1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:03,560 Hey, I'm Kimberly with Elixir mentor Jacob recently added 2 00:00:03,560 --> 00:00:06,880 recruitment services to help companies hire pre vetted Elixir 3 00:00:06,880 --> 00:00:09,880 devs. I help with company outreach, so 4 00:00:09,880 --> 00:00:13,160 if you're hiring, I may be reaching out, or you can connect 5 00:00:13,160 --> 00:00:15,360 with us anytime at elixirmentor.com. 6 00:00:16,480 --> 00:00:19,080 Secure your Elixir apps with paraxial IO. 7 00:00:19,240 --> 00:00:22,280 From code analysis and bot defense to dependency checks, 8 00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:25,560 they've got you covered. Elixir first design with GitHub 9 00:00:25,560 --> 00:00:27,960 integration. Elevate your security at 10 00:00:27,960 --> 00:00:38,600 paraxial dot IO testing. What's up? 11 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:41,400 I'm Jacob Litzel, your Elixir mentor, and welcome to another 12 00:00:41,400 --> 00:00:43,880 exciting episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast. 13 00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:46,480 This is where we discuss everything related to Elixir, 14 00:00:46,480 --> 00:00:48,760 from interviews with enthusiasts, pioneers in the 15 00:00:48,760 --> 00:00:52,360 community to innovative projects and libraries shaping Elixir's 16 00:00:52,360 --> 00:00:54,720 future. Rob Walling joins me today. 17 00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:58,000 He's a serial entrepreneur, author of the SAS Playbook, 18 00:00:58,320 --> 00:01:02,880 founder of Microconf, Co founder of Tiny Seed, and the guy who 19 00:01:02,880 --> 00:01:05,280 bootstrapped it dripped to a successful exit. 20 00:01:05,280 --> 00:01:07,760 And I feel like you have so much stuff going on. 21 00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:10,000 I could just keep your intro going. 22 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,280 But thanks so much for joining me today, Rob. 23 00:01:13,120 --> 00:01:14,400 Absolutely, man, it's my pleasure. 24 00:01:16,360 --> 00:01:20,360 If if for maybe the people that don't know you, you want to tell 25 00:01:20,360 --> 00:01:23,400 us a little bit about yourself and kind of like your background 26 00:01:23,400 --> 00:01:28,360 and what brought you to writing books and for sure. 27 00:01:29,640 --> 00:01:32,600 Yeah, I so I'm a software developer by training, although 28 00:01:32,600 --> 00:01:34,920 I hadn't written production code in about I think it's been about 29 00:01:34,920 --> 00:01:37,880 12 years since I pushed something to a live server. 30 00:01:38,160 --> 00:01:41,080 I did still hack some PHP in Python a couple years back. 31 00:01:42,440 --> 00:01:48,280 I came up duringthe.com boom, which is shows how old I am. 32 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:51,800 But I, I learned to program as a kid and then it really just fits 33 00:01:51,800 --> 00:01:54,560 the way that I, that I think like coding is a language for 34 00:01:55,400 --> 00:01:58,600 makers, you know, and that's, that's what drop drew me to it. 35 00:01:59,560 --> 00:02:01,760 So after, like I, I worked a construction job for a couple 36 00:02:01,760 --> 00:02:04,080 years out of college and I was like, forget this man. 37 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:05,920 I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm like code. 38 00:02:06,040 --> 00:02:09,520 So like nights and weekends. So in college, you know, you 39 00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:12,400 learn stuff, or at least where I was at the public, at a public 40 00:02:12,400 --> 00:02:15,040 university, I learned stuff that was like 10 years old, like no 41 00:02:15,040 --> 00:02:17,320 one was using to actually build the real apps, though. 42 00:02:17,440 --> 00:02:20,880 I had to go to the library nights and weekends and reach 43 00:02:20,880 --> 00:02:24,640 myself HTML and Pearl and and PHP and ASP. 44 00:02:24,680 --> 00:02:28,560 One point O you know, and so and that was so much fun. 45 00:02:28,560 --> 00:02:29,960 Like I got a full time job doing that. 46 00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:33,720 And then, you know, a few years later I was kind of like 47 00:02:34,160 --> 00:02:37,160 programming is fun, but like the politics and the jobs aren't 48 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:39,040 great. Is there a way I can write code 49 00:02:39,520 --> 00:02:41,800 but own my own destiny, you know, and own my own time? 50 00:02:41,800 --> 00:02:44,000 And it was like, oh, I can like launch software products. 51 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:47,840 And so and my first little success in 05 and started 52 00:02:47,840 --> 00:02:51,240 blogging, you know, before podcasts, there were blogs kids 53 00:02:51,680 --> 00:02:56,000 and started blogging in O5 and then I wrote my first book in by 54 00:02:56,040 --> 00:02:58,320 it was I just kept getting a lot of questions about what I was 55 00:02:58,320 --> 00:03:00,160 doing. I was like a single founder, 56 00:03:00,440 --> 00:03:03,200 bootstrapped software entrepreneur, which there were 57 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:05,080 like four of us on the Internet at the time. 58 00:03:05,080 --> 00:03:06,560 You know, there was no one doing that right. 59 00:03:06,600 --> 00:03:09,800 There's a pre SAS. And so I wrote my first book 60 00:03:09,800 --> 00:03:13,400 called start small, stay small in O9, published in 2010 and 61 00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:15,880 then started a podcast. And that's when I realized, Oh, 62 00:03:15,880 --> 00:03:18,480 this whole like being a software entrepreneur thing is it's 63 00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:21,560 great, you know, And I, I was able to quit my day job in 08, 64 00:03:21,880 --> 00:03:23,840 like fully quit consulting and everything. 65 00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:26,560 And I was like, I'm making at the time like 150 grand a year 66 00:03:27,080 --> 00:03:30,120 off of products. And that was life changing. 67 00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:33,640 So since then, I've, as you know, as you said, tiny seed is 68 00:03:33,640 --> 00:03:35,720 the B to B SAS accelerator that I run. 69 00:03:35,720 --> 00:03:38,560 We've raised almost $60 million and we're investing. 70 00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:42,440 Yeah, early stage. And surprising to me, we just 71 00:03:42,440 --> 00:03:44,280 kind of started doing it and it worked. 72 00:03:44,760 --> 00:03:47,640 And then micro constant community and a, and a, an event 73 00:03:47,640 --> 00:03:50,840 for aspiring and, and you know, for founders and aspiring 74 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:53,120 founders. When I've written five books on 75 00:03:53,120 --> 00:03:57,200 the stuff staff and, and being an entrepreneur a lot. 76 00:03:57,200 --> 00:03:59,040 I mean, my first book is really like how to transition from 77 00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:02,160 developer to entrepreneur, because that's the journey I had 78 00:04:02,160 --> 00:04:03,800 just done. And I was basically kind of 79 00:04:03,800 --> 00:04:06,760 trying to take those learnings and, and spit it out. 80 00:04:06,760 --> 00:04:09,920 So that's the short, short version. 81 00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:11,880 But you know, I've been doing this for about 20 years and I 82 00:04:11,880 --> 00:04:16,079 try to only I try to write and say things based on like first 83 00:04:16,079 --> 00:04:19,600 hand experience or second hand experience with companies that 84 00:04:19,600 --> 00:04:25,200 I'm invested in or advising. So I'm invested IN202134B to B 85 00:04:25,200 --> 00:04:27,640 SaaS companies. So I have like a lot of pretty 86 00:04:27,640 --> 00:04:29,440 broad insight and they're mostly bootstrap, right? 87 00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:31,240 These are not most are not venture track. 88 00:04:31,720 --> 00:04:35,200 They are folks who want to build a great million dollar 89 00:04:35,200 --> 00:04:37,520 $5,000,000 AR SaaS company and that's. 90 00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:39,960 Kind of. That's awesome. 91 00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:44,960 I like I, I don't know when I discovered you is probably only 92 00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:48,680 like just a few months ago. I, you know, the SAS playbook 93 00:04:48,680 --> 00:04:52,520 kind of got it hit my radar and I was like, you know what, I'll 94 00:04:52,520 --> 00:04:56,440 give it a try. I read it, loved it, and I think 95 00:04:56,440 --> 00:04:57,640 I immediately reached out to you. 96 00:04:57,640 --> 00:04:59,640 I was like, I need you on my podcast. 97 00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:04,600 And it's nice because I've kind of been like the mindset, like 98 00:05:05,160 --> 00:05:08,480 you don't have to have a Unicorn company. 99 00:05:08,520 --> 00:05:11,240 Like you can make these micro SAS products. 100 00:05:11,240 --> 00:05:15,400 You can make micro products and have multiples of them and have 101 00:05:15,400 --> 00:05:18,800 a good living. And I feel like every software 102 00:05:18,800 --> 00:05:23,520 developer thinks they need that, like Grand Slam, like that 103 00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:26,640 amazing product that everyone is obsessed with. 104 00:05:26,640 --> 00:05:29,800 And, you know, you break the Internet, but you can make a 105 00:05:29,800 --> 00:05:33,840 really good living making useful products for, you know, small 106 00:05:33,840 --> 00:05:37,200 niche, niche groups of people. That's right. 107 00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:39,320 That's right. And whether you find one, I 108 00:05:39,320 --> 00:05:42,120 mean, man, my goal when I was trying to kind of get out of 109 00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:44,720 consulting in the day job was like I need one product doing 110 00:05:44,720 --> 00:05:47,200 about 10 grand a month. That's all I needed. 111 00:05:47,200 --> 00:05:49,240 Like couldn't I just do that? And I tried for that and I 112 00:05:49,240 --> 00:05:53,040 actually got one up to about it was between 3:00 and 5:00 grand 113 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:54,200 any given month. It wasn't SAS. 114 00:05:54,200 --> 00:05:58,360 So it was kind of spiky revenue and I just couldn't push it past 115 00:05:58,360 --> 00:06:00,080 like the market wasn't that big for this. 116 00:06:00,080 --> 00:06:02,400 And I couldn't, I spent a year, nights and weekends trying to 117 00:06:02,400 --> 00:06:05,080 get it to 10K so that I could quit the day job and I couldn't 118 00:06:05,080 --> 00:06:06,760 get it there. And then I realized, wait a 119 00:06:06,760 --> 00:06:08,640 minute, it does between 3:00 and 5:00 grand. 120 00:06:08,640 --> 00:06:12,560 I basically need like maybe two more of these and I can quit the 121 00:06:12,560 --> 00:06:14,360 day job. And that is that's what 122 00:06:14,360 --> 00:06:16,400 happened. So I acquired that first one and 123 00:06:16,400 --> 00:06:18,120 then I built the second one, I think. 124 00:06:18,120 --> 00:06:21,120 And then I, yeah, I, I just cobbled it together over years. 125 00:06:21,120 --> 00:06:25,680 And the, the big thing for me was learning in small doses, 126 00:06:25,760 --> 00:06:27,440 right? Because if you look as a 127 00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:30,800 developer and you look at a successful SAS entrepreneur who, 128 00:06:30,920 --> 00:06:36,120 who's done a 10 million or $100 million SAS, you don't, you 129 00:06:36,160 --> 00:06:38,440 don't, you probably don't have the skills that that person 130 00:06:38,440 --> 00:06:40,600 does. So don't try to do what they've 131 00:06:40,600 --> 00:06:44,640 done. Start small, build something, 132 00:06:44,640 --> 00:06:46,400 launch it. Learn how to market. 133 00:06:46,600 --> 00:06:48,960 Learn how to yeah, you will learn how to learn how to market 134 00:06:48,960 --> 00:06:50,960 because building a product you know isn't going to do it. 135 00:06:50,960 --> 00:06:52,960 I know, I hate that part too. I know. 136 00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:57,640 So did I I hated it too, until I realized, oh, if I actually want 137 00:06:58,200 --> 00:07:01,520 to quit the day job, if I actually want to build a, you 138 00:07:01,520 --> 00:07:02,720 know, a business that supports me. 139 00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:05,120 If I actually, you know, then it became, well, now I want to do 140 00:07:05,120 --> 00:07:07,760 one that does, you know, 30 grand a month. 141 00:07:07,760 --> 00:07:10,040 Now I want to do one that does 100 grand a month like that was, 142 00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:13,760 but I stepped up to that. It took me 11 years from the day 143 00:07:13,760 --> 00:07:17,160 that I had my first kind of revenue with decent revenue 144 00:07:17,880 --> 00:07:20,840 until I had the big exit with DRIP was 11 years. 145 00:07:20,840 --> 00:07:23,280 And could it have been faster Of course, if I'd like gone out and 146 00:07:23,280 --> 00:07:25,480 race funding and tried to do a big Grand Slam like you said. 147 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:27,960 But I learned so much along the way. 148 00:07:28,200 --> 00:07:30,000 And that's I think a better path. 149 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:32,800 And it's a, it's a more common path about that with the 150 00:07:32,800 --> 00:07:35,720 founders that I see across Microcon from Tiny Seed in my 151 00:07:35,760 --> 00:07:37,600 podcast. Yeah, you kinda gotta dig your 152 00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:41,520 heels in and get ready to eat the glass and just do the grind, 153 00:07:41,520 --> 00:07:46,000 right? Yeah, yeah, all the while it, it 154 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:49,280 absolutely will take hard work and take a grind, but there are 155 00:07:49,280 --> 00:07:53,400 people doing it who are ahead of you and list and a lot of them 156 00:07:53,400 --> 00:07:55,600 are giving away information for free. 157 00:07:55,600 --> 00:07:59,560 Like I have a podcast, I have 820, I think I just recorded 821 158 00:07:59,560 --> 00:08:02,040 yesterday. So 52 weeks a year since 2010, 159 00:08:02,600 --> 00:08:04,800 it's all free. Just go, listen, go listen. 160 00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:06,560 The last like 2 years of that, you know what I mean? 161 00:08:06,560 --> 00:08:09,320 And, and then every every couple years I write a book. 162 00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:11,240 I've written 5. And as you said, Seth's 163 00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:16,200 playbook, you know, I think in 23 and that's 10 bucks. 164 00:08:16,640 --> 00:08:18,440 It's 10. It's basically free. 165 00:08:18,440 --> 00:08:20,360 You know, it's 10 bucks on Amazon or you can go to 166 00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:25,080 sethsplaybook.com and that is it's sold 50. 167 00:08:25,080 --> 00:08:27,760 I've still published it. So it's sold like 51,000 copies. 168 00:08:27,760 --> 00:08:30,280 Like it's popular. It shows that it has momentum in 169 00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:33,320 it. There's value in it, but like I 170 00:08:33,320 --> 00:08:35,799 see folks go on Reddit and be like, I built a product. 171 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:39,520 Now how do I market it? Or I built a product, I can't 172 00:08:39,520 --> 00:08:41,240 find customers, I'm going to shut it down. 173 00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:44,640 And it's like, but you realize you can like ask the Internet 174 00:08:44,640 --> 00:08:47,080 for help with this. Like there are people and I'm 175 00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:48,360 not the only one. Obviously there's a bunch of 176 00:08:48,360 --> 00:08:52,000 people who are like kind of giving away thoughts and advice 177 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:56,760 and trying to, I just view it as like my mission in life has 178 00:08:56,800 --> 00:09:01,760 become too, wait, I need to remember it. 179 00:09:01,760 --> 00:09:04,320 It's to multiply the world's population of independent 180 00:09:04,400 --> 00:09:06,840 self-sustaining startups. That's my, that's like my 181 00:09:06,840 --> 00:09:08,960 mantra. And that's what Microsoft does. 182 00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:10,600 That's what tiny C does in a different way. 183 00:09:10,880 --> 00:09:13,120 That's what my books do. That's what my podcast does all 184 00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:16,360 in different, different ways. So that's my advice as a 185 00:09:16,360 --> 00:09:18,480 developer, because I was a two, I was a developer once working a 186 00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:21,920 day job, not enjoying it and being like, how can I, what can 187 00:09:21,920 --> 00:09:24,680 I do to get out of this? And one way of course is to go 188 00:09:24,680 --> 00:09:26,800 raise buckets of money and become a venture backed company 189 00:09:27,600 --> 00:09:30,920 isn't very likely. You know, it's very. 190 00:09:31,640 --> 00:09:33,840 Uncommon. So like most my audience is 191 00:09:33,840 --> 00:09:36,480 obviously technical or wanting to be technical. 192 00:09:36,480 --> 00:09:38,800 Like they're learning how to program, they're interested in 193 00:09:38,800 --> 00:09:41,880 Elixir. And I think it's like very 194 00:09:41,880 --> 00:09:45,640 common for developers to just grind themselves to death and 195 00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:50,320 then burn out. And my goal like at least like 196 00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:53,920 as of lately, I've always had like people doing awesome things 197 00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:56,640 in the Elixir community on as guests, but now I won't. 198 00:09:56,640 --> 00:10:00,320 I've been trying to focus more on people who have built 199 00:10:00,320 --> 00:10:03,640 products and are like successful entrepreneurs on their own 200 00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:07,520 because I think there's there's so much to learn from people 201 00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:12,520 that are technical but have broken out of just the 9:00 to 202 00:10:12,520 --> 00:10:16,240 5:00 like code monkey role, like they're building a product. 203 00:10:16,920 --> 00:10:19,480 Yeah, that was me. I mean, all I did was read 204 00:10:19,480 --> 00:10:21,000 coding books. We would go to the beach. 205 00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:24,920 We lived in LA, my wife and I and I would bring like an 206 00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:28,000 asp.net C# book and read it at the beach. 207 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:30,000 And she's like, come on, man, this is embarrassing. 208 00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:31,280 And it's like, no, this is what I do. 209 00:10:31,280 --> 00:10:33,440 I am a developer. Like that was my identity, you 210 00:10:33,440 --> 00:10:38,640 know, and I and I was a full time plus plus developer For how 211 00:10:38,720 --> 00:10:40,040 long was that? Well, it would have been, I 212 00:10:40,040 --> 00:10:44,200 think it started in 2000, so 08. I was writing code 40 to 60 213 00:10:44,200 --> 00:10:46,040 hours a week, you know, and I loved it. 214 00:10:46,520 --> 00:10:50,320 But I wanted a little more freedom, a little more control 215 00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:52,400 of my life. I wanted location independence. 216 00:10:52,400 --> 00:10:55,680 It wasn't possible to work remotely back then, really, and 217 00:10:55,920 --> 00:10:57,520 not very, you know, not very likely. 218 00:10:57,840 --> 00:11:01,600 So that was that what I saw. And I had to undo a lot of, of 219 00:11:01,640 --> 00:11:06,360 old developer habits, you know, things like wanting everything 220 00:11:06,360 --> 00:11:08,200 to be clear. It's like, oh, there's a, 221 00:11:08,200 --> 00:11:10,760 there's a certain language and syntax and, and it's, there's 222 00:11:10,760 --> 00:11:13,080 probably a generally right way to build this thing. 223 00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:14,760 And even though you and I may have a different opinion, we're 224 00:11:14,760 --> 00:11:17,080 going to get to the end result. We can write a unit test. 225 00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:20,280 Boom, we know it works. OK, so now let's say we're going 226 00:11:20,280 --> 00:11:24,800 to try to market that product. Isn't there the same 1 + 1 = 2 227 00:11:24,880 --> 00:11:26,160 answer? Isn't there? 228 00:11:26,160 --> 00:11:29,360 It's, it's not, it's super muddy and it's, there is no like one 229 00:11:29,360 --> 00:11:31,800 way to do this. And that it, that breaks our 230 00:11:31,800 --> 00:11:34,400 freaking brains, right? Because we want as a, as a left 231 00:11:34,400 --> 00:11:37,120 grade person, like I want to know that there's an answer that 232 00:11:37,120 --> 00:11:39,320 someone just has the path and there's a secret out. 233 00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:41,520 There I just want to grind through the path. 234 00:11:41,600 --> 00:11:45,040 I don't mind the hard work, but I want like the set map, you 235 00:11:45,040 --> 00:11:47,200 know the. Yeah, you want to know that it's 236 00:11:47,200 --> 00:11:48,520 going to work. And I love that you brought up a 237 00:11:48,520 --> 00:11:53,240 map because I often say what even in like the SAS playbook, 238 00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:56,080 it's it's not a map. Anyone who tells you they have a 239 00:11:56,080 --> 00:11:58,880 map to like being an entrepreneur or success as an 240 00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:01,000 entrepreneur, they're they're trying to sell you something. 