Brian Casel, of Bootstrapped Web, chats about his new app
The old thing that used to bug the heck out of me is I would book a call, and then it would snow it would snow 20 centimeters here. And I'd be like, everyone is going up to the resort, and I'm stuck
Speaker 2:in the office. You're close to some mountains.
Jason:Yeah. And so that just drove me nuts. Like, not having it open, you know, it precluded me from doing that.
Speaker 2:I wish I lived closer. I'm, like, a good 3 hours to to get some good snowboarding in, So I can't just go on a whim, you know.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. It is nice.
Speaker 2:But I'm but I am so you know, I was just saying saying this to my wife yesterday. Like, it's really nice lately, the last few months. Like, I literally, my calendar is open. You know? It's so like, I used to have a lot of calls, like, you know, when I was doing audience ops.
Speaker 2:For for a while, I was doing sales calls, and then even without the sales calls, I was still talking to the team and all different stuff. But, like, now I'm just wide open, and I love it.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I wanna talk about, like so you started Productiz in 2014.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The yeah. The end of that year. Yeah.
Jason:And but you also have audience ops. Right? That's the other Yeah.
Speaker 2:I I mean, I just sold audience ops, 2 months ago.
Jason:Oh, yeah. So started in 2015, sold in 2021. That was, like, your main bread and butter for a long time?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It it was. So that that closed in 20 in September 2021. Yeah. I I ran that for almost 7 years.
Speaker 2:It was like six and a half, 7 years. And it yeah. Definitely for a while, it became, just a really good, steady, sustainable, profitable cash flow business for me. Yeah. And it especially the last, like, 4 4 or so years of of running it, like, I was pretty I mean, checked out is the wrong word.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm always very, you know, I do pay attention to the team and and and the clients and everything, but I was out of the business. I was not doing anything. Like, I I literally was touching that business about 2 hours a month or so, 2 to 3 hours a month, in, like, 15 minute bursts of things coming into my inbox. But, like, so that was actually perfect for me for the last few years trying to hack on SaaS products and having all this free time to, you know, I expanded my skill set into Ruby on Rails and all this different stuff. But, like, yeah.
Speaker 2:Then finally this year, I I just felt I don't it was probably a combination of things, but just something pushed me that it was like, it's just time to move on. I'm I'm trying to move on. It's time to actually, in a way, sort of, like, burn burn the boats a little bit and and go. Yeah. Not that I needed to, like, free up time.
Speaker 2:Like, I was already basically full time working on ZipMessage, but, I guess more of like a mental, like, kind of moving on to the into the next chapter of my career here.
Jason:Right away. Totally. Yeah. So so did you make that decision once ZipMessage was giving you a full time income? Like, did ZipMessage had ZipMessage already replaced the income from audience ops?
Speaker 2:No. And it's not yet.
Jason:Okay. So you're still working towards that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It ZipMessage does have, more traction faster than than other products that that I've started for sure.
Jason:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So so that that was that's what made it really interesting for me. I mean, I literally only started ZipMessage right around January 1st this year, 2021.
Jason:Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2:Like, very first customers was was in April of 21. Yeah. And it's been, so it's it's been you know, I mean, I I wouldn't necessarily call it, like, a rocket ship or anything, but it's definitely solid traction. It and we're, like, right within this 1st year now.
Jason:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And then also in September of 2021, for the first time in my career, I I took a bit of outside funding from, from ComFund.
Jason:Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wanna start with that too.
Speaker 2:And so that that that happened in the same month that I sold audience ops. So there was like a big I was really on the fence about the funding and and what form of funding, or maybe just not take funding at all and remain bootstrapped. But it basically came down to, okay, I'm selling audience ops. I I could burn through that money for a while, or I could not and and raise a bit of funding. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's how
Jason:it can. Keep some of that the the audience ops money in your bank account for your family in case you need it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Jason:Or for the future or whatever, but then, use somebody else's money to try to grow ZipMessage. Do you think, I was I was tweeting about this yesterday. There's something about doing a sequence of things. And even if like, if I look at your your web page, Theme Jam, WP Bids, Hotel Propeller, restaurant engine, landing pages, content upgrades, ops calendar, Sunrise KPI, 3rdy, audience ops
Speaker 2:All the ping. Ties. All on one page. All the ping.
Jason:Yeah. Process kit and then ZipMessage. But the advantage is when because it's it's difficult for me to describe this feeling that I'm always trying to describe, which is the the pull of the market, the momentum that just the underlying momentum in a category And the advantage of launching multiple things is that you feel it, or at least that's been my experience. Did you have that too? Like, did you feel like, woah.
Jason:Like, this is much different than what I've seen before?
Speaker 2:First of all, I I love how how you've been talking about that for the last couple years now. It's really I it's I I've been really listening in to to what to everything that you've been saying about, you know, you know, the the market pull and and the wave of of demand and all that, I it really makes a lot of sense. So I resonate with that. I I wouldn't say it it like, with Zip Message, which is what I'm focused on now. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It it has definitely, what what I would I I wouldn't say that it's been black and white, you know, compared to other products. But what I will say is, yeah, like, going going down the line of everything that I've learned, and I've I've noticed this again and again, that every time I start something new, it's in reaction to usually the previous thing that I was working on. Mhmm. And, and I'm every single time, I am course correcting. Like, okay, start one thing.
Speaker 2:Couple of these things worked. That was good. Couple of these things, I was just really hitting hitting a wall on. And and how can we fix that thing in in the next thing? And and, and so, yeah, that that's that's really what it's been all about.
Speaker 2:And, like, so the thing that literally came right before ZipMessage is Process Kit. And I and I still own and run Process Kit. But that one I spent a good 3 years on. And and it didn't grow to replacing, like, my income from audience ops or anything like that. And so once I got to around almost 3 years into it, that's when shiny object syndrome kinda, you know, showed up.
Speaker 2:And that that's when it tends to show up is when you'd spend a long time on something and it hasn't really taken off. And that's when ZipMessage came into the picture. So, they're they're both SaaS products, but, there are a number of, like, specific things in in the way the product is that made ZipMessage really attractive to me.
Jason:Yeah. You know? And has ZipMessage, superseded, process kit in terms of revenue?
Speaker 2:It's just about there.
Jason:It's just about there. So in one year
Speaker 2:or months. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. See, that's that that's kind of what I'm
Speaker 2:And and it's like it has a lot more, number of customers too. It's different value per customer. Feel.
Jason:Yeah. Because embedded in the category is not just the momentum, like how many customers are searching for this every single day. Like, how many people wake up every single day and search for Loom alternative, But also embedded in the category is
Speaker 2:We have that page now. Oh, yeah.
Jason:Yeah. Good. Embedded in the in the category is also the shape of the product, the shape of customer acquisition, the shape of the complexity of onboarding, the complexity of, like, everything That
Speaker 2:was probably the big one. Yeah. The onboarding.
Jason:Yeah. Tell me a bit about that. Like, what's the difference between ProcessKit and this one?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, with ProcessKit, it's so Process Kit is basically a tool that you can create your your processes, get your team on board, and run those processes repeatedly. And there's a lot of automation, a lot of conditional logic. It it does so a lot of agencies and productized services, are it's kind of ideal for them. Those are the best customers for it.
Speaker 2:And I I didn't necessarily intend to do this out of the gate with Process Kit, but it but it resulted in it basically being in the space of project management software. And and that's a huge lift. Not only is it extremely competitive, but it's the the biggest challenge is getting a team to adopt it. And get that and and getting them to to get value out of the tool, like, fast. Because it it takes a good month and it's a project to actually, like, create and set up all of these automations and project and and processes.
Speaker 2:Get your team invited in. And and there there's really great value once they are activated and invited in, and and we've got teams who expand on the product and everything. It it that's pretty good. But getting them there is is a really, really big challenge compared to, ZipMessage. I mean, you sign up for ZipMessage.
Speaker 2:You have your first recording. You send it to somebody. Only send it to one other person, and you've just gotten some level of value from the tool. Yeah. And and I know I'm also seeing, like, you don't need to have the whole team buy into it.
