#54: AI Content - with Meghan Anderson, VP Marketing at Jasper

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Exit.

Exit. Megan is here. Megan, quick icebreaker before we get started. What have you done so far today and this is not to put you on the spot, but I just want to know, like, what's your day been like so far? Yeah, it's one o' clock, east coast time.

It is. And that's staggering. Yeah. So this morning I got my kid off to school. Dad walks her down, which is great every day. So I can get like a nice early start. We are putting together an event in a few weeks, so a lot of my work is on finding quiet moments where I can actually write the keynote that I'm giving. And so I spent some time on that this morning. And then meetings, triage, all the regular stuff that everyone listening is used to. This lovely conversation.

Yeah. And kind enough to give us an hour of which, like, you could have been checking emails and everything. But I. This will be. I'm excited to talk to you and I know people are excited to hear from you. I was going to ask you this anyway because I just saw this on LinkedIn, but you're back in event season. Care to comment? Sympathize with the audience of thousands of B2B marketers out here who can understand what you're going through. What's it like to be back in event planning mode? Event planning season.

It's strange because you're back, but you're also. We've got this halo over us from, or really probably cloud over us from the last few years of like, are people ready? Do they want to show back up? Like, what should we. Not just Covid and the Pandemic, but also just everyone, as we've been saying, has been sick this year. So even deciding to throw an event was kind of like a gulp moment. But the thing is, I mean, you can tell right now there is so much discussion and excitement and confusion and fear emotions wrapped up in generative AI right now that it just felt like a moment that needed an event to pull people together and have those conversations. So I'm psyched for it. I think the program's going to be awesome. OpenAI is going to be there. We're going to have a bunch of performers and artists and writers and people at all sides of the intersection on AI. So it'll be fun. It's just stressful, dude. I'm refreshing the cvent page every single day trying to figure out, okay, do we need to change our food numbers and things like that? So all credit in the world to event planners. It is not my purpose in life. I have so much respect for people who can handle that level of detail.

Also interested in asking you because I Feel like a bunch of your career has been earlier your career was being a leading product marketing at HubSpot. I think HubSpot famously, you know, has that kind of one or two big or at least for like when I was kind of like maybe five, six, seven years ago, it was like you were always working towards inbound towards this big launch like the event and the launch is like so much of what your career has been in marketing, right?

Yeah, definitely. But it's interesting. So my time at HubSpot I was sprinting with my team towards getting a product ready to launch and doing the positioning and the go to market strategy around that and the big like announcement keynote and that was our whole focus. But meanwhile another team, you know, led by Kim Darling and crew, amazing Laura and amazing people on that team were sprinting to make sure that there was a stage there when we got there. Right. And that all of the logistics and details of pulling off that experience kind of just developed around us to allow us to be laser focused on the product and the message we are trying to get out there.

Now you have to do it all. You have a team to do it, but you have to like stress about all pieces of it.

Yeah. But you know what's cool? At this stage of my career, the first call I made when we decided as an exec team that we were going to do this event was to Kim Darling and Laura Moran who ran the inbound event. And I also reached out to this woman, Jana, who ran the events at Drift and that you've worked with in the past to say, hey guys, I need a speed course in pulling off what you do. And they were outstanding. Sent me documents, connected me to people and so I think just the coolest thing about the stage I'm at in my career is I've built a big enough of a network where I'm never really alone in these things. And then of course I've got just an exceptional team at Jasper that is really doing the work to pull it off.

That's such an awesome story and I think an observation for a lot of people that are listening to this. I remember feeling when I was at Drift trying to grow my career, I was building that network. I made a lot of mistakes just by lack of experience. And then when I went to Privy after that I was like, oh, I know which agencies like suck or don't suck and I know who to work with for this and like, oh yeah, how do you get this up off the ground? It's like you should you hire this type of person. And there is, you know, everybody wants to grow their career really fast, but there's also some benefit to having that time where like, you need to build up that network because it's going to become an advantage when you go and lead marketing down the road.

Yeah, it's a flywheel in its own right. Like, I remember people telling me early in my career, oh, you've got a network. And I was like, that sounds like a ton of small talk. And I don't want to do it and I want to just stay in my lane and do my work. I care about the work, but it pays off phenomenally down the line. It's an extension of yourself that you can tap at any given point. And if you're kind to your network, you've built a huge community. Dave, like, if that will pay back dividends in terms of just support, expertise, ideas down the line.

Yeah. A lesson for me was like getting my ego out of the way and just being like, I need help. Yeah, need, like. And, you know, I watch people like you and, and Mike Volpe for example, and it's like, you know, he was someone who like told me a lot like, you know, the goal is not you do all the things yourself. It's like you just have to be the one to help start and facilitate those things. And I think once you realize that, everything changes. Anyway, I have so much that we got to cover. I got to ask you forever. Can you do like a brief career history up until Jasper? And then I want to talk about, like, how did you get to Jasper? Why did you take the job at Jasper? What's exciting? I want, like, how did you meet Dave and them? I'm interested in hearing a bunch of that.

