What ACTUALLY Happens After You Launch Your Startup with Claus Enevoldsen

Speaker A: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Founder Chats. I'm Andrea delanquel, Content Marketing manager at BARE Metrics, and today's guest is Klaus Enevoltson, a product leader who helped scale Flipboard to 145 million users and is now back at square one building lcai, an AI platform built specifically for solo e commerce founders. We actually recorded this two days after Claus launched into public beta. So it's a pretty candid look at what that moment feels like. If you're a founder, there's a lot here for you. How to find and recruit co designers before you have a product, why niching down is your biggest competitive advantage early on, and what you take with you when you go from massive scale back to zero. Let's get into it.

Speaker B: Clous. Like I mentioned, thank you so much for joining Founder Chats today. Really excited to jump into your background at Flipboard and also into the current launch. Uh, for our listeners out there, I mentioned that, that you are day two post launch of LC AI. You've put yourself out there with this venture studio that is essentially a home for builders and really that's where you want to see yourself moving forward. You're building LC AI out there into the public, uh, it moved into that public beta phase yesterday. Can you tell me a little bit about the last 24 hours? How's that been from launch to now?

Speaker C: I mean it's, it's always exhilarating when you, when you launch something, whether it's small, big, new or an optimization, because you finally get some feedback. So there's just been a lead up which is the anticipation and it's like get to like a go, no go. But then the last 24 hours has been looking at data and getting feedback and it's like, what are people saying? And uh, what's good, what's bad, what's not working? Did something break? We've sort of been in that mode and we will be for quite a while.

Speaker B: Yeah, interesting. And I guess you mentioned, um, it says on the website co designed with solo e commerce entrepreneurs. You mentioned there you're now in that sort of feedback phase, that feedback cycle. What did you use to help you build your roadmap and that, that, you know, MVP or that version one, if not the feedback of current customers, how did you start to find that? Because that's, that's often a question I address in our community chats is, you know, how do I know I'm building the right thing? That's kind of the sentiment of a lot of these, these These uh, chats. But how did you go about that if you were in a sort of a closed incubator?

Speaker C: Yeah. So we are part of 1848 Ventures which is like an incubator. It's a studio, venture studio where we are building different products and we have a mission behind 1848. Everything we we're building is for SMBs so small to medium sized businesses. So we have that as a principle but, but specifically for Elsie. Diving into that like step number one for us was to uh, start defining an ICP so uh, ideal customer profile and be really narrow and focused on that. Then from day one as we started going down this route it was like well I'm not the icp. Well actually I do have some of the same uh, traits myself because of my own website. But we need to go find somebody that lives this every day. Very early on, step number one was be very clear about who we uh, think is our ICP and then go recruit some uh, co designers to help us build this with them, listen to their pain points, find out what is it that they're experiencing in the day to day and how can we help them alleviate some of their pain points. It's been very important from day one. Even without a product and even without getting real customer feedback if you will.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's really interesting and I think um, that whole idea of building from a place of uh, of a user perspective as opposed to building for someone is super powerful. And I had Dave from Sub Magic on a few few months ago now and he had built a tool that allowed him to slice and dice his long form videos, uh, and caption them and then and, and make something valuable for him to be able to increase his rate of video production. And he showed it to a few people and they started wanting to use it as well. Right. And again he built it to solve his own problem for himself. Then he found this ICP circle around him and then all of a sudden it exploded. Right. I think there's no better way to build and I think um, I just came back from a conference up in Canada last week, SAS north and some of the chats I had with founders there. Really interesting point you make about getting very specific and very, very niche down to those requirements. I've noted a refreshing shift in that idea of being everything for everyone or building something very wide and understanding you need to get down to a niche and satisfy it really well. First that's been uh, it's always been a sentiment that people are trying to do but a Lot of people don't do it that well. I found what were some of your sort of guardrails in getting down into that niche. Like you mentioned that building for the people that are using it. But how did you sort of what was the pain in the initial stages that drove the first steps of innovation?