Speaker 2:It could just be 2 1 or 2 people in a in an organization, and it spreads, I mean, virally in in an organization. And then the other the other cool thing about it is is that it's easy to share externally with anyone. The the original idea was to, have have a way to just send anybody a link. A customer, a client. Here's a link.
Speaker 2:Hey, can you just click here? Click record. You can record right into your browser. Now we're in an async back and forth conversation. They don't you know, the client, the customer, they don't need to download or install or even register for anything.
Speaker 2:You don't Mhmm. You know, and and so, you know, you could have like your own personalized brand link and send it out. And, I like to think of it as like, it wouldn't necessarily replace a Calendly or or or a SavvyCal, like, you know, I I love those tools for booking calls. Yeah. But it's sort of like an an alternative to to run alongside that.
Speaker 2:Right? Like Yeah. A lot of people say, like, yeah, sometimes a call is is needed. Right? So I'll send my SavvyCal link.
Speaker 2:But sometimes, instead of a call, I'll just send my Zip message link, and we can at least get the conversation started that way. You know?
Jason:Yeah. I wanna go I wanna get back to, remind me if I forget about viral loops. And, but that that that distinction between, how hard it is to get a customer to pay. And I remember, for me, I was working at Sprintly, which is project management software. And this was just so clear to me.
Jason:Because it it it was like to you have you know, I'm doing all this marketing. I'm bringing in tons of traffic, And then that translates to trials. And it's like, perfect. Like, we're getting trials perfect. And then it's like, why are people not converting from trial to paid?
Jason:And so the answer was, okay. Let's do a bunch of calls to figure out, you know, what's going on. And you start doing these demo calls, and you realize on the call, they're like, well, I I like this, but I gotta talk to the rest of my team and get them on board in order for us to switch from Jira to this.
Speaker 2:Hundreds of times. Yep.
Jason:What unlocked it for me was probably looking at Nathan Barry and just watching him and going, oh, wait a second. All he has to convince is a creator sitting at home to take out their credit card and buy. He only has to convince 1 person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Jason:And that's it. And he has to do that at scale. People people wake up one day. They're like, you know what? Damn it.
Jason:I need to switch off Mailchimp, or I need to start an email newsletter. And, you know, they search things up and they find a solution. And, you know, you're lucky enough if you get them to get, you know, in ConvertKit's case, if you get them to your website and you get them to sign up for a trial. That's already you know, praise god. You've got a lead, a live one on the line.
Jason:But then the process of them how easy, how quick, how, frictionless is it for them to just pay? That's that was where we were losing everybody at Sprintly. It was like, we would just lose everybody. It was you had to convince a team.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that frictionless, a lot of people think of it like, oh, user experience, and maybe I could design a better onboarding. And I and I did all that, but it's not that's not enough. It's they have to feel the value fast, you know?
Jason:Yes. I I I tweeted this where I said and people got angry about it at first, but once I clarified it, I think it was people understood better onboarding, user experience activation is not going to solve anything if there's an underlying kind of motivation problem or an underlying, structural problem in the way that the shape of demand in that category. So in project management software, it doesn't matter how good you make the onboarding, how good you make the product tour, how good like, none of that matters because there's this underlying fundamental of in order to use this, I need to convince my whole team. And and it only takes a few conversations with potential customers. You know, one thing that I asked, I said, so what tell me your journey with project management software.
Jason:Like, what what's that looks like for your team? And they'd everyone had, like, 5 apps that they've gone through already. Well, first, we started with this, and then, you know, Bob didn't like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I totally I've seen it.
Jason:And and once you see that, it it people are fighting the wrong battles. They're fighting these battles of, like, oh, I gotta just make the product better or I gotta get more people at the top of the funnel. But just embedded in every category are just these fundamentals of how the shape of everything works, and it's really difficult to fight that. You can't it's hard to swim against the current there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, you you were talking about, like, on my on my personal side, the list of all the products that I've had over the years. Right? Yeah. Those are the only the ones that I actually had, like, customers for at one point.
Speaker 2:There's a whole bunch that I had zero customers for. Right? Yeah. And and this is what I've always had a really hard time with is that middle ground in the in the early days of a of a new product. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, like, that that's where I think like, when I listen to you talk about all all the demand stuff, I think for a lot of listeners, it it might sound very binary. Like, either the demand is there or it's not. And Yeah. And there are so many times when I've been working on a product, and I just wish this product would flat out fail already so that I could that I so that I would know, okay. It's it's easy.
Speaker 2:It's it's time for me to move on. But there's always, like, just a few customers who are coming to the website, and they do book a call, and they do Yeah. Like, talk to me forever about their frustrations with Asana or with whatever other product they're they're using. And so so then you start to notice, like and then you have, like, a little bit of revenue. It's not escape velocity revenue, but it but it's not 0.
Speaker 2:So it's like, what do you do with that? Yeah. And and, like, that that's where it gets really, really difficult for for, I think, a lot of founders, certainly myself. You know?
Jason:Yeah. I I think Tyler Tringus was just tweeting about this. He's just noticed there's this there is this kind of middle ground, and it it's difficult. I mean, one reason I keep talking about it is because it's hard to tell what's possible when you're when you're trying to give advice to other people. Because what I mean by that is, like, when I was selling courses, I thought I was doing okay.
Jason:You know, every year I was, like, selling a little bit more. But what I wasn't kind of taking note of is how much effort, energy, mind space, stress it it took to make those dollars. So it's, like, every, you know, quarter, I'm, like, having to, like, crank this machine to get the the new launch going, the new update, the new sale. And it it was always, like, every month, it felt like I was starting from 0 again. There there was never like this like, I get this thing going and then it's just running.
Jason:And, again, like, maybe that is just the reality for most businesses. That's what most businesses look like is, you know, you're a freelancer and then every once in a while you gotta go get out more sales. And if you don't get more sales, you know, you gotta keep the machine going. Yeah. I mean, at
Speaker 2:at the end of the day, like like, most most businesses, I I feel like in the world or at least in our industry at large, is consulting. Working Yeah. You know, working for someone and, like, it's it's not that hard to to go find a good client. Yeah. And there's there's nothing wrong with with making a great living that way.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, like like kinda but, yeah, like like, especially when you're in the early days, like, although people use the word, like, pivot and and repositioning your product and stuff like this. I think there's a lot of, like, mini pivots along the way. Yeah. You know? You know, maybe you're not completely changing your homepage, but, you're starting to focus in different areas.
Speaker 2:You're start starting to talk about the product in different ways, different use cases, and, like, it it then then you can start to slowly, like, dial in. I mean, that's been some of some of the key learning with ZipMessage in in just the past 6, 7 months. That that's it's been interesting. So just this week, we just launched a a brand new website for the for the whole product and everything.
Jason:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And one of the big reasons for that is because the website that I had before, I designed, I think, around March or April of this year. So
Jason:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right around when the very first customers were coming into ZipMessage. So all the copy and all the positioning and everything was based on, like, basically my initial idea for the product. Sort of my gut, guess at what the product might want. And and for some customers that that resonated enough and it and it got them in. But then over the next 6 months, I I did start to notice, okay, who who is, a, just resonating the most with the idea, and who are the best customers and using it the most, and then who are the who's who's churning and why are they churning?
Speaker 2:And, and what I what I found was that the core, pain point or a problem that it's solving is actually different from what I thought it would be from day 1.
Jason:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So
Jason:the original what was the original like, right now, your headline is better async conversations, video voice, and screen conversations without live meetings. So how is that different than what you started with? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that's the new website. I I actually don't remember what the original h one was, but the idea for the original thing was more of like a customer support context. So Yeah. If I'm doing customer support, I could send a link to a customer and they can reply back, using ZipMessage. And that was the big idea.
Speaker 2:And that's the big differentiator from something like Loom, where I used to have to, like, send send an email to a customer on customer support and say, hey, I need to see your screen. Can you go install this tool to record your screen and or send me a video via Dropbox or something, you know, a lot of friction there. So I was like, I just wanna send somebody a link so that they can record and get back to me. That was the original idea. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and but the way that I designed it and and built the first version was, yes, it had that ability. Plus, I could reply back and it would have on one page a threaded conversation back and forth. And more and more people started to resonate with just seeing that. Like, con a conversation flowing down the page. That that's not what Loom essentially has, at least not with, like, you know, anybody.
