Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.
Justin:
Hey. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020. Trying to show you what it's really like to do this. And, this week, I've got a great guest for you, Ian Landsman, who's been building software businesses since 2004 when he launched helpspot.com.
Justin:
And back then, that was installed on location software. And then 5 years ago, they released a SaaS version of that. So he's kind of done it all. He is full of wisdom and is also just entertaining to talk to you. I think you're gonna enjoy it.
Justin:
Here's Ian and I talking business.
Speaker 2:
One that pops in my head, I don't think I've ever told this story. Just like a long time ago. So I just launched HubSpot. So this is, like, 2,005. It was, like, right when I launched it.
Speaker 2:
And I had been hanging out on, like, the Joel Spolsky, like Joel on forums. Mhmm. Joel on software forums. Yeah. And so Joel you know, now I'm, like, so old.
Speaker 2:
Like, these are, like, old guys now. So I don't know. People might not even know who these people are. But, anyway, so Spolsky had his partner, Michael Prior, and Michael invited me down to have dinner with them because they're in New York City. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And so I go have dinner, and I'm like, the these are my these are my 37 signals. Like, this is it. Like, and Pryor is unbelievable. Like, inviting me to dinner. This is fantastic.
Speaker 2:
So I go down there. I go to their offices. It's New York City. It's fancy. It's like I mean, their offices weren't super fancy at the time, but they were nicer than my office.
Speaker 2:
Right? It's like a it's a, you know, nice office. And, may Michael actually gave me this tip about how to handle your bank accounts, which I still use to this day. Like, the whole thing is great. And then we go to dinner, and it's just, like, the most obvious thing in the world that Spolsky has no interest in me at all and is super fucking pissed off that he's been required to go to his dinner by Michael.
Speaker 2:
So I had to sit through this extremely uncomfortable dinner with Spolsky like, can I get the fuck out of here? I went away from this dude. And so, like, I was like, There's, like, a dose of reality about, like, your heroes. So so then I was Some of
Justin:
them some of them aren't. What I mean, who knows? He he could have had an off day
Speaker 2:
or whatever. Right. But so anyway yeah. So then you're like, oh, these are just, like, real like, even if it's just an off day. Right?
Speaker 2:
Like Yeah. He he's just a normal person who either he's a normal person who's a jerk or he's a normal person who had a bad day, and he's totally a nice person, whatever it is. But either way, he's just like a normal dude, and there's not actually anything that special about him per se.
Justin:
Yes. Yeah. Exactly. What what was the tip about bank accounts that you still use?
Speaker 2:
So I had, we people wanted to buy with bank transfers. Yes. Europeans, especially in stuff. And
Justin:
I had
Speaker 2:
no idea, like, even how to do them or and the thing with the bank transfer is, like, they can like, there's nothing really stopping them from pulling the money the other direction. Like, I guess there's theoretically there's not, like, really authentication on it. Like, if you have the transfer information, you can at least in theory initiate a transfer out. I think now maybe there's some more controls on it. But Okay.
Speaker 2:
It was like a it was like a dangerous situation back in the day, especially for this, like, work you know, it's a system built for, like, big institutions to transfer money that now, like, every random schmo is like, let me send you $3 on, and it didn't really have a lot of security around it as much as 10 years ago. So I was asking him about this, and he said what they did was they have a second bank account. And as soon as they get transferred, they move the money, like, instantly which nobody has the transfer information. So they leave the transfer account empty, essentially. And then we still basically do that.
Speaker 2:
Like
Justin:
That's a total hacker move right there.
Speaker 2:
Right. So I don't even know if it's still applicable anymore, but and a lot of SaaS apps don't do transfers anymore. Yeah. We do. But
Justin:
So so you've been doing SaaS for 15 years?
Speaker 2:
No. What not technically. HelpSpot was on premise, and then it only we it 5 years ago.
Justin:
Okay. So you're still you're still, like you're you're still pretty new to the SaaS game.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I mean, this is I mean, this was a decision I it's very it's sort of interesting. And I literally remember thinking about this because I was building HealthSpa, and I was like, should this be hosted like Basecamp is? Like, where I just put it on a server. Because basically, like, 6 months before help spot or something.
Justin:
Yeah. And you're like, fuck those guys. I hate them.
Speaker 2:
Wasn't as passionate about them then, but,
Justin:
I
Speaker 2:
was just like, you know, I don't know a damn thing about running a server. And, like, I I mean, we had a couple servers. Like, I physically owned servers that I sent to a colocation, and they ran, like, the HubSpot website and stuff. And I was like, I don't think, like, I'm capable of doing this. Like, because, you know, back then, there was no web frameworks.
Speaker 2:
There's no AWS. There's no nothing. Yeah. So it's like buy a bunch of servers and put them on a rack somewhere. Well, that's not I don't know.
