SaaStrappers

#31 - SaaS Bootstrappers Report by MicroConf

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 14:25:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

In our latest issue, we shared the most popular city among saas bootstrappers.

And today, we would like to share the video of Rob Walling + Asia Orangio where they analyze the report collected from 700 SaaS bootstrapped startups. They mainly talk about:

free trial / freemium ratio,
growth rates by ideal customer type,
their willingness to raise funding,
growth and churn rates by model type,
credit card should be required or not,
main advertising channels.

If you want to download the report, here is the link.

Enjoy.

Levent Askan

Previous Issues:

#30 - Which City is Popular Among Bootstrappers?

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

Just saw the tweet that Rob Walling posted and wanted to share it with you.

They asked a question to understand where the founders located among their community - MicroConf - members and the result might be shocking.

They asked this question to 700 members and 266 of them answered.

London is interesting cus the living cost is high there but people prefer it because of the ecosystem who knows?

Check the tweet from the link below:

Twitter tweet

Enjoy and have a great weekend.

Levent Askan

Previous Issues:

#29 - SaaStr Survey + Greg Head's Podcasts

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 15:10:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share the survey of SaaStr that I have seen on LinkedIn. It seems like founders are more interested in bootstrapped or less-raised.

In addition to that, Greg Head shared "Top 10 Things That VCs Don't Tell SaaS Startup Founders" in the latest two episodes of his podcast. Here are the episodes:

Enjoy and have a great weekend.

Levent Askan

Previous Issues:

#28 - Growth Trends of Bootstrapped vs. VC-Backed Companies

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 14:30:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

I have been following Chartmogul reports for a while and this week they published a report where they compared growth trends of bootstrapped and vc-backed companies.

Some of the insights from the report:

Bootstrapped companies with $1M-30M ARR are quicker to adapt but VC-backed grow faster.
The economic downturn hit VC-backed startups below $1M ARR the hardest.
New Business picks up slightly but companies with $1M-30M ARR still struggle to reignite growth.
All SaaS startups below $1M ARR retain customers equally across funding models.
Net Revenue Retention stabilizes with VC-backed companies with $1M-30M ARR ahead of bootstrappers.

If you want to get more details; here is the link to the report.

For Dirk’s opinions, you can also check his latest issue.

And I would like to thank everyone who made this report happen.

Levent Askan

Previous Issues:

#27 - 2 Videos + 1 Reddit Post

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

Thanks to Dirk Sahlmer on LinkedIn, I have found this post about bootstrapping.

This Reddit account tested both VC-backed and bootstrapped ways and decided to go with bootstrapping. What do you think?

Here is the full thread btw.

Videos of the Week:

Levent Askan

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#26 - Things You Need to Consume About Bootstrapping

Sun, 26 May 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

After 2 weeks, I am here to share the videos that I consumed in the previous days about SaaS bootstrapping. In my upcoming issues, I will continue to share some content that I find valuable related to this field.

The first one is coming from MicroConf!

I assume most of you heard about Mailchimp before.

And on this video, Rob Walling interviewed Ben Chestnut to get more details about his bootstrapped story. Some bullet points:

He didn’t know there was a thing named SaaS when they were selling it as a subscription-based.
He decided to sell the company when he understood that the company was not defining himself.
The way they launched the freemium model was an accident. And many more:

The second video is coming from Alex Theuma who is leading SaaStock. He interviewed Adam Robinson who is very popular on LinkedIn nowadays because of his posts.

He was managing retention.com and currently, he is also leading rb2b.com. RB2B enables you to get the LinkedIn URLs of your website visitors and pushed them to your slack channel. Currently working in only the US because of privacy issues.

In this interview, Adam shared;

Why he built another company although he has been generating $22M ARR with retention.com
How he used LinkedIn effectively,
The story of Jasper AI and its effects on him. And many more:

Thanks for reading and I will try to update you with contents like this in the upcoming weeks. If you want to be highlighted here, reach out to me anytime you want.

Cheers,

Levent Askan

Previous Issues:

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#25 - Managing 2 Bootstrapped Companies at the same time

Sun, 12 May 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Michael Kamleitner LinkedIn Profile

Swat Website

Walls Website

I had a chance to meet with Michael as we are both organizing SaaS events in different cities and I have been following his profile on LinkedIn back then.

His story is unique as I didn’t see many people running two bootstrapped companies at the same time. And in addition to that, he is an active angel investor.

Enjoy reading the interview I had with Michael.

And Michael, thanks again for joining our series.

Notes from our side:

Starting from next week, I will pause interviews and will share links about bootstrappers.

I am open to suggestions regarding the future of this newsletter.

Michael:

Thanks for having me. So, about my background, I do have a technical background. I used to be a software developer, and I did that for many years as an employee in various agencies. And in 2008; I started to do my freelance work, mostly because I was so interested in social media platforms.

It was a super new thing back then. And in 2008, Facebook was the first platform to open up their API to guys like me. And so suddenly I was able to build small little apps on top of facebook.com and found it super interesting and exciting. Then started my own very small software agency where we would build apps for various brands on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

And so that was the beginning. Then switching over to creating my own products kind of came organically. Back then I didn't know the term SaaS. I'm also pretty sure I didn't hear the term bootstrapping.

So, it was not a conscious decision for me. Now I'm going to bootstrap my SaaS business. I didn't even know what that would mean.

Were you the only guy starting this journey or did you have some friends or let's say partners related?

In different parts of the journey, there were different conditions in the very early days of the agency.

I had a co-founder Andreas, but he pursued his startup idea. When switching to the products; I was the single CEO and single founder of the company. But of course, I already had a great team back then.

We were like five or six team members - all developers - and some of these guys are still with me or are still with me in some of my companies. So that's a great thing.

So, the name of that software is SWAT. io. and you started as bootstrapping. You don't know those terms. And one year later, you have another company named Walls.io. I think this is something we need to talk about.

Most people are saying that you should focus on one solution, one thing and try to build it fast and try to grow it. And in your case, you have two different products in two years. And right now all of them are live and performing well, but this is something interesting story.

Why did you split those companies? We can start from there.

Michael:

I would begin by saying that those who tell you to focus on one thing in one business, are absolutely right. I should have taken that advice.

On my side, how did I end up with these two businesses? Again, organically completely unplanned and naive. And the real reason is we were doing this agency business, right? And from the agency business, we got the first idea for SWAT.io.

But, I wasn't convinced that this idea would be a self-sustaining business. I thought it was a cool idea. We build something, build a product that we can sell, not just to one customer, like you usually do as an agency, but I don't know, let's say we can sell it to 10 or 20 customers that wouldn't be great.

So that was a very small ambition back then. And now, we will soon reach 1,000 customers with Swat.io. So back then, I didn't even think that was possible. So I always saw this more like a side business and it took me quite a long to realize.

And to also get the confidence to accept and say, Hey, this is a real software business. And I learned a lot during the years and then I got more confident. And then I said, okay, let's go all in. Let's make its own company and its own business and so on.

And that's what I did.

But during the process, I thought like if it's a side project, why not start the second side project? It's completely fine. Now fast forward, almost 10 years, and we were so lucky to make both side projects into real companies, real businesses.

I'm grateful for what my team together with me have achieved not just one time but two times. It's not something that you can take for granted.

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During that 10 - 11 years, Michael, I assume you had some challenges in terms of financial things, right? Maybe regarding the salaries, regarding the expenses or other stuff, because 11 years is a huge period. And in that case, have you ever thought about raising VC funding or you were the guy believing that bootstrapping is the only way?

Michael:

I didn't even know what bootstrapping was. So for me, I was in this mental mode that this is a side project.

That doesn't make sense. And, once it became a real company, it was almost too late in a way to raise money. Why? Because then you have a company with a track record of revenue. And the problem is if you talk to a VC or an investor in general, it's better to have zero revenue.

Then to have two years of slow and modest growth, because that kills any fantasy of the investor. The investment with zero revenue, the fantasy is infinite, right? You can draw a hockey stick graphs and all is fine. If you have a two-year graph or three years that goes, and then you make this, then you have to explain what's going on.

So it's much harder to raise and that's one reason, but.

Therefore accepting slow and modest growth, was a good decision, right? I think that's very personal, depends very much on the personality.

It's a character of the founder also choosing bootstrapping or playing a VC rollercoaster game.

I am also wondering your opinions about finding the talent part. Because while bootstrapping; finding the right talent might be challenging.

Michael:

That’s true. If you started a new business and you're not as naive as me 10 plus years ago, then if I would do it again, I would sit down and do the math.

I would think about how long I am committed. I mean, everyone creating a new company should have a horizon of 10-plus years. Right. There are of course rare exceptions where you are super successful and sell after two years.

But look at the 10 year timeframe and then think are you more comfortable with doing it slow and steady than bootstrap? Or are you impatient? Do you want to grow or do you need to grow immediately? That's also a matter of the market, right?

Maybe it was also in our case, of course, what was maybe a good question. Good luck is that the space we were in social media marketing space was not as competitive back then if it was new, right? It was like a new thing.

Nowadays, if you would start a social media marketing tool today, that's of course a different story.

Sounds good. As I said, you have a huge experience in that space and just wondering whether you have any advice for bootstrappers?

Michael:

I think even if you are a bootstrap and even if you made that plan and you are aware that the growth will be rather slow and steady, it's still good to very carefully look if there's a point in your development of the company where it's time to hit the gas.

On my side, there might have been such a moment in our history, in the history of Swat.io, for example.

Maybe I missed that because I didn't look careful enough.

If you do the first financing round at a very late point where you already have guaranteed or proven product market fit, where you see now I could scale up, I could hit the gas. Then it's probably a different thing to consider venture funding, but I still would bootstrap again.

If I am in B2B SaaS, I would consider at the right point in time, maybe then it's time to really raise and try to scale up faster.

So even if you love bootstrapping like me, try to be open to that possibility.

I'm not frustrated about it. I'm really happy and satisfied with everything, how everything turned out, but I think that would have been a point.

And, from my nature I am not open to risks, especially considering most founders guess pretty open to risk. I guess I'm on the lower end of that spectrum.

Michael:

I have to say first that I'm really like an amateur beginner in investing and can't give any advice as I'm learning along the way, but it's also exciting.

The exciting thing is that you get to know other founders, and other founding teams very well, and that's super fulfilling and exciting.

So that's why I like to do it. I am of course not a big-time investor. I don't have to. The pocket's deep enough for that. So my investments are very small compared to other angels which means I usually have to market myself as an investor in a way that I can also provide something else than money like feedback or network opportunities.

Now to your question, what is the most important?

I think it's all about the founding team in the end because the product that's in this early stage is most likely something that will look completely different two or three years in the future.

In the end; product and market of course are also important, but the main criteria is the team.

Thanks a lot Michael for your time and wish you success both of your angel investments and 2 companies.

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#24 - FullTime Indie Hacker

Sun, 05 May 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Daniel Nguyen Twitter Profile

BoltAI Website

PDFPals Website

I am lucky to have Daniel on our interview series as he is one of the well-known indiehackers and bootstrappers on Twitter.

I am so thankful that he shared all of his journey in full transparency including his approach to building an audience on twitter, his story behind indie hacking and so on.

Enjoy reading.

Notes from our side:

Sorry for missing the last week, it was hectic. Our interview series will be ending next week and I will be sharing weekly news about bootstrappers for a while to keep you updated.

Besides the newsletter, I have been focusing on building a product for RevOps people to minimize data entry and get the most out of it from the CRM.

Currently, I have been doing interviews with sales and revops people. If you are one of them please ping me on LinkedIn.

Background?

My name is Daniel Nguyen. I'm an entrepreneur based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. So, my background is in development. I was a software engineer, product engineer to be exact. So, yeah, I love building things on the internet. So the first dollar I earned on the internet was probably 15 years ago. I was selling software at that time.

Since then, I worked for a few other startups, and then I came back to freelancing and consulting. And so, two years ago, I started being active on Twitter, and I discovered the Indie Hacking Community.

And then I saw, a couple of my friends also doing that. And so I'm interested in the idea.

So I started being active on Twitter before I built the product.

And I just enjoy talking to other indie hackers and other makers on Twitter.

It's very fun for me. During that time I built a side project called ktool.io.

It is a tool to send newsletters and web articles to Kindle. I still working full time off a consulting job at that time, and I started selling lifetime deals back then like two or three months after the development.

I got around $3k in lifetime revenue. So, I quit my job and I started working on ktool full time.

At that time you have some savings also, right?

I always have savings. And so I created and I started working intensely on ktool, almost full time. After one year, I grew it to $1K MRR.

But I haven't found a way to grow it beyond that to make the ramen profitable point.

And so I decided to pause and start learning about generative AI, ChatGPT, and so on.

Hopefully, I could find a good freelance gig on that.

And so I did find two good gigs on generative AI.

One is not actually related to OpenAI API, but the other one is on Generative AI. And so during that time, I wanted to learn more about AI.

So I built boltai.com to show my own pain point. And so, to my surprise, it did pretty well back then.

I also tweeted about it and it went semi viral.

Which one have you been talking about? Boltai.com became viral, right?

Yeah, it's still a super early version, the MVP. It's not the full version right now, but people were curious and wanted to try it.

So I tweeted and it went semi-viral and I got an initial batch of early adopters to support the project and so on. And I made 100$ or so. Not a lot, but I was quite happy with that. And so I keep developing that two months. And then it went viral again.

This time it got crazy viral. And I think I can stop freelancing and focus full-time on this one. And since then, it’s been my most profitable product till now. So it is doing pretty well.

At last, during building boltAI, one of my customers asked for the ability to chat with a PDF.

If you heard about chatPDF before, it went viral multiple times. So, this is not a original idea at all, but one of my customer asked about and so I decided to build it.

But first, I decided to build a landing page for it. And I did a pre-sale on Twitter to see if people actually want to pay for it.

If they not, then I probably not going to build, but it did extremely well. Like. On the day I tweet about the landing page with only the video demo, the product is not even finished yet. It's not even working yet. And people were like okay. This is exactly what I want. And so on.

And I got like 2.000$ in pre-sale for that. And so I thought I got to build it too.

And so now, right now, my primary focus is on boltAI and PDFPALS.

Both of them are generating revenue and you are not working as a freelance or consultant at the moment, right?

Daniel:

No, no, I don't. I stopped at the moment I started getting consistent revenue.

And for most of the AI products, I'm just wondering about the retention rate of the user because most of the people want to try the product and some of them churn after a month or after two months.

Is this the same for your solution as well or is something different?

Daniel:

So, both of my applications follow the bring your key model.

So they pay the license for the software and then they start using it. It's a one-time payment.

However, after one year, if they want to get a new update, new feature, and support, they will need to renew that license.

And if the user decides not to do that, they can continue to use the latest version they have access to. So I think it's fair for both the founder, the developer, and the user.

And you are the only guy building this solution, right? Is it challenging to control your feelings? How do you manage it?

Daniel:

I had the initial savings when I started. It's quite three years of savings. So it's enough for us to not worry much.

And when you quit, people are supportive on Twitter when whoever quits and starts indie hacking.

And for a developer; it's pretty hard to market their product.

So I feel like it's a constant battle uphill every day.

At one point, our family got into a financial crisis and we lost our savings. At that point, I feel like settling down.

It was a difficult time for me as I was thinking about looking for a job. At that time, I talked openly with my wife a lot, even if she had no idea about what I was building. However, she was listening and helped me to gain clarity to go beyond that.

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For most of the people like you; it's important to build an audience on Twitter, as you mentioned, because a Twitter audience helps you to maybe increase your products awareness and also sell more.

For the ones who have no idea about how to build an audience, what do you recommend?

Daniel:

So, people should care that you don't need an audience to build and grow a product. Many founders did not actively build an audience. But they put their focus on other channels; such as Paid Ads or SEO and it worked pretty well. So I think that building an audience is not necessarily the best investment in terms of time, right?

But if someone is new and doesn't know much about SEO or Paid Ads or other channels and still wants to build an audience first then it still works. But I think it will cost you a lot of time.

Do you have any advice for those people who would like to start their own journey? Anything that you would like to share?

Daniel:

So, I think the hardest thing in indie hacking is there are so many things we need to learn. But most of the advice from founders is to pick one or two or maybe three channels, a marketing channel, and stick with it.

And if it experiments fast and if it doesn't work well for you or you are not a good fit for that channel or the work, then find one that works for you because there are many ways to build a profitable product. Each folder has their method, their strategy, their tactic, and their favorite channel.

Sometimes this channel works with one folder, but it doesn't necessarily work with other folders.

There are many channels that you cannot test, for example, SEO. You can’t test SEO, you can only write a really good article and wait for that like 3-6 months.

But others, I would call it a fast channel. You can test it very fast like paid ads or social media tweets.

So you can join Indie Hacker Groups or other maker communities like Indie Hacking. Many Indie Hacking communities will support you even if you have no audience or don't want to be still in it. If they see they are super supportive, join them.

Any books, any persons, any accounts, any videos you recommend for people like you?

Daniel:

I don't read a lot, but there are a few books that changed my mindset into an entrepreneur. So this is one bookholder. Start small, stay small by Rob Walling.

It is like 10 years ago or so. Rob shows the developer how to change the mindset from a software engineer to an entrepreneur, and how to look at the process of building the product and the marketing part.

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#23 - Bootstrapped to VC Funding

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 18:30:04 +0000

Thomas Johnson LinkedIn Profile

Multiplayer Website

Thomas has founded many companies before and he has a different approach related to bootstrapped companies.

