What to Do If Someone Copies Your Product? | Ep. 3042

You know, we talked about Carrot for a second. I do want to talk. So there's another competitor that is now copying a product. They're actually local here. And I think they raised like a series, maybe the seed rounds are fat now. It's like a $12 million seed round, maybe a Series A. So they reached out to us, they wanted to partner up and then—

But they copied you and they want to partner up?

They're starting to copy. But then the CEO is like, dude, should I just— should we just partner up with you guys or should we build it ourselves? And then he—

So he should just buy you.

He does want to buy, right? But we don't want— we don't want to sell because here's the thing. Let me just speak to— so we have a $50 million one, one that raised $50 million, Sequoia-backed, I think Y Combinator. And then the other ones in Europe, they raised about $5 million or so. And then you have this one, they raised about $12 million or so, and they're local here. Now, the reason why we think we have an edge here and that they can listen to this if they want is when the types of products they have are very focused on personalization, right? And When you're focused on personalization, it's very much you're playing a more defensive posture, more reactive posture when you're—

Why would you say that?

So when I think you are creating ads or when you are creating outbound messages that are based on behaviors, that's a lot more proactive, right? That's more proactive than I think than versus just like personalization in terms of building like a landing page, for example. Right. Or Like if you look at— I'm not going to name names right now, but when you look at a lot of these products like, oh, okay, we'll personalize your landing page, we'll make all these other, you know, creatives for you and things like that.

So they're focusing on the personalization message.

They're focused on personalization. And then they've added our feature as like a feature, right? Whereas we're focusing more on the ad side, which more people tend to— more money flows through the ads, right? Because we're going to add Meta, we're going to add Google as well. So we're just going to focus on the proactive side where it's like, hey, if someone behaves a certain way, maybe we'll send a direct message on LinkedIn or email or text message, or we'll throw up like a personalized ad, right? So it's a lot more proactive. So the thing is, and I'm going to land the plane here and turn it over to you, but I think when you have— when you've built all these other features, there's a bit of a sunk cost fallacy where you're like, oh, we should just continue to focus on this, which I think they're going to have to drag out for a little bit. And they're a little bloated too. When you raise so much money, you get a little bloated too. So I'm not saying we're better than them or anything. I just say there's a different mindset to it and we're like, okay, our wedge right now is to go in the more proactive direction versus reactive.

So I don't know any of your competitor names and it doesn't matter for this, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. I bet you they're all going enterprise, okay?

Yes.

And I know why they're going personalization. It has nothing to do with a defensive move.

Go ahead.

When you look at, I would consider you guys an ad software. You agree with this statement, right?

Yes.

Look how much money the ad software system makes. They actually do, there's not a ton of companies that make a lot of money in quote unquote ad software. Yes, you are right where there's more money spent in advertising, but a lot of that money does not translate into the software for, helping run ads and doing a better job running ads. Big enterprise organizations, and dude, we meet up with them all day long, especially divisions that spend an arm and a leg on paid ads. Like, dude, we work with companies that, no joke, are like some of the biggest spenders in advertising in the whole world, like top 10, right? And I'll tell you this, they all spend an arm and a leg on wanting to personalize and going after that dream.

Mm-hmm.

The budgets are massive. The budgets for ad software are not massive.

Yeah. So my response to that is the personalization, like we all have that, right? So, but I would say that the way we're going where it's, it's not just the ad side of things, it's, it's, it's very much ads right now. You're correct on that. But we see a lot of opportunity around when you look at maybe they're not doing as well today. When you look at the Salesloft companies of the world or like these, these sales, like we're going in that direction. So we're going much more just account-based marketing in general and just making it easy where you can do all within our platform. And a lot of it, our plan, and I think you'll probably end up charging this way in the future too, but you're seeing a lot more software charging based not per seat anymore, but it's on usage based and eventually outcome based, right? So we see ourselves charging in that direction where we're just solving outcomes for people. So I think it becomes— I agree with you, ad software typically doesn't do well. Well, you've seen like AdStage, remember that company?

Mm-hmm.

They didn't do that well, right? Sorry, I don't, I don't think it was like a great outcome. But so we don't want to fall into that trap. You're right. But right now that's where it is and it's transitioning into what I just mentioned.