Speaker 2:
Like, I don't know if I can do that. So I didn't do it. And then so you always wonder, like, maybe HubSpot would have been Zendesk. Like, HubSpot could have been Zendesk. But I, you know, I also think the more likely outcome is HubSpot is nothing, and I just work somewhere because, like, I couldn't keep the servers running and I hope it explodes.
Speaker 2:
Like, that's probably the real solution the real result. But,
Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. Because timing plays a big role in this. Right? Like, it's like some things just need to mature to a certain point before they're viable.
Justin:
And then it's like something kind of breaks free, and it's like, oh, wow. Like, now this is and some of these things are sick cyclical. Right? It's like, I mean, people are still referencing Gail Goodman's, talk from, you know, long slow SaaS ramp of death. But, like, who talks about constant contact anymore?
Justin:
You know? Like, I and I I mean, it's it's still out there, but, you know, back then, she was talking about email newsletter software. And now, you know, we got Substack. It's like a whole new generation, essentially the same thing with a little bit of extra sprinkled on top. But it's funny how like, to me, paid newsletters, the fact that that is a thing again.
Justin:
I remember Kevin Rose had a paid newsletter, like, a decade ago. You know? Like, it was a thing back then, and it kinda petered out. Wasn't really you know, didn't really work. And now all of a sudden, it's a thing again.
Justin:
Or, like, Ning. Ning was a way to create your own social network forum. Remember that? And it just, like, petered out. And now we have this new generation of circle and playgroup and all these new, like, online community things.
Justin:
And sometimes the timing is just right. And, you know, and and, you know, some things come in waves. Right? Like, there are some bands that were popular in the seventies, and then they had, like, a a real kinda dark period through, like, the eighties nineties. And then 2000, they pop back up, and all of a sudden it's, like, people wanna listen again.
Justin:
You know?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Or yeah. Like, we haven't even have we even have that same exact thing with HubSpot to some degree where it was like, HubSpot people are moving to HubSpot when they were getting rid of, like, these really old client server type help desk applications and, like, super old school type stuff. And then okay. So it's help thoughts on premise.
Speaker 2:
You put download it and put it on your own servers. Okay. Then, like, you have SaaS start to take off in, like, the late 2000 and Zendesk and all the other, you know, help desk apps, which are just SaaS only. And then it's like, oh my god. Everybody's going to SaaS.
Speaker 2:
Right? Okay. So they're going to SaaS. But then we had this whole other little round where people started to come back to the on premise because, like, then they got worried about security of the SaaS. And then you had people, like, coming back to, like, well, we were SaaS, but now we wanna host ourselves again.
Speaker 2:
And now it's kinda gone back the other way where most everybody is again choosing the SaaS version of HubSpot now at this point. But there are still some on premise, new customers, I mean. But, yeah, like, even within just this one industry, it's been, like, this wave of, like, oh, we're all going to the cloud. Oh, wait. Some of us don't wanna be on the cloud because we're like a hospital and, like, the cloud's kinda iffy and the security is not great, and they don't have it all figured out.
Speaker 2:
And now we're getting away from the cloud, and then now we're going back to the cloud because it's kinda more figured out and
Justin:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Stuff like that. So, yeah. It's kinda interesting to ride the wave for
Justin:
It's it's it's all waves, man. It's all about catching waves. That's the and then I mean, this is the scary part for me is wondering how long is the wave going to last. Do you think do you think about
Speaker 2:
that at all? Like, does that still worry you? It does worry me. Yeah. I mean, there's always I because there's all the different types of waves.
Speaker 2:
It's like, I don't think anybody's gonna stop answering email in my lifetime. So I'm not, like, worried about do companies need to answer email because I think they will. But, you know, like, obviously, like, somebody could come up with something. Like, for a while, I was like, oh, is, is intercom, like, the only way anybody's gonna do customer service? Like, is it just gonna be a widget in a web page, and that's gonna mostly take over with emails, like, just in second, which it didn't and it hasn't.
Speaker 2:
Like, I mean, I think it takes over a very a particular use case. It could be a a pure SaaS app, like Intercom might be a better choice than pure email, but that's, like, whatever. What is that 1% less than 1% of all businesses or whatever. You know, everybody else is still dealing with email and forms on websites.
Justin:
So,
Speaker 2:
so, yeah, you have, like, all that kind of stuff that goes
Justin:
Do you think it's competition mostly for you? Because that's what worries me.
Speaker 2:
Like Competition for sure.
Justin:
Like, Spotify petrifies me because I'm not because I'm not naive. I know that for the user, you know, most of them don't care about open, you know, open, protocols like RSaaS. Most of them don't care. Like, people will always find the cheapest, easiest thing that gives them what they want. And so if, you know, Apple Podcasts loses a ton of market share and Spotify can offer a one stop shop for creating a podcast, like recording it and then hosting it and then inserting ads into it and distributing it to millions of Spotify users, I can see that, yeah, objectively, podcasters just wanna go where they're they can accomplish all those things and, and get their audio out or whatever the job to be done is.
