Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Okay. I'm comfortable having this conversation because I feel like I'm giving them this opportunity, like, to get a discount. I'm sort of like acknowledging the help that they gave us along the way. But at the same time, I'm putting, like, a sense of urgency there, like, because we're going to go into that next phase where the discount's going to decrease. Right. And then in the next phase, you know, the discount is going to disappear totally and then you're going to have to sign up like everybody else for the full price. So that's the way that we approached it. But it was a challenge figuring out what the right timing was for that and how to approach it. But that's kind of the approach we took. And it was actually quite successful.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Going back to how, I guess, how I started this whole series of sidetracks.
You have a co founder, you're talking with a customer, and you identify a problem for acid mule. How did that first iteration go? I know you kind of touched on that usage wasn't as great, but tell me, walk me through what happened.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah, so actually, there's a big learning here as well. And this was another one of my big learnings in this process.
I mentioned sort of this relationship between my co founder Dana and I, and I love it because sometimes we disagree and we have this healthy debate, but it always ends up with a really good outcome because Steve Jobs had, jobs had this saying about healthy tension. You take a rock and it's like, you know, like a gray rock. It looks kind of rough on the edges. You put it in this grinder that, like, rubs these rocks, and maybe you take a couple of these rocks, you put in this grinder that rubs these rocks together and there's like this tension between. Friction between them and what comes out is this shiny, beautiful thing.
[00:01:42] Speaker C: Right?
[00:01:43] Speaker A: And that's exactly the way that I think about, like, our team and how we think about things and how we approach, you know, debating things. So one of the things very early on was I was very hesitant to get the product out there in people's hands. Not ready yet. I'm using it. There's clearly bugs. There's clearly things missing. Like, I don't think it's ready yet. And Dane being very focused on, no, we need to get on. Like, we need to get out there, get feedback, see how people are using it, and, you know, the lean startup way is that. So eventually I probably, like, conceded and I said, you know what?
[00:02:18] Speaker C: You're right.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Like, let's just do it. We've got a handful of people that we know really well, we're friendly with. They know that this is an MVP. Let's just get it in their hands and we release it. And the first couple of users, they log in, they poke around a little bit, they run into a bunch of bugs. This thing didn't work. They send us that feedback. Oh, I uploaded an image and look at the formatting. It's all over the place. And I did this and it didn't work. Or, I don't understand what this does, or it's missing this completely. Where do I do this great feedback? But then they never used the tool again. And we're like, oh, man. And then at first, my first thinking was, I knew it. We shouldn't have released that early. It wasn't ready. That was my first sort of instinctual reaction to it. But then what happened was Dane started fixing those things immediately.
[00:03:05] Speaker C: Right?
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Like, oh, we gotta fix the image thing. Oh, like, I didn't know we had a bug there. Let's fix that. Oh, this is missing. That's critical. Let's do that. And very quickly, we then got another user on board, and they got a little bit further in the process, and then they ran into some things and we fixed it right very quickly. And then another user and they get even further in the process, and then suddenly we're like, somebody's actually using the product. And now in retrospect, when I look at it, I think actually we maybe should have even launched earlier because although the product definitely wasn't ready, we were able to get it to a usable state much faster by putting it in these users hands than we would have without.
That's a big learning, again, is that if it's uncomfortable, if you think you're not ready yet to put it in users hands, you probably are. What it's going to do is it's going to help you uncover a bunch of things that you didn't know that you can iterate on really fast. And that's going to actually get you to a point where it is actually in a usable state much faster than, than if you don't do it. So now I'm a big believer in getting things out early, even with new features that we're releasing. Maybe you do it at a small scale. You don't roll it out across all your users, but get in a couple of people's hands, get that early feedback, figure out what's broken, and you'll get out there in a usable state much faster than you would if you didn't take that approach.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: That's really interesting. I'm a big believer of getting your product out in front of your customer as soon as possible. But now comes the question, and I often, like, I ask myself that questions, like, when is it ready? Like, when is it too early? When is it ready, and when is it too late? Like, how do you define that? You know, like, would a figma wireframe that put together. Sorry, a wireframe that put together on Figma, would that be enough? Or is it like, how do you define that?
