Latest / 1 to 100 / E44: 3,500 Customers and Zero Outbound with Shaan Arora

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E44: 3,500 Customers and Zero Outbound with Shaan Arora · 1 to 100

0:00
In what ways are you and Corey different?
0:01
That was like the whole thing. You were like, man, we're so
0:04
different. Like, and I was like, now I'm
0:06
excited, I mean. I think like it's kind of like
0:09
Ying and Yang, right? I think like Corey's more of
0:11
like the operator, like heads down kind of person, right?
0:15
Whereas like I try to be more like the outward facing external
0:19
person focused more on like the big picture stuff.
0:21
I mean it's kind of more it's typical like CCOOCEO differences
0:25
in that way. And also, I mean, if Corey was
0:27
here a year ago, we've grown a ton.
0:30
So it's probably a lot of other cool lessons we can like, talk
0:32
about and share from from that. Well, awesome.
0:35
Where are you at now? I think last time we spoke to
0:37
Corey, I know because I just re listened to the episode you were
0:40
at 1100 customers. Where are you at now?
0:43
We're. At 3500 customers, yeah.
0:46
And then we actually just crossed 9 million AR today.
0:50
OK, so because I mean, I obviously I see you posting
0:53
because you are pretty transparent about those stuff,
0:54
but my understanding is that a year ago you were like 1 to 2,
0:58
right? Yeah.
0:59
Year ago we were at one, yeah, one from 1:00 to 9:00 in the
1:02
year. Well, I guess yeah.
1:04
Yeah, in the year it's been 1. And is that is that mostly new
1:07
customers coming in or is it expansion revenue?
1:11
It's like probably 80% new customers 80.
1:14
But they're ACV also 3X, their customer growth at 3X and ACV
1:19
also 3X, which is actually the more impressive part, yeah.
1:23
Yeah, that is wild. It's very hard to increase ACV
1:25
like that. Yeah, Yeah, that's fair.
1:28
I think also it's kind of just like not like we just we go off
1:30
for some bigger customers to get higher ACV, stuff like that.
1:32
Oh, I mean, I guess that's fair. Yeah.
1:35
That's not yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
1:38
Is there like a stand out channel for you guys that you're
1:40
like, you know when we turn this on the things change?
1:44
Sorry, like is this like did we start or like I'm just curious
1:47
we're. We're recording.
1:48
This is it. We're in it.
1:50
We, we just, by the way, by the way, we just talk and like say
1:54
whatever. You want to say.
1:56
What's what's crazy is like just talking is interesting to people
2:01
because it's like, we're not, we're not like trying to sound
2:04
like we're on a podcast. We're like, we're literally just
2:07
talking to each other. Yeah, you.
2:08
Know what's? Super weird guys.
2:10
Like, I've listened to a few other business podcasts again,
2:14
like, because, you know, kind of went off of listening to a bunch
2:17
of the podcasts I used to listen to, and they all kind of like
2:20
instructional, you know, and I do value that.
2:23
I'm like, oh, wow, this, you know, they seem confident.
2:25
That sounds like a good thing to try.
2:27
But yeah, we're nothing like that.
2:28
We just chat. Yeah, it's not Shawn.
2:31
We just transport it into your living room and we're just
2:33
having a conversation. So, OK, that's fair.
2:35
That's fair. Oh yeah, that sounds good.
2:38
But yeah, to answer your question, like, yeah, we went
2:39
from 1:00 to 9:00 the past year. We we boosted the call me.
2:43
So we haven't raised a single dollar, which is so we just
2:45
decided to, I mean, we couldn't, we, we, no one wanted to give us
2:48
money two years ago. So we decided that we wouldn't
2:51
take any money and just build it ourselves and do everything
2:53
ourselves. And that end up being a good
2:55
decision. So 60% of our revenue comes from
2:58
agency partners. So it's like our biggest motion
3:01
by by a lot. So 60% is agency partners and
3:04
then 40% is word of mouth and referrals.
3:07
So it's all pretty much like inbound, right?
3:09
It's like agencies, agencies referrals to word of mouth and
3:13
referrals is like normal word of mouth and referrals.
3:17
So we haven't had really any outbound motion whatsoever.
3:19
We, we actually are just starting it now, which is fun.
3:21
But yeah, it's been, it's, that's been like our biggest
3:24
channel has been agencies and I, I think it'll continue to be
3:26
around 50% of our revenue for this year.
3:30
What I mean this is, it's really interesting because I think
3:33
there's, I believe that in the Shopify ecosystem, every, this
3:40
is true everywhere, I guess, But like every product category has
3:42
kind of a, a maximum. There's a, there's your ICP,
3:47
right? And there's, there's the Tam
3:49
with which you can reach, but then like the actual number ends
3:51
up being lower than that. It's just how it works in
3:53
software. We're talking about.
3:54
This loyalty a while back in the loyalty space and like how much,
3:58
how much revenue is there actually and delivering loyalty
4:02
software to brands on Shopify? So I'm curious like you guys
4:06
have grown so fast to this point, like how do you think
4:09
about the future for your business and what the
4:11
opportunity is from here? There's the number came like,
4:15
like you know, Jeremy Horowitz on LinkedIn, he always post some
4:17
interest in Shopify numbers. I think he said there's 130,000
4:20
Shopify brands doing GMV above 1,000,000.
4:22
Correct me if I'm wrong guys, but I think it's somewhere,
4:25
somewhere around there like 130 K Shopify brands doing over
4:29
1,000,000 GMV. And the fun part about what
4:34
we're doing is that then I think the status about 85% of those
4:39
brands use e-mail and SMS as a channel, right?
4:43
So we're looking at let's say like 100K Shopify brands that
4:47
use e-mail and SMS as a channel. Now out of that, what percent of
4:51
those brands that do over $1,000,000 in GMB that already
4:55
use e-mail and SMS as a channel are willing to pay for a pop up
4:58
tool? The answer is relative is like
5:00
pretty good in my opinion, because everyone already has
5:03
one. Like the the fun thing about my
5:05
business is that we're not coming in here and creating a
5:10
new category. We're just innovating upon a
5:12
category that like has existed for decades and has been bad for
5:17
decades. So like everyone has a pop up
5:21
and everyone knows their pop up could be better.
5:23
So it's our job to be like, hey, your pop up could be better.
5:26
Why don't you give us a try and we'll make it better for you.
5:29
So let's say, let's say out of that 100,000 brands on Shopify
5:33
that use e-mail, SMS, e-mail SMS as a channel, what percent of
5:37
those might pay for a pop up tool?
5:39
Let's call it 20, let's call it 20%, let's call it 20%.
5:42
Sure. So that's 20,000 Shopify brands
5:44
over 1,000,000 GMV. And that's just in Shopify.
5:47
So then if you move outside Shopify, you can maybe assume
5:49
another 15 to 20,000 brands are open to trying a pop up tool.
5:54
That's the math that I get right?
