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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Dagobert Renouf (00:01)
Hello Peter, welcome to launch day.
Petar (00:04)
Yo, Dago, nice to see you.
Dagobert Renouf (00:07)
And yeah, I'm sorry, I already forgot because I asked you but it's Peter that I should say. Peter, okay, cool. So, you said Bulgaria? Is that what you said? So, do you live there currently? Are you from there and living there? Cool. Because you know, I looked at it last year when I was looking to run away from French taxes. But like, apart from that... ⁓
Petar (00:11)
Yeah, but that is okay. In Bulgaria it's like that, yeah.
Yep.
Yes, Exactly.
Dagobert Renouf (00:36)
You know, it seemed like quite an interesting country with like, are you in Sofia or are you else? Are you like in another city?
Petar (00:41)
I've
⁓ lived also in Sofia but it's like the darkest city of them all. Like if you want to see something good in Bulgaria it's like you have to go to the mountains, to the sea, wherever it's way way way better.
Dagobert Renouf (00:50)
Yeah.
Which is the city for the sea? Because I know there was the seaside but I forgot. Is it... Yeah, Varna, yeah, that's it.
Petar (01:04)
There is Varna, Burgas. Yeah, Varna is very good.
I lived there like five years. It's my favorite city for sure. I lived in the middle of Bulgaria. It also for me everything's like two, three hours with the car. everything is good.
Dagobert Renouf (01:15)
Wow, that's awesome.
Yeah, I see,
And how is the culture there? mean, for entrepreneurship and indie hacking and how is it there? Okay, no, I was wondering. Okay.
Petar (01:30)
There is no culture. There is no culture.
No one is doing it. It's strange for people that you work after your work. The walls are pretty, pretty bad. To have a SAS, to put it like that, you have to generate your own receipts.
Dagobert Renouf (01:44)
Yeah, okay, it doesn't make sense, okay.
Petar (01:59)
and then at the end of the month you have to pass to the legal authority in Bulgaria an XML file with all the receipts mapped in Bulgarian currency and like on 10 more stuff like it's hell like I've seen literally no one build a SaaS
Dagobert Renouf (02:15)
my god.
That's why it's 50 % taxes, because it's such a nightmare.
Petar (02:23)
No, actually it
is 10 % corporate tax, after that it's 20 % like another tax and you have also insurance and other stuff.
Dagobert Renouf (02:36)
Or maybe it was
15 if you're a stranger and not like Bulgarian. I forgot.
Petar (02:39)
Yeah,
15 if you don't have a company. But if you don't have a company, you have to pay the full insurance price, like to the max salary. You have to pay yourself max salary. And you cannot actually have tax benefits as a company.
Dagobert Renouf (02:42)
Mmm.
I see.
Yeah, I see.
No, no, yeah, you cannot say this is for my business or something like that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, that's awesome because you go online, you see these fucking digital nomad things and you think, I'm going to go there. It's going to be so much easier. And then you talk to someone like, well, you know, there's no culture and you cannot even have, you know, invoices. You have to declare everything and it's a nightmare. So that's very good to have the other side.
Petar (03:00)
Yeah.
yeah i mean for stripe
let's say you say you have stripe and you have to ⁓ i have to over engineer stripe just to to have the walls pass
Dagobert Renouf (03:32)
So you lose the benefit of Stripe, which is like 30 minutes and you forget about it. You have to build the whole thing to be compatible. Wow. Yeah.
Petar (03:35)
Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (03:45)
At this time I remember when I was thinking of nomading, I thought of using, you know, something like Lemon Squeezy or Polar or something that's like a merchant of record. That way you don't have many invoices. Like for launch day, that's still what I do. Like, you know, people pay use Lemon Squeezy that way. My only client is Lemon Squeezy. And even for me, I prefer it because it's simpler in terms of accounting. So...
Petar (04:10)
Yeah, but
even if I use lemon squeezy I still have to do the same receipts
Dagobert Renouf (04:16)
Yeah, you will... you
mean for every individual?
