Latest / 1 to 100 / E12: From Near-Death to $10,000,000 with Stephen Hakami

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E12: From Near-Death to $10,000,000 with Stephen Hakami · 1 to 100

0:00
So on this episode of the podcast, we have my good friend
0:02
Steven coming in as a guest to talk about SAS, even as a
0:07
software company called Whizza that I'll let him explain it.
0:11
But yeah, essentially I met you when I first started foreplay
0:18
like almost like pretty close to the first OK before starting.
0:25
She was like a client of mine on on side quest and then and we
0:30
got to know each other really well, the bootstrapped like 10
0:32
million ARR. And so I thought it'd be a great
0:35
person on podcasters talk about software and although there's
0:37
like stupid stuff that we always get through.
0:39
Yeah, Steve, all you do and we'll go from there.
0:42
Awesome, thanks for having me and offended it took 12 episodes
0:45
for you to invite me. But other than that, excited to
0:49
be here. I Yeah.
0:51
So Wizard, the software company that helps mainly sales teams
0:56
find contact information for people in their ICP.
0:59
So we sell to all types of different companies.
1:03
But yeah, we started in 2019 and like Zach mentioned just kind of
1:09
scaling past 10 million ARR and yeah, looking to to grow a lot
1:13
from here and be accepted to talk about it.
1:17
Wait, so the thing Zach told us at least was that you
1:19
bootstrapped up until this point and now you're considering
1:22
raising capital. Yeah.
1:25
And we've like talked a bunch of because, like, each of us like
1:28
operates in totally different ways.
1:31
And I can't help but be extremely curious about why you
1:34
want to change the way you're operating the business.
1:37
Yeah, honestly, I so I, I think there's a few different factors.
1:41
I think the biggest 1 is just like the size of the
1:46
opportunity, like we, we had the first five years where we were
1:50
profitable and growing at like a decent pace.
1:55
I don't know, like I feel like I'm not as profit oriented
1:59
anymore and I have a lot more fun just like seeing the company
2:03
grow and the team grow. And I think like beating that up
2:08
is more exciting to me than like doubling our profit.
2:12
So I think that's like a big piece of it, just like the fun
2:15
of running in my opinion. Like as we've grown, it's just
2:18
been more fun to run the company.
2:21
I think another piece is just, yeah, like capturing like the
2:24
size of the opportunity, like all of our direct competitors
2:27
that we're winning business from are all like billion dollar
2:32
companies. We sell in a space where like
2:36
almost every business, E2B business at least needs contact
2:39
data. They have a sales team.
2:41
And so it's just, it's a really huge market.
2:44
There's a lot of like easy wins and the players in there don't
2:47
have very good solutions. So just it just feels like the
2:50
opportunity is there and we can continue to grow at a decent
2:54
clip without raising. But I think if we really want to
2:57
like take over the market, it's the it's, it's the play for us.
3:03
But we're still like somewhat on the fence.
3:08
Why? Wait, OK, so because I guess
3:10
like my next question was going to be why didn't you do it
3:12
sooner then? But it sounds like, yeah,
3:15
you're, it sounds like you're convinced, but not totally
3:18
convinced that this is the right way to build the company.
3:21
Yeah, well. I think it depends on the price.
3:24
Like even if even for like the biggest fan of bootstrapping,
3:29
like if someone was going to give you $100 million or 1% of
3:33
the company, you'd do it, right. So like it exists on some level
3:36
of like spectrum of like the price for everyone.
3:41
So the price definitely matters. And in terms of like why we
3:46
didn't do it earlier, I feel like the biggest reason is like
3:50
all of our business came PLG people spending like 50 bucks,
3:54
100 bucks a month. And so we didn't have anything
3:56
that like yes, we could have built out the product, but
3:59
that's still an unknown. Now we're at a point where like
4:02
our sales team has really proven out like a repeatable model.
4:07
And so we know like, even if whatever we think will make our
4:10
product better like doesn't pan out and we just had to stick
4:13
with our existing product, we think we could pad X from here.
4:17
And so I think having that like scalable channel is the key to
4:22
really being like, OK, now I think it it makes sense.
4:26
I got you. I got you.
4:27
I got you. And I feel like you've had, I
4:29
mean, just because I know you, so I can kind of like poke a
4:32
little bit at like, I feel like you have like a personal shift
4:35
as well-being like more focused on, you know, like, like you
4:38
moved. Yeah.
4:41
You know, like, even like right now isn't the same Steven.
4:45
That was like running whizzo like June 13th of 2024.
4:48
Like you know what I'm saying? Like you're focused on different
4:49
things now. Yeah, yeah, I think that plays
4:52
into like, yeah, before it was a bit of like profit and like
4:57
personally making money, which ever wants to make money.
5:01
But like, and I, I do obviously, but like, I, I don't know, I'm
5:05
not as excited about making X number of dollars per year.
5:11
Even if the business is profiting, let's say millions of
5:14
dollars a year, it's still that like that is, that is good.
5:17
Like I don't want to like say that's not a good thing.
5:21
But to me, like a much bigger life changing outcome is like
5:26
much more exciting every morning.
5:29
It's interesting because if you're at 10 million ARR, you
5:33
boost up to this point, I would think you could actually raise a
5:35
pretty sizable round, especially the market you're talking about.
5:38
I mean, I don't know all the competitors, but I just looked
5:41
up like Apollo as I assume that's one of your direct
5:44
competitors. Yeah, that's one of our biggest
5:46
fans. Yeah, it's $1.6 billion most
5:49
recent valuation. Like if that's the the market
5:52
you're playing on, I would assume you could raise a pretty
5:54
big round and then maybe even get some secondary out of that.
