#306: Richard Mensah, Co-Founder of EllisX, on Pioneering Authentic Marketing for Tech Startups

Welcome to Just Go Grind, a show all about building and investing in companies, featuring interviews with startup founders, investors, and operators, sharing the best insights into the world of entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Justin Gordon, Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital. And in this episode, we have Richard Mensah, co-founder of LSX. Now, LSX is pioneering authentic marketing, a new market category that allows companies to increase brand awareness without hassle. In addition, their infrastructure empowers creators and writers To connect with the best startup and tech stories. Shownotes can be found at justgogrind.com. Let's dive in.

Richard, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Justin.

Yes, there's so much to dive into with LSX, your company. For people who don't know though, what are you doing with LSX?

So basically what we're trying to do is build a better way for companies to, I mean, get direct access to media and creators. To pretty much build their brands organically, right? So we're essentially building the infrastructure layer in the background for how companies seamlessly connect with creators who are already looking for content to write about or people to interview with, and also community builders who are looking for guests to come on there to share with their communities. And we're doing this because right now it's really hard for companies to get out there and get the word going, get word of mouth going, because there's so much noise out there in the market right now. And we believe that the best way for companies And also for creators, we're actually making it a lot easier for them to find interesting companies to cover and get a lot of content for their audience.

Yeah, there is an endless amount of content and ideas and people to connect with that like you never would find before. And I love the idea that you guys are doing something to connect people because I'm always looking for guests, of course. And even on the brand side with Vitalyze, the venture firm we're at, like we're always looking for ways to get on podcasts and get, you know, written about as well.

So any brand trying to grow, I could see the value in this.

So I'm really excited to see where this goes. How did this start though, Richard?

I'm curious. Yeah, um, so before I even started this, it was whole like— this is my 4th startup, so I have a whole like startup journey before that. Um, so I'm originally from Ghana. Um, so I got into college, um, at 17, and I got my first laptop when I got to college in Ghana. Um, I was excited about building, right? So I got my first laptop finally, I was like, I get to build cool stuff. So I, uh, I mean, put it together. I learned C++, I learned C, then I had an Android app that I built like a year later after getting the laptop. And I had a bunch of my classmates that were excited about using it. So what we did was we incorporated Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter into one app. So these apps used to be like around 100 megabytes cumulatively back in 2013, 2014. They were quite big for mobile devices back then because they didn't have a lot of memory. And what we did was we created them on a WebView and reduced the size to 1.7 megabytes. And a bunch of my classmates in Ghana were excited. We're using it on campus and Um, I mean, we're just talking about it, so we just had people talk about it and people are using it. My dad even downloaded the app. I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

So one of the main pain points at that point was even though we do something that we knew people wanted, um, we're students back then, um, I was pretty much, um, making like, like $100 in pocket money per month, so I couldn't spend on ads and I didn't have anyone in promotion, my network. So it was like really, really hard to get growth going even though we knew we had an initial Park with the product. So yeah, so that was that one. Then I did another startup after that in the ad tech space. So think of it like Pokémon Go, but instead of looking for Pokémons, you're looking for ads in the real world. So like you could be on Central Park and go like grab 5 Nike ads and come back to Nike and be like, okay, I copped 5 of your ads, so I get like a free like special edition shoe or something. And so a more interactive way for brands to actually get in front of their audiences, not just like passively engage with what they're already doing on Twitter or Instagram or YouTube, but like actively become part of their lives. Um, but yeah, so that one too was good, but it was way too early for its time. Magic Leap didn't really work out, Google Glass didn't work out, all the platforms that AR could have pretty much worked out on didn't really work out.

Um, so yeah, I just moved on.

And I, uh, so I graduated computer science summa cum laude, then I, uh, did a bunch of consulting projects and got a couple of awards from GAE too. And I came to the US to do a master's in business. But before then, that's where I met my co-founder Leah, right? So she has a really strong background in marketing. She was the first marketing head to Boston tech startups herself. She also came into the US from Bulgaria with just $300, and she pretty much worked her way through college. And one of the biggest pain points for her, like, as the first marketing head for startups in Boston too, was getting the founders that she was working with, like, more, I mean, brand awareness or get more people to hear about them because it's really hard for them to break through the noise ultimately. And so what she did to help them out was she built her own like blog. So she wrote a blog about startup innovation where she got to 10,000 unique visits a month. But the main pain point for her too at that point was literally which kind of companies that she can cover and all the people that were coming to her inbound were not high quality. And she also wanted to find people that also had diverse voices and diverse takes on different topics. It was really hard to find interesting stories on a consistent basis. So as a creator, that's one of the main pain points creators have. And as a brand, we also know what brands have is like, we need to build a better way for companies and brands to work together in a way that is not just based on who you know, who's already in your network or something like that, but it's pretty much based on What you're working on and what you'd like to write about or talk about.

