Ep. 22 - How to turn your customers into affiliates with Noah Tucker

Ep. 22 - How to turn your customers into affiliates with Noah Tucker

[00:00:00] 

Callum: So today we have a massive guest on the show. Big on Twitter, doing very well, bootstrapped very well known in the Twitter space, and it's Noah Tucker. And Noah is the CEO and founder of Social Snowball. Noah, thank you for coming on. Honestly, it's been a, we, we've hung out for the last couple of hours and we had a blast.

Noah: Yes. 

Callum: Yeah, it's. A bit of a journey for you guys. When did you start?

Noah: Launch of Social Snowball? 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Two years ago. Almost exactly two years now. 

Callum: Right, yeah. 

And for those people who don't know what Social Snowball is, give us the rundown. 

Noah: Yeah. I mean, the highest level overview we're a word-of-mouth marketing platform for e-commerce.

So anything from like affiliate and referral, influencer management, we're kind of like the control center for everything. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're most known for like our ability to just like, make affiliate onboarding super smooth, like turning customers into affiliates, bringing influencers on without having to go through like the whole like manual application process that they'd expect [00:01:00] in a more like traditional legacy affiliate app.

Callum: So what, who do you class as those traditional legacy? Refersion? 

Noah: Yeah, Refersion. Like, you know, they were the biggest. They.

Callum: Well, like even Commission Junction, they're like an affiliate. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: They're like, they're old.

Noah: Super oldschool. Yeah. I mean, reversion is like laser-focused on e-commerce. Well, actually not as much anymore, but they're like very known in the e-commerce space.

Like and we're laser-focused on e-commerce. Like, like exclusively e-commerce. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: So they're, you know, definitely pro, I would say the biggest competitor. 

Callum: Okay. And where are you based? You're based here in the UK. 

Noah: In London. Yeah. 

Callum: But your accent's not. 

Noah: No. 

Callum: Cockney London accent. 

Noah: No, no, no. 

Callum: So tell us the story. How did you? How and why? 

Noah: Yeah, yeah. 

Callum: Why London? 

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. 

Callum: Out of all the places. 

Noah: Yeah. So, well, I was originally in, from New Jersey. That's like where like I grew up until high school, then I moved to Miami. Went to Uni of Miami just for a year. Ended up dropping out, but I stayed in the city of Miami cuz I just like fell in love with it and I still like, it's still probably my favorite city in the world.

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Then just wanted to switch it up, move to [00:02:00] LA for a little bit. The lease ended there. And so at my, at the time, my girlfriend was going to school in Canada in McGill. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And, and she was about to graduate, like right when my lease was expiring. So we were like traveling around a little bit and she was working remote at the time.

She's also in like the like ad space, so like she could work remote. 

Callum: Yeah, yeah. 

Noah: Traveling around Europe, having a good time. And then she is from London. She, she's not like like a, oh, she was like born in London, but like moved out when she was like two years old, so never really got to experience it.

But she has the passport, so she was like, Okay, I want to try an office job. Like working remote is kind of getting lonely. So she just applied for some jobs in London, got one and we literally just like spontaneously or just like came here. 

Callum: That's it. We're going London. 

Noah: Yeah, like a super, super spontaneous. 

Callum: Mad move. How old are you now? 24? 

Noah: 24, yeah just turned recently. 

Callum: Honestly, that is an amazing, for 24, you've done a lot already. So you should be proud of yourself. Honestly. I, I, you know, I, I'm proud of you. You know what I mean? 

Noah: Thank you. 

Callum: You've got a bootstrap startup. So you've already done all this traveling. [00:03:00] It's great. It's great and it's great to see somebody doing all of that. So what's next for social snowball? What's next for you? Where's the growth coming from? Is any logos you're going after? Is anybody like you? Hunting down. Is there any new developments at Social Snowball recently? 

Noah: Yeah. I'd say, you know, when we first launched, my goal was to be like the affiliate platform for everyone.

And I think, you know, this is my first startup, so there's a lot of learning curves. I'm still going over today and like a lot in the past that I had to go over. And then I was maybe a bit naive to think like I could bootstrap a startup and be like the affiliate platform for every eCom brand. Like from the smallest ones that are just starting the Shopify trial today to like, you know, like Fashion Novas and like I'll just like do it all.

