Startup Celebrity Marketing 101 with Gil Eyal

Jason Kirby (00:00.494)
Um, makes a little more fun when we kind of have a little bit of banter before, and then maybe the team uses some of it. they don't. Um, so a couple of house cleaning items that we, we discussed last time, but I just want to make sure. So, um, Stardust Ventures is a syndicate, correct? Not a fund. And predominantly focused on, um, what was the thesis again? remind me? Consumer.

Gil Eyal(00:26.171)
consumer products. We focus on products that have, or founders that have a great product but have for some reason struggled to get it to market as fast as they would like to. Whether it's because there's a lack of visibility or a lack of credibility or a challenge to explain the product in a world where people have very short attention spans.

Jason Kirby(00:51.210)
And then we talked about Jeffrey's company. Did you reconnect with him at all?

Gil Eyal(00:59.163)
Yeah, we're meeting. I think we're to have breakfast later this week.

Jason Kirby(01:03.160)
Yeah, that should be a good chat. It's rare to have Jersey folk get together.

Gil Eyal(01:06.939)
Yeah, yeah, he's a great guy. He would be nice too, yeah.

Jason Kirby (01:11.630)
I got, uh, did I talk to you about monument or Mike or do you know Mike Russell? He's another guy in Weehawker that you might want to meet. Um, digital health, uh, platform that basically is making health, uh, healthcare $25 for anyone and everyone. So yeah, he's like a marketplace.

Gil Eyal(01:16.237)
No, doesn't ring a bell.

Gil Eyal(01:31.727)
Wow.

Jason Kirby (01:34.926)
You know, guru he's had three marketplace exits and then was also the co-founder of a bombas, like the sock company that got to like a billion dollar valuation. So he's a bit of a hitter and, um, he's got a great. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tee it up. He's a good guy. Um, and he's one those guys. It's like, you love him or hate him instantly. And, uh, yeah, it's. Yeah. If you're, if you're more like a, your traditional buttoned up Patagonia vest.

Gil Eyal(01:46.863)
God, what's happening?

Gil Eyal(01:55.125)
I love everybody. You need to be really bad for me to hate you.

Jason Kirby (02:04.302)
VC you might not like them as much, but people that are founders that have built things, appreciate them a little bit.

Gil Eyal(02:10.970)
I just, don't know if you saw the weekend I got bored in this new thing called Base 44 that it like, let's see. Yeah. So I got, was like, what can I build? What can I build? I remembered I have this big list of investors and like their contact information. So I built a tool that you can fill out your startup information and gives you hundreds of potential investors based on stage stuff they're interested in, other companies they've invested in. My perspective is cold call as much as you need.

Jason Kirby (02:16.923)
I sort of play with that too.

Gil Eyal(02:39.610)
If you're an investor that needs an introduction, you're not a good investor. So my perspective is be, well, anyways, yeah, we can talk about it a little more on the record, but like when we start the thing. But yeah, my perspective is that accessibility is important. if you're the, investors should be a lot less buttoned up and much more deep in the companies.

Jason Kirby (03:08.430)
That's what we need more of the kind of more founder friendly value add, investors. So, you know, kind of jumping straight in, y'all. think it'd be great to, you know, get things going and just talk a little bit more about Stardust and kind of your background at Hyper. So I'm going to go ahead and kick it off and, we'll jump straight in. And what I really want to just start with is, you know, your background at

Gil Eyal(03:09.934)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Kirby (03:33.482)
at Hyper and how that kind of compared to now running a syndicate and just trying to jump straight into that.

Gil Eyal(03:38.683)
Yeah. So I started Hyper after working in a startup called Mobly where the founder got into a lot of trouble later on, but at the time was a young founder, very excited about building a social network that would compete with Instagram at the time or preceded Instagram, but would be similar to Instagram. And the whole thesis was let's get familiar faces, let's get celebrities on board and let's let that drive user acquisition. And it worked really, really well. got Leonardo DiCaprio, Serena Williams, and several dozens of other celebrities on board that drove a lot of free acquisition. Obviously we ended up losing to Instagram for a variety of reasons, but we were a player in the market for a short minute. And when I was done with it, I realized that the world had changed. that influencer marketing was becoming something real, that suddenly social networks actually had a way to let you understand who's really influential, what do they influence, and that led me to build a company that was focused on creating that value. And fundraising was really, really easy in that scenario. It was a sexy story, it was differentiated, nobody else was doing exactly the same thing. It had celebrities. It had all the flair and all the potential that you need in order to capital for an individual company that has its own story. It's got differentiation. It's got endless potential. You're selling a dream. As opposed to raising funds or getting LPs for a professional investment vehicle where you don't really have a dream to sell. It's more about, I have more access or I somehow understand this market a little bit better. And it's much more tied to the numbers, much more tied to the mood of the market at that point. Do people want to invest in funds or do they have alternatives because interest rates are low or because there are other assets that pay a better return? And so I found, and I don't have a fund, you know, I have a group of angels that invest alongside with me.

Gil Eyal(05:50.435)
I found that raising for funds is a lot harder than investing for a startup if you know how to craft a really, really good story around that startup.

