Latest / 1 to 100 / E29: Growth Hacking Your First SAAS with Oliver Brocato

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E29: Growth Hacking Your First SAAS with Oliver Brocato · 1 to 100

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I just hired a like Ava out of South Africa and he used to like
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basically, I guess it put up like Wi-Fi in like rural places,
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like in the area. And he said that he's been held
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at gunpoint 6 times in the last two months.
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Brutal, Brutal. It's insane.
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I. Was like, you're safe, you're
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safe here, brother. You'll be, you'll be in a, you
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know, your, your home, your apartment.
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It's going to be better. Oh my God.
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No, no, You're the one holding brands at gunpoint.
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You're saying you're going down for copying this other brand?
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Exactly. Yeah.
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Wait, sorry, is that what you do now?
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Yeah, so that is what I do now. I as you know Rishab, I used to
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run an E com brand. I started taps Chocolate and
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after I exited about two years ago, I decided to built
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something in the E Comm space. But I was pretty like fed up
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with like running a brat. I wanted something different.
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And you know, I had a pinpoint when I was running tabs of
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copycats, counterfeits, scammers that were ripping us off.
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You know, we were putting up like billions of views across
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social video, on Instagram, on TikTok, across other platforms.
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And you know, it's sort of a universal truth.
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Like as soon as you start to get exposure and you start to get
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momentum, bad actors just start coming out of the woodwork, They
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start ripping you off. That comes in like all shapes
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and sizes, whether it's like, you know, on social media or
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fake listings on marketplaces, or they're duping your website
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and running, you know, ads to your branded keywords and
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showing up for you on Google. You know, I experienced all of
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that. And it's something that a lot of
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brands experience. And so, you know, post
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acquisition, I decided to build the solution that I wish I had.
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But so that's what Bustam is bustam.com.
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Basically we have software that scans Internet to identify and
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surface these bad actors. And then we have a team of
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enforcement agents, actually most of them are based out of
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South Africa that handle all the takedown side of things.
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So once we find a, we go after them and we report them to the
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domain, to the registrar, to the hosting provider, to the payment
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processor. We do whatever it takes to
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basically get them shut down, DMCA cease and desist, you know,
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payment blocks, you know, whatever we can without sort of,
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you know, going through the normal court of law, which would
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take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Wow. Yeah.
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That's wild how? How big of a problem did it end
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up becoming for tabs like or actually maybe a better way of
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asking this, what is how much of your time did you end up
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spending on like trying to figure out what to do with
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counterfeiters? And then separately, how much
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was do you think if you had to estimate it, how much do you
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think was the revenue impact that that that it had to you
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these? Are both good questions.
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Let me start with the revenue impact.
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I would say on average, brands are bleeding anywhere from 5 to
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15% of their total revenue due to these bad actors, which is
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like very, very sizable. Now, there's no like perfect
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solution or silver bullet that's going to bring that down to 0.
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Like, you know, there's there's not going to be like a, you
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know, saw ball sort of thing. But I think hopefully with what
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we're building, you can at least mitigate it and, you know, put
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dollars back into the pockets of rats to answer your yeah, sorry,
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go hydro real. Quick, is that like scams or is
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that people selling knock off versions like and I assume?
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I bucket it all. I bucket it all into one.
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It's like people selling counterfeits, competitors using,
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you know, your contents without your permission or approval, you
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know, maybe competitors running, stealing your ads and running it
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as their own ads and jacking up your CPMS and you know,
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essentially affecting your marketing.
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You know, I bucket all into one, you know, counterfeits,
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copycats, scammers, content thieves, you know, etcetera.
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And then go back to what you were saying in terms of like the
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pinpoint that I felt truthfully, I think I do overplay it a
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little bit just for the story because it sounds cool to be OK,
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Like it was the pinpoint that I had.
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I will say like just full transparency.
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I guess we're on we're on the podcast and you know, I think
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probably we're more SAS people already watching this than
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e-commerce people. So I'll give you a little bit
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more of a transparent view. The other big motivation behind
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building bust them was that I built a very strong following in
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the direct to consumer sort of e-commerce space.
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And so you know when I was building tabs, I was building in
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public, I was talking about my wins, my failures, but I was
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seeing what I was doing and I am asked a following of about
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50,000 e-commerce entrepreneurs. And what I found was that when I
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would tweet about an agency or software company or about a
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creator that I worked with, do they get like 15 DMS overnight?
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And you know, as you guys know, like B to B is, is high ticket,
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right? Like 15 deals closed could be
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like twenty $30,000 in MRI, right.
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And so, you know, when I was running tabs, I ended up
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creating affiliate partnerships with all the different software
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companies and agencies that I was working with.
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And just off like my UTM links, like direct revenue track
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through booked calls, through my UTM links, I drove over
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$2,000,000 in deal flow to, you know, the partners that I was
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working with and the companies that I was actually working with
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as a brand, you know, sort of vendor relationship, which I
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got. Yeah, I don't know.
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So anyway, Long story short, like now it's like, dude,
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instead of being like a street promoter, like affiliate, like
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promoting, like other people's shit, you know, might as well
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like have my own sort of offer and build my own business off
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the back of my distribution. And that was also, I would say
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like a very big motivation behind starting Boston and
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behind starting, you know, AB2B ECOM stats was like, I could,
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you know, start a course and, you know, maybe cash out that
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way, but I would ruin my reputation.
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Like I could start an agency, but like, you know, I don't know
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a single agency guy that likes what he does.
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I was like software, That's what I wanted to right?
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Like it's, it's infinitely scalable, highest valuations,
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like etcetera. And so I sort of went into this
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business like, no, I want to do something in that realm.
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And then, you know, that same point was something that I
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experienced first hand and saw a lot of white space and
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opportunity in and sort of delve into it.
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How? How has?