Currently, he has been building a solution including his wife as a CEO and 10+ teammates.

They started multiplayer.app by bootstrapping and received VC funding to move quickly.

Enjoy reading!

Notes from our side:

We started a bootcamp for early-stage SaaS companies in Turkish to share some information about core topics like positioning, sales, marketing and customer success.

Planning to launch the EN version soon.

Please let me know if you would like to be notified by replying to this email.

When I first saw your profile on LinkedIn, I saw that you have an entrepreneurial spirit. And right now you have another company and working with your wife, and you start as a bootstrapped and get funded later on. And this is a different story that I want to share with my subscribers.

One of them is working with your wife. I think this is one of the things that you have something to share. And the other one is,mainly I interviewed most of the bootstrapped funders. But, your case is also fine. I meant, you started as a bootstraped and get VC funding later on. So for most of the bootstrapped companies, VC funding is a nice question because I think for VC funding, you should be a great fit.

So we can start from the first topic, what are the challenges and good sides of working with your wife?

So there's so much I want to share. So let me start with the part about my partner, my wife. So my career has been entrepreneurial. I love going from zero to one. I love making the early decisions tech-wise and trying to figure things out (problem and solution, product, market fit, all that sort of stuff).

It's just so exciting. So I'm attracted to that kind of thing.

We've been married for 24 years. She has a communications background, and worked for PR firms for several years, got into sort of technology and was brought in-house at DigitalOcean, where she was head of communications, and at MongoDB she was doing all of the communications of the CEO.

Her next step would be to lead a company. And I have a lot of ideas and we decided to start a company - Multiplayer.

I know a couple of things when you're starting a company, which maybe many of your subscribers know, which is like, it's tough to do it on your own, it is not possible to do everything.

I know, it's just much better if you have a partner that can share some of the responsibilities because it's not all about building tech. It's not all about building a go-to-market. It's all of these things. There's just a lot to do. You've got the highs and lows. It's nice to have somebody to help balance things out.

I would recommend somebody with complementary skills, somebody who's looking at the opportunity you're doing, especially if you're starting from zero and is in it as much as you are, somebody who you have some history with, you can have some trust.

It's nice if you've known somebody for a while and you've worked out some of these things. So, my wife and me, we've already worked out our communication issues.

We also have complementary skills. So she's not telling me about technology. I'm not telling her about go-to-market. We have ideas, but I have my spot in the area that I'm in charge of.

She has hers and we work together and it's been working out nicely that way.

It's hard to find that with a random person.

So I feel very lucky that she has a communication background and I was able to sort of convince her to say, okay, take this on as your first CEO job.

And you have been focusing on this project for almost two years. Can you give us more details about how the project started? How was the idea born?

So in terms of bootstrapping, I first got this idea 10 years ago. So one of the things that I would say to people who are considering starting something is “you’ve got to take the long view”.

It's never immediate success, overnight success, like they say it takes years and years and years.

I've always had lots of ideas. What I've done to them is like, let them sit for a while. And the ones that like are still with me months later, a year later, I might say:

Hey, this is a great idea, but the market's not right because this would be a nice to have not an essential thing, but I see where the trends are going, which is what happened with this idea.”

Sometimes you have to let it sit. So that's part of the bootstrapping effort, like knowing when to start, not when to go and sometimes saying, I've got to wait a little while because it's not quite right.

So Multiplayer is a tool for teams that work on distributed software. So, which is every software, it's hard to communicate about system architecture, know what you have.

It's hard to make changes. It's hard to communicate about API changes, all this other stuff, without breaking things. It's hard to do this kind of software development, modern software development. With lots of cloud dependencies and things like that without using a bunch of tools that don't talk to each other.

So we have a tool that brings together your system architecture, your components, and your API, that helps to document it, and soon it will help you to create platforms easily by taking a template, dragging, dropping components, and deploying. So that stuff is really hard. And it's essential, especially the communication part.

If you want a simple way of describing it:

So it's like figma for the backend.

I started thinking about this as working on large distributed systems, 10 years ago, working on teams with lots of platforms, lots of APIs, poor communication, poor versioning, like just all this stuff.

I said, there really needs to be a tool here. But 10 years ago there were a few companies that had this problem. It wasn't an every-company problem yet.

So I decided to wait. So part of the bootstrapping process was having the idea, knowing that it needed to wait for a little while until the right time. Until the right time when there's a critical mass of potential customers, then what we did with this was we put some of our own money in it.

You know, I've worked with developers around the world. We've got a distributed team and brought some of them into this project.

We paid for all of the initial work and got sort of first designs, very rough initial MVP, got out there, started getting feedback from a lot of potential customers.

And you know for us, we decided that we wanted to move quicker than just what bootstrapping fully allowed us to do.

You think you find the market and you think you should be fast instead of going bootstrapping. And you need some money for marketing and other stuff.

I felt as far as I understand. Or finishing the full product. Cause this is a particularly complex products.

It's like the ultimate idea is simple, but the foundation for the product and real-time collaboration and having this different kind of document type system, architecture, diagrams, and APIs, and shows diffs and changes, all the stuff we wanted to do would take time and we made the choice, in this case, to say listen we do want to move quickly.

We don't want to use our own money to get to this like the first version.

And that's why we decided to make that change.

How long did you bootstrap?

It was probably about six months. After six months we started reaching out to VCs and then they invested in our company.

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I'm just curious about this case. I guess there are three types of companies. One of them is like bootstrapping as mainly maybe more than 90 percent of companies, 95 percent of companies in the US, there are some VC funding companies like they want to be unicorns.

And there are some companies like “one and done” which are raising one time and they don’t want to raise later on.

What do you think regarding to those models?

Yeah, I guess it depends on where you want to take it and how big the market opportunity is. So for us, I have another product that's a project.

That is completely bootstrapped and still in the beginning stages. So it's a robotics project.

So there are things that sort of fit that model where you can do it yourself. You can get early users, you can get money and you don't need to hire a bunch of developers.

To help out, you can do a lot yourself and reach a point where you've brought in some positive cash flow and you've got some growth and work it out.

That's kind of rare to have, sometimes you need more time, you need more resources, and you might not have the money yourself, which is why you go for external funding.

From my side, I went through the dot com boom and I started a company at that time.

Okay. Luckily sold it. But I experienced the downsides of competitors, like raising 50 million with a business plan, a hundred billion dollars and all this crazy stuff that was happening.

They just disappeared and there's no fun in that. Everybody loses money, but what I learned is that;

You never get that time back. Not only is it a bad experience for everybody involved, but you lose the time.

You've got to start something else or start from scratch. So, funding is not the goal. Funding is not a sort of award or that you're doing well. All it means is you've got some limited resource to help you get to the next step whatever that is

There are drawbacks to taking funding, which is you're going to have, you have this clock that starts ticking. It really depends on what you're trying to do. For us, we wanted to bring this team together.

We want it to be able to move quicker than we would have. Otherwise, the product features we're trying to build are a little bit broader than just hiring one or two people and doing stuff myself.

We've raised 3 million, just not a lot of money. It's plenty for what we're doing in the phase that we're in.

I'm not thinking like, let's just be a unicorn and raise a bunch of money and have a valuation. I've had this idea. And dream of having this product out for such a long time.

And I think, it will resonate with a lot of people and help a lot of teams and I want that to happen as quickly as possible.

I'm gonna recommend a very strange book. But first: my advice to people is, it's never just one person.

It's always the team. And if you want the team to work well together, you have to make an effort on the culture that you're building, like from day one and take it seriously. Culture and communication.

And the book is Making Comics, I think it's by Scott McCloud. It’s a book on communication that I think everybody should read.

I think everybody should read it because even though it's about making comics, it's about storytelling. It's about communication. It's about taking ideas and getting them across to other people. And if you're a large distributed team, communication is a very important thing.

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#22 - Generating $1M ARR in 3 months

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 17:05:00 +0000

David Zitoun LinkedIn Profile

Submagic Website

David is an active LinkedIn user and I got in touch with him after I read one of his posts about submagic’s progress.

In today’s interview, we talked about;

David’s background,
How did they start submagic,
How did he grow so fast and why content business,
The power of affiliate programs,
The power of bootstrapping.

ps: We had this interview 2 months ago and I noticed that submagic passed 1 million user 4 days ago. Congrats for the team!

Notes from our side:

One of the things I like about Beehiiv is their recommendations feature and last week I gained more than 35 subs with the help of saasbootstrappers newsletter. Welcome to each and special thanks to Mac Martin if he is reading this post.

I'm wondering about how did you begin your journey at the sub magic? I've seen that you are an entrepreneur at heart. We would like to get some information about your background and also how did you start sub magic?

David:

So first of all, let’s start with my background. So I'm 26 and from France originally.

I have a not common background because I started working when I was 16 years old and I didn't study. So I started my entrepreneurial journey very young. And so the chance with that is I had the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes.

I tried different things and my first company that I launched was in a gambling industry, in sports betting in the UK.

So I was living in London at that time from my 18 to 23. I had a company in gambling and then after this company, I went to textile.

And after textile I went into software because I understand that textile is not a good business in terms of margin.

I wanted to do something scalable. I would like to work from anywhere in the world without managing physical products.

So that's why I chose software business and I started a software company in France two years ago which was a small bootstrapped software that I created with one business partner.

It went okay, but it wasn't something great.

It was in a very specific niche. I learned a lot from this experience.

In my second experience, I know how to find a good business partner and scalable idea.

So that's why I started submagic because on my side, I was a content creator myself and I want to dive into software.

To create any kind of software my goal was to create a software that solved one of my pains. And into an industry that I really understand well.

I was creating videos since 12 years old. So I know this industry of videos better than 99 percent of people in general.

So I knew that if I went into this field of video marketing, I will be better than everybody else. And I can talk with people about that for hours, because this is my field. So that's how I started submagic.

Can you give us more details about submagic’s journey?

David:

So we met with my co-founder in January 2023. And when we met; we said together, what is your vision? What do you want to achieve in your life? And my plan was very clear. I wanted to do something I like and be able to launch some products very quickly. And to do that I needed to have a good business partner.

So I meant, I was able to sell it very quickly So we say okay, let's figure it.

We don't know if we're going to find a good product that will find the product market quickly. So the goal is to say, let's take 10 months and during 10 months, we're going to ship and launch 10 different products every month.

And in 10 months, I think we might have one successful product. And we started with sub magic. So we shipped submagic in like one month. We have the MVP and three weeks after we had the first sale on May, 2023.

You didn't get a chance to test other nine products, right? Submagic was your first product.

David:

Exactly. We started with submagic and we had the product market fit in 10 days.

And we said we're going to do something great.

And right now you have been bootstrapping this business?

David:

Yeah, we are bootstrapped since day one. We are profitable since day one. We didn't need to raise funds because to be honest. To build a good software, you don't even need to raise as much funds as people think.

I believe that you can do some big things without raising funds. This is the case of submagic at the moment.

Levent:

And for the ones who have no idea about submagic, can you please give us some details regarding what you offer?

David:

For sure. So we are focusing on the short form content industry.

So for those who don't know what is short form content, it's like TikToks, reels on Instagram.

And so I believe it's a magic that short form will become the new marketing of 2024 like it's already the new way of doing marketing today.

But it will replace like quite everything in the next couple of years.

It will replace emails and similars because we believe that the last 20 years when you wanted to sell a product what you will have to do is having some salespeople and do some outreaching on emails to say; “Hey, this is my product.”

Are you interested in these things? Now the marketing is changing in another way. People are creating content and they attract people because they do great content in educational content about what they are doing.

What exactly, for example, Leo, what do you like in your life? What do you consume? What is your hobbies? And they will show you the content that you want. So for example, I'm a professional banker. I'm doing some emerging acquisition. And if I consume this kind of content, I will have always something like that in my feed.

So every business can be sustainable with short form content. And that's the core of that. So we believe in that.

So short form content is something huge and usually it will still continue growing so fast.

And we believe that creating content is not easy. You know, there is a lot of competition.

Today the value is not only creating content, it is like catching the attention from people.

So you have two ways to do it:

First, you can learn yourself and learn to become a very good video editor. Go on after effects and do some really good editing on after effects. It will take you hours to learn that and it will be painful.
And the second way is to work with an agency. They will charge you a lot of money to manage your content if you have the money, that's good But we believe that your job is not to focus on how to attract people, it's to focus on creating content.

This is your value. We have created SubMagic as a solution that enables for everybody who wants to make their short form more viral, more engaging in three clicks with AI.

So how do you we make that?

David:

We make that through captions today, because if you add captions and dynamic captions, your content will be more engaging and more valuable.

And then we say, what else can we add to make more engaging content?

Oh, we can add B rolls. Okay. So we're going to add B rolls and more engaging B rolls on your content. And then we had transition and then we had sound effects and then we had music and then we had title. Everything that helps your content more go viral.

We put it automatically with ai in three clicks.

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You make the content in a more consumable way and more attractive with your solution Including captions, zoom, sound effects and b rolls.

Currently, I guess you have some employees. You are not two founders. You have some employees working for sub magic. Is it possible to share some details regarding the current situation, how many employees you have, the MRR and similars?

David:

So 12 months ago, we were two co-founders at the beginning and then we grew and we decided to hire only when it hurts. This was a mentality with my business partner.

We don't like having big team. Like everybody thinks like you, if you have a successful business, you need to have like 50-100 employees and they always make the comparison employees versus like.

For me, this is super stupid. And nowadays, you can see that's a lot of successful business with less people. And that's what we believe in that. So we only hire when it hurts. So today we are 10 people in the team.

And the split is we have two people in the customer success. We want to give the best customer experience possible to our users. And we are very proud to have like, since we launched more than 900 reviews in total, and the average rate is 4,9 / 5.

So we have a very good success rate in customer experience. And that leads to our main acquisition channels.

Everybody's sharing the world about how so much is good and how the expense is great at submagic. So two person at the customer experience, we are three person in the marketing, myself, head of growth and or affiliate manager. And then we have three person in the products. So my co-founder and two tech guys.

And then we have one person in SEO. And then one person in content creation.

And we have more than 12, 000 active clients today. And in terms of retention, this is part of our business, but because we grow very fast, we have a pretty high churn. We started with a very high churn and then we are reducing the churn drastically every month because we are targeting who are our best clients now.

And your main source channel is word of mouth, right? Do you also have paid channels or organic channels?

David:

So word of mouth is our main channel. And then we're doing paid on the side. We have a big affiliate program where we have more than 5,500 affiliates today. And we give 30 percent commission back on lifetime value of every customers.

And that's the program works really well. We are very proud of this program because we have some people from all over the world, 18 years old guys making like four grands a month by just sharing some magic in the community. And we are very proud of that. This is amazing.

Any advice for other bootstrappers you would like to share, for the ones who are in the AI space like this video space, anything that you would like to share?

I see a lot of people asking me some advice and telling me; David should I do that or that when launch the product.

I think it's really important that people understand that you need to go fast to launch a product. And what I mean by fast is like, you don't need 10 months to launch a product.

When you start the business and then you need to go fast to validate the mvp, and you need to sell it quickly and see if there is attraction if people want to buy it.

And don't focus on details. Don't focus on stupid things Your product needs to be a minimum viable product.

You need to be shaming about your product.

If you're not shaming of your product it means you don't have an MVP and you are going too far. You are building a good product. And this is the number one mistake that I see everybody's doing. They want to build something great. And then they start selling after six months and then they realize there is no market.

They could have done that in two weeks. That's my first advice on that.

Levent:

So they need to push their limits and ship the product as soon as possible. See the reactions, engagement. And if everything is going well, they can focus on other features as you said, right?

David:

Yeah. And talk with customers, talk with the customers, talk with people.

For the first 500 customers of submagic, I have my personal WhatsApp number and they were calling me anytime they want to give me their feedbacks or anything they want.

So in this case, I was so close with them. So they give so much values for free and they were my best product guys, because they were building my product for me and they were pairing my subscription at the same time. So that's amazing. And people don't understand how valuable is that? Like the basic thing, the business are just like simple things.

Talk with people, talk with people, talk with people and sell and sell.

So when you sell, you make business so then you get the feedback from the people and don't get feedback from people who don't buy your product because people who don't buy your product are not your customers and take only feedback from people who buy your product and, and all the customers are good customers.

Well noted for me as well, David. Thanks for your time also. And anything that you would like to add instead of my questions, or do you have any recommendations in terms of books, advices, or videos?

I like a podcast called Lenny’s podcast, love this guy. He's doing so much great content, so much value. All the guests are amazing.

And if people have questions, I always here to help. I can share some insights, give my feedback on product. I love product. I love marketing. So, do not hesitate to reach me on LinkedIn.

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#21 - From an agency owner to SaaS co-founder

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Vlad Lugovsky LinkedIn Profile

UI Bakery Website

Vlad Lugovsky Reddit Post

2 months ago, Vlad Lugovsky shared how they competed with VC-backed companies in a competitive space by bootstrapping on Reddit and this post really got my attraction.

After that, I got in touch with Vlad through LinkedIn and thankfully he accepted my interview request.

In today’s interview, we talked about;

how challenging it is to compete with VC-funding companies by bootstrapping,
their best practices to generate leads,
how their journey started as a SaaS business,
what are the pros of owning a web-development agency,
is it something reasonable to focus on two things at the same time,

Enjoy!

