Hamza Alsamraee - Co-Founder of NewForm.ai on The Future of Content Marketing

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by Hamza Alsamri, the co founder of New form AI. Hamza, thank you so much for coming the show today.

Thanks for having me.

Of course, man. So I appreciate you coming down from SF and excited to dive into all things content today, man. And before we dive in, I'd love for you to give a quick high level overview of what it is you built at New Form AI before we really dive in.

Yeah, I mean, so New form really started from short form content. So we think short form is the new form. And that was, it wasn't my idea, it was someone else's creative idea. But ultimately we saw the chasm, this kind of shift happen between old media models. Like think about your images, your stills to now short form becoming the dominant force in marketing. Yeah. So given what we noticed, we built, you know, whole kind of content engine where we have in house creators making thousands of ads every month for, you know, our partners. And we realized that again, you know, a few years ago there was a lot of content, there was not much content and now there's a whole lot of it. And the way we're trying to use AI in our workflows is ultimately not about creating content because we think that human content is much, much better than AI generated stuff. And video generation is in there, but informing what to make. So sifting through this kind of noise and trying to extract signal about what content is the best. Because these days, I mean, there's millions of ads posted every day. So it's not about just making volume, it's about making the right type of volume.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think too just understanding what you guys do and diving in even previously, it's, it's fascinating and we'll dive really all into that. But one thing that, you know, we talked about briefly on the phone yesterday that I want to dive into is you go to Stanford, you started your journey in the world of writing a math book, which turned into a math Instagram page. I wanted to highlight this for a moment because I think your story and how it led to what you are doing now is very fascinating. So where did this, you know, love for math and wanting to write a math book stem from initially in your early days?

Honestly, for me it was always about like the patterns I saw in nature. Right. And you know, I was always like, as a kid, I was always inquisitive and you know, I think math was just my natural way to express it.

Yeah.

And you know, like over time I kind of Got attracted to the actual field. But it didn't start off that way. It started off as just like a kid being curious. And I wanted to get into a good school. I wanted to get into, you know, Stanford or something else. So I had the bright idea to write a math book, but I realized that, you know, not many people kind of buy math books for fun, so I needed a way to market it, and that's where the kind of content angle comes in. So I started a math page in high school.

Creative Instagram page.

Yeah. So I posted, still remembers, like, June 25, 2019. So it's been like, what, five years?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

It's crazy to think about it, but, like, I guess, yeah, like over five years ago. And it was literally like, I've scribbled down something on a piece of paper and posted it to Instagram. And I got my first, like.

Yep.

And I was hooked. It worked. Like, the dopamine hit worked. And then I posted a second time. I got my first comment, and then I posted a third time. And I, like, kept refining the content over time, and I got addicted to it because it was like, I felt like it was something that was honestly a much bigger dopamine hit than doing math problems. So I was like, the actual, like, growth and the numbers being moved, moved every day. That's what I got into. So I, like, ultimately, I'm a numbers guy, but I like things moving on a screen now, for sure.

No, it's so cool to hear that. And it just. It's so. I think we as entrepreneurs that are kind of get into this social world initially. Everyone has their kind of story of, like, you know, when the first, like, or the first post or something, the first thing goes viral, and it just kind of bends your brain to think of, like, what are the opportunities here? And, like, how. How can I take, you know, not only capitalize on this, but, you know, and, you know, one should say Facebook advertising once. One could say content. When you think about the origin story of new form and, you know, how you saw content back then. I remember, you know, back in my days of starting the podcast seven years ago, like, this idea of short form content was nowhere near where it is today. Like, there was a moment, I remember in 2019, the TikTok vacation of podcasting, where the long form stuff didn't even really matter. It was. The short form was, like, the number one priority. And it felt like it now happened overnight, but there was, like, a time where, you know, people took real advantage of it. What did you see back then that maybe people should start thinking about now in that same mindset of like, what is, what are the opportunities that you see today in short form that maybe, you know, you kind of felt similarly about back in 2019, 2020?

