🏅 37. Patrick Campbell (Profitwell, now Paddle)

Speaker A: Patrick Campbell, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: What's up man? Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Thank you for coming. Very well myself. Thank you. Whoa, dude, where do I start? I've seen your uh.

Speaker B: At the beginning, I guess.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen. I'll start with this. I've seen your documentary about the acquisition. Okay. And I loved it. Let me guess, it was. That's your idea. Was your idea?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. I mean, who cares the idea. But it's ah, yeah, there was, it was the CMO of paddle, Andrew Davies before. Um, like as we were going through the deal, we're like, oh, let's film everything. And I think that we were talking. What was kind of cool is we were thinking about it on our side. Like I went to Dan and I was like, if our Dan is our head of our media, like, hey, if this all falls through, like, least we'll have his content. Right? And so we did a documentary. But Andrew, the CMO paddle like drove everything. He like found. We had a doc, he hired a documentarian, he was editing with documentarian, everything like that. And so, um, I think that's a really cool thing. And one reasons why this like this acquisition merger worked out really well is because Andrew, for example, like completely agrees with like the vision of being a media company as well as a SaaS software company. And so it's one of those things that like, when you mix those two things, um, you know, we don't have to like talk about the why or like what it should be. It's all about the how or the what, that type of a thing. And it was the same way across, you know, product engineering, exec team, all that kind of stuff. And so yeah, it's exciting.

Speaker A: Do you know, I think it's such a nice thing is because it's the closest thing we've had for something like Gary V. But uh, in SaaS. So you know how he used to have somebody follow him, I guess especially in a company like ah, Pado plus Profit World, it gets tricky because of the privacy and like you don't want to show people the dashboards with the very, you know, very fine analytics of a company that's trusting you, etc. So you couldn't really do a daily thing. Um, but um, uh, it felt, it felt like Gary V. But um, in this field that we're operating in. And I was like, yeah, I wish there would be more of that. Really wish there would be more of that.

Speaker B: Interesting. Do you think, do you think you couldn't do it? Like I think daily it's just, it's hard to build that like muscle. But what do you think? So here's my question. There's a lot of people who do like content the way that we've been doing it. Well, not the way we've been doing it, but there's a lot of people who do like vloggy style content. Like they've done it before. But no one big, right? And the question then becomes like, is it because no one has gotten big enough to do it right? Because a lot of times it's like smaller companies because it's like a founder led marketing or is it because that type of content doesn't play? I don't have the answer. I'm just kind of curious to your view of that.

Speaker A: My view, and obviously I don't have a crystal uh, ball. My view is first of all it's about the resources, but you have them. Um, and second of all, you have the chops to do it because you've been doing it. And I love your content. Actually I don't just like it, but when it comes to whether it will click or not, see, nobody would have guessed Gary Vees would have clicked. He's also that type of personality. But um, uh, you also have your personality which I think suits well and you've this, I mean this is personal lifestyle. But you, you look like an integrated person. When it comes to how we would index, I, um, think would be a long slow. Was that SaaS? Ramp of death, Whatever. What I'm saying is I think SaaS is still early and I know you have the same belief. I think it becomes more and more valuable as time goes by when this becomes more of a mainstream business model. I mean it is, don't get me wrong, but I feel like we're far away from the moment where everybody and their mom is going to want to start a software company. It might sound far fetched, but it's also my belief that the infrastructure tools are going to get better. So it's got to get a bit easier. Uh, so short answer is long way to go. I think it would mature really well. And at the end of the day it's, we're stuck in the SaaS bubble, but it's still business. So people saw an acquisition. You could be in uh, Eminem, you could be in E Commerce. And I feel like your documentary is still valuable because you were like, well, 87 lawyers and you know, it's this company and this company. What about a, uh, uh, I don't know, an E Commerce Company with warehouse all over the place. And just imagine the due diligence that. So ProfitWell is all PDFs and whatever online cloud.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The scale on something like E Commerce or just something else is. Is different. But does that answer your question, do you think?

Speaker B: Yeah, basically. Let me ask you more bluntly. Should I have someone follow me around like Gary Vee and do like a weekly vlog or even a daily vlog, like not. Not from a, uh. Oh, it'd be interesting. But do you think that would be a good investment?

Speaker A: Fuck yeah.

Speaker B: I would watch it, yeah. Why would you watch it? Just curious.

Speaker A: Is because. So I already know you. I'm part of your journey in a way. When I. Why watch is because what I said earlier, I saw the document, I was like, I wish there would be more of that. Now I'm learning. But it's that kind of thing where you could not lie to yourself, but you're like. Because you're doing two things at the same time. You give yourself the benefit of doubt. What I mean by that, I'm watching it for entertainment purposes because people like to. Is why we watch sports, isn't it? We like to watch the people hunting for the meat or whatever, or shooting the bow in the net, hitting the target because you feel like you're doing that as well. But at the same time, I'm learning from you because you've had way more years in the field than I did. So I could pick off cues just of 18 minutes of a documentary. Imagine what will happen now. I'm not telling you, Patrick. I would, uh. I would hit on notifications. So every night at 10pm I would watch it. I don't know because the audience has stuff to do, but I would definitely watch it weekly. Something like that. Yeah. Because there's a, um. How do you call that one? Is like nuclear. There's um. You're spewing off. I'm learning off of your residual actions, if that makes any sense, is how humans learn. So I could be picking up just solely off body language, maybe.

Speaker B: Do you think it's. And do you think it's like, is it. How much of it? Out of a hundred percent. And I understand you want to. You want to interview me a little bit on some of this stuff rather than me interview you, but out of a hundred percent. What percent is like voyeurism, like, oh, I know Patrick, I've had a conversation. I want to see what he's up to.

Speaker A: Oh, what?

Speaker B: You know, like, oh, cool, 86 lawyers, blah, blah blah.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And what percent is like, I want to learn something. Right. Like, and then what percent is another

Speaker A: category you think I might be a bad person to ask when it comes to voyeurism? Because I usually, if I find myself doing that, I quickly snap out of it because I plan to be okay. So if I sit on my butt 12 hours a day, I want to make the most out of those 12 or whatever with work.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I catch up with friends in real life. So if I'm on insta, I tend to snap out because I'm like, I

Speaker B: don't want to, like I gotta do something somewhat productive. Right. Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because you got a limited amount of time where you could sit on your chair without getting problems. So voyagem. Um, is that. But then it, it will be learning and a mix. I would say it depends on the day because sometimes use it as entertainment, as I said, but. But it's entertainment, infotainment, whatever they call it. Yeah. On some days you could be lying to yourself that, uh, it's an interesting conversation because sometimes maybe my neurochemicals are down and I feel like getting themselves back up so I watch something more for the entertainment because I don't have the motivation to work on some other days, uh, I mean, at the same time it's not a course, so I'm not going to sit down and say let me take, let me learn from this actively. But, um, it shows you something that at the end of the day shows you something that very few people in the world have had a chance to do. Yeah, yeah. And I'm talking statistics here. So it is interesting like that I don't know if you get on TV

Speaker B: with that, but, um, I don't care about TV necessarily. Right. Like I think it's just about building audience. And so what you're describing is some of the stuff that we've thought about like not only at Paddle, but also at profitable previously. Just like it's like an ROI game. Right. Like, why does someone buy billboards? They don't buy billboards. Uh, some buy because of a vanity exercise, but sometimes they buy it in like, whatever. But like a lot of times the reason you see these brands buy billboards is they have exhausted every other channel that they've stair stepped up. Right. And so for example, with content like this is very like top of the funnel content, like Gary Vee's like, you know, daily V5, you know, blah, you hustle your face off, you know, that kind of stuff. It's very, very, very top of the funnel. And I don't know if he's necessarily exhausted. I think he's just able to fill the funnel so much. But I think the way we look at it from an ROI perspective was very much like, okay, start with like middle of the funnel content or bottom of the top of the funnel. Sometimes you call it, which is like pricing page teardown. Right? We're going to talk about pricing pages because you don't really care unless, uh, you like really care about pricing or you have problems with your pricing. And that's the type of content we start with. And then we like stair Step up to like Protect the Hustle and some of the other shows that we have. And so, yeah, long story short, I think it's one of those things that like, it's a really good point and it's getting to the point where it's like, I'm even thinking about personally, like, okay, now, you know, I, I have some resources. Uh, you know, so it's like all of a sudden the, the. It's. It might be inexpensive to hire a videographer to work with me like two, three days a week in order to follow me around. We have like different like spots, those types of things. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it, but this was really helpful for me. So I appreciate it and I'll go back to you because I don't want to, uh, I don't want to monopolize the time in this way.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. We can talk about after if you, if you want to continue it. But um, I wanted to start with that because I watched it, it was something special. So uh, yeah, it led to this. Down this route. But we're here because. So I distribute this podcast also on my subreddit where you've been a guest and I loved your, your ama. I can see you put your heart into it, which is how usually tackle stuff. The uh. To be in favor of the audience listening here. Many m of them have, um, what they want to learn from you is this thing where you've also touched upon it with Justin Jackson on his podcast. Not necessarily starting something new, but your methodical ness about whatever the word is. Your um, pick. Picking something new. I'll just call it here. So what happens is you sold your company, uh, profitable to paddle. Uh, it was a bit of a long grind. But um, you've talked about this before. Now many people are looking at you because you've got the golden mouth. Now this has been validated Now a week.

Speaker B: Did you say a golden Mouth.

Speaker A: Mouth. Yeah, yeah. Like your mouth is golden.

Speaker B: Is that what you said?

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. It's like if you ask, if I asked the same question seven days before the acquisition was announced, you would have had the same info. But now people are looking to you because you're in the headlines. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah, yeah. Which is kind of funny, right? Like, it's. It's because it is kind of funny because now there are people that. It's a validation thing, which I think is dumb. I actually do think it's dumb now. I appreciate the merits of it, but there's probably a lesson there because I think, like, and I know this wasn't your question, but, like, it is kind of funny. The people who I don't want to say wouldn't give me the time of day, but all of a sudden I'm special to them. And before I very much wasn't special to them, like, just based on, like the conversations, um, which sucks. It's so bad. But it also is just humanity. Right? Like, so I think it's like. And now it's a weird function of, um. There's a bunch of other things too where it's like, okay, I even have this switch and this was happening already, but like, a lot of my network is smaller, right? Like, a lot of my network, smaller companies. Right. Because that I was, you know, those were the people I came up with. Right. And we've reached a particular peak. Right. And now it's like I am, um, a board member and a chief strategy officer of a unicorn, right. That's venture backed and has to go higher. Right. And so it's an interesting thing, the validation point. Not a lot of people pick up on that. So it's very astute of you.

