Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Most founders pick the wrong tools

Transcript

Most founders pick the wrong tools · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

• 0:00
  So are you a founder who will spend 2 weeks vibe coding a
• 0:03
  custom tool to save 3 minutes of work instead of paying 9 bucks a
• 0:07
  month for software that already solves it perfectly?
• 0:10
  How much time, energy, and focus are you burning trying to build
• 0:13
  tiny optimizations? Welcome to AI for founders, I'm
• 0:16
  Ryan Estes. Today you're going to learn how
• 0:18
  one founder turns software shopping hell into a human in
• 0:22
  the loop marketplace that's growing triple digits year over
• 0:25
  year and why this matters if you're building, buying or
• 0:28
  selling B2B software right now. Now, because choosing software
• 0:32
  is a trap. You do 16 demos, everyone says
• 0:35
  they're AI powered, and whoever pays the most shows up first.
• 0:38
  Then you pick, train the team, implement and feel that gut
• 0:41
  punch buyer's remorse. And about 70% of buyers end up
• 0:45
  dissatisfied with what they purchased at the end anyway.
• 0:47
  So this founder built software Finder in 2019.
• 0:50
  It's free for buyers and it starts with a 10 to 15 minute
• 0:53
  consultation where a real human ask the questions Google never
• 0:57
  can. What's your budget?
• 0:58
  What's your current stack? What's your user count?
• 1:00
  What do you actually need? What do you think you need?
• 1:03
  Then they narrow down hundreds of options to two to three that
• 1:06
  actually fit. And if you like big numbers,
• 1:08
  these guys have built 1500 categories.
• 1:11
  A site with 100,000 pages, a content team of about 150,
• 1:15
  hitting 300,000 organic visits per month and charging vendors
• 1:19
  75 to 1500 bucks per sales. Ready lead.
• 1:23
  Because the leads aren't marketing vibes, they're
• 1:25
  qualified and ready to purchase. Software Finder vendors
• 1:28
  reportedly close 15 to 20% of these leads, versus the five to
• 1:32
  10% elsewhere. And the guest behind all this is
• 1:35
  Adnan Milik, Bootstrapped, scaling a global team of around
• 1:39
  400 people and openly talking about the emotional cost of
• 1:42
  compounding 100% growth year after year.
• 1:45
  And if you like this, go sign up for the newsletter at AI for
• 1:48
  founders.co. We distill the chaos into
• 1:50
  foundergradedecisionsyoucanactuallyexecute@aiforfounders.co. You'll find the newsletter
• 1:56
  because I'll figure it out later is how founders donate years to
• 1:59
  bad tools and bad tactics. And please, if you like this
• 2:02
  show, leave a review that says this podcast kidnapped my
• 2:05
  calendar and replaced it with better decisions and quick break
• 2:08
  for our sponsor, Kitcaster. If you're a founder and you want
• 2:12
  customers to find you without begging the algorithm, get on
• 2:14
  podcasts. Kitcaster is a premier podcast
• 2:17
  booking agency that books you want, shows your buyers already
• 2:20
  trust you Show up, tell your story, build authority and
• 2:23
  compound demand while you sleep. No spray and pray, no awkward
• 2:27
  cold DMS, just consistent high signal digital interviews that
• 2:30
  drive leads and credibility. Go to kickcaster.com and get
• 2:34
  booked today. That's kick caster by MO Bers
• 2:52
  Adnan. Welcome to the show.
• 2:53
  Thank you so much for joining me.
• 2:56
  Thank you, Ryan. Pleasure to be here.
• 2:59
  Yeah, I'm really excited about this for a couple of reasons.
• 3:02
  One, it's not, it's not so often I get to speak to somebody who
• 3:06
  has triple digit growth year over year over year, which is
• 3:09
  really exciting. I want to talk about your
• 3:11
  company Software Finder. And also it's not, it's kind of
• 3:14
  rare that I have somebody who's so quotable as I'm doing
• 3:17
  research on for you, on you for the interview.
• 3:20
  You know, you just have these great statements all over the
• 3:23
  place. So thank you for being
• 3:24
  outspoken. No, that's, I mean, that's part
• 3:28
  of the game, isn't it? You, you got to put the word out
• 3:32
  there. So I mean, that's, that's good
• 3:35
  that you're found good things about me online.
• 3:40
  Cool. And as a foundation for the
• 3:42
  conversation, why don't you give us this an introduction to
• 3:46
  Software Finder? Sure.
• 3:49
  So Software Finder started in 2019 and then the concept behind
• 3:56
  is, is most of the time if you're looking to shortlist
• 4:04
  restaurant or a shortlist or doctor, it's so easy you can go
• 4:07
  online and do it in a few minutes.
• 4:09
  But if you've been tasked to find a software for your
• 4:13
  organization, you know, any software, let's say HRCRM
• 4:17
  project management, it's mostly been tasked to, you know, people
• 4:22
  who are non-technical or they're not software experts.
• 4:27
  So it's mostly your HR managers, accounting managers, or you
• 4:30
  know, your marketing league who will end up choosing a software.
• 4:36
  And there will when we, so the concept came in a way that you
• 4:43
  know, I was being tasked to choose a software, but maybe it
• 4:48
  was maybe 9 years ago. And I went through that online.
• 4:53
  You'll find a lot of information like there are directories,
• 4:56
  there are marketplaces, there are aggregates who will provide
• 5:00
  you top, you know, 5 or top 10 vendors.
• 5:04
  But there is no human centric approach where you can go and
• 5:08
  speak to someone who can really guide you on what software to
• 5:12
  choose out of the 100 software out there.
• 5:14
  And being a non-technical buyer, it is not easy to just rely on
• 5:20
  online sources because most of them are biased or whoever pay
• 5:23
  the most gets on the top. So that's where the concept came
• 5:27
  in that it's a big gap if for software buyers when they are
• 5:32
  looking or they've been tasked to choose the software, There is
• 5:37
  no human guided sort of a free information out there where they
• 5:41
  can go and rely on that information and someone can
• 5:44
  really help them ask the right questions and can help them
• 5:48
  narrow down those options. So that's how Software Finder
• 5:50
  started. It is an online marketplace
• 5:53
  where we have buyers need sellers in the B to B software
• 5:57
  space. And if you're a buyer, you
• 6:00
  normally come to us, we'll spend about 10 minutes with you, ask
• 6:04
  the right questions in terms of what you're looking for, which
• 6:08
  system you already have, what is your budget, how many users.