Totally. Actually started my career as a copywriter in a nonprofit United Way and ended up in nonprofits as you do. I wore a lot of hats. I ran the social media strategy and the website over time. And I just got to see firsthand at that moment how galvanizing technology can be. And it got me really interested in technology as just a force of communication. So I left the non profit world, reached out to a tech startup called Performable, which was led by Dave Cancel and Elias Torres, and got lucky that they took a shot on me, who had never had any tech background before and just figured that they could kind of teach me along the way. And nice small startup, really tight team. And about six months, maybe not even that much after I started there, Performable was acquired by HubSpot, then became the HubSpot Chapter of my career. I was at HubSpot for about 10 years. I got to see it go from a single product company to a multi product company, from private to public, from local, at least North American based, to truly global. And so I think that headline of my time at HubSpot was I got to see scale, right? I got to see growth, got to be part of that. And if you're gonna have a career in marketing, there is no better place to learn it than through the people that I learned it from at HubSpot. So spent about 10 years there. I ran product marketing, content, the creative organization, the brand team and HubSpot Academy over my tenure there. And so I got experience at a lot of different things. And then 2020 happened. 2020 was a bit of like an inflection year for a lot of people. And I sort of looked around. HubSpot had grown to be, you know, on its merit, had grown to be an enormous company at that point or what felt enormous to me. It felt like my exit, you know, it felt like time for me to go give room for other people to sort of lead those teams. And so I decided to leave HubSpot to go work for a startup again. And this time I went to a company called the Wanderlust Group which was like an outdoor tech marketplace so you could book slips at marinas via, via their app Daqwa. And I was there for about 18 months, built a team from the ground up, really got back into the startup feel again. And then Jasper came, gave me a call. The funny story about Jasper is I was not looking for a job. I was really happy at the Wanderlust Group. I think that org is just a, like their focus and everything is really powerful and loved the team. I picked up the call from Jasper because I thought it was my like food delivery guy dropping off Indian food that night because I usually screen recruiter calls because, you know, when I'm in a company I want to be focused, you know. But I picked it up because I was like, oh, they're lost. People get lost on the way to our house all the time. And it was a recruiter for Jasper. And I'll tell you, like it was maybe a couple of conversations in where I was like, something remarkable is happening here. It wasn't just the company's relatively astronomical growth which it had seen in the first 18 months of its existence, but it was the space, right? I think I'm a sucker for a good story in a time of change. And I think I just got a handle on how transformative generative AI was going to be for the way that we work, the way that we communicate, the way that we live. And I just wanted a piece of it. I got, I got excited about that space, so that's how I came about. Didn't hurt that the team at Jasper is just like, they're whip smart, they're fun, they make being part of this feel. Feel like it has as much momentum as it really does. It feels like the pace and level of passion for it is all around you.

Oh, that's awesome. I have so many notes. You're a good storyteller.

So I was like, I think that's a little long for a podcast.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's no such thing ever.

In the span of.

No, no, no. There's no such thing as long. There's only. There's only something as boring. And you're a good storyteller and I love that you're a sucker for a good story. So that is wild. So you literally answered a cold call from a number that was not in your phone and happen to be a recruiter from whatever, which normally I don't.

Recommend, but this time, yeah, they just.

Go straight to voicemail, but you never know what. Or usually they don't tell you what the company is. They're like, I have a hundred million dollar SaaS, blah, blah, blah, nonsense. And you're like, what great. What company? This. So there's an interesting thing that I didn't think about until this call actually was, I feel like HubSpot, I mean, for me as a, you know, marketing manager, Dave, coming up, like, HubSpot was like this amazing company because it wasn't even about the software. It was about. I remember being a junior marketer at like Constant Contact and I was religious about reading your content and HubSpot's blog and because I felt like they taught me how to do my job better at a time where I didn't have many resources. And so, like, I got to just kind of nerd out on like, HubSpot content. And I think what's really cool about what you have and can build with Jasper is like, you kind of have this passion for copy, for brand, for storytelling. You know, you built inbound at, you know, inbound marketing at HubSpot over a decade seems to be on the bubble of something similar here where, like, a whole lot of the marketing that you're going to get to do at Jasper is also going to be about, like, using your own product, which I feel like is something that you're probably passionate about.

