Founder's Story - The B2B Creator Economy Is Wide Open and Nobody Knows Pricing Yet | Ep 329 with David Walsh Founder & CEO of Limelight

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Daniel Robbins interviews David Walsh about how Limelight connects B2B brands with trusted creators across LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts, and YouTube to drive revenue through authentic content. David explains why personality led marketing is becoming the future of B2B, how creator partnerships can outperform paid ads when measured correctly, and why both brands and creators need more transparency in pricing and performance. Key Discussion Points David shares his founder journey across three businesses, including a prior HR software company where he raised too much capital and hired too fast, and how that experience shaped a leaner approach with Limelight. He explains the marketplace cold start problem and how Limelight lowered friction by making the product free for creators early, manually scoring tens of thousands of LinkedIn profiles, and proving demand by selling subscriptions to brands. David breaks down the building in public strategy, saying most of Limelight’s revenue comes from his LinkedIn content, even though it can feel awkward to share the highs and lows. He outlines the content system that works, top of funnel posts to grow audience, middle of funnel industry authority, and bottom of funnel selling that often gets the least engagement but still matters. David shares what brands are buying, creators with roughly 10k to 40k followers who have trust and have not over monetized, plus a go wide approach where brands test many creators and then double down on the winners. Takeaways If you want LinkedIn growth, do not outsource your voice to AI, learn the craft, tell real stories from your own experience, and commit for at least three to six months. LinkedIn creator pricing is still chaotic, with deals ranging from a couple hundred dollars to thousands per post, and the smartest play is often starting with an attractive multi post package to build a long term relationship with the brand. For brands, creator partnerships become truly valuable when you measure beyond clicks, track who engages, identify ICP interactions, and connect that engagement to revenue over a longer window like three to six months. David’s core bet is that every B2B company will eventually run a creator program the way every company runs a CRM, and Limelight wants to be the software layer that powers it. Closing Thoughts This episode is a blueprint for the next phase of B2B marketing, where trust and distribution matter more than perfect ads and saturated keywords. David Walsh makes the case that creators are becoming the new performance channel, and founders who build publicly can turn attention into real revenue faster than they think. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So David, you and I have had the chance to work together. LimeLight made me money. So I want to say first, I appreciate you because I've been building my LinkedIn channel for maybe 10 years at this point. And I didn't know if it would ever make me any money directly through like creating content for a company. Although I was excited for one day. LinkedIn is the hot thing right now. I've been waiting for this day. and I'm sure you have, but I know you, this is your third company.

And I got to say, how exciting is it that your third company is getting so much momentum? Thanks for having me on the show. And I'm excited. It's always nice to hear that you got money from the product. Like, that's the most exciting part about what we build, right? I have spent 12 years at B2B software, launched a watch company, built an e-commerce business, used influencers to grow us. That was back in 2017. So I knew how to grow businesses using creators and influencers. but on the consumer side. And then I started a HR software company. It grew up to 250 customers, raised $33 million, did everything backwards and wrong, raised too much capital,

hire too many people. And then two years ago, I just made this big bet that the future marketing is personality led in B2B. And I wanted to launch a consumer product because I so fascinated with consumer. But if you know anything about software, consumer is impossible. You just have to get such a large volume. So I think we're in a nice mix where we've built a marketplace for, content creators like yourselves who have LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube, business-focused

experts that have building audiences and trust for a long time. I made this big back two years ago that they would want to monetize their audience. And the great thing about that is we get to build for the brands, which is like software, B2B traditional. You know, let's help them with not just a marketplace, but like marketing in general. And then on the consumer side, it's like, we put money into the back pockets of influencers. And that is so exciting. So always good to hear that you had a good experience using the product. I mean, timing, right? I think the most successful founders that we've talked to and people like yourself, timing is like the most incredible thing. You build and build and build it and all of a sudden, boom, it takes off. Let's talk about the

beginning phases because I think anyone who has ever launched an app or a software knows, and we were just having a conversation earlier about like the chicken and egg, you've got to get, you know, one side is you have to get users. The other side is you have to get companies and like they have to work together. But how did you do that in the beginning phases? So Daniel, I have launched two marketplace in the past. I did not want to launch another marketplace. They are so difficult. There's a huge supply and demand issue. You have to get past this call start problem. The marketplace just flops if you don't have, you know, enough traction on both sides. So we lowered the barriers to entry completely. We made the product free for six months. So we got as many creators as we could.

because we feel like they're the ones that will attract the brands. We identified the highest quality creators. We went through LinkedIn for three months and went through 30,000 profiles and scored, ranked and tagged creators and then made it a searchable interface, which hadn't existed before. And we went out to brands and said, hey, would you pay for this? And, you know, will you give me a subscription fee to get access to this? And the answer was yes.