• 6:12
  And our consultants are trained to read between lines because
• 6:16
  you know, most of the time you have to ask the right questions
• 6:18
  to get into what they really needed or why the demand came.
• 6:24
  And then we do matchmaking on our end and recommend them two
• 6:28
  to three top options out of the 100.
• 6:31
  And what we also realise is that 70% of the buyers were make were
• 6:37
  dissatisfied from the, the software purchase that they have
• 6:41
  made. So it was a huge percentage of
• 6:43
  people, they choose the software and then they're not satisfied
• 6:47
  with their decision. And mainly because, you know,
• 6:49
  the decision is being made by, you know, doing a Google search,
• 6:55
  looking into the top three that shows up and then making the
• 6:58
  decision. So humanly, it's not possible to
• 7:01
  look into hundreds of software when you're making the software
• 7:05
  purchase. And that's where we come in and
• 7:07
  do that. We have done all the hard work
• 7:09
  for them and help them make the right decision.
• 7:12
  So that's that's all for Finder. Really a business, you know,
• 7:16
  this is something that I acutely am aware of because shopping for
• 7:20
  software is terrible. It's awful.
• 7:23
  You got to do 16 demos, You got to you, you always feel buyer's
• 7:26
  remorse. You don't know if you're getting
• 7:28
  the best deal. Take for example, cold outbound.
• 7:32
  So if if you're considering cold outbound, you have to get
• 7:36
  domains, you have to create inboxes, you have to make sure
• 7:39
  those inboxes are compliant with D Mark and skiff and all that
• 7:43
  stuff. Then you have to find something
• 7:45
  that can author the sequences. Then you have to have ACRM that
• 7:48
  can send all those things out. And so now you're looking for a
• 7:50
  software that can do that. Well, there's some packages that
• 7:53
  have all that. Then there's specialization in
• 7:55
  every single little area. Everything has a different
• 7:58
  business model, a different pricing page, a different
• 8:00
  authorization protocol call, you know, so it's like a complete
• 8:05
  disaster. You know, you can go to to say
• 8:10
  like, hey, here's what I need, man.
• 8:11
  Just just just tell me the best of the best and like, get, just
• 8:15
  get me through their website. You know what I mean?
• 8:18
  I mean, it's, it's a brilliant, brilliant model.
• 8:20
  And particularly now and you know, maybe you can speak to
• 8:23
  this because really there's not a lot of moats around the big
• 8:27
  enterprise software companies. What you're seeing is new
• 8:29
  players coming in, chiseling off certain features from major
• 8:33
  Azure software players and then bringing that to market.
• 8:36
  So now more than ever and in 12 months from now it might be a
• 8:39
  order of magnitude more software options.
• 8:42
  Is that kind of some what you're seeing right now?
• 8:45
  Yeah. So especially after AI, we're
• 8:47
  seeing, you know, software vendors and new software vendors
• 8:54
  appearing more than it, it used to be a few years ago.
• 8:58
  And mainly because AI has made it so simple for people to
• 9:03
  create new software. The, the time it used to take
• 9:07
  choose to take like years to build a software before now it
• 9:11
  takes a few months. So we are seeing a lot of
• 9:14
  software vendors coming into the market, new vendors, thanks to
• 9:18
  AI. And yeah, it's, it's, it's even
• 9:21
  harder in today's world to make that decision because there are
• 9:26
  so many options. They all say they do the same
• 9:30
  thing and it's, it's very confusing for the buyer or
• 9:35
  they're not confident when they're making this, this
• 9:39
  decision and what, what ended up happening happening is, is a
• 9:43
  wrong choice in choosing or, you know, choosing the wrong
• 9:48
  software can cost, can quietly cost you millions because you,
• 9:54
  you know, the all, all the training, the implementations.
• 9:58
  So it's not only the license cost, it's, you know, the lost
• 10:02
  momentum for a growing company. So I mean, you cannot even
• 10:05
  estimate how much you have lost because you made the wrong call.
• 10:10
  And that's that's where I believe the software Finder
• 10:13
  comes in. And on the other side, software
• 10:17
  vendors, it's a great service for software vendors because
• 10:20
  once we once we qualify them for two to three vendors, we then
• 10:24
  share buyer information with the vendors and then vendor sales
• 10:29
  team then starts to reach out to them.
• 10:32
  And the biggest benefit that the vendors are having, I mean,
• 10:34
  obviously we have sent them a qualified lead.
• 10:36
  But if if minus software Finder, what they're doing is, you know,
• 10:41
  they're trying all their marketing channels or doing the
• 10:44
  code outreach and trying to find, you know, the best
• 10:50
  customer as per their ICP, which is which is so hard if you know
• 10:54
  someone like us does not exist because it means that they're
• 10:59
  qualifying, maybe wrong buyers or you know, buyers that are not
• 11:04
  qualified for this offer. And at the end, sales is sales.
• 11:07
  They're going to end up selling. And what's going to happen is
• 11:10
  the churn rate will be a lot higher because the initial
• 11:14
  matchmaking wasn't done right. And you know, sale because they
• 11:16
  need to meet their target. They will sell at the end of the
• 11:19
  day. So it's it doesn't help software
• 11:22
  vendors as well if they're selling to the wrong companies.
• 11:25
  And I think that's where we fit in best on both sides.
• 11:30
  Therefore buyers, it's a great help.
• 11:32
  What used to take them months of research is now cut down to 10
• 11:37
  minute phone call with software Finder and with vendors.
• 11:41
  Now they're selling to the right people and the churn rate has
• 11:44
  lowered down significantly to the vendors who are working with
• 11:48
  us because they're getting the right prospects. 100%, yeah.
• 11:55
  And particularly for folks that are launching a new project, if
• 11:59
  you've been around enough, then you know how annoying QuickBooks
• 12:04
  is and you're, you're looking at your bottom line of boy, HubSpot
• 12:08
  sure is expensive. Like, what can I do?
• 12:10
  So, you know, every new projects going to need bookkeeping, every
• 12:13
  new projects going to need a CRM, it's going to need a
• 12:16
  project management software, you know, and there's just within
• 12:20
  that there's dozens and dozens of options.