Jason Kirby (06:01.506)
And that seems to be your experience with, StartUs as you're picking companies that you think you can create this narrative for. So I guess tell the audience a little bit about what you focus on and what types of deals you prioritize.

Gil Eyal(06:13.912)
Yeah, so I started Stardust with the recognition that Andreessen and Sequoia are not calling me up to say, we have some room left on this round, you want to join in? And I really don't have access to the best companies unless I can, as an investor, differentiate myself. And the one thing I knew how to do really well is get familiar faces on board projects that they would otherwise think twice about. Or in the past, celebrities always wanted to just get paid cash. and I was wanting to offer them equity for their services. we decided, my brother and I, who's my partner at Stardust, decided that we would target the best companies within a category that we can actually be beneficial to. And that would be consumer companies that have a product that is a great product, but for some reason hasn't gotten the traction that you would expect. It's hard for people to understand, or it's hard for them to even reach people. And we knew that by bringing on board familiar faces in a very thoughtful way, celebrities or high profile influencers, we could one, generate more visibility and two, generate more credibility. And get people to actually pay attention when these founders are speaking and give their product a chance. And by doing that, we could maybe get a seat at the table at some of the better companies that otherwise wouldn't allow just two angels onto their cap table.

Jason Kirby (07:36.814)
So this is for the founders listening here. And the question I want to bring up now is like, when it comes to like this identification of these companies that maybe are struggling to get their messaging across or to get the reach, like how are you, like if they're having trouble convincing their customers, how are they convincing you? And like, how are they pitching to you to where the spark ignites for you to where you have conviction to jump in if they're already, you maybe not everything's up into the right and deep risk kind of thing.

Gil Eyal(08:07.000)
Yeah, ironically, look, if everything's up and to the right, that's probably too late for me to join, right? I don't join in high valuations and I don't join where I can't bring value.

Jason Kirby (08:11.325)
Ha ha ha.

Gil Eyal(08:23.706)
And, but if it's not going great, then what we like to do is we'll come in and we'll try to be very thoughtful about it and understand whether the problem is that you're just not reaching enough people or you're reaching people, but somewhere in the flow, it's very clear that they're not paying attention or they don't understand your product. And then we try to generate a really thoughtful way to explain the product to them and make sure that they do pay attention. And I always say my dream product is something that you put on your head and it grows your hair back. Because if you just saw an ad for it, you would say, okay, this is bullshit, it doesn't work, it never works. And you'd probably not even skip ahead as soon as you can, not pay attention for seconds. But if you saw The Rock using it every week and suddenly there was hair on his head, you might say, you know what, maybe there's something to this product. And that's what we look for. We look for not just bringing on a famous person, but being very thoughtful about it. Someone that you look at and say, Alright, this person, if this person is behind this product, if this person is using this product, one, I can understand what this product does with ease because they're demonstrating it to me and I can see. And two is, it probably works, it's probably real, these people wouldn't put anything but the best food in their body or they wouldn't put this on their head if it didn't really grow their hair back or they wouldn't use this on their face if it didn't get the zits to go away.

Jason Kirby (09:44.568)
So how do founders get or attract the best?

Gil Eyal(09:45.304)
So, to ahead turn it

Jason Kirby (09:50.766)
They're the best talent, like the best celebrities or the best influencers.

Gil Eyal(09:51.434)
The best VCs or the best... I think it's a combination of art and science, The science is being really, really thoughtful about how you would use a specific celebrity and crafting a case where the celebrity no longer views this as a traditional endorsement deal, but actually views this as something that broadens what they to offer to the world. And we have to understand that celebrities... I grew up in a world where celebrities were untouchable. Madonna was Madonna and there was no other Madonna.

Gil Eyal(10:19.258)
That's not the case anymore. Celebrities have a very short shelf life. They make one mistake and they can get canceled. There are, at any given moment, tons of people who look very much like them, who are just as funny and just as beautiful and just as talented as them, who are willing to do more to take their spot. They're willing to take more clothes off. They're willing to tell jokes that are more crazy. They're willing to step over other people to get to that role. So they're always at a threat and any mistake can threaten their career. And so a lot of them are one, very concerned about what could happen to them. And two, always looking for what happens next. Like how do I become more than an actor? How do I become more than a YouTuber? And we see success stories. Look at the Honest Company with Jessica Alba. Look at Mint Mobile. We see examples where celebrities have transcended beyond what made them famous by partnering with these startups. And that's the pitch that we want to make to a celebrity typically when we bring them on board. to one of our companies. Yes, there's a lot you can do for us by being involved with us. People will hear about us. People will know about us. People want to write about us. And people will think that we're a real serious company. But also they'll start perceiving you as a sophisticated business person, as more than someone who can tell a funny joke or can take their clothes off.

Jason Kirby (11:37.002)
And so that's basically finding the angle that aligns with that motivation for a celebrity. But how do they get access? That's obviously your solution, but for founders that are curious about this process, how do they get access to these celebrities?

Gil Eyal(11:45.881)
Yeah.

