Sebastian Nelson Podcast Transcript
Sebastian Nelson joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech, working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.coruzant.com/brand.
Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Sebastian Nelson. Sebastian Nelson is the founder and CEO of Cruva, a California based SaaS platform helping over 400 brands collectively generate 10 million monthly sales.
On TikTok Shop, a pioneer in the social commerce space. Sebastian started an e-commerce in 2018 selling on Amazon before pivoting to TikTok shop at launch. Frustrated by the manual time-consuming process of managing hundreds of affiliate creators, he built a tool he wished existed. One that automates creator, outreach, management and performance tracking.
Today, Cruva is an official TikTok shop partner, and the Go do affiliate management platform for brands looking to scale faster without scaling their workload.
Well, good afternoon, Sebastian. Welcome to the show.
Sebastian Nelson: Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. And traversing two time zones.
Brian Thomas: You’re in California, the LA area, long Beach. Today I’m in Kansas City, so that makes it easy. Unlike some of the other times I’ve had to traverse from Sweden to India to Russia to you name it. I’ve been there, so I appreciate again, you making the time. And Sebastian, jumping into your first question, you began your e-commerce journey on Amazon, but when TikTok shop launched, you committed to it early.
What made you see TikTok shop as a better opportunity? And what were the risks or signs you looked at when deciding to pivot?
Sebastian Nelson: It’s kind of funny. It was really a means of survival for me at the time. So I was getting squeezed on Amazon from all sides. So my advertising costs had gone up a ton and a product that was once a cash cow turned into a liability and I literally couldn’t sell the units at profit.
So I. I needed somewhere else to sell ’em. This was mid 2023 and at that time, TikTok shop had just come out. So I decided to just give it a shot. It’s not like I was some savant where I was like, oh, TikTok shop’s gonna be huge. It was just necessity. I was I needed to sell these units, I had debt that I had to repay on the, for the business.
And so I launched on TikTok shop. I worked with about 10 creators and was able to go mega mega, mega viral with my product that fourth quarter during the Christmas season. And that’s, really when the light bulb hit me of like, Hey, working with affiliates, getting content, videos at scale and, seeing this snowball effect of content get put out and just hundreds of videos every day for my product. Just that’s when the light bulb moment really happened to me.
Brian Thomas: It’s amazing. Love the backstory. Always do, always a challenge. Typically that happens that sparks a creator, an entrepreneur a founder to, to do something different. In this case Amazon can fluctuate quite a bit, and as you saw there, your story when TikTok TikTok shop.
Launched you knew that you had to do something else because of the challenges you ran into. So I appreciate the story and our entrepreneurs in the audience certainly do as well. And Sebastian up I’m sorry. Kru was born out of frustration with manual creator outreach and management. What features or functions were non-negotiables for you and billing truva?
What early hypothesis did you test and which one surprised you?
Sebastian Nelson: I mean, it, it was born outta necessity. Like I said, when I first launched that brand we had a ton of early traction and managing and outreaching to affiliates was one of the most manual parts. It just. Drowned me in manual work.
And so I knew it could be automated. I didn’t know exactly what it looked like yet. But the main thing is we needed something to save time for brands to, to regain for solo founders like myself, I needed that time back, the hours every day, messaging back and forth with creators. So I would say early hypothesis that we tested was really just scale.
Back in the day, when we first launched Truva it was really about just volume. It was a volume game. How many messages could you send out, and then how many creators could you onboard? That was just the absolute most important thing.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate you sharing that. And again, you highlighted this necessity drove that change.
You were looking for efficiencies, you were bogged down in a lot of manual processes. And again, jumping in, out of pressure, out of need, you’re able to pivot and make this change. So I appreciate the backstory. And Sebastian, Cruva is an official partner of TikTok Shop. What was required to achieve that status? How does being a partner change your opportunities, constraints, or integration approach? And what doors has it opened for you?
Sebastian Nelson: Yeah, great question Brian. So it’s really, it’s changed the game for us frankly. TikTok has been absolutely amazing partner to us. Really what it’s given us more than anything that we appreciate is just having a say.