5:57
So it's like you can just take a massive swing like probably be
6:01
the probably get similar amount of money as you get if you just
6:03
kept bootstrapping this thing for a few years and and take a
6:07
big swing and see what happens. Exactly.
6:09
Yeah, I think that goes into the calculus for sure.
6:13
But I think like for any bootstrapper, it is valuable to
6:17
even like go through the motions of raising around because
6:20
they'll pry into certain things of the business that either you
6:24
ignore or just like don't think about as much.
6:27
Like the retention, for example, is obviously huge and everyone
6:30
thinks about it. But like for me, I've always
6:33
been like, well, all I care about is net revenue retention.
6:35
Because if net revenue retention is above 100%, then what, what
6:41
does it matter what gross is? And when you speak to firms,
6:43
it's like, oh, no, we won't, we won't invest if it's less than,
6:47
let's say 90% gross revenue retention.
6:51
And even if it's like, oh, why does that matter?
6:53
I don't know. It just makes you think about
6:55
like certain deals and things that you're doing and where your
6:58
company focuses. Whereas before it's like, let's
7:01
just get as much revenue as possible from whoever will pay
7:04
us. And now it's like a bit more
7:06
methodical with like we're the right types of customers and
7:09
like I think a bit more of like a mature business thinking than
7:13
when you first start. Yeah, because I think that the
7:15
big difference, I mean I'm going to say the obvious thing now,
7:18
but the big difference is like you're playing two different
7:21
games. 1 is a profit maximizing game, the other one is an
7:24
enterprise value maximizing game.
7:26
And like those are just not the same in the very long term for
7:30
very large companies, those end up becoming those converge.
7:33
But in the short and medium term, you take very different
7:37
pathways to to accomplish those two things.
7:39
And reason why gross logo matters is or matters
7:45
differently is it turns out that if you can win the market,
7:52
especially in the competitive market, it'll show up in your
7:55
gross logo retention. And it turns out the winner has
7:58
outsized returns, right? And then you get lower cost of
8:02
capital and you can build more products.
8:04
And so then your, your net revenue, your, your ceiling goes
8:09
up, the better your gross revenue retention is.
8:12
This is like very common in ECOM SAS at least, which is like a
8:16
lot of ECOM SAS companies get stuck somewhere between 10 and
8:19
50. Well, there's a category that
8:22
gets stuck between 2:00 and 5:00.
8:25
And then there's a category that gets stuck between 10 and 50 and
8:28
the only way that you can escape past that is you become multi
8:32
product, but you only get permission to then sell the 2nd
8:35
and 3rd and 4th and 5th product if the customer's still around,
8:39
right? And so like, and, and most of
8:42
the CE OS of most of ECOM class companies actually say this out,
8:45
but like they're super comfortable saying this out
8:47
loud. Like in fact, like Tomer says it
8:49
as like an explicit strategy, which is like, hey, ECOM has
8:53
limited time and so the outpost strategy is to be extremely
8:58
multi product. That is like an explicit
9:00
strategy, right? Other companies do it more
9:02
implicitly, like Attentive does it more implicitly where it's
9:06
like they're known for SMS, but you know, they're adding e-mail,
9:09
they're adding other things. Clavio has now shifted to
9:13
explicit because they just refocused from the e-mail tool
9:16
to like saying, hey, we are like AB to CCRM, which is a way for
9:21
them to capture more product seat sets on top of that.
9:26
But anyway, like, yeah, it turns, yeah, you have to worry
9:28
about different things because those different things lead to
9:30
different ceiling sizes and that different ceiling size is the
9:33
enterprise value creation. Yeah, yeah, it's very, it's very
9:36
interesting how like we, you know, you put together like a
9:40
financial pack and it like it's really all they need like to to
9:46
decide if they want to invest or not.
9:48
And just like, I don't the, the numbers are like quite telling.
9:53
And I think they do a pretty good job as investors of like at
9:58
least some of the like growth equity Ted firms.
10:01
Obviously for venture capital, it's different, but like they do
10:05
a pretty good job of just like looking at your customer spend
10:08
over time and like kind of cutting out the the bullshit
10:12
around it. I think it's a valuable whether
10:14
we do it or not. I think it's a.
10:16
It's a good use of time, and these are things you can think
10:19
about even if you remain bootstrapped.
10:22
Yeah. I think that the other thing
10:23
that a lot of people miss is like as you're building
10:27
enterprise value, there are assets that are valuable in a
10:33
company transaction that are not directly profit related.
10:37
And that also changes how you make decisions, which is also
10:39
why I'm kind of wondering like, you know, why you're shifting
10:42
basically because there's just like a lot of other decisions
10:46
that you start to make differently because you're
10:49
again, you're trying to maximize the value of some sort of
10:51
transaction in the future for the company.
10:54
Whether that's, and like the large majority of those are M&A
10:57
and then there's some like extremely small subset that's an
11:00
IPO, right? But it doesn't actually matter
11:02
which one of those two is the end outcome.
11:04
You're maximizing for that end outcome, which is a very
11:07
different set of things to like. You will hire different people
11:11
is the most obvious way that that changes.
11:13
Right. Because an asset that has like
11:16
higher quality people working in it that are in the location of
11:21
the places where that next owner of the business is, is a more
11:26
transactable asset than one that that does not have those
11:28
properties. Yeah, it's very interesting.
11:32
Have you guys raised or are you both?
11:37
Addressed. Yeah.
11:40
We yeah. So we've, I mean, so This is why
11:42
like in previous episodes, we've talked about this, but like, you
11:44
know, Zach is the bootstrapper, Jeremiah is like in a more like
11:48
PE holding style. And then I've I've raised.