5:55
So let's say 30K and then we also can drop our price and go
6:00
after like charge people like $1520 and kind of judge me model
6:04
if you wanted. Or we can go really enterprise
6:07
and go after a target, a Best Buy, like one of those kind of
6:11
guys and charge a ton. So there's like, there's
6:14
interesting, there's interesting like.
6:16
Mechanics, yeah, it's interesting because with your
6:18
distribution, I mean, you're already pretty close to like a
6:21
Judge Me from a revenue standpoint with a Judge Me
6:25
paying customer account is like 80,000, like that's some wild
6:29
number. Yeah.
6:31
Like I don't even know if you want to try that, right?
6:33
I mean, not trying to give advice here, but like that it's
6:36
it's interesting, like you've done you another 1000 customers
6:41
get you beyond something like a judge me with a 20th of a
6:44
customer paying customer base, right.
6:45
So. That's true.
6:47
And I'm sure for Matt, I'm not sure like how many customers you
6:49
guys have, but like I'm sure like you know, like there's just
6:52
different ways to that we can that we can.
6:54
Totally, Yeah. I mean like our, our number, our
6:57
number count is like very small, but our Acvs are enormous,
7:02
right. And so like we're in the in the
7:06
six figure Acvs, right. And so it's, yeah, you just like
7:11
you just have to multiply different numbers, you know, And
7:14
yeah, you get good, you end up with a good outcome, yeah.
7:17
I think we've, we've had this conversation in the past.
7:20
I think about, you know, just the trajectory of the platform
7:23
as well. Like I think Jeremiah, you guys
7:25
would know you're on the Shopify App Store, but you're also off
7:28
the Shopify App Store. So you're participating in the
7:30
market, right of the, the apps that are available for post
7:34
purchase surveys in the Shopify App Store.
7:36
There's also the trajectory like I imagine if you're like a
7:38
developer in the Warp ecosystem, I don't know what that looks
7:41
like. I haven't spoken to anyone who's
7:43
building the Warp ecosystem. There was no Tam a few years
7:47
ago, there was no WAP a few years ago, but now there's a
7:49
lot. So like building the Shopify
7:51
ecosystem isn't just about the like current cohort or like
7:55
people who are in market for the product category that you're
7:58
building, but it's also like what's the future of the
8:00
company? Could the Tam massively increase
8:03
if Shopify has another, you know, significant boom?
8:07
I don't think that's out of the question.
8:09
I think that's. Wild, That's that's super
8:12
interesting. Honestly, I would.
8:13
That is a wild yeah. I'd I'd love to debate this,
8:18
sorry, I'd love to debate this topic of moving outside Shopify
8:22
or not, right? It's something that we talk
8:24
about within the company. To me, it's like there's more
8:27
money to be made outside Shopify, like generally, right?
8:30
Like if, if you have a a bigger universe of companies you can
8:34
serve, you can make more money right now.
8:37
Like is it worth it to build outside integrations?
8:40
Is it worth it? Is it worth it from an R&D
8:41
perspective to make outside integrations?
8:43
Or is it better to just be so, so hard in Shopify that you can
8:47
get all the good Shopify brands? I'm curious how you guys think
8:50
about this. I mean, I'm not sure if all all
8:51
of you guys are outside Shopify, but yeah.
8:53
I think your business is already telling you what to do.
8:56
Do the best thing about how you grew is that you can just look
9:00
at your own business and it it will tell you what to do.
9:04
You 3X your ACV, the way you 3X your ACV is all in new customer.
9:08
Those new customers are bigger. It drove the acceleration of
9:11
your growth. This is like, not like the the
9:15
best thing about business is it's not theoretical.
9:19
It's like entirely empirical, like no one should sit at like
9:23
armchair debates have like no place in business, which is like
9:26
the single best thing about this.
9:27
You know, like all of the researchers in academia and like
9:30
politicians, they can all armchair debate each other.
9:34
We just have to do stuff and then our customers buy or don't
9:37
buy. So, so like, like this is the
9:41
beauty of business. And so like, I think your answer
9:44
is in your own business right now as an outsider with very
9:48
little information outside of what I learned in the last 10
9:51
minutes. I I think I think you just
9:55
follow the line which means you have to go outside of Shopify
10:00
like like the line is. Go go, go build the Salesforce
10:05
Commerce Cloud integration. That's where, yeah.
10:10
So we're quality, build it. I mean, I don't know that much
10:13
about that space, but I know some of our biggest customers.
10:14
Can I, can I tell you a crazy stat, Sean?
10:18
And one of our first 3 enterprise customers in GMV
10:24
equaled all of our Shopify customers put together in GMV.
10:32
OK. So I think it's like a hard
10:36
thing for people like, let me say that.
10:38
Yeah, let me try a different way of saying the same thing.
10:40
Like we talk like there's a lot of how much GMV is represented
10:45
on. Jeremiah, can you share how much
10:46
GMV is represented on no or can you not share that on on, on, on
10:51
Shopify? Yeah.
10:52
I can try that Shopify GMV, I would probably be a little bit
10:56
small on this, but it's it's like 15 to 20 billion somewhere
10:59
in that range. Yeah.
11:00
So we have 3 customers that make up that number.
11:03
OK. So like I I think like.
11:07
And that's, that's like 6000 brands that make up that for us.
11:11
That's great. I mean, obviously like there's,
11:13
you know, the top 100 are probably.
11:15
Yeah. And so I think that, like, what
11:17
often gets missed is like, scale really matters.
11:22
Like, I mean, not sort of matters.
11:24
Like really matters because you you just learn faster when when
11:32
you have scale. That's just one person's
11:34
opinion. Yeah.
11:36
Scale and sorry, scale in what way?
11:38
Like scale in scale and work is the scale of the companies with
11:41
with you. Learn more in in depth scale
11:44
than you learn in breadth scale in, in my opinion.
11:47
And and that's actually the biggest advantage of enterprise
11:50
software relative to like there's a lot of like
11:53
theoretical debates about like SMB versus enterprise.
11:57
And there's lots of ways to make money, which I want to come back
12:01
to this question. Like I want to know why you're
12:02
building this business and that will probably also inform how to
12:07
think about this. But like, I think depth of scale
12:11
is more important than breadth of scale because you actually
12:14
learn you're you're more likely to be at the edge of innovation
12:17
with the depth of scale than you are with the breadth of scale.
12:21
That's just, again, one person's opinion.
12:23
So yeah. That's super interesting.
12:27
For sure. It's interesting too, because of
12:28
the what you're describing. You know, when you have a, when
12:32
you're working with an organization of that size, the
12:36
things that you do for them are probably massively superior to
12:40
what they had previously. And the speed at which you can
12:43
innovate on their behalf way faster than what they could do
12:46
on their own, which I think is a really compelling angle.