Gil Eyal(11:53.113)
Yeah, there are a lot of ways to get access. A lot of people try to mingle, right? They'll go to the events, they'll befriend people who say that they're friends with the celebrities. And I can't tell you that never works. There are cases where you'll hear about celebrities joining startups or they knew somebody or their cousin recommended it. But I feel like it's getting less and less prominent. What's happened is that this idea of bringing on board a celebrity has been embraced by the agencies that manage them. And they now have people who's jobs are similar to the ones that VCs to vet these opportunities, to be very, serious about it. And I bless you. And so when I talk to founders, they say it's in your best interest to one, be very, very thoughtful about who you want to go after to understand what is the value that you're guaranteed to get from this? What is the value that you're hoping to get from this that isn't guaranteed? And then who are the celebrities who can actually deliver those values? The fact that they're just famous is not going to be enough a lot of the times. And I'll tell a story of a company that reached out to me that we didn't invest in a while back that had this idea of selling life extension medication, which I don't even know if it worked or not, but they thought it would be really funny if they got OJ Simpson to be the face of the brand, which of course he's known for anything but extending lives. This was when he was still alive, obviously.

Jason Kirby (13:13.142)
Yeah, it's terrible.

Gil Eyal(13:18.200)
And I said to them, look, that's going to get you attention for sure. Is it going to convince people that you're a serious company, that your medication is serious, that it really works? Probably not. And that was one of the main reasons why we weren't interested in it. And then you said, so how do you reach them? It's going to be really boring and sad. You craft a very, very attractive letter with some video of what you do and something that would make somebody serious, read it and think that this is very, very serious. Similar to how you would cold outreach. to a company, to a VC, and you send it to the agencies that represent this talent. You go on IMDB Pro, you identify who does it. Now, if you, similar to the way that you would approach a VC, if you happen to know somebody who knows somebody, right, if you get recommended by another VC, or if you have me on the team and I already know the agency and we've already done a few deals together and we've made money on some of those deals, those things make it easier, but nothing replaces having an amazing pitch that's hard to say no to.

Jason Kirby (14:19.478)
When it comes to your experience doing this, what's kind of an interesting story that you have around kind of architecting one of these deals and what the outcome

Gil Eyal(14:28.922)
I wish, you know, people expect this to be like really sexy and really interesting. The famous story about my original company is how Leonardo DiCaprio was wooed into the company. So, so Mobly was a company that was basically kind of Instagram before Instagram. Definitely not as good on the execution and definitely not as successful. But the concept itself was, hey, these mobile devices are becoming very prominent. Let's build a tool that allows you to share. photos and videos at the time, was premature, but photos and videos through some kind of social network. And so we had research that Leonardo DiCaprio really hates paparazzi. Everywhere he goes, they bother him. And our thesis was that if we can convince him that if he had this app and he shared photos of himself all the time, then the paparazzi would have no reason to chase him anymore, right? Because his photos would be out there. It was a very naive perspective that we kind of convinced ourselves to believe as well. And what we did was we actually tried to find ways to get to him. We ended up finding out that he goes to Laker games and he has a very close to an expensive seat at those Laker games. And we got tickets to those Laker games and we sat nearby and we started talking to people about our app. And that didn't work. And we eventually went the regular way and we got somebody who knows somebody. and they introduced us and we told them the story and he got excited and came on board. But it was a fun route and we like to pretend that maybe it had something to do with it. But yeah, generally it's the boring way. It's the lawyer way. It's the manager way. And the ones that have worked really, really well for me, like the ones with Gal Gadot and Goodles, Victor Wemba Nyama and Barcode. We just did one with Dr. Phil for a company called Hedonia. They went the boring route. We found somebody who manages their business and connected with them, pitched them, and showed them that this is good opportunity, convinced them, and got the talent on board.

Jason Kirby (16:37.602)
So boring is accessible, which is great to see. It's inspiration to the founders listening is like, yes, you can. You just got to do the boring work. Now I'd hate to go by.

Gil Eyal(16:39.674)
It's replicable.

Gil Eyal(16:46.948)
Boring is replicable. There's a very clear process, right? Boring is you could do it again and again and again. We do it the same every time. We're very thoughtful about who the celebrity is, but we come prepared and we pitch them the way we pitch VCs. And if anybody's listening and thinking, how can I do it? That's my advice to you. Don't go to those parties. Don't mix. Don't think that you'll accidentally be discovered. Do it the right way.

Jason Kirby (17:11.220)
Interesting. Don't think you'll be accidentally discovered. I, fall victim to that in my, my career at many points of just like, I'm, I'm awesome. Like, but my, my aura will be picked up at some point. It's like, no.

Gil Eyal(17:17.592)
We all have.

Gil Eyal(17:25.562)
You can craft the whole thing we had for Leonardo DiCaprio, the whole dog and pony show, but at end of the day, we didn't get a deal done until we sat with somebody who knew what they were doing to look at it and be serious. And it's kind of naive to think that someone like Leonardo DiCaprio isn't a very sophisticated business person.

Jason Kirby (17:45.250)
And so could you shed some light into how these deals are structured? Is it all equity? Is it performance-based? Do they just get like this grant and what if they don't perform? So I'm just like curious, like how, how do go about structuring these deals with celebrities?

