Saas Companies that Anyone Can Start with Rob Walling

There's a lot of online communities. Anyone can start one. You get a few hundred people together. There are so few people who not only run in person events, but who do them well. And if you can do that, it is an incredible competitive advantage. Okay, uh What are we gonna talk about? Uh a few things. Oh let me tell you something.

Sorry, I asked you a question and then I interrupted you, but let me tell you something. So I'm doing something cool in ten days. So On the pod. And on Twitter I talked about how I'm buying a piece of property and I'm turning it into like a thing.

Like a Like a hotel Airbnb fitness thing. I have this guy, I'm not gonna say who it is yet because I haven't asked his permission. But basically he bought uh like five thousand acres

In the south. in a in a state in the south. Let's say Georgia. And he is turning it into an airline. Hotel.

Or a airline neighborhood. soon with hotels. So basically they're putting an air strip. In the middle of this piece of property And then they're lining up houses along it. So uh you could buy a house and then soon it's gonna be a hotel and then they're gonna have an airplane hangar there.

So for all airplane enthusiasts, you can keep your plane there and take off and land on this you know, right outside your home. So it's basically like having a uh a house on a golf course. Except instead of a golf course it's An airplane Red Wayne Hanger. But here's the kicker.

He asked me if I wanted to come check it out and I said, Yeah, sure. He goes, All right, meet me at the Teter Barrow Airport. In New Like outside of New York. on you know, January twenty fifth, and will fly my jet down. Um so I'm flying private down. I'm gonna go up to New York just to fly back down, just like it creates it.

But nice. Isn't that isn't that sick? So is this um Is it like super rural or is it uh kind of just outside of a major metropolitan area? It's an hour and a half outside of a major area. Got it. So And most of these people most of these houses

Is this gonna be these people's like full time residents, you think? No. No, probably not. It's a lot of like older people. You don't have to be You don't have to be like rich, rich to do this. I think you have to like be able to afford a two hundred thousand dollar plane or something like that. That could be your hobby. So you have to have some money. But it's not like gonna be necessarily like incredibly wealthy people.

Yeah, so enough to afford like a Cessna or something like that. And you can fly in. And it's just somewhere to fly and then you stay by your airport and just hang out and chill. Yeah, that's kinda neat, right? Yeah, it is kinda cool. How much do you think he's in on this project?

Um Uh I'll I'll say it and then if he says I can't, but uh nearly eight figures is the money that he's had to use his own money to do that. And then he'll uh raise some more money. And then how many houses He was like oh it's just like a side project and I was like

What? That is huge. That is Uh Rich is your friend. Wha what does this represent for him? I don't know. I just met him. Um, but not wealthy enough to like I I like if he loses that it's not it's like will be really bad. D do you own any uh like vacation homes or secondary homes or anything like that? Well no. No, I own

Um My house that I live in I own and then I own some uh Uh Like rentals. And like a uh

now a vacant lot that I'm building a house on to sell. But nothing like this, no. Plain vacation home. No, no, I don't o I don't I think that vacation homes

Only makes sense. For me personally, only makes sense to me if I buy them and rent them out. And so If I can find a place in New York or California that I like and I could rent it out and make a profit then I would do it. So I I met this guy the other day who is a billionaire or close to a billionaire, and this person has Uh

an apartment. They don't live in New York, but they have an apartment there and it's really fancy. And then they have a place in Park City and they rent it out when when they're not there and it pays for itself and they're still like it's like a wealthy person. I think that's the way to go is you But not everyone's comfortable doing that. It's interesting to me'cause this idea that you're describing sounds like the inverse of what I would want. Like

I want to be able to fly places so that I could stay there. Like I wanna fly to New York so I can go to New York. But this is the opposite. They're setting up somewhere to stay. So that they can fly. Does that make sense? Well, it's not just that. Just imagine you're like sixty five years old and like you want to like spend the weekend at this area and you wanna fly there and stay there and hang out and then go on trips throughout the day and just hang out with a bunch of other airplane nerds that are like you. Yeah, sure.

It's like if you're like sixty five and this is your passion, I think I think that people who are into this shit are so into it that they just want to be around other people who are into it. Yeah. I think there are a lot of opportunities like this as people as more and more people'cause you it looks it sounds like this is mostly retirees, but I think you could also do it towards Remote workers.

of just like People have lived places for no particular reason in the past. And I think As people can now choose where they want to live, they're gonna start congregating more in Groups of like

I don't know, group around their hobbies or like vegans, how they want to eat. I don't know, like random niches. I agree. I think that will happen too. The the day that New York allows short term rentals, so in New York you're not allowed to rent for under thirty days. Um, or you gotta like jump through crazy hoops, but the day that that's allowed, I'll be buying a place there. Mm. But not not until that's allowed. Oh, okay. You wanna talk about this uh Elizabeth Home Holmes thing?

Yes, I do. Uh so you s you sent this to me. W you want to give the backstory? Well, let's say what happened yesterday. So uh yesterday you send a post to me and Sean. that you were on the front page of Hacker News.

Yeah. Go ahead. I meant like what happened to Holmes yesterday. Oh, so Elizabeth convicted of like three or four crimes Um, I don't know if she's been sentenced yet, but she could serve she will serve years of of hard time. Potentially up to twenty years.

Yes. Well twenty there's three three counts that were It carry sentences up to twenty years and one that carries up to five. So I don't know if those are additive or if it's only up to twenty. I don't know how that works, but yeah, it's Yeah. And what happened yesterday, it actually happened on Sunday night. I got a text from a friend who goes, Hey, you're on the front page of Hacker News. If you don't go to Hacker News, it's basically like Reddit, but like

If I said Reddit for nerds, th you would be shocked because Reddit is for nerds. But this is like really for nerds, like nerd nerds, and it's all like computer nerds. And of which I am one of them. And I uh I got a text saying that my article that I wrote in two thousand and fifteen

was on the front page of Reddit. Or on Hacker News and it was getting which means you'll get millions of visitors. And the headline to my article was The coverage. of Thranos is utter bullshit.

And I wrote this article defending Thuranos. Thernos and defending Elizabeth Holmes. And It did not age well. That article.

But Let me explain what the article do you have the article in front of you? I I just wanna talk about my favorite uh like Subheadline. Which is You called it a minor PR hiccup.

Yeah. So I call this a minor PR hiccup. So I wrote this into so I was uh like twenty four, I think, or twenty five when I wrote this. So Whatever, you know, I've grown and I read my writing, I was like, Oh my God, I I wasn't bad then, but I'm way better now. And so I was a little embarrassed. But um The article basically was written after people accused Holmes of at first doing something wrong.

And they were hating on her, but previously in the in the previous month and the previous few years She was on the cover of all these same magazines. And the point of my article was on the on the on the surface, it looked like I was defending her, and I was defending her. But what I really was also doing, and I say this in article, is as I was Defending this idea that like

It's I think it's nonsense and crazy that we build these people up And say that they're like the next You know, the next Steve Jobs or whatever it is. And we like want small businesses to win and someone starts a business and we want them to win. But then once they get really successful or potentially like uh they're considered like a winner, we turn on them and we just hate them just because they're doing something like That seems really weird and they talk funny or they look funny.

And I thought that's bullshit. So I stand by that second half because now that's even the whole anti tech is even thing is even bigger. But yeah, I was wrong. I I was so wrong about her. Yeah, it's just you see so many cases of a lot of these hit pieces that are totally not fair to founders.

That Like your guard was up. Enough that you didn't see that this was the time that they were actually right. She fooled me, man. She fooled me. She Suck you in with her deep voice and those big eyes.

Dude, she got me. I was so on board the reason here's why I was on board with it. And the reason why I was on board with it. It's really a I can't decide if it's a good reason or a bad reason and you tell me. So their biggest backer was Tim Draper. I don't know Tim, but I used to be friends with his son and his friends uh his son, Billy, is an awesome dude.

And from what I've read about Tim, Tim seems amazing. I know that he's like this like high integrity very honest person. He seems like a great guy. He don't party, he don't drink. And He's known for like being one of the first investors in SpaceX, I believe first investor in Hotmail. So a bunch of these like really

amazing companies that help found the internet and create the internet and and everything. And he was super on board with Theron Theranos for a long time. And so I was thinking Well, there's no way that Tim Draper would do something, um, or like would be tricked by this, because he obviously didn't know, but he's like, There's no way that Tim would be tricked by this. And that's why I was like on board.