Justin:
Right?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I mean, I think that well, part of the thing for me, the fear of that kind of thing is also just that as us this is one of the real I mean, the bootstrapper circles, we spend a lot of time primarily talking about the advantages of being small and things like that. Mhmm. But I think with this kind of thing we're talking about, it's one of the real disadvantages. It's just that when you have to like, if the market moves a little bit and you have to move, like, it's like when I started HubSpot, it's like, okay.
Speaker 2:
Then SaaS became a thing, like, 3 or 4 years later. But it took me, like, 4 years after that or 5 years to actually do it for us because, okay, once you have customers and they're paying you and they have demands and they want the thing you make right now, like, there's just not a lot of time and money and resources and energy to move to where the market might want you to be. Mhmm.
Justin:
You you
Speaker 2:
know, or where the future is in that market. Right? So it's like, you know, so we we hired somebody, and they worked on it. Like, this was, like, the guy's whole job for, like, a year was to do this thing and get us cloudified and stuff, and it's like but that all had to happen. There had to be bandwidth to do that.
Speaker 2:
You had to you know, we took a couple of detours down other paths, which probably would have been better spent just making HealthSpark, you know, SaaSified. So, like, you have all these little things that even just one misstep for a bootstrapper takes, like, 2 years to recover from. It's not like a big company where it says, oh, I have 2 teams working simultaneously on different things, or we can just throw a bunch of money at this and recover quickly from our misstep. Like
Justin:
Mhmm.
Speaker 2:
They're just kind of so that's the part where it's like, it's like the you might see something coming, like, you know, even with what you're talking about. Like, okay. Maybe you see spot of if you determine, like, Spotify is really a serious threat, like, it's hard for you to move now that you have customers, and they like Mhmm. What you're offering. And they don't want you to do something else or make these changes that you feel like you might have to make.
Speaker 2:
And, you you know, it's only the 2 of you guys. So how much time is there to make big changes? And all those type of things start to factor in. So
Justin:
So how how do you hedge your bets?
Speaker 2:
I've never I haven't done a very good job at hedging the bets. I mean, we've we've, we've tried building a couple different products. None of them have been nearly as successful as HelpSpot. So there's not a lot of hedging. I mean, the hedging is sort of like, it's almost like where you have to bake in the hedging to having a good idea and being in the right market.
Speaker 2:
Like, that's the hedge. Like, people are gonna have to always answer email.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Speaker 2:
We, like, for us, like, it's on premise, and literally nobody makes on premise help desk software anymore. So there's, like, a subgroup of our customers that will that have a very limited pool of options. They don't want to have it SaaSified, if they really wanna host their own help desk software. So that's a plus for us. Right?
Speaker 2:
So that's a sum sub percentage of our customers. We if we lost everybody else to Zendesk and Help Scout and whatever else, like, these half of our customers just wouldn't do that because they don't want that.
Justin:
So
Speaker 2:
that's, like, part of the hedge. We we don't lose all those customers to those other competitors right now, which is good. But, you know, if, you know, there's that aspect of it. The idea itself, like, our interfaces, you know, I think you count differences like that. Like, I think it's probably similar for you as well.
Speaker 2:
Like, 80% of what we provide is exactly the same as what everybody else provides. Like, I think it's a total 80 20 situation. Like, if you go through all the help desk apps, they all do the same thing. If you go through all the podcast hosting apps, they all do the same thing. And then it's like, well, what's the 20% that you do that makes the interface different just so somebody understands it more and yours clicks more with a certain type of person than with somebody else.
Speaker 2:
Or you have that one weirdo niche feature, which is really useful for a certain group of people that some Spotify is not gonna build because they don't they only care about the huge numbers. They don't care about these 20,000 people who want this niche thing, which is a giant business to you, and it's completely irrelevant to them. You know, coming up with those little differences and then being able to explain that you have those differences is a whole another challenge. But, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Those kind of things.
Justin:
This is completely unfair, but I think it could be kind of fun. Let's let's prognosticate on how we think our friends should hedge their businesses.
Speaker 2:
Oh, there. There we go. I like this idea.
Justin:
Let's start with, Ben and Tupel. What do you think they should be doing to hedge their business?
Speaker 2:
Yes. See, I mean, so they're so early that I guess I don't think that there's anything they could do. I feel like they just have to, like, keep moving forward on the path they're on. You know what I mean? Like, they're doing well.
Speaker 2:
Mhmm.
Justin:
I don't know.
Speaker 2:
Like, what could you like, right now to try to, like, actively try to hedge it would seem like a bad idea just because what are they gonna do? I mean, I guess the only thing I would say is could you the most obvious thing to me would be, okay, you have this technology for, like, sharing these screens in a really cool seamless manner. Like, what are other markets that might use that other than dev geeks? And then could you, you know, without too much work, start to, like, approach that market for whatever. I don't know whatever other groups that might need that type of thing, but then you could have, like, maybe it's a separately branded product, but it's just the same infrastructure or whatever and gives you that hedge of, like, a second market besides devs in case GitHub comes out with awesome, you know, pair programming video tomorrow and Mhmm.