Speaker C: Well, so just a, uh, few words on why it's so important to go narrow.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Is I think the whole point of going narrow is that so you can hone in on a specific person's pain point. If you are solo, uh, E Commerce founder, your pain points are very different than even if you have a team of 10. Like I don't have a marketing department. If I'm a team of one. If I have a team of 10, I might have, uh, you know, one person. If I'm a team of 50, I might have a whole department. So that's really the whole reason for going really narrow. When we were thinking about this icp, like I said, it helps us, it has to align with our mission of 1848, but it allows us to have that focus. But another, uh, word that we use a lot is like, it allows us to find a wedge into a market.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, it doesn't mean that we will forever stay with uh, a very narrow focus. It just means what do we believe is our access point to the market? Where do we see where we can solve points that no others are doing? And maybe there are some competitors that are overlooking. And that also made the solo E Commerce founder very attractive because I think with AI products in general, a lot of SaaS companies, B2B SaaS, they solve for enterprise. And the solo founders are the ones that are uh, the last to benefit from this AI revolution we're going through. So I think those are some of the points. But I think your question was like, well, when how do we learn about what the MVP should be? Well, we had these conversations, right. And we quickly realized, almost seems like uh, an obvious. But it's like they're wearing 10 hats every single day. Right. And a quote that stands out for me in these early conversations was like, help me figure out what's next. Like help me figure out what I should do next. Because it's all the time for them. It's a privatization and a trade off conversation they have with themselves. So if we can help them with that, alleviate some of the tasks, but also help them prioritize what they should be doing, then we were on something.

Speaker B: Yeah, great. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and just um, harking Back to that idea of building for someone like one person in particular. One thing I found super powerful when I do talk to founders about that intelligence gathering about what to build, how to build is if you do have an icp and this comes down to how you break down your total addressable market right into, into segments. But if you have an icp, an ideal customer profile, you know, that might look like a company and it might be. We go after SMB in the e commerce space doing revenue of you know, up to 10 million in the greater US region utilizing these tech systems. That's great. But what you're talking about here I think and correct if I'm wrong, but if you can get down to I want to build a product for Klaus. Klaus is a product manager at this kind of company. His day to day includes doing these sort of tasks. He's expected to generate these kind of reports in order to provide the like getting down to that level of fidelity and providing a Persona to the ICP I think really helps founders zero in on that. That wedge that you mentioned, HubSpot did it back in the day right when they were starting to deviate between CRM and cms. They had, I think it was. There's a case study, I was like marketing Mary and um, customer Charles or something like that. Like they had these two Personas out there that they were trying to satisfy with their future builds and they came at a decision point when particularly in their pricing structure were they going to optimize for user seats or free. Free web hosting. I think it was right. So yeah, I love that idea and I think that's a great point for any, any aspiring founder out there is to get detailed, get detailed into who you're and start to make that mark really early. Yeah.

Speaker C: And also like it goes to like when you then go and you want to find your co designers, which basically means people that are helping you define your features. Like it's very um, I think your natural instinct is to go call on your network and your friends to help you out. And there's definitely value in that. I've had many of those conversations and if they have a good head on then they can give you good feedback, like just common sense feedback. But you uh, really have to be, be strong in saying that. No, I got to go find my ICP and figure out how you get them to be your co designer and persuade them to be on your team.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I guess the most power, uh, even again, harking back to my talk with Sub Magic, a Couple of Dave's first hires were his customers, early customers. So bringing his customers on board as staff members made that much, much easier as well. Right, that's, that's really cool. So I guess, um, class, back to your history of Flipboard. So we note that I think it was up to 145 million users. Um, with Flipboard, over time you've gone from this giant sort of behemoth of a client funnel down to a brand new launch. Uh, what are the, what are some of the lessons learned from having a company that you scaled to that big to coming back to bare bones, starting again? What are you going to try to implement this time around?

