Bootstrapping in France (Baptiste Jamin from Crisp)
Bonjour, Baptiste. Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much. Come on, Saba. Traviere.
Baptiste:Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Baptiste:Nice.
Justin:Yeah. Your French is very good. It's it's still, like, 10 or, like, 100 times better than, all the, all the American people watching Emily in Paris on Netflix, and saying, J'adan, Latourifel. J'adan Le Louvre. Oh, yeah.
Justin:It's how we say it. How we say Yeah. Le Louvre, vouslevez couchez avec moi. 100 times better. I see.
Justin:You can
Baptiste:speak for Stevie. I'm glad. I'm glad I got a little chance. Hey. Welcome to Build Your Sass.
Baptiste:This is the behind the scenes story of building web apps in 2022 bootstrapping startups, Building your own thing. I'm Justin Jackson, one of the cofounders of transistor.fm. Today on the show, I have Baptiste Jamet, Who is the cofounder of Krisp, Krisp dot I m, if you wanna check it out. They do live chat, customer support, ticket software, help desk software. They compete with massive companies, Zendesk, HelpScout, Intercom.
Baptiste:And they're seriously one of the most impressive Product companies I've come across, it the product itself is super high quality, but the cost to customers, the price is really affordable. We switched to them from Kayako, and we just can't believe how good it is. So I think you're gonna get a ton out of this conversation. It's one of a lot of people, you know, might not know Baptiste or might not know have heard of Krisp, but they are seriously impressive In terms of how profitable they are, how many customers they serve, and what they've been able to achieve. They're located in Nantes, France.
Baptiste:Yeah. Let's get into this conversation. It's great. So Krisp is basic we use it as customer support messaging. You have a live chat widget and then it also, has an email component so you can email support at transistor And it goes into the live chat interface, and we can respond to those emails in the same interface.
Baptiste:And then it has a ton more. But how did it get started? You did you and your cofounder know each other before? What was the kind of beginning of Crisp?
Justin:Yeah. -Basically, before doing Crisp, we did, like, several side projects. I mean, I wouldn't say startups, but really side projects. He and I, we started coding, like, when we were teenagers. I started coding when I was 12, -Uh, doing some video games, and he started coding when he was 16, and he did, like, a messaging -It was like an open source Facebook, basically.
Justin:And So we did that when we were teenagers. Then we did some projects that worked. Some other failed. And, And, basically, we met each other in the in computer science school. We were apprentices, so we worked in big French companies, I used to work at Orange, which is the biggest French ISP and he used to work at Ericsson, telecom company.
Justin:And basically, we were we got bored of our jobs. I mean, we were we worked in big companies, and we felt, okay, basic customer support and messaging is the core of any company since like 1000 of years.
Baptiste:I mean,
Justin:since, like, when you think about customer support, and when you When you go to the same restaurant every time, it's because you have a nice filling. Yeah. With, And then, the restaurant, the people work there. And it's the same for any kind of businesses. And we felt, okay, Something is happening in the the startup ecosystem.
Justin:More and more companies are gonna be created in the next years. So -So, we need to have a tool allowing for those companies to get in touch with their customers something which is Super cheap, reliable, and having, like, a nice feeling. We wanted to create, like, the The apple of the, the customer support.
Baptiste:Yes, the apple of customer support.
Justin:So, we tried doing that by using something really minimalistic. So the first Chris version was messaging, like a simple chat widget. Yes. Just a simple chat widget. No file no file upload, no emojis, just the core was text messaging With an interface to to to reply to all the customer queries
Baptiste:Yes.
Justin:And, a chat widget, and something crazy minimalistic.
Baptiste:Must have been quite so were you quite young when you were figuring all this out? Were you still in university or you were still in you're just working your first jobs out of university?
Justin:So we were like 21 or 22, something like that. Yeah.
Baptiste:So you were quite young. And this is in 2015.
Justin:Yeah. 2015. Yeah. And and so, we did that. So we did Crisp, just because we really felt that we had to do this.
Justin:And we didn't, like, have any vision, like, 10 years vision. I mean, I I didn't know what SaaS was about. I mean, the SaaS, in software as a device. An investor told me, okay, so Crisp is a Saas software.
Baptiste:Right? Yeah.
Justin:Saas what? I didn't know that. I didn't know About all the competition, etcetera. I mean, we wanted to do Crisp, and we did Crisp. And I think, because of all our previous experiences, I mean, we did different messaging software before.
Justin:So, by doing Crisp, we knew what we had to do. Then the kind of features I mean, we knew how to do a great chat software. So, it saved us a lot of time.
Baptiste:Because you'd built, You'd you'd built some chat software before?
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Baptiste:I'm I'm I'm really curious about, as a couple young guys in France, How aware were you of the startup ecosystem of like, you said you hadn't heard of SaaS before, But had you heard of, like, had you heard of Intercom? Had you heard of any of that? Were you reading TechCrunch?
Justin:I wasn't reading TechCrunch, basically. So, obviously, I knew some competitors, but not Intercom. When we started Crisp, I didn't know about Intercom at all. I mean, We didn't, do some benchmark or whatever. We did crisp, I mean.
Justin:We did crisp without thinking about All the rest. We did something opinionated. And about the French ecosystem, I think, it really So I did, like, in 2012.
Baptiste:Okay.
Justin:We started to have a strong ecosystem, some podcasts in France. So we had, like, a start up, called TheFamily, Who basically translated, all the articles from Paul Brown, and translated everything in French, and did some pod French podcast.
Baptiste:Okay.
Justin:About all the, the YC, etcetera. So thanks to that, we had all the Basically, all the knowledge from the Silicon Valley, but in a French way. And it helped a lot, all the French people, building startups.