Speaker 2:It's it's it's higher fidelity than like a Slack chat. Mhmm. It's it's more open. You can have it with freelancers, clients, your team, whoever. So that's what people start to resonate with.
Speaker 2:And, and then I noticed that the people who are actually using it the most, like daily usage, are teams. Like, everybody's remote now. So remote teams and and and client services. So they're talking to clients and and and freelancers using it to talk to their clients too.
Jason:Yeah. And then and
Speaker 2:then the other thing I'm noticing just in general is, like, a lot of these SaaS companies in general are not just full time employees anymore. There's a couple of partners and full time employees and then a bunch of freelancers that come in and out and you're looking to hire people on gigs. So you have conversations going with all these different people, but they're not necessarily people you're gonna invite into your private Slack workspace. You know? So so that's that's where it starts to really resonate with people.
Speaker 2:So so that's what that was the big change. And and I guess from a positioning standpoint, the other the other thing that that really resonates are people who are doing more live calendar appointments and more live Zoom calls than they want to be. Yeah. So so that's why the new website now, like, really tries to position it against, like, this versus calendar appointments.
Jason:Yeah. And do you think that positioning because all of that makes sense to me from a you know, it makes sense as you're you're listening to customers. These things that might not have been immediately apparent would become more apparent. Like, it's like, oh, man. Like, this is an alternative.
Jason:This isn't just an alternative to Loom. This is an alternative to scheduling a calendar meeting. This is an alternative to, Slack chat. This is an alternative to me uploading an unlisted YouTube video. You know, like, there's all of these alternatives to the the job to be done isn't just, like, give me a better version of Loom.
Jason:It's no. Like, my job to be done is please, save me. Help me, to have less meetings. Help me to clearly communicate this to a customer, and have them be able to share their screen with me, without it being live.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and, like, there's a lot of these patterns that are already happening that have been happening for years, but they're just there aren't. And there there are plenty of tools that that people resort to. But, so, like, hiring is another big one. So we're everybody's hiring remotely now.
Speaker 2:You put up a job listing or you put out on Twitter that you're looking for somebody. Developer, a writer, whoever a marketer, whoever it might be that you're trying to hire, then you get a bunch of applications. Now you gotta read all these text applications and sift through that. That's hours of work right there. Then then you're then you gotta, like, sort of boil it down to a a short list and then have, like, Zoom calls with all of them.
Speaker 2:And then you do follow-up conversations and you don't wanna go too you don't wanna have too many calls because it's like too much time on both of your ends, but you're still not quite sure whether or not the person is right. And are are they a long term fit and all that kind of stuff. So for for me and and a lot of users now, I like to do I I just hired a guy to help with, some marketing work. I I like to do a short, a short Zoom call to, like, meet and greet. Like like, just see if if there's, like, a personality fit.
Speaker 2:Like, are we are we gelling? Like like, 10, 15 minutes just kinda meet. And then a deep dive over the course of, like, 2 weeks, asynchronously. Video, messages back and forth. Show me your screen.
Speaker 2:Show me a recent project. What do you think about this for the long term, plan on this role? You know, and then you can, like, insert, like, quick text responses, insert links, whatever it might be. But, like, I you know, you get a much better feel for who the person is, what the plan is without having to book calls with, like, 5 more candidates. And, you know, and it just it it just makes the whole thing easier.
Speaker 2:And, I mean, the other thing that I really love to focus on is I feel this every time I'm in a call with somebody that I'm working with. It's better. It's it's actually better. Like, it's not just more convenient. The time zone stuff, the avoid calendar bookings.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's that's nice. To me, that's not even like it's it's actually a better conversation, better outcomes, more productive. Because, think about, like, you're you're on a Zoom call with somebody that you're working with, collaborating on some on some work. I have a question, like, what do you think about this?
Speaker 2:Or what do you think we should do about that? Now they're on the spot. Like, they have to have an answer right now, live, you know? Yeah. Whereas if I if I send that to you, if I show you something and say, what do you think or what do you think we should do about this problem?
Speaker 2:Send that to you. You you watch it. You digest it. You take a walk. You think about it.
Speaker 2:You come back. You prepare a response. Maybe you jot down some notes. Then maybe you record your response. Oh, I I could say that a little bit tighter.
Speaker 2:I can get my point across a little bit more clearly. Let me rerecord that for 2 minutes. Then you send it off. Now now I I just got, like, the best that you have to offer. And Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's and we go back and forth that way. And and, like, it the final product is, like, way better, whatever it is we're we're working on. You know? It it
Jason:it feels like especially with a product like ZipMessage, once you're in it, your imagination of what's possible with it expands. So, like, I I think I was a customer because we just switched from Loom to ZipMessage. The initial trigger was me getting this invoice from Loom saying, hey. This is what we're gonna charge you for next year. It was something like $500 or something.
Jason:I was just like, ah, man. Like, I've you know, I'd kinda like to try ZipMessage. This is a good opportunity to try it, and it would just be a good replacement for Zoom, for Loom. So I canceled Loom, get ZipMessage, and there's other jobs to be done there. I wanna support an indie product.
Jason:I invested in Brian's journey. You know, there's there's other things. And that's what gets me in the door. But once I'm in the door, I'm I'm starting to think, okay. I had a customer, you know, ask some questions.
Jason:I'm like, oh, yeah. I'm gonna use zip message for this. So I record a zip message and say, you reply to this with your screen. And so they do that, and I'm like, oh, wow. This is great for customer support.
Jason:Then I had a friend who asked me to give me feedback on their app. They just built a new app. And so I okay. I'll do this on there. I record a thing, and then I send that to them.
Speaker 2:I know. This is the hardest thing.
Jason:We have an internal we have an internal team conversation. I'm like, oh, you know what? This would be awesome to we I used to use Loom for this. I'll just send this to the team, and they can respond with things. And then my mind it starts to unlock all these other things.
Jason:It's like, oh, wait a second. Like, I'm always doing these building public kind of questions. Like, hey. Here's my analytics. What you would you folks on Twitter do with this?
Jason:And I'm like, oh, I I could just record a thing, a question, and put it out on Twitter and have people respond in this thread. Yeah. And then I'm like, oh, I could do this. But how are you gonna deal with that?
Speaker 2:I know.
Jason:Like, there's an initial trigger that gets people in the door, and that's kind of what you gotta focus your marketing on. And then, of course, as people activate and use it more, it's gonna be great. And it it may have this kind of viral loop component as it spreads everywhere. You know, some people are using it for their podcast voice mailbox. Like, hey.
Jason:If you wanna leave us a message or a question, use it here. So there's all these possibilities, but how are you kinda dealing with the marketing side of that and just, like, getting people to sign up?
Speaker 2:You definitely described all these are all real uses that real customers have been using it for. Yeah. And that's the problem. Or that's that's definitely the the challenge. You know?
Speaker 2:It's it's actually been a challenge for a while. I I talked about this on Bootstrap web, early on in in the live side. This this must have been somewhere around, probably May or June of this year, when I I had the very earliest customers. And that was my first thought. I was like, okay.
Speaker 2:I I need to niche down. I I need to have a specific use case that I know exactly how to market this thing. And one of the early patterns was coaches. So if you're a business coach, and, and we do have quite a few coaches who who use it for, like they might do some, like, live coaching, but then they they have, like, async q and a in between those sessions. Or they have a community, and they and they do, like, ask me anythings or group sessions using, you know, all all async, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So that seemed like a good it's it's still a really good use case for us, but it's, as as you said, it's not the only one. So early on, I was talking on on Bootstrap Web about, like, okay, I need to niche down. I think it's gonna be coaches. And, and I started sort of I made a landing page for it, and I talked to more coaches about it. And then I, you know, as I'm sure you get all the time, like, I have a podcast, so then all these, like, random strangers start emailing me, like, I heard that.
Speaker 2:Don't do that. Do this. Yeah. Like, you know, they give me all this all this advice and stuff. And I and I think it did start to actually actually, that was a case where it started to click for me.
