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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Dagobert Renouf (00:01)
Hello Maxime, welcome to Launch Day.
Maxime (00:03)
Hey, Dagor, thanks and nice to finally meet you.
Dagobert Renouf (00:08)
Yeah, so you are in the right in the middle of my interview day. Your call number five. So you're the call where I have hope that now I have less because I have eight and you're like on the right side. Like, yeah, I start having some hope. Yeah. And I just eat so I will probably feel tired for 10 minutes, but you know, will be better. I'm sorry about that. No, yeah, I'm just joking.
Maxime (00:20)
Yeah, okay. So you're in no group with... Nice.
Dagobert Renouf (00:38)
⁓ Where are you from? Because you are French, obviously, and I'm just curious where you're
Maxime (00:45)
Yes, so I'm French from Paris. So I'm born and raised and grew up in Paris until I was 23. And then I moved to Singapore where I'm still based officially. I'm mainly based in Singapore, but being fully remote, I travel quite a fair bit of time. So I would say I spent half of the year in Singapore and half of the year abroad and coming back to France sometimes to see the family and the friends.
Dagobert Renouf (00:48)
Okay.
Okay,
okay, because you have residency, I guess, in Singapore and then you move around. That's awesome. Singapore is quite expensive. That's why I didn't consider it, it seems awesome. It seems like once you get to a certain level and you can afford it, it seems like probably like the best place, like for everything, for taxes, but also for just like the quality of life seems awesome.
Maxime (01:17)
Yes, that's right.
Yeah, the lifestyle is good there, so that's why I stayed so long. But indeed it's quite expensive, so I didn't come there as a solo unemployed founder. I came here first as a student and then I stayed, found my first job in startup and the salary are quite competitive and Singapore pays well, especially in startups. So yeah, I stayed there, met my partner there.
Dagobert Renouf (01:46)
Yeah.
And what did you do?
Were you like a developer? What was your role?
Maxime (02:03)
So
no, so I'm not, by the way, disclaimer, I'm not a dev, right? So I don't code myself, even though I've been managing since seven years, since all the startups I've been, tech team, and I'm heavily involved into the product. oops, sorry. So I can understand like... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (02:11)
No? Yeah.
Maxime (02:23)
coding, the structure, the architecture even of a database and on the backend. But I worked with a very sleek and lean team of like three freelancer, two devs, one front, one back and one designer. And I operate this kind of like mini startup studio where I ship like a lot of different startups until some pick up like the latest one, Blockbuster that we will talk about. So yeah, that's how I operate.
Dagobert Renouf (02:43)
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Maxime (02:53)
And yeah, going back to your first question, my first job in Singapore, it was to do that kind of product. And I was actually the first employee of an insure tech startup there. And so I had to do everything that was not related to insurance and learn from scratch everything related to like fundraising, product management, finding the right tech partners, whether those are.
Dagobert Renouf (03:03)
Yeah.
And when
you're working in startups like this, you basically have 10 holes in one. Like you come for one hole, but you end up doing 10 things. So you learn a lot. Yeah.
Maxime (03:20)
Yeah, Exactly. So was doing also
the automation, internal automation and operations, the first sales strategy, the go-to-market, the website, the marketing, all the Google Tag, you know, that can go deep, like infinitely, you can go deeper and deeper always.
Dagobert Renouf (03:39)
Yeah, SEO,
tracking, analytics, yeah, I see that. Yeah, so like, and that's kind of like the cool thing when you're indie hacking, but even though that wasn't indie hacking, like, so that's related. It's like, it's about being a generalist, you know, it's like, that's how you grow the most, I guess, you know, so.
Maxime (03:54)
Yeah, exactly. I feel
like, mean, what's that taught me and I still use to this day and I still feel confident about creating any project is because of that, because I've done pretty much everything from scratch already. So I don't feel stopped or scared to launch something because I haven't done it because I know that, okay, it's like everything I've done always. I will just like start from scratch if I don't know something and just like step by step learn and
Dagobert Renouf (04:22)
Yeah, you
Maxime (04:24)
compared.
Dagobert Renouf (04:24)
can figure it out. You're not intimidated by anything. Because like for example, some people, they are scared of dev because like, okay, it's very intimidating. But since you have some experience with working with people, like you know what, you know, how much it's gonna cost you, how much it's gonna be. And so you can, you know, you're less, because that's like I've.
When you're not a developer, I've noticed a lot of people have that problem. It's like they end up overpaying developers and they don't have what they need and it's not working out and it's super stressful for them because it's so expensive. yeah, when you're in the free... Yeah, it's always easy. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. There was a lot of talk about, it's the end of like, you know, cannot find a job as a developer anymore. like, it's just because the... I mean...
Maxime (04:53)
Which is good for the indie flancers ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (05:14)
the big companies fired a lot of people, but like it seemed to me, and we had data on this that we just went back to before COVID. But before COVID, it was already freaking easy to find a job as a developer. It wasn't impossible at all. And so, I mean, maybe now with AI, it's gonna change a bit more now, but yeah, I think as a developer, you still have a big edge and a bigger, it's so easy to find clients. So.