241 00:12:01,400 --> 00:12:04,360 For me, it's a compass. That's what I view the playbook. 242 00:12:04,360 --> 00:12:06,640 That's what I view my advice as. Like, I can get you. 243 00:12:06,720 --> 00:12:10,200 I know the general direction you should head, but what I don't 244 00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:13,800 know is exactly the topography and how every turn you're going 245 00:12:13,800 --> 00:12:15,360 to have to take because you're going to have to do a bunch of 246 00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:18,320 exploring, fail along the way. That's something we don't like 247 00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:20,760 to do. I don't like to do it as a 248 00:12:20,760 --> 00:12:22,320 developer and as a former athlete. 249 00:12:22,320 --> 00:12:25,600 I don't want to fail. Well, turns out marketing and 250 00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:26,960 being an entrepreneur is just one. 251 00:12:26,960 --> 00:12:30,280 A series of failures all in a row, and you need enough. 252 00:12:30,360 --> 00:12:32,520 You need just need enough wins. You need to be ranked just 253 00:12:32,520 --> 00:12:36,560 enough of the time for it to. Like hindsight, like I've been 254 00:12:36,560 --> 00:12:41,680 building stuff, you know, product ideas, SAS ideas for the 255 00:12:41,680 --> 00:12:46,480 last 10 years and so many really good ideas I've just given up on 256 00:12:46,480 --> 00:12:49,920 because I like refuse to learn how to market it. 257 00:12:50,880 --> 00:12:53,360 And I think like one of the biggest learning curves for me 258 00:12:53,360 --> 00:12:56,360 is like, I hate learning new tools and like complicated 259 00:12:56,360 --> 00:12:58,560 dashboards. And when I see things like 260 00:12:58,560 --> 00:13:04,000 Facebook ads and like any Google console dashboard just sucks. 261 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:06,480 Like even in the developer world, you're relearning that 262 00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:08,000 crap every time you're going in there. 263 00:13:08,440 --> 00:13:12,720 And I think like, that's the barrier to entry that is hard to 264 00:13:12,720 --> 00:13:16,840 get over for a lot of developers because I can add a new feature 265 00:13:17,520 --> 00:13:20,040 so easily. Like especially like with LLMS 266 00:13:20,040 --> 00:13:23,560 today, like I feel like I have a superpower that helps me code 267 00:13:23,560 --> 00:13:27,480 twice as fast and plan better and just implement things so 268 00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:30,840 much quicker. Yeah, and that's you. 269 00:13:30,840 --> 00:13:35,680 What you pointed out is well, or what I might say, is that 270 00:13:36,680 --> 00:13:39,160 something that maybe also bothers you about learning the 271 00:13:39,160 --> 00:13:41,040 Facebook ad interface or the Google ad interface? 272 00:13:41,040 --> 00:13:45,720 Not only is it painful, but it's not certain that it will work 273 00:13:45,720 --> 00:13:47,560 out. There's a good chance you will 274 00:13:47,560 --> 00:13:50,720 spend 5 hours, 10 hours, whatever running and money 275 00:13:50,920 --> 00:13:53,560 running ads, figuring out the thing and have it does not work. 276 00:13:53,560 --> 00:13:55,720 And then it's like, well, but I could have built a feature like 277 00:13:55,720 --> 00:13:58,240 100% certainty. I could have built that feature. 278 00:13:58,240 --> 00:14:00,960 So certainty versus uncertainty is a framework I talk a lot 279 00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:05,320 about as an entrepreneur. And you know, the best 280 00:14:05,320 --> 00:14:09,200 entrepreneurs who, who grow their companies, who you know, 281 00:14:09,240 --> 00:14:13,720 who, who have successful exits and all that, they are drawn 282 00:14:13,720 --> 00:14:17,400 towards the uncertain parts. You learn, it's painful. 283 00:14:17,880 --> 00:14:19,880 You learn to walk in that direction. 284 00:14:19,880 --> 00:14:23,160 You have to because anything that's certain you can and 285 00:14:23,160 --> 00:14:26,640 should automate, delegate, hire help, whatever. 286 00:14:26,640 --> 00:14:31,120 It's the uncertain stuff where the, the, the entrepreneurs, you 287 00:14:31,160 --> 00:14:33,320 know, and, and they can identify it as that's the uncertain 288 00:14:33,320 --> 00:14:34,760 thing. The uncertain thing in building 289 00:14:34,760 --> 00:14:37,040 a product usually is, will anyone care? 290 00:14:37,040 --> 00:14:41,440 Will anyone buy this? Can I reach anyone who actually 291 00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:42,840 needs this tool and will pay for it? 292 00:14:43,040 --> 00:14:45,880 Like that's the uncertain thing. And none of those are solved 293 00:14:45,880 --> 00:14:48,080 with code, unfortunately. It's a bummer. 294 00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:51,080 I wish they were, you know, so there's going to be a resistance 295 00:14:51,560 --> 00:14:53,440 in your mind, right? There's going to be like, oh, 296 00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:55,840 every time you think about doing it, your mind's going to come up 297 00:14:55,840 --> 00:14:59,120 with something else to do instead that's more certain. 298 00:14:59,160 --> 00:15:02,440 And you, I think you need to to learn to kind of fight against 299 00:15:02,440 --> 00:15:03,920 that. Yeah. 300 00:15:03,920 --> 00:15:07,880 And then just like like Medium, like what content are you 301 00:15:07,880 --> 00:15:11,320 creating to put on ads? Like it's just so many layers. 302 00:15:11,320 --> 00:15:14,600 Like you could be doing everything right in setting up 303 00:15:14,600 --> 00:15:17,520 ads right, but you might be running the wrong things. 304 00:15:18,120 --> 00:15:20,760 You might be, yeah. And this is where at least with 305 00:15:20,760 --> 00:15:22,880 our companies, you know, we invest at tiny seed. 306 00:15:22,880 --> 00:15:26,880 We invest between 120 and 220,000 in each company. 307 00:15:26,880 --> 00:15:30,840 So it's it sounds like a lot if you're a consumer, but it's not 308 00:15:30,840 --> 00:15:33,520 a lot in the venture world. Like it's an accelerator round, 309 00:15:33,600 --> 00:15:35,960 right. But once we once they have money 310 00:15:36,080 --> 00:15:39,800 and they do they some, I think let's see 80. 311 00:15:40,040 --> 00:15:43,200 I already guess 85% of companies I'm invested in have a technical 312 00:15:43,200 --> 00:15:47,120 Co founder. So it's very developer heavy and 313 00:15:47,120 --> 00:15:51,880 when they want to run ads or do a new marketing approach, we 314 00:15:51,880 --> 00:15:54,600 often we have mentors or we have like consultants that we 315 00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:56,000 recommend. And it's like if you have 316 00:15:56,000 --> 00:15:59,160 budget, which in time you see they will pay this instead of 317 00:15:59,160 --> 00:16:02,920 you learning Facebook ads, pay this person $2000 a month plus 318 00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:04,960 your ad spend. Then you don't have to worry 319 00:16:04,960 --> 00:16:07,560 about any of that. Still might not work, but you 320 00:16:07,560 --> 00:16:11,840 know, if it, if it doesn't work, it's not because you did the 321 00:16:11,840 --> 00:16:13,760 wrong thing. The person you hired is 322 00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:17,080 competent, you know what I mean? And so now you need money to do 323 00:16:17,080 --> 00:16:18,280 that. And as a bootstrapper, I know 324 00:16:18,280 --> 00:16:20,080 that's hard. I was there, I had to, I 325 00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:22,640 learned, dude, I ran Facebook ads for like 2 years straight 326 00:16:22,640 --> 00:16:24,560 back in 2011, 2012 to grow a product. 327 00:16:24,560 --> 00:16:29,920 I ran AdWords from 06 to, I don't even remember 2010, 2011. 328 00:16:29,920 --> 00:16:33,520 Like I learned all that crap. I mean, I was deep into SEO and 329 00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:38,240 I did it because I had to in order because I couldn't afford 330 00:16:38,240 --> 00:16:40,680 to hire someone, you know, And I did it because I wanted the 331 00:16:40,680 --> 00:16:47,440 freedom of of product income. Yeah, I mean, like I wanted 332 00:16:47,440 --> 00:16:51,240 enough to make it work. It's just definitely growing 333 00:16:51,240 --> 00:16:53,520 pains. Yeah, for sure. 334 00:16:53,720 --> 00:16:56,320 Have you done, I mean, have you talked on the well I have. 335 00:16:56,520 --> 00:16:59,440 So I have questions for you like why do you do this live stream? 336 00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:02,360 Why do you you're giving back to the Elixir community, right? 337 00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:04,920 But like what? What in you decide made you 338 00:17:04,920 --> 00:17:06,800 decide to want to do this? Because that's entrepreneurial 339 00:17:06,800 --> 00:17:11,319 right there, right? Well, honestly, like, sorry, 340 00:17:11,520 --> 00:17:17,359 I've, I am incredibly lazy. I think that's the story of most 341 00:17:17,359 --> 00:17:20,720 developers, right? Like I don't want to keep doing 342 00:17:20,720 --> 00:17:24,280 like repetitive tasks or like things I don't a lot, a lot of 343 00:17:24,280 --> 00:17:27,440 time for. And well, one, I started my 344 00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:31,040 YouTube channel just tutorials teaching Elixir, like kind of 345 00:17:31,040 --> 00:17:35,560 getting started quickly because I built a product and kind of 346 00:17:35,560 --> 00:17:37,720 learned the hard way. Elixir was my first immutable 347 00:17:37,720 --> 00:17:43,600 language, more like functional, you know, functional paradigm, 348 00:17:43,600 --> 00:17:46,840 whatever you want to call it. And I came from like object 349 00:17:46,840 --> 00:17:50,160 oriented background. So I suffered, I, I wrote things 350 00:17:50,160 --> 00:17:54,160 like it was object oriented programming and rewrote a lot. 351 00:17:54,160 --> 00:17:56,600 So it's like a painful thing, but I was building my own 352 00:17:56,600 --> 00:17:59,400 product as I learned and I was like, I'm going to make it. 353 00:17:59,560 --> 00:18:03,560 Like there was at the time it was, I don't remember now 3, 354 00:18:03,600 --> 00:18:08,000 three years ago, there wasn't much out there like as YouTube 355 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:11,560 tutorials for just Elixir. So I just started and it kind of 356 00:18:11,560 --> 00:18:14,520 picked up steam. Like I feel like I'm the most, 357 00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:16,880 I'm the most popular elixir channel. 358 00:18:16,880 --> 00:18:19,000 That's just Elixir, which is pretty cool. 359 00:18:19,880 --> 00:18:25,400 And then Michael from Paraxial, which is an elixir company, he 360 00:18:25,400 --> 00:18:27,240 reached out. He's like, I noticed you're 361 00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:30,440 growing. I'd love to like figure out a 362 00:18:30,440 --> 00:18:35,600 way to sponsor you. And we started talking and he's 363 00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:37,240 like, you know, you should do a podcast. 364 00:18:37,240 --> 00:18:39,800 And I was like, oh, that'd be kind of cool. 365 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:41,720 And he ended up being my first guest. 366 00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:44,840 Like it like from the moment he brought it up, I think we did it 367 00:18:44,840 --> 00:18:50,400 like a week later, like I was just ready to go and I did live 368 00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:54,240 streams because I'm too lazy to do all the post editing. 369 00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:57,560 And now I don't have to. Like I have my cool stream deck 370 00:18:57,600 --> 00:19:00,440 and I can change things. But for the most part, it's just 371 00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:05,560 us talking and that's it. And I also hate staying on top 372 00:19:05,560 --> 00:19:08,360 of the latest and greatest trends. 373 00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:11,960 Like who's doing what now? I just hear about someone doing 374 00:19:11,960 --> 00:19:14,520 something cool and Elixir and I have them come on my podcast and 375 00:19:14,520 --> 00:19:15,920 I ask them all the dumb questions. 376 00:19:15,920 --> 00:19:19,760 And I learned live and it's just enjoyable. 377 00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:24,440 And I think a lot of people get the same out of it as I do 378 00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:26,840 hosting it. And so I just get to meet really 379 00:19:26,840 --> 00:19:30,520 cool people. I network well and it's just 380 00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:33,440 it's become a lot of fun for me to meet people this way. 381 00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:38,320 That's really neat. And you're helping folks and 382 00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:39,920 you're building a name for yourself, right? 383 00:19:40,080 --> 00:19:44,760 A personal brand. So well, so it's interesting. 384 00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:50,640 There are only, there's kind of this myth on indie hacker 385 00:19:50,640 --> 00:19:53,040 Twitter, which is where there's folks. 386 00:19:53,040 --> 00:19:54,800 Indie hacker Twitter, for those who aren't, who aren't familiar 387 00:19:54,800 --> 00:19:59,120 are often folks who move to a, they're developers who move to a 388 00:19:59,120 --> 00:20:02,800 cheap country to live. So their cost of living goes 389 00:20:02,800 --> 00:20:05,200 down. Usually there's to generalize, 390 00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:08,400 they're a bunch of single dudes, but that's not not everybody. 391 00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:10,360 And they're usually in their 20s and 30s when you have this 392 00:20:10,360 --> 00:20:12,560 mobility. So you move to Bali where it's 393 00:20:12,560 --> 00:20:16,000 like you can live for, I don't know. $500,000 a month, like 394 00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:21,520 it's not very much. And then they build small 395 00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:23,400 software products and they launch a bunch of them. 396 00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:25,200 They don't really do marketing. They like kind of build an 397 00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:28,400 audience on Twitter and then they try to just launch a bunch 398 00:20:28,400 --> 00:20:30,160 of things and see what gets traction. 399 00:20:30,200 --> 00:20:34,720 OK, And that approaches, It's it's fine. 400 00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:38,320 I have opinions about it. It's, it's the problem is you 401 00:20:38,320 --> 00:20:40,480 just don't learn anything. I don't love that approach 402 00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:42,960 because as you said earlier, you've launched products and you 403 00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:45,960 haven't seen that could have been successful that you didn't 404 00:20:45,960 --> 00:20:48,000 see through. Most successful products take 405 00:20:48,360 --> 00:20:52,240 months and years of weaving and pivoting and, you know, grinding 406 00:20:52,240 --> 00:20:54,240 and getting outside feedback and iterating and blah, blah, blah. 407 00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:55,960 Just trying to launch something to be right from the first time 408 00:20:55,960 --> 00:20:58,000 is really, really unlikely. You're just trying to get lucky. 409 00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:01,440 It's a little bit of a lottery ticket mentality, but there is a 410 00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:03,840 common misnomer around there of like, oh, build an audience, 411 00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:06,080 build an audience, right? And sell your SAS to it. 412 00:21:06,400 --> 00:21:09,640 And what I've seen again, across these 234 investments I've made 413 00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:14,920 is that like 4% of my successful companies had have any type of 414 00:21:15,040 --> 00:21:17,560 audience, right? Or have built an audience that, 415 00:21:18,320 --> 00:21:20,600 and, and there's a bunch of reasons for that because usually 416 00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:24,480 SEO and ads and, and integrations and partnerships 417 00:21:24,480 --> 00:21:26,760 and affiliates and all that is just a better marketing channel. 418 00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:29,000 OK. But with that said, there are 419 00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:32,680 some niches where audience is actually very useful. 420 00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:38,360 And if you yourself are good on camera and you enjoy it, maybe 421 00:21:38,360 --> 00:21:41,120 it's an unfair advantage that you have that you should lean 422 00:21:41,120 --> 00:21:44,560 into with your products. You know, to think about, you 423 00:21:44,560 --> 00:21:47,920 know, what either with your your current product is like, Well, 424 00:21:47,920 --> 00:21:51,400 do you want to build an audience, start a podcast, start 425 00:21:51,400 --> 00:21:54,080 a YouTube channel in that space, right where the customers would 426 00:21:54,080 --> 00:21:55,160 be? Maybe. 427 00:21:55,160 --> 00:21:57,880 Maybe not based on, you know, based on where the Google 428 00:21:57,880 --> 00:22:00,480 customers are. What's funny is so we were 429 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:05,000 talking before we started, but micro conf does like masterminds 430 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:08,280 for people, right? And I was just, I don't think my 431 00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:11,040 audience knows this, but I am in the current. 432 00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:14,640 There's like a winter session and we were just talking about 433 00:22:14,640 --> 00:22:16,920 that and they were giving their like you just, you should just 434 00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:22,000 start making content in like secure documents and like why 435 00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:25,400 you need like a dead man switch attached to these things like 436 00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:29,560 whether like whether it's like in the prepper space or you 437 00:22:29,560 --> 00:22:33,120 like, you know, security paranoid people like you want to 438 00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:37,080 kind of go into that. So I've been thinking about it. 439 00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:41,120 So maybe, maybe we'll, yeah. And it's not usually advice that 440 00:22:41,120 --> 00:22:43,920 I give people. You'll actually see in SAS 441 00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:46,520 Playbook I talk about be really careful with folks who tell you 442 00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:48,040 to go build an audience to build SAS. 443 00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:51,720 Audiences are great for selling info products, for selling 444 00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:56,800 books, for selling courses, for selling events, for selling 445 00:22:56,800 --> 00:22:59,160 mastermind matching. Like I'm an audience builder, 446 00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:00,720 right? That's what I've done after. 447 00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:04,800 Well, used to be a developer, then I did a bunch of software 448 00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:07,720 and SAS companies and then built an audience. 449 00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:11,760 And it's great because I want to sell books and sell conference 450 00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:14,000 tickets. But for building SAS, it's 451 00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:17,000 almost, I won't say almost never. 452 00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:19,600 It's very, very rarely the right answer or the best marketing 453 00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:22,520 channel. But, and, and most folks, SAS 454 00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:24,720 founders are not great on camera, don't know how to build 455 00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:27,120 an audience well, and it's really, really time consuming 456 00:23:27,120 --> 00:23:28,880 for them. So it's kind of like just spend 457 00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:31,760 that time doing SEO or AdWords, you know, or, or a different 458 00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:33,840 channel. But if it's your own for 459 00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:36,120 advantage, if you're already good at it, if you already enjoy 460 00:23:36,120 --> 00:23:39,680 it and there's even a small amount of traction to be gotten, 461 00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:43,840 be really interesting. I'd be interested to see, you 462 00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:46,200 know, if you tried it for a few give, give yourself three months 463 00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:48,760 of consistent content and see if you get a win. 464 00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:50,480 You and I were talking about small wins earlier. 