12:49
And that too, right. So there's a because of that
12:53
depth component, like when you're talking about breadth,
12:56
you don't have like the, the cost of replacing you is easier
13:00
because the, if customers aren't going as deep, there's not as
13:02
much that needs to be done to actually or the cost of
13:05
replacing is lower because there's not as much that needs
13:07
to be done to service that customer.
13:09
When you go deep like that, it just is.
13:11
I feel like it's just so much stickier.
13:13
Yeah. I mean, a different way of
13:14
thinking about it is like, let's just say you're working with an
13:17
organ. This is a nominal example.
13:20
Let's just say you're working with an organization that has a
13:22
hundred person product team, right?
13:24
Versus like an ECOM brand that has a zero person product team.
13:30
Like they don't have a product team, they just have marketers,
13:32
right? Like which one of those two
13:34
people is more likely to push you to produce a more innovative
13:39
product? It's like it's going to be the
13:41
people who have already had 100 people worth of investment on
13:46
building the most like sophisticated thing, right?
13:50
Like illustratively, these are not tech customers of ours, but
13:55
like illustratively, like Wayfair and Target set a lot of
13:59
the precedent on like, what does good site experiences look like?
14:05
And it's because they're digital product teams are like massive
14:08
and they do like extremely innovative things, right?
14:11
And then the rest of the industry sort of like follows
14:13
from there, right? Or, or like a tapestry or I
14:16
mean, there's just like these other examples where most of it
14:19
flows from. And I think like what most
14:22
people will say when they think in that world is they'll,
14:25
they'll think about Amazon. But there is a layer of like
14:28
companies that are between 1:00 and $10 billion of revenue that
14:32
are doing like really interesting things that are hard
14:36
to do. And they push you more than the
14:40
sort of next band. Yeah.
14:43
Interesting. Yeah, the idea of being pushed
14:45
more and needing to innovate more when you're working with an
14:48
enterprise man is something I never thought about being an ad
14:50
like. That's pretty interesting.
14:53
Sean, how much of your platform is reliant on specific data from
14:58
Shopify versus like how much of it's just kind of like onset
15:02
experience, not really reliant on like back end or data and
15:06
those kinds of things? Yeah, no, it's a good question.
15:08
Like so sorry, for context, we're already off Shopify like,
15:11
but like it's a very low percentage of our brands, like
15:13
.5% of our brands are not on Shopify.
15:18
So it's a low number. But we haven't built any of
15:20
those integrations that you mentioned nor have we tried to
15:24
push non Shopify customers to use this.
15:26
It's kind of just like brands come, they're interested for non
15:28
Shopify and we're like, hey, let's try it out.
15:31
The reliance is more on like order data as you're alluding to
15:34
Jeremiah, like, which is like, hey, like what's the attribution
15:37
for the customers using Alia based on how many orders they've
15:41
made Now, like it's not a huge deal because brands that are not
15:46
on Shopify don't get that data and they haven't really barked
15:48
about it. You know, they've still been OK
15:49
to use it. So like I think it's like, OK.
15:53
Yeah, I feel like, I feel like the expectations of a good
15:56
experience are lower outside of Shopify.
15:59
I mean, that changes when you start to get into like really
16:01
enterprise. But you know, if I'm working on
16:03
somebody who's using a big commerce or a Woo commerce or
16:05
something like that, it's like it doesn't work exactly as well
16:08
as a Shopify version, but it's better than what we have.
16:10
So the bar is low. Yeah, they used to a bad
16:15
experience on big commerce. Yeah.
16:17
You said what? But you said they.
16:19
Used to have bad experience on big commerce, yeah.
16:22
I do want to offer one point of view.
16:24
I would be cautious about that perspective.
16:26
When you get to large enough enterprises with large enough
16:30
SKU counts, it actually inverts really fast.
16:33
Where like the sales forces are a bet like serve them better
16:37
actually, because like there's, there's just differences in
16:40
opinions in how like these platforms were built.
16:44
Not trying to like be highly supportive of one platform or
16:47
another. I'm just saying like you will
16:49
like observe as you start to talk to more of these
16:51
enterprises, Sean, you'll like observe like the way that most
16:56
of us talk about it in Ecom SAS is very different than how these
17:00
like large brands and retailers talk about it.
17:02
Yeah. Anyway, I'm curious like what is
17:05
your objective at the end of the day have like with building this
17:08
business? Yeah, it's a good question.
17:10
I mean, so the reason why I wanted to build with a company
17:15
and for contest, I'm 24. I started a company at college.
17:17
Like while I was in college I built it.
17:18
I I started building with my Co founder Corey.
17:20
I had the Co founder bill. So I started a building when I
17:23
was 20. And the reason was because I
17:28
used to work at a bank. I, I entered at a bank for six
17:31
months in New York, Credit Suisse, and like, I like, hated
17:36
it. Like hate, like I was, I woke up
17:40
like miserable knowing that I had to go in and work at a bank,
17:44
right? What?
17:44
Department. I was actually like a computer
17:47
science and business major in college.
17:49
So I was, I was doing interesting stuff.
17:50
Like it was kind of in the quantum world, those interesting
17:53
stuff, but like I just felt like completely worthless.
17:58
Like I felt that like if I died tomorrow, nobody here, nobody
18:03
would care at all and literally nobody would care, right?
18:05
And like I didn't want to feel like that any.
18:08
I just hated that feel. I hate the feeling of being
18:10
like, I mean absolutely nothing to anyone here.
18:14
And that was just like so resonant with me that it was
18:19
like I will do whatever it takes so I don't have to go back to
18:22
the bank. Maybe it sounds privileged to
18:24
say that because I had a good job at a bank, but like I would
18:27
I was like, I will do whatever it whatever it took so I don't
18:30
have to go work for someone else.
18:32
So when I started ALIA, when I went after college, I didn't
18:36
have a job, but I went full time right away at ALIA just to build
18:39
a company. It was just me.
18:40
Cory and Bill were still one was in school, one was in college.
18:43
So like it was just me full time.
18:44
We had two customers, 1 was my Co founder's cousin and one was
18:48
this girl from class who begrudgingly agreed to use the
18:52
right. So 2 customers made $20 a box
18:55
like, but, and we did like the most like tedious, you know,
19:01
like horrible tasks. Like do you know how we got our
19:03
first 2 customers? I would go on actually after
19:06
those two, I would go on Etsy, comment on every single at like
19:10
a bunch of Etsy sellers and be like, hey, I'm Sean, I'm a
19:13
college kid. I'd love to get your advice on
19:15
my, on my companies, right? I would do that every day for
19:18
like 3 hours and I end up getting 40 Etsy accounts
19:20
blocked. Like that's what I spent my time
19:22
doing, you know, so like, like the most tedious, like the, the
19:28
word, like the worst tasks, the stuff you probably wouldn't even
19:31
give to a VA. That's how like that's the stuff
19:33
that I was doing right. But like, I loved it.
19:36
I loved like, I didn't care that it was like the stupidest, most
19:41
brain dead work ever. Like I just loved it because I
19:44
was doing it for me, you know, like that's why I, that's,
19:49
that's what I want from this business.
