, hey, this would be a good product. But the challenge with this product is verification of posts, making sure that people are using proper hashtags, that there is compliance, that they’re not talking poorly about the brand, that ultimately there is an alignment between the brand voice and what is authentic customer posts.

00;26;46;01 – 00;27;06;14
Yuri Kaplan
And at the time, this was just becoming a hot topic. User generated content. Now everybody says UGC is way better than influencers, but we were kind of like at the beginning of that, right? So the way that we were trying to automate it basically is creating this landing page that the brand can create. You’ll land on the branding page as a consumer.

00;27;06;14 – 00;27;38;05
Yuri Kaplan
After that email that I just mentioned, and now it says, hey, you know, take a photo of yourself, snap it. Here’s an example of somebody else’s post, and here’s a hashtag I mentioned you should include. I just say how comfy, how soft our sweater is. You know how well this detergent smells, how whatever this product is, and it gives the guideline just enough for the consumer to not copy paste that same caption over and over, but to understand, like what should you be saying about it?

00;27;38;07 – 00;28;18;10
Yuri Kaplan
And to make sure that those hashtags and mentions are ultimately powering the social power and the recognition on social platforms for the side business and that kind of tweak, it was essential to us because ultimately, this is exactly what led to the acquisition, because Sampler has a very powerful network of, customers, regular users that receive samples. And the reason it was kind of like one plus one equals ten when we got acquired, because our technology was able to amplify what the customers that receive samples are already doing, because now you can receive a sample, you can post about this ad sample.

00;28;18;14 – 00;28;44;01
Yuri Kaplan
The whole thing can be automated through the technology, the AI technology that we built proprietary at AdMass and everything is kind of synergetic for us at the time. With that mass was like, how do we tap into all these brands? Again? Sampler worked with over a thousand brands and and they had the brands. So it’s kind of like we had the technology, we had the, the ability to analyze data in a very specific proprietary way.

00;28;44;06 – 00;29;11;16
Yuri Kaplan
But they had the brands and they had the audience networks that can be segmented in a very powerful way. So it was kind of one plus one equals ten. We joined an ad, basically for a while, I was actually heading off that project ad sampler. Now I started on my next entrepreneurial journey, which is currently a little stealth, but it’s also in the place of AI partnership is, for me, extremely important.

00;29;11;16 – 00;29;31;28
Yuri Kaplan
And because of my knowledge of marketing, you know, part time, sometimes I advise, startups as well on, their marketing goals and things like that. Because they see value in what I say sometimes. That’s kind of where I’m at now. That’s where AdMass is at now. And I think I kind of covers the journey, if you will.

00;29;32;01 – 00;29;54;29
Yuri Kaplan
Three lessons that I have learned during my entrepreneurial journey that I think, would be some of the most valuable ones that I’ve learned. Lesson one doing a lot of research before actually diving into building something I think is super vital. This is especially a trap that often technical founders will fall into because you’re thinking, hey, I can build it.

00;29;54;29 – 00;30;16;13
Yuri Kaplan
Let me just build it and then market it and see, you know, how does it turn out? The thing is, I think there are three precious resources. Personally, the least precious one is financial, because if you know the right people, you can get the right finances. The second most important one is time, and the most important one is your network.

00;30;16;13 – 00;30;41;25
Yuri Kaplan
Because with network you can get time. You can get money, you can get everything. So if we go back to the fact that time is actually the second most precious resource, the thing is everybody has 24 hours. So for you to outcompete somebody, you either have to have a multiple of your time because you have more human resources, which then multiply by the 24 hour periods or 40 per week because people don’t work 24 hour period.

00;30;41;27 – 00;31;05;04
Yuri Kaplan
Most people, so or you actually learn how to utilize your own 24 hours in a more efficient way. So what I means is ultimately, you wasting a bunch of time on a product that’s not going to fit the market is actually a waste of your second most precious resource. And I think a lot of technical founders, they don’t look at it that way because they look at it as well.

00;31;05;04 – 00;31;24;00
Yuri Kaplan
I don’t have to pay anybody. I’m ahead of the curve because this other person is actually hiring somebody. Yeah, they’re hiring somebody, but they’re not wasting their most precious resource, which is time and network. They’re wasting their financial resource, which they have. So I think it’s a very wrong comparison. And often technical founders fall into that trap I did.