Speaker 2:
Then maybe you're in bad shape, you could have that hedge there. There. That would be, like, an obvious one. But something that doesn't take them too like, I don't think that they would wanna do, like, a whole new product. Like, I think they'd wanna do a whole new product in quotes where it's, like, the same product repackaged or something along those lines anyway.
Justin:
Yeah. How much of hedging do you think is because there's different ways to hedge. Like like, Jason and David hedged their bets because they took money from Bezos. And ever since then, I think every like, every bootstrapper would take that deal. That's just an incredible deal.
Justin:
Like, the to to to be like because the the the fear for me is I'm now I'm not getting that deal, and I'm I mean, actually, if someone's out there right now and wants to give me that deal.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Same for me. If you're out there and you wanna give me 1,000,000 of dollars and never have any say and get, like, a tiny percentage of my company, then I am all for the deal. Come get it.
Justin:
Do it. Yeah. Like, the so the the fear I wonder if you still have this fear too is I haven't yet socked away enough money that I feel secure. And, I mean, that's one way to hedge is if you can sock away a bunch of money. If you have a couple $1,000,000 in a bank account, then that's your hedge right there is yeah.
Justin:
When this runs out. But I'm still early enough that, you know, I I just I just paid off my line of credit. I'm starting to save up money again. Like, I spent all my money raising kids and starting businesses. So now I'm finally in one that makes something, and it's like, okay.
Justin:
And I'm 40. So I know, like, okay. I gotta gotta pump up that retirement savings account. Gotta do all that stuff. But there's always this feeling of, damn, I wish there was a way of, like, cheaply going public or if, like, I could actually crowdfund and actually pull in more than a 100,000.
Justin:
Like, to to actually be able to take some money out of this company because the cash flow's nice, but there's always the uncertainty.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I mean, you have, like I mean, one interesting thing Jordan Gahl talked about in their podcast was, like, literally hedging scale. I don't think he's actually even doing it, but just the idea of, like, well yeah. Like, if I bought options against, like, Zendesk, then, like, I would sort, like, help desk software space. Right?
Speaker 2:
And Yeah. Like, from some massive downturn anyway, like, in terms of the the market as a whole. Like, obviously, not for we use something wrong or HelpSpot specifically, but that's sort of an interesting idea. Definitely, you have the idea of, like, you have a successful business now. Like, you could just sell it and lock in the money.
Speaker 2:
Right? Like, you could sell it, lock in whatever it's worth. Right? You're a 3, 4, 6 x, whatever
Justin:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
That you get. And since it's growing strong, you'd probably be at the higher end of that range, and you sell it. And bam. Like, then you build the next thing. My only thing with that is that just for in my experience with other people have done this successfully.
Speaker 2:
I have not yet. It is a goal of mine to have a second really successful product, but at at some point but I have not. So that's always in the back of my head. Like, well, I have this really successful product. Like, oh, I could sell it, but then there's no guarantee that there's another really successful product on the other side of that.
Speaker 2:
And the amount of money I would make from it is definitely not like I would feel totally comfortable not working the rest of my life. Like, that's definitely I would not feel that way for sure. So
Justin:
Mhmm. So
Speaker 2:
then that's like so then it's like, okay. I have this thing that regularly makes what anybody would consider a very good amount of money. Yeah. And, you know, that that's not to be trifled with in terms of, like there are reasons to sell and everything, but that is valuable and also something that isn't necessarily repeatable. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So it's always on the back of my mind there is that, hey. Like, once you get to a certain point, it's like, yeah. This is maybe it's not always interesting because you've been doing it for a long time, or maybe it's the market gets a little scary or whatever, or maybe they go down for a year or 2 and things like that. That's not necessarily the end of the world. It could be it could be worse.
Speaker 2:
You could suck at this and then not have enough money. 10 years from now, you're in a job, like, that you hate Yeah. Because you sold your business that was doing just fine, and maybe it wasn't optimal, but you were like, well, I'm just locking it in. But then there wasn't actually anything better on the other side of that. So
Justin:
Yeah. And it it it's interesting that no matter who you are well, maybe someone eventually gets out of this. But, like like, Adam Wavin still worries about whether he's gonna be able to keep earning revenue off of the Tailwind ecosystem. And I look at him from the outside, and I go, what what are you talking about? Like, that is that is blowing up, and you've got a healthy amount in your bank account.
Justin:
Like, that is but he worries about it too.