11:52
Yeah. Interesting.
11:55
He just, he just, he just closed a $45 million Series B.
11:59
So wow, Congrats. So yeah, he's raised a lot.
12:04
He's the man that knows all about BC funding and how to get
12:08
them to open their wallets. Yeah, you should go listen to
12:12
episode because you like broke down like the entire process and
12:14
there's some good stuff, OK. Yeah, it definitely should.
12:18
It literally just came out. So yeah, it's not like you.
12:23
No, no, no worries that you didn't see it yet.
12:27
But yeah, it's just, it's just, I find it fascinating when
12:29
someone wants to switch from bootstrapping to to raising
12:33
capital because it's just like such a different way of running
12:36
the business, so. Yeah, I, I didn't raise any
12:40
capital on and I think it's the, you know that the business that
12:45
I run is software subscriptions. And we're talking about like
12:49
typically call it 50 to $500 a month is like a typical range.
12:54
There's, there's more, there are some that are larger than that,
12:57
but that's kind of where the, the bulk of of our customers
13:02
fall in terms of the revenue that they drive for us.
13:03
And that just isn't a high enough, doesn't lead to high
13:07
enough revenues for VCs to to really be that interested.
13:11
And so I think that's, yeah, I, I learned that early, accepted
13:17
that early and moved on. But but it's still a good
13:21
business, right? It's just a, there's just, it's
13:24
very hard to get to that billion dollar outcome and what's
13:27
essentially A relatively small Tam with with a pricing strategy
13:32
like that. Yeah.
13:34
Did you guys feel like you couldn't expand like like back
13:37
to the point of like multi product like is that something
13:41
you considered or? Yeah, I actually think that's
13:44
really should be brought up at Yapo.
13:46
I actually think that's a really interesting example.
13:49
Like they start with reviews and they basically have just
13:51
continued to expand into more and more lucrative categories.
13:54
And so like people are only willing to pay so much to put
13:58
reviews widget on their website. There's a, there's a cap in what
14:03
you're willing to pay for that because ultimately it's, it's a,
14:05
it's code that you have a lot of alternatives for and there's not
14:10
really an outright to, to spend more based on the usage of it.
14:15
And then you get into, I mean, they, they have loyalty.
14:18
They have, they had at least subscriptions for a while.
14:22
And so you can see like loyalty you're, you're theoretically at
14:25
least able to show that you're driving business revenue impact
14:28
in a way that's more clear than like reviews.
14:32
Subscription becomes even more clear than that.
14:34
I think they're deprecating subscription.
14:35
But ultimately with subscription, you can pretty
14:37
easily charge somebody a percentage of that transaction
14:40
because you're literally like taking money from somebody and
14:43
putting it in their bank account.
14:44
Then they moved into e-mail and ask and ask.
14:46
And I think that's that is you look at like Clavio single
14:49
product basically, I don't remember their most recent
14:52
revenue, but I think it's something like $700 million or
14:54
or it may even be higher than that now.
14:57
And so if you're YAP, you can look at like, hey, how do we go
14:59
take 10% of that business? We already work with a lot of
15:02
those people. They're already our customers.
15:03
And so let's go take a piece of that business and we can charge
15:07
$50,000 a month from some of these customers because we're
15:10
sending enough and it's easy to see the ROI on sending an
15:14
e-mail. So yeah, the short answer is
15:15
like, I just not, I don't at at this moment, I don't have an
15:20
appetite to get into any of those kinds of categories.
15:22
But I think we ultimately we would need for us to really
15:25
expand our AC VS in a meaningful way, we would have to get into a
15:28
category like that where you're willing to, just where customers
15:34
are willing to spend $50,000 a month if there's ROI on it.
15:38
And yeah, that's just like that's, that doesn't, that's not
15:42
the case for the products that we, we operate.
15:44
And so it just hasn't made sense to seek additional capital.
15:48
And then ultimately that resulted in selling the
15:50
business. But I don't know, it's still
15:51
fun. I still like growing the
15:53
business. I still like thinking about
15:55
additional things. And who knows, we may get into
15:57
some of that stuff in the future too.
16:00
I mean, I feel the same thing. It's probably true for Wizard,
16:02
right, Steven? Like, I don't know what you
16:04
think, but I don't think you're going to be selling contact data
16:08
if you raise capital. Or rather, I don't think that
16:11
that's going to be sufficient for the person giving you the
16:14
capital. More importantly, like they're
16:16
going to say, like, where's your automation tool?
16:19
Where's your AISDR? Where's like like you're like
16:23
basically what you have to sell to the investor is like, hey
16:27
guys, I know I've been selling contact data.
16:30
Now I actually want to turn this into a suite or into a platform.
16:34
Like that's, that's, that's what you have to do otherwise.
16:37
And that's what that's what all these other companies did.
16:39
Just to be clear. Like that's what like that's
16:41
what everybody did. And so it's like the path is
16:43
actually what this is true across industries.
16:46
It's not like it's an ECOM problem.
16:47
So. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
16:50
That's part of our story. And we do legitimately want to
16:54
do that because we think data is really important on top of those
16:57
products. But like, yeah, Zoom info for
17:00
example has, you know, they've IP owed.
17:03
They do obviously have like many other products under their wing,
17:07
but it all comes back down to the contact data.
17:11
So yeah, it is an incredibly important piece, but I think
17:17
like if we weren't going to raise and we decided like, let's
17:22
be more efficient. I think there still is a huge
17:26
outcome in just like the lane of contact data and like
17:29
integrating nicely with CRMS and, and the other part of the
17:33
stack. But agreed like that you, you
17:36
really can't tell that story like which is one thing we've
17:41
learned for sure. Yeah, yeah.
