In this episode of DejaVue, Alex and Michael are joined by Sumit Kumar, the founder of Parqet.
Sumit shares his journey from getting into Web Development and Vue.js over to working at Stripe and eventually founding Parqet, a (German) portfolio tracker SaaS. Topics covered in the first part of our conversation include a lot of business insights, such as the transition from being a developer to being a founder, the challenges and benefits of bootstrapping, as well as the importance of marketing.
If you are interested in the business side of things, you definitely should not miss out.
Links marked with * are affiliate links. We get a small commission when you register for the service through our link. This helps us to keep the podcast running. We only include affiliate links for services mentioned in the episode or that we use ourselves.
Chapters
Welcome to DejaVue
How did you get into Web Development and Vue.js?
Converging Frameworks
Previous Work Experiences and joining Stripe
What did you learn from working at Stripe?
The Front Page Test
How did your start Parqet?
The Transition from Developer to Founder
Can you focus only on Programming as a Founder?
Finding a CEO instead of being one
Marketing is Half the Job
How did Parqet grow?
Why don't you share your MRR anymore?
Why did you choose to bootstrap
Niche down strategy
Dealing with GDPR and localization
Wrapping up
In this episode of DejaVue, Alex and Michael are joined by Sumit Kumar, the founder of Parqet.
Sumit shares his journey from getting into Web Development and Vue.js over to working at Stripe and eventually founding Parqet, a (German) portfolio tracker SaaS. Topics covered in the first part of our conversation include a lot of business insights, such as the transition from being a developer to being a founder, the challenges and benefits of bootstrapping, as well as the importance of marketing.
If you are interested in the business side of things, you definitely should not miss out.
Links marked with * are affiliate links. We get a small commission when you register for the service through our link. This helps us to keep the podcast running. We only include affiliate links for services mentioned in the episode or that we use ourselves.
Creators & Guests
Host
Alexander Lichter
Web Engineering Consultant • Founder • Nuxt team • Speaker
Host
Michael Thiessen
Full-time Vue educator
Editor
Niki Brandner
Audio Engineer and Video Editor
Guest
Sumit Kumar
Founder of Parqet & Podcast Host
What is DejaVue?
Welcome to DejaVue, the Vue podcast you didn't know you needed until now! Join Michael Thiessen and Alexander Lichter on a thrilling journey through the world of Vue and Nuxt.
Get ready for weekly episodes packed with insights, updates, and deep dives into everything Vue-related. From component libraries to best practices, and beyond, they've got you covered.
Alexander Lichter:
Welcome to DejaVue.
Michael Thiessen:
It's your favorite Vue podcast. You just don't know it yet. I'm Michael, and I'm here with Alex. He's a consultant, member of the Nuxt core team, YouTuber, all these amazing things. And, glad to have you here once again.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Thanks, thanks for sticking with me for all these episodes. I think like episode 38. It's it's been quite a while, almost a year so far. So, yeah, Michael Thiessen, my lovely cohost on the other side of the world, all the way in Canada.
Alexander Lichter:
He's a full time educator around the the Vue and Nuxt space. He's doing a lot of amazing content. He did mastering Nuxt, for example, Mastering Nuxt 3, of course, very important, and a lot of other amazing courses. So definitely check it out. But probably you you know us so far, but you might not know the special guest we have on for this episode.
Alexander Lichter:
It is Sumit Kumar, who is the founder of Parqet. Sumit, how are you doing?
Sumit Kumar:
Hey, guys. I'm good. Thank you very much for the invitation. And, by the way, Mike, I follow you on Twitter for a while and, always take notes on you on the tips of you that you have. So, yeah, I'm very honored to be on.
Alexander Lichter:
Lovely. So
Michael Thiessen:
Good to have you.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. It's, it's great that it works out, especially yeah. We both, I think, follow you on Twitter and, all the the spicy hot takes here and there as well sometimes. And, of course, we we have a few things to discuss today ranging from, of course, all about, Parqet itself, how it got to that. But maybe we start a little bit early in history.
Alexander Lichter:
So how did you get into web development and maybe also Vue and Nuxt?
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. Okay. That that's very early, web development. I, like, when I was 15, I was, a gamer, basically. I played Counter Strike, Source.
Sumit Kumar:
I played, Unreal Tournament, things like that in clans, you know, like a team. And at some point, we were like, okay. We need a website. Anyone know how to do a website? Nobody knew.
Sumit Kumar:
So I started to click right click on other websites I liked and show source code, copy paste it, and just did trial and error until I figured out how it works. So that's how I started building websites through the gaming hobby, I think, I guess. And then I went into, you know, freelancing, had my first job, and and and stuff like this. So this is how I became a developer. So everything's self taught.
Sumit Kumar:
I don't have like, I wasn't at a programming boot camp or studied this at university or something nothing like this. So it was all self taught. And Vue, I discovered after the, you know, Backbone was the first framework that I used after this this discovering that I do the same thing over and over again. So I used Backbone and the templating engine handlebars. Mhmm.
Sumit Kumar:
So this was what I was used to. And then I was in Angular, and Angular then had this Angular 1 to 2 migration, which was horrible. I think that's where they lost most of their user base. And in in that time frame, React and Vue and some alternatives came up. And when I was looking at Vue, it had the familiar templating syntax like handlebars.
Sumit Kumar:
And React was basically JavaScript, but the HTML and JavaScript. And I I didn't like that at all from the syntax perspective. I like the logic in the HTML like Vue does. So that was my main point why I chose Vue back then, and it was, like, 0 point something. I don't I don't really remember the version, but it was very early.
Sumit Kumar:
And since then, I have been using Vue and introduced it basically in every team I worked with and every company, I worked for if they haven't used it already and if I was a developer on the team. And, I'm very happy still to follow that and also the new journey that Evan is is going with the new company and everything. I believe we have a lot of complexity in in the web development now, too much actually. And I feel like he is the person who can, you know, bring us a little bit back to, let's say, sane standards similar to PHP or, Ruby, where you just have, you know, the way you do things for a decade or more while front end development has been changing so much all the time. And even if if you leave web development for 6 months, you come back and you feel like you have to learn new stuff.
Sumit Kumar:
And especially for someone operating a business like me, this is becoming annoying. Like, I just want to ship stuff. I don't care about the new technology because you are solving the same problem over and over again, usually, in web development at least. So, yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Good notes on that. Also, of course, to mention episode 31 where, I had the honor to interview Evan, in Japan, around VueFes Japan, all about VoidZero, his new company, and, basically developing some kind of, like, cargo for us, but for JavaScript so we can finally have a unified tool chain. Definitely, if you haven't checked it out, worth worth listening.
