Arvid Kahl: Welcome to The Bootstrapped Founder. Today, I'm
talking to Moritz Dausinger, a serial indie hacker with several
exits under his belt. Moritz most recently pivoted his
software business refiner after 18 months of trying to figure
out a way forward. Well, now he's founded. We will chat about
figuring out how to structure sales, how and who to hire, and
if he really wants to sell this business again for a third time.
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right, here is Moritz Dausinger.
Moritz, I really have to thank you not just for being on this
podcast today, but for having been on podcasts in the past in
August of 2017. And this is six years ago, which is crazy. You
went on the Indie Hackers podcast and that was episode 24.
It was barely a couple months old at that time. You talked
about building and selling mail parser. And I remember this
podcast episode so vividly. I have like a visual memory of
this. I was traveling through Berlin, just coming home from
work in the espon right there. And I heard you mentioned that
you sold your business to a private equity company. And it
blew my mind that day. I just didn't know, I didn't know that
was possible. And you also mentioned the name of that
company, which is something I will never forget because we
ended up selling our SaaS business to the same private
equity company two years later and in a way that makes you
responsible for our exit. So I just wanted to extend a very big
thank you to you and just point out how powerful it can be to
share your story in public like you did on that podcast. So I'm
really, really glad you're here today as well. So thank you so
much for that.
Moritz Dausinger: Man, you can't imagine how happy I am to
hearing this. And now look at us, what? Six years later? Seven
years later?
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, almost seven
Moritz Dausinger: And I remember when I got asked to speak on the
indie hackers podcast, I wasn't hesitating. It was quite new. I
knew the website I bet. Well, it was kind of a niche experience
back then this whole indie hackers thing. And yeah, lucky.
I did. I think there's so many also from my career and my story
after coming afterward. So many good things came from this one
podcast, which which was, I think, actually my first one
ever. So now lucky me into the right thing, right?
Arvid Kahl: That's right. That's a that's a great start to start
podcasting, probably in what is still the best podcast in the
space, right, at least the most renowned podcasts that I could
think of when I think about indie hacking. So are you still
an indie hacker? Do you still consider yourself an indie
hacker?
Moritz Dausinger: Oh, well, well, I think I stopped putting
myself a label on quite a long time ago. Because it really
depends with who I'm talking to. Like, for example, if I would
talk to my parents, I would say I'm middle stand it on the name
like Sherman. I don't know small business IT company. So I'm not
a startup? I'm not. I would Yeah, I would say it's a small
IT company. We are several people. So I'm not really an
indie hacker, but I'm the solo founder. At the same time, it's
mostly self finance. So yeah, you could say you could also say
I'm just a 40 Something guy who has an IT company and building
software, right?
Arvid Kahl: I guess that's that's what most Germans would
be much more easily You can attract it to as a concept they
would understand like, you know, the middle middle student,
that's what we call it right? middle middle class, small
business thing. That is something relatable to most
people. It is interesting that you mentioned this, like you
said, you're having a team. So you're not an indie hacker
anymore. That I mean, that's not exactly what you said. But it's
kind of, you know, a sentiment that once you grow your business
to a certain size, it feels less in the less independent, it
still might be financially, right, you might might still
have most of your funds coming actually from your customers.
But there is some dependency in the business, either for your
team members, so they have a job like a stable income, or to
customers who really rely on you. Now there is a dependency
in there. That is something that I don't hear many people talk
about, like, what's that dependency, that newfound
dependency in a previously independent business is let's,
let's maybe talk about what you're currently building, or
maybe, okay, let's start with that. Because we can talk about
the things you built in the past afterwards. We don't need to be
chronologically correct. But you're currently working on
refiner. And I think refiner has an amazing long and I guess,
order yes and stressful story. Like to hear about it. How did
that go? Like after selling your first few businesses? You
started refining? What? What made you jump into that again?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah. So when I sold my last company, Doc
parser, I had an agreement with the buyer, where I would stay on
for a couple of what was one and a half years actually. And I
would readily transition out of the company. So his interest was
basically as long as things are going well, I'm getting, I'm
going to work less and less fine for me. However, back then,
having a wife having kids means you're not free to go anywhere
in the world. So you kind of stuck where you are in the
office still. And so I thought why not just build the next one,
right? I mean, I need to do something. And so when I was
running doc parser, I had this need to qualify my signups like
they would create an account. I didn't want to have too many
questions while they are creating their accounts. I
wanted to them to experience the software right away. But I still
had some questions I would have to have answered. And so what I
did, I was displaying an in app survey, five minutes after they
created an account, asking two simple questions. Just for
context like dog parsers document processing software. So
I was asking the question, how many documents are you
processing per month? What type of documents that you want to
process? And having the answer of those two, those two
questions allowed me first of all, making some kind of axial
and charts and whatever to figure out who my customers are.
And secondly, I could identify bigger accounts, I could say,
oh, this one looks really interesting. I want to talk with
this guy, I want to make sure that they are having a good
experience. And so I like I'd worked really well. I liked the
idea. I didn't find find the product doing that. So back then
I was basically hard coding all this. And so I thought this
would be my next winter. I started coding this very simple
idea. And well, one and a half years later, I found myself with
an enormously complex enterprise IT kind of lead qualification
solution. Nobody was asking for literally nobody was asking. So
even though I created a couple of companies before I did,
pretty classic beginner mistake. And you know, the issue there
was I built a first of all the software nobody was asking for
Secondly, a software where you would need to have some kind of
enterprise sales process, something I really don't like
doing, and so on and so on. So I felt like okay, I'm kind of
stuck somewhere. Let's go back. Let's do a kind of Piero and go
back to this initial simple idea of showing surveys inside an
app. And this is what basically refiners today. So throw away
like 90%, the code launched one week before lockdown. COVID
lockdown in France, perfect timing. Bad. Well give me some
time to like, I don't know, like, I think this whole first
COVID months. It was good. That software was quite, you know,
there was not much going on. So I mean, there were other stuff
to take care of, for example, the kits and then after, in
total, I would say two years after starting this new project.