Yeah. And just to back you up. Uh, just reading from the article, it's expected that a young company that's attempting to change a massive and archaic industry will mess up. It appears that Theranos made a bunch of mistakes and I'm not defending their actions. I'm also not saying that the media shouldn't point out the truths about Theranos' mistakes. You know, you just go on to say

Uh talk about how the the Cycle kinda flipped on him. So Yeah, I mean It is true what you're saying, but it is still funny to have an article up With that headline.

And I didn't delete it on purpose. So around three years ago, someone made fun of me. for that article and I was like, I'm not deleting that. We'll keep it up. It's all right. I got it wrong. If I'm gonna If I'm gonna take swings, I gotta let people see the misses too.

Yeah, absolutely. Um All right, wanna go to one more topic? Yeah, we got four minutes, so All right, so you tweeted out something that was pretty cool. What was it?

Okay, so it was essentially we start a new family tradition in my family this year. Which is well and it was just my wife and I doing it because We we we started we're gonna try and roll that out to my siblings and my parents. But didn't she make a presentation? Yes. So What it is is that I decided it was kinda my idea that at the end of the year

We're gonna make presentations. about how the past year went. And essentially what our goals are for the coming year and our resolutions and that type of stuff. And we're gonna present it at like a family board meeting. It could be a slide deck, it could be like a memo, but it's essentially called the board meeting. Family board is sitting there and you have to present it on your year. It looked like she was presenting to a bunch of people. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just me. Oh my God. Okay. We're not totally crazy. Like, we did it kinda funny, all right? I dressed up as Steve Jobs, I put on the black mock and Gold glasses. Um I'm not criticizing you. I think it's cool. That we were like

getting hardcore, going over our numbers. Like a lot of it was l was kinda funny. W was played for Chuckles, but it was a good opportunity to just reflect on what we've done and uh and what we hope to do this year and and uh So what was the uh D was that effective? Yeah, I mean some of the stuff so let me read some of the stuff actually. Um

Me and the case. I do the same I do the same thing. So My wife actually collects the stats. Uh and your wife's pretty alpha, right? Yeah, she graduated from

uh a top law school in the country And then Georgetown. Uh pretty fancy. Yeah, it's good it's good law school.

And then she works for a big law firm now. So she took stats, she like tracks. All her mother stuff,'cause we had a baby last November. Um And so I couldn't believe some of the stuff.

So like Gallons of milk. That her body produced in two thousand twenty one. Three hundred and fifty. Gross. Isn't that crazy? How does the body do that? That is crazy. I know that's that blew my mind. Three hundred fifty gallery. So much. It's so much. So you're trained. You track how much milk your wife made.

Yeah. how many nights she slept on the floor in our daughter's room,'cause like some nights she wouldn't sleep. And so a hundred and four nights. Almost a third of the year, yeah. She slept on the floor in Claire's room. Um N the number of hours she spent nursing her was eighteen hundred.

Um and then we tracked. Wait, eighteen hundred in one year? Yeah. Wow. Man, being a woman is so much harder. I know. That that did help me realize like wow, that's just like that's another job in addition to your job. Like Holy moly.

That's crazy. What else? Uh any other. Yeah, um She counted the number of times my daughter was obsessed with this book Monsters Come Out Tonight, which is a Halloween book. Sure at sixty two times.

Why does she do all this, your wife? Just'cause she wants to show your kids? I don't know. I she's just compulsive actually. She is uh She's the type of person where in the morning she'll go, Do you know what today is? And I never know'cause she always knows weird anniversaries in her head. She's like, Oh, it's It's ten months since this happened. I'm like, how do you know that?

Um But she like compulsively tracks little numbers in her head. So She apparently tracks him on her phone too. Did your wife's Rain Man? That's sick. He's like

Like a lactating Rain Man. That's lovely. I might have to delete that. I don't know. I don't I'll have to think hard before I decide whether to publish an episode in which we call her a lactating rain man. Um that's cool. So what do you mean? You mean it is a compliment though, right? You mean it is a compliment. Yeah, well it's neither a compliment well, the Rayman is the lactating thing is just fact. Yeah.

The Rayman thing is definitely a compliment. Um do uh Do do you is she care is she earning more than you as you start your business? Yes. That's pretty sick, right? It's nice. I don't mind it.

You uh Is she paying for everything? Um no, so she's actually still net negative because she just graduated in Um Whatever in the summer, and didn't start school until October.

Um So I my goal is for n us to never have a year where she earns more than me, not for any like sexist reasons. I just you know that's a goal of mine, so I gotta make more money than her this year. But yeah, in uh the last quarter of last year she made more money than me. So all right.

And That's actually Like I think there's a lot of guys who are self conscious about that. I uh feel the opposite. I'm like

I want you Like I wanna be the lazier of the like I want her to earn more and just maybe like not have to work. I am self conscious about it. I I do like I'm happy for her to have a career, but like It's not so much a like

uh self conscious about her making money, but it is like a little bit of like a Step it up. You gotta get your business into a place where you're out earning it. Like look what I'm out here doing, you know? That's sick though. It's pretty sick. I think You know how like there's articles that talk about like your best financial decision?

My opinion is the best financial decision you can make. Of course, this is a good decision for a lot of other reasons, but the best financial decision is marrying the right woman. Amen. Or picking the right spouse, rather. Or just staying married, right? Did you have you read The Millionaire Next Door? Where they're like, No, what did they say?

It they look at all these factors that like most millionaires have. And this is not Silicon Valley millionaires, it's like auctioneers and construction comp you know company owners. And they say like here are all these factors like most have never Purchased a suit for more than, I think it's like$800. Most have never paid more than$200 for a watch. Most in the vast, vast majority of them never got divorced. Don't get divorced then. That's great. Crazy. And I think even if you get a pre nap, I don't think that that like it

It doesn't Does a print up only work for the Earnings that you made before you got married? Yes. So then who cares in most cases? Exactly,'cause you get married I got married at twenty five, I was worth Jack Shit, right? And it's like all the money that I've made in my life has been since I've got married I've been married one years, so

Does a prenup cover if you start a business and it's worth nothing? And then you get married and ten years later it's worth a lot. Does that d d is the sh Which one Does that count as?

That I do not know. What I do know is a friend of mine got married, got a prenup, and he had crypto and he specified like this my hundreds of bitcoin are excluded and they've gone up in values and they're still excluded. But I don't know if company shark the same way. I would guess they would, but you know, we'd have to get a lawyer on here. Are we going to be able to do it?

It's like the worst sad topic. No, here's why we're covering it because um Ben's Ben quit his job to start a podcast uh a popular p uh a podcast that's going pretty well and he works for us part time as a pr our producer. And he His wife is a very successful lawyer and I asked him I said, you know, like a lot of men might be self conscious about that.

About your wife earning significantly more than you, how does it make you feel? And uh I we're I was Just curious. Has your wife ever earned more than you, Rob?

Ooh, that's a good question. Um Well, your businesses are like family businesses kinda, right? Yeah, I mean she runs her own thing. Dude, I actually think I mean, yeah, so when I left Drip two years ago, I sold a company and then I left it in twenty eighteen. I didn't work for six months, but it's like so I wasn't earning anything. But then even after that, like starting Tiny Seed, I didn't take a paycheck for a year. And she was making several hundred grand at her business. So yes, she has, but it's also like, yeah, but I sold a comp I I think I'm excused at this point, you know. I uh my wife became a millionaire, a a liquid millionaire before I did. That's awesome.

Because By two months. Was it like stock or what would you have to She worked at Airbnb for a long time and then it went public in December and I sold my company in February. So she beat me by two months. You didn't feel you didn't feel bad about that at all, did you? Dude, I was pumped for her. I was so I mean it the the way the everything is ours. So it it was like Frankly, when she got paid, I was like, Oh, I just got paid too. I mean I thought it was awesome.

Um we're live now, by the way, Rob. Uh great. Are you okay with that? Absolutely, sir. I'm always I'm always I was born ready, yeah. So uh This is Rob Walling. Rob, you uh

You I was just on your pod. Like uh two weeks ago. Did it go well? Yeah. I got a lot of positive feedback, actually. What was interesting is someone said, a couple of people said, You guys have real great rapport. And I said, Which is funny because we've never met. It's not like we're best friends, but they said you sounded like you were friends, you're naturals, you know. And I said, I think it's e it's easy to have a podcaster on a show.