Maxime (05:39)
Yeah,
I feel like it. And I think all these trends like Lowe, that's just my personal take, right? We will see, but I think it scares a lot of ⁓ builders, founders and devs because you're like, okay, everyone's going to build, so the competition is going to be like very stiff. But I feel like it's good because the more builder mean like a lot of people will also need to scale more some projects. So there will always be like a need for devs and for product.
than for any startup role. So I agree with you.
Dagobert Renouf (06:11)
And you know.
And there's also all this hype,
know, it's kind of like, there's too much hype about it. So it's kind of fake, you know, like, you can build anything, but who did actually build anything, you know, that didn't have any skills. That is really great. You know, it happens, but like, it's still very uncommon and probably it works better for some products than some others. And so it's still like, there's so much hype. Like when you see, like even when you're a developer like me, you're going to see
Maxime (06:34)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (06:46)
yeah, look at this new update of like cloud code and you use it and you're gonna, and then you use it and it's not that. It's good, but it's not the hype. And so there's so much hype around AI. It's also hard to know the truth, know? Yeah.
Maxime (06:54)
Mmm.
Yeah, it's fascinating but the speed of how progresses is crazy.
Dagobert Renouf (07:09)
Okay, so you've been a generalist working at startups in Singapore. What's the journey to get to where you are now? What's the journey to starting your own things?
Maxime (07:21)
Yeah, so, okay, so actually I told you I started like first employee of Intratec Startup. So I did my classes there, you know, learning everything from startup. So I did the fundraising, I did, and I was leading that like really from scratch. Like I don't know how to make a deck. I don't know what's a valuation. I don't know what to even evaluate a company and stuff. And I just learned DIY on YouTube. Like there's a lot of content there. It's so great even before Chagy
Dagobert Renouf (07:44)
Yeah.
Maxime (07:50)
on YouTube you can find like pretty much everything. So learn that, we raised funds, we could hire a team. I was really involved in the design of the first version of the product, finding the right team, finding the right operation system and automation from when we have a lead to the nurturing campaign that goes after and stuff. I did really, it was really great to learn all that was needed as a founder basically. So stay there three years.
the company was kind of like plateauing, couldn't really go up. for like one, two years I didn't feel much ⁓ evolution in my world anymore and I thought it was a good time to to live and to to start something else and I was offered to be a co-founder for a crypto asset manager company in Singapore. ⁓ Two people super experimented in... sorry did you ask something?
Dagobert Renouf (08:42)
good.
No, it's just funny. Like crypto, that sounds a bit, ⁓ you know, scammy and fun. So I'm curious.
Maxime (08:56)
Yeah, well, if you're not in crypto, definitely it's going to sound scammy. If you're a bit in crypto, like personally for your investment or because you've built on the blockchain, you start realizing that the blockchain is an interesting technology and you can achieve a lot of interesting things with it. So that's part of the crypto was interesting to me, much more than the finance part, to be honest. But yeah, I got this opportunity to join as a co-founder with a super good condition, good salary, good equity.
project was good, the other co-founders were solid, ⁓ much more senior than me, coming from finance, like ⁓ a banking industry for like 20 years, so they knew everything about compliance, regulation, trading, and have a good network as well.
Dagobert Renouf (09:41)
Yeah.
Maxime (09:47)
So yeah, I joined to do exactly the same thing as I implemented in my previous startup. Like, okay, fundraising, starting from scratch, having a business model, having a website, a mobile app, finding the right ⁓ dev team, finding the right designer, doing the design, the product thinking and all that. So did that for about one year. And then I realized finance was not a fit for me personally. And also I grew even further that desire to really create my own ⁓ even
Dagobert Renouf (10:04)
Okay? Okay.
Maxime (10:17)
having lack of founders and really be full in control right so I launched something in crypto ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (10:24)
And why isn't that a fit? Why
did you think finance wasn't a fit for you?
Maxime (10:29)
Because I feel it's too abstract and I'm sure you would get that as a builder when you build in finance It's really it's really abstract because the business model of asset management funding in crypto is like taking people money Invest on their behalf and getting them a return, but there's no real build There's no really
Dagobert Renouf (10:51)
you
Maxime (10:52)
concrete, tangible ⁓ products that you see the users using daily or that you see, you know, user flow or stuff like this. It's very much just numbers. And that's the part that I feel was a bit pointless. ⁓ Just working on numbers. Yeah, exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (10:59)
Yes.
It doesn't have to be an app, it could be an excel sheet. Basically, the product could just be an excel sheet. Like technically,
yeah.
Maxime (11:15)
And most, yeah, you're absolutely right. And most of the clients that were onboarded, ⁓ even though we have an app, we had an app, ⁓ they went offline because it's more traditional process and stuff. So I mean, that's interesting to learn about new industry and new skill set. But yeah, definitely not the part that I get interested in the most. And you're basically selling numbers out of...
numbers so something was was feeling off you know and I feel like building real product that you see user use daily your tool you get much more satisfied
Dagobert Renouf (11:51)
And at this point, what
were you thinking? What were you dreaming of building at this point? What were the things that made you think, okay, I'm leaving because I want to do something? Because usually we have an idea or we have something, even though it's not what you do in the end, but sometimes that's what happens.