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And basically through like a lot of very painful trial and error over the past, you know, two years we realized, like we work way better with bigger brands. You know, and I think it's just a little easier, like if you are bootstrapping to like not growth market as much, and go for the smaller ones and like have the freemium and all everything like going for the bigger brands, that makes more sense.[00:04:00] 

So yeah. So we've had to like shift a lot of things to be able to work with those bigger brands. Like they're expecting a certain level of customer success, they're expecting a certain level of product, just functionality in the app. Like we had to build a lot of things to be able to work with those brands.

So anyway, over the past like year once I had that realization and that just like taking step after step after step to get there, like we finally are at a place where we can and are working with a lot of bigger brands. So that's like kind of like sigh of relief, like Yeah. Obviously there's so much more to build still.

Callum: You started to win those logos. 

Noah: We're starting to win 'em, yeah. 

Callum: And have more conversations with those companies. 

Noah: Totally, totally. 

Callum: Do you, have you found that the, the on, not the onboarding process, but the sales process has got a lot longer? 

Noah: Yeah. For the big ones, for sure. The bigger ones, Yeah. I mean, the big brands definitely have, it's not, you know, one call and they're installing on the spot.

You know, they have different teams. 

Callum: I missed that. 

Noah: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's nice. Obviously, 

Callum: I love those calls where you're just like 'Yeah, can you just install and then we'll just right out, we'll just go [00:05:00] through the process we to get you onboarded.' 

Noah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Callum: I think that, for all eCommerce SaaS products, the, the process has got a lot longer because they've been, had their fingers burnt a couple of times now by other apps where they're promised things. 

Noah: Totally fair. 

Callum: They've not delivered. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: So I think the, the sales process has got a lot longer especially after Covid and the market that we're in now.

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: That's definitely, we, we've seen that at REVIEWS.io I, I also think. You know, the market is changing fast at the minute. Obviously we're in an economic downturn.

You've got interest rates going up, inflation going up, and you've got all of these problems. How do you see Social Snowball navigating those? And I always spoke about this earlier, but you know. 

Noah: No, I mean, it's interesting because it's like kind of scary, obviously. Yeah. But I think we're like honestly in a lucky position because like, I didn't like think of this like when starting it, but like, what is Social Snowball?

We're like a new customer acquisition channel for brands and it's not a customer acquisition channel. 

Callum: A low cost acquisition channel. Right. That's the important bit. 

Noah: Low cost.

Callum: Or no [00:06:00] cost. 

Noah: Predictable. Yeah. Well it's like, you know, with any, like anything that's affiliate, you're paying performance right? On a performance basis.

So it's like.

Callum: But what I mean is if we don't perform, you've got no cost.

Noah: Right? Right, Exactly. So it's very like low risk for the, for the merchant. But yeah, because of that, like I think we're in a really lucky position where brands are struggling because of all this like economic stuff and what's making it harder is them like having to deal with like, you know, obviously apple's privacy stuff like Facebook, CPMs, just in general, ads getting more expensive, like all that stuff.

But then Social Snowball. What's really cool is like we provide another marketing channel that's an owned marketing channel, right? Like your affiliates are your owned audiences. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And it's at a predictable customer cost. So, you know, basically brands can use Social Snowball to lower their blended CAC altogether, even though it might not be, you know, 80% of their revenue is coming from Social Snowball.

Realistically, that's, you know, in most scenarios not the case. Even if they're still like having to rely a lot on Facebook and Google and, and the traditional platforms, Even if [00:07:00] they could get like 10% of their revenue coming from Social Snowball Yeah. At a very predictable customer acquisition cost. I mean, that here's the needle.

That moves the needle. 

Callum: Yeah, of course 

it does. That's the, that's the difference between being unprofitable and profitable. 

Noah: Right. 

Callum: You know, and that, that 10% is where the profit is. Yeah. If you, if you can push through that, if you can add that growth on. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: And I, and I think that because of your model, I think there might be a pull back in spend, but I think your, you know, if you position your product right, Social Snowball right. You can pick that up, right?

You can pick that spend up. 

Noah: Yes. 