17:44
Like the, I mean, you have to tell two stories.
17:46
You have to say you're going to be the platform, you have to see
17:48
your data's better. And then you have to say that
17:50
because we're smaller, we're going to use AI faster than all
17:54
of these other companies that have to like price based on
17:58
seats. And so they don't have the
17:59
opportunity to win the market. Like that's the, I mean, that's
18:01
like basically the fund rate. That's the way to raise money,
18:04
basically, you know, somewhere in there.
18:08
What's what's been like the most unexpected thing or like moment
18:12
of the company? Because like now it's you know,
18:14
it's getting to a point where it's like, yeah, there's like,
18:15
you know, multiple years under the belt and stuff like that.
18:18
Like what do you think you'd be the most surprised about like
18:21
reading about if like the person that like started was was like
18:24
reading the story. Like what do you think would be
18:26
like the so far the most surprising chapter?
18:30
Of our company story. Yeah.
18:35
Yeah, we so we have a pretty crazy story.
18:37
So I started the company in 2019.
18:41
I had tried. So I had always like, I had a
18:44
pretty short career before I started software companies, I
18:48
guess. But I started my career in
18:50
sales. And so right away I was like
18:54
coming up with ideas for salespeople.
18:56
The first software idea that I had was something called Torch.
19:01
And basically what that did was scan your e-mail inbox to find
19:04
people that you've sent an outreach to, but you never
19:07
followed up with Gmail. Like kind of does a little bit
19:10
of it today where it'll be like, you sent this five days ago.
19:13
Do you want to follow up? But it was for sales people, you
19:17
know, sending mass emails kind of before the time of like tools
19:20
that would automate the follow-ups.
19:22
There were a few of them, but most sales people just sent
19:24
emails 1 by 1. And I made like every mistake of
19:28
a, you know, like a like first time founder kept lowering the
19:34
price, kept adding like random features and that didn't even
19:37
make sense like through an e-mail Finder in there.
19:40
And just like it was just it was a mess.
19:43
So eventually stop doing that and then went back to the sales
19:47
job and kind of had to be the idea for Whizzo, which at the
19:50
time was a tool that essentially just like allowed you to make
19:54
folk lists from LinkedIn sales navigator.
19:57
Anyway, Long story short, I went back to the original developer
20:01
who. Who had built Torch and me and
20:05
him kind of got started on this project together.
20:07
He was living in Morocco at the time.
20:10
And so yeah, we, we built it pretty much like entirely
20:15
together. I think around three years in,
20:19
I'm forgetting what our revenue was around the stage, but maybe
20:24
3 million of of revenue at at this point annually.
20:29
So it was like there was, there was a business, we had a lot of
20:31
customers and the developer essentially tells me, hey, you
20:37
know, like I have ulcerative colitis, I'm going to be in the
20:41
in the hospital for the next little bit.
20:43
If anything happens on with the app, just just go into AWS and
20:49
reset it. So I'm like, OK, no problem.
20:52
And she's so he's in the hospital and I'm at this point
20:57
like our app is going down all the time because there are just
21:00
there issues that have come up. He's been there a few weeks and
21:04
I'm, I don't leave the house without my laptop with me in
21:07
case I have to restart the server.
21:09
So I'm doing this probably like 10 times a day.
21:13
It's just a mess. I'm like the most dressed I've
21:17
ever been in my entire life in a in a panic.
21:21
And at one point I just completely stopped hearing from
21:25
the developer and he's like very commutative.
21:28
We talked like everyday on on chat and.
21:32
OK, but there's there's like a piece of color here.
21:34
You've also like never spoken to this guy ever.
21:38
Yeah, we've been working together.
21:41
For three years, it's a crazy thing.
21:43
Like you've never heard his voice, but he's only messaged on
21:46
on Skype. Like it's kind of an incredible
21:49
thing that like a business. There.
21:53
Are and you never spoken to this guy?
21:55
I mean you guys were friends but like actual spoken never
21:58
happened. I actually did that with my
21:59
first Co founder as well. Seven years.
22:01
First time I heard of his voice was when he came to visit me
22:04
after I sold my part of the business to him.
22:06
Like no joke. That's crazy.
22:09
Yeah. The the.
22:11
So when we first started working together, I found him initially
22:13
on Upwork and I had kind of a, a blanket message that was like,
22:18
Hey, if you want to get on a call and discuss the project,
22:20
like whatever. And he was like a bit
22:23
apprehensive to it. And I was like, I looked at his
22:25
portfolio. I'm like, oh, this guy, this
22:27
guy's perfect. He did all the design, all the
22:28
coding, like the all of Wizzo was like initially built by him,
22:34
like back end, front end design files, like everything.
22:39
So he was, he was crazy, but I just got the sense that like he,
22:42
he wasn't as like social social in that sense.
22:45
So I was like, OK, if this guy doesn't want to work that way,
22:47
like I'll, I'll text chat him, whatever.
22:50
And then I kind of just like drag, drag, drag on dragged on
22:55
for like years. So anyway, so yeah, so his, so
23:01
eventually he becomes totally unresponsive.
23:03
You know, I didn't, I didn't know where he lived in Morocco.
23:06
And really, you know, I knew some of his like personal life
23:10
stuff, like I knew his mom was taking care of him when he was
23:12
sick and he was a nurse. But like, I, I really didn't
23:15
know any of these other people in his life.
23:18
And then I got an Instagram message from someone with the
23:23
same last name who was the brother.
23:27
And like, right away, like my heart sank because I haven't
23:29
heard from him in like 30 days now.
23:32
And he's like, hey, are you like his business partner?