Maxime (12:07)
So you mean when I joined that crypto asset manager or when I left?
Dagobert Renouf (12:10)
No, when you left,
when you left, what was the vision?
Maxime (12:16)
So yeah when I left I had an idea in mind around NFT so yeah I was really in my deep crypto crypto blockchain period it was also like end of 2021 2022 so it was like crazy All right so
Dagobert Renouf (12:24)
Yeah.
I did an NFT collection three years ago
and people thought I was gonna scam them so I sold nothing.
Maxime (12:36)
Yeah, like 99
% of the NFT collection, unfortunately. But yeah, that was really like the thing everyone was talking about. And I did, I was super interested in that. I did a lot of research about how to use the, so more about like the blockchain aspect of it, as I mentioned earlier, right? It was more to use that new technology.
Dagobert Renouf (12:54)
And so what's that?
Can you tell a little bit about it? Because I really don't know. So I'm just curious.
Maxime (12:59)
Yeah, so quickly what I really
enjoyed is really like AI, right? Like what's so fun building with AI is like it's a new technology evolving so fast and so there's so many things yet to be built and for crypto blockchain it felt the same. So the blockchain basically like a crash course it provides like a ⁓ unified and certified and verified information on a decentralized network. So there are huge ⁓ upsides of using the
blockchain if you think about it for everything that is for example passport or stuff it's a very good example because the passport today is just a piece of paper with the chip right and it feels so outdated because you can counterfeit you can lose it and someone can steal it and it's just a piece of paper right while if this information you put your passport is on the blockchain it can be I mean your own passport can be on the blockchain only
Dagobert Renouf (13:42)
Yeah.
Maxime (13:59)
one time so no one can ever do a counterfeit of your passport you can prove the ownership of your passport without even having to carry it physically no one can prove ownership ⁓ besides you and yeah, shall you lose it or something you can just... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (14:04)
Yes.
Maxime (14:19)
update that information on the blockchain and that will be updated and visible by anyone forever. So it's super easy to track and to add some real...
Dagobert Renouf (14:28)
Yeah, okay. It's really the... It's a cyber security
thing, kind of. It's really like a...
Maxime (14:34)
Yeah,
there's a lot of use cases in the cybersecurity and my project, my initial project was like NFT for content creators. So it was not something I dreamt of since I was a kid, but I was really thinking about like what could be the blockchain application that can also make a good business. And I thought this one was ticking a lot of boxes. So it was basically for content creators or everyone was an audience, like influencers creating NFT collection for them that could be earned or bought by their biggest
fans and each NFT would give like perks to the fans like a meetup in real life or true zoom getting some dedicated product or stuff like this or personal shout out for the birthday or stuff like this so kind of a only fan without all the porn sexy and stuff part and on the blockchain right so it was like this and
Dagobert Renouf (15:25)
Yeah, okay. No, that's interesting,
Maxime (15:31)
And actually it worked a bit, like we did two big drops in Singapore, one with a super famous DJ. So that was a super fun adventure, right? But then right after, yeah, that was so good. And I went with him on backstage in Singapore clubs and stuff. So that was good. And for a builder in Singapore, I really felt like, okay, I'm connecting with like Singapore local scene even more and stuff. So that was interesting.
Dagobert Renouf (15:40)
Yeah, I bet.
Maxime (15:56)
But then NFT market like totally crashed. So everyone lost trust into NFTs and blockchain digital goods. So no one would ever buy like NFTs anymore. And content creators, when I pitched them saying like, yeah, we can do NFT collection, they stopped directly at NFT because for them it was like a scam. And also for sure like the business model was not perhaps as good as it could be like on web.
Dagobert Renouf (16:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why do you think it crashed? Because I don't actually know why it crashed so bad. Because to me, it never seemed like something real. Like it's funny, people say it's a scam, but it's always been like about... It's like digital collectibles or like digital art. it's not real value, you know? And so it's never been and it's fine. But it seemed like people like eventually woke up like... But it's just not real money. Yeah, of course it's not, you know?
Maxime (16:27)
I'm just.
⁓
Dagobert Renouf (16:51)
I don't know, what happened you think?
Maxime (16:52)
I guess it was just a little hype, know, like there was a huge hype which drove up the price like crazy and then the hype faded because the art is still the same and the properties are still the same. It's just the hype that fades and the value that people...
gave to NFT also faded. And also we thought, and me too, very much to be honest, that NFT adoption would be much more massive, right? And we saw like Twitter back in the days, they started implementing the NFT, you know, exactly right. So it was like a big thing. Everyone was talking about these, the biggest companies like OpenSea, the NFT marketplace and others, they were like killing it. So we were just all so hyped thinking like,
Dagobert Renouf (17:22)
Yes, you could have NFT profile pic. I remember that was so cool.