Petar (04:19)
every individual purchase every it's like for bulgaria all not us every online thing is e-commerce like it's a it's a store that's it
Dagobert Renouf (04:32)
No I see, I understand. So like,
the optimization of lemon squeezy doesn't even make sense in the Bulgarian system. It's like, what is this shit? You know? And so, okay.
Petar (04:39)
Nope.
No, actually lemon
squeezy it's... I think you should start moving to stripe maybe fully because I see that they are moving away like when they got bought by stripe they are...
Dagobert Renouf (04:54)
Yeah,
yeah, no, for sure. It became way less interesting. I didn't have problems, but yeah. It's... ⁓ Yeah, I am actually wanting to move away. It's like I was lazy and now I don't want to change it because with Stripe then you have to manage tags and everything and I'm afraid of that. But yeah.
Petar (05:13)
They are
already integrated, I think, for some like beta. They already integrated Merchant maybe.
Dagobert Renouf (05:18)
Yeah,
yeah, they started to do that. No, yeah, I need to move away because I pay way too much for Lemon Squeezy. It's crazy. I don't know, it's like 15 % fees. That's not what they announce. But when you look at the end, because they add some taxes that I wouldn't add myself, but they add it. And so it deducts from the price. And so I actually, I make way less than I should be.
Petar (05:32)
Purchase
Dagobert Renouf (05:46)
So I think that's the thing. I prefer Gumroad because Gumroad they take a shit ton of money but they say it, you know? And so, and it's very reliable. I like Gumroad but that's more for courses. Anyway, awesome. You are from Bulgaria and you are the only indie hacker in Bulgaria. Apparently, or something.
Petar (05:48)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe
there are more, but at least I'll see them in the building public community. I think a few more Bulgarians, but I think they don't live in Bulgaria.
Dagobert Renouf (06:07)
Okay, cool.
Yeah, maybe, yeah. Did you ever wanted to leave? Because for me, for example, I'm from France and I'm still in my hometown and I love my hometown and I don't want to leave. But did you ever wanted to leave?
Petar (06:25)
I've been everywhere, so I'd say I like I'm actually in my hometown too like my hometown is not that big but it's like it it was a capital of Bulgaria like 200 years ago or something yeah but actually I've been I actually graduated for seaman for captain and I was we traveled the whole world like
Dagobert Renouf (06:30)
What do you mean?
Cool.
Petar (06:53)
Not much, like one year. And for sure I prefer home. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (06:58)
No, there's something with home, Even if people
can tell you, ⁓ know, it's better there. Like, yeah, but this is my place, you know? Yeah, that's...
Petar (07:05)
Home is home. Yeah, exactly. I
I like to have the ability of being indie hacking to, let's say, go one month in ⁓ Spain or something like to have one month or two there, but the base of operations is here. And also my wife is also here. yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (07:26)
Yeah, cool. Yeah, my future wife will be Russian, so it's a different thing. But she fell in love with my hometown of Lille in France, and with me, of course. So, not just the city, hopefully. But yeah, so cool, man. So how does you end up an indie maker then, since it's absolutely not in your culture?
Petar (07:41)
Yeah. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (07:55)
What's the, how did you start your professional life and how did you get here?
Petar (08:03)
In general first as I said I was gonna be a captain then I saw that this is maybe the worst job you can take
Dagobert Renouf (08:10)
Wait, what is this
thing? What is the word you're saying? I'm sorry, I don't get it.
Petar (08:12)
Captain,
like on the ship.
Dagobert Renouf (08:16)
⁓ yeah, you, okay, captain, you mean captain of a ship? Wow, amazing, wow.
Petar (08:16)
Yeah, I graduated for... Yes, Yeah,
I graduated for this. Like, this was my university.
Dagobert Renouf (08:26)
Cool. When
you say captain, I imagine a pirate with a hat and everything. I'm like, you can have a grad, you can have a school for this? Wow. But I guess it's not that, but you know, that's my imagination. So, okay.