Michael Thiessen:
Yeah. I've I've noticed that too with the front end development. It like, we go back and forth between single page apps and SSR and, oh, maybe a hybrid or, well, no. Maybe SSR is not good. We should go back to single page apps.
Michael Thiessen:
And, my hope is that that it's just that front end development is a little bit newer in, like, terms of history versus, like, back end development, you know, the Internet is newer than computers, and that it's, like, we're gonna figure it out and, like, stabilize things. I don't know if that's a well thought out theory, but that's my hope at least.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. I think in a way that that we see that in the last years, at least like not in the last 10, but maybe in the last 2, that more and like there are less frameworks emerging. There are less things to be like, oh, this is the the the hot new technology, and everybody jumps ships. It's more like also, a lot of frameworks are converging, more or less Angular, for example, checking out maybe different syntax, like functions for components and whatnot, what they showed during, the the JetBrains JavaScript days. We act as a compiler now.
Alexander Lichter:
Vue Vapor mode gets closer with, like, a solid like implementation and so on so on so. And I hope and also in the the back end part of the meta frameworks that, yeah, things are just, like, aligning more and more close, to each other, and then it's more about, hey. Which syntax do you like more? Which mental model fits well?
Sumit Kumar:
Hopefully. Hopefully.
Sumit Kumar:
I like, I I don't like learning new frameworks now like I did in the beginning when it was all about the craft. You know? You are a developer. You want to learn new things. It's exciting.
Sumit Kumar:
I I can totally understand that, and I can understand that people want to, you know, like, do new things or do things differently. But, for me, by now, at least, it's becoming just a tool where like, how I do different stuff. Like, I do features and business, businesses around it. So, I don't want my laptop to change all the time. You know?
Sumit Kumar:
It it will be
Michael Thiessen:
Mhmm.
Sumit Kumar:
It would be terrible if my operating system would change all the time or how I access the Internet or whatever, you know, all these standard tools you use every day. If they if if you have to learn all of them again and again and again and keep up to date, then it's not a tool anymore. It's, it's in your way. And for front end development, specifically for me personally, it's also at that stage where I just want things to work.
Sumit Kumar:
And I don't care if it's old as long as it works. And, of course, I have to do things like there has to be some community support and I have to find developers for it. So I can't, like, I can't use Angular 1 or or Nuxt 2 anymore.
Alexander Lichter:
That's fair. We'll we'll come to the whole migration part, for for sure. But now, like, okay, is that you got into Vue.js, you introduced it at, quite some companies where you've been, have been around, been an Engineer in the team. So maybe before you you advanced to doing some like, pursuing some more of your side projects, how which which companies did you did you work at?
Alexander Lichter:
Because I remember we met in 2019, I think, at Vue.js Amsterdam. Yep. And I think back then, you were still at, I think now it's ShareNow. Back then, it was ShareNow. Naming is always a bit confusing.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah.
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I worked at like, the first company or companies I worked for after doing freelancing were agencies, where I learned a ton, and it we haven't used any frameworks there. It was all, like, jQuery, stuff.
Sumit Kumar:
And then I worked at Mercedes Daimler Cartagot, car sharing company, the car sharing, subsidiary of of Mercedes, back then. It was called Cartogo. Today, it was called ShareNow until recently. They merged again, with a different company or were were purchased, acquired. So they now are called, I think, Free to Move, I think.
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Something like that.
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. Either way, it's a cash sharing company. And, I worked there for 5 to 6 years. Then I I started Parqet during that time on the side, and I wanted to go full time. But then Stripe reached out and and told me they have a, like, a position in Germany they think would fit, and I went through their, hiring process.
Sumit Kumar:
And to my surprise, they said, we would like you to join us. And, even though I had different plans, I thought, like, Stripe is for me, the Champions League. It's the best company I could think of. I want to learn from them even if it's just 3 months, even if they kick me out. And and, like, I thought every day there, I can soak up every knowledge about company building teams, best practices, documentation, all that stuff, and bring it into my own projects and companies.
Sumit Kumar:
So I joined Stripe, and, ultimately, I was there 18 months, I think. And then I left simply because there was it was too much. Parqet grew quite a bit in that time, and I couldn't like, I got a kid, and and and a side project that was full time with tens of thousands of users and employees by then and Stripe full time. And Stripe is not a, you know, not a not a company where you where you chill. It's it's a company where you give it give it give it your all.
Sumit Kumar:
Like, I'm not talking, over hours, but I'm talking the hours you spend are intense. Like, you you do intense work, which is great, but I was exhausted. I was completely exhausted. So then I quit and and went for time, on pocket.
Michael Thiessen:
So what kinds of things did you learn from your time at Stripe? You mentioned, like, it sounds like you were thinking very strategically of so your your long term plan was not to continue being a software developer, you know, until until you retire. You were planning on focusing on Parqet and growing it. And so what kinds of things did did your time at Stripe teach you that that you then brought into Parqet?
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. So, like, calling it a plan is maybe a bit overrated. I let's say it was a dream, or something where I thought, I want to try it. You know? Even if I fail, I would like to try building my own thing and see how far I'd come.
Sumit Kumar:
That that was basically what I wanted to do. With Stripe so I think Stripe has a lot of things that people look up to, developers, businesses, other people. Like, that is the polish of the product itself. Like, it it looks really good. It's a good user experience.
Sumit Kumar:
The documentation is fantastic. It was always the gold standard for documentation, API documentation, and things like that, even API design, like the endpoints, the payloads, all all of that. I think the product is great. It works flawlessly. Like, I use it still every day.
Sumit Kumar:
Like, we process most of our revenue through Stripe. I'm still a huge fan. Oh, obviously, they have issues like every other business. But in general, they have a really, really, really high bar on many, many things. So I wanted to get in and learn as much as possible, and I took so many notes for the hiring process, interviewing, for documentation, for best practices internally, HR, how they talk to me as a as an employee, how they explain things, company rules they have, and and, basically, like, just frameworks for for employees.
Sumit Kumar:
And in that time that I was there, they scaled from, I think, 3,000,000 to 7000 employees in a year, something like this. Like, it was completely crazy. How do you keep up that, like, the quality bar and the knowledge sharing inside inside the the company and all all these things? So I did a lot of, like, I tried to talk to as many people as possible also on the product teams and, yeah, just just took notes of everything and compared it also with my previous, employers. And, obviously, a lot of stuff is irrelevant to Parqet simply because of the scale that Stripe operates in, right, or companies like Stripe.
Sumit Kumar:
But there were also many, many things that I took with me. For example, hiring process, I I took many notes on that, like how to filter and how to find out the right signals during an interview process, for a matching candidate, because that is very important to me. I don't want to have a wrong hire. Or a wrong hire is very expensive to me for a company with 10 people. You know?