• 12:22
  When people are coming to the site, what categories of
• 12:25
  software are most popular that they're using Software Finder to
• 12:28
  to fulfill? So we are now into about 1500
• 12:34
  different categories. So there are a lot of categories
• 12:38
  when, when, when you're on softwarefinder.com In terms of
• 12:44
  major categories, I would say they're about 50 to 60.
• 12:48
  And then there are a lot of subcategories within those
• 12:50
  categories. But where we see a lot of demand
• 12:54
  is your HR software or payroll software, accounting, CRM,
• 12:59
  project management, medical software.
• 13:02
  We have actually the biggest in US when it comes to medical
• 13:05
  software because it's such a niche industry, not they don't
• 13:08
  find a lot of help from other players.
• 13:11
  ER, PS, legal management software, property management
• 13:16
  software, construction management software.
• 13:20
  So there there are quite a few categories, but these are
• 13:23
  probably our top 10 where we see a lot of traffic and a lot of
• 13:28
  demand for for software. Interesting SO.
• 13:31
  It's the AIAI based tools, but you know, that's like your major
• 13:35
  demand in the last one year. Anything to do with AI?
• 13:39
  Yeah, totally. That's interesting.
• 13:41
  I I wouldn't have suspected that.
• 13:42
  So it's pretty specialized. So it's people coming in and
• 13:46
  saying like I need a project management, but I want project
• 13:49
  management for construction companies.
• 13:51
  They're coming in with very kind of specific keywords.
• 13:55
  That, that is correct. So because software buying has
• 13:59
  been happening for 20 years, So what businesses realize that
• 14:03
  generic software doesn't really work for them.
• 14:05
  So they they have implemented few struggled and now they're
• 14:10
  looking for specialized software that that is made for, for their
• 14:13
  industry specifically. So there are a lot, I mean,
• 14:17
  there's a tool for every industry these days when it
• 14:20
  comes to CRM and project management.
• 14:23
  I mean, HR obviously is very generic, but there are some
• 14:28
  specialized HR and payroll tools as well.
• 14:31
  But most of your industries are getting very generic in order to
• 14:36
  serve customers better. And it's, it's, it's just easier
• 14:39
  on both sides. It's easier to sell and buyers
• 14:45
  see a lot of value because it's customized for for them.
• 14:48
  Yeah. You know your front line on
• 14:51
  software development 1500 categories.
• 14:54
  So, you know, if you're talking to this audience that's building
• 14:58
  new projects, what are some categories that you'd like to
• 15:00
  see more software options and what are some categories people
• 15:03
  should stay away from? That's a good question.
• 15:10
  From you? You mean from the vendor
• 15:11
  perspective or the buyer perspective?
• 15:14
  Maybe both, you know, like just kind of looking at supply and
• 15:16
  demand, is there kind of like a certain demand for software
• 15:20
  options that isn't currently satisfied?
• 15:24
  I mean, the dissatisfaction is everywhere.
• 15:26
  So I always say if you're looking to build a new software,
• 15:31
  I would rather choose an industry where there's a huge
• 15:34
  demand rather than creating a software in an industry where
• 15:37
  you have to create a demand. So for example, even in today's
• 15:42
  world, if you are building a new accounting or AHR software,
• 15:46
  because literally every company is looking for one.
• 15:49
  So even if you can improve or do something like let's say if you
• 15:53
  can improve 5% from what is out there in the market, you have a
• 15:57
  huge market to capture. But what we have seen is that a
• 16:03
  lot of AI based keyword is obviously the big bus anything
• 16:10
  to do with AIAI based CRM, AI based e-mail marketing, AI based
• 16:14
  project management. So if you're, if you're building
• 16:18
  a tool which is AI first, then I think there's a there's a big
• 16:23
  demand out there. But if you're, if you're AI 2nd
• 16:30
  and you know you're going to build another SAS and then
• 16:33
  create an AI layer on the top, then I think it's probably not
• 16:37
  the best time to do that. There are already a lot of
• 16:39
  competition out there and they have big budgets.
• 16:42
  So it would be unless you raise 50 million or 100 million in
• 16:47
  seed funding, it's not going to be easy to compete with those
• 16:50
  vendors. But if you are building then
• 16:55
  build AI first, SAS second. AI first, SAS second.
• 17:00
  Yeah, it seems like too, there's kind of this new entry of like
• 17:05
  amateur software developers, AI augmented software developers,
• 17:09
  where people are really building their own software to suit their
• 17:12
  own purposes. You know, had a great
• 17:14
  conversation with a guy from Bloom, Bloom DIY.
• 17:19
  And, you know, he's really kind of creating kind of vibe coded
• 17:22
  apps where you can share them with your friends and family.
• 17:25
  So, you know, you wanted to, you know, have a grocery shopping
• 17:28
  list app, you know, you can share that with your family or
• 17:31
  immediate family. So, you know, people are going
• 17:33
  to be emboldened now for like smaller things to start
• 17:36
  bypassing some of the, you know, the bigger players to get into
• 17:40
  that. Now I want to go back in time a
• 17:42
  little bit. So software Finder is totally
• 17:46
  bootstrapped. Is that correct?
• 17:48
  It is totally bootstrapped and to to date we have not raised
• 17:52
  any funds from any VCs yet. So this is totally bootstrapped.
• 17:56
  It can still happen, right? It's, it's so cool.
• 18:02
  I love that. So when you're initially
• 18:04
  building the team with the idea, talk about the formation of the
• 18:07
  team and then actually the creation of the product, what
• 18:10
  the prototypes look like, the MVPS, your design partners, kind
• 18:13
  of everything that happened before you brought it to market.
• 18:17
  You are so we we are three founders.
• 18:20
  We worked before in our previous lives together in the same team.
• 18:25
  So we knew our strengths and weaknesses and we knew each
• 18:30
  other role very well that what role everyone is going to play.
• 18:34
  So initially, obviously we we need you to build a website, we
• 18:38
  need to build a marketplace. So the first money that went in
• 18:43
  is to building the website. And the biggest challenge that
• 18:48
  we had is to do SEO which takes a lot of time.
• 18:52
  It's it's mainly NSEO play where you know organically you need to
• 18:57
  rate really higher in order to attract those buyers.