Petar (08:36)
Yeah, yeah Yeah,
so I Decided this is definitely not for me. I mean no one there says that it's for him It's like the worst job you can hear and you're far away from your family from home
Dagobert Renouf (08:51)
Yeah, you
live for three months or six months, yeah, yeah.
Petar (08:56)
Yeah, and normally they... Now internet is getting better maybe with Musk, but when it was me it was like you buy 60 megabytes for $20 or something like that. Yeah, it's not even enough to chat in WhatsApp or whatever. So yeah. Everyone, don't vote! Don't vote! Yeah, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (09:09)
my god,
You can't even watch porn on the boat. Like it's a nightmare. ⁓ my god.
my god, what a nightmare. Wow. Okay.
Petar (09:25)
So yeah, and there I decided that I will start coding and actually my last contract, it's like that. And on my last contract, like the full time, every time that I had spare, was studying, studying, studying. I came back, I started one academy.
Dagobert Renouf (09:44)
So you will actually
on the boat, you did it a few times.
Petar (09:47)
Yeah, yeah, two times. Yeah, one time six months, one time five.
Dagobert Renouf (09:51)
Wow, okay. And then you went back home and then you studied in between to learn coding. Why did you think of coding?
Petar (09:55)
Yeah, in between and also... ⁓
I even thought it before, actually the irony was that maybe until 8th grade or something I was like I like computers, I am going become a programmer and I don't know what changed and why I decided to do this but yeah something changed but I came to the right mind I am so happy that I decided to go back to programming this is the best decision I've made
Dagobert Renouf (10:17)
Okay.
coding. Yeah, okay.
Okay, now I hear you. Because like, because wait, it's actually I'm curious about it, because you're not, does it pay well to be the captain of the boat? Or?
Petar (10:29)
Yeah, it took some time.
It paid well like 15 years ago. Before it was like really, really well paid. Like the captains when they come back, they can buy an apartment or whatever. And it was really well paid. But when I started and actually the time that it was, right now it's absurd. Like it pays the same as it paid 15 years ago. But the money, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (11:06)
Okay, with three times
more costly everything. see. Yeah. Wow.
Petar (11:10)
Yeah,
it paid well really, but right now it's... I mean, I can make way more even working as a senior deaf, like, there's...
Dagobert Renouf (11:21)
Yeah, I see, Wow, okay, so you did that and you started freelancing ⁓ after that?
Petar (11:29)
No, actually
I did an academy. ⁓ At that time it was very good one. Six months full time there. It's like a school, like you directly go there, but it's practice oriented. You do one project, two project, three and it's a small group. Like it was very good. And immediately I started one job. I decided it was not.
so good for me so I just went to another job it was very easy for me because I even on the first job I was building projects on the side because it was too easy let's say and I was bored and you know I'm trying to grind I'm just starting in a new niche so and like that on the second job I also had some more time so I just started building one project and this is the moment I realized
Dagobert Renouf (12:07)
Yeah, yeah, I see. That's good.
Petar (12:25)
No, actually this was the first step to realization that you should market first. Yeah, I built one project and I spent maybe more than two years for sure because first I was...
Dagobert Renouf (12:31)
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Wow, so on
the side of the jobs you were having, you were kind of bored and having lots of time, so you were building this project on the side. So what was this project?
Petar (12:42)
Yeah, yeah. All the time.
It was for fitness trainers and to manage their clients and stuff and also for fitness enthusiasts because I wanted to test myself so it was much easier for me to make another roll. And the thing is that I was building, building, building for a very long time and at some point I decided it's ready even though I maybe re-rolled it 2-3 times because I became more senior on the way of course and I wanted to make it better.
Dagobert Renouf (13:15)
Yes. what
is this shit? I need to rebuild it. You cannot launch with this code. Yeah, okay.
Petar (13:18)
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. And I watched and yeah, zero customers.
Dagobert Renouf (13:26)
So how did
you launch it actually? What did you launch?
Petar (13:29)
I don't know, I just released it and I was like, yeah, people will come. I know a lot of guys, know a lot of coaches.