Baptiste:Okay.
Justin:Because we we came from we came from nowhere. Yeah. And now we have a Trabillard, thank you. Thanks a lot. Nice.
Justin:Pretty strong ecosystem in France, with, like, many, many, many different startups being created. And now, I think France It's the biggest start up ecosystem in Europe. Oh, really? In fact, Brexit helped us a lot. Because, In in a sense that because UK is no longer a part of, you, we Because we were, like, the 2nd, the 2nd, Solid ecosystem.
Justin:We are now the first one. Wow. Thanks to to Brexit. But, yeah, still, it it's still a a a pretty big ecosystem.
Baptiste:And okay. So and so the family was like a, An accelerator, like, a tech accelerator similar to Y Combinator?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. It was like the French YC. Yeah.
Baptiste:And did you participate in that? Did you end Taking funding, or did you self fund Crisp?
Justin:So we self funded Crisp. So Crisp is still, like, fully bootstrapped And self, found idea.
Baptiste:And how did you do that as a couple of 20 guys in their twenties, fresh out of university?
Justin:So, in fact, it was not crazy complicated, because what's cool building a startup when you're a student is, you know, you don't have any wife, you don't have any Kids, you don't have any house.
Baptiste:Yes.
Justin:So your life is pretty cheap.
Baptiste:Mhmm.
Justin:So being Ramen profitable, I mean, you don't need so much money to, To to be, like, in life I mean, to to succeed a company when you started you're a student is not crazy complicated. So using, like, $100, you can stay alive, and it's what we did. It's what we did.
Baptiste:And What What infrastructure did you use when you started? Were you on Amazon Web Services? Were you
Justin:No, no, no. So AWS is like too expensive, and, the value for the money is pretty bad. Yeah. So we did some benchmarks, And we figured out that digital auction servers were, like, the best value for the money. I mean, The servers were, back in 2015, were, like, 10 times more efficient.
Justin:So, for, like, $5 per month, you can, like, host the entire Crisp and Fashion Drink.
Baptiste:Wow.
Justin:-It's not possible anymore, but we tried to optimize everything because we were students. We really wanted to have a freemium model. We wanted to have a free plan because we thought it could it could give us A lot of attraction, users. So we used the free plan, like, as a marketing, and, So we we had to optimize everything, and then the servers, etcetera. Everything was super optimized.
Justin:So, basically, it was easy to get started because hosting Chris costed us, like, €50 per month, something like that. Yeah. And we knew how to to create Crisp. I mean, technically, how to create Crisp. We tried to do The marketing ourselves, customer support.
Justin:So, during, like, 1 year and a half, We didn't have any employees, etcetera. Pretty lean, and, we started to be profitable just being Vallejo and I, doing
Baptiste:Just the 2 of you. I mean, what's interesting is you have this insight. Even having not heard of Intercom, you had this insight that customer messaging was gonna be big, that every business Needs some form of messaging. And you said, maybe you noticed this at restaurants, like restaurants with good customer service. Restaurants that
Justin:Yeah. Yeah.
Baptiste:You know? But was that, like were you were you thinking of when you were observing these things, were you thinking of a restaurant that answers the phone, or you're just Thinking of a restaurant that onboards clients into the restaurant itself, what were your observations that made you feel like This was worth pursuing.
Justin:-So when we started Crisp, we felt, Okay, maybe we could sell Crisp to restaurants, actually. Having something, handling email, phone calls, chat, etcetera. And messaging chat was just the first Step of this plan. And when we started with just chat, we the market was so huge That we had to do so many things, so many features. Yes.
Justin:So many stuff was going on. So, going to chat took us a lot of time, But because the market is so big, and then, in fact, In terms of messaging, and in terms of customers, you had 2 kinds of customers. The customers Who phone companies first, and the customers who want asynchronous messaging. So, nowadays, most of the people who are under, like, 35, maybe under 40, were born with Internet And iPhones, etcetera. So, for them, they prefer to chat with companies.
Justin:It's quite a thing for them. They want to chat with companies. They don't want to do phone calls, etcetera.
Baptiste:That's right. Like, if they'll avoid they'll do anything but Getting on the phone. Like, don't make me call.
Justin:Yeah. They're scared of taking phone calls.
Baptiste:But boomers love it.
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. And the open is and the opposite, the boomers loved, phone calls.
Baptiste:And so you have this This insight how did you know the market was big? Like, you you put Krisp out and you just started seeing traction right away. What were the indicators That the market was big, that there was a lot of potential customers there. And when you say the market is big, were you still thinking of restaurants, or were you thinking of Just any company on the Internet.
Justin:So, basically, when we started Crisp, we thought to we don't know anything about the market. So, to get started, we're gonna try with solopreneurs, freelancers. We're gonna try using this market first. And then, we're gonna collect all their feedback, and we're gonna upmarket. So small startups, SMBs, and then bigger SMBs, -And it's, what do we do?
Justin:Every try, we upmarket. And now, we are selling to enterprise customers. So, when we started Crisp, we had Maybe 10 initial users. Okay. And we focused on those 10 initial users.
Justin:Those users gave us a lot of different feedback. Yeah. So, rather than focusing on traction, acquisition, we just focused on retention. Got it. To make those 10 customers happy, and what we figured out that is that Those 10 users talked about Chris Q, other companies, and we started to have 15 users, then 20, then 50, 100, and then one of those initial users featured us some product tints.
Baptiste:Okay. Yeah.
Justin:And back so, in 2015, Product Hunt was a closed community. And the guy didn't Tell us about that. On Sunday, we were on Crisp answering some users and boom! So all the analytics, etcetera, everything went crazy, like really crazy.