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Building and software differed from what you expected.
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And I think you had something queen tabs and bust them, right.
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I forgot the name of it, but was a study study.
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But yeah, so I'm curious and I'm sure you learned a lot in that
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process. But yeah, how is that different
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from what you expected and coming from the brand side?
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I would say like 2-2, two things like stick out to me.
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One is that like it's super fucking slow.
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Like I mean, I don't have a dev team probably like you guys like
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I don't have like 1414 people like on my dev team.
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Like we have a one man, you know, dev shop currently, and
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I'm hiring my second, you know, full time engineer.
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So, you know, I think that contributes to it.
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But even people that I do know that that run, you know, larger
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operations and have more, you know, headcounted people, It's
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like it's it's it's wild how like everything just adds weeks
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or months to like the road map and things that should be like
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intuitively, like, you know, an easy fix or, you know, should be
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like very low lift just inevitably end up getting
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dragged out. So that's one thing that I would
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say is a very challenging, I'm a non-technical, you know, guy.
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And so for me, like I have this sort of assumption that
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something should, you know, like, let's get it out and ship
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it out. And it always takes 3 or 4 times
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longer than they say it's going to take.
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And then that we think it's going to take.
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And I constantly sort of like feel like behind like the 8 ball
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in a sense where I'm like 2 months away or like 3 months
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away from like having the, you know, product that's in my head,
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like, you know, be what, what, what, what the customers
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actually using or seeing. So I see like that's like super
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challenging and frustrating going from like e-commerce to
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software. The second thing I would say is
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that like in E com, you sort of have a product and then it's
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about like selling the product, right?
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Like you have the product in hand, like, and you don't really
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make a lot of like adjustments or refinements or anything after
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you have the product. Like, you know, if you look at
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like, I don't know, like Manscape, for example, or like
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you like Apple, it's like the, the iPhone 17 is the same shit
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as the 16, which is the same shit as the 15.
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And maybe Apple a bad example because they actually do
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innovate. But, but if you look at like
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most physical products, right, it's, it's pretty much like the
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same shit. Like maybe it's a little bit of
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a tweak here one year to the next.
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But the reality is with ECOM, it's very hard to iterate, you
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know, because A, you have to sell out of all your inventory
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and then B, it's like you got to change the formula and then you
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got to get get it and you got to make an adjustment.
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And it goes back to China and there's a three month lead time
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and then it ships for too much. So it's sort of one of those
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things like you have a product and you sell the freaking
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product and then your goal and your job is just like marketing
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and distribution. And that's like sort of your
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singular focus, you know, with SAS, it's way more iterative.
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Like you're constantly, constantly, right, like shipping
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new features, changing things, optimizing, getting customer
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feedback. Like it's just constantly
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evolving. And so you're sort of playing
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two gifts, which is 1, like the product game, but then two,
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like, still like the marketing and distribution game, which is
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like a lot more challenging. Like a lot more challenging,
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yeah. Because your Tam is smaller.
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Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's
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interesting. I feel like the, the biggest
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shift when as you were saying this that like I was starting to
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sort of see in my head is like when you're doing this like
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consumer marketing game, like you just have lots of
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opportunities because you can say like I can take this angle
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with this audience, this angle with this audience.
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Not not that it's easy, but you have more opportunities because
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you're Tam generally is like a lot larger, right?
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Like for you with tabs, your Tam is like every adult basically,
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and so the the like ways that you can kind of try to attract
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those people is just very wide with especially B to BE com SAS.
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It's just like, you know, all of a sudden the world becomes like
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this big and somehow you have to do distribution in a world this
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big, right? And so it's like a totally
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different, I would imagine it's a totally different distribution
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mindset. Then then how you were thinking
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about that, how you were thinking about tabs, which,
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yeah, I'm, I'm curious, like what tactics are you able to
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borrow and what tactics are you not able to borrow from, like
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what you did in tabs? It's good question.
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I think I think in a large way, like I'm starting scratch and
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I'm starting from like fresh. Like to your point, like
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marketing towards, you know, educated business professionals
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is very, very different than putting out brain rot bullshit
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on TikTok. You know, targeting like brain
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and dad like. 18 to 22 year olds, right?
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Like it's, I mean, it's a completely different audience,
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you know, it's like a completely like different game, completely
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different rules of engagement. And you're also to your point,
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like it's, you know, a way smaller time and you know, they
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live on different platforms. So many like different nuances.
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So like in a lot of ways, like I'm kind of starting over and
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there aren't that many like I would say like 1 to 1, like, oh,
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just, you know, apply that framework or apply that
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playbook. And like, you know, we're
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rolling, you know, I'm going from selling direct to consumer
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to selling to business owners. I'm going from, you know,
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selling product, you know, selling software, it's it's a
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completely, completely different game.
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You know, tabs was $29.99 a box. You know, bust down has two
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models. We have a performance model that
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is $300 a month platform fee and then 50 to $200 per successful
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takedown. So you know, we're finding the
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bad guy would bring it to the to to for their approval.
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Once they approve it, we go to get it taken down and then only
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after we get it taken down, we built that 50 to $200.00.
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So we have the performance model and then we also have like an
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unlimited sort of retainer model, which is at $2500 dollars
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to $5000 a month. So as you can imagine, like, you
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know, it's different like in consumer, it's marketing from
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one to many, you know, with with what I'm doing now, it's a hand
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to hand combat. You know, every deal is, you
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know, an effort. Every deal is like, you know,
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going back and forth with decision makers and sales calls.
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And you know, we need buy in from here.
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And you know this, we had an amazing sales call.
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They said that they're happy and then they fall off a Cliff and I
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never hear from them again. And you know, so I mean, it's
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there, there there are a lot, a lot of differences.