Speaker 2:
And This is something that is not nobody talked about it when I was coming up, and, basically, nobody even talked about it now, which is that when you have a, like, somewhat successful product and at least in the software space, I don't hear many people talk about it. It's, like, just the, like, whole, like, financial, just smart financing of your personal finances when you, like, don't have that much money, and then you come into, you know, a good amount more money. Yeah. And you just spend right up to that good amount more money. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Like, whether it's on the business, whether it's personally, whether it's you paid off this, you bought a new house, you got a kid in school, you got all this stuff.
Justin:
I'm in I'm in this phase right now. I I have a kid in private school. I just bought a new car, and we just bought a new house.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So everybody spends to their means, like, by default. You know what I mean? And so, I think that there's not, like, the financial sort of literacy just in our society. Right?
Speaker 2:
Like, that's what society is pushing you to do your whole life is, like Mhmm. Get a better job so you can buy more stuff and do more stuff and all this. Yeah. So it took me a while to kinda, like, yeah, deal with that. Like, oh, maybe we shouldn't spend all the way to every dollar that we possibly could in some way or other.
Justin:
And Mhmm.
Speaker 2:
So, yeah, I think that there's just that that that is there, and then that worries there because you know you're spending more. Even if, like, yeah, he's doing very well. I'm I'm sure he's not necessarily spending up to what he's bringing in at this moment, but you still know you're spending more than you used to. And, you know, that worry is there that as that lifestyle creeps up like that
Justin:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
You know, if if it does go down a little bit, like, are you gonna have to fire people? All those kind of things.
Justin:
Adam I mean, this is the advantage of one time sales is if you hit oil, if you hit a geyser, then you get all of the upfront value of that thing now, and you can sock it away. And this is like the the this idea of market and volume. Like, Adam and I were selling the same thing. I had a course for developers, and he has a course for developers. But his did way better than mine.
Justin:
And the volume matters a lot in terms of even hitting, even hitting a level where you have enough margin in your life that, you know, just like having a bunch of money in a bank account is life giving in of itself. And, I mean, I can see, like, in one time sales, the worry is always, like, when is this going to die out? And there still seems to be lots of demand for things in Tailwind ecosystem, I think I mean, he seems to be hedging his bets the right way, which is similar to what Taylor Otwell did did is when you own the framework and you can invest in the framework better than the competition. So Adam's Adam's competition is Bootstrap. If you if he's investing in Tailwind and building more cool stuff, cooler than Bootstrap is, and just keeps, like, doubling down on that, it's gonna be pretty hard, I think, as long as it continues to evolve.
Justin:
You know? Like
Speaker 2:
Well, that's where I always think, they both Adam and Taylor are very similar to me to 37 signals in that I don't necessarily find them to be very useful as examples for other people. Not in certain bits of their execution, they're extremely useful, and you should absolutely, like, copy what they're doing. But there's other parts where, like, just, like, build a huge audience as, like, the first thing of advice to give somebody is just such a hard like, that's it's that's way harder than build a successful SaaS app. Like, that's that's way harder to be like, I'm gonna build something with a 1000000 people who want to follow me and participate in it. Like, that's, like, that's I mean, HubSpot's had a couple 1,000 customers ever.
Speaker 2:
So, like, go build something that has millions of people interested in what you're doing is such an incredibly tall order, that and not even something they necessarily set out explicitly to do. You know, it's like a whole thing that's like so, yes, like, once you have a 1000000 people, you have a so much fun that's like having a big bank account full of money because I could find stuff to sell to this 1000000 people even if only a tiny percentage of them wanna buy it. Like, that's a huge, huge, unbelievable advantage. And now they have to still do a good job, which all three of those people have done of picking the right products, like picking products that work for those market. Like, that's they could have picked terrible products, and they would have made less money.
Speaker 2:
They would have sold so a good amount, but they would have made less money. So I think they're all really talented and have done a great job of those things. But as, like, advice for somebody who wants to get in the software, I don't know if it's not that useful to me to, like, build a a gigantic open source project that everybody loves. Like, that's like, okay. There's 10 of them on Earth.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. You know, we happen to know 3 of them personally. Okay. Great. Like, I don't know, like, how you do what you're gonna go get glean out of that for the other millions of people out there who wanna run the software companies.
Speaker 2:
But
Justin:
Yeah. I mean, I think one thing is it does help to be in motion in the right areas. You know? Like, and I think people can seek some of that out. It's like just being in motion, doing stuff, swimming in the right waters, you know, that that does help.
Justin:
And I've said a long time, like, the developer market is unlike any other market ever. Like, you couldn't even replicate that success in an adjacent market. Like, there's nothing like, there's no, group that is that that uniform, that accessible online, that incentivized financially, individually, and corporately to level themselves up. There's just, like, nothing really like that. And so are sort
Speaker 2:
of unique. Yeah. To even bring that many people on board, that that they can build these open source products that have a 1000000 people interested in them so quickly. I mean, in just a few years, with no money, no marketing, no anything. And just because the developer community can just spread an idea so quickly is and I'm not really one for selling some developers in general.