Because they're just entertaining naturally. And I've been reading your work for like ten years. Um and so or I forget how long, but basically Ben we so this is Ben. Ben works with us, um he's filling in for Sean today. We uh I sent Rob like an email like in two thousand and I forget he like pulled it up, but I sent like a my first email to him like years ago saying how much I loved his content.

And then I was finally on his podcast like eight years later, so it worked out. Yeah, and that helps that familiarity certainly helps. I know that people who listen to my podcast and then appear on it know what to expect. And they're able to Which is why before coming on here. I I I've listened to your show on and off over the years, but like I listened to like the last four episodes just so I would have some familiarity.

What did you think? Oh, I think they're great. You got a good show here. I think you should change the name of the show is what I think you should I think the name's off. The name is horrible. I know. It's tough. And man, I have you know, my podcast is Startups for the rest of us, which I still like, but it feels long now, and I've debated whether to To change it. Have you guys actually considered it? Cause I'm curious what would go what would need to go into a name change. The problem is is

We considered it like a year ago when we were smaller, but then we were like back then we were like, Oh, we're too big. Back when we were did that we we were at like three or four hundred thousand Unix a month. And or visitor or um listeners a month. And we were like, Oh, but we're too big, it already is stuck. Now we do in December we crossed two million. Uh lessons a month and we're like No, we're definitely too like we're definitely too big. And Darmesh, who is the founder of HubSpot, who now owns the podcast.

He was like, You gotta change the name and I'm like, Darmesh, it's way too late and he was like No, it's not. And so he thinks we should do it. I think it's too late into the game. Frankly, I think a bad name sometimes is a good is a good thing, but the name is quite horrible. And I feel embarrassed to tell my barber and stuff, and they're like, Well, what's it about? I'm like I'm not sure, but not much.

But it's not about making your first million, that's for sure. Yeah. It's not get rich quick. It's like a real business podcast. And that's that's the thing is Since you have subscribers, because what I've thought about is like, let's say we change the name of you know of of startups for the rest of us. I think I just change it in the RSS feed, I change it with Apple and Spotify, and then it just propagates. I think people I'd need new line, you know, a liner art or whatever. I think people be confused for a few weeks. And I guess all the incoming links. would say startup the rest of us are my first million, but aside from that, I just don't know the backlash. It's n it's

It's less of like changing the name of a company. Is really hard. Right, because of the brand you've built. But changing the name of podcast I think is s I I'd like to think it's simpler, but I've never done. Our friend Nathan Uh started this company called Convert Kit.

Which is amazing, and I'm an investor in. And it was crushing and he changed the name to something. I forget what he changed the name to Seva. S E V A. Which appar apparently does that mean something offensive in Hindi? It wasn't offensive, but it was

Yeah. It has like a spiritual meaning. And so the back he had backlash, right? And it was about cultural appropriation was the kind of phrase that was used. Yeah, it's like a it's a word in a different language and people were like, You can't name your company that and I He's not a he's like at the time was probably like a fifty person company. They probably did some research, but they mostly like just probably read the definition in a dictionary and thought it sounded cool.

And then like a week later they changed it back to Convert Kit, which I think is a great idea. Convert Kit's a good name. Yeah, it's you that's that's the other thing with the name change is okay. So you're gonna change my first million. What are you gonna change it to? Because naming is really hard, right? Are you very hard. I know some people who are really good at it. Most people are not, including myself. I struggle with naming. I always go too literal. We would hire I would hire one of those like naming firms. I actually think that I think a naming firm is actually a great idea.

Yeah. At this level and at the at the The kind of reach that you have and the stakes and the race I guess the resources you have, it would be a no-brainer. If someone really good, I don't I don't know, do you listen to Tropical MBA podcasts by chance? Yeah, I like those guys. Yeah.

They had a really good kind of lower budget naming person. I say lower budget. Let's say five grand, ten grand versus, you know, you can pay a hundred grand or more. Um, she was super sharp. It was such a good episode, and she had like an ebook on how she does it. And I was intrigued by that just because Uh Y look, you and I are gonna be putting out new whether we rename things or putting out new stuff for the rest of our lives. So how do we get better at this, right? That's something I wanna do. Yeah, what were we saying, Ben?

I I you actually answered the question I was gonna ask, which is how much is a naming service? But there you go. But I I mean you know, uh I I think like the thing about my first million Like you said, sometimes a bad name is a good name. Because the thing is it forces someone to react. Like someone has to have an opinion about my first million. They might not like it, but they're not gonna just like forget about it. They're gonna like, Oh, what's that? But dude, my companies are called the Hustle. Horrible name. HustleCon.

Horrible name. Once I'm at a conference on content and I call it a Concon. No. A meetup series called Pizza and Forty's. Uh our subscription servers called Trends. Like I'm not good at like I I like I've done Trends is good. The hustle's pretty bad. The rest of them are tough because the hustle hustle now has this negative or it has for several years this hustle culture, right? Has a negative connotation. So I guess if you're leaning into that, at least it gets attention, but it's a tough one to do. So Rob, how do you describe your your who you are in a professional sense? How do because I was gonna introduce you but you're you're you're pretty eclectic that I don't even know how to

The proper way to do it. Yeah, I mean, bottom line, man, I used to be a software developer and then I didn't want to work for other people. So I started startups. And first it was, I mean, in 2006, it was downloadable software. There really wasn't SaaS. And then it i it became SaaS, right? That's what you do now if you're in software. Um so I became a founder, serial entrepreneur, launched a few, acquired a few. And

Along the way started Vlogging about it. As you you know, as you were saying, I wrote a coup I've written three books about bootstrapping startups. I bootstrapped everything. I never raised funding. I'm not anti funding. I'm not I think funding has a time and a place, but I am anti the narrative that in order to start a startup, you have to raise funding because I that is just not the case. I think one percent of companies One percent of tech companies need funding and the other ninety nine percent really shouldn't shouldn't do it. So around twenty eleven then started a podcast and then

Uh no, that was twenty ten and then twenty eleven started my events called MicroConf. And um And then just a couple years ago launched an accelerator for SAS bootstrappers. So you um I wanted to go to MicroConf years ago, I remember that. And

I w didn't have enough money to to go, so I'm gonna have to go soon. But how what were the name of some of your software companies? I I know Drip and and can you reveal like s how big some of these grew to? Yeah. Drip grew into well, I mean Drip is tens of millions now, but I sold it in in twenty what year was that? Twenty sixteen. Grew it to a few million bucks before

I sold it. You you grew to three three million dollars a year in revenue and then it uh Now it does tens of millions of dollars. Oh yeah. Absolutely. I mean this is email email service providers are really any type of SAS.

Um If you double down on it, like and you stick around for a long time, this stuff just It compiles. It it goes up every month if you're doing it right. Do you regret selling it? No, never. Never a day have I woken up and thought, I really wish I was still working on that. Like I learned we were team of 10 when we sold it.

And I learned what I needed to learn. And it was enough money that I never had to work again. And that had been a goal. I was forty one, maybe, when I sold it. And that was a Lifelong goal.

You know. Work again? Yep. And I knew I would. I knew I would work. Well what was your number? Well, I don't want to tell you how much you know for it. You don't have to tell me what you sold it for, but like in like when you said my goal is to earn this much like what was the threshold of not having to work?

Well, that's interesting. You know, when I was twenty five, I just thought it was millions. I never actually calculated it. And then as I got into my thirties, I started saying, Well, what's this four percent rule thing that you hear about in personal finance, right? And I actually think the four percent rule is bullshit. Um I think you need to be you need to be a little more cautious. So it's about three, three and a half percent. So then The rule is if you need If you want a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. To live on? And

You have five million dollars in the bank? then the idea is that if you do the four percent roll, you could take out two hundred grand a year. And never um touch the principal because stocks and bonds and other investments are are to and inflation are are working there. So a three percent rule would give you about a hundred fifty grand.

So I'm not using my numbers, but you get the idea. So it quickly became apparent to me that when I was in my thirties of like I think somewhere it's somewhere between five and ten million, I think is most people's number. Depends on where you live, depends on how you live. Um But I think anything north of ten is like I may like It is excess, I'll say that. I

I'm north of ten. And I And I feel like I didn't My life didn't change. There was some point between five and ten where it was like, Yeah, that's enough. You know, I still like having the money and I do things with it, but um Definitely.