465 00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:55,160 One of the hard parts about bootstrapping especially is so 466 00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:57,160 funded companies fail when they run out of money. 467 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:00,280 Bootstrap companies fail when the founder runs out of 468 00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:02,240 motivation, right, because you're not. 469 00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:03,920 And that's it. It's a motivation. 470 00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:05,800 We call it the your emotional runway. 471 00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:09,240 You have, you know, there's there's monetary runway in a, in 472 00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:11,680 a, in a company where you're burning down and then there's 473 00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,280 emotional runway of I just, I'm just done with this thing. 474 00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:15,880 And that's usually what happens, right. 475 00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:18,920 So how do you, how do you refill that emotional runway bank? 476 00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:22,160 It's with small wins. You get a win, you get a 477 00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:24,720 customer, you get to 1000 MRR, you get to 2000. 478 00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:26,320 It's like, oh, this is kind of working like it. 479 00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:28,800 It makes you want to keep going. But if you're just flat or pre 480 00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:31,320 revenue or nothing's working for months and months and years and 481 00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:33,360 years, you just run out of desire. 482 00:24:33,360 --> 00:24:35,920 Yeah, that happened with my first product that I was 483 00:24:35,920 --> 00:24:39,320 building when I learned Elixir, which I'm also grateful because 484 00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:40,920 it led to all this stuff, you know? 485 00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:46,280 But I started it was like a fitness marketplace 1 double 486 00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:49,520 sided marketplace, so super difficult. 487 00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:51,360 Don't. Don't do that. 488 00:24:51,360 --> 00:24:55,080 Don't do that guys. I learned this after I already 489 00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,320 was like very invested that it's like the worst thing to do is 490 00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:00,840 to, you know, have the two sided marketplace. 491 00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:03,720 But I learned. But yeah, I started building 492 00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:05,960 this and it was like kind of a place where coaches could 493 00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:10,720 publish workouts and then other, you know, clients could come 494 00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:14,880 browse, browse workouts, buy them and then like kind of be 495 00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:18,440 coached virtually. And it was right around like all 496 00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:22,600 the COVID stuff too. So like, kind of made sense and 497 00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:25,520 I got burned out. I started hating. 498 00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,800 Like, I found myself just on Zoom calls every day with 499 00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:31,600 wannabe fitness influencers. And it really annoyed me. 500 00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,520 And I was like, I really don't like these people. 501 00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:37,480 And I have to pretend I do because I want them on my 502 00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:41,000 platform. And I just like totally burned 503 00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:43,640 me out and I moved on. Yeah. 504 00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:45,880 And that's another, I mean you pointed out a couple things. 505 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,760 Number one, emotional runway and you only have so much that you 506 00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:50,360 can do, you know, without traction. 507 00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:55,600 But the other thing you pointed out is if you are going to be an 508 00:25:55,600 --> 00:25:59,760 entrepreneur and launch, launch a software product, you probably 509 00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:01,240 you might want to like your customers. 510 00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:03,760 You know what I mean? Like it help. 511 00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:08,360 It's not 100% has to, but it really does help like if if you 512 00:26:08,360 --> 00:26:13,600 don't like talking to people in the construction field, if that 513 00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:14,960 business like, and this isn't great. 514 00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:17,000 I come from a construction camp when my dad was an electrician 515 00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:19,160 in 42 years. I worked construction for years 516 00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:23,120 as a kid and then a couple years out of college and you know, 517 00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:26,720 it's fine, but it's not. I don't jibe with most people on 518 00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:30,160 construction sites. I jibe with people like you who 519 00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:32,600 are like out there writing code and building products and in 520 00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:35,000 tech like it's just more of my, my scene, right? 521 00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:38,480 So, and my brother still runs. My brother runs an electrical 522 00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:40,120 contracting firm out in California. 523 00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:43,920 I even if I saw a great window and I have a ton of knowledge 524 00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:46,560 and I have a ton of family knowledge and my name, my last 525 00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:51,160 name is known in California in the like my because my dad did 526 00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:52,440 it for so many years. Everybody knows him. 527 00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,040 I actually have an in and could build software for probably 528 00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:57,840 electrical contractors and actually get some traction 529 00:26:57,840 --> 00:26:59,400 right. I don't want to do that. 530 00:27:00,120 --> 00:27:02,160 I don't want to do that because I just don't want that to I 531 00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,160 don't want to be in that field and there's again, there's 532 00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:06,680 nothing against it. It just doesn't jibe with me and 533 00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:08,520 people call it product founder fit. 534 00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:10,400 Sometimes it. Doesn't hold your interest it. 535 00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,160 Doesn't no. And So what? 536 00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:15,640 So what you know, what were my products? 537 00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:17,440 Well, I had a like a SAS called hit Tail. 538 00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:20,880 It was SEO and it was an SEO tool because I was an SEOI was 539 00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:23,000 doing a bunch of search engine optimization for all my products 540 00:27:23,520 --> 00:27:26,000 and I could talk to SE OS and marketers and I was cool with 541 00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:28,400 it. And then my next one was an 542 00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:31,040 e-mail service provider. So it competed with MailChimp 543 00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:33,760 and later on it had marketing automation. 544 00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:36,840 But that was for really early on and get entrepreneurs because I 545 00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:39,520 love talking to entrepreneurs. And these days, like what, what 546 00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:44,400 are all my all my platforms, you know, YouTube and podcasts, It's 547 00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:47,360 all, it's all entrepreneurs, bootstrap, mostly bootstrap 548 00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:50,120 entrepreneurs. And I really enjoy that crowd. 549 00:27:50,120 --> 00:27:53,560 It just fits who I am. So, you know, you can build a 550 00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:58,080 business and maybe not love the market or not love every 551 00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:01,120 customer or whatever, but it, it certainly helps keep the 552 00:28:01,120 --> 00:28:02,680 motivation. If you're like, man, these it's 553 00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:05,320 really fun. I enjoy these conversations, you 554 00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:06,920 know. Yeah, yeah. 555 00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,800 Once the conversation becomes brutal, it's really hard to stay 556 00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:12,720 motivated because then you're just grinding through phone 557 00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:14,600 calls every day that you don't want to be on. 558 00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:17,520 I'd be fitness influencers. That would be really tough for 559 00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:19,320 me. I would have a real tough time 560 00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:20,160 with that. Yeah, well. 561 00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:23,800 Like and I'm like I'm in like I work out all the time. 562 00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:27,040 I'm like super into fitness. I thought I was super into 563 00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:28,560 fitness. I'm into it. 564 00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:34,160 For me, my mental health, my physical health, my 565 00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:37,040 entertainment, like, you know, mountain biking, rock climbing, 566 00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:40,200 but I'm not into the actual space. 567 00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:43,520 Yeah. And I think that's a important 568 00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:46,080 kind of thing to figure out as well. 569 00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:48,240 It's a good thing to learn, yeah. 570 00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:53,680 And then like, Oh, no, go ahead. I was just going to say this is, 571 00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:57,280 you know, one of the things that I talk about a lot is this 572 00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:00,520 framework called the stair step method, Stair step method of 573 00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:05,560 entrepreneurship and all it all it is, is there's three steps to 574 00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:07,600 it. The first step is just get a 575 00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:10,360 small win. You don't build a full blown 576 00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,040 standalone SAS app because it's so hard to market and build and 577 00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:14,760 maintain. And it takes you 6 months to bid 578 00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:16,760 like 12 months to build, even with AI, whatever. 579 00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:19,520 You start with a small little add on to like the Shopify app 580 00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:24,520 marketplace or HubSpot marketplace, Heroku marketplace, 581 00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:26,080 you know what I mean? And I have a list, we have a 582 00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:30,000 list on Microcom's website of like 75 or 79 of those little 583 00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:32,320 marketplaces. But you can write some code, you 584 00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:34,400 can almost vibe code some of these things because they're 585 00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:36,320 just, they're small. You get in the marketplace, 586 00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:39,520 maybe that thing only makes you $500 a month, maybe it makes you 587 00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:42,360 5000. But you will learn so much from 588 00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,480 pushing that out. And you don't have to learn all 589 00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,360 the marketing because really all you need to do is learn how to 590 00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:51,640 rank in that App Store, you know, in the App Store listing, 591 00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:53,160 that's the only channel you need. 592 00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,000 And So what you'll learn though, is you'll learn copywriting, 593 00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:57,720 you'll learn how to get something in the wild, how to 594 00:29:57,720 --> 00:29:59,720 take criticism, You'll learn how to support it. 595 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,080 Have a production app that people are paying you for is 596 00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:06,840 crazy the first time you do it. And, and the reason I and then 597 00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:10,320 Step 2 is, hey, if that one only made you $1000 a month, maybe 598 00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,080 stack a few of them to get to the point where you can buy out 599 00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:14,880 your time. And then Step 3 is like, all 600 00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:17,600 right, you now have experience, you have some confidence, you 601 00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:19,680 have some skills, you have money coming in. 602 00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:24,360 Now go and build that big idea. You have the big SAS app that 603 00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:28,080 you want to be half a million a year or 505 million or you know, 604 00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:29,960 whatever it is. So that's stair set method. 605 00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:32,720 People can Google it, record videos and everything about it. 606 00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:35,360 So I there's much more detail, but the reason I bring that up 607 00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:39,120 is that it doing that allows you to do a couple things. 608 00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:43,640 One, you don't sync years into a single product. 609 00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:47,360 You sync months into getting it live because it's a smaller 610 00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:50,600 byte, right? So you know, you launch and you, 611 00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:55,040 you try to iterate on it and make it better, but you, you 612 00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:56,680 don't sink so much time into doing it. 613 00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:01,080 But the second thing you know to the point you just made is you 614 00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,560 are going to find out pretty quickly if you enjoy it or not. 615 00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:05,800 And it sounds like you built a fit. 616 00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:08,240 It sounds like you went and built a fitness platform, 2 617 00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:10,760 sided marketplace. And I bet you spent quite a bit 618 00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:14,040 of time doing it. And I bet it was amazing. 619 00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:16,960 I bet it was gorgeous. I bet the code, I bet the code 620 00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:19,360 should have its own IMDb page. It's so amazing. 621 00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:22,480 But but then you found out very quickly. 622 00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:24,560 Oh shit, I don't want to do this. 623 00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:26,800 And and it would have been nice to have found that out earlier, 624 00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:29,040 right, and not spend all the time and that's what the again, 625 00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:31,120 the stair step allows you to get to that point quicker. 626 00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:33,920 If you realize, like, boy, I really don't enjoy working with 627 00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:35,920 e-commerce owners. Well, great, you launched A 628 00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:38,240 Shopify app. It wasn't fun. 629 00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:40,760 Maybe don't do that again. Maybe launch a Roku app because 630 00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:42,880 you like working with the, you know, developers as customers, 631 00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:45,200 whatever. So that's a long winded way of 632 00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:47,920 saying there are, there are frameworks out there that can 633 00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:51,440 help you kind of take one step in front of the other and not 634 00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:54,600 make these huge bats with years of your life. 635 00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:59,600 I've had friends who spend 6 years nights and weekends 636 00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:01,040 building. They they build, build, build 637 00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:02,920 and they try to market it and they just hang on and it's like 638 00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:05,920 6 years of their life trying to get a product off the ground. 639 00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:08,840 That's just not good. That sucks. 640 00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:10,920 It's super demotivating and it's a waste of time. 641 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:13,080 It's a waste of your time, opportunity costs for you. 642 00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:17,280 Yeah, that's what so perfect form was my marketplace and I 643 00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:22,240 think I spent at six to eight months building it before 644 00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:23,520 launching it. Too. 645 00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:25,640 Bad. It was horrible, but it was like 646 00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:29,040 all of my time, like I quit my job and was living off savings 647 00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:30,480 and. Oh, that is a lot then. 648 00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:31,880 Oh, OK. I just, I thought you were 649 00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:33,680 saying nights and weekends. No, that's a big bet. 650 00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:35,000 You made a big bet. Yeah. 651 00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:38,480 Yeah. And then I got burned out and it 652 00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,480 got hard, right? Because like, I would get little 653 00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:44,480 sales here and then I would like calculate it and be like, I need 654 00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:49,280 like 50,000 users to make this make sense. 