Baptiste:Like traffic, like people coming in, people Asking questions.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. We had 2 busy days. So I had, like, to work during nights. And my colleague during days.
Justin:And we did like shifts like that.
Baptiste:Oh, wow.
Justin:So, yeah. We could like handle all the traction. And then, we tried to collect all the feedback and to make all the users happy about that. And, any in the next so Product Hunt was something big for us because it really helped, to get traction.
Baptiste:Yeah. And that that was fairly because that was also in 2015. So you launched by the way, how did you find those first ten people? Where did they come from?
Justin:So, I had a friend, who contacted like a few companies. Called emailing, basically, telling them, You don't have any customer service. I mean, your contact form is broken. You should use Crisp. Wow!
Justin:And the next the next day, we have 10 users.
Baptiste:Wow. That's a good friend.
Justin:Yeah. Very good friend. Yeah. Yeah. Because initially, Crisp, I mean, No one could sign up on Crisp.
Justin:I mean, with Valerian, we were typical engineers. Now, it's not perfect yet. Yes. It's password protected. So the the home page was password protected.
Justin:And, so this friend told me, but can I Sign up on Crisp? No, you can't. It's password protected. Oh, man. Give me give me the password.
Justin:And I told that I okay. Could could we maybe stop, password protecting Crisp? And, yeah. Okay. Let's remove that shit.
Justin:So, yeah. Nowadays, Many people, had a look to the movie about Facebook. I don't remember the name.
Baptiste:The Social Network.
Justin:The social network. And, most of the people think that launching a company is like emailing thousands of people, and then boom. Yeah. Your company is, is created, and you get, you have traction. Yeah.
Justin:But in fact, starting a company is like Launching your company every day, during like a few weeks. Yes. There is no d day. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:It's a slow, opening.
Baptiste:Slow opening. And and you felt like did it feel like you mean, like, every single day you came in and you were like, Okay. Well, like, today, we're going to take off the password protection, and that's going to be like another launch. Is that what you mean?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. It's not even a launch. I mean, it's just one more step.
Baptiste:Yes.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so we moved the password, and the next day, boom, 10 users.
Baptiste:It's it's really interesting that you got started with the cold emailing, if you think about it. Was that a hard step for you to get somebody to help you with that? Did you have any kind of sales or marketing inclinations?
Justin:No, no. I mean, we were like 2 typical engineers, Developers not knowing anything about marketing, SEO, etcetera. Not wanting to talk 2 people at all. Yeah. So, yeah, when we started to have to have users, we had to split the roles, and my colleague, Valeron, More doing code, doing more code, and me doing more marketing and growth.
Justin:So I I try to Learn everything about marketing. Draw faking.
Baptiste:So and even today, if I look at your about page, there's you and Is it Valerian? How do you say it? Valerian?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. In French, you you pronounce the arbot in English. I think you would say Valerian.
Baptiste:Yeah. So You too. So he's more technical and and then you have Antoine who's also doing marketing and sales, And then you have some more software engineers. So and then a content manager. So did that sales and marketing grow over time?
Justin:So, we went from 0 to 100 ks amoral, just Being the 2 two roles.
Baptiste:Wow. How long did that take?
Justin:3 years?
Baptiste:0 to a 100 k in 3 years with just the 2 of you. And how did let's just stop there for a second. How did that feel? So You launch. You got 10 customers.
Baptiste:Then someone features you on Product Hunt. How many customers do you think you got out of Product Hunt?
Justin:5,000, something like that.
Baptiste:5,000?
Justin:Wow. Yeah, yeah, but not all the users were paying for Krisp, But Okay.
Baptiste:So you had some free
Justin:users then? 5 yeah. Yeah. 5,000 user is it's still a lot. And When when we talk about Product Hunt, we we talk about people who have a big impact in the start up industry.
Justin:And talk those users are really different to, regular SMBs. I mean, they're gonna spread The word about your product. So initially, yeah, maybe 5,000 users, but thanks to all The those users, we had a lot more.
Baptiste:Yeah. You must have started getting a lot of word-of-mouth.
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Baptiste:And, I mean, it's nice that At this time, 2015, you know, the SaaS ecosystem is much more mature. Customer support ecosystem is much more, mature. There's Zendesk. There's, You know, all these big players in that space. And so now people are looking for alternatives, and You folks come in.
Baptiste:What's always been interesting about Krisp is the price. You start free, And then you you give an incredible amount of value for the price that you charge. How What was your instinct there? Like, why make it so affordable? Why you know, because, you know, intercom Is 1,000 and 1,000 of dollars per month for, you know, they do different things, but, you know, that's what people are Often comparing, you must get a lot of people switching from intercom to Krisp, I'm imagining.
Justin:We felt we need to reduce The decision making for users wanting to use a product like Crisp. Initially, we had 4 different plans, And you had a different usage level between all the the plans. So we had the free plan. We had Crispro, Crisp Business, And, enterprise, maybe. We had, like, 2 different plans.
Justin:And we try to reduce decision making by just having a free plan, a cheap plan, and, like, A more expensive plan, but with all the features included
Baptiste:Yes.
Justin:Included, which was the Crisp Unlimited. Yes. And when we released the Crisp Unlimited plan, We had, like, 4 times more users on this plan. Got it. All the users We're choosing this plan rather than the Crispro one.
Justin:So, and we had a few friends doing unlimited plans, And in fact it worked a lot. Yeah. And in France, we did that because in France we have I think the unlimited usage, is quite popular in France. For instance, it started with Phones, and, basically it was like crazy in France, when he did that, and internet went popular, Thanks to that. And we wanted we really wanted to do the just something similar, but for Sass.