It's a great question. I think, you know, a lot of people, you know, are catching on. Right. Like, I mean it's not the, the ship has sailed on like being the first to do this. Like everybody's doing this.

Yeah.

Right. So it's nothing new. I think what most people are missing is how to turn into an engine. Right. And like same thing with, you know, Yersh. I mean you, you've had hundreds of guests at this point.

Yeah. Right.

Like there's a process, there's an operation around this that I don't think enough people appreciate. And that's my biggest focus at NewFarm. Like I'm more on the content side.

Yeah.

You know, and I'm my main focus. Like how do we get the best content, the best volume, you know, the, the highest number of content assets.

Yep.

And how do we get fast? So I think like not enough people are doing that well and it's mostly just like, hey, you know, I have this influencer, let me pay them, you know, 500 bucks for a video and then maybe I'll get it two weeks later and maybe I'll like report back learnings in two weeks. It's just too slow. And like your competition, they're iterating every day. Right. And that's ultimately, I think, like, I think distribution is the moat these days. Right. Like, absolutely. We used to think about like product moats and you know, engineering moats, whatever it is, like products used to be harder to build.

Yeah.

But these days, like, I mean think about what happened with content as the cost of content went down. Like how many videos are made 20 years ago versus now?

Oh yeah, night and day videos versus, you know, however many very less frequent.

Because I mean you had the iPhone, you had TikTok cap cut, all these tools, what we call Rails now exist to make content creation really easy. The same thing is happening with software. So like if you think about, you know, AI and what's doing to actual software engineering, it's making the Rails and these whole like product modes less important. And obviously product still matters. But in a world where anyone can know out compete on distribution and the product offering is similar and you can iterate faster because now you have, you know, all these AI code assistants for sure, distribution becomes more important.

Yeah. And when you're and I couldn't agree more. Right. And you, you see that so much and just even on the CPG landscape, right, you see people like Logan Paul and launching prime, where you know, you have a brand like Gatorade or these massive organizations and you know, they'll triple their followers in terms of like the distribution they have and how that converts to, you know, on the shelves and sales. And just you see that I think in these creator led brands, but also kind of as you said, from the technology standpoint, like how do you then, you know, create that same distribution not only for CPG products but for the tech brands. And you know, I know you guys have worked with so many great brands in terms, in terms of the content strategies when you're first approaching a brand and maybe for, you know, entrepreneurs and CEOs out there, how should they be thinking about their content engine and what are some learnings that you and the team have picked up over the years in terms of the framework of how you think about it and how you actually go about executing it?

I think like you, everybody needs like their Jake from State Farm, like for sure think about Jake from State Farm and the fact, you know, that figure had on State Farm's business. Yeah, I think like the same thing holds true with, you know, businesses these days and big and small. Like you don't need to be State Farm to have your own creators. Right. And I think like, you know, I'm biased because in my last startup I was that Jake from State Farm. I made all the ads.

Yeah.

So it's like, you know, it was this VC backed app called Faves and you know, I was doing everything from A to Z. So I was like head of growth and I was making every single ad, running it and I made maybe a thousand ads. You know, in my time there's. And that was like, you know, that was my job. It's just like making the best content. I think like a lot of people that we talk to these days that have scaled pretty quickly, like these guys, they're actually like right next to us in our office in New York. Resume.

Okay.

So there's this app resume. And it's actually like, it's funny because we met like I met the founders like over a year ago at this point because they loved what we were building at Faves.

Okay.

So recipe is this like recipe tracking and saving app so you can like save your favorite recipes, you know, keep a list of what you're cooking, what you want to cook. And it's like a simple you know, utility, subscription app. A lot of people like it and I kid you not, they make hundreds of ads every month and it's like almost. It takes up so much of the founders time because like that's their main content engine and now they, you know, they rake up hundreds of thousands of downloads every month and it's because of content. And I think like you're seeing more and more of this, you know, ultra focused, you know, distribution approach from like I would say the new age of software companies.