Sumit Kumar:
And, what were other things? Product management were a few things. Then, of course, lots of developer stuff and decision frameworks. My manager there was great. I tried to find out how their leadership principles are, how they do decisions.
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. And there were there were a lot of things and a lot of things that are very, very different for from, let's say, German large German companies, obviously. But I'm I I wouldn't go into very specific details because I'm not sure, you know, how comfortable Stripe is, with me, sharing sharing that stuff. But, if you want to ask me how I do things at Parqet, I can tell you how you know, what I derived at if there is very, like, very specific stuff. It was a lot of inspiration.
Sumit Kumar:
Obviously, you can't copy how a how a company works, but you can take inspiration on how the people act, what decision frameworks they have, what principles they followed.
Sumit Kumar:
One thing that I can share that I always use at Parqet is the front page test. It's basically a rule set for me as a as a leader if we do decisions. If that decision or the outcome of that decision is tomorrow on the front page of the New York Times, is that a problem? Yes or no?
Sumit Kumar:
And if the answer is yes, we won't do it. This is, the front page test that we use at Parqet for basically the stuff that we do. And if there is any doubt sometimes, we try to, you know, what if it would be at the front page of of a of a major news article, would I be able to defend it, in in front of the public? And this, I think, is a great, great test to, yeah, to decide stuff. And this comes up all the time with, you know, I don't know, user tracking, marketing stuff, all these
Michael Thiessen:
Yeah.
Sumit Kumar:
Where you go from performance marketing to morality, like, stuff that you can track, you can do a lot of things. But do we actually need to track? Like, is that a problem? Like yeah. Many times this comes up.
Sumit Kumar:
And we are portfolio tracker. We track finances. So, we have this topic a lot.
Michael Thiessen:
Yeah. I was gonna say it sounds like that that test works for, you know, any decision in your life too. If if I made this decision or said this thing and everyone found out about it, would that be a good thing or not? And, you know, that can that can, pretty quickly reveal whether it's a good decision.
Alexander Lichter:
And I also think, like, it sounds like more people and also companies, but also people should apply that in a way. Not necessarily maybe to every decision, but, like, especially to key key decisions of, like, yeah, especially tracking marketing, but also on life decisions. Of course, it's, something people should consider.
Sumit Kumar:
There are obviously decisions that, you know, the front patch test fails and you still do it. That that's, like, that's still the case, but at least you are aware. You are aware that this is something where we do it, but people won't like it if they find out. And I I'm not necessarily meaning users. This could also be towards competitors.
Sumit Kumar:
This could also be just company internal stuff, you know, that you don't want to go out, of course. So the test sometimes fails, but it's important to be aware and everyone else is aware, you know, and everyone can carry the decision regardless. That is just one thing that I learned at Stripe that I apply basically every week, to to how I decide or think about stuff.
Alexander Lichter:
Definitely super interesting. And I feel like we already, got almost to to the the main part of your your current journey.
Alexander Lichter:
So while, even before joining Stripe, as you said, you already had a side project that grew to, like, 1,000, tens of thousands users. So how did you develop, how do you start developing Parqet also back when it was already called it Tresor One back in the time? So how did that start, and why did it blew up that much?
Sumit Kumar:
I was starting to take care of my finances personally. I started, you know, saving up a bit, getting my costs under control, and, ultimately started investing, like, getting rid of all my debt and, then started investing. And, usually, when you do things like long term things like investing, like fitness or weight loss, things like that, you want to track it. It's very motivating. You want to see where you're going, you know, and, same for me with, investing.
Sumit Kumar:
I wanted to see I'm I'm a cash flow oriented investor, so I like dividends. I like to see money coming in, from from the assets that I purchased. It's not for everyone, but it's for me. And I wanted to see, to see how that progresses. I wanted to see, basically, the charts and and, because it motivates me to to keep going.
Sumit Kumar:
And there was one solution, only one solution that I can think of, besides Excel, and it was very manual. Not like, it would it's very powerful, but, it's over 10 years old, I think. It's open source, which is great, but you have to install it and everything. And I'm a front end developer. I like stuff on the browser.
Sumit Kumar:
I like a very modern look. I like it to be very automated. And as soon as I see one user doing something and another user doing exactly the same thing, I'm always thinking, okay, this has to be a cloud solution. So but but it was none available, in Germany. So I built it on my own.
Sumit Kumar:
And I tried this before. I tried this twice before, but I failed because the the starting point or the the entry barrier is a bit large. Because you need financial data, you need to somehow aggregate data from banks, which is tough. They don't have APIs in Germany or at least no public APIs. Yeah.
Sumit Kumar:
So the starting point was tough or the the entry, point. But I figured it out in December 2019 and had the first version running, basically during Christmas, and then I had my version. And then I, you know, started like, I always thought about the next step.
Sumit Kumar:
I didn't think this would be a company that that does 1,000,000 in revenue at some point. I was thinking maybe it's a nice side project that that can get me €500 per month for you know, to invest more, to to, increase my savings rate, basically.
Sumit Kumar:
So the first thing I have to do is, does it work for me? And if it works for me, do other people sign up? And if other people sign up, is someone willing to pay? That was the first, like, the validation steps. Right?
Sumit Kumar:
And as soon as someone was willing to pay, the first euro came in. That was that is always a fantastic moment for someone that bills for the first time, something like this. Then I just started adding stuff and and and growing it. And, yeah. But if you would have asked me, would it be what it is today?
Sumit Kumar:
I would have said you're crazy. But of obviously, it was the hope. And who knows where it goes? If you tell me today, it will in 5 years, it will do 10,000,000 in revenue per year, I would say you're crazy. But I don't know.
Sumit Kumar:
I will work towards that. I don't know if it happens or not, but, we will see where it where where we can go with it.
Michael Thiessen:
That, first Internet money is like, it's very powerful because it it totally changes how you think about the world where I remember the first time I charged for something and a couple people bought and, like, it doesn't even have to be, like, a $100. Even if you've made $5, you can it, like, it changes the way you think because you realize, wait, I created some stuff. I like, out of nothing, I sent out a tweet or an email or, you know, whatever. I put it on a YouTube video, and some other people sent me money. And I like this money kind of comes out of thin air, it feels like.
Michael Thiessen:
And that that changes how you think about it because all of a sudden you realize, wait a second. This is actually something that's possible to do. And so if you're out there trying to or thinking about doing a side project or something like this, I I don't know. I I would say to just try to make some money from it and that's so motivating and and then you can figure out how to make more. Right?
Sumit Kumar:
100%. Yes. The first step. It's it it it is insane what what happens, I think, in in in people's mind when when this happens. Because for me, it was like you realize you need you need Internet and a laptop, and you can you can change your life, basically, if it grows large enough.