19:51
That's what I just want from my life is like knowing that I'm
19:54
doing it for me, you know, and like nobody can take that away
19:58
from me. So when it comes to like what I
20:00
want from this business, dude, I didn't even think we could hit
20:02
half a million like that was I didn't even think we could have
20:05
more than our team is 30 people now.
20:08
Like I don't know, we could have more than just me, Corey and
20:10
Bill. I thought that was going to be
20:11
it forever. Like I didn't know any of these
20:13
things existed that we have today.
20:15
You know, it's like my expectation for building this
20:17
company was simply. I just don't want to have to be
20:21
forced to work for someone else and I want to do things my way,
20:24
you know, So like when I in like the trenches, like the hard
20:29
parts of it, I would just think like, OK, if I don't work today
20:32
and if I don't succeed, I'm there.
20:34
I'm going back to the bank, brother.
20:35
Like I'm they're going to send me the I, I got to go back to
20:37
Credit Suisse and I'm not going back to Credit Suisse.
20:40
Like now you're not. If it took, I would just not go
20:42
back. You know that that and now, you
20:45
know, I've achieved that. Obviously I've that I don't need
20:47
to go back to. I don't need to do anything.
20:49
Like I've achieved ultimate freedom.
20:52
My goal for the company was literally just so I don't need
20:54
to work for someone else. And now it's this whole thing,
20:57
you know, I never thought we would get here.
20:59
And it's still completely unbelievable that we got here to
21:03
me. That is.
21:05
So that's interesting because you are, you're sitting here now
21:08
bootstrapped 9 million an AR who you, who you would sell to very
21:15
much changes the price. But like, let's call it like,
21:19
you know, worth 15 to 200 million based on the buyer,
21:24
right? Like somewhere in that range.
21:26
Like that's probably like you're sitting here being like, OK,
21:29
that's, that's like that's probably on the table for you if
21:32
you want it. And you, your motivation was
21:36
that you don't want to work for anybody.
21:38
So in theory, like you, you might be at a spot where like
21:41
you don't have to. You also maybe don't have to
21:43
work at Alia. Like how?
21:45
How do you think about that from from here?
21:48
I OK, like I'll put it this way, like I love building.
21:55
I love the feeling and knowing that I'm building something and
21:57
that I have the freedom to do whatever I want in a day.
22:02
OK, but what I love more than that and is genuinely working
22:07
with my Co founders, my Co founding team specifically, so
22:10
me, Cory, who you guys know, Bill Mike, my third Co founder
22:13
and our founding engineer. Like those guys like push me
22:17
every day to be better. They're like all much smarter
22:19
than I am or read a lot more than I do.
22:21
They listen to more pod like all these things like I have to go
22:24
in there and try to impress them with my with my intelligence and
22:27
I love that. Like I love the ability to like
22:30
feel stupid at my company. That is my favorite thing.
22:32
I'm very happy building this company and I'm happy doing it
22:35
with my friends, you know, but like I I think I I honestly
22:39
think I'd be happy building any company with my friends because
22:42
the two things are there. One is like, I'm not working
22:45
with someone else and I've achieved freedom.
22:47
And two is I could I get to learn and be with people who are
22:50
much smarter than I am. So though, if those two things
22:53
are there, I'm happy in whatever the company is, whatever we're
22:55
building. Like I think to me that's less.
22:58
And it's probably like, maybe it's contrarian to say that, but
23:00
to me it's less important. Like if those two things are
23:02
there, how do you think about, you know?
23:06
Somewhat related to this, by the way, now is not a good time to
23:10
sell a SAS company. I don't know if you've been
23:12
following the public markets, but Jeremiah's numbers are
23:16
generous at the top end, so. Yeah.
23:20
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
23:20
I there would ask like very strategic, very intentional
23:25
reason. I'm not, I'm not discounting the
23:27
value of what you build. I'm just saying that the market
23:30
is, is like currently unfavorable.
23:32
This is like not a not a rish of opinion, but the, the, the, the
23:39
thing that makes me the reason why, at least the question of
23:44
how much do you think about you're, you're building SAS
23:49
today. What I would describe as like
23:51
traditional SAS and like this is like a debate that is like very
23:55
much present, right, Because we're seeing the reduction in
23:59
SAS valuations. Has Jack already added you to
24:04
this like Slack channel that we have?
24:06
You saw like me and Mike going back and forth about this and
24:10
like I, I'm very curious what you think about the future of
24:15
like SAS companies versus what I would describe as like an AI
24:18
platform. So a good example of an AI
24:21
platform in my mind is Harvey, Sierra, Decagon, Lagora.
24:29
Yeah, like any of these ones, like I would describe them as an
24:32
AI platform. And very, very roughly, like, I
24:38
think Nikita had like this really succinct tweet yesterday
24:42
or today that I think reflects this pretty well.
24:45
It was like a company that goes in and uses agents just, like,
24:49
solve your problems, roughly speaking.
24:53
OK. So like that's what Harvey
24:54
claims to do, by the way, for like legal firms, right?
24:57
They're like not particularly opinionated.
25:01
And So what while, like while this is all happening, how do
25:05
you think about building SAS in the context of what is happening
25:08
in the market and its impact on, yeah, candidly like SAS
25:12
valuations? OK.
25:14
So it seems like you're kind of separating these two things like
25:16
an in. Completely like an agenda
25:18
company versus a SAS company. Yeah, that's why I try to define
25:22
what an agenda company is like, which I understand is very
25:25
loose, but it's like a I'm going to come in with agents and do
25:29
whatever it takes to solve your problems.
25:31
Is my very, for lack of a better way of describing it.
25:35
That's like my very rough way of describing it.
25:37
Whereas the SAS company is. I have a product that solves a
25:40
particular problem. So it is Claude bot one of the
25:43
Claude bot. Yeah, that's like that.
25:44
I would describe that as like an agent, right?
25:46
Like it's, it's not a company yet, right.
25:48
It's just like an open source project.
25:50
But that is like a use me to solve your problems type of
25:55
situation, right? Or like a clod, Clod as a
25:59
platform, right? I can use clod for a Co work.
26:02
I use it for code like I I can just use it to solve a wide
26:06
swath of problems. Yeah.
26:08
OK, so sorry, I just want to make sure the definition is
26:11
correct in my mind. So it's like, let's say, OK for
26:13
in our example, right, someone is like, oh, I need a better pop
26:16
up tool, let me go talk to Olia. Whereas with the agentic
26:19
solution it's like hey I need help but I don't know in which
26:23
the direction. I don't know what I need help
26:24
with. Maybe and like the agenic
26:26
solution is just going to use agents and fill gaps, fill gaps
26:30
that I don't know I have. Yeah, yeah.
26:31
And you may know like what your problems are.