Gil Eyal(17:58.735)
Yeah, the structure of the deal really depends on the company. Some companies are early stage, they don't have a lot of cash and they're happy to give away equity. It also says something about the company if the person is a shareholder and so forth. And others are much later stage creating revenues and are very, very stingy on giving away equity and just want to pay cash. Those are really easy to do those deals, but there's nothing that really ties the celebrity deep into the company the way that being a shareholder does. So you see both of those deals, but the structure itself is actually really similar to most service agreements, whether or not it has an equity component. There's vesting, there's a certain guaranteed amount, there's a certain amount that could be earned through performance. Performance could be either actual just doing things or hitting certain results. And so those deals are structured this way. This is how I tell the founders to think about it. I say break it down into two. First, what do you absolutely need to get from this celebrity? You need to the rights for their name and likeness and voice. You need their appearance and the rights to put it on your website and on your socials and in ads. And you need the right to say certain things about the celebrity's involvement and the right to feature them in advertising has a time limit to need for a certain amount of time. And those are the guaranteed things you absolutely have to get. What are you willing to compensate for that? How much equity, how much money, how much bonus. And then let's think about the other stuff. How many users do you expect to get from this? How many views do you want on their social posts? How many social posts do you need and what kind of reaction do you need to them? And let's build a compensation structure that creates incentives to both sides to hit milestones around those things. So if you need to hit a number of installs, let's incentivize a celebrity by giving them a dollar every time somebody installs the app. I don't know. and I'm just making this up, but it's really a two stage deal. What you must have and against it there's a guaranteed return and what you're hoping to get, which against it there are bonus incentives.

Jason Kirby (20:04.332)
And like, do these celebrities get greedy in these negotiations? Do their business managers get greedy or do they all just like, let's all play ball? Like, how do these like negotiations go back and forth?

Gil Eyal(20:16.822)
It's as crazy as you can imagine. Celebrities are not one size fits all. There are celebrities that are extremely easy and nice to work with, that are very reasonable, that are always doing more than they promised. And there are celebrities that are divas and impossible to work with. I can tell you that we have one company that got to the point where was the day of the signature of the celebrity decided they don't feel like doing it anymore. At the time, the company was valued at less than $50 million. It's now valued at more than $500 million, and the celebrity would have owned north of 10%. But they made money elsewhere, and I'm sure they're fine. But that kind of behavior came in after nine months of negotiations. So you see everything, and you never know. And I can tell you some stories about celebrities that I can name a little later.

Jason Kirby (21:06.510)
Oof.

Gil Eyal(21:16.418)
Yeah, it's very hard to predict. Some of them are horrible. Some of them are wonderful. And we're very lucky with some of our companies to have landed celebrities that have built the company. mean, Google's and Gal Gadot, Gal has been so powerful and instrumental in helping build that brand. Not to discount at all how amazing the founders are and the team around them and the product itself. But sometimes you just have an amazing partner and sometimes you don't.

Jason Kirby (21:44.494)
And so when it comes to, you know, structuring the deal, was like, what's some stories that you can share in terms of success stories that you felt the founders and team manage the relationship well and the celebrity also participated accordingly? Like what's some like lessons that founders can take from that?

Gil Eyal(22:01.498)
So we have a lot of most of them are successful relationships. It doesn't necessarily translate to a successful startup because when you when you There are a lot of things that just don't depend just on the celebrity and we know how startups are you might have the best founding team But the market didn't turn that way or things like that some examples of celebrities that surprised us in In a good way at Mobley we had to deal with a very very famous rapper that we signed and was supposed to create content for us and that content would be posted on our website and we had a good relationship and one day out of nowhere we woke up to realize that he posted a leak of his music video that was set to come out the next day without telling anyone including us and that spread like wildfire. The only problem was we weren't ready for it. So about two million new users in who came in to see him, we're talking about a very big name, we crashed and we crashed for 24 hours, which ruined everything. But yeah, sometimes they like you and they try to do the right thing. And he did something very nice. just didn't work out the way that we could. On the flip side, we signed a deal with Lance Armstrong and shortly after he was accused of... using performance enhancing drugs. And we were like, you don't think you could have mentioned that a little before? Ironically though, the fuss around it and the issue around it actually drove a lot of traffic to our product. So sometimes you think something bad happened or you think somebody may not have treated you the way that you were hoping to, and it still produces a good result for you as a company. So yeah, the stories can vary. Usually it's a lot more calm though. Usually it's something simple like bar code signs, Victor Wimbanyama. Victor Wimbanyama is seven foot four. He's got the body frame that if you just looked at him, you would say he's not going to make it in the NBA because he's too skinny and he's going to be fighting these monsters who are 300 pounds and much, much stronger than he is. And yet he plays very well. He's extremely flexible and bar code is an energy drink that's all about health and caring about what you put in your body.

Jason Kirby (23:57.518)
this.

Gil Eyal(24:26.646)
And it makes a lot of sense simply by looking at him. He doesn't need to talk about it. Similarly, looking at him, you understand why he chooses to drink barcode and not some of the other products out there that are significantly less good for you.

Jason Kirby (24:38.634)
And you know, it goes to the phrase of like, no PR is bad PR. You know, type of.

