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In this episode, we discuss how the recent economic uncertainty might impact bootstrapped businesses.
Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.
00:16.12
Rick
what's up this week Tyler
00:31.75
tylerking
Like and I just spent like 10 seconds trying to figure out who was going to ask the other what was up this week and we blew it 30 seconds oh yeah ah yeah, feels like summer I'm feeling good I know you said you're tired before we started recording but I'm feeling like.
00:36.11
Rick
Um, it's actually it actually took 30 seconds I was watching the timer.
00:49.53
tylerking
Ready to you know, go into summer.
00:49.75
Rick
Um, it's 30 I woke up and it was ° outside I hate Utah right now I'm I'm low on Utah I don't think so I mean I don't think park city is usually that cold in in many and I'm in draper Salt Lake area so
00:53.93
tylerking
Wow is that normal for me. Yeah, that sucks.
01:07.65
Rick
Yeah, I'm not happy about this and like when it's cold when you think it's going to be warm. It's a really bad way to start your day.
01:11.34
tylerking
Yeah, it's ° right now outside loving it anyway while I'm feeling good about the weather. Um, you've been following the stock market or anything.
01:21.43
Rick
Yeah, meant my version of this is following the housing market because we we would like to buy a house and so it's I'm not going to say I'm happy because it seems like really bad to say that out loud but it would be nice from home prices down.
01:26.27
tylerking
Oh yeah, oh so you might be happy about what's going on then.
01:36.46
tylerking
But yeah, ah, yeah, yeah in the sense that people will be hurt. It sucks but like the situation over the last several years has been bananas and like yeah, it's it has to come down. But do you think? Okay, there've been maybe I feel like every two years or so there's like a little. Recession head fake where you know like 2016 had this where a bunch of saas company stocks like stocks went down and then it it came back and it was fine. Does this feel different to you or is this just another one of these little blips. Yeah, but why.
02:07.31
Rick
Um, this feels different. Oh yeah, like um.
02:16.59
Rick
Um, why does it go different.
02:18.50
tylerking
I mean I know why for me like among other things. It's everyone's talking about it differently now like if you go on Twitter everyone's like this is for real but I don't know why they're saying that. But there seems to be some kind of consensus.
02:29.30
Rick
Yeah I can't can't um I thought this would happen during Covid and so I pulled out of the market completely and like I've been out of the market since um, which was really hard for me to watch because I was like like I just watched like people.
02:34.53
tylerking
Ah. Oh wow.
02:47.40
Rick
Double triple their money and like you know because I was pretty heavily indexed on the SAndPFive hundred um like great pre pandemic and right around when that started going down I pulled out so everything I've been just in like basically savings accounts. Um, and so.
03:02.31
tylerking
So you missed some gains.
03:05.66
Rick
And miss some serious gains and so I you know I've sat it out the whole way. None of this made sense to me none of this growth like I just never could like wrap my head around it given the situation and so I guess I guess I'm just like nuts.
03:15.95
tylerking
E.
03:25.34
Rick
This just feels like yes this is like you know when you throw a ball up in the air gravity happens. It's just like it feels like that's what's happening and it just like yes. Okay, this finally makes sense.
03:28.94
tylerking
Yeah, so so one of the reasons I would never time the market which you did I admire your courage but 1 of the reasons I went is like then now now when do you get in when do you when do you say? Okay, it's done and it's time to get in again.
03:44.52
Rick
Um I don't know um and like I question ever getting out like I I was invested in Index funds like it wasn't like I was like really being thoughtful about this, you know? Yeah so I mean in in in hindsight like I think like I probably should have just kept my you.
03:51.75
tylerking
Yeah, you're like yellowing game stop or something.
04:03.80
Rick
Strategy since I was 20 and just like putting some percentage of earnings and index funds like you know every month and you know if you do that then you kind of you know everything averages out and so I probably should have done that um but there were some circumstances that that led me to being a little bit more risk averse than normal and.
04:05.25
tylerking
Um.
04:22.63
Rick
Anyway, Ah I guess now it's a question of when do I start doing that again and yeah and I've held it out as lot this long. So I think like what what I'm excited about with this particular. Let's just call it like recalibration of the market versus recession. Um I think that.
04:25.87
tylerking
Getting back in? yeah.
04:41.72
Rick
I'm in a position where like I could take a few bets. Um, and so I I'd much rather be strong in a downturn. Um you know than than having like just sort of rode the wave and not knowing I know I kind of like the position of being having the option of going in versus questioning when I should pull out.
04:42.80
tylerking
I.
04:57.93
tylerking
Yeah, this is something I always find puzzling about a lot of ah like financial investing advice. Beyond Just the normal put your money in Index funds. It's kind of like wait for you know, like wait for the housing market to crash and then buy real estate or whatever but like it kind of assumes then that you have a lot of money. Not in the market for a long time which kind of goes against the like put it in Index funds and let it sit there. So Yeah again I wouldn't do it myself, but it does sound kind of fun almost to be like if there's a great opportunity coming Along. You're going to have some money to put in it.
05:29.90
Rick
Yeah, and I mean it sable and I have been quite patient with home buying like we're not, we're not in a crappy place at all. We're in a pretty nice place renting. Um and but like you know is it where we want to be no like we would rather be in a house. Um, you know that's nicer and bigger and you know we would like to be. You know, nesting for lack of a better term. Um, but but we've we've been patient and and and it's kind of cool to think that you know we might be rewarded for that patience. Um and potentially get a better nicer house for less money than we would have paid for a average or maybe a non-ideal house. Um, that's 1 example of this but like.
05:49.55
tylerking
Right? but.
06:07.42
Rick
The cooler thing is like being maybe a little bit more opportunistic like Zoom. For example I don't know if you looked at their stock price but like they're below pre- pandemicic um levels and it's like let does make sense. Um I don't understand the stock enough to like say that's a good investmentment or not for myself. But like there's something interesting about that that makes me go maybe in addition to some.
06:13.17
tylerking
Yeah, like.
06:27.10
Rick
Maybe there's a little bit more of a complicated portfolio here of like there's some index fun here and then maybe there's some speculation speculation. You know growth not like speculation but like buying buying up some stock here that on a long-term basis is probably undervalued.
06:39.36
tylerking
Yeah, so speaking of like you know is Zoom Underval or whatever but like let's let's maybe shift this to how does this affect actual businesses like do you think that? ah like B Two B Sas bootstrap type like you know. Our our types of companies should care about this at all like it like in in what way.
06:57.80
Rick
Yeah I mean this stuff has major ripple effects like you don't know you can't exactly point to them. But um I mean the obvious one I think you pointed out on Twitter I think I saw if you serve saas funded startups like you're gonna fill this. Um.
07:14.31
tylerking
Yeah.
07:16.17
Rick
Funding driies up. But um, people get more cautious like people can't make their mortgages.. What do they do like they they start you know pinching pennies and and that eventually affects you um at some level So like I mean there are very few like true recession-proof Businesses. Um. Especially boottrap businesses that I kind of think of as in this category of serving the average like the average you know business or the average consumer or even the long tail version Small business. Um, probably going to be affected.
