#312: Kirsten Baumberger, Co-Founder of Minisocial.io, on Scaling On-Demand User Generated Content, Leveraging Partnerships, and Being the "Anti-Platform"

Welcome to the Just Go Grind podcast. I'm your host, Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vilize Venture Capital. On today's episode, we have Kirsten Bomberger, co-founder and Director of Partnerships at minisocial.io, a user-generated content platform that facilitates the production of user-generated content on demand and at scale. Many works with top DTC brands and agency brands including DoorDash, Sanzo, and Native. to generate fully licensed user-generated content via micro-influencer activations on TikTok and Instagram. Let's dive in. Kirsten, welcome to the show.

Hi, it's great to be here.

Yeah, and with Minisocial, a lot to chat about with what you've done in the last couple of years helping brands. I'm always curious about the beginning though. How did this get started in the first place, Kirsten?

Yeah, I actually sort of love our origin story because it's sort of— it's the typical founder ideal origin story where it came from a need that me and my co-founder had when we were being sort of freelance social media managers. So basically, Minisocial started because we were DMing our friends on Instagram and saying, hey, if we send you this subscription box, will you shoot it and then send us the content so we can repost it on the brand's social media channels? So it really had like such an organic origin story and It was built from our need as marketers, and that's why I really am so excited about it.

Okay. With this too, going the venture-backed, I think you went raised from like Hustle Fund and a couple other ones. Why you decided to go that route? I'm just curious.

Yeah, so that's also an interesting sort of journey on our end. So we started off bootstrapping for the first year. So we basically took our work from being freelance and spun some of those clients into mini social And we scaled a lot by cold email. And that's how we landed some brands like Native and HUM Nutrition. And then from there, we really wanted to have more tech components to Minisocial and really build out a platform and a dashboard so that it was more seamless for brands to be able to just spin up campaigns whenever they wanted. So that's why we decided to sort of, what we like to call it, it was like a seed or a pre-seed round, but we've sort of called it like a partnerships round where basically we wanted to raise from investors who, you know, were entrepreneur-focused and sort of meant a lot and worked a lot in like the space that we're in. So that's sort of how we stumbled upon raising a little round. And it was, it was definitely interesting. We were always sort of thinking we would always bootstrap it, but we sort of realized that there is value to bringing on, you know, partners and investors. And we're really, really glad that we did.

Yeah, it's actually one of the questions I ask a lot of entrepreneurs I talk with when they're in their super early stages, they haven't raised yet. It's like, why do you want to raise venture capital? Is this the right route for you? Because for a lot of companies, it's not necessarily. And it's also a matter of the founders, like, how do you want to build your company? There's no one way to build it. And it's kind of up to you in terms of how you go about that. But some markets for sure, some ways of doing it, you need to raise capital faster, otherwise you don't have much of a chance. But I love that you're very intentional about doing it. And one thing I want to go back to, You mentioned the cold outreach. I did cold outreach for a previous company we had started, my best friend and I. Yeah. Pod Puppy was the name of it. We did podcast production for folks and we just did cold outreach for like hundreds or even thousands of messages basically. And I'm curious for you, what was that pitch when you're cold outreach into these brands for ManySocial that people probably hadn't heard of yet? What was that pitch like?

Yeah, so basically it was, we stuck with email because I felt like email, cold email is a little more friendly than like calling up someone and saying, hey, have a conversation with me right this second.

Yeah.

So we stuck with email and basically we found that a lot of people needed content and they weren't really sure the various ways to produce that really social-first content that they were all sort of looking for for their social channels. So our pitch was basically like, hey, you need content and you want to work with micro-influencers. We're like a 2-prong solution for you to be able to do that in a really seamless way. So that was sort of how it worked. And we were really lucky that our cold email worked as well as it did, because I know people have really varying experiences with cold email.

Yeah, it can be hit or miss. And with you too, what brands are you targeting? Were there certain niches you were targeting? Were there certain verticals you were targeting? Take me through some of that, because I know founders who are starting, they're trying to boil the ocean, which is never a good idea. But how did you go about even finding those first brands that you even wanted to reach out to?

Yeah. So we looked at pretty much direct-to-consumer lists. So lists on different Forbes or different sort of places that were like, oh, here's the top 100 DTC brands to watch in 2019. So I would just basically go down that list and find people on the social team or the marketing team and then just shoot them a note.

I know you mentioned already that you went the route with cost of funding, raising venture capital. And you wanna do some other things with ManySocial. Take me through what that looks like in terms of the product you have for brands and how they work with you from when they start to like what they're actually doing week to week. Like what does that look like for them?