Dagobert Renouf (13:33)
Yeah, but like did
you at least send an email, it on Facebook? What did you do?
Petar (13:38)
Yeah, I
actually knew a lot of coaches and what I realized that I will never do business in Bulgaria again because it's like everybody says, yeah, that's great. That's amazing. Yeah, that's I will for sure use it. And no one registers.
Dagobert Renouf (13:55)
That's
the same everywhere but I guess... I know in US it's better because they're like very happy to try and spend money to try something new all the time. Even like compared to France it's like three times easier. So yeah.
Petar (13:58)
Yeah.
For sure.
Yeah,
I know, I built another project where we had market. And everyone was like, it was for real estate agents. but... Not exactly marketplace, ⁓ like to make everyone of Bulgarian real estate agents to communicate with each other and have this all for us and stuff. And there it was a little bit before this AI hype, so I had to really do it.
Dagobert Renouf (14:18)
Yeah.
Petar (14:42)
well so it was i don't know more than half a year and one more guy we paid also to assist me for some stuff because i just didn't have the time as i've been working full time all the time and we had like everyone like agencies groups because normally they use just viber or facebook groups like and we gave them really good solution i mean
Dagobert Renouf (15:08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Petar (15:11)
Everything was with with caching with message brokers like emails you receive it was like I was planning for I don't know hundreds thousands of people like Spent so many time on that Yeah, like a hundred people registered the tops and that was it Yeah, so now I know that post fast this is what I made different I started marketing even before I built it
Dagobert Renouf (15:21)
Yeah, lots of features.
Yeah.
No, but you know, that's what I do now. know, like, for example, launch day, I announced it in September and I had 60 sales in two weeks of people wanting to buy. So I knew it was good. And then I took a long time to build it, but at least I knew I wasn't building for nothing, you know, and. ⁓
Petar (15:55)
Yeah.
Yeah, way,
way better. Yeah, definitely.
Dagobert Renouf (16:00)
That's way better. I think people are so scared of that. But if you have a cool idea and you're excited to build it, you can just, I mean, for sure, now I have an audience, so it's easier. But still, if it's a really good idea, you can announce it, promote it everywhere, say it's in early access. And if you cannot get anybody to pay, when you launch, it's not going to be easier. mean, some products, you need to have it to demonstrate the value. But a lot of products, it's not that. It's just an idea.
And if you can identify the problem, people will pay, you know, so.
Petar (16:34)
I think the biggest issue for most is that you have to fail at least a few times to get used to this feeling. Like now I don't care, I will just launch something and okay, I will even pre-launch it as you said and I don't mind but with the first project you're like I have to be perfect, know, it has to be amazing.
Dagobert Renouf (16:42)
Yeah.
But you know,
talking with you, I'm realizing it's about fear because like, I think what people do and at least what I was doing is like, why not just put a page before you did anything? Like in the first day and say, this is my idea, this is how much it costs, you can pay. You don't do that because you're afraid people will say no. But like then you will build it, but then the fear will not go away. So even two years later when you launch, you still have the same fear.
Petar (17:14)
Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (17:24)
And you still, so if you just face your fear the first day, you could just know that nobody gives a shit, you know, or that they do. And the other side is like, if you have some sales, it's amazing. Because now you're building for somebody and now you're motivated.
Petar (17:39)
Yeah.
Yeah, but the whole also there is another how to say like mental barrier from older people and how business was made before. Like we were gonna make, ⁓ I have one on the side project for a hotel management as I have one friend with hotels and he just, ⁓ we made some first landing page, know, just to have it there. And he said to like his relatives or something.
Dagobert Renouf (17:59)
Yeah.
Petar (18:11)
You know we're gonna build a project, already made a landing bench, we're gonna start promoting it. And where's the product? We haven't started it. And they're like, how? Like why? This is a lie, this is bad. Like why is it bad? Yeah, this is the mentality of 50, 60 plus like, and this is maybe a lot of people have gathered this mentality. At least this is I've seen around me.