Callum: And they can, If, if brands can invest in their customers more and their customers can drive revenue, which is what your app does, then it's a no-brainer. It is a no-brainer. And I love, I seen the other day I was, I've seen your tweet about the new feature. 

Noah: Yep. 

Callum: Where you are identifying codes that are leaking out now to, to Honey and these other discount coupon sites that are literally, they're probably one of the biggest problems for D to C brands.

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: I mean, they're just [00:08:00] killing their percents, you know, they're taking, you know, if there's an offer and you've given it to one person and it hits. There's one in the UK, which is, is massive called, I'm sure it's Pocket. You, you've just got leaking of, of, of revenue through these things, and obviously by you being able to identify this now. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: That's really cool. Really, really cool. 

Noah: Well, it's, it's an even bigger problem when those are affiliate codes because like, yes, Honey sucks when a, when it takes a code or any of these sites take a code and now you're like discounting customers that would've bought without a discount. So that's like just chipping margin, margin margin every time.

But then think if that's an affiliates code and you didn't know it was on honey. Like, obviously, you know, those codes are like an attribution system for like saying, Okay, this was a, a referral from this affiliate. 

Callum: Mm-hmm.

Noah: So if this code is leaked, not only are you losing margin, but you're sending commissions, sending commission to the affiliate, so you're losing in every direction.

So that's like, Yeah. That's why it's a big problem with specifically like affiliate and influencer. 

Callum: Yeah. I might actually, So when I started [00:09:00] REVIEWS, I had two products. And one was an affiliate solution that identified affiliate fraud and the other was REVIEWS.io. 

Noah: Oh, no way. I had no idea. 

Callum: And I, you know, we bootstrapped up both of them. I built kind of an MVP of both of them. and I actually preferred the affiliate fraud thing. I thought there was more value in the affiliate fraud solution. So I went out to some big, you know, D to C retailers in the UK. One of them was a Carphone Warehouse, which you know, is probably the UK's biggest mobile phone retailer at the time.

And I went to them and said 'Listen, I can see all this affiliate fraud that's going on in your, in your network. And I can stop it. I can identify it, but I can and I can save you money.' And they really weren't interested at that stage because they were just 'Is it a real customer? Yes. Have we paid a commission?

Yes.' But they didn't care that they paid the commission to the wrong person. 

Noah: Yeah. It mattered less back then. 

Callum: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now it matters. But back then, It didn't, [00:10:00] they were like, we just want as many customers. 

Noah: Yeah. There was, everyone was printing cash back then. Like e-commerce was a different game.

Callum: Yeah, totally. 

Noah: Now everyone's like, you know, like 

Callum: It was pure, it was pure land rush. They were all like 'Get it in, we don't care.' And I said to the team, I said, oh, I've got another product that does the reviews. And they were like 'Oh, we like that. Yeah, we are looking for a solution that does products reviews for, for the handsets.'

So I said 'Right, I'll be back in a couple of weeks.' I went back to them with the MVP of REVIEWS.io actually became one of our, 

Noah: Oh, was they your first? 

Callum: Oh, they became one of our first clients, one of our flagship clients. And yeah, it was just a mad and literally I dropped the affiliate thing and didn't think about it for years and years.

And then honestly... 

Noah: We'll take it off your hands if you what? We'll take it off your hands if you 

Callum: See it. I, I killed it. I, I, I love probably, I, I, I probably deleted the server that everything sat on, but it was just such. I thought at the time it was gonna be this is, this is it. And, and you know, it wasn't, I had to pivot real [00:11:00] quick and go, go with another solution.

And luckily REVIEWS has done pretty well over the last 10 years, so yeah. But then now I see these new, new versions of affiliate companies like yourself coming out and it's really interesting to see how you guys are looking at the market. And it's probably totally different how I probably looked at it 10 years ago, you know?

Noah: Definitely. 

Callum: And, and I, I, I think it's amazing what you are doing. You seem to have picked up so many logos already and, you know, in the last couple of years. So you've been going two years now. Two years, which is amazing to have the, have the brands on board that you've already got, being bootstrapped and, and the growth the way you've done.

You, you've gotta be very proud. What's in that roadmap going future for you? 

Noah: So like recently we've started to like realize a lot of our brands. So like what we launched with like was like our, all of our marketing language too. It's like turn your customers into affiliates. Like we have a better refer-a-friend solution.