So speaking of the sales loft space, I'm an LP in a few funds and I know some of these companies that are large, revenue growth has slowed down drastically.

You're not doing that one anymore? Outreach, sales loft?

And then churn is really high on some of these companies. I would recommend going after the personalization space. It is actually much bigger and it makes more money. Optimizely is a great example of personalization.

How are they doing now?

Over $400 million in revenue.

So they kind of stalled out and came back, huh?

They're growing really fast.

Yeah, yeah.

Over $400 and they're growing at a rapid rate. You know how I know these numbers? They blogged about it on their own blog.

Yeah. My point of saying this is that I don't disagree with you on the personalization piece because ABM to me is— there's personalization. You agree with that, right? Yeah. But we don't want to play their game. We don't want to fight their game against them right now. Like, it doesn't make sense. You know what I mean?

Their game is bigger, though. That's all I'm getting at.

We don't. So the thing is, they're doing ABM, we're doing ABM, but our wedge is a little different right now. We're not going to target exactly what they're doing. And by the way, we have the same features they have.

Yeah, no, I get it. Your entry point into a company. It's just a different pitch.

Yes, exactly.

But all I'm getting at is if you look at how much money a corporation is going to spend with you for marketing software, personalization has much bigger budgets. I'm like 110% sure.

I think we're saying the same thing. My whole thing is ABM, so Yeah, yeah.

But when you, when you start pitching beyond ABM and you just try to make it sound bigger, when you're pitching more personalization and how you can do a lot and just help the experience and, you know, with AI everything should be 1-to-1 and you keep going down that rabbit hole, people have bigger budgets for it.

So you touched upon something that, that, that's, that we talked about in the car yesterday. Actually, no, I think it was this morning in the car. Okay. Maybe it was last night. So The copy. So what we're really talking about right now, what you just mentioned is the messaging, right? Yes. The messaging matters whether, whether you're writing messaging for marketing to a company or whether you're even doing it for dating, right? Yeah. So the messaging matters, which is kind of what you're emphasizing right now.

I remember this conversation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the copy matters, the messaging matters, and human psychology doesn't change, right? You have to say the right messaging to people. And my point in saying this is that we might want to tweak our messaging a little bit and just see what works. We're going to keep tweaking and see what works. We're not just going to sit there But we don't want to fight fire with fire right now.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. And I get why you're not necessarily going head on. These people just have way more money than you.

They have way more money. Wait, the teams are bigger, right?

They can lose money. Yeah, you can lose some money, but you can't lose their kind of money. No, I know Eric's, Eric's done well. He's rich, but he can't just go lose $12 million in a year.

No, no, that'd be very painful. All right. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NB NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. I want to talk about the secret to hiring well, because I think this is everything that you've done in the last, especially the last, call it 7, 8 years or so with NP Digital and whatever I've seen success with. We've been very intentional with how we hired, and maybe we'll start off with probably the highest leverage thing that I learned from you in the last year or so is the 2 promotions that 2 different jobs, because especially in the agency world, people follow you around, people follow great people around. And when you have someone with 2 promotions at 2 different companies, that means they're actually really good competitors. 2 competitors. Okay. Why don't you elaborate on this thinking? Sure.

So if you're hiring someone in an industry that has been around for a long time, like a marketing agency, if you go look for people that worked at multiple competitors, Ideally ones that are your size, if not bigger. We tend to prefer ones that are bigger. They typically know all the roadblocks that you're going to face and how to overcome them from that job that you're trying to hire for. So the reason we like 2 competitors is one company may view someone who's really talented, and you've seen this as well, and you talk to them, you're like, this person sucks. Like, how the heck did they think this person was amazing? So if they work for 2 competitors, there's less likelihood that they were amazing at one company and shitty at the other company if they got promoted multiple times at that organization. So someone worked for 2 competitors, continually got promoted, and then the next, or they worked at one company, they continually got promoted, went to another one, and then had a similar entry position or maybe even a better one than, you know, where they left off on the previous company, and then they got promoted multiple times. That means that person is usually really good.

Yep.