And so, you know, we jumpstart the Cold Star problem by getting and identifying the highest quality creators on LinkedIn, which we felt like had not been done before. There was influencer platform for consumer, for TikTok, for Instagram, but nobody had done it for LinkedIn. So that's where we started and then we've expanded from there. And, you know, the marketplace, I think, has hit an inflection point about six months ago where we actually just, you know, start to grow rapidly and there's network effects. But it was so painful. Like, I mean, so painful to get to this point. And so we have all the benefits now of kind of tailwinds behind the product, but very painful to start a marketplace. How much do you think it helped that you are, you know, quote unquote, building in public?

I keep hearing about this like building in public. It's not really something. I've tried. I don't know. I'm not sure how I personally feel about it for myself. Not for others, though. I mean, I love, I enjoy watching. But how did the fact that you were building more publicly, but also on LinkedIn,

as the platform. So I came up with the idea for Lime Night because I was building in public. In fact, when I started LynLyce, my clear thesis was I want to build B2B software for marketing leaders, and we started with referral software because they needed more efficient ways to grow. I started posting content on LinkedIn every day. Ask me why. My last company, I spent four years building. I never talked about it publicly once. And I was like, okay, I've done the behind the scenes, building, you know, hiring people, raising capital, you know, all that other stuff of building companies. But I wasn't really the spokesperson for the brand. So I just said, this time I'm going to go all in from day one.

I'm just going to post everything of my thoughts, the good, the bad, the ugly, the high is the lows. And so I started posting content on LinkedIn. And then because of that, I became much more aware of the creator economy in B2B and influencers and people who have built large audiences. And to give you some numbers, Daniel, 90%, I would say, of our revenue today comes from my LinkedIn content, just posting content publicly on LinkedIn. in. That's how we've put ourselves on the map. And I think for any founders or any operators out there that are listening to this, any marketing leaders, you need a channel that is good return on investment.

And there's no better channel than employee advocacy and founder brand. Of course, it takes time and efforts and consistency like everything else. But once you do it, it's incredibly powerful. And I highly recommend this. It feels a bit awkward, though. It feels a bit unnatural to be posting your numbers online and then telling people that things are going bad. But you build trust and you build audiences and people, you know, end up becoming aware of you with trusting you and they're buying from you. 90%. That's insane. So if I'm somebody who's like, David says I need to do this and he's successful with limelight right now, but how do I even get started? Is there a process? Is there something? Are there steps that you follow right now?

Because I think like you said, we do a lot of things in a day, right? But what do I put on my account out of all the things that I'm doing. I can tell you what not to do, number one, do not go to chat, TBT, and say, write a LinkedIn post for me. That is the worst idea ever. It will not work, along with everyone else in the world that's trying to start out with doing this. The truth is, is you have to learn the craft, right?

And some people are naturally better copywriters than others, right? I would say a mediocre copywriter. But once you start to read content from other people and follow their journey and interact on their content, you realize what's working, what formats are working, how to tell stories. You know, LinkedIn is short sentences to keep attention spans. The hook is really important. You learn all of that by doing it. So like number one, I think what I advise founders is like, or anybody essentially that wants to build in public or just post content online on LinkedIn. Put yourself out there. Be aware that you're going to look like an idiot at the beginning and people are going to be like what he's lost his mind. Number two, learn the craft, like get into us, understand what's working. Number three is consistency. What I see. is people do this for two weeks, three weeks

because they sit on a podcast and say this seems like a great idea, let me go try it, and then they give up the moment that they get anxious because it's not working. It's like with everything, you have to see it at least three to six months, minimum. If you don't do three to six months, you're not going to see the combating nature of this. And

then, yeah, again, the under like maybe the common denominator of everything is be comfortable looking like an idiot and look like a fool. I personally don't care because it drives revenue for my subscription revenue business. So when my friends from Ireland give out to me and say, you've lost your mind, you're an idiot. I like point to the revenue and I'm like, I don't give a crap what you say. You're not building a software company.