655 00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:52,560 And it was like I was hitting numbers that weren't realistic 656 00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:56,040 to me, wrapping my head around it at the current rate of 657 00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,360 things, you know? Yeah, yeah. 658 00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:00,800 And those, I mean, I think you broke two of my. 659 00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:03,200 I have 8 rules. I broke all yours. 660 00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:05,360 Never do I think you broke at least two of them. 661 00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:08,880 Number one, don't bootstrap A2 sided marketplace unless you 662 00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,440 already have one side of it. And then the other one is don't 663 00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:14,800 take a percentage of of GMV is what it's called. 664 00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:16,880 But don't take a percentage of the revenue that's coming 665 00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,600 through unless you're taking a subscription as well. 666 00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:25,120 Because to your .5 percent, 10% of of what other people are 667 00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:27,800 charging you just you need too much scale and you're very 668 00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:30,400 unlikely to get there. Yeah, yeah. 669 00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,440 Oh, when I first was going through your book, I was like, 670 00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:38,400 Rob wrote this for me because I'm breaking all of these. 671 00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:38,960 Rules. Oops. 672 00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:43,960 Yeah, Well, it's because I broke a few of them or like I made a 673 00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:46,040 few of those mistakes. These are just learned mistakes 674 00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:49,280 that I've seen from doing this for 20 years and literally 675 00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:51,360 talking to thousands of entrepreneurs, you know, and 676 00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:53,200 I've been several of those on my own. 677 00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:58,440 It's really nice to kind of have your mistakes reinforced. 678 00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:00,080 I'm not the only one that does it. 679 00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,120 I think it's very common for tech technical founders to do 680 00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:06,200 the same thing. Big time, because we all have 681 00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:10,080 the same proclivities of we all want to build a product that's 682 00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:13,719 so great it sells itself all of us if you build and everyone. 683 00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:17,360 Come right? All of that and I did do and 684 00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:20,600 here's the thing that the worst part is that every once in a 685 00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,800 while you'll hear a story of someone who did that. 686 00:34:24,199 --> 00:34:25,800 And so then you're like, we'll see, it's possible. 687 00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:29,639 So that could be me. The problem is sometimes those 688 00:34:29,639 --> 00:34:32,400 people are just revising history and they're actually really good 689 00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:35,199 marketers that but they don't want to admit it where they did 690 00:34:35,199 --> 00:34:37,960 a ton of marketing and selling, but they'll want to downplay 691 00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:40,440 that for some reason. So #1 sometimes it's not even 692 00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:43,239 real. But number 2, when it is real, 693 00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,280 because there have been a few. I, I had a guy who had an open 694 00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:48,000 source project that got, well, Sidekick. 695 00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,120 You would, you would know what this is Mike Perham, founder of 696 00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:54,920 Sidekick, which is rails or it's a queuing. 697 00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,240 It's like a queuing mechanism. Anyways, he he started an open 698 00:34:57,240 --> 00:35:01,480 source source project and now he makes few million a. 699 00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:04,040 Year. Oh yeah, just one person with 700 00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:06,960 AQ. With AQ side KIQ, yeah. 701 00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:09,120 And so people see that and they're like, well, I want to do 702 00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:11,040 that. And it's like, dude, there are 703 00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:14,400 like 5 businesses in the world like that. 704 00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:18,120 Like I can count on one hand the number of companies like that. 705 00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:20,520 So I get it, it does happen. But it is a lottery ticket 706 00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:24,720 mentality. Don't chase outliers. 707 00:35:24,720 --> 00:35:27,440 If you hit it, if you get lucky, great. 708 00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:29,680 But do not count on luck. You want hard work. 709 00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:31,840 Luck and skill are the three components of of success. 710 00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,720 You want to build your skills up, not just technical, but 711 00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:38,600 marketing, sales, learning how to, you know, distribute your 712 00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:42,120 product and then hard work, which is what you have. 713 00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,560 And I have, I'm like a hard worker, but you have to put in 714 00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:47,120 hard work. You need to build skills up. 715 00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:50,240 Let luck take care of what luck's going to take care of. 716 00:35:50,240 --> 00:35:52,400 But I do not like approaches that a lot of luck. 717 00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:59,560 Yeah, if I've, I feel like I, I'm, I'm 40 now, about to be 41 718 00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:03,360 and I feel like all throughout my 30s it was like the luck 719 00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:05,960 mentality, right? Even like when I would join new 720 00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:10,040 startups, 80 hour week startups, you know, you're just grinding 721 00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:12,520 yourself into the ground, but you're like, this is going to be 722 00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:14,760 the Unicorn. This is my this is my ticket. 723 00:36:15,400 --> 00:36:18,000 And I have options. Yeah, I have stock options, 724 00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:20,840 right? Yeah, that's, that's the, you 725 00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,280 know, the the issue is from the outside because I was in the 726 00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,080 same mentality. Dude, I used to read it was like 727 00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:29,120 Ink Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Red Herring Business, 728 00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:31,200 2 point O These were all like 20 years ago. 729 00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:35,520 People still printed paper magazines and all these stories. 730 00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:38,040 I do too. I used to they would show up. 731 00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:39,360 I'm like, this is fun. I get to read. 732 00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:42,400 A friend of mine calls them entre porn, like entre 733 00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,520 pornography because they really are. 734 00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,680 They're you read them. And now I know a bunch of the 735 00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,360 stories, like friends of mine have been in those magazines. 736 00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:52,960 And when I look, I'm like, that's not what happened. 737 00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:55,560 That's not that's not action. And I don't think anyone's, 738 00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:57,440 well, maybe some people are intentionally trying. 739 00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:00,720 They're trying to get clicks. They're trying to get, they're 740 00:37:00,720 --> 00:37:03,120 trying to tell a story that's maybe more compelling than it 741 00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:07,040 actually is because a lot of the stories of success are a little 742 00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:08,920 boring. Yeah, it's grind. 743 00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:11,560 It's ground. For just grinders for 10 years, 744 00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:13,360 great. That's not interesting. 745 00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:17,080 No one wants to hear that. No, I I know dozens of founders 746 00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:19,160 who sold for eight or nine figures, right. 747 00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,960 So 10 million to low 100 millions and there and I 748 00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:26,360 interview them on my podcast now and again and the stories are 749 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:29,600 interesting to me and probably interesting to you as someone 750 00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:33,440 who wants to do it, but they are not generally that interesting. 751 00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,200 It really is a lot of like I put in a bunch of hard work. 752 00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:38,440 Oh my gosh, I did a bunch of stuff I didn't want to do, man. 753 00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:40,840 We had to develop these skills and we got a little lucky here 754 00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:43,480 and there, but like, we just hammered it, you know, and. 755 00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,720 I just think the stories are so good for setting your 756 00:37:46,720 --> 00:37:51,880 expectations and you like you, you, you know what other people 757 00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:57,560 went through and it's not just, you know, the facade that 758 00:37:57,720 --> 00:38:00,240 everyone sees. Totally, totally. 759 00:38:00,240 --> 00:38:02,320 The real story is not the tech crunch headline, right? 760 00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:04,720 The tech crunch and the, you know, the tech crunch headline 761 00:38:04,720 --> 00:38:07,520 or and I'm not picking on tech crunch, just any journalistic 762 00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:08,400 thing that's. Trying to. 763 00:38:09,240 --> 00:38:12,000 You know what I mean? It's like they do they tell the 764 00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:14,880 big story that makes, you know, you and me be like, oh, well, I 765 00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:16,800 can do I want to do that. I just want to build a great 766 00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:19,680 product or whatever. And it's like usually the the 767 00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,760 story is not true. I have a question for you as 768 00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:26,640 someone who you know, you said you're I don't know you struggle 769 00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:29,160 to get motivated to to do marketing right. 770 00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,320 Have you considered teaming up? Finding a Co founder? 771 00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:39,960 I have and I've actually talked to one person who I'd really 772 00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:45,080 love, but I'm definitely like taking it slowly with that 773 00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:48,320 because partnering it's a big deal, right? 774 00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:53,120 But I do think it would be very beneficial to partner with 775 00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:55,720 someone that actually enjoys doing those things. 776 00:38:56,280 --> 00:39:00,920 Yeah, I it can go both. I'll just say I've seen it done 777 00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:04,240 both ways where there is a a single founder who is a 778 00:39:04,240 --> 00:39:08,200 developer who learns how to market and sell 100%. 779 00:39:08,240 --> 00:39:10,800 Ruben Gomez is the founder of Steinwell, which is like a 780 00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:13,160 DocuSign competitor. He is exactly that. 781 00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:16,760 Ron Galperin had an incredible exit the headline. 782 00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:19,480 He's a Tiny C founder. He built gym desk, which is kind 783 00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,040 of like if you were to run a gym or martial arts Dojo. 784 00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:24,680 It's the software that runs everything all your. 785 00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:26,920 Subscription. Yeah, Gym desk. 786 00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:30,000 So he's we invested in him. I don't even remember five years 787 00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:31,640 ago. I've interviewed him on my 788 00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:33,200 podcast. He had the headline number is 789 00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:36,960 $32.5 million exit. It was a partial sell. 790 00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:39,320 He kept shares. So the valuation was actually 791 00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,560 higher than that. But this dude worked his butt 792 00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:43,480 off and he's a developer who learned how to market. 793 00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:45,280 So it's I did the same thing, right? 794 00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:50,920 It's totally possible. But a lot of the successful 795 00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:55,440 companies that we fund have a really solid technical basically 796 00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:59,320 a technical Co founder right ACTO and and the dream team is 797 00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,880 then a really solid. Find a subject matter expert in 798 00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:06,720 the in the niche or marketing sales, you know, and that's not 799 00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:08,600 easy. It's not super easy to find, but 800 00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,280 it is possible. And although you're going to 801 00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:15,520 probably give away half your company to someone, if if 802 00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:18,160 they're worth it, then they're worth, you know what I mean? 803 00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:19,520 Like I agree. They're worth it. 804 00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:21,160 If they're worth it, they're worth it. 805 00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:23,840 But if they're not, I hope you have a really good vesting 806 00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:25,520 schedule. That's what you do. 807 00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:26,720 Yeah. You have a one year Cliff for 808 00:40:26,720 --> 00:40:28,120 sure, right. You have four years with a one 809 00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:31,920 year Cliff like standard and you the thing you're looking for if 810 00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:35,440 you're looking for a a marketing Co founder or sales Co founder 811 00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:43,560 is that they have done that. They've done what that they have 812 00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,960 a track record of like successfully marketing things 813 00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:50,000 and that they've successful, frankly, successfully marketed 814 00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:51,480 SAS. If you're going to build a SAS 815 00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:54,360 because it's different. We've seen folks coming from who 816 00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,080 are like e-commerce marketers. So they used to marketing to 817 00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:01,000 consumers, you know, shopping by stores and such and try to 818 00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,080 switch to SAS. And it's not that they can't get 819 00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:04,680 it, it's just that it's a different game. 820 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:06,520 So you want to vet as much as possible. 821 00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:08,560 If they don't have a proven, some type of proven track 822 00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,840 record, they don't ask the company, you know, because you 823 00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:15,640 have a proven track record, you do of building software that 824 00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:19,240 goes into production that has millions of users or whatever, 825 00:41:19,240 --> 00:41:21,680 you know what I mean? Like you have that so and you're 826 00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:23,680 going to get half the company. So if someone else is going to 827 00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:27,120 come on the other side, I'm not saying they can't be learning 828 00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:30,960 some of the things, but they should be bringing a lot to the 829 00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:32,880 table. They have to have gone through a 830 00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:37,760 gauntlet in some way, right? Yeah, because being, you know, 831 00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:41,680 being ambitious and wanting to learn things is great, but then 832 00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:43,720 it's not AI. Don't think it's an even trade. 833 00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,680 Yeah. Where do you think you started 834 00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:50,600 learning? Like when you've really feel 835 00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:52,360 like it clicked? Was it when you were building 836 00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:54,960 Drip or before then? When you were like, I know how 837 00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,160 to market, I know how to make money, I know how to do this all 838 00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:01,080 by myself? That's a good, that's such a 839 00:42:01,080 --> 00:42:03,680 good thought experiment. So what I really remember was 840 00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:08,240 learning, excuse me, you know, there are only, there are 841 00:42:08,240 --> 00:42:13,440 discreet marketing approaches and there are like 20 B2B 842 00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:14,960 marketing approaches. If you're marketing to other 843 00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:16,480 business, there's only 20 of them. 844 00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:22,080 And it's things like SEO, pay per click ads, right? 845 00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:24,520 So that's met ads and Google ads. 846 00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:26,680 There are partnerships and integrations. 847 00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:31,120 There are, there's cold outbound, like outreach on DMS 848 00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:33,400 and LinkedIn and e-mail and phone calls, right? 