07:44.48
tylerking
Let me let me I think I mostly agree it of course it depends like how big of a deal is it like if it's a little baby. You know the stock market goes down. Let's say we're near the bottom right now and it goes back up probably the ripple effects will be contained and there are some good things about it. Well sorry and. I want to acknowledge. Of course it could get much worse I'm not saying like I'm not making any predictions about what might happen 1 thing the the talent market has been absolutely bananas lately and I'm kind of I don't want anyone to lose their job and all that kind of like you said I'm not like wishing ill upon people but I am like oh maybe we can actually hire a developer. Again in the future as opposed to I think we're totally priced out of it before.
08:21.51
Rick
I Think so let's let's break this conversation into like what are the like worries and then the opportunities and like I think that there's probably if you're ah well a self-funded in control of your own destiny default alive company.
08:26.68
tylerking
A.
08:37.10
tylerking
Right.
08:37.21
Rick
The pros outweigh the cons in this situation on a long-term basis because you're gonna be in a position potentially to watch competitors go under I've already seen 1 competitor go under I just saw another one get acquired reading between the lines like perhaps you know that's because of this market right? And so all of a sudden I've got less competition. Um, that's a good thing right? like.
08:50.85
tylerking
A.
08:57.21
Rick
I Think um, you know, less people to fight over ah customers with then you've got the talent acquisition less competition Potentially um in terms of trying to hire the person that you want to hire. Um, those are all pros they like kind of go to the default alive outlasting. Um maybe ah, ah less ah a venture-funded.
09:15.41
tylerking
Yeah, and I think my my understanding of how this works has become a lot more mature over the last several years because we were both fresh out of college in 2008 and almost everyone got laid off at our company except the 2 of us and 3 other people. So like we've kind of been through a recession hard times.
09:16.61
Rick
Competitor.
09:33.69
tylerking
But I wasn't like really paying attention I was 23 years old like I didn't know what was going on 1 thing I didn't appreciate until more recently is even companies that don't go out of business even if they don't necessarily so so like pause for a second one of the things that's going on right now. It's not that. Businesses are doing worse than they were. It's that investors are not giving them the same multiple. However, you want to value the business right? like Apple's stock is down Google's is down Amazon's down none of those are doing poorly really like they're making more money than they were a year ago but investors are saying we think you are overvalued. There is too much hype and. Business is just fine, but the the valuation's gone down I think like five years ago if you'd ask me I'd be like okay then there that doesn't really affect anything what I don't think I appreciated is how much the stock price affects a company's ability to raise capital and to hire employees because. Especially at startups. But even if these big publicly traded tech companies employees might get 50% or more of their compensation in in stock options or rsu or some form of equity if the stock price goes down eighty it's effectively like all your employees just lost you know 50% of their.
10:43.31
Rick
Compensation. Yes, yeah, thousand percent
10:43.39
tylerking
Compensation so companies that don't care about their valuation like you know any bootstrapped company I I don't know how to like what to do with this information but I could see it being a pretty big win for bootstrapers.
10:55.99
Rick
Yeah I mean like when when you're there's like kind of 2 so 2 versions of competition that is reliant on outside capital one is a default dead company like right and then that just like wipes them out like they have to make cuts like it's very hard to recover from that like then there's the default alive.
11:05.30
tylerking
Um, yeah.
11:15.80
Rick
Companies that can continue to invest in growth but have to slow down a little bit. Those are the ones that like potentially those people get those companies get stronger and like um like there's sort of like a evolution that happened it's probably not good for your business because like they're going to come back and you know potentially beat you? Um, but. I Don't know like the the ones that are um, the competitor that went under in in our space was definitely probably living you know on the danger side of growth and got caught and but there you know there are probably other ones out there who are just going to be like okay like we got to get we got to be more thoughtful and. And a year or 2 from now they're going to benefit from that.
11:53.11
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, I mentioned this in my every week I send out a newsletter. The employees of less serum and the theme for this week was like what might all this mean and not again, not really making predictions. But I point out like 1 in particular one of our direct competitors. Most of them are pretty mature now and like they're profitable and it's. They're not like going to go out of business but 1 of them. It's like if you look at their numbers them getting acquired or something like that go the the odds of that happening. Go way up. So yeah, we'll see but.
12:20.69
Rick
Yeah, it's like a you know one one ah piece off the board that you have to worry about have you thought about being proactive about hey you for sale. You know like using this as an opportunity to.
12:27.52
tylerking
Yeah, absolutely. So.
12:35.55
tylerking
Well this kind of this company's like a multibillion dollar company
12:40.16
Rick
What about like ah some of your smaller fish like where it's like hey maybe these guys are going to get tired.
12:44.20
tylerking
Yeah, that'd be interesting. You know to be honest I don't even know who those companies are like Crm is so mature as a space that there are $30000000000 plus dollar companies I just made up a number but I bet there are thirty billion plus dollar companies that like. I haven't really been paying attention to who are the ones that are even smaller than us. Um I don't think we're in a great position to spend a lot of money though because I also want to like if if there are these ripple effects I want to have as much cash as possible to deal with them I I don't know if you've read Mark Benny off the. Founder of salesforce said his number 1 regret is pulling back in 2008 2009 because you know recession is happening I don't think they were profitable yet or if they were not but not seriously and so they kind of slowed down and he said what he didn't appreciate is how important momentum is where the money you're spending today. Is really, you're seeing returns on it 3 4 5 years from now and so they should have been moving much faster and like 2015 and it's because they pulled back during the recession.
13:47.92
Rick
I mean that is so interesting on so that made me think of something like it takes so long to build momentum in a business and really like feel it like the benefit of it. Um, so much longer than you realize like you know when you when you put your hand in front of a fire. You feel the burn. There isn't that feedback loop in building momentum in a business and it takes like extreme courage and yes I think he's right, it takes four plus years to feel the momentum of what your investment your like proactive investment is today.
14:11.90
tylerking
Yeah.
14:18.00
tylerking
Yeah I just saw someone tweeting I forget who it was but tweeting something that felt very real to me because I'm experiencing this right now and they were like companies with high employee attrition. Don't realize what they're missing out on because you like hire a developer and maybe they're good or whatever. A developer the number that this person said was year three year 3 they just are so much more productive and if everyone's leaving after 1 or 2 years you never hit that and I'm I'm feeling this less annoying right now we've got a handful of people kind of entering that year three or 4 phase and it's like our head count's not that much bigger than it was but the productivity is through the roof and. It's like yeah if you don't hire anyone for 2 years Add another three years on top of that before you really get an effective team.
14:58.88
Rick
Um I can relate to this too at windfall. It's like my productivity today versus my first three months versus what I imagine it will be in like eighteen months in it's just it's significant. It's like I'm I'm still in the building momentum phase very interesting i.
15:07.90
tylerking
Ah.