• 19:00
  So initially it was not about the vendors, it was all about
• 19:03
  the buyers because you know, if the buyers are coming, vendors
• 19:06
  will come automatically. So we, we started the website,
• 19:12
  did the MVP launched it, we got our first customer paying
• 19:16
  customer in the very first month of us launching which which was
• 19:20
  great. So basically the service is free
• 19:22
  for the buyers. So we don't charge buyer of
• 19:24
  anything for our service and we charge vendors for the for the
• 19:30
  leads that we supply their way. We don't get involved in the
• 19:35
  commissions of the sales. So we just supply them the leads
• 19:38
  and then that's, that's it for us.
• 19:40
  We don't get involved in the sales cycle or the commissions.
• 19:44
  So. Obviously, yeah, the vendors,
• 19:46
  vendor, it was easier to get the vendors, but yeah, it was very
• 19:49
  difficult to get buyers in the start.
• 19:50
  That's I think that's where we struggled.
• 19:54
  And because it was a service model, there was no, I mean we
• 20:00
  were not charging vendor anything unless and until we
• 20:02
  send them the leads. So if we're not if we're not
• 20:05
  producing leads, then that contract doesn't mean anything.
• 20:10
  So we did, you know, because the IT was so.
• 20:13
  Early for the website that, you know, forget about the organic
• 20:16
  traffic and because we were bootstrap wouldn't had a lot of
• 20:19
  money to, you know, put in into the online ads or Google or, you
• 20:24
  know, your your social media. So we would we started doing
• 20:29
  some of the ad campaigns, but our major revenue initially came
• 20:33
  purely from outbound. So we did, you know, we did some
• 20:37
  e-mail marketing. We even did cold outreach and
• 20:42
  started to find a buyers for the vendors we initially came in.
• 20:47
  Amazing. OK.
• 20:48
  So cold outbound kind of starting to get customers, but
• 20:51
  SEO you invested early in SEO. Can you talk a little bit about
• 20:54
  what content started ranking well?
• 20:57
  Are you doing kind of this verse, this kind of like the
• 21:00
  grid based check marks kind of comparison like what was the
• 21:03
  content that started performing well for you?
• 21:06
  Yeah. So we on our website you will
• 21:10
  see a lot of vendor profiles obviously that's that's the
• 21:13
  whole thing. You have categories and you have
• 21:15
  the vendor profiles within those categories.
• 21:18
  So we started to rank well initially for vendor profiles
• 21:21
  where you know if someone is searching for a HubSpot pricing
• 21:24
  or HubSpot demo, then prospects or buyers started to move to our
• 21:32
  website. Initially we also did a lot of
• 21:35
  comparisons or alternatives, category related keywords.
• 21:40
  You know what the buyer who doesn't know which vendor
• 21:44
  they're looking for normally what their type is, you know,
• 21:47
  your top ten HR software or top five project management tool or
• 21:51
  top five CRM software or e-mail marketing software.
• 21:54
  So those, those are the ones that are really difficult
• 21:57
  because there's so much competition, because all the
• 22:00
  vendors are targeting those, those keywords with millions and
• 22:03
  billions of dollars in their marketing budgets.
• 22:08
  So those are the ones that are really difficult.
• 22:10
  But then I think the first one or two year we, it, I will be
• 22:16
  honest, it was very difficult for us in order to, and, and
• 22:22
  Google has its thing that, you know, if you're a new website,
• 22:25
  it, it doesn't really bother, it doesn't really give you a lot of
• 22:30
  traffic. It takes time to build your, you
• 22:32
  know, domain reputation, link building and you know, so many
• 22:37
  other things. So thankfully I wasn't the one
• 22:40
  responsible for this. One of our Co founders, Mariam,
• 22:45
  she, she's our CMO. So she, she took on the SEO
• 22:48
  challenge and today she, she, she manages it.
• 22:53
  But it was, it was difficult. But now you know, 6-7 years down
• 22:58
  the line, we our organic traffic is hitting 300,000 per month
• 23:06
  from literally 06 years ago. So we and and it's a big team.
• 23:13
  We have about 150 people in SEO and content team.
• 23:17
  We produce a lot of content. The website has about 100,000
• 23:21
  pages. But yeah, to answer your
• 23:24
  question, it's a lot of comparison alternatives, vendor
• 23:29
  related keywords or category related keywords that we have to
• 23:33
  focus on. Yeah, amazing.
• 23:35
  It's like SEO is kind of the classic, when's the best time to
• 23:38
  plant a tree 10 years ago. When's the second best time
• 23:42
  today? You know, so it, it, it does
• 23:46
  pay, you know, and now, you know, kind of the LLMS have
• 23:49
  taken a probably a 2530% chunk out of search.
• 23:52
  So how have you seen traffic to the site kind of change maybe
• 23:56
  over the last 24 months as people are starting to, you
• 23:59
  know, ask their their ChatGPT like what what they should, what
• 24:03
  kind of decisions they should be making?
• 24:04
  With the significant so a lot, a lot of your search or B to B
• 24:11
  software by related search has been moved to AI because it's
• 24:18
  much cleaner, they get cleaner results.
• 24:22
  So, but, but the good thing is because our SU was so strong
• 24:25
  that AI engines or LLMS were already consuming a lot of our
• 24:31
  content. So we are, we, we already
• 24:35
  getting a significant traffic from LLMS because they're
• 24:38
  consuming our con content, they're showing our links there.
• 24:44
  So that's, that was the advantage that we had because
• 24:48
  we, when we knew 24 months ago that, you know, LLM is going to
• 24:53
  going to be the next big thing. And what I, I knew since the
• 24:58
  very start that LLM is going to LLM search is going to take over
• 25:02
  most of your B to B buyer searches.
• 25:05
  So we focused a lot on LLMS in the last two years and we're
• 25:08
  doing significantly well. We actually have vendors who who
• 25:12
  are coming to us and asking if we can add them in some of our
• 25:17
  articles so that their name can start showing in LLM because
• 25:21
  they're consuming our content. So we're getting a lot of demand
• 25:25
  due to that. But yeah, AI is it is even.
• 25:31
  I mean Google is becoming your LLM as well because most of your
• 25:35
  AI overviews are coming on top now.
• 25:37
  Yeah, 100% interesting. OK.
• 25:41
  So you guys go into market, you've got a couple of
• 25:43
  strategies, long, long term strategies, doing a little cold
• 25:46
  outbound when you're thinking about the business model, I love
• 25:49
  you pay per lead. What is the the range that
• 25:52
  you're getting paid per lead? It is different from category to
• 25:57
  category on an on an average, it's anywhere from let's say you
• 26:04
  mean the price for the lead. That's that's what you're.