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know if I have a good answer to it.
Yeah, I don't know if I do, because most of the cases I've taken an instinctual approach. Like, I'm like, okay, I feel like it is early, but it's probably ready to get in the hands, and then I feel like I probably did it too late. So I think I'm still trying to solve that problem myself.
Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know what the answer is there. Figma, I think definitely getting in somebody's hands to do a click through and give you feedback on. Absolutely. Like, do that, get in their hands.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: But I don't think that's necessarily the product yet. Right. But the first version that maybe you think that somebody can successfully go through that workflow, even if there are clear friction points, maybe some bugs that might run into the process, maybe that's the way. Right.
Is you feel like somebody could get through that flow successfully. So let's put that in their hands and see if they're able to do it right. And if they're not, why not?
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Right?
[00:06:05] Speaker A: But again, I think it's more nuanced than being able to, like, say the answer is three, right? Like it's a metric or something like that.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: I think it is a, it's just a gut thing that you have to sort of get comfortable with doing it earlier and earlier. And by the way, now we treat everything as an MVP. So it's not just a product thing.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Like our website.
[00:06:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Let's treat as an MVP.
[00:06:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Let's get something out there and iterate on it.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Our pricing model.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Let's do the minimum thing that, like, we feel that we can get out there. We have all these ideas of tiers and, like, new packages and all these things. What's the simplest form that we can get out there and iterate on?
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Because the feedback you might get it from the market is completely different from what you thought you would do. So maybe that's the answer. I don't know. Again, I think it's still very qualitative and nuanced, but it's like thinking about what's the earliest state that you feel you can deliver something where it can provide some value or at least a vision of what that value could be. Right. And that's like the right time, but it's still very nuanced. I think.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: I think tying back to earlier, we talked about, you talked to two to 300 customers in the beginning stage of SMEO. I'm sure it's a lot higher now.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: But you over time develop this sort of instinct about your, you know, your target audience, you know, what they want. And with that instinct, you know, you know, I think as a founder, when is the right time? And. But that time, you want to go even earlier than that. Right. So instinctively you want to release ten days, right, but take it five, make it half and release it and get it to the customers they've talked to with the best report and then get them to give you feedback. I think that's how you can really sort of hack this loop of, all right, let's release early, get feedback, improve our product, and then release again.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And we do internal testing beforehand. So if we feel like the product's at a state where you can get the job done, that feature is trying to get done, and there might be some bugs in there, but they're not blockers to getting it done.
That's a good state to do it.
You might find that there are blockers to getting it done, but at least you've gone through the flow a bunch of times and you've been able to get the job done. It could be more intuitive, it could be faster, or it could be a little smoother, but if the job can be done with the feature, it's ready to get out there.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Now. You release a product, you iterate it, you finally got a user that is actually using it. At this stage, what was the biggest challenge that you and your co founders faced?
[00:08:59] Speaker A: I think it was just getting over the hump of, okay, now we need to ask people to pay for this thing, and how do we do that?
Even coming from a sales background where I'm very comfortable selling stuff when it's your own baby and you've sort of gotten these people on board and they've seen the warts and all, getting them to pay for it. And I think the way that we did it was actually a pretty nice approach, which was we just sort of decided hey, okay, let's. Let's do this in three phases, actually, right? So, like, let's start with our design partners and let's say, hey, guys, we're about to launch. We're almost ready to launch this product. This is what the pricing model is going to be, right. If you sign on right now, we'll give you a 50% discount lifetime.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: Right?
[00:09:49] Speaker A: So, you know, that's like, people bought into that, right? Especially those that were getting value. It's like, hey, we're going to launch in a month. So you have, like. Or we're going to launch in two months, let's say. So in the next two to three weeks, we're giving you this opportunity to get a 50% discount, right.
