startups, growing on linkedin, personal life q&a

Hi guys, I'm Eunice and welcome to my very first Q and A. So like a week ago I posted this on my story and I was actually very, very surprised how many people responded to it. It's honestly amazing to know when you have a platform and a community behind you. So thank you guys for asking me all of these questions. But for anyone new here, let me quickly give some context. So I'm Eunice and I spent this summer working as the CMO for a startup called Series, which is an AI social network. And we went pretty viral this summer. We had a bunch stunts, we have a lot of controversies and good news around us, but it was an amazing experience. I left that in July and I came over to SF and now I'm working on something new with my friends from school. So yeah, I'll be answering the questions you guys ask about my past, present and future. And I hope you guys enjoy. Okay. The first question I get asked all the time now is what the hell am I up to? So I'm actually an international student, so. So I'm not allowed to take gap years, but I am a rising senior, so I'm going to try graduate a semester early and within this next semester I'm going to be here and there. So I'll be working to finishing my degree and I'll also be working on Sonder, this new startup that I joined part time. Okay, so this leads me to the next question, which is what is Sonder? In short, we are a social network for personal stories. I know that means absolutely nothing, but hear me out. We're quite early stage right now, so I can't really go too much into details, but we're trying to help you craft your narrative in your past, present and future. So what we have right now is a social graph that we construct for you based on your imessage text. It's been really, really fun to use and it can help you analyze situations in your life and in the present. Part of our products would be a social media network feed. We're trying to change the way that people interact. Right. So not right now. Social media is very much about engagement maxing, but we want to shift that paradigm and bring it back to authentic connections and sharing your story. So we will. We're just, we're kind of experimenting on how to shift the incentive from getting more likes and views to something a little bit more human authentic. And for the future, based off your personal narrative and context, we want to help you predict your future and we want to create nudges and incentives for you to reach out to a friend or check out a new thing. And it's all very personalized to who you are. It's a little like a culmination of a lot of different ideas. We're still working through it, but stay tuned. It's gonna be amazing. Okay, so now for more general startup questions. So a question people have is, how do you find opportunities? So opportunities are actually everywhere. There's so many startups coming out all the time, but the thing is, you just have to go after it. You know, there's this saying, like, you miss every shot that you don't take. And that is so, so true, right? Like, if you never ask, if you never reach out, then you already are passing on that opportunity. So I think you should just keep reaching out and keep showing people what your value proposition is. I mean, that's exactly what I did. When I heard about what series was working on, I reached out on LinkedIn. It was a cold, cold message. And I told him exactly, oh, this is my experience. This is what I do. And that obviously piqued his interest. We got into a conversation and I just show them what I got. He called me at one in the morning. I did exactly what he needed me to do, and I just showed my worth. So, yeah, I think the most important thing is going after it. Just put in all your effort, all your. All your time and effort to show your commitment to the idea, and people will naturally bring you on. To be completely honest, I came into my position without a lot of experience in startup marketing, but I definitely grew into the position as time went on. I think it's more about showing your dedication than, you know, your hard skills. Sometimes the next question is more related to what I did, and it is, how do you come up with the marketing ideas that I use for series? So I think a big part of marketing is looking at what other people do. Right? I think these playbooks are created because it works. It's shown that it works, and it will work for quite a while until someone reinvents the playbook. So I did a lot of. I spent a lot of time analyzing what other people did, and I kind of mimicked it, but with my own personal twist. And in regards to, I guess, our most viral stunt, which is the Hamptons house, we came up with that because we were looking to bring on interns to Manhattan to just work for us, But Manhattan is really expensive, so that would just be. I don't know, that would just not be financially, like, good. So then this was around 4th of July, and that was when everyone's in the Hamptons, and one of the founders had the amazing idea of what have we hosted these interns in the Hamptons. And it just happened that Love island was really big at that time. So then we decided to market it as, you know, Love island, but for interns. So, yeah, so that's how we got people to post about it on TikTok. Love island for interns and how we flooded LinkedIn. This is the biggest question. Everyone wants to know why I left series. And I don't think it's that juicy. I just really, I didn't want to continue with them post summer because, well, logistically it would be a little bit difficult. But also I think there were some differences in the, in our approach. So I think I've become a. A lot more calm, a lot more healthier with my social media consumption. I don't know, I don't fully believe in the attention economy way of getting users or getting views. So I just wanted to try something else that's a little bit more intentional, a little bit more slow. And I wish the team the best, honestly, and I will always give them my full support, but I think we just diverged in certain views. Okay, so this is about LinkedIn. So I guess I'm known as a LinkedIn warrior now. So someone asks, I run three different business businesses and want to grow on LinkedIn. Any tips? Okay. I think LinkedIn is a completely different game. There's a very specific language that's always used on LinkedIn. And to be honest, everyone, there's