Dierre Johnson

Generated 20B+ organic views | Founding @sideshift_app

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

hey X, im DJ

24, black, and just moved to nyc

few things about me:

- ran 4 marathons (Chicago is 1/1)

- addicted to growth hacking (20B + organic views to date)

- dyed my hair blue senior yr of college

now building @sideshift_app to be the De facto Content Marketplace

sharing the gospel of ugc & how to distribute ANY product / service

Let’s shoot the shits below

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@CollegeToCEO lmaooo i wish i did

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

oh to be in new york right now

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

Knicks W + A$AP Rocky. name a sicker duo….

sf & tech twitter could never comprehend

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@ManilowOliver @tomas_boismene give it up for gf dude

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

June update: We have surpassed $1.5M in creator payouts in 3 days….

June is going to be a record month for us.

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

😭😭

[Squilly @squilliamlewis]

It has officially been 2 years since we launched SideShift...

So, I wanted to share a few wins and lessons so far:

Over the last 24 months, SideShift has grown to over 900,000 creators and 1,000 brands and agencies across 150+ countries. Every week, we continue expanding globally on both the creator and brand side.

This past month also marked a milestone I'm especially proud of: 10 unique creators have now earned over $100,000 through SideShift Since we rolled out creator payments earlier this year.

Soon enough, we'll be sharing our first $1M creator earnings milestone as well.

What makes me most proud, though, isn't the numbers. It's the impact. We've helped college students pay tuition, parents leave full-time jobs to work remotely, creators purchase their first homes, founders launch products and acquire their first customers, and enterprises scale creator-led growth to millions of installs / purchases per month.

We've also grown the team and recently moved into our new home in NYC. Building companies can often feel like staring at the next milestone without appreciating how far you've come, so moments like these are a good reminder to zoom out.

The last two years have reinforced a few beliefs.

First, be flexible on the details but rigid on the mission. SideShift originally started by helping people earn money through local side hustles. Since then, the product has evolved, the opportunities have evolved, and the market has evolved. The mission hasn't. We've always believed that work is changing fundamentally. Technology and social media have made it possible for people to earn from anywhere, on their own terms, and over the next decade I think we'll continue seeing a massive shift away from traditional employment models and toward more independent forms of work.

Second, talk to your customers religiously. Data matters, but some of our best insights have come from direct conversations. After our pivot, we sent voice notes to every new customer for six straight months. It wasn't scalable, but it taught us more than any analytics dashboard ever could. Many of our strongest customer relationships and earliest power users came from those conversations.

Third, volume is everything. The internet becomes noisier every year. Attention becomes harder to earn every year. The only strategy we've found that consistently works is continuing to put shots on goal. Over the last 60 days alone, SideShift has published 4,000+ TikToks, another 4,000+ Instagram videos, hundreds of LinkedIn posts and tweets, dozens of YouTube videos, and hundreds of blog posts. The reason brands now associate UGC with SideShift isn't because we got lucky. It's because we've shown up every single day for years.

We're still incredibly early.

There is so much left to build, so much left to learn, and an endless number of people we can help along the way.

Excited for what comes next.

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

only getting started

[Nick Lawton @nicholasnlawton]

It has officially been 2 years since we launched SideShift...

So, I wanted to share a few wins and lessons so far:

Over the last 24 months, SideShift has grown to over 900,000 creators and 1,000 brands and agencies across 150+ countries. Every week, we continue expanding globally on both the creator and brand side.

This past month also marked a milestone I'm especially proud of: 10 unique creators have now earned over $100,000 through SideShift Since we rolled out creator payments earlier this year.

Soon enough, we'll be sharing our first $1M creator earnings milestone as well.

What makes me most proud, though, isn't the numbers. It's the impact. We've helped college students pay tuition, parents leave full-time jobs to work remotely, creators purchase their first homes, founders launch products and acquire their first customers, and enterprises scale creator-led growth to millions of installs / purchases per month.

We've also grown the team and recently moved into our new home in NYC. Building companies can often feel like staring at the next milestone without appreciating how far you've come, so moments like these are a good reminder to zoom out.

The last two years have reinforced a few beliefs.

First, be flexible on the details but rigid on the mission. SideShift originally started by helping people earn money through local side hustles. Since then, the product has evolved, the opportunities have evolved, and the market has evolved. The mission hasn't. We've always believed that work is changing fundamentally. Technology and social media have made it possible for people to earn from anywhere, on their own terms, and over the next decade I think we'll continue seeing a massive shift away from traditional employment models and toward more independent forms of work.

Second, talk to your customers religiously. Data matters, but some of our best insights have come from direct conversations. After our pivot, we sent voice notes to every new customer for six straight months. It wasn't scalable, but it taught us more than any analytics dashboard ever could. Many of our strongest customer relationships and earliest power users came from those conversations.

Third, volume is everything. The internet becomes noisier every year. Attention becomes harder to earn every year. The only strategy we've found that consistently works is continuing to put shots on goal. Over the last 60 days alone, SideShift has published 4,000+ TikToks, another 4,000+ Instagram videos, hundreds of LinkedIn posts and tweets, dozens of YouTube videos, and hundreds of blog posts. The reason brands now associate UGC with SideShift isn't because we got lucky. It's because we've shown up every single day for years.

We're still incredibly early.

There is so much left to build, so much left to learn, and an endless number of people we can help along the way.

Excited for what comes next.

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

not too bad

[Oliver Manilow @ManilowOliver]

We’ve paid out $1M to creators so far in June….

It’s June 3rd

[Oliver Manilow @ManilowOliver]

There’s a strong correlation between how long you fail for

and how successful you will become

We launched @sideshift_app 2 years ago today and did not eclipse $1k MRR for over a year

Today we have over 1,000 customers and a team of 15

keep failing-it is the key to success

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@CollegeToCEO let me on the pod bro

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

every office should have a lock in room for their autistic employees:

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@diaryofagirlceo i love it!!

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

if you’re visiting nyc for tech week and building something in consumer, ai, distribution - hmu

would love to say hello and invite you to 2-3 cool events

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@k4komaaaal @lucaspatiri_ @frankyecom congrats @ManilowOliver

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

building cool shit with your friends >>

[Nick Lawton @nicholasnlawton]

I've advised Seed to Series G founders on how to build massive 100 person UGC programs.

All of those campaigns have one thing in common...

They all ran the programs end to end on our platform

Today, I wanna teach you how SideShift actually works for brands and apps of all shapes and sizes.

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@WHOISRAHB 😭

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

another beautiful day of not needing to explain why nyc is better than sf

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

Just met someone at nyc tech week event whose entire growth strategy is spamming TikToks

Not exaggerating

$100k MRR. two co-founders. Plus a team of contractors managing their creator teams. $12k / month total spend. That’s it.

$1.2M ARR startup running fully on autopilot

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@ibuprod got u

[Dierre Johnson @Dierrejohnson]

@nazzari jacket is hard