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Start free trial →Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth · In-Depth Interviews · November 2026
On why the modern social-first marketer is so hard to hire, he says companies look in the wrong places and set the wrong bar, recalling how he joined as a 19-year-old intern with no startup experience.
Yeah.
…question along these lines. Say someone's like, amazing. I'm going to do this. We're going to commit to this. We're going to hire. We're going to find someone to run it. What are some. One of the most common mistakes you find companies, people make when they're starting on this paid EGC route.
I think a lot of the times is people will typically look in the wrong places and will maybe put out offers online or on LinkedIn or whatever with too high of salaries or too high, like, I guess, like requirements. And you're not going to end up attracting the best people. Like, if you put out an offer where you're going to pay on a, you're like, oh, these people who are running UGC campaigns are in super high demand. I'm going to put out a job listing for 250K, 200K base salary, generous equity. You're going to end up attracting the wrong type of people. Like when I joined Whisper and went to join Whisper, I can tell you nowhere near that. We were interns and we were just hungry kids who wanted to learn and wanted to grow. And again, had some experience with content. And I think if you just think that throwing money out there and looking for someone with the best grades or the best school or the best experience is going to get you the best hire to run this for you, you're in for a rude awakening. And yeah, I would focus on just finding a scrappy kid who's hungry and willing to learn. And like, I don't know, you just get a good feeling from them. Like I was talking to Tanay…
You had a couple of awesome tweets along these lines. One is that everyone looking for a marketer with the best resume is going to end up hiring a bot.
Yeah.
And then the other is this really important tweet that the most successful founders, investors, creators I've met aren't the most talented. They're delusionally confident. They outwork everyone and they love what they do.