Speaker 2:It was like, okay. Even though the general wisdom is go vertical. Yeah. This is just a horizontal product. At at least at least with it's not like for literally everyone in the world, but especially if you're on a remote team, if you're in tech or or digital client services, like, it's it's within that realm, but it's pretty horizontal within that realm.
Jason:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and I and I started to sort of just embrace that. Yeah. My thought now, like with the new website, the way that I structured it is we've got the homepage, which is pretty broad about what what it does and what you can do with it. Then I have 2, use case pages. 1 is called, Async Team Meetings.
Speaker 2:The other one is called async client meetings.
Jason:How do you land on the term async? It was that related to like, was that, verbiage that, that that potential customers
Speaker 2:were using? Or It's it's it's still a little bit, like, kind of, like, controversial. Like, I I do get people saying, like, I don't know what that means. Mhmm. But I also see it as sort of a newer term that's it it is growing.
Speaker 2:Like, I see people on Twitter that I that don't know me or anything, like, using the term async, usually in in the same sentence as talking about using Loom or talking about working remotely and, you you know, asynchronous communication. So so I see it as, like, sort of like a newer trending term that I think we should try try and own. You know? And that's that's part of it. You know?
Speaker 2:But it it it does perfectly describe what what it is. It's it's asynchronous.
Jason:You know? Yeah. It's just interest the the challenge is is you're looking for the I mean, again, this is the advantage that podcast hosting has is the as much as you can, like, cavort around, like, with ideas of, like, this is how people might find us and this is how, I'd like things to go. In our industry, the truth is that people basically get themselves ramped up to a level where they are ready. So it's like they they talk to their cohost.
Jason:They're like, let's start a podcast. They're like, yeah. Let's do it. Let's both get mics. K.
Jason:We did that. Okay. Let's record our first one. They figure all that out. And then they're like, okay.
Jason:We gotta host it somewhere. And the like, 9 times out of 10, the next thing that happens is a Google search that looks like best podcast hosting. Like, that's Yeah. That's the thing. So they're looking for the best and then the category.
Jason:And there's an enormous number of product categories that are like this. Best form software. Right? And so it's gonna be, like, reform versus typeform. Those are your options.
Jason:Best remote chat app.
Speaker 2:It's gonna
Jason:be Slack. It's gonna be whatever. Best project management software. So there's a lot of these kinds of things, but not every category has that. You know?
Speaker 2:I'm always I'm I'm friends with so many, other founders who who have that type of product and market where it's like they just, you know yeah. It's super competitive, and and it's such and it's a huge market, and they can they can carve out a piece of it. And and I I always sort of wish I was I was, like, this is what I this is what probably stresses me out the most right now this year, is is that it it is not a product that, people are actively searching directly. There there's definitely search stuff that we're going after. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But they're not searching with the buy intent right now. You know? So I I see it more as, like, like, you know, the the term async and the fact that it's in our headline on the home page and everything. It's not necessarily that people are searching for, I need to buy an asynchronous communications tool today. Let me search for it and buy it.
Speaker 2:But it is a little bit more about different differentiation. When they land on the page or if they're talking about async or they hear somebody talk about async on Twitter or a podcast Mhmm. I want the association to be like, oh, you you guys are asynchronous or we're trying to go async, then you should look at ZipMessage. And and and that's what's that's what's hard. Like, I'm so impatient.
Speaker 2:I I wish I could just I wish I could buy AdWords on async. You know? My hypothesis on this is that it's just gonna be a slower build.
Jason:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, yeah. And I gotta sort of train myself to to just just execute on on what I could do and and, you know, see where this goes.
Jason:Yeah. I mean, one of the things I like to do is I like to look up my competitors in Ahrefs. And so if we look up Loom I mean, one thing that's immediately apparent is so many of their keywords are just branded keywords. Loom, Loom video, Loom login, download Loom, Loom screen recorder. There there's there's I'm searching for, like, an actual intent based search that's not a branded search.
Jason:And this is different than a lot of products because in this case, like, I'm still scrolling. I I still can't find website video recording is probably the first one.
Speaker 2:I think that speaks to the competitive landscape on this one. You know, and that and that was one of the things that led me to decide, like, oh, this is a product that I might wanna do. And and that's and that was, again, course correcting from the previous one, Process Kit was in the project management space. You know, I could try to optimize for project management software all day long. I'm never gonna be on page 1 for that.
Speaker 2:Whereas, or or even if it's not even an SEO play, you're still up against thousands of of PM tools. Mhmm. So this one, what I what I was seeing in the market, you know, in terms of validation, I like to sort of just observe from from afar, and and and see what I was seeing was Loom is the is the big one. Everybody I mean, I I was a paying customer of Loom for a while. So so what I was seeing was there's a lot of, usage of this one big player.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of small sort of similar tools in the space, but but nothing like, it's not an ocean of of tools, out there that that do this sort of, like, fast, easy video recording, send off a link. And there's things that are sort of like it, but but again and and then I saw I saw that, like, it's not super crowded, and I see clear ways that I want to differentiate that that certain problems like the back and forth conversation, ability to just send it to a customer, like, that kind of, like, you know, like frictionless kind of stuff, I wasn't seeing in these other tools. So I was like, okay, it's it's there's a lot of activity. Everybody's using these types of tools. There's not that many of them, and and I see ways that I could differentiate.
Speaker 2:And that that's what got got me really excited about it. You know?
Jason:It's similar to Calendly. They really defined this thing. Like, I hadn't really even heard of that before. Like, I'd never thought to Google, like, appointment scheduling tool. Like, I never even thought about that.
Jason:I was like, no. For appointment scheduling, I just, like, invite someone to my Gcal event, and that's how it works. And then once I heard about Calendly and I saw it and and and so this goes back to what I was thinking about viral loops is, I was listening to this podcast I was gonna send you. It's on Noah Kagan's podcast, and he's interviewing, Andrew Chen. And Andrew's always been interested in these kinds of products, like products where I
Speaker 2:just downloaded another one with Chen. Might be Tim Ferris.
Jason:Yeah. Because he's got a book out. So he's he's talking about this idea quite a bit. And it's it's different than what I've what like, it's different than what Transistor had, which was an established category. So this is like a category that's been around for 10 plus years of podcast hosting.
Jason:And it's it's tangentially related to website hosting, which is another thing that's existed for a long time. And so there's this this kind of overarching category of website hosting. And sometimes that's how we describe Transistor. You know? You have website hosting for your website.
Jason:You need podcast hosting for your podcast. The difference here is, in things with things like Dropbox, with things like Calendly and Loom, it's almost like the there's this initial incumbent who really carved out a big space. They created the the category. And in most cases, it seems people hear about it, and then they just Google for that name. It's like, okay.
Jason:I need Loom. I've heard about Loom. I got a Loom link. And they're viral in the sense that I can't remember Andrew's exact definition, but we all we've experienced this. Like, you get a Dropbox link and you're like, oh, this is interesting.
Jason:And then you download the client. And now all of a sudden you're a user. You get a Calendly link.
Speaker 2:I mean, I definitely yeah. That that's exactly how me and probably everyone converted on Calendly years years ago. Right? I mean, I forgot who who sent it to me, but I definitely that's how I converted this. I I received a Calendly link.
Speaker 2:You know? I think, like, every product has, like, these pros and cons. Like, there's and there's a whole line of different, benefits. Right? One of the things that I I I love about the hosting business that I'm so I'm always so jealous of is that, like, you have, like, the the set it and forget it, benefit.
Speaker 2:Like, yeah, you gotta use it to, like, create episodes and post them. But after you post them I mean, I am still still paying for hosting of both websites and podcasts that I've stopped touching years ago, but I don't want them to go offline. So I'm paying for them. You know? I mean, that's a huge that's a huge benefit.
Speaker 2:You know? And there there are some tools like that.
Jason:Yeah. We we have less of that than traditional web hosting because there is this feeling with a website, it's like, Well, I got to keep that you know, up. But with a podcast, sometimes there's this feeling of, like, well, I'm no longer actively releasing episodes. And so I think we're we're right in the middle. Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. But I I have old I have old podcasts that still bring traffic and and people that I don't do anymore. You know?