And then we go and look to get those people and we'll reach out to them and be like, hey, so-and-so, love what you've done in your career. We're actually looking for someone like you. Do you know anyone that may be interested? We never hit them up directly and say that we're looking to hire you because it usually doesn't work as well. And then you interview them for culture fit. Keep in mind, if it's C-level, they're not going to get as many promotions. And when we're doing this, we actually look for people who don't just hop around jobs because if someone hops around jobs, you can get promotions quicker. A lot of times with title, we want people who stay loyal to a business. And of course you want them to change jobs eventually, but if they keep getting promoted and they've been at businesses for like 5, 6, 7, 8 years, they're usually pretty good.

C-level, you're looking for tenure for sure.

C-level, we're definitely looking for tenure, but even for mid-level, we're looking for tenure.

Yeah, but mid-level, you're looking for more promotions. C-level, you're looking for tenure.

Yeah, but you go back in time to all their job history and you want them to have multiple promotions.

For sure. You're looking at the, you're looking at the history as well to see if they have the the promotions that you're looking for, for a more mid-senior level role. But this is, this is, it's important, especially in a people, like a services type business, because it all comes down to people. And the thing is, clients will follow them, but people will also follow them too.

Yeah, people will also follow them. There's rules on poaching and stuff like that because typically they're working for large corporations. So you got to make sure you're not breaking any laws and it's going to vary, you know, company by company who you poach from and potentially even state by state. And the other thing we do is when we're interviewing them, we expect them to be cultural fits or else it won't work out. We expect them to be player coaches if it's executive level, like if you're looking for a VP of marketing, they need to be able to get their hands dirty and do a lot of the grunt work, but they also need to manage and bring up their team and help them improve. And then we expect them to work a lot of hours and obsess about work and the quality and be passionate because if they're not, it's not going to do well. We love executives that we have to tell them to take a break. A great example is, is my CEO right now is in Cuba. I genuinely tell him to take breaks and he needs more vacations. Our CFO, same problem. And he'll be like, oh, I'm going to Ireland for a week. And we have unlimited PTO, so it's not like I'm counting if the CFO takes more than 2 weeks or 3 weeks or 4 weeks. The guy just works so hard. We had to tell him to stop working. And I remember one time I was talking to him and he was at his daughter's— no joke, because it was during like business hours— at his daughter's swim meet for like a state championship. And I was so pissed off. I'm like, you're talking on the phone when your daughter's swimming in a state championship? And I said, stop talking and working, go watch your daughter.

Wow.

And same with when he was at dinner one time and his wife was there. I said, put on speakers. He put on speaker and I told his wife, I'm like, don't let him do calls while he's eating dinner with the family.

But we talked about this on Monday. I don't believe the breaks do that much. We've talked about this with the burnout thing, right? So with burnout, it's not because remember the Boom guy was like, I gave everyone a week off and then everyone was still complaining. It's because there weren't enough people, didn't feel like they were winning. The milestones were too far out. So I think in my mind I'm like, yeah, I'm like, that's a good way to break down burnout because you and I don't think about milestones, but You have to set the milestones in front of people where they feel like they're winning. And at least for me or you, I know when you're on a break, you're still working. I'm on a break, I can't help but to not work. And so the people, your executives can't help but because it's so fun, right?

Yeah, but it has nothing to do with burnout. It's more so people need to maintain relationships with their family and have a balance.

I agree with you on that, that piece. I agree with you. But I think the fallacy here is thinking that— I'm not saying you're thinking this, but People that think going on vacations actually stops you from—

Oh no, it doesn't do it.

The vacations won't save you.

No.

Yeah.

But when, when people have like family issues, like their brother being sick or their kids— Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you want to go to the mall.

And you want to go to the surgery and it's just like, dude, stop this. There's more important things in life than our revenue for the month or whatever, right? Like your kids are more important. I would never ask someone to choose our business over their kids being sick.

And the family and the friends are number one.

Yeah.

Yeah. By the way, speaking of revenue, do you know what the net income of Google was over the last 12 months? You should probably know this.

Around $100 billion, if I had to guess.

$115 billion. And the graph is going up over here. So—

I think it's one of the most undervalued companies out there.

So look, it says no—

Personal opinion, not financial advice.

No excuses, no grandiose promises, just pure execution. Sundar Pichai. It's Pichai, right? You're Indian.

I don't know how to say his last name.

Pichai deserves more credit. And it's true. Nano Banana, great product, right? VO3, great product.

That's Google's product?

You didn't know that? That's Google's product. Dude, it is amazing.