It's not like I would have had to work again even with a major stock market downturn or something. That's pretty cool. Three million with ten employees is is a pretty sick business when it's software. It's was very efficient. We were also really I mean, I was bootstrapped. I should have raised a round. I should have raised a seed round because it was way stressful and I was uh I burned out pretty hard on it. And that was part of There were several factors uh into selling for me, and I'm curious if you, you know, have talked about why you sold as well. But for me it was like number one, if I can never if I can have enough money that I control my own destiny for the rest of my life, that was a big win. That was the only way I would sell. That was the only reason why I sold. It's it's just like take the cash off and now you can do anything. I mean, I started a damn startup accelerator, right? So I we fund uh Bootstrap SaaS Founders. I'm not gonna make money from that. And that's a five to ten year play to make real money, right? To ac actually get the carry back. Yeah, I take a salary, but it's like a token to what I could be making somewhere else. Um

And so I can now do l play longball with it because I'm not thinking, Oh, how am I gonna you know, how am I gonna do my big score. I never wanted to be worth I never my goal was never I need a hundred million or I need a billion. It would be I'd be fine with that, but that's not that wasn't the goal. It was to have that freedom. I sold To have that. But

I wish The the thing about my company is that I loved it. I mean I still I'm still here. And I love it. Um like I hate it and I I hated

Uh like there was days where I'm like This sucks. I hate media. I hate dealing with people. Of course I had like those normal things. But like the thing is is that like I started my company Because I was just blogging for fun when it didn't make money. And I didn't actually think it was gonna make money. And now that I have

something I still do this because I just am a compulsive and I love it. And so I st I love my company. I just Wish I wish I was wealthy that I didn't have to sell it. Do you know what I mean? Yep. And so'cause now I know I'm gonna have to go and start it again one day.

You're gonna have to start something. And that one you won't have to sell, right? You'll be in a position where you can decide to to do it or not, and you can make bigger bets because if it goes to zero. It's not like You're sitting where I was in twenty fifteen, where it's like I am literally worth Millions and millions of dollars. On paper.

And I have actual liquid net worth. About four hundred grand in retirement savings between my wife and I And I have about fifty thousand dollars in the bank and our house, which had no equity because it was, you know, it it had gone down or whatever. So that that was it. So I was like ha I felt way overexposed.

to something tragic happening. When you are doing three million in recurring revenue Um, I'm not sure if you how you do like if people pay up front or what whatnot, but Like I've seen convert kit's numbers that like all the public stuff that they reveal. And they're they didn't have a significant amount of cash in the bank.

Was your was your thing the same way where Absolutely w'cause like ten you think ten employees making ten uh make it three million dollars like oh you should have like plenty of money. But What what was the truth? The truth is that growth

Choose just destroys cash. Like no matter how much cash we made. I've I was

spending it on AWS bills. I was spending it with SendGrid. I would hire another contractor. I would hire another employee the moment we we'd grow by 10 grand in a month, let's say of a monthly recurring. And I'm like, great, now I can hire another engineer because oh my God, we are understaffed. So At ten people, we were way understaffed. Um And Yeah, I'm trying to think. Uh and that's where like my decision at that point was I'm either gonna raise an angel round, like a seed round.

Or we should sell it. And that was that was the decision of do we double down on this business for another Two to four years. Or am I ready to to you know make make that choice of letting it go.

And that so that was I I was a drip user. Who owns it? Um well what's interesting. So Lee Page has bought it. Lee Page's head. Raised.

Um thirty eight million in venture. And They It's actually a parent company, right, called Avenue Eighty One Incorporated, that owned lead pages and then acquired drip. So there's two products under one umbrella.

Well pretty soon within l the the Avenue eighty one, you know. CEO realized the opportunity here is drip. Like drip is a multi billion dollar opportunity, whereas landing pages are You know, the whole market at the time was eighty million, maybe. A hundred million.

And that's that sounds like a lot to us, but they're venture backed, so they need to get to billions in valuation. So they actually s sold off lead pages. And the company is now drip. So Drip owns Drip now.

You know what I mean? Like it's it was a a turnaround. I don't know if you I don't know if you ever heard that this happened with Best Buy, where they acquired squad And now like Best Buy would not exist without Geek Squad. because that was like all their net profit through the, you know, last 15 years. That is that essentially happened with Drip. They just refocused the whole team that had 170 employees and I got to start handpicking people from the lead pages team and pulling them over to help. So when I left

There were a hundred and something people working on trip. Do feel like See Remember like when you're a kid and you should date someone and then you see her with another guy and you like feel just like that that jealous you feel like Anger and jealousy and you're sad.

Do you Do you still have that do you have that emotion when you see drip? I don't. And But but I will say that there have been some things that have happened that have

that I haven't been happy with. So they like raised prices and they didn't do it very well right after I left, like a few months after. And I was like You guys are better than like I would have done that so differently. And if I was in the room, I would have said don't do it. They just did it really fast. They didn't grandfather, you know, they just made kind of all the one on one mistakes and that sucked. And I and then there was a huge backlash against drip. Which is part of my legacy. Like Drip is you know it's it's like the hustle will always you will always be the founder of the hustle, right? And I will always be the co founder of Drip.

They they've messed with the UI, they've reshaped it and stuff. So when I go in now I'm a little bit like Ugh, I liked it the old way, but but I don't feel It's not the ex girlfriend thing. It's more of a I did have to let it go. Yeah, and just And just Let it go. I still use it. I I mean I'm in it every day. It's such a good tool.

Do that that's a good sign. Do you um And then MicroConf, was that a big business? 'Cause I'm when when I started HustleCon, I like researched you guys to steal ideas, but like also like to make sure it's a good business and I was like, Well, Rob's pretty savvy and he's doing it. So like yeah, I could probably make a profit off this. Yeah.

Yeah, it was definitely pr you know, it was a side project, like a hobby. All this time, right? until about two years ago where when I left Drip. I had this big uh Decision of like

I have this podcast. At the time I had a co host with the podcast, I'm solo now. Um Had microconf. Do I sell all of that? I l I literally thought of just leaving the whole entrepreneur like blogging, podcasting thing.

And going in like s I was gonna acquire a tabletop gaming, the second biggest tabletop gaming website. Right. You know like Settlers of Catan or like Dungeons and Dragons. So it's like not board like a board game is Monopoly, right? But then there's like levels above that of complexity and stuff. And so Which are booming right now. Huge. Well Covid helped, but also they're just they're super popular. And so I was like that's a hobby of mine and I was like, I really want to do it. And then I started talking to the owner of the site who's great great dude. And I'm like, What are your numbers? And he started giving me the numbers and I was like

This makes no money. This mate And he's like, Yeah, dude. Tabletop games make no money. Like that, you know, there's the few. There's the Catan and there's D. There's like ten or twenty. Everything else kind of is I'm I'm overgeneralizing here because certainly there's other, but it's not like startup. Like we are so spoiled with startups where we don't manufacture physical things and and you don't have returns and you don't have access to inventory and you don't have a warehousing and all that stuff, and the profit margins are thin and et cetera, et cetera. So that's when I double down. Um

On all of that. And so yes, your your qu your initial question was is MicroConf a good business? Yes. W will we sell? Let's see. We'll sell seven f like low some figures like a a million, million and a half dollars, I think. In top line? This year maybe? Somewhere in that.

Range. I need to look at the budget. You can tell that I have someone running it. Because I should know that I would know that number if I was actually like into it. Will you be able to and could I mean if you do one point five, I would I would hope that you probably do like the

Three or four hundred in profit. Um I think so. Although here's what we do see We Are not running it.

As a profit machine, we are running it almost it's become like a service to the community. Um, and so we run a bunch of the events at break even or loss. Like the our local events are where we go to San Jose or Atlanta or Austin, Texas, we do a one day event. Those tend to break even or lose money and we're doing it to try to Just expand. Like the mission is to increase the number of independent startups in the world, right? That's what we want to do. Bootstrap startups used to be the term, but it's like It's not solely bootstrap, some people raise small amounts of money.

And to do that, we gotta get the word out. And so we run it at a you know, ten to twenty percent profit net profit margin. And we could make more money. We used to make more money um five years ago or whatever, but it there's just no need to at this point. That's a pretty sick uh side like a h good hobby. It was good. It wasn't before when I still had drip, we weren't doing a million because we were, you know, we're gonna do 15 events this year. When we were when I was running drip, we were doing three. But they were big they were big events we would have. Trying to think of what our top line

Revenue was even you know let's say half a million. Six hundred grand across three events. So it was it was good. But it's a brand, right, man. It's like the first year. We In twenty eleven we went to sell tickets. And we were like, We're gonna sell two hundred tickets at

eight hundred dollars a piece or five hundred dollars a piece, and we sold like seventy at like five hundred dollars. Terrible. And everyone's like, You're gonna make money off sponsors and yes, you will. It's gonna take you two or three years though for them to trust you. Yeah. And what what I didn't realize with events was they buy like a year in advance.