I was at the point where I had significant Mr. of, I don't know
that was like one or $2,000 $1,000 per month which was for
me to sign okay. I And finally, after two years I did it. I had
another software, which was kind of working well, yeah, that's
the beginning of this refinery story.
Arvid Kahl: Thanks for sharing this thanks also for just being
honest, but both to yourself. And to me and everybody
listening about, you know, like, even even if you did a couple
things before and you're successful doesn't mean you
cannot fall into same traps again, I do make the same
mistakes. And it's probably I don't know, maybe, maybe I just
want to ask you this. Did you feel like you knew better, you
know, after having built two businesses that you knew exactly
what your customers need? And then you build it? Was that it?
Some kind of hubris? Some kind of oh, yeah, I know better than
everybody else.
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah. Okay. So like, I mean, at that time, on
top pass, it was a third product I had built and which became
big. And so I was like, Okay, I found my model. I like building
software. I like the early days. So I'm just going to continue
building one project after the other SaaS, product, B2B SaaS
product, because I figured it all out, I know it all. And, ya
know, what helps you what, like the experience I have right now
definitely helps in the day to day operations. It helps with a
lot, a lot of things I wouldn't neglected neglected. But it
doesn't prevent you from making stupid mistakes, it doesn't
prevent you from not finding the MVP you're looking for. And it
really reminded me that going from zero to something is just
so hard, and you need to have luck. And you need to have good
timing, and you need to exert a lot of things checked to be
there. Once you have something in your hand, which I've
mentioned before, like one to $2,000 Mr. Then I think it's
much much more about execution. But before that, it's some kind
of like magic. Where are you? Yeah. Well, some everybody
that's different. But
Arvid Kahl: yeah, that's that's an interesting point. Once you
have something, not only is it is it just about execution at
that point, but it's never just about anything, right? If they
you know, entrepreneurship is everything at the same time. But
if you have something, not only can you actually put more energy
into what you know, works, we can also show it to other people
and make other people interested. And I think you did
that, right. Because for your first products, you only really
put your own money into this. You just use your own funds. And
that was it. But for refiner, you went a different route. Do
you want to explain a little bit what you did once you reach that
point? And MRR?
Moritz Dausinger: Yes. Yeah, just to to follow up on this.
The first one, like, I feel like once you have something, then
that also means yeah, as you mentioned, you can show it to
somebody and you have, most importantly, customers. Yeah.
And once you have, once you have 10 customers or 50 customers, I
feel like the shop changes, the job is then to listen to what
they're saying, having your own vision as well, and trying to
match those two things. And so I'm definitely not the guy
saying whatever the customer says, I'm going to implement it.
It's more like whatever they say, and it fits my products,
energy, it's maybe already on my to do list, then I'm doing it
right. So this is why I think it's getting not easier, but
different once you have to know 50 customers. And to follow up
on your point about what I did once I went to the one to 2k Mr.
At that time, I already had like, nearly two years of own
money spending and no salary put into this company. And I felt
like I have no two choices. Either I do that, again, like
another year without a salary on maybe two years without a
salary. Or maybe I can get a little bit of extra outside
funding inside his company. And you know, like, the reason why I
never raised before was because I didn't really like venture
capital path. You are set on once you raise with a VC which
means seed round and series A Series B and you basically are
promising everybody, I'm going to build a really, really big
company and good for people who want to do that. I didn't want
to do that. So I'd never actually considered the VC path
something which would fit to me. But luckily, during the last
year, there were a couple of funds coming up which are what
they call themself bootstrapper friendly, so you can get an
investment They definitely are funds. So they, they want to
have a return on their investment. But they're not
necessarily setting you up on the path of a typical VC
startup. And so that made it compatible to me. And so I
raised some money with com company fund. And I actually
really, I can fool hobbies, I don't really, I don't really
regret it, because it allowed me to just really accelerate a
little bit like hiring freelancers for marketing, and
also developer freelancer and just go faster. And with not
many strings attached, they are for sure strings attached, you
are giving away a part of your company, right. And then the
moment you want to sell your company, it's also you need to
give money back to them. So you're kind of signing up that
this is becoming a bigger thing than just like a project you
would sell for, let's say 50 or 100k. On micro acquire it,
you're kind of signing up that you want to build a bigger thing
that that's the strings attached to it. Yeah, but apart from
that, I was really quite happy about that decision. Also,
because, you know, as I mentioned before, I already put
in a lot of own money. And I felt like if I continue doing
that, it's just becoming more and more difficult to make
really objective decisions. Because it's still a business,
right? It's not it's, it's a business.
Arvid Kahl: That's what I was, that's, that's what I'm super
interested in. Because you're saying, like you with that
money, you can make objective decisions. And without it, they
would have been more, I don't know, fear driven, I guess,
which is interesting. Because most people, whenever they talk
about raising money, they say, Well, now I need to make
different decisions for my investors. But that's where the
bootstrapper compatibility comes in. Can you kind of explain,
like, the kinds of decisions that you didn't want to make
like to kind of, you know, all your money is in there? And now
I need to, you know, protect it. What was that? What was driving
you at that point?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah, it was more like, putting too much on
my of my own wealth into one project. And also, you know,
like that, I think it's really interesting to ask the question,
when are you racing, what wouldn't work for me, for
example, is raising money on an idea, because then I would be
super nervous, like, oh, man, this guy just gave me money. And
now I need to really need to deliver and need to build
something that is working. The moment I raised money from Tyler
from company fund, there was already a software product,
which was working, right, it was not profitable, but it was
working. And there was confident enough, giving my previous
experiences with NASA SaaS space, that I thought, okay, if
I can bring it to KMR, I probably going to be able to
bring it to 20 or more. And so yeah, that gave me confidence to
say, From now on, I can do that, but I prefer doing it with
outside money than my own money. So okay,
Arvid Kahl: that's, that is exactly what I love about this
bootstrapper compatible model, like, first of all, they are
compatible in terms of they don't really interfere with your
decision making, which is exactly what you need at that
point, right. as a, as a solo founder, or as an indie founder,
you want to make your independent choices, that's,
that's what you signed up for. And the whole journey, that's
what you want. And they only really take you on, if you've
proven that the thing you're doing works, right. Like if you
look at tiny seed, or if you look at the com company fund or
whatever other players in the field exists, they all want you
to prove that you can have customers, they need you to
already have customers before they give you money, which is
also complete opposite of the VC idea. They want you to just you
know, have a really disruptive idea, and maybe some kind of
semblance of a product, if at all, you know, like some
products don't even exist, but our market it you know, and in
the VC space, not that there's anything wrong with trying to
disrupt the world. It's also interesting, right as a business
approach, but I think in terms of what we are doing as people
who want to build, and I mean, it's in the best sense of the
word, a lifestyle business, a business that allows us to live
the way we want to live. Having somebody who can support us,
like that is great. And I I have to I have to mention it. I have
a podcast with Tyler, where we're building stuff together.