Maxime (17:39)
wow, it's gonna keep going like this and adoption has just started and it will be ⁓ even much bigger ⁓ in a short while. But actually the opposite happened and even Twitter they rolled back their profile picture and you cannot do that.
Dagobert Renouf (17:52)
Yeah, you can't even do that. Because basically
for people who don't remember, that was three years ago, you could have like an hexagon profile pic ⁓ instead of circle if you had the NFT. And that was a link to your NFT image. That was super cool. But it's funny you talk about this because every time I see like new people come and they are new in the industry, everybody's jumping on the new hype, but they don't know this because I remember this time we...
Maxime (18:07)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (18:21)
all thought NFT was going to be like, you had lots of critics, but it seemed like obvious blockchain NFT, everything seems so it was going to be that, you know, it was obvious. And then it crashes. And I think like some, for example, right now with AI, I'm not saying AI will crash because it's a different thing and solving problems differently, but still I think it's super hyped and probably overhyped and people don't realize if you just, you know, it's a big risk also, you know, and so
Maxime (18:32)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (18:51)
That's, like there's so many things like this, know, everything goes through a hype phase and then down. Because even if AI stays, the hype will probably not stay eventually, you know, it will just be something. I don't know, but, or maybe I'm wrong, but like all I'm saying is there is always uncertainty. But when there is hype and everybody believes it, you think it's certain, it's 100 % certain, but it never is.
Maxime (19:02)
Mm.
Mm-hmm. Good. Good.
you become totally biased and you feel like ⁓ you're invisible basically in your hype and stuff. yeah, let's see, AI seems to me personally much more solid and much more here to stay and the speed of iteration as we discussed briefly is like crazy and I think we're just scratching the surface of like what we can do with agents and stuff. There's gonna be like huge waves plus that implementing in robotics and stuff. mean, perhaps I agree.
know if the hype will fade and when but I think there's still a solid a long time to go with the hype.
Dagobert Renouf (19:53)
Yeah, to be honest, I don't know. I use it all the time. I only code with this now. I use it all the time. I pay for cloud and everything and also chat GPT. I also think it's possible, for example, because we don't have the same things. When there's a new model, it doesn't seem groundbreaking now. And they're always trying to hype it more. And it's possible we reach the end of one phase, and maybe it's not going to get better.
Maxime (20:00)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (20:21)
Actually it even gets a bit worse because they have to realize, we need to make money now. So they make it less powerful so they can make more money. So yeah.
Maxime (20:29)
Yeah, I saw and that
is that is crazy. Let's see what plays out But yeah, so going back to the yeah going back to that project So yeah, I started like this and I started with again that same playbook that I knew I've totally unlocked which is like, okay starting solo finding the right team ⁓ Raising funds so I raised initially for this NFT project around like ⁓ 500k USD So I was I was okay to to hire to spend
Dagobert Renouf (20:34)
So yeah.
Yeah.
Maxime (20:59)
to structure things and I did a lot of like solo founder wookie mistakes like overspending hiring too many people too fast spending too much on branding which is I feel now totally unnecessary until you are at like 10k MRR so to tell you a few funny anecdotes like on the branding I think I spent like so I started easy with like $500 on the logo and then on the
Dagobert Renouf (21:16)
Yeah.
Maxime (21:28)
graphic charts a bit more with the agency, know, because I wanted it to be fancy and I'm like, okay, this is the one that idea is gonna is gonna take me to the next five years and 100 % is gonna be a unicorn, right? So I was worth
Dagobert Renouf (21:39)
It's funny, like we don't invest
in branding because we think, it's a good move. We invest in branding because we are convinced it's gonna be a successful idea. So then you think, well, it should look good because it's gonna be awesome. Because you don't think, yeah.
Maxime (21:50)
Yeah, I mean it's beautiful. Yeah.
Yeah, it's because you believe too much is working
even before having validated anything because you have some prediction that your project is going to blow up that you you you're like, okay, I will increase the speed of this blowing up and increase the the conversion rate and stuff by having like a strong branding and a super nice UX and stuff. So yeah, I did that. even like did some ⁓ business card physical business cards for NFT project because it was part of the package. I could just top up
Dagobert Renouf (21:59)
Yeah, yeah,
Yeah, yeah.
Maxime (22:24)
a little bit hundred dollars to get business card I was like okay yeah of course let's have everything I did some t-shirts ⁓ like something around
Dagobert Renouf (22:31)
⁓ my God. They saw you coming.
were like, yeah, we're gonna get this guy. We're gonna get, we're gonna sell him business cards. Yeah, No, I get it.
Maxime (22:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, most probably.
Yeah, I mean it was different
stuff, t-shirts, went on Vista print and stuff, stickers. So I ordered something like 200 t-shirts and nine months after I pivoted and changed the branding completely and I still have at home like 180 t-shirts unused. So that's like part of all the early mistakes. ⁓ But yeah, ultimately NFT crashed, couldn't find any more content creators willing to trust that. Also the business model was not so great.