Dagobert Renouf (18:25)
my god.
Petar (18:38)
That it's like you have to have something, you cannot be like this, like...
Dagobert Renouf (18:38)
Yeah.
You really don't need to because for me, when I didn't launch for eight months, I sent multiple emails saying to people when I was making updates, I can refund you. I'm not trying to steal your money. I was just wanting to validate if you want to jump away because it's too long, I'm refunding you. And I refunded like 12 people out of the 60. And it's OK. It's not about... It's just validating. And if people really care, then they will do it. That's cool.
Petar (19:11)
Yeah,
yeah, exactly. So this is the best validation. think I've also seen a lot of people run like even don't start or think of project just do some simple landing page and When they are very good with ads they run a lot of ads on the landing page to try to convert if this converts they start building because sometimes yeah as you said you have an audience and it would be easier because you can promote it some somehow at least some people but if you don't
Dagobert Renouf (19:28)
Yeah, yeah, that's
Yeah, a little bit,
Petar (19:41)
I think might work. I'm not very good with that, but I'm sure they can work.
Dagobert Renouf (19:47)
No, it will. think it will. It's just like if you have a good concept, you will see if it's alive or not, or if it's dead. If you spend a thousand dollars and nothing is moving, you know. Yeah, awesome. Okay, so you build these different projects, and how did you reach the project you're doing now? How did you get there?
Petar (19:58)
Yeah.
I actually didn't even want to build it at first. I started using a couple of similar tools, like I will not say names, and I started...
Dagobert Renouf (20:23)
We can talk about your competitors, we can, but okay.
Petar (20:26)
I don't want to be the bad guy. So I choose a few tools. Some of them were good, but they were too expensive or were missing something. Some of them were cheap enough, but the quality was like... I I'm a software engineer and I like my pages, my product to work well, fast and...
Dagobert Renouf (20:28)
Okay, okay.
Petar (20:50)
when it just doesn't work or I have to wait like 5, 6, 7, 8 seconds for one page.
Dagobert Renouf (20:55)
And
a lot of these tools are slow. A lot of these tools are slow. And they are bloated with like, you can move things around, but like it's like, because I know, because I tried a lot, because of course I tweet a lot. But yeah.
Petar (21:03)
Yeah.
I hated this like and I just realized I see something I have scheduled at one of the tools like 15 or 20 and I'm like I refresh and it take like 7-8 seconds what if I schedule for one month ahead like it will stop working and these tools they earn money and I'm like okay I can make like way way better products like for sure and I just decided and
Dagobert Renouf (21:26)
Yeah.
Petar (21:36)
I started small, adding only some posting and stuff, but I saw that actually agencies also would use it because they're even my... I'd say they're even better a customer for me, even though I don't have much, I just have a few, that agencies don't churn, in my opinion. And this is the biggest issue because they also don't want to churn from the other platforms.
Dagobert Renouf (21:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Petar (22:06)
because it's a very big hassle to move all the accounts and clients but if you manage to get a few agencies it will be totally reasonable for me like I managed to get the prices really low because I self-host everything so I'd say it became how to say a product that I was not planning to build but now I'm planning to put at least a year ahead of it
Dagobert Renouf (22:36)
Wow, this is cool. And you know, it's funny you talk about speed because it's a feature. And I saw an article yesterday on, I think about it for a long time, that speed is actually a value. Like, we don't think about it, but like, I used to be big on like front-end development and performance optimization. And I was always obsessed of getting the first, you know, the whole page in under half a second was like my dream goal, you know, which is very hard to do, but.
⁓ That's like... It seems like nothing. But... And people will say, yeah, maybe for e-commerce, for Amazon, but like even an app, like a scheduling app or an app you use every day. Like... For example, like Twitter, when it became, you know, all this Elon drama, people started moving away to threads and to other competitors. I use threads for a while. Threads, it's slow. It's fucking slow.
you post something, like Twitter, it's instantaneous, not just for you, but also for everybody. People see it in real time, it's awesome, you can interact. Thread, you post something, it's gonna be like, take three seconds for just the fucking one line. like, so you cannot reply to people quickly. So you cannot, so like, this changes the whole dynamic. And so, people completely underestimate that. For example, for a launch day,
there is a live chat on the homepage and everything is instant. You there is no that you can upload some products, you can comment and everything is updating live and it's like dynamic and that's like making it more fun. For lunch day, it's not really necessary just because I enjoy doing it. But I'm saying there's really a value, you know, in speed and now...