So obviously, I'm not gonna badmouth the idea of the comm
company fund here. Also being an investor in the fund. And also
knowing that both you and me and Tyler we all sold our businesses
to the same private equity company. It's a big family,
right like and that's that's what I kind of love about the
fund. Like it was initially called earnest capital when he
started and then he renamed it to the Kong company Fund, which
I think is a much better name. It comes from a place where
people really understand what the kind of business stead we
want to build is about right, both Tyler and the mentors and
the investors in the fund. We all are effectively solopreneur
or really small indie business owners or have been because we
sold our businesses, right. So we know exactly what this field
is about. And I'm really happy you got some, some funding for
refiner, because apparently it helped you pretty well, right?
Like, I was looking pretty good.
Moritz Dausinger: It did. And you know, like, I think, I can't
really remember the, I think you can put it like that, like, it's
really about math, the count company fund on similar funds,
assume that eight out of 10 investments will work out. And
which is the opposite to the VC model, where it's basically two
out of 10 will work out and the rest, maybe not. And I'm not
saying this one is better, this one is better, I can just say
this one is more compatible with me as more words as somebody who
likes building software products, and like, organizing
my days, the way I want to and so yeah, I'm happy that I took
that. And, like, really, what it really did is that I switched a
little bit my mindset, you know, I was hiring, was able to hire
freelancers in advance, like, you know, like, you're not
profitable yet. But you can burn more money. This is typical,
three points, and all the startups have that they can just
burn, burn, burn money, and I held it. It's really sweet. It's
really good. But you you Yeah, after half a year or one year,
you're like, oh, wow, I already spent half of it what? So you
need to be careful with it. But it did really help in terms of
product development, and in and marketing because SEO like
content is one of the big drivers for a refiner. And it's
a long term game, you know, like, you need to invest a long
time period of time. It's not something where you can just put
down like 500 euros, and the next week, you're going to see
results. You need to start early. And you need to do it
good. And it will cost some money. And a lot of this money
went into that. And so yeah, that wouldn't have happened
without investment. Yeah.
Arvid Kahl: Well, that's good to know. I'm reminded, as you're
talking about, like, who you hired and the freelancers that
are working for you, I reminded a talk that Rob walling was just
giving at MicroConf in Denver a couple months ago, he talks
about the first hires that every SaaS B2B SaaS business should be
doing. And I do wonder, in your particular case, what is the
order of people that you hired in, in the sense of that you
hired for part time or full time or even just projects? What
order of jobs did you need to hire out?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah. So I don't want to make a rule out of
that, and I exploring things as I go. But I can just say what I
did. For the early iteration of the early product, I hired
website designer to make it look good. So that I have a nice
website, I did the product myself entirely. So I was lucky
enough that I could code and build some kind of UI, which is
not too crazy ugly. But you need to see that my product has an
visual part of it. It's the surveys. And these ones were
also designed by a designer. So I was able to get a good looking
product, which was kind of important for for my business.
Next thing was marketing. Like, as I said, the SEO person. Its
power from smashing copy, which I really recommend. And after
that, it was a developer, another marketing person. Today,
we having also that mobile surveys of app to mobile
developers, a salesperson in Paris. She's doing basically
following up and building up a process around bigger customers
so that they because they have special needs to get on boarded.
And who else that's about it. Yeah.
Arvid Kahl: That just that list alone raises so many questions
for me, but I'm trying to constrain myself to one at a
time. First one, how was it hard to hire developers for you?
Because I felt that so strongly to hire somebody that was
supposed to do my work as good as I did it. How was that for
you?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah, no, like, really, really difficult
when you're a technical founder. And so I was super lucky to find
Ben. He's also active on Twitter. Digital trouble is his
handle He was over, he is a senior person I can trust.
Nevertheless, you need to do a lot of specs, you need to really
write that down into detail because nobody knows your
product better than you do. And secondly, there are parts on the
products, I think are good for outsourcing. And then there are
other parts where I'm basically like, okay, no, I'm the best fit
for this particular part of the product. If one day, I'm in the
position to hire a full time employee who is just doing that,
for sure you're going to take over, but for right for right
now, these are the parts I'm handling. And these are parts,
for example, in our case, then coded the entire dashboard
section where you could build your own custom reporting
dashboards, like adding a chart and resizing and removing, it
was really a nice project apart, which didn't interfere with all
the rest of the software. So that was basically my approach.
Or they would say, No, I can't go outsource all of it. But
there are definitely still things I can outsource. And even
then it's even then if you have a really good person, it's so
difficult to have the coding standards, right? To make it so
that if I mean, for me, it's really important that the code
base is kind of uniform, you know, like, if one day somebody
else is gonna take over, they will find your way because
everything is done the same way, which I value more than the
perfect way, you know, it might not be perfect, but at least
it's a way for you. So there's a system to it. And all this kind
of stuff is really getting more more difficult, more, the more
people you're putting on the project. And yeah, so that's the
answer of your first question. I think some things you can
outsource some things I'm not eager to.