Speaker C: I mean, I think specific to like your question about big numbers versus small numbers. Like, well, the biggest difference is we just don't have the data. When you have millions of users, you have the luxury that you can do a lot of quant test, a B test, and you can just launch them and know in two days, was this a good idea? So a lot of that doesn't exist anymore. Whereas at Flipboard we were lining up a B test every week and multiple uh, ABCD tests. Uh, and so that whole thing has changed. Uh, when you go trying to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 1 is scrappy. It's hand to hand combat and you really appreciate moving the digits just single digit. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Can I just get one more today to try out my product? That's a success metric. Uh, and we celebrate it. Right. But I think another big theme Flipboard, to me was, um, between Flipboard and where and now I was also at another startup. So it's three, four years back I was at Flipboard. Well, we didn't have AI back then the way that we have now. Right. And I think that unlocks everything for startups. Like the game has changed, which makes it really exciting to be in a zero to one space because you have these superpowers, you can do a lot more with no people. And I think it should be encouraging for any startup founder that if you can leverage these products, you can go really far without having to worry about funding as much. You can bootstrap yourself and try out a bunch of things if you know how to leverage the tools.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100% and just harking back to that volume base. I think that's a really interesting point because I think to pioneers of experimentation like booking.com right. The amount of traffic they would have daily and they run thousands of experiments at any given time concurrently and they can adjust the most minor of Things like, uh, a, uh, certain. How they word a recommendation or how they were to review to incentivize different behavior. And so you're absolutely right. I think the time that the intelligence pool that you have with a larger customer base is far greater. But that's not to say you should avoid experimenting or testing with your current user base, even if it, as small as it may be, in order to continually optimize. Right. Because you'll still see those efficiencies. And like you say, it might not be as steep as 145 million, but if you're trying to increase your trial daily trials from 10 to 15, like, that's huge in the context of your current environment. Yes, that, that's really cool to hear. And I think your other point, um, around the tools we have available, uh, I, I'm the same. So I've been in SAS now for seven years thereabouts. And you know, I talk about my first experience, my first SaaS company. Like, why didn't have AI back then? Like, you sound like the, the old crew. Right. Even though we're not that far into it. But we used to have a fundamental principle across our sort of ecosystem of companies around sell to build. So that whole idea that at the end of a sales call I'm going to say, hey, Klaus, we're thinking about releasing sms. Um, is that a good idea? Like, would you use it? How much would you pay for it? How much, how value? How much value would you get from it? And you build this intelligence picture over time and you go, okay, great. I've now reached a threshold where I have dedicated MRR to this new feature. Hey, devs, go and spend the time and money to build it. And I think you're right. And we have this superpower now where we've almost flipped it on our head and I can release something really quickly with a very low impact on M my cogs, with a very low impact on my developer cost to see if it's going to work. And if it doesn't, then I throw it in the bin and the sunk cost is minimal. I don't know if you agree the same way. Yeah, but that's. I've had to make a conscious shift in the way I'm managing my team over the last two years to break that idea. Because I always say to them, show me the data. Right? You always want to see the data. Show me who wants this feature before I build it. Because it was always going to be a big lift. Now that lift is getting smaller and Smaller by the month it seems.

Speaker C: I mean some tangible examples of that is like I mean I'm sitting and I'm having fun and Lovable. Uh, that's my prototyping tool. Um, one of my colleagues, he uses Replit. Uh so we have uh, our own right. But it's very easy for us to build something that is pretty good and then uh, we either launch it as a public facing site that we can get real users to for free or we can take that and put it in front of user testing or something like that. Instead of years ago it would be uh, a prototype that you could click through and it would take our uh, designer a bunch of time to create. Like I can do it now and have a fully functioning prototype in no time.