So I found your profile on Reddit and also I got a chance to check your LinkedIn profile. So you had a great story and we would like to get more details regarding your story today. But first of all, can we get some details about your background?

Vlad:

Yeah, sure. So, I started as a software engineer. During my time at university, I started to work at a large software consulting company, which basically provided software development services. And I quite fast started to talk directly to the clients.

So take more responsibility. Let's see. And this is what I liked. And then when university was coming to an end I started to think about what I want to do. And the most obvious choice was to start something myself. And I went freelancing.

So this was the first step for my ventures to start and by freelancing, I was able to increase my salary quite significantly. And, I started to save money.

I don't know why at that time, I was thinking, hey, maybe I can buy apartments for myself, you know, to start the serious life with a wife and kids.

But then, I started to think that freelancing is also the question of scalability. So if you're great, you start thinking you can only sell your hours. Right. And then I started to think, how and what can I do? So I thought that the most obvious choice was to open some kind of consulting business, start hiring more people because I was able to find some clients.

I would love to build some product right away, but for building products, you need some money. And you can't save enough to build some decent product, unless it's some kind of small product.

More or less big. So I started a company called Akveo and that company provided software development services for different clients in the United States and Europe. At that time, we made our products open source and open source was a great channel for us to bring new clients.

For instance, one of our admin templates, NGX admin, was the Angular admin dashboard and we published it using MIT licence on GitHub. This was a great way for us to bring a lot of new clients at that time.

So Akveo is the company you focus for generating revenue, but it's like a consultant job, right? It's not like the thing that you have been doing right now. It's like right now you have been offering SaaS services through your solution. But before it's like a web development agency, right?

Vlad:

Exactly. Web development agency. And as I mentioned, since we published this open source admin dashboard, we built a lot of admin interfaces for our clients.

And this is where originally the idea of UI Bakery was born. So why don't we allow our clients a way to drag and drop interfaces they want themselves. Because eventually we understood we're doing the same job over and over again. So we started to build some kind of internal process type, which eventually was a technology.

But at some point we separated UI bakery into a separate company. And at that time I was already running Akveo for seven years. It was around 100 people. And I wanted to start something new because just like a usual employee, you want some fresh start and working on the product was a good thing for me.

So this is why we kind of decided to step down from the management and just move completely to UI bakery. And basically this is how it is.

So I'm running UI bakery right now.

How was the process there with that? To be honest, it should be hard because as you said, for your previous company, you have a hundred employees, you are one of the managing directories there.

And I assume you have been generating a good amount of revenue and you have a good amount of salary. And after a while you are saying that, okay, it's okay for me. And I'm going to focus on a new project, no revenue, no subscriber, no transaction focusing on that. I mean, how did you feel at that time?

How did you get that decision? Did you have any savings before getting that decision?

Vlad:

Well, obviously I had some savings, at that time, though they were not significant. historically we were always investing like everything that we had in growth.

And what I especially didn't like about the consulting business is that it's not really scalable, it really depends on how many employees you have. And I wanted to start something big. So it was a risk of course, but what I also understood was that if I won't try that, the product would eventually fail, because it's always about the focus.

So you can only focus on one thing at one particular time. And I was trying to push the consulting business and at the same time, I wanted to push the product company and it was not working. And, it wasn't working mainly for this reason.

Because you make decisions which you think are good for both companies. But when you look from the perspective of every single company, these are bad decisions. And the example is for instance; we were at the strategic session and then we made a goal for both companies, something like we want to build and you know provide services in low code and no code something like that.

Just kind of unclear vision for any of the companies.

So do we focus on building it? Do we focus on providing services? So it's not and eventually when we kind of separated all the things and I kind of started to focus completely on UI bakery.

Yeah, it was hard initially kind of to get from like zero to one but you know it's eventually with dedication and it was possible.

And it's like five years right now, right? When I checked on LinkedIn, UI Bakery is like five years old right now.

Vlad:

So, we consider the birth date of UI Bakery when technology eventually was born, but I would say that the current version of UI Bakery is from 2021, so two to three years.

And how is the current situation right now for UI Bakery? How many employees do you have? You are also in a competitive market when I check it from your LinkedIn posts, you mentioned that you have some competitors like VC fundings and how it's feel like to be in that environment because you are bootstrapping.

Vlad:

Well we are 12 employees and we are profitable. So these are our main achievements for the previous year and we kind of started to slowly hire just because we need to be careful. When you hire people you need to be sure that you're still profitable.

With regards to our competitive landscape, at the times it was really hard - especially in 2021 and 2022 - you read all the time that another company raised like 40 million.

We were thinking that we're going to be dead in a couple of years. But then, like the customers, they choose the products not because investments and investors.

There's a lot of customers who evaluate the products in different kinds of conditions.

And they want to find the team that delivered because some of them know that even if they are VC funded they might be gone in a couple of years or since they are VC funded they would be always hunting for more revenues. And if at some point every customer, like that particular customer, would not become not really interesting to them.

They would just easily kind of like stop providing good support and just build features for that customer.

Our strategy is slowly, but surely; we don't have many customers.

This is around 150 and we focus on closing their problems.

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So you try to be engaged with what they are building and adjust your featured map based on their needs. And you are more proactive, right? I mean, this leads you to be more proactive, I guess.

Vlad:

I don't think it's about the proactive support. It's more like just because we don't have a lot of money in marketing, in advertisement, and you can’t get a lot of leads and a lot of customers in a shorter amount of time.

So this is why people eventually take VC money. But then when you get a lot of customers, they are really different. They all have different problems. You need to have really good product managers or the people who are in charge your roadmap.

So that is how they segment all their needs and identify what you need to build and what is needed to really for your target audience and your vision.

And what is needed to build at that particular time, with the essence that you might lose those customers eventually. So in our case, we have less customers, and this is why we also have more focus. Um, so we are not moving maybe as fast as we could with VC funding. However, we are more sure that we are doing the right steps.

Just wondering, did you focus on one space, one niche, or you have been offering your solution for every industry right now? Did you do something related to that?

Vlad:

So despite the fact that we kind of sell to different industries we understand the person that would get the most benefit from using UI bakery should have technical knowledge. And, so basically this should be a software engineer in some, or personal software engineering background.

And this was really important for marketing activities and for product roadmap.

So, because UI bakery is a platform and with UI bakery, we can build internal applications for customer vendor applications, for healthcare, for manufacturing, for banking industries, you're not limited.

So it provides you the set of components, which are;

- applicable to different industries, but still you need to have some kind of segmentation, at least for a target user. And as in our case, the target user is as I mentioned, software, engineer or engineering background.

Yeah, but it might be better to double down on that, right? I mean, even though going with the horizontal way, you mentioned that vertical can be also useful in the beginning, right?

Vlad:

Yes, vertical absolutely can be useful for the beginning.

Okay, in terms of the growth part of the UI bakery, would you like to share any insights or tips that you achieved?

Vlad:

Well, I would say that we are at the early stage of our growth.

However, what was working for us, the best is organic channels. And, I believe that, if you have the possibility, like if anyone wants to build product on the longterm and build some great marketing strategy, starting investing in the organic traffic is like; it's the best way because in the longterm, it provides the cheapest and the most proficient results.

I guess the best way for bootstrappers mainly because you have been doing your project, aiming it to be like a long term and from the previous interviews, most people say that SEO can be the critical thing from day one.

Vlad:

I'm interested, however, how this would change with the rise of the GPTs, just because, you know, I believe people would use some kind of AI searching giants like OpenAI or others.

But still you know, what I currently see is that they still take this information from the internet.

So like probably it would stay like in a similar way.

Yeah. There should be more creative contents right now. It's like a more informational way. But I think writers need to add something from their side, from their perspective, or do some interviews and get some data from the other people and share it as a storytelling way.

So Vlad, my last question, any advice for bootstrappers around, in terms of your experience, in terms of books you read, in terms of movies you watch, something you have to share?

Vlad:

So I think if anyone would love to build good products, this is a good strategy.

And you mean after the consultancy business, you have some clients to reach out easily because they had been using your service or other stuff and it might be easy to convince them to use their solution, right?

Vlad:

Yes, exactly. And the main thing is that you have trust with them.

And by providing a service, you can gain trust.

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#20 - Started as a Bootstrapped, now VC funded.

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 16:32:15 +0000

Oleg Shilovetsky LinkedIn Profile

OpenBom Website

Thanks to LinkedIn, I met with Oleg and to be honest, he is one of the most experienced SaaS founders I have seen.

He knows the critical factors of building a business and I learned so many things in a short period from his sharings.

He has 20+ years in manufacturing space and he knows what most companies need in terms of digital transformation. And that’s why he started OpenBOM.

He started as a bootstrapped and then raised $4M funding. In this interview he also shared why he received that money.

Hope you like it.

Weekly News:

Last week, SaaSOpen happened at Austin which was organized by Nathan Latka mainly for bootstrappers and you can get access to speakers’ slides by rt’ing and commenting the post Latka shared on LinkedIn. Here is the link to it.
One of the well-known B2B bootstrappers on LinkedIn - Adam Robinson - shared why the traditional VC model is dead. Here is the link to it.

As we talked earlier, you raised some funding for your company but your mindset is bootstrapped. So today we are going to talk related to that. But before that, you can give us some details about your background first.

Sure. Of course. My background comes from development of software for engineering manufacturing companies I was involved in product data management and product life cycle management for the last 20+ years, I was working for a couple of very large software vendors in the space.

I worked for the dassault systems and I also worked for Autodesk. I was around a few startups and one of them was my company that was acquired by Autodesk. So I've been worked a lot with the engineering and manufacturing companies.

Also, I have my professional blog called Beyond PLM for the last 15 years. I'm publishing from two to four articles every week on my blog. So it's a part of me sharing knowledge with the community, with people that are looking for this knowledge.

How did your journey start with OpenBOM?

It's a combination of pain and experience. So I've been involved in the development of product lifecycle management systems from manufacturing companies. I've learned a lot in doing this for software vendors. I was running teams.

And manufacturing companies that came to me for advice, for different kinds of questions about how to do and what to do. So I've seen the opportunity and the only thing that you technically can’t change when you decide that you want to start a business is timing.

Because you can decide where to sell. You can decide what to do. You can decide even how you build a company, but timing you can achieve.

So, and the timing is something that I've learned really important because the greatest technology, bad timing will be bad.

And the average technology in good timing can be actually something that, will like, if you don't have timing, if you don't have a market.

Those are the things that are very hard to change. I mean, you technically can not change them. So the reason why investors are always asking you about market because they know if they don't have a market, like whatever you put money in and they're brilliant things you do, I do not sell.

So what I've seen is that, we do have a momentum.

In manufacturing, which indicates that the companies are transforming and digital transformation is what is happening in the companies. Like, if you take a look on perspective, I like this example because it's very kind of well, easy to understand to everyone.

“Like 30 years ago, I was going to my road trips in the car and I took a book, which was the paper map and my wife was sitting next to me and saying, now you need to take a turn and here's the gas station.

And this is where we can go. I mean, the all information was paper, analog.

Now we go into the trips, we get the everything planned in the phone, we stack the phone in the car, and then we can go. Now, in some places you can just immerse, immerse yourself in the navigation experience.

This is the 30 years of digital transformation of driving experience.

And in this process, this was a lot of companies; someone invented how to make maps, someone invented how to track traffic and how someone just brought local business information and combine it together in the overall. So it was a lot of digital transformation. So what happens now in the manufacturing business is the same.

I mean, it's not about maps, but it's about a lot of information. That is happening in the companies. The companies are figuring out how to work with each other. Companies are figuring out how to define the risks of supply chain and companies are figuring out how to connect information about what you do in the company with what your customers need.

So just to summarize; OpenBom is like the digital transformation of manufacturing space at the moment. And you started this in 2016.

We've been talking to potential customers who've been experimenting with technology effectively. We started to sell in 2019.

And in that three years, you raised some funding there?

Yeah, we raised some funding. It was a lot of transformation for the company.

But what about your mindset is like? Bootstrapped?

Our mindset is how to drive adoption. So one of the interesting lessons that I've learned is that; in the business of manufacturing, manufacturing companies are very conservative and there is a kind of perception that engineers are creating great products, very innovative products, always on the edge of the technology, but what people are not saying very often is that engineers are super conservative, conservative when it comes to their tools.

So let's put it this way.

So manufacturing companies developing great new products. And very often they build it using Excel and managing data in very old-generation forms. It is because, it's the reality.

So, and they use some of the products because they like and use it for ages.

So it is a very interesting kind of difference and because engineering; manufacturing companies are changing very slowly traditionally.

If a manufacturing company is doing something they're profitable and you know, their intention is when someone is coming to them and saying we can change something.

They say, I do it for the last 40 years and I'm profitable. Why do you want me to change something? What will happen tomorrow that didn't happen for the last 40 years.

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Yeah in that case I mean it should it seem like it's hard to convince those people to use your solution, right? Because they have been using the previous model maybe 20 years, 30 years. And what are the obstacles you had in that case? Because it's hard to change people's minds.

Just wondering about the things that you had and your unique selling points. Would you like to share?

Of course. Yeah, that's very important. Again, it's very important observation but it's hard to convince people that nothing is changing. So this is why I'm saying the world is changing, but the world around those people is changing.

And just think about a great company called Kodak. They look great. But, where are they now? So another great company called Nokia. Everyone was using Nokia phones. Where are these companies now? So there are a few other great examples of companies that existed.

So when the world is changing and they need to figure it out. So that's why I said timing is everything. So, and that's why the greatest news for us was COVID as much as it, like I said, the experience for everyone, a world is changing because everyone is moving into different parts, like the shake that happened to shake out.

That happened with COVID that helped everyone to understand that they need to have a digital strategy.

So that means you need to have new tools that's something that brings a change. And today it's a big good thing that happened. Like it's all online and everyone is going to distribute.

As you know we have some bootstrapped subscribers and also some VC funding firms. They would like to hear more about your story.

You have 15 employees at the moment, many badges from G2 and it looks like you have been doing great things from your end. What do you recommend for companies like you?

It can be employee wise, company wise. So i'm just wondering about your case here because I think there is a great use case behind your story

It was people people told before me a lot and I want to come back to this again and again.

The companies are not failing not because they do something wrong in the wrong way.
The companies are failing because they do something that people don't need. That's the most important thing.

So the problem with all founders, including myself, I'm not like many others is that we are very much preoccupied with our ideas. And because we are very much preoccupied with our ideas, we have a tendency to invent new stuff.

And as a result of this, we believe into this a lot. And sometimes we feel that because we believe, it's an important thing. Okay. So it's a very sensitive topic. You need to figure out and you need to get people to tell you that you actually did what they did. And that's the place where a lot of founders are making mistakes.

So you need to be brutal about finding customers and getting their responses. And analyzing those responses and making decisions in judgement of the results without being influenced by different events that obviously will happen to everyone. Because look, you're inventing something or you're trying to do something.

And you want to grow it by not without using artificial accelerators, like it's a lot of money. So a lot of money can hide some of the problems because you can sell a lot if you invest a lot of money and you can create something always by selling a lot of marketing because you can get artificial. Okay, you can get some results that not reflecting the reality and I'm not saying that you don't need money.

I see. You mentioned that; need, timing and customers are crucial, right? Three things are crucial for a company when they start doing something new.

Anything that you would like to add for bootstrappers and other people? Maybe a recommendation from your end in terms of books, podcasts?

Books, just Google, you know, there are a lot of people that sharing a lot of information. So not necessarily what works, what works for you might not work for someone else.

And what did they do? Like when someone is telling you. Take a look at what they actually did. That's where this is very important thing. And the most important thing is just don't give up because it's been said by many people, but I mean, it's not easy, like no matter how great successful you will be, it's a super lonely job.

It's boring. Although everyone didn't say any great stories, like how fun it was. After all, you will be measured by the sales results, how much you sell, and how it will grow, and then you will need to invent how it will work.

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#19 - Bootstrapping in Bangkok

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Tobias Meixner LinkedIn Profile

Hubql Website

Tobias is another guy I got in touch via Twitter.

He has been building his bootstrapped product while freelancing on the side.

This interview is for those who are in pre-revenue stages and also want to build a SaaS company while working full-time or part-time.

And want to get more information about the ecosystem in Bangkok and Thailand.

May not be for those who have been generating 10K MRR at least.

Updates From My Side:

I am going to be transparent here. After a while, I started to notice that in terms of content I am the guy who likes to build directories and reports. Interviewing is a great trigger to meet with new people but it’s hard to share it in the report format. So, I am thinking about is this makes me motivated, do I need to change the format or structure.

Just wanted to share my genuine feelings here.

Feel free to share your suggestions.

So when I checked your LinkedIn profile, I have seen that you have been living in Bangkok, but before that, I guess you have some experience outside of Bangkok, maybe European countries. I would like to understand why you moved to Bangkok and what happened there, you know?

I know Bangkok is a place for digital nomads, mainly for Europeans, and I really want to understand your case in that space.

Tobias:

It's actually gone quite some time back. I moved to Bangkok about 12 years ago and when I was studying information systems in the past, I had the opportunity to travel and also travel to Thailand.

And so when I graduated, I had the opportunity to start a job here in Thailand. And, I got a job, started working in Thailand after graduation and then never looked back. So it's really been my new home since then. And I enjoy living in Thailand.

As long as you have a stable job.

And you have been living there for how long?