Or some sort of discount.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Then the next phase was we reached out to our entire database of people that we spoke to during the customer discovery process, and we said, we're going to launch in a month.
We're giving all these people that gave us feedback along the way an opportunity to get a 20% discount. It expires at this time, right. Oh, and then finally we launched publicly. And then, you know, people are paying full price.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: But I feel like that sort of approach is sort of, like, psychologically for you. It kind of creates. Okay, I'm comfortable having this conversation because I feel like I'm giving them this opportunity, like, to get a discount. I'm sort of, like, acknowledging the help that they gave us along the way, but at the same time, I'm putting, like, a sense of urgency there, like, because we're going to go into that next phase where the discount's going to decrease. Right. And then in the next phase, you know, the discount is going to disappear totally, and then you're going to have to sign up like everybody else for the full price. So that's the way that we approached it. But it was a challenge, you know, figuring out what the right timing was for that and how to approach it. But that's kind of the approach we took, and it was actually quite successful.
So I definitely recommend doing something similar.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's actually really smart. I never thought about, like, that, you know. Okay, you started charging people.
People are paying. What was the biggest mistake that you wish you had not done during this. During this period?
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good question. You know, there's a couple I mentioned earlier, like, launching earlier and stuff like that is a good learning that, like, I would have maybe done, uh, differently. I, you know, been more comfortable doing. Um, the other thing is, um, and it's kind of related is, you know, building a broader product than you need to at the very beginning, right. You know, there's like features and functionality. I'll give you an example. In our use case was like, um, you know, we do sales assets, right? We started with the one pager format or the page format of an asset. And usually there's like pages and there's decks, right? And we started with pages because Dex is a lot of tools to build Dex. There's PowerPoint, there's Google Slides, there's keynote. There's all kinds of tools for that. The page format, when it comes to sales assets, is usually something that's done by a designer.
Having a tool that you can self serve and build this thing, and it's not thousands of dollars for a designer, it's dollar 50 a month. That was clearly the case. But a lot of people did tell us, oh, you know, it would be great if you could do decks, right, as well.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:46] Speaker A: So we built the deck format as well. And then obviously once you get the deck format out there, they're like, oh, you know, with keynote, I can do this. And there's like more and more features. So, like going broad like that versus like staying very narrowly focused and saying, okay, maybe we'll do Dex at some point, but let's really, really get this like this one pager format. Let's go deep instead of broad and really get this down.
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: I think that was a mistake that we maybe made. We didn't make it dramatically. Like, we released the deck as well. And to this day, most people, like people use it. But the main use case is still that page format. It's definitely that page format.
Maybe we could have waited to release it. Now when we release new features, we have to think about how it, like, will impact both the page and the deck form. It just makes everything a little bit more complicated. And I think, especially in the early days, really pushing yourself to focus narrowly on a particular use case, a particular problem, a particular feature set, and go deeper than wider is.
I wouldn't say it was a huge mistake we made, but it was one that, in retrospect, if I were to change anything, I probably would have, would have done that and stayed focused there, right?
[00:14:00] Speaker B: So stay focused on one use case and get really good at it.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And even, you know, our template library, right? We have 20 different templates. You can build one pagers, case studies, and all these things. Maybe we should have just stayed focused on the one pager or like one use case to start and just really, like, nailed that. And then, like, you know, we. The thinking was, oh, the more templates we have, the more use cases people can use it for. So the more things that, like, opportunity for people to do things with it. But, like, I think pushing yourself to be narrow and really just be, like, a master at one key thing is a really disciplined thing to do. It's hard, but it's very disciplined and can lead to really great outcomes.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: After you focus on the one pager, you saw growth. Where is acid mule today?
[00:14:47] Speaker A: So, acid mule today is, as I said, we have paying customers that love using the product.