Gil Eyal(24:44.448)
I wouldn't say that. There are examples of bad PR for sure and you know just think about Diddy right now and I would not want to have a company involved with that.

Jason Kirby (24:56.302)
No, no, no, would not want that. what, easy issues and all that kind of stuff. Like there's definitely been some, some blow ups that, know, the risks that happens when associating yourself to a big personality. Um, so kind of a, another question tying into that, if I'm a founder, you know, looking at bringing out a celebrity and trying to structure a deal. Like, have you done any kind of analysis with your companies or companies you've been exposed to in terms of like the. pre-valuation of signature of a celebrity to a post-valuation of a signature of a celebrity? Have you seen it move the needle for fundraising? Have you seen it move the needle? And is it instant? Do they usually have to see it perform? So just curious from your perspective.

Gil Eyal(25:38.779)
So the way we approach it is we don't go to fundraisers right after signing an influencer. What we do is we invest in a low valuation, bring on board the celebrity and execute on the strategy that is supposed to benefit from the celebrity. I think we're at a place where these later stage funds or even the series A or series B that come in after us, they no longer get excited about seeing a celebrity face. They're excited about seeing what the celebrity face did for the company. So if, for example, because you have a celebrity now target wants you in all of the stores, purchase order that's really meaningful. And also, you feature the celebrity in your ads, and you can show that the cost of acquisition dropped by 40 % whenever the celebrities faces in the ad compared to just a regular person. Now you have a story you can craft around a competitive advantage in your market. And so typically, we've seen, I mean, I'm just looking at the last three or four jumps of 10x, 15x within six to 12 months in the valuations. But not because of the celebrity. We've seen jumps of say 10 to 15 X in valuation from one round to the other. But not again, not just because there's a celebrity present, but because within that time between the funders, those six months came in a major commitment from a huge retailer or a huge jump in online sales because customer acquisition costs were low.

Jason Kirby (26:39.343)
Say those numbers one more time. Say those numbers one more time.

Gil Eyal(27:05.290)
some kind of stories that you can craft that says if you give me your money I can continue putting more or you know pouring more oil into this fire and I have this asset that I can use to achieve those goals.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc(27:19.576)
See that that's so valuable. feel like so many founders are like, have X, like we have this celebrity, we have this person and it's like, cool. Doesn't matter. Like what does it actually do for the business?

Gil Eyal(27:26.618)
Often it's in my perspective it's often a negative. So if you've structured a deal, we were pitched a company with a very, very, a celebrity that I would have loved to work with. And they said, we already have a deal with her and she's committed. And I said, well, let me look at the deal. And in the deal, you can see that it basically chokes the company to death because she takes 10 cents on every dollar the company makes on a company that's not going to make money for three years. And I said, you can't do a deal like that. that just doesn't work. You can give her 10 cents on her version of the product. You can structure some kind of a cash bonus against hitting certain milestones after you reach certain amount of sales, but you're losing money and now you're losing 10 % more money every month. And it's just gonna make it impossible to do the deal. The celebrity wouldn't renegotiate. And I said, I have to walk away. So sometimes a celebrity deal. is actually a negative or sometimes they have a celebrity but the celebrity has nothing to do with the company and it's literally okay when the celebrity will get you visibility but everybody will be thinking in the back of their mind what does this celebrity have to do with this product which isn't as bad obviously as them squeezing the company dry but I just you know I don't know if we can work with that and also it leaves no room for another celebrity or someone else that you can use another issue is when they bring on board a celebrity that doesn't own their own channel So we love to work with people who have real channels, big YouTube channels, or they have a talk show, or they have a really popular podcast, because right now, if you have a really big Instagram account, it doesn't really guarantee any visibility. The algorithms have taken over. But if you have a really popular YouTube channel, we can predict how much visibility you can create every time you post. Same thing for podcasts or talk shows. And so we can price into the deal repetition of the message that you're involved with this thing. So in a perfect world, know, you, back in the day we had Oprah and if Oprah was your celebrity and you were featured on her show every week, that was far more valuable than Madonna. That was great, but she only had a song come out, an album come out once a year. And that's when she would command her attention, unless she was going on tour and committing to put you front and center on stage every time she goes on stage.

Jason Kirby (29:46.742)
No, I think that's a, what I'm really hearing the common theme is like data matters and it's not a vanity to, know, the vanity metric of saying of X library doesn't really mean much until you actually have the numbers that prove the economic impact on the business.

Gil Eyal(29:52.170)
yeah.

Gil Eyal(30:02.010)
Well, back in the day, it was really interesting because a lot of when influencer marketing just started getting its starting being used like across many companies, a lot of the beauty companies would hire sports illustrated swimsuits models to be the face of their makeup. And I always wondered what are you thinking? And when I built Hyper, which was my startup, I could see that 95 % of their audience were men. We didn't have OnlyFans back then. This is what they were looking for, swimsuit models in small bikinis. And you're not gonna sell any makeup. Not only were you not going to sell any makeup, but women despised these women. They thought they were, know, a lot of women really didn't like them. So you're putting your makeup on someone that has a big audience, not an audience that most of your audience is not going to be interested in this or even see it because it's mostly men.