Speaker A: Yeah. And as I said, seven days before or one hour before the acquisition was announced, you had the same info, but as you said, it's humanity. And that's why I gave this context, because people now are coming out of the woods to say, Patrick knows. Let's go ask him. Let me look up for his name and, you know, SEO and everything for his advice. Um, but yeah, just wanted to put this in context. We can talk about the humanity aspect. But, um, given that, given that you have this experience now, which has been validated very out there publicly, because for instance, you've also been on latkes and you shared or at least he reverse engineers some figures, so that's also some validation, for instance, which gives people more of a reason to search for you and say, I want to go to Patrick Campbell to ask him. I mean, ask him, listen to a podcast with him about, uh, picking an industry, choosing the right market, starting a SaaS this way, et cetera. So would you be, uh, okay if we talk about that topic?

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I think what's interesting about what you said is, like, I've always tried to be a person, and I don't think I've always done it, but I've always tried to be a person to house my advice, right? Like, whenever someone says, like, oh, should we raise funding? I try to always be the person who goes, well, first. I've never raised funding, so I don't know the answer to that question perfectly. But here's how I think about it, right? And I think not enough people do that. Um, I probably could be better about, like, I don't know anything about that. I shouldn't comment on it. But I think it's. A lot of this stuff is, like, the reason. I think it's wild that you just positioned it that way. I am very much regretting moving our podcast recording session so many times because you're. You're a very insightful person. And, uh, I'm like, oh, I could have used this three weeks. Weeks ago when we originally were trying to schedule. But, uh, yeah, that's a. That's a great line of questioning. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, uh, enough. Enough of a reason to do part two, I guess, or part three, of course.

Speaker B: Of course.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, what I wanted to, uh, go a bit deeper on was so I listened at least five times to your conversation with Justin in snippets, and the whole episode, multiple times, because I wanted to be, like, a bit of a deeper dive. Uh, I try to put myself in the shoes of somebody starting something new. Or, uh, when I say this is not necessarily somebody having their first attempt at building a SaaS, it might be an indie hacker who has a portfolio of, uh, uh, products, and they're looking for yet another one. Or maybe they had two small ones, but now they say, you know what? I'm kind of sick and tired of a small market where I can feel the roof because my head is banging against it every day. Let me go look for a big market. And then they listen to your episode with Justin. Justin has been very vocal about picking a big market. So, um, I wanted to make it a tiny bit more practical. Although no company will be started by the end of this episode, I just want to run, uh, with you through, uh, let's say let's talk about do's but also do nots of a market or let me talk about this specific market. What do you think? So you talked about the subscription market. No subscription industry where you said this Max 150,000 subscription companies. What, what made you realize that? Or when did you realize that with profit woe and I quote you here, the thing we got wrong was the market. When did you start getting that feeling? How did it feel? What were the metrics that made you say that?

Speaker B: Yeah, so wrong. That's a really good question. But also like wrong and right. Especially for someone in the context of you talking about uh, like someone starting something new, maybe they've done something a little bit before. Um, that's the first thing to get out of your vocabulary, right? In my opinion because I think that what I've tried to change right or wrong too. Like under what circumstances? X, under what circumstances is this a good market? Right. And I'm not trying to semantically attack your question. It's just more of like a context I think is really important because I think for if we decided, hey, we do not care about doubling, we are going to grow, we are going to build this for profit. ProfitWell was the perfect business and I might regret that in a few years that we sold, I very much might, right? Because all of a sudden we had this perfect bootstrap business. The ceiling is there in terms of logos that no one's really coming into the business because it's not a billion dollar necessarily idea. And we still think it is, but maybe in five years I won't. And so I think that that's the biggest thing right. In markets. When I was trying to talk with Justin is like it's all about velocity, right? So if I'm trying to find a perfect space to get into, I want a big market with something that people are already paying for or are definitely willing to pay for. And this is if I'm trying to bootstrap, right. Or be an indie hacker, whichever. I don't know why we have two terms but apparently uh, we do because the indie hackers there's like 10% of them that are very self righteous and they want to get rid of terms. Um, but I want to find a high velocity willing to pay market that has easy CAC implications. I just have to out compete so and so on an easy cac. Now what I just described is what everyone wants. It's hard. So you might not get all of those things and there's probably a couple of variables I'm not thinking about like your strengths. Right? My strengths are not in consumer or down market or attracting, um, a mass of people. Right. Like I'm not going after millions of people, I'm trying to go after hundreds of thousands of people. People. So I think that's the thing to think about. And what I mean by market is if you're going after something that doesn't exist yet is in a market that's very blue ocean as they say, um, and that means that the velocity isn't there, you probably got to raise money. You probably are going after either a zero or a giant company. Um, and it's just those trade offs. It's just that spectrum of trade offs, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: Mhm. Okay. So much like anything else in business, what I hear is you got to juggle between a couple of things because there's also feasibility in terms of maybe you find the market and it plays to your strengths, but you just don't see anything new you could create or you don't find the edge to penetrate the market in a way. Um, so would you add that on the table as well? I guess even technical feasibility or maybe a good SEO. But that's not an SEOable. Not um, necessarily, but sort of probably you could start with SEO.

Speaker B: Well, I don't know. Right, because like SEO, right. Like I think every company needs an SEO strategy. Right? But like our company, like if I would have thought about SEO before we started, like we might not have done it because like again there's only so many people searching for like pricing or retention or metrics right now. There's, there's high intent, right? So there's really, really high intent. So people will filter through, of course, but it's not like oh my God, a hundred thousand people a day search this term. And if I'm even number seven on the page and getting a good amount of traffic. Right. So I think it's M. More. I think the first thing that you said I think is also an important thing, like technically, like sure, if it's a nuclear fusion. Right. Like working on something again, doesn't exist. All this other stuff, you need a lot of funding, you need to really consider it. But even if you're a funded business, I don't know, again, that's a zero or infinite money. Right. Business.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Building the third, um, help desk for E commerce companies or the tenth depending on how you look at it. It's a little bit of a known business. Then I need to think about, well, I have a market It's a big market. The willingness to pay is there like how much lock in is there? There's quite a bit of lock in, but there's also a lot of new stores coming online. And do I have an advantage somewhere? Right? But even then, if I don't have an advantage, if I'm good enough, there's enough people that will come to me, right? And this is where like, I think the indie crowd as well as, um, bootstrappers, they kind of diverge from people who have done and sold a business before. Because my eyes are different now. My eyes are like the cool part is the growth. The cool part is moving quickly. I think in the beginning the cool part is I want to make dope shit, right? Uh, and the third or the tenth CRM or help desk in a space is not cool. Like, yeah, maybe I have an angle, but I'm not like, oh my God, let's go after, right? And so you start to see like, you start to see this like convergence. So what I would encourage people to do if they're early is like pick a space that is exciting to you, but don't make it so that it has to be so exciting that no one's ever done it. And I think this is the biggest mistake. You see this in the self righteous part of the indie hacker community where all of a sudden it's like, well, that exists. It's like, okay, well, sort of. It doesn't really exist like, or the company. Like we had this in the early days, like. And what's kind of funny is like barometrics and chart mogul, we all started around the same time. No one was copying another. No one. Like, uh, we were about to launch and we didn't even know Bare Metrics existed. And then all of a sudden they launched on Hacker News and we were like, oh crap, we're done. Right? But that's the biggest fallacy. It's like, oh, this already exists. Well, does it? Like Bare Metrics was like a couple months in beyond where we were launching. We were already thinking on it, we were already moving on it. Chartmogul was coming. All of a sudden there was a bunch of fast followers and it's like, okay, cool. We went from what we thought was a blue ocean to a red ocean. But the red ocean is full of little guys. It's not full of, oh, HubSpot's getting into our market or a giant company. And that's the other thing. If your market is tasty enough, meaning it's huge, someone will get into it eventually. That's another thing that we don't think about, right? You get crushed. And you shouldn't think about that in the beginning necessarily, but use other products existing as validation. And if you really are like, I want to create something new or beautiful, great. Find a market where everyone hates everything and figure out why they hate it and then do the opposite. Sometimes it's hard. Like billing. No one likes their billing system. Like, there's a group of people who love their billing system. But like, if you look at aggregate nps, we have this on all of our partners, like all of our integration partners. No one loves it. It's not like there's uh, an overarching like, oh my God, everyone even stripe people crap on all the time, right? And the reason is because it's like, well, they've tried to create the most beautiful easy to use payments product and sort of easy to use and beautiful billing product. Well, if they did that, and that's the premise, and still in aggregate, no one loves it or most people don't love it. It's just a hard space. And this is what I learned coming to Paddle, which is like, if retain goes down for six hours, we probably don't even have to tell you. We retain the emails like we're freaking out, don't worry. But like we retain all the emails at six hours plus a minute. When it gets back online, we send all the emails, we send all the notifications, et cetera. Um, and like no one's the wiser, right? Paddle goes down for six hours, not only is everyone freaking out, um, people are losing millions of dollars and we're getting death threats, right? Like it's that level. Right? Like it's that level. And so I think that's another thing to think about is like from a technical standpoint, like, is that the type of business you want to build? There's a lot of advantages and disadvantages. And I think to summarize this, it's a lot of trade offs and you should not have any binary thinking. And this is the struggle, right? Like, notice how like I wasn't like definitively do this. And the reason is because it depends on you, depends on what you want, it depends on the spaces you're looking at. But try not to have any binary thinking when you're going into it. Try to make it probabilistic thinking and then there's always going to be downsides and that's okay. Um, lean into them. And I wish that I had had the foresight to consider Some of the downsides more at the time rather than we were like halfway through, if that makes sense. And that's, that's, that's a long diatribe coming around, basically.

