Why expert creators have an unfair advantage (and how to become one)
How Sarina Virk Torrendell went from employee #12 at Postmates to founding YouPop. On monetizing expertise and building creator economy infrastructure after a nonlinear career.
Hi, I’m Hannah! Welcome to Nonlinear News, where I write for smart, ambitious people choosing the nonlinear path.
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I’ve always wondered how some people always seem to find the newest thing first. They’re buying Bitcoin in 2015, building with AI in 2022, joining a unicorn when it’s a 12-person startup no one’s eve heard of.
Sarina Virk Torrendell is one of the early ones, several times over. She was employee #12 at Postmates, launching its first markets before Uber Eats and DoorDash were household names and you still had to explain what on-demand delivery was. Then she worked in payments at Apple before everyone paid by tapping, then live shopping at Amazon. Now she’s building YouPop for “multi-hyphenate knowledge creators,” who she believes are the next big wave of the creator economy.
Sarina’s career, as she describes it, is “both linear and nonlinear”: human rights advocacy in DC, a master’s at Columbia, that 12-person startup, her own e-commerce company, then Apple, Meta, and Amazon. The whole time she was also career coaching, podcasting, teaching marketing at Reforge, and advising startups. She was a multi-hyphenate for a decade before she started building for them.
I’ve been learning a lot from Sarina’s career and entrepreneurship journey since I first met her a few months ago, so I wanted to share our conversation with you on:
How she spots a new category early, and what she saw that made her quit Amazon to build in the creator economy
Why your professional experience is an advantage in the creator economy
Which skills matter more, not less, as AI changes how we work
How to start sharing what you know before you feel like a “creator”
How ambition and risk change as you grow your career and family
Whether you’re trying to break into tech, building something on the side, or sitting on expertise you haven’t shared yet, I think you’ll find something valuable from our conversation.
From international affairs to employee #12 at Postmates
Hannah: You’ve said your career is both linear and nonlinear. For someone who doesn’t know you, give us the short version of your path.
Sarina: I love this question, because whenever people hear my background they assume I’ve done a variety of different things, which I have: everything from marketing to operations to business development to product. But everything layered on top of what came before. There was always growth and compounding in the traditional linear sense.
Early in my career I was in international development, working on human rights advocacy campaigns globally. After college I went to DC and worked for a nonprofit and a think tank, and I really believed that was how I wanted my career to evolve, and I wanted to maybe start my own organization one day. So I went to graduate school for international affairs at Columbia.
Hannah: How did your career goals change while you were at Columbia?
Sarina: I started to notice some interesting things happening in Silicon Valley. For context, I’m a Bay Area native turned New Yorker. I’ve been in New York about 16 years now, but technology and what was happening in the Bay was always natural for me to keep an eye on.
This was 2010. The App Store had launched. Companies like Uber and Airbnb were starting to pop up. And I thought to myself, this is a really interesting moment in technology, and I’m curious what this is all about. Even though I was getting a master of international affairs at the time, I took a business school class one semester, and it was there that I thought, I think this might be more my jam.
How she broke into tech without a network
Hannah: You didn’t have a traditional tech background or an existing network. How did you approach breaking in?
Sarina: I was applying to 50 or 60 roles a week, meeting five to ten people for coffee, offering to do free projects, and spending hours learning about the industry. I grew up in the Bay Area, but that didn’t mean I knew people in tech or had a way in. I had to build those relationships from scratch.
I was paying close attention to what was happening with marketplaces and the App Store, and I knew I wanted to be part of it. Eventually I had a few offers, and Postmates was one of them.
Hannah: Of all the companies you were applying to, what made Postmates stand out?
Sarina: They were the first on-demand delivery company, and their whole thing was: how can we build a remote control for consumers to get anything they want, while creating more income for local merchants and people looking for flexible work?
Coming from advocacy and international development, I saw it as an interesting new model for growing a market. So I joined as employee number 12. My job was to launch Postmates from the ground up in its first markets and build the playbook that later helped it scale nationally.
Hannah: How did you evaluate an opportunity that early when you had no startup experience?
Sarina: I was 25, and some of my confidence came from not knowing enough to overthink it. I wasn’t evaluating Postmates based on its funding stage. I was looking at what was happening with marketplaces and on-demand services, and I saw an opportunity to help build a new category.
I remember Bastian Lehmann, the founder, telling me in the interview that they had just raised a seed round. I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t understand how risky the company was, but I also didn’t understand how big the opportunity could become. At that age, the naivete was an advantage.
From Postmates to a decade in tech
Postmates was only the beginning of Sarina’s career in tech. After her first stint there, she started an e-commerce handbag company and ran growth operations at Glamsquad. She later returned to Postmates to lead retail partnerships with companies including Glossier and Warby Parker, then launched its alcohol and grocery categories.