Jason:I mean, we definitely have that as well. Our our, like, acquisition and churn profile, if you go to ConvertKit's, Openmetrics, we are very similar to them. A bit a little bit less so. Like, we're I think we're more we're right in the middle between hosting and then, like, this ongoing service like ConvertKit. But if you look at the market, it's both for ConvertKit and Transistor.
Jason:We basically need to have this influx of new people every month. And then there's always going to be a pretty sizable, group of people churning.
Speaker 2:Like, they don't get going within within, like, a month or 2?
Jason:Yeah. Or they just, like it's it they start something. It's not getting the traction they wanted. They gets they start something. They get bored.
Jason:For all the reasons you can think of someone starting a ConvertKit list and then stopping, those all apply to podcast hosting as well. It's like, you know, they get really excited, and then it's like, oh, this is work. Or, I'm not I only have 2 subscribers. I'm just gonna cancel.
Speaker 2:Is it more do you think it's more work to get a successful new podcaster on board or to convert like like move your existing podcast over?
Jason:Yeah. I I think our our focus for next year is gonna be I mean, there's a ceiling to this. So in the paid podcast hosting market, Buzzsprout and Libsyn both have, let's say, 35,000 feeds from what I can tell. So that's 70,000 total. Maybe it's up to a 100.
Jason:So there's a that's that's total number of feeds that are paid podcasting pay paying for podcasting. So I think there's an opportunity there. Like, you know, if we carve off 10% of that, that would be huge for us, that we would we would probably double our annual revenue. And the other opportunity for us, surprisingly, and Nathan's had this with ConvertKit as well, is there's a free option at the beginning of the market that people get started with. So a lot of people start on Anchor and surprisingly a lot of people upgrade to Transistor.
Jason:And for Nathan, it's a lot of people start on substack and then upgrade to ConvertKit. So we've got this, like, this kind of natural feeder system now.
Speaker 2:It's it's an interesting case study and, like, look what happens when you offer only a free product. And, like, I remember seeing Anchor back, like, a couple years ago. Like, that's interesting, but they're only free. So I'm not gonna use them because I they probably won't be around very long or or something's gonna happen. They get acquired or something.
Speaker 2:And, like and and they did get acquired. Right? But,
Jason:Yeah. There there was Spotify. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's interesting to see why people upgrade though because with Substack and Anchor, there's this feeling of, okay, I'm gonna go pro now.
Jason:Like, this is kind of like the beginner thing. It's limited. The analytics aren't that great. They haven't updated the player forever. I could only have one podcast per account, so I can't host multiple podcasts on the same account.
Jason:I can't run a private podcast. You know?
Speaker 2:That's a that's a good one. The, multiple accounts, multiple podcasts. I mean, I I have multiple podcasts. I plan to launch another one. It's it's definitely gonna be on Transistor because, I mean, one of the things that I love that you guys just launched, I can't wait to use it at some point, is, the dynamic audio insertion.
Speaker 2:Oh, man. And that that was totally a shiny object that I was I I was starting to look into that to to build that a couple years ago. I I never did it, but, I love that. That that is such a, you know, the obvious one is to use it for ads, but I I would totally use it for, like, here's what's happening at my company this month. You know?
Speaker 2:Let me put that on all of my podcasts. Like
Jason:Oh, I mean, I I put it on I put an update on I have some pretty popular podcast, build and launch and product people. And I'm, like, as soon as Jason and John finished working on the pre roll, post roll version of it, I'm like, I'm using this for these back catalogs that still get thousands of downloads every month. Yeah. And so I just recorded, hey. This is Justin, and, wanted to give you a little update.
Jason:Last episode of this podcast was in 2018. It's 2021. Here's what's happened. And, that just being able to use your backlog, like, have it in Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like a real time element into what is basically a past recording, you know? Yeah. I love
Jason:it for Black Friday, like, promoting Black Friday. So we just put the campaign on, took the campaign off.
Speaker 2:Or you need to, like, hire like, hey. We're hiring someone this month. If you know someone, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You you guys actually have, like, a a bit of a viral component, though. Like, if if they use the Transistor website or the Transistor player, you're seeing, you know, powered by Transistor.
Jason:Where you have one step better than us is our virality is very two dimensional in the sense that more people using Transistor doesn't necessarily benefit the users. But there is a scenario where more people using ZipMessage, the more people that use it, the better the ecosystem gets. Meaning, if I already have an account on ZipMessage and you send me a ZipMessage message, then I'm already there. I'm already seeing it. And Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, my vibe is already on your messages. Yeah.
Jason:It gets better and better and better. And so there and Andrew Chen talks about that. Like, Dropbox gets better the more people use it. Slack gets better the more things in your life that are using Slack. If it's your running group, if it's your church's bible study, and if it's your company, now you just have one app that you have to use.
Jason:And, you know, Discord gets better when everybody's deciding to use it for crypto chat or whatever. Because then if you're into crypto, you just have to go to one place and you've got it all. And I think you've got a little bit of that element.
Speaker 2:We just this month, for the very first time, I'm experimenting with free. Like, there's a free premium.
Jason:Oh, cool.
Speaker 2:So
Jason:Tell me about that. What's the thinking behind that?
Speaker 2:It's exactly that. It's it's the it's it's a it's a viral product. So I'm about 3 weeks into having the free plan live. Mhmm. And, you know, I I launched the product earlier this year, and my default as a as a bootstrapper, like, charge for what what you're doing, I went with the I'm I'm not gonna do freemium.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna do a 14 day free trial. And that that worked okay for the first couple of months, to to get the first customers on board. But I I I went out to a a retreat with some founder friends, about 2 months ago, and it they sort of so I I was a little bit surprised because I'm in a a group of, like, fellow bootstrappers who are all about, like, the tend to be more like the charge more, don't do free, all all this kind of
Jason:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But all of them are like, look. The nature of this product is it's viral, so you're gonna need to go freemium at some point. And they all and and and that sort of and and then I I was thinking about it, and that really convinced me that, like, if if I'm gonna experiment with a free plan, it's probably easier to do that during, like, now, like, during the 1st year. And the and the the thinking is that without the free plan, with just the free trial, it really does limit the the viral spread of of the product.
Jason:Because Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, we we had plenty of trialers who signed up, and after 14 days, they didn't convert. And now they're not using it anymore, and they're not sharing it anymore. So so now with the free plan, yeah, they don't have the urgency to convert necessarily at at 14 days, but, it we're just every day, we're we're adding to the pool of free users who could send a Zip message link to someone else. You know? And and so I I think it's, it again, it's it's one of those things where it's like a slower burn.
Speaker 2:It's it's it's a slower growth because, you know, there's gonna be plenty of just free users. But, you know, I I I put in a bunch of, you know, I think pretty compelling limits on the free plan that that would get you over.
Jason:I think looking at your pricing, I actually think it's see, you've got some really great kind of feature distinctions too. Like, as I'm looking at this so when I was upgrading from Loom to Zip Message, I'd already added a bunch of team members to Loom. So instantly, I'm looking at, okay, team members. Well, I have to be on premium. That's the only option for me.
Jason:It's still more affordable than Loom, so there's a natural, like, okay. I'll switch. Let's save a little bit of money. By the way, that's how I that's how I, justified it to John, my business partner. I'm like, no.
Jason:This is more expensive. Let's just switch to this, and it'll we'll save a little bit of money. Right?
Speaker 2:Thanks thanks for proving it, John.
Jason:And then, by the way, those conversations if you can observe those conversations in Slack or wherever, I think those are the most fascinating conversations.
Speaker 2:This is why I love build your SaaS as a as a pod as a podcast, but I feel like there should be if I can give you some some feedback on air about this. So, I I would love to see more actual internal conversations, but published on air on Build Your SaaS between you and John. That that's what I'm really, like, that's what I'm always fascinated with. Like, yeah, it's cool when you talk about other people and, like, interview guests, like, you know but you have the unique, benefit of you and John are in the same company. Like me and Jordan are in 2 different companies.
Speaker 2:So so we can't collaborate on stuff. You know? It this this we and I was literally just thinking about this last night. I was listening to Art of Product with with our friends, Ben and Derek. Right?