like, everyone's a little bit cringe, but I don't think anyone cares because you're doing it for, you know, a certain audience. And this audience does not mind the cringe at all. But I think my biggest advice for you if you want to grow on LinkedIn, is to have a very strong personal voice. Right. I think LinkedIn really loves stories. Like, they really love personal stories that convert into, you know, your business or what you're working on. And another big thing is being aspirational, right? I think people on LinkedIn are always feeding for jobs, feeding for, I guess, a purpose. And if you can show them what they could aspire to be like, then those posts do very well. So for me, I made a post about how I had no internship, but I did something which got me the position that I got and that got a lot of likes, and it also converted pretty well for me. Another thing is analyze some of the top LinkedIn creators, we all have a very specific way of writing. So I guess two sentence hook, super important. That's what folds on the post. And in terms of structure, each paragraph should only be around like three or four sentences long. You can see the structure all over LinkedIn. Just analyze it and you will slowly learn how to do it yourself. It'll become very natural to you. And I guess if you're into this, you can also rage bait like it does pretty well on LinkedIn. And these old people, they love being baited into these fake made up stories because they cannot tell if it's real. What is my purpose? This is a really deep question. This is a cop out answer, I think. But I think my purpose is to just ask questions. I think my biggest thing is storytelling and asking why. Like someone once told me that they think I'm really quirky because I'm overly enthusiastic about meeting people. And I totally agree with that. I just think people come from such different places. So it's always very fascinating to me on how people converge to a certain point or why people are the way they are. And I like to do this through, you know, meeting new people online, in person. There was a while that I would use hinge just to meet new people. And yeah, I, I think through listening to other people's stories, it also helped me construct my own in a way. So that's like one of my biggest life passions. And I think in my ideal world I would also want to travel and ask people in different places and people who grew up in completely different worlds from me why? So how has my definition of success in my life changed from entering college until now? So I think when I first entered college, to me the most obvious answer is getting through college, finding a good job and just that's it. But I learned that there's a beauty in unconventional paths and success looks different for everyone. So in no way did I ever imagine I would try to graduate early. But now that's my goal. I want to graduate early so I can go into the startup world even earlier. And I just think it's so amazing the people around me are doing the same too. So Leslie, who is part of the Saunter team, is taking a gap year and Harvin, he took a gap semester last semester and now that might be an indefinite leave. Like so many people are taking so many different paths and success just looks different for everyone. And yeah, I think I'm just really happy that I get to work on something that I'm fulfilled by. Like, I'm Honestly, taking a smaller base salary before working for this. But I care about the mission so deeply and I care about the people that I work with. So all of that is okay. To me, this unconventional path mentality kind of leads into the next question, which is what is my worst fear? Okay, so my worst fear is not living up to my potential or at least what people think of me. I don't know. I think the scariest thing about, you know, the platform that I've been given this summer is that I really feel like a lot more is expected out of me now. So I have a lot more attention, a lot more eyes on me, at least in that part of Twitter. Right. I have a lot of VCs that follow me. I have, like, really cool people from really cool company just watching what I'm doing. And, you know, with great power comes great responsibilities. I think I like to hold a high expectation in what I do. So because my baseline or the standards are set so high, it kind of scares me that I can never really hit the threshold of, you know, pushing new grounds or being doing my job properly. And that's really scary for me. But I have, like, friends and family that support me and just believe in my work because of who I am. So I'm really grateful for that. This is more about my content. So do I. Do I primarily film travel content or do I want to get into a different genre? I actually don't film travel content anymore. I haven't traveled this entire summer, basically, and my content is mostly about my startup life. But I do want to get more into regular lifestyle content and just yapping videos. I like sharing my readings and I like sharing the random facts I'm learning. So you'll see a shift in my content. Okay, what is something that I'm doing lately that's making me happy? So I think the happiest thing is that I actually have time to think about things outside of work. So I've been doing a lot more reading. So I read other people's articles, I'm reading the news again. And this is just making me feel mentally stimulated in ways that's outside of marketing, distribution, growth, all of that shenanigans, saying it's fun, but, like, you need hobbies outside of that. Okay, so the last question I have is everything Harvin and Harry eats in a day. So this is more about our day to day. We eat pretty well, so we order taken most of the time, but when we go out, we try to go to a new place and we love eating we love trying new restaurants. Okay. Anyways, that's all the questions I have for right now. If we want more startup specific experience related questions. I'll do another video for that. But thanks for listening to me talk. This is my very first time ever actually doing a video where I just speak to the camera for like I don't know how long. This video is going to be 20 minutes straight, so I'm a little bit nervous about it. I'm sorry if I was yapping your ears off, but I hope you guys learned a little bit more about me. And yeah, feel free to reach out to me on anywhere. I'm pretty responsive. And yeah, I'll see you guys next time. Bye.