00;31;24;04 – 00;31;47;00
Yuri Kaplan
Right. So now if I was to do things differently, and in fact, I am doing this with the new start-up is instead of building doing first qualitative research and qualitative research, I think a lot of people think you can get away with ChatGPT today. To be honest, ChatGPT serves a lot of great purposes. There is nothing like getting intimate with your customer because you don’t know what questions to ask.

00;31;47;00 – 00;32;11;25
Yuri Kaplan
ChatGPT and just creating customer personas through ChatGPT is not enough for sure. You can conduct a general profile, see where the gap is, but at the end of the day, you need to conduct qualitative research by doing simple 10 to 15 question interviews with your target demographic. You don’t need a lot. You really need like five. After seven, you’re basically, you know, kind of wasting your time because you’ve probably had a good baseline.

00;32;11;29 – 00;32;37;20
Yuri Kaplan
And from there, you still don’t need to actually build anything. What you do is you launch a page, you validate that qualitative research through a quantitative analysis of, say, various, you know, ads or funnels that you can build from a marketing perspective and only then you actually build it. So hopefully you actually have a lot, somebody says sign up for a waitlist on your product if it’s a SAS platform or so on.

00;32;37;22 – 00;33;02;17
Yuri Kaplan
And funny enough, if you look at Y Combinator and some of the latest companies that have succeeded at Demo Day and succeeded ultimately in their cohort, that’s exactly what they usually launch with. They launch with a simple landing page after having qualitative research, and from there they go on, creating these giant lists, and only then they develop because now they have qualitative and quantitative data around what they should be building as well.

00;33;02;17 – 00;33;25;18
Yuri Kaplan
And they have kind of the pre validated their product. And of lesson one that I’ve learned. So lesson two I think one of the things that I’ve learned and I will definitely try to do better and better and better. And I think this is a never ending journey to be honest, is, increase in the speed at which you or a feedback loop works.

00;33;25;18 – 00;33;56;28
Yuri Kaplan
And what I mean by that is that within every business you have stakeholders. Those stakeholders are generally diverse. They could be your team, that could be investors. They could be many different people, like anybody who’s invested in your company succeeding. But also most important stakeholder is always the customer. Because if you position the customer as not a money maker, but as a stakeholder, you really start doubling down on the very value creation that your company generates to solve their pain.

00;33;56;28 – 00;34;13;07
Yuri Kaplan
So by looking at and kind of shifting that mindset a little bit, then you ask, okay, well, how can I make sure that I’m providing the best value for the pain? And this is not only success, the product market fit, it’s the basis of product market fit. But it’s also actually the basis for being able to charge a lot for the product.

00;34;13;13 – 00;34;31;16
Yuri Kaplan
You look at Apple as an example. They charge way more for their phones than anybody else. But in reality it doesn’t cost them more to make. And in fact, if you look at their documentation, they have the highest profit margin almost out of like most companies out there. So it says that they could sell their phones for a lot cheaper.

00;34;31;16 – 00;34;54;11
Yuri Kaplan
But why don’t they? It’s because why sell it for cheaper when the perceived value of their products is so, so high? And why is because they double down on their pain so much. Sometimes you’ll see their commercial, oh, we shove this laptop in an envelope that solves the pain of – heck, I can’t fit my laptop anywhere, right? And they visually sell that to you in a matter of 30s so that they target every single pain that you’ve had.

00;34;54;13 – 00;35;19;27
Yuri Kaplan
There is a number of amazing companies that do that, but the reason behind it is because they have such good feedback loops from their stakeholders. So even during their R&D process, they’re consistently iterating weekly, daily, weekly, daily on better improving the product and every little thing. Design features. Where does that button go? Like whatever it is, whether it’s hardware or software, it doesn’t matter.

00;35;19;27 – 00;35;40;08
Yuri Kaplan
In fact, it doesn’t even matter if you’re a service based business. But increasing the speed at which you receive feedback on your current state of service or product, iterating upon it, and making sure that you’re not just building something that isn’t directly connected to solving a pain, or increasing the value at which that pain is solved by your business, I think is crucial.

00;35;40;08 – 00;36;09;06
Yuri Kaplan
And, it’s, it’s something that honestly, I, I think everybody consistently keeps on improving, even like the top ten companies, everybody there consistently working on improving. So definitely I see little guys just starting out can learn a lot from that and do a lot there. And of lesson two and then for lesson three, I would say empathy because it’s very challenging to solve somebody’s pain without being highly empathetic.