Some of them have gotten rid of much more expensive tools or design retainers that are much more expensive and take a lot more time than using our tools. I think we're at the point. The way that I like to explain this is, I think we validated the problem exists. We validated that people would get a solution. They would adopt a solution to solve that problem. We validated that people would pay for a solution to solve that problem. And then we validated that actually, the solution we've built solves the problem and that people actually like it and that it's delivering outsized value for them. Now, what we need to do is build a sustainable business.
So we need to bring on enough customers.
[00:15:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Where this starts becoming a profitable business, we need to think about our pricing model, and it's a freemium model. It's very easy to get started. It's low cost, but, like. And we're starting to see upgrades in terms of, like, people adding more capacity to their accounts and stuff like that. But, like, what are other things that we can package in to maybe create higher tiers.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Or things that can increase. Again, I think of it as two variables, right. Increasing our user base, our paying user base, and increasing our average contract value. Those are our paths to getting to a sustainable, profitable business, and that's the next step in our journey here. So it's a good place to be. I think we've taken a lot of risk off the table by validating the problem and actually developing a solution that solves that problem and that people will pay and upgrade with. Now it's about delivering more value that people will pay more for and that more people will pay for and figuring out our go to market motions, really figuring out, what are those channels of distribution that can help us get more customers at a larger scale? So, that's where we're at as a business. We raised a friends and family realm, 200k, sort of pre seed realm.
And we are thinking about raising a seed round in the fall now that we've sort of. The first round was to sort of validate the problem and like, our solution. And now it's to like, go the next step of really getting to be a profitable business. That's our goal, right? Is we want to be profitable. So figuring out those things around the pricing model and the go to market channels and distribution channels is what we would do with the next round of funding. Again, we're not necessarily right now considering a venture round or anything like that. We're talking to some angels and some friends and people that we think can also bring a lot of value as former founders themselves and experience that we want to work with. And we'd love to be able to jump on calls and talk about challenges very openly and they'd give us feedback without the pressure of intense growth. Right. Again, the idea here is to get to that next phase of profitability where we stand on our own feet and then figure out, well, what do we want to do next? Like, do we feel like the market opportunity is much bigger than we thought originally and a venture round sort of makes sense? Do we feel like we're just on a good path and we're profitable and we can start, you know, we enjoy building for this community of users and we enjoy building this product and we're paying ourselves like a reasonable amount for doing it. We can just coast kind of on this trajectory for as long as we want to. Or is there a exit opportunity that makes sense as well?
Again, what's really nice about this approach that we're taking is the optionality that we'll have, and that's the goal, is to create optionality for us. Right now we're just having a ton of fun building this product. It's like Christmas for me or my birthday every day that we release a new feature and I get to use it and then I get to demo it and I get to see other people use it. And I'd love to do this for the next 10, 15, 20 years if I could. So I want to get to a point where we could if we wanted to, right, that, you know, we're sustainable and profitable and there's no worries about, you know, the path forward.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I totally agree with that approach. Right. Like a lot of, a lot of, there's a lot of mystery out there. Like, you know, if you want to build a startup, you have to raise VC money or in fact, that's not the case. You know, by not raising, you give, you give yourself a lot of options, right, by taking on VC money. There are certain things that you have to achieve for, for your startup to continue raising and they're, you're, you're really restricted into what you can and cannot do. Right. You have to grow at all costs where sometimes that growing at all cost mentality will really kill a startup.
If you're taking a community first approach, you're trying to foster a community of users that really resonate with the product. Maybe taking that VC money isn't the best option at the moment.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm not one of those people that have a binary view on this.
I'm not saying that there's no value in the VC. We've seen amazing companies venture back, do amazing things, become the next unicorns. I mean, like hugely successful businesses, right? And there's definitely like a proven model for that and a lot of value that's created and, you know, the VC's more than the money they bring, the reputation and the, you know, customers and the community that they, you know, that they have fostered as well. There's a lot of benefits to that approach, but there's also cons in terms of optionality and pressure to grow and the culture of the type of business that you want to build.