Dagobert Renouf (22:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maxime (23:10)
To be frank, I realized that after. So after nine months, I switched totally pivoted to something else. And that pivot was like the best decision, right? Because it gives us with the team more momentum, new renewed energy. ⁓ I felt super stuck, ⁓ keeping going on the NFT content creators, feeling that it's not working out. I was starting to burn out like very slowly, right? It was not a real burnout, but I was,
Dagobert Renouf (23:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maxime (23:40)
hard to get motivation on daily basis.
Dagobert Renouf (23:41)
But it's scary
to pivot, but then once you do it, it can be very liberating also.
Maxime (23:46)
was
⁓ liberating. Really, I felt like freedom. Like, okay, I don't have to fight my mind about how I'm going to make this work. No, it just doesn't work. And let's move on and let's have a clear vision again and stuff like this. So that new pivot didn't work best, but at least I unlocked the fact that I could pivot and I could successfully do so. And so after six months in next project that was still in crypto, I pivoted again.
Dagobert Renouf (23:53)
Yeah.
Maxime (24:15)
to something else in crypto then took four months only to pivot again so every time I kept pivoting, pivoting and every time it was a shorter time to the pivot and that led me to realize at some point okay actually I'm gonna be much more agile if so I basically all the team ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (24:24)
Yeah.
Maxime (24:36)
so I had to let them go because there was no more ⁓ cash anymore, right? The 500k was totally burned. And also, yeah, also the project was too different, so their skill set was not, were not like relevant anymore, so that was a big thought.
Dagobert Renouf (24:41)
Yeah. Yeah.
Or you only need
generalists at that stage, people who can do everything, kind of.
Maxime (24:54)
Yeah, kind of, and I needed
tech and stuff, but everyone needs to have the startup mindset and crazy ambition and crazy energy and stuff. So I trimmed down the...
Dagobert Renouf (25:02)
Hmm.
So at this point, what
you told me, like you had 20k left or something and then you went back up. So how did that go? Did you do it alone?
Maxime (25:10)
Yeah.
⁓ Yeah, so I had like 20k left and I kept only the same team as I worked with still today so that freelancers ⁓ outsourced two freelancers dev, one front one back and one designer part-time, right?
So very lean cost structure, the devs are outsourced in Southeast Asia, so very competitive as well pricing for me, so I could really lower the burn rate, not spend too much a month and just keep going with those 20k that would give us like good runway to if we were in this mindset that we totally officialized saying like okay we're gonna launch in like four to six weeks maximum, start validating with revenue, see what sticks.
Dagobert Renouf (25:31)
Okay.
Yeah.
Maxime (26:01)
If that sticks, okay, we stay and we double down. If that doesn't, we kill immediately and we start something new, right? Because I've done it's mini-pivot.
Dagobert Renouf (26:08)
And so what was the
idea at this point?
Maxime (26:11)
Yeah, so the idea was just to get a maximum of idea and to launch it for six weeks. so I started by doing, yeah, and also very important thing at this stage when I was pirating so fast, I was deeply convinced that this is the right way to do so. So then I don't waste time on a project that doesn't work, waste time, waste resources and stuff. So I was deeply convinced of that, but it seems super odd in Singapore in the startup scene and stuff.
does that it's so unconventional and then like
Dagobert Renouf (26:44)
It's more VC based,
it's more like big founding, yeah.
Maxime (26:48)
Yeah, yeah exactly and Even in startup in France or startup clusters I started Twitter. They they are very much more traditional rights. They don't pivot us there
Dagobert Renouf (26:58)
Yeah, no, 100%.
It's actually not that many people who use this approach, for sure.
Maxime (27:02)
here.
Exactly right.
And so randomly I found a product of Mark Loo, that you know very well, Shipfast. And it was really the beginning and I found it on AppSumo totally randomly because once in a month I go on AppSumo, check the deals and stuff. And so I found that, I is this guy Mark Loo? Why is Shipfast and who is this guy? I see he puts his Twitter link on the product. So I went on Twitter that I barely used at the time.
And ⁓ then I realized there is this whole community of like Hindi hacker and funders and solo funders or so on X twitter and that was like so great to see that and I saw I realized a lot of them and including like Peter levels and stuff
that I got to know at this time ⁓ actually validated the process that I came to a conclusion to, like saying that shipping fast
Dagobert Renouf (28:03)
That's interesting. you
read, I thought you had this idea from that, but you basically figured it out yourself by your own experience that.
Maxime (28:10)
Exactly my experience, exactly
well said, my experience led me to this conclusion and then I realized other people did it too and that was for me like a super strong thing to know because I'm like okay I'm not crazy to get convinced of this like it is a thing and many people have...
Dagobert Renouf (28:19)
Yeah.
You know, that's so important.
That's why it's so important to have some community. Because if you're surrounded by people who do something not like you, you think you're crazy. You think it's not gonna work. And when you see some other people and you think, ⁓ I'm not crazy, it can work. That's so important. That's so important.
Maxime (28:47)
Exactly, exactly. So yeah, that was that was super good to know that and yeah strength in strengthening even more my convictions And so from this day, I started to ship like a product every month so the first one was like tweet search because yeah, I was participating in contributing to the community from this day that I ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (29:05)
Yeah, 50 % of makers start with something like that, you know, because we're like on Twitter, so like, I'm gonna do
something for Twitter. Yeah.
