Personalized LinkedIn Ads at Scale

In this episode #3012, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss how AI is changing the game for LinkedIn ads through personalization at scale. They also dive into lessons from a SaaS founder retreat and explore whether AI could disrupt platforms like WordPress. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) Personalizing LinkedIn Ads with AI (03:06) ROI Results from Hyper-Personalized Ads (04:17) De-anonymizing Website Visitors & Outreach Tools (05:13) SaaS Founder Retreat Insights (06:47) The GTM (Go-To-Market) Confusion in B2B SaaS (08:40) Founders Want Community (11:01) The Risk of Leverage in Business (13:18) The Challenge of Focus vs. Opportunity (15:30) Investor vs. Operator Mindsets (16:34) Will AI Kill WordPress? (20:09) WordPress vs. Lovable & AI Builders (22:13) Leadership Challenges at WordPress (23:56) HubSpot’s Legacy and OpenAI Connections To suggest a topic, go to https://www.marketingschool.io. For more content from Eric and Neil, check out Eric’s Leveling Up with Eric Siu YouTube channel and Neil’s Neil Patel YouTube channel. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric's ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel, @ericosiu Instagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 01

  So let's talk about personalizing your LinkedIn ads at scale. So I was sharing an image with Eric a few minutes ago. There's a company called User Gems, I believe it is. And they'll say like, "Hey, NP Digital," but they won't write NP Digital. They'll actually slap in their logo. And the example I sent Eric of these screenshots, they have variations for all, like, "Hey, AVI SPL, hey Frontier, hey CGS." I don't know all these company names. But in essence, what they're doing is they're running targeted LinkedIn ads to each and every single company with an image just for them, which obviously you can do really quickly because of AI.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  And when I was showing Eric, because he has Carrot, which is not carrot.com, what's the URL?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Carrot.ai, C-A-R-R-O-T dot A-I.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when you check out Carrot, and we were talking about this, because with LinkedIn ads, they're super expensive. But, you know, we all know personalization is important and targeting specific corporations that are your ideal fit is important, especially if you're new to LinkedIn ads because of the cost. But why not just do creatives that are super personalized at scale? I did not actually check out their ad library, but someone on my team's like, "They have thousands." And I don't know if they actually have thousands or they're using that as an expression. But yeah, you can, you know, personalization's nothing that's really new, but you can just do this with ease now, while before you couldn't.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  And I was asking him, I'm like, have we done this for any clients? What were the results? And they were just like, yes, it produces for when we tested it out and we've done it for a handful of customers. They were saying that it produces anywhere from a seven to a less than 20% better ROI for the same spend, which isn't bad. Every little extra dollar really does add up.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  So what are you guys using to personalize LinkedIn ads at scale?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Use your solution.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Oh, you do?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Wait, how do you use it?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  We use it.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Huh?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Glass olive.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  What?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  That's not possible.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  It is possible.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  But you're not paying for it. That's good.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're not paying for it.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  Okay, that's good. That's good. Okay, good. It's good to know that. So it's good to know that you're using Carrot, because here's the thing. Here's the interesting thing here. Personalized, especially in AI world, people want personalization. They want to feel like they're being spoken to like a human, right? I actually think, you know, so User Gems has one. There's another competitor in space. They're coming out with one. And these, so User Gems, I was just checking their LinkedIn. I think they're series, series B? Let me just look that up. Series A, $20 million, okay? And then there's another player in the space, maybe raised 50, 60 million dollars and then they...

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Wait, User Gems raised how much? 20 million?

• 3:22Speaker 00

  20 million, yeah. And then there's, then there's the, the player in the UK who copied us pretty quickly on this feature. This is, this is the feature that we came out with in November. So these people ship relatively quickly, right? That, that's a whole thing we can talk about in a second. Like in SaaS, you're, you're better off just looking at what seems to work and just copying very quickly. Like no feature is too safe.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  But these ads, I think, would work really well for you guys.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  They do. So here's, here's what we've seen from a number standpoint. We have one customer who's willing to pay about $1,500 per lead, right? Because they're, they're enterprise SaaS. They're getting leads using Carrot for 500 bucks a pop for these LinkedIn personalized ads. And then we have another customer, they were struggling to get this large beverage company that everyone knows. And they actually ended up shaking it loose from their pipeline and getting that deal done, right? So they know it's driving customers. What I'll say to any of these people who are listening to this personalized LinkedIn ads thing is nice, it's not enough. It's not enough as a feature, right? So that's why, you know, we copied... Other people, which is like the personalized landing pages, right? And then we're adding in website de-anonymization, which there's a lot of products that have that.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  But then we're also adding in, like for example, if I engage with one of your posts and I'm part of your ICP, we'll reveal that it's your ICP engager is happening and we'll say, hey, do you want us to customize the outreach? So there's a lot more that we need to build within this. But the very start of this personalized LinkedIn ads at scale, yes, it works.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  It definitely does work. And when you're saying you're de-anonymizing visitors, you're talking about providing their email address because you know who's visiting what site, correct?