15:15.67
Rick
J d if you're listening like this just makes me think about all the work that you're doing right now because we're not like we're at the stage where like 90% of all of our effort combined is going towards growing the business and we may not feel the momentum or building for years and ah got what but like it brings this question of like how do you know that you're building good momentum.
15:28.23
tylerking
Yeah.
15:35.67
Rick
And not um, you know wasting effort. How does how is but how how could Mark Bining off have been confident in 2008 that like that would have been a good decision to be going.
15:45.43
tylerking
Yeah, I'm going to answer this with like a dumb platitude but like 1 of the quotes that Bezos is most famous for and which is when you've referenced before is like rather than thinking about what's going to change in the future think about what's not going to change and I often think about this like if the product's getting better and you know it's getting better if you're hiring talented people. If if you're doing stuff that provides value to customers. It's hard to imagine. That's not the right type of momentum.
16:08.14
Rick
Yeah I mean that the mental the the broader mental model for that. It's called inversion. Um, it's flipping something on its head and it's like yes, a thousand percent um yeah like that's really really good point and that that answers my question too. It's like we're betting on a long-term trend.
16:23.99
tylerking
Um, yeah.
16:26.32
Rick
Individual Health insurance and's like yes we're building a it's cool.
16:28.63
tylerking
Cool. So just to put a put a pin on this like but maybe the recession. Maybe there won't be a recession Whatever but like what I'm thinking is I already felt good about our trajectory I want to do everything I can to just keep pushing while everyone else is pulling back? Um, and. Maybe maybe it won't matter but that could be a reason that 5 years from now we're like you know what that was that was the defining moment of the company.
16:52.85
Rick
Is there anything that you need to do to buy more runway by less but like pay down future worry today. Um, while this is fresh.
17:07.22
tylerking
I think we have really good. You know quote unquote runway I mean in a sense. Our runway's unlimited because we're profitable but we have almost $1000000 in the bank right now which is like way way way more than we've ever had and i'm. Timing could not be like when when the pandemic hit in 2020. We we talked about this on the podcast that I was like I don't think we have enough money if this gets really bad and so at that point I got really serious about I mean partially thanks to ppp loans that worked out well but like that accounts for like a third of it. But the other 2 thirds was just. Last two years we've been like we need more money in case, something bad happens. So I actually feel really good about where we're at right now.
17:44.58
Rick
How are you like if if an employee says let's just say I Guess it's all hypothetical but let's just say this thing really takes a dive I Guess you'd have to reevaluate that constantly based on new information. But do you do you? anticipate like what how bad does this have to get to where it's like you're you're going to start? um. Playing defense versus offense.
18:03.90
tylerking
I mean hopefully like like really ridiculously. But I guess it depends What does it mean to play defense versus offense but like not certainly not doing layoffs I'm already not planning on hiring anyone anytime soon. So It's really just can we maintain our costs our current team And. We went through this exercise when the pandemic hit of like what if and I basically said what if our revenue drops similar to the average revenue drop during the great depression that was the like what I called the worst case scenario and I think we could get through that with no layoffs ah people would take major pay cuts. Especially. People like me who are paid more but assuming it's not more than a year or 2 before things start coming back I think the pay cuts wouldn't be so severe that anyone would necessarily quit because of that. Especially because if you're in the great depression like you're quitting to go do what right? like it's not like you have other job options anyway.
18:54.67
Rick
That's cool. Yeah yeah, no, and that's it's a perfect scenario. It's like everyone's willing to take a bait cut in that type of scenario. Do um, that's cool like I kind of turn the question back on myself like what does legup help need to do man. It's so interesting I mean Za Benefits took off.
19:01.96
tylerking
Yeah.
19:12.10
Rick
In 2008 during the recession primarily because the business that we are in both that Za benefits in it leg of Health um is kind of anti-reession. Um, and that like the the demand for our services increase um through a depression or a recession because um. You know the competitive premium product becomes you know, even more expensive. Um, So yep and if you know group Health insurance becomes you know one of the first things to go at a business from a premium product. So There's a lot of reasons. Why.
19:32.87
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, every time someone gets laid off. There are potential lead for you.
19:41.27
tylerking
Oh yeah, right.
19:47.73
Rick
Ah, recession could accelerate leg uphelts growth growth.
19:51.30
tylerking
That's interesting I also just you're in a great spot where it's like yeah I know j d is kind of an employee but like more of a partner like the 2 of you just have to survive like you're a cockroach right now like what could possibly kill you nothing? Um, which is fantastic.
20:05.50
Rick
You sounded like Mr Wonderful right there I feel like you just called me a cockroaches didn't he call people cockroaches. Yeah yeah, you even that is a positive.
20:08.87
tylerking
Oh no, he does but in a bad way I mean and I mean you could survive a nuclear strike Um, but all right? Well, we'll see what happens I mean things things are never as good or as bad as they seem so probably ah, nothing all that exciting will come out of this but we'll we'll See. Um, what's going on with you.
20:28.99
Rick
Why I mentioned this briefly but um, the big kind of thing that happened like last week we talked about ah a competitor going out of business and this week a competitor just got acquired um gallagher acquired lighthouse lighthouse was an old actual partner at people keep and same benefits I don't know if you ever interacted with them. But um.
20:49.53
Rick
That's kind of ah, kind of a big deal. Um, Gallagher is a significant consulting firm for businesses buying a pretty large individual health insurance operation. Um I don't know if I don't have any details here like I don't know if the founders or owners of lighthouse got tired and wanted to get out or whether it was. You know, economic you know economy driven or whether there was an opportunity gallagher saw. But you know this happened you know in the last week or 2 so um, but it's kind of cool to see like action happening in the in the space that I'm in um I don't know what it means but it it means something.
21:18.83
tylerking
Um, because last episode you said someone one of your competitors went out of business this week. One of them got acquired. So like I don't know are there a hundred companies this size or is it like nope now there's half as many competitors as there used to be.
21:38.60
Rick
It's more like the half like these are the national players and there are very few of the national players and 2 2 got taken out.
21:43.88
tylerking
That's pretty exciting I'd be nervous if it's like a winner take all type market but I can't imagine how they could you know use this for Monopoly power or something like that given how regulated health insurance is.
21:57.00
Rick
Yep, So to me it feels like positive. Ah you know at least the the acquisition and and validating So I know it's kind of but it's cool to have see see movement in the space like it doesn't feel as insurance is pretty boring but it is like.
22:01.19
tylerking
Ah.
22:13.37
Rick
Some action happening right now.
22:13.38
tylerking
I Feel like something that sets me apart from a lot of people I know is when something happens whether it's good or bad I'm normally like cool stuff's happening. You know like I don't necessarily have a negative reaction even if it's like objectively a bad thing I kind of get that impression from you as well I Wonder if that's like a good entrepreneurial quality to just be like.
22:20.59
Rick
Yeah.
22:27.90
Rick
Yeah.
22:32.69
Rick
Yes, that's I mean I I totally believe that I mean I don't think you I know there's always change in a startup environment and so like one of the things I'm trying to help people I've taken on new reports at windfall recently and it's like 1 of the things I try to help them understand when I become.