I am and I'm okay with looking like an idiot for a little bit while I do it. Was there a time where you looked so much like an idiot where you said, this is it. I'm done with this. I'm not going to do this anymore. Every week. Once a month at least. You know, you have to put yourself out there and it feels awkward, right? And like sometimes it's a little bit too much, right? And I think that's natural. You're going to, I like it with everything. You have to learn the muscle. So do I cringe at some posts every so often? Yeah, but guess what, the ones that I cringe at usually get the most return, the most impressions, the most engagement and the most revenue. So as you start to do this, you realize, okay, like, where's the line that I'm not willing to cross? And truthfully, at the

beginning, you know, maybe this is helpful for everyone else. Like, I focused on growth of my audience. So we went from 2,000 followers to 40,000 followers, which meant I was posting a lot of top-of-funnel content, like engagement content, you know, remote working, benefits, you know, stuff that people will interact with because it's universally understood. And then over time, I started layering in bottom-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel content. So middle-of-funnel is like industry. I talk about marketing in general. I posted about it today about the marketing industry. It doesn't get as much engagement, but put yourself as a thought leader.

And then there's bottom-of-funnel, the selling limelage, which gets the lowest engagement. And Daniel, I would say most people default to when they start to write content, let me write about me. Let me go sell. And that is not the way to do it. You actually need to think, what does the audience want to hear? How do I tell a story? And how do I not just aggressively try tell them that I'm great? And here's my features and functionalities.

Let me go sell to them through content. Once you start to do that, you realize nobody gives a shit. So it's a whole strategy. By the way, I don't think you're an idiot. So I know I said that before just playing off the term that you use. So I don't think any of your posts sound like an idiot. I think your posts are great. We are our biggest critics, though.

I don't even like to, I never watch interviews or discussions I have with anyone, by the way. I don't even like to watch myself because I start to nitpick so many things. 2000 to 42,000 incredible results right there. When you look at what you were talking about top of the funnel, which seemed to get the most following traction or the ones that drove the most people that wanted to follow you. What type of post?

Because I think I'm at like 34,000. I want to get to 80,000 or 60,000. Is there some type of post that can be doing that you think would move the needle in terms of strengthening the following count? We could do a whole podcast just on that topic alone. I could talk about it for ages. And by the time I finished recording the podcast,

the game had changed, the algorithms changed. So, you know, what's working last week isn't working this week. I think, number one, like, AI slop is everywhere. Go to LinkedIn, scroll, nine posts at a 10 posts or AI slop. They're too well written. They're too structured. They're robotic and they don't tell a story. So I think, like, number one, you have to input your own personal experience.

Like, you know, an example of that is like last week I spoke to a designer and I got 1,100 and something applicants, here's why, you know, I interviewed this specific person. I posted about that last Friday. It got, I don't know, 30,000 impressions since Friday, which is, again, hiring on LinkedIn is obviously a topic that a lot of people care about. It's a job search platform as well as many other things, but I also told a story. So I think it's like, you've got a mix storytelling that AI can't write into the mix and grasp users. And then look, you know, People might know this because they're probably interested in LinkedIn if they're listening to this podcast. But there's other ways to grow, right?

Number one is write great content. That's what everyone thinks, right? But you also have to engage on other people's profiles that have audiences so they engage back, right? And then the third one is just consistency of doing the work nonstop every single day. So I've been putting comments that I find to be funny or full of humor. Maybe those are not the right comments. Maybe I need to be more serious. When you look at what you put on to other.

people's profiles, what works for you? Comments that are humorous are good. In fact, now LinkedIn just made visible the amount of impressions you get from posts or from comments. I think anything to stand out, instead of the generic chat chit automated comments that just takes the post, picks one line and then regurgitates it back, you know, if you add humor, you're going to stand out from the crowd. So I would definitely do it.

Don't insult people. Like, you can draw a line of like, I'm humorous, I'm funny, but I'm not like aggressively going after you. But I think LinkedIn is too conservative. Sometimes the impressions I get from my comments are better than the impressions I get from my post. But I try to do sometimes more controversial comments or like an opinion comment, hoping that other people would draw their opinion recently that happened.

And I don't know. She was kind of making fun to me. I don't think she understood that there was humor in my comment. And she was like, I was like, whoa. So I ended up deleting it. I do that a lot. Sometimes I'll post things, Dave, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't like it. Then I'm deleting it, which I probably should stop. When you, what are companies? So you're, the great thing is you get a lot of great data, I imagine.