Petar (24:26)
annoying the customers
what like really what
Dagobert Renouf (24:29)
And people
use frameworks, they're gonna use all the frameworks, like super bloated, like React and lots of libraries. And then this whole shit becomes like a complete nightmare that takes like so long. And it's not just like the page size, it's also your browser has to unpack everything because there's so much data. And even if it's not that big and you have good connection, it's still gonna be slow. And that's like, I'm sorry, I'm obsessed with this, but yeah.
Petar (24:56)
Yeah, not only that people
don't realize that even if you don't load much, but if you bought your HTML like to be too big, it will still be slow. Like it has to be rendered. And I actually even for I use next for the public part for the blog and so on. like the inside of the app, the client part, let's say the dashboard is react. Like I see no reason to make it.
to add another Node.js server when I have a proper backend. I don't see a reason for that because in general also Next.js is pretty hard to self-host. Like it is easy to self-host but it's pretty hard to scale and it might get pretty expensive. And if you...
Dagobert Renouf (25:43)
That's the
goal, that's kind of like trapping you with like these super cool features and then you pay a lot. So please show us because now I want to see how fast your app is. And if it's slow, I will be super mad. So I hope it works. Yeah. No, I don't see it yet. You need to share again. Yeah.
Petar (25:52)
Yeah. Okay. Let's come here. Is it visible? wait. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (26:07)
Yeah, speed is so underrated and now people don't even... They don't even know about it, they don't optimize for it, they think they were gonna have...
Petar (26:14)
with this vibe coding
culture, it will become even worse because they see that the product works good and the moment customers come, it just falls apart. you need to have some knowledge to optimize your queries or whatever.
Dagobert Renouf (26:19)
yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And
you know, when it's an app, people are gonna spend let's say 20 minutes on every day and gonna click a hundred different times. If every time you click, you wait three seconds, it's so annoying. You know, it's crazy.
Petar (26:43)
Exactly.
Now here, this is actually just published posts, how much you have per workspace. This is, will add here more metrics. I just got approved for Instagram and waiting on approval on Facebook. So I want to add like real metrics, like not only how many published, but the metrics.
Dagobert Renouf (26:54)
I see ya.
you mean approved
for like special data so you can show them. Yeah.
Petar (27:08)
Yeah, for each
new thing you get a pass to approval of Facebook and it is the slowest thing that can happen to someone and they reject you for no reason. And yeah, so ⁓ this is like this dashboard doesn't have much you can just filter like normally. I have post here even I have now scheduled. Let's say I have my calendar here. Actually right now it's
Dagobert Renouf (27:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, cool.
Petar (27:37)
Too fast because it's cached on the front end. I will refresh. Actually this was a ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (27:44)
You know, this is super fast, this is cool. We can actually, yeah,
can get to work now. It's not like you don't have to wait every time. Yeah.
Petar (27:50)
Yeah,
let's say the published post and as you can see there, you can see the scroll bar.
Dagobert Renouf (27:58)
Yeah, there's like a hundred. wow. That's cool. Wow. I'm so happy to see something fast. I love this shit. That's so cool.
Petar (28:02)
Okay, so it does
work fast.
Dagobert Renouf (28:08)
Yeah, it's super fast. Yeah,
and show me the calendar. Can you move things around or is it more like manual?
Petar (28:14)
I haven't
added because from what I talked to agencies they don't even need actually drag and drop from what I saw the only thing they most need is like let's say here just choose the date whatever and to go to the post it's pre-scheduled you can choose whatever networks
Dagobert Renouf (28:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
wow, yeah, you have
like a billion ones. That's interesting. Yeah, cool. Yeah.