Speaker A: So, so much good advice. So I want to bring it up because in another podcast you gave this brilliant piece of advice which was a very, um, was a neighbor of what you just said. The fact that competition does more good to an industry than bad. And then Justin talked about anchor as well, helping transistor. You touch upon this with uh, chart, mogul and bare metrics. Another. I think you put it very well when you said earlier, because sometimes great advice is an interval. And you gave both ends of an interval. Pick something juicy, but not as so juicy that nobody else is building it. And everybody's gonna have to like your mileage might vary. Everyone is gonna have to find out for themselves where they sit on that interval. Um, interesting thing you said about the fact that before in the beginning, what was attractive was let's build dope shit. And now you're attracted towards growth and uh, you know, percentages. It's simply what drives you. And I'm at a way smaller scale going for that as well. I built a business that is still doing six digits per year. We work half an hour to an hour a day. I built a second SaaS, uh, product which does about. Is at almost 1000 mrr right now, five months into it. But it's in the, It's a notion website builder. It's in the notion, uh, industry which is small. We've made a bet that it might mature and now I'll tell you in a second. But, uh, we're looking about looking at starting something new, listening to your advice as well. So I'm first person here, uh, being in that moment and I thought it would be such a great moment to have this interview with you now because I can be an advocate. I'm in this position now. In six months I won't be. And so many people are still going to be in this position. Um, I think. What do you think about the fact that we might have to learn. So we're in a bit of a bubble in tech. We might have to learn a tiny bit. Not everything from, from how we pictured businessmen before tech. Like, not a, um, not like in a tuxedo with a fat belly and a, uh, Monaco and whatever, but a tiny, tiny bit. So not to do it too much because we've seen what too much capitalism can do, I guess. But that's getting political. But a tiny Bit more about, learn a tiny bit from them about being a bit more focused on the numbers. Not too much because you can lose it. But what do you think about that? You said, look, I'm attracted towards growth now because you've built your dope shit. You, I mean you can always build more. But you said what motivates you now is different.

Speaker B: So what is that motivation or what's the core question there, do you think?

Speaker A: I'm sorry, I went on a tangent as well because there's so much to unpack here. The question is, do you think we have to focus a bit more as well on the numbers and on the technical business side, or do people have to go through phases where they have to first build dope shit and then get to this stage?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that. So again, it's a binary, right? And we said no binaries. Right. And so I think that what's really interesting about your question is Faku Facundo, our, um, cpo Baku only cares about Doshit until you show him how much it will grow or help the business. Right? And he's a CPO that everyone should have a CPO who starts from no. And you're not going to want it. It's going to be super frustrating. But you should have a head of product who starts from no. And the reason is, is because you need someone who, again, it's not that they are impervious, um, to feedback, but they care so much about the customer side and so much about the experience. Like Faku, for instance, if, if we never sent an email to any user ever that wasn't a product email, he would die happy. Right? And it was a fight just to be like, hey man, we're going to have to reach out to users to make money. And he's like, well, we have to do it the right way, right? And we have difference of opinion the right way. But then in that battle we get to like a good understanding and then we have really, really good outreach. Right. Uh, people still complain about it, but you know, that's kind of what happens. Right. So I think with faq, the biggest thing was finding a way for him to kind of see the dope stuff, build dope stuff within guardrails and then those guardrails are influenced by how fast we're moving down the path. Right? So he's not again, hey, we need this thing for a user. Well, only 10% of our time is going to be dedicated to sales orientated engineering. Right at our stage, right? Do you want this or do you want this, right? And then the sales leader, whomever can make a decision, right? And all of a sudden that's a guardrail, right? All of a sudden there's a guardrail of like, we're not gonna go crazy, right? For me, I want to build dope stuff too, but I don't get the same level of, like, feelings for Maslow's hierarchy of needs out of a user, you know, praising our product or using our product every day that he does. And that's okay, right? I get really excited about, wow, remember that one time I, uh, was in a room for 18 hours a day doing everything, literally everything, right? And then remember when we had 10 people and I was like, holy cow, like, remember when I had to care about those things? Now I don't have to care about those things. And that was 50 people and 90 people. Now 350 people, right? So I think it's like I get excited about the. I mean, some people call it empire building, but like, empire building has like ego inherent in it. And it's not like an ego thing, it's just like what I get excited about, right? I get excited about like, oh, cool, I'm at a 350 person company now. I've already made like a big mistake by getting in the weeds of something and I'm like, whoa, that shouldn't be my job. That's not where I'm going to be most effective. My most effectiveness is like these two to three layers of people getting super excited by them and super into it. And so, yeah, I think it's just, that's the thing that I think, and I think your team, assuming you don't want to just be a solopreneur, which is totally valid, I think a solopreneur, you probably need to care about both of those things. Probably. One, if you care about just building dope stuff, the likelihood you're going to be as successful as lower. If you care, um, about just the build, the likelihood your product is dope is probably lower. Um, but I think as a team, you need to find that balance. And I didn't appreciate this in the beginning. I didn't appreciate this at all. I thought having a CPO that started from no was bad, right? I thought it was terrible. Um, and then you see companies that have heads of product that are basically project managers and the CEO is leading everything and they're terrible. The products are terrible. And so, yeah, I think it's one of those things where it's a blend and again, trade offs on kind of what you make a decision around.

Speaker A: When you say a, uh, CPO that starts from no, do you just mean that when you come with, hey, Faku, should we do this? He starts with, absolutely not. If he's not making the product, one

Speaker B: of the most frustrating things. You won't even finish your sentence. And it'll be like, why doesn't this fit? Why doesn't this fit? This doesn't fit with our vision of doing this. And I'll be like, hey, man. And I'll just have like a kernel of idea. Hey, it'd be kind of cool to, like, do this type of thing. And it's a thing that, like, definitely isn't down the middle, but it's like a little off the path, but, like, uh, not totally out of the realm of things. And he just like, you don't even finish your sentence. And I was like. And he'll be like, I'll be just like, can you just dream with me for a second? Just dream with me. I'm not saying we do it right now. I just, like, just dream with me for a second, right? And then when you set the context up, then he's perfect. Then it's like, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think he again. And one of the smartest things he did that I was hesitant about, it was the smartest thing he did is when I was bringing him on board, he went, okay, I have a couple of things that I need. There was numbers and then there was. He wanted to be on the board and all this other stuff. And that's what I wanted as well. But the one thing that I had hesitation was he's like, at the end of the day, I make decisions on product. I make all the decisions. And I was like, oh, no.

Speaker A: Oh, is that.

Speaker B: I don't even know this guy that well. We've been working. He's a contractor for a little while. Yeah, well, it's not even my baby. It's more of just like. It's a control thing, right? Like, imagine. Imagine like, this is the first time you're doing this or the second time you're doing this. And you, you've. You've had crappy managers before. You've had. You've had good managers before, but you've had crappy, you know, people you've worked with and good people to work with. Like, you're just go to the worst case. It's like, oh, is he going to be terrible? And then all of a sudden he's making the decisions, and like, I don't trust this guy. Right? Because there's no way I can trust this guy. Right. And so I was like, uh, okay, I don't know. And then what happens if we disagree? And I think what he said or this is in hindsight where we say he said. I don't know if he exactly said this was like, we will give each other all the time in the world to convince the other. And then at the end of the day we either. In practice it's like Christian, uh, uh, the CEO of Paddle, said something interesting when we were talking about this. He's like, yeah, it's interesting. What's the smallest hill you'll die on? Right? Because for example, like in practice we argue about it, I convince him, he convinces me. Or we agree basically on a test there has been, I can't think of a single decision where we have disagreed and he has gone one way and I wanted to go the other. Like there's not a single one. But in theory, it's really, really important to set this thing up, things up this way because and again, he is an experienced product leader, experience engineer, all these other things. I think if you do this with, I don't know, maybe you should do it with someone who's more junior. I don't know. You need checks and balances inside a business and I don't think enough businesses have checks and balances.

Speaker A: Mhm. Where did you meet, uh, Faku?

Speaker B: Uh, interestingly enough, an early customer. I was talking to him, um, and basically um, he said, hey, um, there's this guy I know, um, you should chat with him and like, see if he's willing. He was just looking for like contract work and it was kind of funny is he ended up uh, Faku. The day we met, he had just broken up with his like multi year girlfriend. He was intending to like travel with her for like months, like this multi year girlfriend. And then all of a sudden like, like he was like, I don't know what I'm doing. So yeah, we'll see. Like he knows that type of thing, thing. So it was definitely a very like kismet sort of thing, um, that kind of came together, which was good. Yeah. The guy's name was Chris Bulger. I should give him credit. Whenever I talk about this Chris Bulger, he leads, um, part of product at Whoop. He was Runkeeper and then when we met he was at Compete.com, which was an old school data, uh, company back in the day.

Speaker A: Shout out to Chris and shout out to Faku, the Steve Jobs of, uh, billing, uh, industry.

Speaker B: Don't tell him that. That'll go to his head.

Speaker A: But, uh, I mean, Steve Job, particular individual, ups and downs. But part of what he was known for was his ability to say no. And he's. I mean, I should say Faku is

Speaker B: also a particular individual. So that's a good way to describe him.

Speaker A: So that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Something else you, You've said, which is, uh, interesting to me and I think particularly interesting to the crowd that is saying, yeah, but that already exists. But the people that might be tipped over, you said that even if you don't have an edge, if you're in a big industry, you would still do the company because you have. I might be perfect, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you said something along the lines of you have trust in yourself, that you're going to execute better, so you will find that edge eventually. How much did I get right? How much did I get wrong?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. I think what's really funny is I think that if you're a driven person, which mostly everyone listening to this should be, um, and you have a market that is pushing you or pulling you, you almost have to find the edge. You almost have to. Right. Because you're not going to survive or you're going to give up and rationalize why it didn't work out or whatever, if that makes sense. I think that's the way, like, I think about that. I'm not sure if that's the exact way that I should think about it, but it is one of those things to kind of like, Kind of like ponder.