22:32.91
tylerking
Any change I'm going to view as an opportunity doesn't matter.
22:51.58
Rick
Someone's new manager. It's like listen with great change comes great opportunity and like ah people don't have that default though I think it is actually a fairly unique viewpoint.
22:59.37
tylerking
Yeah, cool, Well keep us updated if anything come like I don't are you going to try to go poach in either customers or I mean are you doing anything based on this acquisition.
23:09.70
Rick
Yeah, no, but Jd is working on the other so Jd has a strong relationship with this one that's getting acquired so I'm sure he'll learn something about the details but um on the other one though that went out of business. We are working to try to do something where either it's lead flow or you know.
23:24.78
tylerking
Yeah.
23:25.94
Rick
Help helping them to sort. You know so offboardre their clients. Whatever um I don't know what'll come of that but jty's running both of those um that this kind of transitions nicely like I've mentioned that I've I've had new reports. Um you know and there's been a lot of change like in the start of environment. Um I find myself cats on the roofing a lot these days. Um. This is a phrase Tyler introduced me to and I actually need you to tell me the story again because I keep trying to explain the phrase to people like it means something to me so I'm using it. But then I try to explain it to someone else I'm like I can't tell the story like Tyler can and so I ended up just like making them look at me weird like you're talking about a dead cat like what the hell are you saying yeah.
23:50.60
tylerking
Um, yeah.
23:58.33
tylerking
Yeah I know it's a little more of but I've had this too actually recently I was teaching this to someone at work and they're like I I kept it retelling the joke and I like I Still don't get it but should I should I say it real quick in case people don't remember from before right.
24:07.81
Rick
Yes, and I need you to because I need to be able to like listen back to this episode and like and like figure out how to tell this story because I am using the phrase all the time. Oh good.
24:16.53
tylerking
I actually have a blog post on this. So if you Google cats on the roof lessing business or whatever I bet you'll find it. But so it's a joke that for some reason my family told a lot but it's not specific to us other people I've met have known the joke and it's there's a it's 2 houses next to each other in a neighborhood. The um, the adults from 1 house are going out of town. They ask the kid next door hey can you take care of our cat while we're gone halfway through the trip they call talk to the kid hey how's our cat doing and the kid says sorry the cat's dead. Ah I don't know he died and they're devastated. They loved this cat. They're really broken up and they say oh like. That sucks I know it's not your fault but like you could have told it to us better. You could have said it in a way where it wouldn't have just like hit us that hard. You should have said the cat's up on the roof and won't come down and. Ah, then when we call back, you can say oh the cat's closer to the edge and he looks like he's going to jump and then he jumps and eventually he's dead but we're ready for the news at that point because like okay lesson learned and so then ah fast forward a few months the family goes out of town again. Ask the kid to take care of the grandma who's staying home. Um, and they call halfway through the trip. How's Grandma doing grandma's on the roof. It's the joke.
25:28.50
Rick
Ah, is good. Yeah I forgot about the the thing I was forgetting about was the Grandma part I just like stopped after the cat thing and I just like get it and they're like no.
25:31.81
tylerking
Ah, yeah, yeah, that's the joke. The thing I don't like about this joke is it completely telegraphs itself as soon as you say the kids taking care of Grandma you're like I get the joke. Okay.
25:43.16
Rick
Yeah, yeah, um, cool. Yeah, but I'm using that a lot I find it helpful is like ah just a good like light conversation to talk about I like entry point into talking about upcoming change or big big change and um anyway.
26:00.50
tylerking
I Think it's more and more. It's my number one like management communication thing to fall back on like it kind of doesn't matter how hard an announcement or a thing that you need to communicate is if you just prep people and give them time to process it so that they're not.
26:01.10
Rick
It's ah been useful.
26:19.32
tylerking
Giving you their emotional reaction the moment they hear the news it just yeah, it makes everything so much easier.
26:25.39
Rick
Thousand percent so I'm gonna um, actually read your post and I'm gonna practice telling that story and I'm gonna try again and see if someone doesn't look at me like I'm a crazy person.
26:32.74
tylerking
Have you have you figured out how how are you actually executing on cats on the roof like I kind of have my style in terms of how I drip information to people to prepare them for the ultimate news have you developed that or is it just kind of ad hoc every time.
26:47.41
Rick
It's ad hoc every time and it's usually smaller things in my role um very individualized things. Um, it hasn't been like company wide type communication yet. So I can be pretty personal with how I'm doing it.
26:53.22
tylerking
Um, yeah.
27:00.80
tylerking
That's cool, cool. Um, so we got ddosed again if you recall our first that I say again we got ddosed I will never forget the date because it was January Sixth 2021 the date of the ah the.
27:04.97
Rick
The heck.
27:19.80
tylerking
Insurrection so we missed all of that news because our site was down that whole day. Um I don't have like huge insights here except like when it happened in 2021 we set up cloudflare and that was helped us get out of it. It happened this time and it wasn't really that big of a deal.
27:35.35
Rick
Dick Cloud player go crazy notifying you and so like what happened exactly.
27:38.60
tylerking
No, so yeah, it's I wish you know in a perfect world. You'd imagine like cloudflares just got some crazy machine learning thing and just ddoses can't hit you. It's not really like that. It's more like our site went down. Um and it then it came right back up and at the same time we got an email. That was like I just took your site down I'm going to continue taking it down until you give me $5000 in bitcoin. So like a ransom note basically um, which is kind of scary like because like wait can can they do that can are they going to keep us down. Um, but basically they send. Just an overwhelming amount of traffic from thousands of different ip addresses to various endpoints what you can so cloudflare doesn't automatically stop it. But there's a few things you can do one cloudflare has a little toggle called we're under attack. So when you log in on the very first page There's like this kind of emergency button. You can push and if you say hit that. It helps. Basically they start like anyone who goes to your site. They have to do like a Google captcha. Basically um, somehow the attacker still gets through a lot of it. But it stops a lot of it so that helps downside to that is it breaks a ton of stuff like especially if you've got like your Api is doing that but like someone making an api call can't. A captcha you know. So then you have to go in and like say well I want to explicitly allow this endpoint because the attacker is not going after it and then the 2 things I foundly useful one is firewall rules so you could say like for for a bit all of the traffic was coming from China and so we just had block all traffic from China. Then they routed it through other places and it's like well it's coming from these four data centers in the us. So we blocked all four data centers in the us. It's kind of like a game of cat and mouse. But um, the firewall rules help a lot and then the other one is rate limiting so they would hit specific pages and so we'd be like if someone hits the login page more than 5 times in a minute lock them out for the next hour. Ah, so's there's a lot of stuff on our end to like figure out what they're doing and stop it but cloudflare gives all the tools like it's it's oddly a weird, no code tool like we used no code to defend against this ddos a non-technical person could probably do this.
29:44.60
Rick
Was it fun in any way shape or form and yeah.