Speaker B: So I've tried to coin this term micro uh, apps for marketing. Right in that we. So we bare metrics. We acquired a company a couple of years ago now called Flight, uh Path Finance which was a forecasting software and it directly integrates with Xero, builds these beautiful dashboards for you to model out your Runway, your burn rate, all that sort of good stuff in lovable. Now I've built apps in the last couple of months same as you. That's my playground at the moment. I built an app that could just use your Stripe API key and throw up some really cool dashboards. Right. Limited functionality but I did it in like a day. Um, I didn't have to go and acquire a bolt on for that to happen. Um, I built a max MRR calculator that shows you when your current churn rate will meet your current rate of new MRR M acquisition and show you your limit of like you either need to adjust these variables. I built a. We, we released SMS for our recover feature the other week. I built an SMS message generating tool where you can pick your tone, your branding guidelines and it will automatically generate SMS messages for your recovery workflows. This is, I'm a non technical CEO doing this. I'm not a developer. Right.

Speaker C: Um, yeah it's cool.

Speaker B: It's phenomenal the power we have at our hands now to be able to do things quickly. And if, and like I, like you said the reason I'm doing this is I'll test that on the public market and if it's valuable to enough people and I see enough traction I'll say hey devs, bring this into the product. Like bring it in and put it in where it's appropriate for all of our users. I really love that kind of uh, the place we're in at the moment is non technical founders to do that. Granted, if I try and get too tricky, the apps fall apart and I don't know how to fix them and I don't know how to dig beneath the hood too far, but it's okay for the top level stuff I'm trying to achieve. Um, yeah, I'm really excited to hear you're doing a similar thing. I like playing around in Lovable. I've played in um, uh, what was the other one we worked in Replete. Yeah, a couple of our guys have worked in Replete as well. Bolt, cursor, all the standard sort of coding tools as well. But the whole idea of low code app development through something like a lovable has been really cool. Uh, to see how that's gone.

Speaker C: And I think the other thing you're sort of pointing out is like you can use it for prototyping and get product feedback, but you could also use it as like lead magnets or lead generation tools. Right. And that's exactly what I mean.

Speaker B: People pushing it out there just to say, hey, this is what, this is our thought leadership around how you should calculate certain metrics. And it also allows me to sort of almost put out like freemium style features, uh, like in bare metrics, we'll, we'll ingest all of your revenue data from day one all the way through. So if you had a transaction back in 2013, we'll bring that in. I can build something that just shows you like your last months of data. Right. Last one month. Because it means it's decreasing cogs, decreasing processing power. And if you like it, then sign up to Bametrics and you'll get the full history. Like it's uh, a great lead magnet, um, source. And that's what. Yeah, I'll keep, I'll keep banging this uh, micro apps for marketing, uh, catchphrase and see if it, see if it catches on. Um, but yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. So with, with that in mind, I guess and you know this innovative mindset about building things and talking to customers, you would describe yourself as someone who thinks outside the box. Have you made any sort of unconventional decisions with uh, Elsie in your current go to market that you think sort of go against the grain or maybe even go against how you would have done it if you launched it two years ago?

Speaker C: Well, I mean, I don't know if I have like a um, shocking statement to make. I do think that just based, compared to just a few years ago, things are just going much faster. Right. So this rapid prototyping and getting feedback is just a different ballgame. So I don't feel like it almost has already become the norm for startups to do it this way. So I don't feel like we're doing anything groundbreaking, but that's what we're doing. We are quickly coming up with ideas that fits with the whole framework we have for what we want this company to be. But then we're quickly prototyping and getting it out there m at a much faster pace than before. We use a term. It's like intentional speed to market.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Uh, it's not just speed to market to have speed to market, it's intentional. Uh, and that's sort of one of the first principles we have.

Speaker B: Intentional speed to market. I really like that it sort of implies a little bit of, uh, disciplined execution. Right. Like, you still, you're, you're, you're doing it fast, but you still got some pretty, pretty robust guidelines to keep you on track, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right.