• 26:08
  Looking for yeah, absolutely kind of price per lead.
• 26:10
  Yeah. So it's anywhere from $75 per
• 26:14
  lead and it goes all the way up to let's say $1500 a lead,
• 26:18
  depending on the size of the organization, which category you
• 26:22
  are in. Some categories are really
• 26:24
  tough. It's very hard to find buyers in
• 26:27
  or the deal sizes is really bigger.
• 26:29
  So the lead cost varies from category to category size of the
• 26:33
  organization, what they're looking for.
• 26:35
  So this is a whole model that we have developed.
• 26:38
  We don't do any bidding yet on our leads.
• 26:42
  So it's a fixed price that the vendors pay at the moment.
• 26:47
  Incredible. That seems really high and and
• 26:49
  amazing. So if I went to a software
• 26:52
  Finder and I was like, hey, I need communication platform, you
• 26:55
  said, hey, Slack's a good option.
• 26:56
  I click over, go to Slack. Hypothetically, you get paid 75
• 27:00
  bucks. No, so that's, that's, that's,
• 27:05
  that's not true because there's a human element in the middle.
• 27:08
  So you, we capture your information through the website,
• 27:13
  but then we give you a call and, and that's why the lead quality
• 27:18
  is so high and the lead cost is higher because our software
• 27:21
  consultant will give you a call. We'll ask you a series of
• 27:24
  questions. We'll, it is, it's more like a
• 27:27
  pre sales call that you know, your, your SDRS normally do in,
• 27:31
  in companies. So we spend 10 to 15 minutes.
• 27:36
  We asked you the right question. We then we then recommend you
• 27:38
  the top three options. So our leads, they don't go to
• 27:42
  your marketing funnel. These are sales ready leads.
• 27:45
  So they go directly to your sales because most of the time
• 27:50
  they're ready to see demos. Because we have done the hard
• 27:52
  work, we have done the matchmaking, we have qualified
• 27:55
  them as per your ICP. Brilliant.
• 27:58
  OK, so you are early to human in a loop.
• 28:02
  You're the original human in the loop.
• 28:05
  We. We are, we are.
• 28:07
  I mean everything is starting from AI but ending at a human.
• 28:13
  Yeah, I love that, you know, and it, it probably makes people
• 28:16
  feel really good if, you know, an unbiased source is like, hey
• 28:19
  man, I'm just here to help you. You know, it could be AB or C,
• 28:22
  you know, like let me help you. And so they can be more honest,
• 28:26
  you know, of what they want, as opposed to talking to some sales
• 28:29
  dog that's going to close you no matter what, you know.
• 28:32
  Exactly. Yeah, amazing.
• 28:34
  So you have the compensation. Yeah, sorry.
• 28:37
  And that's why we don't do bidding because we don't want to
• 28:40
  be biased if we do bidding and some vendors are paying more,
• 28:43
  some are paying less and then you know, as a business, why is
• 28:49
  it make more sense or whoever is bidding more to sell them more
• 28:54
  leads because they're paying higher for the lead.
• 28:56
  For example, Google, your top four ads are the ones who are
• 29:01
  bidding the highest. It doesn't matter how good their
• 29:04
  software is on Google, if you're bidding higher for the keyword
• 29:07
  you show on the top, that's it. There's no, there's no other
• 29:10
  thing with us. The lead cost is the same for
• 29:13
  every vendor. So vendor 1 to vendor 50,
• 29:16
  they're all paying the same amount of money for the lead.
• 29:19
  So for us then it all depends on the lead is qualified for which
• 29:24
  vendor because we we make the same amount of money from the
• 29:27
  top three that we pick. What both, I love this.
• 29:31
  It's, it's such a simple model and just so useful and I mean
• 29:36
  incredible. You know, I, it could almost be
• 29:39
  extended to anything. I, I feel like I could be like
• 29:41
  the, the nachos Finder, you know what I'm saying?
• 29:45
  People be like, what's the best nachos in Denver?
• 29:48
  I'm like, well, you came to the right place.
• 29:49
  We're going to need a 10 minute consultation and I'll give you
• 29:51
  some recommendations. Yeah, how's your test birds
• 29:54
  lying? Yeah, exactly.
• 29:58
  OK. So you know, you move very
• 30:02
  quickly. And so there must have been a
• 30:04
  point where you kind of started to see kind of that rapid
• 30:06
  traction. What was that moment and what
• 30:08
  was a benchmark that that kind of threw the light bulb on was
• 30:11
  like, OK, this has got this has got a sticking power.
• 30:18
  I mean, I in ideation Phase, I had like like we were so
• 30:23
  confident that because there was hardly any company that was
• 30:28
  doing what we started doing. The only closest company to us
• 30:34
  was software advice. But then they were so biased
• 30:37
  because they were doing bidding as I said.
• 30:39
  So again, it was like something similar to what Google is doing.
• 30:44
  So buyers were not getting the right vendors, whoever is paying
• 30:47
  more were getting the leads. And and that's where we we knew
• 30:53
  that this model is going to work because it is such a huge market
• 30:57
  and the market is going to keep on growing like software market
• 31:00
  is, is not shrinking. It's not going to shrink in the
• 31:03
  near future too. So now, I mean in the last six
• 31:07
  years, there's more and more buyers and they're more and more
• 31:09
  sellers, which means there's a huge demand for someone, you
• 31:14
  know, like us to be the mediator to help the both sides in order
• 31:19
  to do the matchmaking. Yeah, yeah.
• 31:22
  It seems like the integrity, you know, the company personal
• 31:26
  integrity is really important. Like how do you convey that to
• 31:29
  to users? I mean, on, on the buyer side,
• 31:35
  they, they're already appreciated that someone has
• 31:39
  spent 10 minutes listen to them and asking them the right
• 31:42
  questions because no one is doing that like no third party
• 31:46
  is doing it. So on the buyer's side, they're
• 31:51
  already thankful to to the free service that we're providing
• 31:56
  them. Yeah.
• 31:57
  On that side, we're not charging them a dime on the vendor's side
• 32:00
  because we're not bidding. They they know exactly that the
• 32:04
  leads that they're getting are as per their ICP.