Sumit Kumar:
But even even that, like, people think often about money, but it changes a lot of things. You get a lot more freedom, if you build your own thing and you can live off of it. You can work where you want, how long you want, when you want, with whom you want, on what you want. Basically, on every metric that you can think of, you get some sort of freedom. This changes obviously when it gets bigger and you will become a founder, like developers who think I would just code all day and earn a lot of money.
Sumit Kumar:
That is not the way how this works, obviously. You will have to do things that you don't like or that you're not good at or you have to learn a lot of things. But if you like solving problems, then, yeah, you can you just solve problems all the time. And at some point, you hire people that are better than you. For example, I still code, but my team doesn't like that I code.
Sumit Kumar:
They are better than me. They they do all of that stuff. And I just like, by now, I I validate new ideas with code. But, you know, on the day to day, I I I don't code anymore on, on our code base. And yeah.
Sumit Kumar:
So if you just want to code all day, then this might not be the best thing. But, yeah, it depends on some people do it solo. Right? They they are one one man show, one woman show, and they still code. But they also have to do marketing.
Sumit Kumar:
They also have to do marketing. They also have to do some sales calls. If it's b to b, they have to do customer support. Like, you can't get around that.
Alexander Lichter:
I just wanted to ask, finally, like, if you say, okay, there's developers. So, like, hey. I love to code, and I don't want to do any of the other tasks. Then would you say, like, founding like, the aspiration of becoming a founder is not a good idea if he like, the person is really not up to all these other tasks and really wanna focus on programming?
Sumit Kumar:
It's much harder. It's much harder. They can still try, obviously. And then there are, you know if you find a product that is a 100% self serve and you somehow find a way to get customers, then fine. But you have to find a way to get customers.
Sumit Kumar:
Right? And and this is marketing. If you don't like spending time with that, then you have the problem that most India hackers, that most people developers that start these companies have. That is they build something, they build a big cathedral, no one comes because no one knows about it. So they they build for a year.
Sumit Kumar:
They build for 2 years maybe, but they have 0 customers. And that is a huge mistake. You have to validate much, much faster. We I had the first running version after 3 months and the first customer after 5. And this is how, in my opinion, you should shorten that time as much as possible to find out, if it's a viable business, if people are willing to pay for it.
Sumit Kumar:
That is the most important question to answer on your status, especially if it if you want if you wanted to become a business. It's a different thing if you say, I want to learn a new framework and I'm building this app for it. Fine. Then the goal is to learn. Okay?
Sumit Kumar:
Then you don't have to but if you want to create a business, if you want to start a business, it's crucial to validate as fast as possible. So if a developer says, I don't like marketing. I don't like any of this, and I just want to code and, you know, then they code a new project and they don't find customers, if it's okay for them, then they can continue to code. You know? It's just about the craft.
Sumit Kumar:
But on the other hand, you might be just as happy like, think about the the freedoms that I mentioned. You might just be happy finding a company like Parqet or a different company that is remote, where you have a lot of freedom, where you don't have to be in the office 9 to 5, and you have interesting problems, you can solve them at scale, and you just code all day, barely any meetings. So this might be the dream job for you then. So find these companies instead if, you know, if you don't like to solve all these other other things. Especially if you get employees, you will solve people problems, not code problems.
Sumit Kumar:
So you I think people need to think about this stuff before they start a company, what they really want, and then either find a company that or a product or, you know, a scenario that works for them, or they can find a a company where they are just employed and and it works for them.
Michael Thiessen:
There's this great book called The EMyth. The point of this is that so many people go into business. For example, someone is, like, really good at baking and they love baking. So then they decide, oh, I'll open up a bakery. But then what they don't realize is that running a bakery is, like, 10% baking, and then they have to deal with taxes and accounting and hiring people and dealing with customer support and, you know, all of the food and health safety stuff that they've got to figure out.
Michael Thiessen:
And then, you know, a year later, they're bankrupt because they realize I don't like any of that stuff. I just wanted to bake at home, and that's what I liked. And so it's yeah. It's it's a good point to, like, think about ahead of time. Do you want to just sit and code?
Michael Thiessen:
Because that's totally valid, you can do that. And if you like that, then maybe a better path is finding a company that you can just do that and not have to worry about managing people or doing marketing and all these, like, million other things that you've gotta worry about.
Sumit Kumar:
Or a co cofounder. Cofounder could do this as well. You can find, someone who who is good at that, who does the sales part, who does the people management stuff, and you are the techie who builds it. You're the CTO. That's also fine.
Sumit Kumar:
I also saw companies where the the developer has the idea. They start building a product. They bring in someone as a cofounder who then does the CEO role so they can focus on the tech. Once the tech team grew, they they will become a manager as well. They didn't want that, So they gave gave the CEO title to someone else.
Sumit Kumar:
He still owned the the people the person who the deaf who started it was still the person who owned most of the shares, but he basically gave away all of the, responsibility of managing and was still a developer, then a senior developer, whatever, you know, whatever title, they gave him. But he was the owner of the company and and gave away all the all the other stuff. This is rare. This is very rare. But, he realized what he can do, what he wants to do, what he's what he's good at, and gave away the rest.
Sumit Kumar:
Obviously, he has to give away, quite a bit of equity for that too, but it's still a scenario that I think is is absolutely valid. And and I respect that because he he he did rather do that instead of, failing because he he doesn't want to do sales or people managing or something like this.
Alexander Lichter:
I just wanna say it's so remarkable because, like, jumping also a bit like it, like neglecting your ego a little bit and say like, yeah, you know what? I know what I can do and what I can't do. And sure, like titles and everything is all shiny, but in the end, if that should be a success, then there should be someone who is more into management, who's more into, actually, like the the the CEO stuff or even as a CTO, as you said, than than me. But, yeah, I think, like, a lot of people that are not into all the other things around programming, they might fail at that step where it's like, okay. That won't work out.
Alexander Lichter:
I'm looking for a cofounder. I'm looking for a CEO to take that over for some equity and so on and so on. But, especially to everybody who's doing that, that's yeah. That's that's pretty amazing because that's probably the the only or, like, one of the few ways to save, quote, unquote, a company, which would be doomed otherwise. Because if you say, I'm I'm a bad manager and I don't wanna change that, yeah, we we know how this usually ends.
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. But but let's be honest. Most companies in that stage, they don't get to the stage where they hire employees. So this is really the case where the developer says I'm out. The the the case is usually they don't find customers or the purse the developer doesn't find customers because they neglect marketing or they don't are not interested in marketing.
Sumit Kumar:
But marketing is half the job. I neglect I neglected it. Some point, you like, I see people on Twitter, they do, like, split weeks. Right?