Yeah, I mean, I, like, I'm a lover of words. I'm a lover of writing. A lot of people have asked me, why would you go to a company that automates writing when you love writing so much? And the answer that I give them and that I really believe is that, like, this is just the next incredibly powerful tool in the tool set for writers. Right. In the same way that the digital camera helps to expand photography and brought new people into the fold and that wouldn't have otherwise been there, and then also invented new ways of communicating and creating art through that photography, this, to me, is that same model. Right. And I think because I love good writing and good marketing so much, I also feel sort of a responsibility to. That sounds grandiose. I'm sorry if that sounds grandiose, but I'm an idealist. Like, I feel a responsibility to get in there and kind of tip this in the right direction. Right. So I think there's no secret that much like any technology, AI can do some, you know, can unlock human potential. It can do some amazing, incredible things. It can also be a shortcut for people to put a lot of junk out on the Internet. Right. And I think that the world needs examples of how do we bend that arc in the right way? And I wanted to be in there with my hand, you know, on the steering wheel, helping to push it that way, too.

That's such a great. So I feel warm and fuzzy to hear you say that, because I do see that side of it. And I think in knowing enough about you, like, I think you're very strong character, ethical person like you. It feels good that you're leading the marketing there versus, like, I could, you know, I'm not going to name any names, obviously, but, like, picture somebody else in that role. And like, there's a lot of stuff that's on the border of cringe. I think you have an opportunity to build a brand around, like, the right way to do this. In a similar way that you talked about, like, here's how to make marketing people love a decade ago.

Right, Right. There are. There's good parallels there. I mean, I think HubSpot kind of first came about as a response to people wanting to block out ads and wanting to create a better way of marketing to people. But then fast forward a few years, and then everyone was doing content marketing. Content farms started popping up. People were churning out, like, buzzfeed title articles, including some of the content that, you know, we put out Admittedly. And so it's kind of like, you know, old marketers ruin everything, saying, like, we tend to take a scorched earth approach sometimes to the technologies that we're given. And I think there is work to be done when you have a platform and you're at a company that creates some of the technology to make sure that people know that that doesn't have to be the only way. Like, I think the cool thing about AI is it could be, you know, people are always like, faster, better or cheaper. Like, choose one. It actually could be with the right strategy, all three. But you gotta use it well.

Oh, you better use that in your keynote. That was fire. That's a great line. You gotta use that.

Yeah, I need that stuff. The keynote is not written yet, guys.

Well, there you go. Okay, we'll send you this audio. We'll send you this audio. That's a killer. That's a killer hook. I. Okay, I want to get more to Jasper and like, the use case and there is like, I have a bunch of stuff that I want to ask you about that, but I want to stay on for a minute. You taking this job, you obviously have a great resume. You had your pick, you know, you would have had your pick from any recruiter that would have called you. Given that there is so much hype in this industry, how did you go into Jasper? And because I'm sure you did a lot of interviewing them as well, like, you must have seen something in the product that you were like, oh, this isn't just buzz and hype. Like, this is very real. Can you talk through that?

So what I saw in the product was, like, the power that it had. But then I also saw the opportunity in terms of the opportunity and the strategy of, like, what they were doing and what they weren't doing. And I want to make sure that I can have an impact when I take on a role. There's nothing worse than taking on a role and realizing that, like, you're not really adding value there. And so that's important for my own ego, right? To be like, I can make a difference here. And so I think for the first part of that, for the technology look, the TAM is massive. Everybody writes, everybody creates. We are targeting business users specifically, like marketing executives and content leaders at growing companies as our primary audience. And the product is built for that. And, you know, we feel like we have specialization there. But, you know, you could also be a founder who uses Jasper, maybe English as a second language, and you use Jasper to convey your ideas or you could be a single marketer at a startup, or you could be a blogger at a massive enterprise company. The TAM is just so big. And that pain is real, right? Like, content demands are up and not slowing down. Every year there's a new channel. You know, before it was okay enough to have a blog. Now you have to have a blog and a podcast and TikTok following and like, you know, great email newsletter. And it's just like it's never ending and people are burning out. So the pain was real, the opportunity was there. And then in the strategy, I saw places where I could be additive, right? I knew that we could diversify our acquisition sources more. I knew that we could, you know, move up market in ways that I had had practiced before. And I knew that we needed to do more around thought leadership in how to use AI responsibly. And so that's what I pitched. And the team was excited about that vision. They had talked about parts of it as well themselves and just hadn't had anybody to execute on it. And so that's how the minds met on it.

I love that you mentioned having this huge tam, which is awesome, but I can also see it be like, how do you focus, like, as much as you're comfortable sharing, like, can you talk about go to market? Because like, it's great to have a huge tam, but I've also seen like, internally it's much easier when you're like, we sell to this one person and here's who they are versus, like when you have to market to like the solopreneur, the blogger, the enterprise team, like, how are you approaching that? And if you could share some of like your thoughts on go to market with that lens.

Yeah, definitely. We've actually been talking a lot about this because so when Jasper first started, it just took off. So like the product market fit was there, but in the beginning it really was everybody and anyone as the company has matured, and again, by matured, I mean we're in our second year here, so our third year decentralized, our third year. But as the company has matured, we've needed to look into that user base and figure out like, okay, who really is from these hundred thousand, you know, paying customers, who really is the best fit for what we can offer in a differentiated way. And that last piece is really important because the other thing that happened and that we knew would happen is that the field is starting to get really crowded, right? For as many new startups as there are, we're not really crowded yet. It's still a wide open field, but it's more certainly more crowded than it was before. And you've got people going straight to like language modeling.