Speaker A: Um, would you, Would you start a company without the. Because what I'm. What I think is very straightforward is the fact that even if you don't have an edge, you start talking to users. And as you said, if you're driven, you're going to talk and properly talk and squeeze the information out of them. You're gonna talk to the first five people. They're gonna be, uh, realtors, let's just say. And you're gonna be. You're gonna say, well, might as well. Because I guess it's your relationship with the fate, with universe. With the universe or fate. You're like, well, this is it, I guess, because I don't see any reason not to. And any audience, as long as it makes sense, could be as good as the other one. You know, assuming it checks some boxes.

Speaker B: I don't know. I think I actually don't agree with that. Um, I don't know what I was trying to say, but I think that the thing that I think about in the context of what you said is, for example, let's say Paddle gets bought tomorrow and they don't want me to come on board. Great. Um, the next company that I start, and there will be a next one, I will definitely spend probably a year full time working my butt off, researching, talking to people, following paths, cutting off paths, all those types of things, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And there's a bit of that analysis paralysis that I think is like, really tough to deal with. But I do think ultimately it's one of those things that like, you do need to scrutinize your customer in your space. And I think that that also means that you might overthink. But right now I think that, like, I've learned, at least for Faku, Peter and I, we will overthink no matter what it is. Therefore, if we're going to overthink, let's overthink about the right things and then that'll guide us towards a decision. Right. And I think that the overthinkers can teach something to maybe the underthinkers. I don't know. This is gonna, uh, this is gonna ruin. Ruin itself really quickly. But I think it's one of those things that I think a lot of people just rush into something, get a little bit of traction, and then give up on it because they get bored. And I think that that's really, really problematic. Um, I think it's one of those things that you do need to overthink a little bit and understand your customer. So if I'm talking to realtors and I'm trying to understand what the realtors want, I need to evaluate this market in a bunch of different ways. What's funny is the four steps to epiphany, the lean canvas. All these other things that like, we kind of learn about, but then a lot of us never do. It's like those things exist for a reason. They don't exist because, like, oh, uh, we want this annoying thing to like, try and get people to understand, or we want this annoying thing to like, give people homework. It exists because it like, centers your thinking. Right. And I think that, like, doing some of that work up front, it's not a business plan, but it helps you kind of like, understand your market and validate, like, so you don't have surprises. That's probably the best way to look at it.

Speaker A: I see. I should have given more context. So it was My mistake for I just said realtors as if you're building. I didn't say what you'd be building. So in practical terms, uh, my number one pick right now for a new company is um, an online document signing. So a DocuSign, let me call it. I was trying to find a few euphemism, But I guess DocuSign is the go to. Um, yeah, I'm, um. This is at the top of my list. Not 100% committed since I'm, I'm, I'm sharing my position here. But um, it, it does look like a juicy. So it ticks some boxes. It takes the boxes. You've said it's got lock in, it's got, it's in a growing industry. So I'll just say this in ten seconds. Four billion dollar industry. Right now it's expected to get to 29, uh, by 20. No, to $36 billion by 2029. So they estimated 30. No, 36 CAGR. But uh, what matters more is that DocuSign grew 50 from last year. So because those are all projections. So I'm talking now about real stuff, 2021 to 2022. So it looks like it's got some lock in. It looks like it is a growing one. It looks like there's enough space for, for enough players.

Speaker B: Why is it lock in? That's not lock in.

Speaker A: Is it not because it's.

Speaker B: No, because like I can, I can literally. Okay, think of the product, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Someone uploads a PDF, they put a few tags on a piece of a PDF, they send it, the other person signs it. That's not lock in. Lock in is like, I had to get an engineer. It's like, no, there's a brand certainly. And when I'm like, let's say like start a new company. Hey, uh, what should I use for E Signature? I'm not even probably going to say it. What should we use for DocuSign? That's what I'll end up saying, right? It's like Google, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Should we use DocuSign? Uh, yeah, but like, let's just look at a few others, right? Like that's probably what'll happen is because like the product, until you're like, it's just ubiquitous. Right. But this is what's really interesting, right? Like you look at hello Sign, you look at PandaDoc, you look at some of these other products. Like there wasn't as much lock in because it's not like a billing system. Billing system. Like, oh, I went through months of Work. And now you would like me to go through months of other work, therefore just to undo. Yeah, just to undo and get this other one. That's a big trust lock in. Right? Like people won't even have a sales conversation for that. Right. So it's interesting. But anyways, I just wanted to check your assumption. But, but keep going. I didn't want to interrupt.

Speaker A: I was thinking it could be lock in, but I might as well. I might be wrong based on what you said. Given that you start storing your documents, I was thinking more about a big organization where you could find a new juicier, better UI notion, like UI kind of company. But Every, the other 27 people in your team are gonna be like, yeah, but it's. All our documents are here. And if we've integrated APIs and whatever, if we're getting.

Speaker B: But who uses that every day? Salespeople. Salespeople, like they don't give a shit. Person who cares about that is like legal, like ops, right. And normally like the decision isn't being made by them, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And think about it, think about it like this way. So like Echo Sign had more traction. Uh, Adobe Echo Sign, I think it was Adobe Echo Sign, whatever Adobe's product they bought, I'm pretty sure it was Echo Sign had more traction than DocuSign. They did. They had a better product as well. Uh, it goes to Adobe. Uh, Jason Lemkin sold it to Adobe and DocuSign, their new CEO. They had like ah, eight CEOs over the period. They've had so many CEOs there. He runs, and Jason just talked about this recently. He runs like um, a domination strategy. And it's just like we will win every deal, we will give away it for free. We will do everything. Right. So he got it to be ubiquitous. Right. And now we're in this cycle where it's all DocuSigned. All DocuSign. DocuSign. Right. And what's interesting is like even when you look at search, All Google, all Google, but remember that time period, it was like 10, 15 years ago when like Bing was kind of a thing. You saw the Bing ads everywhere. Like you saw everything. And Bing's market share went from like 0 to about 5%, which in the search space is insane, right? It's not 90%, it's not 10%, you know what I mean? But it's like 5%, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so for you, if you're considering uh, E sign space, I would look at that space and be like, let me map all the Different E signatures. Right. And I would attack it either from being cheaper, being niche, or being somehow cleaner or better, which is very hard because I don't think people care how clean it is. It's the type of product that they will go, oh yeah, that is clean, that is great. But then they'll go, eh, ah, but like, I don't really care to switch. Right. So it's got to have something switching costs. Right. I bet you could like have a better fair use limit when it comes to DocuSign, um, and do some sort of very beneficial free and drive product adoption really quickly. But I got into like helping rather than listening. So apologies there.

Speaker A: No, no, no, no worries. No worries. So you said, uh, let me get this a bit clearer. You said you wouldn't look for cheaper or uh, a bit.

Speaker B: I wouldn't look for those, yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, you would. You would or you wouldn't?

Speaker B: Like, I don't understand why there isn't a freemium version of DocuSign. Like I think DocuSign has a freemium version, but it's like very faux free. Meaning you don't get a lot of like I can actually look right now. Um, you don't really get a lot of functionality. It's more just like a try before you buy.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know.

Speaker B: Why isn't there a free docuSign? The tech can't be that good. Like it can't be that hard. I don't know and I might be completely wrong, but there's got to be something you can give away. Go ahead, Sorry.

Speaker A: Where would you charge if you would give DocuSign away for free? Because I know. By the way, I highly appreciate your strategy which turned out to be fantastically good about giving, uh, the bare metrics equivalent for free. I mean uh, credit where credit is due. I see the load behind when you're saying, why don't you give away DocuSign for free? Where would you charge at one point in this scenario?

Speaker B: So I'm looking at the pricing page right now. Right now they're low end personal plan is $15 per month.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, you can do five documents per month, single user only, basic fields, basic reports built in accessibility, basic workflows, multiple languages. Here's what I would do. I'd give away those five for free. That means the bottom end freelance market, the bottom end real estate market, people doing a couple of deals per month, nothing crazy. All of those, like basically not all of them, but a good amount of them come to you. Right. I think that where I would differentiate so they have a mobile app that's included. I would keep that included as well. I think some of the things here, like the integrations with Dropbox, Google Drive and more like think about Slack for instance. Right, Slack. The power of Slack was they limited the number of messages and they limited the number of integrations. And the minute it became annoying, you were like, uh, of course I'll increase, like of course I'll pay more. Right here they have basic fields, basic reports, multiple languages, integrations with a couple of things. There's automated reminders. There's probably a number of things there that even if I only have a couple of like integrations or a couple of dollars a month, I'm more than willing to pay just to have that integration or something like that. Right? And then as soon as they have more than five. Yeah, there you go. Right. And I don't know what the cost structure here, someone could tell me all of a sudden the cost structure is insane. I don't think it is. But like if it's not, there should be a free version of this and it should be the best free thing out there. And this is the perfect market for it because there's so much stuff like if I search E Signature free. Is anyone running this strategy right now?

Speaker A: Not to the extent that you're saying there are doing it, but not to this extent. And there are still enough players in the market, the market is old enough for the product to be because you know, somebody like notion came a few years ago with the blocks. Now as time goes by, more and more companies are doing the block style, uh, approach the block style philosophy. So the, the more time goes by, the more the philosophies are shared and kind of like. Do you watch Formula one by any chance?

Speaker B: Uh, I know of it. I don't watch enough of it to get a reference. But go for it.

Speaker A: What happens is when a new generation uh, comes, which is regulations, the car needs to look this way and they need to respect that. First few years, a couple of philosophies are being defined, but by the end of the cycle. So 2021 was the last year of the last cycle, which was like 2014, 2021, most cars kind of look the same because a few philosophies have been developed. So same in something like E signing, I'm guessing if somebody came up in 2012 with, I don't know, sign right now from your mobile phone, by this time there's been enough time to cross pollinate between, between companies because they're like, well they're doing it, so it's good. Great. Let's, let's build that as well.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I want to ask you something else on pricing. Fantastic idea on the freemium. I want to ask you, how about the following as well? So in parallel, give a plan where you have unlimited users. So you sacrifice that sweet ndr. Because this is the thing about e signing, uh, companies. $8 a month per user. You get more than 100% in net dollar retention. That's fantastic. Give something like 49 or 99amonth for unlimited users, charge per workspace, or maybe, maybe skip this, but do that up until you get a base of customers. So a foundation, whether that foundation is 10,000amonth because I'm an indie hacker, or whether it's a thousand users, because that's what I feel comfortable with. And then switch into, uh, per seat pricing because by this time you already have had some time spent. So your product is a bit better in the first year. We can agree that the product is going to be lacking maybe more than a year. Have you ever considered this strategy where you give away not free, but you give away a great deal at kind of your expense. So I'm sacrificing ndr, but NDR is not going to kick in any way in the first year. Even if I grow like a rocket. Sacrifice that for a foundation and you then you grandfather people so that no matter what, even if you're, even if people are not buying your per seat pricing because the product is not good enough or whatever, you still have that base of $10,000 a month or whatever the basis.