Our first sponsorships were like two K a piece. Then we start getting the fifty K and a hundred K. But they booked a year in advance. And I was like, wait, what? So like it's it's a pr it's a crazy business.

Yeah, I personally wouldn't I kept saying to my I'd a co-founder with that and then our event producer, and I kept saying, I don't want to be in the events business. Right. We we had one event and then we expanded it to two because we wanted to move to do one in Europe. And then we expand it to three because we wanted an earlier stage event. And I kept saying, I don't want to be in the events business. And they kept telling me that's the business. This is an events business. You started one, you know? But I did it more as a commu I want to I always thought of it as a community. 'Cause that's like MicroConf has an online community and YouTube channel and all that stuff. Well, Ben, you look like you're about to say something.

No, no. I was Oh you're laughing. Uh Yeah, I was just laughing. Do uh who who who starts a a business, an event business, and doesn't know it's an event business, but uh when I started hospital, I was like this is This is stupid. This is just a means to an end. We're getting out of this immediately. And then

It it's like uh it it's It's kind of like when you see all your friends starting software companies, you're like, dude, events are embarrassing. Why would I want this? Like this is stupid. It doesn't, it's too hard. But then once you get a little more confident in yourself and you're like, Well, if I accept it for like for what it is, it's actually pretty neat. Oh yeah. And there's nothing like it, like in this, even let's say pre Covid. From

Twenty eleven until until this year over the last Ten eleven years. There's a lot of online communities. Anyone can start one. You get a few hundred people together. There're so few people who not only run in person events, but who do them well. And if you can do that, it is an incredible competitive advantage. And not even that we have that much competition, but it is It's not just like I'm gonna run a business and make money. It's like the community of MicroConf is so tightly knit and it's because we meet in person.

You know what I mean? You just you have I mean you you've experienced this where you go to an event, you meet someone in person, and we the retention rate was sixty or seventy percent. So you come back to the next year. And everybody kinda knows each other. And then you get new blood and you know, so there's It it built a way better community than if we did not have in person events. So because your job He says your career, you see a lot of like crazy software companies

Some of which maybe aren't necessarily huge. But They are Could be surprising because you're like, I cannot believe someone's making this work. And you probably Are able to spot lots of opportunities.

We asked you if you knew of uh we asked you ahead of time and I'm curious if you ever think of any Any software companies. where you see and you're shocked at the that this is like a problem that needed to be solved. Yeah, I see a bunch. So I have some I have some both ideas that I haven't seen implemented that maybe we can dig into later. Uh yeah, we'll do both of those.

Yeah. But There's a So I'll I'll talk about a couple so Tiny Seed is the start up accelerator I run. And so as a result, you know, we've had across what, four batches.

Four batches we've had. Two or three thousand applicants. So I've seen a lot of SaaS companies come through. Wow. And What I Uh I've been surprised by a ton of them. Let me just look at one right here. So

CRM or kind of customer interactions applied to Any niche and the smallest niche you can imagine. So like Home improvement contractors.

The founder of Builder Prime is the S is SAS. We funded it with Tiny Seed. And he had a home improvement. Project. And he said the experience dealing with the contractor contractor was fine, but the communication was like text and then email. And it was anytime there's a bunch of text in email, that can be a product. What was the name? Bill the what? Builder. Prime. Builder Prime. Builder Prime. Yep.

And so it's in essence, I think he might call it CRM for yeah, he calls it best CRM. But really It's not only the sales process, but then it's the communication during a home improvement project. And so like shouldn't you w I would say well shouldn't couldn't you use Basecamp? Isn't like project management or could I use Microsoft Project like online? Right,'cause you could but it's like no, this is a strongly typed version of that.

That is Completely built. For their needs. How's this going? It's going really well. I can't disclose revenue, but um I'll say anyone in time he was in batch two. Any of those companies are gonna be, you know, mid six figures into seven figures, right?

The um founder of HubStop, Brian Halligan, came on the pod and he told us that when they f I I I'm gonna paraphrase the story, I might get a little bit wrong. He said that when they first started HubSpot They were like at a fork in the road and not sure which way they were gonna go. And for a minute, I think they even created it and even had some sales, but they were like well Let's like HubSpot is a CRM, but then let's create like Law Spot.

So it's like uh hub spot just for lawyers. So instead of like making it one for everyone We're gonna make an individual one for different industries. And so let's create Law Spot and just get lawyers to use it. And that's kind of basically what this cup company, Builder Prime, is. Because you would say, like why can't you just use HubSpot? Why can't you just use A so whatever you want it, whatever it is. Uh I understand. And so

All right, this is a cool company. How big's the team on this? What what pen? My my other question is um Like, d d do you have any companies, Rob, that you work with that are building apps on top of Salesforce or HubSpot that are like building in those ecosystems? Or do you think They should always go the direction of Builder Prime and just build their entire own ecosystem this ecosystem.

We have One who is built on Heroku. We have one who's kinda built is a WordPress plugin kinda built on WordPress. They're actually doing really well. It's Castos, it's podcast hosting. They're they're into seven figures.

But there's no you know, so the thing is is with building on h hub spot or Salesforce There's this platform risk. Right.'Cause I had an angel investment that was doing really well, was built On Shopify was a Shopify app. And they started killing it and then Shopify came and knocking and said

You gotta start. Panis. Big chunk of your revenue or we shut you down. I mean really You know, I I I would say it's shady shit, but it is what it is. It's platform risk, right?

Um, so that's where we have to be aware. Like if you go to sell a SaaS company and you're solely built on top of a platform. You Sell for a lower multiple. than if you were on your own. So As a result

what we say when folks come in and apply and say, Hey, I'm only on Heroku, or if we we see Shopify apps come through. We had to have seen Salesforce apps come through. I don't remember uh spot one, to be honest. But what we say is Cool, it's not a non starter, but how are you thinking about this? Are you building for what other platforms are you building for? How do you escape that? Because by the you know, when you're five hundred grand a year, no one cares. When you're five million a year.

On a platform, they notice. And that There's a danger there. That's that's pretty cool. That's interesting. I I mean I I knew that was true, but I didn't know that Shopify could change the prices that they charge. Seen it. Seen it happen firsthand, yeah.

What else is interesting. Go ahead. Yeah, there's there's another one. Um This one's interesting. It's called scraping bee. And the cool part about them is they are public with their revenue. So I can actually at least give you an idea. So they cost a million dollars in annual recurring. Uh just

Two, three months ago. And if you look at what it is, is it's They allow you, if you want to Um Sc scrape the web, right? If it's like well, I want to get all, you know, the products off of an e this particular e commerce site. You can go in

And it's not a GUI, like you need to write a little bit of code, but then they have all the servers that allow you to get around being blocked by APIs or whatever. And when you think about this idea, it's It's like well That sounds like a nice little five ten K a month idea, right? They're

Doing north of a you know, probably a hundred hundred grand a month right now. I haven't looked at the revenue recently. But like two employees Yeah. It's two employees. It's the two founders. Wow. It's crazy. We're encouraging them to hire, actually, because here's the problem. Let's say they wanted to sell. I'm not saying they do, but if they wanted to

That's a problem. Like they would they would be worth more if they Or a team of five or ten. Than if they're only two. Because they're making a bunch of profit, but it's there's risk there, right? Do they have is this like uh one of those uh public revenue things on like the bare metrics or whatever? You know, I think they just disclose it on Twitter.

It's Pierre to Wolves. Yeah. And it's like every couple months he'll say when they hit a milestone, he'll be like, We hit this and Um the co founder I mean co founders Pierre and Kevin are really cool and transparent and they talk a lot about I mean it's content and SEO. And they have grown crazy fast. I believe, and my memory serves me correctly. Though when they joined Tiny Seed, they were at four K a month.

And this was Shoe years ago tops. eighteen months two years I you know so it's like to go from four K to ostensibly what ninety K, hundred K they're in that range a month. Um Pretty cool. These guys should raise money, maybe.

Yeah, they should. They could. If they wanted to, it's up to them, right? company that's growing quick that has a million revenue is like fifty to a hundred million dollars. Yeah, it's nuts. I know. So like if you could raise five million dollars and just do five I mean, that's kind of interest that that'd be that'd be easy to justify.