You're seeing, you're seeing not only, you know, what's working on the front end from the users, like the content creators, influencers, but you're also understanding the data of what companies want. So if I'm thinking about how to really structure my LinkedIn profile because I want to be attractive to companies, what do companies want? That's actually such a great question. I've not actually, I've not been asked that on a podcast before. So I'll give you like straight off the top of my head. I think number one, what brands themselves are becoming more aware because B2B influencers new, they're coming more aware of like the engagement bots, the profiles that are getting here. huge impressions and engagement, but it's actually just a farm of people interacting on each other's content. So I think authenticity is what I'm seeing all brands care about. And what's really interesting is they don't look for huge influencers and creators. Like they're not looking for the people with 100,000 followers plus. They're looking for the people with 10 to 30,000, 10 to 40,000 followers who have built audiences that have trust and haven't really monetized it effectively yet

and aren't doing brand partnerships five days a week. Those types of people and audiences are the things that I'm seeing a lot of companies go after. And when I speak with, like we work with WebFlow, HubSpot, Bill.com, Zoom Info, Active Campaign, pretty large enterprises. I'm like, okay, tell me your budget. And then they're like, okay, we've got $200,000 a month to spend. It's like, okay, I would, you can go wide, work with many creators. You can go high, work with the biggest creators. You can go deep, multi-channel partnership, you know, well, maybe it's a newsletter and an event

and a LinkedIn post, which I always recommend they do go deeper with creators and influencers. But most of the time I'm advising them to go wide. Work with as many as you can. Get as much surface area content out there. See what's working. Build an audience and then double down on the creators that are performing. So for people listening to this, if you're looking at your LinkedIn, I think authenticity is important to be clear about who your audience is, who you write for in your bio,

in your header. Don't be vague. Be very specific. And then I think in general, like try to do. some brand partnerships. And once you start to do any brand partnerships, we've seen that a lot of brands are aware that they're available to do brand partnerships and then start to increase the amount of offers that go out to those creators. That's through data that we've been tracking on our platform. So what do you what I don't even know? Like what is an average amount for like a creator like

myself? What can I even earn from LinkedIn? I think I see standards of like Instagram, which I know there's everything that's kind of all over the place like YouTube there but because there's been you know been people doing that for a longer time I feel like there's some like standards that have been created out of air what about LinkedIn nobody knows how much to charge nobody knows how much to pay it's the while while west we actually built benchmarks over the last two years collecting data from all transactions to bring more transparency and educate both brands and creators creators on what they're worth and brands on what they should pay but the truth is even if we give them all the it's still a little bit like, you know, there's edge cases.

I can give you some hard facts. The lowest amount for a post that we've seen, about $200. The highest amount for one post, $8,000. We've had scenarios where one creator was paid $30,000. That happened twice for one campaign. Now, there was multi-channel. There was like you have to come to an event. You have to do two LinkedIn posts and you have to do one newsletter, for example, $30,000.

So I think like it's up to the creator to decide what they're working. worth is and how much they want to charge. But you also need a bit of guidance. You don't want to overestimate. And I would say, Daniel, for most part, like the B2B creators overestimate what they're worth. And they're probably charging a little bit or expecting to charge a little bit too much at the beginning where my recommendation is charge enough that you're not undercharging yourself. I never think that's a good idea. But also make it attractive to the brand and make it maybe more long term. So when somebody reaches out to you and says, hey, I want to pay. you to do one post on LinkedIn for $700, you say, no, I only do five posts. It's $3,000.

And then you've built a relationship over time that then they can start to double down. Because a lot of brands, Daniel, are doing this for the first time. They're just trying it out. They're allocating budget and they're trying to figure out what's working. Don't immediately, you know, stop them in their tracks by overcharging at the beginning and then not delivering the results. The better plan is to get into the room, do a few partnerships with them, a few pieces of content and then build that relationship because if you can prove revenue, which is what we can talk about, you become really valuable to them and they will pay you a lot more money because our ultimate goal is that you have an army. These brands are having an army of a hundred

creators creating content consistently, bringing their business to the top of the news feeds and driving a lot of revenue. And once we unlock that revenue, you know, these brands will pay you a lot of money. They just want to make sure that it works to begin with. That's always the thing. I've done influencer marketing for my own brand since 12 years ago. And the question is always like, what will it get to me as the brand and company? And I think a lot of companies, unless you're like a very large corporation, obviously it's different. If you're, you know, depending on your size, the budgets you understand like sometimes it's just brand awareness. Sometimes you need certain results.

So what type of results are you seeing from the brand's perspective? So I always believe, Daniel, that if we were able to make influencer marketing in B2B performance-based, it will unlock 100X the budget. Because these brands are spending a fortune on paid ads on LinkedIn, on Google, on Facebook, and across all social channels. And they're competing on keywords that's now saturated and it's getting a worse return on investment. So they have millions. And I speak with like webflow, Zoom info, build.com. And I'll say like, how much you're spending a month? And they're like $5 million on paid ads.