Literally.

That's a lot to unpack. What a journey to get to this point then. So obviously find your co-founder, which is a big part of it, you know, finding a co-founder for the company, which a lot of people go through that and find different ways of going about it. But that gets you to this point, obviously, of starting LSX. And what was the kind of early stage in terms of, you know, customer discovery, figuring out what the product would be initially? Take me through some of that stuff too.

Yeah, it's been very different. So initially, we thought it would be like a search engine. for journalists. That was the beginning part. But along the line, it changed a lot, right?

So now what we are is more like an earned media marketplace, but the bigger vision is actually to become the engine for content, for how people find and discover organic content to write about or to get in front of their audience or like to share. But it's been quite a journey. So we started off with a small product, built it out in a month after like incorporating, had our first paying beta user like a month after building the beta. We've always had paying beta users, just saying. So yeah, that's really good to know.

But yeah, but yeah, so basically we built that out.

And then the thing that we saw was once we built that, that was really hard for that initial product to work because a lot of people on the creator front or writer front didn't necessarily know who they were looking for. They were typically looking for someone, but usually they'll just go with the most famous person because that's who they could find online. But I mean, they also, when they came to our platform to search, they weren't really searching that much. So we had to rethink the idea again. So what we built then was that we started creating something for event organizers to just find guests for their conferences. And that began to pick up a lot, right? So we had, we have HubSpot, we have Startup Grind, a couple of hotshot event people use our platform to find speakers for some of the events that they host. And it was going well. We even had Harvard use it, and it got to a point where it was picking up and COVID hit. So pretty much all the online events, like all the in-person events, just went to zero. So I remember that moment, I just called my co-founder. I'm like, you know what, you know this cool thing we're having with this event, like in person and people using our platform? Well, this is going down, so we might as well think of a new way.

Oh my goodness.

That was an interesting conversation. So right after that, um, We had to now focus on creators and see how, um, like startups could leverage creators. And that's where we had our first few podcasters come on board after speaking to a number of them. So we— how we built it was we spoke to a number of podcasters and writers to see, okay, what do they look for in a guest? Um, what's their main pain points? Um, like pretty much understanding what kind of people they want to have on the show and how they find them now in the moment and what variables to look out for. And based on that, we built the initial MVP for that and We had a bunch of podcasters join the MVP once we launched it out on Product Hunt. I mean, just so you know, we have like a huge waiting list right now of like 370 companies.

That's amazing.

Who want to join. Yeah, but that was it. Then eventually we figured out, we started seeing a lot of writers trickle in. So we have writers from TechCrunch, Business Insider, and larger publications who also saw this as huge value add to what they're already working on, because sometimes they need to find interesting Um, people to chime in on different topics you're writing about. So, um, that's why they come to our platform for that.

One of the things, yeah, I'm also on that waiting list. I just joined, by the way. So fingers crossed I can convince Richard to get me up higher. But one of the things I want to go back to is the Product Hunt launch. How did that come about and how did that end up going for you?

Uh, it was good. Um, so basically it was pretty straightforward. We, I mean, we had KP.

I don't even know KP from On Deck, but basically he launched—

People know him from Twitter. Yeah. He's the building public guy for sure.

Yeah.

He's a cool buddy of ours.

Um, so basically, uh, Yeah, we set everything up. We put it out, the product on Product Hunt, and we had a lot of people just for some reason just come to us. So, so far we spent $0 on marketing, just so you know.

And a lot of people came in there and we also have a lot of word of mouth and good comments from a few of our beta users previously, and they just helped push them up. I think we came up to the 4th product of the day on that day, and it was like, I think one of the top 10 in the week, which was really good. Excited about. I'm hoping to beat that next time we do a Product Hunt launch.

What kind of numbers did you see from that?

Oh, it was a lot.

So we had, I mean, in that 2, 3 days of that first week of product hunt, we had like around 200 companies join the waitlist.

Um, and we had people who just joined the platform.

We, at that time, were testing still.

So we let a few people in just, um, iterate a few more on the business model and everything. And yeah, we got a lot of them, um, who loved it. And we have a lot more of them still waiting to join. Yeah, we'll get them in. We'll get it eventually.