29:47.49
tylerking
Yeah, kind of in the way we are just talking about that listen if this happened every week or if it happened like I think this was a pretty unsophisticated attacker if like you know the chinese government decided to do this to us like they would take us down and there's nothing we could do about it that would obviously be terrible. But yeah. Once a year having kind of like adrenaline rush and I like pulled in all that as soon as it happened because we've been through this before almost immediately I was like guys this is going to sound weird but I'm going to go take a nap. Her is like what I'm like well because I'm going to stay up all night in case this these attacks continue throughout the night ah so I did like an all nighter and checked a bunch of Dr Pepper it was it was kind of fun. Yeah.
30:24.58
Rick
Um, yeah, um, did you ever respond to the to the ransom note.
30:28.19
tylerking
Yeah, so both times I actually suspect both of these were from the same person the 1 in 21 2021 in this year both times I sent they sent multiple emails and they started tweeting at us which is also kind of like we tweeted our downtime notification like sorry this I was down. We're working on it and they. As a reply they were like I'm the one taking your site down. It's not coming back. So so then our customers can see that which is kind of scary and we reported it and Twitter said that does not violate their terms of service anyway. I sent one email I said we I just want to acknowledge. We've seen this. We will not. We will not pay you any money and you'll not get any more replies from us I don't know if that's the right approach or not but that's what I did via email. Yeah, no.
31:08.90
Rick
You did that via Twitter or via email and you didn't you didn't reply to the Twitter thing man.
31:16.36
tylerking
Blocked it which I think makes it so people won't see it after it's blocked. But I'm not positive about that. Yeah, it's just kind of scary right? It could be way worse. But this time the site was only down for a few minutes. There was some like.
31:19.33
Rick
Oh my god.
31:30.46
tylerking
Some people had problems throughout the day but like most of our customers probably didn't even know anything happened. Thanks! It's ah if if anyone's listening and you get ddosed I'm happy to share the playbook with you. Just let me know.
31:34.32
Rick
Good job.
31:42.97
Rick
Hope I never have to deal with this because I do not have the skills.
31:45.96
tylerking
Well I love the businesses that you've been involved in something I've always been jealous about with Zane benefits. You could take the site down for 8 hours a night and no one would care like it's incredible I mean I guess you're not selling software.
31:54.75
Rick
Know Yeah, it's true. But then you you also have the stickiness. Yeah.
32:02.64
tylerking
Like this ah like you you always say it's a tech enabled service right? But the service is what you're selling and no one can ddos that.
32:06.71
Rick
No one could dedos the service. You can always go on the phone go to a you know coffee shop you can deliver the service via multiple mediums.
32:13.73
tylerking
Yeah I also love that the as much as there is software like a lot of it's like let's say they're buying united health care as long as UnitedHealthCare's website is up even if yours is down. Yeah, there's there's just so many redundancies in your business that it's great. Um I want to give an update on two growth.
32:27.83
Rick
It's good point. What else.
32:33.35
tylerking
Things because you know this has kind of been an ongoing theme this year trying to figure out new growth channels. Um, one thing we started working with is I guess the the generic term is um, cop cost per lead or cease. Ah, what is sorry what is Google Ppc price per lead so ppl. Um, do you know? what? that term means off the top of your head. Yeah I think it's specific like there's a lot of ways to buy leads. But I think it's specifically a a specific type of this.
32:55.30
Rick
I Mean ah, there's a thousand of those acronyms. But yeah, like it's how much you're paying per unit of something.
33:09.10
tylerking
We're using software advice to start with if you heard of them. Oh I did okay, okay sorry I have my memory so great that I forgot something from two weeks ago
33:09.83
Rick
You talked about them last episode and I think it's a software review site right? and and well yeah, what one of the things that you were going to do I think was see if you could find someone who knew how to do software advice like like an expert.
33:25.67
tylerking
Right? right? That's why we talked about it. Sorry yeah, so we first of all, we took your advice. Um, it's ongoing but Alex is pursuing and a handful of people. Um, that might be able to give advice but we actually are seeing decent results so far from software advice.
33:29.30
Rick
Yeah I don't know if that ah and you ended up doing anything with that.
33:45.12
tylerking
So it's it's not like at the point where it's scaling up yet like if it stays where it is. It will be a meaningless amount of customers. But the the numbers are looking pretty good and especially what we're finding is no one's really bidding on the cheap customers because you can kind of pay. The the way they price it is. It's based on the revenue of the lead so because it's all b two b stuff so someone calls software advice. They're like hey we have 7000000 in revenue, we're looking for crm they price that based on that $7000000 if someone's like 1 to 5000000 or below one. There's very little competition for those so we're actually. I don't know how we scale it or if it's even possible. But so far. It's been promising.
34:24.10
Rick
I wonder if they have a group quoting tool similar to this where we could buy leads in Utah for businesses that don't offer health insurance with low revenue.
34:33.70
tylerking
Yeah I wonder so so let's think through that because the way software advice gets these leads is they like dominate them g two captera there's a handful of these companies they dominate the seo for anyone who's looking for a crm. So I guess there must be companies doing that with health insurance like if you search for health insurance in Utah.
34:47.59
Rick
Probably.
34:52.63
tylerking
Question is are they selling the health insurance directly are they trying to sell off the leads.
34:55.71
Rick
Yeah, probably the lead. Yeah, they're probably doing the sell off the leads interesting I have to look into that. So so what do you? What's the next step.
35:03.38
tylerking
Um, one is to that. There's other companies that do the same type of thing. So we're going to try to scale by going to more companies and see how that works. We're also going to try to but start buying more expensive leads to see. Just what happens I'm not optimistic about that. But we're we're still very much in experimentation mode. The big question is can we increase volume without decreasing the quality of like like the metrics work right now. But if if the roi drops significantly then it won't. So. That's the first thing is that scale question and then the second thing is for now we're not factoring in ah human labor at all. We're like we're spending money on the leads and then however much time it takes to convert them. We're ignoring that which obviously you can't ignore long term it. It doesn't take a lot of effort but it's maybe like 2 or 3 phone calls. For a 5 or 10 user account. That's probably fine for a 1 user account. That's probably not so another thing on our radar is like kind of I actually might pick your brain about this at some point because it sounds like Jd's doing this sort of where it's like still it's sales. It's like 1 on one not fully automated but like using tools. To significantly reduce the amount of time it takes like send these follow up emails and schedule the calls and stuff like that.
36:19.80
Rick
Yeah I mean what? what have you started. It's definitely good to start with the manual approach um have I mean assume like the call to action after one of the calls is free. Try I'll sign up.
36:28.67
tylerking
Yes, and what's great is these aren't there's a lot of places you can buy leads from and by leads. They just mean here's a list of people you can cold call these are people who actually. Opted in to getting our call before we bought the lead so they're pretty warm and they're really, they're looking for a crm you know? Yeah, we've got I mean we're not through the thirty day free trial. So no one has paid yet but we've got a couple activated.
36:42.17
Rick
Yeah, that's cool I Can't wait to hear about how this goes have you got any winds yet.