Maxime (29:14)
Yeah,
exactly. yeah, barely made any sales. But that was okay. Because I was super okay with this approach. It's like, I'm actually not building a product. I'm trying to validate if something can work or not for like four, six weeks. So then I don't have time to get emotionally attached to that project or that's not my baby anymore. Like, first one. Yeah, it's a speed dating.
Dagobert Renouf (29:30)
Yeah, yeah.
It's like dating. It's like Tinder until you find
the right one.
Maxime (29:44)
Yeah,
or that's more so I Disclaimer I barely use tinder and stuff, but I didn't do speed dating neither But I think it's even more closer to speed dating like you spend a little bit of time with all the project And you see where there is a fit, right? So it's really that and ⁓ yeah, so I did
Dagobert Renouf (29:58)
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
So when did you find the
fit? What was the thing that made you think, you know, because right now this thing is working a bit.
Maxime (30:04)
I'm not sure if I... I'm not sure. Yeah,
so definitely there's a stronger fit ⁓ with this one. So basically it took me like four products launching like four to six weeks before I launched Blockbuster, which is that SEO content automation tool that I'm fully focused on now. that...
Dagobert Renouf (30:26)
And how did you know that
there was a fit? How did you say to yourself, this is it?
Maxime (30:30)
with revenue, that's the only matrix ⁓ I was looking at. To be honest, it's like, is that making sales and revenue or not? And are people paying for it?
Dagobert Renouf (30:39)
And so how quickly did you
get revenue? Like how did you feel like how?
Maxime (30:43)
So I took like
a bit more than four or five weeks to build it. And then I launched. So when I first launched, I totally mispriced it. And then I changed my approach. It was like too expensive, right? Because I priced it the price of all my competitors who had like months of operations and clients and stuff ahead of me. So I'm like, okay, no, I'm gonna totally readjust.
and I did a launch offer and I made the price like such a no-brainer that in my mind, so yearly plan, and I'm like, if someone is interested by the product and by the offer and the value proposition, it's a no-brainer. So if you're interested, you have to buy it. And if you are not interested to buy it for such price, then it definitely means there is no need for this product and there's no fit. So I started with that and I made like the first 10 sales in one week.
Dagobert Renouf (31:22)
Yeah, you.
Yeah.
Maxime (31:37)
on that no brainer price. So I'm like, okay, we are up to something that's good. Actually people want to use it and are willing to pay some amount for that. So that's cool. And then the great things unlock when you start having your first users, you know that like you get feedback, you discuss with them, you build the roadmap hand in hand with your first users based on what they need.
Dagobert Renouf (31:38)
Good.
And then you realize
the value you provide and you realize you can make it more expensive usually because you're like, they actually like this. it's not just because it was cheap. They actually want this, you know.
Maxime (32:05)
Yeah, right. So after that, mean...
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I was getting like super good feedback and it was like one of the first time that I had like good feedback, not about the product design and UX. I was always making good looking product, but first time people told me like, wow, it's actually helping me a lot for my business. And that's exactly what I needed. Yeah, absolutely.
Dagobert Renouf (32:27)
Yeah, which is much more valuable. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Maxime (32:32)
And so that was the first ever feedback I received like this. I'm like, okay, something's different with this project in a good way. So I kept on going and I increased the price after the launch promo, but still at a discounted price. I had no sales for like four, five days while increasing to the new price. So I'm like, okay, this is over. It's so over after five days no sale. Like people were willing to buy when it was like so cheap. But now that I priced it,
Dagobert Renouf (32:57)
Give it, give it some time, yeah.
Maxime (33:01)
it's over and stuff and then first sell start to kick in and then I got much more and then it kept on going regularly so I'm like wow okay so new price is validating I stand on this price for quite a while and now I'm like more to match your price because the product has evolved a lot since as well with a lot of new features a lot of new stabilization on the core yeah of course so let me share that
Dagobert Renouf (33:21)
Amazing. Can you show us a bit? Can you show us around a bit?
Maxime (33:34)
are you feeling? Is your lunch digestion kicking?
Dagobert Renouf (33:37)
Yeah, no, it's okay. It's actually getting
at the end of it. But I think it's so cool that you figured it out with your own experience, this thing of... ⁓ And it's cool because when I hear you, because sometimes people who just do ship fast, they do it in a very dogmatic way, but not really knowing why. And you have a clear reason why you're doing this. So that's really, really interesting to hear you. Yeah. Can you close this small, riverside window? Because sadly it's recording it. Okay, cool.
Maxime (33:47)
Thanks.
Mm-hmm.
yeah, I've been through all the phases and... I think so. Yeah. Okay. That's it.
So this is how Blockbuster is looking today. So as I mentioned, it's like an SEO automation tool. So the first step, once you're on board, you just have to put your website URL and automatically it will fetch all your website information with AI. So basically your description of the business and activity, your target audience, that is very important. So then all the article will be targeted to be relevant for your audience. The location, if you have any specific benefits, the tone of voice that you use and also
Dagobert Renouf (34:32)
Yes.
