Interview with Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Upfluence, Vivien Garnes

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker, and today we have Vivien Garnes, the CEO and co‑founder of Upfluence, one of the leading influencer‑marketing platforms. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about Vivien’s background and how their team came up with the idea of a data‑driven influencer‑marketing platform.

Before we begin, I’d like to take a moment to talk to my listeners. If you need any help with your influencer‑marketing strategy, reach out to my team. We can help you amplify your online presence, generate more traffic, and boost your revenue. For more information, check out my site, shanebarker.com.

Hey guys, what’s going on? Shane Barker here with the Marketing Growth Podcast, and I’m super pumped about our guest today. He’s an originator in the influencer space and has been making huge strides for almost ten years now. We’ve been trying to schedule this interview for a while, and we were lucky enough to carve out some time from his busy schedule. I just got back from Costa Rica, and the stars aligned, because today I have with me Vivien Garnes from Upfluence. What’s going on, man? How are you doing?

Thanks for taking the time. I know you’ve been doing a lot of great things. I’ve been following you almost stalkerishly for a long time and seeing what you’re up to. I’m really proud of you, and I’m excited to chat.

What I always like to do at the start of the podcast is get to know a little more about the guest—where you grew up and your background. So tell us a bit about yourself. Where did you grow up?

Wow, that’s awesome. I’ve never been out there. I’ve been to cans and a few different places out there. I have not been there. I might have to add that to my list of places to go.

France is absolutely amazing. I’ve been every time I’ve gone out there, it’s been nothing but a good time, great coffee, baguettes, all the typical stuff you think about. But it’s definitely impressionable.

I have a funny little story about that. When I was in France—this was twenty‑something years ago—I was there with some friends, and we were leaving for the airport. I was waiting in a taxi when I said, Hey, I need to pick some wine. So we stopped at a local wine shop. I went in and said, Hey, I need to pick out some wine. The guy behind the counter gave me a look like “American,” and he wasn’t going to help me. I said, I want to buy ten or fifteen bottles. I don’t really know what to buy, and I’m in a rush. He was ignoring me, so I said, I’ll just pick it by the labels. He said, “Don’t pick it by the labels.” I said, Oh, are you sure? Because I could do that. He said, “No, no, no, no,” and then he picked the bottles for me. I was able to get them before I left. It was pretty funny.

So obviously you grew up in France—how big was your family growing up?

Wow, congratulations. So you’re a busy boy, three years old and just a brand new baby.

Oh man, well, gosh, that’s good old chicken pox that just never ends, the gift that keeps on giving for a while. And obviously I’m assuming you guys didn’t get chicken pox, so that’s kind of a good thing.

There we go. I guess you’re getting it out of the way—there’s no better time than now, huh? Yeah, so tell us something interesting about you growing up, anything fun the audience should know.

That is awesome, yeah. There is something, obviously: we see the artist or musician up on stage, and there is a little piece, I think, of everybody that thinks, God, that would be awesome—to go up there, be on stage and have some fun.

And of course, it’s hard. I mean, I used to do, back in the day, a lot of traveling because I was going to the hotel. That’d be awesome. It’s difficult—it’s hard traveling like that, on relationships and everything family and things you have going on. Especially since I don’t think you were married at the time, so you probably had a little more freedom. And you didn’t have two kids with chicken pox at home where your wife’s going, “Hey, when are you coming home?” while you’re on a tour bus or in a van.

That’s awesome. I love the guitar. I’ve actually bought my wife a guitar a few years ago because she said she really wanted to get into the guitar. She didn’t jump into it the way I think she wanted to. But it is something else, just a beautiful instrument, man. So congratulations on having the success of doing that. And you probably have some pretty good stories that we don’t have time for today, but I’m sure there are some pretty interesting ones. Another time for sure. Yeah, we’ll do it over a glass of wine or a beer one day.

So where are you? Where do you currently live? You’re no longer in France; you’re in New York, right?

Gotcha. No, that’s—I mean, you’ve got to stick where the roots are sometimes. Nothing wrong with that, and with technology it’s as long as you’ve got good internet. It’s not a bad deal at all.

So, where did you go to college? Also in France?

That is interesting, very interesting to me. I will talk about this a little later.

How did you actually—let’s talk about it right now, because I’m curious—meet the other two co‑founders if they’re in the US?

That’s awesome. I love it. I was just curious—if they’re in the US and you’ve been in France, that makes sense: college years getting together, and you said you have a PhD in it now. That’s interesting.