Speaker B: So I think that if you can position it so that it's not like you're taking something away from me. Um, like I have a better strategy for you, right? One is either lifetime deal, like, start it early. Hey, we know that the product isn't going to be amazing, blah, blah, lifetime deal, like if you give us this much now, we won't charge you into the future. Uh, people like those types of deals. I sign up for those types of deals because it's a little bit of a bet, right? It's a bet, uh, that it's going to keep going. And you're kind of like pre investing, right? I think that the issue is I don't want to get a bunch of people and then set the expectation that they don't have to pay me. It's hard enough to get a thousand users. If I get a thousand users and then all of a sudden I can't monetize them. At all. Unless I build a completely different product. It's terrible. It's just terrible. Right? It's just not fun. So I think the other thing is, uh, I also feel like there's just a better path. What I would do is I don't think charging per user is a good idea anyways. I think charging per user with these types of products, it actually hurts your retention. You're saying like, oh, you give up ndr? I don't think so. I think if you charge based on the number of signatures and Panda Dot kind of tried to do this, I think Proposify might have done this. It just depends on like, I'd have to do the research but like all of a sudden like, I think HubSpot's the perfect example. HubSpot gives you unlimited users unless you're on their first paid plan. And I think on their free plan they also don't give you unlimited users. So all of a sudden you're on unlimited users, then you're on the first paid plan or you're unlimited users, free, limited users, um, first paid and then unlimited over after that. Right. But then the contacts, they charge you based on contacts wherever you are, unless you're in the free plan. And there's special things about the free plan. And I think what's beautiful about that is you can kind of have your cake and eat it too. The reason they want that user limit on the low end is because they want to make sure that there's NDR when you have a lot more users than like three or five. Right. Because there's a lot of really small three to five person companies that are doing a lot of money and, and they want to extract some of that cash. Right. But they have this other thing which is number of signatures. And so what I would be interested in doing is a histogram analysis of signatures. I don't know how you get this data. Maybe you can collect a survey and then it's going to be a little inaccurate, but that's fine. And then just do a histogram like hey, how many DocuSigns you send a month? And then ask a question. Have you ever received an email from DocuSign that says you were over your fair use limit?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: That's a yes or no question. People remember those emails because they're like, oh crap, I have to delete some or I have to, to do something else. So yeah, I would look into a couple of these axes and kind of go from there. Um, but I wouldn't. There are A lot more value metrics than E signatures and users you might come back to. Those are the only two that matter. That's probably fair, but you should explore that a little bit before assuming that it doesn't exist. That's how I would think about it.

Speaker A: What I ask is, has, uh, a bit of overlap, but not full overlap, which with what you said, which is still a great idea, separately. So I was saying instead of charging per user, which is what the standard is, and that means there's probably space to innovate, I was saying do more of a basecamp kind of pricing where you pay not a big amount, but less considerable amount. So 99amonth, something like that. And you just get unlimited users. Let's call that a third plan. And I was envisioning what you said as well, a middle plan. So first plan would be free. Second plan would be, let's just give them, um, five seats for the price of what they pay for two seats in another company right now so that you attract them. You get, uh, is that two to five team, uh, of two to five people at the price of two. And then once you have more than five, just go for the 99 for unlimited. Because kind of like Basecamp, you have at the back of your mind that, uh, comfort that, you know what, I kind of know what it will keep on costing. Would you still vote with yours? Something in between? This one.

Speaker B: Depends on what you want, which I know is a cop out, but it isn't. I think Basecamp, the thing with Basecamp, 99%, 99%, it might actually be over 99% at this point. 99% or more of their traffic comes direct. When you have no problem with distribution, like getting people to your site, especially qualified traffic. Why would I confuse you with multiple tiers right now? Should they have two tiers? Probably. Should they have some tiers after you initially sign up to sell you other stuff? Yes, I think so too. But like then they have a philosophical difference with that type of stuff. But that's the thing, right? If, uh, I'm having a sales conversation with you, that's heavier cac, higher CAC or heavier cac, then I also need better monetization strategy because I'm going to have more difficulty or at least more expense to bring you in. So when you propose that, I think that again, it depends on your life cycle, where you are in the life cycle and where you want to go. And I think in your particular case, in the early days, yes, doing something clever, but just make sure it doesn't kill you in the end. So if it's not free, fine. If it's $99 per month, unlimited probably is going to be too expensive. But like let's say like $50 a month or you know, even $20 a month unlimited, like all of a sudden you're going to start to build that base and it's okay to take that away at some point. Right. As long as it's monetized. Right. And when I say take it away, you're going to legacy, uh, them in. Um, I think it's very difficult to give away unlimited and then later like take, take that away and you know, kind of go from there. I think it's really dangerous to do that because I think users, they, they, it's just. You saw this with Evernote. I, I don't think there was another option for Evernote, but it's just one of those things where you don't want to pull an Evernote. Unfortunately, it just doesn't go over well.

Speaker A: Mhm. Cool. Super useful. So we talked about picking, looking at how to pick one. We talked about pricing and about, I mean we talked about an edge and pricing in particular. What about um, timing. So I've seen that when it comes to timing, most people, the, the natural is to overestimate because we're early adopters, we build stuff. So we're like, yeah, it's uh, let's say it's 2016 and you're looking at a live chat company and you're like, yeah, there's already intercom and drift just started up. Or let's just say it's actually 2018. Um, and by during that time and right now there's been so much money made in live chat companies which aren't core live chat companies anymore. But uh, first of all, do you agree with that? The fact that timing is. People tend to overestimate because we're early adopters.

Speaker B: I think it is impossible to get timing right. I just do, I think it's impossible. Like people are giving us credit or me credit for selling at the right time. There was a good chance we delayed this. There was a good chance we tried to do it earlier and it didn't. And so I think it's like, I think the problem with people who get timing too early, like the early adopter comment that you're making, the problem is they don't adapt right. They get too ingrained with again the vision. So there's vision, there's how you get there and then there's like assumptions on the vision and how you get there. And as soon as those assumptions get out of whack, and it's hard, it's really hard to identify those. Incredibly difficult. Like, you're not going to identify those, like, in the time they're happening, it's always going to be hindsight. But this is why feedback cycles are so important. But the minute you get into that mode, like, you have to adjust. So, for example, like, live chat, I think Drift. I, um, can't speak about Drift because they're a customer. Um, I think, uh, Intercom. I could speak about Intercom. I think one thing that Intercom got somewhat right was they stuck to their core. Like, we are messaging. Right? They stuck to the core messaging, right. They didn't get to, like, we are going to chase down salespeople, we're going to chase down marketing, we're going to chase down. Because that reduced a lot of the risk in their business. Now, they might not necessarily be the largest business in the end, but it reduced a lot of risk. Right. And I think what Intercom has done really well is they focused on a lot of fundamentals. They don't have uptime issues, they don't have deliverability issues. They don't have any of those things. I'm not saying Drift has those either. But, like, I think it's just one of those things that, like, both those companies. And I can say this, like, both of those companies are very, very good at, like, understanding the market and, like, reacting. Responding to it. They're not reacting to it. Um, but I think timing. The one person who I think is always early is the guy who started Clubhouse. Highlighter was so, like that stuff so early. Every time he does it, it's so early. And after doing it three or four times, I think he should recognize, oh, this is a big thing. Let's take a step back. And what he could have done, and I don't know how you would have done this, but. And maybe he'll do it now, is kind of like what Foursquare did. A lot of people don't remember. Foursquare was so early. Then they kind of came into vogue, and then all of a sudden it kind of dropped off. Right. But what he did is he pivoted to being a business product. So it was more about B2B. It was more about location data. It was more about these types of things. And that's what sustained his business. That's what created a really, really large business, actually. Right. Because he responded to the market. He realized that he was really early on this location check in. Then he was right at the right time because it grew right into it and then he was able to pivot over time and I think that was, that's a significant thing to basically learn from.

Speaker A: That's super interesting. And yeah, Clubhouse does resemble a bit of foursquare in that regard because Clubhouse had a meteoric growth and then now it's the next phase. When I talk about early to market, let me make this distinction as well, which it's a bit niche, I'm a bit nitpicky but I'm curious to know your thoughts because now you're part of them. I think Pado, uh, let me say this, I think 99 of paddles lifetime revenue still hasn't come into fruition. Paddle to me looks, when I say early to market I don't mean um, crash. I mean I'm thinking about the 10 to 40%. So I mean a bit of a slog, a bit of a grind until it really kicks in. And when it kicks in, it kicks in which is paddle. Now I mean I think companies like Pado, Stripe Gumroad have the only thing better than recurring revenue which is infrastructure revenue. Because Pado grows with his customers. Uh, you can get more than uh, anyway, you understand what I'm saying. So paddle started when? 2012 I reckon, officially.

Speaker B: Yeah, we started around the same time actually.

