Founder - SARAL | The Influencer Operating System for Ecommerce

Make no mistake about it.

Influencer marketing is the next big thing. In fact, it's already here. Most of the DTC world just needs to catch up to the right ways of executing 😉

If you don’t have big names talking about you, loving you, and recommending you, you’re missing out on millions of dollars of revenue that could be yours 💸
Imagine letting that much money go down the drain because there isn't a simple enough way for you to capture it. 

When you consider that just one tag, one mention, or one recommendation could result in tens of thousands in sales, you owe it to yourself to try SARAL: The Best Influencer Marketing Tool on the Planet right now 🔥
 
🤔 What makes it the best?

Because it makes influencer marketing as simple as 1-2-3.

With a few clicks of a mouse, you’ll be able to:

1️⃣ Identify top influencers in your niche
2️⃣ Connect with them and build a relationship
3️⃣ Monetize you relationships 

And not just with one or two influencers but hundreds. Imagine 100 influencers promoting your brand on socials week on week. It brings in crazy $$$. 

That’s why you’re going to absolutely love Saral and the money it will make you 💰

Here's the best part: 

It brings in eyeballs and sales without you spending a dime on Facebook ads.

Don’t take my word for it, here’s what our users say:

💬 "This is insane. you are literally replacing a whole team of people with these features"

💬 "Holy shit just watched your demo – your product is absolutely revolutionary."

💬 "Love how organized the app is. It looks SO clean. I think the Drip part is key, glad you have that in there. Especially with the templates"

As my thanks for giving us a try, you’ll receive a FREE copy of my Quick Start Guide to Influencer Marketing, that will take your brand from nobody to superstar in no time 🌟 

Remember, it's as simple as 1-2-3 after you read the guide and you're all set  🚀

Get them talking about you NOW! 

Try here: https://www.getsaral.com

Yash Chavan

Execution years feel very different from transformation years.

In SaaS, not every year is about shipping more or growing faster. Some years are about changing the shape of the company, aka transforming 💜

- Who you sell to
- What you say no to
- The standards you hold the team and yourself to... 
- ...and the hard decisions that follow

In 2025, we made deliberate shifts in how we build the product, who our customers are, and who stays on the team.

We went upmarket, attracted better customers, improved retention and profitability, and built a healthier business 📈

We also shipped foundational updates, including a unified Superhuman-like Inbox built for influencer marketers, and SIA, our influencer assistant! 

But what I’m most proud of is how much the team has grown over 2025.

Our quality of thinking is higher. Systems are better. Alignment with our core values is stronger 💪

That kind of progress compounds quietly. High standards are not abstract. They show up in what we ship, how fast we learn, and what we refuse to accept.

We’re already seeing it internally, and I’m excited to show it to customers this year ⚡️

2026 is about making influencer marketing something brands can rely on, not just operate. Proving impact. Tightening the loop between effort and outcome. 

Building trust where there has been skepticism for years. I think we’ll change how a lot of people think about this space.

Now comes the hard part. Very excited to do it with you all - cc: Muskan, Kalwani, Sneha, Praful, Omkar, Vishv, Pranav, Abhishek, Gold, Michael, Priya, Iuliana, Chris, Jim ❤️‍🔥

“Influencer marketing doesn’t work.”

I hear this every month. And I get it.

🧨 Brands have been burned:

- With sky-high expectations
- With terrible tracking setups
- With short-term hacks that fail later

But here’s the truth: Influencer marketing does work -- when you do it right.

The problem? Most people stop at "doing it right."

They forget to track it right ‼️

If you judge a long-term brand channel with short-term metrics, of course it won’t make sense.

It’s like measuring a car only by how fast it goes 0 to 100 mph... great for a drag race, useless for a road trip.

There’s too much content on “how to do influencer marketing.”  

But not enough on how CMOs can prove its ROI to CFOs.

⚡️ Some of the best people I know who've been consistently talking about this are Dan Wilson and Sasha Jeppesen from Charlie Oscar.

So we decided to bring them on a live webinar for an hour to chat about it.  

🗓️ Wednesday, Jan 14th.
🕙 10 AM CT

Link in comments. Save your spot 👇

Sambhav Chadha

Trusted to drive full-funnel growth for leading & fast-growing Health & Wellness brands.

Want to learn why?

DM me and I'll send across some case studies. 

p.s. fixed cost structure, no added fees regardless of how big we help you grow.

Director

Nothing says “I'm excited for this one” like a 4am onboarding call on Christmas Eve.

Augmentum Media x AG1 💚 

Super pumped to be scaling the AG1 influencer-affiliate program in 2026.

Always a pleasure to be running this alongside Abby, Keri and the rest of the epic Superfiliate team, a best-in-class platform for programs of this size and ambition.

2026 is going to be a fun one.