26:33
It's just that the agent platform is not going to say I
26:36
provide pop ups. It's going to say it will just
26:39
build whatever you need. So it's like one of my problems
26:42
is pop ups. One of my problems is my PDP
26:44
images. One of my problems is my
26:46
checkout flow. One of my problems is, and
26:49
they're like, oh, great, yeah, I'm just going to, like, tell my
26:51
agent to, like, solve all of these problems for you.
26:53
That's an agent. You can have it right now.
26:57
A lot of, like a lot of our customers have a ecommerce
27:00
manager position, right where it's somebody who manages the
27:03
website. You could in theory have an
27:05
agent that works alongside that person or who someday even
27:09
replaces that person or that person says, hey, we need a new
27:12
pop up, go do it this, this and this way.
27:15
Or we need, yeah, new a new retail locator on our site
27:21
because the one that we have kind of sucks and just like all
27:23
that kind of stuff, right? Where the agent can actually
27:25
just go do that for you and you don't need a software tool to do
27:28
all those little different things.
27:31
Yeah, I think probably a lot of maybe a good amount of software
27:35
tools are trying to morph into the agent world, right?
27:39
Like maybe they're like they're seeing what you're talking about
27:41
Rishab and being like, oh, I'm going to morph into that kind of
27:45
company so that they could be evaluated as, let's say, like an
27:48
AI agent tool instead of being evaluated through as a SAS
27:51
company. So I think that's like one thing
27:54
I think a lot of people might just do is like, hey, I'm just
27:56
going to go change and become this thing.
28:00
But and at the same time, like I think people probably won't rely
28:04
100% on those AI agents for maybe a couple of years, maybe 3
28:09
or 4 years where it's like they will still be searching for a
28:11
specific product and being OK with a person giving it to them
28:14
without running through agents. So that's probably my two
28:16
thoughts on it. I think 1 is like some companies
28:19
turn to morph into it and 2nd is like they probably won't take
28:22
over everything right away. I guess my question, Sean for
28:25
for you is like, let's just take that framework for you.
28:30
Then as you think about like your personal goals, like
28:33
working with your friends on interesting projects.
28:36
Like if I just use that, let's just say it's three to four
28:41
years, like is that does that to you now invoke the question,
28:48
hey, I want to run Alia up this year and find the right sort of
28:54
way to either morph it over the following two years or landed in
28:59
an entity that can like appropriately utilize it.
29:03
And then I want to go work on one of these types of platforms
29:06
with my friends. Yeah.
29:08
I guess the, the my question is less about like our predictions
29:13
of the future and more about like how do you interact with it
29:15
independent of sort of whether it's three years or five,
29:18
whatever the time horizon is. Yeah.
29:20
Yeah, it's like, I think, I think yeah, the two options are
29:23
one, like trying to morph into that company or two, selling it
29:26
off and being OK and then just working on building a different
29:30
company that does that is like AAI Agentic company.
29:33
And to me, I think both sound interesting to be honest.
29:35
Like I think I'm going to keep building companies.
29:37
So like whether it's I turn all the way into that or I sell it
29:42
and turn another company into that, like build another company
29:45
and make it like that. I think both are both are both
29:47
interesting, both are feeling and like both both would both
29:51
would fulfill my my my 2 wishes. OK, I.
29:56
Remember when we were talking to Mike from Postscript about this?
29:59
I said that I would really like and I'm not a Postscript
30:01
customer anymore. I'm not anywhere near their ICP,
30:04
but you know, Shopify came out with SMS and I was like, OK, I
30:07
can't send images with Shopify messaging, but fuck it, you
30:10
know, whatever this will do and it's easy.
30:12
It's in Shopify. My VAS can go and they can just
30:14
like schedule out a bunch of messages.
30:16
We're good. The revenue is still coming from
30:18
SMS. I don't need Postscript. But one of the things that I
30:21
wanted from Postscript is wouldn't it be cool if
30:23
Postscript knew how to raise up return purchase rates?
30:27
It knew how to recommend products so that I didn't have
30:30
to spend time or hires. I want to look into that data
30:33
because that's just not not scalable, right?
30:36
It's too time consuming on a one time basis, let alone multiple
30:39
times, you know, over the course of weeks and months.
30:44
So I guess that would be the agentic version of postscript.
30:46
Maybe they go there, but you you kind of have some features in
30:49
Alia that I like that for me, you have the like automatic AB
30:54
testing thing and like that's so much.
30:57
I love that. I don't want to AB test my pop
30:59
up because I'm going to test a pop up, right?
31:03
I don't want to design them either.
31:04
I want kind of them to be generated for me.
31:06
But if I'm going to test pop ups, I kind of want the the
31:09
brain to do it for me. Right.
31:11
Yeah, totally. Yeah, No, that's interesting.
31:13
And like, yeah, I guess, I guess I haven't thought of us as like
31:16
building towards becoming fully genetic solution, but I think.
31:20
I'm just supremely lazy. I just really want all the
31:23
software to do everything for. Me.
31:25
I mean, dude, that's like that's, that's perfect, right?
31:28
Because like, that's that, that's what a lot of people
31:30
want. And like, that's probably what a
31:32
lot of people are building. Too, Jack, you're not alone.
31:34
I was just, I just put you one of our products.
31:36
I'm saying you need repeat help you with the repurchase rates
31:39
and all that. Yeah, yeah, I really do.
31:41
What you just described is exactly what it is so.
31:44
Oh dude, I. To be honest, it's better for
31:46
certain product categories, by the way.
31:48
It is interesting though, because I think like what's
31:51
interesting about my, my first startup was 2010.
31:57
I was in college. We tried to build a text
31:59
messaging platform on Twilio. So it was like Postscript, but
32:04
ten years before Postscript. And it was it was an abysmal
32:08
business. The only people that wanted it
32:10
at the time were were politicians.
32:15
So anyway, yeah, it was the, our only customers were politicians.
32:21
That election cycle ended and we ran out of money and shut it up.
32:24
But but it's interesting is like Twilio, one of the things that
32:28
I'm curious about when we talk about agents, like I could
32:31
theoretically go spin up an open claw bot that sits on a virtual
32:36
private server that connects to my Shopify, connects to Twilio
32:42
and just sends one off customized messages to all of my
32:47
customers. Like that is a that is possible.
32:49
I don't know if that's actually a good idea, but you could do
32:51
that, right? There's other ways you could
32:54
potentially do that as well. But that's just that's that's
32:55
one example. So I am curious like, and that's
32:59
what that's what I would have like when I started my
33:02
e-commerce brand the Verse at the very beginning, I was
33:05
literally emailing every customer right as a person,
33:09
contacting them and and asking them for feedback and all that
33:11
kind of stuff, right. In theory that can be scaled in
33:14
a way that just doesn't exist with with a Clavio, with a
33:19
hostscript, any of those kinds of things.
33:20
But not that they can't do that too.
33:22
I think that's obviously like they're probably best position
33:24
to be able to do that in the future, but you can kind of do
33:27
it for next to nothing now with the technology that exists.