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, more than that, though, it's saying, hey, we found this person over here. Here's what we think you should be messaging this person. And then the more integrations we have, we can say, okay, you emailed this person like 12 months ago. Here's the conversations you've had in Gong or like email. Here's the recommended outreach we think you should do to revive this lead, right? So we think B2B, it's just like, how do you make it easier? Because, and this could be the next topic, I just came back from a B2B SaaS founder retreat where there's a bunch of eight, nine figure founders there.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  You didn't go to Vegas?

• 5:20Speaker 00

  No, I want to go to Vegas. Oh, no, no, Vegas is, no, no, don't reveal Vegas, but Vegas is supposed to be this weekend.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  It's supposed to be, so that means no go on Vegas.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Well, that's because our mutual friend was gonna, was gonna come, but we might do it the next weekend because the hotel rooms are $3,000 a night for this weekend.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Forget that.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  I went to perplexity, I was like, why are the hotel rooms $3,000 a night? And it's like, oh, because it's like a U2 farewell concert or something like that.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Wow, at the Sphere or something.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Or no, ACDC, ACDC, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, that's like the, I remember Beavis and Butthead, I think Butthead used to wear the ACDC. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so, okay, you want to, you know what, I want to know what I learned from this, this little retreat?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  So before I want to know what you learned, I want to know the type of people that were there. Roughly how many? And when I'm saying type of people, I'm talking about like their roles, but also company size. And the reason I want that is, is I can then You know, think about the learnings respectively for a company size and if it could be applicable.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. So this event, I was there from Sunday to like middle of the day Tuesday and we did it in Temecula. So it was an easy drive for me. Some people had to fly from like Toronto, some people from Miami and all that and a two hour drive for me. But so the group, one, I'll, I'll just give you kind of the breakdown of some of these people. So there's, they're all, they're all founders. Okay. They're all founder CEOs and I would say that some of them have built their SaaS companies to nine figures and then sold it. Some have built to like mid eight figures or so, call it forty, fifty million or so. Some have sold their companies for like fifty, sixty million or something like that. So everyone is, they're all part of YPO. So there's a certain level. And then one guy in the group, he actually helped build Calendly.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  And so, you know, Calendly became like a big thing as well. So that is the setup of the group is it's a group of guys. And then we just ended up chilling in like a home in Temecula.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  So all eight figures, some nine figures?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  A lot nine figures or most likely maybe?

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Let's just say like two out of eight.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Got it. So most of them are eight figures, call it like ten, twenty million ish in revenue.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Ten, twenty, some like forty, fifty.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's the group. Like what, and then let me just give you something to take.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And they were all founders or they were hired guns?

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Everyone, it seems like everyone's a founder. Maybe one might be a hired gun, but that's a different story because he works with his spouse. So, yeah. And then the spouse like founded like a really big company in the past and sold for like, I think a healthy nine figure amount.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Good for them.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. So here's what I learned. The, the big thing is people in B two B SaaS, they have no idea what to do with go to market right now. Zero clue. And a lot of people, it's like a sunk cost fallacy. They're like, oh, but I invested so much in SEO. I'm like, so what? Doesn't mean you deserve traffic right now. All right. So everyone seems to be confused about go to market. But what were, I kind of left them all. It's like, guys, like it is the search everywhere optimization thing. I said, guys, you have to be creating content like in some way, shape or form. I don't care if you hire an in-house influencer and pay them like two hundred plus or something like that. Maybe give them some upside or you have to figure it out on your own. Well, well, I don't like be on camera. I'm like, so stop being selfish. Like your job is to figure out how you can help other people with the knowledge that you have. And we started talking about the Clouly people, right?