Want to scale your brand with influencers? https://lnkd.in/e4N_Tw2j

Building the #1 influencer partner for Health & Wellness Brands | Clients inc. Lululemon, Nestle, Huel, AG1, Fabletics, Fussy, Mother’s Earth, GIMBER, Elavate, Turmeric Co. & more

This is what a $100M+ brand's influencer engine looks like:

1. Influencer demand is created upstream, not harvested downstream. Last-click performance will always understate its impact. Its real job is to expand who considers you and add trust to back that up.

2. Attribution is triangulated, not believed. Tracked links, creator codes, post-exposure lift, MMM-style modelling. No single metric is trusted in isolation.

3. Incrementality is tested in controlled systems, not ad hoc posts. Geo tests. Creator on/off cohorts. Paid amplification with and without creator inputs.

4. Influencer content is a top-of-funnel asset factory. The highest-leverage result is new angles, objections, language, and proof points that feed paid, CRO, lifecycle, and retail.

5. Creative ROI matters more than creator ROI. The best teams measure which narratives compound across channels.

6. Audience expansion is the real growth unlock. At £100M, you don’t grow by convincing the same buyer harder. You grow by systematically entering adjacent belief systems.

7. Creator diversity is a risk-management tool. Different ages, regions, life stages, formats, and motivations.

8. Influencer throughput is forecastable. If output isn’t predictable, spend never scales cleanly.

9. Your segments are part of one combined system. Celebrity, macro, micro, affiliate, gifting etc... all within the same modelling, not different tracks. 

10. Usage rights at scale. Influencer content that can’t be reused is wasted leverage. The winners treat creators as production partners, not media placements.

11. Measurement shifts from ROAS to contribution margin. 

12. Influencer investment is timed, not reactive. These are planned quarterly, not unlocked in panic when performance dips.

13. Community is a key lever, not a side initiative. 

14. Influencer output feeds omnichannel strategy. Search demand, retail sell-through, paid efficiency, and lifecycle performance all respond to creator activity. (this is why siloed measurement fails)

15. Influencer becomes infrastructure. If the channel collapses when one person leaves, it was never built properly. The best programs outlive individuals, platforms, and algorithms.

Influencer investment is only going up. 
But it's up to you to get it right.

P.S. if you want a high quality version of this comment ‘PDF’ & connect with me and I’ll DM it over.

A few years ago if you’d told me we’d be trusted to run influencer programs for some of the biggest Health & Wellness brands in the world, I probably wouldn’t have laughed.

But I definitely would’ve assumed it’d take a decade.

Fast forward, and we’ve worked with brands I used to see as “untouchable” from the outside.

Lululemon.
Huel.
Nestlé.
Fabletics.
AG1. 

And a few more we’re not quite ready to talk about yet.

What still catches me off guard isn’t the logos.

It’s the level of trust behind them.

Handing over your influencer program isn’t a small decision.

It touches brand, performance, community, and reputation. It's complex, attribution is messy, and a lot can go wrong if you get it right. 

Most agencies who are trusted with that responsibility lose clients because they oversell and underdeliver. We’ve grown because we do the opposite.

The brands that stay with us don’t stay for decks or buzzwords. They stay because execution compounds. Because systems actually exist. Because communication is clear. And because when something doesn’t work, it’s fixed fast and properly.

Now heading into 2026, expectations are higher. The brands are bigger. The margin for error is smaller.

That’s exactly where we do our best work.

So if you’re thinking seriously about scaling influencer in 2026, and want a partner who actually follows through, my DMs are open.

2023: ~4.7 hours of meetings per week
2024: ~18.1 hours per week
2025: ~26.0 hours per week

That trend is… not ideal.

One of my core goals for 2026 is to bring this back under 20 hours per week.

What’s ironic is that, as a team, we run pretty lean.

Very few internal meetings. Strong processes. Concise written updates. Voice notes over calls wherever possible.

Most meetings are genuinely important: reporting, feedback, problem-solving, creative brainstorms.

But personally, I’m the outlier.

A lot of my time is spent meeting new people.
Exploring opportunities.
Following curiosity.

Almost all of that defaults to meetings.

Some of it is valuable.
Some of it is probably habit.
Some of it is definitely avoidable.

So I’m trying to be more intentional about where my time actually compounds.

If you’ve successfully reduced meeting load without losing momentum (or you’re working on the same problem) I’d genuinely love to hear what’s worked, or hasn't!

Any tips?

In 2025, an influencer posted about one of our clients once every 15.7 minutes.

This month, that number is closer to one post every 7 minutes.

Not because of one big campaign.
Not because of a viral moment.
And definitely not because of one “genius” idea.

It’s the result of thousands of small, unglamorous actions stacked on top of each other.

One email sent properly.
One creator followed up with when others wouldn’t bother.
One relationship nurtured instead of rushed.
One system improved slightly instead of rebuilt entirely.