Arvid Kahl: Man, that is, that's a great answer, like to know
what you need to still do. And to to also let go of the things
that I bet you could do it because you have to until you
hire somebody for it. So how much of your day do you still
spend coding compared to the all the other things you have to do
as a founder,
Moritz Dausinger: right now, close to zero, because and I'm
saying this with a sad face. For those who are not watching, but
listening, now I really I really like holding like a, but I know
that for the business, I am spending a lot of time
onboarding new customers, I'm spending a lot of time doing
admin stuff like paying bills and paying me are paying
contractors paying moving money around and and like, for
example, also with the bigger accounts, there's also always
legal questions, and there's just so much stuff to do. So no,
unfortunately, I'm not coding much these days. And Nick, one
of the next things on my list would be also to hire somebody
for exactly this the technical support, I call it like, it's
not just supporting the way of, Oh, where do I change my
password, it's more like a customer. So customer success
person who really takes the new customer by their hand and make
sure that they get the most of the solution. And I think this
will free up a lot of time. Once I find the right person to do
so. Because yeah, right now, it's really like, less fun than
before. Let's say like, before, there was a lot of coding and
new features and whatever. And right now it's more like showing
up every day and getting the stuff moving. It's part of the
game, right?
Arvid Kahl: You can't run a business without operations,
right? You still need to make thing make things happen. But I
was talking to Tyler about this on our podcast, he was kind of
bringing it up because he has been talking to a lot of
founders, obviously in the fund. And he heard from a lot of them
that they just want to be contributors to their own
projects, they still want to contribute. They want to be an
individual contributor to the codebase to the actual product,
and often they can't really find it. So find the time to do it.
Because there's so much so much else to do. So what you're doing
right now, I think is very important to even be aware of
that just because the business necessitates all this extra
work, doesn't mean that you cannot find somebody to do it
for you. Right? You are not the only person who can. So I'm glad
you are you're already thinking through how you can get that
work, offloaded to somebody else so you can be best at what
you're at, which seems to be coding at least.
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah. And I mean, I think it's a real real
issue and what we've been probably it's so rare that you
find somebody who's good in the beginning of building a company
where you need to do well you need to contribute, and then he
kind of switches to Like the brothers of stripe, they are
coders. And then there's they switched at a certain point into
conquering the world. Like, I mean, you don't do that by
continuing coding, I guess you do that by hiring the right
people having the right strategy and so on. And honestly, it's, I
mean, maybe sounds a little bit self limiting, but I'm, I'm kind
of feeling good in this early stage world where I'm still
contributing a lot. And I'm curious how far we're gonna go,
this time, we'll be finer. But um, it's not something I'm
feeling pulled towards to say, oh, I really want to be managing
100 People in two years, it's really not something I'm having
my hands on. I'm waking up in the morning, it's more like, Oh,
I think we should probably develop this. And that because I
feel like that would be a good fit for the product. I'm more in
this world still. Again, maybe we talk in five years, and then
I'm telling you a different story. But right now today, I'm
on this mindset that I am showing building products and
companies. And let's see how big we are growing. But let's see
about that. It does
Arvid Kahl: remind me not about like five years in the future,
because who knows what's gonna happen then. But it does remind
me of five years in the past when I was listening to you on
the 24th episode of indie hackers, and you know, the, the
mentality you had back then kinda sounds like the mentality
you have today. You want to build interesting stuff. And you
want to grow it to a point where you still enjoy building it,
right? So maybe let's let's talk about male parser. And Doc
parser. You You did sell them at some point you did get acquired.
I do wonder why that is because you know, like, we all either we
want to sell, or we want to build something for life. Can
you explain to me maybe like the process of how you figured out
that you can and wanted to sell a business in the first place?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah. So when I started building, may parser,
it was meant to be a fun side project, were actually really
not having any ambition there. I was working for startups studio.
And Paris, a very well known startups, we're really having
the best job in the world. It was it's called the founders.
It's really where everybody wants to work. And I was able to
work there. So I had a great job there. And yeah, but I still
built a software, and then it kind of took its own life. And
then there was this moment where I had 5k M R on the side
project, and pretty much the same in the salary. And I needed
to decide where is this going. And I decided I want to give it
a try. I want to see how far I can go. And at that time, I also
read the website, and a website about Fe International, which
was a business broker. And I was like, what does this exist a
business broker? Like, like a real estate broker, but somebody
was just selling online estates? And I was like, super fascinated
by that. And then yeah, somehow I saw, okay, what if you, if you
bring it to this kind of Mr. You can sell it for this amount of
money. And, well, it became interesting as an idea. And
then, yeah, by discovering this whole world that this idea was a
little bit set in my head to say, okay, maybe I can bring it
to a point where I can sell it. And, you know, like people
always referring to this life changing money or whatever. But
sorry to say, but was kind of true. It allowed us to do a big
down payment for an apartment, and secure myself as a
entrepreneur in a way of, like, having, like, first of all, more
self confidence in the dome, like, okay, apparently what I'm
doing, I'm doing it correctly. Secondly, most of my apartment
in one of the most expensive cities in Europe is already
paid. That's good. And if I can do it once, maybe I can do it
twice. So it was really it was not the sense of now I'm buying
big watches in cars and whatever. Not at all. It was
just like, giving me some kind of peace of mind and security in
life. And yeah, so that was really attractive as an idea and
that's why I sold a parser. And at the same time, back then I
had created doc parser, which was kind of a sister product.
And Kevin, the buyer of May parser. From Joseph capital,
back then. Agreed that I could continue building up the parser
and selling me parser to him. And it was basically win-win
Basically a win win situation, because what I like to do is
building up stuff. And what he likes to do is buying stuff that
is already big. I told him that, let's let him do it. So I
continued working on doc parser. And once I feel it's time is
ready and go, we both agree that time is ready, I would have, he
would have right of first refusal. So he is not obliged to
buy but he can buy it. And this is how it happened. And so these
two were basically well, two different products, two
different adventures. But one story, right?