Justin:And we thought, okay, if we want to make Krisp popular, it needs to be a a no brainer dealer. So If you don't have any money and just you start a company, just choose for free, because, anyway, you don't have the money to pay For any SaaS. So better give the product for free, and, anyway, maybe you're gonna be successful one day. And, it's how it works. And then we try to have a plan for any kind of company.
Baptiste:For John and I, This is exactly how it worked because, you know, we started just the 2 of us just like you 2, and we're bootstrapping this. We're self funding it. John, especially, doesn't like spending money. So anytime he can save money, he likes it. And we started with Kayako, and We started with Kayako because it was free.
Baptiste:So it was like, are are we gonna use intercom and spend, whatever it was, 100 of dollars month, it would have been more than our hosting bill. Or are we gonna start on something that's free? We started on something that was free. The problem with Kayako Is that the price was low, but the product quality was quite low. It was just always had bugs.
Baptiste:We were always having downtime. We were always having trouble. And then we're looking for alternatives. And every you know, like, we would have downtime, and then every 3 months, we'd be like, You know, should we look at something else? We look at Intercom, and then we look at Help Scout and, you know, all these other tools.
Baptiste:And it never felt like right. Like, a lot of the tools didn't have good live chat, which is what we wanted. And Then we found Crisp. It got recommended to us. And I just remember, like, looking at it and going, there's no way that we're gonna All of this for this price, but we signed up for the free plan and tried it.
Baptiste:And we're just like, this software is solid. Like, this is really good software, And it's so much more affordable than the alternatives. And you're right. It was just a no brainer. And I think what's interesting is in the startup ecosystem, there's a lot of a lot of, ideas about maximizing your price.
Baptiste:So, like, intercom is maximizing their price.
Justin:Yeah.
Baptiste:But for SMBs, that's the wrong At answer, if you're looking if you're trying to serve SMBs, it's the wrong answer because we We can't afford intercom prices, and it's way more likely we're gonna recommend you to other people. So I've recommended Krisp So many times just because it's like, this is an amazing software, and you won't believe the value you get for the price. Like, it's just a no brainer. You've gotta get on it. And so it it I'm interested to know, like, have do you feel like that trade off has paid off of you just get Way more word-of-mouth, way more uptake because of the price?
Baptiste:Yeah.
Justin:I think raising your price, like, Two times per year can work for VC funded companies.
Baptiste:Mhmm.
Justin:For a reason is they have So much growth that they just don't care about paying 2 times more for for what they paid before. And it's even not their money. I mean, it's the VC's money. So just just spend. Spend on the people, Spend on the software.
Justin:Spend on ads. The spend, basically. So I think in comes customers They're mostly VC founded companies, and just, they just just don't have the time to switch. Yeah. So, okay.
Justin:They pay. They pay. But SMBs is quite different. And at Crisp, we really Craft, a software for SMBs. Now, we start to have enterprise users.
Justin:Yeah. But you're really crisp. What made us is SMBs. I mean, regular SMBs, not technical startups. Really, we are talking about German, industry, I mean, regular SMEs.
Baptiste:Like like, main street businesses? Your So not necessarily tech companies.
Justin:Like Yeah.
Baptiste:You're talking about, like, retail stores, Restaurants?
Justin:Regular. E commerce. Okay. Yeah. Many, many different, many different companies, you wouldn't Even think about so, for instance, during COVID 19 pandemic, we started to have, like, funny, usage of Crisp.
Justin:For instance, churches using Krisp. Yeah. Because churches were closed and people couldn't confess anymore, physically.
Baptiste:They would just jump on they would jump on Crisp with the priest.
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Exactly.
Justin:Yeah.
Baptiste:Just start confessing their sins. And and the thing is, the priest could, use your magic tool to look at what they were looking at on their browser and see how sinful they really were.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And we also have a video. We also have a video, chat system with Crisp. So they can do a live conversation as well.
Justin:Okay. So it's a big confession. It it it it won't work with chat. Let let's go.
Baptiste:Let's do
Justin:a call. Let's have a a video, Phil. That is hilarious.
Baptiste:So do you find is it difficult having such a wide variety of users? Because there's definitely, companies in the the knowledge base space and the customer support space And the live chat space that goes specifically for technology companies. So you have all sorts of customers using in all sorts of different ways. Has that been a challenge, or does it not really matter? Does it not really matter what they're using it for?
Justin:So sometimes, for these users, They're the 1st SaaS software they're paying for. Yeah. I mean, they never paid for any software before. So, they don't know stuff like what the seats are. For instance, in the live chat industry, they used to pay per seat.
Justin:So, they they don't they're not familiar with that. And, so, which it's why we've tried to make Crisp As crisp as possible, as simple as possible. It's to satisfy this kind of customers. And, now we have, a few integrations, a few integrations, as well, made for this kind of industries. Okay.
Justin:For instance, we have a few integrations for, like, niche softwares. For instance, CRMs For specific industries, and now Krisp tends to be the iPhone of the customer service. I mean, It's a tool where you can plug apps that can multiply the experience of customer service. So you can, like, connect your Stripe account on Krisp, and when someone has a chat with you, you can immediately Find all the invoices.
Baptiste:Yes.
Justin:And we are now connected with different invoicing system here, including Niche Systems, and it's how we try to tech industries.
Baptiste:Yeah. How because you have a pretty small team still. How how are you able to ship so much At this quality level, like, you you have probably you you might have a 100 times less employees than some of your customers. So how are you able to build this quality software and keep releasing this? Like, whenever I get your newsletters, I'm always like, How are they shipping so much?