So, they, we work with 650 brands across the world and so they actually value our feedback and they take our advice and then they actually will go and try and implement the changes and the things that we suggest. So that’s been amazing. And then on the opportunity side they’ve put us in front of a lot of sellers, right?
So we’re on the official app store where any brand comes on, they get a chance to see us and our service offerings. Integration, there’s definitely some limitations with the integration. And it hasn’t always been smooth sailing but what is, and we’ve really, really just worked with them over, we’ve been a.
TikTok shop partner now for over a year. And through that time, TikTok has evolved so, so much and we really, really value, like being able to see the evolution and our tool has just changed so, so much. Where in the beginning, we were so focused on outreach, how many creators are you reaching out to?
But then. That kind of got a little bit outdated, where now you really need to be thinking about, okay, who am I reaching out to? Right? And that’s why we’ve built all these tools to use AI to actually be able to identify the right creators. Where now, instead of just going, Hey, I want, a creator with 5,000 followers who’s promoted a beauty product, you can come into our system and say, Hey, I want a mom who is blonde.
With 5,000 followers, right? And then we will actually use AI to go find those affiliates. So again, TikTok has been an amazing partner for us and really allowed us to grow and develop all these new features.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing and it’s good to have it’s great actually in your case to have a good partner like TikTok here, in the official app store, your brand gets put out there.
I think that’s great that they highlight you, but also what I really took away here is, I know you did a lot of outreach early on, but using tools, ai, machine learning. Help you dial in those to find the right creators or affiliates that are again, maybe niche to something that you’re trying to sell in particular.
So I again appreciate you highlighting the technology there. And Sebastian, the last question of the day, looking ahead maybe five, 10 years, how do you see the evolution of social commerce, meaning TikTok, shop, Instagram shopping, live commerce. And the role of affiliate creator platforms like Truva, what’s your vision for brand creator ecosystems in that world?
Sebastian Nelson: Yeah, absolutely. I, I don’t say this lightly, but I really think it’s going to change where every brand is looking. The smart brands, we’re adopting it early, are seeing the results, as an example. Today one of the brands that’s dominating in the social commerce space is comfort clothing.
They sell hoodies. They have an amazing product, but what they do so, so well is they recruit and train affiliates in-house, and they’ve achieved in just about three and a half, four years, a they’ll hit 500 million in revenue this year, which is. An unbelievable achievement for a company that’s only four years old.
The way they’ve been able to do that is 100% brew affiliates, so they don’t work with influencers, right? Every brand is still thinking about influencer and. Really what we’re seeing on the front lines is that there’s a shift, there’s a major, major, major shift going on. So in five to 10 years, I think a lot of the dollars being spent on influencer will now be spent on affiliate.
And our role, for our platform kind of in that ecosystem is really to be the operating system. So when you think about what does an at scale affiliate program look like? You’re working with thousands of creators creating ends of thousands pieces of content on a monthly or, or even weekly or even daily basis for some of these really, really high level brands.
And so we see ourselves as, hey. You want to come onto our platform, be able to see all of the analytics, be able to find the right creators for the future. So it’s like a, just like a traditional sales funnel at, at a company. You have a sales funnel for your affiliates. How many creators are you reaching out to?
Then how many are responding? And then of those, finally how many are actually making product. And then the key metrics there is retention. So how many of those creators who make one video. Actually stay with the brand and end up making 4, 5, 6, 10, 20, 30, a hundred videos for the brand, because that’s where we see real, real scale.
So we wanna look ahead, five, 10 years, we wanna focus on hey, helping brands find the right affiliates, reach out to those affiliates, manage those affiliates, and then retain those affiliates.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you. And again, I’m not keen on, enough to speed to a lot of this stuff out on, these e-commerce sites right in this industry. Do talk to a lot of folks that are in here, but I appreciate you sharing the insights and I would definitely though agree, every brand in the future will be definitely looking at this model. Smart brands jumped in early, like you mentioned, but affiliates are key here.
Now and in the future, not necessarily influencers and I didn’t know that. But again, I appreciate talking to creators and founders like yourself that share those insights and nuggets with our audience most appreciated. Absolutely. And Sebastian, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Sebastian Nelson: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Sebastian Nelson Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