Yeah, so the very first step on our end is getting a brief put together. So we have a brief builder tool, which was sort of part of the whole development process that we used the Hustle Fund capital to do. And that tool basically takes brands through an onboarding process. And the goal is that it takes them less than 10 minutes to spin up a campaign on ManySocial. We're a little different than other SaaS or product or other marketing platforms out there where we're not like a monthly recurring subscription. So brands are free to run as many campaigns with us as they want or as few campaigns with us as they want. So the way that that tool works is they can spin up a brief and then we're sort of like a fully managed service. So we'll actually book up the creators for them. Based on the information they provided in the brief. And then they can check out the list of creators that have opted in, and then they can get their product shipped out to them, and the creators will post on their social channels, and they'll upload all of the content to our platform. And that'll be on the brand's dashboard so they can jump on and download all the content. And with Minisocial, every asset that comes in is fully licensed, so the brands can use it across all of their marketing channels. So there's really no limits there, which is Really nice for brands and definitely gives them peace of mind when they wanna use it on an ad or on emails.

What does this look like on the creator side of things in terms of how many followers they need to participate, who you're looking for on the creator side? Because I've seen this before in different ways that people leveraging kind of micro-influencers, which can mean a lot of different things as well. Like, what does that mean for you guys at Minisocial in terms of what those micro-influencers are and who you're looking for in terms of them?

Yeah. So when we started Minisocial, sort of micro influencers was, I guess, like the bottom bucket that there was. But now I guess nano influencers have become a term as well.

Yeah.

So we work with nano and micro influencers. It's creators between 1K and 10K followers on either Instagram or TikTok. We really look for creators that have like a good sort of community around them. Our 2 pillars at ManySocial are content and community. So we look for creators that are doing both on a quality level.

Yeah, I always wonder about that because people don't think they have value from that 1,000. But when you batch them together and they have engagement versus just no engagement at all with 1,000 is much different than having every post, just tons of engagement, tons of likes and everything. And I know we've kind of looked at that too, just in terms of how we look at social in general more broadly from a Vitalize perspective. It's like how much engagement on these posts are we getting? Not just throw something out there, throw something out there, really digging into the analytics behind it and these direct-to-consumer brands. So they're batching many different creators essentially together for these campaigns. What does that look like? Is it like hundreds in a campaign? Is it like, I guess I know it's going to vary based on budget, but I'm curious from their perspective what it looks like.

Yeah. So the way we've sort of come at it in the middle. So there's brands who want to work with just like 3 micro-influencers and there's brands who want to work with like 10,000 of them. And we sort of found ourselves— yeah, 10,000 is a lot. I can't believe there's brands who manage that many. So we sort of found ourselves in the middle. So our bottom tier is 25 micro-influencers. And that's a great place to start because it's a good amount of people who are tagging you and talking about your brand. But we go all the way up to 500 micro-influencers and that tends to be the brands who can manage to send out a lot of product because it really is a lot of product when you're shipping to 500 creators.

Yeah. And you mentioned that early on going from this cold outreach, no one really knows about you to then now you had some venture capital. Things have changed a little bit. What does the growth look like now for you in terms of how you're approaching growth for ManySocial, attracting more brands? I'm curious on how that goes now.

Yeah. So we've been lucky enough to stumble upon a bunch of awesome advertising partners. A few that we love and have been working with for a while are the D2C Newsletter, CPGD. There's a bunch of awesome people in the space who have kind of like our micro-influencers. They have that really niche sort of audience and they're providing value and sharing things with them. So we've really just sort of leveled up with those advertising partners and have seen some really awesome success with them.

Are there ones you're like, what are you looking for in terms of those partners? I mean, There's a lot of ways you can go about this and brands look at newsletters like you mentioned, and there's a lot of them that are great. You could look at podcast sponsorships. You could look at obviously paid acquisition on the typical Facebook, Instagram, all of that. But how have you looked at those different channels and decided which ones that you were gonna pursue with ManySocial?

Yeah. So I think honestly it's me spending a lot of time on Twitter and looking at where are these DTC marketers and DTC founders, what are they reading? Where are they spending their time? And basically just inputting mini social into those, like you said, podcasts and newsletters. And that's sort of our preferred method of getting in front of these people. Like, I think, you know, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, those are all great and they have a time and place. But in terms of like the amount of money that we have to put into ads, you know, it's not as crazy as some of these brands who have raised, you know, $10 million. So every ad dollar for us really, really counts. So there's not as much testing as we can do. So we really look for these specific audience-driven newsletters and podcasts.