Like if you're using like one of those like referral like 

Callum: [00:12:00] Yeah. 

Noah: Tools. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: That's like focused around your customers and owned audiences, it's probably not doing that much revenue. It's probably not getting that much activation. People aren't that excited about it. It wasn't really built for scale.

Yeah. You know, there's those solutions and then there's like the Refersion, which just aren't really made for your customers or own audiences. It's like those were like the two options. So basically like what we did is we like, built the affiliate solution like more for your customers. So it's like a better refer-a-friend solution and like that's what was our flagship product.

It was like, you know, turn your customers into affiliates automatically. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And it, and, and it, and you know, that's still our biggest product and it works really well. But what we've realized is that a lot of our brands were coming to us and they were telling us that they were using Social Snowball, not for their customers at all, actually.

Not for their subscribers or their fans or their followers, but they were like managing influencers and like onboarding them manually, and just using social snowball for like the management attribution. Like generating commissions, paying influence on a performance basis. Yeah. So like what we realized is we kind of accidentally built a really great influencer management platform as well.

So when we [00:13:00] realized that, which was like, you know, a while ago now we started building more functionality, we started talking to the customers being like 'Hey, you're using us for influencer management. That's really cool. Like what's something, you know, what's not good about Social Snowball for influencer management?'

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: So I think like the biggest difficulty, or not difficulty, but like the, the challenge I'm dealing with right now today, and it's a great challenge to have is like, what, how do we like, bring ourselves to market with like both our like really awesome refer friend product that's like way better than any other refer friend product.

Yeah. And an influencer management product that people are already using and loving. 

Callum: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Noah: Because like.

Callum: You've gotta get your marketing perfect on that, cuz you've got these two horses almost, 

Noah: Right, right. 

Callum: Two products. 

Noah: So that's kind of the, like, that's like looking forward into the future. Like, and, and for both products, I mean, it's really one product.

Like, I don't even know if I'm gonna call it two products or one product. Yeah. Like this is the stuff that keeps you up at night, but like they both need a lot more still. So like, our refer referral, you know, is tool that's like more for your customers. Like it's not done like, just because we have, you know, we built a lot of features over the past couple [00:14:00] years.

There's still a million more. 

Callum: It's never done right. It, Yeah. No one's tool is ever done. We've gotta keep moving. 

Noah: That's the thing. 

Callum: As soon as you stop moving, you're, you're, you're dead. 

Noah: Right. So we're still like shipping features as fast as we can for that, and now shipping more like influencer management features.

But I think the goal for us now is to like figure out how we're gonna be the control center for all of your decentralized marketing. So like, kind of like I said in the beginning of the podcast, like anything that's not owned, anything that's a partnership. So like you're partnering with a customer for a referral, you're partnering with you know a publisher for, you know, you're partnering with an influencer, anything like that. Like we want to be the control center where you can manage it all and just like give the best user experience possible for both the affiliate. 

Callum: Yeah, I love that. 

Noah: So that's kind of like, I'm, I'm realizing like we're, we've done that accidentally a little bit and it's like really awesome because, you know, at the end of the day, although I don't even.

Callum: That's how Klaviyo view themselves, isn't it? This control center for all of, all of your customers. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: And I think market's changing. I think you know D to C brands and eCommerce brands. [00:15:00] Although we, we just said that their, their buying process is much longer, it's much shorter than when you've not got that clear message. 

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. 

Callum: Do you know what I mean? They, they're building, they're buying from you because of your product, not cuz of your salesperson's relationship with their.

Noah: Mm-hmm.

Callum: You know, head of IT. 

Noah: Agreed. 

Callum: What do you think about, I dunno whether you've seen this, the thing that Apple did, They're changing their terms and conditions. They said that they wanted a commission off any boosted posts on Facebook. Did you see that? That was last week? Oh no.

They didn't name Facebook or Instagram. They just said on social media apps that they wanted a revenue share of that post. 

Noah: Oh, wow. That's interesting. Cause I thought their play was gonna be just to release their own ad platform. The best tracking and targeting in the world. 

Callum: They don't even need to, they can just own 30% of everybody else's. Wow. With this thing, with this change. So, 

Noah: And who pays? 

