Pallet pivot to sustainable growth, PR is outdated, Perplexity is your new snack engine & more

Merci Larry is a bi-monthly curation on the latest Trends and Concepts shaping Startup Growth, alongside a monthly Knowledge Series dedicated to popularizing AI concepts for growth.

Hello 👋🏻 In today’s edition:

• Pallet pivot to a more sustainable business model: what it reveals about the creator economy
• The death of the Press Release
• Perplexity and the nugget-sized information concept
• How Gen-Z broke the marketing funnel
• A new framework to help B2B Founders find their Product-Market Fit, Google consider acquiring Hubspot

The "creator economy" of 2021-22 growth rates are gone. Pivot or shut down?

Pallet's original idea was to leverage content creator communities (Youtubers, writers, etc.) to provide hiring managers with the ability to target the most qualified audiences, with the benefit of having a talent collective backed by the content creator himself. Pallet's business model was simple: charge a 10% "cut" from the money that creators charged for companies hiring.

Gergely Orosz explains it perfectly in his recent article on the sunset of his own job board and talent collective following Pallet's pivot. Many content creators made the decision earlier not to maintain their talent collective: they spent too much time on something too abstract: once talent is hired, they don't quickly re-enter the job market, and the more experienced they become, the more they benefit from their own network.

I do, however, see an interest in content creators pushing a specific job offer within their content (as Lenny Rachitsky recently did, for example) - and in that case, there's no need for an intermediary, a role that Pallet has been fulfilling until now.

Shutting Down My Job Board for Software Engineering Positions After 2.5 Years

The death of the press release: why launching products on social media is the only way to go.

It’s a bold but true statement from Andrew Chen. PR as it is known is outdated. The way things are done, from message to distribution, has remained static, while the audience has grown bored of this kind of message. The pull marketing model has naturally run out of steam in favor of push marketing, which takes place mainly on social networks. They offer dynamic communities hungry for authentic stories. Unlike traditional PR tactics, success on social media requires gaining attention through authentic engagement and crafting compelling narratives over time. Authenticity, storytelling and genuine human interaction on social media are proving to be the most effective strategy in today's digital landscape.

In the end, it’s about building an audience OVER TIME, not just about getting the spike.

Andrew Chen thread on Twitter & Lulu Cheng Meservey’s manifesto (so cool to land on a pure HTML page by the way!)

Perplexity: the runway to find an inventive way to bring AI to search

“You can never succeed at recreating the whole index like Google. It's too late… It's sort of like finding your way in a maze where you're starting at a huge disadvantage.”

Aravind Srinivas, CEO and cofounder of Perplexity

Perplexity doesn't want to challenge Google's dominance. Besides, the initial demo wasn't designed as a Google competitor for the sake of it. What's interesting is how they aim to provide nugget-sized information to make quick decisions. They've also been able to successfully monetize search with a $20 monthly subscription that gives access to advanced features (they currently only have 100,000 paying users out of a total of 15 million).

‘Like Wikipedia And ChatGPT Had A Kid’: Inside The Buzzy AI Startup Coming For Google’s Lunch

Gen-Z: consumption today is an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community and loyalty.

It’s now all about inspiration and discovery. Brands need to adapt to this ultra-saturated ecosystem in order to inspire. That’s the hard part: getting seen and considered in a very short timeframe. The discovery part relies more on what we are used to see in terms of brand searches but brands need to unlock the inspiration phase first.

Gen Z broke the marketing funnel

🍕Acquiring Hubspot would be a way of finding new growth opportunities at a time when competition is eating into Google’s revenues. Google considering Hubspot acquisition.

💰 Adobe is offering to pay artists for videos to train AI and catch up with the competition, especially with OpenAI Sora. Adobe Is Buying Videos for $3 Per Minute to Build AI Model.

👀 FirstRound released a new framework to help B2B Founders find it, faster. The first session covers the 4 levels of PMF: Nascent, Developing, Strong and Extreme. Even if you’re not operating in B2B, it’s worth a read. Levels of PMF, Session 01. There is also a podcast episode with Todd Jackson (partner at FirstRound).

As you move your way up through the different levels of product-market fit, what you’re really unlocking is repeatability — across demand generation, product development, customer satisfaction and unit economics.

Question, feedback, suggestion 👉 drop me a line on LinkedIn.

Until next time, ciao!

Alice

Thanks for reading Merci Larry! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.