Speaker 2:
Like, I don't think that they're especially good market overall. But really but but when you get the right, when you get at them in the right angle, then they're obviously an amazing market.
Justin:
See, Ian, I think you need to revise this belief. I think you've got a holdover from the old the old crusty days. Yeah? It could
Speaker 2:
be. It could be.
Justin:
Because it changed. I I I mean, podcasters used to be a terrible market. They were, like, DIYers in their basement, wouldn't pay for a thing, and then the tide changed. And I felt it, and that was one of the reasons I was even interested in going after it because I was like, okay. Wait.
Justin:
Stuff is this is changing now. But I think develop like, right now, I if I had a fund, I would be investing in developer tools, developer frameworks, even what a young guy like Caleb Porzio has been able to do on his own, getting up to I I mean, he's making 6 figures on GitHub Sponsors. Right? Like But
Speaker 2:
it but isn't that showing but see, that's my point. Right? Like, so he's got, which is a may I love this GitHub sponsor is something that I've talked about forever. Like, when Taylor first worked at userscape, like, we talked about things like this. And there was some other things like, like, get tip or something was 1, but it just never GitHub doing it just made it all work seamlessly, which is what needed to happen.
Speaker 2:
But, like, he couldn't sell any of that software. He couldn't sell it for money. Like, it has to be this indirect. Right? And how many people are gonna be able to do that indirect?
Speaker 2:
For every Caleb, there's probably a zillion people making $5 on their GitHub repo. Right? So I I don't know.
Justin:
Yeah. But the but this is this is the thing about examples is people all like, I I give examples all the time to prove my theories. And then people say, well, those people are exceptional. And I say, yeah. Anybody who succeeds in business is exceptional, I think.
Justin:
Like, the the fact how many people have tried to build help software over the years? Like, you are sure. It's it's you better chances than winning the lottery, better chances than you being a star football player. But it's still you are one out of maybe I mean, who we don't even know. Like, because we just don't know, yeah, of people who have tried.
Justin:
There's people trying right now. There's people who have a target on your back right now that are hunting you.
Speaker 2:
My back. But, yeah, they're hunting other people. But, yeah, they might catch me in the crossfire.
Justin:
To me, even watching Caleb was interesting because I'm not technical enough to know if he's a good programmer or not or whatever. I saw him early on record a video about LiveWire, and I already felt like this guy's gonna be a success. I I don't know technically how good it is, but his enthusiasm, his being, like, passionate about it, you can just already kinda tell. It's like you know? And I shared it I I shared it with Adam, and he's like, yeah.
Justin:
That seems kinda interesting. And I'm like, no. I and now it's kind of come to fruition. You know? Like, you could the the you have to be exceptional.
Justin:
And so part of the the, idea is like, okay. Well, how do you get exceptional? And it's just like you gotta put in the repetitions. You got like, how are you gonna get better at surfing? Well, you gotta get in the water every day, and that's how it works.
Speaker 2:
There's also, I think, a a unique thread through all of these people. I mean, absolutely DHH, but also Taylor, Adam, and Caleb is they're all extremely talented, and that's gonna be hard for you to replicate in terms of advice, like be super smart. Right? Not whatever. I can't do anything with that advice.
Justin:
But Yeah.
Speaker 2:
What you can take from them is what they all do extremely well and exactly what you're talking about is share their ideas and and and implement their ideas in a way that is accessible. So, like, it's Kayla making a video that's interesting.
Justin:
So when you
Speaker 2:
watch it, you watch the whole thing and learn what the hell he's trying to get you to use. Or Yeah. Like, in Taylor's very early days of Laravel, like, he had just amazing documentation for this little unknown framework from some guy in Arkansas. Yeah. Like, the documentation was amazing.
Speaker 2:
That's when I reached out to us after I read the Laravel documentation. I was like, this is like, this is exactly what I want, and I knew it's what I wanted because I understood that it was, like, clearly written. You could see it had everything you wanted. Like so whereas, you know, we're talking about software developers in particular here. Like, everybody wants to code the thing, But then what happens after you code the thing is what makes you into Taylor or DHH.
Speaker 2:
Like, great documentation, getting on videos and podcasts and whatever to express your ideas. Like, I mean, market essentially marketing.
Justin:
Yes. Well, even, like, Ruby on Rails is a great brand. It's just a great brand. It it it it's like I you instantly get what this thing is. It's like it's like if you're trying to explain it to somebody, you're like, well, there's programming languages, but this kinda, like, puts it on the rails.
Justin:
Like, it makes helps you move faster. And there's constraints within it, but it just helps you build what you wanna build faster. And you can kinda feel it already. So, yeah, I yeah. I think that's a good,
Speaker 2:
That's something anybody can do. Like, if I build something, get out there and and write concisely about it and document it fully. And those are things that you could just do. You don't even have to be that smart to do those things. Right?