Speaker B: Okay, so coming from a. Again, we mentioned a few years ago with Flipboard, bigger, bigger customer base, we're at day launch. Uh, what are the metrics that matter to you? What are the metrics that you're looking at over the last 24 hours and in the next two weeks to sort of see how you're going to trend with the launch?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it's fairly straightforward for us, as I think it is for any company that's going into this. Um, like, number one, we want account creations. We want quality account creations. Right. We want people to try it out. Ah. And number two, it's product usage. So it's as simple as that. But for us, we feel like we're trying to change behaviors, we're trying to create daily habits. Like, we really want Elsie to be the hub that you go to. Like, it's your starting website every single day because it's your business partner. So it's a tall order. Uh, and we need to see that in the metrics, how that bears out. If we can start to create habits with, with, uh, the core tools that we put in there, then that's the next month. I would say two weeks to a month. We got to see that. And then we can start talking about what comes next in terms of what's the sentiment to pay and all of those good things.

Speaker B: Yeah, very nice. Yeah, I think that's part of the struggle too, with founders when they do, whether it's a launch or just early days, New MRR is Always the first guiding light of are we actually getting paid for what we're offering the market? And people are willing to pay for it. That's one thing, I think, moving from releasing a free plan for early adopters and then you ask them to pay and it's sort of, uh, actually not enough value there. Being able to build that sustainable view of metrics that are going to drive. I think activations is a great one. That's where a lot of people fall over to. I think if you're blind to buy just signups versus what I would call PQLs, right. Product qualified leads or product qualified users that are actually connecting. Bare Metrics has a similar workflow in that we, we have trial signups and then you get to a connection page where you see what the product might look like when you connect your stripe, your charge B, your Shopify partners example. But when people don't, you're like, okay, well we know that they're not, they're not a quality lead there because they were much, you know, kicking tires or just interested to see what we were. But as soon as they connect, we're like, hey, you've just unlocked so much more value because we can show you everything you need to see, not just what you think you might want. Um, which is great.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I agree. Yeah. Looking at, looking at active customers and that activation rate, um, is a great measure for sure. And then obviously down the track, founders can start to look at things like, you know, churn. And uh, the time to churn is a big one. How quickly do they particularly, I think with AI tools at the moment that are anchoring themselves to credit usage or token usage. Do you put too much upfront value in your product early? And I consume those credits really quickly. I don't need them again for another month or two. Um, so I either pause or I churn. Uh, that's a big balance that the AI companies are trying to find at the moment, I believe.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think that's interesting, uh, just to riff on it a little bit, um, there are some underlying metrics that we'll look at to see how do we let the users put more skin in the game as they go. Right. Elsie, the beta we have has, uh, different elements, so there is, uh. And the whole idea is that Elsie learns about your business, so the more you put into it, the better it gets. So the chat function gets better because it knows about your business. Right. So the chat function is central because it knows about your business and you can ask it anything uh, but then we have core apps that are built into it and the two that are part of the beta launch is one is marketing, uh, helper Marketing Gold we call it, that helps you uh, create content for social media based on your products that's in your store, both imagery as well as the copy. And then we have another core app which is around your website health. So if you take those three, you can sort of think about, well, what's the habit level for all three? Well, the website health might be a monthly habit, like you want to keep it on, uh, monitor it, but you might optimize your website once a month or twice a month based on what you see. Marketing help might be it could be daily. It could also be multiple times a week because you want to be inspired to what you should put on and chat might be the daily habit. So we will definitely be looking at usage, uh, metrics for these different ones and see compare that to how much skin in the game are we getting you to do? How much are you putting into it to make the system better?

Speaker B: Yeah, I really like that terminology around building habits in your user base. And I guess it's the equivalence of like stickiness, right? How do I get my clients to be sticky if I can help them and enable them to create sustainable habits that deliver value over multiple uh, time ranges? Like you said, daily, twice weekly, weekly, monthly. That's a really cool way of thinking about that. I think I might steal that because we again I look at, we have a live stream, a daily breakdown which is seeing all events that come through stripe, your new signups, your new trials, your churns, your expansions and reactivations. But then we have things like ltv, right. LTV really is only a, ah, good metric over time. Uh, and even your churn numbers, some people want to see daily churn, but your ability to impact that, particularly in that SMB space, is generally going to happen over 30 days. So the result of a change in your onboarding or the result in a change in your support or documentation, it probably only manifests over a 30 day window. Therefore that's something I'm going to look in on an action over a 30 year window. I really like, yeah, that terminology around building habits in your users, I think that's a good one.