Callum: The advertiser, Facebook is obviously gonna pass on some of that cost. The majority of it. And probably they'll swallow some [00:16:00] of it. 

Noah: Wait, that's crazy. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Wow. 

Callum: I, I've not, I don't think it's been enforced yet, but it was a change in terms last week where they were like, Oh, we're gonna do, If you are a social media post and you boost a post on app that revenue, 30% of that revenue has to go through the app store.

Noah: Is that just a, a post? Like, is that just boosting a post that's like natively posted on the platform, or is that just running any ad? 

Callum: The way it was worded, sorry. Was any action taken within the app to do with advertising. So if you did, I think if you boosted or you did it outside of the app.

Noah: Yeah, like Facebook Ads Manager. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: You know, like how, you know, I can go on, I can be on Facebook and I can go, I wanna actually get some more visibility on that. 

Noah: Right, right, right. 

Callum: It's that revenue. 

Noah: Okay. Okay. That's, that's a bit different. That's still pretty crazy, like.

Callum: It's pretty crazy still. Yeah, it is really crazy. And I thought, I thought actually they're still [00:17:00] not happy with hurting Facebook and Instagram. I think they're still going after it. I think there's still a focus on that. They've done the tracking thing that obviously massively hurt. 

Noah: Huge. 

Callum: Facebook, Instagram, and all of their, their platforms.

But I think, they're still targeting it. They're still looking at it. They're still looking at how they can control this beast. And this is just another way. 

Noah: Well, I think they might just ship their own platform, like their own ad platform.

Callum: Yeah. I could see their own ad platform being shipped.

Noah: Because they have all the data.

Callum: Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Noah: So like the average consumer, they think like data, like sharing their data is like a bad thing and they're like, people are like spying on them and whatever.

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: But you know, Apple has kind of maybe like created that, that what's the word? Like they've created that belief in, in the concern. 

Callum: Oh, they, they're the, they're the drivers of that. 

Noah: Right. 

Callum: You know, like they're, they're the drivers of the, you know, tracking's bad. 

Noah: Right. But if it's Apple Tracking, they could be like 'Oh, this is now [00:18:00] your data's safe with us.'

Like, it's always been, you know, Apple always has our data. 

Callum: Yeah. Because they trust Apple more. Right. 

Noah: Everyone trusts Apple. 

Callum: It's a trust thing. 

Noah: Right. So if Apple released their own ad platform. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And it would, they could bargain to consumers like, oh, like we have your data safe now and you get to see like relevant ads and then, you know, Facebook's busy building the Metaverse and not fixing their ad platform problems.

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Apple could just like swoop in.

Callum: A hundred percent. A hundred percent is that opportunity. I don't know though, cuz they're a bit funny about what they build. 

What do you think about the Elon Musk buying Twitter?

Noah: I think it's cool. I think it's cool. I mean, I think. I, I mean, I, I just like Elon Musk, like I, 

Callum: Oh, I do. 

Noah: I blindly like him. I don't care. He could do something that other people don't like. I just like the guy, I, I used to have a Tesla, like. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: I think everything he does is awesome and I'll, I'll buy whatever he makes.

Callum: Yeah.

Noah: I don't know. Like I, I think like, So what, remind me, like what is his, his goal is for, correct me if I'm wrong. I think his goal is to make it like just the most like honest, transparent, cause like 

Callum: A town hall for the [00:19:00] world. 

Noah: Town hall for the world. Cuz it's like right now it's like very much, I mean, all of social media is like you know, you feed the, like there's a movie or something. I don't even know if it was a movie. Something about like the bubble that everyone is trapped in. Yeah. Where like you tell the algorithm, algorithm what you like, and then it just feeds you only what you like. So then let's say you're like politically extreme on one side.

Callum: You get more extreme.

Noah: Right. 

Callum: And it's, that's where the money is. 

Noah: Right? Because like, what's the goal of these platforms? It's to keep its retention. Like to keep you on it for as many seconds as possible so they could show as many ads as possible. Yeah. So then not only does that like create your like, you're only gonna see that content over and over again and it's usually like extremist cuz you feel to one side of this, it 

Callum: Gets more and more extreme as. 