I know, it's amazing.

Did you see me use it last week? I was, I was, I was on vacation, right? Still working, but I had it recording me playing tennis. And then I told it to rate my form on my forehand and my backhand, and it rated it and it said, here's what you need to do to fix it. Oh my God, dude, I don't know how to play golf. It's my first time playing golf on, on the— I played like 9 holes, right? You know, have you played golf before? Yeah. Okay, so I don't know how to play.

I lived in a country club, remember?

Well, that's right. That's right. So, so the— it, it told me how to fix my form and my swing. And then, um, my very first hole was a bogey. And I don't even know what a bogey is. What is a bogey again? I just, I was told it was a bogey.

I don't know. I'm not that good at golf.

Yeah.

When I played golf, I sucked every time.

I, but I think a bogey is like, it just took me like, I don't know, like 3 or 4 strokes. Yeah. Yeah.

How many strokes it is. I think it varies per hole too.

Yeah. Per hole. So I was like, I don't know, like the par was 4 and I think I like hit it or like 1 over or something like that. I don't know.

I have no idea.

But What fixed that? AI did that, right? So my point is I use Gemini for that. So Google's products are really good. They're really good. They just suck at like figuring out how to market them. Uh-huh.

Yeah, dude, totally agree with that. But what's interesting is when you look at Google as a company and products, you know, I learned about that product not from them. I learned about it from what social platform, if you had to guess?

Twitter? Yeah.

X. Yeah, it's all over X.

Yeah. Yeah. Nano Banana. Nano Banana. So when you open Gemini on your phone, there's a little banana there and you can— and it maintains character consistency. So I asked it to make a picture of me and like make it like into a manga and then make it into a story. And it did that. It was perfect. And then I asked it to combine different images. Anyway, my point is—

But dude, you can do it with like a— you can do some really cool stuff with celebrities if you really wanted to, assuming you have their authorization and stuff.

So this $115 billion in the past 12 months, where do you think they rank in terms of just all companies in terms of net income?

Net income? Top 10.

Number one.

At every company in the world?

The most of any company.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So people like to say, like we've said before, like sometimes we'll exaggerate to get the headlines, but that traditional SEO is dead, blah, blah. Google's still good for a long time. Dude, they were first on AI, DeepMind and all that. Like their models are pretty fine.

People forget ChatGPT's OpenAI's lead AI person was a Google person that Elon Musk recruited out.

A DeepMind person? Yes. Yeah.

So look, I forgot what his name was, but it was up there. Yeah, I think he was a Google person, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah. Google, Tesla. But that's what—

that's the thing that people make mistake on. Everyone's like, oh, Google's out. And I'm like, what are you guys talking about? Google Search is growing and it's more popular than ever. Yeah, I don't think Google has to worry too much about marketing. It's— they just need to integrate these products within the core apps that people just use and they'll be okay.

Dude, you'll like this. You'll like this. Watch. So someone asked Grok here, Alphabet Google has the highest trailing 12-month net income at $115.6 $136 billion, up 32% year on year. Microsoft is number 2, $101.8 billion, up 15% year on year. Apple still strong. Apple, $99.3 billion, down 3%. Nvidia, $86.6 billion, up 19%. The recent quarters show strong growth, like 59% in Q2 fiscal year 2026.

You see Nvidia's— I started doing the calculation on this. It's a— there was a TechCrunch article that like their top customer— I texted Mike on this. There was a TechCrunch article CNBC article on their top customers and their percentage of revenue, right? Where is it? Nvidia has like crazy client concentration, but it could be that they're middle, like vendors or something like that where they're, you know, selling it to other people. Let's see, 6 customers made up 85% of their Q2 revenue from a TechCrunch article.

Wow.

And their article says Nvidia's 2 mystery customers accounted for 39% of Q2's revenue. In that article, they break down their next biggest customers and add it all up. I'm like, 6 customers made up 85% of their Q2 revenue.

Wow.

Yeah.

So when the infrastructure buildout starts to slow down, those—

Oh, they're going to get hit hard.

But it's— I don't think it's slowing down anytime soon.

No.

Yeah, I think we still have like another 5, 10 years to run. Yeah, that's not financial advice, guys. It's just what I think. Anyway, we'll catch you later, guys.