Speaker 2:
That but you have to have the will to do them as opposed to, like, go in and add a feature.
Justin:
Mhmm.
Speaker 2:
Like, that's right? And a lot of people wanna go add that feature. And, listen. I'm a guy who wants to go add the feature. Like, well, I wanna just build this.
Speaker 2:
So I like building software. I like the creativity of it. I like being in there, thinking deeply about the problems. I have very little interest in marketing, in updating the website, in writing documentation. I am totally one of those people.
Speaker 2:
So I this my story is a little more about timing. Like, there wasn't, like, not a lot of competition for what we had when I started. Like, now we have a domain that's 15 years old that ranks for good terms at least reasonably. So, like, we can, like, we could be doing a lot better if I was interested in marketing, but I'm not that interested in marketing. So, you know, we do fine and well enough for me, and I'm happy with it.
Speaker 2:
But there's no doubt we could be 5 times bigger if I was more marketing oriented. But, yeah. So, I mean, so you're taking advice from somebody who knows. I I'm totally not like those guys. Like, I'm not like Adam.
Speaker 2:
I'm not doing a 1,000,000 screencasts about Tailwind and all the awesome stuff you can do. Like, I'm not I'm not that guy. Yeah. But you should probably aim to be that guy because that guy is the guy who gets out there and gets mindshare.
Justin:
Yes. I mean, if that's if that's you. Yeah. I mean, my what helped me after years of trying to do stuff on my own and being convinced that I would just have to be, you know, somebody who could do it all. And, Justin, you gotta teach yourself how to actual actually program something because, you know, you're never gonna make it, was teaming up with somebody who's just amazing at those things.
Justin:
Like, I've had other partnerships in the past and they didn't feel like this. There's a lot more risk. Like, it's like being married to someone. It could go it could go shitty any day. But that feeling of being like, teaming up with somebody and just their efforts multiplying your efforts and your efforts multiplying their efforts, that I've never felt anything like this before in my life.
Justin:
Like, it is, incredible. And I meet a lot of developers now. I really wanted to get talked to you about, about how software is all about volume. We might have to save this for, like, another episode. There's a lot of, like, really talented people I look at that are building stuff, and I go, man, like, if you teamed up with someone like me, that would be a business.
Justin:
And now I just now that I've felt it before, like, it's just like I can see how I could augment other folks. And I think I don't know. Like, it actually makes me wonder something I've been throwing around the idea this is gonna sound terrible. If if you really are someone who judges me, just stop listening. I don't think it's really terrible, but, like, thinking about, like, team sports and their draft, you know, I sometimes wonder if there's, like, an equivalent of draft in tech where so like, you and I have now we have some time and we have some money.
Justin:
How can we get some young talent in our draft that have the potential, and, you know, like, the the biggest obstacle in anybody's career or definitely starting a business is that you're gonna you're gonna go broke or you're gonna get broken. Right? And I don't know. There's just something about this idea of, like, I wonder if because now I'm trying to think of how am I going to invest my money. And to me, there's just nothing compares to investing in tech products that like like, transistor is my best investment by far.
Justin:
Like, doesn't even compare. Like, you know, like, maybe if I put 5,000 into Apple, like, 10 years ago. But, like, that so I just keep thinking about that is there's all this talent, and I wonder if there's a way of investing in that now in the same way that a sports team says, okay, rookie. We're gonna we're gonna, you know, put you on I don't know. I don't know what it looks like.
Speaker 2:
It's still hard for tech talent to connect with technical marketing talent. Like, that's you just have to like, the worlds aren't really have a lot of touch points, and so you end up with a lot of, like, developers looking for technical marketing type people, and then you have technical marketing type people who are stuck working in some big company because they don't know any, like, developers to, like, start a software company with or whatever.
Justin:
And Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So there is something there about, like, if there if it was easier somehow to make those connections, it certainly being interesting. And I'm not I've never been a big one on partnerships, but only because I think they're at a lot of risk to me. But there's no doubt that when you have a good partnership, it's way better. Like, a good partnership is way, way better than being on your own. It's not even close.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So if you can find the right person, then that's just amazing. So I find the right person so hard and people end up like it's like a marriage. Like, well, I just settled for this rando because I needed a programmer. And now, like, low and behold, a year later, the Rando sucks.
Speaker 2:
And this my great idea, which might be a very good idea, is now, like, ruined because I'm in married to this Rando.
Justin:
I'm I'm
Speaker 2:
in bed with a Rando. Right.
Justin:
I'm in
Speaker 2:
bed with a Rando, and so that's, like, a really risky proposition. But, yeah, if if it's a good combination, then, obviously, it's a multi huge multiplier over trying to do stuff yourself.