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That being said, I think I have a very strong sort of advantage
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because again, like I have this Twitter following and I
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understand how to, you know, get impressions and sort of
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attention hack and get seen within the, I would say like
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e-commerce, like community and world.
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And so like when I first introduced, like Busta, I'm
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like, you know, I put out a tweet that, you know, got over
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250,000 impressions and like over 400 signups.
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Like in our first day, like, you know, I'm putting out content
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every single day and we're booking 3 to 5 calls off the
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back of, you know, my, my ex account.
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So, you know, I would say like that was something that I got to
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bring from tabs, which was like, you know, tabs gave me
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credibility, gave me a personal brand, gave me, you know, sort
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of this, this following and, you know, understanding like the
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Twitter algorithm and understanding like how to get
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seen and how to build that following.
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And now I'm sort of bringing that to what I'm building with
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tabs and using that as sort of like a weapon for distribution
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and for, you know, getting customers and, and, and, you
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know, building this up. And then I would also say like,
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dude, I'm growth hockey. Like we're doing a lot of very
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like interesting sort of, you know, campaigns or, or marketing
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activities that again, like isn't the same as times, but
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like is maybe like similar philosophies.
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So like, for example, we're running like a cold e-mail
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campaign where like we're like messaging brands and saying
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like, hey, like we found over 200 copycats counterfeits that
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are like ripping you off. Do you want to see the list?
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Or like, you know, emailing a founder being like, hey, like I
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almost got scammed by a product that's literally like pretending
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to be you guys. If they're using your images,
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your keywords, you know, they're duping your site like 1 to 1.
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Like do you want to see the link?
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Like what person is going to say like, no, I don't want to see
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the link, right? Like, so I don't know, I guess
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like there's still like a lot of like creativity and like sort of
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ingenuity in terms of like figuring out how to, I don't
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know, like I would say be scrappy and, and be effective,
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you know, with tabs. Like I didn't have investor
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money. Like we started with $30,000 and
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scaled it to an 8 figure a year business.
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Nice, Nice. What would you say from your
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experience on the marketing side of things has been a more
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persuasive angle the size of the pie, like the revenue loss from
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copycats from competitors, the the size of different brands or
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like, is it more emotional, right.
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Because when I speak to founders that are getting copied and with
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my first brand when I got copied, it was more of an
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emotional thing. I don't know if I was even
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paying any attention to the size of the pie that was being lost.
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I just pissed off that they did it.
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It was more like fuck that guy. Like that was the.
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Because he was, he was my employee, right?
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I I hired these two dudes for business development.
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And they. Yeah.
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So it was more of like, and I think it's the same thing for
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Zach. Like Zach doesn't care about the
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slice of the pie that all of the copycats have taken.
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It's more like, yeah, fuck that guy.
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I think, I think it's both. I think like maybe it's like,
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maybe like the emotion that sort of drives them to like book a
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call and you know, to investigate this.
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But then it's like my job to actually, you know, make them
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feel like it's something that's close to the PNL, right?
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Because I do like they're, I mean, I think like in, in this,
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in this economy, in this day and age, if you're not close to the
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PNL, like you're fucked, right? Like honestly, and so like
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everything that we do, we try to connect it back to like, here's
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how much revenue you're losing. Like here's like here, here's
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how much like revenue we're recovering.
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You know, which by the way, might be a stretch.
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Like we're not actually like recovering that money.
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It's like, but you know, the sort of stretch that we make is
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like by taking down this bad actor that we calculated is
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getting 2000, you know, dollars a month from you, you know,
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we're putting that back into your, you know, to your pockets.
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We're trying to sort of frame everything that we're doing, you
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know, bring it directly to like, here's how much money we're
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recovering you, here's how much money we're putting back into
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your pockets here, much how much money is getting stolen from
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you. And by basically doing that, I
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think that we're able to, you know, justify, you know,
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charging them what we charge. And, you know, ultimately being
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something that's like, not like a nice to have out of like ego
17:29
or vanity, but rather like something that like is, you
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know, super important for the business and, and a no brainer.
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And so, you know, I want to sort of like guarantee like a 5X ROI
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sort of thing where it's like, whatever you're paying us, we
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guarantee it's going to be, you know, 1/5 of whatever money
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we're putting back into your pockets.
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And as soon as you start framing things like that, I think, you
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know, retention increases, customer satisfaction increases,
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and you're able to push people that maybe we're on the edge.
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That may come from, you know, an emotional way, you know, to
18:00
actually being locked in for the long term.
18:03
I think that's so important. I'm not sure if you guys are
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seeing all of the tweets that came out recently, Taylor
18:08
Holiday was talking about, you know, how people are pricing
18:11
SAS, how they're anchoring the price of SAS against Shopify or
18:15
angry against judged on me, man, you want to get anchored against
18:18
judged on me. So I think it's so important to
18:21
show people exactly how much money they're making and give
18:24
them a denominator, right? Like what is the cost from?
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I think that that tweet, yeah, I like, first of all, Taylor's
18:35
just playing the X game, which he does really well.
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But like buried in his tweet is like so much nuance that it's
18:47
like an impossible, It's an impossible thing because there's
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this question of value. And as soon as you say the word
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value, now you're like opening yourself up to all sorts of
19:02
interpretation, right? So like I actually agree with
19:05
Oliver's view, which is like, hey, if I, if I can give you, if
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I can teach you the business case, meaning like it is my job
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to teach you how to think about the business case and say like,
19:16
here is the value. And here's the cost.
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Anything over $1000 a month at this point in at least an ecom
19:22
world requires a business case. I'm, I'm not totally sure about
19:27
other worlds. I I suspect that anything that's
19:31
like over 10 KA year, you basically have to give a
19:34
business case to whoever is responsible for your procurement
19:37
or your finance, whatever, whatever it is.
19:41
But everybody needs a business case.