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It was like OpenAI. You've got direct alternatives like you know, writer.com etc. You've got platforms that are AI adjacent, starting to build AI in. And so now it's a real choice that people have to make that buyers have to make about which route they're going to go. And some of them will say, oh, I just want a free tool that I can use and play around with. Some of them will say like I really need AI to be part of my operating model as a marketing team. And so what we found by looking at our strengths as a product, also our like best fit customers, the one that stay the longest and are the best for us is that it makes the most sense for us to focus on those sort of growing, let's say like mid market and up companies that have a content forward strategy and a, let's say like a 20 person marketing team. Right. That's our sweet spot. So how's our team structured? How's our strategy structured?

Yes.

The interesting thing is while that is our best fit because AI is so popular, we do still get a ton of business from, from what I'll call prosumers. These are like the individual single player users. They're using it for their personal blog or as a secret weapon inside their company that's not yet to buy, ready to buy yet. And so we have to care for and nurture them as well and like take, be there to take business from them while this kind of target market is continuing to grow at a heavy clip. So we today have structured our marketing team where I've got a prosumer like mass acquisition arm of the marketing org and then I've got a separate upmarket marketing org and they each, they have very clear goals, very distinct goals, just like a clear understanding of their audience and their strategies match that. I love that I've got a creative and community team that supports all of them.

Okay, great.

I'm going to come back to this. This is what people love to hear. So one thing that I love that you, that you shared there and this comes up a lot in, in, in the community and in other words like I do think a lot of people get really stuck on team structure and I think what Megan just laid out is just such a good example of like team structure matters as it relates to the business. The business has these two markets which Is like this high volume, mass, high volume, you know, free to pro, you know, prosumer model and then you have this enterprise model and like so many teams structure, like product marketing, demand gen, content marketing. You're like, nope, we're going to build a marketing function around these, around this, funnel this, go to markets and then we're going to fill in the gaps. I love how you've laid that out and I hope that more people start to do stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean you must see that too. Like feel free to share your own kind of experiences, stories here. But I've always found that the best way to structure a team is to have the structure mirror the strategy.

Yeah.

So that your leads and their teams don't have conflicting goals. Right. You want them to have a single North Star that they need to hit that they wholly own. And so for example in product marketing, huge part of what we're doing and we're going to be growing that team. But I've put product marketing under our upmarket team because I want us to lead with marketing for our ideal customer, which is the business buyer. Right. I don't want product marketing to be swung when it comes to positioning around like oh, do I speak to artists and writers or do I speak to buyers so that that defines a little bit about their strategy.

Yeah, that's great. I mean and for people listening, that's the type of thing that you have to do. Like forcing something for clarity is always going to be better than trying to like please everyone. And so could the Jasper website be like, hello, we serve all of you. Like I see a lot of questions that come up in the community also about like who do we talk to on the website if we serve five, six different customers? But so often it comes down to like you might have that many use cases but the strategic priority for the business is to lead with this upmarket customer. And by the way, all that content can probably pretty easily be translated down market.

Oh, and one more point on this that I think is important. This is like I'll hat tip to HubSpot and specifically to Kip Botner for this is who is the sorry, Kip Bodner, who's the CMO of HubSpot. Now your structure should change all the time. So at HubSpot because, because you're basing your structure on strategy, as your strategy evolves, so does your marketing team structure. And so you need to condition your team to be comfortable in change. Right. So every year at HubSpot we made some change to marketing structure. And you know, in the early years, like, it was unsettling for people. They were like, oh, I'm getting a new manager. I'm moving over here. I was comfortable in this corner. But you shift the structure and the strategy shifts too. And so next year, the year after, I may find that our strategy needs to evolve again and I may need to arrange the team differently. Same players, but different setup to hit that.

I love that. And, like, think about how much has changed in the market and the economy in the last two years. You know, you can't just glue people in. And I think what's smart about you mentioned what Kip shared and what you do now is I feel like it's less of a big deal if the team knows that going in. And so, like, if you're proactive and you're like, hey, we're gonna change a lot and like, if you want to work here, like, you kind of have to deal with it and it's going to be beneficial for your career because of this reason. It's most likely when they don't expect that and all of a sudden the change feels like whiplash.

Yeah, totally. And, you know, I think there's trade offs in every move that you make. And you have to know what those trade offs are going to be and be comfortable with it. And then the other thing is, like, that breaks when you've got bad managers on the team.

Yes.

Because then if you're not investing in like growing your managers, giving them hard feedback, making sure that they're good at managing, then you're going to get managers that people don't want to work for. And then that breaks that whole approach of we're malleable, we evolve quickly. Any of us can work anywhere on this team.