Speaker C: Oh yeah, and it reminds me, before Flipboard I was with uh, Texture, which was a subscription business for unlimited access to magazines. And we put a lot of effort into churn prediction models where we directly tied your behavior to the likelihood that you're going to churn uh, after those 30 days. Right. And so, so that's another way you can, you can apply it.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. We, we actually had an interesting um, client case a few weeks ago in digital media and they were looking to experiment with, they wanted to see long term effects of three different pricing models and it was something like you know, digital plus hard copy only digital, digital plus audiobook as well. Like they had like this audio function and they were all kind of three different price points. But they wanted to see the weekly churn rate of each of them and then the reactivation rate once they ran certain campaigns. Um, and the product was kind of the same for each one of them. It was just the way they grouped them I guess that was uh, interesting. And different price points for what were people willing to pay. Um, that's a really cool one. Class you mentioned at the start of this, you know you define yourself as a builder, um, as part of this, this journey you're on at the moment, uh, with, with Elsie. Some people may not know, but you're a self taught artist. You have your own art website on the side. How do you balance that as part of your sort of the work? Does that give you purpose outside of work and is that a way to sort of de stress or is that just something you love pursuing in your own time?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it's been um, I started painting because you know, where I worked before 18, um, 48 was at Maker's Place, which was a startup for digital art. And, and I was around all of these artists, uh, and creating every day. I was like, I can do that too. And you know, feel like I have a growth mindset. So like, so if I want to do it, I can do it. So I started painting and, and I quickly realized that it is exactly what you're saying. It's, it, it's de stressing. Like I'll tell my wife I'm um, I'm gonna be in front of the canvas for 20 minutes and then four hours later. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Up from the basement. Ah. So I definitely use it for that. Um, and then it's just fun. Um, I really enjoy it and I like to put it out and see how people react to it. Uh, that can be a little bit intimidating. If I tie it back to what I'm doing now, it's like, well it's my own little startup because after a while doing it as a hobbyist, well, let me try to see if people will buy it. So I have my own website for it where I Have my paintings for sale. I also have an. Exhibited locally here in California and been part of uh, an exhibition in Spain. It's been a lot of fun.

Speaker B: Wow, that's so cool. Is that, is that a portrait? Sorry, Is that a work in the background that I can say. Is that a self paced, this big one?

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, oh, I wish. But that's one of the guys I look up to. His name is Michael B. Michael Brandrup and he's the Danish artist that lives in Los Angeles. So he's an expat like me, I'm from Denmark as well. So we had that shared and then I bought that from him. I'm um, very uh, excited about it. He's become a friend of mine. But also his style inspires what I do because at the end of the day I'm really just a copycat. In my early days I'm trying to imitate the masters if you will.

Speaker B: That's very cool. Yeah, I love that. And whenever I get the chance to travel to a new city, I try and get to the, the biggest sort of gallery or um, you know, museums. I love museums as well to look at the art. And ah, funnily enough I went to. I was at the uh. Was it in Ottawa? Yeah, it was Ottawa. So it was the Ottawa um, gallery or the Canadian Gallery. I think it was National Gallery and beautiful, beautiful building, great architecture, just really nice to spend some time in. But. And um, you know they've got some original um, Matisse in there. They've got um, a few other like really ancient paintings and really well crafted, really detailed stuff. But then I went into this one room and it was kind of the abstract art, uh, space. And there was a single wire, a uh, single black wire running from one corner of the room to the other. And that was it. And it was this like, it wasn't even minimalism, it was just kind of like a. Why I'm like, I don't kind of. I don't think I get this art. Um, I don't think I have to. But the painted works were amazing. Um, they were really good. I spent about three hours there walking through.