Baptiste:Like, how are they doing all this with such a small team?
Justin:But it's because we're a small team that we can achieve great things. I don't think, and it's not possible to do a baby with 9 women in 1 month. It's the same for features. I mean, it's not by bringing more developers Solving the same issue, you're going to reduce the amount of time required to solve the problem because there there is some decision making some meetings required, unit tests, you know, Scaling people is hard. Yeah.
Justin:So, with TridentCrisp, you find T shaped, people. Yes. People with an entrepreneurship mindset, and it's it's a lot easier. Mhmm. Because you don't need to, like, spend your time doing calls, etcetera, meetings.
Baptiste:Yes.
Justin:Just we get the things done. Okay. There is a problem. Let's solve the problem. I mean, You are in charge of solving the problem alone, and it's oh, it works.
Baptiste:And it and it's worked so far. And when you say t shaped, you mean Somebody who is deep in one area, like, has deep knowledge in Yeah. Programming or Whatever. But it's also broad in that they could also understand customer support. They might also understand some marketing.
Baptiste:They might all under
Justin:The design, etcetera. Yeah. Exactly.
Baptiste:Interesting. And and so right now, your team is how many engineers on your team?
Justin:We're 4
Baptiste:engineers. Four engineers.
Justin:Including, Valerio and I.
Baptiste:Okay. And then it looks like you have Another you have Antoine and Leo on content, and then you've got Leah, whose partnerships, is that like figuring out enterprise deals?
Justin:Not only, but we start to have agencies. So we have a lot of Different agencies using Crisp, freelancers, etcetera.
Baptiste:Okay.
Justin:So we try to figure out Who could recommend Crisp for clients and, having special deals, for them?
Baptiste:Got it. In terms of marketing, what has been have there been some other things that have really worked for you, like, where you've pulled the lever and you're like, This is this brought us in a whole new, group of business that we wouldn't have had before. Is there anything like that, or is it just gradual? Like, is it mostly word-of-mouth? Where are you really focusing your marketing energy these days?
Justin:It changed a lot, over the time. It changed, a lot. So when we we started Crisp, basically, we didn't have any strategy about marketing, etcetera. Just like a few users using Crisp, Word-of-mouth, and we tried to iterate crisp on them about all their needs. Then we we started to have traction, more users using Krisp, using the free plan and recommending Krisp.
Justin:So, we worked a lot on the product, and especially around onboarding, to better understand what the people needed. Yes. And what was in their mind when they wanted to use a tool like Crisp? Mhmm. So, we did the bottom of the funnel.
Justin:I mean, all those people needed a chat software right now. It was their job finding a chat software To get the things done today. And it's what we offer them, by simplifying the user experience When the users sign up for Crisp, and we try to optimize all the steps so you can get the things done immediately. And it worked a lot, and we figured out, by doing that, let's so 50% of the users We're still using Krisp the next day.
Baptiste:Wow. I I mean, that insight is what's interesting is that instead of starting with a marketing tactic, You said, first of all, let's just figure out where people are at when they land on our doorstep.
Justin:Yeah. Crisp is still about product led growth. It's still. But with some, magic sauce, spicy morning sauce around it, That makes a great multiplier around. I think marketing is a great multiplier.
Justin:So, if you have a good traction like that, Using your product I mean, succeeding a company is all about product market fit and having a great Product for an audience. If you have that, okay, you're gonna have some traction.
Baptiste:Yeah.
Justin:Marketing is doing from that To that, something like that.
Baptiste:Yeah, it's an amplifier.
Justin:An amplifier, exactly. And and so we we achieved doing that until 100 ks. So, I used to arrive at plateau of knowledge. Marketing is was not like my thing. I did that because I had to do that, but it's not my passion.
Justin:So we tried to find people, and Antoine, who joined the team In 2018, to solve to to reach the next milestone, And, we started to work on SEO. Back in the days, no SEO at all. I mean, no SEO. So, we had to iterate on a lot of stuff. We tried paid advertising as well, Copywriting, and, yeah.
Justin:But still the bottom of the funnel. Yeah. And now, -As we grow to more enterprise deals, more, users willing to pay more, We need to to to have a better branding around Crisp. So, users not requiring To use a support system right now, but maybe in 6 months, a year, can know about our brand. They can know that Crisp is good for them, and maybe one day, they're gonna use a tool like us, and they're gonna think about Crisp.
Baptiste:Of Of those levers, SEO, ads, has anything worked better or worse? Like, for example, we've, At Transistor, we've never really been able to make ads work for us. What's been your experience with ads, SEO? What's Been working the best.
Justin:I think it's complicated. Mhmm. Very complicated and expensive. SEO is like Magic. I mean, magic in the terms of it can be, super good in terms of growth, but It's super dark in the meantime.
Justin:I mean, the way it works for me, it's still not 100%. I still don't understand everything. Yes. And even people working 100% of the time on SEO, they don't understand What's
Baptiste:going on? Yeah. What's in the dark box? But,
Justin:there there Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, there is still things to do. I I don't think you need to focus a lot on SEO at the beginning, to to succeed, something.
Justin:But at some point, you know, SEO is like the multiplier, the amplifier.
Baptiste:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's such a key insight. And, again, just to go back to this insight of You realized that when people landed on Krisp, they needed to make a decision today. It was their job To find customer support software today.
Baptiste:Hey, Janet. I need you to go and research the best ones and just choose 1. It it was similar for Transistor too. It's like, you know, the 3rd time Kayako went down, we were like, that's it. Like, today's the day.
Baptiste:I'm gonna go and research all of the possibilities. I go in 3 different Slack groups. I say, hey. What is everybody using for live chat? Chris gets mentioned in that list.
