Putting Hustle into Practice | Vungle Co-founder Jack Smith

And so bringing it back to the story, like, this was a hack. I'd figured out this hack, but I hadn't had anything to use it for until that point. I was like, oh, this is cool, but I don't really have any use for it. But then when I saw that TechCrunch article, I'm like, wait a minute, I could use this to get that guy's attention, right? So basically, I created an ad that fits all of the LinkedIn ads rules. The picture is like 25 pixels by 25 pixels. The title is like less than 25 characters or whatever. So basically, if you were browsing LinkedIn that day, and what I did is I targeted this to all the guys that were connected to him. So if we're taking Tim Draper, for example, it would be all the people that work at DFJ, all of the entrepreneurs he's invested in, like all the people close to him. If you're browsing LinkedIn that day, you'd see a picture of his face, and it says, "Do you know, in this case, Tomas? Got an urgent message. We need to get to him. Click here." And so obviously that kind of stands out a fair bit. And basically, so we just created this ad and then it linked to a landing page that I just created in like half an hour with me and my co-founder. Let's see if I— I don't think I've got a picture of it, but basically what I did there is I just took out my phone, I started filming my co-founder, and I'm like pitching to the camera why we deserve the last spot. So we just did it in like one take, but it's a video of us and we're basically like, Tomas, we've seen your background, you're a legend, we deserve this last spot, we won't let you down. That's it. Let me see. Yeah, so I was targeting like that. Oh, here you go. So it was like this pops up. Just created it in like half an hour. And so I'm like, dude, we deserve this last spot. This is my email address. This is my phone number. Give me a call. And then it's got this, but actually a different one I had had a button saying, click here to email this to Tomas. Actually, a different one I had. So— Basically, like, 24 hours later, I just went to sleep. Like, we'd done this. I didn't expect anything to come from it. I was like, let's give it a shot. Go to sleep. It's a different time zone in England, obviously. But then, like, the next evening, I get this, like, one-line email. He's like, do you have time for a talk? And so have a call. So again, I saw this ad on, like, a Wednesday. This is the next day. This is Thursday. He's like, can we have a call? And so picking up the phone, he's like, hey, is that Jack? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, this is Tomas. We can chat. But first of all, take this ad down now. He's like, everyone is calling me about this. So he told us later on he'd basically been on a flight from New York to San Francisco, so he didn't have internet. And he's basically getting off the flight, and then he's checking his emails. He basically had over 20 emails from people saying, these kids really want to talk to you. Have you seen this video? And so we were like, okay, cool, yeah, we'll take down the ad. And then, as I said, we saw this TechCrunch post on a Wednesday. We had this phone call on a Thursday. And then over the course of the next week, we basically had like 2 more Skype calls with him where he was like drilling into our idea. As I said, our idea was like totally terrible, so— but we were basically just telling him like, listen, dude— because we were also like not a fit for this program at all. Every other company there basically was like PhDs from Google. Like, one guy wrote YouTube's API. This other team were like 2 PhDs in video encoding from Google. Me and my co-founder, neither of us were even engineers, and our idea was like terrible, but we just told him like, so each batch has like about 12 companies. We were like, dude, your other 10 companies, like, they're just a safe bet. They're too safe. Like, you should just go have one wild card. Like, just at least take one risk. And then so basically, yeah, saw the ad on a Wednesday. The next Wednesday he said, all right guys, I've made my decision. Let's have a final Skype call. And we're like, man, we've got our interns here. Do you have to reject us on camera? Can't you just phone us to reject us? And he's like, no, we have to do a video call. And then we're doing this final call and then he's basically like, guys, if we go through with this, You've got to move to America permanently because I've invested in companies before and they do the 3 months and then they go back to their home country and our investors don't like that. And then me and my co-founder, we didn't even have to discuss it. We're just like, yep, yep, that's fine. That's not gonna be a problem. And he's like, okay, cool. Well, I've decided to take a risk. You guys have got the last spot. And so we're just like high-fiving around the office like, this is awesome. And then so yeah, this was like a week after seeing the ad, like the Thursday then. He's like, okay, cool. Well, The program starts on Monday, so just book the first flight out here. And so we just got on a plane with just our suitcase, and we told everyone in England, oh, hey, see you later, we're moving to Silicon Valley. And so that was how we basically got the last spot. Now, what was pretty cool