Speaker C: I do the same every time I go for conferences or business meetings. Just the first thing I look up is like what museum can I go to? And for me I'm gravitating towards the modern stuff and the abstract stuff. Uh, those are the two things. And one thing on your comment about the lines, you remember it, you're talking about it. So it had an impact.

Speaker B: Yeah, it did, yeah. I guess that whole idea of like, it makes you redefine what art, uh, is to you, right? Like, is this something that resonates with you? If not, maybe someone else, but also, yeah, I appreciate the intent of what they're trying to do. More so the, than the, um, expression itself, I guess. I guess in closing. M Mate, so had a great chat and thank you so much again for the time. I've really enjoyed, um, talking to you. Just as a side note, what are your thoughts on AI created art now and the sort of, the push towards will it become part of the norm? Will there be a place for. I. I personally think there's still a certain element of talent and expression that you can only deliver from a person, from a human. And I'm none the more, Boyd. When I go to a conference and I shake people's hands and talk to them face to face and I know that they're real, you get that connection. I feel like there's still something to be said about artwork and, and things that are generated by humans, uh, and then you know that there's physical effort that's gone into them. But how do you see that playing out? Because it's certainly become prolific in the last 12 months more than ever before.

Speaker C: I mean, you're almost opening a Pandora's box with me here, because before 1848, with makerspace for three years, where this is what we were working on and AI artist was part of digital art movement, which is still a small movement, but I find it, uh, very fascinating and exciting. I think there are different types of AI artists. There are those that are very derivative and are, uh, used in mid journey to do something derivative that is not that inspiring. Then there are those that are really pushing, um, the envelope and creating their own algorithms and their own original art, uh, either through their own AI model or creating generative art, which is building an algorithm of their own and some of that stuff. I have digital art on my wall here. It's hard to see on the screen. I have downstairs, I have a giant print, uh, uh, a 1 meter by 1 meter print of a generative piece of art. So I'm all in on it. Uh, I find it very fascinating, uh, when you have artists that are pushing the envelope, that to me is extremely exciting. And NFTs have made that possible, uh, because you NFT is a way to prove provenance of you are an owner of this art, which makes it possible for these artists to make it a living.

Speaker B: Yeah, agreed. I think you're right. I think some of the, some of the things that come out are quite fascinating. Um, I follow some, some, I guess you wouldn't really call them influencers. They're just content creators on Instagram that run a camp. Their whole account is a, it's a video AI video of a uh, like an outback Yeti style guy in Australia and he's just getting up the shenanigans and he's just got a whole like funniness uh, about him that I just find hilarious and I follow it, all right? And it's, it's entertaining and it's interesting and it's, you know, it's got substance. There's thought behind the skits that they put him in and the things that they get him to do. So there's still, it's still entertainment value there for sure. But yeah, that's great mate. Yeah, I'm, I'm uh, It's great to see someone who's got a good balance between, you know, being able to invest yourself so heavily in a, in a startup environment and have it, have a really great release, uh, and a good outlet outside of that. I think that's important for founders, um, and young startups to understand as well from a professional and personal perspective. It's important to have that, um, for sure. Well mate, we're about to wrap up with our call but do you have any questions for me? Anything you'd like to ask me or talk about?