Speaker 2:And and they had a unique episode last night of the the 2 of them collaborating on air about how can we improve our podcast next year. Right?
Jason:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I was like, this is great. This is like, I'm I'm hearing, like, creative ideas. I'm hearing pushback. I'm hearing, you know, this is real. You know?
Speaker 2:That that's what's interesting to me. And,
Jason:Yeah. You're right. Yeah. We definitely need more of that. And the other advantage John and I have is that we're very different people.
Jason:And so, this dynamic plays out all the time with us, which is and what's interesting about it to me is I then extrapolate based on other experiences as well. Like, when I was at Sprinkly, and I had to suggest what we were gonna use, products we're gonna use, how did that conversation go? What was the pushback? What were other people saying? You know, what, you know, what how did I fight those battles?
Jason:How did I navigate the culture in order to get things approved? And, and the same with mail out. Like, when I was there, what was what were the things I was doing? And what position did I have to be in? Because I started my tech career at Mailout Interactive, an email newsletter company.
Jason:And when I started, I didn't have very much social capital. But as I kinda worked my way up, increasingly, it was like I could I could suggest something, and I didn't even have to ask for permission. I could just charge it to my card and, you know, that's what we're using. Those interactions and those dynamics are really interesting to me. Yeah.
Jason:And I have seen, especially for freelancers and consultants, you have that ability to, like, look into other people's Slacks and be there during those conversations. And whenever you notice something like that, I just it's like you've got to kind of take note of how that dynamic plays out. What are the power dynamics? What are the how much social capital do you need? What how do people suggest something?
Jason:Because they're basically your salespeople. Right? They're like, hey. We should switch for this. So the line I used with ZipMessage is it's like Loom, but we get the added benefit of these threaded conversations.
Jason:I think we could use it for product review. But at the very least, we'll be able to replace what we're using at Loom for and save a little bit of money. It's like, okay. Sure.
Speaker 2:I forgot whose podcast it was. May maybe it was one of yours, where you're you're thinking about it's not just about how how you message your homepage to your target customer. It's about how how that customer has to go sell it to their coworkers or their boss or their partner. You know? There there are all these different value propositions at play that you need to sort of optimize on so many different levels, and it's that's where it really gets challenging.
Speaker 2:You know? Even,
Jason:I mean, even a product like, ConvertKit and Transistor to an a certain extent And it's so interesting because most of our customers are prosumers. It's just individual creatives at home that wanna make a podcast. But every once in a while, we get teams that sign up and the decision making process is completely different. The prosumer what's interesting is they often have to sell it to their spouse. So why do you wanna get this?
Jason:What what is this gonna do? You know?
Speaker 2:You see that with, like, courses too. You know?
Jason:Hey. I gotta use ConvertKit. I was working for a email newsletter company. And so I already had a free account with them, and I'm like, I'm gonna switch to ConvertKit. I have to, like, navigate this with my family with my wife, basically.
Jason:Like, okay.
Speaker 2:I saw that. Again, it was like one of those differences between, like, Process Kit and then into Zip Message. Process Kit, I saw a ton of that, like, where the person who discovered Process Kit Googled for it, came into the website, signed up for an account. Like, they they're super excited about the possibilities, what they could do with it. They're sold all the way, but they couldn't they couldn't make the sale to their team.
Speaker 2:And and, like, I I had a lot of churns where it was like, man, I love it, but I but my my team couldn't get on board with it. And, I I
Jason:actually think the one reason the prosumer market is interesting, we used to have this distinction that, like, MicroConf, where people would say, don't do b to c, just do b to b. And that was kinda like the that was the the cliche. And, first of all, I think b to b as a category, there's, like, way more nuance to that. Like, b2b can mean b2 Microsoft. It can mean b2, like, enterprise.
Jason:It can be b to government. It can be b to a 5 person team. Very, very different. But then there's this new emerging category group in the middle of prosumers, creators, independent solopreneurs, whatever, that aren't true businesses. Many of them are doing part time things or hobbies that they hope turn into something or hobbies that they're just so serious about they will spend a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And And and people are more comfortable just paying for for software in general now. Like, yeah, probably even more even the consumer, prosumer crowd is, like, before a SaaS product was like, what? A subscription? No way.
Speaker 2:And now now it's like they probably have a few of them. You know?
Jason:Yeah. I mean, I think b to c as in if you're gonna make a generalization, it's still difficult. But there's a big difference between saying, like, I wanna sell you a subscription to this recipe app And, hey, you spend, like, most of your time and most of your money on photography. I'm gonna I'm going to sell you, SaaS based on that. It's just a different thing because there's always this aspirational component of this could become bigger.
Jason:At the very least, a email newsletter or a blog or podcast is gonna be better for my career, or it's gonna be better for my, you know, whatever. And the nice thing about that category and the nice thing, I think, also about, however we say this, independent businesses, indie hackers. There's downsides to smaller businesses, whatever, is the volume. There's just so much volume. And SaaS, especially if you're at the $19 plan or the $39 plan or whatever it is, SaaS is just all about volume.
Jason:You just want thousands of people waking up every day.
Speaker 2:I think I think you're right about that. I think that's where that's one of the that's another one of those aspects that I think doesn't quite get talked about enough, even even, like, as obvious as it is. Right? Is is that, like, I think a lot of us in this in this in this indie hacker world are, a little bit too creative with the types of products and solutions that that we're creating. You know?
Speaker 2:I I I've been guilty of this with numerous products. You know? I'm constantly questioning myself on it. And it's like, you know, is is the ocean big enough? Is the market are there actually enough people,
Jason:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, who have this problem? And I I mean, also to to the point of, like, the way that businesses buy software, that that's changing a lot too now. Again, like, obviously, software is not new to businesses, but, like, now you're seeing way more just people within a team are so easily going and picking up a couple of SaaS products just just to because they have to have a get a job done by the end of the week. So this solves the problem. I don't need to even ask my manager about it.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna sign up for this and that software tool. And if and then if it sticks, it sticks. If it spreads, it spreads. And that's that's where I love what's happening with ZipMessage for Teams. Like Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like you just said. Like like people who have Teams. Like, you don't necessarily even need the whole team to be bought in on day 1, but one person in the org can start using it and spreading it within a department. And Yeah. Whereas before like, other tools I mean, I come from ProcessKit before that, but, like, you'd have to get, like, everyone to, like, evaluate it and then everyone say, okay, this month, we're all gonna get on board with with this.
Speaker 2:And that's that's really difficult. But, like, now it's like software tool, you know, they as long as it's not, like, tens of 1,000 of dollars, like, they they have, like, instant approval to just go ahead and and get the tool that that needs to be done. You know? Yeah.
Jason:And just do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and I I like I like the fishing metaphor of like, if you build a product that requires you to catch a 12 foot sturgeon, You know?
Jason:It's like, that's what I gotta catch. Well, those are difficult to catch. There's not that many of them, and you might be fishing for a long time before you catch one. But, for most SaaS, because most SaaS is just volume, that's a that's an Ian Landsman quote. It's just volume.
Jason:Right? Most SaaS, you want just a river that where there's just tons of fish coming down all the time. Now your competitors might be fishing in the same river. And, you know, in in my case, maybe Libsyn has a bigger net. But as long as there's a bunch of fish, even if I have a smaller net, I'm still gonna be able to catch them because there's so many coming down the river.
Jason:And every day when I wake up and I go back to the river, there's still more fish coming down the like, if I if I fall asleep and I sleep in and the sturgeon swims by and I missed it, it's like, ah. But SAS is mostly just how many fish are swimming down this river, and then it's all about optimizing your fishing game. Right? It's like, okay. Well but optimizing your fishing game for sturgeon, it's the risks just go up.
Jason:The the the dependencies just go up. It's so much more difficult to, you know, catch those kinds of fish.
Speaker 2:Well, the the element that I that I like you you tweeted about this a little while back, of that the idea of, like, tapping into this demand is, like, when you when there is that move that natural movement, the the you know, you don't have to have everything optimal. You you can have you can Oh, yeah. Things can be things can be ugly. Things can be broken here and there, and you're still gonna convert some customers. And that's another one of these, like, really, really hard things that happen.