Arvid Kahl: That's awesome. It's nice to build that connection to
the thing you're just saying with Kevin, that is that is
important, right? Because in this space, even though there's
a lot of competition among funds and private equity companies, it
is nice to know somebody that you can trust. I very, very
fondly remember our first interaction like around the time
that we were trying to sell panda our business. And also
we're looking at chose Swift. And I did a lot of outreach to
people like you and Tyler people who had sold their businesses
before, just to make sure that there's a relationship that I
can actually trust with these people, because you said it life
changing amounts of money. And that is scary, right? It's scary
to deal with something that is so valuable, your thing, they
even get to look into it, they look into your p&l, they look
into your you know, all your documents, your cash flow, and
maybe even your database or something right, you, you have
to be really protective. So knowing that you already have
somebody you can trust, and sell this next thing to probably give
you a very different, or at least a more secure feeling in
building that business. Is that right?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah, definitely. Like I mean, the
first one I sold through Fe International. Because of that,
because I didn't know anyone. I mean, yeah, you could I could
have probably send out an email or Twitter tweet, I want to sell
this thing, give me give me your offers. But as you said, You did
so it's so scary, you're scary, you're scared to mess it up. And
you're scared to have this once in a life opportunity to sell
something valuable. And you might end up with somebody who
tells you the giving you a super high price and whatever. But in
the end, it's just gonna go really sideways, and then you're
having a lot of trouble. And this is why I worked with EF
International in the beginning. And then on the second one, I
already knew Kevin knew he's a stand up guy and his word and
virtual handshake, if we didn't do the handshake really is worth
as I don't know how to say it's worth something a lot. Yeah, I
have, you know, like, just a funny story. He's actually in
Paris next week for a personal trip. And we are planning to
meet because, well, we kind of kept the contact and became
friends more or less. And, you know, like, that's just really
nice, you know, like that you can keep those relationships
over a long period of time and build up trust and all those
kind of things. And then also have a good time as some dudes
walking around in the city and talking about life. So that's
pretty good.
Arvid Kahl: I'm happy to hear that I have the same
relationship with Kevin. I mean, not exactly the same, obviously.
But we still talk to I actually, when this episode comes out,
it's Kevin's episode will be the one before this because I just
talked to him. Right. So we we just chat all the time. And we
even like this official public conversation still, because we
both have a lot that we want to share and talk about in public.
And you're doing this now to I'm really happy about this, which
kind of brings me to my next thought you're not very active
on Twitter, at least not in the moment. But I see you sharing
all this stuff right here and you've written about it, you've
obviously went on podcasts and you are on podcasts? Are you
kind of getting back into the kind of building and public game
into sharing your story is that's what's happening or is it
just like a fluke right now
Moritz Dausinger: it is not, let's say different. I made a
break from it. Like I was much more active on Twitter. Up
until, I don't know, maybe one and a half years ago, one year
ago, and there was no real reason or real event or whatever
big decision I just kind of, I don't know posted less than less
and then you know, like, fell like I mean this kind of stuff.
You don't need to you either you want to do it or you don't want
to do it right if you don't want to do it. There's no no reason
doing it. And but yeah, definitely a couple of weeks
ago, I felt like, Okay, why not go on podcasts again, that was
always something I really enjoyed doing. Because it's much
deeper and much more, there's much more context in it. And so
I was got contacted by one guy from Germany. It's a German
bootstrapper. Podcast, happy bootstrapping, as you're talking
German listened to a really nice guy. And yeah, I liked it. And I
thought why not do a little bit more? Because sharing is
important. And it's not really sure. I mean, sure, it's nice to
be invited somewhere and then talk and it's nice for the ego
and whatever. But I wouldn't be where I am, without all those
blog posts, spending hours and hours on Hacker News back then,
and indie hackers and Twitter, and this is basically the
university. I mean, I did study stuff, but I studied other
stuff, different things, right. Everything I did, I'm doing
today, I basically learn through that. So I felt like, it always
sounds a little bit cheesy, but I feel like it's the right thing
to share and give back.
Arvid Kahl: 100%. That's, that's why I'm here. And I guess it's
also why you're here. So it's the perfect example. And I told
you this in the beginning, if it wasn't for you, I don't know.
Like I you know, I don't know what would have happened because
when Kevin reached out to us, and we had shared like our MRR
numbers or stripe numbers on indie hackers, we've kind of
plucked that in. So he found us through indie hackers, and then
reach out to us through an email. I knew exactly who he
was. And you did that you did that for him. And you did that
for me, right? You connected us without even knowing that you
were connecting us in some future scenario. And I think
that's what at least teaching in public, which is what you're
currently doing here with me right today. That is what that
can do it on such a massive scale. And like prior to hitting
the record button, we were talking about this, like the
indie hackers scene has grown so much right? Over the last couple
of years. When you were in Episode 24, it was still kind of
a niche podcast. And now look at the indie hackers podcast and
look at startups for the rest of us or other like podcasts in the
space that have been going on for years, if not almost decades
at this point. Isn't that wonderful? I just I don't know,
I just want to be share my gratitude for people like you
who were there from the start and sharing their story. And I
think it's important. So I can only recommend like doing more
of this and also sharing more on Twitter, because I think you
have you have a lot of pool, you have a lot of people following
you. And you have a lot of interesting insights to share
from running a business.
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah, and I feel like I mean, there's always
like let's say like this, I'm very convinced like every
journey is different. And you know, when I'm sometimes I'm
doing mentoring sessions in a night, once this situation where
I was telling somebody, something, and then after you
later they told me, Well, half a year later, you told me that and
it didn't work. And I was like, Yeah, I don't know. Like, I just
said stuff, which worked for me. And I feel so I feel like you
need to be really responsible in how you teach and how you share
things. And again, I can just tell my story. I can. I'm 100%
sure that any hacker who's starting today has maybe more
thing, more opportunities, but maybe it's also more difficult.