Maxime (34:38)
internal links everything is done automatically. Internal links is quite important because it will contribute to the internal linking which is the way to add automatically links to other pages of your website with each blog article. That's one of the best practices for SEO articles.
Dagobert Renouf (34:41)
Bye.
I see, yes. So when
you generate the articles, it would automatically create some links to your other pages. ⁓ I see. That's really smart.
Maxime (35:02)
Right, based on ⁓ what
are the most relevant pages, based on the article context and topics. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (35:10)
Yeah, and so it's generating
automatically, but I see you can update it after, like you can edit it if you need.
Maxime (35:14)
Absolutely. So if you want to modify anything,
you can adjust anything you want and save. So you have control still, but it's just like a fast onboarding. ⁓ And then we automatically provide you with a lot of topics that are custom made to the audience. And those topics will update every month with new topics based on the new keyword trends and the new or just live trends around the industry.
Dagobert Renouf (35:40)
So it's brainstorming the ideas
for you and updating every month.
Maxime (35:44)
Absolutely, and so you have everything with the right keywords to highlight the different ⁓ key points to feature in the article and stuff but So we connect with the API like that data is data for SEO API and so we fetch like the keywords at the onboarding with your website URL as well and then we create the topics ⁓ based on that and
Dagobert Renouf (35:52)
And how's the keyword research happening?
Maxime (36:10)
So yeah, first option is like you use the suggested topics that we provide you But if you have also clear ideas in mind about what you want to write You can just brief anything in that brief box and that can go from here one one simple simple keyword And or that can be like a much longer description You can paste like even a reports or client case study or data for your business or stuff like this and it will generate a note based on that but still keeping in mind
Dagobert Renouf (36:37)
Yeah, okay.
Maxime (36:40)
all your business activity, your audience and stuff. And so from the topics or from the right brief box, you can either generate the article directly or schedule them, right? So when you schedule, it goes on that scheduler where you can basically build your content plan ahead. And so you can schedule for all the next days, weeks, months to come, the contents that you want to create and automatically every day it will auto-generate
that blog article and publish it live to your website. For the publishing, have integration with WordPress, Shopify, Webflow or API key if you use a custom website or any other solutions.
Dagobert Renouf (37:18)
Awesome.
Maxime (37:24)
⁓ And also a very cool thing I feel that it's actually used by already 30 % of our users is that hosting tab. So not sure if hosting is the best word, but basically if you don't have a blog, we can create a blog section for you for free as part of the subscription. So, have a great day.
Dagobert Renouf (37:43)
That's awesome, because to be honest, I
don't want to set up a blog, it seems boring. And you would just create it in a sub-domain. Wow.
Maxime (37:50)
Yes,
absolutely. you could have like today, tomorrow blog.itslaunchday.com and then you can...
change your logo, can choose the theme that you would like your blog to look like. We five different themes and you can adjust the colors to make it yours, the font and all the buttons like call to actions, header, footer links. So you can really easily personalize everything for your blog, provide the basics super well, you don't need more. And if you do that, the cool thing is everything is managed only through Blogbuster. You can manage your blog customization and all your articles and scheduling from there.
Dagobert Renouf (38:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so
Maxime (38:29)
you.
Dagobert Renouf (38:30)
I'm gonna roast ⁓ you a bit and ask you a hard question. I saw one guy who said he generated thousands of blogs for his website and it increases ranking and then he got penalized by Google. It was AI but it was also programmatic SEO.
Maxime (38:34)
Okay.
yeah,
it was programmatic SEO. I saw this tweet actually. ⁓ Not sure exactly what happened there because I used ⁓ daily blogging for all my previous projects. So since the first one at Metabay, I know that SEO was always one of the strongest drivers of traffic for me and for all of my projects. And even when I started...
Dagobert Renouf (39:08)
and even with AI content.
Maxime (39:10)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And when I started the six weeks max project, I always used SEO and AI to create the blogs. I also did programmatic SEO heavily. And every time it was the number one source of traffic. And so that's why I got the idea of doing Blockbuster, because it was working so well for my other project. I'm like, OK, I found something. I cracked something for my business, so I'm going to make it product.
Dagobert Renouf (39:13)
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, because that's very tempting, to be honest. Yeah, I want to try it. That looks cool.
Maxime (39:41)
Yeah, and for my latest
product as well, I did some programmatic SEO. It was called like Easy Chef. I'm actually trying to sell this one. ⁓ Not a lot, but still selling. And yeah, and every day there's like AI recipe. So yeah, every day there's like new recipe.
Dagobert Renouf (39:50)
Okay.
yeah, B2C apps, all these B2C apps, we know.
Maxime (40:02)
pages like this that are created by AI published automatically and four times a day and that is driving insane traffic ⁓ on autopilot.
Dagobert Renouf (40:14)
But dude,
you have like, did you check the recipe? Is it any good? It's like AI generated recipe? Man, it's so scary, dude. my God.