And just to dive deeper in that, because I kind of obsess about this stuff, are you looking at it from the perspective of you're going to test it multiple times with one of these, see how it goes and adapt? You're going to test multiple at once. How is that process going? I'm always thinking of other founders who They hear something, it's too broad and like, okay, how do I actually do that for my company? For you at least, how has that gone in terms of figuring out that mix of the ones you're working with, the ones you're gonna try out?

Yeah. So it's pretty much the ones that are talking about how to succeed in e-commerce, how to work with influencers. And it's really, they're always focused in on sort of our target audience, which is those D2C e-commerce brands. So basically, When I stumble across one, what I do is I'll just say, hey, you know, we'd love to put a placement in your newsletter. And then from there, though, we would, we'll just give it a shot. And then, you know, if it, if it works and we get some traction from it, that's awesome. And then I'll do it again. And then I'll sort of just move on to the next one while, you know, continuing work with the other newsletters that we've been working with. And then just sort of adding to our list of advertising partners that way.

Yeah, I love that. We've started to dabble with that with By Lies Angels, with our angel investing community. We have, I think we played with like Fem Street was one newsletter, like Lolita, uh, Lolita Taub's newsletter as well.

And like, yeah, I love her newsletter.

Yes, exactly. So we played around with advertisements there. We're gonna actually, we're gonna play with probably more of that coming up. But it is an interesting channel where a lot of times you're trying to find that those channels that are underutilized or that you have kind of an asymmetric upside with them. And some of them, like even these newsletters, like they're relatively cheap in terms of sponsoring them. When you look at their reach and especially if you have that repeat thing, like for any company out there looking to expand, I think there's an opportunity within that, especially with podcasting for sure is one where sponsoring that's unknown for a lot of people. And then also to your point, the newsletters are interesting as well. And then the way you're leveraging content, there's so many different ways to acquire customers now. I find it fascinating in all sorts of ways. And one thing I want to go back to is just with this growing, I think you started in 2019, I read. How has the team grown? How has that side of things gone for you with ManySocial? I'm curious about that.

Yeah, so me and my co-founder are not technical at all, as you can probably tell with any time I start talking about tech stuff or the platform or product. So I don't really speak that language. So the first sort of folks we brought onto our team is a group of developers out in LA. And they have sort of been the UX, the design, and like the backend development, like of ManySocial. So they were like definitely the first critical group of team members that we brought on. And then beyond that, we've tried to create a really flexible and like casual sort of work environment. So we have part-timers and contractors who work with us. And the way we work is they're sort of influencer coordinators. So there are team members who are scouting new creators every day. Onboarding people to the platform. And then, you know, we have freelance writers that we work with. So we're kind of building out this sort of new way of work is sort of the way I like to look at it. Because I think that there's so many opportunities for people now with like, you know, the way that COVID has taken remote work and people can, you know, maybe they are working with 2 to 3 companies at a time and they're also part-timing with them and their hours are flexible. And I think that for me, why that is so important is because that helps sort of prevent prevent burnout. I think having multiple projects and multiple places to sort of put your energy into is like a really awesome way to sort of go into the idea of this like new concept of what work means for everyone.

One thing you mentioned there with hiring your technical team, and this has come up a few times, but how did you go about evaluating and finding the technical team when you're non-technical? That seems to be such a challenge, and hiring in general is like the biggest challenge for any startup, but hiring a technical team, especially the first technical hires you're making when you're not technical yourselves, how'd you go through that process of doing that?

Yep. So they're like a group out in LA and they sort of have it all. So like I said, they have the UX, they have the design, they have the development. And we sort of knew what kind of language we were looking to work with and what kind of platform we were looking to build. So basically what we did is we turned to our advisor, Emmett Shein. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's like the founder behind Gin Lane and now Pattern Brands. But he's done a lot of work partnering with these sort of developers to produce projects that he was working on, sort of on the design side. So he had somebody who used to work at Gin Lane with him, and he was like, you need to talk to these guys. they're doing really cool stuff. So basically, it was a pretty simple, easy conversation where it was like, can you build this platform? You know, can you build these tools that we need? And sort of looking at their previous work that they had done as well, because for ManySocial, design and UX is really important to us. We really want to be sort of like, I guess one term for it is like the anti-platform. Like, we really want to be friendly and like, not as like, you know, scary technical as some of the other platforms are, especially because I feel like so many marketers and founders, they're not looking to have to spend hours on a platform trying to just figure out how it works because they have a million other things to do. So that was like a big thing for us was looking for a team that could really create a friendly design.