I don't know like it's different. And different. Yeah,
that's so the I think there's a very how to say it. Like, you
need to be careful not to put yourself there as the Google
understood everything and look at me, like with refiner I had,
it was the fourth product. I was building the fourth startup. And
I was convinced I was having an easy time just executing
whatever. And no, it didn't happen. And so yeah, teaching
great. But for all people just starting out, every be be be
mindful about that. Every story is different than when we both
started when we both sold our company. It was a different
time. And sounds really like old dudes. On the radio. It's kind
of true. Yeah, that's right. Different time.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, it's and you're 100% Right. Like all
advice is anecdotal. Like, it's all just a story and experience
that you have, and no advice is ever completely copyable in
different circumstances. I 100% agree. And you're right. In a
way, it's not even teaching. It's just sharing. It's just
sharing a journey. It's just giving people just insights into
what happened. Why you think it happened, not why it happened.
Because you never really know. Right? But while you have a
strong sense that it happened for a reason, and then that's
all you can do, and people have to pull from that what they what
they want to learn and I love this. That's why I've been
asking you questions not really, for you to give me answers on
how to do it. But more answers on how you did it. And I, I feel
you're doing one other thing. And I kind of want to get back
to this because as myself a coder as well, a technical
person. And knowing that many people listening to this are
engineers with, you know, not too much patience for marketing
or for sales, but they they do want to build, they do want to
make things you're doing something with refined art is
really cool. And you kind of make your documentation for your
product, kind of a first class citizen of the product. And I'm
going to kind of ask you like, how, how did that come to be?
Why is that? And how do you keep this not just an add on but like
a core part of your product?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah, very interesting. Because when I look
back at the products I was building, they kind of reflect
me as a person in the way that they are technical. My audience,
the users who are using my products like 1password, Doc pas
and refiner, at least tech savvy people, they're not coders, but
technical people who like that about the software who like that
they have lots of options to customize everything really the
way they want to. And so the type of products, building our
but I'm not, I don't want to say complex because complex sounds
difficult, I want them to be super easy. Let's say they are
powerful. And with that comes also options and customizations
and all those kinds of things. And I feel like if I would not
have a really top notch documentation, I would, that
wouldn't fit, right. That would feel weird in a way. And
sometimes I've witnessed that with products, they have a
beautiful website, like really shiny, super nice, well made
website, you sign up. And then it's already a little bit, not
so beautiful, the software. And then you realize that it's super
disappointing, because there's not much functionality,
functionality, or it's super complex, or whatever. And I
don't like this journey. I rather prefer having a good
website, a good product and a good documentation and standard
high. And so So I felt like for the type of product I'm building
and the audience I'm having, I'm kind of it's my job to say,
look, you can do a lot of stuff with this software. It's quite
powerful. And I get it, it's maybe not obvious to you. But
it's obvious to me because I built that. But it's definitely
not obvious to you because you're using it for the first
time. Here's the documentation, I'm trying my best that it's
good for you, which then makes my life easier as well. Because
I feel like with every user who's finding their answer in
the documentation, I have one more one less email to take care
of.
Arvid Kahl: Interesting. So it's kind of it is helping you
reducing customer service load because people kind of help
themselves. That that does remind me you were saying in the
beginning that the thing you built that didn't go anywhere
initially for refiner was very like enterprise, the sales heavy
or it focused at that. I guess now what you've been building is
more of a low touch kind of SaaS. Do you think it I know,
it's still both. And that is an interesting thing. We'd like to
know how you bridge this, like how you build a business that is
both low touch SaaS ish. And, you know, high touch sales. But
what I'm also interested in, as we are still at documentation,
do you think like having a good documentation is actually a
beneficial part of your sales process? Both in low touch and
and high touch? Like how does it fit into this kind of dichotomy
of sales?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah, that's a really a lot of good, good
points in there. So when I started out, I started as
product for startups starting at $39 per month. And I over the
time, it's so obvious, once you know it, once you see it, it's
so obvious, but then I didn't see it all the time, I realized,
actually, companies who are getting the most value out of my
product are bigger. They're not early stage startups, because if
you to get value out of surveys, you need to have either a lot of
users, and I'm talking like 1000s, and not to hundreds. Or
end or you have a team, which is so big that like opinions or gut
feeling is not counting that much anymore. So basically, you
you're having you think like, you know, like early day or
early stage founders, often driven by gut feeling and
talking with the users. And then it's like, less about really
like hard numbers. And this works really well and I'm still
doing this, you know, like I'm still at that point. But once
you're becoming a bigger company, then you want to have
some proof before you start the machine of implementing
something. And this is when surveys can really, really get
you a lot Have peace of mind, actually. And so I realized that
the best customers in the sense of they are getting the most
value out of it. More like established startups with
attraction, or even scale ups, or b2c marketplaces, all these
these kind of software companies. And with this
realization came also going with the prices up. And so today the
small price starts at 79, if you pay the yearly, but more like
99, if you pay monthly, and I mean, they're their customers
paying more than 1000 per month, like it's really like a spend,
which is I would call on maybe not already mid market, but But
yeah, definitely not in the hackers, no, and no early stage
startups, or just a sum of them. And with this knowledge came
also the realization that on the upper end, they cannot go search
service, they they cannot go low touch. I mean, even if they tell
me, oh, look, I created an account, I understand the
software, I know what to do, they still need to go through
legal, they still need to pay invoices, on a yearly basis,
they still want to have a signature on the terms of
service, they still want to have on security audit, and so on and
so on. So even if my user, the one who is signing up would like
just to put in his credit card and be done with it, they can't
do that, because they're in a bigger company where they have
other processes. And this is where my colleague flurry comes
in, where she is basically, for these kinds of customers, some
kind of project manager, driving the project, project forward,
following up talking with different stakeholders and so
on. This is why I'm having this dual model. If it was up to me,
let's do low touch, right? I mean, there's just this reality,
if you buy if you sell to, if you sell to banks or whatever.