From there she moved into global partnership marketing at Apple, product marketing at Meta, and creator partnerships for live shopping at Amazon. Alongside those roles, she was career coaching through withSarina, hosting the Career Memos podcast, teaching product marketing at Reforge, and advising startups. By the time she started YouPop, she had already spent years combining a corporate career with several other kinds of work.
What she’s building at YouPop
Hannah: How did you get the initial idea for YouPop?
Sarina: I started to chat with content creators I knew in this space and asked about their pain points. The biggest one was that they were using too many tools that didn’t really serve them, and the analytics were terrible.
That gave me the idea to create true AI-native infrastructure for the modern-day, multi-hyphenate, knowledge-first creator. I wanted to create a new agentic operating system for that person.
Hannah: When you say “multi-hyphenate knowledge creator,” who do you mean?
Sarina: It’s a creator like you. You have a 9-5, but you also have content, from short-form videos to a Substack. Maybe you’re going to write a book, maybe you have a podcast, maybe you’re going to sell a digital course or start a community. You’re not just doing brand deals.
Hannah: What will creators be able to do with YouPop that they can’t do now?
Sarina: We’re not public yet, so I’ll keep this high level. Fundamentally we’re equipping creators with the data and insights they need to make real business decisions. The goal is more discoverability and more monetization opportunities, all within an intuitive, agentic operating system.
Coming from consumer technology, I know what good looks like and I know what bad looks like, so we really wanted to focus on UX. Whether you’re a very data-driven creator or not, you have a way to get intelligent insights to inform how you want to grow your business, because you are a business owner at the end of the day.
Why expert creators have an unfair advantage
Hannah: What do you think the current creator economy gets wrong about the “multi-hyphenate” or knowledge creator?
Sarina: There’s so much focus on brand deals in the industry, and certainly that’s a great way to monetize. But there’s so much opportunity beyond that.
To give you an example, one of the content creators who sits on the advisory board for YouPop has a huge following on TikTok and Instagram. But she monetizes primarily through keynote speaking events and corporate workshops, not brand deals.
A lot of these multi-hyphenate creators have an unfair advantage because they have deep expertise. As they share that knowledge, it can lead to corporate workshops, keynote speaking, podcast opportunities. The creator economy for a long time was affiliate and brand deals. Now there are so many other ways to monetize, both offline and online.
Hannah: So the expertise itself is the asset, and the content is how people find out about it.
Sarina: Even for you, Hannah. I remember you telling me you got your current role because you’ve been sharing your perspective online. The monetization is coming from somewhere other than the content itself. You’re sharing your expertise and people are watching, even if they’re not engaging with your content. They see it, and then they think of you. If a company says, I want someone to come lead a workshop on marketing or building a Substack, they’re going to think of you, because you’re visible.
Founder-led marketing over building in public
Hannah: You’re posting a lot right now. How does that fit into your marketing strategy overall?
Sarina: It’s definitely founder-led marketing. I wouldn’t say it’s building in public, because I’m pretty tight-lipped about what we’re building as the product is still in beta. I focus more on sharing my own knowledge, because I’m building for knowledge creators and I want to model what that means, from sharing my fundraising tips to what I’ve learned about go-to-market throughout my career.
And it’s been amazing, because it goes back to opportunities that come your way. I’ve connected with so many creators just because I’m being visible.
Hannah: Why do you think that kind of relationship-driven marketing works right now?
Sarina: Paid marketing was efficient for a long time, but I don’t think it’s as efficient now. Consumers are inundated with products and tools. Even creators have so many platforms competing for their attention.
That makes community-driven marketing and one-on-one relationship-building more important. Showing up online and building direct relationships might sound old school, but I think it’s becoming effective again.
The AI tools she uses as a solo founder
Hannah: You’re a solo founder building an AI product. Where do you use AI the most as a teammate?
Sarina: I use Claude, for my more analytical thinking, and then ChatGPT for a lot of marketing, decks, and storytelling because it knows so much about me and how I think because I’ve used it so much.
In terms of other tools, my current accounting software is Finta and I’m obsessed with it. It’s AI-native and it’s so great for any startup founder. My tech stack isn’t super extensive, but I rely quite heavily on Claude and ChatGPT.
How her approach to risk changed over time
Hannah: You described joining Postmates as taking a “naive risk” at the time. How did taking the risk of leaving Amazon to start YouPop feel in comparison?
Sarina: Now I’m 40, I’m a mom of three, I own a home, and I live in an expensive city. My risk appetite has naturally shifted as I’ve taken on more responsibility. I went from naive risk-taking to calculated risk-taking.
I left Amazon just after finding out I was pregnant. At that point I had an extensive career, so I was walking away from a lot of stock and a very comfortable position.