• 8:31Speaker 00

  And then one of the guys in the group, he has like, um, he has like, uh, basically it's like, it'll screen for weapons in a school, right? Imagine that, like, like, there's a lot of school shootings that happen.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  His, his SAS will screen for weapons?

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  How? Like through a metal detector or something like that?

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Something like that. Yeah, I don't know enough details, but I basically started telling people, I was like, guys, like, what, what is like the most outlandish stuff you guys can come up with? And that guy was like, oh, I'm just gonna walk into a store with a cowboy hat with a gun and see what happens. I'm like, that's a little outlandish. Like, you might get in trouble for that.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Depends on the state, but yes.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Texas, it'll work. It'll work in Texas, because it can carry in Texas, right?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. But that's what his current software does.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  That's a cool concept.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so everyone has like interesting stuff, right? Where they have a lot of data. Some might be in like KYC, which is know your customer. Some might be in like real estate where they can offer you a deal. Where like, for example, if I, um, if I register, okay, let's say I registered for an apartment. Let's say you're the landlord, right? Let's say you reject me, but I had to go, you pulled my credit, you did all these things, right? I did a lot of work. You rejected me because I'm too risky. But what if Noah over here and like three other people all of a sudden can appear and say, hey, you've already done the work? We're gonna approve you, right? So that's a really cool offer. I'm like, how do you not just float that offer everywhere? And so I think it's just pushing these people a little more, but everyone seems confused and go to market right now. Because the game has changed so rapidly from a, from a marketing standpoint. So that's number one. Do you have any follow-ups on that before I go through some others?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  No, keep going.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  I think the second part is, it's, everyone wants community, right? Like, we've talked about this quite a bit, like human to human, and it's, it's apparent that a lot of people don't. I think I've gotten lucky with, um, you know, being in part of these different groups, right? Where I'm able to meet with multiple people once, like two, two times a year.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Let's back up. Are you talking about they want community for their customers want community or they themselves want? So they themselves as founders and operators want community.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's lonely. Yeah, because, because they say they don't really have, you know, hangouts like this, right? Whereas I have like two other groups at the minimum.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  But they're in YPO now?

• 10:28Speaker 00

  They are, but they don't have, so in YPO, we actually talked about this a little bit. In YPO, their forums, their core group back home, they don't really talk about SAS and business all the time. It's more like personal stuff, right? So you would actually like a group like this, because all we talked about was business the whole time. So that's what I would say.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  But their YPO group is mainly personal.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Correct. Yeah, and the same thing with mine. My YPO group is more personal. And my YPO group likes to, um, they, they like to go out and party, right? And so like, you know, every group is different.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you mentioned that when you guys travel.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  You wanna go to sleep and they wanna drink.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Drink or, yeah, you know, it's, uh, they, they like going out. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think it's, everyone's looking for a community. It's about founders. It's, it's a very lonely game. And I think the other piece is everyone is.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  I'll tell you one other thing I learned. I don't wanna reveal this person, but it just reinforces the fact that you don't wanna have outside stakeholders as much as possible. Like, some of these people have raised multiple times and sold multiple times, but they would prefer not to, cause one company was forced to sell. By not necessarily their investors, or you can say investors, but a, a bank forced them to sell. Because the, the bank thought the business was too risky, even though the business was starting to take off. The, the bank forced them to sell. Isn't that crazy?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  That means they had debt and they were struggling to pay the debt, or else the bank would have never forced them to sell.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  It was a combination of debt, but also it was, um, their contract sizes were not like pure play SaaS. You had some that were like government contracts that were like, maybe like one offs. And then maybe like only a portion of it was like actual recurring revenue SaaS.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they breached their covenants. For the bank to put pressure and be able to force a transaction.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  That means they had debt from the bank.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  And something went wrong and they weren't able to make their payment.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  But we talked about this too, with, with, you know, you, we were talking about this a little bit. It's like ideally.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Ideally.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Ideally, you don't, you don't have these covenants and ideally, what did Charlie Munger say? You go, men go broke through three things. Ladies, liquor and leverage. And the first two are for fun. So it's really leverage.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it sucks, cause like he clearly had something going, right? The other thing I learned too is there's one guy in the group, he has leveraged everything, by the way. So we're talking about leverage, right? But I don't, again.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  What do you mean, say leverage everything? Like, give example?