On the other hand, there's the bootstrapped, or let's say self funded or lightly funded angel backed approach, a lot slower growth, a lot stressful in the early days because you don't have that cushion. You're constantly looking at that Runway that you have, but much deeper ownership in what you're doing, not just in terms of the equity that you own, but also the decisions that you make and the culture that you build and the speed that you go at that I think has a lot of benefits. So I think there's a lot of lifestyle decisions that you need to make if you're choosing one between the other and then also the type of business that you want to build as well.
So we've chosen one and, you know, I would never say no forever.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Like if again, there was amazing, huge opportunity that felt like that was the right track for, and I felt like it was the right time in my life for that. And my co founders agreed maybe we'd make a different decision, but at this time in our lives, based on what we want to build, the type of life we want to live, and, you know, the pace that we want to go at and sort of the sort of less of a focus on growth. Right? Now and more of a focus on really solving this problem deeply for our customers.
I think that this is the right approach for us.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: I'm on your page all the time. I see you run some really amazing content marketing.
Which brings me to my next question. Right? Like, in today's world, where so many of the blog posts, the comments, everything is kind of generated by Cha GBT. And like, I'm, I'll confess I did some of that, too. But, like, how do you stand out? Like, how do you, how do you stand out in today's world?
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it's funny because I think being human is a way to stand out.
And what I mean by that is, you know, I do use chat, GPT and AI as a means of ideating or researching around content, but I don't use it to actually write the copy of the contents because I feel like I have my own tone of voice, I have my own way of saying things.
I also just feel I want to be genuine with my audience.
And I do feel like that human touch really matters.
That is one way to stand out. I also think really focusing on building community. Like, I'm not just creating my own content, but I'm going out there. I'm talking to a ton of product marketers. We're having these product marketers on our podcast. I'm engaging with their content too, right? Like, I'm promoting their content.
You know, if they're, if they're looking to hire a new product marketer on their team, I'm like, helping them spread the word about that, right? Or I'm sharing that job listing in different places. I'm going into like, the product Marketing alliance, which is the community, the biggest community of product marketers, and answering questions, not pitching our product, but answering questions, giving recommendations. Right. I'm really investing in building my place in that community, and I think that's like a really human way to stand out where we're starting to see it. It's a lot of work, but we're starting to see a payoff now when we get on discovery calls with product marketers, like, you know what? I jumped on this call because I heard your podcasts on the product marketing live podcast, and it really resonated with me. Or I saw that, like, somebody that I know and respect was engaging with your content or you were engaging with their content and so on. So I think, like, there are ways to automate these things and there will be more and more, but I think keeping that human touch and that human essence of your contents in a world where more and more will be AI generated is a way to stand out. And, you know, I don't know, I feel it's the right thing to do, and if it's the right thing to do and the way to stand out, then, you know, that's great.
I'll just say one more thing. A marketer that sort of inspired me in this way is Dave Gerhart. He was the VP of marketing at drift, and then he's now got exit five, which is his community marketers. And, like, back in the day when everything on LinkedIn, all the content was very, like, branded and like, professional and it was like all about your, you know, your company and your product. He was going out there and like, doing like, video rants on his walk to, like, work or like his walk home and like, little, like, podcasts rants, like, you know, five minutes on his, what he's thinking and like, just sharing thoughts. So freeform and all that stuff. And it really resonated with me. And now a lot of more people are doing it, but then you're starting to see a lot of content that's emerging that you just, when you read it, you just know it's written by chat GBT, right. It's like the way that I like to explain it, and it will get better and harder to determine over time, I think. But, like, right now it's like, very shallow, right? And it, like, definitely explains points very clearly and accurately, but it's shallow, right. And it doesn't have the personal experience and the human anecdotes and things that.