23:38
I'm like, yes, Because right away I was like, Oh my God, like
23:41
if he's messaging me like he must have passed away and he, I
23:46
get the message and he's like, oh, no, like he, he's fine.
23:51
He's just like not going to be accessible for another like 30
23:53
days. So I kind of like relax a
23:56
little. I'm like, OK, 30 more days,
23:59
Like, I can live with that. The panic kind of continues.
24:01
Restarting the server, you know, just every day trying to figure
24:04
out like what's going on here. And I'm on the phone with that
24:07
and our other friend Jake. And I was driving.
24:13
I'd like, I can picture it exactly.
24:15
It was like a snowy day in Toronto.
24:18
I was driving to buy a piano because I wanted to start doing
24:21
piano lessons. And all of a sudden we're on the
24:25
phone, we're talking about this, They're trying to figure it out,
24:27
like they're looking things up. And then all of a sudden I just
24:30
hear looks like the biggest gasp I think I've ever heard.
24:35
I don't know, I forget now if it was from you or Jake.
24:38
And basically his brother had posted like a month prior, like
24:43
around the time he messaged me like a Rest in Peace post on
24:47
Facebook. But he passed away a month ago.
24:49
And you know, I guess was essentially, yeah, I, I don't
24:56
know, it was motivations. I won't like speculate, but that
24:59
was like, obviously the, the hardest point in the business
25:02
personally. Obviously, like, even though we
25:04
had never talked like we would essentially text hang like every
25:10
day for years, like just an incredible guy to work with,
25:14
probably the most honest guy I've ever worked with as well.
25:17
Also from a business perspective of just like, Oh my God, we are
25:22
fucked because the entire codebase was just on his
25:26
machine. He was the sole developer.
25:28
He's not on GitHub. And I'm like, we've lost, we've
25:32
lost it. We have to restart the company
25:34
basically. I mean, and then Jake, who was a
25:38
friend of mine was like, I know 1 developer who I think can can
25:43
help, you know, I'll put you guys in touch.
25:47
I got in contact with him. He came to my office.
25:49
He still like tells the story that I looked like white as a
25:53
ghost. And I just like he's like, I
25:55
could hear the fear in your voice.
25:58
I was just like a shell of myself.
25:59
And he comes to our office and he's like, OK, like maybe I can
26:02
get the code, but like it's probably compressed.
26:07
And so we can't make any changes.
26:08
So like we can get the app back online, but most likely we're
26:11
not going to like we're going to have to restart.
26:13
And I'm like, OK, let's just get the app online and whatever.
26:17
And he's like, there is like a 1% chance that it's not
26:20
compressed. And turns out he, you know, he,
26:25
he, you know, he got, he got in, he got it after like, I forget
26:29
what it was 6 or 7 hours and basically saved the save the
26:34
business. And he's our CTO now and built a
26:37
development team and our codes on GitHub now.
26:39
But yeah, that was like a existential moment.
26:44
And you always hear the, you know, the classic cliche of
26:47
like, oh, what happens if X gets hit by a bus?
26:52
And you kind of just sort of like, OK, whatever.
26:55
But yeah, anything can happen. And that was just a crazy,
27:00
crazy, probably crazy period of my life.
27:03
Damn man, that is like that is rough.
27:07
And did you have you had any more communication with your
27:10
with that developer from Morocco's family since then or
27:13
is that kind of? Yeah, I was actually.
27:16
I was able to get in touch with his mom and I'm still in touch
27:19
with her and was able to obviously support them because
27:25
he also had equity in in the company and everything.
27:28
So yeah, luckily I was able to get in touch with her.
27:34
Obviously I didn't trust the brother as much based on lying
27:38
me, but yeah, his, you know, his, his mom kind of luckily we
27:43
got in touch. So I thought I was going to have
27:45
to apply to Morocco and like find the computer and like try
27:50
to hack the computer or something.
27:53
Like, dude, that is, yeah, I don't even know what I would do
27:58
in a situation like that. I feel like there's certain
28:01
things where, like you get tested in such a big way that, I
28:04
mean, it is sort of like that. Should we just shut this down
28:06
and restart? It's like a, it is like a what's
28:11
the point kind of moment, right? It's it's like so extreme that
28:16
it's like a what's the point kind of moment.
28:18
We had the team and like, obviously the revenue coming in.
28:22
So it's like we had something there, but like the product was
28:26
essentially gone. So it's just like, how do you
28:29
even restart and get people to like, switch their cards to the
28:32
new system and like, But yeah, that seemed like, at the time,
28:36
the most like realistic case. Has every other problem since
28:42
then felt minor? Yeah, I, I actually, I keep, I
28:48
have a photo from like when he was in the hospital, he sent me
28:52
like a message that was like, because he used to get pretty
28:54
stressed about like we would do a launch and something didn't
28:57
work. And it says like, you know, I
29:02
essentially it's a long arrested, but like the only
29:05
thing that actually matters is your health.
29:06
And you realize this like every time you get even like you get
29:09
the flu and you're just like, man, all I care about is just
29:13
like being healthy. And so, yeah, I think definitely
29:18
like moments like that and other things, like it doesn't have to
29:20
be as extreme, like everyone goes through, you know,
29:23
difficult times. And it does put it into
29:27
perspective, I think for the future.
29:29
I think I'm we've had other issues like we've we've gone
29:32
down. We actually had a New York tech
29:36
week party. We have flew our whole team
29:38
there and everyone's drinking with an open bar and then all of
29:42
a sudden our CTO like checks his phone and just I'm trying to get
29:45
the CCTV footage and just sprints out of the party.