Right. But it depends on the founder, right? It's like that's one of the things that a lot of bootstrappers They don't want to get on that once you raise that money. Now you're on the venture track, right? And it's like I gotta raise every H months I'm supposed to move on. I'm supposed to hire. Yeah, but we're different. Tiny seeds for bootstrappers. And so with Tiny seed.

Folks can run their business and take profits out. We actually fund LLCs. And they can take profits out if they want. How do you get paid? We get paid if they take profits out'cause we

We You know, buy a percentage of their equity. So Basically, if they take dividends out, we pro s you know, serve prorata in those. Or if they were to sell the company, again, we own stock. So or units and LLCs. So we get that percentage uh when they sell.

But is that actually gonna be profitable for you, you think? More so than um trying to get Trying to do the traditional model where you Throw shit at the wall and Ten percent maybe works.

Right. Well, we we are still in the traditional model of we've funded six fifty nine sixty companies to date and we will fund another hundred and we have enough money right now to fund another hundred and twenty, hundred and fifty in the next three years. So We are still in that model of making a lot of bets. What we're what we see is that our bet Like

I don't think we will have a billion dollar outcome. I just don't see that being reasonable. I think we'll have a lot of Ten to fifty, ten to hundred million dollar outcomes. And the numb we've run a bunch of models and in fact if you go to tiny seat.com slash thesis You will see

my co founder. is a data was a data scientist PhD in computer science. And we ran a bunch of back testing on it. Anonymous. SAS data.

Uh. I think it was several thousand companies and looked at our our funding approach versus you know what it would return and it will return Venture like returns with I believe lower down side risk.

Because we invest it. We invest at the early stage at low valuations, in essence. Wow. What what else is interesting to you?

Um Yeah, you want another another company? No, tell me what ideas that you think that would there's opportunities in. Yes. All right. So here's so I always when I start with ideas, I'm I'm such a B to B SaaS founder, right? So I start with a problem, right? And so first, any time I see someone doing something in Excel or or a Google sheet, I think to myself, that could That's an idea, right?

If you take it. Or if there's a bunch of email, you know, or text back and forth. Um So is it'cause it's communication or it's just storage. There's a couple things That

Um I'm pretty fascinated by so One is Podcast apps are doing quite well. Like we're in Riverside now. We've funded, I'm invested in Squadcast. Which is a competitor of Riverside.

Um and uh both of them. We're using Riverside Now, we use Squadcast, we use Zencaster, we use Zencaster. I was with them before, yeah, with Squadcast. And then of course podcast hosting, right? There's Castos and Lib Liz LibSen and and others. And We use that, I think. Even podcast editing like Alot I we use I use Audacity and then my editor uses Adobe something or other, but like Alatu, A-L-I-T-U is podcast editing in the browser. So like the stack's starting to get there, we have disparate

But when HubSpot launched, so I so I know Darmesh, right? Darmesh and I were bloggers and speakers. We met at BOS in 2008 or something. So I remember when HubSpot launched. And I remember thinking. But all of these things exist. Like in early days, Hubspot was like

It was like a uh a blog, I think, plus a marketing website, plus Yeah, Google Analytics. Plus I don't remember what something is. Email capture form or something. Something like that. It was very simple, but I was like I could but I remember saying Daramesh, but I could build that. You know, with MailChimp plus

WordPress, you know, I'd and he's like, Yeah, but Business owners don't want to do that. They want a bundle. And he was right. I think and he was right. I said they're public and w you guys are

Yeah, an amazing company. I think of the same thing with Podcast production. Where I right now, I mean I've been running a podcast for eleven years and I have, you know People helping with it and

I literally am in notion. dragging this thing over here and then sending an e that sends an email to my producer to do something that we then log into Castos to upload You know what I mean? It's like where's the hub spot for that? Where's the bundling of the podcast stack? I have a strong opinion. I have two strong opinions. The first Is I'm almost certain No.

I'm partially certain. That for the most part Podcasting software and podcasting tools. is a horrible business because A few reasons.

Very few podcasts are successful. And most all of them are broke. Yeah. Here's m here's the counterpoint to this, because I like to be con I am an investor, so I see the numbers, all right?

Um Squadcast doing several million a year in revenue. And They're not doing it on the fly fishing podcast. Think of the three avatars for Uh a podcast.

There there's the hobbyist, my Dungeons and Dragons podcast, my fly fishing. And they're gonna they're broke and they're gonna pay nine bucks a month. Right. And they're gonna churn like crazy. Cause they're gonna start it's too much work. All right. Then there's the next tier up. Which is Startups for the rest of us. I'd say my first million is in that where it's like a single show, but if I go to pay

A hundred dollars a month. For Squadcast Riverside. A hundred dollars a month for hosting. It's not a big deal to me, right? And I don't think it is to you. There so it's not nine dollars, but for you it's like a hundred. I think if I were to say, Oh, my first movement should pay five hundred dollars a month for each of these, you start to feel like I'm not sure that's worth it, but there's a number there. Okay. So there's a and they and we don't churn. I mean, I've been doing it for twelve years. You guys been doing it for several. It's like the the the S and B of of podcasts. It's the S and B that actually sticks around. There's hobbyists, there's S B, then there's one level up.

So There's iHeartRadio. There's ESPN's podcast. There's the Kevin Smith Podcasts podcast, right? There is Paris Swisher has a whole network.

Gimlet Media. N PR like once they w especially once they went remote. That's the enterprise. But how many of those are there? Because for example, like Vox. I think Vox was trying to sell their CM Like it's all media companies are like

Oh, we built this proprietary technology to like get our articles shar and like Things like that. Cool, I would love that technology. But they wanna go out like Washington Post is doing this, they wanna go out and sell their software and I'm like How many fucking media companies could pay a hundred grand a year for software? Most media companies are broke. And so that's my same thing to podcasters.

But all right, I agree, those exist. I wanna be I need to be convinced though that there's like enough of them. Ben was gonna say something we should let him do. Say I I I was blown away, so we got a pitch from one of these

recording companies, w one of the ones that Rob mentioned, I won't say which, but I assumed that the pro tier That Rob was talking about. would be like 10x what a normal plan was. And it was like One hundred X. It was like

It was like Plus a month. For um A month? A month. A month.

For some of these. Yeah. And um The squats I was blown away. I could not believe it. I was blown away. But anyways, you know, it's worth it for for a lot of people. So uh anyway, well for that type of company, you don't need that many customers, I think is is Maybe the point. Really?

Do get crazy amounts of features with Dollars a month. I mean They're cool. They are cool features. They're cool features. Wow.

That is crazy. That does sound high, I will admit. That's crazy. But that's where you don't need that you don't need that many. Okay, so podcasting is is you're saying it's a good business because there's actually enough customers. to to make it work, right? Yeah. Yeah. And podcasting has this other thing that I that is

I think undervalued or just not talked about enough. It's this concept of a dual funnel or a split funnel where You have You know, who else has this is um Electronic signature. E signature has this, where you have this super wide funnel

There's either free users or very inexpensive users. On the low end. And so a lot of people use it. Thus you build a brand and you just have five thousand, ten thousand customers, whatever. Uh Some are just users, some are customers. You also s if you have any type of viral loop, that's amazing, right? You send the link to Squadcast or Riverside. You send a link to get a document signed. Oh, a little bit of virality. But then on the Top end.

with e signature. Similarly, you have realty mortgage brokers who I need 8,000 documents a month signed. And suddenly that's at 10, 20, 30 grand a month. That dual funnel is incredible because when you if you're just enterprise, then you're enterprise, right? And it's like, Oracle in the old days. It's like all right, so We need to close five hundred deals this whole year, but each deal is a million or two million bucks, right? I mean, that's it's like these massive deals. And it's just this grind of enterprise sales, but when you have the low end funnel

And the high end funnel, it's um It feeds on itself and it helps you have a more stable business. The companies that are able to charge Uh six figures a year in software. Do you think that

A lot of times their software is actually better than the five dollar a month tools that are in the same category, but for different people. Like is it is it You know, if it a cup if it's five dollars a month versus five hundred thousand dollars a year, is it actually a thousand times better? No, it's not. And I would it's not. Um Five dollars a month, I would say a more accurate one is like

You know, is the if I'm paying two fifty two hundred and fifty a month versus twenty five thousand a month, let's say that's it's a hundred X difference. Those are probably relatively similar. And in fact, a lot of the pricing advice we give to our founders. um or I I give on the podcast as well is The moment s s someone approaches you, potential customer, and says Cool, we like your software.