Tobias

12 years.

Tobias:

Full time. We are bootstrapped. So we started about a year ago. And it actually solves the problem that I've experienced working in software for so many years. And it's something that we want to change. So our vision is to change the way people work and the way people develop software.

And so there's a deep passion of ours, my co-founder and I, and so that's why we started the company and also quite invested in the company, not just only our time, but also some of our resources too.

I see. Cool. And, how long you have been focusing on your solution - hubql?

Tobias:

Yeah, we started about a year ago and we started part time and then sometime like mid-last year, we decided to go all in and focus on it full time. As you know, and talking with other bootstrap founders, we can only go so far as soon as we find product market fit.

It might be a different story, but we are still in the stage of finding a market for our product.

We are deciding on what the next step is going to be, but we are still full time focusing on the product

I guess you are not the only ones who are focusing on that. When I check your link, it seems like you have six employees, right?

Tobias:

Yeah, we have six people working on the product and not everyone is full-time and not everyone is an employee at this stage.

And what is the current situation of HubQL at the moment? Are you generating any revenue from that space?

Tobias:

Yeah, right now we are pre-revenue. We are still in this stage where we are approaching potential customers. We are generating leads. We have some potential discussions, but no revenue at this point. We do have quite several signups, so it is interesting product, but no revenue at this stage.

What do you do guys do attract some leads. Do you have anything that you would like to share with us?

Tobias:

Yeah, different channels that we are trying. So we try to attract developers in social media. So we are quite active on LinkedIn. We are starting to be more active in Reddit, for example. And so besides building the product, we also want to build up the community.

And this is also a long-term investment. So we focus a lot on building the community besides doing some direct sales of products. Opportunities of course; where we do reaching out in our network, some cold emailing and things like that.

So we're really in for the long-term game which is building the community and the product.

I see. And in terms of short term, I mean, what do you have on your channel list? I mean, do you use Google ads or do you send a connection request on LinkedIn? What do you guys do to get some feedback?

Tobias:

Yeah. Actually most of our signups right now are coming from Google ads. So we run some ads related to our topics and this has been working pretty well because the conversion is pretty good. Our landing pages seem to attract our target group. So we can generate users. So the next step is really to reach out to them and generate also revenue from teams that eventually will also try the product. But right now it's mostly Google ads that we run.

How much money do you spend on Google ads?

Tobias:

A couple of hundreds per month. Small budget, because the conversation is going well.

If you think it's efficient, you can increase the budget later on. And you said that you have been focusing on this almost, let's say more than one year. I just want to learn during that period, how was your mood Tobias? Because you have been focusing on a project that is not earning the money at the moment, right?

Did you search for other jobs? And similar stuff?

Tobias:

So this is my second startup. And so, I know a little bit about the startup world.

It's something that you want to invest long-term in building a company, building a product is not easy. So I'm aware of this and it's a roller coaster. So there are great days, there's good news, but there's also a lot of bad news or stressful days. And of course, for me personally, it's finding a routine that kind of works for yourself.

Everybody is different, but for myself, I have found a routine in terms of how I can manage the stress, and how I can manage my workload. And also find a way to of course ensure your income, for example, to make sure that you can continue to run the company. And so if that is in balance, then of course, it's a long-term game that you have to play.

So your mental stability and your income stability are very important to make sure that the company continues to run. It's a challenge, but I think it's manageable. There's always a way to solve the problems that you have on hand.

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Do you focusing on your hobbies at the moment?

Do you have any hobbies there like running or stuff like that, or all the month doing this project?

Tobias:

Yeah. So last year I found out that tennis was the way to tackle my stress before I did a lot of walking and running. But I needed something that is a bit more, you know, requires more energy where you can also maybe just sometimes release your stress.

And I found that tennis is kind of the best way for me to do it. So I played tennis around three times a week and it hurts a lot.

How much time you need to spend to make this profitable in terms of months or is it going to be a year?

Anything you have regarding to that or just you will see it on the path.

Tobias:

Yeah, so we are one year into into the company, right?

So now it's the time for us to find a way to ramen profitable. That's kind of the goal. And for now, we can only generate this with the freelance work that we do on the side that of course helps us to continue to fund the runway that we have for the company and then eventually get to the point where we can generate revenue from the product, of course the goal is to reach this within this year.

And then expand from there. So that's that's kind of our plan. We also do look for fundraising opportunities. So if that is something that might happen, then we also open for them.

I see, good to hear those. Okay, cool. For the bootstrappers like you, how is the life in Bangkok? I mean, you recommend them to live there or are there any communities that you keep in touch?

Yeah, I'm just wondering that because I was also spent some time in Bangkok. And I couldn't find some people because of the season as far as I understand. But in your case, as you have been living there for almost 12 years, 13 years, how is Bangkok changing in terms of bootstrapping, nomading and other stuff?

Tobias:

Yeah, I think nomading majority is still in other places. So if you look at Phuket or maybe Chiang Mai, there's probably more popular places for digital nomads in Bangkok itself, you still have quite a few that you can maybe meet in the co working spaces.

There's more opportunities from the government, I would say. So, in terms of visa opportunities, they try to support digital nomads. They also try to support startups here.

And you have some events where they try to promote starting a startup in Thailand?

Tobias:

So I think it's more than in the past and not only digital but actually starting a startup, you know, like SAAS companies.

Founders, for example, come together and find solutions to collaborate or find a community of investors. I think this is still a bit early stage where in Thailand. That can help, but not really, a network of angels or you know maybe a private investment that is happening that much in Thailand.

So it's still quite struggling, I think, to start a startup in Thailand for, let's say Thai people looking to start a SaaS company. It's probably not as easy as in other places.

Just wondering about your advice for other bootstrappers that want to start their own company or you know that want to start their let's say SaaS.

Tobias:

Just take some time out of your free time and maybe invest an hour a day to build an app and validate it very quickly.

And only once you see that there's an actual interest, then actually start a process of starting a startup and starting a company. Because the risk is definitely fairly high. But yeah you can validate and build a product really fast today and get feedback really fast. So I think use that opportunity to validate your assumptions or your ideas and then move on to the next one if it doesn't work.

And that's maybe something that we haven't done as much in HubQL because we are more like a visionary company that in the long term game, but if you're starting out alone, maybe. It also takes some time to, for example, find a co-founder. It's not someone you can find within a day or two.

So I think the first step is to really just validate the idea, validate the product, and then maybe find a team or someone you might want to collaborate with to build a company, which of course is related to the decision.

If you want to do just the sort of passive income as an indie or actually start a startup, which is also quite a big decision to take and settle on.

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#18 - From Podcasting to A Tool for Podcasters

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 15:35:00 +0000

Tiago LinkedIn Profile

Podsqueeze Website

I got a chance to meet with Tiago on Twitter and his story immediately affected me. This is a genuine story that I totally want to see from other software developers and builders around.

He had a podcast where he hosted other bootstrappers and because of the amount he earned in a month which is like almost 600$, he decided to make a bold move and focus on tools that he might generate more.

With his co-founder, they started to try new products and found one which made them excited. And this is the product that solved the problem of Tiago once he was doing podcasts.

Amazing interview that everyone should take a glance as it has parts for everyone.

Updates From My Side:

Some of you may remember that I have 8+ years of experience that I helped two companies to reach their first $1M ARR.

And now, I plan to share what I learned with a bootcamp mainly for early-stage SaaS companies.

It will include sessions related to positioning, high qualified lead generation and sales process optimization.

If it grabs your attention, let me know and send me a message through LinkedIn or email. So, I can give more details.

So Tiago, thanks for accepting my, let's say request on Twitter. Actually, I have been following your journey for a while and, uh, you did a great thing with that podcasting tool and you had also a community in that space because you have been podcasting today.

I would like to get more details about your background first. How did you start that? How did you start the community?

Tiago:

So I started my journey as an entrepreneur about two years and a half ago. So I am a software engineer.

I was working for multiple companies. I worked for a startup. I worked for a bigger company. But I think I've always been an entrepreneur at heart and I've always tried building my own projects. And I always thought, okay, what if I would go full time? Is that even a possibility? Is this a real profession?

So, more or less during COVID times. I decided to take the leap. So I left my nine to five job that was paying well to basically focus 100 percent on my projects. So, there was kind of the path. And then since then I've been building different things and learning a lot about entrepreneurship, just try to figure out, you know, how can I sustain this for the rest of my life?

At that time, I guess, there wasn't that AI hype, what type of companies you tried?

Tiago:

Two years and a half ago, there was other hypes, I guess, not so positive ones in my opinion, like the NFT hype and then crypto and stuff like that.

But I didn't start anything with that. Fortunately, it's been kind of a chain of events. So I started, I was working in a nap for climate change to help people fight climate change called change it. But then at the same time, when I went full full time entrepreneur, I was not making any money, obviously.

So I got a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress. It was like, what have I done? So I decided to start my own podcast as a kind of therapy for myself and a way for me to narrate my own journey and take notes. And since then, it's been a succession of events that led to Pod Squeeze, which is quite funny, but back then I didn't know.

So I started my podcast named Wanna Be Entrepreneur which is about bootstrapping a company and I started just recording first to my phone. Then I kind of upgraded my setup and because of the podcast, because I got some people interested in that, I decided to start this community, as a way to sustain the podcast. So I thought, okay, if you're paying.

And I have my own journey where I narrate, I am really open about everything that's going on with me, both in the business and mentally.

And then I also interview other bootstrappers. I interviewed more than 60 different bootstrappers. Some of them are making a lot of money. Some of them are not, but I wanted to really understand what was really like to, to bootstrap a company like this and in this way without the VC.

So without the VC part, like, is this really possible? Because of that, I created this community and this community became a product of its own because people really enjoyed it. So I decided to start charging for to join the community. And, it grew up to, I think $600 MRR. And I was really invested in that.

But then I kind of realized that yeah, the growth was not sustaining my lifestyle. Of course, 600 is not, it's far from being. So then I decided, okay, it was a hard decision, probably one of the hardest decisions of my professional career which was okay, I need to drop the community and start over after two years of failing.

I still haven't done it, but I still, I need to start over and start you know exploring other projects.

And after two years you decided to focus on Podsqueeze, right? I guess you build Podsqueeze after the AI thing. And I guess from your Twitter, it's like four or six months.

Please let me know if I am mistaken. And, I guess it's going well at the moment. You have a co founder and your competitors also started to run ads for your name on Google ads and other stuff. So how's it going? And how did you start focusing on pod squeeze and how did it start?

Tiago:
So podsqueeze started, because I met this guy who is also an entrepreneur for more like more than 10 years.

And I have been helping him with his projects. He has been helping me with my projects, but we never actually worked together in something. But he is more like design background, marketing background. And I'm more from tech side. And we said like, okay, let's join forces and let's try to build something.

And, Podsquueze is not the first product we built. We built something else. called Indie Lottery, like a product to help kind of a product hunt competitor. And, we decided, okay, we are going to give it. Maybe one, two weeks or maybe a month and let's see if it doesn't work, we kill it right away. We are not going to waste much time and we go to the next one.

Then we were kind of brainstorming and we're thinking, okay, what can we do? There's this, new technology is now called chat GPT. They have an API. What can we do with this? Because this is mind blowing. This is amazing. We were brainstorming. And because I have my podcast, I know that it's a pain to create show notes and descriptions and all the assets and repurposing the content.

It's super annoying. And I thought, okay, now with this technology. Maybe we can do something. Maybe you can save tons of time from this podcast because I would use it myself. And that's also, by the way, another lesson.

You know, solving your own problem. So I was solving my own problem. I pitched this idea together with other ideas to João and we decided to go with this one and in one week we built the first MVP. So it was just one week build it. And then every week we were analyzing and saying, okay, do we want to continue?

So every week we would reach the end of the week and say, does it make sense to continue? Okay. It does give it one more week. So first week we build it. We shared it with a few friends and they said it was interesting. And some of them were quite excited about it. So in the next week we decided to build the monetization.

So stripe integration. So in two weeks we built something that people could actually buy and use and then relaunch it.

And when did you launch it?

Tiago:

We launched it at the end of February, so it's going to be a year soon. So it was the end of February, beginning of March is when we actually launched the product.

And now, you have been generating 14K MRR. As far as I see on Twitter. And how did you reach that number, Tiago? I know many companies like three years, four years, not in that space.

Some of them are VC backed. Some of them are bootstrapping. So what did you do differently? Or is this something related to AI? I mean, how is your opinions regarding to that?

Tiago:

My opinion, and also based on the people I've interviewed on my podcast is that most the products that have a lot of success, most of them have this kind of traction, right from the start.

And if it doesn't work, then you have to start all over. And if you give, how many years do you have to actually start something, right? So it's much better to do smaller bets, right? Like a month. So in a year you have 12 months. So 12 different products that you can get, that you can try. So my, and of course that there's no one truth, right?

So you always need to adapt to your market, to your personality, to your everything. But what I recommend everyone is. Try something until you get distraction. You need to share it and people must be excited. They must be throwing their passwords at you, throwing their money at you, throwing their passwords and saying like, okay, let's fix it.

Because that's what we found at first. When we first launched it, funny enough, we didn't get a paid customers in the first week right away. We got one. But we had a lot of people excited. They were like, this is not working and they would stay with us. In the chats and we're like, because they really wanted it to work.

So most other products, they would just, okay, not working. I will just close it but not with this product. They were really excited. They wanted us to fix it. And of course we had a lot of bugs, right? Tons of bugs, a lot of things that were not working, but they were patient.

And then we fixed a few critical bugs. We reduced a bit the prices because the prices were a bit too high. And from like the third week on. We started getting people coming to the web, customers. And then the growth. And of course that is also related to the AI trend because it was a new product and podcasters were amazed with this and now it's not the same, of course, because there's a lot of competitors and they already know, but we got this AI trend and we reached 5k MRR in about like three months.

And about six months we reached 10k MRR. So it's been a huge growth. And then we actually plateaued. So that’s the next challenge.

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Tiago:

Yeah, I'll tell you everything we did.

So basically when we first launched, Reddit and we launched on my Twitter base. I have like around 4, 000 followers. We tried to like spread everywhere. Just to get some initial traction and see if people would be interested. When we saw that they were interested, we started also doing email marketing.

So we found a bunch of emails from podcasters and we started like emailing them heavily and try to get them. And they were also very excited. So that worked really well, email marketing and still works really well for us. And of course, then a lot of word of mouth, people talking.

And then we did a product hunt launch that was really good. We got second place and that brought us a lot of traffic and a lot of customers.

And since then, for the following months until around September, it was just growth based on the email marketing, based on the trend that AI was generating and based on the product launch. So those were the only means of marketing.

Good to hear those. And once you reach plateau, you were telling your new marketing things at the moment. I also seen that you have been talking with some SEO guys. So you have new plans regarding the marketing as far as I understand. Am I correct?

Tiago:

Yeah, correct. So now looking back, we've made a huge mistake.

Which was, we thought that the product, the trend, the AI trend by its own would just catapult the product, the pod squeeze to, you know, whatever, a million ARR or something like, we were naive. We thought that the growth, because it was growing to just continue growing, but that was a huge mistake. So, we'd neglected more sustainable sources of marketing, right?

The product hunt launch is something you can only do once. Right. You cannot do it multiple times. So once you do it, you get those customers, that's it. Around September, we started our growth. We were still growing, but with a different momentum, it was much lower growth. So we decided to start investing in something else which was SEO.

We invested in SEO, but SEO takes some time to start kicking in. And we were a bit too late. So there was what I believe to be, it's my theory that those two or three months in the end of the year, where we stopped growing also because we were like transitioning from AI generated to like SEO and other means of marketing.

It seems like a lot, but if you think about it, instead of us spending three, four months, we just spend it once. And someone did that in a week and in a week we learned everything we needed to know about SEO. What should be our SEO strategy? We fixed this, fix the bugs in the website to make sure it was a engine friendly.

And, and we knew what was the strategy, like our keyword strategy, and then we hired someone as well to help us. And together with my co founder, Joao, we have been like writing two, three pieces of content every week. And, and now our SEO is growing which is really nice.

And you have been generating new customers from inbound content marketing, as far as I understand, right?

Tiago:

Yeah, SEO and cold outreach.

And you also have a co-founder, how did you distribute the shares?

Tiago:

We started this together and there's also something that is really helpful. We do share 50%. If you find a co-founder, you need to share a percentage. But you know, it’s amazing, right? Like he has skills that I don't have and he has done things that I would not be able to do.

So, it's a huge resource to have someone also to share the journey with and bounce ideas. And if you are sick or if you are on holiday, you know that someone else's cares as much, you know, for the business as you is taking care of that. So yes, I recommend.

I totally agree with this and oppose solo funding. So, any plans for the future? What would you like to achieve at the end of the day in terms of pod squeeze, what would you like to do?

Would you like to reach out all of the podcasters or would you like to also do something for YouTubers as well? What are your ideas or what are your future plans?

Tiago:

The mission for podsqueeze is to be an essential tool for podcasters. So when you think about podcasting, you think about, you need a host. You need the microphone and you need pod squeeze. That's basically what you need.

It's a growing market. It's growing every year, which is really exciting. So we just want to be the tool for everyone. At the moment we are mostly focusing on podcasting or on YouTube, where it's also YouTube podcasting. But we, we also offer possibility to create clips.

