Dan & Maria Cristina what's your backstory?

Dan:

I went to university for civil engineering and computer science, but pretty quickly realized the traditional education path wasn't for me. I dropped out and jumped straight into the marketing world, starting with affiliate marketing, which was honestly a fantastic hands-on business education.
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As a teenager, I used to run garage sales and was flipping items I'd buy cheap. I was always connecting with people, building relationships, and learning the basics of business transactions way before I knew what "networking" formally meant.

My path to founding has been pretty exciting and unconventional. My partner and I started with small projects: affiliate websites for luxury travel, e-commerce ventures, growing social media accounts to millions of visitors, and just testing and learning as we went. After spending about 5+ years working with marketing agencies, we eventually launched our content agency, which is actually where the idea for Yahini was born and really started to take shape.

Maria Cristina:

I grew up in a family of creatives and entrepreneurs, always torn between artistic expression and the practical side of business, selling my artwork at local markets when I was barely a teenager.

Academically, I pursued three degrees, but the one I always love to show off is my Film degree. It might seem unrelated to what I do now, but it fundamentally shaped how I approach storytelling and creative problem-solving. There's a surprising amount of overlap between building a compelling narrative for film and creating a marketing strategy that resonates with an audience.

Before founding Yahini, my background was heavily steeped in content creation of all kinds: film, video, fiction, and non-fiction. What's interesting is that my seemingly scattered background turned out to be perfect preparation for startup life, where you need to be adaptable and draw connections between seemingly unrelated fields.

What does Yahini do, and how did you come up with the idea?

Yahini is a content strategy tool that eliminates hours of planning work by automatically generating funnel-mapped keywords and detailed content briefs. The platform analyzes your business and competitors to deliver keywords that are already prioritized and mapped to your funnel stages. Then it automatically creates custom content briefs optimized for each keyword's intent and funnel position.

Unlike generic AI tools, we've actually trained our system with real content strategy expertise and hundreds of data points, expert guidelines, and proven frameworks. When we've tested it against human expert recommendations, it consistently matches about 90 percent accuracy.

The idea for Yahini came from our own clients' work. AI became more prevalent in our sales calls, and clients began asking why we weren't leveraging it to work faster or better. So initially, we built Yahini just to optimize our workflow, using it to turn around proposals faster, conduct research more efficiently, and get a solid foundation of keywords and briefs ready to go.

We were honestly spending ridiculous amounts of time on the research process, and Yahini helped take that tedious work off our shoulders. Over time, we realized this tool could help way more people than just us, and we decided to pursue it full-time. We've been gradually transitioning from our agency client work (we were essentially operating as content CMOs for a small handful of companies at any given time) to focusing on building and growing Yahini as a product.

How did you acquire your first 20 users, and what strategies worked?

Like most first time product founders, (which is a completely different beast compared to running an agency), we were overwhelmed by the sheer number of potential marketing activities. To prioritize, we created a simple system that ranked each effort by cost and potential impact.

Before diving into formal marketing, we had a small group of what I’d call “early adopters.” These were connections from our network, previous clients, and referrals who helped shape the early version of Yahini. That initial feedback loop was invaluable, but it wasn’t so much marketing as it was relationship-based sales. For our first deliberate user acquisition strategy, we decided to launch a lifetime deal (LTD) in some private communities. Lifetime deals can be a double-edged sword—many companies use them for a quick cash grab without considering that they’re committing to support those customers forever, which comes with real costs.
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However, for our specific business model, an LTD made perfect sense. We partnered with some of the largest Facebook groups dedicated to lifetime deals and ran targeted giveaways and promotions.

What key metrics or user feedback confirmed that you were achieving product-market fit?

We did two things, with some interesting results.

First, we sent marketing emails asking for reviews and feedback, even offering incentives. To be honest, this didn't yield great results. Our customers weren't really engaging much over email, so we got minimal responses despite our efforts.

What worked significantly better was direct outreach on social media. We started asking specific questions:

• For customers who weren't using the app much, we asked what would make them use it more;
• For those who were using it tons, we asked what made them rely on it so heavily. This approach gave us much richer insights, though obviously, it's not the most scalable method once you hit a certain customer threshold.