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The problem is like who, who is doing the value side of that
19:47
business case? And if it's not the vendor, then
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yeah, you're going to be compared against random things
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like that's, that's the, that's the, that's the actual core
19:57
problem with all of this. And also why a lot of SAS
20:02
companies don't put their price on their website, because what
20:06
you're doing is you're providing cost without providing value,
20:09
Right? Right.
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And like, and that's the big issues, like when people
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complain about like, why is your price on your website?
20:14
It's like, because then there's no conversation, right?
20:18
Yeah, you're gonna. We also split tested it and I'll
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tell you that conversion rate it took a massive dump when I put
20:25
the pricing on the website. So that there's your answer too.
20:28
That's. Interesting.
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Yeah. The, I do think 11 aspect of
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this though is as more SaaS providers start to publish say,
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hey, you're getting a 5X ROI on this or 10X ROI on this or a 20X
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ROI on this, there's a point at which the brands stop believing
20:49
that. Does that make sense?
20:50
Like there's a like even stamped one of our products repeat
20:56
basically like we, we can show you the, the amount of revenue
21:00
there that is being driven by these Clavio flows that you can
21:02
implement using this technology. And you know, we've, we've had
21:07
brands who turn with a 30X ROI and it's just because like they
21:12
just don't think that it's, they don't actually think that it's a
21:15
30X ROI, right? Like even though you can show
21:17
them the revenue numbers being driven by this, they're saying,
21:20
well, OK, but like there's other ways I could do this thing
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potentially, right? Yeah.
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So I, I think it's like your job like in order to show them
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though that like that it's real, right?
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Like anybody could say that you're getting a 10X ROI or a 5X
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ROI. Like we show like the brand,
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like the formula for how we're capturing like that, that
21:40
revenue that we're estimating, you know, so, so I would say
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like that's like really important.
21:44
We have full transparency that cure the inputs that we're
21:47
taking. Like here's like the tools that
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we use to estimate revenue if we can't get it, you know, to the
21:52
nearest dollars we're using, you know, extrapolation of traffic
21:55
times, conversion rate times, AOV and you know, these are
21:59
inputs and sliders that you can build.
22:01
And so like ultimately, like, you know, in order to stand out,
22:04
I think like you got to be convincing, like just slapping
22:07
A10X ROI isn't good enough. Like you gotta, you gotta go a
22:10
step further. And then, you know, beyond the
22:12
ROI, I think like you need to be like irreplaceable, right stick.
22:15
If somebody isn't using Bustam, like what are they using?
22:19
And the answer is like a VA, which like sucks because the VA
22:23
has no idea what they're doing. They don't they don't have any
22:25
technology. They're not finding things.
22:27
They don't know how to do the takedowns.
22:28
It's going to cost you more than it's actually going.
22:30
To help you or a lawyer which is going to charge you what we bill
22:32
you for 1/2 an hour call right? And so I think, you know, being
22:38
like, like having like an edge in some way, shape or form
22:41
beyond just like pricing or like an ROI is also super important.
22:46
And I think that becomes very tough now that like a lot of SAS
22:48
is becoming commoditized for sure.
22:50
I actually think your second point there is the more
22:53
important point. You need the ROI, but you also
22:55
need it to be hard to replace that.
22:57
If you don't have both, it doesn't matter what the ROI is.
23:02
Yeah, agree. Yeah.
23:04
This is a visibility as well. You know, I wonder like, sorry,
23:08
Rishab, just before we move into the next thing, I wonder if like
23:11
the visibility of the ROI that you're stating right and that
23:15
you're explaining. So there's, there's that
23:17
transparency piece. So it's, it's believable, it's
23:19
acceptable. Where is it placed?
23:22
Like I haven't been in Clavio in a while, but it used to take a
23:25
while to find out, you know, what you were making from
23:27
Clavio. Maybe it's right there on the
23:29
dashboard now and then maybe on the way out, right as well.
23:33
When they're churning, it's like, do you actually want to
23:36
lose this ROI, right? Like where we're positioning the
23:40
ROI and putting it up front and center I think is important too,
23:44
right? If it's on the vertical menu
23:46
nested under like a few different products that like no
23:49
one goes to because it's not where you are, like
23:51
operationally existing in your app, then yeah, it might as well
23:55
not be there. Percent, I try to put that like
23:59
dollar figure and like everywhere that we like have
24:02
message and interact with the customer.
24:04
So like we have like basically we find bad actors and then we
24:07
we have like a place in our platform where it's like in
24:10
review, OK. And then in the in the in review
24:12
section, there's each bad actor and they can approve us to go
24:16
ahead and do the takedown or they deny it.
24:18
For each card. There is a here's how much money
24:21
you're losing due to this bad actor.
24:22
You want to approve it or deny it, right, for every single car.
24:25
And there's also like sort of gamified on the top, like.
24:28
Across all the. Cards, here's how much you're
24:30
losing, right? Like and here's how many.
24:33
Then we also have like Slack channels with every single one
24:35
of our clients. We have an automation that goes
24:38
from the platform into Slack. And so we message them every day
24:43
like here's how many takedowns we got you and here are all the
24:46
takedowns we got you, along with the estimated revenue that you
24:48
were losing that were there for recovering every single day.
24:52
We'd send a Slack automation whenever they have 15 bad actors
24:56
for review along with the estimated revenue that that,
24:59
that they're losing. Hey, if you have 30 bad actors
25:01
that you need to review, you're losing a potentially $30,000 a
25:04
month Click to needs review in order to go ahead and get it.
25:07
You know, we give weekly reporting and monthly reporting.
25:09
And again, like the dollar amount is so, so, so important.
25:12
I'm like working with like my designer right now.