So if people want to repurpose their content, their video content into clips, they can also use pod squeeze. So it's natural that eventually some podcast, some YouTubers, I mean, we'll also be using our tool, but the main goal at the moment is to be the essential tool for podcasters.

The monetary goal for this year, which is quite high but it's $100.000 MRR, I know it's really hard, it's going to be really challenging, but that's kind of what we're fighting for.

It means how many subscribers?

Tiago:

To get there, we will need around 2000.

And at the moment we have around 500.

And I'm just wondering how is their engagement and also how is their retention rate, churn rate? For most of the AI products, the churn rate is like almost 30%. How is your churn rate per month?

Tiago:

Yeah, that's something that really worries us. But it's good to hear that we are not the only one. So we have around like 10 percent churn per month. Which we thought it was terrible because it's a lot.

It's around 10%, something that we have been fighting to reduce. And we do have some ideas on how to get there.

Levent:

I guess 10 percent is not bad by the way, because I also talked to other AI founders and one of them said it's 30 and the other one said it's 20. So yours is the lowest.

Anything that you would like to add?

Tiago:

Well, I think I said most of the things that I would advise a starting bootstrapper, but just to recap, if you're new, I would say try multiple projects. And until something gains attraction that you never seen before, don't be afraid of killing it.

Just try like a week or two weeks, give it or give it a month per project. Let's say if it doesn't work, kill it. Start something new. Fix your own problem. You need to be the first user because to build a great product, you need to understand if it's actually solving a problem and if you are, it's crucial.

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#17 - Solopreneur in Bali Generating $2K MRR

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 20:30:00 +0000

Erwin Twitter Profile

BootstrFM

Tailscan Website

Erwin is one of the popular solopreneur guys on Twitter who is building his product in public. I got a chance to discover him through his Twitter Space session where he hosts other bootstrappers mainly digital nomading.

I am testing a new format where I share all of the conversation without editing and summarizing. Hope you like this version.

So right now you are in Bali. Before that you were in Bangkok. Uh, what are you doing in Bali at the moment?

Erwin: I would consider right now, Bali, my home base. So, when I'm not traveling, I'm usually here. I have been in Bali for about five years on or off.

And what were you doing before Bali?

Erwin:

So the two years before, you know, the pandemic hit, I was traveling a lot. And then the last three years I've been here more than before those five years. I had a career for three or four years in consultancy, straight out of university.

And, why did you decide to move to Bali or why did you decide to traveling? What happened while you were working for a consultancy company?

Erwin:

So there was, an opportunity within the company when I was 25, I think, or 24, and it was that, uh, there was going to be a new office in Kenya, in Africa,that they wanted to open. And the structure of the company was so that every location was quite independent.

So really everything had to be started up from scratch. And, I was asked to become, essentially to become a technical sales and team lead of the teams there. Back home in the Netherlands where I'm from and that was remote. That was about a year and a half of working remotely between, you know, Kenya and the Netherlands flying back and forth.

And I got a bit of experience with remote work. Sincerely like this, and this is interesting. And so after one and a half years, I decided to quit the company, um, get rid of most of my stuff, and start traveling. And that's how I ended up with Bali because it was frankly, it was on the top of the nomad list.

And I loaded the page, looked at the first destination. I was like, okay, I guess, I guess I go there. And I guess the rest is history.

You had your savings when you arrived in Bali, I guess.

Erwin:

I had quite a bit of savings, yeah. And a freelance career. That's how I started.

And when you arrived to Bali, did you start coding? What were you doing at that time? I mean, did you start your own software service company or freelancing? How did you earn money in that case?

Erwin:

Yeah, the first two years, I was mostly dreaming of building a product, but I didn't actually, you know, end up working on it. I had some side projects that were never released, as it goes quite often, so the first years, two years, I was really just freelancing and I made websites, mostly websites and also some Android apps. And then after two years, I tried, you know, like becoming more public about what I built, and that resulted in the very first project that I had called sparkly.

Which was a Slack integration. And I learned, first of all, I learned a ton doing that and I made quite a few mistakes in a good way. Like you know, as you should, learn from your first launch. It's never, never crazy success, right? It went very well for the first few months when I launched it.

Some quite big companies turned out to be customers for a few months, and this was also during the pandemic. Um, so, you know, more people were moving to Slack because they were working from home and stuff. So it was good timing in that sense, but I did not have the business skills.

So I ended up having a pricing model. Pay per user, you know, makes the bill variable month to month. And I realized later on, I learned that companies don't like that. They want to have a specific price.

And then you sold that company, through which platform?

Erwin:

I'm not entirely sure how long micro-acquire was around, but, I think I was rather early with that.

It was still the time when, you know, it was called micro acquire which I listed as pre-revenue. I did make a couple of hundred monthly recurring revenue off of it, but realistically it was a zero again when I sold it. So I marked it as pre-revenue. I sold it to a company that wanted the integration for leads because they have, they wanted to transition the tool to free and then use that for their consultancy business.

I sold it for, I think, 13K. It wasn't a big amount, but it was enough to recycle my time anyway.

And then you decided to focus on another project or you continue to travel for relaxing. How was that journey?

Erwin:

I took, I definitely took a week off after that. For sure, just to enjoy myself a little bit.

But it wasn't maybe a few weeks after I already started. The next thing was a brand management platform. I've always loved branding and, you know, organizing assets and all that kind of stuff. So I had affinity to the product. But what I didn't do was talk to people.

I basically didn't launch it for the first six months when I did. Uh, I had some responses. I had maybe a hundred trial users, but I never actually converted anyone. I had the syndrome of if I build one more feature that is going to make everyone want it. And what I realized now is if you can't make the core of your product, interesting enough for people to get it, any extra feature won't matter.

But back then I didn't know this, so you kept on working on it for 10 months. And then you uploaded that, right? It's the name of the project, it's Basestyles, right?

Erwin:

It's Basestyles, I actually took it offline because I didn't even want to pay the Heroku bill of 20 bucks a month anymore. But I think on my personal website it's still, listed as a project.

I basically just stopped that one.

You decided to stop doing that project because you didn't get the marketer's right?

Erwin:

I realized that I wasn't the right person for this industry and this product. You know, after 10 months of doing this. If you can't make something work, I got bored too, but then if you can't make it work after 10 months, then honestly, it's probably, especially if you're independent and alone, like I was a solo entrepreneur, it's just best to call it quits.

And you also believe that there should be a founder product fit, right? Rather than product market fit, there should be a founder product fit.

Erwin:

Yeah, which I thought I had. And I was passionate about the solution turned out, I was passionate about the solution, about what I built, but I wasn't that passionate about the problem.

Not enough anyway, to know how to sell this or know how to approach it.

And after that time, did you get demotivated or how was your moral situation?

Erwin:

Yeah, not so good to say the least. I was not very motivated to continue and the money was running out. What I used to do was freelance a bit and then run off my savings to do one, one project.

Once I needed to, you know, once my runway was small, I would start freelancing a little bit again. And I wasn't one of these cycles where I just ran out of money and I was like, either I can work hard again and then try another couple of months with the base styles or just stop and find something else.

I see. By the way, how do you find your freelance projects? I mean, do you use a platform or with a friend's recommendation?

Erwin:

Yeah, the last it's usually friend recommendations from a network as a consultant, actually is quite useful. All the people I used to work with in companies, they all spread out to tons of other companies over time.

So my network now is very diverse.

It's easy for you to find some clients because of the network situation. I see. You made some savings and then you made some freelance project and then you focused on a new project, right?

Erwin:

Right. It was August, 2022. Basically giving up on bass dials and I was already freelancing a little bit, by the way.

So I had, you know, I was increasing my runway a little bit slowly. But I was, it was a net positive month. And I decided, you know what, why am I not just, you know, I've been hearing the advice all the time. It's like build fast, validate fast, you know, like throw away the project if it doesn't work.

And there's a difference between understanding and doing it and hearing about it all the time. And I thought I was doing this. But then I looked myself in the mirror, I was like, I'm actually not doing this at all. I'm actually doing the opposite. So maybe I should really stick to what's being said and advocated and just give myself one week, and try to build anything.

And I ended up grabbing an extension that I made to make it easier for me to work on base styles because I was using Tailwind and I wanted to change visually very quickly. And so I made a Chrome extension in the browser for myself to like adjust the styles a bit quicker. And I was like, well, I suppose I can just grab that and.

Make it a bit prettier, make it a bit more usable. And then, you know, maybe release that I gave myself a week to try it. And so I built a prototype very quickly within a week, actually it was like 10 days and then, um, I made a demo video of 15 seconds, give or take, uh, put it on Twitter and what do you know, like it had like 500 likes and I had maybe more than 20 people in my DMS.

Asking how to get it, how to buy it, that they wanted something like this. And that, that was, that was wild. It was like night and day.

So, and then you think that you've found the right product to focus on. Am I right?

Erwin:

Once you start getting DMS of people saying I want this and it's not just, you know, a couple of friends, it's actual strangers. Um, then yeah, I think it's safe to say that you have something interesting going on for sure.

It was all through Twitter. That's where I validated it because, you know, for a developer tool that I built, it's, it's a good place to.

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You said that you started to focus on that project, August 2022. And I think it's almost 2 years.

how is that going? How is your business skills? How do you market the product? Uh, do you use Twitter or any other platforms to promote it?

Erwin:

I started in August and kind of dabbled into it. So September and October were still a little bit. I think honestly I did the challenge at the start of October for that week. And before that I was like, kind of like working on the tool anyway, once it was released, you know, it went very well, the launch went very well.

And, tailscan has been alive now since the first product hunt launch for almost 2 years. And over that period of time, I've had quite a few ups and downs, but I would say there was reasonably consistent growth. I think for the first six months, it was pretty static, like, you know, just continuously climbing linearly.

And then somewhere in June or July, uh, of 2023, I decided to change the pricing model and start offering both monthly and yearly, then a one-time licenses as well.

And that changed like, the recurring revenue situation all of a sudden it shot up like maybe 300 percent more growth than the months before. Um, so, uh, that's one of the lessons that I also learned is like, don't stick to your pricing. Like, you know, just start on what do you think is potentially a bit cheap, but you know, good enough.

And then just see, eventually see if you can increase it and see if people, want to pay for that. And in my case, people did. I think my conversion dropped a tiny bit. But yeah, revenue increased by 300%.

So before that, you only had yearly pricing, right? And you tried the monthly one and the perpetual license.

Erwin: Yess.

What's the source of your growth, Erwin? I mean, how? Your clients find you through twitter or through organic channels. You have a specific source.

Erwin:

I do have multiple sources. So for the first six months, it was mostly Twitter. And I made a couple of those.

And so I made a couple of tweets about, you know, special effects for buttons and stuff like that, like sharing free content, um, to help a little bit. And that was the first six months that worked very well. Um, after about six months, I think the SEO started kicking in. So I wrote a couple of articles and those are ranking pretty well these days, all tailwind related, of course.

And right now I would say 40 percent of my traffic is Twitter, 50 percent is SEO. And the other 10 percent is you know some other sources like newsletter mention or other stuff.

I see. And, did you write all of the articles by yourself or did you find a contractor to write the articles?

Erwin:

No, I have a philosophy.

I simply don't want to spend any money that, I'm earning right now because, you know, at that time I wasn't growing profitable. So I had the philosophy. I want to do everything myself. I want to learn everything myself. Up until the point where I am around profitable and then, you know, potentially after that, whatever money's left, I can start using for contractors.

So I wrote it myself and I did use AI to help me summarize, you know, what I should talk about or like bullet points or a bit of ideation, I suppose. But after that, I pretty much wrote everything myself. Including articles, coding, social media posts, you are one boss wearing multiple hats. I am wearing quite a few hats.

Yes. I see. I see. I mean, and right now, um, how is the situation of Tailscan? Are you going to focus on this project more? And what do you have on your mind?

Erwin:

So I just released Tailscan 2, which was meant to be the Tailwind 2. Uh, the version that was pretty much including everything I wanted to do for Tailscan didn't really work out that way.

So there will still be coming on another version out with the last few things. I will consider the project mostly feature complete after that, unless there are specific developments within Tailwind that I maybe should be supporting in the future, of course, but I want to focus on improving Tailscan.

Um, and then after that, I would, I would like to move into a different product that's related to Taillwind as well, which helps because, you know, there's already some audience and already have existing customers. So it's easier to start that one up. Um, but I think that that's what I'm going to do in the next couple of months.

I see. So you would like to develop a new product for the same or similar personas or clients, right?

Yeah. Because it's better to grow. It's, it will be easy to grow and also generate revenue.

It's this, this stair stairway approach where you have the one product to like build an audience. And then the second project to like, make money. And then the third one to potentially conquer the world or not really, but like, you know, dominate the niche anyway.

And, you have been living in Bali, as you said, for almost five years. And right now, how are the money things on your side? I mean, are you a ramen profitable, or profitable or still using your savings, how is your situation? And yeah, maybe you can share some struggles if you face any.

Erwin:

So right now, as it sits, tailskin is making just over 2,4K a month. Now this is gross, of course. So, you know, to make it net there, I still have to pay some taxes over that, and then it sits after taxes, maybe at like, 2K or so, which is right around the ramen profitability mark for me.

So I can say tailscan is profitable enough, to support my lifestyle, and to support all my spending. The amount of customers has also been slowly increasing. So, you know, I feel like I can, it's a bit more hands-off now, like a little bit more. And, if anyone's interested, they can always look at my open dashboard.

I published all the metrics publicly. It's all there for everyone to see, including the spending that I do business wise, by the way.

So you can also check out what my profit would be, or what products I use.

Let me think about the struggles.

One is to not continue to build features all the time and consider something feature complete. Because we all know this, right? We have a product we use, we love, and it just gets more complex over time to the point where we don't want to use it anymore. And then we find a different product that is simple again, right?

And it's this weird cycle. It's, I think it's good sometimes to consider what you should and shouldn't build for your product and perhaps keep it more simple.

Um, so I think this is more business mindset, right? I think the one you said is much more business mindset because when you, when you in a developer mode, you, you always want to develop, and release new features.

Erwin:

Right. You also need to sell those features. It's your ROI on your time. And that can decrease if you build too many features or too many niche features.

It has the potential to suck up your time more than it's worth.

And then the second struggle is marketing and automating it as much as possible. So marketing takes a lot of time, especially when your personal branding is attached to it. Which is the case for me. I have to still figure out exactly how to, uh, do marketing more efficiently, um, and more continuously so that I can be hands-off a bit more.

I see. Marketing actually for indie hackers, it's one of the challenges.

I have one specific insight that I always tell everyone, and always tell everyone to also really take to heart.

As a programmer, like I really listen to that and that's that there's a huge difference and correlation directly, pretty much of the people that seemingly are successful with products and building it and end up, you know, living off of it, etc. And then the people that try, but fail. And the big difference between those two is:

The ones that make it are writing.

They're actually writing. And, so often do I hear, you know, fellow indie hackers go, but I am writing. And then it turns out to be something like documentation or they're working a day on one headline.

On social media, like human writing is you can't do enough of that for your product and you really have to do more of it. In order to be successful and all the, all the great people that we know, they write. And the reason we know about them is because they write. So they share what they have on their minds.

Yes, but I do know quite a few people that we know in our startup bubble that are quite introverted in real life.

So if you read this and you're like, I'm introverted does not matter. It matters how well you can put your thoughts on the paper. As efficiently and well as possible.

So I have two questions left. I've been one of them is something regarding to advise. You can share to other bootstrappers, uh, because it's a tough journey and, uh, both of the money wise and also mental wise.

So it's good to hear your advises. So advice can be different for each other and, you know, it's. People's choice to apply it to their life, but, you know, to have it on their mind.

Erwin:

Yep. There's, there's two more things. The, the first one is, I would definitely try to look into something called flywheel marketing. Because it's one of these things that I think can help indie hackers massively gain new customers without that much work.

Normally SEO is the holy grail because it's automated marketing. And once it's out there, it just works. Any other marketing doesn't really work that way. Um, or as easily Google ads does, but you know, you have to pay for that. Flywheel marketing is the other way, uh, if your product allows it. For free, get more leads, which is amazing.

And flywheel marketing essentially is, making sure that there's some repetition, some cycle, which attracts more people over time, every iteration that you do, and that could be a link on the bottom of your chat widget, where people go like, I like this chat widget. Let me check what services.

That will be one way. But the other way that I did was post about features continuously on Twitter, with the demo video, take a screenshot of that, put that in my newsletter and mention it in the newsletter. If you want to see the demo video, click here. People would go from my newsletter to Twitter.

They would look at the video or would interact with the post. Because of that, the algorithm would pick it up and show it to more people. And those more people would be subscribing to my newsletter again. So that I would end up with more people. And I would do the cycle a couple of times, to increase my, my newsletter for example.

That's one thing. It's the flywheel that you created. And it's quite underrated, but anyone reading this, definitely look into it. Number two is to take care of your mental health. I always wanted to say this. It's a tough thing to do this. It's one of the hardest things in my opinion to do.

Um, there's a lot of, you know, mental struggles and emotions coming with it sometimes and frustrations. Um, but you know, the one that, that holds on, tries to learn and hold on, and keep on going is the one that wins. The ones that quit, you know, you don't win when you quit. But take care of your mental health, take a break when you need it.

Don't neglect your health, basically, this is first hand experience, it's not worth it. How do you take care of your mental health? Um, so that's why I've been saying for the longest time, I didn't do enough. Um, and so I'm very good at not feeling stress in my head, but putting it inside my body.