29:48
Everyone's like what's going on? Then the whole development team
29:51
like joins him. We went down at the in the
29:54
middle of the party, everyone's like had many drinks and he's
29:59
just in the lobby of the hotel where we're having it, fixing
30:03
it. But yeah, so I think I, I think
30:05
it has maybe like even situations like that pretty
30:08
relaxed. That story of like, everybody's
30:12
out drinking and then it's just like, Oh my God, this is not
30:16
like either something was forgotten or something is broken
30:18
or whatever. I feel like that happens all the
30:21
time, You know what I mean? Like I feel like to the person
30:24
to whom it is happening, it feels like, Oh my God, what's
30:26
going on? It happened so much that this is
30:30
to me, it's just like it's, it's another Tuesday.
30:33
You know what I mean? So.
30:35
I'm like, whatever, Yeah, like GCP was down yesterday for three
30:39
hours. Right.
30:41
Like that's the first at at at first what I thought you were
30:44
going to say is like this is like, you know, like some
30:46
massive dude. GCP was down for three hours.
30:49
You want to know the funniest thing?
30:51
And Jeremiah, I'm, I'm actually curious if you guys like what
30:54
you guys did. But we sent like, because we're
30:57
like, we have relationships directly with all of our
30:59
customers. We sent like a note to every one
31:00
of them, like here's what's happening, here's what's going
31:02
on, here's what we're doing, here's what we can't do about
31:04
it. And then when it came back, we
31:06
had some of our customers tell us that we were the only
31:09
software company that was communicated in this way that
31:13
they work with the only one. And that was just like, I don't
31:20
even know what to say. You know what I mean?
31:22
Like, it was like a crazy thing. It was a crazy thing, yeah.
31:26
Yeah, that's smart. I don't think we sent anything,
31:29
but probably should have, just like I'm sure everyone knows,
31:33
like everything's down right now.
31:38
I didn't put an intracom banner up, that's about it, but.
31:42
Banner they can't see because they can't get in, no.
31:45
No, no, everything was. Everything was everything was
31:47
fine, it just wasn't like loading for us or something.
31:50
Yeah, we didn't have any issues actually.
31:51
So I don't know how we there's so many things impacted, but for
31:56
some reason we were so. That's not possible dude.
31:59
The Shopify API stopped working. Well, the shop on the Shopify
32:02
side, yeah, but like we're all of our systems were online.
32:06
So all of the things that we control were working, if that
32:09
makes sense. So it was like, but that was.
32:11
True for us too. OK, but you still?
32:14
That was the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:16
I see what you're saying. Yeah.
32:19
I mean our stance on that is like if Shopify's down, we we
32:24
don't usually send comms when Shopify's down.
32:26
But I mean, that's an interesting.
32:28
Like, yeah, yeah, they'll trust even.
32:33
Yeah, actually, I, I that's smart.
32:36
So yeah, do you guys ever feel like when things like like AWS
32:40
went down? Like I forgot when it was a year
32:42
ago actually in Canada, we had like the biggest cell provider
32:48
go completely down like 2 years ago.
32:50
And if she was just like you wake up in the morning and just
32:53
phone just had no cell connection and the Wi-Fi.
32:57
So it's just, it was not, but it's just, it's like it's
33:01
everything like a House of Cards.
33:03
Like I feel like one day there's going to be like a week where
33:07
like, everything is down. I remember as a kid, there was
33:11
like a blackout. I can't remember what year it
33:12
was. I was like young enough to be in
33:15
the streets. It was awesome.
33:17
Like the entire country, everyone was out of their house
33:20
because there was no lights, There was no whatever.
33:22
And like, yeah, it was actually pretty.
33:24
It was pretty sweet. I don't think it's possible in
33:26
the US at least. Yeah, in like third world
33:29
countries like Canada. I was.
33:33
I was my. What I was actually going to say
33:35
is like, I think like capitalism fills that very fast.
33:40
Yeah, Yeah. So.
33:42
That's exactly the point. The the socialist will never fix
33:47
the life. If we don't need this, there's
33:50
no incentive to fix the Internet.
33:52
Like dude, GCP was down. You want to know what was
33:55
happening on Twitter? A bunch of like, like people who
33:59
provide compute services literally were trouncing on the
34:03
GCP being down and we're saying we're up.
34:07
Like that is what happened on Twitter.
34:09
And that's how you know that like, hey, capitalism will solve
34:12
the problem. It's because like they used that
34:15
one moment. Like one of my friends runs a
34:18
runs an infra company and dude, his socials and all of his
34:22
investors just like push this message super hard that they
34:27
that they just don't go down. It's like a big part of their
34:29
value prop, like they just don't go down.
34:32
And they've like made tons of technical investments.
34:34
They're like across multiple countries, across multiple back
34:37
ends, across multiple model providers, They just don't go
34:40
down. And so like GCP was down and
34:43
they were like, and, and, and they'd like made, they'd
34:45
commented about that 2 days ago. And so then they were like, see,
34:49
that's why we said that, you know what I mean?
34:52
Like capital, like capitalism has this like funny way of doing
34:55
of like filling these holes. That's what that's why I don't
34:58
think it's, like likely that everything just goes down.
35:00
Yeah. And what's what I mean?
35:01
Even like the core, like the Internet, I don't truly deep
35:05
down know how to. Work you, you think you could.
35:08
You don't think Elon Musk is going to tweet as soon as as
35:11
soon as the Internet goes down? Like that's what Starlin goes
35:13
for. Like, dude, that's what's going
35:15
to happen. Starlink has has diversified the
35:18
the risk there. Yeah, and you can dude, 100%
35:21
confidence he will tweet as soon as something like that happens
35:26
and ship some Starlinks to people one month off.
35:28
You know what I mean? Great.