Sumit Kumar:
They say something like this week development, this the the other week is marketing. And then they don't open the code editor. They just write, like, I don't know, content, blog posts, reach out to people on on LinkedIn, whatever the marketing channels are that they try. And this, I think, is good. Like, you you gotta do it.
Sumit Kumar:
I I even think in the first few months, marketing is more important because you can find the audience even before you build the product, which is the best way to validate. But, it's hard for a developer. It's hard for me too. I I I love, like, building the first UI and, you know, testing it out.
Alexander Lichter:
I think especially starting from 0, if you don't have, like, maybe a Twitter audience or YouTube channel or newsletter or something, then I guess even harder, unless you are in community where a lot of people express that need. And then in a way, you also have your audience, but then, yeah, you have to put something something in there.
Alexander Lichter:
So what I wondered about is in terms of marketing, and then we come to the to the growth part again, what do you think, also about the audience, what do you think made, Parqet eventually take off from, like, okay. This is your side project and people interested and it works well. Like, how that grew to, like, tens of thousands of users while you were still, like, doing it on the side?
Sumit Kumar:
So in the beginning, like, I what I can recommend to everyone is reading Peter Level's MAKE book, that is has a great section for launch launching the product, and I live stream the launch as well. So it's all on YouTube, basically. The first day, how I launched it, where I marketed it, and everything. So I can summarize that. And I got that from from the book.
Sumit Kumar:
That was like, I didn't use Product Hunt or anything like that. I don't really believe in Product Hunt, for anything that is not targeted at developers. I looked at where my audience hangs out. My audience are retail investors. And specifically in this case, because I only supported one bank in Germany, the bank I was at in the beginning.
Sumit Kumar:
Right? One bank and, like, 2 asset classes, stocks and ETFs, basically. Yeah. Not not more. And one currency, euro.
Sumit Kumar:
So very, very, very niche down. So my target audience were people who invest in stocks and ETFs at that bank. So I was thinking, where do they hang out? The bank had a forum, then there are stock forums in Germany, and there was a subreddit, finance personal finance subreddit, the German one in, yeah, on Reddit. So I posted there and said, hey.
Sumit Kumar:
I I've built an app for myself. I use it now to track this and that. I would love your feedback. What do you think? And just create the first 100 users or so or a 100 sign ups.
Sumit Kumar:
Let's put it this way, 100 sign ups, and a lot of interest, lots of feedback, that I built in. And while I was posting, I was live streaming. So and I also mentioned that there. So people went into the YouTube channel. They commented in into the chat, what I should change.
Sumit Kumar:
I read the feedback. Some of it was brutal. And, like, if I if I would have gotten only that negative feedback from that one forum, I would have stopped the project immediately. They, like, they ripped me apart. But other people were very, very positive about it.
Sumit Kumar:
So, yeah, I I took the feedback. I implemented it live. I I live coded, in that stream. And this created the first few, let's say, few dozen users, that tried it. And the main thing that that that basically helped it grow was that I built the marketing into the product.
Sumit Kumar:
I again, I I'm also a developer. I don't like to or I wasn't proficient in marketing. I didn't really wanted to do it. So I thought about what what is a natural way for people to share it. And what I implemented was a way for them or let's put it this way.
Sumit Kumar:
I always saw these influencers, finance influencers. They post screenshots from their brokers. They post screenshots from their Excel sheet, whatever, to explain what they invest and to explain, what they do. So what I built in was a sharing feature where someone could say, I want to share my portfolio. They can make it public, the whole visualization of the portfolio, and they can hide absolute values if they want to.
Sumit Kumar:
So you can see either everything, this person has a 100,000 invested in Apple, and they made 20% performance on it, or they can see only relative values. They have Apple stock, and they made 20% on it. Right? They don't see the absolute values. So they don't it could be 10,000, could be 100,000, could be 1,000,000.
Sumit Kumar:
You don't know. So relative and absolute sharing was built into the product. You can, with one click, say, I want to have it public, send someone the link, and they can view the portfolio. This was perfect for these influencers to start showing it and have their audience follow them and, follow their progress of their portfolio. So users shared it.
Sumit Kumar:
They were basically the marketing, and this is still the case for today. Obviously, we have a lot more marketing efforts now, but, this is how it started. And this allowed me to focus on the product for the 1st 2 years while users and influencers, used the product and shared it. And I I didn't have an in an affiliate program or anything like this, but at some point, I saw, like, big influencers, like, 50,000, a 100,000 followers on Instagram using it. And they used it used screenshots and stories all the time.
Sumit Kumar:
Like, they they shared it every day. So at some point, I reached out to them and said, hey. I like what you're doing. I like the content. And I love that you are using the product and did you find it valuable.
Sumit Kumar:
I would like to have you participate a little bit. Here's a referral link. If you want to, you can use it, and you get 10%, 20% kickback for every new customer that you bring in. And this was basically then the start of an affiliate program. Right?
Sumit Kumar:
So so now this is a combination of that. And fun fact, that person, her name is Lisa, I I hired her eventually, part time to to our marketing team. She still does the influencer and blog and everything on Instagram, and she became quite successful. But part time, she's now the team of Parqet and and, is responsible for all of the affiliate program that we have.
Alexander Lichter:
It's really clever to hire someone that also knows the niche, that's really integrated, and probably also has lots of contacts to other, like, people in exactly that the target audience who can, like, participate in that program. Like, also not just like a shallow connection, but more, like, sometimes deep connections with other people. So that's that's a really smart move, indeed.
Sumit Kumar:
It was it was a very good fit. It's silly. It's a a very good fit because she knows the industry very well. Obviously, all all like, she's one of the largest, players, influencers, that does this, but also it aligned very much with her goals. Like, we we talked a lot about what she wants to do.
Sumit Kumar:
Does she want to do full time creator on Instagram and things like that? And she had specific goals. And at some point, I was like, okay. Your skills match what I need. And, I think Parqet can provide the lifestyle and how you want to, like, work and and live every day.
Sumit Kumar:
So for example, remote stuff and and and all these all these things and and being more in the finance space because she her main job wasn't in finance at all. But it was her hobby. That's why she started the Instagram channel. So, yeah, it it it was a very good fit, for both of us. And, yeah, great hire at the end of the day.
Sumit Kumar:
It's a shout out to Lisa, by the way, if she's listening. I don't know.
Alexander Lichter:
Well, I hope hope she will. I hope the whole Parqet team will tune in on that, especially on the business part here. I also think, like, the the one key point that you mentioned is, like, okay, the users do the marketing. Basically, they share like, they want to share stuff anyway. And then a way of, like, okay, I don't wanna share exactly how how many euros I have invested here and there, but more like a percentage wise, like, values, all good.