So you have this mass acquisition team, you have this upmarket team, creative. And to say creative and community are kind of shared across both.

Creative and community are shared across both. And report into me. Okay, the channels. So email, organic paid media. I have those as part of the mass acquisition team because of the volume of people going through that. So our upmarket team will partner with the paid team, which sits on mass acquisition for upmarket retargeting or ad campaigns that way.

Got it. That was going to be my next question. So they, they basically tap on that team and say, hey, we're, we're doing this campaign. We need some resources or budget or whatever to do X.

They'll have their own budget. So our target team will have, hey, we've got a hundred K for advertising. In this period of time, like we're going to give you that budget. We need to tap your expertise for how to spend that.

And how do you, how do you keep everybody aligned? Aligned there to like, is there any shared goal? Because if I'm on the. One thing that I've struggled with is like wanting to do that. But the mass acquisition team has their goals to hit and like they're already busy and they already got a lot of stuff on their plate and so like I got to take time off of my, what I'm doing, which is what I'm measured on to go and help the upmarket team. Yes, I know we're one team, one company, but it does kind of break down at some point. How are you going to prevent that?

Yeah, that's exactly what you're exactly right in terms of like the trade offs of where you put people and what emphasis that puts on it. Right now we are a small enough team that I can say, hey, look, the lion's share of your work on paid because it's the larger by volume audience is going to go towards this. But we need 20% or so focused on these campaigns and it's a small enough team that that works. Yeah, I think as the team gets bigger, you know, there are some resources that may be better spun out as like a shared, you know, across the team org. But you know, we're 10 people right now in the marketing team.

Oh, that's awesome. If there's like internal politics and bullshit at this phase, like it's the wrong people.

Yeah, absolutely. And like, look, we're all super invested in this company doing well. Most of us, like you should always believe this about the companies that you join. But most of us, like, we believe that this is going to be big. Right. And we are throwing ourselves at it to make it.

So you have 10 people. Are you hiring right now? Growing right now? I would assume that you are. How do you, how do you not go too fast? Cause I'm sure you could go and hire 10 more people if you, if you wanted to right now. But how do you, how do you balance like how fast this market is growing and like, you know, building the right team right now.

I will say it's really fascinating to be a growing company in a time of a lot of contraction in the industry. Right. So like I'm going on LinkedIn and I'm seeing layoffs left and right. And meanwhile, like we're posting jobs and the numbers are looking good right now. It's a surreal feeling. You Know, there's almost like a little bit of like guilt around it. But I think what's actually really effective about this right now, if I can say that, is there, there's a humbling nature to it where, you know, there's a responsibility to grow responsibly, right? To not overextend yourself, to not, you know, we just got a $125 million round. We could grow headcount faster. But those are choices about people's lives and careers that you're making that you better be able to pay that off. Right? And so how I think about hiring, I don't think about the full year because so much changes in the span of six months. I think about who am I going to need for the next six months to, to set me up for those long term goals and make sure that there is demand to ground those roles, right? So that those roles are going to be roles that we have for a very long time.

I put that in my notes, bolded as I'm typing when I'm interviewing. Don't think about the full year. I think so many people get, get stuck there. And what you said is like being realistic, like, how could you plan for a year? You don't even know like what June is going to look like.

Think about how different the world looked three months ago in this space. You know, like it's wild right now. So I have an allotted headcount because we do annual planning for, you know, what I'm going to be able to hire this year. But I'm leaving a bunch of those kind of like unassigned in my head for the back half of the year. And I may decide at that point we don't need that. We're going to turn that into program spend or we're going to like just not hire that role. I'm thinking about this quarter, next quarter and trying to hire quickly when you've got a role. But don't overextend yourself on the roles you put out there.

All right, can I change directions and ask you some of these questions?

Yeah, sure.

This one is from Pontus. What are some of the most innovative marketing ways that you've seen Jasper being used right now?

All right, I'll tell you the most common and then I'll tell you the most innovative. So the most common is we see people using Jasper the most for long form content, blog articles, things like ebooks and things like that. And the way that we recommend that you use it is not like, don't do a set, it and forget it. Press the button and then publish. We recommend you use it to get yourself started off the blank page or outline the post and then use your time to do research, pull in interview topics, and kind of fill out the substance of it and just have it speed up that work. That's the most common use. I think after that, it's like social media and ads. We have an art feature. Art feature. Ironically, people we pulled. What are the prompts that everybody puts into art? They all want to make faces. Our number one prompt is a person, which is funny because AI actually struggles with people, like hands and things like that. But we are drawn to humans. We want to see people in our art and in our graphics. So that's how most people are used.

I took my headshot and I had Jasper turn it into like a impressionist painting. And it looks like me when I'm like 72, like with a, you know, full bald head, obviously, and then like a white gray beard. It's beautiful. I've made it my profile picture. But yeah, that.