Speaker C: Well, I, I guess, I mean this is the first time we meet over a call here. But the um, but you scale in bare, uh, metrics, uh, do some of these things resonate with you? Ah, what stage are you in as a founder or a CEO?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So the things that resonate with me the most is that the history of Bare Metrics being a single point solution for stripe, creating that wedge. And that's when you said that wedge piece that was really resonating with me because I know that the founder Josh Pigford, when he built it he had his own frustrations with being able to understand anything that comes from stripe. And so he built Bay Metrics to ingest that data and present it in a more cohesive and manageable way. And once he had established that uh, that foothold in the stripe market, he saw that there was a common problem with users for Google Pay, Google, Google Play Store, Apple, right. Charge B was getting big at the time, recurley there was other subscription management platforms out there that lacked fundamental metrics and analytics. So he started to build for them as well. But he had that foundation in Stripe that helped him understand how to apply the same problem set to new areas. So that resonates with me and that's part of our, I guess, parallel nature. Um, your point about experimentation resonates with me a lot. I'm um, My presentation last week in Canada was around how to build a hypothesis driven experimentation roadmap. How do you include experiments in your goals weekly, uh, quarterly, and how do you actually utilize your metrics to do something Right. And so that, that scale piece I think is something that's under not under not understood. But uh, the signal you get at scale like 145 million like you say. So so much quicker and easier to see statistical significance of a change and then move on real quick. And that's where I think, uh, operators at the moment get bogged down, is that they either don't let an experiment run long enough because they don't have enough data points, or they see an immediate impact up or down and then implement the change as their champion, which I think is, is a bit of folly behind that. So having a great statistically significant framework of experimentation and acknowledging your own weakness, which is perhaps low traffic volume, maybe low conversion rate or like wherever that is, getting an understanding of what is significant to then implement that champion variant is important. And we do that regularly. We have big sort of quarterly strategic movements. Uh, maybe a pricing page redesign is a big lift because you need to see conversions through that new pricing page versus something like changing the content of your CTAs on your high performing blog posts, right. That you know are going to drive greater amount of conversions. You can see signal within two weeks because your trial numbers will change. Yeah, that resonates with me as well. Where we are at the moment is we're trying to find what's that next leg up for us? We, we have our strike user base, we have our chargeb user base. We've got all these sort of um, individual users that come through for those particular platforms and we're building out more of our feature builds at the moment are from requests from individuals that say we really want our numbers to look like this. Right. And it might be just an amendment to how they manage their churn or their reactivation dates or something nuanced to their account. And so it's really hard for us to build holistic changes that uh, affect everyone equally. But that's what I want to get to. I want to think what's that big next leg up for me to offer something to the wider market that will be of benefit to more people. Forecasting is a big one at the moment. Scenario building future, proofing your revenue model and your operating model by playing out the variance. Right. What if a new competitor enters the market and my revenue contracts by 3% month on month, how does that impact my Runway? Right. Um, actually I release a new product and I continue to grow at 10% month on month. When do I need to hire a new sales rep? Right. Those sort of things there have become more and more important for founders and we're seeing a lot of value in providing those services. But, yeah, um, that's where we are at the moment. I really enjoy the SaaS space at the moment. I love talking to companies like yours and these emerging AI companies that have the ones I like talking to, the ones that have sought me out for metrics because it shows me they understand that they should be looking at something.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: They like, I need to know what to look at. I need to know how to monitor this success rate here and whether we're actually going, whether this plan is working, whether this price point is working. Um, and so I've really enjoyed seeing the breadth of AI companies that are emerging and quickly passing through those that have a proprietary value and not just a wrapper on an existing platform. I think that's, that's important. And I love your, I love your play of having that, that web health, that socials, uh, and that sort of internal management. That's really, I think, the way people should be playing. Um, so it's good to see. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

Speaker C: I hope we can, uh, we can become a customer of yours when we start getting some paying customers.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I'd love for that to happen. Yeah, I'd love for it and I'd like to be fair, um, I'd even throw you on our Kickstarter campaign free. Um, jump on there so you can start to see those dashboards as they arrive and you can monitor that now that you're launched. Um, absolutely. Jump in there and um, and check out that, that plan because I, I want to see it now. I want to see your numbers up and to the right and, um, and continue to grow, uh, from here to there. Great. Yeah, yeah. Well, class. Thank you so much for your time, mate. We've gone a little bit over, but I've, I've had a great time talking to you and I hope we can do it again someday. If you ever have the need to, if you want to do any co marketing material for Elsie, if you want to jump on, um, a podcast or a webinar or whatever, it might be more than happy to contribute. And, yeah, thank you so much for taking the time.

Speaker C: I appreciate it. Thank you, Luke. Awesome.

Speaker B: Thanks, Klaus. We'll talk again soon.