33:31
I mean, whatever it cost you for your virtual private server and
33:33
then you read the API in Shopify, you read Twilio's API,
33:38
you pay your penny to send the message and that's kind of it.
33:41
So it it is, it's still more complicated.
33:45
I don't think that that's necessarily where software is
33:47
going. I actually hope it's not where
33:48
it's going. It's not really great for any of
33:51
us, but but it's just interesting like.
33:55
I don't disagree. I'm sorry, I don't agree that
33:56
it's not good for us. Well, sure, yeah.
33:58
OK, let's let's break that down a little bit because I also
34:00
haven't like actually thought this through very much.
34:02
I just know what's possible so. You know what I just noticed?
34:05
We have a moment in every podcast episode where Rashad
34:08
goes disagree. And then there's the ark, right?
34:11
It's how does Rashad disagree? No, but I am interested.
34:15
You're just making me a caricature, man.
34:17
This guy's like going to flame me the same way that Sax flames
34:20
J Cal. Like I'm going to be our J Cal.
34:24
Now this is fun. This is this is some people,
34:27
people to look forward to. They're like, when's the moment
34:29
when Rashad gives me? Disagree.
34:31
All right, first of all, it is for sure the case that there
34:34
will be some fraction of people that are going to do what you
34:38
described, Jeremiah, right? And then all we're going to
34:41
debate is how big that fraction is, which is like a completely
34:44
pointless debate, OK. So, so we can at least agree
34:48
there's some fraction of people who will do this for whatever
34:51
reasons, they find it fun, they find it cheaper or like it
34:55
tickles their fancy, you know what I mean?
34:57
Like what? Whatever it is.
34:59
So given that there will be some fraction of people who do this,
35:02
then the question is like, what do people like us do?
35:05
We just scale it. I'll tell you what I think.
35:07
I think that the problem is that as people do this, one of the
35:13
big jobs of a vendor or a software provider is to provide
35:16
context across customers and you take learnings across customers
35:22
and then you re propagate that out.
35:24
Now in the world of SAS, we had to be ridiculously opinionated
35:29
about how those learnings get shared because we have to
35:32
program it into our features. OK, so like, I'm going to make
35:37
something up. You see that a certain survey
35:39
question is really useful. And then you sit there and then
35:43
you tell your devs like, hey guys, let's make sure everyone
35:46
asks this question and here's all.
35:49
And you're like so opinionated about it, right?
35:51
And they have to like a pin. They have to like take.
35:55
We have that our number one question, we push it as much as
35:59
we can and we get close to 2 million people a month that
36:02
answer that question and it provides context.
36:07
What do we do in this new world? We do the same thing, but we
36:11
don't have to be so ridiculously opinionated, right?
36:15
Because now you can learn things in a contextual way and that's
36:19
way more powerful way. Now how does that change like
36:23
pricing model? I mean, those are all details
36:25
like, you know, and that's like kind of our job, like we have to
36:29
figure that out. But I just don't think it's bad
36:32
for us because like it is like the thing that I think people
36:36
totally forget is that actually the biggest job of a software
36:40
vendor is provide economies of scale and knowledge of scale.
36:44
And that's not going to change. The tooling is actually kind of
36:48
whatever. Like we like, yes, some people
36:50
pay for tools, but actually you're most sophisticated buyers
36:53
never pay for the tools. They're paying for the other two
36:55
things and they just like interact with those two things
36:58
in a different way. Yeah, absolutely.
37:00
I mean, when I talk to our team, this is not really a new
37:03
conversation, but I think it's accelerated and because of AI
37:06
and the change that's happening, like the value of our what we
37:10
offer our customers is not the ability to ask survey questions
37:14
on your website. That's a commodity that doesn't
37:16
matter ultimately. It's what do you do with that
37:19
information on the back end? How do you ask the right
37:21
questions? How do you make sure you're
37:23
getting the best possible information to change the way
37:26
that you do your business, not the actual piece of code that
37:30
collects that. Yeah.
37:31
And I think like the same thing is going to be true for Alia.
37:33
Like someone's going to be able to say build me a pop up.
37:36
But Alia has a point of view because they've worked with so
37:39
many companies right now it's getting the opinion is getting
37:42
programmed directly into the product.
37:44
Like what's happening is that you're seeing features going
37:47
into Ali, by the way, I don't know this to be true, but I'm
37:50
assuming that this is true. I'm assuming there's just like
37:52
good product management happening, right?
37:54
So like and and it gets opinionated in that way and
37:56
it'll just shift how the opinion gets propagated across the
38:00
ecosystem basically. Yeah, and like to Jeremiah's
38:04
point, right, he's mentioned like, hey, you know, you can, he
38:07
could, he could use an API call and send e-mail or send SMSS
38:10
himself, right? Send text yourself instead of
38:12
using Clavio or POST. Whether or not that's a good
38:16
idea is a different question. But like you can do so.
38:19
But and you also mentioned that Clavio was in the best position
38:21
to do that already. And like, yeah, I think it's
38:25
probably true with us too, right?
38:26
Like people could probably make their own pop ups, but like, how
38:29
is it going to perform well? Is it going to be optimized?
38:33
Are there any learnings they have from before?
38:35
And the answer is probably not. And our answer is like, yes, we
38:38
have more learnings than any other pop up tool in the market.
38:42
So like we will create what's best and we kind of will tell
38:48
you what's best to to put. Yeah, and I actually think those
38:51
learnings are going to get harder and harder for people to
38:53
learn from each other with AI because the nuance is just
38:58
becoming so ridiculously deep. So like, I'm I'm going to again,
39:03
I'm going to make up an exam. I'm going to use.
39:04
Can I use audio as an example? But like, I'm just going to make
39:08
something up. Let's just say like, hey, when
39:10
you sell makeup between 10 and $20, when people are coming from
39:17
meta ad, here is what the pop up needs to look like.
39:20
And here's the timing. And here is the pattern of the
39:22
behavior prior to that pop up. Guess what's going to happen?
39:25
Like an LLM is going to understand that and be able to
39:29
implement that way better, but that makeup brand is not going
39:33
to know that. And and that's and that's and
39:37
therein lies the issue, right? And so there's going to be a set
39:41
of people who. You can't prove it in that
39:43
context, whereas if you have the data already.
39:46
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's like not more
39:48
or less complicated than that basically, which is why I'm
39:51
like, I disagree about the like it's not it's for us thing.
39:54
I mean, I do think, as you know, we've shown surveys to hundreds
40:00
of millions of people. That historical context I find
40:05
to be extremely valuable. And I think that there's a world
40:10
in which like we were launching today, it'd be harder to get to
40:12
that scale then and maybe not, but I think there's, it's just,
40:17
it's different. And I think it'll be, there's
40:19
going to be more competition and more competition means more
40:22
distribution of the way people do things.
40:25
And I think having that historical context is a useful
40:28
thing. Yeah, it's so cool to, you know,
40:30
think you have a question, maybe this would improve performance.