Noah: Right. But then it's also incentive for creators on every platform to create content on the extremes because how are they gonna get paid? Like think of like YouTube for example, or it's very straightforward. You get paid based on views. YouTube will straight up show your video more if it's on one extreme side because that's what the algorithm you know, if you're on like very far on one [00:20:00] side and it knows, you wanna see that you make a video for that, now it's like, and you're suggested on your YouTube.

So it's like very polarizing. 

Callum: The middle has gone completely. 

Noah: Right. So I think Elon's ultimate goal is to like, kind of like abolish that and make it like. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: You just see everything. I don't know. I mean, I don't, I think it's interesting. 

Callum: I think so far, you know, what's it been? Has it been like a week? Just. 

Noah: Yeah.

Callum: 10 days since he took over. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: And I think then it gets, you know, I think it's great. I, I think it's brilliant. Super exciting. Yes, It's either gonna do amazingly well or completely implode and I don't think he cares about people, what people say about him on it.

I don't think he cares about people's views. I think he's got this product and wants to make it valuable and make it good for, I hope he wants to make it good for humankind. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: And, and stop all this extremism on both sides. What else has been going on that you, you, you think is interesting right now?

Noah: Did you see the people like, just to stay on the Twitter topic for another second? 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Did you see the people that pretended to quit Twitter the day that [00:21:00] Elon joined? Like when Elon joined, you know how he filmed the sink video? Like 

Callum: The, the, when they were all in the caff. Did you see them in the caff when there was this, like everyone, It was after the sink. He did the sink. 

Noah: Well, no, I'm talking about like after that, like on that day there, there was like a ton of camera crews. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And it, I mean, you must, you definitely saw this. 

Callum: Yes. 

Noah: Rahul Ligma. 

Callum: Yes. Yes. Ligma. Yes.

Noah: So basically this dude is just like, I think it's like in San Francisco or Bay Area or whatever. Yeah. And this dude he's like some tech founder also, and he was just at the gym.

And then he texted like someone on the, my, like someone who knows someone on the My First Million Podcast. Like that's how they like had these inside, They had like screenshots of the text. 

Callum: He didn't work for Twitter? 

Noah: No, no. It was all fake. He texted somebody, he said, Hey, what are you doing in the next hour?

And the guy was like, Nothing. What do you mean? And he was like, there's a, Wanna help me pull a stunt? There's a bunch of camera crews outside the Twitter office headquarters. 

Callum: Oh my God. 

Noah: He's like, do you have a box? I need a box. And then they found a box somehow he literally walks outta the gym [00:22:00] and like tries to make it look like he walks outta Twitter HQ.

He didn't have anything in the box because this is obviously a joke. So he found a Michelle Obama book, put it in the box. And then he walks out to the camera crews and they just eat it up. They believe all of it. I mean, he's Who walks? 

Callum: That's me. I ate it up! 

Noah: Yeah. The whole, the whole internet did. The whole internet did and it was completely nonsense.

And like his name that he like told reporters was Rahul Ligma. And then his friend who like, just like drove over real quick. Yeah. It was Daniel Johnson. So like, last name, like Ligma Johnson. Like the whole joke, like Ligma. 

Callum: Oh my gosh. 

Noah: Yeah. So that was like, I think like that was the best-executed stunt of like all time. Like this guy was literally just at the gym. Hmm. How could I, like literally, like he's wearing his shorts. 

Callum: He looks like he's just come from the gym, but also looks like he could be working at Twitter, because like these tech guys, like, they're like showing up casual.

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. 

Callum: Oh my gosh, I did not know that. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: I feel, I feel violated for.

Noah: I feel [00:23:00] like I want to like do the same, I wanna like find an opportunity like that. Like that is hilarious. 

Callum: I love, love, love, love gorilla marketing like that. 

Noah: Oh yeah. Yeah. 

Callum: We've gotta find 

Noah: That guy's a genius. 

Callum: We've got, 

Noah: And he was well executed too, like, like the fact that. Said like, oh, I bought a Tesla and I can't pay it off. Like perfect. Like literally Perfect. 

Callum: Yeah. Everyone's eating it up. 

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. 

Callum: That's true. Oh, that's gonna go mad. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: Oh, I love that. I love that. I mean, I've done some gorilla marketing in the past. 