Alexander Lichter:
So relative values plus it's super easy. You don't have to do wacky screenshots or hearse my Excel. She's just like, oh, here's a link or here's a screenshot. And if you wanna have the details, also, like, update it, I don't know, monthly whenever the new, like, new, savings plan is executed, then then there you go. So that's, that's that's really nice.
Alexander Lichter:
I'm happy to hear that it's still the the way of, of growing it.
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. Yeah. Of of course, there are much more now. Right, we have at at the end of the day, we tried a lot of things. We we even did offline or, yeah, offline stuff, radio, print, ads.
Sumit Kumar:
We do content marketing, SEO. We have our own YouTube channel. I go live every Friday. I there is a live stream still. Then every weekend, we have, like, portfolio roasts where me and an and an expert, like, look at portfolio real portfolios of of people that they send it to us.
Sumit Kumar:
They give us a description, like, what they earn, do they have real real estate, blah blah, all all of the details, and we review that and and give our opinion on it. So, yeah, we do a lot of a lot of things now in in marketing, but still people sharing their portfolios, peep like, providing a tool for online discussion about wealth creation and investing, is still a, a a main part, obviously, and we just utilize this more. Us on YouTube looking at portfolios and talking about them is basically also using using that tool. Right? The tool for a discussion.
Sumit Kumar:
So and and my portfolio is also public. Like, people often ask me as well because I'm now in in that space how I invest, and I I can just send them a link.
Alexander Lichter:
With relative or absolute values?
Sumit Kumar:
Absolute values. I'm I was Okay.
Alexander Lichter:
So, like, fully public?
Sumit Kumar:
Fully public. Because I was transparent with this from the beginning, and I started with, like, €2,000. Now it's a couple 100,000. So this whole journey is public on YouTube and on Parqet for people to look at and get inspiration from or what not to do. Completely completely up to them.
Sumit Kumar:
But I was always very transparent with building Parqet, with the investments, and, in a way, this sharing feature is also a, like, a way to express that, right, for other people to do if they want to.
Alexander Lichter:
I think that the whole term of transparency is super interesting. I remember the the early days where you also shared, like, all the numbers, like, open startup style, which you don't do anymore, I guess. Do you do you wanna comment, like, why why that changed from, like, sharing all the numbers to, like, only briefly sharing the the actual business stats?
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. I think most of the, most of of the founders stop at some point, and, I can I can explain why why that is. I think, you know, in the beginning, I was benefiting a lot from other people sharing it. I was benefiting from levels.io.
Sumit Kumar:
I was benefiting from from all these creators, especially on Twitter, who share what they do, how much they earn, who share their strategies. And it was, for me, a way where even if I own only a euro, I'm already ahead of a lot of people who would like to earn their 1st euro. So I thought I can I can give back by sharing what worked for me? So I talked about it. I shared it.
Sumit Kumar:
I started also a German podcast, especially because in Germany, there are not many creators sharing all of that stuff. And on Twitter, I share usually, in English. So I shared as much as possible. But when you get to 20,000 MRR, the benefit of the what you share at that stage is not for the people who start. It's and and the people who are at 20,000, they can figure it out on their own, and they are very small.
Sumit Kumar:
Like, it's not it's not like every every founder who has 20,000 MRR follows me. So the the tips become too far detached from the people who want to start. Right? If I talk about hiring your 10th person, like, the the developer doesn't care who has 0 customers and 0 revenue, but, while the benefits decrease for the people by sharing the stats specifically, the the tips might still be relevant, but the the stats are not relevant. Like, it benefits no one to say how much my monthly growth is from 20,000 MRR upwards.
Sumit Kumar:
It's just interesting, but no one benefits from that. While in the beginning, you can much more tie what you do to the growth, etcetera. And also a 20,000 MRR or 30 or 5th 40000, the downsides start to outweigh the benefits by a lot because the copycats come, they see it successful. We, like again, I build it because there was no other tool. Now there are, like, 10 tools in Germany, that that compete with us, some bigger, some smaller.
Sumit Kumar:
And, the more I share, the more I have a competitive disadvantage. And I still share a lot. I still have the podcast. I'm still on here discussing this with you. Mhmm.
Sumit Kumar:
No one else does this in that space. So, I'm still more of an open book than the rest, but, I try to be a lot more, conscious about what I share. And, that's why I also basically remove the the business metrics that are critical now, like MRR growth and and all of these things, because I'm a bootstrapper. I don't have external funding. And, some of my competitors, they have funding or they have bigger reach.
Sumit Kumar:
And I'm I'm at a disadvantage on so many things. I don't have to, you know, play into the hand as well with with, being so transparent.
Alexander Lichter:
So you just mentioned you're you're a bootstrapper, and I think that's super interesting because a lot of people are, like, founding applications, being like, hey. I wanna apply to Y Combinator or seek out some VC money, going to investors and so on and so on. So why did you decide to bootstrap your your whole journey from the ground up? I mean, we already heard how you started, but, like, why did you never go for the the VC way? Like, what's, what's, turned you down that that way, so to say?
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. The it's interesting that you frame the question this way, because I would frame it a different way. Why do you why would you go the VC round? I know that VC is the standard, but I think this is the problem. It shouldn't be the standard.
Sumit Kumar:
It should be a tool that you use if you can't do it on your own or with your founding team. So, you know, if you do a to do app, like, you don't need VC funding. It it most companies don't need VC funding. If you do hardware, fine. If you do a payment processor, fine.
Sumit Kumar:
If you do a bank, fine. You need funding. But if you don't need to build for 2 years before you get your first customer, if you can build in 3 months or 6 months, you probably don't need funding. And in my opinion, like, if you ask other founders, if you could, would you do without VC? They they all say yes.
Sumit Kumar:
Obviously, they can't do it publicly. They have investors, but they all would love to not do it. And I saw investors pushing out founders and things like that. Like, I I hate that scenario. There are a few others other scenarios that I hate.
Sumit Kumar:
I hate going with nothing to someone and begging for money. It's it's not like I'm I can't do that. I like to talk eye to eye to people, but I don't like going with a PowerPoint there and asking for money. It's, I don't like that at all. And also think about what a success metric is for a business or what a a survive a success metric is for a business that you found for you as a founder.
Sumit Kumar:
A life changing business is a business that does a few 1,000,000 in revenue. Right? If you like, it can support you and your family and probably better than any business that any, job could, but also gives you a lot more freedom. So if I sold a company for 10,000,000 and I own a 100% of it, it's a success. But if a VC funded company sells for 10,000,000, it's a failure.
Sumit Kumar:
It's a complete failure. If they they have to sell for a 100,000,000 or they have to go for a 100,000,000,000 in order to do enough revenue for the investors, then it's a success. So it's either dead or huge success. And the chance is so low to to achieve that, but the chances are not so low to to build a business that does a few million in revenue, which would be a failure for a VC company, but still changes your life as as a founder. So the bar for success is a lot lower.