• 32:10
  It helps them close more deals. So generally what we see is the
• 32:16
  closing ratio for non software Finder leads are anywhere from
• 32:22
  let's say 5 to 10%. For software Finder leads, their
• 32:27
  closing ratios are anywhere from 15 to 20%.
• 32:30
  Variable. And that's because of the
• 32:33
  initial work or initial hard work, I must say, that we have
• 32:37
  put in for on their behalf in order to do the matchmaking.
• 32:42
  Yeah, totally. Because ultimately, like kind of
• 32:44
  the, the rule to sales is people want to be closed.
• 32:48
  They, they have indecision and that's a horrible feeling.
• 32:50
  They're like, give me a couple of recommendations and then help
• 32:54
  me narrow down which is best for me.
• 32:56
  And then they can feel confident and they move forward.
• 32:59
  So that that makes a lot of sense from the vendor side.
• 33:03
  This also seems like software Finder could be a great go to
• 33:05
  market for a new software company.
• 33:07
  I've got my brand new company, Nachos Finder.
• 33:11
  How do I kind of sign get on board with with software Finder?
• 33:16
  Yeah. And so it's, it's, it's really
• 33:17
  simple. You go to softwarefinder.com and
• 33:20
  you go to 4 vendors and then you create a profile for, for your
• 33:24
  new business. And then you will start to get
• 33:29
  traffic, you'll start to get leads.
• 33:33
  Obviously there's a human element there too, where we'll
• 33:36
  speak to you, who's, who's, who's your perfect buyer?
• 33:43
  What are you looking to sell? What is the price point, what
• 33:48
  user base you do well with? So all of those right questions.
• 33:53
  So I mean on the vendor side, we spent an hour just to try to
• 33:57
  understand whenever there's a new vendor comes on board
• 33:59
  because if we don't understand the vendor, then we are not
• 34:02
  doing the right service. Yeah, to the what would exclude
• 34:07
  a software company from being able to be listed?
• 34:11
  What would do what? Sorry.
• 34:12
  What would exclude a company? Is there any?
• 34:17
  I mean, if we if if we don't have the category for you, then
• 34:20
  obviously it doesn't make sense for you to be there.
• 34:23
  So that's the first thing that the category needs to be there.
• 34:27
  But apart from that it, it's just as long as it's AB to B
• 34:31
  software business. We don't we don't do B to C at
• 34:35
  all. We have actually started doing
• 34:38
  services as well. So companies that are providing
• 34:40
  B to B software related services, for example, you, you
• 34:44
  know you're hotspot implementation companies, your
• 34:47
  sales implementation companies, ERP implementation or ERP
• 34:52
  partners. So we also after software, we
• 34:57
  are also venturing into service business and we are seeing
• 35:01
  really good results. We only started a couple of
• 35:04
  years ago and our service industry is growing at a very
• 35:09
  rapid pace because there's so many services companies and that
• 35:13
  I mean, and most of these companies don't have budget for
• 35:16
  marketing or sale. I mean, these are, they don't
• 35:19
  have like seed fundings or a huge funding behind behind their
• 35:23
  back. Most of most of your partners or
• 35:27
  implementation service companies.
• 35:29
  So they, they love our service because they're not only selling
• 35:32
  licenses, they can't, they after licenses, they're making money
• 35:36
  by doing implementation, by doing trainings, even by doing
• 35:40
  custom development because you know, every software is unique
• 35:42
  and you have to do some custom work.
• 35:44
  So it's not only good for vendors who are selling
• 35:49
  software, it's a great model for service companies.
• 35:53
  Yeah, explain some services are we talking about like
• 35:57
  bookkeeping, accounting services, professional services?
• 36:01
  It's, it's a good example. We we haven't started the
• 36:04
  bookkeeping or accounting services yet.
• 36:06
  It is in the works, but we started with your implementation
• 36:13
  partners. So for example, if you implement
• 36:15
  a HubSpot or e-mail marketing tool, these tools are really
• 36:20
  complex and you would need a implementation partner help to
• 36:23
  set up the tool, right? And most of these companies,
• 36:26
  they don't provide implementation services.
• 36:28
  They ask you to go to one of their partners to do the
• 36:31
  implementation. For example, if you, you're a
• 36:36
  huge maintenance business or manufacturing business, then you
• 36:42
  need an ERP without partners, you cannot implement ERPS.
• 36:46
  Like, you know, there's this so confusing, you know, there's AHR
• 36:49
  element accounting, element stock management, there's so
• 36:54
  many things. So you, you need your
• 36:57
  implementation partners. And so we, we started with those
• 37:01
  and slowly we're getting into, you know, your bookkeeping or
• 37:05
  your digital marketing services. Maybe we should have a podcast
• 37:11
  service provider there too, because, you know, you guys are
• 37:14
  so much in demand these days. I, I I think that's that should
• 37:16
  be the next one. No doubt about it.
• 37:19
  Well, it seems like the nachos idea is out.
• 37:21
  That's OK. OK, that's amazing.
• 37:25
  We'll stop it now, too fast. Looking at it, it looks like you
• 37:31
  have about 450 employees globally.
• 37:33
  Is that correct? Yeah, we're touching about 400
• 37:38
  foreign employees globally. Our we're growing at 100% for
• 37:42
  last five years. We are aiming for another 100%
• 37:47
  this year. So a lot happening, hiring a lot
• 37:53
  of people. So it's it's growing really
• 37:56
  well. But yeah, I mean targeting
• 37:57
  another 100% at this rate is obviously getting difficult year
• 38:01
  on year. We doubted ourselves last year,
• 38:04
  but we were able to achieve 100%.
• 38:07
  Now this year, I think we're more confident than last year
• 38:10
  because a lot of things are in place.
• 38:13
  Sales are in motion, more and more vendors are coming in as a
• 38:16
  brand is growing and our organic traffic has seen about 300%
• 38:21
  growth in the last two years, whereas all our competition has
• 38:25
  seen a huge dip. For example, your G2 software
• 38:29
  advice, Kaptara, they have seen 80% dip in their organic traffic
• 38:34
  where we have seen 300% growth. So obviously we're doing
• 38:39
  something really good when it comes to organic and you know
• 38:42
  how Google's and LMS are playing.
• 38:44
  So I would say we we have the right tailwinds to take the
• 38:54
  company to another year of 100% growth.