36:57.25
tylerking
Customers. It's again, it's so low volume that I definitely am not celebrating yet. But ah, we've just like our third or fourth traction channel we've tried that and it's it's the first one where like things are kind of working so I'm feeling good about it. Yeah yeah.
37:06.31
Rick
Cool Now you could do this a bunch of times and it'll add up.
37:13.51
tylerking
I agree yeah that that's the hope and then the other one I Want to talk about is we explored Programmatic Seo I'm sure we've talked about this on this podcast before do you do you remember? if we've done it recently? No, you do oh right? right? right? because you so so here's what I'm curious about.
37:22.13
Rick
I We use Programmatic Seo a lot at leg up health.
37:32.30
tylerking
Um, there's a lot of different ways to do programmatic seo what is what is your version of it look like like spreadsheet to webflow Api so you've got a spreadsheet with a bunch of data in it like here are all the different plans prices.
37:41.20
Rick
Yeah, it's webflow spreadsheet to webflow api for sure.
37:52.14
tylerking
Details You have a template for a blog post. That's like here's how we show the information about a plan and then you just how do you connect the spreadsheet to webflow.
37:59.14
Rick
Yeah, so the the way the um, so so the way we think about it is in terms of like plans. So there's a public database of all the health insurance plans that are available at healthcare I gov and you can basically access that list via an Api. Or a Csv and basically we we created a template on webflow which is they call collections and upload because that only gets updated once a year we update it manually once a year by uploading that information into webflow.
38:26.28
tylerking
I.
38:33.25
Rick
And if you type in like a plan name for example, leg a palus number one let me give you an example.
38:36.36
tylerking
But sorry when you say you're uploading it to webflow like ah, you're manually going in and typing the details in or what you can just import. Oh I didn't realize that okay need.
38:43.19
Rick
No, you can import csvs into webflow. Yeah now if I wanted to we could have this managed in like an airtable database and then like push the airtable database to webflow. But I I just do it in like Google sheets and. Then upload the information to webflow because the frequency of updates is so low in so in other cases where you're doing like if there's a like a daily update needed like I would not want to do it this way I'd want to have more of like a more a more ah automated way to deploy.
39:01.76
tylerking
Yeah, yeah.
39:14.50
tylerking
Yeah, got you? Um, so anyway, the the reason this is coming up is I follow someone on Twitter who has kind of been doing some freelance programmatic seo so I read chatter and just asked like could it work for us I think the conclusion was like it could, but it's probably not We're not a great fit. Um, primarily because I don't think we have access to any kind of like special data like having all these plans. That's great. A spreadsheet of plan information is great. We're trying to think like what what would our data be um. I know we we've talked about this before because when when you did all your the the stuff you're talking about I asked then I'm I'm going to ask again, anything just right off jump off the page about like what a Crm Programmatic Seo would look like I know I'm putting you on the spot here.
40:09.19
Rick
I Mean the the really obvious like spammy one is if you are getting into so selling. People's personal information like you could ah like you could expose aspects of your database to search engines. Um and have like people.
40:17.97
tylerking
Um, yeah.
40:28.37
Rick
Searching people company names for example, landing on a less annoying serm page and saying get access to our lead database. You know set up for lessing serm.
40:37.12
tylerking
Oof God that would be obviously there's no way in hell we would ever do that. But that is that would work. Um, yeah.
40:41.95
Rick
But that's like an um, that's a very obvious like obvious one. Um I don't know like like what's a I can't think of a I mean you could have a database of all the crms out there. They're pricing. Um, yeah now and have a less annoying crm versus you know that.
40:54.00
tylerking
Yeah, that's the best one that that well the what was suggested to me was actually so we we already have less annoying serum. We have comparison pages for like 10 different ones. The cool thing about.
41:01.61
Rick
That one.
41:10.88
tylerking
If if instead if you leave lessening s here I'm out of it if it's like pipe drive versus salesforce you get ah the square of however, many rows in your spreadsheet you get right? because every combination becomes ah like it's nsquared as opposed to end different articles. I still I don't think that's like super compelling but that's the best we could come up with related to your company database thing. We also brainstormed at one point like if ah we have ten thousand about ten thousand customers not users but customers like giving them profile pages they would opt into it but being like. You know we'll do some like basically it's like a yelp page for you or whatever because a lot of these people don't have any web presence at all. Um, that would be a lot more work.
41:56.87
Rick
Um, but why not like you could do you could that would be so easy to do.
42:02.10
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, maybe we'll do that one I think I think where I landed on this I'm not mentioning programmatic seos like I'm super excited and it's going to be a big win. But I think like in the system of experimenting with new traction channels. It's like ah medium high not high.
42:19.82
Rick
Google I just sent you ah as query to search like I most the the query is select health signature silver twenty five hundred. That's a plan name type that into Google number one like we're being select health at the plan like so.
42:20.60
tylerking
In my opinion.
42:31.34
tylerking
Like up health there you go Wow How yeah, that's so cool and this is not yeah this is not like I clicked the link.
42:38.69
Rick
It works it works I'm just I'm just saying like and that's all programmatic like I didn't write any but unique content for that page I just.
42:50.52
tylerking
It's a very lightweight page. It's not like you went. Okay, that's interesting have you looked into using like copy I think copy dot ai it's called or any of these like Ai writing tools for Programmatic Seo
42:50.54
Rick
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:01.87
Rick
No no I It's interesting I feel like my bar for quality is too high to trust for me to trust that. But I I is it good.
43:14.92
tylerking
Well so it's pretty good. A eunice has been testing this out for us. It's pretty good like like surprisingly shockingly good, but the thing is my our bar is also higher but the the model is you have it write a thousand articles and then you just go proof freedom. Ah so you still get.
43:19.31
Rick
Okay.
43:34.49
tylerking
It's not like going to have incorrect information or anything like that I've heard again I'm I'm struggling to figure out what the content would be but I could see that being a pretty cool approach going forward. Yeah, so anyway I'm mostly talking about it just to say I have researched it dear listener.
43:44.40
Rick
Um, yeah, it's worth trying.
43:53.56
tylerking
Ah, if you have any kind of unique data sources that could be turned into blog posts or you think that our Ai generated blog posts that you just go proofread that that there's like a lot of content that needs to be written in your space I think there's something there I don't think crm is like perfect for this but I might try it later on.
44:09.65
Rick
I think any space where you have. It's like an educational sale ah in a sort of dead old industry. There's an that's probably a place where this would be an opportunity. It's true in health insurance. Um, but like yeah if you're in a space that's like been around a long time. Lots of players. Um, and there's some sort of educational component There's probably an opportunity for you to like creep up the long tail rankings with a program at like Seo Strategy um
44:34.20
tylerking
Yeah I like it I sometimes lament that Crm is like that the customer too educated like I'm sure there's opportunity for Seo and content marketing. But it's like damn like nobody is confused about what a what? a Cr M is.
44:44.42
Rick
I mean if that's so different. It's you can tell you been in business a long time because I remember a time we were like these fricking people don't know what a CRM is
44:55.92
tylerking
Yeah, we didn't call her. Our original name was less knowing software because I was like no one knows what a crm is but why would we put that in her name. Yeah yeah, but um, yeah, ah back to you? What's what's next on your list.