about this story as well is the same as you were asking before about how did I bid on the ad. With this one, I bid on a CPM basis. instead of cost per click. So that means that I was bidding $2 per 1,000 people that see the ad. So in this instance, I created an ad targeting to Mars. You'll see that basically like 5 people saw it, 2 people clicked it, but this was like only targeting to Mars. So basically the whole thing cost me 1 cent. That's awesome. If I'd been paying cost per click, then it would have cost $20 or something, but it would cost 1 cent. Now, after we got into the program, I was basically like, oh, I found this hack. I might as well just keep utilizing it, I guess. So, after getting into the program, at the time, basically, we were working with games to make videos for their app. It was quite a terrible idea, but I was like, how come we use this more to our advantage? I just saw some post like, oh, this company called Color has just raised like $40 million. So I was like, all right, can we just target them then? And so I created an ad targeting the CEO, saying, do you know Bill? This is really urgent. And then basically I just targeted it to all their employees. And then he emailed. He's like, okay, I'll intro you to my team or whatever. That one cost a bit more. That was like $2 to target him. Then I was like, all right, Rovio. It's like one of the biggest app companies in the world. Can we target Rovio? So I was like, all right, can we target Rovio's CEO? This one we just targeted at their employees. Michael Heddes is the CEO, so we're like, oh, tell me the— Now, we didn't get in contact with the CEO, but we did get one of the vice presidents from Rovio And then he was like, this is pretty awesome, let's chat. And then, all right, that one cost $3. And then Spotify, again, these guys are massive. Can we get— this one, we were just bored, I think, so we were just like, we just want Spotify as a client, was the title. And then that one, they were basically like, hey guys, we've been all talking about your ad in the office. And then this one, we actually did get them as a client. They paid us a couple of tens of thousands of dollars, I think. That one was like $16, though, so that was pretty expensive. And so, just to put in, because sometimes some people have said, like, oh, well, you're showing all the good examples. Like, what happens when this goes bad, right? So, to throw in one other example, we had something like this. for Match.com, like Tinder, right? We used the Tinder logo, and we were like, we want Tinder as a client. And in that one, they actually mailed— I think they faxed us, or I don't know how we faxed. They mailed us a cease and desist letter, because they're like, you're frickin' using our logo on these ad campaigns. And so, what I say is, in that scenario where things don't go to plan, because they Then what you've got to do, I think, is— or at least what we did is we were respectful. We weren't rude, saying, hey, we can do whatever we want. We were respectful and polite. So basically, their lawyer had sent us this cease and desist. He mailed it and emailed it. And basically, we just jumped on a call with the lawyer, and we basically just explained to him. We're like, hey, actually, this ad, it's not showing to the general public. We're only showing this ad to Tinder employees with your logo, and it's only because we really respect your company, and we would just love to work with you. We're not trying to do copyright infringement or whatever. And so in that instance, the lawyer was like, oh, that's pretty cool, actually. And then he intro'd us to their business development team instead. So I think when things don't go how you're wanting, it's how you react to them as well. If we'd been a dick and been like, oh, well, all the other companies like it, we're not taking it down, fuck you. then he would have been like, okay. But because we were just explaining and polite to him, then he wanted to help us. So I think you can apply this same thinking to lots of other challenges that you might have in life. If there's something you want, if you have a goal, then especially any system— in this instance, it was LinkedIn ads, but new systems are launching all the time. Whereas Google AdWords has been around, like, what, like 15 years or something, and there's people who are like 10 years experienced in that, if there's a system launching tomorrow, then nobody else has more experience than you. You can all start on a level playing field, so no one is ahead of you. So if a new system launches tomorrow, you have the opportunity to be the world leader expert in that. So if a new system launches tomorrow, what I'd suggest is like find out the rules. Like, what do they explain are the rules, and what are the actual rules? Like, when you try and submit the ad, they might tell you the rules are one thing. They might tell you the title has to be less than 50 characters, but due to a bug, it might actually be 100. So can you find out the rules, and then can you bend them in your favor, which is what we basically did here? So that is the story about getting into AngelPad. I can talk more about what happened once we got in, or— Have any questions or something from you guys if you want as well, depending how you want to take it. Thank you.