We need to red line your terms of service. Or we need Uh to invoice with POs. Or we need single sign on, or we need a Salesforce integration, or we need there's there's this whole list of things that instantly should trigger you should pay about a hundred times more.

that your price should go up because the sheer headache of dealing with procurement and going through that process and the maintenance and all the, you know, the interaction. It's not that the software is better, it's that the the time and the headache and the pain. of making that sale and maintaining that customer is um

That's where it's at. Right. That's where the money spent. But is it that hard to like Uh do the single sign on or like isn't there is there not like an eighty twenty thing that you can do where it's like it works for most High end customers. Well, there's two things, right? It's are we pricing on value? Cause I price on value, right? There's price you can price on cost, you can price on value. What's a third?

I forget what the other one is. Anyways, but Certainly I'm not pricing my SAS on cost. Because I would have no margin, right? So I'm gonna try to price based on the value and Um I could build single sign on it's like, hey, let's let everyone have it, but it's a trigger that that company has the ability to pay.

And frankly are gonna get a lot more value out of it than A one person team using it. Right. You know, it's like Gimlet Media. Versus

Rob Walling. Comes to you know, sign up for your podcast recording. It's like Gimlet Media should pay a lot more than me, not because they They need that many more features, but They just should. Their whole business is built on it and they're making millions of dollars now.

Yeah. Any other ideas that interest you at the moment? Oh yeah. Um, so I gotta be honest, man. I mean, this is not even a SAS idea, I'm just gonna throw it out. You know, you do you know the website examine dot com? My favorite website out there. I would put it in top ten. I'm a pay I'm a paying member. There's a new one that I'm looking at called uh

Consumer W it's like examine.com, but for uh Brands. Vitamin France. Yep, and examine his nutrition information you can trust. So I interviewed the founder

Uh on my I love soul. Sul's he's great. I interviewed him on podcast Sherry. My wife's been friends with him for f sever years since they met at an event. So Had him on the show and I was fascinated by it because I'm like It it's nutrition information you can trust, right? And and you know that when I'm saying it for the audience.

Where is the examine dot com for crypto? And NFT like for web three stuff, because I feel like there's so much crazy info out there and there's so many opinions and religious, you know, not truly religious, but like religious fervor. And the and the Bitcoin maximalists and shit, and it's like Someone Can do this.

Right? Yeah, so let's talk about that. Examine I've talked about examine on the pod a ton because I think it's One of those sites that I see I don't think I know how big they are. I mean, like I would imagine like Not big, like two or three million a year in revenue, but I have no idea. That's just a guess.

But I know it's not big'cause they don't hire a ton of people. And I was like This is one of the most under monetized sites I've I know well. I actually think that they're examining could be significantly uh Examine could be a hundred million dollar a year business, I think.

How How do you think? So there's a bunch of so I would I I think that they For one, they don't do any affiliates. So something like Wirecutter. You know wire cutter? Mm-hmm.

Yep. Uh so in um And New York Times, you know, they're a publicly traded company. They're the wire cutter revenue got classified now as uh like other revenue. So I've been trying to like decipher it and figure it out. And they do something like close to nine figures in sales from affiliate

affiliates. Examine doesn't want to do that. But I think they I think they could. I think they could do it in a tasteful way and it could work wonderfully because what Examine doesn't do is they don't tell you which brands to buy. But I think they should'cause that's what I want. And that's what a lot of people want. Additionally, I think you could sell to doctors. So there's actually another company out there that does like four or five hundred million dollars a year in sales and they sell to doctors. And when you go to the doctor and you have like a rash, they just like it's like a Wikipedia for doctors. They like look it up. And like the latest inf uh studies are there on that.

Interesting. And examine you know, I didn't talk to Saul about that, but they don't want to do it because they don't do they not want it to taint The they want to become a review site. I mean that's why we don't trust review sites, right? It's the I trust T is in that. I trust wire cutter. Yeah. I mean I think there I think there's this way to solve for that. Like like

Dude, like if Casey Neistat is a YouTuber who I like, if he tells me a cool product and then there is an affiliate link there, I don't care that it's an affiliate link. Right. But anyway, what what uh exam I also think examin.com could work for injuries. Oh, like medical, like hey, my knee'cause like to get the definitive This is that, or s just illnesses in general, right? You Google symptoms and like rehab.

Yeah. W are you sick or injured enough to make that a thing that you would pay a monthly subscription for? Well I don't know I I don't know if you could make money through subscriptions with that, but I do think that like

When you have like an Achilles injury and you're like, I'm desperate, I'll do anything. I just need to learn like Because I remember when I was researching for my like I had a pain in my leg, I was like I like I went to all the studies and I just read all the studies. I'm like, I'm just gonna figure this out. I'm not gonna read like a ehao article on how to do this. I'm just gonna go to source and like What's the what's the thing that I'm reading about the studies? But how does

Uh Rob, do you know how does Examine.com operate. Like how does that literally work? Because all they do is pour through all the studies and find the ones that have a good sample size that have definitive proof.

And they make a list of like these work for sure. And then they have another list that says These seem like they might be able to work, but we can't say for certain and then These are shit. Don't trust. Pretty much. Yep. And they

Their big hit early on, he said all this on the podcast, it was it was all SEO, right? It was organic, and then they took a Google dive at some point. I don't know when it was, but um they had already implemented their subscription revenue. I don't even think that they had ads at one point. I don't know that they do anymore. I'm actually on the site looking around. But yeah, that's it. That's how they write the topic. And they're What is their value? It's the brand it's the trust.

You know what I mean? That's why everyone goes to it, because they have built that brand that you you trust it and I trust it. But but how do they do that though? Do they literally just have one hey go, uh All right, editorial team. This week You, Steve, your writer your writing topic is um Um

Building muscles. So go and research everything that helps you go research creatine, protein. The So if I were them, I would be looking They've been around for d a decade now.

All the topics have been covered. I'm only looking for new information. Right. I'd be monitoring all the journals, all the whatever's and have subscriptions to all that. I don't know exactly how to do it, but that that would be it, right? It's having having a Google Alerts essentially for all the new medical stuff to just Update. You just want to keep it updated. That's crazy. I can't imagine there's a to a new topic they haven't already covered in their

Thousands of pages. And this would actually make way more money in crypto. Totally. I mean there's several There's several niches where this this would be interesting. The hardest part is there's a bunch of crypto news sites and I when I go to'em, I just don't know. I don't trust him. Yeah, yeah, I don't know like are these guys like these like hardcore libertarian the world's gonna and fuck money, like fuck uh cash because it's just stupid. Or it are the you know, like

It a a great way to explain it is like basically do you remember like the Mac versus PC ads where there was like a like a cool looking Mac guy versus a nerdy PC guy? And do you remember that animosity created between Mac and PC guys? Now Imagine if each person who owned a Mac or a PC had a million dollars of Apple stock. That's like that's like the the the hate that's like the vibe that you're gonna get.

That's right. And so they just fervor with money behind it. And so it's very hard. for me to hear a crypto guy, even Sean. Sean's one of my best friends and he but I know he's got a lot of crypto. So I'm like But is this because you are you tell me you th

what you want to happen or what you think will happen. Right. So it's actually really interesting. How what would you do to build that? I would start so first thing you have to do is build credibility. You have to start there. So I'd probably start a podcast. So that people could hear my thinking.

Week to week. Um I would definitely be attending all of the crypto events anywhere to get into the network to build trust. Because if people don't if you're anonymous, like if you try to build this anonymously, no one's no one's gonna believe it. So I would get in into the network and then

Um Follow the model. I would look at what did examined do. We know anyone who has done this model, what did they do in terms of Of Uh Content. And then obviously just hire writers and

Look at the white papers and give our opinions. And this is actually a cool business'cause this business could last a hundred years. So like if you look at like um Consumer reports. Consumer reports has been a l around for decade. Decades.

They still do well into the nine figures of r of revenue. So consumer reports is a you know review site that people pay money for. They're a nonprofit, so all of their expenses are public. All their revenue is public and everything, and they're still growing. And so like a if you do a good job of building a brand like on this topic.