• 38:57
  Is do you have like things you can point to exactly why you
• 39:01
  keep to growing and your competitors are not?
• 39:04
  I mean, is that is that clear? It is, I think organically.
• 39:11
  We tried to play a very risk free game.
• 39:19
  We didn't do things that other companies were doing in order to
• 39:22
  get quick traffic from Google or LLMS.
• 39:26
  Our vision was clear that, you know, do the things right.
• 39:31
  Let's be patient. It's going to take years, we
• 39:34
  know. But once it starts happening, we
• 39:37
  we will see the results. And this was being followed.
• 39:42
  We haven't seen much, much of A vent in the first three to four
• 39:46
  years. But now last two years it you
• 39:49
  know, the patient game has really played, played off and we
• 39:52
  are now seeing results where where our competition is.
• 39:56
  And because because I mean, I don't want to say.
• 40:02
  Foul play. But, you know, there are always
• 40:03
  so many, so many things that you can do to get more traffic
• 40:06
  through through Google. And Google keeps on updating and
• 40:11
  keeps on penalizing those websites.
• 40:14
  So I think that's probably what happened to other marketplaces,
• 40:17
  yeah. 100% amazing. OK, Adnan, I want to check in on
• 40:20
  you personally because a couple of months ago you were posting
• 40:24
  that, you know, end of 2025, you kind of felt like you were
• 40:27
  hitting the limits emotionally, physically.
• 40:30
  I, I would love to know, you know, if you're comfortable
• 40:32
  sharing, you know, what was going on and kind of how you
• 40:35
  feel now. Yeah, obviously growing a
• 40:40
  company at 100% rate last five years was uneasy emotionally or
• 40:44
  physically. It's, it's not an easy task
• 40:48
  building 400 people team globally and, you know, hitting
• 40:54
  your targets year on year. So yeah, emotionally it was
• 40:58
  tough. Physically it was tough.
• 41:00
  I've been working, you know, many hours in a day, as many as
• 41:06
  I can get. But now and, and, and honestly,
• 41:09
  the team was growing. You know, you hit a point where
• 41:12
  maturity takes time. And I would say in the last six
• 41:17
  months to a year, I mean, it started happening two years ago
• 41:19
  when we started hiring senior team members in our team.
• 41:24
  And then it took them about a year, year and a half to learn
• 41:27
  the concept to, to learn how we do things.
• 41:31
  And the maturity has started to come.
• 41:33
  So now I think we are in a much better phase that you know, we
• 41:37
  have about 60 to 70 really good leaders in the team who have,
• 41:43
  who are now understanding the vision, they believe in the
• 41:46
  vision and they're now taking the company to the next level.
• 41:48
  So I would say from 10 to 50 in the last two years has really
• 41:55
  taken that burden off not only myself, but you know, all the
• 41:58
  founders. And honestly, I mean, we didn't
• 42:02
  have the luxury of millions of funds coming in through seed
• 42:05
  funding. So, you know, we were doing
• 42:07
  everything bootstrap, keeping company cash flow positive while
• 42:11
  growing. It's it's not easy.
• 42:13
  Yeah, 100%, man. I get it.
• 42:15
  Everybody listens. This show gets it especially.
• 42:17
  I mean, it's like 100% growth year over year for five years is
• 42:22
  an amazing feat, but it's also a massive challenge.
• 42:27
  You know, it may be a good problem to have, but it's still
• 42:30
  a problem in a way, you know what I mean?
• 42:33
  Yeah, OK. And we do, we do get a lot of,
• 42:36
  you know, now that we, we're getting a lot of VCs behind us.
• 42:40
  They want to be part of this success story.
• 42:43
  They want to fund the company. But we, we still would like to
• 42:46
  keep it bootstrap because again, we, we didn't build a company to
• 42:51
  do, you know, 5X10X multiplier in the next few years.
• 42:57
  We want to build a business that is really providing help to
• 43:01
  buyers and sellers out there and build a company slowly, but
• 43:06
  build it in a way that you know, it's going to last longer.
• 43:09
  So it's, it's really helping out.
• 43:12
  Well, there are a lot of ideas, you know, to make more money,
• 43:16
  but we don't want to miss our, you know, vision and principle
• 43:20
  that we want to provide the best service for buyers and sellers
• 43:24
  out there. Incredible.
• 43:26
  All right, we're ready for the quantum round.
• 43:29
  Are you ready? I am super ready all.
• 43:31
  Right Anand you are going to make some software and you want
• 43:36
  to Sprint as fast as you can to $1,000,000 annual run rate.
• 43:39
  What software do you build? $1,000,000 in a year.
• 43:47
  Yeah. I would build AI based HR.
• 43:59
  AI based HR. Yeah.
• 44:03
  Is there just every? Every puppy in the world needs
• 44:05
  HR software. There is still a lot of work
• 44:07
  that needs to be done in order to improve the HR software.
• 44:10
  Yeah, 100% love it. How are you using LLMS kind of
• 44:14
  in your your daily workflows? A lot.
• 44:19
  So the company is being and honestly I leader myself
• 44:27
  obviously last two years a lot has been changed through LLMS.
• 44:31
  So internally within the company, we have head of AI
• 44:36
  whose job is to work with every team and ensure that they're not
• 44:42
  doing repetitive work or they're not doing something that can be
• 44:46
  achieved through AI. So we have about 10 people team
• 44:50
  within our AI umbrella whose job is just to help support every
• 44:57
  other teams internally to, you know, cut down on things that
• 45:04
  they shouldn't be doing in today's world manually.
• 45:07
  So every six months our goal is to cut down at least 1015% or
• 45:13
  20% other tasks, manual tasks through AI.
• 45:19
  And now we are almost touching about 40% and then some of the
• 45:23
  teams and some of the teams are touching about 30%.
• 45:26
  But our, our goal is to keep, keep on increasing and then see
• 45:29
  where, where we are now. And as the LMS are growing.
• 45:32
  So, you know, you never know what's going to happen next
• 45:34
  month. What was the low hanging crew?
• 45:37
  What were you able to automate and kind of take off your your
• 45:40
  staff's plate early on? Are we talking about reports
• 45:43
  generation and follow up notes and things like that or was
• 45:46
  there anything specific? Yeah.