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Home, home, everything, like, uh, you know, you, you leverage out the wazoo for like, um, your, you, you basically, you, you've pushed, put all your chips in the middle for your business, like.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  So he's maxed out.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  He's maxed out everything.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Mortgage, his car loans, everything.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Everything.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  But no investors, that means.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  He has investors too. And he's, um, I think he's like pulled, like some crazy terms too. Like, I, I think the interest rates are astronomically high. Yeah, we're talking like thirty percent. I don't have the exact numbers here, but it's insane.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  But it's like, this is like, oh man, you have really put all your chips in the middle and like, I applaud you. I'm scared for you, but I applaud you for having the guts to do it.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I couldn't do it.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  I can't do it either. I just, I think that would hang over my head.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Is that person married with children?

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I definitely could do that. If I was single, not married, no kids, it's a different story.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  But you know, hi- his whole thing is like, I, look, no matter what, it's gonna be a great story. I'm like, that is true. It's gonna be a great story, whether it's good or bad, it's gonna be a great story.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Imagine your kids not having a roof over their head. That is not a good story.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  It's not a good story, but hey, but it's still a story.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, those are just a couple of high level things I'll say and-

• 13:47Speaker 01

  By the way, I wish that person the best of luck and I'm knocking on wood for their luck. I don't want them to lose.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  I think they've got something good and I hope they can figure it out. Um, one final thing I'll say here and then we can move on. So there's one person in the group, um, you know how you and I talk about like the, we've had to learn our lesson with focus, right? How long did it take you to learn your lesson of focus?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  More than ten years.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Okay, same for me, right? More than ten years. Now, there's one guy in the group and, um, let's just say he has a couple of businesses, right? Um, more than a couple of businesses. And, um, he was basically like, what am I supposed to do with all this? Like, you know, he wants like a very big outcome at the end of the day, right? Um, but, you know, we, I kinda shared my experiences and everyone in the group was basically like, you're gonna have to kill some of these things, right? Uh, but he's like, well, there's an opportunity here, there's an opportunity, there's an opportunity here, right? And even though the lesson was focus, I don't think he necessarily is going to take that advice or that those experience shares. And what my conclusion afterwards was like, dude, maybe that's okay. Maybe he enjoys having all these different things.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  And maybe he says he wants the multi-billion dollar outcome or whatever, but maybe he doesn't really want it inside. I think he enjoys what he's doing already, so just let him do it, right? There's no like right or wrong, but it's, I don't genuinely believe he wants a huge outcome and he already is doing really well. And so I'm like, maybe just keep doing what you're doing, like forget whatever we shared, just do what's comfortable to you. I just learned that I, I get less anxiety from, from focusing, so.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, focusing makes things easier. I agree with you on that, but some people perform well with a non-focused business. It kind of can be focused. A great example of this is we have a mutual friend named Syed who lives in Florida. Most of his business is around the WordPress ecosystem.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  But he has a lot of businesses. He invests in quite a few, doesn't always own majority from my understanding. Sometimes he does, or sometimes he owns a hundred percent.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  No, yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  And he also owns businesses outside of tech. And I look at him as an entrepreneur. I'm not saying that'll limit his earning potential because I don't believe, you know, I've seen people not have focus like private equity funds and people become billionaires from that.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  And they just continually buy a lot of different businesses in different verticals.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  We would agree that that is their business.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  That is their business. But I look at like Syed, for example, I think he thrives in that environment and enjoys it. I think he'll get bored with just one business.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  I think I look at Syed as more of an investor. And the reason I say that is because the forum that he's in, in YPO, is like a fully invest, decked out investor forum.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Right? And I think you're gonna like,

• 16:23Speaker 01

  I agree with this. He's minority owned for a lot. I mean, I'm not saying he's a minority, although technically he is in the US classification.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  But I meant more so when he's investing, he's taking a minority chunk.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  He's very much a student of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. And so, and when he, even just when he talks in general, he thinks like an investor. And if he has to roll up his sleeves every now and then, like he'll do it. But for the most part, he stays pretty hands off. So I look at private equity. I look at Syed more as investors. I look at this guy as he really likes getting involved in all these different things. And I'm like, okay, yeah, you know, I would say focus, but just do what works for you.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  On a random note, what do you think's gonna happen to WordPress with all these changes with AI and like lovable and all these solutions that can just?