40:34
Like I'm thinking right now at night time from Facebook ads,
40:38
would it be better for your pop ups to be in dark mode, right,
40:40
So they don't flash bang people when they're shopping at night?
40:44
Maybe I don't know. But testing that as a human, I
40:47
don't even want to. I don't want to think about
40:49
that. I want to.
40:50
Yeah, I was going to test. You know, follow that, you know,
40:54
curiosity. But if an app could do that for
40:56
me, I'd be like, oh hell yeah, this app's incredible.
40:59
Yeah. And I mean like we're relatively
41:02
getting there, right. Like for smart testing, right,
41:04
we, the tests run using AI and like it's completely on our
41:08
recommendations. And then we're building thing
41:10
called smart offers. We're like, you know, let's say
41:14
Jeremiah and Rishab, you guys are different shoppers.
41:15
One of you needs 10% to convert, 1 of you needs 15%.
41:18
You just see different offers similar to Monocle in some ways,
41:21
but like using our historical data too.
41:25
So yeah, we're building things like that right, where it's like
41:27
both on a contextual level, like you're a shopper today.
41:30
The context we have about you at the proper we can use and the
41:34
historical data that we have from our other customers we can
41:36
use to get the customer to opt in at the highest, the highest
41:41
chance they have to opt in. This reminds me of the
41:43
conversation we had about payment rails for agent agent at
41:47
Commerce or just agents like the sort of payment rails that they
41:50
can use to transact. There are just certain things
41:53
that don't cover your reservation rate to like go and
41:55
pursue that curiosity. But those good decisions
41:59
compounded could be a net benefit for not even a net
42:02
benefit. I can imagine for enterprise
42:03
businesses, for businesses where these sorts of small changes
42:07
actually ladder up to huge amounts of revenue, right?
42:11
They're worth pursuing, but they're not worth pursuing for
42:13
individuals. They're all just not even
42:14
feasible right in the context that Rashad was talking about
42:18
before, where there's just so many different conditions that
42:21
like it's impossible to to work on.
42:22
By the way, just tying this a little bit to your enterprise
42:25
point as you have this debate internally at Alia, that level
42:31
of nuance way more valuable if you're selling $6 billion of
42:35
merchandise a year than if you're selling $10 million of
42:38
merchandise a year. And so it's just like some and
42:41
that's, and that's sort of like what I mean by like the, the
42:43
depth of your feature tends to get pushed when you operate it
42:47
like it's just a micro example. Yeah, yeah.
42:50
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
42:51
Like I think the way we think of building products like we build
42:53
product kind of we, we try to build features for the best
42:59
possible customer, like the the largest best possible customer.
43:03
So, yeah, like selling to those guys would be great.
43:06
So I, I, I have to, I have to learn a bit how to sell to
43:09
enterprise customers, you know? I don't think it's that
43:11
different from what you're currently doing.
43:13
Yeah. What let's.
43:14
Talk about, I think, I think it's really interesting that you
43:17
guys, you know, it sounded like you managed to bring up ACV by
43:21
selling to better customers. What was that journey for you
43:24
guys so far, right. Obviously it's not enterprise,
43:26
it's not you know, but it's, it's something right and it's a
43:32
huge amount of growth. So what was that I guess change
43:35
in your go to market or how did it look?
43:37
It's honestly been just kind of unintentional.
43:40
Like it's kind of just been like, hey, we, I mean, to be
43:43
fair, like a year ago we had $1,000,000 in ARR and we had no
43:48
one really knew us. So I think like just by proxy of
43:50
like growing and being more, having bigger brands trust
43:54
trusted, trusting to use us. I just gave us that unlock.
43:58
So I don't think anything specific.
44:01
I think it was just one of those things like, OK, like, hey, this
44:03
like Nike strength is interested.
44:06
Oh, gross is interested. Would they be interested two
44:07
years ago when other big brands were not interested?
44:09
Probably not. Nice.
44:11
Well, I was hoping specific so that I could be like, Oh yeah,
44:14
we'll use that too. But.
44:16
But honestly, one of our biggest, one of our biggest
44:19
hacks, which is such a good one, is that because we exist on
44:23
site, people see us, right? So like, if they like the pop up
44:26
that they see and it's on a brand that they admire, they'll
44:29
do right click inspect element and they'll see what is this pop
44:32
up from? They'll see Aaliyah and then
44:34
look us up and sign up, right? So like that's such, it's such a
44:38
such A and like something I never expected to be a growth
44:41
lever, but I think for my next company, I want to make sure I
44:43
do that too. Where like if someone likes what
44:47
they see, they can, they know who you are, they know what your
44:50
company is and they go download you because they already liked
44:53
it. Of course you need like power
44:55
buy all the we don't do that because brands don't like it.
44:58
But like the Powered by stuff probably works pretty well too.
45:01
Shopify disallowed that we our free version needs to have the
45:04
powered by little thing and it was effective we we.
45:07
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.
45:09
We've considered just in the beginning when we tried it,
45:11
brands were so evenly against it, we could maybe.
45:14
Yeah, well, yeah, Shopify doesn't appear anymore anyways,
45:17
so. OK.
45:20
When you right click inspect Ali or is it Ali Alan or is it Ali
45:23
at pop ups? So I can imagine like, hey, Ali,
45:26
Alan. No, it's Ali pop ups.
45:27
I mean our website nowlikeourourwebsiteisali@popups.com
45:32
our domain is alialarn.com. Like we just, we just need to
45:35
get everything over to the NITA. That's funny, That's funny.
45:39
What is it? Yeah.
45:41
It's one of those like startup things.
45:43
Nobody is too low priority for so much.
45:45
Yeah, but it'd be so. Much.
45:46
I know we only have a few minutes left and this might be a
45:47
much bigger topic, but like why not take money now?
45:52
You we could, right, like if we if we were to take money, it
45:57
would be to go in build a billion dollar company, like
46:01
build, make that billion dollar vision and go for that, right.
46:05
If we don't raise money, we don't we can potentially exit,
46:10
right? That's that's what I think about
46:12
it. What makes you what makes you
46:14
believe that? Sorry, what makes you but maybe
46:17
maybe just help me understand like what type of money are you
46:20
thinking about you would raise and why do you think that it is
46:23
setting the expectation of building a billion dollar
46:25
company? Yeah.
46:26
I guess it's my, my like traditional understanding of
46:28
like how traditional venture works, like maybe I think with
46:31
the precede or seed stage where like DVCS take massive bets,
46:36
right? They take, sorry, they take a
46:38
lot of bets and they hope one of them is a massive success,
46:41
right. So when I tried to go pitch my
46:43
precede, when I tried to go pitch us for precede, I tried to
46:46
pitch a billion dollar vision and they came back and said,
46:48
your vision isn't big enough for us.
46:51
Fine. So that's my understanding.
46:53
And I know there's growth equity.
46:54
I've been hit up, I'm sure you guys get hit up all the time.