25:15
Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I I have to ask, Yeah, by
25:19
month 3 of being on your platform, are your customers on
25:24
average either churning or upgrading Basically because like
25:30
with a design system of this type, one of two things is going
25:34
to happen. Either you're like, Oh my God,
25:36
I'm getting so much value. I'm going to like do this, but
25:39
at 200 a pop at some point when I'm clicking and I'm just like,
25:45
I've just clicked 10 of them. Like I'd rather upgrade.
25:49
I mean, like that is like a beautiful thing because, and in
25:53
fact, if, if ideally you get 2 segments, ideally you get a
25:58
segment that just like is like, you know, I've done what I need
26:00
to do. And then you do this.
26:02
And then obviously you just worry about finding these
26:05
people, right? And then that's like your
26:07
feedback loop to your to your acquisition, but but I'm curious
26:11
if you've already started to see that?
26:13
100 percent, 100%, we've seen that.
26:15
So, you know, like the all you can eat sort of unlimited
26:18
retainer becomes an ascension that people opt into
26:22
voluntarily. And they're beating down my door
26:24
begging to upgrade to a higher package.
26:27
Because to your point, you know, if if there are a lot of bad
26:30
actors that are out there, they're doing the the math
26:33
themselves and they're saying, holy shit, like I need the
26:35
unlimited model. Like, you know, it makes no
26:38
other sense otherwise. So for example, kill crew like
26:40
came in the door, you know, I'd say a month or two ago and
26:44
within 9 days we racked up like 30 or 40 kills, which is a
26:47
sizable bill on a, on a performance $50.00 or $200 per
26:51
takedown. And they signed a 12 month
26:53
contract for three KA month, you know, 10 days in, which was like
26:56
pretty fucking cool. I'm going to ask, why are they
26:59
pecking you? Why do you turn down business?
27:01
Are you just like, no, this is too difficult.
27:03
We're not going to like, why are they?
27:04
No, because no. No, no dude, because you could
27:07
just say stay on the variable and make more money.
27:09
That's why they're. Not right?
27:11
Exactly because they're saying what they're saying, dude, we
27:13
have way too much volume to be paying on a per killed basis,
27:17
right? Like we want the all you can
27:18
eat. Like imagine you're at, imagine
27:19
you're at like a restaurant and you're like, it's like $20 a
27:22
fucking chicken finger. Or you could pay, you know, $30
27:25
and, and have the whole entire buffet.
27:27
Like, you know, at the point that you have 10 chicken
27:29
fingers, you're like, all right, like, dude, what am I an idiot?
27:32
Like I need to. Upgrade it.
27:33
Right, right, right. And yeah, do you on the other,
27:37
go ahead. Do you allow pausing as well?
27:39
Because I could see like for a smaller brand, let's say you
27:42
come in, you've got ten of these takedowns you need to do, right?
27:45
You take them down, you're not getting the volume that some of
27:49
these larger brands are. And so like in that context, if
27:53
you have the ability to pause, it becomes interesting because
27:55
then you have then you can keep racking these up and say like,
27:58
you know, here's the ROI, I'm coming back like that.
28:02
I don't know if that behavior is happening, but it seems like
28:04
that behavior would happen. So can I give the whip?
28:08
Yeah, please. Sorry, dude.
28:11
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Me and Jeremiah are gonna
28:13
disagree pretty strongly on this particular aspect.
28:16
I'm pretty sure. I say don't even take those
28:19
customers just for what little it's worth.
28:22
Interesting. I think it's not worth anyone's
28:24
time. I like, yeah, I get into trouble
28:28
for this sort of shit, but I, it's like, I think the problem
28:32
is that you will end up thinking about that part of your customer
28:38
base in a way in which is distracting to the customers
28:41
that are like seeing immense value and seeing quickly like
28:45
kill crew and all of your mental energy should be spent on on the
28:50
kill crews. That's just my two cents, but
28:54
yeah, I'm, I mean, I'm curious how, what you've seen so far.
28:56
Yeah. Yeah.
28:57
I mean, I mean, The thing is, is that like.
29:00
There are way? More smaller brands that come
29:02
through our doors than the kill crews that, that, that come in
29:05
and set. So like in an ideal world, of
29:07
course, like I don't want to deal with the small guys and I
29:09
want more kill crews. But you know, just naturally,
29:12
like for everyone kill crew that comes in the door, there are 10
29:15
smaller brands that come through the door.
29:17
And so, you know, ultimately, like I think I sort of have to
29:19
split my focus, you know, on both in terms of sorry, what was
29:26
your question, Jeremiah? What we say, Oh yeah, the pause
29:27
thing, we don't, we don't have a lot of people that are pausing
29:31
because I mean, it's a $300 a month platform fee and there's
29:35
no commitment of having to approve any bad actors that we
29:38
find. So, you know, on the worst case
29:41
scenario, the brand is out $300.00 for the month.
29:44
And they're getting like, you know, sort of like an insurance
29:47
sort of policy, I would say of like constant monitoring 24/7
29:52
and running scans every single day, as well as enforcement
29:55
agents that are manually going out and manually scanning, you
29:58
know, sort of platforms and marketplaces and social media,
30:02
you know, in order to ensure that no bad actors are out
30:04
there. And so I think that a lot of
30:06
brands are willing to pay for that for their Peace of Mind.
30:09
And the other thing too is that like right now, like we're a
30:12
hybrid of software and agency. Like obviously like the end goal
30:16
is to phase out these enforcement agents and, you
30:19
know, fully lean into automating everything on the identification
30:23
side and on the enforcement side.
30:25
And when that happens, we'll be able to draw that monthly
30:29
monitoring fee, you know, substantially down, you know,
30:34
potentially even to 0 where we only have two models, which is,
30:38
you know, monitoring for free, which becomes the lead magnet
30:41
where everybody's going to sign up for that.
30:42
Because it's, it's, it's a no brainer.