Speaker A: Yeah. So um, if Pado wouldn't have been in the market and there will be like a weaker half assed option and you will start right today, Paddle, you'd grow way faster obviously than it took 2012 to right now because uh, of the market, because of the market, because of, of everything. So that's what I talk about when I'm thinking about timing. Not um, specifically about innovation but more about speed to escape velocity if that makes sense. It's a very nitpicky comment.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Um, I think what's really hard is. I still don't think you can time it. I think that drift started when the market was accelerating, not when it was beginning. Intercom started when the market was beginning. Right. They're both impressive, great companies. Right. I think there are some businesses you have to will into existence more than others. Slack did not have to will itself into existence. Like yes, they had the gaming company that was failing beforehand and they pivoted to this um, hip chat style competitor and everything like that. ProfitWell, we had to will a lot more into existence. If we were in a different market we would have accelerated even faster. Right. Because we Were executors. Right. We're operators. At the end of the day, I think Paddle the market's coming into vogue because I think people are just starting to understand payments and billing and understanding how it impacts their business. And we're riding the wave of like, not only do we do it for you, but we help these areas of your business that suck. Like all those types of things. Right. For example, again, the metaphor that I've been using, I don't think it's going to be the final metaphor is like Stripe build roads like a charge be or Curly built trucks on those roads. Like Paddle is building a logistics network, if that makes sense. So what I mean by that is like this is the thing a lot of people don't realize. Like, and if when they realize this, they're like, holy shit, this is, this is wild. Right. But I think that we get put into this charge me bucket or this Stripe bucket and people don't realize like we're one of Stripe's top 200 customers.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like we, we route payments. But what happens is if you have a customer in Bulgaria and we know that the payment acceptance is better for checkout.com than stripe, we run that payment through checkout.com right. And then the US most of the US revenue ends up going through Stripe. Right. So it's one of those things. And then there's a bunch of other ones.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And then like we handle all the taxes, we handle all this. So it's a logistics network of like shipping out everything. Right. And so I think that's the thing that like it's hard to say, like is that a timing thing? I think it is a positioning thing. I know Andrew is working heavily on this. This is something I'm thinking a lot about. But it's like that's a really big thing to think about is what does that positioning look like basically.

Speaker A: Mhm. Nice analogy. On the logistics infrastructure, you said number one will into existence. Number three was, you said that Drift was in an accelerating. What was it? It was a rating timing moment.

Speaker B: Yeah, they were. So the market was Intercom started and this idea of having a chat bubble. They were the inventors. Right. And there was like live chat before that. But like the way that they used it, they were like the first ones to use it the way they did. Right. And I guess like Olark and like true live chat back in the day, like you know, probably were the originators. Right. But Intercom started to make it a like ubiquitous thing. And then Drift basically looked at that doubled down on sales and marketing and Excel and rode the acceleration of the market. Right. They were the ones who basically started seeing, oh, there's a requirement for this. Like it used to be. Putting live chat on your website was like a question. I was like, do we want to do that? I don't know. Some people see it now. It was like, no, every website needs this. Right? And that's where Drift basically came in. And they probably helped accelerate that market. Um, but yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker A: And even David Cancel, uh, CEO, founder and Drift talked about his philosophy on this new stage of SaaS companies. Whereas the P and G era, where it's. Because what you said made me think he was talking about, how was it between this, uh, I don't know, $1 soap and 1.5 dollars. So P& G knows and brands and markets and accelerates the market in that direction. But yeah, so very great point. Now you said number three was. I'm trying to put it down. Uh, they hit the Drift hit the moment when the market was accelerating and intercom was creating. Because Intercom didn't will it into existence. As you said, there was already olaq. But there's a difference between willing into existence and where Drift, sorry, Intercom was. What was that? Creating the market or innovating? Growing the market. How did you call it that?

Speaker B: Well, here's the thing. I don't think, and I actually have an interview I did with David Cancel, uh, that he says this and it's, it's. You can't, you can't will a market, uh, into existence. It cannot happen. You can open a market, you can expose a market to something, but the market isn't ready until the market gets ready. It's just like a recession, right? We all start talking about a recession. We start behaving as if it's in a recession. There are some fundamental things that happen in the market, but then all of a sudden a recession takes place. We all can't go. It's like traffic too. We all can't go. Okay, everybody, we're not in a recession. Everything is actually okay. Like, we can't do that. And then all of a sudden, magically, we're out of recession. It's just this flywheel that once it gets going, right? So you have the first start where people start offering live chat, right? But if the market doesn't want it, it doesn't matter. And all of a sudden there was little bits of the market that wanted it, right? There was like, well, this is kind of convenient for this space. Or this vertical or that vertical, Right? And then it was first used as just support. And then it became, well, if it's just support, why don't we also put it on the front of the website? Why don't we put it everywhere? Right? And this is how the market evolves. And then intercom makes it incredibly easy to control where it is, what you do, all that other stuff, that's the thing that they innovated on. And then all of a sudden becomes a requirement. And it's like, oh, my God, if you don't have this, you're an idiot. People start asking, well, I don't want to. I don't want to email, I don't want to fill out a form. Can you just like, why isn't there someone there to answer my question now? Right, yeah. The market demands that and then they write it, right? And there's little nudges you can give in different directions. You can shape a market, but you're not going to create a market. You're not going to will a market into existence. Um, and it gets semantic really quickly here. But that's the thing to get.

Speaker A: The reason why I was asking is because I have a point. I have a question I want to ask you. So, uh, let's just recap in a sentence. Intercom kind of opened the market. Drift accelerated the market. In broad strokes, given the context we just put.

Speaker B: I don't, I don't think I would agree with that. I think that drift. Because they. Because you're saying that drift did something, I think that, like, I don't know. And this is getting semantic really quickly. So I don't know how interesting it is.

Speaker A: No, I don't know. Let me rephrase.

Speaker B: The market.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I messed it up. Drift. This is a better phrasing. Drift came at a moment where the market was accelerating. That's a better way to put it.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Okay. Agree or disagree. If you're a bootstrapper, and that includes lifestyle, business, or it means non VC backed for the fanatics out there of the wording. If you're looking to bootstrap a company to healthy profitability, like a healthy business number, not this one, Excel. Create a product in a market that's accelerating is your best bet. Agree or disagree.

Speaker B: Say that one more time.

Speaker A: So if you're looking to bootstrap a company into healthy profitability, creating a product in a market that is accelerating is your best bet, given the risk. So the. Bless you. Uh, no, I didn't sneeze.

Speaker B: I was thinking but yes, I think the answer is yes. But good luck identifying a market that is accelerating.

Speaker A: Didn't David do that with Drift?

Speaker B: No, he did, but uh, David's been in the game for years. So like, I mean it's possible, 100% possible. But yeah, it's one of those things where you have to really, really consider where that's coming from.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Like I. Of course. And that's what you should do. You should study the market, you should understand it, you should scrutinize it. And even if you get 50% wrong, you're 50% right.

Speaker A: Mhm. So this is where you said you take a full year to research, talk to people. This is where you would measure. Not twice.

Speaker B: David and Elias took two years before they actually started Drift. They started the company and then all of a sudden they ended up pushing forward so much. They started four different products before Drift, like four different products. They shut them down and then Drift was the one they went after. They just went all in.

Speaker A: This is so, so useful, by the way. I feel like there's a lot of, uh, a lot of value packed in here.

Speaker B: But that's the other thing too, like shutting down something. That's another thing that people don't do well, like hold on to it, hold on to it, hold on to it, hold on to it. For you, like something you said before, you have a business where you spend a half hour to an hour a day. If it's truly a half hour to an hour today, fantastic. Never shut that business down. But all of a sudden it's like, I don't know, five hours a week, depends on how good it is, depends on how much time it goes into. It's a distraction. And I think that there's a lot of products that they just kind of go like this, they just meander and they never go like that. And the problem is we have stories of people who like, oh my God, the revenue went like this and then like that. Right. But what people don't tell you with those, there's no context, there's no, like, where were the other numbers that kept them going? And so then we have members of our community who they just keep going, they just never stop. And there's no number that shows momentum, just a single number that shows momentum for us. The revenue on top of ProfitWell went like this. It went like this for a while and that was when we were building, building, building, and then just like it slowly kept going up and then it went up like that. And that was one of those things. Where it was like, oh, okay, this is great. Let's keep going. You know what I mean? Let's keep going. Right? And then the revenue followed. And that's the thing that if I was looking at just my revenue graph going like this, and I didn't have that other context, I would have told that person to give up. And that's true. You should give up. If none of your numbers are going up and none of your momentum metrics and you're not getting momentum, give it a timeline. Six months, nine months, whatever it is. Now, this assumes you're going full time and not just like, well, I haven't done anything in three weeks. I've been tired, blah, blah, blah. But, like, that's the thing to kind of think about.

Speaker A: So you'd say there should be a metric, even if that metric is your own deadline, because you're giving it nine months. There should be.

Speaker B: I gave myself nine months. Yeah.

Speaker A: There should be a metric, um, driving this. Even if. If it's not revenue, there should be a metric driving you to keep pursuing this. Because, yeah, very few times the context you said, which is true. It's not often given. Very few times it has been given, let's say with. I think it was. I'm not going to give an example because I don't have the exact, uh, I can't be correct, but I've heard teams saying, look, revenue wasn't going anywhere. Uh, this, this. And that was. But the people love the product. And we kept seeing average, uh, session duration increasing because that's what we're working on. And we knew we were on something.

Speaker B: Keep going. Yeah, keep going. Then. That's how I feel like, keep going. Now, if you saw none of those numbers going forward, but you just felt like it was going to work, then keep going. Then give yourself a deadline.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: And then if you don't figure it out by that point in that deadline, we have to be able to kill our darlings. And it's easier said than done. And I haven't killed enough darlings. I've killed, like, you know, very small features and things like that. But it's like, I think I just. I think the biggest myth we tell each other is like, oh, keep going, keep going. Grind, grind, grind. Which is totally true. Never stop grinding. But on what you grind is really important. It's what you grind. What if. What if Stuart was like, no, this. Like, you know, I really want this game to happen. Users on the game are going down, session duration is going down. All these numbers Are going down or flat. It just blows up for no reason. Right. Because it's like it just didn't work. That's okay. Move on to the next thing.

Speaker A: You said you haven't killed enough babies or not that many. Uh, metaphorically speaking. I'm not trying to incriminate.

Speaker B: Metaphorically speaking, yeah, of course.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so I want to ask you over there for advice because I've heard you. When we started talking, you said if you don't know something about a topic you just mentioned, uh, you don't know, quick, um, thing. By the way, when do you have a hard stop? Because I want to be respectful of your time.

Speaker B: Um, I think I have until 10:45 Eastern, so another 20 minutes or so.