Jason Kirby (30:56.504)
That is so sadly true. But you bring up this other point around that. Yeah.

Gil Eyal(30:58.670)
Yeah, but it what launch hyper.

Jason Kirby (31:02.204)
The, the prioritization of channel distribution too, just like on any channel, I think is often underrated. Like, they have this many, millions of Instagram followers is like, I've seen plenty of Instagram accounts with like very low engagement where it's just like, can post and it just doesn't go anywhere. But it's interesting. I'm curious in this, you see YouTube, you say podcasts, like, from your perspective, when you're analyzing these relationships, like.

Gil Eyal(31:18.488)
Yeah.

Jason Kirby (31:26.860)
What have you seen across these channels? how have you seen them kind of perform in comparison to other channels?

Gil Eyal(31:32.763)
So performance starts with you defining what the KPI is. If the KPI is I want to run ads and I want to have a familiar face in them, it's very different than I don't have money to run ads. I need someone who has their own media because they post all the time and they see it. And that should drive whether you go after a big YouTuber or a Hollywood celebrity. If you need a familiar face that people trust, a Hollywood celebrity might be better than a YouTuber. But if you need people to see you every week, you need a YouTuber that posts every week and can use your product on that video every week. And so it really depends. There's this amazing campaign by this company called SodaStream. I don't know if you know them. They basically have these machines that carbonate. You like them?

Jason Kirby (32:09.528)
Customer. Yeah.

Gil Eyal(32:13.178)
Yeah, so I like them too. And they didn't have a huge budget, but they were looking to do a celebrity campaign. And I was not involved, so I have no credit on this, but it's still today one of my favorite campaigns that I've seen. Back in the day, everybody was watching Game of Thrones. There was this epic scene where the queen was kidnapped by the church in the show and they made a walk this walk of shame when they released her. so SodaStream at the time was having legal issues. They were being sued by carbonated drinks companies for saying that those companies are bad for the environment and there was all these issues and they couldn't really say in an ad what they what people what they their perspective is which you shouldn't use plastic bottles. And so they have this video of this guy walking in the supermarket and he goes to pick up bottle of carbonated water or a six pack of carbonated water. And as he's walking back, people start whispering shame, similar to the episode. Nowhere ever is it mentioned anything. There's nothing mentioned about Game of Thrones, but you immediately get it. Right. And he's like, and the shame he gets to the register and it's as he's walking becomes more and more a Game of Thrones world. It's like bad neighborhood. And then it's like some of the people from game who look like they came out of Game of Thrones till he gets to the mountain, the character who played the mountain. Right.

Jason Kirby (33:07.416)
Brilliant.

Gil Eyal(33:29.112)
a secondary character that was definitely not the most recognizable character, or sorry, very recognizable, but not the most famous character on the show. And that character says to him, why are you hurting Mother Earth? And it's just such a funny scenario. anybody and everybody who's watching that show immediately got it, that it's shameful that he's buying carbonated plastic bottles when there's soda stream. And... That worked really well. know that they spent a relatively small amount of money on this. I heard it's less than half a million dollars on the entire production and the talent. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I heard. But they spent millions of dollars on media. So they created an amazing piece of content and they realized that what they really need is a lot of people to see this. And they needed people to pay attention. So they chose to focus on this concept that everybody was talking about. They could produce it really, really quickly and... I don't have any, I'm not involved, so I don't know what the data is, but I would imagine this was extremely effective for them. I'll share with you the link to the video if you wanna share it later.

Jason Kirby (34:30.146)
Well, I'm definitely fell for that one hook line and sinker because that's why I have a set of stream. I got so tired of throwing away all the cans and bottles and everything like that. And I love carbonated water. So I just personally felt guilty.

Gil Eyal(34:35.114)
yeah, know it's on the... see me? Yeah.

Gil Eyal(34:43.352)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Kirby (34:51.114)
So, yeah, it's amazing how the right person out of the right messaging can have such an impact. And that's why I think your whole career and the kind of the influencer world is so meaningful to kind of share these insights for founders to kind of really think about. How do you engage these types of campaigns? posting on Instagram one doesn't do anything at all.

Gil Eyal(35:04.922)
No, you have to be creative and interesting. Another one that I love is Care France. It's this nonprofit that takes care of women in the third world. And they created these 30 to 60 second videos of, I think it's seven or eight women in the third world showing their lives in 60 seconds. It's so beautifully done. Nobody's an influencer. It's just social media at its best. And then they said, you don't have to donate money. Just repost this. It's like donating money. And millions of people reposted the videos. If you look at if you Google care friends life a woman in the third world, you'll see some of these videos unbelievable storytelling without any budget and without any celebrities

Jason Kirby (35:45.472)
So what are some of the underrated channels or platforms or strategies that you're starting to see be fruitful in terms of return on ad spend or just return on investment in general right now?