849 00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:38,520 And then I, I forgot the fifth one is, but those are just 850 00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:40,200 examples of people understand what I'm saying. 851 00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,240 I list them all in this Espery book because I just want as a 852 00:42:43,240 --> 00:42:44,600 developer, we say, Oh, we got to market. 853 00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:46,280 Well, what does that mean? I don't know. 854 00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,240 We market, we tell people about it and it's like, no, there are 855 00:42:49,240 --> 00:42:50,880 specific ways that you can do this. 856 00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:56,520 I mean, product hunt launch and a launch maybe through app sumo 857 00:42:56,520 --> 00:43:01,600 or launching it on these DLA day sites like that alone is a 858 00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:03,400 marketing approach. Now, those are not the best, 859 00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:05,640 right? Those are often one time and 860 00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:07,600 blah, blah, blah, but these are all things you can do. 861 00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:13,400 So what I, what I learned and, and to answer your question is 862 00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:18,440 the very first thing that I learned was a, oh, marketing is 863 00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:21,080 these discreet things that you're not going to be an expert 864 00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:23,120 in all of them. There is no marketer that knows 865 00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:25,800 all twenty of those. Usually you specialize in a few 866 00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:29,320 of like 1-2 or three of them. So I started learning SEO. 867 00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:31,960 That's the one that I learned because it was helping. 868 00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:35,160 I had a product called.net invoice and it was invoicing 869 00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:36,760 software. It was web-based. 870 00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:38,240 You downloaded it to your own server. 871 00:43:38,240 --> 00:43:40,520 So it wasn't SAS right. It was pre SAS and it was 872 00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:42,560 writtenin.net. It was written in VB and then I 873 00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:46,480 translated it to C# and you say, well, why would why would anyone 874 00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:48,040 want that? Why would anyone care that it's 875 00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:52,120 in.net And it was a if you had a Windows Server and wanted to run 876 00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,040 your own invoicing software and wanted to own all your own data 877 00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:57,800 was a big thing like if you. Want to mindset back in like the 878 00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:01,360 early 2000s and 90s, everyone wanted to own their software 879 00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:04,920 they hated updates and paying for upgrades and. 880 00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,280 Yep, subscript, they didn't want subscriptions. 881 00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:10,800 And so this was a one time fee. It was 300 bucks when I acquired 882 00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:12,840 it, it was 100 bucks. I mean, raised tripled the price 883 00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:15,280 and and tripled the monthly revenue by doing that. 884 00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:19,040 But so, and, and then there were other people, they were like 885 00:44:19,240 --> 00:44:22,480 there were consultants who wanted to buy it and repurpose 886 00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:25,320 the code for clients, right? So they wanted to like spend 300 887 00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,360 bucks to kind of get this code base and then you just tweak it 888 00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:30,280 and you, you know, give it to a client, right. 889 00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:32,800 So there were a bunch of use cases, but it wasn't a huge 890 00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:34,040 market. It was small. 891 00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:36,040 Like it was 3 grand to 5 grand a month. 892 00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:37,680 That's all I ever made from that product. 893 00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:41,920 But I learned it was most of that was through SEO and it was 894 00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:44,640 just ranking for invoicing software, Windows Server, 895 00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:47,920 invoicingsoftwareasp.net, invoicingsoft-ware.net invoicing 896 00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:49,600 software, you know what I mean? It was just finding all the 897 00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,880 terms and writing articles and whatever, optimizing, doing 898 00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:54,760 which you did back in 05/06 to do that. 899 00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:57,640 Then I was like, well, if that's working, should I run AdWords as 900 00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:00,440 well? And so I ran AdWords and then I 901 00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:02,400 learned that I had two. It's like a bat. 902 00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:05,480 You have the, what is the, what is the bat belt called? 903 00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:10,520 You know, he has the Batman who has the, it's like a tool belt. 904 00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:12,080 It's like a tool belt with slots. 905 00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:13,280 And he's like, I had the batter rang. 906 00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,240 I right. I had, I had first I had zero 907 00:45:16,240 --> 00:45:18,480 slots on that. And then I suddenly SEO was when 908 00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:20,680 I could slide in and then AdWords was the next one. 909 00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:24,480 Then I did display ads next and messed around with those and 910 00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:26,760 then I did partnership. So I had like 4 things that I 911 00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:28,760 knew how to do that kind of took me through. 912 00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:32,920 I didn't think that I, I wasn't confident in my marketing 913 00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:36,320 ability until hit tail, which was probably 2011, 2012. 914 00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:38,960 And that was where I was doing AdWords. 915 00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:40,800 It wasn't working. And I said I'm going to try a 916 00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:45,000 brand new one. Facebook ads and I spent like 2 917 00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:47,400 years running Facebook ads and that grew that business from 918 00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:50,120 $1500 a month up to 30,000 a month. 919 00:45:50,200 --> 00:45:52,440 And I, it was just me. Like that was all, it was like 920 00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:54,560 90% profit margin. You know, it was me and a couple 921 00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:59,040 contractors and that's when I was like, oh, I'm pretty good at 922 00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:00,320 this. Like I'm a marketer. 923 00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:03,080 And it wasn't just, oh, I can market anything to anybody. 924 00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:06,160 I didn't think that. But what I knew was that I could 925 00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:10,000 figure out a new marketing approach well enough to grow 926 00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:11,920 something. That was the confidence we 927 00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:14,160 started having at that point. And then I got kicked in the 928 00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:16,240 teeth when I launched Drip. And then I was like, I'm a good 929 00:46:16,240 --> 00:46:18,160 marketer. And it was really competitive 930 00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:20,040 because there were like 500 different e-mail service 931 00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:23,120 providers and we were 1. And I was, it was brutal. 932 00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:25,520 And I really got my ass handed to me on that one. 933 00:46:25,680 --> 00:46:27,920 And and then figured it out. No, I had like, you know, there 934 00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:30,480 was like 10. Did you purposely enter a 935 00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:34,000 saturated market like because you saw a problem you wanted to 936 00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:38,160 fix or what was that? Oh, it's a good question. 937 00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:41,840 I kind yes and no. So I didn't originally and then 938 00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,440 eventually realized once we launched, oh, there's 939 00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:46,880 opportunity here and I don't care how crowded it is. 940 00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:50,400 I had a unique opinion. I was very opinionated about the 941 00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,880 vision of Drip and how it would fit into a gap in the market 942 00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:57,320 that wasn't being served. But I didn't know that until we 943 00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,200 launched. This is such a perfect example 944 00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:01,920 of what I was saying earlier of like if you give up on things 945 00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:05,960 too early, then that you you don't you never see that gap, 946 00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:07,800 right? You just kind of float you put 947 00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:09,160 it out. Oh, it wasn't successful great. 948 00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:12,720 And then you give up on it because drip originally all it 949 00:47:12,720 --> 00:47:17,240 was was a little it was a piece of JavaScript you added to your 950 00:47:17,240 --> 00:47:19,200 website. All right, so you have a blog, 951 00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:22,080 for example, and you want just a little e-mail capture widget, 952 00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:23,840 right? Like a pop up toaster pop up. 953 00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,640 This was 2012. There was no way to do that 954 00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:30,440 other than open source library. You had to hand code it to do 955 00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:31,680 that. Now there's a bunch of ways to 956 00:47:31,680 --> 00:47:34,080 do it. Everybody write message and sumo 957 00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:36,240 me and all these, right? It was like 20 things to do 958 00:47:36,240 --> 00:47:38,120 this. But there were drip was, as far 959 00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:40,120 as I know, like the first one that was selling, you know, 960 00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:44,200 selling that functionality. All it was was the toaster pop 961 00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:46,920 up and then you could send a sequence of emails to someone. 962 00:47:47,240 --> 00:47:49,240 That was it. There were no broadcast emails. 963 00:47:49,240 --> 00:47:50,880 There was no embedded form there. 964 00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:52,200 It wasn't an e-mail service provider. 965 00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:55,520 It was just a simple utility. So we launched it because we 966 00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:57,280 needed it. I needed it on hit tail, right? 967 00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:00,600 So I hired a developer, Derek Reimer, who's actually the 968 00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:04,080 founder of Savvy Cal, which is built in Elixir, because I was 969 00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:05,920 going to bring. That one up, I didn't realize 970 00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:09,160 the connection there. Yeah, So I hired him as a 971 00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:14,680 contractor to build it in Rails and he he built the widget, we 972 00:48:14,680 --> 00:48:18,040 launched it. I got it up with my audience up 973 00:48:18,040 --> 00:48:21,560 to like 8 KA month where I was like, oh, that's OK, That's, 974 00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:24,960 that's good, that's not bad. And freaking plateaued, 975 00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:28,240 plateaued for like 9 months. A churn was high. 976 00:48:28,240 --> 00:48:31,240 Nobody wanted to use it. And people start friends of mine 977 00:48:31,240 --> 00:48:33,240 and founders would use it and be like, you know, what'd be really 978 00:48:33,240 --> 00:48:37,440 cool is if you added these automation features like you'll 979 00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:39,840 see in these expensive platforms, there are platforms 980 00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:43,040 charging like $1000 a month, $500 a month to have e-mail 981 00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:45,760 automation of tagging. And you know, I won't go into 982 00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:49,680 all e-mail automation, but no inexpensive platforms were doing 983 00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:52,240 that. And so I was like, well, maybe 984 00:48:52,240 --> 00:48:54,760 we should do that. And I knew it was crowded and I 985 00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:56,840 resisted doing it for many, many months. 986 00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:59,080 And eventually I was like, I think this could be big. 987 00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,600 So that's when Derek came on full time. 988 00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:04,920 And then like it within a year, he was a retroactive Co founder 989 00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:06,120 because he'd written all the code. 990 00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,880 He was starting as a contractor, became W2 at a certain point. 991 00:49:08,880 --> 00:49:10,860 And then eventually I was like, dude, do you want the title Co 992 00:49:10,860 --> 00:49:13,280 founder and want some equity? And he's like, yeah, so he and 993 00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:15,640 I, you know, effectively are Co founders of DRIP. 994 00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:21,400 And that once we made that shot of building automations in and 995 00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:24,080 going after the crowded market where people were throwing money 996 00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:26,760 around, that's when it took off and it really started growing. 997 00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:29,720 That's awesome. Those are, see, those are the 998 00:49:29,720 --> 00:49:31,400 cool stories I want to hear, you know? 999 00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:35,480 It was awful, dude. I tell you, oh, go. 1000 00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:38,160 If people are listening to this and you want to hear the how 1001 00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:43,120 painful that was, go to start up storiespodcast.com and listen to 1002 00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,400 It's a 90 minute audio documentary I made. 1003 00:49:45,600 --> 00:49:49,360 Derek and I would chat via Skype back then because there wasn't a 1004 00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:52,600 Zoom. We chatted via Skype once a week 1005 00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:56,920 for nine months or a year, and then I, and so I had like 10 1006 00:49:56,920 --> 00:50:00,240 hours of audio of just me agonizing, both of us agonizing 1007 00:50:00,240 --> 00:50:03,120 like this is not working. What are we even building? 1008 00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:05,160 I don't, is this even going to work? 1009 00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:06,720 Like you can just hear it and I listen back. 1010 00:50:06,720 --> 00:50:08,640 It like gives me PTSD. It's awful. 1011 00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:13,000 But and I and I smash that down into 90 minutes and you can 1012 00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:15,440 listen to it there. And it's a cool little artifact 1013 00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:17,160 of the, to me, that's the real story. 1014 00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:18,240 That's not the TechCrunch headline. 1015 00:50:18,240 --> 00:50:20,560 It's the real story of what it actually took us. 1016 00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:23,280 It was super muddy. I'll have to check it out for 1017 00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:24,120 sure. It's fun. 1018 00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:28,520 It's fun. I'm curious with you were both 1019 00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:30,760 kind of technical founders then with Drew? 1020 00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,720 Yes. However, I did myself a favor 1021 00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:39,040 and I said build it in a language that I don't know. 1022 00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,000 Because what I don't want to do, what I kept doing with hip Tail 1023 00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:45,880 was I would hire developers to make changes. 1024 00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:48,640 And sometimes I'm just like, fuck, I'm just going to do this 1025 00:50:48,640 --> 00:50:50,480 myself. And I just go in and do it 1026 00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:51,560 because it's easier for me to do it. 1027 00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:53,720 I didn't want to do. And so I would do that instead 1028 00:50:53,720 --> 00:50:56,160 of market. I would do that instead of sell. 1029 00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,880 And So what I told Derek, like I said, build it in a language 1030 00:50:59,880 --> 00:51:01,440 that I don't know. And I didn't know Ruby. 1031 00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:04,000 So he built it. And he had built several things 1032 00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:07,360 in Rails by then. So that was so, yes, I was a 1033 00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:08,760 technical founder. I mean, he and I would like 1034 00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:12,280 architect and talk and he would show me the DVD database 1035 00:51:12,280 --> 00:51:14,840 diagrams and we'd like, how flexible is it going to be? 1036 00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:16,560 You know what I mean? So I could do that from a high 1037 00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:19,160 level, but like, I don't know, other than I could read Rails, 1038 00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:19,880 right? Because it's easy. 1039 00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:23,200 I'm sorry, read Ruby. But yeah, no, I didn't write a 1040 00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:25,480 line of code on that. So yes, we were technical 1041 00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:28,960 founders, but it was, I forced myself not to be on that one and 1042 00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:30,920 it was OK. It was a good choice for me. 1043 00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:33,840 It was tough because I really identified as a developer and 1044 00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:36,880 really wanted to be continue to do it because it makes me feel 1045 00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:38,480 great to write code and how to do stuff. 