Yeah. That you look at lingo. Right. And how they've gone about just their content strategy and the character of, you know, the bird and you know, I think they have 10 million followers on TikTok or something like that.

Yeah.

It's crazy to see.

Yeah. And like that's their Jake, you know.

Exactly.

You need one.

Yeah. At what point in a company's. I guess I should reiterate that when you're talking to different companies, you know, early stage startups to more, you know, larger scale enterprises, how do you speak differently to content strategies within these organizations? Right. One could say founder led brand from the. Is from the beginning is so much more impactful. But if you're talking to a organization that has this marketing team and they have processes and there's like very structured, I guess, how do you view that in terms of like the time of going about really implementing a strategy when it's just early stages from the ground up versus talking to a team that you know, is more established within an organization.

Yeah, I think it's. They're very different games because I mean we. So we worked with this app for a while called Mersul. So Marsool is like one of the biggest food delivery apps in Saudi Arabia. So they're like bigger than Uber Eats. And we realized like something funny which is like there's more people in Saudi Arabia that have the app installed than do not. So like at that point like how do you do your marketing? And like I think Uber had a similar story to where like they were running some sort of campaigns and they were literally like we basically converted everyone that can be converted.

Yeah.

So if you're dealing with like a big enterprise brand. Right. Like you need to think about not just like the actual, you know, new user kind of acquisition, but cultivating your audience, getting them to purchase more from you and like exciting them about the product. So like for example, like we're working with Binance right now and Binance has like a specific campaign that we're working on with like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Okay.

I like, frankly that, like, if you don't, if you haven't had Binance already, you're probably like, you know, maybe you'll install it because of this. But like, it's also geared towards people who are already familiar with the brand. Right. So I think it's like strengthening the.

Brand, the relationship, the touch point, all that stuff.

Exactly. So I think, like, what I would say, a lot of early stage founders overestimate the power of brand because they don't have one.

Yeah.

Then it's like brand is to be underestimate.

Yeah.

Like, because what are you, like, what are you optimizing in a brand? And of course, like, you don't want to like, come off chew gear. Like, you don't want to dilute your brand. But like, brand marketing as like an early stage startup, like, I don't. I feel like that's a paradox. That's an oxymoron.

Yeah, for sure. And when you say that, I guess let's go deeper on that. It's an, It's a paradox in the sense of you're so early stage, there's not too much to build around it or. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, Like, a lot of people, and we see this all the time with content where, like, they're making duolingo style content when nobody knows who they are. And like, yes, duolingo can make a funny joke about duolingo and it's funny like if like duolingo is in the Twitter comments of like, Wendy's telling them to like, f off. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, like, like there's like fast food Twitter beef, like Wendy's and McDonald's. They always, like, are in each other's comments.

Yeah, that's funny because they're reputable and people know them.

There's a personalized version. Like, you don't see McDonald's as like this random company. Totally see McDonald's as a person these days because of like, how they, how well they did with their content. It's like, that's to be earned. Right. Because like, if, you know, insert startup.

Yeah. No one knows. Yeah, yeah.

It's not fun.

Less effective.

Yeah.

When it comes to, like, really standing out when it comes to the actual creative. What are, what would you say are the top three things that brands can do to truly stand out in their content? Because I think, you know, everyone's on social media, you can see what's working, what's trending, and everyone has the same level of awareness of like, oh, this is trending. Oh, let's know, recreate it. But when you think about like how do I stand out? How do you help your clients stand out? Like what comes to mind when you think about that?

I think a lot of people over optimize it and like I cringe every time I see like some new buzzword used in like a marketing ad and I'm just like, what are you doing? Right. Like I think what was it? It was like, yeah, like some, I, I came across some like corporate ad that was like that this is the new demure way to do that. I'm like, no, like, like you don't want like funnily enough, I think like organic content, maybe you lean into that. If you're a well known brand, you know, on organic content you want to lean into trends. But you know, we're operating a lot of times in the paid ad space.

Yeah.