That's not how it works, right? So yeah, and this is why you can
do both. And some, sometimes people are like, oh, I need to
decide whether low touch or sales as sales driven. And I
feel like yeah, all have it. Our customers like it like this, and
their customers like that. And some people like to try it. Some
people like to talk some people like to whatever. And then if
you want to grow your business, then do all of it, right?
Arvid Kahl: Do you see a tendency? Like do you see a move
more towards enterprise over time or like a shot someone?
Moritz Dausinger: Right now it's quite stable, actually, they go
feel like would need to look it up, I would say 1/3, custom
contracts, custom pricing to a third is credit card. As is
like.
Arvid Kahl: That's I think like that, that immediately makes me
think of technical implementation of that kind of
pricing structure. I don't want to dive into it too much. But
I'm thinking, if this is what can happen to a business, it
makes a lot of sense to think of your pricing structure, when you
start building your business is something very flexible, right?
Like, how did you how did you think about this? Like, how did
you build?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah, there was actually one pivotal point
title, I don't know how to say it. But Pivotal, exactly. In the
beginning, I was charging based on survey responses. The more
survey responses you collect per month, the more you pay me,
didn't work out, because there were a huge companies which were
which were synchronizing all their user data to me. So I was
like, crunching a lot of user data just to have like 50
responses, because they just wanted to serve a really tiny
segment of the user base. So I switched the model to what I
call monthly of what what is called, commonly called monthly
active users. So the more users you are having, the more data
you're synchronizing with my app, the more you need to pay,
which is kind of a better proxy for how much value you're
actually also getting out of the software. And this kind of stuff
is baked in into the code in this in a way that I have an
admin back end where I can for each account, say this is their
quarter, then and also have feature flags, for example, they
can access the translation feature, they can do this and
this and this. And the way technically it is done is like
somebody on a normal plan on the essential to growth plan will
have by default, all the settings as written in my config
file, but I can go in and override them. And then there's
this one special plan which is called the Enterprise plan and
there it's based Usually, the default settings are really
generous. And I can still also go in and override for every
account to thing. And then on the billing side I using I'm
using charge B, which also allows me to set for every
customer on the Enterprise plan, a custom amount. And so this is
where you see comes also this all about automation before,
that I'm dealing with invoices and stuff all day long. And the
downside is really like the bigger customers. It's so nice
if you have suddenly like $500 Mr. On top, because there's this
one new customer, but this customer needs to have a new
invoice in one year. So whichever reminder in one year,
you're going to send it and you need to send a couple of weeks
before because they takes them some time. And so yeah, there
comes the ops complexity.
Arvid Kahl: I guess it's worth it. Right. That's that's kind of
what I'm hearing I keep these big customers that their value
metric is pretty, pretty scalable. I do wonder how much
does this cost to run? Because if you ingest all this data, you
kind of have to have some kind of cloud hosting and all that.
Is that manageable? Like how do you manage that cost down?
Moritz Dausinger: It is an issue, right? So my approach to
the past was always, as a tiny team, I'm happy to pay more to
AWS for managed services, Manage Database, manage queuing, all
the you know, the SQS, the s3, the RDS, it's such a really, if
you just it just it's just running. And well, there's a
price to it. And the price is now becoming so big that I could
actually basically hire somebody. Maybe not full time.
But I could definitely spend some money on somebody who can
help me putting all this on bare metal and let it run for her
know, maybe 1/10 of the cost. Because right now I'm at the
point where I'm between 15 and 20% of the Mr. Which goes
straight to AWS. And I know that in the past, it was more like
for my other businesses like five to 10, which I don't know
if there's a benchmark out there, but I know there are lots
of very, very successful businesses which are paying a
couple of $100 per month. So the the cost for me right now is
like really one of the it's definitely a topic and with 20%
of your MRR going straight to the hosting provider. It's
painful. Yeah.
Arvid Kahl: Oh, yeah, that is expensive. It does remind me of
what we did with Vita panda. Because we did hosted database,
like my managed database stuff as well. I think we paid like it
when we sold. We had 55,000 and MRR and I think at least 5000 of
that was an expense just purely to I think Mongo HQ was the name
of it composed was so was later bought by bought by IBM at some
point. It's just for database, which
Moritz Dausinger: is 10% off to present. But that was
Arvid Kahl: almost the only expense we had. So we were good.
But you know, it's still it's substantial. it's substantial.
And you're right at that point, if you if you pay $5,000 a month
for something that would cost you maybe a couple hundreds in,
like the technical expenses, you could pay the remaining 4500 To
a person to be there all the time and dealing with it. It's
just I always, in my own mind, I always thought I'm paying 5000
To compose because they have a team of 20 people that if
something goes down, it's up again, because they're working
in shifts. If there is like a zero day exploit somewhere, they
immediately patched a system, you know, if a server explodes
or what wasn't that like in I don't know if it was in France,
or something recently, where there was this flooding into the
data center. Like if that happens, somebody is swimming to
my server and making sure it's still running. You know, that's
kind of what you pay for it
Moritz Dausinger: moment. Exactly the approach that I had,
like, whatever I can the hosting sites, give to a managed
service. And I would really recommend that actually, like I
would definitely not recommend trying to save 100 bucks in the
beginning and then run your own database server and rescue
business because maybe you misconfigured it and your
database is gone. Right. I mean, that's risky. That's a major
risk. And yeah, but as I said before, like right now I'm
coming to a point where I feel like something should be done
about.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, you're right, though. Like it's not just
misconfigured. And then it's kind of gone because it
implodes, but also somebody might just really get access to
all your customer data. Right. So and the more you move into
your kind of compliance level enterprise sales demo, you have
to be absolutely clear that the thing you checked on their
checkbox is actually protected. Right?
Moritz Dausinger: Yeah. So for the audit. That's another really
big point, folks. Somebody in the GDPR world, we are hosting
in Europe because of that. And AWS allows us to do that.