Sumit Kumar:
I can still aim for a $1,000,000,000 business or a 100,000,000 business, but if I hit lower, it's still okay. It still it still changed my life. It still provides a good life for my employees, hopefully, and it still provides a great service for my customers. And that is a win in my book. So as long as I can do without VC funding, I will do without VC funding.
Sumit Kumar:
Again, it's a tool. There might be scenarios where it makes sense even for me, but so far these scenarios haven't happened. And as long as we are profitable and growing, I also don't see again, I I see a few scenarios where it would make sense, but, as long as we can fund ourselves and the initiatives that we do, it's good to go without. And I would advise anyone to start without, especially developers. If you can build it on your own, do it.
Michael Thiessen:
It also changes the way like, the type of problems that you have to go after. Like you like you said, you have to have a company that can be worth a $1,000,000,000. So you can't just build an app that's going to solve a small problem for, you know, a small set of people. Whereas if you do a bootstrap business, you can do that, and it's much more relaxed. Like, if you are trying to start some, like, AI company now, like, sure, you might have a chance at at creating a big $1,000,000,000 company, but you're also competing against some of the smartest people in the world who are have nothing but time and are willing to work long hours.
Michael Thiessen:
And, like, I don't have that time, and I'm probably not anywhere near as smart as some of these people. And I'd rather just work on something that I have a much higher likelihood of succeeding at. And, yeah, like you say, like, you don't you don't need to make a $1,000,000,000. You can have, like, a life changing amount of money with a much smaller problem and and something that's more fun in some ways to to actually go after.
Sumit Kumar:
And even the founders who sell for a 100,000,000, they only own 10% of the business. So they all also only make 10,000,000. Right? Like, it's only like, I'm saying this as if, like, I didn't sold anything for 1,000,000. So, but, like, if you compare that, one is much harder to do than the other.
Sumit Kumar:
And, that's why I the stuff you mentioned also with market, it's it's also important to think about your idea. People are always saying that, so I feel like I'm repeating something that I heard a 1000 times, but you have to find a niche, serve that niche well that might be a like, look at the current solutions out there. They might be a bit old. They have, a thousand features, and you just pick 1. And you you narrow the customer base down to solving that one problem of a feature that's a lot like, used a lot in their solution.
Sumit Kumar:
And, yeah, you you basically solve only for that niche, and then slowly you expand that niche. Again, I mentioned this in the beginning. I supported 1 bank, 1 currency, 2 asset classes. Now we have, I don't know, 10 asset classes, all of the currencies, all of the banks in in in Germany, and we also support, Austria and Switzerland. So we expand, right, and on on multiple dimensions.
Sumit Kumar:
So in the beginning, you you should carve out a niche and try to cater to the customers there, make yours the best solution for this specific niche. And if someone comes, I want it in English. I want it Parqet is not even available in English after 4 years. And it's very, like, it's a deliberate decision to not to to not do that, because we are still in a a little bit bigger niche than in the beginning, but we are still in a niche and we want to serve that well, and that niche is still large enough to get customers and to provide value for them. And we might expand at some point geographically as well, but, yeah, it's not today, at least.
Sumit Kumar:
So this is how I at least think about it and how I would advise it also, to everyone starting out. You can bootstrap in a niche quite quite easily. But if you want to solve everything or or for everyone, you have to solve everything, and that means you you need a lot of time building a lot of things. But if you find a niche niche niche niche niche niche, always niche down. And even if you think, oh, I need to add this feature, I need to add this, and this feature creep stuff, that always happens.
Sumit Kumar:
Write it down first. This is what I support and then I launch. And you don't build more than that. You don't need a global invoicing solution if you have 0 customers. You don't need to automate.
Sumit Kumar:
Like, there are so many features developers build for good intentions, but still, you don't need self serve for that that customers can change their email. You don't need password reset flow. You don't need any of that. Do it manually.
Alexander Lichter:
Dark mode.
Sumit Kumar:
I don't still still still have dark mode. Yeah. But this is exactly the case. Like, do it manually. Do everything you can manually.
Sumit Kumar:
If you have customers reaching out and telling you, I need a better invoice or I need my email changed or I want to delete my account, then you do it for them. And when you do this ten times a day, then you can automate it. If you have to delete 10 times a day customer, then you have a different problem. Why do they all want their their account deleted? And then you set this first.
Sumit Kumar:
But yeah. So do do stuff manually until until it's such a burden that, you have to automate it. Everything else is a waste of time.
Alexander Lichter:
Obviously, because besides the whole, like, legal regulations of, like, oh, yeah. GDPR says you need this and that. But I I fully agree, like, a focus on the main features.
Sumit Kumar:
Again, But but this also this is a controversial topic. People hate me for this. They they but but, sir, there is a I I know the German word for it. Let me quickly think about the English one.
Sumit Kumar:
A a large company that violates stuff gets punished higher than a smaller one. Right? There's a "Verhältnismäßigkeit". What what is it?
Alexander Lichter:
Yeah. Like a relate like, yeah. But is it it's a relation to, like, the income or the the revenue. But, yeah, I I I don't know I don't know the English word either, actually.
Sumit Kumar:
What I what I mean is that if you have 0 users on your on your website, you don't need a cookie banner. Nobody cares. Like, it it doesn't matter. And, like, you can't do you may not go to jail for failing a cookie banner or having an invoice wrong or having no impression, which in Germany, everybody's like, oh my god. You have no impression.
Sumit Kumar:
Like, who cares? If you if you have visited us and they start to care, then you add it. It's it's completely fine. The the main thing is you are not like, you shouldn't hurt anyone. Right?
Sumit Kumar:
If you cause damage to people visiting your site or to customers, that's a problem. That's what the law is made for. But if you just didn't know a regulation and did something and you know it's wrong, then you fix it. This this happens all the time. You can't know everything and you shouldn't, like, try to decipher all of the legal stuff that you are required to do, again, I'm not talking about regulated businesses, I'm talking about a regular website or app, then you make the mistake, you fix it, and it's fine.
Sumit Kumar:
We did many mistakes and we fixed it, and you become more professional as you go. But I wouldn't focus on that at all in the beginning. Again, why would you focus on GDPR before your first customer? It's not not a logical, order to do things, in my opinion.
Michael Thiessen:
And I'd I'd like to point out to go to go back to a point you'd made earlier, just for the people listening that, maybe don't know Parqet and that when you go to the website, it's entirely in German. So when I was looking it up, I had to get Chrome to, you know, auto translate just to figure out I apologize. What's going on. No. It's not I guess it's not your fault.