And that costs some health issues that are resolved right now. It's fine. I'm good again, but, stress is something very dangerous. And sometimes we don't think about it enough, how bad it can impact you. So, it's very important to have things to, to release stress. And, you know, for some people that will be going to the gym, other people like to hike, other people like to do other sports or maybe have a hobby or whatever.

But never have only work in your life. You have to have some, some other thing that goes to burnout. I was pretty close to it, I luckily didn't, but I was close to it. I feel like.

So, uh, any books, any people or anything that you would like to recommend to other people, like styles, bootstrappers, let's say.

Erwin:

Oh, so this is a weird thing about me. I don't read books, no book recommendations. But, I don't have that many recommendations for who to follow either.

I think it's quite apparent in the space who to follow, but I would say. If you get the chance, then look at the previous episodes on BootstrFRM, you can listen to them back on Twitter. I think that's a solid recommendation, uh, as to who to follow and to learn.

Thank you very much for having me.

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#16 Shopify App Exit Story

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 15:30:00 +0000

İlke Karabogalı LinkedIn Profile

Ali Selim Aytuna LinkedIn Profile

Personalization Website

Are you ready to hear an exit story of bootstrapped Shopify app founders?

I have been living in the same neighborhood with İlke and her story with her co-founder is inspiring.

They exited their Shopify app when they had 150 subs and now focusing on their new adventure.

Enjoy!

Recommendation of the week:

Hazel reverse engineers how successful indie makes build multiple 7-figures. Her last issue breaks down how Jay Clouse grew to $600K per year as a solo creator. Here is the link.

Welcome to our interview, İlke and Selim. I met İlke through my LinkedIn account and learned that you co-founded a company named Personalization, which exited in 2022. I'd like to hear about your backgrounds and your journey with personalization.

When I heard İlke's story, it got me excited. So now, I'd like to hear more details from you. Before personalization, you were working for a corporate company, as I understand from your LinkedIn profiles, and then you transitioned to startup space. Could you share your experiences with the corporate part first, perhaps including some insights into your time at Nokia, before diving into personalization?

İlke & Selim:

Certainly. At Nokia, we were colleagues. I was working on the marketing side, and Selim was managing the developer ecosystem. During that time, we started discussing various startup ideas. After exploring a few concepts, I decided to leave the company and began working on a small idea. I shared it with Selim, and he was on board. Our motivation stemmed from being e-commerce users ourselves and experiencing the pain points firsthand. So, I left my corporate role first, and six months later, Selim followed suit. In August 2012, we began working on our idea.

I noticed your journey with Personalization began around 2019 on LinkedIn. Could you share more about your previous company, Shop Crowd, and the pivot towards Personalization?

İlke & Selim:

Yes, our journey started with Shop Crowd, which initially targeted B2C services but pivoted to B2B within 12 months. Our first product, designed for B2C, proved unsustainable, but upon speaking with e-commerce clients, we realized the potential for our solution as a B2B offering. This pivot was a natural decision, as it aligned with customer demand and provided a viable revenue stream. Over time, we transitioned from serving corporate clients to targeting smaller enterprises, leading to the creation of Personalization.

So, after the pivot, you rebranded as Personalization. How did this transition unfold, and what were your key considerations?

İlke & Selim:

Exactly. While the core technology remained the same, we repackaged it into an e-commerce app. Initially targeting Turkish clients, we later shifted our focus globally. This decision was driven by market demand and the need to adapt to changing consumer behaviors.

Expanding globally was essential for us, given the challenges of operating in an underdeveloped country like Turkey. Cash flow management was particularly challenging due to delayed payments from clients. By targeting a broader market, we mitigated these risks and ensured the sustainability of our business.

Can you elaborate on your approach to customer acquisition and the role of marketplaces like Shopify and WooCommerce in your growth?

İlke & Selim:

Certainly. We initially relied on field sales and founder-led initiatives to acquire customers. While educating potential clients about personalization and AI, we found success through direct engagement and demonstrations of our value proposition. Integrating with marketplaces like Shopify and WooCommerce further accelerated our growth by providing access to a larger customer base.

Choosing the right marketplace was crucial for our success. While Magento, OpenCartand PrestaShop were viable options, Shopify and WooCommerce offered higher conversion rates and better integration processes. Understanding the user demographics of each platform allowed us to tailor our approach and maximize our sales efforts.

At that time, how did you differentiate yourselves from competitors like Amazon in the personalization space?

İlke & Selim:

We differentiated ourselves by highlighting the scalability and accessibility of our solution. Unlike Amazon, which relies on vast amounts of data, our system was designed to be lightweight and suitable for smaller e-commerce businesses like up to 10 products. We emphasized our ability to deliver personalized recommendations without requiring extensive data points, making us an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

Additionally, our focus on real-time recommendations and easy integration set us apart from conventional AI-based systems. By addressing common pain points and offering a seamless user experience, we positioned ourselves as a preferred solution for businesses seeking personalized customer interactions.

Looking back, what were some key milestones in your journey with Personalization?

İlke & Selim:

One significant milestone was our transition to a SaaS model and our successful integration with platforms like Shopify. This allowed us to reach a wider audience and achieve exponential growth. Additionally, refining our product offerings based on user feedback and market demand played a crucial role in our success.

Moreover, our focus on customer-centric sales strategies and targeted marketing efforts enabled us to establish ourselves as a leader in the personalization space. By continuously iterating on our products and prioritizing customer satisfaction, we were able to sustain our momentum and drive long-term growth.

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So during those early days, when you were just starting out, can you recall how many team members you had on board?

İlke & Selim:

We were a small but mighty team back then. Picture this: a handful of dedicated individuals, including backend and frontend developers, and a compact customer acquisition squad. Despite our modest size, we had meticulously fine-tuned and automated most of our processes. It was all about efficiency. And you know what? It worked like a charm.

We were able to cater to our customers with unparalleled dedication. And the response? Oh, it was heartwarming. Our clients showered us with gratitude, and our reviews? Stellar.

Those reviews were like gold dust in the marketplace realm. You see, in the competitive arena of online platforms, reviews reign supreme. A high review score was our ticket to acquiring new customers effortlessly.

So, did you diversify your approach back then? I mean, apart from the platforms you mentioned, did you explore avenues like Shopify or delve into the realms of Google ads?

İlke & Selim:

Yes, indeed, we cast our net wide. We dabbled in paid advertising across various platforms. From Shopify's marketplace ads to Google, Facebook, and Instagram, we left no stone unturned. But here's the kicker: the marketplace ads outperformed the others by a mile. There was an efficiency there that we couldn't ignore. Of course, we didn't neglect the power of SEO either.

We revamped our website, delved deep into technical SEO, and embarked on a journey of optimizing every aspect of our online presence. And you know what they say about high rankings on Google? It's like having a golden ticket.

Our blog posts were reigning supreme in the Shopify category, thanks to our relentless content creation efforts. It was a multi-pronged approach that paid off handsomely.

And then came the decision to exit the company. What prompted that move? Was it a case of seeking new challenges, or were there offers too good to refuse?

İlke & Selim:

It all started a few years back when a representative from FE International came knocking. They wanted to assess the value of our company, and let's just say, it got the wheels turning. Despite the initial valuation falling short of expectations, it sparked our interest in exploring potential acquisitions. We cast our net wider, exploring different avenues like MicroAcquire. However, it was our experience with Empire Flippers that truly stood out. Their meticulous due diligence process and the quality of offers made them the obvious choice for us. It was a blend of attractive offers and a desire to embark on new adventures that led us down the path of exiting the company.

Empire Flippers, indeed a game-changer. Did they sweeten the deal with a higher multiple compared to other platforms?

İlke & Selim:

Oh, absolutely. Empire Flippers set the bar high with their initial valuation, offering a multiple that was the envy of many. It was listed at a whopping 60x monthly EBITDA, a testament to the value they saw in our company. After some negotiations, we settled on a 50x multiple, which still left us grinning from ear to ear. The quality of offers and the rigorous due diligence process truly set them apart from the rest.

And now, onto your latest endeavor. Care to shed some light on the Seven Feet Framework towards Product-Market Fits?

İlke & Selim:

Ah, the Seven Fit Framework, our latest brainchild. Picture this: a culmination of years of trial and error, distilled into a framework aimed at helping budding startups navigate the tumultuous waters of product-market fit. It's still in the prototyping phase, mind you, but oh, the potential is palpable. We're testing it rigorously, ensuring it resonates with early-stage startups striving to find their footing in the ever-evolving market landscape.

So, is it tailored for early-stage ventures, or can established companies also find value in it?

İlke & Selim:

While the framework is still taking shape, we envision it catering to both early-stage startups and seasoned veterans alike. You see, the beauty lies in its versatility. Whether you're a fledgling startup finding your feet or a seasoned scale-up looking to fine-tune your strategy, the Seven Fit Framework promises to be your guiding light in the murky waters of entrepreneurship.

Exciting times ahead, no doubt. And before we wrap up, what pearls of wisdom would you offer to aspiring bootstrappers, based on your own rollercoaster journey?

İlke & Selim:

If I were to distill our journey into a few nuggets of wisdom, it would be this: embrace the psychological rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship. Bootstrapping isn't just about balancing the books; it's about navigating the highs and lows with unwavering resolve. Prioritize profitability, yes, but never lose sight of the value you bring to your customers.

Transparency, efficiency, and a relentless focus on delivering value are the cornerstones of a successful bootstrap journey. And remember, it's not about the size of the investment; it's about the impact you make with what you have. So, to all the aspiring bootstrappers out there, strap in, hold on tight, and embrace the journey ahead. The road may be rocky, but the rewards? Oh, they're worth every bump along the way.

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#15 Interviews - Oleh Kulyk

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 14:30:00 +0000

Oleh Kulyk LinkedIn Profile

Scraping Ant Website URL

I have been following the story of ScrapingAnt on Indie Hackers and it’s great to have Oleh here.

This guy is from Ukraine and he has been selling his solution globally. In this interview, we talked about;

His background,
How did they launch Scraping Ant,
How did they find their first customers,
Advice to other bootstrappers.

Recommendation of the week:

Hazel Lim has a newsletter where she shared the growth strategies of indie makers which is similar to SaaStrappers and totally recommend her newsletter to get some inspirational stories. Here is the link.

Could you tell me more about how you transitioned from software development into starting Scraping Ant? What motivated you to create this particular product?

So, my journey from software development to starting Scraping Ant was a natural progression fueled by my background in technology and my desire to solve a specific problem. Throughout my career, I've worked on various projects that involved data extraction and web scraping, and I noticed a common challenge: the lack of reliable and efficient tools for web scraping at scale.

This realization, combined with my passion for building solutions, led me to the idea of creating Scraping Ant. I wanted to develop a platform that would make web scraping easier, more reliable, and accessible to businesses and developers of all levels. I saw an opportunity to streamline the process of gathering data from the web and provide users with a powerful toolset to extract, transform, and analyze data efficiently.

With Scraping Ant, my goal is to empower businesses and developers to leverage web data for their projects and applications without the hassle of building and maintaining complex scraping infrastructure. I believe that by simplifying web scraping and offering robust features and support, Scraping Ant can make a significant impact in various industries, from e-commerce and market research to data analytics and business intelligence.

As we brainstormed ideas with my co-founder Andrew, we realized that we wanted to create something with long-term potential and scalability. We considered various options, but what ultimately drew us to the concept of Scraping Ant was a combination of factors.

Firstly, we recognized a growing demand for web scraping solutions, especially with the increasing importance of data-driven decision-making in business. We saw an opportunity to address this need by developing a platform that would provide users with powerful tools for extracting data from the web efficiently and reliably.

Secondly, both Andrew and I had experience working with web scraping technologies in our previous roles, so we had a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities in this space. We felt confident that we could leverage our expertise to build a competitive product that would meet the needs of our target audience.

Additionally, the timing was right. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to adapt to remote work and rely more heavily on digital solutions. This created an increased demand for tools that could facilitate online data gathering and analysis, making it an opportune moment to launch a web scraping platform like Scraping Ant.

Overall, the combination of market demand, our expertise, and the current business landscape made Scraping Ant the ideal project for us to focus on. We saw it as a chance to build something meaningful, scalable, and valuable to users, and we were excited to embark on this journey together.

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It's interesting to hear about your initial focus on the gambling industry and extracting odds data. However, you mentioned that you faced challenges with marketing and measuring conversion rates on existing API marketplaces before. Can you elaborate on what led you to shift your approach and start providing services through your own infrastructure? What were the key factors that influenced this decision?

While exploring the gambling industry and considering Andrew's experience with data extraction from gambling websites, we initially thought about building a service focused on providing odds data. However, as we delved deeper into the market and discussed our options, we realized that this approach had its limitations.

Andrew shared insights from his previous experience, highlighting the significant investment in time and resources required to develop and maintain a comprehensive system for extracting and organizing data from gambling websites. This made us reconsider whether this niche market was the best fit for our skills and resources, especially given the challenges associated with building a robust solution and finding customers.

At the same time, we encountered difficulties with marketing and measuring conversion rates on existing API marketplaces like RapidAPI. While these platforms provided access to potential clients, they also posed limitations in terms of visibility, control, and analytics. We found it challenging to effectively promote our services and track user engagement and conversion rates within the marketplace environment.

In light of these challenges, we made the strategic decision to pivot our approach and transition to providing services through our own infrastructure. This shift allowed us to have greater control over our marketing efforts, user experience, and analytics. By building our own website and SaaS infrastructure, we aimed to create a more tailored and seamless experience for our customers, from their initial interaction with our platform to the utilization of our services.

Ultimately, our goal was to improve our ability to attract and retain clients, streamline the user journey, and better measure the effectiveness of our marketing strategies. This decision marked a significant turning point for Scraping Ant, enabling us to chart a new course and pursue growth opportunities with greater flexibility and autonomy.

Could you elaborate on how you approached advertising on platforms like Google and Reddit to attract your first customers? What strategies did you employ, and what lessons did you learn from these early marketing attempts?

Certainly. Our approach to advertising on platforms like Google and Reddit was fairly straightforward, although we had to learn as we went along due to our limited experience in marketing and sales. Here's how we approached it:

Google Ads: We experimented with Google Ads to increase our visibility and attract potential customers. This involved creating targeted ad campaigns that focused on relevant keywords related to web scraping, data extraction, and related services. We aimed to capture the attention of individuals or businesses seeking solutions in this space. Through Google Ads, we were able to place our ads prominently in search results, potentially reaching a wide audience interested in our offerings.
Reddit: In addition to Google Ads, we utilized Reddit as a platform to promote our services and engage with relevant communities. We identified subreddits related to data extraction, web scraping, and other relevant topics where our target audience might frequent. Within these communities, we shared information about our services, provided valuable insights or tips, and engaged in discussions to establish credibility and build awareness. This grassroots approach allowed us to connect directly with potential customers and showcase the value of our offerings within a trusted community setting.
Landing Page: Central to our advertising efforts was the creation of a compelling landing page that effectively communicated our value proposition and encouraged visitors to take action. We designed the landing page to be visually appealing, informative, and easy to navigate, with clear calls-to-action prompting visitors to learn more, sign up for a trial, or contact us for further inquiries. By optimizing our landing page for conversion, we aimed to maximize the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns and drive meaningful engagement with our brand.

Throughout these early marketing endeavors, we learned valuable lessons about the importance of targeting the right audience, crafting compelling messaging, and continuously refining our approach based on feedback and data insights. While we encountered challenges and setbacks along the way, each experience served as a learning opportunity, helping us to iterate and improve our marketing strategies over time.

And how did you grow that company? Are you still two of you guys? Or did you hire someone? How was your journey in that case for the three years?

So we've been doing it, like we have only two of us who are mainly working on this project but still we are trying to delegate some of the responsibilities like accounting, operational stuff that we want to get away from and be focused on the technical part.

So yeah, unfortunately we're not that sales guys and we are mostly trying to solve market problems. So during those three years we identified, we gathered a lot of feedback. And we tried to understand pain points.

And recently we hired one more guys to help one more guy to help us with sales. So we were looking for some experienced salesmen to help us improve our processes and implement best practices for sales. Hopefully like this investment would help us to grow even faster.Question:

So any advice for bootstrappers, any advice for people who would like to launch their SaaS company as bootstrapping?

I have the only one advice. I saw so like in the early days, but I didn't get it right. It's pretty, it's quite simple and it's pretty universal one advice.

So things will get way more. Time than you expect and it it's applicable for I guess a lot of different things In life, but yeah things will get way more time that you expect. So, you need to push it forward. You need to keep consistent and not give up if you'd like, if you'd still like to do what you're doing.

So that's the second advice. When you're trying to build something and you want to like to do it, to do that for a long time and to build something out of it, better to pick up something that you're passionate with. So something that you would like to do for a long time, because yeah, it wouldn't be easy.

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#14 Interviews - Dmytro Krasun

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Dmytro Krasun LinkedIn Profile

Dmytro Krasun Twitter Profile

ScreenshotOne Website URL

I have been following Dmytro on Twitter for a while and really like his transparent tweets where he shared all of his ups and downs. Not like other founders who use their accounts as promotional material.

I would like to thank him for joining our series.

We talked about;

How did he start his journey,
Why did he focus on API projects,
How did he survive during the tough times,
The power of SEO,
Advice for other bootstrappers.