• 17:08Speaker 00

  Are you talking about this because of the thread? I saw a thread the other day on Twitter.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  I did not see a thread, but I've been messing around with lovable a lot recently.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  You like lovable?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  I was using it to help create a better version of one of the reports, a design report that one of my product team ended up sending me for UberSuggest.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  And I wanted to make, come up with my own variation. So I'm like, let me just use lovable and see what I can.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  You gotta use V0 for that by Versel. Did you do that?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  No, I did not. I'll, I'll, I'll do that next.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  V0 is better for front ends.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Uh, and I did not get the best results with lovable. So I was like, all right. But generally speaking, I'm just like, you know, WordPress as a business, I was starting to think about it. I, I still think there's a big ecosystem for them, just like I think there's a big ecosystem for Shopify still and their stock price, at least with Shopify shows it. But I think their model is gonna have to change on how they adapt. Shopify is easier because they'll just create partnerships with like the chat GPTs if they already have it, make it easier to buy within chat GPT, which is great for them. But WordPress, I would say is much more slower moving organization, in my opinion.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  I don't have any data on who's moving faster, but like when I actually look at releases and progress, I've seen Shopify make way more progress over the years than I've seen WordPress make. Um, and it's not to knock WordPress. They've built a bigger company than I have built. So, uh, I'm not trying to be negative here. But I don't know how they're actually gonna adapt to this new world.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonia Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonia Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts. So I was reading this the other day, but, um, I think it was Jason Lemkin that made this point, but basically,

• 19:20Speaker 00

  if you look at lovable, you look at Replit, you're basically paying $20, $200 a month or whatever. Versus what used to be free, which is WordPress, right?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  So it's, it is gonna, I think it's gonna take some time. I do think WordPress will eventually quote unquote become dethroned or won't be the king in this space anymore. Cause they power forty percent of the, the web right now still, right? Websites. I think that's gonna continue to go down because people are now willing to pay for what used to be free. And that's, that's again, you look at lovable, Replit, like that is happening now, right? So I think the model will eventually become disrupted and I think you and I-