Maxime (40:21)
Yeah, I checked the first, so not
all of them. We must have around like 3000 recipes by now. I absolutely didn't check all of them, but I did some heavy testing and checked ⁓ very precisely the first ones. I mean, the first 100 ones. And it was ⁓ super good, super relevant. ⁓ Actually good. We can check it out like live, but I was impressed.
Dagobert Renouf (40:27)
my god.
It's just like I think
AI could have a bug and say to add some poison or shit, that sounds scary.
Maxime (40:50)
So I
spend hours and hours prompting crazy. Sometimes it's not wrong, but sometimes it's a bit odd. Sometimes it will give you chili crab for breakfast or stuff like this. don't really, not sure if that's gonna be the most best seller recipe, but at least it's not crazy stuff. Nothing can go wrong. yeah, and same for Blockbuster. Actually, one of our main competitive advantage is the quality
Dagobert Renouf (41:00)
Yeah.
my god.
It's interesting.
Maxime (41:20)
the article and I can show one and I spent myself like hours and hours and hours, hundreds of hours of prompting and still to this date I always try to improve the product, make it better, ⁓ add some more...
features that could make it even standing higher in the rankings. And so every article comes with custom images. So those are AI images as well. You get the right structure with a different H1, H2, H3. You get some list articles for all articles. You get the internal linking we're talking about. So still a few images, some tables in all articles, and some external links.
Dagobert Renouf (42:04)
You know, I like it.
My previous startup, Logology, we were starting a blog, but we were doing everything ourselves, so we were never writing anything because it was so long to write high quality articles. And now I think there's room for both. It makes sense to have some, let's say, more generic articles generated by AI to cover a wider base of keywords.
Maxime (42:16)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (42:29)
And then maybe sometimes you can make a custom one, like that's very unique article if you need. I it's good to have both strategy.
Maxime (42:36)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. can do
both. We got some clients that are more hands-on on the article that really want to add their personal touch and I think it's a good thing to make it even more human. So yeah, it's the combination of both AI and human is what's working best anyway. But a lot of customers and myself included, ⁓ actually just let it go fully on autopilot. Don't go rewrite anything and still it brings results. So that's great. Also, we made a lot of efforts to make it sound very
human as much as an AI. There's no like in this fast paced world or you know like stuff like this. No, Exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (43:08)
Yeah, it does look quite good. Yeah, I agree when I read it. It looks... Yeah, yeah, it's not bullshit. I don't see any M dashes. I don't see
any of the AI telltales. And it's like, I'm just gonna read for people just listening. I'm just gonna read a little bit. You can show one, please. Like a foundational keyword research beyond translation. Before you adapt your content, you must first understand the language of your new market. This means digging into how local audiences actually search, not just how you think they do.
Maxime (43:20)
Yeah.
Okay, sure.
Dagobert Renouf (43:37)
Yeah, so like, it sounds more human. Yeah, it doesn't sound like a generic chat GPT thing. Yeah.
Maxime (43:43)
and it asks questions
to the reader sometimes and stuff. it's really basically when you go with Blockbuster, it's like for the full autopilot flow where you can go from like autopilot scheduling to publishing to a website in a few clicks and also the article quality that is... ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (43:48)
Yeah.
Maxime (43:59)
that we worked or asked of to make it super efficient in terms of SEO and super good in terms of reading as well for any human being. And of course, if you want to edit, we have the editor directly built in in Blockbuster. So if you are more hands-on, which is good, and you want to adjust, ⁓ change everything, you can do that. You can even regenerate the images with AI or upload your own. So you get also the full
Dagobert Renouf (44:07)
Yeah.
It looks awesome. It looks really cool.
Maxime (44:29)
built-in editor.
Dagobert Renouf (44:31)
Yeah, that's like giving
you an amazing first draft that is good to go, but you can also change it if you want. Well, that's awesome, Cool, cool. Yeah, that's why I wanted you in because I think it can be so useful, at least for me. mean, for my previous product, it would have been so useful. So I think we're at the stage now where AI can be actually valuable and not just like a scammy or anything. And I think it's really cool. So I'm really glad that you're in this launch day.
Maxime (44:36)
Yes. ⁓
Mm-hmm.
Well, Dago, if you're interested,
there's going to be a nice discount coming up soon for Blockbuster, so feel free to use it.
Dagobert Renouf (45:04)
Yeah, that's the goal. I'm squeezing everybody who comes to launch day to give the best discount ever.
Maxime (45:10)
Yeah, but that's cool. I mean,
that's fully part of the business model. ⁓ As I mentioned in the previous tweet, I think it makes sense. It's really a mix of like, yeah, product hunt and app sumo. And it's really that angle, feel, personally, between both ⁓ that brings something unique and makes sense. yeah, kudos. I was sold. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (45:22)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Thanks man.
Cool, well I'm glad you're in this lunch day. And yeah, I hope it did those awesome for you. Thanks for being here. Cheers.
Maxime (45:39)
Thanks a lot,
enjoyed a lot. Cheers.