46:56
All this growth equity guys like, you know, that's, that's a
46:59
different kind of capital and it's probably more helpful with
47:02
better expectation setting. Yeah, I guess it's my, my like
47:05
traditional understanding of like how traditional venture
47:07
works. Like if you're doing with the
47:09
precede or seed stage where like DVC's take massive bets, right?
47:14
They take, sorry, they take a lot of bets and they hope one of
47:17
them is a massive success, right.
47:19
So when I tried to go pitch my precede, when I tried to go
47:22
pitch us for precede, I tried to pitch a billion dollar vision
47:25
and they came back and said your vision isn't big enough for us.
47:28
Fine. So that's my understanding.
47:31
And then I know there's growth equity, I've been hit up, I'm
47:33
sure you guys get hit up all the time.
47:34
All this growth equity guys like you know, that's, that's a
47:37
different kind of capital and it's probably more helpful with
47:40
better expectation setting. It's interesting.
47:42
I Rashad, were you talking about raising money or exiting?
47:45
See, the the interesting thing is Sean can do whatever he wants
47:48
right now and and so you can just make up a deal.
47:52
And so all I'm like the, the principal thing that I'm
47:55
wondering is actually less about and that's why I asked like what
48:00
like what gives you the like, what makes you feel like you
48:03
need to go for a billion dollar outcome?
48:06
Like dude, like literally, I think you could decide what you
48:11
want to do and there will be an investor who will do that.
48:15
So you could decide I want to sell a part of the company and I
48:18
want to give liquidity to people.
48:19
I want to take investment into the company.
48:21
I only want it to be this amount and I wanted to be at this value
48:24
so that way I can decide whatever exit I want.
48:27
Like you right now, you could do whatever the hell you want,
48:31
truly, because the total number of investable companies in this
48:35
category is not that big. And so that's actually the more
48:40
the push that I was trying to move toward with the question.
48:45
But I was just, I was just curious, right?
48:47
I'm like, curious, like how you think about these things?
48:51
One just quick thing there too, like the trajectory you're on is
48:55
incredible. It might continue for a long
48:57
time, but it's not going to continue for forever.
48:59
And you've hit a scale like scale plus growth trajectory
49:04
that I think is really compelling.
49:06
And who knows when that ends, right?
49:09
It ends for every business or at least like there's cycles,
49:12
right? So it is interesting.
49:14
I, I agree with the shot. I mean, if it were me, I'd be
49:17
thinking like, how do I take something off the table?
49:19
How do I think about like, yeah, like, do you raise a rat?
49:23
Like, do you have a big vision, go after, Do you exit the whole
49:27
thing? Who knows?
49:27
But like, at least, like, I think I agree with her shot.
49:29
Like, you have so many options in front of you that it is an
49:34
interesting time to think about that.
49:36
Like on a personal level, what does that look like?
49:37
Or even just as the CEO, like I feel like this is like one of
49:41
the main jobs of the CEO is just to ask yourself, how should I
49:45
use capital as a weapon for me, my people, my customers, like
49:53
for everyone involved, right? And then just you create in your
49:57
mind, what would capital do for which stakeholder?
50:01
And then you find a way to get it done.
50:03
That's interesting. It's obviously something like
50:05
that, yeah, which you've mentioned like we could kind of
50:08
create the deal that we want, right?
50:10
That's interesting. Like, yeah, it's, it's it's
50:12
something how to consider be like, I guess like de risking
50:14
through liquidity is also helpful for founders.
50:16
On the topic of using capital as a weapon, when do you go for
50:19
Clavio's lunch? You've got to think there's a
50:21
non incident. Like it can't be small amount of
50:25
customers that are with Clavio just because they.
50:28
I don't know that there's this breadth as opposed to depth that
50:30
are with Clavio. Just because it does it all.
50:32
You know, you can get your pop up, you can get your e-mail, you
50:34
can get your SMS. It does all of them kind of well, but not none
50:38
of them incredibly so yeah. When do you start sending
50:40
e-mail? I.
50:42
Think it's probably not on our own math.
50:45
Yeah, I wouldn't do it. But more importantly, even if I
50:48
was going to do it, I would sure as hell not say it right now.
50:54
Like this is like literally the thing that's like creating all
50:57
the leverage in the business. Like, yeah, you're not trying
51:00
to. We're not trying to make enemies
51:01
so. Yeah.
51:02
No, no, it's a fair question. Look at the business like, hey,
51:05
you could probably compete with those guys, but it's not, not on
51:10
my Bing look hard right now. I think one thing.
51:13
I'm actually, I think very yeah, I think very carefully about
51:17
expanding into new businesses that would make me a competitor
51:22
to something else because there's it changes the game that
51:28
you're playing. Zach's not here and on our Zach,
51:30
we'll talk about the game that we're playing, but it changes it
51:33
and it like it has the chance of completely derailing the things
51:38
that are working. And so I I agree with not that
51:42
you shouldn't do or do any do or do not do anything, but it
51:46
changes the game you play as soon as you compete.
51:49
Sean, you're crushing it, man. I'm so excited for you.
51:53
Yeah, I hope you. Yeah, I hope you take the
51:58
opportunity to just, like, design whatever the hell you
52:01
want right now. Yeah.
52:03
Yeah, very, very interesting to think about.
52:06
It's also just nothing I've ever thought about.
52:08
I think that the question of like what, where does capital
52:11
fall into this whole world that we're doing has gone, has gone
52:14
by the wayside with this much growth.
52:15
We're just like, Oh yeah, we're going to grow forever, right?
52:16
Who cares? But it's, but it's a good, it's
52:19
a good perspective to be like, OK, we're probably not going to
52:21
grow this much forever. So let's let's figure out what
52:24
else is out there. Like I mean what?
52:25
What capital can be used? And you might, you might, you
52:29
might quadruple this at this rate and continue on the same
52:32
path. But there's just never, there's
52:34
never a guarantee of anything. Yeah, It's all about.
52:39
Well, yeah, I mean, thanks for having me on.
52:41
It was super cool to meet you guys.
52:42
Like it's cool to hop on. I hope it was.
52:45
Yeah. An interesting conversation for
52:47
anyone who listened. Yeah.
52:47
It was a great chat, man. I'm jealous of your hat.
52:49
I feel like it would look really good with this shot.
52:52
You're gonna sell those hats on? Yeah.
52:54
Olly were you based bro Jack? Say again sorry.
52:58
Where you based? Toronto, normally Peru, but
53:02
right now OK. Cool.
53:03
Yeah, I was saying like next time in Toronto.
53:05
Oh my God, this guy's going to personally deliver it.
53:07
I thought he was going to offer to mail it, but this is wow.
53:10
Talk about service. I know I said next time I'm in
53:15
Toronto. So I mean, I'll be there for
53:19
editions. So if you're going to be there.
53:21
Nice, Awesome, I'll do it. This was great.
53:24
Thank you guys, great to chat. Take care.