From the outside, it looks like scale.
From the inside, it feels like repetition.

This year reminded me how much we overestimate breakthroughs and underestimate consistency.

Most of the work that actually compounds doesn’t look impressive day to day. It looks boring. It looks operational. It looks like doing the same things well, over and over again, even when no one’s watching.

What I’m most proud of isn’t the volume.
It’s that this happened without shortcuts.

A team showing up every day.
Processes that hold under pressure.
And a culture that values doing the small things properly.

That’s how you get from one post every 15 minutes…
to one every 7.

And it’s how we’re thinking about growth heading into 2026.

Honest unfiltered thoughts on the future of influencer marketing.

The #1 biggest issue in the space at the moment is the lack of education.

It's what causes you to receive ridiculously inflated rates from creators. It's also what causes you to not know why one creator performed and another didn't. The mismatch is why so many brands STILL struggle internally to justify increasing their investment in the influencer channel.

The evidence is there: but you need to go looking.

IPA data recently ranked influencer marketing as the strongest channel for long-term brand building. Unilever's big influencer & social investment another signal. Despite that - attribution is messy, and the average brand doesn't have the resource to invest in internal models.

The average creator on the other hand is on the back foot.

They became a creator because they enjoyed, well... creation. Not to work out how to price themselves in a way that drives you your 1.76x ROAS target.

The mismatch creates tension, and as an industry we need to make a concerted effort to education on both sides wherever possible.

That means continuing to show the data & prove out the impact of influencer. That also means taking a minute to reply to a creator to explain how you got to $X as your maximum budget. Sweat the small stuff and it will compound.

Then comes the AI issue. On both sides.

Will AI simplify workflows? Yes. Will AI tools or AI creators be able to replicate human connection? No - and performance tanks as a result. People buy from people.

Where does that leave us?

My view is increasingly that we are at an incredibly important cross-roads. 

The industry is only growing and following a similar pathway maturing similar to Meta Ads 5 years ago. To be clear - that's a good thing. Returns will become harder to come by, but the upside for brands that do it right will only become bigger. Brands that have a clear strategy, invest in the channel (and importantly the talent/partners to scale the channel) will win. 

But idk.

Thoughts? (5 marks, show your working)

I’ve worked with a handful of Fortune 500 companies, five 9-figure brands in the last year, and more 8-figure brands than I can count.

Here’s what the average 8-figure brand needs to understand if it actually wants to get to $100M.

1) Brand is the unlock

Performance doesn’t scale without brand. The stronger the brand, the easier every other channel becomes.

2) Community beats campaigns

The brands that win don’t just run marketing. They build ecosystems people want to be part of.

3) You will run out of your current audience

What got you to $30–50M will not get you to $100M. New audiences are mandatory, not optional.

4) New channels feel inefficient at first

Every breakout channel looks “bad on paper” before it works. If you only scale what’s already efficient, you stall.

5) Attribution gets messier, not cleaner

Last-click lies. UTMs under-report. Links miss impact. MMM + internal models become table stakes.

6) Creative becomes infrastructure

You don’t win by making one great ad. You win by building systems that produce great creative continuously.

7) Retention matters more than acquisition maths

LTV isn’t a spreadsheet exercise. It’s product, experience, and trust showing up consistently.

8) Speed beats perfection

The best 9-figure brands don’t move as carefully as you'd think. They move fast, learn fast, and correct fast.

9) The org has to level up with the revenue

Process, leadership, and decision-making have to evolve. What worked at 20 people breaks at 80.

10) The winners think in years, not quarters

Short-term wins still matter. But the brands that reach $100M are always building for what comes next.

None of this is flashy.
All of it compounds.

And it’s why scaling from $10M → $100M is a completely different game.

You are too obsessed with your emails.

Most brands don’t want to hear that.

They obsess over outreach copy.
They tweak incentives.
They argue about commissions.

Meanwhile, the real failure happens earlier.

Discovery is the bottleneck nobody measures.

Scraped lists.
Loose filters.
“Let’s just test a few creators.”

Then 1,000 messages go out…
15 replies come back…
And the channel gets blamed.

Here’s the reality:

Every outcome in influencer marketing is downstream from who you select.

That’s why we’ve made our influencer discovery tutorial public.

Not a tool demo.
Not a “top creators” list.

The exact system we use to find 10,000+ of high-fit creators every WEEK (!) for Health & Wellness brands: without burning time, budget, or goodwill.

Inside the tutorial:

• How we discover creators at scale without sacrificing quality
• The signals we care about (and the ones we completely ignore)
• How to build creator segments
• Why scraping quietly kills performance and relationships
• How discovery feeds directly into seeding, affiliates, and paid usage

This is the foundation of every program that scales.
It’s also the part most brands rush and regret later.

Want access?
Like this post.
Comment “Discovery” and I’ll send it over.

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Yash Chavan's LinkedIn Performance

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