1046 00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:39,120 It's so. Fun. 1047 00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:43,480 It's cool to build stuff with so fun lines of code, you know? 1048 00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:46,000 I meant to see a render on your screen like. 1049 00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:48,920 It's pretty amazing. But I was trying to hack. 1050 00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:51,120 I was trying to hack it. So I was like I want to build a 1051 00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:53,880 multi $1,000,000 company and I just don't think I should. 1052 00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:55,440 We shouldn't have two founders writing code. 1053 00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:58,560 It just. I think at some point it'll be 1054 00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:02,160 hard, but I'm OK with transitioning out of the role of 1055 00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:07,520 developer and I'm not there yet. But one thing I took from your 1056 00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:12,120 book was like hire customer service and then hire for the 1057 00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:14,560 skills you're already good at. So like you replace yourself, 1058 00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:17,160 right? Yep, Yep. 1059 00:52:17,240 --> 00:52:19,800 And, and you, and you replace the areas of certainty in the 1060 00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:21,400 business. As I said, look, customer 1061 00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:24,480 support is a certainty. Like you know, you're going to 1062 00:52:24,480 --> 00:52:26,960 get emails and live chats, maybe if you have it and you're going 1063 00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:29,040 to respond to those. And you generally know like you 1064 00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:31,040 have a knowledge base and you generally know how to do that. 1065 00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:34,080 And so hiring for that is not actually that hard, right? 1066 00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:37,840 Versus hiring someone to, it's like, I don't have any marketing 1067 00:52:37,840 --> 00:52:41,600 channels that work. Hiring someone to like find 1068 00:52:41,600 --> 00:52:44,360 marketing channels that work for your company zero to 1, 1069 00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:47,760 virtually impossible because it's so uncertain. 1070 00:52:48,040 --> 00:52:50,360 It's just you have to try a bunch of stuff and grind. 1071 00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:53,760 It's founder level grinding. And so that that's those are 1072 00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:56,680 examples I have to use. It's like the hardest part and 1073 00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:00,080 it's the one thing that as a founder you have to learn how to 1074 00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:02,400 do because you have to understand your product and your 1075 00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:04,560 product fit. Yes, that's right. 1076 00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:06,920 There are really there are 4 core. 1077 00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:10,440 I call these the four core. No, the core 4 SAS skills. 1078 00:53:10,640 --> 00:53:12,480 It's not in the book because I just came up with this like 2 1079 00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:13,760 months ago. So it's on the podcast. 1080 00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:16,280 It's like new stuff. It's it's stuff I'll put in my 1081 00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:19,000 in my next book. But because I keep getting these 1082 00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:26,040 questions on the podcast of I'm a developer and I I don't want 1083 00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:28,880 to learn to market. Can I hire someone to do that 1084 00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:31,020 for me, right? Or do I need to find a Co 1085 00:53:31,020 --> 00:53:32,200 founder? How do I find, you know, a 1086 00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:34,160 marketing Co founder? And then vice versa, I'll get us 1087 00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:37,480 someone who is going to sales and marketing who's like how do 1088 00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:43,200 I find a developer Co founder? And what I say is you and often 1089 00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:46,320 say, do I need a Co founder? And here's my framework for 1090 00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:50,600 this. There are 4 core SAS skills that 1091 00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:53,200 I think you need on the founding team of a SAS. 1092 00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:58,800 It's marketing or sales, those two different things, right? 1093 00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:02,520 Marketing is I'm more of a marketer where it's like it's 1094 00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:06,240 getting people to come inbound via SEO and AdWords. 1095 00:54:06,240 --> 00:54:09,720 It's spreading the word in a in A1 to many way. 1096 00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:12,400 All right, that's marketing sales is I'm going to do sales 1097 00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:14,040 calls. I'm going to get on the zoom 1098 00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:15,240 with you and I'm going to close it. 1099 00:54:15,240 --> 00:54:16,640 And usually the deals are bigger. 1100 00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:18,880 You need a higher lifetime value, you need a higher annual 1101 00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:19,800 contract value, blah, blah, blah. 1102 00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:23,600 So, but so the four are sales or marketing depending on what 1103 00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:25,520 you're doing. Like DRIP is a marketing driven 1104 00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:28,440 engine. How people do sales driven sales 1105 00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,320 are marketing product and engineering. 1106 00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:35,560 OK Product is different than being like a lot of developers 1107 00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:39,080 know how to write code, but product is deciding what do I 1108 00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:41,720 build for this audience? How do I build something people 1109 00:54:41,720 --> 00:54:43,520 want? How do I listen to customers and 1110 00:54:43,520 --> 00:54:46,160 build the next feature that's going to get us the next 1111 00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:48,960 customer? It is a hard, hard role to do 1112 00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:51,320 and a lot of us don't have it by nature, you know? 1113 00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:56,320 And so like, I'm decent with product and engineering, but 1114 00:54:56,440 --> 00:55:02,960 it's definitely engineering 1st and then product like where when 1115 00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:07,320 someone suggests a feature or an idea, if it's a, if it's 1116 00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,920 actually a really good idea, I'll see the good product fit 1117 00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:13,920 for it really quickly. And then I'm really quick to 1118 00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:18,520 write off the silly requests. But I think like for the most 1119 00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:22,320 part, I'm good there. Yeah, you got product and that 1120 00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:24,480 this is, you know, the reason all four of those are on the 1121 00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:28,400 list is most of the SAT. There are some SAS companies 1122 00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:31,180 that do not have a technical Co founder like a developer Co 1123 00:55:31,180 --> 00:55:33,280 founder. And so they hire, they go and 1124 00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:36,800 they hire an agency or they hire a developer to write the code. 1125 00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:41,040 The problem is #1 most developers don't have a great 1126 00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:43,720 product sense. There's a whole other skill set 1127 00:55:43,720 --> 00:55:46,600 there and product has to be with the founders, at least until I 1128 00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:49,480 say has to, you know, and the successful companies, I see it 1129 00:55:49,480 --> 00:55:52,680 almost, it pretty much always is until you're doing two or three 1130 00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:55,480 million a year. You want product to be in the 1131 00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:58,680 hands of the founders. You also want sales and 1132 00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:01,520 marketing to at least be driven by the founders. 1133 00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:03,720 They don't have to do everything, but they have to be 1134 00:56:03,720 --> 00:56:07,720 making the high level decisions. Development, especially if you 1135 00:56:07,720 --> 00:56:11,200 are a developer as a founder, you can hire or help with that 1136 00:56:11,600 --> 00:56:14,520 much early on than you would think because you know how to 1137 00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:19,440 manage that and how to code, code review and to keep the code 1138 00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:25,520 base, you know, really pristine. That one it the, the, the big 1139 00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,800 mistake that I see companies with non tech or no, no 1140 00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:31,000 technical phone to make is the higher developer. 1141 00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:34,200 And then of course they write shitty code and it works because 1142 00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:37,480 we know it can work for six months or 12 months and then 1143 00:56:37,480 --> 00:56:40,000 there's a bunch of bugs and then a new developer comes in and 1144 00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:41,640 says we have to rewrite this whole thing. 1145 00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:44,080 And that happens every year or two to the same company. 1146 00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:48,600 You know what I mean? It's so of the four development 1147 00:56:48,600 --> 00:56:52,600 is the least important of of the four, like I just, you know. 1148 00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:56,000 I agree and I I did see a comment in here. 1149 00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:59,160 Let's see Daniel, it feels weird to build an entire product 1150 00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:02,160 alone, then partner up with someone at the finish line. 1151 00:57:02,720 --> 00:57:05,480 But like guys, we're technical founders. 1152 00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:10,080 The easiest part is building the code, the product, then the hard 1153 00:57:10,080 --> 00:57:12,600 start happened. Now you have to build the 1154 00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:15,520 company. I call it starting line. 1155 00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:18,480 Yeah, that's the. Starting line, not the finish 1156 00:57:18,520 --> 00:57:20,120 line. When you launch is the starting 1157 00:57:20,120 --> 00:57:21,600 line. It doesn't feel like that, you 1158 00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:24,640 know, if you spent six months doing it, but maybe it's let's 1159 00:57:24,640 --> 00:57:28,160 say it's a hundred 100 meter dash and it's maybe it's the 10m 1160 00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:31,120 mark, you know, meaning you have 90 meters left to go because you 1161 00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:32,840 will build, if you build this company and it's great. 1162 00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:34,480 It will be years and years and years. 1163 00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:39,000 Yeah. And I would also bring in, if I 1164 00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:40,920 was going to bring a sales and marketing person on, if I was a 1165 00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:45,320 developer, I would want some proven the results, you know, 1166 00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:49,480 that they've done in the past. But also I, so I have a book and 1167 00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:52,200 the thing that I say all the time is start marketing the day 1168 00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:56,360 you start coding. And what I mean by that is when 1169 00:57:56,360 --> 00:58:00,920 I had the idea for drip, I went out and I validated, I, I talked 1170 00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:02,840 to like 17 different entrepreneurs I knew and I said, 1171 00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:05,200 I'm going to build this. Would you pay this much for it? 1172 00:58:05,200 --> 00:58:07,240 And like 10 of them said yes. And I was like, all right, I at 1173 00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:10,040 least have like a core group of first customers, 10 customers 1174 00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:12,040 who were willing to pay 100 bucks a month as this works 1175 00:58:12,280 --> 00:58:15,000 great. So then I went to Derek and I 1176 00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:17,000 said, here's my idea for it. Can you start building it? 1177 00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:19,760 So then you start building it. What I then did, and this is 1178 00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:21,840 where you don't bring somebody in at the finish line, you bring 1179 00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:25,520 them in when you start coding. I then set up a website for it. 1180 00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:27,560 I wrote all the copy. I started doing SEO to a 1181 00:58:27,560 --> 00:58:30,760 website. All it had was the promise of 1182 00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:34,240 what Drip was going to be and it had an e-mail opt in. 1183 00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:36,160 Then I started running Facebook ads. 1184 00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:39,840 I spent like, I don't remember 345000 bucks on Facebook ads to 1185 00:58:39,840 --> 00:58:41,760 get people to that page to opt in. 1186 00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:45,440 So by the time that we went to launch Drip, I had been working 1187 00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:47,520 for eight months marketing the damn thing. 1188 00:58:47,680 --> 00:58:51,080 So we had 3400 people on an e-mail list that wanted to hear 1189 00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:54,640 about Drip. So that's where in a perfect 1190 00:58:54,640 --> 00:58:57,560 world, you wouldn't bring sales and marketing in a Co founder in 1191 00:58:57,720 --> 00:58:59,600 at the end. You bring them at the beginning 1192 00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:01,160 and then you're both running in parallel. 1193 00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:04,880 So if you're going to spend 20 hours a week building, hopefully 1194 00:59:04,880 --> 00:59:07,840 they can spend 20 hours a week selling and marketing the damn 1195 00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:09,840 thing. You know you can do that before 1196 00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:12,200 you have a product. Not in every space, not in you 1197 00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:13,800 know it. It depends. 1198 00:59:13,800 --> 00:59:17,240 But for the every product I've ever launched personally and 1199 00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:21,760 I've launched 5 books, I've launched 3 SAS apps, I've 1200 00:59:21,760 --> 00:59:24,800 launched a conference, an accelerator. 1201 00:59:24,800 --> 00:59:27,000 All of those have started as a landing page. 1202 00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:30,040 They've been a landing page before I did any work just to 1203 00:59:30,040 --> 00:59:34,200 gauge interest. So I attempted to do that with 1204 00:59:34,200 --> 00:59:38,440 kill Switch, but I did it wrong. My like the thing that I was 1205 00:59:38,440 --> 00:59:40,840 like very open. Like I built everything in open. 1206 00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:44,280 I was announcing features and then had like a beta testing 1207 00:59:44,280 --> 00:59:47,200 window. Where I went wrong though is I 1208 00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:50,240 assumed my current audience is my customer. 1209 00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:52,600 That's problem, yeah. And they're not. 1210 00:59:53,200 --> 00:59:56,280 And they're not, no. And this is the problem with the 1211 00:59:56,280 --> 00:59:59,080 advice on I see on socials. It's like build an audience and 1212 00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:00,440 then build the SAS and it's like. 1213 01:00:01,080 --> 01:00:03,040 Usually that's not true. Usually. 1214 01:00:03,040 --> 01:00:05,800 So I say build your network, not your audience is is what I say 1215 01:00:05,800 --> 01:00:09,360 instead of that and that the idea there is your network of of 1216 01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:13,600 other folks who can maybe they'll have audiences that are, 1217 01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:19,440 you know, that work for you or maybe they have funding if you 1218 01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:23,960 want to raise it or maybe that network is willing to become a 1219 01:00:23,960 --> 01:00:26,120 customer. People in that network, like a 1220 01:00:26,120 --> 01:00:28,000 bunch of the early drip customers were people in my 1221 01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:30,800 network, you know, just that I knew and that got us to a few 1222 01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:33,520 thousand MRR. So it is. 1223 01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:36,760 Yeah, it's hard to think about. Yeah. 1224 01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:40,200 If you were to well, who are the customers? 1225 01:00:40,880 --> 01:00:42,800 Who are the customers of kill switch is kill switch? 1226 01:00:42,800 --> 01:00:44,560 Is that what's wrong? Yeah, kill switch. 1227 01:00:44,560 --> 01:00:48,880 So it's like, I would say like privacy minded people. 1228 01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:51,680 Like it's a product I've thought about for years. 1229 01:00:51,680 --> 01:00:56,000 And then just in the last couple months, the idea was sparked 1230 01:00:56,000 --> 01:00:59,440 again in my mind and I was like, I'm building this thing and 1231 01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:04,000 like, I know. And then I started talking to 1232 01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:06,480 people and I got a ton of validation from people that 1233 01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:08,840 aren't developers, that aren't in my space. 1234 01:01:09,120 --> 01:01:13,080 And like this is a product that a lot of my friends and like 1235 01:01:13,560 --> 01:01:16,520 just people that I talked to in my social circles were like, 1236 01:01:16,600 --> 01:01:19,640 yeah, I would buy that. But I would say it's more like 1237 01:01:19,640 --> 01:01:23,480 privacy conscious people that are also prepared. 1238 01:01:23,480 --> 01:01:27,160 Like kind of like I was kind of saying preppers earlier, but I 1239 01:01:27,160 --> 01:01:29,320 think it's like people that prepare for the worst. 1240 01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:34,960 It's kind of like like if you're trading crypto and you have 1241 01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:39,360 crypto seed phrases and wallets and like, does your spouse know 1242 01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:42,040 how to access any of that? Probably not. 1243 01:01:42,800 --> 01:01:46,440 And so like my idea with that is like you can zero knowledge. 1244 01:01:46,440 --> 01:01:49,680 So you can encrypt it client side, push it up to my servers. 