And you start reviewing stuff and you do a good job, you can review many other things and last for a very long time. It's kind of a cool company. Yeah. Yeah, they are still kicking. Anything else interests you? I am interested in

I mean this you know, normally I'm boring bit boring businesses are my favorite, right? Because it's like B to B SAS's. Is the way to go. Um I think any time you can take a concept like we've said with Builder Prime. Um

You know, where it was just like CRM for customers. We have another company we funded called Client Hub, which is basically project management CRM for accountants. And then we have another one that's called Gym Desk, which is basically run your gym business on it. It's like kind of CRM and communication. So it's like where how many niches are there where that works? Some of these are gonna be seven or eight for your businesses. Some of the niches are gonna be very, very small.

Um But that's where you just have to pick is like, hey, am I a lifestyle bootstrapper because I want to attend twenty thousand dollar a month business. Um but I like these ideas of You know, it it depends on your ambition. But

If you wanna stay small and just build an incredibly profitable business with two people working on a you know hundred grand a month. I mean, you can enter a not a less competitive space. If you want to grow big and grow faster, then you enter a a space Like electronic signature or like calendar scheduling links. Which we've funded companies in both like Calendly Competitor and you know

And hello sign competitor or whatever. There a lot of competition. You have to move faster, but the market opportunity there is just tremendous. Do Uh what do you how do you decide if it's gonna be a eight figure idea or much smaller.

Okay. Is there a metric that you look for? Yeah. That's an interesting question. I

Usually so with tiny seat companies when they apply, we say If your ambition is to build a seven figure And your recurring revenue company, then you're in the right place. We get some people who say, I really want just a half million dollar business. It's like great. that's gonna be a great business for you, but that's not really fundable for us. It just doesn't make sense. Um

I think a big piece of Can it get into the you know, and we'd love to see mid seven figures and up, right? Um But a big question of can it get there? A lot of it, it's less about market size because most markets

are big enough. There are few markets that are too small. Most of it is uh the metrics of the business is where we look at The churn. And we look at the pricing.

And so if you're if everybody's too price sensitive, to your point earlier, if everyone's a Fly Fisherman podcast and everyone's paying in, you know, ten to twenty bucks a month and that's kind of where most people are and then your churn is ten percent like You just can't. you know, almost impossible to build a million, two million dollar business. But when you get to the point where hey, my average revenue per user is a hundred or five hundred a month. And your churn is two or three percent.

You would have to own the whole market. Like there's almost any market is big enough that that can be a five million dollar business. All right, my last question. Um How many of these folks building

Software companies that you see? Yourself included, are not technical. Well, that's a great question. And if they are non technical, what do they do? Yep. Um, so I'm a developer or was I haven't written code in years, but

We actually ask so we do a state of independent SaaS survey and we put out a report, an in like an industry report. And We asked the question. Do you have At least one technical founder.

Right, or you know, and yes or no, right? And The number of SaaS companies, kind of bootstrap dish SaaS companies with Z with no technical founders. is like tw I believe it's twenty percent.

Twenty five percent? It's very possible. It is And usually what the expertise they have there. Either the subject matter expert like We're gonna build software for accountants, I was an accountant for 20 years, right? We're gonna build software for UX designers, I'm I was a designer for 10 years. They're either that or

Their sales. or marketing. That's what they should have. Now we've seen where there's a developer and then there's like the business person. The business guy or just means like anything. This is b yeah, it usually winds up meaning you're not actually that helpful and probably shouldn't be a co-founder. You know, if you can't sell or market Or like have input on the product.

Yeah, or or develop it. Like those are really the four roles. Um You probably shouldn't be. So if I'm if I like I'm not tech I'm not technical. But I um I can like

tie stuff together and use Zapier and I'm super creative. How do I start a start a software company without hiring or I would may if maybe hiring Zip, but without having a co founder. Right. So for you, since you have money, you would either acquire something because there's always stuff for sale that you may want to acquire and then just grow if you have a market content marketing expertise, or you would hire, you know, a developer or an agency or something to build it.

If you don't have the money Uh a lot of people Non technical will work a day job and actually funnel money to the side to basically pay for a developer to do it. Um

The other two approaches I've seen are exactly what you said, which is I'm gonna build my minimal viable product. Using Zapier. And Notion and chewing gum. Right, and I'm just gonna cobble it together to the point where hey, if I get a few grand a month in revenue, this proves it and now I'm gonna use that to get it built.

It's a harder way to go, but it's possible. The last one I've seen, which is genius. And this is what the founder of Castos did'cause he's not he's a single founder, not a developer. He worked a day job. He started a productized service. Podcast editing.

And He high he got it up to I forget what the number was, thirty or forty grand a month. Yeah. Productized podcast. He was one of the earlier ones. It was called Podcast Motor. He was working a day job the whole time. So then while he was he actually doing the editing or he would he did it first and then and then got someone overseas. Exactly.

Yep, yep. Yep. Or even even as folks in US and Canada doing it. Um, and there was enough profit margin that He then started reinvesting, you know, and said, I well, now I want to build now that I'm doing podcast hosting. He actually was in the podcast space. Someone says, I have this WordPress podcast plugin for podcast hosting on WordPress, and I want someone to kind of adopt it type thing. Since he was doing something in public, they approached him. He bought it for not very much money. And then he built the entire, you know, what again is a Seven figure business. He's raised, you know, three aside from us, he's raised three quarters of a million dollars and it's grown fast. So that's the other way to do it is like

I even I was a developer and I had to do it nights and weekends too, you know, and I was pulling money away from the day job. For the agency and devo and hiring a develop developer. What what's the best way to do that? Do a lot of these folks like A lot like When I was starting, everyone said like, Oh, just go on O Desk and hire someone in India to do it and I'm like, I don't know, man, that doesn't sound like I can like Like you can really Yeah. So like what you're tough.

What what what are there any agencies that you like or for hiring devs? Are you hiring someone by the hour in America? What what's what do you typically see? Yeah, I typically see I see a lot of people going either fr through referrals, like you get into a community

um MicroConf Connect or Indie Hackers or Whatever, dynamite circle, and you ask and you say, Who has used someone whom you trust? Right. So you try to get that referral. It's not just a a flat look because going to Upwork, which used to be Odesk. is kind of a shit show these days. The other thing is there are now these

Referral services aggregators? There's one called trust shoring. Which is run by a guy who attends MicroCroft, but he basically knows a bunch of Eastern European dev agencies. And if you come to him and say I wanna build an IOS app. He'll say cool, I have these Three agencies that I that I refer to. He's almost like a broker in a way, but like he's a good dude and he knows them, you know, and so he and he's vetted them. And then there's one called Cloud Devs.

dot com and they do the similar thing for Latin America. And so the next do you like Tot Tel? Or anything like that. Top towels. Good.

Um Right,'cause I think it's under fifty an hour, so it depends on budget and all that if you're s if you're scraping by. I haven't used Top Town but I've had friends use it and I heard quality was really good in the early days and of course like anything. It gets you know less and less, but Um, that's certainly something you could try too. How much would you budget to create an MVP?

It depends on what it is. You're talking like a SAS app? Here's the other thing, man. If you're if you are non technical and you've never started a startup before, I would say don't build a SaaS app. It's too hard. Like go, I have this thing called the stair step approach to bootstrapping, which is like start small with like a WordPress plugin, a HubSpot add on, a Salesforce add on, a Heroku add-on, and go build that, cut your teeth at it. It's way less expensive, way harder to maintain, and way easier to maintain. You get the experience, you get some revenue. Then Grow it to enough that you can buy out just buy out your day job.

eight grand eight grand a month, maybe ten grand a month, then and now you have experience you can double down and Um do it. It is awesome. Question of building an MVP of a SaaS app.

Ten to thirty grand. Hard to throw it out. But and you think a non technical person could actually maintain that and understand what's going on? Well, no, then you'd need to have that agency sticker. That's where I'm saying if you're non technical Um

You either need some money, I mean this is why folks you build it. And you're you pre sell it. Y you get to the point where there's enough revenue that you can then justify you know raising funding, right? If you're if you're not technical. Or you have a side job that's uh

Putting money into it. Well, thanks for coming and and talking about this. I uh you you have a good view of what's going on in in this space. I think it's badass. What you think? Yeah, that was great. Thanks so much for coming on, Rob. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. So good. This is awesome. Um do you want to give a pitch? Where what where do you people follow you most? So I'm on Twitter at Rob Walling.

And frankly, they listen to this podcast, they Would probably like startups for the rest of us. It's more focused on, you know, Sass and startups, but thirty five minutes every week for five hundred and ninety episodes. That's badass. I'm I'm a fan. I've been listening to you for a long time. Almost ten years, it feels like.

Thank you. This is awesome. Thanks for coming. Thanks so much, Sam. Boom. That's it.

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