45:01.86
Rick
Yeah, and you like your one of your top performing pages back in the day was like what is this here I am right? no gone are those days. What's kind of related to what you're working On. Um I Just just an observation more than anything else. Um I feel like running a business. Ah, that is default alive calm start to last whatever you want to call it Bootstrap. It's all about like avoiding vicious cycles and creating virtuous cycles. Um, in the you know micro example traction Channels within Marketing. That's what that whole concept is about.. It's like test things get. Get something working and spinning and then repeat it and then go try other things and you basically just want to get a bunch of virtual virtuous cycles um working and then you know play defense against the the opposite and something that'll happen over enough time and I think Like. Back to our conversation earlier I'm just like trying to figure out like how do you know when something's virtuous versus vicious versus like just like not like there's no multiplying Factor. There's no compounding and like for example, writing um I can very quickly see after a year or 2 writing on my personal blog like there's a virtuous cycle of good things happening. More newsletter signups are happening every every month every day. Ah more traffic site visitors. Um I'd be.
46:20.39
tylerking
Yeah, and in order for it to be a virtuous cycle like it. It means less effort put in gets the same or better results over time.
46:29.54
Rick
Yes, and then the but the opposite is true for a vicious cycle. It's like things get exponentially worse. Yeah I don't know I just I just I just feel like um maybe it's made the way I think but like think it's like very hard to run a business on.
46:34.15
tylerking
It gets harder and harder. Yeah is there an in-between.
46:48.98
Rick
You know, like like long term and have success like on just like 1 plus one equals 2 type steps.
46:53.57
tylerking
I think it's hard to scale a business on that but I like my initial reaction when you said like how do you know whether it's a virtuous cycle or not is to kind of say it doesn't need to be at first. Um like this is the kind of related to innovators dilemma I feel like which.
47:09.15
Rick
Meaning.
47:12.50
tylerking
Just listen to a podcast where they had some expert on Apple on and they were like so what's Apple's next product move and they were like well okay, even a mediocre publicly traded company has to grow ten fifteen percent year over year right or not mediocre but like Apple has to grow that much if you think of they're $2000000000000 company. What's 10% of $ 2000000000000 they have to like there's there's really not much they can do. It's either cars or health care. Those are the only 2 industries that are big enough for them to move the needle. Um, that's the downside of being a big company and I think like the the upside of a startup is you don't have to necessarily pick. The huge opportunity and the virtuous cycle right? away you have to find it eventually. That's not an answer to what you're saying at all. Yeah, like yeah I not necessarily that it's the exact same thing as product market fit but I almost feel like.
47:52.42
Rick
You say that it's less important early on. Um, um.
48:07.72
tylerking
Product market fit. It's partially about the product and stuff. But it's partially about like that's when your first virtual virtuous cycle kicks in I think like when you hear other people talking about product market fit they're like we were slogging. You know for.
48:13.74
Rick
Yeah, that's good point.
48:22.10
tylerking
Sometimes it's six months sometimes it's four years they're like but then eventually one day like we found something and like what felt like we were swimming Upstream Now. We're swimming downstream Now the current's going with us and customers want this and like we're not, We're not fighting this hopeless battle and yes you want that eventually. But I don't think anyone needs that. Day one.
48:42.22
Rick
How do you I Guess what I'm really asking is like it's like how do you go faster towards getting that which is like the you know it's like the question every entrepreneur asks. Ah.
48:47.59
tylerking
Um, yeah.
48:53.40
tylerking
Right? I mean are you feeling a sort sense of insecurity about this that like time is not being spent on on virtuous cycles.
48:58.84
Rick
Um, know no I just it's more of like ah it was more of a generic observation coming in but then we had the conversation about ah Jeff not je as a um Mark be off and the momentum like 4 year momentum thing. It's just like I'm I'm kind of getting stuck on.
49:11.53
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
49:18.51
Rick
You know do I have to wait four years to know for working on the right things today. Um like no yeah, no good.
49:22.97
tylerking
We've talked about this but well sorry, good. But we've talked about this before but like 1 mental model that I sometimes like to use I normally use it more for prioritization. But like I think it's related to this is just imagine yourself 10 years from now and ask yourself will I care about this? um. I normally use this in the context of like ah something was supposed to ship this Friday but it's not ready. Is it. Okay, if we ship it Tuesday and you can work yourself and be like no we said Friday it was supposed to be Friday but like 10 years from now we're not going to care. We're not even going to remember but I think you could do the same thing where it's like.
49:51.86
Rick
Um, with me. Yeah.
49:56.98
tylerking
I had a bit of a wake up call this year. We talked about this on the podcast that like our growth has not been great recently and I looked at all of the product stuff. We'd been doing and it was all like stuff customers asked for. But if I'm being honest if you look ten years out in the future am I going to be like. Yeah that's the feature that made everything different and I the answer in the past had to definitely be no and now everything we're working on I'm not saying it all will be yes, but it could be every single feature that the the devs are working on. It could be the thing.
50:30.72
Rick
Um, I am we're we're working on all the right stuff in that concept like yeah, um I think the only yeah, it's it is. It's it's like it's.
50:35.89
tylerking
Think so I'm not sure if that's related to or like does it is a virtuous cycle. What I'm talking about I don't know.
50:50.62
Rick
Yeah, at the end of the day like what I'm really talking about here is like am I going to regret anything that we're spending time or money on right now and the answer is no like we're doing all the right things I think the one area where it's like gets into a little bit of a issue for me is just like how much time I'm spending on legup Health personally.
50:55.44
tylerking
A.
51:09.60
tylerking
Um, yeah.
51:10.45
Rick
Um, that's but that's a that's not the game I'm playing right now. It's not my role. So um, yeah.
51:16.52
tylerking
I have one other thought here. So I talked about the elephant curve post by Jason Cohen a while back and I'll admit I even I don't fully understand the math I say even I as if I'm good at math like I read and I like kind of got it but like 1 thing in there is it.
51:28.36
Rick
Um.
51:33.31
tylerking
There's a simpler version of it which is like an s curve of growth which is the idea that when you're first starting. It's very slow growth and then it kind of like hockey sticks up and a lot of people stop there and they're like then you hockey stick forever. But then it hockey sticks the other way in plateaus eventually. And the point of that post was like layer a bunch of these things on top of each other so that when 1 thing's plateauing. Another thing's hockey sticking. Um, but sorry I don't really know where I'm going with this I'm just doing this off the the top of the dome here. But I think one way in which a vicious cycle can happen. Is when you're reaching the top right? That's basically what it means right? And so I think 1 question could ask yourself is where are we on this curve this kind of is related to the Apple thing like is there enough room for growth here because another way if I'm if I'm criticizing myself and looking back at things we invest a lot of time and that probably weren't worth doing. It's like. I should have known that thing was had to level off not that it can't grow anymore. But that it has to get harder and harder because we're already near the peak. You can't nothing can have a virtuous cycle if you're not near the base of the mountain because there's just not enough room for growth. I don't know what to do with that.