30:44
You get, you get, you get, you know, information and alpha and,
30:47
and alerts when, when bad actors are ripping you off and then you
30:50
only are paying when we're actually getting a successful
30:52
removal. And then if you are a kill crew
30:54
and you have a lot, you can go on that unlimited sort of
30:56
retainer. And it also makes sense.
30:58
So that's sort of like the future vision of where Boston's
31:01
going. But right now, like, you know,
31:04
our technology just like isn't fully there yet.
31:06
Truthfully, like the technology is very hard to develop because
31:09
you need to build scrapers to scrape platforms that don't want
31:12
to be scraped. And so it's it's, it's certainly
31:14
challenging to say the least. I love it man.
31:18
I can hear the passion in your voice.
31:20
It's cool. Thank you.
31:21
Well I'm also 1/2 Italian so you know that's how to speak.
31:28
What? What's the What's the reason you
31:31
chose E com? But outside of just being
31:34
familiar with it and like having a brand like you, because you
31:37
did study buddy, which is totally outside.
31:38
It's like consumer SAS. So like I would imagine that you
31:43
sort of like gave yourself permission to be pretty blank
31:46
slate about what you build. Like what?
31:49
What made you choose ECOM SAS? I mean.
31:53
And then why Bootstrap? Actually, yeah.
31:55
Yeah. So I mean, I mean, you said it,
32:00
which is like familiarity, like I mean, I've been operating the
32:03
E com world since I was 14, like as a perchant and it's what I
32:07
know. It's what I live and breathe.
32:09
All my friends are in E com like, you know, on the personal
32:13
side and then on the professional side, like I know
32:15
all the E com guys. I know all the E com killers.
32:17
I've spoken at events like I know the movers and the Shakers,
32:22
you know, and then again also like the Twitter phone, like I
32:24
have this like distribution that like, you know, I was able to
32:28
prove that I can drive millions of dollars in deal.
32:30
Flow per year. To, you know, companies like
32:33
might as well, I feel like I have this like sort of bazooka
32:35
like might as well like direct it towards myself and and you
32:38
know, enrich myself in the process instead of other.
32:40
People. So I think like it was really
32:42
just like it's what I was comfortable with.
32:43
It's what I knew, it's what I felt like I had the biggest, you
32:48
know, competitive advantage and playing it, you know, you look
32:51
at like a Peter Hall who like sells RX bar and then builds
32:54
like David, like right after his non compete expires, right.
32:58
It's like, you know, that's compounding.
33:00
Like he's playing the same game like over and over again and
33:03
he's gone even bigger than he went last time.
33:05
You know, for me, like truthfully, like maybe I should
33:08
have stuck to e-commerce, you know, I should have maybe like
33:11
built another sort of like TikTok viral, you know, CPG
33:14
brands. But I, I was very burnt out.
33:17
I didn't want to do that. I wasn't in love with just like,
33:20
you know, like shilling like bullshit on online.
33:22
Like I wanted to do something that I was a little bit more
33:24
passionate about, something that was actually solving, you know,
33:27
a bigger problem, something that was, you know, more product
33:30
focused, more value driven than marketing.
33:33
And that I would still be able to play towards my strengths
33:37
and, and still be able to play towards all of this, you know,
33:40
sort of, I guess edge that I've been building over the last, you
33:43
know, eight or nine years from building in this space.
33:47
And so, you know, I didn't want to deviate.
33:49
And I think I think that's a good reason.
33:51
I think, you know, a large part of the success that I've had is
33:54
is is from comes from that philosophy in that mindset.
33:59
Were there any other name that you would consider?
34:02
So you went with, you went with Boston?
34:04
Right. And a big part of the brand is
34:07
the name, right? Being able to be recognizable,
34:10
communicate what you do to your customers.
34:12
Were there any other names that were pretty close?
34:17
There was busted, but then that sounded like a little bit
34:21
sexually inappropriate, so vetoed that And that's that's I
34:28
think that's good. For you and you've got tabs and
34:30
then you've got busted. Yeah, exactly.
34:32
Tabs, sex, chocolate. And then I got I got busted.
34:34
I'm making my parents proud. No, no, so, so, yeah, so bust,
34:43
you know, it's like sort of like busting like a bad guy, right.
34:46
So it's it's a little bit, I think more relaxed than busted.
34:53
So that's, that's how I ended up going with bust.
34:56
I'll tell you though, I got, I kind of got fucked.
34:58
So when I initially started the business, I bought bustam.com
35:01
because I was too cheap to sink in like 5K to get bustam.com.
35:06
And then we started doing well and I was like, alright, time to
35:08
buy bustam.com. I bought bustam.com and then we
35:11
had this huge like migration issue between the two domains.
35:15
And now if you search like Bustam on Google, like
35:18
bustam.com just doesn't show up. So I'm working with like an SEO
35:22
agency. I'm running Google ads, you
35:25
know, so that so that I do sort of capture, you know, the warm
35:27
intent audience that's searching for me.
35:31
But that's that's been a bit of a disaster.
35:34
Dude, I was hoping for a way more ironic story.
35:37
I was hoping someone bought busting.com and then you had to
35:40
bust them. No, no, unfortunately not.
35:45
That's funny. Do you, do you think we've
35:48
talked about this before? Because like you know, Jack,
35:51
Zach all had like ECOM businesses before.
35:56
If you had to gauge which like on what dimensions ECOM is
36:00
harder or easier and on what dimensions SAS is harder or
36:03
easier, Like what would you say are the aspects of running an
36:06
ECOM business that are harder and then on what dimensions are,
36:12
is running a SAS business harder?
36:15
I think the big, I think about audit answers to that question,
36:18
but I think the biggest thing that stands out to me is that
36:21
like with B to B, it feels like your output is more directly
36:27
correlated to your input, where it's like when you're running
36:29
like AB to B sort of business. Like it feels like the harder
36:33
you work and the more you hustle and you know, the more inputs
36:38
you put in, like the more that you're going to get out.