One of our most valuable exercises was manually reaching out to potential ideal customer profiles on LinkedIn. Surprisingly, this helped us quickly identify who wasn't our target audience, which might sound counterintuitive, but it was incredibly clarifying. There was this whole segment we'd been planning to target, and it turned out they weren't a good fit at all. That negative insight was probably the most valuable piece of feedback we received because it immediately helped us refocus our efforts where they mattered.

What distribution channels have been the most effective in reaching your audience, and how did you discover them?

We've mainly used social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook communities, and Reddit to reach our audience. LinkedIn has been our strongest channel.

Facebook communities, especially those focused on content marketing and SaaS tools, have also worked well for us. The key there was becoming active, helpful members first before even mentioning our product.

Reddit has been the most challenging but potentially rewarding channel. It's a more unfiltered environment, let's say. Users there have zero tolerance for promotional content and will call you out immediately if they sense you're there just to push your product. We had to completely rethink our approach, focusing on providing genuine value, answering questions, and being transparent about who we are without leading with a sales pitch.

We didn't really "discover" these platforms so much as leverage our existing familiarity with them. When we were running our agency, we'd already built personal brands and networks on these channels, so it was a natural extension to use them for Yahini. The big difference was in the approach.

Were there any distribution channels you tried that didn’t yield the expected results?

Wouldn't say we've had any major distribution failures yet, mainly because we've been pretty selective about where we invest our time at this early stage. That said, we're currently working on building relationships with affiliates, particularly on YouTube, and that's proving to be much more challenging than we initially anticipated.

The YouTube affiliate strategy is turning out to be a real long-term play that requires tremendous dedication. First, you have to identify channels that perfectly align with your product and audience. Then comes the outreach process, which is time-consuming and has a pretty low hit rate. And finally, you need to sort through which creators are open to affiliate arrangements versus those who only do paid promotions.

We're still in the early stages with this channel, so it's premature to call it unsuccessful, but I've found it to be the most labor-intensive marketing activity we've tackled so far. The potential upside is huge if we can get it right, but the path to getting there is much steeper than platforms where we already have established networks.

What makes Yahini unique, and how do you keep it valuable for users?

What sets Yahini apart is that we're not just another AI content tool. We're a strategic content planning system built by content strategists for content strategists. The key difference is in how we approach the content creation process. Most AI tools are basically just regurgitating what's already ranking on Google, giving you generic templates and surface-level insights. Yahini, on the other hand, is built on expert content frameworks and strategic guidelines from our years running a content agency. We've essentially encoded our decade of content strategy experience into an AI system.

Another unique aspect is how Yahini maps keywords to different funnel stages (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU) and then automatically generates briefs that are specifically optimized for each stage. So educational content gets structured differently than bottom-funnel conversion content, just like a human strategist would approach it. To keep Yahini valuable, we're constantly learning from our users. We've found that different user segments all have slightly different needs. We're continuously refining our frameworks based on what's working for them.

We also regularly test our output against what human strategists would recommend. Currently, Yahini matches about 87-92 percent of what a professional content strategist would suggest, but at a fraction of the time and cost. That benchmark keeps us honest and focused on delivering genuine strategic value, not just more AI-generated fluff.

What users appreciate most is that we're solving a real pain point - the tedious, time-consuming work of content planning and brief creation - while still leaving room for human creativity in the actual content creation. We're not trying to replace writers; we're trying to make their lives easier by handling the strategic foundation so they can focus on creating exceptional content.

How does Yahini stay ahead in the fast-evolving AI and content marketing space?

We stay ahead by maintaining a hybrid approach that combines the latest advanced LLMs with real human expertise from content strategists. We're constantly updating our proprietary frameworks based on what's working in content marketing right now.

What gives us a real edge is that we built Yahini to solve our agency problems first, so we're solving real practitioner challenges rather than theoretical ones. This means we're always enhancing our keyword prioritization algorithms, funnel mapping capabilities, and brief generation systems based on real-world feedback from content professionals who use our platform daily.

How do you balance automation with creative strategy in content marketing?

We use AI for the analytical heavy lifting while preserving the strategic and creative elements that require human insight. Yahini automates the time-consuming aspects of content strategy (keyword research, competitive analysis, and brief creation) but we've designed it to enhance rather than replace human creativity.

Our system analyzes thousands of data points across your content ecosystem, examining everything from market positioning to audience targeting approaches, but it doesn't just copy what's already ranking. Instead, it identifies strategic opportunities where your unique perspective can fill content gaps. The AI has been trained to understand that no two content briefs should be identical because no two businesses have the same goals, audience, or market position.