Posts of the week:

I think with the help of AI, we will see more bootstrapped companies and this can be a new trend or hype, I don’t know what to say. Anyway, a new video from YC has released which is all about vc-backed and bootstrapped companies.

Don’t miss the event of MicroConf at Atlanta, 21 - 23 April. Many many key speakers will be there, including Rob as well. Here is the link.
For those who live in Istanbul, I will host an event all about bootstrapping a SaaS company. There will be 3 bootstrapped founders who will share their experience with us. Here is the link and you have a special 50% discount. Code: INDIRIM50

Updates from my end:

Our newsletter reached almost 500 subscribers with an average of almost 50% open rate. And I am planning to have sponsorship part on my newsletter. For the early adopters the price will be 50$ per issue and 150$ per 4 issues. Reply this email if you are interested in.

For those who don’t know me, SaaStrappers is like my second project at the moment and I mainly concentrate on offering positioning & revenue operations consultancy services to early stages and seed SaaS companies with my partner. We have 20+ years of experience in that space and helped four companies to reach their $1M ARR. For my posts about positioning, you can follow me on LinkedIn.

So I have been following you for a while from Twitter and following your project - screenshotone. Can you give us some details about your background?

Thank you for having me and for the opportunity to speak. Yes, we have interacted quite a few times on Twitter. I remember you were building a project with landing pages.

So about me, it's a bit complicated. Let's start from my software engineering background first. I learned computer science in university about 10 or 11 years ago. After that, I worked as a junior software developer at various startups, gaining experience over 10 years. Two years ago, I decided to quit my job and try building my projects. I didn't have specific plans but felt it was the right time to take the leap. However, finding success took time and money. Although it was challenging, I don't regret it.

When I tried building side projects while working full-time, it was difficult to find energy and focus. So, I decided to quit and dedicate myself fully to building my projects. This decision coincided with the birth of my second child, which added to the complexity. In January 2022, I began exploring different ideas, engaging with communities on platforms like Twitter, IndieHackers, and Reddit. Initially, I tried to build an audience, following a popular trend, but it didn't resonate with me.

Instead, I decided to leverage my experience as a backend developer to build API products, which I found simpler. With a list of over 50 ideas, I randomly chose one related to APIs. Despite having no marketing skills and a small Twitter following, I launched my API product in May 2022. To support its launch, I also published articles describing related problems and solutions, aimed at improving SEO. Although this approach generated some traffic, it didn't lead to significant conversions.

In June 2022, I decided to promote my API across various platforms like IndieHackers, Reddit, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

While Product Hunt wasn't part of my initial launch strategy, I explored every avenue available to reach potential users.

Before that, Dmytro, I have another question. For that time, for June, and I guess you left your job, maybe 2021. You didn't mention that, but after you left your job, I mean, you were spending your savings, right?

Yes, indeed. After leaving my job, I had no income and relied solely on my savings. The situation was compounded by the fact that a significant portion of my savings was invested in the stock market, which was experiencing a downturn at the time. This created immense pressure, and I contemplated abandoning my entrepreneurial pursuit to return to traditional employment. In April, I even entertained job offers from promising startups, but I hesitated. If I had accepted, I feared I would never know the outcome of my project.

The looming economic uncertainty, coupled with global challenges, added to the stress. However, I resolved to give it another six months. If I couldn't secure any paying customers within that timeframe, I would return to the job market. The cost of living in my area for a family with two children was substantial like 5K - 7k dollars per month, making this experiment financially demanding. Despite the pressure, I decided to cast aside my fears and intensify my marketing efforts.

Then, in July, a breakthrough occurred. A Twitter friend working on a project for creators, became my first paying customer. It was a moment of immense joy, even though the subscription was just $7 per month. This modest transaction validated my efforts and provided a glimmer of hope. Encouraged by this initial success, I set a goal to acquire two paying customers by the following month.

With renewed determination, I continued to promote my API. By August, I had secured five customers, followed by ten in September. This gradual growth signaled that my venture was gaining traction.

How people find your solution and what did you do to promote your company?

Ah, this is a crucial topic. Initially, Twitter played a significant role. Many individuals building projects stumbled upon my API and decided to give it a try. Approximately 70 percent of my early traffic came from Google, both through organic searches and Google Ads.

Today, I rank second on Google for the key phrase "screenshot API," a position I've achieved through persistent SEO efforts. It took nearly two years to reach this ranking, and I anticipate climbing to the top spot in the coming months. While this visibility brought in revenue, it wasn't enough to cover my expenses, presenting both a blessing and a curse.

I had set a personal rule that having at least one paying customer would prevent me from returning to traditional employment. However, this mindset was flawed as the income wasn't sufficient to sustain me. Consequently, I gave myself another six months to intensify my efforts and generate more revenue.

During this time, I moved to Israel, where I continued to focus on growing my business. The six-month deadline pushed me to explore additional avenues for income. I decided to launch my product on Product Hunt, which provided valuable exposure and high-quality backlinks. The supportive community, particularly on Twitter, further boosted my morale and visibility.

The Product Hunt launch significantly increased my monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from $200 to $800, but I needed more to cover my expenses. I began taking on freelance jobs and consulting projects to supplement my income while continuing to develop and promote my product. Despite the challenges, I remained committed to building and improving my business while ensuring financial stability.

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So, at that time, were you also providing consultancy services to companies, or were you only focusing on the ScreenshotOne API? Or did you build anything else to earn money?

Around eight months ago, in March 2023, I started to feel the financial strain and decided to pursue additional income streams. I took on a consultancy project with a friend of a friend, which provided much-needed financial stability and reduced my stress levels. This allowed me to experiment further and expand my projects.

One of these experiments was Damn Good Tools, a collection of AI-powered tools that I developed for fun and to explore emerging technologies. The project gained traction and was even featured as the product of the day number two on several platforms, thanks to the supportive community. I eventually added payment features to Damn Good Tools, generating around $500 in revenue within two weeks.

As I experienced increasing support demands for ScreenshotOne, I took a break from work and went hiking in the Bulgarian mountains. Prior to this trip, I listed Damn Good Tools on various business-selling platforms, including Acquire.com, with a price tag of $9,500. To my surprise, I received multiple inquiries and offers to purchase the project during my hiking trip.

While tempted to sell Damn Good Tools, I ultimately decided against it because of my attachment to the project and the difficulty of managing multiple projects simultaneously. Although I entertained offers for ScreenshotOne as well, I opted to retain ownership, as the proposed prices didn't meet my expectations.

In the end, you did sell the project, correct? Would you be willing to share the price at which you sold it?

Yes, I eventually sold it for $9,500. I had spent about four months working on the project, including the time I devoted to other activities like hiking trips. In terms of actual time dedicated to building it, it was probably closer to two weeks to one month. For me, it was a significant sum that provided some relief and allowed me to alleviate some stress.

It was also an interesting experience because I had never sold a project before. I wanted to see if I could do it and understand how it would feel. Selling the project was a bittersweet moment. While it was a win financially, I also felt a sense of loss because the project had gained popularity within a niche community.

However, after receiving more support tickets for ScreenshotOne, I realized that selling the project was the right decision. I simply didn't have the time to manage two projects simultaneously. Now, I can focus entirely on ScreenshotOne and see how it continues to grow. Currently, my goal is to grow it to $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). That's where I stand at the moment.

Currently, how much Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) are you generating through ScreenshotOne?

At the moment, it's around $3,700 MRR, give or take $100. Each month, it grows by about 10%. However, the growth is quite slow, which is my main concern. I'm hoping that within the next two months, I'll be able to reach the first position on Google, which should provide a significant boost.

I plan to capitalize on this by improving my landing page and dashboard to increase conversions. Additionally, I'll focus on enhancing stability and performance. If these efforts don't lead to reaching the $10,000 MRR milestone within the next six months to a year, I'll seriously consider either selling ScreenshotOne or exploring other side project opportunities to see how they fare.

I understand. So, currently, you're not tapping into your savings because the income from your freelance job and ScreenshotOne is sufficient to cover your expenses. This newfound stability must be quite reassuring for you. Does it also mean you have more confidence to explore new product ideas or invest further in your existing projects?

Yes, exactly. With the combination of my freelance work and ScreenshotOne's revenue, I'm feeling financially secure again. This stability allows me to entertain new ideas and conduct experiments without the pressure of immediate financial concerns. However, I aim to maintain consistency and thoroughly explore each idea before moving on to the next one.

Your journey certainly seems to emphasize the importance of self-discipline and taking action, even when you don't feel fully ready or perfect. It's interesting how you've learned to embrace opportunities like this podcast interview despite initial hesitation. Do you believe that taking imperfect action and consistently showing up can eventually lead to success, even if it means making mistakes along the way?

Absolutely. Taking imperfect action and consistently showing up is crucial for progress and success, in my opinion. It's about overcoming the fear of imperfection and failure and realizing that progress often comes through iteration and learning from mistakes. By consistently taking action, even when things aren't perfect, we create momentum and opportunities for growth. It's a journey of continuous improvement and adaptation, and sometimes the biggest lessons come from the mistakes we make along the way.

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#13 Interviews - Anil Agarwal

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Anil Agarwal LinkedIn Profile

InCruiter Website URL

Anil has an interesting story that I wanted to share in this newsletter. His background is related to the aerospace industry and he wanted to enter the startup world. He looked for ideas for a while and found one at the end of the day in 2018. For 2.5 years, he worked 8 hours for his product although he has been working as a full time.

At the moment, he has 250+ customers and he has been selling the software from India to the world.

Posts of the week:

Jason Lemkin from SaaSTR shared that there is a 3rd way instead of bootstrapping or VC-backed. Which is Just Raise One Round.
Here are the more details. And at the same time Greg Head also mentioned a similar term on his LinkedIn post - One and Done.
One of the players in the digital adoption space - Userflow - had been acquired by Beamer. I hosted the co-founder 4 months ago and at that time they were generating $4M+ ARR with 3 people. Check the interview from the link here.
If you are active on Twitter, you probably see some posts of Jon Yongfook. He is also known as a Bannerbear guy and he decided to not share his revenue publicly. I believe many people will continue like that because for readers MRR is nothing. We don’t know their real journey behind reaching that MRR including marketing, sales, churn, retention, and all similar things.

Twitter tweet

Vlad is the co-founder of UI-Bakery and on his LinkedIn post, he shared how they survived, and became profitable in the competitive market.
For those planning to apply to Tinyseed, the application will be opening on February 12th.

It seems like your primary interest lies in the aerospace industry, yet you ventured into the video interview solutions sector with your business. Could you provide more insight into your background?

Certainly. After completing my aerospace engineering degree in 2011, I secured a position in India's defense sector, primarily involved in the manufacturing and design of aerospace vehicles. Despite coming from a family with a business background, I initially pursued employment opportunities.

However, my entrepreneurial drive persisted, and over the course of seven to eight years, I actively sought the right idea to launch my own startup. This quest led me to establish my business in 2018.

Could you elaborate on how the idea for your business came about?

It all started when my co-founder went for a job interview in Bangalore. During her visit, she discovered that there was nobody available to conduct the interview for a chartered accountant position, despite the candidate's significant experience. This highlighted a common challenge faced by many startups and small to midsize companies: the lack of resources or bandwidth to conduct interviews effectively.

Whether it was companies from the FinTech sector hiring technical personnel or those from the IT industry struggling to find qualified chartered accountants, the need for interview solutions was evident. Recognizing this gap, we conceived the idea of creating a marketplace to offer interview services.

Thus, in 2018, we embarked on building a platform that would provide interview solutions as a service to address this prevalent issue in hiring processes.

Just to clarify, your company conducts interviews on behalf of other companies?

Yes, that's correct. Initially, we began with our interview-as-a-service platform, where we handle interviews for our clients. Since then, our portfolio has expanded to include several other products within the same interviewing domain.

So you've been bootstrapping since the inception of your business in 2018, correct?

Initially, we entertained the idea of seeking venture capital funding to fuel our growth aspirations. However, as we progressed through 2019 and 2020, we began to hear from other founders about potential drawbacks and restrictions associated with VC funding. Considering our profitability at the time, we ultimately decided against pursuing venture capital.

At the moment, you actually have more than 250 clients currently?

We've significantly surpassed the initial projection of 45 clients and now serve over 250 clients.

And, is it a model like a SaaS model or you sell your software for a licence fee?

So we have multiple products. We have six products now. One of the products is conducting interviews for the companies where we charge per interview model. Second, we have a platform that's a SaaS model where companies can buy our product to conduct interviews.

So is it more AI generated?

Yes. So we have an AI-generated interview also, where AI also can take the interviews. That's the latest product.

Anil, I'm just wondering, why did you start as bootstrapping? Did you have some savings, or were you also focusing on other side projects at that time? Additionally, are you the only founder, or do you have other co-founders?

I have one more founder, and we started together. So, no. So what I did, I started while I was still working.

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Although you are an Indian company, you mentioned that 70% of your subscribers are from all around the world. How did you grow internationally? What did you do in terms of marketing and sales?

So basically, the product we're into is very niche, and the market is quite limited globally. Hardly 10 or 15 companies around the world offer similar services, not just in India. Given this niche market, companies from around the world seek out our product. Initially, we focused on networking with HR and CHROs to help them understand our product, its solutions, and its pain points.

Later on, we implemented various marketing strategies such as email marketing, Google marketing, and SEO to expand our reach. We also engaged in networking with HR professionals and implemented SEO practices to generate leads through both inbound and outbound marketing efforts.

And it's a very niche and small market, right? It's not as competitive as, for example, CRM.

Exactly. CRM may have hundreds of competitors, whereas we only have 10 to 15. However, our market is also very niche. While CRM is needed by every company, our product is specialized, and many companies are still unaware of it.

And what are the main questions you face from potential customers or what are your struggles at the moment?

Well, most companies inquire about how they can trust us to conduct interviews for their candidates. They want assurance that our interview process is reliable and qualified. They often ask how we ensure the quality of interviews and the competency of our interviewers.

We've encountered various questions along these lines, but we've addressed them by building our platform to ensure transparency and trust. Every interview is recorded, and clients can review detailed feedback reports and interviewer profiles, fostering confidence in our process and team.

What are your future plans? Are you targeting any milestones in the coming year? Do you plan to expand into other regions or consider venture capital funding?

Our mission is to become experts in the interviewing space, focusing on sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding in the recruitment sector. Currently, our six products revolve around interviews, including exit interviews, video interviewing platforms, AI interview software, and more.

We aim to be a top provider of interview solutions globally. We see a growing demand from international markets and plan to expand into the US, Middle East, and Singapore. While we've been bootstrapping, we're open to exploring funding options to support our expansion plans.

Do you have any advice for bootstrappers?

Entrepreneurs often rush to seek funding when starting a new venture, believing it to be the key to success. However, I believe that if your product genuinely solves a problem and resonates with customers, VC funding may not be necessary. Building a solid product and focusing on acquiring clients can lead to organic growth and sustainable revenue generation.

It's essential to manage your finances carefully, balancing revenue and expenses to maintain profitability. Many startups that rely solely on VC funding find themselves in a perpetual cycle of burning through cash without achieving sustainable growth. By prioritizing profitability from the outset, you can build a robust business that can weather market fluctuations and stand the test of time.

While VC funding can provide resources and support, not all funding opportunities are beneficial. Maintaining control over your company's direction and decision-making processes is crucial for long-term success. Bootstrapping allows you to retain autonomy and pursue your vision without external influence.

In summary, while VC funding has its advantages, bootstrapping offers control and independence. By focusing on building a profitable business model and managing finances wisely, you can create a sustainable venture that aligns with your goals and values.

Yeah. And that's what the thing is. And also, I guess the money they have on their bank account is also important at the beginning of the day, right? They should have some savings or they should be okay to work. Same like what you did for two and a half years.

So we specifically followed one approach we call the bottom-up approach. It involves hiring executive-level employees initially. There's a distinction between funded startups and bootstrap startups. In a bootstrap startup, where funds are limited, you typically start by hiring executive-level staff. As you grow, you gradually expand to manager, director, and VP levels.

On the other hand, in a funded startup, once funding is secured, you may directly hire VP-level staff, who then hire managers and executives. However, this can lead to higher expenditure. Both approaches have their pros and cons, but for building a startup, adopting a bottom-up approach is often more sustainable.

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#12 Interviews - Joran Hofman

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Joran Hofman LinkedIn Profile

Reditus Website URL

Joran’s Podcast - B2B SaaS Growth

I have been following Joran for a while as he has been airing podcast episodes with SaaS people mainly related to b2b SaaS growth.

And also, he is very active on LinkedIn.

On our interview, we talked about;

How he transitioned his career from sports management to SaaS founder,
His startup experiences,
His blog about SaaS tools,
How did he start building Reditus,
The importance of organic channels and also podcasting for his company,
His opinions about VC money,
His advice to bootstrappers.

Enjoy!!

Post of the week:

Jason Lemkin from SaaSTR shared that there is a 3rd way instead of bootstrapping or VC-backed. Which is Just Raise One Round.

Here is the more details.

Certainly, my academic background was in sports management in the Netherlands, essentially commercial economics with a focus on sports business. During my bachelor's program, I had the opportunity to do two sports-related internships that played a pivotal role in shaping my career trajectory.

The first internship took me to Australia, where I worked for a company organizing sports events in Sydney during lunch breaks. It was during this experience that I was introduced to the world of sales. A mentor challenged me to sell one of our competitions to a company, marking my initial exposure to real sales.