And for like ass purposes, if your goal is ROI and like actually creating assets that will last a long time, you don't want to capitalize on trends because like trends will just fade away fast. So honestly the biggest things are like the usual, you know, like marketing hand, like marketing 101. Make like solve a problem, make it clear what problem you're solving and identify your, the core audience. And like you can do that all in a subtle way. Right. So like we think content is the targeting and you can do it. You know, like let's think about like a financial product for example. We like to use this one. Like let's say the hook is, you know, I don't know where to invest my money versus like I need a new side. Hustle is like, I guess both people are optimizing for the same thing which is like they're trying to make more money.

Yeah.

But like think about the audiences that attract each from each hook and ultimately that's like what you want to think about is like what is, what is it that I'm you know, putting out there and what am I attracting? And if you're making the wrong type of content. Yeah. You'll attract the wrong audiences. Love it.

I, I want to touch on a little bit about like building new form and where you guys are today, like where you spend most of your time and what are some of the, the, the challenges that you've overcome throughout the years in this world of, you know, content and like, you know, it's such a fast moving industry of like what's new, what's high with obviously with AI these last couple of years. But yeah, let's take it like take us back to today and where you spend time. And where you spend time here today.

Yeah, I mean, I used to, when I first started, I used to make all the ads, right. So I'd do everything. I was like a one man show and you know, I, you know, was creating hundreds of ads every week. I was managing the campaigns. These days, honestly, my focus is on how do I like, scale up, you know, the team efficiently and like, focus on operations. More boring business stuff, I'll be honest.

Yeah.

So it's like thinking about, like, hey, how can this get better, faster, more reliable? And I'm really proud of the team we've built. Like, I'll be honest, like, you know, I haven't made an ad in a while and like the. What I know I've done my job as well is like when, like there's a question and I, you know, someone from the team knows it way better than I can answer it. Like, that's how I know I'm doing my job. Yeah. Like at this scale, like, I mean, we're not too big, right? Like we're at about 15 people at this point. You know, I think it's just about like building systems for that next, you know, doubling tripling of the business.

I think people would find, you know, this perspective interesting of you're, you're in school.

I am.

You go to Stanford. How do you manage your time with, you know, everything you're working on? Team of 15, you're here in LA doing podcasts. Just how, how do you manage your time and how has that changed over the years?

It's crazy. You just reminded me I have a piece. I do tomorrow. But come on, dude, it's. I think like, frankly, I'm answering that question every day.

Yeah.

Right. So I'm still navigating it. Like I don't think I have the right answer, but like one activity always seems to be like a distractor from another. Like I play rugby at Stanford and from. Frankly. Yeah, like I'm, I look forward to rugby on my most busy days because that's exactly why I should go. It's like, because it was really busy, really stressful that I need that. Like, you know, two hours of practice to myself and maybe, you know, we run a whole lot and I hate myself after it. But like, that's the distraction I think you need to like keep a balanced life.

Yeah, No, I love that. And I think when. So you're, you said you're a junior.

Yeah.

When it comes to new form and where you see in the next 18, 24 months, like what's your mindset as like post, you know, post graduating, running this company, just how do you View the next 24 months of your life and just the future overall?

I mean I'm hooked on, on new form and like what we're doing and like there's a lot more, you know, investments that we're making, like especially on, you know, I mentioned this briefly earlier, but we're making so many ads that it's hard to go through them manually these days and actually analyze, hey, what's working, what's not. So we brought on our third co founder and cto, Alex and I mean we've been working on our kind of AI creative analytics suite for the last several months, which is basically how do we take all this unstructured data about creative and how do we empower ourselves first? Then eventually we are, you know, we already have like design partners for the tool externally, like how do we empower them to be able to analyze what's working, what to make? And I think like this content space is only going to get bigger Y and if you think about advertising, like the billion dollar companies and advertising today were targeting first. So they will like, you know, the face why Facebook became what it is today was like the Facebook pixel Y and like all the targeting methodologies, lookalikes, custom audiences and there's a whole wave of companies that are built, I think the next wave of like, you know, unicorns built in the space are going to be content first companies. So content analytics first companies. And I don't think it's like, you know, in the next year or two, then everybody's going to catch on. But I think like, certainly within the next five years, like this space is going to be, you know, as big as the targeting space.