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Well, well, let's go back. I don't think they're willing to pay for what used to be free because what used to be free to get what they want. A lot of times involve paying someone to help them. With a full-time employee or a developer or a designer. I know you can do a lot with WordPress for free, but a lot of the people using lovable, from my understanding, are doing stuff that would have required them to pay an engineer or a designer.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm looking for that. Okay, so, okay, here we go, here we go. This is what, I, I pulled it up. So Jason Lemkin, WordPress powers forty percent of the web. Lovable and Replit are targeting that market and more, but they get to charge you twenty-five dollars a month and for every token you use. WordPress in its most basic form is free outside of a host. And your argument is it's not free because you do have to find developers and people to figure it out.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even with the plugins and all that kind of stuff. If any business running on WordPress, majority of them that I talk to, when I say majority, I'm talking about like ninety-nine out of a hundred, pay people to manage their WordPress, to design, create plugins, tweet code, all that stuff.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Yep. Now to continue here, much as, much as ChatGPT gets to charge for what Google provides for quote unquote free, lovable and Replit get to charge for what WordPress provides in many cases for free or very cheap. That adds up to a lot of money very quickly. AI is getting us to pay for a lot of what we used to get for free. For more value, no doubt, but a lot more than, than what we used to. So like, I, I think your argument is fair. Like, I didn't actually think about that. Like, you do have to pay developers and people, like, you do have to pay for plugins, hosting and all that stuff. It starts to add up. And you, there's, there's mental bandwidth to, to figure that stuff out, too.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Dude, we spend, for all our WordPress instances throughout our organization, and I don't know how many sites we have, but if I just look at our main- Three websites, I would say we easily spend like 300 plus grand maintaining them per year, easily.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  I still think though, even if most people start to move over to lovable and replant and replant ship and deploy these websites, 40% of the web plus pricing, that's a large amount of revenue that's gonna come out.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  And I do think though, even if you deploy something lovable replant, you're still gonna need something to manage. So whether what used to be developers or someone that's actively on the site, I think that's probably gonna be some AI agent doing it. But I also think that's gonna happen for WordPress too.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  I think costs will come down for both sides, actually.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think costs will come down for both sides.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like I think, I think, I think our conclusion here is WordPress is probably gonna lose market share. And it's fine, you know, things change over time.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Unless they adapt.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  I just haven't seen WordPress really adapt.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  No, there's, I mean, I think, I'm sorry, I think their founder is distracted, so.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  I don't know much about what's happening with the founder, but when I look at the overall progress that WordPress has made, I haven't seen really much improvement from Tumblr, the acquisition. Maybe they acquired it for other reasons. They've acquired a few other companies in the last year or two years that I read about, I forgot exactly when. But I was looking at some of these acquisitions, I was like, why'd they even buy them? It was like the same thing, like, we both love HubSpot, but remember the rumor that was going around that Google was gonna buy HubSpot? I'm just like, it doesn't make sense for Google to own HubSpot. And I don't think that rumor was valid, and I don't have any proof or data on this, I know Darmesh, but not well.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  And I don't think that Google's really circling it, it doesn't fit into what they're trying to do. If you look at Google and Facebook, they're trying to paint this story of you don't need agencies and marketers, just use our software and we'll do it all for you.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  And then when people don't get the results they're looking for, they turn to agencies.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm looking, by the way, I'm looking at Grok right now, I'm like, what's going on with Matt Mullenweg? Which is the founder, or I think he's still CEO of WordPress, I see.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure he's the CEO.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, so they got in a lawsuit with WP Engine, which is like a hosting.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That's right.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  So WP Engine, by April 2025, a US District Court granted WP Engine preliminary injunction, forcing Automattic to restore access and lift discriminatory measures. Because I think WP Engine was going out to market there. I think they're trying to sell. And then I think WordPress Automattic, they said they, Matt Mullenweg said they wanted a piece of it. And, you know, they got in this lawsuit. And then I just, I think, you know, this stuff is a distraction. And in January 2025, Matt Mullenweg disbanded the WordPress Sustainability Team. He deactivated WordPress.org, accounts of several contributors, including Juiced, Yostivak. Yeah. And just calls for him to step down have grown, but he's been there, right? So I think a lot of this distractions versus when you look at Dharmesh, for example.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  He's always posting to LinkedIn, he's posting to Twitter, sharing new experiments. He's like, he bought agent.com, he bought this domain over here, he sold this domain, he's always trying new things. And I think that's always a good signal of whether a company is kind of on top of it or not. Versus like for him, it's more he's either not posting or you see it like it's like lawsuit related stuff.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yes, and Dharmesh, a lot of the content that he's posting is even new features and news related to OpenAI and ChatGPT and stuff that they're doing. But what's interesting there is I think he'll make a killing from.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  OpenAI shares?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  OpenAI shares. I don't know what his net worth is, and I'm not here to try to predict. But I'm guessing he may make more from that than he did from all of HubSpot.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Dude, imagine getting 15, 20 million dollars or whatever, just all in OpenAI stock. And this was like a year or two ago, because he was selling a chat.com, I think he sold it to Apache BT. So you figure 15, 20 million dollars for that, right? Let's call it 15.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I'm assuming he got a good deal for him. And it's probably worth, you know, hundreds of millions easily. Based on their latest valuation, it'll probably go to a trillion plus dollar company.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  The interesting thing with HubSpot, he's done an amazing job building a great company, him and Brian Halligan. I don't know the lady who's the CEO right now, but when you look at.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  He's Indian.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  She's Indian, right? When you, when you look at HubSpot, they built an amazing company that's roughly worth 30 billion dollars. I'm looking at their stock symbol right now, live, it's like 29.34 billion, which is amazing and very hard to do. Do I what?

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Do you still own any HubSpot?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  No comment. So, uh, and, and then what you end up seeing with this company is, is. It was not only hard to build this big of an organization, but what people don't always realize is Brian and Dharmesh, to build this kind of organization, had to pump in a lot of cash. So they had to take in tons of investor money over the years. And when I say tons of investor money, I'm not talking about like the amounts that like the Ubers or the ChatGPTs raised, because the time when they created their startup, which is similar times to when I was, you know, getting started and raising capital, people didn't raise as much money. It's like if you raise like a hundred million dollars, you typically would go public, not in one round, in total, right?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  And I don't know exactly how much HubSpot raised, but I don't think it was that much. I don't think it could be more than a few hundred million dollars before they went public. But it took a lot of capital to build the company that they did, and it's actually worked out quite well.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Anyway, that's it for today, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.