So you can read it and you're like, yeah, I think this was created by chat DPT, so right now it's a huge advantage, I think, because people can tell that difference. I think it will continue to be, though. Like, there will always be a benefit to the human touch to these things. Again, powered by AI to do the research, to, like, get some interesting stats or like, get ideas right to idea. But, like, the, like, people want human connection in the end of the day. And, like, we're all on these journeys, we're all going through challenges and hearing how other people have done it as well, and you're not alone. But also how they've solved those issues, I think is always going to be a way to stand out from the crowd.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: I love that one. One of the, like, one of my favorite things to do is just to interact with founders that are posting their, their stories, like building in public series, right?
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: And, you know, just interacting with them like, you know, understanding the struggles that they go through, not just like a triumph, the struggles that they go through, I think it really builds that connection. Like, on LinkedIn, like, you know, you. You're. You're building in public. You're letting everyone knows the struggles that you're going through. I love that it's something that I'm trying to implement. Yeah.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: And I think with this, this podcast is a great example of that. I love what you're building here because, you know, we talked about my story and some of these things about, like, are we onto something? I think we are. I think we're not. Like, how, like, everybody's telling us that this is what we should be building, but, like, they're not using it. I was searching on Google, trying to see if, like, anybody else that was out there talking about these things, you know what I mean? And, like, am I alone? Or is this, like, you hear all these overnight success stories, like, are we just off?
[00:27:31] Speaker C: Right?
[00:27:32] Speaker A: And then I started reaching out to founders and, like, asking them, hey, like, tell me. And that's when I really started, like, hearing, oh, you know, it's a facade, right? Like, sure, there's like, the, like, little, you know, outliers that there's like, boom, overnight success. But a lot of these are, like, some of these are, you know, you look about Figma, right? The overnight success that actually had eight years before they even released a usable product, right? You know, who's been doing a good job at creating content as Lenny, Lenny's newsletter. He's been sort of having founders on there and sharing. He had a really great post that showed how long it took some companies to get to product market fit and to their first paying customers. And when you see some of these logos that you're like, oh, my God. I thought, like, these are unicorns. Overnight success, it took them five years. It took them eight years. It took them three pivots. You know, I only started hearing that from sort of speaking to founders, maybe finding, like, some things like Lenny's podcast, and hopefully what this will become to sort of calm myself and be like, oh, okay, this is normal, right? So I think anything that you can share out there to, like, help people feel okay, it's normal. I'm not alone. Like, there are successful companies that have gone through this path and seen the same things as I'm seeing right now. I think that's really, really important.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: And, Justin, this has been so much fun for me, and I hope, I hope all the best for you and good luck in your startup journey.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much. It's always fun to talk about these things and give back and make sure that people feel like they're not alone and that what they're going through is normal. So more than happy to chat and hopefully this was helpful for somebody out there to either just get started because they don't have an idea, but they can start talking to people and find those trends. Or I maybe they're in it and they're just not seeing that traction yet, even though they're getting positive feedback from the market. Just to know that, keep iterating, keep pulling that thread and have faith that eventually that things will connect and you'll get to the other side.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Amazing.
If any founders need help with sales assets, one pagers, where do they find you?
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you're interested in the asset mule, go to assetmuel AI. We have a free forever tier you can get out there, start building your first couple of assets, start getting the analytics and seeing how your prospects are engaging. It's a great tool for founders. The main use case was solo pmms supporting growing sales teams. But we have a lot of founders that don't even have sales teams or product marketers. They're doing their own founder led sales. It's great for that. We also even created a couple of fundraising assets that you can build, like fundraising decks and executive summary templates that you can use for your own fundraising efforts. Right? So definitely sign up and check it out and then follow us on LinkedIn. Follow me. Follow asset mule on LinkedIn. We're always sharing our learnings, building public and trying to share as much as we learn, as much as we can.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: Love it. Justin, thank you so much for your time today and it was a pleasure and it was a pleasure chatting with you.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Awesome, thanks, David.
