Creators earn from ad revenue share, not views, fueling a $2B AI company
Creators take commission from ad spend with no ceiling, backed by ‘smart retainer’ guarantees; this paid-UGC system powered Whisperflow's 30x revenue growth over the past year.
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Ship product first, open paid ads early
Whisperflow's growth was rooted in the product itself—with a few thousand users it was still unknown, but about six months later it began growing on its own, when the team confirmed ‘we've really found product-market fit’. Hector says that once a product can grow on its own, you should actually open paid advertising early. He learned an ‘ecommerce playbook’ from a former colleague, Matt: most SaaS companies are afraid of spending money or breaking through their ICP, so they hesitate to open paid channels. But once you do, you can quickly validate whether your copy moves cold traffic and whether your product can convert those users into paying customers—this signal is hard to get from organic content alone, and you almost never hit true saturation; there are always new angles and new ICPs to try.
— Hector SerranoSuccessful free-UGC projects get deliberately killed
In early 2025, intern Tobin built a CPM-based ‘organic UGC’ project—creators posted videos to their own accounts and split revenue by views. In two and a half months it hit 500 million views, but CPM was low, and the team discovered they were chasing ‘vanity metrics’ without converting users to paid. They deliberately shut it down. Real growth came from the later pivot to ‘performance-based ad spend’ model—the paid-UGC system they run now.
— Hector SerranoAd spend commission with guaranteed minimums drives creator growth
The new model runs creators' videos directly as ads, with commission from ad spend or GMV rather than fixed view-based splits. To keep newcomers from getting discouraged during the first few months when they're not earning much, the team set up ‘smart retainer’: for every 25 videos, they guarantee $1,500. If pure commission doesn't reach that amount, they make up the difference. Once commission exceeds the guarantee, creators only take commission and receive no additional payment. After a few months, high-performers make almost entirely from commission, which means brands only pay for the ads that actually earn money, not for the output itself.
— Hector SerranoHire creators by track record, not credentials
Hector and his former colleague Tobin had nearly opposite resumes—one had a 2.5 GPA and played D1 college sports, the other had a 4.0 GPA and went to University of Waterloo—yet both became excellent marketers. Hector says the signals that actually matter are simple: does this person have experience growing even a small account to 10,000 or 20,000 followers? That shows they understand content timing, editing, and trends. And is this person scrappy enough and genuinely reliable? Filtering by best schools and highest grades actually keeps you from hiring people who can actually do the job.
— Hector SerranoStart creator groups with DMs, not via platforms
When a new brand posts on creator platforms like Tribe, no one responds, because the platform homepage shows how much money the brand has spent and how many creators they've already signed—startups with no track record can't compete for top talent. Hector's approach is to skip the platform. He searches Instagram by keyword for creators in relevant verticals, sends 150 to 250 highly personalized DMs in a week, and lands five or six genuinely good fits. Then he follows those creators' followers to find similar ones. The group grows slowly from 5 to 10 to 15 people, not hundreds at once.
— Hector SerranoRough, unedited ads outperform polish for technical audiences
Hector gets asked constantly, ‘We make developer tools / hardcore products—is UGC even applicable?’ His answer: UGC doesn't mean the audience is college kids. What matters is putting real target users on camera. For older, more technical audiences, the best ads are actually the ‘ugliest’—like an unedited screen recording that runs one or two minutes long. This crowd doesn't respond to polished personal brands or an 18-year-old pitching them. They only trust peer-to-peer real use cases, just like no one buys a $3,000 sleep device from a child.
— Hector SerranoFinal creative always needs human hands, never AI
Hector says that even inside top labs, research and workflows can be automated, but the final videos, designs, and editing that get shown to users still rely on human work at scale. The moment an audience spots AI—typos, wooden copy, AI-generated influencers—it backfires on the brand, especially risky for an AI company. As a speech-to-text AI company, Whisperflow's position is to use AI to help people speak more naturally, not to use AI to replace creators in producing final ads.
— Hector SerranoPackaging beats production quality on YouTube's platform
Hector says the long-form video team matters more than the short-form editing team. Even if you shoot cinema-quality content, if the title and thumbnail don't draw clicks, no one ever sees how good the video is. Good YouTube packaging—thumbnail, title, opening pacing—determines whether it can be re-cut into high-quality short-form material later, and YouTube videos have strong long-tail effects; some videos keep accruing views long after posting.
— Hector SerranoIn their own words · checked verbatim
A 30, 40-year-old founder doesn't understand what an 18-year-old kid who's in these Discord chats, scrolling every day on Instagram and TikTok. They don't understand what's actually working and the best ways to approach these new channels.
Hector Serrano0:00
If you're not having that growth early on and you're having to force it a little bit too much, then maybe you have to go back to the drawing board a little bit and rethink how you're actually positioning the product.
Hector Serrano5:09
let's say we're going to do 25 videos and we're going to pay you $1,500.
Hector Serrano14:21
we have creators now that are making like $13,000 a month.
Hector Serrano16:22
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.
Hector Serrano1:00:05
If we, on the other side, go out and start making AI slot ads and videos with AI influencers and, I don't know, AI designs and AI statics, it's probably not going to be received really well, and it just looks off.
Hector Serrano1:04:25
you could have a masterpiece of a video. You can make a Hollywood production movie, but if you put a bad thumbnail and a bad title that doesn't intrigue people to click on it, no one's actually going to know how good your video is.
Hector Serrano1:16:47
Figures
| Whisperflow's revenue growth (past year) | 30x | 2:01 |
| Whisperflow's latest valuation | ~$2 billion | 2:01 |
| New ads launched per month | 500–600 | 12:16 |
| Full-time headcount growth | from 4 to ~120 | 48:19 |
Glossary
- UGC / User-generated content
- Content created by real users or creators, not by the brand's own team.
- CPM / Cost per mille
- A pricing model where content or ads are charged per thousand impressions or views.
- GMV / Gross merchandise value
- A metric measuring total transaction volume in ecommerce contexts.
- ICP / Ideal customer profile
- A description of target customer characteristics most likely to buy the product.
- Smart retainer
- A guaranteed minimum payment based on completed work; once commission exceeds the guarantee, only commission is paid.
- Ad fatigue
- When repeated similar ads cause platforms to judge relevance as too high and performance declines.
How to listen
Growth leads for paid acquisition and creator/UGC projects, and founders considering hiring young marketing talent.
The final lightning round (book, movie, travel app recommendations) is low-density and skippable.