Justin:
Well, this is definitely like, if you see what, like, what Adam did with Steve was interesting because Adam was already having success, but it was almost like he drafted Steve. Like, he saw something in Steve that made him say this is worth partnering up with. Steve had, like, no Twitter followers. Like, there was, like and then there was but there was the potential. And I wonder if there's a way to to scale that.
Justin:
I guess this is kind of what, like, investors do and VCs do and accelerators is there they think they've got the ability to recognize talent and invest in it before, you know, somebody else discovers that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I do think that's where, like, you see, you know, software companies by being started by the same people over and over. Because the once you get in that pool, well, now you do have access to people making connections for you and, hey. You should meet this person, and there is that whole buddy system that I think really helps. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Like, stuff like, I think of you know, as somebody who's looked at a lot of resumes over the years, I think the issue is, like, there's a it's what you're talking about with, like, some type of business idea like that is that there's a lot of just randos. Like, everybody's gonna say, yeah. I wanna be a part of that. But, like, who's actually the cream of that crop on both sides of that? And, like, that's a huge talent right there, like, distilling that down.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Like and then you need the okay. Then you have your 2 groups and you try to put them together. And then then you have all those just interpersonal. Does this work interpersonally and all that kind of stuff?
Justin:
Yeah. Have you invested in any companies?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I've done I haven't done too much, like, really, like, sort of well, I guess, let's see. I probably invested, like, 6 companies or something overall. So far, most of them have been duds. One of them is one of them is going okay.
Speaker 2:
I don't know if it's gonna we're gonna make me any money. One of them is Calm, which is, like, that meditation app, which is
Justin:
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:
I put, like, $1,000 into that. And I don't know. Last statement they sent me was, like, it's worth, like, a $140,000 or something like that, but I don't know. But I haven't gotten it. I've gotten, like, $4,000 in cash from it, so we'll see if I ever make any actual money.
Speaker 2:
But, yeah, the other stuff just went to nothing. Like, I did, like, one with the person I knew, one with with Sue on, like, AngelList, one of which is, like, still around, 2 of which are gone, just nothing. Buff buffer. I've invested a few bucks in buffer, which is still around, but I don't think, like, at the point I invested in it, like, I don't think it's actually any more valuable than that, so I don't think it's really worth anything.
Justin:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So a few things here and there. By the way, they put a lot of energy into it, so it was kind of miss misguided, I think, in general.
Justin:
I mean I think
Speaker 2:
it's State First. Like, my only big investment right now is Cloudflare. Like, I think that's, like, I think that's really I feel like this is a huge advantage people have. And if you work in tech, it's like you know the awesome tech startups. Even after they go public, like, you still have a huge advantage.
Speaker 2:
Like, the rest of the market has no idea how amazing Cloudflare is. So you know how amazing Cloudflare is. Yeah. So you could still get in on a much less risky basis than risk than, you know, an angel list or some guy you know who needs $10. Like Mhmm.
Speaker 2:
Investing in public company Cloudflare is a 1000 times less risky, and you have an extreme knowledge advantage over the average investor in this particular area. So I think there is a lot of value in technologists just focusing on, like, who are the new public companies or the up and coming companies that I know I use. I know people who use it. We're all excited about it in the geekosphere because we all communicate so quickly, and that information doesn't make it out to the rest of the world for another year or 2. So now I have this asymmetric advantage there even with a public company, as opposed to, like, the riskier kind of startup scene and all that.
Speaker 2:
But
Justin:
Yeah. It
Speaker 2:
is fun. I mean, I like the idea of investing in startups. Like, I would certainly like, if I ever sold for enough money to do that, like, I would love to just, like, meet with founders and, of course, that's like a dream job. I would totally love to do it.
Justin:
But Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
If you're if you're bankrolled for it, I think it's it's good. But
Justin:
Exactly. Well, this is fun, man. I I, I'm gonna I think I'm gonna publish this on the build your SaaS feed, but I think we should do another one and talk about why software is all about volume. Because that was like what I had in my head, but we gotta we gotta do a follow-up. So everybody, you gotta follow you gotta follow uncle Ian Landsman on Twitter.
Justin:
Ian Landsman is his Twitter handle. And, yeah, go check out UserScape, Helpspot, Laravel Jobs, Laravel Online. Look at you. You're running all sorts of you've hedged your bets.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I mean, we got some stuff. Definitely, like, Laravel Jobs has done really well, and we run Laravel conferences, which do well. So, I mean, yeah, I'm not gonna starve or anything here.
Justin:
Hope you enjoyed that chat with Ian. Definitely going to have him back to talk about a bunch of other stuff. Right now, I want to thank our Patreon supporters. Take It EV Podcast, Ethan Gunderson, Sofia Quintero, Diogo, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Boria Solaire, Ward Sandler, Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evandro Sasse, Pradyuma Schembecker, Noah, Prales, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sitt for Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, Dan Buda, Darby Frey, Samori, Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada Canada. Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam DuVander, Dave Junta, and Kyle Fox at get rewardful.com.