52:49.58
Rick
Yeah I I I got nothing either but like it's I don't know I I think the question is around. Are we going to regret how we're spending our time in resources and the answer to that.
53:07.95
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, cool. Um I'm about out of topics but can I throw a stupid ah pop culture sass pop culture thing at you.
53:08.59
Rick
Question is no but we need to be patient.
53:19.21
Rick
Um, you love these guys. No somehow I have escaped their noise. Um.
53:22.88
tylerking
I do well I don't know I love talking about him anyway, did you see that base camp switch their name back to 37 signals I actually have two I saw I saw this once and that's it. Ah, but for people who don't know them. Like know their history. They start as 37 signals and they had a bunch of products one of which was basecamp they sold off all the other products and changed the company name to just basecamp a single product company and I'm sure they wrote a thought piece about how focusing on 1 product is better but recently they're like no we want to do multiple products they switched their name back to 37 signals I don't expect you to care about what this company's name is that's not really my point here because I assume you don't is that fair to say well I just thought maybe it would be worth discussing like the merits of ah a single product company versus a multi multiproduct company. Um.
54:04.80
Rick
I Mean is there anything to learn here.
54:14.44
Rick
Have they explained why they made this shift.
54:17.99
tylerking
I read a blog post about it again. I've mostly I don't see anything from them mostly these days but ah, it basically said like they did base camp and then they they didn't use the word board but it kind of sounds like warboard they they built hay which is an email thing and they said there. There's a third one coming. And they're just like this is a lot of fun. We're liking it I I kind of get the impressions just like the the 2 founders. Whatever they want to work on is what they're going to want to work on and when base camp still had a ton of room for growth. That was the fun thing and now something else is the fun thing. That's me editorializing a lot.
54:57.25
Rick
That's interesting. This made me think of a separate acquisition that happened I don't know if you saw it ah Postmark got acquired by active campaign and who was the former owner of parent postmark and what was their firm's name. Do you remember.
55:01.50
tylerking
Yeah, right Natalie negui. Oh um, wild bit is that right? I think they sold wild. No no, no I think they so I think they sold like.
55:12.36
Rick
But wild bit did they sell wild bit or do they just sell their ah postmark.
55:20.50
tylerking
They kept some things. Ah.
55:20.34
Rick
Yeah, they did yeah look at that. So this is like kind of what I think of when I see wild bit dot com is exactly what I think of when I think of what 37 signals is doing basically saying we're going to be a portfolio holding company of company of companies and products we create and eventually maybe we sell those companies like.
55:27.50
tylerking
The.
55:36.10
tylerking
M.
55:38.54
Rick
Looks like um, wild bit sold 2 companies this year one was ah Demark digest and postmark and they're keeping people first jobs in beans stock.
55:46.40
tylerking
Interesting. So yeah, it's kind of like a startup incubator almost which I think it's very tempting for founders to want this right? You're like the thing I like is coming up with ideas and making high level decisions and I don't necessarily want to like run this business for the next forty years of my life so it is very tempting.
56:01.89
Rick
Me.
56:05.93
tylerking
At The same time. It is really hard to start something new and I learned this the hard way with sparse back in the day where I had lessnoing serum I wanted to start another product to sell to similar customers. Rather than building it into lessering serum which is what we're doing now we're trying to build those features in a lessening serum I built a whole new brand and stuff like that and halfway through I was just like this is too fucking hard like I quit so we shut sparse down.
56:29.69
Rick
Yeah, at some point though lessnoying serum could be like this product on the shelf and you're like okay, it's like I need to stop messing with this and then just let it run and that at that point you may have a different perspective on all this.
56:42.90
tylerking
Yeah that's interesting I I question that like yeah, there's this maybe toxic quality in like the economy in general but especially tech companies that like everything has to always be growing but I have that like. I know it's bad and I know it's toxic but also it is in my Dna that I'm like lessening serum if if it stops changing it will die right? Tech moves too fast. It may take fifteen years before it dies but it will die I can't let that happen.
57:15.25
Rick
Yeah, but maybe the what best way for less annoying business to continue is to have multiple products.
57:26.96
tylerking
Basecamp but fair basecamp has an interesting twist on this which is that they launched Basecamp and then they just launched basecamp to which is a completely different product different codebase. Anyone can keep using basecamp one forever. But the way they like when they switched to just Basecamp one of the ways they justified is they were like. We're just going to keep making new versions of Basecamp. We don't have to like have multiple products at the same time just new versions I don't know anyone else that does that but I say that in response to what you said that like maybe you fork less annoying serum and you say here's the the version that's never going to change for people who are perfectly happy with it. Then here's a different version where I'm going to take crazy risks like it actually should be more built around calendar than contacts or whatever and that way you don't alienate all the people who already like it.
58:13.77
Rick
I feel like this is all just so hard. It's so much work involved between for 1 launch that like you have it's like guesswork I like your approach way better. It's like just going to continue continuously iterate and improve lessnoing serm if you do that everything will take care of itself unless like.
58:20.89
tylerking
Yeah.
58:29.78
tylerking
Yet is right? It is hard though to take risks to be because I do think like my vision for the company is that it's not really a cr I'm 10 years from out. Not you could still do all like if if any customers are listening. Don't worry, you could still do see our m stuff in there but that like.
58:32.55
Rick
Like unless like the internet goes away which case that's ah different as you.
58:48.30
tylerking
Ah, new customer doesn't sign up and be like this is a serum. They'd sign up and be like this is just various productivity tools but doing that is a risk and it's hard to you know the the more successful your product gets back to innovator's dilemma the harder. It is take that leap. There is something elegant about Basecamp's approach of being like we're going to take this risk without. Jeopardizing what we had but because it's the same brand. You're not like starting from scratch I've never really thought about doing that seriously. But I get the appeal.
59:15.42
Rick
Why Why don't you do it.
59:19.21
tylerking
I mean I'm not bored with less annoying serum I think is the big thing and they were I think I Also think they thought they made a lot of mistakes with the original base camp and we did I mean everyone makes mistakes with products but I feel like they're all ones you can iterate out of I could see myself doing that. If we wanted to make a change that you couldn't iterate to if it's just like this new vision is incompatible with what the product is right now I think yeah I think I think I I've never really thought about it. But that that's got to be the answer I think but anyway that's all I got.
59:43.27
Rick
We've got to clone this and I'm like totally got it. Yeah, it makes sense. What else mean I got another topic but I can wait till the next time we talk. It's not Urgent. Um.
59:57.10
tylerking
Sounds good I got to go host a host some cocktail dinner thing for some people I don't have a kid so more than you? yeah.
01:00:02.12
Rick
Man you're you're a partier.
01:00:10.90
Rick
It's a indeed. All we do is talk about how tired we are um well if you'd like to review past topics and show notes visit start to last dot com I'll see you next week Tyler
01:00:18.36
tylerking
All right see ya.