Petar (28:40)
Yeah,
and from here I actually made... I wanted to make it too simple. I think for now it's possible, but with the new features I'm thinking I will have to maybe redesign something. Because from now all you have to do like, I don't know, choose a photo or something. Let me find some photo.
Dagobert Renouf (28:51)
Yeah.
And so do you have specific fields so that you have specific content per platform? ⁓ Like some specific fields that are going to show only on one platform or something? yeah, I see, okay, yeah.
Petar (29:02)
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah, this is like settings
for each for each one you've chosen here. You can this is actually I didn't know Facebook hit it, but I saw one client wanted it. You can add a carousel link and actually it to have some kind of carousel photos on Facebook that each one is clickable. So it's like direct call to action if someone clicks the photo, something like that. Yeah, for Instagram.
Dagobert Renouf (29:31)
Yeah, I see. So
by default, it shows one content, but you can add a specific one for every platform. I see.
Petar (29:39)
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, you have like everything post to grids stories collaborators for tik tok public only me like everything that is possible even for excited communities our favorite building public community and out to retweet which I actually use a lot because
Dagobert Renouf (29:47)
Yeah.
Wow, cool.
I'm gonna be...
So you didn't want to shit talk your competitors, but I've tried everybody. And I just want to say it's funny because, man, all these features, these other platforms, they're gonna tell you, yeah, we're gonna add it. It's in the super premium plan. It's like becomes so complicated to just add this fucking basic auto retweets, which is not that hard, I think. And so I like that you just like...
Petar (30:26)
It is not, ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (30:29)
add everything and it's just instant and it works and there's no bullshit. I really like the vibe here. Yeah.
Petar (30:36)
I tried to make it as simple as possible. My goal is to make it so simple. I actually wanted this here too. Because I was using this way of scheduling and I was forgetting when I scheduled posts. I added a small calendar that here it is actually all the scheduled posts to their accounts. this is something small, but it actually saves me a lot of time.
Dagobert Renouf (30:55)
that's nice. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's good. That's good.
Petar (31:05)
And for this whole post, let's I will, I will six, let's say, see how fast it is to schedule. Like this is everything and uploaded photo and the photo is uploaded on the Clickwood schedule. And one bonus, ⁓ I created another service because my backend structure is not so small already. And each photo that you publish, because I had some issues, like some.
Dagobert Renouf (31:18)
Yeah.
Petar (31:31)
Photos fail for Instagram, for Facebook, stuff like that, know resolutions and I made another service and right now each post passes before when I schedule it now it just passes through the queue and gets automatically processed by aspect ratio by whatever needs for the platform so it doesn't fail like this I think
Dagobert Renouf (31:34)
Mmm.
⁓ Yeah. And
what if the person has uploaded the wrong aspect ratio?
Petar (32:01)
No worries, this is the whole idea. Like it will get correctly resized, let's put it like, I don't remember the term. Yeah, I don't remember the term, but it was like that because especially for Instagram carousels, you need to, ⁓ all the photos get the aspect ratio of the first photo. Yeah, some small things I had no idea of and...
Dagobert Renouf (32:11)
Yeah, I see, okay.
wow, yeah, cool.
Petar (32:31)
After a few tweaks, testing a lot, think right now it works pretty nicely from what I've tested. And I also added this thing here. I actually haven't made it pretty big yet. I'm still... I'm still in the process how it should exactly work, but it works pretty nice now. Like you can upload some photos. Okay, those are the same. Maybe it won't make it perfect.
Dagobert Renouf (32:49)
Mm-hmm.
Petar (32:59)
but anyway you can add some fade in, some... okay it's a vintage, two fade outs, the video duration and some audio if you have, I don't have actually currently, and some fade or slide like for the transitions and you can just generate a video and it creates a job and it will wait and see it you have now already a working video
Dagobert Renouf (33:14)
Mm-hmm.
Cool,
like a slideshow for TikTok. Wow, cool.