I love it. Let's go take a look at it. Yeah. So that's the most common, I think, the innovative stuff. There's two things that I like. I like when people take a source piece of content that they've written and they use AI or Jasper to turn that into different, to repackage that and reformat that for different channels or uses. Right. I think that's where it gets really powerful, is you have a strong source and you say, hey, take this and turn it into 15 tweets, a landing page, a podcast script, and it can do that. I also have seen people use it for, like, I use the art feature for slide decks. So right now, can you tell I'm upset? I was stressing out about this keynote.

You're in full keynote mode.

Yeah, I'm in full keynote mode. So instead of spending hours in stock photo sites, like, trying to find the perfect image.

Yeah.

I'm using Jasper art to just like, quickly make. Describe what I need and. And turn it into a.

What's an example. I love that. And I feel like as somebody who's made decks too, I know many people listening to this. It's so easy to get stuck on, like the what should the slide could be. And so just to move faster, like, is so great when making a deck. What's a good prompt that you could. As an example for something that you might put in a deck?

It's hard without the storyline. I'll tell you one thing. So there's Author and musician named David Cope who has experimented with music and AI. So kind of he creates new pieces in the style of Bach or musical patterns based off kind of past AI learning. So he's going to I think be in the keynote and I wanted like a picture of him, but I wanted him surrounded by just a blend of zeros and ones and musical notes. That's what I described and that's what I got back.

That's awesome.

There's no actual picture of that out in the window. What I just made, I love that.

Because like I would make a deck and like I'd type that on the slide and then leave a note and then I would have to send it off to a designer and then designer would like, the process would be like, I would do that. Two days later I get a slack message. Hey, on slide 31 you said this like, do you want it like this? And so that's, I mean to automate that is and do that so fast is amazing.

Yeah, it's cool.

Okay, that's a good one. And you can feel free to skip any of these. I don't care if you answer them or, or not.

If you piss off your crowd.

No, no, I'm not going to piss them off. This is great. They're like happy to ask any questions. I don't want to, like if you don't have a great answer, it's, it's totally fine, no pressure. How are you capitalizing on the current AI run with the head start that you have? And how do you plan to break through the clutter of the rush to be the market leader in the space?

Oh, this is like an awesome question. Who is that?

Jason Miller.

Jason Miller, come find me on LinkedIn afterwards. I have more questions for you about where that came from.

Love that.

Capitalizing on the start and making sure we don't fall behind. We think about it daily, every hour, every minute, every second comes up often. So a little bit of context here. I think that Jasper was early into taking AI and using it for like creative purposes in marketing and sales. Right. Our founder came from a marketing background. He knew that pain really well. He and his co founders like just, they just hit the pain so dead on that it goes right. And so that was the first year of Jasper and as I said, you know, like it took off. People from all different types and backgrounds started to use it. But you always have to know and they always did that Head start is going to be short lived and no one at the end of the race is going to Remember who started up front? Now, the trick, I think, is that every time the landscape shifts, you not only shift with it, but you figure out why that shift is good for you. So, for example, OpenAI, which is a language learning model that a lot of AI is sort of built on, including, they're one of the models that we use. They started opening up access to the public through ChatGPT a few months ago, and it was this phenomenon. I mean, it just jumped the chasm in terms of awareness. And we had a lot of questions around, like, are you worried about that? Are they a bad partner? And honestly, the answer is like, no. It was the best possible thing to happen to our space. Because now we don't need to explain to everybody what generative AI is true. They know. Right. The awareness has just completely ballooned. And because of that, now we get to focus on like, okay, cool, so what do we offer that's differentiated in that space? Like, how do we lean into that thing that we do better than anybody else? That's an example of like, hey, a market getting more crowded is actually not necessarily a bad thing for you, because if you're standing alone in a field, you don't know where to point yourself. You could go anywhere and there's no lines to define you. The more people get into it, the more contrast you have. And look, if you find somebody that is solving the exact same problem for the exact same audience in the exact same way, that is a good reason to get better at what you do. So that's all we're trying to do, is just move with the landscape and adapt to it and have that change make us sharper. And I think the company's done a really good job of that so far.

Yeah, that's. So thank you to ChatGPT. I mean, I can't even imagine how many people were sending you all the Twitter threads and LinkedIn posts about ChatGPT. But so as my follow on to that, it was a great answer. By the way, a lot of people ask about category creation, and the way you just said it to me, seems like there is a category here. Does OpenAI AI own it? Do you care about owning the category? Like, are you all taking a category creation approach, or is it just we're riding a wave and this is what we do? Does that ever come up inside of the company?