I'm like, oh my God, $5 million on paid ads. If we could just take 10% of that, you're talking $500,000 a month to creators, I guarantee you I can get a better return on investment than what you're getting today. So what we typically say with influencers and, you know, when they're standing these programs up, is have the usual attribution systems in place, right? Track website traffic, demo signups, put self-reported demo links, use UTM links per creator. So custom UTIM links to show conversion. tracking and a handful of other things that we can talk about. But what really moves the needle is

when you start to track who's engaging on that content. So we are posting content across 100 creators every single week, let's say. There are people that are engaging on that content, liking, commenting, reacting, that are potential ICP. Now, 80% of the people that engage on LinkedIn are not your ideal customer profile is probably rubbish, but 20% of them probably are. And we're now driving leads. Because in B2B, the journey isn't, I I see something on Instagram, I click the link and I buy the sunglasses. They're seeing something in a news feed. They're reading it in a newsletter and then they're making a decision two months, three months later. So the brand needs to take one, a longer view of what revenue attribution

and how to measure it. Like let's take it three to six months. Let's not just post three posts and hope that it drives revenue. But then you also need to track who's engaging on the content and prove that those engagements are actually becoming revenue. And that's the big unlock that we unlocked about two months ago, three months ago, where we started to track everyone engaging on the content and we were able to prove that people interacting on content drove revenue, and that's really powerful. Well, it sounds like there could be billions of dollars. I know the creator economy is like billions of dollars outside of LinkedIn.

So why not? LinkedIn seems to be the place. You got me inspired. I'm going to become a full-time LinkedIn creator. and I'm going to document on LinkedIn becoming a full time. No, this is great, man. I'm like, I'm really excited. I feel like the time, like I've been on LinkedIn for a long time.

I've been watching it. It's really been my favorite place to hang out. And I feel like as time goes on, I'd say LinkedIn and YouTube right now, LinkedIn and YouTube are my two favorite places where I put a lot of my energy. Every other social platform to me is very toxic. it gives me anxiety and I feel like it's just like people's opinions I don't want to read about about whatever is happening in the world that's terrible and I'm just like I need to go to a safe place so I think LinkedIn right now is my safe place you sound like one of our customers right

they actually say the same thing they say like we care about LinkedIn we care about YouTube sometimes they say newsletters or or Twitter but those are you know Twitter specifically a bit of a cesspool. We actually have influencers across every social channel. So LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube, Twitter, even some Instagram and TikTok. And so we do cater for brands that want to go wider with lots of social channels. I say our core bread and butter is LinkedIn. Now, you might not get as many engagements on LinkedIn or as much impressions or much reach as like a TikTok video, but it is your ICP and you're able to identify those people that are engaging on the content. So yeah, it's a fun place to be. I don't see how TikTok converses much of anything. I don't

I don't know. Because I think our attention is so fast. I mean, like, I don't think we spend enough attention really looking at or like paying attention to what something is. Although I just bought. Let me leave it with one thought, right, which is the big bet that we're making. I'm two years into building this business. We've raised $3.2 million. We're working with some of the biggest companies of the world. We're keeping the team really, really lean. The marketplace is humming. But the big bet, I'm constantly like a shit. I'm a billionaire. And then I'm like, oh, this is going to fall to pieces and it's going to explode. And so the big bet that we're making is that every single B2B company can have a creator program. They might not think that people create content

about their niche, but they can and they do. And so we think just like every company has a CRM, HubSpotter Salesforce, every company will have a software that powers their creator program, and that will be limelight. That is our ultimate goal. We think if we can execute on that strategy, it's going to be amazing. Because the thing is, Daniel, every single, when people come to us, They say, I saw my competitor doing this. I need to do it myself. And so it becomes this natural, like I'm seeing this motion at work for other people. They're spending money on this.

Where do I get started? And they either go to agencies or software. And we want to be the software that powers the whole industry. Limelight, I believe in it. I'm on it every other day seeking information about what brands are working. What are they doing? So how does somebody sign up for Limelight? And then also, how does a brand sign up?

So it's free for creators. Go to Lymlight HQ. dot com. We do not charge any transaction fees, all the money that a brand says to you goes directly to you, which isn't the same for some other platforms. And any branch, and just go to limelighthq.com and sign up for a demo. And they'll meet with me most likely, as long as they're qualified and they have budget to spend. And yeah, follow me on LinkedIn. I post content every day. It's a little cringy, but I'm enjoying it. Well, David, you reached out to me at one point and you said, I have a brand that wants to work with you. I went on limelight. Turns out there was a brand that wanted to

work with me. And that was the first time anyone's ever paid me for something on LinkedIn. So I appreciate you, by the way. And I really see limelight as a future unicorn. So thank you for all that you do to help people make money and you help brands spend money wisely. Thank you for having me.