Baptiste:I go check it out. I sign up for a free trial, and Now I'm in, and I've but I also wanna close the loop fast. I don't wanna be deciding what software we're gonna use forever. I just wanna make a decision and move on. And getting in the customer's mindset the way you did, understanding That if you can improve that initial experience and that onboarding, that's the piece that so much software Doesn't get.
Baptiste:They don't understand where our customers at. What brought them to your site today? Like, what brought them there? What mindset are they in? And once you understand that, you can configure your your onboarding to best Just, like, get them in the product and get them paying.
Baptiste:And that's a lot of the battle because you could have a huge funnel with tons and tons of people coming in, But if you're not able to make those key moments
Justin:Yeah. And for instance, I think regular industries, For instance, if you think about the food industry, and chocolate bars, have a break, have a Kit Kat, it's such Great, tagline, because I think it was creating 50 in the 50s, 57. And the idea about that is what the users, I mean, the people buying our product, are doing When they buy our product. And, in fact, if you think about chocolate bars, people try to achieve a task. They're hardworking in their company.
Justin:They try to solve a bug. They try to, lawyers -Doing, paperwork, etcetera. -Yeah. -And they want to get the things done. -Yeah.
Justin:-And they go to the machine, They, they use, $1 to get the product, and boom. They eat the product in, like, 5 seconds, and boom, they are they go back to work. It's not about the taste. It's just about Throwing the get the food. That's right.
Justin:And it's it worked so well. I mean, have a break, have a Kit Kat. It's just A chocolate bar, but it's a great tagline because the marketing guys, thinking about that, knew The customers and what the customer is where what the what were their the goal? What they wanted to do?
Baptiste:Context. This is, in The jobs to be done, they call they say, what are people hiring the product to do? And there's so many layers to that. Like, if if you're in a company, and let's say it's a 20 person agency, and your boss says, We need to get live chat software for this customer. And then says, Janet, you go research, you know, the live chat software.
Baptiste:The job to be done is different for different people in that organization. For Janet, she wants to look good to the boss and to the client. So what does that mean? It means I've got to make a decision. It's if it's more affordable, that's always good.
Baptiste:They're gonna be saving money. If it's a good software that doesn't make me look bad, that's a good thing.
Justin:Right? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And It's the customer, and they're scared about they they just don't want to fuck up the decision, because it's How their colleagues gonna think about their role?
Justin:I mean, at the end, it's just choosing, like, A software costing, like, a few bucks per month, but it's like their their their job is all about This, and they could be fired or whatever. They they they want to mess up about this.
Baptiste:And even in small companies, with a cofounder, you see this dynamic. If it's my job to choose a tool or make a decision and I fuck up and it looks bad to John, my cofounder, It that does affect me. That's a part of my calculus. Right? It's like, I wanna make good decisions even in a Even in a small company, in a cofounder relationship, you don't wanna fuck up.
Baptiste:Like, there's that old saying, like, nobody got fired for choosing IBM. Right? Like, there's always this idea of what's the safest choice I can make that will make me We had a a
Justin:a an easy trick, And I learned this trick by working from a French company, a small company, having, like, normal clients. And In a decision making process, you have the people choosing the software, and the people gonna choose, if I'm gonna choose this software or another one. And then, maybe, the the billing department is gonna pay for the software. And, what they did is just A PDF. And, they gave you a PDF, and then, you could forward this PDF to your boss, to your colleagues.
Justin:So, you could convince them that this is the right decision. And, we made the same horse crisp, just A PDF. Resuming everything in 20 slides. That's so smart. Very easy.
Justin:Super easy to process. Features and three key points about what to think. And super, like, it's super easy and at the end, it's just what, who we are, The Crisp customer survives. Crisp SLA. I mean, Crisp is never down.
Justin:We have a good customer support. And what's the cost? And if you have any questions, email us. Just very easy and it works So great. Because they can, like, okay, boss.
Justin:This is the document. This is what we need. And the boss He's not having the time. He needs to to to make a decision, like, quickly. And using this document, He can do the right decision.
Justin:He's not he's not having to go to the website, maybe Having an account, etc. Is having a PDF. It's like buying a house, you know. When you buy a house, want to buy a house, You have a PDF with photos, etc. The the the the cards,
Baptiste:Yeah.
Justin:The agency, etc. Yeah. Contact points. Yes. This is the same.
Baptiste:Yeah. That's such a key insight. Again, because it it gets in the psychology Of someone buying a product, how do people buy products? And unless you're just selling to a solopreneur And there's different dynamics with solopreneurs. But as soon as you have 2 people in the company, I have to convince John to buy this product.
Baptiste:So what am I gonna do? I'm gonna be selling him on it. I'm now the salesperson. So equip me as The person who wants to buy your software to sell it to the other people in the organization. And that's such a key like, a great way of doing it is the is the PDF.
Baptiste:This this is also the same insight, we a lot of us in SAS have had about reports. What why do you want reports? Give me reports so that I can look good to my boss in a meeting. Hey, Janet. How are we doing in terms of customer support?
Baptiste:Oh, well, we've had Yeah. 81 more conversations this week. Our response time is down, and we've had more visitors. Perfect. Thanks, Janet.
Baptiste:Like, you you're equipping people to have the answers So that they look good in a meeting. So key. Yeah. And once you understand why Not everyone is hire like, for podcast hosting, not everybody is hiring podcast hosting for the same reason. The marketing team has their goals.
Baptiste:The boss has their goals. The you know, everybody has their goals. The individual employee who's in charge of purchasing Has their goals. Right? And nobody wants to fuck up.