Speaker 2:Like, I I deal with it right now. Every like, literally today, I have 10 right now, I'm at 10 in my inbox. Yeah. And those are things that are suboptimal in my business. And it's constantly a a decision of, like, what am I not gonna fix today?
Speaker 2:Because I, you know, I can only choose 1 or 2 of these. So what's it gonna be? And and it's, it that's a constant challenge, you know, because there are, like, big you get, like, feature requests. Like, a feature request that I've heard 10 times, yeah, I wanna go build it right now. There's clearly a demand for it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But but I but I can do that next month or the month after, and and we'll still be fine. You know? And that's really, really difficult.
Jason:And and that's where Ruben Gana has just tweeted about this. He's, like, you know, most people are, like, optimizing stuff that doesn't matter. What you should really be focusing on is 5 x ing or 10 x ing your traffic. And, you know, relevant traffic would be the the the key piece. Right?
Jason:If with Transistor, we our trial to conversion with credit card upfront is 75%. And it's been steady like that almost since we started. And so we just know That's great. Right?
Speaker 2:I mean Yeah.
Jason:It's great. The challenge is you just need to get more relevant traffic at the beginning, more leads, more trials. And as long as that quality stays about the same, you're going to increase revenue. That's the key. And the the the key distinction for us is that we were able to get to the certain escape velocity, not because we're the most brilliant, not because we're the best product people, although I do think we're very good product people, not because we're the best marketers, although I do think I'm a decent marketer, Not because I had the biggest audience, although I had a decent sized audience.
Jason:What really, did it for us was just this underlying demand. And for me, eventually, it feels like every business needs that because you wanna be able to relax a bit. You wanna be you you you don't wanna have to continuously wake up every day and, like, start cranking this machine that's, like, rusty, and it's not just not working on its own. It requires you to be moving with it every day. No.
Jason:You want a machine. That's the dream. Is it eventually you want something that starts
Speaker 2:You know, as a observer of of you and so many other founders in this space, I'm always fascinated and because I'm in it right now. It within that first, call it, like, 12 to 24 months of of the SaaS business. Right? Like Yeah. What are the things that you you know, you're you're several years into Transistor now.
Speaker 2:So, like, looking back, what were the things that, like, you're like, yeah, that really moved the needle for us Yeah. In terms of growing MRR, or or that didn't? Like, we we worked we we spent too many hours on that when we should have spent it on this because that's what really clicked for us. And and obviously, the the big caveat I I that should be stated is, like, yeah. What what probably worked for you probably will not work for someone else and vice versa.
Speaker 2:But, like,
Jason:yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, looking back on it, anything stick out? Sure.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. So this is the chart that I've I I think about quite a bit. This is our 1st 12 months. So month 1 to 6 is early access.
Jason:That's me just inviting people to switch to Transistor before we'd even launch the product. And there was some good feedback there. What am I testing there? How many people do I just personally know in this market? And how hard is it to get them to switch?
Jason:And it turns out it's pretty easy. They just forward their old RSS feed. They start using us, and they're happy. It's like, okay. That's a good sign.
Jason:Then month 7, we do our product hunt launch. And you could see product hunt launch, we got a bunch of new trials. But then every the 3 months after that, we go down. It's like every you know, the next 3 months after launch, we're getting fewer and fewer trials.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I haven't yet done the the Product Hunt launch on on Zip Message. I'm I'm trying to think through when like, I'm thinking sometime next year, early next year. Yeah. Like, when is an optimal time to to do that, you know?
Speaker 2:But
Jason:Yeah. You
Speaker 2:I guess you never really know. Yeah. Like, I don't I wouldn't wanna wait, like, too long. Like, I I wouldn't want it to be, like, a 2 or 3 year product, and then we do our our product hunt launch, you know?
Jason:Yeah. I mean yeah. Of course. Yeah. I the and you can see the product hunt launch for us, it wasn't just the product hunt launch, but just it's this official milestone that is just nice to go through because it makes a big splash.
Jason:You get a bunch of people talking about your product. You get a bunch of advocates advocating for you. And you can see I mean, we got, whatever it is, 75 trials that month with product hunt, and then it goes down to about 50 trials.
Speaker 2:But that's still considerably more. There. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. There's considerably more than we had in early access for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what what's really interesting in 11 and 12? Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. So month 11 to 12, it goes up sharply. And what really started working there, I I think it's a 3rd, 3rd, roughly. A third is SEO, search engine optimization, just having relevant content that people were searching for, that we were now ranking for. The big one that happened that month is we launched our affiliate program.
Jason:And it's just if, again, if you're thinking about what people do, they're searching best podcast hosting. And we're gonna be able to get some of that. We're gonna be able to rank for some really good keywords, but there's a lot of that that in our category. Rubin was actually the one that that clued me into this. He said, look at the web hosting market.
Jason:What's going on there? And a lot of web hosting is, Pat Flynn selling, you know, Bluehost on his podcast. So you're sharing revenue with people who often people say with people who have big audiences. It's it's not necessarily that. It's people who have who own really relevant keywords.
Jason:And
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and then they And
Jason:and they learn from Nathan Barry too.
Speaker 2:So with affiliate yeah. This that's super interesting. So with affiliates, is it is it the is it the affiliate them selves, like their referral link that is driving that? Or is it just the fact that you have a lot of people because they've become an affiliate, they're more likely to share it, talk about it, link to it, put it put put it on their on their website.
Jason:For us, and I think for ConvertKit too, this is why it doesn't work in every industry. It has to be one of those things where people are searching for a roundup of, like, here's our review of the top 5. And Mhmm. The good affiliates actually do a decent job of reviewing. Like, they'll actually sign up for each product and try and, you know, do a a legitimate review.
Jason:And then you're just making it worthwhile for them to check you out in the 1st place and consider you and then rank you. And so for us, it was we're gonna be very generous with the commission. And, that was something I just took from Nathan. He offered 30%. I said, well, we'll offer 25%, and that will instantly make us one of the most generous revenue shares in podcast time.
Jason:Over the lifetime. Yep. And
Speaker 2:Any anything you've done to, like, obviously, you have a platform to begin with, but, like, to get affiliates on board, did you recruit any high value affiliates, anything like that?
Jason:I mean, part of it, I think, was just me being out there, but I think our top 4 or 5 affiliates, don't tell Matt Giovannucci this, but I was on his podcast, and they were all listening to his podcast. And so they
Jon:Oh, yeah.
Jason:They signed up from there.
Speaker 2:I don't know him well, but I I man, I love everything he puts out. It Yeah. It's just such high quality and a lot of personality. Yeah.
Jason:Yes. Yeah. Totally. But the thing with with it's this is why category determines the shape of everything is it it won't work for everything. You know what I mean?
Jason:Like, if it's not if there's not that type of thing
Speaker 2:I've tried affiliate, and it's it's never worked on any of my products.
Jason:I think what most people don't understand is how many views these affiliates sites have to get in order for it to work like our top
Speaker 2:of Well, I what I found with it is, I like, I want it to work, but I what I found in my previous businesses, I haven't launched an affiliate for ZipMessage. I I might at some point. I've had some requests for it. But it's certainly in audience ops. And I saw this back when I did restaurant engine too.
Speaker 2:It I had a lot of requests and and sort of, like, demand of from affiliate. Like, I wanna be an affiliate for this. I I get that request a lot. And and it was 95% waste of effort and time for me to to spend on on those requests. You know?
Speaker 2:Like, I I found that in, there there are some we don't technically call it an affiliate program, but, like, in audience ops, there are, like, resellers. And and, obviously, I don't own that business anymore, but, like, that that's like a a a chunk of of the customers are, like, agencies who resell. But I I just remember getting a lot of requests from consultants and agencies who were like, we can bring on lots of clients, and then we spend time in the sales process with them, and then they bring on none or only a few. Yes. And and then I remember back in in Restaurant Engine, I I like, built out, like, a whole suite and dashboard and materials for them to go sell Restaurant Engine to these restaurants and, like, zip, you know?