Let me talk a little bit. Come at that from a bit of a different angle. So when I think about positioning in the market, there's a couple of questions that I ask right away. One is how established is the pain and how established is the category of solutions for it. So some companies, you start that company and you have to actually, like, you have to actually market the pain a lot. You have to show people that there's a need for it. So an example of that would be like, you know, even in HubSpot's early days, even though, like we. Someone call HubSpot a category creator, like, what they were really marketing was, hey, this way that you've always marketed and that you have built your entire strategy on, it's problematic. And some people recognize that it was problematic, but not everybody did. So HubSpot in the early days spent a lot of time marketing the pain of like, content marketing is a better way to go. Inbound marketing is a better way to go. And that turned in once that pain was established, that turned into category creation. We don't have to market the pain all that much. People know how hard it is staring at a blank page. But the solution is not that well defined yet. There's a technology, it can be applied here, but the parameters of, hey, this field is this big and there are people over here that answer it this way, and there are people over here that solve it this way. That category is still taking shape. Now we can play a role in defining what, you know, for businesses in particular, what are the features that you need, what are the, like, the strategies that should go with that. And we'll do that. But sometimes it just takes a couple of years for a field to actually take shape. And all that matters is that you have a position in it. That's how I kind of think about finding your spot in a category. And, you know, I think that that's what your customers care about. They don't necessarily care. Hey, I hear this is the company that created the category of X, Y or Z they care about. This is a company that's best suited to solve what I need.

So, like, Generative AI is not a. You're not like, we're out trying to own that?

No. I think there's going to be a ton of different uses and companies that pop up in this space that all deserve a seat at the table. I think that what we solve, we want to be the best at that. If I want to own Generative AI and I want it to be synonymous with Jasper, then I have to worry about every time if a music AI company pops up or a video AI company pops up, I have to figure out, like, am I going to pivot and go do that and own that or am I going to try to acquire them or what? Like, I just think that this space is so big and so burgeoning that we need to pick a point on the horizon and run like hell to get there and to get there faster and better than everybody else.

This is great. This podcast is going to be strategic therapy for many marketers out there to hear you talk through the way that you make these decisions. Okay. Inevitably this question came up. I'm sure you've answered it a million times. How do you articulate the difference between Jasper and ChatGPT?

Yeah, definitely. So, again, like, I think OpenAI has done a tremendous thing in kind of unleashing this kind of tool to the world and letting everybody from your second cousin to your colleague across the hall try it and use it. I see ChatGPT as a great democratization of AI. It's a great starter tool for people to use AI for the first time, to get comfortable with prompts to try it out. And for some people, that's going to be all that they ever need. But we think that for businesses you are going to need a tool that is built specifically for business use cases that pulls from multiple models, OpenAI stability hugging face, like the kind of full and growing gamut of models out there to select the right model for the job to be done. That then enhances that with things like recent search results to bring some recency into those prompts. Because most people don't know this, but most AI is trained on data from two or three years ago. There's an enrichment that happens through Jasper that brings in more current information into the results. There's some customization that Jasper does for business use cases for your brand specifically. I think the difference between ChatGPT and Jasper, both great tools, but I think that if you are looking to use AI as a professional tool for your entire team to collaborate on, to have it kind of mirror your style and voice, you're going to want to invest in a platform like Jasper. And oh, by the way, then you also have dedicated account manager, you've got guaranteed uptimes, you got like a lot of the resources that you need for serious heavy use of this technology versus engaging with it as you're just getting started.

You're saying we're going to be the B2B use case and plug into the tools you're using and build a platform that way.

Yeah, and I think that's also another strong point is I think the best thing that ever happened to Jasper is the extension that we have because that Means that you can call up Jasper on LinkedIn, on Twitter, in Google Docs, in Gmail, in your instance of HubSpot, or your constant contact like your email providers, you don't have to go to Jasper. Jasper comes to you. And I think for a busy marketing team, those kind of tools are going to be what takes it from like a magic trick and a sideshow to something that's truly ingrained in your operating model.

How hard are you going to go in building up Jasper? Is this going to be like a character driven brand like Jasper is? Is this little robot, Are you going hard on that?

You know, I don't think I need to go hard on it because it's kind of happening already.

Is that just like I feel like if it's a founder that might have already been there before you got there.

If you've got a cute robot as a logo and its name is Jasper, which is 100% the most adorable name I've ever heard, it's going to have a personality. Your community is going to adopt him. And that's what's happened. We have eight people that have Jasper tattoos on their body, not staff, like people who just love the logo and love the little guy. We went to go film a commercial and we had to give Jasper a voice, right. And so now Jasper has a voice and that voice has got to stay with him. So it's just, it's going to happen organically and he kind of has a little personality. Right. Like I remember I was using Jasper pretty hard one time in my writing and AI is at the stage where sometimes it just has a little glitch and I prompted Jasper to write the next line of something that I had started and it just responded. I'm tired. I was like, all right, fair play, fair play, Jasper.

Leave me alone, lady.

Yeah, so we've got a whole Slack channel internal. Bored of the times when Jasper's had a little SaaS.