For my second internship, I traveled to Indianapolis, USA, where I continued working in the sports industry. However, upon returning to the Netherlands, I faced the challenge of not having a sports network. Despite applying to renowned brands like Nike and Shimano, I encountered fierce competition and didn't secure a position due to not having interned with them.

Consequently, without a network in sports and facing hurdles in landing a role in the industry, I made the decision to shift towards a more conventional corporate job. This shift marked a significant transition in my career, leading me into the realm of corporate sales.

And how about entering the startup space?

Certainly, upon returning to the Netherlands, I initially took on a corporate job that involved cold acquisition, requiring me to make around 60 phone calls per day. The corporate environment was structured with predefined roles, fixed salaries, and clear boundaries. I spent about four to five years in this corporate setting.

Around the two and a half year mark, despite consistently meeting targets, I encountered challenges in transitioning to the next role due to not meeting all the specified requirements. This experience made me question the corporate structure and whether it aligned with my aspirations. Eventually, when I achieved the desired role, I found myself questioning if this was truly fulfilling.

It was at this juncture that I decided to transition into the startup world, seeking the dynamic and entrepreneurial environment that aligns more with my ambitions. I joined two startups in the Netherlands to re-immerse myself in the hustle and innovation that startups offer.

Interestingly, the leap into the SaaS (Software as a Service) realm happened somewhat unexpectedly. Utilizing the LinkedIn apply button, I applied to a job and found myself working in Helsinki at LeadFeeder. This marked my entry into the SaaS domain, and the journey unfolded in a way that, while not entirely based on luck, presented unexpected opportunities.

After your experience at Leadfeeder, did you directly launch Reditus, or did you have any entrepreneurial ventures before that?

No, Reditus is my first real company. However, in my earlier days, while working at a corporate job, I ventured into entrepreneurship by starting a dropshipping pie business. In this business, I collaborated with a bakery to produce the pies, and they were shipped accordingly. It served as my initial foray into entrepreneurship.

However, Reditus is the first significant venture where I fully embraced the entrepreneurial path. I commenced its development while still working at Leadfeeder. This strategic approach allowed me to bootstrap the company by channelling my salary from Leadfeeder into Reditus. This financial structure enabled me to hire a developer and build a product that I believed had the potential to be sold.

How long did the period from starting Reditus while working at Leadfeeder to its actual launch take?

The journey took longer than I initially anticipated. I would say it spanned around one and a half years. Initially, my plan was to quickly build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and release it. However, during the development process, as I reflected on my experiences as a SaaS affiliate for numerous SaaS companies (about 80) before Reditus, I realized that the initial MVP didn't align with what I truly envisioned.

Upon discussing it with the developer, the decision was made to start small and build incrementally. However, on the launch day, I recognized that the current version was not aligned with my vision. This realization led to the understanding that if I wanted to achieve my envisioned product, I would need to rebuild the entire thing while having users already on the platform.

You mentioned being an affiliate for around 80 companies. How did you become an affiliate for such a large number of companies? Did you have a blog or another platform?

To monetize the platform, I applied to various affiliate programs, signing up for as many as possible. However, managing multiple programs became challenging. Logging into separate portals for each program made it difficult to track earnings and performance. Additionally, some programs would cease without notification. Faced with these issues, I realized the need for a better solution, leading to the development of Reditus.

It took almost two years to launch the product, and you mentioned an AppSumo deal as part of your strategy. How did that contribute to the growth, and what challenges did you face with the one-time fee model?

Yes, it did take almost two years to launch the product, and during that time, we focused on the MVP and began selling. We started with the SaaS side of the marketplace, convincing SaaS companies to set up an affiliate program. To attract them, we ran an AppSumo deal, offering a lifetime deal. While I have mixed feelings about this approach, it did bring in users and revenue.

The AppSumo users, being willing to pay but not the full price, presented challenges. Their commitment level was lower as they opted for a one-time fee, making them less engaged clients. However, the deal helped us gain revenue, users, and live affiliate programs in the marketplace.

After quitting my job in February 2022, we started selling normal packages. This revealed core issues in the product, with buttons not working correctly due to mixed back-end and front-end code. To address this, we decided to undertake a significant core update, bringing in a co-founder committed to building a solid product. Over six months, from summer to June of the following year, we rebuilt the core. Finally, we launched our product on Product Hunt, marking a significant milestone in reaching the point where I wanted to be after a long journey.

You mentioned having paid users outside of the AppSumo deal. Can you provide some insights into your current customer base and the recurring revenue you have built over the years?

Absolutely. The AppSumo deal took place around three years ago, and since then, we have successfully built a customer base with recurring revenue. We currently have paid users who contribute to our revenue stream. The focus has shifted beyond the initial AppSumo users, and we continue to grow and engage with a more diverse customer base.

Starting as a bootstrap, did you initially rely on personal savings? It sounds like you managed to leverage stock options from a previous company. Could you share more about how you financed the early stages of your startup journey?

In the initial stages of bootstrapping, I did rely on personal savings to support the development of Reditus. Additionally, I had stock options from a previous company, which had been acquired. These stock options became vested, providing additional financial support for the startup. While the decision to leave the company may have affected the final amount, it played a crucial role in funding the early phases of Reditus.

Bootstrapping offers the advantage of independence, allowing us to set our own pace without external pressure to grow rapidly. However, the struggle to meet financial needs and ensure profitability each month can be challenging. While I appreciate the freedom of bootstrapping, I also see potential downsides.

I am open to exploring other funding options, especially considering my growing network. A community round, involving smaller investments from individuals in my network, could provide not only financial support but also smart money—investors actively engaged in our journey. This approach aligns with the idea of staying capital-efficient, focusing on profitability, and leveraging a supportive community rather than following the traditional VC route.

But they also mention that, they kind of say like bootstrapping is also where you get a bit of funding at the beginning to go through that journey. And then you go bootstrapped further. Like one thought I have I think should we just raise a little bit money now in a community round where it's not I guess like fully vc, and then go further basically with the way we are going like really capital efficient focus on profitability and then keep growing.

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And also, Joran, regarding your growing stories right now, I'm just wondering which funnels you focus on. I mean, SEO pay that because on your side right now, the money is so valuable, right?

I mean, you need to spend your money so wisely and which channels you focus on regarding to acquire some leads, regarding to get some customers on your side, which one works well.

At the moment, we purely have organic channels running and purely inbound. I do the podcast, and we have a lot of content. Also, we're helping SaaS companies set up an affiliate program, right? They link back to us, and we start getting some people asking, "Hey, what is this? I'm going to check it out as well." That's working.

I think what's really working nicely is that people start recommending us as well. We're building up our own affiliate program. At the moment, it's purely inbound. It doesn't mean that I'm against paid ads or running outbound campaigns, but I don't think we were ready for it.

We're redoing our user onboarding, redesigning our website, and relaunching user onboarding emails. We will probably start running paid ads and doing cold outreach, but that would be in a month and a half when we have the foundation set. I want to have it semi-automated so that once we turn on that money tab, it's not going to put more pressure on me if that makes sense.

And you mainly publish contents in English, right? Not in other languages.

No, purely English, only English.

The reason why I ask this is because, Joran, I talked to another bootstrapper guy, and he was also focusing on creating content in his own local language, Polish. There might be a huge competition in English, but in your own local language, the competition might be lower.

He was getting leads from his local language content, and the MRR generated is the same from both languages. Are you planning to launch some contents in other languages as well?

We're not, and the reason is that I'm in the Netherlands, and a lot of people here speak good English. We're focusing on B2B SaaS companies who want to go global and don't want to purely focus on the Netherlands. My assumption is that they do things in English as well, and they want to grow outside of the Netherlands, and that's where we help them. That's why we don't do it in Dutch, besides my time, because it would be too much work.

And right now, how many employees do you have at the moment?

For the content and development parts, we have three people working full time—myself, a back-end developer, and a front-end developer. Additionally, we hire an agency for content creation, including strategy and writing. For the podcast, I also hire someone to manage it. So, it's three full-time employees and a few part-timers, including advisors for competitor relations and affiliate recruitment.

And at the moment, are you still using your savings, or are you ramen profitable?

We're not profitable, so I still use my savings. However, we've started selling services alongside our product. The services income, combined with product revenue, sustains us for the next two months. From early January, we plan to launch a productized version of our services with a paid beta offering. If successful, this could provide additional revenue to sustain us for another three months. It's a strategic approach to ensure the product pays for itself as my savings are running out.

So I'm just wondering about the benefits of podcasting on your side. How do you feel about podcasting? Is it useful for your business or just for your friendship or learning something new? How does it go on your end?

Yeah, I think we definitely get benefits from it. I started out with a bit of selfish motivation, seeking help from industry experts. Recording and sharing those conversations, I built a network of high-profile people. Having guests like Wes Bush, Sean Ellis, and Kevin Dorsey on the podcast is valuable for future collaborations. It opened doors, allowing me to speak at events like B2B Rocks in Paris. Nathan Latka also invited me to speak at SaaS Open in March. The podcast builds trust and authority for Readiness, and it serves as a marketing channel with over 13,000 plays, potentially generating revenue to stay bootstrapped. It's a valuable tool for visibility and networking in the industry.

For bootstrappers, what advice would you give, considering the challenges of bootstrapping?

Embarking on the bootstrap journey requires preparation for its inherent challenges. Anticipate that timelines might extend beyond initial expectations. Perseverance is crucial during moments of doubt, recognizing that setbacks are part of the entrepreneurial experience. It's essential to maintain focus on the ultimate goal that prompted the startup's creation.

Managing financial aspects is paramount; consider covering costs through side projects or offering services related to your product. A hands-on approach is advised—actively engage in various tasks to understand client needs and iteratively enhance the product. For those fortunate to have savings, leveraging them can provide a buffer during early stages.

So, you're essentially suggesting becoming your own client by productizing services. Could you elaborate on how this approach benefits your business?

Absolutely, by transitioning services into a software solution, you essentially become a user of your own product. In the context of recruiting affiliates, which was initially a labor-intensive service, turning it into a software solution streamlines and automates the process. This firsthand experience of using the product for a real client enables you to identify pain points, areas for improvement, and automation opportunities.

As you encounter challenges in the affiliate recruitment process, you gain insights into making the solution more efficient and scalable. By addressing your own struggles, you enhance the product's functionality, ensuring it aligns seamlessly with the needs of both your clients and your internal operations. This iterative approach not only refines your product but also positions it as a valuable asset that meets real-world demands.

Is there anything specific you'd like to add that we might have missed in our discussion?

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SaaStrappers

#31 - SaaS Bootstrappers Report by MicroConf

#30 - Which City is Popular Among Bootstrappers?

#29 - SaaStr Survey + Greg Head's Podcasts

#28 - Growth Trends of Bootstrapped vs. VC-Backed Companies

#27 - 2 Videos + 1 Reddit Post

#26 - Things You Need to Consume About Bootstrapping

#25 - Managing 2 Bootstrapped Companies at the same time

Notes from our side:

Were you the only guy starting this journey or did you have some friends or let's say partners related?

So, the name of that software is SWAT. io. and you started as bootstrapping. You don't know those terms. And one year later, you have another company named Walls.io. I think this is something we need to talk about.

Most people are saying that you should focus on one solution, one thing and try to build it fast and try to grow it. And in your case, you have two different products in two years. And right now all of them are live and performing well, but this is something interesting story.

Why did you split those companies? We can start from there.

I am also wondering your opinions about finding the talent part. Because while bootstrapping; finding the right talent might be challenging.

Sounds good. As I said, you have a huge experience in that space and just wondering whether you have any advice for bootstrappers?

Thanks for sharing in all transparency. The last thing I would like to talk about is something related to angel investing. You have many companies on your portfolio and just wondering what are your criterias for angel investing?

#24 - FullTime Indie Hacker

Notes from our side:

Background?

At that time you have some savings also, right?

Which one have you been talking about? Boltai.com became viral, right?

Thanks for sharing all of the things in transparency, Daniel. I've seen boltAI on Twitter as well. And right now it has many competitors in the same space.

Both of them are generating revenue and you are not working as a freelance or consultant at the moment, right?

And for most of the AI products, I'm just wondering about the retention rate of the user because most of the people want to try the product and some of them churn after a month or after two months.

Is this the same for your solution as well or is something different?

And you are the only guy building this solution, right? Is it challenging to control your feelings? How do you manage it?

For most of the people like you; it's important to build an audience on Twitter, as you mentioned, because a Twitter audience helps you to maybe increase your products awareness and also sell more.

For the ones who have no idea about how to build an audience, what do you recommend?

So what do you recommend for other people in terms of indie hackers, bootstrappers?

Do you have any advice for those people who would like to start their own journey? Anything that you would like to share?

Any books, any persons, any accounts, any videos you recommend for people like you?

#23 - Bootstrapped to VC Funding

Notes from our side:

When I first saw your profile on LinkedIn, I saw that you have an entrepreneurial spirit. And right now you have another company and working with your wife, and you start as a bootstrapped and get funded later on. And this is a different story that I want to share with my subscribers.

So we can start from the first topic, what are the challenges and good sides of working with your wife?

And you have been focusing on this project for almost two years. Can you give us more details about how the project started? How was the idea born?

Is it something related to market, the people that you are going to work with, the timing, the money you have?

You think you find the market and you think you should be fast instead of going bootstrapping. And you need some money for marketing and other stuff.

How long did you bootstrap?

I'm just curious about this case. I guess there are three types of companies. One of them is like bootstrapping as mainly maybe more than 90 percent of companies, 95 percent of companies in the US, there are some VC funding companies like they want to be unicorns.

And there are some companies like “one and done” which are raising one time and they don’t want to raise later on.

What do you think regarding to those models?

Thanks for sharing all of those, Thomas. I think this is going to be a different issue compared to others because of your journey and other stuff and the things that you shared. Just my last question is going to be about anything you would like to share as an advice.

#22 - Generating $1M ARR in 3 months

Notes from our side:

I'm wondering about how did you begin your journey at the sub magic? I've seen that you are an entrepreneur at heart. We would like to get some information about your background and also how did you start sub magic?

Can you give us more details about submagic’s journey?

You didn't get a chance to test other nine products, right? Submagic was your first product.

And right now you have been bootstrapping this business?

And for the ones who have no idea about submagic, can you please give us some details regarding what you offer?

So how do you we make that?

You make the content in a more consumable way and more attractive with your solution Including captions, zoom, sound effects and b rolls.

Currently, I guess you have some employees. You are not two founders. You have some employees working for sub magic. Is it possible to share some details regarding the current situation, how many employees you have, the MRR and similars?

David:

And your main source channel is word of mouth, right? Do you also have paid channels or organic channels?

Any advice for other bootstrappers you would like to share, for the ones who are in the AI space like this video space, anything that you would like to share?

So they need to push their limits and ship the product as soon as possible. See the reactions, engagement. And if everything is going well, they can focus on other features as you said, right?

Well noted for me as well, David. Thanks for your time also. And anything that you would like to add instead of my questions, or do you have any recommendations in terms of books, advices, or videos?

#21 - From an agency owner to SaaS co-founder

So I found your profile on Reddit and also I got a chance to check your LinkedIn profile. So you had a great story and we would like to get more details regarding your story today. But first of all, can we get some details about your background?

Vlad:

So Akveo is the company you focus for generating revenue, but it's like a consultant job, right? It's not like the thing that you have been doing right now. It's like right now you have been offering SaaS services through your solution. But before it's like a web development agency, right?

How was the process there with that? To be honest, it should be hard because as you said, for your previous company, you have a hundred employees, you are one of the managing directories there.

How did you get that decision? Did you have any savings before getting that decision?

And it's like five years right now, right? When I checked on LinkedIn, UI Bakery is like five years old right now.

So you try to be engaged with what they are building and adjust your featured map based on their needs. And you are more proactive, right? I mean, this leads you to be more proactive, I guess.

So thanks for sharing all of the details by the way. And in that competitive space, it might be hard to focus on product like yours and you mentioned that you have been dealing with them in a different approach and I guess it can be a great advice for bootstrappers.

Just wondering, did you focus on one space, one niche, or you have been offering your solution for every industry right now? Did you do something related to that?

Yeah, but it might be better to double down on that, right? I mean, even though going with the horizontal way, you mentioned that vertical can be also useful in the beginning, right?

Okay, in terms of the growth part of the UI bakery, would you like to share any insights or tips that you achieved?

I guess the best way for bootstrappers mainly because you have been doing your project, aiming it to be like a long term and from the previous interviews, most people say that SEO can be the critical thing from day one.

Yeah. There should be more creative contents right now. It's like a more informational way. But I think writers need to add something from their side, from their perspective, or do some interviews and get some data from the other people and share it as a storytelling way.

So Vlad, my last question, any advice for bootstrappers around, in terms of your experience, in terms of books you read, in terms of movies you watch, something you have to share?

And you mean after the consultancy business, you have some clients to reach out easily because they had been using your service or other stuff and it might be easy to convince them to use their solution, right?

#20 - Started as a Bootstrapped, now VC funded.

Weekly News:

As we talked earlier, you raised some funding for your company but your mindset is bootstrapped. So today we are going to talk related to that. But before that, you can give us some details about your background first.

How did your journey start with OpenBOM?

So just to summarize; OpenBom is like the digital transformation of manufacturing space at the moment. And you started this in 2016.

And in that three years, you raised some funding there?