36:40
It's like the more sales calls that I make, the more tweets
36:42
that I put out, the more emails that I sent to brands, the more
36:45
meetings that I have. Like things just feel like more
36:48
like directly correlated 1 to 1. Like it's very like easily, sort
36:51
of like calculated, right? It's like, here's how many
36:54
emails I don't need to send, Here's how many response, here's
36:57
how many book call, here's how many I can close times this
37:00
amount. Like it just feels like more
37:02
sort of like predictable and also like maybe even a little
37:05
bit more rewarded you as a result because you know that all
37:08
that hard work is like going into is going to create like an
37:11
amazing outcome, whereas like e-commerce is like sort of like
37:16
its own beast. It really is.
37:19
And you know, with E com, some of my biggest months were months
37:24
that like I didn't expect it or, you know, months that came from
37:29
like, you know, a decision that, you know, from four months
37:33
before, like, you know, to to work with somebody or to do
37:36
something or not do something. Like with E com, it feels, I
37:40
don't want to say like, I wouldn't say luck based, but it
37:43
just feels like like way less like in your control, like
37:46
having the right product. And I mean, I guess having the
37:48
right product in any business is helpful and don't get me wrong,
37:51
but like in the E com like particularly it's like you could
37:54
be, you know, operating and doing a really good job, but
37:58
it's just like, you know, maybe not the right vehicle, whereas I
38:01
can B to B. Like I feel you can more easily
38:03
like brute force your success and more like sort of, you know,
38:07
hustle your way into like building something of value.
38:10
I'm curious, do you guys, do you guys agree with that take or
38:13
what do you guys think? Like that framework because it
38:18
also like correlates a little bit to how I've heard like
38:23
investors will talk about consumer versus B to B where
38:27
consumers more hits driven. So yeah, luck, luck I think is
38:31
not the right word. It's more like hips driven and
38:34
moments driven. Yeah, Or it's like you're like
38:37
behind the right tailwind or like, you know, like in the
38:39
right vertical or category at the right time or, you know, you
38:43
were for me like tabs, like I was super early on TikTok
38:46
organic and that was like a massive, massive part of like my
38:50
success. Yeah.
38:52
Yeah. A. 100% exactly.
38:54
Whereas like B to B is more predictable.
38:56
And so a lot of investors like investing in B to B because it's
39:00
more predictable, right? It's like, OK, I do this thing.
39:03
If the product is right, then this thing happens and you know,
39:07
like it's not you can't be over precise, but you can kind of see
39:12
how how the system works. Yeah.
39:15
That the compounding effect in B to BI feel like it's more that
39:19
part is more predictable as well.
39:21
So going back to like obviously consumer businesses can compound
39:24
as well, but it just like the rhythms are different than it is
39:29
in B2B. Yeah, yeah.
39:32
And consumer, it's like you're just like way more on like a
39:34
roller coaster. Whereas in B2B like and like
39:37
with what I'm doing now, it's like I could, I could say pretty
39:40
like confidently like what I'm going to do this month, what I'm
39:42
going to do next month, like you know, etcetera.
39:47
You know the other thing with consumer is that like truthfully
39:49
like to me like consumers. All.
39:52
Marketing like it's. All.
39:54
Marketing, it's like it's like, are you even like, you know,
39:57
building a business or are you like, are you running like a
39:59
content agency? Like like truth.
40:02
That's why I was just like so like burnt out and like sick.
40:04
Like that's why I didn't want to start another like E conference.
40:08
You know, it's like it's less about like the product, it's
40:11
less about the customer experience.
40:13
It's less about, you know, but driving value and like having
40:16
retention. It's just more about like, you
40:18
know, you know, acquiring customers with a calculus lower
40:23
than LTV, whereas I feel like with, you know, B to B, like the
40:28
the largest driver of our clients has come from referrals
40:32
and like word of mouth. Like I think like in B to B,
40:35
like in SAS, if you're just like way more like rewarded from like
40:40
focusing on building a good product, like, you know, like if
40:43
you don't have retention, like you're fucked.
40:45
If you don't have good marketing in econ, you're fucked.
40:47
And I think like as a result, like those are the things that
40:51
you as a founder have to index on, depends on which game you're
40:54
playing. And I think that it's better
40:57
long term to focus on like the product versus the marketing.
41:01
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think there's the
41:04
biggest differences between ECOM and SAS is that in SAS, your
41:08
supply side, a lot of the time you're not responsible for
41:11
generating demand. You're solving a problem that
41:13
exists in the market. And the closest thing I can
41:16
think to SAS and ECOM is when the brand emerges to ride a wave
41:23
of demand. I know like call punches after
41:25
Joe Rogan started talking about coal punches, it's kind of
41:28
similar because the market is asking for this product and
41:32
you're stepping up to provide it, right?
41:34
I see this across all of the Shopify founders as well.
41:37
There's this romantic like interpretation of not doing any
41:40
marketing, right? Because you're not responsible
41:43
for generating that demand like Shopify has done it for you,
41:45
right. And I understand it being
41:48
romantically, why have that cost if you if you don't need to,
41:52
right. But I think that's a it's a huge
41:54
difference if you can solve that problem.
41:55
Well, right for the existing demand then, then yeah,
42:00
marketing is for a lot of SAS not a problem.
42:04
The underrated aspect, which Oliver you touched on, is that
42:08
you actually can't in software. You can't choose to just keep
42:13
your products the same. You have to be constantly
42:15
developing it, and the fact that you can change and can iterate
42:19
creates an expectation from your customers that you must do that
42:22
in order for them to continue to pay for your product.
42:25
It's a very different again, if I if I have a granola brand that
42:31
I like, I don't actually want them to change the product.
42:33
I want it to be the same today as it was 10 years ago.