I love that. And when you talk about this software analytics suite, this is something that you guys are using internally for now and then do you plan to productize that in terms of other companies that can take advantage of that?

Yeah, I mean we've seen the effect it has on our own workflows and you know, it's like, I'll be honest as janky as hell right now. Like, and the reason we're not spitting it out.

Yeah, no, I get it.

Is because, you know, like we're trying to just figure out, hey, how do we actually implement this tool into our own workflows? And then we can go out, hey, this is what it's done for us and this is what it can do for you. So we're already chatting with brands, agencies that want to use the tool and the reception has been amazing.

That's great to hear.

Yeah, that's I think where the next few years come from. We haven't raised so this is coming completely, we're completely bootstrapped. All the engineers were hiring completely out of the, you know, like the agency cash flows are funding the actual tech investment. I think like that's another thing that you know, we don't want to raise and I think we can build this in the next couple of years without so it's going to be exciting.

I think it puts you in all the advantage as well. Right. It's you know, even just at my last tech company we raised money back in 2021 and just when it comes to like founder optionality, I think just how you just described it, like cash flow positive reinvesting in different areas of the business that you know you want to invest into and grow. I mean every investor loves to hear that nowadays of like great, you guys are profitable, you guys are growing, you guys are investing into your own efforts. So it's cool to hear you talk about that in terms of just how you think about raising and all that stuff in the future.

Yeah, I mean I think like broadly on that note, it's just a lot of people raised to find a problem to fix and I mean I think that's been like the whole idea is like at least a seed rounds like you can go find your product market fit. Yeah, I think that's worked for a long time until I don't like these days it's, it's really hard like in seed stage even investing like people want to see product market fit because the market's shifted.

Oh yeah.

So even seed companies now are expected to have revenue to have like customers some sense of product market fit. And frankly I'd much rather like focus our time on like instead of like trying to raise some round focus our time on actually building the tool, talking to customers. We've already built the agency. We have like 30 clients or something like that right now and plenty more conversations about the technology side. So we don't really need the, the funding anyway for sure.

No, I love that approach to it too and I think too especially being up in SF and I, I'm sure you're surrounded by and you talk to all these companies are raising all this Stanford, you know. Yeah, exactly. It's like it's the opportunity will present itself and you guys are going about it in my opinion the right way. And it's super cool to hear about that. I want to talk about just not only trends, but opportunities. When you think about, you know, new form is the name of the company. New new form of content is what you said earlier. When I see content today, things that are sort of like, sparking my attention are like, okay, the AI avatars and how you can duplicate yourself and how does that scale and where does that fit into the puzzle piece of, you know, the next new form of content? And like, once it's really nailed. Because I know, like, you know, I've used so many different, like, AI tools or caption tools and there's always like. And you kind of hit on it earlier, like the personalized element that you just. It's hard to give 100% away to a tool or some type of AI product. But I think that will quickly change over the next couple of years. In terms of, like, what will, you know, Mr. Beast? Is him talking in the intro or the outro or is it his AI clone? And how do you guys think about that in terms of, like, the scalability of ad creative with the use of AI clones and that overall, I mean.

So I think there's a whole lot to analyze there.

Right.

I'd say like, like, here are a few takes. I'd say take number one is if you think about, like, what, who AI content benefits the most, it's not necessarily companies. It's like the actual platforms. Because what is the number one headache of every platform? It's like creators.

Yeah.

Right. So like YouTube. YouTube's number one expense item is the money they have to pay out to creators. And if you tell YouTube we can give you the same level of like, advertising dollars because, like, people still spend time on it.

Yep.

And you don't have to pay half of your revenue out.

Yeah.