Hannah: What made it feel like a calculated risk?
Sarina: I looked at the market, the categories, and the network I had built. The market was signaling a lot of opportunity for AI-native companies, especially vertical AI. The creator economy was growing, and this segment in particular was growing. And after more than a decade in tech, I had strong relationships I could draw on. There was still a lot of risk, but my career had also created opportunities and connections I didn’t have at 25.
The skills that mattered before AI, and the ones that matter now
Hannah: What are the most valuable skills from your career that you use now as a founder?
Sarina: If you had asked me this two years ago I would have said financial modeling, data and analytics, being able to show things through data. Now I just go into Claude, prompt it, and it builds all my financial models for me.
So now I think it’s really storytelling and relationship building. The ability to tell a good story is something I learned at Apple, because at Apple you were only allowed to use keynotes in meetings. There were no memos. Everything is in a keynote, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a small meeting. That ability to tell a story and present it is something AI can’t replicate. It can help you frame things, but the human storytelling skill has helped me tremendously as a founder.
Hannah: You just raised a pre-seed. How did your storytelling skills help?
Sarina: It was critical in every step, even in just putting the pitch deck together. A lot of people have asked me what and who I used to help me put together the story and the narrative, but it was just me. I came up with the story and the narrative, and I chatted with a very good friend of mine to brainstorm, but my approach to putting together that deck felt “old school”.
Relationship building over a decade in tech also helped a ton. It was a very tight process. I didn’t take a million meetings. I probably had 20, and every single one was a warm intro.
Hannah: The data fluency still matters though. You learned how to read financials and turn them into a story, which are skills that are valuable even if you’re not building the models yourself.
Sarina: A hundred percent. You need the data to tell the story, because you can’t just tell a story and not have any evidence. Even though YouPop is pre-launch and pre-revenue, you can still forecast things. You can still use benchmarks and other things from the market to help you use data to tell a story. But that only comes from a decade-long career of knowing how to do that and then tell the story to investors and the broader market.
How to start when you have the expertise but no public visibility
Hannah: What’s your advice for someone with years of experience in, say, marketing or product who is curious about sharing their expertise. What makes a successful expert creator?
Sarina: Show up and be yourself. I know everyone says this but it’s absolutely true. I started sharing more of my own knowledge because I’m building for this audience, and wanted to show how to do it myself. My posts that have performed the best were me sitting on my couch talking about go-to-market as if I were talking to you. Not super polished, just me sharing my insights.
There are so many people who have valuable experience, and it doesn’t have to be a heavy lift. You can literally open up your Instagram app, record a Reel, and share your knowledge. The main thing is to be true to yourself and true to your expertise, and not try to be something you’re not.
And get over the cringe. That’s the biggest thing.
Building a company with three kids under five
Hannah: A lot of women I hear from, myself included, wonder how having kids changes your risk profile and your appetite for ambition. What has that looked like for you?
Sarina: Having kids definitely changed my perspective. I reflect back and think, what was I doing with all my time before? This whole 996 culture doesn’t work for parents. It will never work for parents. And that’s not what YouPop is about either.
But I have experience, which gets me farther than hustle at this stage in my career. I know what good looks like and I know what bad looks like. What might take someone six hours might take me one hour, because I’ve put in more reps, from doing the hustle culture, seven days a week, 24/7 thing earlier in my career, especially when I was launching Postmates.
Hannah: So the experience compounds into efficiency?
Sarina: One of the advantages of being an older founder is efficiency. And then being a mom, you’re even more efficient. I’m very good at saying no. If it doesn’t serve a goal, it’s a no. If it doesn’t fill my cup with joy, it’s a no. I just don’t do things if they don’t fit one of those buckets, and I don’t apologize for it. If you’re getting a no, don’t be offended. It’s just not serving one of those things right now, but maybe it will later.
The other big thing is that I have help, and I don’t think this is talked about enough. I have three kids under five, I’m building a company, and I live in New York City. I have a nanny. I have babysitters on rotation. Someone comes and cleans our house.
You have to be a bit of a super delegator, because for me it’s much more valuable to spend that hour in the morning with my kids while someone helps make their lunches, instead of scrambling to make lunches myself. I’m a very engaged parent in everything I do, and that’s also because I know how to build teams and delegate accordingly, both in my professional and personal life.
Follow Sarina on Instagram where she shares advice for founders and multi-hyphenate creators, and join the YouPop waitlist at YouPop.ai.
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Hey Hannah! Loved this one. The line about people seeing your work even when they don't engage with it, and thinking of you later, is the part I keep coming back to.
I'm a couple of months into publishing, and the numbers say nothing is happening, which makes it very hard to tell the difference between invisible groundwork and just being invisible.
This is a great reminder to keep going.
This newsletter was amazing, thanks for sharing!