Gil Eyal(35:58.831)
Yeah, you know, and for I hate to say it, but for me, the most effective one is Facebook ads, meta ads that produces the most return. And so when we are targeting advertising, we want to we target familiar faces within specific categories. So if you're this is a terrible example, but we'll use it because I wouldn't use it in real life. But right. let's say I wanted to sell a book about how to be the best chess player in the world. One approach I could have is go take Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza, pay them each millions of dollars, the actor who played George Costanza, right? And have them play a chess game and create content around it and have amazing content that would go viral and get it a lot and get a lot of attention. But it would cost me millions of dollars and they don't have their own media. I'd have to spend on my own media. Or I could go to whoever the most famous people in chess are today, right? And that might be... Gary Kasparov who used to be the world champion or it might be the Botez sisters. And I could have them create really, really engaging content for me that I can use in advertising and know that they're very, very familiar faces if you care about chess, right? Just because you watch Seinfeld doesn't mean you know who they are. But if you care about chess, then you probably know who they are. And so the thought that what's been really, really cost effective for us is to understand that we're not necessarily going after the biggest, we're going after the most familiar or the most recognizable, the most trustworthy within the category of an audience that we are trying to reach. And that brings you back to really marketing 101, anybody who's taking an MBA, they tell you first, you understand who the audience is, then you understand what the channel is. The celebrity is the channel. And you don't want to spend on a channel where 90 % We'll go to waste.

Jason Kirby 37:52.430)
But are there like, I had a feeling it was going to be, you know, Facebook and that is going to be always the big one as far as like, when you get to the scale point. Um, but are you seeing any kind of performance in TikTok over Instagram or any, any kind of like other platform or distribution channels that are kind of outperforming from your expectations?

Gil Eyal(38:13.732)
Yeah, so if you put aside traditional marketing with the budget, YouTube is far outperforming any platform that I've seen. It's the one that where you get a lot more bang for your buck, even though it could be a little more expensive. The exception is, and it depends on the type of product you sell. If you sell a product that you can sell for a high margin at a low cost, then TikTok Shops is an amazing channel to do that because you can compensate the influencers on performance. without having to put too much money down and you just need to send them a sample of your product. So if you have a product where it costs you nothing to get it to the influencer, they think it's very valuable because it costs you five bucks but you sell it for 200 bucks and you can sell it and you can let them sell it for 100 bucks because I got it from this influencer. That's a model that works really, really well on TikTok Shop. They also have something called Spark Ads, which is advertising similar to the way they could advertise on Instagram. I haven't done much of it. It hasn't been as effective for me. And I haven't heard from people that they've had a ton of the same level of success as they've had with Facebook and Instagram. But if you are going to spend a budget, there's also that option. What's really, really worked well for me as a channel has been YouTube with creators that post regularly where you can be featured again and again in the content. Because it's one thing about getting people aware and seeing it once getting them to a decision that they want to buy Requires repetition and requires them to see it again again with most products. That's been a channel. That's worked much much better for me I know that people also use Anywhere from whatsapp to snapchat to other platforms of the Pinterest I haven't had a lot of experience doing it

Jason Kirby (40:00.750)
Okay, that's fair. I think there's some good insights and it's good to know on the YouTube front. I think that's something that, from my own personal experience, I'm seeing still a lot of value in terms of the reach that you can get for a relatively low cost if you play your cards right. So most of your focus is consumer. Most examples we've been talking about consumer, but let's look at the other side of the coin, B2B businesses, B2B software, whatever it is. Is there a playbook for... B2B software founders to leverage influencers and how does that, what does that look like?

Gil Eyal(40:32.250)
Yeah, look, at the end of the day, even in B2B, you're selling to a person, right? You need to understand who, what your customer looks like. And you may typically most companies that are B2B have a persona within their customer company that they sell to. It might be the CISO or it might be a business development person, or it might be the CEO, but there's a type of person who has a role, who has certain milestones that they need to achieve. And those people, just like everyone else, rely on trusted voices. to decisions. And so you can decide who your influencers are based on who you think would influence that audience. So I'll give you an example of an amazing B2B influencer. There's a woman named Cybersecurity Girl, Caitlin Sarian. She talks about cybersecurity and the people who follow her are people who care about cybersecurity. If you don't care about cybersecurity, you're probably unlikely to spend a lot of time on her channel. She's got it. north of a million, I don't know how many followers now on Instagram, but she's someone where whenever a company talks to me about cybersecurity, I say you have to go to her because the audience that is going to buy from you, they're probably watching her videos. And if they're not following her, then somebody's sending her videos just because it's relevant content to them and everybody's on social media. So if I had to imagine what they were watching, that's what they were watching. So when you think about a B2B campaign, you really have to think about it the same way. who are these people watching and do they trust those people? So if you're targeting startup founders, you're probably going to find, you're probably want as influencers, the gurus that startup founders listen to, the people who wrote the books that startup founders read. If you're targeting, we have a company that's targeting mental health, who do mental health professionals listen to? And we have a group on there, we have Dr. Phil on there, but we also have a bunch of other less famous, regular person famous, very industry famous people who've written the articles that everybody shares, who write for the publications that everybody reads. And those people, maybe they don't post on Instagram, but they create a video testimonial and they attend important meetings to influence the decision making. And if we have a conference, then we host them in a conference. By the way, if you are a B2B,

Gil Eyal(43:01.124)
company and you are trying to do influencer marketing with one of these people, then the best thing you could do is host a physical or online event where people have now access to this influencer. And that influencer might be talking about something that's important for their industry, but will also say why your company has contributed so much to dealing with that issue.