• 45:49
  I mean apart, apart from report general, I think biggest win
• 45:51
  that we have seen is in SEOA lot of because so much data, so many
• 45:57
  keywords, just imagine 100,000 pages, how many keywords and
• 46:01
  how, how, how, how big a content strategy that we need to we need
• 46:04
  to create. So I would say the biggest win
• 46:07
  that we have seen is in the on the SCO side, whether it's
• 46:13
  getting initial content from SCO, from AIS, doing a lot of
• 46:19
  crunching through AI plus we also do a lot of PPC.
• 46:22
  So AI is really helping us found gaps where we can, which ads are
• 46:30
  running better, which ads are competing with each other.
• 46:34
  So there is a lot of work that used to be done there through,
• 46:38
  you know, analyst or manual work, which is now being taken
• 46:40
  over by AI reporting. Obviously it's one of the key.
• 46:43
  But there's I think almost everywhere where we're seeing
• 46:47
  big impacts and it is affecting our bottom line as well as well
• 46:54
  is this, it's obviously we're not hiring as many people as we
• 46:57
  were before. And I'm sure with 100% growth,
• 47:02
  we're not going to touch 800 employees from 400 employees.
• 47:06
  I think we we might be able to do with 500 employees this this
• 47:11
  year around rather than 800. Because of that, yeah.
• 47:16
  Love it. This has been so fun.
• 47:18
  As we're kind of wrapping up here, Adnan, do you have a
• 47:20
  spectacular business failure that you can share?
• 47:24
  Something that went horribly wrong.
• 47:26
  Worse the better. This is the first business, so I
• 47:31
  I unfortunately. I don't.
• 47:33
  I don't have. An example for you, but I mean,
• 47:39
  obviously you, you, there are there are failures when it comes
• 47:43
  to this business as well. You know, things didn't go
• 47:45
  right. But I always say that that's
• 47:48
  part of the game. Failures teaches you as long as
• 47:51
  you are learning from your failure and keep keep on moving.
• 47:53
  Don't get disheartened as long as you have believe in the idea
• 47:59
  just keep on going and just be persistent and the results will
• 48:04
  start falling. First few years never going to
• 48:07
  be easy. It wasn't easy for us honestly.
• 48:10
  We put in a lot of sweat equity in the business because we were
• 48:13
  bootstrapping. We didn't have the luxury of big
• 48:15
  funds. So just as long as you're
• 48:21
  constantly learning and just display on your strength, it's
• 48:26
  forget about the weaknesses. You know you will have
• 48:29
  weaknesses, people will boil it off.
• 48:30
  Don't bother. Just just work.
• 48:33
  Just keep winning on your strength.
• 48:35
  Don't try to fix your weaknesses too much.
• 48:39
  Brilliant ladies and gentlemen, go check out softwarefinder.com.
• 48:43
  You know that there's a couple of tools you're using that you
• 48:46
  want to trade up, you know, so definitely go check out Software
• 48:49
  Finder. Get the unbiased consultation of
• 48:52
  industry experts. Autonomous has been amazing.
• 48:55
  What's the best place for people to connect with you personally
• 48:58
  online? They can connect with me on
• 49:02
  LinkedIn. That's that's the best way on
• 49:05
  LinkedIn you can connect with me.
• 49:07
  Or if you're choosing the software, go to software.com and
• 49:12
  book our 10 minute console and we will narrow down three to
• 49:15
  five options for you. Even if you're not shopping
• 49:18
  today, Bookmark Software Finder Software changes constantly and
• 49:23
  we stay on top of the landscape so you don't have to.
• 49:27
  So Bookmark Software Finder and if you are a software vendor and
• 49:30
  you want qualified buyers send directly to you, then you can
• 49:34
  connect.us@softfinder.com. Amazing.
• 49:38
  Adnan, thanks so much for the conversation.
• 49:41
  Thanks you so much for having me.
• 49:43
  It was such a fun conversation. I totally enjoyed it.
• 49:45
  Thank you, Ryan for your time. Hey founders, let me ask you
• 49:50
  this, are you building with AI or getting left behind by it?
• 49:55
  If you're serious about scaling smarter, faster and bolder, you
• 49:58
  need to check out AI for founders.co.
• 50:02
  It's your go to resource for cutting through the noise and
• 50:05
  actually using AI to grow your startup.
• 50:09
  Each week, AI for Founders drops a sharp, no fluff newsletter,
• 50:13
  dives deep with expert guests on the podcast, and hosts monthly
• 50:17
  workshops where you can get your hands dirty with the real tools
• 50:21
  and strategies. Whether you're precede or Series
• 50:24
  B and beyond, launching something new or just staying
• 50:28
  sharp, AI for Founders gives you the edge you need to win in 2025
• 50:32
  and beyond. Hit AI for founders.co to
• 50:36
  subscribe to the newsletter, tune into the podcast, and grab
• 50:40
  your spot in the next workshop, and it's all free.
• 50:43
  Build smarter, move faster, think bolder with AI for
• 50:47
  Founders. Now back to the show.
• 50:51
  This episode is brought to you by Moeburst, the AI first growth
• 50:55
  engine trusted by iconic startups like Calm, Robin Hood,
• 50:59
  Reddit, Uber and Google. Moeburst is a digital, full
• 51:03
  service, mobile first marketing agency that helps companies to
• 51:06
  scale and become category leaders.
• 51:09
  Whether you're finding product market fit or ready to
• 51:12
  accelerate growth, Moeburst delivers creative, data-driven
• 51:15
  solutions that help with scale and efficiency and impact.
• 51:20
  At Moburst, we're not just guessing what works, we're
• 51:22
  predicting it. As an AI first agency, Moburst
• 51:25
  uses cutting edge tools to analyze user behavior, adapt
• 51:29
  creative in real time, and uncover hidden growth
• 51:32
  opportunities. The result?
• 51:34
  Marketing that's faster, smarter, and built to convert
• 51:38
  from early stage startups to global brands.
• 51:40
  We've helped hundreds of companies overcome complex
• 51:43
  challenges, unlock new audiences, and optimize every
• 51:46
  metric that matters. At Moberst, we believe that
• 51:49
  creative thinking, advanced technology, and data are the
• 51:53
  core drivers of success at scale.
• 51:55
  If you're serious about scaling your business with precision and
• 51:58
  purpose, it's time to talk to Moberst.
• 52:01
  Visit moberst.com and let's build something category
• 52:04
  defining together.