Baptiste:Everybody wants to look good.
Justin:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Baptiste:Make a decision that makes them look good. Make it a no brainer. And this is why
Justin:Definitely. Yeah.
Baptiste:Is why you need, like, on another thing you guys do great on your page is you just You kinda systematically show people, like, here's the product. It's built for customer support, marketing, and sales altogether, and then you have 300,000 brands are already using Crisp. So the boss is gonna wanna know why should I trust these people. Well, 300,000 brands, including Boston University, Call Hippo, John Deere are all using this product. Yeah.
Justin:And and in fact, if you switch to a different language, so if you switch to French, If you switch to Portuguese
Baptiste:I'm looking now. German.
Justin:Oh, yeah. You're gonna change. You're gonna change. So You you you know brand this kind of brands?
Baptiste:Yeah. So you're doing it you're you're geolocating. You're making it even more Salient to potential customers to say, hey. Well, if you're in France, let's, we'll show you, B and B Hotels. You know, that's a brand that you might know and recognize.
Baptiste:That's so smart. Like, are most of your customers from Europe or from North America. And what's it like being a technology company outside of North America? Do you feel like that has made anything harder, Or is there a huge opportunity in the EU that you've been able to take advantage?
Justin:So, US, it's only 30% of our revenues, So, it means that we take our revenues all around the world and outside, the OS. So I don't think there is any issue for US customers buying a product Map made, from the invoice. In fact, it's why, if you look at the footer on the home page, it says, Made, Made in France, something like that. Initially, I didn't want, to add this tagline. I mean, We don't want to sell us as a French company.
Justin:But, if you look at the trends, show that American customers have a good feeling about French, made product.
Baptiste:That's right. Yes.
Justin:So so, it's why we show that. I mean, I don't think it would be the same if it will would have been India, or I don't know. But when if you look at the trends, and it's even better than showing USA. Made in the USA.
Baptiste:I mean, there's there's definitely, like, certain brands that you see that you got Made in France has this feeling of quality, of maybe craftsmanship, of higher quality, luxury.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. It's the same for Germany. If you think about German cars, when you close the door, it makes a special sound. It's perfect.
Justin:So a company, I mean, a country can have a perception about How how they do product. It's why there is this tagline, made in France, in the future. But at the end, you know, There are great software developers all around the world, so it's not making any difference. And, So, yeah, it's not a problem for,
Baptiste:Is your whole team located in Nantes?
Justin:No. No. No. So Krisp used to be a remote company. I mean, we didn't wait it For COVID-nineteen pandemic, to to know what remote is.
Justin:We started Crisp by by being 100% remote. And but we wanted, like, to have our families, so being nomads was not easy because when you travel all around the world, You have not you have you don't are you are not doing any long term relationships. So by going to, -Uh, the west of France, near our families, friends, etcetera, it was easier. So, we made a team in Nantes, But still, half so 50% of the team is All around the world. I mean, we have people working at Crisp in different countries.
Justin:So all the Slack So we use Slack every day, and all the people on Slack just we speak English altogether.
Baptiste:Okay.
Justin:And, but But half of the team is French.
Baptiste:Oh, interesting. So but during the day, the language that you use for, like, work is English.
Justin:Yeah. Not at the offices, obviously.
Baptiste:And the other thing I think you've done well that I think we're trying to think about too, it's it's so easy because so much Of the SaaS market, traditionally, has been North America. It's easy for us to have blinders on. And so, like, if I I would say our it goes US first, then maybe UK, Germany, Canada, France, And Australia. Those are our top markets. But we know that, You know, in Spanish speaking countries, podcasting is getting big.
Baptiste:And so one thing that's been interesting about Chris is you have that auto translate feature, And we have people all the time that is it's almost like you built the product just assuming that you're gonna have a global audience. So you can see right away, this person likely speaks Spanish. Do you wanna live translate this right all at once? Do you think that's helped you as a company get into markets that you wouldn't normally have have reached into? Like, is there are you seeing uplift in Spanish speaking countries or in Asia?
Justin:As we come from Europe, so people in the US and especially, all the in America, think that Europe is Europe. I mean, like the USA, but it's not working like that. I mean, Europe is 30 different countries, even more. And we all speak different languages. We all have different cultures, different feelings, etcetera.
Justin:And as France comes we are French people. We come from Europe. So we knew that, okay, If we want to be global, I mean, France is going to be a market for us, because we are French. So, we need to translate everything in French. -We're going to be global first, so English first, but then we're going to localize everything.
Justin:So We're gonna localize everything in French, everything in Spanish, Portuguese, German, etcetera. And this strategy worked great because, the Crisp live chat widget is translated in more than 60 different languages. And actually, our users translated everything. We didn't do anything. Oh, really?
Justin:For that. Just Yeah. So all the chat widgets are translated by the users, because they wanted to use Crisp In their own language. So, yeah. Here is the translation file.
Justin:Translate it, and we're gonna make Crisp compatible with Finnish with, Danish with whatever. And it's what we did. And by doing that, in fact, we had the huge Shrractions in countries we never thought we would have a chance. For instance, Finland. Okay.
Justin:Chris was translated in Finnish, And thanks to that, we had a YouTuber, doing a blog article in Finland. And this guy was super popular. And like in a few months, we went from 0 to Market leader in, Finland.
Baptiste:Wow. That's incredible. It it may does make me feel like I mean, this is something we talk about at Transistor, but going we in some ways inspired by Chris, we decided to localize Our podcast websites feature. And we have a developer, Jason, who really pushed this. He said, like, we really gotta do this.