Probably the best I did on the Gorilla Marketing side. I did we couldn't afford to do an expo in our early days, so we went out to, it was in London. There was a, it was an eCom expo and we went out and we, we, I made a plate. My friend owned it was a sign maker, so he made me a sign that we literally put it on the floor and I just had a street cleaner clean it and it was in, it just said, you know, REVIEWS.io cleaning up the competition. Right. And literally [00:24:00] we blasted everywhere where everyone walked was queueing towards to and from this expo it just said, REVIEWS.io everywhere.

Callum: And literally we went out and hired, we hired a water bowser and a, a jet wash, and we went and did that. That was quite cool. 

Noah: That's awesome. Yeah, no, I love, I love like creative marketing stuff. 

Callum: There was one in, we did in Seattle.

At Seattle, at Seattle's, I forget what that one's called. Seattle eCommerce Expo. And we rented tuk-tuks and we got a couple of drivers of tuk-tuks. We couldn't afford to be in the show, but we could afford to do the tuk-tuks, so we were ferrying people about, and we had the logos on it and everything. 

Noah: Oh my God.

Callum: And that was quite good. 

Noah: That's fun. That's fun. 

Callum: That was quite good.

Noah: I love that. Things that don't scale. 

Callum: Yeah. Yeah. 

Noah: But they really do scale. Cause you just hire a lot of people to do it. 

Callum: You could hire a load of tuk-tuks. 

Noah: I guess anything scales.

Callum: Yeah. I, I seen a good one actually at Salesforce, the Salesforce Expo a couple of years ago.

And that was where they in, in San [00:25:00] Francisco? 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: Where they had a blimp, literally just hovering, just above the conference where everyone who came in and went could see this blimp with. I forget who was sponsoring that one, but yeah.

Noah: I suppose that one won't do that good of a job. 

Callum: Yeah, no, he was good at the time. I was like, Oh my God, that's good.

I need to get my name on a blimp. That's, that's the aim. But yeah, since Covid, I, I've it's, it's harder to do that stuff now I think. 

Noah: Yeah. At this stage, the stage you're at is, I'm, I'm in prime zone for that. 

Callum: You're, you're in prime zone crazy stuff. Yeah. 

You can still get away with it. I just look maybe a bit old idiot.

You know what I mean? Getting old fast. Yeah. No, it is, it is a good way to get marketing. I mean, I think you, you, you've got some good ways. You've got Christmas coming, you can dress up as a snowman. Did you get the snowman? I seen you was gonna do this. 

Noah: Yes. So I didn't buy it, but I still can, like I still can. It was too late for Halloween. I like, thought of it the day before. [00:26:00] 

Callum: Right. 

Noah: But like, yeah, I mean, like, we've, you, you know, we've always been really fun with our branding and marketing. I think like a lot of B2B SaaS just doesn't do anything fun. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: They, they, their marketing is very informational. It's not cool. It's not interesting. It's not funny. It's not exciting. Like when I, you know, before I even launched Social Snowball, I was like, my idea was like, I'm going to be the B2B staff that has fun marketing as if we were like like direct to consumer company. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Because like who, like, we're B2B, but who is our, who is the second beat in that?

Like it's Shopify store owners and they're like, Who is a by store owner? It's like, they're all like younger. I mean, not all, but they're all these like. With the marketing trends and like they know what's going on and like you, you can market to them as if they were a consumer a little bit. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: A little bit. Like enough that it's gonna stand out.

So like from the beginning I was like, okay, we have to be like meme friendly, we have to be funny. So like that, you know, obviously the name Social Snowball came first and then I was like, okay, let's just do [00:27:00] snow-themed everything. So like, you know, obviously I'm trying to make myself into a meme on Twitter with my snowman.

Callum: Yeah. 

Who's one of the SaaS brands that you really look up to in the Shopify eco-space, ecosystem? 

Noah: I think Triple Whale from a marketing Triple Whale, like marketing specifically. Yeah. You know, product-wise, I'm assuming they're great. I'm like, I haven't like dug too deep to like really know, but marketing-wise, they kind of paved the ground. They kind of set a new standard. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And they did like what my idea was to do just at a way bigger level. Like they're very fun at B2B marketing.

Callum: They're so fast. They, they're, they're, you know, he's obviously.