00;36;09;06 – 00;36;29;02
Yuri Kaplan
They say that if you’re you don’t do a business that you don’t know, for example, or, you know, don’t get into something that you’re not familiar with and so on. And, you know, you have to be attached to the pain of something and you know, if you haven’t experienced this pain, don’t try to make a business out of it.

00;36;29;05 – 00;36;49;29
Yuri Kaplan
There is truth to it. And I’ve heard this a lot, but there is also non truth to it. One of my most successful mentors who said seven exits worth over $1 billion, he said to me is like I’ve never had the same pain. I just saw a great business opportunity, you know? So and apparently he got very rich solving these pains.

00;36;49;29 – 00;37;18;27
Yuri Kaplan
Right. But he was highly empathetic to understanding the pain and falling in love with that problem because he saw somebody else is experiencing. And it and he was like, I don’t want people to experience this thing anymore. Let’s let me interview these people, do some qualitative research and understand how I can better approach this, establish a business model and see if this is a sound idea, because you know, you’re not going to be selling typewriters today, and teleportation tools are not yet available.

00;37;18;27 – 00;37;43;22
Yuri Kaplan
So even though traffic jams suck, we can’t build a teleportation portal just yet. Right? So there’s always that like, okay, yeah, there was this pain, but can I solve it with the current resources? Is the market timing is right. There’s all that other research that does have to happen after, but it happens initially with empathy. And the reason I think that this is my personal opinion, but that a lot of people say, well, you have to experience the pain is because it’s so much easier to be empathetic to yourself.

00;37;43;29 – 00;38;11;07
Yuri Kaplan
You’re like, oh, but I’m feeling this pain. But that’s not the only way to run a business. And in fact, even if you are the only one experiencing the pain and that’s your trigger factor, you still have to ask other people because what? They solve it in the same way that you would, because you might be, you know, thinking of product A, but once you do an analysis of ten other people experiencing the same set problem, you realize actually it’s a product B and that goes back to being efficient with your time and making sure you’re building the right thing.

00;38;11;14 – 00;38;36;10
Yuri Kaplan
You have to think about the other people. You have to be highly empathetic. And it goes back to the initial two lessons that I’ve suggested, actually, because a it involves doing a lot of qualitative research up front, but B it actually involves a qualitative feedback loop, because every single time you move your product or service forward, you need to remember that, okay, let’s be empathetic that what I build actually actually solving and delivering that value to clients.

00;38;36;10 – 00;39;00;18
Yuri Kaplan
So and honestly I think everybody can practice, you know, empathy because outside of business it’s also makes you a better frickin human being. Right? So, I know personally, like, I definitely, I’m going to keep pushing myself to be more empathetic, especially during those moments that sometimes you might have a negative interaction with a human being. You never know what kind of day they’re having.

00;39;00;23 – 00;39;23;07
Yuri Kaplan
I mentioned that I did cold calling before, and I had a mentor in cold calling at one point, and, he, he taught me this thing that I’ll never forget. It’s like when you cold call somebody, assume that their kettle is burning. Somebody just recently died, and, you know, their cat is sick and puking everywhere, you know? And right now, you just call them to bug them for something and trying to pitch them something, right?

00;39;23;08 – 00;39;42;03
Yuri Kaplan
So there’s two things that happen there. Hey, when they tell you to get off the phone very politely, you don’t feel as offended because people can say very rude thing when you called call. Second of all, though, you become very appreciative. A very second of their time. You become very appreciative of their mood. That’s kind of the whole principle about it, right?

00;39;42;03 – 00;39;59;07
Yuri Kaplan
By be empathetic, you start thinking even if somebody is giving you negative energy, you’re actually creating positive energy in the world. And that’s a beautiful thing, because at the end of the day, the whole point of entrepreneurship is to create positive energy, whether it’s through innovation or for helping people or for solving pains. And if you’re in it, to create positive energy.

00;39;59;10 – 00;40;08;02
Yuri Kaplan
From what I’ve seen, people become usually successful, whether they’ve experienced that thing, whether they have not, which route back to the empathy.

00;40;08;04 – 00;40;21;29
POV Host
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