I think they'll be pretty happy. So I think, like, the platforms stand to benefit the most from AI generated content. I still think it's far out from a world where, know you have an AI generated social media platform.

Yeah.

And, you know, it'd be really interesting to see one take place. I think, like, on the advertising side, we actually, like, so being a math major, I. I wanted to actually analyze, like, are AI ads going to be more profitable, like, to run? I think, like, obviously. So if you think about the average cost of an AI ad may be a dollar.

Yeah, Right.

The average cost of like a UGC ad, like a video, maybe 100 bucks. And I'm just like, rounding up. So if you Actually do the math like, okay, well I can make 100 AI ads for the cost of one, you know, you know, normal ad. So it should be a no brainer that AI ads are more effective. But if you actually look at like how ads accounts work, like 1 in 30 or 1 in 40 ads make up half of the spend. It's like those you're optimizing for that one in four.

Yeah.

And if you look at like those ads, like if you plot a normal distribution, if you plot a distribution of like let's say ROI per ad, you get something that's a normal distribution, just like a normal bell curve. And you know, the best ads that you want to spend your money are like two standard deviations away. They're that like top 2%. So that you crunch up the math like let's say ads only 20% worse on average. Right now you have to test so many more AI ads to get to something just as good as like the top 2%. So maybe it's like only the top 0.1% of AI ads make it so. What most people are not accounting for is like the cost of testing. Because it's not free to test on an ad. It might be free on organic, because on organic it doesn't cost much to post. It doesn't cost at all to post. But on paid ads, let's say you're optimizing for a purchase, well, you need to spend at least a couple hundred bucks to know if like this ad is working or not. Yeah, you can't spend a dollar and be like, oh well this didn't work, this didn't get a purchase.

True. And I do want to suggest for time purposes as well, like one question that keeps coming back to my mind is just, you know, for the companies out there that are probably so every company knows, like I need to be putting more time into distribution content. What would you leave companies and founders with today when it comes to their first step? If they feel that they're leaving, you know, money on the table, opportunity on the table when it comes to their content strategy, where should they start?

I think, you know, if, if you haven't done, you know, like let's say paid ads or any, any paid marketing at all.

Right.

Frankly, you know, you want to get started, you know, even if it's with a small volume of assets, right. Like hire creator off of TikTok creator marketplace or something like it does not need to be expensive. And the reality is like what we do, like, you know, we're not good at taking things from zero to one. We always tell this to people. I think, like founders themselves of these brands should take the thing from zero to one. Right. So, like, if you have something that's already working, then, yeah, that's where we come in. But like, initially, you don't need to invest tens of thousands of dollars to test if this channel is worth investing into or not. Like, I'd recommend getting started with, hey, get a creator. Look at what your competitors are doing. There's a bunch of ad spy tools, Facebook ads, libraries. Free. Yeah, just look up Facebook ad library. You can just look up what your competitors are doing, replicate a few of those ads. You know, you can even, honestly, you can film it yourself. Like you have a phone. You can film the video. Maybe if you're camera shy, hire someone and, you know, start experimenting with, you know, what it would take to actually start. Yeah, making profitable ads. But yeah, like, eventually your goal is to just make that content engine into a real thing and make it work on autopilot.

Absolutely. Last question before we wrap up. You know, if there's founders out there, companies out there that are interested to learn more about new form and everything that you guys have going on, where's the best place for everyone to learn more and to talk to you and the team?

I post, like, nuggets of info every day on, like, both LinkedIn and Twitter. So it's just Hamza Samurai on both.

Everything. I'll link everything down below as well.

Yeah, so, like, you know, we try to give away as much free alpha as possible without, like giving away too much of the sauce, of course. But, you know, we're always posting insights, what we're seeing. And, you know, like, ultimately, I think, like, there's. There's a wave here that a lot of people are riding and I think more people should. Absolutely. So, yeah, that's where you can find me. And also the website is just newform AI. If you want to learn more about us.

Love it. I'll be sure to link that down below. And once again, Hamza, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today.

Thank you for having me.

This is great. Thank you.