Cole Whitmore

NYC
Founder @shortlistos

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

@saarth_ @AgentPhoneHQ agent

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Hot take but marketers won't be able to get a job without a github in the future

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

@sinanaral the pleasure is mine @sinanaral 🤝

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

At a young age I struggled with reading books because of my ADHD. Now it’s become my biggest obsession since they have been helping me stay informed on AI, Marketing, and Business. 

In a world obsessed with “fast” information gathering, I believe taking the time to read from experts is how one stays best informed long term.

Before the year ends I'm challenging myself to read all of these titles:

Contagious by @j1berger  
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
How to raise a VC Fund by @wintmead
Wanting by @lukeburgis 
Human + Machine by @pauldaugh
The Hype Machine by @sinanaral
More from Less by @amcafee

Follow along to get my takeaways on each one and let me know in the comments some of your favorite titles. Looking for things to add to my 2027 reading list

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Posted this one 4 hours ago 408 likes isn’t too bad.

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

@Henryf1w No

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Me next pls

[CEO ANNON @CEOAnnon]

Got accepted for the Claude Startups Program 😋

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

@jorgegreg99 ads = consistent bread

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Why do 93.4% of the people that watch my content not follow me?

Because most people are haters and don’t want to see you win.

It’s all good, you don’t need to follow me to help the algorithm.

Thanks for the watch time.

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Summary: Silicon Valley finally realized they can use DTC ad strategies. Now that you can buy @WisprFlow’s profitable paid ad program at https://t.co/otR6tbPkzW

[Ira Bodnar @irabukht]

The most insane paid ads program in Silicon Valley, behind Wispr Flow's $0 to $2B run

1/ "10 really good creators can get you to $50M a year"
-> The model: brands recruit creators to film their ads and pay them a percent of the ad spend

2/ A year ago Wispr Flow stopped organic UGC completely and put everything into paid
-> 500 to 700 new UGC ads a month now, aiming for 1,000

3/ They took the paid ads playbook of killer ecom brands
-> SF finally figured out what the best DTC brands have been doing for years

4/ Their view: organic only works with real talent on the team, while paid works for anyone who can ship enough different ads
-> You don't need a genius to win on paid, you need lots of ads that each look and sound different and a system that keeps them coming

5/ Ecom brands pay creators a cut of each sale. SaaS brands pay a cut of the ad spend, since a software sale can take weeks to close

6/ Wispr pays 7% of ad spend, uncapped, paid out every 7 days

7/ New creators get a guaranteed minimum, which is how Wispr signed good ones before it had a track record
-> $1,000 for 20 to 25 videos a month. A creator who earns $500 in commissions gets the other $500, and once they earn more than $1,000 on their own the guarantee stops

8/ Each creator works on one customer segment
-> A customer no ad was speaking to, a format nobody could shoot, a country with nothing running. One creator per gap

9/ No two videos are allowed to look alike
-> Meta's Andromeda clusters videos that are 50 to 60% similar and suppresses them, so 1,000 talking heads get treated as one ad

10/ They recruit on Instagram with keyword search
-> Search "UGC creator", "tech", "SaaS", mine the followers and comments of every good creator, send 100 to 200 DMs in a week

11/ 50 creators accepted out of 5,000+ applications
-> $220k paid out so far, top creator makes $12k a month

12/ Creators get $100 for referring someone at their level or above
-> No beginners on the team

13/ They scaled 5 creators, then 10, then 20, then 40, and stopped at 40 to 60
-> The whole climb from 5 to 50 took four months

14/ Creators are run like a sales team
-> 30-minute onboarding each, a weekly call with the media buyer, 1:1s, creator coaches

15/ Creators see the ad account
-> Every Thursday the media buyer walks them through what's working, which customers to target next and what to test

16/ One media buyer runs all of it: 50 creators, 700 ads a month

17/ The same creator ads run on Meta, AppLovin and TikTok

18/ The group stays small on purpose
-> $100k paid to 20 creators looks better to creators than $200k paid to 1,000

19/ Creators see which ad is winning and start making their own version of it. Wispr stops this and pushes them to film something new instead
-> Meta treats the copy as the same ad as the original, so the copy never gets shown

20/ Why other creator programs fail: brands accept everyone who applies, nobody coaches the creators, and creators join without understanding they only get paid when their ads perform

21/ Meta charges more every year for the same amount of reach, and that cost is out of Wispr's hands. The one thing they control is how good and how different their ads are, so that's where the money goes
-> Last quarter Meta showed 14% more ads than the quarter before and still raised the price of each one by 12%

22/ The guy who built it joined Wispr Flow at 19, before the product existed, with a 2.5 GPA
-> 25 months later: $280M Series B at a $2B valuation

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

yk that one of the most underrated experiences is having a job where you genuinely like the people you work with

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

@MaxHirsch13 Haha

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Give it no attention and it will hold no power over you

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Hard to have a bad day in NYC when your days look like this.

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Become aggressively alive.
Stop sleepwalking through your own life. Go places. Meet people. Try things you've never done. Laugh properly. Love people while they're here. Take the trip. Start the project. Stay out a little later when the night is good. Say yes to the story. Say no to the things that drain you. You're not here just to work, scroll, recover and repeat. Build a life that gives you memories, stories, scars, lessons and moments you'll still be talking about years from now. Don't just exist. Be ridiculously alive.

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

@donaldvchu @MaxHirsch13 highkey

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

@NaguBuilds @MaxHirsch13 Free trial is a printer

[Cole Whitmore @colewhit]

Week 2/52: New York City is the best city in the world.

Anyone suggest any startup co working spaces / private offices?