I actually just talked to someone from a company called Last Crumb, the CEO of that company, and they have like Yeah, a massive waiting list. It's a consumer company. So it's a little bit different, but massive waiting list right now, you know, trying to match supply and demand is always really interesting. And especially like this type of thing too, like you can't just take everyone instantly to find good companies. So it's tricky. And one of the things you mentioned too is the business model. What is the kind of the current business model? How'd you land on that today for LSX?

Yeah, so initial, the initial business model was supposed to be in our mind was like a paper connection. So basically, once we connected you to a writer, podcaster, we just charge like a flat fee irrespective of who it is or what they're writing about. I mean, quickly we saw that it wasn't really ideal for our use case because our goal is not just to make the connections happen, but we're actually trying to create a new way for companies to reach their audiences via media and creators. So we're pioneering something we call authentic marketing. So to do that, we need a lot more people in the company, not just like a marketing team using the platform. We need a CEO, CFO, CRO, pretty much anyone who is a function in the company. They have interesting insights based on what they're working on. We believe that they should go out there and share with interesting audiences that are tailored to what they do in the company. So for example, you could have a, I mean, like a blockchain startup with, um, I don't know if they have CEOs now, but basically—

Touché, touché.

But basically it's a CTO of a blockchain startup who wants to, um, like pretty much help build their brand. They get access to a lot of technical podcasts or technical writings or technical community events that they could actually go in front of and talk about how their company is doing things differently from other companies out there in the blockchain space, or what the insights are and what they out so far. And we believe that this should cut across from not just the CTO, but I mean, marketing person could do that for what's happening in marketing. I mean, product person could do that for what's happening in product, and revenue and finance should talk about revenue and finance. But basically, we believe that building the company organically is not just a function of a marketing team. It's more organic interactions from every team member with different audiences to be able to help people care about what the company is doing and what the mission is and what their insights and their values are. And on the creator front, I mean, what we're seeing there is we're seeing all these people who are, I mean, creating their own content and they're trying to write about interesting startups. But the main pain point for them is most of these creators are pretty much limited to who they can invite or interview by their networks. And we believe that we have to unlock the whole entire creator economy so a lot more people can partake in that. So for example, if you like to interview cool people, we want to be the platform you come to so you can keep interviewing cool people irrespective of whether you're in India or you're in South Africa or somewhere, because again, you're a good storyteller, you're a good person to— like, who's good at interviewing. So we should give you the people you need to interview, and you just focus on giving your audience the best, um, sort of content they want and just keep making them happy. And that way you get to grow your audience, and, um, I mean, startups will get the distribution they need.

Yeah. How did you think about, just in terms of the pricing, like, who, who you were going to charge on the— on that front in terms of the business model, and then landing at that, you know, currently $99 could change as people listen to this, you know, years from now. But how do you land on the pricing and then who you're going to actually charge on which side of that?

Yeah, so we ultimately now at a subscription model for startups. Basically, we're seeing a lot of SaaS tools we have to build to make the whole, pretty much entire space more efficient. So we're going to use the SaaS pricing model. How did we land at $99? It was just testing a number of things, right? So we, I think we started at $59,000, then we went to $87,000, then we came to $99,000. But funny enough, we actually have companies that are later stage, like, hitting on our door. So we have Series B, Series A companies willing to come in. We had a company that went public earlier this year who wanted to use our platform. And these guys are looking to pay anywhere between like $10,000 to $15,000 a month for exactly what we're building. And when it comes to all the features we want to put together in the future. So it's like, we know we're underpricing based on what we're doing, but it's still like something we need to do to give access to people who may not have a lot of money to pay it. Because one of our missions is not just to pretty much make the connections happen, but our mission statement says that we want to empower relationships or foster relationships that empower innovators to succeed. So I'm thinking about the innovator somewhere in Bangladesh or India or somewhere in Asia who has just a really, really good idea, but it doesn't have an easy way of getting the word out about what they're working on. And basically we want to be able to empower such a person. And we also want to empower companies that have like thousands of employees too, and that are trying to like go to the next level with their companies too. So yeah, thinking of all those people and trying to make sure that, um, we create something that is going to be beneficial to everybody and help everyone succeed.

Yeah. And then the testing part of that, I mean, there's always so many ways to go about that with pricing and having talked to just like hundreds of entrepreneurs now, everyone has a different approach for that. And you have to just try something out a lot of times. they're underpricing, but to your point, it depends what your mission is, who you're trying to get access to and how you approach it moving forward. With you then, you mentioned word of mouth being a big driver and obviously I'm sure you had a massive bump with Product Hunt as you talked about, but what today is fueling the growth or how do you look at growth for LSX now in terms of how you get to that next stage?