What makes this approach work is that we're not trying to automate creativity itself. We're freeing up creative minds from the tedious analytical work so they can focus on developing original insights, unique angles, and compelling narratives.

How did you decide on your pricing strategy, and what has been the response so far?

Being agency founders at heart, we initially adopted a value-based pricing framework. We calculated how many hours Yahini saves compared to manual content strategy work (which typically takes 25-30 hours per project) and priced it at a fraction of what you'd pay a consultant or agency for that same work. However, the real evolution of our pricing strategy came from direct conversations with early users. We launched with one pricing structure, but quickly noticed patterns in how people were using the platform. Some users only needed occasional briefs for specific projects, while others were managing multiple client strategies at once. So, we adjusted our pricing to create tiers that better matched these distinct usage patterns.
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We also decided to offer a lifetime deal early on as a strategic move to build a dedicated core user base that would provide consistent feedback. We were careful to price the LTD attractively, but still in a way that was sustainable for us long-term. We didn’t want to fall into the trap of undervaluing the product just to generate a quick cash injection. Another significant shift was adding a free plan, which we hadn’t initially offered. After analyzing user behavior and acquisition patterns, we realized there was a segment of potential users who needed to experience the value of the platform before committing.
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The response to our pricing has been incredibly validating. Our power users, particularly agencies and content marketers managing multiple clients, have explicitly told us they’re getting 10-20x ROI on their subscription—just from the time savings alone. Several users have mentioned that a single content brief would cost them $300-500 if outsourced to a strategist.

How do you see the future of AI in content marketing, and how is Yahini preparing for that future?

A super interesting question! We're currently in the "AI content pollution" phase where there's an overwhelming amount of AI-generated noise flooding the internet. Everyone's using basic AI tools to churn out mediocre content at scale, and it's creating this sea of sameness that doesn't serve readers or businesses.

The truth is, that AI is replacing certain workflows and roles, particularly junior writers and strategists who were following formulaic approaches anyway. For business founders who were paying for mediocre content that generated no results, this is great news. They can now take control of their content production using AI workflows at a fraction of the cost.

Is this challenging for some freelancers and strategists? Absolutely. But we also believe that throughout any professional's career, there will always be technological shifts that force evolution. The most successful content professionals are figuring out how to use AI while doubling down on the uniquely human aspects of their work: original thinking, authentic experience, and strategic insight.

At Yahini, we're preparing for this future by focusing on the strategic layer that sits above pure content generation. We believe the real value isn't in simply creating more content, but in creating the right content with the right strategy behind it. Our development roadmap is centered on enhancing our strategic capabilities: better funnel mapping, more sophisticated competitive analysis, and deeper business context understanding.

Anyone can generate an article, but knowing exactly what content to create, why it matters to your audience, and how it fits into your broader business goals - that's where the real competitive advantage lies, and that's where we're focusing our innovation.

What advice would you give to founders who are trying to find the right distribution channel for their product?

The fastest path to finding your channel is by talking directly to your early users. Literally, ask them how they discover new products like yours. Once you've found a channel that’s gaining traction, resist the urge to diversify too quickly. Instead, double down on that channel until you’ve truly nailed it.

What motivates you to keep building Yahini, especially through tough times?

It’s the user reviews—hearing how Yahini actually helps them. There’s something incredibly motivating about knowing that real people are finding value in what we’ve built.

Who are some recommended experts or entrepreneurs to follow for learning how to grow a business?

We’ll mostly recommend people who might not be household names in the broader entrepreneurship space, but they're the ones who have genuinely shaped our business ethics and knowledge:

• Noah Kagan from AppSumo has been invaluable for practical, no-BS advice on building and distributing products.
• Neville Medhora completely transformed how we approach outreach and email marketing with his conversational copy techniques.
• The teams at Grow and Convert, Animalz, and other specialized content marketing agencies have been instrumental in helping us understand the strategic side of content.
• Dave Gerhardt from Exit 5 is probably the most honest voice in B2B marketing right now, and his approach to building marketing that connects with humans has been a huge influence.

Any quotes you live by?

"Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like." Paul Graham

Your links + socials

Dan LinkedIn

Maria Cristina LinkedIn