Wow, that is awesome. Yeah, I love that. I taught a classroom at UCLA as a personal brandy and how to be an influencer course there. And that was really influencer marketing, but touched on just being an entrepreneur. Hey, how do you build your personal brand? And kind of getting that out there. But you guys, that’s an actual PhD in it. That’s awesome. I love that. I often look into that because I’m always intrigued about other things. I always feel like I’m a student of the game, so there’s always more you can learn. And so I feel like we gotta—I might have to take a look at your program that you took, you never know. I might have to go out there and do that. That’d be awesome. So cool. I’m excited, man.

So we’re going to talk about you being a co‑founder and the co‑CEO of Upfluence. I wanted to understand—we know that there was you, Kevin, and the guys in college, where you guys kind of put the whole thing together. But how did you guys come up with the idea? I mean, what was the deal you guys were in college? You’re going through classes, and he’s chatting with the guys having a beer, and you’re thinking, we can do this. Wait a second, we’ve got the talent here. What was that? What are the next steps? What was that process?

I love that. It’s so funny; I have a somewhat similar story. I had a patent on these things called hot pads. They were reusable heat packs that I came out with. And this was 20 years ago—a long time ago in the early days of the internet; I’m bad with dates. It was a long time ago.

It was right when the internet was coming out. Now it feels like I’m 100 years old or something, but we did the same thing—we had some of the same issues. I bought tons of inventory and just said, I’m a marketer. I’m gonna build a website, and I’m gonna have to hire somebody to count on my money. Because these things are the best thing since sliced bread. I can’t wait.

And then all of a sudden, we made it into a promotional item. So we sold it on ASI, and it was promotional. We also made a therapeutic, and so there were some things, but I had inventory—like those 1,000 neckties—in my garage.

We moved probably three times, and then the third time we moved, my wife said, “So how much longer are we going to keep that inventory in the garage?” I said, “What do you mean?” She replied, “Yeah, but you’ve got tons of inventory.” Because I used to have good-sized warehouses, and because I eventually got rid of the business, we still had them.

And it’s like, “Just keep them,” and she said, “So when it gets cold in the winter, when our heat goes out, you’ll have thousands of them.” I said, “Yeah, yeah, what is the plan?” She replied, “Exactly. I don’t mind, but we’ve moved them three times, and I don’t see really pushing that forward on the hot pad thing, because we had good orders with Disney and some good stuff.” It was a good time, but it was definitely a lesson—I thought, “Oh.”

And so I could just see those 1,000 neckties. My wife said, “Those are awesome. So what are we doing with them?” And I said, “So what’s the plan?” That’s the big question. And so I love that. Once again, I’m very similar in that it didn’t have anything to do with influencer marketing. This was way before influencer marketing.

But I understand that you buy all the product. This was before drop shipping was big, so you would just buy all the inventory. And then you’re like, “Yeah, this is awesome,” and, “Damn, that’s a lot of product. I gotta figure out how to sell them now.”

And that’s part of the foundation of what you built: you were in the middle of this, thinking, “Okay, how do I do this? You realize influencer marketing.” You do this through bloggers and giving samples, and understanding that if we have better metrics to make better decisions, then obviously we can scale and make good things happen. So that kind of ties into Upflows.

I’ll be honest—we don’t have enough time to talk about everything you do, because you have so many analytics and offerings. I’ve been stalking you guys for a long time, thinking, “God, I’d love to get access one day and see all that juicy data you have back there.” But let’s talk about that a little bit. Tell us a little bit about the platform and what you have built.

I love it, end to end. That’s literally everything it’s like. How do you find the people, all the way to paying them and finding out the metrics and who you should spend more money with? I mean, that’s always the hardest part. When we started doing influencer marketing early on—probably about eight-plus years ago—the hardest part was that you were making good money for one of my clients, a fitness influencer who was crushing it. The problem is, out of the 20 influencers we were working with, we didn’t know which 10 were doing phenomenal and which 10 weren’t, because we didn’t have tons of software. And so we were looking at this thing, trying to figure out who’s moving the needle. How do we know that?

I love the fact that you guys had that. It sounds like an all-in-one solution for any type of brand that wants to know how to find the people, what to pay them, and then see if it works—which is really the goal. The only way to know the true ROI of influencer marketing is to be able to find the people, determine what you pay them, and then see if it works.

I love that. And what do you think? Obviously, you’ve been doing this for what, nine years—almost 10 years, right? You guys are sneaking up on 10 years, which is crazy. I mean, really think about it. Time flies. We’re getting older. I know it happens.

What type of businesses do you think are best for upfront? What have you guys seen over the last 10 years after building the platform?

Gotcha. So it’s really anybody that says, hey, you’re looking for a new revenue stream, and you guys are looking to try something out, and you pretty much have the all‑in‑one platform where you can do it from end to end. I love that. I want to know a lot more about Upfluence, but we’re running out of time for now. We’ll continue this conversation on the next episode. Stay tuned to the Marketing Growth Podcast.