Security wise, the data is encrypted in transit, and also
addressed this kind of stuff, like, yeah, you can do all this,
but I am not a DevOps engineer. And these guys are super
expensive. And yeah, as you said, you you're not getting
this level of riobel reliability yourself. And this is why I'm
kind of continuing with it. And it's already one year that I'm
saying I need to reduce the cost. But then
Arvid Kahl: well, you'll find you'll find the right time for
that kind of kind of brings me to kind of the the final
question where, what are your future plans for refiner?
where's this going? What do you what do you plan for the next
couple years? Or do you even have plans? I'd like to know,
Moritz Dausinger: it's a really good question. So like, on the
product side, there are a couple of things I could do. Because,
you know, like with refinery, basically in the product, that
would be a web app or mobile app where I'm displaying inside the
app survey. And a couple of other tools exist. They are like
onboarding, tool tips, or checklists, whatever you can,
you can do a lot of action stuff inside an app. So I could branch
out there. There's another opportunity where it could
branch out more into the data crunching and maybe add a layer
of that you can also send me product usage data, then I could
do stuff like, look, power users, more satisfied and no
power users. And I mean, we can do that already today with
integrations and our customers are doing that. But I could
build that in into my product. So there's lots of stuff I could
do. And at the same time, I'm feeling like, well, maybe
refiner is justice, pro poor tool thing. There's very, very
specific tool, which allows you to do the best possible in app
survey experience. And it's fine like that, you know, like, I'm
not really, I didn't decide on that right now. And in terms of
the company, like, what I would like to do, is definitely hire
support and Customer Success people. So that this is off my
chest like because you know, like being in the owner or like
a solo founder. And everybody knows it, right? If there's so
much freedom, there's so much good parts about it. But one of
the huge downside is you are responsible all the time. And I
can right now, like when I go on vacation, I can put it down to
like 15 to 30 minutes per day on the good days. And so I need to
check him out in the morning. And I'm telling myself, well,
that's fine. That's a good price to pay for all the freedom which
comes along. But I think one of the goals would be to be at a
point where the team is like, really bulletproof. And I can
say, if I don't get an SMS or phone call, I consider
everything is going fine. And I said we're gonna go.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, that sounds like the perfect. It's kind of
reminds me of what John Warrillow was saying and built a
cell, like the perfect sellable business is a business that can
run without you where you remove yourself from operations. So
that's kind of almost the logical follow up questions. I
know, you're thinking about eventually exiting the business,
is it going to be sold one day? What do you think?
Moritz Dausinger: You know, you never know. Right now isn't a
good time. I think now, it's not the right time. For several
reasons, I think. Not actually not for several reasons. It's
just not at the point where I would like to let it go. There's
really like just so much stuff. I can still do. I want to do.
But yeah, it's talking to us again. Yeah, that's
Arvid Kahl: right. Yeah, that's I think that's that's the
mentality that indie hackers just develop at some point.
Right? We will see also, not now maybe, depends on the offer.
Right? It's always it's always combination of,
Moritz Dausinger: and what you just mentioned, right? I don't
know who said it, like, maybe it was also Kevin. A business that
is easy to run, and business, which is easy to sell, like
basically what you just said before, like in different words.
And it's kind of should be, I mean, there are times where
you're pushing in times where you're giving all you have to
make it grow as fast as possible. And I feel like the
next step for refiner might be this well, it's a marathon.
Let's do cool things down and then everything can happen
right? Then I can run it for 10 more years because it's cause
Hackley. Salad, whatever
Arvid Kahl: I loved, I love the idea of like calming it down.
Because once you're calm, you see more things like you're not
in this kind of chaotic panic mode, because every fire needs
to be doused immediately right but you Good. Okay, now this is
a way I could go or let's just slightly move over here. I think
that is exactly right. I'm, I'm super pumped to just follow your
journey along. And I, I certainly hope you're going to
be more active on Twitter, I'm going to try and follow you on
every podcast you go at any point, obviously, but I would
love to see you share more of this because I think the journey
of a business that had to pivot like 18 months in and is now
profitable, and then growing and finding enterprise customers,
that is a story that is eight super successful compared to
many other people's stories, even though you might feel like
you're still in the middle of it, but just look at it from
somebody who has nothing, right. This is a glowing example of how
it could look like. And it's something that I just want to
see these little steps that you take off, I want to see, what
are you trying here? Are you are you branching out to, you know,
your tooltip kind of onboarding thing? Or are you actually
focusing on just being the product that does this? This is
exciting for me to just follow along the journey. So I would
love for you to do this. And that brings me to my last
question. Where can people find more about you? And where can
they follow that journey that I just promised them.
Moritz Dausinger: So as I'm now restarting to use, Twitter is
the best place definitely like, I feel like it's for me, it's
still the place where I can, most easily and most freely, to
speak my mind about the business. And I'm, you know,
like, also Twitter is for me, like pure business. I'm not
really. I'm not sharing personal stuff there. So yeah, please go
to Twitter and Dow Zinger. I guess even a LinkedIn up. And I
promise, I promise I will be more active there.
Arvid Kahl: I don't I don't want to put you on the spot. But I
would love to see it because I think the community can benefit
so much from you. I think they already have I certainly have.
And again to bring this to a close. Thank you so much for
everything you have done over the last six years in being
there for people sharing your story, sharing your knowledge,
and for keeping hopefully keeping keeping at it and
keeping sharing your story, which was a wonderful
conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Moritz Dausinger: It's my pleasure and really mean it and
thank you for inviting me.
Arvid Kahl: Absolutely. Thank you.
And that's it for today. Thank you for listening to The
Bootstrapped Founder. You can find me on Twitter, if Twitter
is still there, @arvidkahl. You find my books and my Twitter
course there as well. And if you want to support me and the show,
please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get this podcast in
your podcast player of choice and leave a rating and a review
by going to (http://ratethispodcast.com/founder).
Any of this, will really really help the show. Thank you very
much for listening and have a wonderful day. Bye bye