Michael Thiessen:
I'm not in your target market at all. And so I've been following you for a while and, like, vaguely know what Parqet is, but, I mean, it's not being marketed to me. And that's exactly the point that you're making is that you have these 3 countries that you're operating in. You maybe don't worry about GDPR at the beginning. You don't have all this other stuff, and you just, like like, it doesn't matter as much.
Michael Thiessen:
You figure it out as you go.
Sumit Kumar:
Regarding GDPR, I wanted to also say if you are aware of the regulations, build it in. Right? Yeah, of course. Do it. Of course.
Sumit Kumar:
But I wanted to mention that you shouldn't be scared to launch just because you don't know everything about it. We are a finance app. Obviously, we I put in a lot of care that your data is safe, that the data is separated, that there is anonymous data in the database and not any personalized data, all this kind of stuff. So I put in every best practice that I know, and I hired external people who validate that. But, I wanted to basically go against that narrative that, you have to protect everything, every little thing against every little thing regarding the European regulation and all that when you start a company that basically has 0 users today.
Sumit Kumar:
Regarding that that marketing stuff, can you imagine how tempting for me it is to make Parqet English, especially because I'm on Twitter doing everything in English, well, mostly in English. I have a big English audience as well. I was at Stripe before and, yeah, on podcasts and on on on conferences talking English all the time. How hard for me it is to not do an English version, especially because I get asked from, basically, most of my Twitter audience when when is the English version coming, when can we have an English version. And I still don't do it because it's first of all, it's a lot of work, but people don't realize that it's not ending with putting making the website English.
Sumit Kumar:
Customer support, marketing, support for the local banks and local, finance stuff, has to be there. Otherwise, it's just a bad solution in French. You know? It's it's it's not a good solution. There is no product market fit if I don't support the local banks and and all of that.
Sumit Kumar:
So at some point, I want to go there. But, again, I'm very deliberate about who I target and then and then going for that. And I want to be the best solution in Germany first because I I try to become the best solution in Spain. And, yeah, that's that's how I think about it. And in my opinion, at least if you are bootstrapping, you should focus on the niche.
Sumit Kumar:
But there are obviously products that you can go global right from the start, like API products and things like that.
Alexander Lichter:
And, I mean, obviously, if you start, like, with the English community, then in in your case with financial data, it's very specific to countries while for a lot of products, of course, like, okay, if you, if you provide a a product that's not necessarily bound to finances, it's a bit easier to globalize that in a way. Let's I don't know. A social schedule or yeah. Like, whatever. And that's that's way easier.
Alexander Lichter:
But as you mentioned, it still comes with certain issues. For example, yeah, internationalization of the website is one thing, but marketing is the other. You need people writing content that you need, like a help desk and so on and so on. I guess, that's what what people might only see if it actually starts bubbling up at some point. Like, oh, customer from, I don't know, Italy and the site is in Italian.
Alexander Lichter:
He's writing in Italian. Sure. You can auto translate it, but it won't be the best experience for for the people. In in terms of GDPR, I I think I I personally agree to a big part here of like, yeah, you don't have to start like a law degree to, figure out what the regulations are. But of course, as soon as it's about, like, data tracking or stuff, then you're not at least, okay, use some common sense, use some best practices, maybe read an article or 2 about what's actually okay or not.
Alexander Lichter:
But then it's like, how does the cookie banner should look like? And so there are I would say there are limits, which you can always improve after actually landing your first customers and then also caring about that when it's, like, financially logical. As in, like, if you have 10 people paying for a prod a product and it's like, I don't know, $10 a month, it's probably not the right time. If you have, like, 1,000 or 10,000 of users, that's definitely a good idea as you, in the end, also did. But, like, don't make the the 3rd step before the the first.
Alexander Lichter:
Same as you said before with wasting time on topics.
Sumit Kumar:
And you can you can always also get rid of stuff. Like, for example, we, in the beginning, thought, oh, do we have to do this cookie banner thing? Like, we I did. I was alone back then. I just got rid of all the cookies.
Sumit Kumar:
Like, I thought, why do I even need like, I got rid of Google Analytics, all of that stuff. I I didn't even use it. And what do I want to know? I want to know how how many people use the website. I can do this without cookies.
Sumit Kumar:
They have solutions like Plausible Analytics or, you know, your host Cloud CloudFlare, whatever. They give you the stats. You don't need any tracking scripts on your site. So if you don't have any third party scripts like that, you don't need a cookie banner. And we didn't had a cookie banner for, I don't know, quite a while until we started with marketing where you then need to somehow so you don't burn money.
Sumit Kumar:
You basically need to find out what channels were successful, so then you need cookie banners. But we again said, who do we need cookie banners for? We only need cookies cookie banners for people who are not customers yet. So as soon as you are a customer, we auto decline cookies, for example. Like, we put in a lot of care that I think basically no other company does, in tracking as little as possible only so we don't set money on fire on on our marketing, and this is basically it.
Sumit Kumar:
So, yeah, you can also go that route. Just don't use don't use cookies. So you you don't need a cookie ban.
Alexander Lichter:
Until you maybe do. But it's also a really good point. Like, you don't have to track everything. You don't have to measure anything. Be, yeah.
Alexander Lichter:
Be very, let's say, direct and, like, be very expressive of what you actually want to measure and what you actually need and if it's possible with less power. That's a bit of, like, the rule of least power, which people also use in programming. Like, you don't need a crazy library for, I don't know, centering a diff. You can just use CSS in your file. Use the the tool with the least power, the function with the least power to to do that.
Sumit Kumar:
Yeah. Fun fact, if you Google that and you arrive at Stack Overflow, the main answer is from me, how to center a div.
Alexander Lichter:
For real?
Michael Thiessen:
Oh, wow. And shame to fame.
Sumit Kumar:
We will
Alexander Lichter:
link that and, of course, all of the the social and the YouTube videos mentioned, live streams in the show notes. That's that's fun.
Sumit Kumar:
It's, it it's my only source of points on Stack Overflow.
Alexander Lichter:
It's still growing.
Sumit Kumar:
Yep. It is still a problem.
Alexander Lichter:
Apparently, like quitting Vim.
Alexander Lichter:
And that's it for this episode. This was the first part, of our lovely conversation with Sumit Kumar, the founder of Parqet. And the 2nd episode, which will come out the week after or maybe it's out already when you listen to that, we talk more about the technical aspects, how the migration from Nuxt 2 to Nuxt 3 works and so on, so on. So stay tuned for that.
Alexander Lichter:
Definitely, follow him on, the social medias. Of course, links in the show notes and description as usual. And let us know how did you like the episode? Was it interesting business wise, perspective wise, and what are you building right now that's cool and awesome? Write us in the comments or on social media, and, yeah, let us know.
Alexander Lichter:
Otherwise, also check out the older episodes of DejaVue and stay tuned for part 2, and the next episode.