Yeah, that's such an important thing, especially now with being able to stand out because there are so many competitors in different spaces now. It's like, How do you find a way to stand out? And yes, inherently what you do as a company and how you operate, but also what does it look like? I mean, people don't give a lot of thought to— there's a short consideration phase. I think it was said on Twitter one time with people's attention spans. So you have to really stand out in some way right away. You don't have much time.

Exactly.

That's what matters.

Yeah. And I feel like with time, I think founders, marketers, they're trying to juggle so many different balls and it's like if we can take things off their plate, and not have to add more onto their plate. Because I feel like I use so many different platforms and softwares, just, you know, you know, I'm sure you do too.

Yeah.

And the amount of time I spend just like figuring out how they work, it's just like really frustrating for me. And like, I'm not a technical person, so maybe it takes me longer than other people, but I want to just make sure that like the marketers and brands we're working with can actually do meaningful work on ManySocial and not have to spend time just figuring out how the platform works.

Yeah. And what you mentioned around having within 10 minutes to create a campaign, like that's so valuable to be able to start with it and right away create something meaningful, tangible within a few minutes. I mean, that's, that's huge in terms of going about that. And one thing I want to talk about, just going back to what you talked about with fundraising, how did you go about deciding which venture capitalists or angels you're going to work with, that whole process? I want to hear more about that.

Yeah. So It came in like a really organic way. So the funniest thing is, like you mentioned, Lolita Taub's newsletter. So she tweeted about like her, she had like a, it was like a Google Form that was like, she would like basically put your pitch in here and like, I'll send it out to like her group of investors and angels. And if anybody likes what you're doing, they'll reach out to you. So this was at a point and it was like, pretty early in sort of the COVID shutdowns and stuff. So we were like, okay, maybe we should just like take a break from the idea of fundraising. You know, we weren't, we weren't totally sure we were going to dive 100% into it, just given the timing and everybody in the world was so consumed about, you know, COVID and like, you know, investors were taking a step back. So we filled that out and then Hustle Fund actually reached out to us from there. were interested in learning more. And then the second we met Elizabeth and Eric and the whole team at Hustle Fund, it was like an immediate match. Like Elizabeth was a founder herself, so was Eric. Elizabeth was in the marketing sector. So it was just like, it was like a match made in heaven to work with them. So it was one of those things that we just stumbled upon the right people at the right time and we just said, okay, let's do it. And we're really lucky that we found them.

Yeah, I'm glad you did. There's so many stories of how long it can take to fundraise and how challenging it is fundraising and find those right partners. You're gonna be with them for a very, very long time. So I'm glad you're able to do it.

Yeah, because we raised such like a small little pre-seed round, they ended up taking pretty much the whole round. We just had another angel jump in because he's an advisor for us and he wanted to join. But it was really cool. We were one of like I think Elizabeth said she's made 3 offers on the first call, and we were one of those 3 that she met us on the first call and made an offer. So that was a really big sort of sign for us too, that we were on the right path and on the right track, and it made us feel good about what we were trying to build.

Yeah. I mean, and then getting that funding, then going through that process afterwards, what was that like in terms of you got the funding then, and then using that to actually execute on your vision? How has that gone? Yeah.

So that's been pretty good because we were always sort of had the revenue behind us as well. So we were, you know, we had revenue from day one. We didn't start Minnie without revenue, basically. So that was really helpful and definitely gave us a leg up in terms of, you know, being able to, you know, invest in marketing and invest in tech. So we basically took that money from the raise and put it, you know, all towards the development of the platform. Well, we use sort of the other revenue that was coming in from the sales we were generating to power the rest of ManySocial.

As a founder, so have you started a company before this?

So my co-founder and I had a, we were freelancers in New York doing like social media management. And we had a like little agency that we started, agencies in air quotes, because it was just us two basically just like trying to run social for these awesome DTC brands. And so we kind of found out that like, oh, you can charge more as a freelancer if you say that you are an agency. So that's why we sort of branded it as an agency because we were able to like, people took us more seriously, people took our work more seriously and we were able to charge more and get paid sort of what we deserved for the work we were doing.

What has the difference been then from that, from the freelancer agency life? to now with ManySocial, how has that been different challenges-wise between the two? I'm curious.

