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JH Jack Haldrup On How I Built This (Guy Raz)

“I think it's easy to call it a viral video, but we knew that it would be an ad. And I would say it's viral because the ad was so efficient at acquiring customers cheaply and profitably that that's what drove the virality, along with some of the sharing behind it.”

How I Built This (Guy Raz) · Startups & Venture · November 2026

“I think it's easy to call it a viral video, but we knew that it would be an ad. And I would say it's viral because the ad was so efficient at acquiring customers cheaply and profitably that that's what drove the virality, along with some of the sharing behind it.” — Jack Haldrup, How I Built This (Guy Raz)

Context

Raz had described Dr. Squatch's cheaply made 2018 video, which went on to huge view counts. Haldrup pushes back on the "viral" label: it was a paid ad that spread because it acquired customers so efficiently.

Transcript

How I Built This (Guy Raz) Around 58:07 into the episode
Speaker 4

I'm talking about natural, nourishing, cold-pressed hand-cut soap for men. Men who use their hands, men who build things, men who open the pickle jar on the first try.

Guy Raz

It's really entertaining and engaging. And the idea, I guess, was to just put this up on YouTube or and buy some Facebook ads with this video.

Jack Haldrup

Yeah, I think it's easy to call it a viral video, but we knew that it would be an ad. And so I would say it's viral because the ad was so efficient at acquiring customers like cheaply and profitably that that's what drove the virality as along with like some of the sharing behind it. Well,

Guy Raz

tell me about launching it. Like you had originally talked to somebody who said, well, we'll make it for a quarter million and then we'll put a quarter million dollars of marketing behind it. You spent $15,000 on producing the video. And then what did you have to spend to actually market it to get…

Jack Haldrup

Yeah, that's a good question because when I think about marketing, I think more incrementally. So when we put it out there, you know, let's say we're getting people to watch two minutes of content for like half a cent on average, which is crazy cheap for that level of engagement. We're getting…

Guy Raz

So you put it out into the world with some little bit of ad spend. And what did it do to sales for sales?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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