What's the guy's name? Who 

Noah: CMO. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Raava. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Yeah. 

Callum: So quick on Twitter and getting 

Noah: Oh, great. 

Callum: Yeah. Memes out, shitpost out. 

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. They're great. They're the, they're the best. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: And it's crazy because like now, especially within the E-com SaaS space, like you'll see everyone is trying to post the same content as Triple Whale now.

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Like they did set the [00:28:00] standard. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: In like B2B, SaaS or like, eCommerce, SaaS marketing. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: On Twitter. So like they've done, I've... 

Callum: Such a good job there. They've gone from zero to where they are now. 

Noah: Right. 

Callum: Such a short space of time. 

Noah: Yeah. Really impressive. Very well executed. 

Callum: I, what was their last raise? 50 million?

Noah: I thought it was like more like the 25, but. 

Callum: Or maybe it was on a 50 million valuation. 

Noah: Oh, way more than that. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: Way more than that. 

Callum: I thought it was 50 million for some reason. 

Noah: No, they're not raising 25. They're not diluting 50%. 

Callum: No, no, I don't. Did they raise 25 or I don't, I don't know what that raise.

Noah: Something like that. Something around there. Something. 

Callum: Yeah. Right. Okay. 

Noah: I think so. Maybe I'm wrong. 

Callum: Yeah. Mean they great product. 

Noah: I think like I think B2B, SaaS marketing is changing in other industries, like e-com is an easy one because like I said, like the founders and operators, they eat that kind of marketing up and they're also marketers.

So like, they're also like, that's, that's actually the main reason I didn't even say that before. Like that's why like fun marketing works [00:29:00] because we're marketing to marketers, so like they appreciate good marketing. 

Callum: Yeah, yeah. 

Noah: You know, it's like they, they, they, they understand it. They see the value in it. You're not like tricking anyone or finessing anyone. Like you're really, like, they appreciate good marketing. So it's, I think, you know, Triple Whale does a great job with it. Like, I mean, Social, Social Snowball from the beginning, like even before Triple Whale, we've tried to do a good job at it. They definitely do it at a bigger scale.

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: But you know we're definitely do, you know, taking that approach. 

Callum: Amazing. I do like it. I do like it. What's a book, podcast, film, anything that you've seen recently that's inspired you?. 

Noah: Podcast for me, honestly, like the one that I will never miss an episode of is, is I shouted it out before Startups for the Rest of Us by Rob Walling.

He, you know, I'm a bootstrapper. You're a bootstrapper. He really talks about like bootstrapping, but not just, you know, it's, I cuz there's a lot of bootstrapping, you know, podcasters like the Indie Hackers. 

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: This one, he just gets it like, he gets it like to a level that I've never seen anyone get it [00:30:00] before and he's not just like obsessed with like bootstrapping and being super small, like indie founder thing. Like he understands that like there's like, he calls it like mostly bootstrapping, where you like, might take on a little bit of capital or might do like go through an accelerator, which he owns one also, or do like a friends and family round, whatever it is.

Like I like, I feel like a lot of people like associate bootstrapping with lifestyle business and like if you're gonna build something bigger, awesome. Like you're not doing that by bootstrapping and he doesn't follow that narrative. And he also like talks about like bootstrapping and building something big like you've done.

Callum: Yeah. 

Noah: So I, I just see really eye to eye with all of his views and he's just a really smart guy. He founded Drip, like the ESP. 

Callum: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Noah: So he founded that plus like a ton of other SaaS businesses and. 

Callum: Yeah, I mean.

Noah: I couldn't say enough good things about that podcast like. 

Callum: Oh fine. I don't, I've not got that on my, on my playlist, but I, I'm definitely gonna add it.

Noah, thank you so much for being a guest today. I really appreciate it. It's so fun having you on. 

Noah: This is lots of fun. 

Callum: And yeah, we'll do it again [00:31:00] soon. 

Noah: Absolutely. 

Callum: We'll catch up on, on the story of Social Snowball, I will add notes to the podcast about everything. Literally we've talked about any links, they'll all be in the show notes and catch us next time.

Callum: Thank you for listening today. In reviews we trust is a bi-weekly podcast where I hope to be bringing you advice and insights from brands that are taking the e-commerce world by storm.