1245 01:01:50,120 --> 01:01:53,240 And if you don't check in, you can have a whole detailed 1246 01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:56,960 instruction list how to access your crypto, how to access, you 1247 01:01:56,960 --> 01:01:59,320 know, anything. And you can have it have it all 1248 01:01:59,320 --> 01:02:03,760 laid out and, you know, delivered to your significant 1249 01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:06,920 others, inbox, text message, whatever it may be. 1250 01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:10,760 But they get access to digital files that they might not know 1251 01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:14,040 where they all are. OK, so I like that use case you 1252 01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:17,800 just laid out with crypto is, and that might be the first one 1253 01:02:17,800 --> 01:02:20,840 I would start with instead of marketing to everybody, I would 1254 01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:23,080 consider like how do I get in front of crypto people? 1255 01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:24,920 You know, what are the crypto newsletters? 1256 01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:27,200 What are the crypto websites? What are the crypto podcasts 1257 01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:29,920 that you could go be interviewed on 'cause you're gonna be a good 1258 01:02:29,920 --> 01:02:31,400 interviewer as a podcaster, right? 1259 01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:34,120 That's one of the 20 B2B SAS marketing approaches is a 1260 01:02:34,120 --> 01:02:36,920 podcast tour. Podcast or YouTube tour is what 1261 01:02:36,920 --> 01:02:38,280 I call it used to be called a book tour. 1262 01:02:38,640 --> 01:02:40,640 You know, you'd go to bookstores, you'd sell the book. 1263 01:02:40,880 --> 01:02:44,960 But these days, excuse me, you can go on a bunch of podcasts 1264 01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:46,200 now. We do it this way, right? 1265 01:02:46,200 --> 01:02:47,960 I'm not on a podcast. You can drink some water. 1266 01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:50,760 I'm not on a podcast tour right now, but when I launch a book I 1267 01:02:50,760 --> 01:02:52,320 am I'll go on like 10 podcasts in a month. 1268 01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:59,240 So here is another question for you. 1269 01:02:59,240 --> 01:03:01,960 How much are you going to be able to charge for this? 1270 01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:06,200 And the reason that I asked is the lower that amount, the fewer 1271 01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:09,880 marketing options you have because you know what I mean? 1272 01:03:09,880 --> 01:03:12,680 Because you can't do let's say like cold outbound where you're 1273 01:03:12,680 --> 01:03:16,200 like emailing in LinkedIn, like you need an, an annual contract 1274 01:03:16,200 --> 01:03:19,600 size, meaning that most customers pay you on an, you 1275 01:03:19,600 --> 01:03:21,440 know, even if they pay you monthly over the course of a 1276 01:03:21,440 --> 01:03:25,120 whole year, they will pay you at least it's almost $10,000. 1277 01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:28,320 Now if you want to make a cold outreach work, 7500 to 10,000 is 1278 01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:31,800 the range. And if you want to do like 1279 01:03:31,960 --> 01:03:36,520 enterprise sales, even some in person events, usually you want 1280 01:03:36,520 --> 01:03:39,240 to sell for about $25,000 a year or more. 1281 01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:44,240 If you're, if you're selling for like $100 a year, $200 a year, 1282 01:03:44,600 --> 01:03:47,160 there's only like 4 marketing approaches, 5 marketing, that's 1283 01:03:47,160 --> 01:03:48,600 it. Everything else is. 2 and it. 1284 01:03:49,040 --> 01:03:50,240 Has to be just, you know, a low touch. 1285 01:03:51,040 --> 01:03:51,880 It is. It has to. 1286 01:03:52,000 --> 01:03:54,520 Be self served at that point, which is a tough which is a 1287 01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:57,240 tough way to go. So this was this was a hard one 1288 01:03:57,240 --> 01:04:00,360 for me to actually like nail down pricing too, because I 1289 01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:04,720 didn't want to offer like monthly recurring subscriptions 1290 01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:10,000 because like I could have a dead man switch triggered in 90 days 1291 01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:13,480 and I don't want to have billing issues and have your account cut 1292 01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:16,080 off and then your your switch doesn't trigger right. 1293 01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:21,520 So I have a year subscription, A2 year option and a three-year 1294 01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:24,080 option. And so they get smaller 1295 01:04:24,080 --> 01:04:28,680 discounts as they ramp that up. But I've also considered doing 1296 01:04:28,680 --> 01:04:33,520 like a lifetime purchase, but it's hard to come on, come on to 1297 01:04:33,520 --> 01:04:36,480 what that number is. What does a lifetime purchase 1298 01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:39,520 look like? And then you kind of kill the 1299 01:04:39,520 --> 01:04:43,880 whole point of like SAS. It's not recurring at that 1300 01:04:43,880 --> 01:04:46,240 point. And I mean, yeah, what if 1301 01:04:46,240 --> 01:04:49,080 someone lives another 60-70 years? 1302 01:04:49,080 --> 01:04:51,560 Is your service really going to be available in 60-70 years? 1303 01:04:51,560 --> 01:04:54,080 That's a big promise. You know, a long time. 1304 01:04:54,960 --> 01:04:56,320 It is. It is a challenge. 1305 01:04:57,800 --> 01:05:03,640 And so, yeah, if you're lower priced like that, content, SEO, 1306 01:05:03,640 --> 01:05:06,840 some form of virality, it's all got to be mostly free marketing 1307 01:05:06,880 --> 01:05:09,240 basically. I don't know that you can. 1308 01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:14,360 I don't think you can run. It's very unlikely you'll be 1309 01:05:14,360 --> 01:05:17,320 able to just run ads to that and make. 1310 01:05:17,960 --> 01:05:22,480 One thing I did do is I have an affiliate program so if people 1311 01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:26,280 are users and they love my product they can make 20% off 1312 01:05:26,640 --> 01:05:28,960 initial sales. So I feel like that'll be good 1313 01:05:28,960 --> 01:05:33,040 too, but I still need to have the steam going to get make. 1314 01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:35,160 That yeah, you do. You gotta need the momentum and 1315 01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:39,400 if you know affiliate marketing, you have to go the, the 1316 01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:42,120 affiliates that will make you the money are not usually not 1317 01:05:42,120 --> 01:05:44,480 your customers. It's usually the, the 1318 01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:47,000 influencers in this space. It's someone with an existing 1319 01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:49,360 audience. And so that's where if you have 1320 01:05:49,360 --> 01:05:51,800 a network of those people, which I, I don't know that you do 1321 01:05:51,800 --> 01:05:55,560 right now, but building the network and network with 1322 01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:59,640 influencers who are either talking to preppers or crypto 1323 01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:03,120 people or whatever sounds like preppers and crypto might be 1324 01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:05,920 your two icy, your two ideal customer profile. 1325 01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:08,960 I think those are the the eat the like the low the low hanging 1326 01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:10,480 fruit. Which is where you want to 1327 01:06:10,480 --> 01:06:11,880 start. It's where you want to start, 1328 01:06:11,960 --> 01:06:14,680 you know. And so, yeah, you get to decide 1329 01:06:14,680 --> 01:06:20,920 if like marketing can look different for different 1330 01:06:20,920 --> 01:06:23,040 founders. I'm not saying you can just do 1331 01:06:23,040 --> 01:06:24,640 whatever you want and it'll work. 1332 01:06:24,960 --> 01:06:28,720 But I am saying that me and another successful founder next 1333 01:06:28,720 --> 01:06:31,480 to me, like this guy Ruben, I mentioned earlier, founder of 1334 01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:36,680 Signwell. He is so good at SEO, one of the 1335 01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:40,600 best I know in the world. And he will drive hundreds of 1336 01:06:40,600 --> 01:06:42,640 thousands of uniques a month for like terms. 1337 01:06:42,640 --> 01:06:43,920 I'm like, how do you even do that? 1338 01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:46,160 Right? So he and I could start the same 1339 01:06:46,160 --> 01:06:49,760 company and he would do SEO. He doesn't like being on camera. 1340 01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:53,440 He doesn't like, you know, it's just not his thing, right? 1341 01:06:53,440 --> 01:06:55,280 He comes on my podcast now and again, but it's not his thing. 1342 01:06:55,960 --> 01:06:59,160 I if I started the same company as him, I would probably do some 1343 01:06:59,160 --> 01:07:02,240 SEOI wouldn't be as good at it, but I would I would be doing 1344 01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:05,120 podcast tours. I would be schmoozing, you know, 1345 01:07:05,120 --> 01:07:08,800 with building the network in the space I might be going to in 1346 01:07:08,800 --> 01:07:11,000 person events. If I could afford it, I would be 1347 01:07:11,240 --> 01:07:13,120 on camera. I would probably start building 1348 01:07:13,120 --> 01:07:15,080 an audience because that's kind of what I do. 1349 01:07:15,240 --> 01:07:19,160 You know, I'm good at it now, so and both might work now. 1350 01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:21,200 The SEO would probably work better if I'm being honest 1351 01:07:21,200 --> 01:07:24,960 depending on the space, but it just gives you an idea of like. 1352 01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:28,600 Well, the SEO is better for return on investment for sure 1353 01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:31,880 for time involved right it. Is it is so? 1354 01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:37,920 Yeah, it's hard. I don't know, but I'm learning 1355 01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:42,040 and I The thing is this product like Killswitch is actually 1356 01:07:42,040 --> 01:07:44,200 something I actually love and use. 1357 01:07:44,200 --> 01:07:48,640 Like I'm, I have all my, my own files and everything on here. 1358 01:07:48,960 --> 01:07:52,640 So like it's a, I'm dog fooding my own product this way. 1359 01:07:53,040 --> 01:07:55,120 And it was hard to do, especially with like perfect 1360 01:07:55,120 --> 01:07:58,400 form and like the the fitness stuff. 1361 01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:01,480 It was more I could only dog food it from the client side, 1362 01:08:01,480 --> 01:08:05,280 not the coach side. So I think that's. 1363 01:08:05,280 --> 01:08:09,000 Yeah, it does make it easier. You don't have to scratch your 1364 01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:10,680 own inch. You don't have to be your first 1365 01:08:10,680 --> 01:08:12,880 user. I've seen a lot of successful 1366 01:08:12,880 --> 01:08:14,600 companies that are not, but it's helpful. 1367 01:08:15,360 --> 01:08:19,319 I, I feel like it's helpful just as far as like how your UX flow 1368 01:08:19,319 --> 01:08:23,680 is and like points using the app, you know, like, not 1369 01:08:23,680 --> 01:08:26,640 necessarily like like with, with colex. 1370 01:08:26,640 --> 01:08:30,399 I'm a senior back end engineer there and it's a trading card 1371 01:08:30,439 --> 01:08:34,439 marketplace. It's not a hobby that I take up, 1372 01:08:34,439 --> 01:08:37,520 but I love the technical challenges of my role, you know, 1373 01:08:37,520 --> 01:08:43,359 so I don't necessarily, I'm not a power user of our app, but I I 1374 01:08:43,359 --> 01:08:48,200 enjoy the the things that I get to work on, like at the levels 1375 01:08:48,200 --> 01:08:50,520 and the performance and all that fun stuff. 1376 01:08:50,520 --> 01:08:53,439 Yeah, yeah. Totally. 1377 01:08:54,560 --> 01:09:00,840 I, I recorded a, we did a survey of like 200 something SAS voters 1378 01:09:00,960 --> 01:09:02,880 in, I think it was November just a couple months ago. 1379 01:09:03,640 --> 01:09:09,160 And we asked them what was the minimum MRR, like $1000 MRR 1380 01:09:09,359 --> 01:09:11,880 monthly recurring revenue that wasn't and up. 1381 01:09:12,600 --> 01:09:14,680 And we said, how did you come up with your idea? 1382 01:09:15,279 --> 01:09:17,000 And then we bucketed those into eight. 1383 01:09:17,000 --> 01:09:19,359 There were only 8 categories, only eight ways that they came 1384 01:09:19,359 --> 01:09:23,359 up with them. And the most popular two were 1385 01:09:23,359 --> 01:09:29,080 basically it was 72% had found it at their day job. 1386 01:09:29,800 --> 01:09:32,560 It was either they saw a problem at their day job that they were 1387 01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:35,240 like, oh, we need a tool to do that. 1388 01:09:35,359 --> 01:09:36,960 Like Patriot duty is an example of that, right? 1389 01:09:36,960 --> 01:09:39,240 Years ago, right? It's like we need a, that of the 1390 01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:42,479 day job. They saw a problem that wasn't 1391 01:09:42,479 --> 01:09:46,840 being solved or they saw where their company was spending money 1392 01:09:46,840 --> 01:09:50,640 on existing tools and they thought I can do that better, 1393 01:09:50,640 --> 01:09:54,200 differently, more opinionated. So 72% combined there. 1394 01:09:54,800 --> 01:09:58,800 If folks are thinking about ideas, it doesn't even have the 1395 01:09:58,800 --> 01:10:00,640 scratch your own itch, right, Which is what you're talking 1396 01:10:00,640 --> 01:10:02,800 about where like I have a pain point and therefore I build for 1397 01:10:02,800 --> 01:10:05,280 myself that I believe was like 14%. 1398 01:10:05,800 --> 01:10:08,160 So it's just it was a minority. Yeah, it's really interesting. 1399 01:10:08,440 --> 01:10:09,480 Scratch your own itch works great. 1400 01:10:09,480 --> 01:10:13,120 But here's the here's the thing that can can screw you is a lot 1401 01:10:13,120 --> 01:10:17,600 of us think like consumers and selling to consumers is freaking 1402 01:10:17,600 --> 01:10:19,480 brutal. Building B2B sets for consumers 1403 01:10:19,480 --> 01:10:21,520 is awful. The churn is high, the price 1404 01:10:21,520 --> 01:10:23,840 points are low, so you can't really afford to market. 1405 01:10:23,840 --> 01:10:25,360 They're just not great businesses. 1406 01:10:25,920 --> 01:10:28,080 And I play like I play Dungeons and Dragons. 1407 01:10:28,400 --> 01:10:31,840 I would never, never, ever build a tool for Dungeon Masters 1408 01:10:32,000 --> 01:10:34,960 because everybody's so cheap. You know what I mean? 1409 01:10:34,960 --> 01:10:37,040 And they want the world, and they want it free. 1410 01:10:38,040 --> 01:10:40,240 So there is. A that's the problem with 1411 01:10:40,240 --> 01:10:45,480 developers too, I think like and Drip was kind of focused at a 1412 01:10:45,480 --> 01:10:48,200 developer, right, More well, like maybe an entrepreneurial 1413 01:10:48,320 --> 01:10:52,320 developer, but. Early on, early on, I my network 1414 01:10:52,320 --> 01:10:56,120 was developers, but it was more from marketers, founders and 1415 01:10:56,120 --> 01:10:59,040 marketers, yeah. And so here's the thing. 1416 01:10:59,040 --> 01:11:01,360 Developers, when they're talking about spending their own money, 1417 01:11:01,360 --> 01:11:02,800 are just like any of the rest of us. 1418 01:11:02,800 --> 01:11:06,480 And they're like consumers, but developers have a day at a day 1419 01:11:06,480 --> 01:11:09,840 job spending money. Like how do you do, you know a 1420 01:11:09,840 --> 01:11:12,840 developer or development manager who's like paying for New Relic 1421 01:11:13,280 --> 01:11:16,560 and paying, you know, what are the expensive tools? 1422 01:11:16,560 --> 01:11:19,000 I mean, Cloud code is not that expensive, but like all the 1423 01:11:19,000 --> 01:11:21,120 tools that we used to buy database management stuff that 1424 01:11:21,120 --> 01:11:24,600 was like thousands per year. We paid thousands per year. 1425 01:11:24,600 --> 01:11:28,000 So yes, developers individually, if I'm going to try to sell an 1426 01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:30,080 individual developer or something, they're like, Oh no, 1427 01:11:30,120 --> 01:11:33,600 I could go to the movies with my family this week or I can buy 1428 01:11:33,600 --> 01:11:35,080 this tool. They're super cheap, right? 1429 01:11:35,360 --> 01:11:37,120 But the moment that they have a business or they're in a 1430 01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:40,720 business context, developers spend money, you know, that's 1431 01:11:40,720 --> 01:11:43,880 the difference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1432 01:11:43,880 --> 01:11:46,520 Which was a learning curve with like Elixir Mentor. 1433 01:11:46,520 --> 01:11:50,200 I was like, how do I make Elixir Mentor bring in revenue? 1434 01:11:50,520 --> 01:11:54,840 And like, obviously like you podcast sponsorships were 1435 01:11:54,880 --> 01:11:57,320 obvious. And then I was like, I can make, 1436 01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:01,920 you know, paid tutorials and I started, I started 1 and I 1437 01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:04,560 immediately hated making tutorials because I felt like I 1438 01:12:04,560 --> 01:12:07,520 was on the hook. So I stopped and I got 1439 01:12:07,520 --> 01:12:10,200 everyone's permission, like whether they wanted refunds or 1440 01:12:10,200 --> 01:12:11,960 not. Most people were cool with me 1441 01:12:11,960 --> 01:12:14,480 just publishing it on YouTube. They're like, you know, more 1442 01:12:14,480 --> 01:12:17,280 content out there the better. Thank you for doing what you do. 1443 01:12:17,760 --> 01:12:21,080 And I was like, OK, it's not courses because like I made a 1444 01:12:21,080 --> 01:12:25,520 couple $1000, but like nothing, nothing great. 1445 01:12:25,640 --> 01:12:28,800 Because I don't know, Elixir is an interesting space too, 1446 01:12:28,800 --> 01:12:32,760 because I feel like there's more senior level engineers that come 1447 01:12:32,760 --> 01:12:36,080 into Elixir, so they don't need the beginner tutorials as these 1448 01:12:36,160 --> 01:12:38,600 as much. And then I was like, well, I 1449 01:12:38,600 --> 01:12:40,480 have an audience. What do I do with it? 1450 01:12:41,080 --> 01:12:44,320 And it was really hard. And then I started and it's kind 1451 01:12:44,320 --> 01:12:47,800 of like, it's kind of a side job, but it, it, it keeps me 1452 01:12:47,800 --> 01:12:51,480 busy and it, it honestly brings in pretty good revenue. 1453 01:12:51,760 --> 01:12:54,520 But I started a pre vetted recruitment service for Elixir 1454 01:12:54,520 --> 01:12:58,160 developers. So my whole selling point is you 1455 01:12:58,160 --> 01:12:59,840 guys don't have to do the technical vetting. 1456 01:12:59,840 --> 01:13:02,840 I'll do it for you. You just do cultural fits. 1457 01:13:03,240 --> 01:13:05,560 And it's it's actually worked really well. 1458 01:13:05,560 --> 01:13:08,640 And just this podcast I loan, I think kind of gives me the 1459 01:13:08,640 --> 01:13:12,040 credentials and so companies trust me. 1460 01:13:12,120 --> 01:13:16,000 And then it goes from there. I love that idea. 1461 01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:17,960 And my guess is you're not charging enough for it. 1462 01:13:18,480 --> 01:13:20,320 I would just guess you should raise your prices. 1463 01:13:20,320 --> 01:13:27,080 Yeah, no, I so we're an investor in front end mentor, which is 1464 01:13:27,520 --> 01:13:29,480 forget what the front end framework they use. 1465 01:13:29,480 --> 01:13:31,760 But anyways, I mean, it's for front end devs and it's for 1466 01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:34,960 entry level to become juniors, you know, and like trains them 1467 01:13:34,960 --> 01:13:39,160 up and they make money on subscriptions for the training, 1468 01:13:39,360 --> 01:13:40,440 right, where you can pay them monthly. 1469 01:13:40,560 --> 01:13:45,280 And those have to be really inexpensive because some person 1470 01:13:45,280 --> 01:13:47,680 trying to learn to be a front end dev doesn't, you know, 1471 01:13:47,720 --> 01:13:51,480 they're paying out of pocket. So they're really aware of the 1472 01:13:51,480 --> 01:13:56,880 money and then they have a basically a almost A2 sided 1473 01:13:56,880 --> 01:14:00,720 marketplace of recruitment where you can come in to hire front 1474 01:14:00,720 --> 01:14:04,720 end devs and and you do that. So that's what I was going to 1475 01:14:04,720 --> 01:14:07,840 say for you if you were to try to monetize it. 1476 01:14:07,960 --> 01:14:10,400 It's exactly those two things plus sponsorships. 