Jason Kirby (43:23.800)
So kind of the fun question I have here is I imagine there's a lot of founders in this situation right now where they're maybe exploring different channels to pursue. If you had a founder come to you, they have $50,000 to spend on marketing, make a splash. They have an influencer, but they haven't struck a deal yet. Like what would you, what would just be like your strategy that you would take to maximize that budget and negotiate a great deal with that influencer?

Gil Eyal(43:51.995)
I think it starts with understanding whether you're trying to get somebody who has their own audience, who comes with a built-in media package, right? They'll post and people will see it, or it's a familiar face where you need to spend the money to advertise. If it's a familiar face where you need to spend the money to advertise, typically the way we structure the deal is a low signing bonus plus a bonus against company milestones. So we'll be using your face in advertising for as long as we use your face in advertising. If the company hits these milestones, you get a bonus every once in a while. If it's somebody that comes with built-in media, then I typically like to give them a upfront commitment in exchange for a larger commitment to post again and again on the author. So if you have somebody who posts every week on YouTube and they get a million views on that video you want to be in every single one of those videos you want to be at the first three minutes of the videos to make sure that all the viewers have made it that far into the video and our typically will be much less success driven because we don't know if they'll convert or not we can't really blame them for converting or not converting and much more how much you post for us so I try to squeeze the most media out of them for that money don't know if that makes sense. if they have their own media, I try to squeeze as much of it out of them for my money. If they don't, I try to squeeze as much rights to use their name and as much advertising and then pay them against the results of that advertising.

Jason Kirby (45:24.462)
Yeah, think that's valuable advice. And for the audience here, I think it'd be good for you to just share a little bit more about Stardust and what you look for and what types of deals you're prioritizing as a firm.

Gil Eyal(45:36.699)
Awesome. So whether you're a founder or somebody who's looking to invest in the consumer space, the way we think about deals at Stardust is we like to come in after there's a little bit of traction, meaning the product has met its customers and we have some feedback. It doesn't necessarily have to be amazing feedback. It could be that we don't understand the product. It could be that it's a good product, but it's not good enough. It needs to be improved. Or it could be that we love the product, but it's too expensive. And that we can then, alongside with the founder, craft a plan that would leverage familiar faces to solve that problem. Whether if the problem is a lack of visibility, we can create a lot more visibility. The product is a lack of credibility or understanding. We can solve that problem with a familiar face that simply by being involved gets you 80 % of the way to explaining what the product does. And if we can find that company, then we say, look, we'll come in. We need a lower valuation because we're doing all this work for you. However, we'll be with you for the next six months. And what we'll do in those six months is we'll close that deal for you. We'll ensure that that deal happens. We'll help you execute on the plan of what you're benefiting from that deal. And we'll introduce you to the investors that come in in the next round. So if you're a founder that that sounds right to you, you think you have a great product, that's when you want to meet us. Now, if you haven't met your audience yet, it's too early. And if you're making 10 or 20 million a year, not impossible. We have done those deals, but it's probably too late. unless you feel like you've hit an inflection point where a celebrity really makes a difference. And if you're an investor who's looking to get into the space, then we say typically, look, the allocations we get are too big for us. So when they are, we can't afford them. We'll open them up to other investors and we love collaborating. So we'd love to hear.

Jason Kirby (47:22.242)
What's the best way for people to learn more and find out about Stardust and you and getting in contact?

Gil Eyal(47:28.058)
It's www.StardustVentures.us is the website. My email is gil at StardustVentures.us. I know that people say that investors don't love cold approach. I love cold approach. Just be succinct. Give me the important information in the email. You don't need an intro. Just send it over.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc(47:48.180)
It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. really grilled you on kind of the influencer celebrity strategy. I'm hoping that founders got some good tidbits from there. Before we part, what would be one word of advice to founders that you want to share with them right now?

Gil Eyal(48:04.634)
So I would say two things, okay? In the celebrity front, people always overvalue visibility and undervalue credibility. Don't make that mistake. Celebrities will deliver significantly more credibility and significantly less visibility than you think most of the times. And then on the VC side, when you're raising capital, be very, very thoughtful about the other side. Try to understand what are they looking for? The one pet peeve that investors have is when you send them something that has nothing to do with what their fund invests in. I get startups in the SaaS place and in cybersecurity all the time, and I'm sure that they're amazing startups. I just have nothing to do for you, and it shows that you haven't been studying and haven't been really paying attention to me. So pay attention to your audience. Send them a message that they'll appreciate. Look at who else they invested in. Look at what spaces they invested in, what they've said in articles, and customize your approach. You'll get much better results.

Jason Kirby (49:02.190)
I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your advice. It's been a pleasure having you. Awesome. So I'm going to keep it recording. Just to wrap up here, I want to kind of give some notes. Yeah, no, that's good. I'm keeping it recording because I want my team to hear us kind of talk about the recap. So a couple of things that stood out to me. You had a lot of really good structure in...

Gil Eyal(49:05.946)
Thanks for having me. It's been so much fun.