That's great. I mean I actually feel like there's a lot of like brand word of mouth, like love that you can create. Like Slack, I think did a great job with like little micro copy in the product in the early days. There's a lot of brand personality that you can give it. Okay, I want to try to get to a couple more of these. Some people. There's so many questions. I'll screenshot these and I'll send them to you later. Not that you have to answer them just, but they'll be interesting to you. See if you can answer this in like one or two, just like a quick answer.

What do your quarterly slides look like?

This is from Grant. What are your quarterly slides look like when presenting to the board?

Yeah, we do all the business operating slides of like, hey, here's where we are against targets. Here's how AR is looking, here's how Churn is looking. And then we usually will do a deep dive section after that where we're going in depth into a particular strategy that either needs advice and we tell them pointedly on that or that has seen tremendous results and we want to elevate it so that they can see it. And so that's the main kind of skeleton of the slide deck.

What podcasts do you listen to frequently?

Well, I've got to say yours, right?

No, Come on.

I want the real. I want the real. We are blessed in the, in the marketing and tech space of having just really great content out there. And so I've got a smorgasbord of different podcasts.

I want one non marketing podcast that you listen to.

Oh God. I listened to Normal Gossip, which is the funniest podcast I've ever heard. If you haven't heard of it. It is this woman who asks for people to send her just one story, gossip from like their lives. Not celebrity gossip, not anything. And the way she tells it, she retells this gossip story and like lays it out in a way that is so hilarious and fascinating, where you just get really invested in the characters even though you have no idea who they are.

You just gave me an idea. I'm going to ask people from the community. This is a marketing idea. I'm going to ask them to email me like horror stories from work and we'll, we'll break them down. Horrible bosses stories. That's great. I love that regular people gossip.

She's a great host because she sounds exactly like your best friend telling you, like. And then get this. Laying it all out like that.

I love that. Okay, this one is. We're filing this under like the note. Thanks for asking. No chance. But I'm going to read it out loud anyway. And you're not going to answer it. Someone wants to know what's your current annual marketing budget? I'm curious because you have so much funding, what percent of new ARR would that. And I will answer that with in your dreams. Will she share that on this episode? Let's see what else I want to.

Thanks for asking.

Yeah, yeah, Great question. And like, and what's your salary and how much? Yeah, all this nonsense.

Do you want social. I Can give you my Social Security last only.

We only need the last four. And then any interesting ways that you're at the marketing team right now or the company across the board is using Jasper on Jasper.

Yeah, the. The one that came up yesterday is, got this just incredibly strong SEO lead, a woman named Krista Doyle. And she's been using Jasper to speed up her creation of, like, snippets and all of the, like, structural code that needs to go into a blog post or other content to make sure that it's getting into the various vehicles to get it higher up on search ranking. So I think just that even if you never use it for a single word in your blog post, being able to very quickly spin up like meta descriptions and snippet code and things like that to close out the posts is helpful.

Awesome. All right, Megan, we could have interviewed you for hours and hours. Thanks for giving us the time. This is Megan Anderson. She's VP of marketing at Jasper Jasper AI. Also one of our premier sponsors for Exit 5 this year, which everybody is excited about. I'm excited about just associating those two things together and it's cool to have people talking about this. I love copy, I love content, I love social media, all that stuff, and to see what's happening in this space. And Jasper is right at the forefront of that and just excited to keep doing stuff with you and the team and it was great to have you on this episode. Anybody that wants to find you, we'll link to all your stuff. Social media, go and check out Jasper. And Megan, thank you so much for doing this interview.

This was a blast. Thanks so much, Dave. It's great to see you as always.

Yeah, you too. Thanks, Megan. I'll see you. I'll talk to you soon. Okay.

All right, take care.

All right, bye.

Bye.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of the Exit 5 podcast. If you're in B2B marketing and you want to grow your career, you should also go and check out everything that we have over@exit5.com. We've got articles, we've got videos, we've got templates, plus we have a community, a community of over 4000 B2B marketing pros. Whether you're deep in your career and want to connect with your peers or just starting up and you want a place to go where you can see what people people are talking about. Get smarter about B2B marketing in your own time to grow your career and help grow your company. Go and check it out. It's exit5.com you can get on the email list there. You can join the community. There's 4,000 marketers in the community. We have a job board. We're always adding new stuff. It's really becoming the number one place you can go if you want to grow your career and learn more about B2B marketing outside of what you're doing inside of your company every day. So check it out. Exit 5. And I also want to make sure I give a shout out to my friends at Hatch. That's Hatch fm. They produce this podcast. It sounds amazing because of the work that they do and they work with B2B companies just like yours. They offer unlimited podcast editing and strategy for businesses. You can get unlimited podcast setting and on demand strategy for a low monthly cost. All you got to do is just upload your episode and they take care of the rest. Go and check them out. It's Hatch.

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