42:36
And if you change the product, you're more at risk of losing me
42:39
as a long term customer that if you kept the product the same
42:41
software is the complete opposite.
42:43
You have to be constantly iterating on it unless it's like
42:46
that, you know, government software or something like that,
42:48
right? But I also think that's sort of
42:51
exciting in a way too, because it's like, hey, like because
42:54
I'm, I can keep iterating on it. Like if I'm doing, you know,
42:58
let's call it 100K now, it's like, dude, if I can get my
43:02
churn down or my retention down or like increase, you know,
43:05
whatever a percentage on the onboarding here or there, it's
43:08
like to me, it gives me like more like levers and strings
43:11
that I can pull in order to like, you know, improve the
43:14
business. And it's like if at my current
43:16
state, which like my product is maybe like kind of shitty or mid
43:19
is doing this, like imagine what the product will do in three
43:23
months from now, six months from now, 12 months from now.
43:25
Like once we attack these different.
43:27
Bottlenecks. So like, in a way like I
43:29
actually look at it. In a very like positive and like
43:32
exciting and like hopeful way or it's like, wow, like, you know,
43:35
there's so much opportunity for growth that doesn't need to come
43:38
from necessarily like driving more customers, but rather just,
43:42
you know, to your point, like evolving and improving and
43:45
building. Yeah, I to be clear, I agree.
43:48
I that's my favorite part of it as well.
43:50
I actually really love that part about the iterating and the
43:52
changing of things. Oliver, how do you feel about
43:56
the future of ECOM? I don't know.
44:01
That's such an existential question.
44:03
How do I feel about the future of ECOM?
44:06
How do I feel about the future of ECOM?
44:08
I don't know. How do I feel about the future?
44:10
It's going to be. I feel like it's going to be a
44:12
very like weird world. Like, you know, is our AI just
44:16
going to like order stuff that we know we're going to walk
44:18
before we know and like? And predict things and, and just
44:22
take care of all of that sort of decision making stuff before we
44:26
even pull the purchase. I don't, I don't, I don't, I
44:30
don't know. I think it it's.
44:31
Going to be very interesting to see where our world goes with AI
44:35
over the next 5/10/15 plus years.
44:38
And I think like, obviously we're going to be living in a
44:40
very, very different world than we are today, which is scary and
44:45
exciting. What do you guys think?
44:48
I don't know. I think there's like, I think
44:54
there's this opportunity because ecom has like stagnated and
44:58
growth over the last few years. And the majority of ecom in the
45:03
US at least is Amazon, right? And so now that the where the
45:09
search is is changing finally both from Google but actually
45:14
also from Amazon to ChatGPT, there's like two things that are
45:19
possible now. I think overall ecom could grow
45:21
and I think share of Amazon could reduce.
45:24
And with both of those things being true, even though the
45:27
consumer is weak in the US right now, I think it's possible.
45:32
I don't know how likely, but I think it's possible that we
45:34
actually have like a boom of ECOM where total ECOM grows,
45:39
total retail grows, but the share of ECOM goes from sub 20
45:42
to like, I don't know, something between 30 and 40% in the next
45:47
like 5 to 10 years. And if that happened, anybody
45:51
who's like in this space as that's happening will benefit
45:54
immensely from it. Now, but I don't Yeah.
45:59
But I also feel like things are going to change too.
46:00
Like in a sense where it's like, like, I don't know, like ChatGPT
46:04
will know, like my life will know me, my taste, my profiles,
46:08
my budgets. It's like, you know, let's say
46:10
it's like I'm running out of toilet paper.
46:13
Like it orders the toilet paper for me.
46:14
You know, it's like, you know, I'm going to my sister's
46:16
birthday. Like it buys her gift for me.
46:18
Like, like it's going to be, it's interesting.
46:20
It's going to be weird to see. Like, I don't know, there's
46:22
going to be as much of like a human interaction on the
46:25
shopping part. I feel like a lot of those
46:27
things will just be like automated.
46:28
What potential? Totally.
46:31
Even if they're automated though, it's just less.
46:36
It is more shopping because maybe you would not have gotten
46:39
your sister a gift if you had forgotten and you were just
46:42
like, I'm so sorry, I forgot. Here's a big hug.
46:46
You know what I mean? Like and so like, not only is
46:49
your total shopping activity increasing, but now it's all
46:52
happening on any anyway, who knows, but like.
46:56
Are. You guys concerned at all about
46:58
like consolidation into like, I think some of this has been
47:02
happening over the last couple of years where smaller brands
47:05
struggle with with keeping up on the ad spend front and the
47:09
larger brands are able to basically spend more because
47:12
they have more ability to move capital.
47:15
I worry a little bit about what that could look like in the
47:19
context of AI, right where right now in theory on Meta 100
47:22
different brands could show you an ad in a specific category,
47:27
but you know, you're going to see three brands, let's say in
47:31
your in ChatGPT. Like do you guys have any
47:34
concerns about that or do you think SHA GBT will basically
47:39
divvy that up across different brands?
47:44
It's a good question. I don't know.
47:46
I don't know. It's we're heading in a very
47:50
unknown sort of space, but the whole AI SEO thing is weird to
47:57
me where people are talking about optimizing for and gaming.
48:02
To your point, I think the big brand that has the highest
48:06
amount of sales volume and reviews and mentions and press
48:12
about it will ultimately always probably get shown the most,
48:16
right. You guys, you guys have heard of
48:20
that? A ginger guy who gamed Google
48:22
like 10 years ago to show his face for world's most handsome
48:26
man. That's not possible today.
48:28
You can't, you can't make that happen in ChatGPT, all right?
48:31
It's just too smart. Yeah, I don't think so.
48:35
Well, thanks Oliver. It was great having you on.
48:39
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me guys.
48:41
Talk to. Joe.