Yeah. So with our sort of agency life, we had hired a few sort of part-timers back in the day and learned a lot of lessons from hiring and what not to do. I think a lot of it was we were just super quick to hire like the first person that we interviewed. And, you know, that's not always the right match. Sometimes you get lucky and the first person you interview, you absolutely adore. But for us, I think we needed to be more thoughtful about the hiring process and, you know, why are we hiring this person? Are they a good fit for us? You know, do we have enough workload in order to be hiring them? I think, you know, being in New York, we were really sort of caught up in like, oh, look at all these other founders. They have like a team of 6 and like, they have this like huge team. And we're like, oh, we want to have a team too. So we sort of jumped into hiring without really knowing.

Yeah.

what all that meant and what sort of being a good manager meant. So that I think is sort of the biggest takeaway from that is making sure that, you know, when we're hiring for Minisocial, we're doing it for a reason.

With that too, so I've been at a paid acquisition company before working with venture-backed startups, and any client services industry can be challenging. How do you overcome that? What's it like working with brands? Sometimes had unreal expectations. How do you manage that with them? I'm curious on your experience with that.

Yeah, so it's definitely a struggle. And we come across things every day, whether it's a sales call or a current client that we're working with. And it definitely takes thick skin to have to work with different kinds of clients. And everybody has all these expectations and you're just trying to keep everybody happy. So for us, it's come down to lots of mindfulness and really just being like, okay, We're all humans here. We're all people, you know, just trying to do our best and trying to like help each other and help each other's brands succeed. And so I think just coming at every conversation from a place of kindness has really helped us sort of create relationships that are, you know, manageable and scalable and make sure that everybody has a good outcome.

Yeah. And one of the last things I want to chat about is just Going from bootstrap to have revenue to then you raise some venture capital, there's definitely different expectations around that. How have you handled that in terms of, okay, we have to hit growth at a certain amount? Like, how are you managing through that? Because I know other founders are going to go through that same process, may not understand it. How has that been for you? How are you handling that so far?

Yeah, so we were really lucky in the investors we brought on are very entrepreneur-focused since they're entrepreneur investors. They were, you know, they built businesses themselves. So they sort of understand, you know, the pressure that's put on founders to, like you said, hit those growth metrics and keep scaling. For me, I think it's been more of, it's a really good sort of driver. So like when I'm like, okay, like, you know, like I'm not feeling like, you know, doing this ad for this newsletter today, I sort of have in the back of my head, it's like, you know, it's not just you that you're trying to, you know, create success for. You have a team now, you have, you know, your investors. And so I think for me, it's been really good to have that accountability, to have that monthly investor update that I know I have to send on the 30th of every month. And I want to include, you know, awesome highlights in there and really good sales numbers in there. So for me, I think it's been nothing but a good thing. And we have honestly have the best investors and You know, if there's one thing I'd say to founders who are looking to raise, it's really be picky with the investors you bring on, because there are so many out there now. And like, I do think capital is really easy to get, whether it's like a loan or, you know, non-dilutive. There's so many different ways you can go. And you have the luxury of choosing your investors. You don't feel like you have to, you know, get saddled with investors that are not aligned with your goals. Really make sure that they're aligned with your business, because If they're not, you're going to feel pressure that's not necessarily aligned with the right kind of pressure that you need to have.

Did you ever consider any alternative sources of funding besides VC?

Yeah. So we did basically just consider traditional loans from a bank, like a business loan, but it never really came down to that because we were generating revenue and because After that round, basically the tech allowed us to scale in a really sustainable way that we never really went down that path. But non-dilutive is interesting, especially if we were to start spinning up Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads. We thought about it, but for now we're doing so well with our advertising partners and newsletter partners that we're sort of like, okay, maybe we can sort of just stick with that for a bit.

Yeah. And as we wrap things up here, just curious as to what are some of the next steps for you at Minisocial and what's the big vision for this company?

Yeah. So the vision from the beginning was basically to create a company with, that's all about user-generated content. I think content created by your customers and content created by real users of your product is huge. And I think sort of community and content, like being the 2 pillars of Minisocial is a really are really 2 important things that brands need to focus on. So basically over here at Many, we're working on some other products that just help brands tap into community and tap into creating content within their sort of existing customer base. So that's, it's sort of really new and really in the works, but it's an exciting product.

That's amazing. And Kirsten, thank you for the time. Where's the best place for people to find you online? Learn more about Minnie as well.

Yeah, so I'm on Twitter and you can just find us @minniesocial @minniesocial.com. So yeah, you can email me at kirsten@minniesocial.com as well and always happy to chat with anybody about literally anything. Awesome.

Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Yes, thank you.

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.