1477 01:14:10,880 --> 01:14:14,720 So you just listed everything. And it took me, it took me 3 1478 01:14:14,720 --> 01:14:19,160 years to figure it out. Yeah, well, and here's how, 1479 01:14:19,400 --> 01:14:21,560 here's how maybe you could have done it faster is just by 1480 01:14:21,560 --> 01:14:24,480 looking around at what other similar, you know, what are the 1481 01:14:24,480 --> 01:14:28,080 other coding podcasts or coding platforms or coding whatever is 1482 01:14:28,080 --> 01:14:30,760 doing and seeing how they monetize and then seeing which 1483 01:14:30,760 --> 01:14:33,760 of these do I want to do. I still think, I don't know how 1484 01:14:33,760 --> 01:14:38,760 big your audience is, but I bet if you wanted to do a course you 1485 01:14:38,760 --> 01:14:40,760 could figure out a way to make decent money from it. 1486 01:14:40,880 --> 01:14:43,400 Courses are great, especially well here's when they're great, 1487 01:14:43,800 --> 01:14:46,080 they're great if you can record them and they'll be a little bit 1488 01:14:46,080 --> 01:14:48,760 Evergreen. If you need to constantly update 1489 01:14:48,760 --> 01:14:52,280 them because stuff changes, which maybe Elixir is that, then 1490 01:14:52,280 --> 01:14:54,800 it. Sucks I I think it depends. 1491 01:14:54,800 --> 01:14:57,960 I feel like Elixir is pretty stable even with like older 1492 01:14:57,960 --> 01:15:01,840 versions which is good. But there are like, you know, 1493 01:15:01,840 --> 01:15:04,800 we've had some Phoenix updates in the last couple years that 1494 01:15:04,880 --> 01:15:07,360 like broke my old tutorials and things, but. 1495 01:15:07,360 --> 01:15:09,800 Yeah, yeah. But that's just the. 1496 01:15:09,840 --> 01:15:12,400 Nature of development, isn't it? Right. 1497 01:15:12,720 --> 01:15:14,440 Oh yeah, it totally is, totally is. 1498 01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:17,240 Yeah, I've, I've done, I've written five books, but I've 1499 01:15:17,240 --> 01:15:21,600 done 2 courses in my life as both for entrepreneurs, you 1500 01:15:21,600 --> 01:15:24,000 know, for SAS, Well, the first one wasn't SAS because it was 1501 01:15:24,000 --> 01:15:25,800 2010. So it was more like just 1502 01:15:25,960 --> 01:15:29,240 bootstrap software founders. And then I just did SAS 1503 01:15:29,240 --> 01:15:33,440 Launchpad two years ago, which. Is when did when did SAS get 1504 01:15:33,440 --> 01:15:35,080 coined? When did that pop up? 1505 01:15:36,400 --> 01:15:41,880 You know, so it used to be called ASP Active, No 1506 01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:45,600 Application Service provider ASP is what SAS was called before 1507 01:15:45,600 --> 01:15:48,000 this. Well, and it was like cloud I 1508 01:15:48,000 --> 01:15:50,600 think and then it was SAS and then it was cloud based and 1509 01:15:50,600 --> 01:15:52,760 cloud just kind of didn't catch on in our circles. 1510 01:15:52,760 --> 01:15:55,080 It did in like the business context, you know? 1511 01:15:55,160 --> 01:15:57,280 Everyone calls everything cloud and non. 1512 01:15:57,320 --> 01:16:01,560 Technical circles exactly. Yeah, I think my memory of 1513 01:16:01,560 --> 01:16:05,920 hearing SAS was probably. And so like Basecamp, MailChimp, 1514 01:16:05,920 --> 01:16:07,440 those were like really early SAS. 1515 01:16:07,880 --> 01:16:12,880 I think that was like O6O7. I started, I started hearing the 1516 01:16:12,880 --> 01:16:17,800 term around O7O8I would guess and I don't know, it didn't. 1517 01:16:17,800 --> 01:16:20,320 It's such a clunky Acura. It's awful. 1518 01:16:20,320 --> 01:16:24,520 I wish like I was trying to teach it to my kid on a podcast 1519 01:16:24,520 --> 01:16:25,760 and he keeps like 11 at the time. 1520 01:16:25,760 --> 01:16:27,080 And I recorded a podcast episode. 1521 01:16:27,080 --> 01:16:28,920 It's like explaining SAS to an 11 year old. 1522 01:16:29,200 --> 01:16:30,880 And so I was like, all right, what do you think SAS stands 1523 01:16:30,880 --> 01:16:32,200 for? And he's like software. 1524 01:16:32,600 --> 01:16:33,560 Is it something? Yeah. 1525 01:16:33,840 --> 01:16:36,240 And I'm like as a service. And he's like, what does that 1526 01:16:36,240 --> 01:16:37,760 mean? And it's like, I know this is an 1527 01:16:37,760 --> 01:16:40,400 awful name. Like I would not pick this name 1528 01:16:40,400 --> 01:16:42,920 for it's no, a marketer did not pick that name. 1529 01:16:44,400 --> 01:16:47,560 Yeah, I don't know, like it makes sense to me, but I've also 1530 01:16:47,560 --> 01:16:49,360 just been programmed with hearing it you. 1531 01:16:49,360 --> 01:16:52,280 Know me too, me too. And but now I'll be like, all 1532 01:16:52,280 --> 01:16:56,600 right, so we're B to B SASS and it's like that's just a acronym 1533 01:16:56,800 --> 01:16:58,760 mess. If you haven't heard what's B to 1534 01:16:58,760 --> 01:16:59,880 B? Some people don't know what that 1535 01:16:59,880 --> 01:17:01,120 is. Some people don't know what SASS 1536 01:17:01,120 --> 01:17:02,880 is. And so it's it's not great. 1537 01:17:03,080 --> 01:17:05,680 I wish it was a better, better term for what we do. 1538 01:17:06,720 --> 01:17:09,960 Yeah, I mean just in your next book, rename it, see if it 1539 01:17:09,960 --> 01:17:13,440 catches on. Well, I've dude invent my own 1540 01:17:13,440 --> 01:17:16,040 category. I've tried to do that twice and 1541 01:17:16,040 --> 01:17:19,160 it didn't work either time. Like I'm not doing that anymore. 1542 01:17:19,160 --> 01:17:21,040 I'm going to just latch on to the existing one. 1543 01:17:21,080 --> 01:17:24,320 It would be really hard to try to coin a new term and sell the 1544 01:17:24,320 --> 01:17:26,080 book because no one would know what it's about. 1545 01:17:26,840 --> 01:17:31,200 Yeah, I would have to in advance try to get people to say the 1546 01:17:31,200 --> 01:17:32,960 term right? And my reach isn't enough. 1547 01:17:32,960 --> 01:17:37,480 Like I'm a complete outsider in, in like Silicon Valley, in the 1548 01:17:37,480 --> 01:17:39,400 whole startup space, like no one knows who I am. 1549 01:17:39,440 --> 01:17:41,480 I just have my own little thing over here, you know? 1550 01:17:42,040 --> 01:17:46,000 But it it works, I like it. It does work, I enjoy it. 1551 01:17:46,400 --> 01:17:51,080 Yeah, One thing that like I'm kind of curious and actually my 1552 01:17:51,080 --> 01:17:54,440 look, my mastermind gave me this question because I told him that 1553 01:17:54,440 --> 01:17:56,560 I was having you on and they were they were stoked. 1554 01:17:58,240 --> 01:18:03,400 What like the whole like the shift, the shift in everything 1555 01:18:03,400 --> 01:18:06,960 that is happening with creating products and just software in 1556 01:18:06,960 --> 01:18:09,960 general with like LLMS and like clawed code. 1557 01:18:09,960 --> 01:18:13,080 It's good, right? Like I don't have much to knock 1558 01:18:13,080 --> 01:18:15,160 on it anymore. I do a lot of code review and a 1559 01:18:15,160 --> 01:18:20,200 lot less writing of code. But like SAS was always that, 1560 01:18:20,880 --> 01:18:25,040 that magical place where you could, you know, exit with, you 1561 01:18:25,040 --> 01:18:30,080 know, 10X to 20X numbers, right? What do you think is going to 1562 01:18:30,080 --> 01:18:35,600 happen with just SAS products spinning up like crazy, but like 1563 01:18:35,600 --> 01:18:39,000 also the value of SAS companies moving forward? 1564 01:18:39,000 --> 01:18:41,040 Do you think it's going to hurt anything? 1565 01:18:42,600 --> 01:18:47,440 So 10 to 20X is a little high by the way, I would say it's more 1566 01:18:47,440 --> 01:18:50,960 like 5-5 to 8 is the most common. 1567 01:18:51,320 --> 01:18:53,080 Which is still bigger though than. 1568 01:18:53,920 --> 01:18:56,680 Other ECOM is based on net profit. 1569 01:18:56,760 --> 01:19:03,360 You know, you'll get 4 to 6 net profit versus like 585 to 10 top 1570 01:19:03,360 --> 01:19:06,360 line revenue if you're growing. So you get a $2,000,000 SAS 1571 01:19:06,360 --> 01:19:08,280 company that's doing well and you sell it for 10 million 1572 01:19:08,280 --> 01:19:09,080 bucks. That's it. 1573 01:19:11,040 --> 01:19:13,000 Well, that's five XI guess. Yeah, 10 to 20 million. 1574 01:19:13,000 --> 01:19:15,960 Anyways, it's a lot. It's a lot you can get you can 1575 01:19:15,960 --> 01:19:19,760 get very wealthy in a short amount of time if you do it 1576 01:19:19,760 --> 01:19:21,840 well. So yeah, the question is 1577 01:19:21,840 --> 01:19:29,920 valuation, specifically with AI. So I do obviously we're going to 1578 01:19:29,920 --> 01:19:39,160 see much like no code brought a lot of of folks into the space, 1579 01:19:39,400 --> 01:19:42,120 into the building space and potentially the entrepreneur 1580 01:19:42,120 --> 01:19:44,520 space that weren't able to do before. 1581 01:19:44,880 --> 01:19:46,840 I do see we do see AI doing that. 1582 01:19:46,840 --> 01:19:49,400 It either makes developers faster or it makes non 1583 01:19:49,400 --> 01:19:51,760 developers able to build apps it. 1584 01:19:52,400 --> 01:19:55,480 May be a front end developer because I struggle with front 1585 01:19:55,520 --> 01:19:57,720 end. That's really cool. 1586 01:20:00,680 --> 01:20:06,360 The the Moat though, or the challenge has not been product 1587 01:20:06,360 --> 01:20:08,480 historically hasn't been engineering. 1588 01:20:08,480 --> 01:20:11,440 Engineering takes a while, Engineering takes the time and 1589 01:20:11,440 --> 01:20:13,920 some money. But the companies that win in 1590 01:20:13,920 --> 01:20:17,360 any space and the ones that get traction are the ones that 1591 01:20:17,360 --> 01:20:20,720 market and sell well. They make the product decision. 1592 01:20:20,720 --> 01:20:24,800 So I can't, I don't, I can't imagine an LLM making product 1593 01:20:24,800 --> 01:20:26,360 level decisions. You know what I mean? 1594 01:20:26,360 --> 01:20:28,440 I don't mean what to build. You're deciding what to build 1595 01:20:28,720 --> 01:20:31,320 and then you tell it, build it like this, exactly like this, 1596 01:20:31,320 --> 01:20:33,480 blah, blah, blah, right. And it goes and builds it. 1597 01:20:33,480 --> 01:20:38,880 If you were to tell, yeah. So product level decisions, like 1598 01:20:38,880 --> 01:20:41,040 if someone who's really good at product is going to be better 1599 01:20:41,040 --> 01:20:43,400 than an AIAI, right. And then someone who's good at 1600 01:20:43,400 --> 01:20:45,840 marketing and sales, like AI can't do that for you. 1601 01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:50,360 It can help you do that. But I still think that the, in 1602 01:20:50,360 --> 01:20:54,520 any given market, there's this cluster, say e-mail service 1603 01:20:54,520 --> 01:20:57,160 providers, right? There's 500 of them, but there's 1604 01:20:57,160 --> 01:21:01,320 like 5 or 10 that have a huge brand equity and a huge amount 1605 01:21:01,320 --> 01:21:04,320 of market share, maybe 20 tops. There's a bunch that you've we 1606 01:21:04,320 --> 01:21:09,040 just never heard of. And so if we added another 500 1607 01:21:09,040 --> 01:21:11,200 because AI, because people can just bill, bill, bill, bill, 1608 01:21:11,200 --> 01:21:14,520 bill, I don't think that dynamic suddenly changes. 1609 01:21:14,680 --> 01:21:18,840 It's not that there's still 510 or 20 that have all the, you 1610 01:21:18,840 --> 01:21:24,560 know, most of the cache and most of the value there for I we've 1611 01:21:24,560 --> 01:21:27,360 seen it happen. We've seen it happen with CRMS, 1612 01:21:27,680 --> 01:21:30,080 right. So Salesforce came out in 2001, 1613 01:21:30,080 --> 01:21:32,240 I think. And it's a super crowded space. 1614 01:21:32,400 --> 01:21:36,560 There are hundreds and hundreds of CRMS and there could be 1615 01:21:36,560 --> 01:21:40,040 hundreds and hundreds more. And I think the ones that will 1616 01:21:40,040 --> 01:21:42,840 suffer are the ones that don't have a strong brand, don't have 1617 01:21:42,840 --> 01:21:45,240 strong positioning of like why we're unique. 1618 01:21:45,440 --> 01:21:47,920 Why should you use this CRM over that one? 1619 01:21:48,120 --> 01:21:50,360 Salesforce, It's because they're the biggest brand. 1620 01:21:50,360 --> 01:21:52,880 They have the biggest ecosystem. Nobody gets fired for buying 1621 01:21:52,880 --> 01:21:55,600 Salesforce, right? HubSpot is number 2 and it's the 1622 01:21:55,600 --> 01:21:57,400 same thing, big brand, nobody gets fired. 1623 01:21:58,320 --> 01:22:00,880 Then there's a #3 I don't know. We, I don't know who the number 1624 01:22:00,880 --> 01:22:02,520 3 is. Maybe it's close out column or 1625 01:22:02,520 --> 01:22:06,760 someone by the time you get to 10 you and I have never heard of 1626 01:22:06,760 --> 01:22:10,320 these companies. So adding adding a bunch more I 1627 01:22:10,320 --> 01:22:11,800 don't really think is going to change that. 1628 01:22:12,040 --> 01:22:14,880 It just creates a lot more small winners. 1629 01:22:14,920 --> 01:22:18,880 I don't think it redistributes all of the revenue because 1630 01:22:18,920 --> 01:22:22,840 because exit multiples are based on revenue and growth, growth in 1631 01:22:22,840 --> 01:22:23,440 churn. And revenue? 1632 01:22:24,000 --> 01:22:25,800 I don't think that changes that much. 1633 01:22:25,880 --> 01:22:27,560 It's still changed the. Multiplier I don't. 1634 01:22:28,800 --> 01:22:31,600 Think so and I think I mean maybe it has small ripples, but 1635 01:22:32,360 --> 01:22:34,960 it's still can you market and sell this thing? 1636 01:22:35,120 --> 01:22:37,120 Do you have traction? Are you growing fast? 1637 01:22:37,160 --> 01:22:40,280 That's. I, I like, I'm excited by it 1638 01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:43,840 because I think it will just produce like more micro products 1639 01:22:43,840 --> 01:22:49,000 for like very niche spaces and I think it'll benefit a lot of 1640 01:22:49,000 --> 01:22:51,080 people. Yeah, yeah. 1641 01:22:51,080 --> 01:22:54,800 If anything, I can see that, let's say that, that in the old 1642 01:22:54,800 --> 01:23:00,080 days, meaning three years ago, you know, there, there would be 1643 01:23:00,080 --> 01:23:04,480 a, I can't think of it like a concrete example, but like, but 1644 01:23:05,320 --> 01:23:10,800 there might be a tool that helps with applications like 1645 01:23:10,800 --> 01:23:14,320 university applications for students with accelerator batch 1646 01:23:14,320 --> 01:23:16,720 applications, because we do an application process, right? 1647 01:23:17,240 --> 01:23:22,440 And we used to pay five $6000 a year for really kind of crappy 1648 01:23:22,440 --> 01:23:26,760 software that did that. These days, what we actually had 1649 01:23:26,760 --> 01:23:28,560 is someone on our team just went and built it and they wrote it 1650 01:23:28,560 --> 01:23:30,120 in Python. We just built our own system 1651 01:23:30,520 --> 01:23:33,160 these days. I could see us building that in 1652 01:23:33,360 --> 01:23:37,240 AI, you know, or with AI either no, no code or AI are the two 1653 01:23:37,240 --> 01:23:42,000 ways that we would do it. So can I see that potentially 1654 01:23:42,000 --> 01:23:46,120 impacting some spaces where companies build more in it's 1655 01:23:46,120 --> 01:23:48,280 less about the competition, which is what I just laid out, 1656 01:23:48,360 --> 01:23:51,600 you know, of having more ES, PS more CRMS, but it's that just 1657 01:23:51,600 --> 01:23:54,160 more smaller companies because we're a team of 11 people. 1658 01:23:54,160 --> 01:23:55,920 Like we're not a big, we're not a big firm. 1659 01:23:55,920 --> 01:23:58,280 I don't want custom code actually in our, we're not a 1660 01:23:58,280 --> 01:23:59,960 software company. So I don't want to maintain 1661 01:23:59,960 --> 01:24:03,320 custom code. But will more companies maybe 1662 01:24:03,320 --> 01:24:06,400 build internal line of business applications with AI and 1663 01:24:06,400 --> 01:24:09,640 therefore the revenue of some of the bigger players or some of 1664 01:24:09,640 --> 01:24:12,560 the ones that you know may otherwise have gotten their 1665 01:24:12,560 --> 01:24:16,400 money be be lowered? Yeah, that that might be play. 1666 01:24:16,600 --> 01:24:19,360 I don't see it ending anything, but it can have a ripple effect. 1667 01:24:19,440 --> 01:24:22,640 Is it a 10 percent, 20% hit? Yeah, maybe. 1668 01:24:22,640 --> 01:24:24,200 Yeah, yeah. Interesting. 1669 01:24:24,200 --> 01:24:26,160 I like that. I like the optimistic approach 1670 01:24:26,160 --> 01:24:29,880 for sure. And then I saw some up in the 1671 01:24:29,880 --> 01:24:34,360 comments someone asked, would love to hear about the Sass 1672 01:24:34,360 --> 01:24:36,360 apocalypse. I feel like that kind of fits. 1673 01:24:36,360 --> 01:24:40,280 I feel like it's just like just tons of producers, right? 1674 01:24:41,400 --> 01:24:47,320 Sass has been dying since 2014. The SAS apocalypse. 1675 01:24:47,320 --> 01:24:49,480 I hear about it every year I hear SEO is dead. 1676 01:24:49,480 --> 01:24:52,000 I hear SAS is dead. I hear everything's dead. 1677 01:24:52,160 --> 01:24:56,480 SAS was going to be dead when when no code came out, it was 1678 01:24:56,480 --> 01:24:58,320 going to replace everyone was going to build their own. 1679 01:24:58,400 --> 01:25:00,440 You know, that hasn't been the case. 1680 01:25:00,440 --> 01:25:03,400 AI and. The The thing is with that, like 1681 01:25:03,400 --> 01:25:05,440 you still have to have infrastructure, you have to have 1682 01:25:05,440 --> 01:25:08,200 it deployed on a server. Like a lot of people don't want 1683 01:25:08,200 --> 01:25:10,520 to deal with those headaches. Like sure you can build all the 1684 01:25:10,520 --> 01:25:13,560 code you want to use, but then you have to host it all. 1685 01:25:14,440 --> 01:25:18,640 Yes, that's the issue, right? And that's why we'll set. 1686 01:25:18,640 --> 01:25:23,080 So I think no code probably hit SAS 2010 20%. 1687 01:25:23,160 --> 01:25:26,440 Like I think there were 1020% less revenue in the SAS 1688 01:25:26,480 --> 01:25:29,280 ecosystem because people, well, it went to the no code players, 1689 01:25:29,280 --> 01:25:31,040 right? People building stuff. 1690 01:25:31,160 --> 01:25:34,920 I think AI vibe coding, internal tools like that. 1691 01:25:35,560 --> 01:25:37,760 I think it'll be similar. I think it will be a hit, but 1692 01:25:37,760 --> 01:25:40,160 it's not a SAS apocalypse. Makes a great headline though. 1693 01:25:40,760 --> 01:25:43,160 It does. Paying it. 1694 01:25:46,240 --> 01:25:50,000 I, I don't know, I don't think I've ever seen it, but the SAS 1695 01:25:50,000 --> 01:25:52,760 apocalypse word. But maybe I just don't pay pay 1696 01:25:52,760 --> 01:25:57,400 much attention. Yeah, it's out there. 1697 01:25:57,400 --> 01:25:59,400 It's in the ether. I'm sure. 1698 01:26:01,280 --> 01:26:04,600 I mean, so this was awesome, Rob, we can start to wrap things 1699 01:26:04,600 --> 01:26:06,880 up, but I really appreciate you coming on. 1700 01:26:06,880 --> 01:26:11,400 It was a fun conversation. Do you have any words of advice, 1701 01:26:11,400 --> 01:26:15,200 words of wisdom for any technical founders out there or 1702 01:26:15,200 --> 01:26:16,400 soon to be founders? Yeah. 1703 01:26:17,680 --> 01:26:20,640 Technical founders or soon to be founders, Well, think in years, 1704 01:26:20,640 --> 01:26:22,680 not months, right? It's going to take longer than 1705 01:26:22,680 --> 01:26:24,120 you want or longer than you think. 1706 01:26:24,880 --> 01:26:28,520 Definitely learn more than you want to about marketing and or 1707 01:26:28,520 --> 01:26:31,240 sales. And it's just, I know, I know. 1708 01:26:31,240 --> 01:26:32,960 I was that guy. I was a developer too, and I 1709 01:26:32,960 --> 01:26:35,800 hated it. But the other thing is there are 1710 01:26:35,800 --> 01:26:38,400 people out there who are genuinely giving good advice on 1711 01:26:38,400 --> 01:26:40,600 these topics. You know, for oftentimes it's a 1712 01:26:40,640 --> 01:26:43,560 former developer who is now right. 1713 01:26:43,560 --> 01:26:48,440 So myself Orvid call AHL. He has a YouTube channel and a 1714 01:26:48,440 --> 01:26:53,160 podcast. And once you and the reason I 1715 01:26:53,160 --> 01:26:57,360 say that is because you kind of don't want to make the same 1716 01:26:57,360 --> 01:26:58,880 mistakes that all of us have made. 1717 01:26:59,240 --> 01:27:02,480 And the way to learn about the mistakes that we've made is to 1718 01:27:03,080 --> 01:27:06,040 watch the watch our episode that listen to our episode. 1719 01:27:06,040 --> 01:27:08,720 That's 8 things you should never do right, or the biggest 10 1720 01:27:08,720 --> 01:27:09,840 mistakes I made as an entrepreneur. 1721 01:27:09,840 --> 01:27:10,880 I've recorded both of those things. 1722 01:27:11,240 --> 01:27:15,120 And just educating yourself on the entrepreneur side of things 1723 01:27:16,240 --> 01:27:20,160 as much as you have, you've educated yourself in technical 1724 01:27:20,440 --> 01:27:22,480 circles, right? And in terms of code, like 1725 01:27:22,480 --> 01:27:25,880 you've learned a lot, you want to also learn entrepreneurship 1726 01:27:25,880 --> 01:27:27,840 is a skill. It's and so is marketing. 1727 01:27:27,840 --> 01:27:30,600 Like it seems amorphous, like, oh, don't you just do that? 1728 01:27:30,600 --> 01:27:32,400 It's like, no, you get better at it over time. 1729 01:27:32,760 --> 01:27:35,840 So if you want success at it, go to work. 1730 01:27:35,880 --> 01:27:38,400 You know, go to go to work. Educate yourself. 1731 01:27:38,960 --> 01:27:41,240 Work out that those other muscles right. 1732 01:27:41,960 --> 01:27:42,720 Yep. Yep. 1733 01:27:42,720 --> 01:27:45,480 And I hope like if there's anything that my audience learns 1734 01:27:45,480 --> 01:27:49,480 from me, I mean, let alone like programming Elixir, but but 1735 01:27:49,480 --> 01:27:51,920 don't bootstrap a double sided marketplace. 1736 01:27:54,000 --> 01:27:56,640 Don't do unless you already have one side. 1737 01:27:57,200 --> 01:28:01,280 Yeah, there you go. All right, awesome. 1738 01:28:01,280 --> 01:28:02,480 Thanks. Thanks so much. 1739 01:28:02,480 --> 01:28:05,520 And everyone that tuned in, thanks for being in the 1740 01:28:05,520 --> 01:28:07,360 comments. I love seeing it and I hope you 1741 01:28:07,360 --> 01:28:12,800 guys all have a good weekend testing.