Yeah. I mean, word of mouth is one of the big ones. We have partnerships with a few startup service providers and startup accelerators, so we're actually partnered with On Deck, we have a perk with Techstars, we have a number of things with Bombillo, LaunchHouse. So we have all those relationships already in place. So basically on our door when it comes to startups, you're already just knocking pretty much because we have a lot of leads coming in through there. So there's the partnerships, there's the word of mouth that is also bringing in a bunch of people from referrals, and also one of the other things is content. Leah and I, Leah is my co-founder, that is, so we do a lot of content. Leah writes for Bulletin, she does a lot of podcasts, we use Twitter a lot. I write for Entrepreneur Magazine, I use Twitter a lot, I do a lot of podcasts, pretty much anything to go out there and reach the people that we cannot reach otherwise by our manual efforts or through content. So we want to actually build a relationship with these people, not just shoot out a bunch of ads at this point.

So basically we want to scale our organic reach and the content we're putting out there.

How did you land on that strategy as the way to go? I know there's other people, one person that comes to mind is Reuben Harris from Career Karma. Had him on the show previously and they invest heavily in content and they are getting like, I don't know, a million uniques a month or something crazy. How'd you land that strategy for you guys in terms of using that?

Yeah, I think honestly with content, I think content is actually going to be the main driver of growth for most companies in the next 5 to 10 years because I mean, now product is super easy to build, right? You could use no-code tools, you could use, I mean, engineering talent is like, I mean, for some people it's scarce, but it's actually, if you look on a global scale, there's a lot of them everywhere.

Yeah. I'm from Ghana, so I know what I'm talking about.

But basically, so what is going to help companies stand out is the ability to, I mean, keep the attention of their, I mean, target audience or target customers. Content is one way to do that. You educate your customers through, I mean, podcasts or through having like articles out there, through even having like your own TV show. I think Wistia has something like that. I think HubSpot actually has, I mean, a lot of content they put out there in podcasts and they have a whole media network pretty much running HubSpot and literally all their leads come from their blogs and articles and their content and they have never— that's the moat literally. Like even you can build the best software that outcompetes HubSpot, right? But you don't have that moat of HubSpot's content. That's what's going to keep getting them to like win. And most startups don't really get the fact that it's not just about the product or the tech, it's more about what other content pieces do you have out there? What other moats can you build that are not related to your product that can bring people in? So there's content, there's community, which is something else we were looking at. So I mean, we used to have community events where we bring our founders and people to just talk about different startup-related topics. For example, we had a couple of VCs come to talk to them. And last year at Christmas, we had a music person play music for them. So we were playing— it was virtual though, it was virtual music concert, Christmas carols kind of thing. So any way to engage the community is another thing to do. But basically, we're seeing more that we picked that approach because we actually want to build a long-term relationship. We're actually thinking of a company from the next 10 to 15 years, like a very long horizon. And we believe that the best mode to build now will be the content mode, because once we have it, we can literally like do anything when it comes to the product, but it's the content and backlinks and other people's goodwill that is going to keep us going.

Tell me more about how that plays into, you know, talking to investors potentially with that strategy. And they obviously, you know, as being at a VC firm, like we expect certain growth and everything, but how does that play into that? Are those conversations or what are you hearing around, around that side of things?

Yeah, um, so far we haven't had any pushback per se on that strategy because, um, I think the investors we're talking to are more long-term focused. And we have a number of hotshot angel investors already on board and who are actually supporting us in any way we, we need them to. But I think we— that is not really a big play whatsoever. Um, basically we're partnering, we have a couple of things we're looking out for, um, particularly. So it's pretty much people who have a longer-term horizon than the ones we're talking to or the ones we already have on board. So yeah, but I think eventually, once we get to a point, we might activate a few growth, I mean, faster growth mechanisms. But as it stands now, content is going to be the moat. And actually, that is the moat that is going to last longer than just shooting out a bunch of ads or like a random spend on anything that is going to give us quick returns in the moment.

Yeah, and definitely goes back to the idea of making sure you have investors who are aligned and who understand what the strategy is. Finding those people that get what you're doing, which is obviously why they're investing. But one thing I'm curious about, you mentioned Launch House. How was Launch House? How'd you get into that? How was the experience?

So basically, we got into Launch House. We got invited by one of the founders. We were actually trying to do like a partnership with them, and we're like, okay, you know what? You guys seem like you're working something really cool. Why don't you join Launch House?