35:30
Offer. I just bought a Starlink, it's
35:34
such a good product. So you have like.
35:37
Yeah, it's so good. Incredible.
35:40
I don't have, I don't have like my Internet doesn't go to like
35:43
the roof of my building. And so, and I like try to get
35:47
like mesh systems, whatever. And never worked.
35:48
And I just got Starlink. So I had like the Starlink up
35:50
there and it's fucking incredible.
35:52
And like it was, it's like part of me.
35:55
And maybe because I don't live in a place where Starlink is
35:58
like has like a lot of penetration, but it was like,
36:00
how have I not even seen more people talk about just like the
36:03
onboarding process of this whole like the entire thing is
36:06
incredible. Like I feel like people are
36:08
like, Oh, it's you can get Internet everywhere.
36:09
Like that's what we were talking about, but like just as a
36:11
product in in like the way like outside of the Internet, like
36:15
the way it was shipped, like the the on boarding was just
36:18
incredible. I'm just like surprised I don't
36:21
hear more people talking about it.
36:23
Like how good of a product it is.
36:25
Like it's like, it's incredible. Do any of you own a Tesla?
36:28
No, I don't like electric cars. Makes sense.
36:33
Makes sense. It's.
36:34
Like wearing red glasses. I was like, I should have known,
36:36
you know, it's like like like you like definitely give either
36:42
G Wagon or like Corvette vibes. I don't know which one of the
36:45
two it is, but it's one of those.
36:47
So Steve's the G Wagon guy and I'm, I almost bought yesterday
36:53
and like, I'm just waiting for like the final like numbers on
36:55
it, an old Land Rover Defender that was imported from like
37:00
Slovenia or something. You look Slovenian.
37:07
I look like, I'm like, I look like I'm going to go to war.
37:10
It was that was all part of it. But the reason why I don't like
37:12
electric cars, like I think they're incredible.
37:14
Like I think they're cool to drive.
37:16
But like, I think over a long enough time horizon, just like
37:21
combustion engines are, you're not going to be able to get like
37:24
really cool ones. And so I'm looking at this like,
37:26
time of my life as like an opportunity to just like absorb
37:29
something that's fleeting. And like, I have 0 desire to be
37:32
like an early adopter with electric cars because I'm just
37:35
like, oh, I'll have all of the, the ones in 10 years are going
37:38
to be so much better. And I'll not be able to have
37:41
like this thing that's like loud and like smells like diesel.
37:45
And I love the smell of gas too. OK.
37:48
Anyways, I just wanted to talk about the onboarding process.
37:50
I think this is like Elon's companies.
37:52
He just does a very good job of this.
37:54
When you buy a Tesla, first of all, you buy it online.
37:57
It's like easier than buying AT shirt from true classic.
38:00
Literally it is easier to buy a Tesla than AT shirt from true
38:03
classic. Not no offense to true classic,
38:06
but it's just like that easy. And the way you pick up this car
38:11
is insane. You like show up.
38:14
First of all, they could just bring it to you if you live in a
38:16
home, but I live in in like a condo complex, so they can't
38:20
bring it there. So I go to the dealership and
38:24
you just check in. There's a lot, OK?
38:27
It's just numbered like 1 to 40. And then you get a text within
38:32
15 minutes saying your car is ready.
38:35
And then the whole on boarding happens through your phone.
38:38
Like there's no human involved. You set the car up, the keys are
38:42
in the car waiting for you in this like beautiful envelope.
38:45
Like you don't you don't have to talk to anyone and you drive
38:48
away in 10 minutes. It is insane.
38:53
It is insane. Like the total amount of time
38:56
you have to spend to buy a Tesla is like under 15 minutes.
39:01
Yeah, but the only issue with that is that one of my favorite
39:04
jokes is that when someone asks me to sign something, I say I
39:07
usually don't do this for free. And in this case I wouldn't be
39:10
able to use that dad joke and so I'm anti.
39:14
Tesla, I'm sure you can come over to some other dad jokes in
39:19
that experience. You can make a few back in my
39:21
day comments. And especially.
39:25
If you're wearing those glasses, you'll you'll be ready for it.
39:29
Yeah, yeah. The I feel like there is
39:32
something to like taking the principles of like tech, like,
39:38
you know, smooth onboarding or like time to value and all these
39:42
things and bringing it to these like older businesses, like not
39:47
even D to C, which like has been done where a lot of I think like
39:50
the principles of that have like made its way into like CPG
39:54
brands. But like, I don't know, gas
39:57
stations or like just other like antiquated industries that
40:02
really like young people aren't involved in these days and like
40:08
bringing those things. Like, I wonder what else is out
40:10
there that you can just like, take over?
40:14
I was thinking about this with the grocery stores yesterday.
40:16
Like I was, I went to the grocery store and they asked me
40:19
for my phone number for the rewards program and I entered my
40:21
phone number and you know, nothing happens.
40:24
There's no like benefit really there's no.
40:27
And you could, you could make such a great experience because
40:30
you have so much data about what somebody's buying, the types of
40:33
products that like that the possibility for creating like a
40:37
really great loyalty retention program in the in the context of
40:42
the grocery stores. Incredible.
40:43
And like they kind of do it, but it's all it's so poorly done
40:47
compared to like what you actually do.
40:49
So yeah, I was thinking about that exact thing yesterday.
40:51
If somebody actually unlocks that, there's probably massive
40:55
opportunity there. Yeah, like if it was like, hey,
40:57
we see every week you buy a dozen eggs, this that the other
41:01
like do you want to set that part up on auto delivery and
41:06
whatever? I think it's even simpler than
41:09
that. Like the grocery, the the entire
41:11
way you make money in the grocery stores, you put the milk
41:13
at the back. That is like how you make money
41:15
in the grocery business. And so you now have information
41:18
about what every person's milk is and just knowing that should
41:24
enable you to make a shit load more money.