Speaker A: Cool. Okay. Because I need to space them out. All right. We had this long chat about the market, which, uh, uh, as I said, it's complementary to your discussion with Justin Jackson. Um, I want to walk through a few practical examples or not practical examples. A bit of info that people can, you know, can remember. Let's uh, start with this. When you talk about a huge town, give us some numbers. And I know the answer is going to be depends on what you want to build. But clearly a, uh, a TAM of a market where there's only a million dollars per year in a market that possibly can't be big enough and 100 billion, like E commerce is probably a lot, a lot. So could you put that in context for us when you talk about a huge tam, how you would think about it?

Speaker B: I think for me, the way I think about tam. So like for example, if you're like, if you're like, hey, the market is global GDP or all E commerce companies, you have not done. That's not TAM analysis because not. It's not all. It's not all E commerce companies, right? It's. It's of a certain size. It's using this particular integration, you know, so on and so forth. And there's stages, right? Like you can stay like all E commerce companies is our final tam. But then here's like our midterm tam, and here's our like TAM right now. And I think that one, I think that shows a level of sophistication if you are trying to raise money. But two, I think it's incredibly useful because I think you need to be able to have that conversation at different levels. Um, but I do think it has. It's a function of like motion, like sales and marketing, motion, product and market fit. What I mean by that is. And Brian Balfour Actually gave a really good talk on this at one of our conferences. Actually, this is the first time he gave it, but it was like, it was model, customer, market, product fit, like four things. And basically it was like, okay, if you have a lot of logos in your tam, a lot of customers types, but your motion you're bad at, and the price is bad, then what are you doing? Right? So what I mean by that is like, for example, my motion is like, we're really good at inside sales and really good. Well, we are, we are above average, let's say, at inside sales and we are above average at like brand building amongst a, uh, model, uh, that requires inside sales. I can't just go, cool, we're going to go sell to like moms and dads between these two house brackets. I don't know how to market to that group. I could figure it out and maybe there's like some unfettered advantage and that's okay. Like, it doesn't mean you have to have the skills, but it's one of those things of like, it's not just who you're targeting, it's what you're. How you're going to target them. And do you have the skills or will you acquire the skills in order to target those types of people? Right. There are some things that are really easy, easy, quote unquote, to learn. Right. For example, if I want to buy all the car washes in Salt Lake City and I want to be the car wash king of Salt Lake City in Utah, right. I could probably figure out, I don't want to say that I know exactly how to run a car wash business, but there's enough people in the world who figured that out. Right. And there are some markets, like the real estate market, I think someone said, I can't remember who said it, but they're like, the real estate market is full of the dumbest rich people they've ever met. And that's like a very common trope. It's not like a rocket science y field. Right? So it's like, okay, I can probably figure out how to do real estate pretty decently well. And that's not an arrogance thing. It's not a hubris thing. I very much might not be able to, but I'm betting this that I could. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Risk.

Speaker B: All of a sudden it's like, I'm going to go, I have the perfect idea. What's the idea? Okay. Or, uh, who's the idea sell to? It sells to banks. What kind of banks? Well, there's only 10 of them in the world.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know if I'm that guy. I don't know. I've never sold in that environment. I have never been in that environment. I have never built for that environment. I have no idea. Can I get someone who does know that environment? Well, there's probably not a lot of people understand that environment. So like, uh, I don't know. Right. Like that's a really difficult space to go into if you've not dealt with it. Same thing. Building a company that sells to governments. Same thing might be a great idea. But are they gonna buy it? I don't know. Right. And so that's the thing you have to think about.

Speaker A: Mm mhm. Um, another something else I wanted to ask you in this round of like lightning questions was about market timing. But you said you, you just don't believe in that, so I'm gonna have to skip that one.

Speaker B: It's not that it's. It's more of like. No, I believe in. I believe you can't time the market. I think you genuinely can pick a good time or a bad time to go into a market. That's the thing to think about. I think too many people get caught up in. Again, the overthinking. I guess I should start from a premise that normally people don't think about this at all. And I'm m starting from a premise of I think people think too much about it. And that means 90% of people don't think about it at all. I'm talking about the 10% of people. The 10% of. So I think this, this podcast probably has the 90% of people. Yeah. You can time the market because you can get it more right than wrong. Right. And that's through customer research and customer development, which ironically no one wants to do. So yeah, I think it's uh, it might hurt your premise of your question, but hopefully that explains a little bit more.

Speaker A: No, it doesn't hurt because it adds more clarity and uh, I'm glad I got it slightly wrong. Not 100% clear what you said because you got the chance to.

Speaker B: No rights or wrongs.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's never binary. Um, last question in this thing of practical. Not lightning, but closer to lightning questions, people. You're looking. You would be looking for a market where people are already in motion. Is that pretty much a euphemism for if you would. If you would be able to know if you'd be omniscient, which nobody is the growth percentage rate of that market or of that, uh, segment of the market you'd be addressing. Because you can't look into the future. You can't know whether it's going to be growing 50%. Yeah.

Speaker B: You know what a really good example is? You know the story about Amazon, Amazon for more or less? I don't think he knew, oh, it's going to be books and it's going to be all these things. I think what he knew is the Internet is growing at an exponential rate. Yeah. Are people going to buy stuff online? Yes. Where do I start? Books. Great. That's timing the market. Right. Because he knows this underlying thing is going to grow. Right. Are people going to buy more subscriptions or less subscriptions in the next 10 years? They're gonna buy more subscriptions. There's too many advantages to the customer. There's too many advantages to, um, um, the company.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker B: Right. Those are the types of trends that I think you can, you can go after. Are people like, do I know if live chat's going to explode or not at the time? Probably not. Right now. It's really obvious. Right, but that's the thing, right? The bet that I would make there is yes, because live chat is a shorter response time than email or forms, and people are really annoyed with emails and forms, and people are going to want increasingly quicker and quicker response times. Kind of like you and I talking right here. Therefore, I think live chat's a good space. That's probably where the start is.

Speaker A: And, uh, to bring up something you said earlier about intercom messaging, are people going to want to message more? Is there a need for an infrastructure tool for that? That is obvious not only in hindsight, but, um, that's where the word uh was going. Good. Um, if you're able to switch gears with me over here, of course, my main question, which was outside this technical conversation, which by the way, was lovely, so I appreciate all the info you dropped. My main conversation in a completely different topic was about Patrick, Uh, your drive. I'm speeding it up now because time is limited, uh, as it always is. Um, you said you're not a car person, boat kind of person.

Speaker B: No, not yet. Maybe. We'll see.

Speaker A: You said. You know. Exactly. You said you're not going to splurge your money on stuff like that. And you've also talked before about your hyper focus, um, especially when we're talking about not. Not me, but when you were talking about maybe shiny object syndrome, or maybe founders that have that itch to start different stuff, you said you just don't have it and you understand that is part of you.

Speaker B: Um, yep.

Speaker A: So my main question to you is, see, I want to be a bit more of a sophisticated interviewer and I don't want to ask you what drives you because that's a bit lame, but it is that question. I want to put it this way. Is it, Is it what's inside you? Is it a chase for something? Is it the same way I've seen it in other people, that it's a, uh, it's really nothingness, but not in a nihilistic way. And since it's nothing, well, I might as well build something that helps people. What, what gets you this focus? What gets you out of bed is another way to put this question. But in this context of you being able to hyper focus because that's just part of you. So if you were to analyze yourself. Yeah. What is in the last 10 years that allowed you really to go for the grind of profit? Well. And I, uh, know you won't be stopping anytime soon. How do you work is the question.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. It's really interesting because I'm having some of these existential conversations or thoughts or, you know, um, dreams in my head. I think that. And what the context was is like, I think people. So there are some people who love coming into a sales team at X, building it to Y, and then don't want to touch it again. Right. Um, I think of like Alex Hermosi, um, who's a buddy. Like, he's really good at that. And he's structured his entire life now around that. Um, and he's got other stuff he loves. But that's the thing in business. There's some folks like Josh Pigford, who is a competitor and now online friend, at least, um, that I think. And I'm not going to speak for him. I can speak for Alex because we just had this conversation, but I can speak for Josh. I'm not going to try to speak for Josh, but my take is he loves the 0 to point 1. I don't know, whatever it is, it's not quite the full feature of the business. But he loves that beginning part. He just loves it. You can see it in his tweets. You can see it, what he talks about, that kind of stuff. I think it's like one. What do you love? For me, it's less about a time period and a structure and it's more about. It's less a time period and structure and it's more about building out and seeing the thing grow, right? And right now I've seen it grow to a certain stage. I might not like this stage beyond it. I'm going to try it out and see. But then the other thing that underlines me, which I think is different and what brings that focus and intensity is like I'm a mission guy, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So like my mission envelops me completely. My mission right now is building. Was building profitable. Now it's building paddle. Right. And I don't know, right. I don't know when that changes. Does it change when I have kids? Does it change when those kids are older? Does it change if I find a really cool hobby? Does it change when I retire? I don't know. Uh, when I retire, am I gonna be miserable or is it gonna be like I'm gonna go try to teach kids something and my mission is gonna be working in a local school for four hours a day or something? I don't know, right. So I don't know. Like I'm a big mission guy and that comes a lot from just like nurture and upbringing. I think it's going to be, it's going to be hard to see, but that's where I come from. And I think that other people, and this isn't a judgmental thing. I think every time I say this, people are like, they feel judged. I'm like, I'm not judging you. But there's other people that are like, no, like my, my job's a part of my life. I want a fulfilling career. But it's not everything right? To me, it's everything right? And that's scary. And that should sound scary to some people because it's not you. And the thing that I always come back to is like, if you're listening to this, you and I, we're all at this like striation of society, right? You have people digging ditches, people working at, ah, white collar jobs, you have people working at blue collar jobs, all these other things, right? We are in a striation of society and striation of career where if you or I just wanted to like freelance and make a living, not necessarily a great living, but make a living, we could work a minimal amount of time to fulfill whatever lifestyle we wanted. I don't have a very extravagant lifestyle. Like I could work a minimal, I could work a day, a week and probably fulfill the lifestyle that I want. Right? But it's like, okay, if we're all at this level, what's interesting about the people who are on the next level, right? Like what's different about the Elon Musk? What's different about them? Right? Like what separates us from them. That's a really interesting thing. And I think one of those things is, is like Elon Musk has had multiple divorces. He's got probably not spending enough time with his kids. He sleeps at the factory. There's a difference there. And you don't have to be on that there be that on that level. But then I don't know, I'm working on a little bit of a framework where I think that like there are explorers. Um, those are like, I think Noah Kagan, Dharma Shah. These are people who basically like they will. They do a little bit of everything. They dabble in a bunch of things they go do like they kind of chase like excitement or chase like um, the new thing. They're phenomenal executors, like right on this level. Like don't get me wrong. And that's why they're really successful from a financial standpoint. But they also dabble in a bunch of things like Noah will ride his bike across the country, you know, all this other stuff. Dharmesh will build like a wordle app. Then I think you have like, I call them money Honeysuckle. And these are basically investors. They never truly get involved, but they're intense and they're doing a bunch of different things. And then I think you have minds. And minds are like the Elon Musk these are. But then when you look at those three groups, there's people who are either intense and they're all in or they're not. And that doesn't mean they don't work egregious amount or anything like that. It's just a very different mindset. Right. And that's, that's the framework I'm looking at. And I don't know if it's, I'm um, not saying it's right. It's probably not right. Just given that I haven't really thought enough about it. But like that's the thing that I think that like is really interesting to kind of look at our world and like, okay, we're all over a level of success or a level of like intellect. Then what separates the striations? So a little bit of a long tangent there, but something that's been on my mind.