Speaker 2:And it was just, like, such a waste. And, you know, I mean, I I I didn't recruit really great affiliates or anything like that, but you just get this like, there there's this always this natural demand, I think, that probably a lot of SaaS see. There there there's just a lot of people out there who see a new SaaS. They're like, oh, I wanna try to sell that to my clients. And then
Jason:Yes. But it doesn't work it doesn't work like, we have we have something like 7 or 800 affiliates. And it's the top I'd say the top 7 have brought in 95% of the revenue. So out of 700 of
Speaker 2:videos I mean, I I think there's there's gotta be you you mentioned, like, SEO. And, I mean, there's gotta be, you know, what do you call it? Like, byproducts of having a successful, affiliate program. It's like you there are more people signing up for it and sharing it and linking to it. And
Jason:Yeah. I let so I would say a third of our revenues come from affiliates. A third of our revenue has come from SEO. And a third of our revenue has come from brand, which I'll just brand is like me on social media. Brand is our podcast.
Jason:Brand is people hearing about us, people, you know, understanding that's a good product and hearing reviews and things like that. But all of these interplay with each other. So one of the first questions I ask people when they sign up is, what brought you to Transistor today? And it's interesting getting those responses back. And, you know, some people are like, oh, I just Googled best podcast hosting.
Jason:Another person will say, well, I I Googled how to start a podcast, and I found your guide. That was 3 months ago, and now here I am ready to start. Another person will say, oh, I've been following Justin, I've been following you since forever. I read your blog and your newsletter. And and it's about a third, a third, a third.
Jason:But those are not, like, silos. They all interact with each other too, and they lift each other up.
Speaker 2:I I see the same thing too. People, a a chunk will say, like, yeah. I listen to your podcast or or follow you on Twitter. And then, I don't know about you. It seems like you're you're more, actively out there with the personal brand, but I I tend to discount it.
Speaker 2:Even though I I do have a a bit of an audience now from several years of doing the podcast and a lot of people who who've come into, like, the productize course and things like that. I tend to look at that like like those are great people, great customers, but I'm I'm a lit like, I'm super excited when I see how'd how'd you hear about ZipMessage? And and they write in, like, Google search. Or they write in, like like, oh, my boss told me about it, so I signed up. Like, I love those responses.
Speaker 2:But if but if they're like, oh, I've been following you for years, it's like, okay. That's cool. But
Jason:Yes.
Speaker 2:My marketing didn't quite work yet. You know what I mean? Like, that that's what I
Jason:Although they're all the the challenge is is that it's all cumulative in the sense that I would have not switched to SavvyCal if I hadn't known Derek and known his story. I would not have switched to Zip Message if I hadn't known you and known your story. Now you might only get a few of those. But one of the things about those kinds of interactions is there certainly, so for us, there was certainly more value in having, Basecamp sign up for a podcast and then talk about it than having just anybody else who knew us before and then sign up.
Speaker 2:You know
Jason:what I mean? So I've known those guys for a long time. And so it made sense that they would think of us when they were thinking of switching. It's cumulative. So so having
Speaker 2:It's cumulative and, like, there there are I hate this term, but there are influencers in in the world. And and, like, I mean, one of the things that that's been a really great driver, in the early success of ZipMessage has been my friend Chris Lemma, who who is a pretty well known name in especially in WordPress, but but in the SaaS world in general now. And he's been recommending it like crazy, and and it's been really, really helpful. Yeah. And and a couple other people like that who who are just well connected, and they happen to really like ZipMessage.
Speaker 2:So, so and, like, now like, right now, you know, I am trying to I'm trying to make an active because that kind of thing has always just come from serendipity of of literally just being friends with with people like that, of being on the Internet for years. But I'm trying to take a more active approach to it now. Like, I would love to find 50 more people like that with with with reach who and and this is where, like, you know, my friend Jordan is, like, the the LeBron James of this strategy, and I'm, like, the the bench player who who can't get on the court. Right? Like, I mean, like, just striking up relationships, like Twitter DMs going crazy, like like, I like, that's where I I have natural friendships, but I don't take an active approach.
Speaker 2:Like, today, I need to meet 20 more people and and do you know, make this happen. You know?
Jason:And there's multiple ways of doing that. Like, the, Adam Wadden ended up being a good friend to me, but also just a a very helpful person in my business life. And he found me, I'm guessing, through my blog or my podcast. So that was and he reached out to me. So that would have probably not happened unless I'd had a public persona.
Jason:But there is another way of doing this that's much more targeted, which is just, if you're really good at connecting, meeting, introducing yourself to interesting people who have connections themselves. That's a much more direct way of doing it. Or you could also be like a Ruben Gammes who just or even an Ian Landsman who they don't strike me as, like, awesome a type alpha male, you know, salespeople that go out and, like, are networkers. They are also not personal brand people who blog a ton and podcast a ton. But there's just silently earning respect over years years years, and then you just naturally you put in the work.
Jason:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I think those guys have, like yeah. They've they've been out there because they've had some success, so people know them publicly. But but we know them personally, and they just constantly, give a lot of really incredible value privately. And and you and you grow your your network that way too. You know?
Jason:For sure. Like, for sure, more people know about Taylor Otwell than Ian Landsman. But that's okay for Ian because he's just happy to go along with his life and, you know, he and he he makes a difference where it counts for him. So it seems like there's 3 kind of approaches.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, having a podcast honestly, having a podcast is a big one for sure. I mean
Jason:Yes.
Speaker 2:Like, you know, I've I've gotten to know Adam as as well pretty well. I think he's a listener of Bootstrap Web. That's how I met him. You know? And and a lot a lot of these folks, you know, we we we've just been
Jason:Adam was the one that told me that we should do build your SaaS the way we did it. He said he said, you gotta you've got to, do it like Bootstrap Web because I don't want you teaching me. I don't want you I want you to turn off your marketing voice and just have these kind of update conversations. So we we all copied your format. That's that was the
Speaker 2:I'm I'm so glad you you do because these those are all the podcasts I listen to. Like, I want more of them. I was Yeah. I was DM ing with someone today. I was like, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like start one, please, because I I wanna know.
Jason:Yeah. They're awesome. And the key is you can have 500 listeners or a 100 listeners. Doesn't matter as long as they're the right people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And Oh, and we do everything wrong, by the way. I mean, we're not every week, you know, we're we we take breaks because we get busy. We don't really promote the episodes and, like Even that,
Jason:I don't know if it matters. I I mean, if you're trying to do what Ben and Derek are trying to do now, which is grow their show even bigger, sure. It matters. But there is a style of show that, the right people will listen to. And you might only be getting a 100 of listeners, but, you know, Heat and Shaw is listening and Ruben Gammes is listening.
Jason:And that's maybe all you need because then Yeah. They'll reach out to you.
Speaker 2:I love, I love going to MicroConf and literally feeling like all of our podcast listeners are, like, in this room. Yes. And and there there aren't any outside of this room. It's just the people here. You know?
Speaker 2:Like Yeah. And and, like, that's, you know, that's cool. That's totally fine.
Jason:It's super annoying to my wife when we go to those things, and she's like, this is this is silly. This is weird. Everybody knows you. Yeah. Well, this was great, man.
Jason:We gotta do this again sometime. We ended up going over an hour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. Anytime, dude. You know, thanks for having me on. I'm again, I'm I'm always a fan of of all the stuff that that you're putting out there, so, keep doing it.
Jason:Oh, yeah. Well, this was so fun for me to go talk some of this stuff out. These are the kinds of conversations I like. They kinda ignite sparks in my head that, you know, make me wanna go and look at things or research things or
Speaker 2:For sure.
Jason:Do things. Folks, you def definitely check out ZipMessage, zipmessage.com. If you like this show, reach out to us on Twitter. You can find us on on Twitter. I'll put our handles in the show notes.
Jason:Actually, do that. If you're still listening, reach out to us. Let us know what was good about the show, what we made you think of, if there was any kind of moments, any pushback. We'd love to hear it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally. I'm on like, Twitter is where I I spend way too much time. So cast jam on on Twitter. And and, yeah, thanks again, Justin, for for having me on.
Speaker 2:This is awesome. Beauty.