41:26
But instead all you do is you keep the fucking milk at the
41:29
back. I mean, what a stupid thing.
41:31
That was actually the example I was thinking of like hey, you
41:33
know what milk I buy? Text me saying, hey, your milk's
41:36
on us today, right? Like something like that where
41:39
it's like you give me something for that cost you $3 to get me
41:43
into the store to buy all the other things I want to buy.
41:45
Like that's that is such a low cost way of getting somebody
41:48
into the to walk in the door. Yeah, there's, there's so many
41:52
things like that that are just on taps and even, I mean Amazon
41:55
owning Whole Foods, Whole Foods still hasn't done a good job of
41:57
that in my opinion compared to what is possible.
42:00
Yeah, it's not great. I've also noticed that like the
42:02
closest grocery store to me as a Whole Foods now and it's
42:05
actually way cheaper to get it delivered.
42:07
Like the prices are like half on a lot of things that like I
42:10
regularly buy. And I'm like, why?
42:13
Like, like why is it cheaper to get it delivered?
42:15
Yeah. And.
42:16
You don't have to spend half an hour or an hour going to get it.
42:20
I actually think that Starlink is the perfect product and you
42:24
know, because like Tesla is a is a great product as well, but
42:27
it's the subject of a lot of criticism online.
42:30
All right. Like I'm not sure any of the
42:31
criticism has to do with the car I have.
42:34
I have yet to meet a critic of the car who owns the car.
42:37
Right. And you can't critique styling.
42:39
It just works. If you say it doesn't work,
42:41
that's just objectively false, right?
42:43
It does work and it works really well.
42:45
You can't say it's too expensive because it's actually cheaper
42:47
than a lot of like local options.
42:49
I go to a lot of like surf towns and these towns are dominated by
42:53
Starlink. The local providers are just
42:55
getting wiped out because it's cheaper, right?
42:57
So you can't say all Starlink's too expensive because people
43:00
like this just objectively false.
43:01
It's kind of the perfect product.
43:03
When I was living in Mexico, there was this, it was in this
43:05
town that never had good Internet.
43:08
And so people would come in like Digital Nomad to be able to come
43:11
in for a weekend and then like hop out.
43:12
And then when I was there, it's like they started first getting
43:15
Starlink since it was like in 20, 21 or something like that.
43:18
And there was this guy that was renting Starlinks by the week
43:22
and he was absolutely killing it.
43:23
He was renting at like $200 a week or something.
43:25
It was like the only way you get Internet in this place.
43:27
I was like, how many Starlinks do you have?
43:29
And he was just like, I buy 150 right now, like cycling at $200
43:32
a week. And I'm like, damn, you're
43:34
crushing. The other thing that's
43:35
interesting about Starlink is that generally speaking, new
43:39
tech innovation kind of concentrates on urban centers
43:43
and Starlink opposite of that. And this is just kind of like a
43:45
interesting operation. But like my, both my parents
43:48
have Starlink because they live in a rural area where the
43:53
alternatives are very bad and they're not tech people by any
43:57
means. And so I, I do think that's an
44:00
interesting, yeah, it's an interesting thing where like
44:04
generally speaking, that's the opposite of what you expect from
44:06
a tech innovation. Dude, I know someone who's like
44:09
a self defined communist and he had to buy a star link and he
44:15
wasn't very happy about it. He was so upset.
44:19
Oh, you're getting value out of Elon Musk's products.
44:21
And he was like, I mean, there's like there's no other options.
44:24
I was like, yeah, that's yeah. It's a good thing.
44:26
I have so many things I want to say that I'm just not going to.
44:29
It's like, oh gosh, yeah, the Internet's a beautiful thing.
44:39
I guess that is the thing that I will say.
44:41
The Internet is a beautiful thing.
44:44
I did not realize how pervasive startling was.
44:47
My wife is from Cameroon, so Central Africa, very like poor
44:52
place. She had a cell phone before I
44:54
did. She had wireless Internet before
44:56
I did. Like all those things, like the
44:58
only, there is no existing infrastructure and so the only
45:01
way to use these technologies is with wireless access.
45:06
And like new technology like that, there's no landlines for
45:09
phones. So most people didn't have a
45:11
phone until they got a cell phone.
45:14
So yeah, it's it's just, it is interesting to see like heck is
45:17
really changing how things can be distributed and, and where
45:22
like where the innovation actually gets used first is not
45:26
always where you would expect. I was listening to the Telegram
45:29
founder on a podcast the other day and he does not have a phone
45:33
other than just to test the Telegram app and just totally
45:37
lives without a phone. And I feel like now living in in
45:41
New York, I could could do that weirdly.
45:45
That reminds me what you were saying a second ago.
45:47
Reminds me of Facebook's penetration strategy in
45:51
developing countries. If you buy a phone SIM card in,
45:56
I don't know, some random developing country, Facebook
45:59
will be free to use. You'll have connection through
46:03
Facebook, but nothing else, right?
46:04
You can use WhatsApp, you can use Instagram, you can use
46:07
Facebook for some amount of like limited data and smart, right?
46:11
Because then people who are getting connected to the
46:13
Internet for the first time are seeing the Internet as Facebook.
46:17
Right, sure. I got to hop off for for call.
46:21
This is good. Thanks for coming on, Steven.
46:23
Yeah, thanks for calling us, Steven.
46:24
Super nice to meet you more. Thank you, guys.
46:26
Yeah, you too. Yeah, he's our guys.
46:28
As well. Good to see you guys, yeah.