Baptiste:And so we localized it into, I think, 5 or 6 languages to start. And it's interesting because you do just as soon as people see, for For example, that you can have your website in your language for your country. It does just bring in a bunch more attention, and so demand customer demand that you might not have been aware of Kind of shows up.
Justin:It's complicated to think for native English people. I mean, People, who have always been used to speak English in their life because they think they think like that. But, you know, right now, I'm doing this podcast in English. It needs even if I'm good, I think I'm good at speaking English, but It's not my main language. I had to learn this language at school, and right now, my brain CPU need to Tom's late in live, everything.
Justin:And it's, I mean, even the best Not English native speakers need to think when they they read something, etcetera. So, if everything is translated in your mother Mar the tongue. It has an immediate impact on your thought. It's Something that you are not thinking about, and even like English people are not thinking about that, but it's It's a big impact to convince people.
Baptiste:Yeah. Because you feel like you're home when when you see your language.
Justin:Yeah, you have some kind of a Quebec accent.
Baptiste:Yeah. I'm fine.
Justin:Now Yeah, but for instance, people in Quebec. Because crisp, is translated in French, they love it. Yeah. It makes a big impact.
Baptiste:Yeah. The that we noticed that right away because we get we would get a lot of Customer request from Ottawa and from Quebec. And in Ottawa, that's our capital. Everything has to be bilingual. And, in Quebec, everything has to be bilingual, definitely, but, you know, leads with French.
Baptiste:And, yeah, as soon as we Have those French language translations. One of the first customers to use it was the Canadian government because they need to have Podcasts in both languages.
Justin:Yeah.
Baptiste:So, yeah, I think it's a great insight.
Justin:And it's a great way, as well, to differentiate with competitors. At Crisp, we care about that. We have features, and, for instance, Crisp is translated in Arabic. No one cares about Hebrew, Arabic, etc. Because it's RTL.
Justin:Everything is in the opposite way. Yes. Reverse.
Baptiste:Yes.
Justin:And we do care about that. And, and, and, yeah. When they see Crisp, wow, they're they're the only kind of company Taking care of us. So they they love us just because
Baptiste:of that.
Justin:And and
Baptiste:some of those markets could be bigger. Has it been a surprise for you? Like, is is Are some of those markets again, like, when I talk to SaaS companies in North America, it's always the same 5 or 6. United States, Canada, Germany, France, Australia, UK, germ Yeah. Those are the ones.
Baptiste:So is there a country where you've seen a lot of growth, customers wise That surprised you?
Justin:So, there, there is definitely something huge happening right now in Countries you never think about. So, for instance, in South America, there is something huge happening right now in Brazil. In Asia as well, there is a big startup ecosystem happening. If you look at Indonesia, Vietnam. Something is going on here, and you see real startups.
Justin:Interesting. Launching.
Baptiste:But are you see are you seeing an influx of customers from those locations?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And and and also, So, definitely, something is going to happen is, now nowadays, older people can use smartphones, computers. The knowledge tends to be cheap and affordable. You can learn anything on Internet.
Justin:And you can for instance, there are more and more startups coming in Africa as well. For instance, there are some companies, countries Like Kenya, with big startups' ecosystems. So, the world where the USA, where the First, software consumers and producers has ended, and we're Now, in a new world where, like, internet is global, software, usage in making is global, and it's totally Changing right now.
Baptiste:Big opportunity. Well, thanks so much, Baptist, for this. This was really great. I love So many of your customer insights are are so interesting. I think we'll have to we should do this again because I know I'm gonna have more questions as soon as we hang up.
Baptiste:But is there anything you want to, let our listeners know? Are you hiring? Do you wanna, Any anything in particular you wanna let folks know before we leave?
Justin:Yeah. So we we we hire Any kind of T shaped people, so if you're looking, like, for a company offering so, At Krisp, we don't hire people for roles. We hire people because we think those people are great people, and we try to build roles Around people. So, if you're a developer liking a bit of marketing, Crisp is for you. If you're a developer liking design plus, support, design plus support, plus whatever.
Justin:Crisp is made for you. If you are you want to talk to people but also code, Crisp is made for you, for instance. We have Dennis in Portugal, who started at Crisp doing customer support After doing, audio engineering school, and now he's shifting to customer to, Development, because he's so good at it. Yeah. So, Chris is T shaped people, and if you are this kind of person, You can, reach us anytime, on chris.chat.
Baptiste:Awesome. Well, thanks again for doing this. Thanks for staying up late to to do the phone call. Thank you for engaging in English for an hour and 14 minutes and using all those CPU cycles. I hope I didn't make you.
Justin:My my CPU is overeating. Yeah.
Baptiste:If I had to do this whole thing in French, it would be it would be a you have to think so Hard to think, how do I say this in French? It's it's just I I I appreciate you doing the the podcast, And, yeah, we'll do it again.
Justin:Thank you very much. Have a good day.
Baptiste:Let's give a shout out to our supporters on Patreon. We've got Jason Charms, Mitchell Davis, Marshall Follett, Alex Payne, Bill Kondo, Anton Zorin, Harris Kenny, Oleg Kulig, Ethan Gunderson, Ward Sandler, Russell Brown, Noah Praill, Colin Gray, Austin Loveless, Michael Sittver, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Adam Duvander, Adam Duvander, Dave Junta. You know, John Buddha found a bottle of Junta wine the other day. Junta wine. We're gonna have a team retreat.
Baptiste:We gotta we gotta have some Junta wine while we're there. And Kyle Fox From get rewardful.com. If you like this episode, share it with a friend. Reach out to Baptiste on Twitter. Let him know that you liked it, And I will talk to you next time.
Baptiste:Bye.