Like, you know what?

We should do that too. So my co-founder Leah is actually in On Deck, so she actually been to On Deck and the whole. startup community. I'm like, okay, that's cool. I'm like, okay, so let me try out Launch House for a month and see how it goes. And I really loved it. I think their community is amazing. Um, it's pretty much about who you meet and the community. So far I've met a couple of really smart young people, um, in Launch House who are working on interesting problems. And I, I believe that, um, I mean, that is probably going to scale to a bigger community because there's something special about having like IRL meetups Like in a place than just like online communities, and that's what Lunch House brings to the table.

Yeah, that's something that we're actually thinking about a lot with Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community. It's like we've always people around the world, like 300 members or whatever. How do we do events like in person at different locations? Because we know we want to connect them, and like even in LA where I am, we have a bunch of people from LA, bunch of SF in Chicago where we're located, and even today on a call, I had someone who was in Berlin. And then someone else is in like London and Europe wondering about like, can we do meetups in Europe with Vitalize Angels members? And it's like, yeah, that'd be amazing to do. And that builds that community and that moat for moving forward where it's like, why would you join LSX? Well, they also have this massive community of people. It's like, it makes a lot of sense with that. With you guys too, what is the experience like for someone using LSX? Tell me, you know, right now at least, what does that look like from, you know, click join, whatever it may be, or apply, obviously to get accepted. But what does that look like in terms of that experience?

So that's once you're already in or once you're waiting to join in?

Yeah, in the early, early stage before you even get in and then once you get in.

All right, it's quick. So basically our waitlist to be able to actually get accepted once we open it up is you need to have a product in the market, you need to be full-time on your business, you need to have raised some funding or have some revenue. We're doing this just to make sure there's some level of quality on the platform when it comes to startups. You don't just like, we don't want someone who just woke up a day or two ago and just came up with an idea in his garage to just jump on LSX. No, we're not like an ad platform.

Yeah.

So no, we're not that. So that's what we do for startups to make sure they're high quality. But pretty much the goal ultimately is to make it a lot easier for interesting, I mean, people or startup members to find opportunities to go out there and spread the word about what they're working on. So I mean, What we have now is more like an earned media marketplace. So you see a lot of opportunities to go on podcasts, newsletters, talk about what you're working on. Sometimes you see a couple of events pop in there and just send a request. All you have to do is literally click a button. So there's no pitching, there's no like pretty much trying to sell yourself because basically we're selling you once you're on our platform, you're pretty good enough to be on the platform. And in the future, the goal is to literally tap into a lot of ML and analytics actually. So basically what we're seeing is once someone goes on a podcast So once someone gets written about in a newsletter or something like that, or like an event, it's really hard for them to measure the value of that, right? And it's hard for them to see how they can keep doing it and how they can optimize their efforts around all those things. So that's something we'll actually be doing, actually helping people understand how all these things come together organically. So for example, imagine you and everyone at Viralize is going out there speaking on Viralize's behalf on different platforms, on podcasts, YouTube, whatever it is. If there's a way to put all that data together and help you understand that, that's actually going to be We believe that's going to be very valuable right now and a lot of people are more likely to use that as their primary medium of reaching their audience instead of going with like a bit superficial methods like ads right now. Because the reason why a bunch of people spend on ads because of the fact that they can actually measure it and optimize it because they have a sense of control. So if you could give people a sense of control when it comes to going out there and building the brand and talking about what they're working on, we believe that a lot of people are more likely to want to actually go speak to people instead of just sitting behind the PC.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like people intuitively know that it's going to be useful. It's hard to track those things. And I know we're almost out of time here. So what is the best way for people to get in touch with you and also to learn more about LSX?

Yeah. They can follow the company at LSX Inc. on Twitter. They can connect with me on Twitter at Richard, R-I-O-M-E-N-S-A-H, Rio Mensah on Twitter. And they can also follow the company on LinkedIn. LSX on LinkedIn. So pretty straightforward right there. Just, or just Google LSX and you find a lot of links. You could just follow.

Perfect.

Richard, this was a lot of fun. We could, could have dove into way more, maybe have a part 2, a round 2 sometime, but thank you so much for coming on the show.

Definitely.

Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Just Go Grind. If you want to follow along on the socials for all things Just Go Grind and with me as well, You can find Just Go Grind on Instagram and Twitter @JustGoGrind. You can find me on Twitter @JustinGordon212. Find me on Instagram @JustinGordon8. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.

Bye.