Speaker A: I mean it's a uh, it's an open ended question. So it's not like it's a, uh, there could be an one sentence answer. What I hear from you is as well, uh, that it's about tasting these different levels. So if you would have been the kind of person who is getting the most joy out of going from 0 to 0.1, you've already been there, so you would have been not stuck, but you have been like, all right, this is lovely, I'm going to stick here. Now you're tasting something else. So this is what I find very interesting and I want to put my finger on it. If you were the type to go from 0, 0.1, you would have known it. You found your joy in grow, seeing something grow in mission. However, however, now you're trying something else and you said it. I don't know if I'm gonna like it, but I'm trying it. Going from uh, profit world to paddle this big thing, maybe that thing isn't true. And you're gonna find out later in Life, maybe at 50, maybe at 40, maybe at 80, what your main thing is. But um, I see you're still tasting something else. Not to say that when you found it you just stop tasting other stuff, but when you quote unquote, find it, you kind of uh, dwell there a bit or you know, knock yourself out. Like you like going from 0 to 0.1. You keep creating shit because you're like shit. This is lovely. Yeah,

Speaker B: yeah. I don't know, it's going to depend on the axes. We got to develop some axes here. I think that uh, there are certain execs, like for example, there are certain execs that they only like to go from 0 to 10 million. They know by the time it's 10 million that they're going to hand it off. Right. And there's certain execs that know they're not going to come into a business until it's 10 million and they know how to get from 10 to 100. Right. And so I don't know. I think that for me, I know what I know, which is I really enjoyed building a multi eight figure business. I really enjoyed that. Um, I think if I did it over again I could shave three years off the timeline, which is great, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: I don't know if I'm going to like a nine figure plus business going public, being public, et cetera. Right. That's a journey. I don't know. And so I have to dabble, I have to look into it. Um, I have made the decision that this is the experiment right now. If I felt any amount of certainty that I wasn't going to like it, um, I wouldn't have gone with the Deal. I would have said no. Here are the keys. Have a nice day. By that type of thing. Yeah, that's the thing to think about. And I think if you're listening to this and you are new to the game or you've been in the game for a while or whatever, you very much have to experiment a little bit, but constantly have this introspection because I think if you don't have this introspection, you don't really understand like yourself. Some people, like I think Jenny, my better half, she, she, she correctly figured out that she is a number two. She's not a number one. She's not going to found anything. She doesn't want to be a founder. She wants to be the COO or the operator or the executor or whatever it is. She doesn't want to be the person with the weight on the shoulder. She doesn't want to be the person thinking about a lot of these things. She wants to be the person that comes in and accelerates.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Some people would judge her for that. Oh well, you can be, you can be the founder. She knows she can. She just knows she doesn't like it and she's not going to be good at it. So why, and that's another thing. Like why do we judge people? I don't judge Josh for starting things over and over again. Why would I? It's a waste of time. He's happy. If he's happy, great. He's not hurting anybody. Awesome. Right? But I think that we have less of an appreciation. For example, a controversial statement. You cannot show me a person in SaaS that has gone to 100 million and beyond that has not worked their ass off and sacrificed something in their personal life. You can't, you can't show me someone in the early days who built a successful business, let's say 10 million. Uh, I won't say success was built at a business that has gone 10 million and above, who has not worked their butt off and had personal sacrifices. You can't show me it. Unless there was like some giant luck thing like as crypto and it went crazy or something like that. But then we're seeing a lot of those businesses fall apart, right? But we like to say, yeah, work life balance. Work life balance. You can create this balance. It's like, no, you can't. Even though Josh and I are very different in how we see the world, he works his butt off. Like, you know what I mean? And it's like, and even the people who are like down to Four days a week or three days a week. Now they work their butt off to get to that point. They didn't just start at that point, Right. And some of the folks who started their own business at that point, they busted their butt working in corporate environment for a long time. Right? And so I think it's like, I don't know. I don't know if this is useful, but we would do a lot better in our lives not judging people, um, for their decisions. It's the 4th of July right now. I have a full day of work. I'm not like, oh, no. Oh, my God. I'm not expecting anyone at the company to do this. Anyone who pings me, I respond to. I'm not really pinging anyone unless they're outside the United States. But it's just like, that's fine. I enjoy that. I enjoy what I'm doing. I'm going to take a little bit of time later, but I'm not like, like, it's my life and it's your life. Decide what you want to do and then go do it. And then the minute you have misalignment, that's when you should think about it. And that's what a friend or advisor or someone should tell you to get back on track.

Speaker A: If we would have had the exact same conversation on the topic of athletes, people would have been like, yeah, of course, but what are you talking about? Like, if. If you're tall and whatever, this is your position. Um, yeah, that would have been like, uh, I'm not going to say brain dead, but it would have been obvious. What you're saying, though, isn't obvious at the moment, but I appreciate you putting it this way.

Speaker B: But athletes, it's the other end. Athletes, it's, oh, this superstar could be Shaq could have been so much better if he worked harder. Shaq's the first ballot hall of Famer, right? And it's insane. Kobe. Kobe was great because he practiced three times a day. Right? And we appreciate that. And I, I think it just. I think with the entrepreneur side, it just gets mixed up in, like, I'll tweet. I've tweeted before. No one asked LeBron about his work life balance. Cause no one would ask LeBron about

Speaker A: his work life balance.

Speaker B: Right? And then people, like, again, they get into assumptions. They're like, well, yeah, but no one's expecting, uh, LeBron's like, trainer to be there at all. It's like, it's like they're basically saying, like, but you're not Expecting your employees or your team to work this. No, I never said that. Yeah, but, like, it's. It's just this weird. And I think it's a lot of judgment, and I think it's a lot of, like, insecurity because people aren't comfortable with their 9 to 5. Like, they think they're judged for it because, oh, I could have been more. Well, you're not trying to be. That's okay. Yeah, but if you're not trying to be, don't, like, put that on anybody else. And I think that's the thing. Um, it's a lifestyle and it's one of those things where, like, I don't judge you for, you know, going out every night and, um, you know, going out on weekends. I don't judge you for it. It's not for me. So it's just something to think about. Something that grinds my gears, as you can see. Clearly see.

Speaker A: But, yeah, it's interesting, but it's very, very powerful and useful because it's. I'm going to repeat myself. It is empowering, so it is valuable. Um, also, great moment to end on a high note, Patrick. Uh, as always, you're giving out 110%, so I highly appreciate that. I didn't even realize it was the fourth of July. So I realize now how I need to be thankful for you because we rescheduled a couple of times and I understand.

Speaker B: I rescheduled a couple of times on my end, so it's my fault here.

Speaker A: No, no, no, no. I want to be grateful because we accommodated something in between. Um, I want to end with this. Where. Where should we direct people that want to keep up with you and what you're doing? What will be the main channels?

Speaker B: Yeah, so just, um, patakist.com um, it just redirects to my Twitter. Just go to my Twitter's. Twitter.com patekist P A T T I C U S. Um, I'm on LinkedIn as well as well. But don't message me on LinkedIn. I won't see it. Um, um, and then if you have any, like, um, other stuff or you can't remember anything I just said, just pcaddle.com um pcaddle.com um, I'll respond to everybody. It might take me a little bit to get back to everybody, but, uh, yeah, we'll crank from there.

Speaker A: That's brave, giving out your email address like that. I appreciate it because I know you replied as well.

Speaker B: But no, uh, I reply to everyone. It's. I don't think it's that brave. I think it's like, it all comes back, right? You know, for every person, you're like, okay, here's this. Like, it's easy enough for me to be like, here's this blog post I wrote on this, right? Or like, hey, Like, I don't really know the answer. Or, hey, here's an answer, but it took me six weeks to reply to you, right? Like, as long as there's no expectation of, like, oh, he's an asshole. Because he didn't reply to me immediately, like, which I don't think there ever is. Like, then it's great. Oh, I swear, I just want to be helpful. I think that's a little thing, like, too. Like, this is such a minor note to end on, but I think that one of the worst pieces of advice I got in the beginning was don't go to events. Don't network. And then I started realizing, like, oh, man, every time I network or go to an event, I just meet people, and if I'm helpful to them, they want to be helpful to me. Not every single one of them, but most of them, because it's such a helpful community. And so help, help, help. Um, I think that's a really, really big thing that I think, um, I want to be known for. I want to be known for, like, yeah, I can't. You know, I'm not going to be the most helpful to everybody, but, like, at least we'll try, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: And you are. You are already known for that. But, um, I'm looking forward to the next, uh, seasons to see how, uh, how it progresses. Patrick, I'll stop the recording in a second. Just bear with me for. For a minute. Uh, thank you for coming on the show.

Speaker B: Absolutely, man. Appreciate it.