Petar (33:28)
Yeah,
yeah, and you can just download it easily. And just to note, because I see that some platforms have some kind of video generation, I think it's pretty important to know that your browser and your computer will not be sad that you did this, because this is done on the backend.
Dagobert Renouf (33:47)
Yeah, I see, see. because it's a
front end on the other platforms. Like if...
Petar (33:51)
Yeah, most
of them use some kind of FF-MPG front-end wrapper that actually is pretty slow because you have to parse the video on the browser and yeah. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (33:57)
Yeah. Yeah.
my god, But for simple things
like this, it's perfect. And I guess once you need very advanced, people can edit it themselves. If you need very advanced, they're not going to use a tool like this anyway. So that's smart. Cool.
Petar (34:16)
sure yeah I have some ideas how
to make it even better but we'll see I actually added ⁓ for the accounts
Dagobert Renouf (34:25)
And how did
you, so how did you get the clients? How did you get the agencies?
Petar (34:30)
I think most of them were eggs actually I don't even know how I was just sharing
Dagobert Renouf (34:38)
No, but like
it's a very simple way to grow a X scheduling platform by posting on X. You know, that makes sense.
Petar (34:44)
Yeah, like,
yeah, I was just posting posting ⁓ what I see that drives traffic, not much customers, but traffic is for sure. I mean, if I managed to write one good Reddit post, I just see spike of traffic.
Dagobert Renouf (35:01)
Do
you have an example of one good reddit post? ⁓
Petar (35:06)
⁓ I have to find but I haven't seen I haven't had good ones lately
Dagobert Renouf (35:14)
No, okay,
but like just because I never had a big success on Reddit,
Petar (35:19)
This one is not that good, but it's still traffic.
Dagobert Renouf (35:22)
Yeah, but like it's not bad.
You know, it's only big viral post is interesting, but like this is also interesting. So you just, you posted this, this question. And so, like, it's not about, it's not about your product.
Petar (35:30)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is my post. This is all my Yeah.
No, very,
very rarely I promote my product directly. is like ⁓ the Reddit hate you will get like you'll get zero customers, visitors, nothing. just like you see from either from Google, like Google searches just increase the moment if something goes good. Like you see, I had here something small. I try to poke everywhere I can post fast and that's it.
Dagobert Renouf (35:42)
⁓
Okay, so you posted that and how people find out?
Petar (36:08)
That's it for the whole post. I ⁓ mentioned once, not more. If you try to be too much promotional, you will get only hate.
Dagobert Renouf (36:18)
I'm taking a screenshot of this because it's super interesting. Cool.
Petar (36:20)
I think
⁓ I'm trying to understand better reddit but for sure ⁓ If you try to promote or write with AI because I've tried also to write with AI It really flops like Yeah, yeah Yeah, so I'm trying to do this also with reddit. I think it kind of works but I also have
Dagobert Renouf (36:35)
Yeah, for sure. People will see it. Nobody wants that. Yeah. Cool.
Petar (36:49)
coworkers or something like that, let's say that have agencies, I'm just waiting for them to start because they will need reports. the bonus thing is that agencies want to automate their business. And actually with any 10 and tools like that, it's pretty easy, but most platforms don't offer or it's expensive to use it. And I've already added an API. So it's...
Dagobert Renouf (37:14)
Hmm.
Petar (37:15)
Pretty easy and the bonus with the API is, let's say you come here to the workspace settings. ⁓ Workspaces are like for, it's mainly used with agencies. Like you can make ⁓ each client a workspace and all his accounts, all his posts, everything is per workspace separated. So you know, you have one client, second client, you don't want to mix it because you have to anyway do them or you can also add editors to, I don't know.
Dagobert Renouf (37:25)
Yeah, I see.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, get it.
Petar (37:45)
Yeah, and client to also come here, approve and stuff like that. ⁓ Yeah, for the API, it was actually pretty easy to do. I really don't know why most platforms don't do it. Maybe I'm not sure, actually. It's pretty easy to have some kind of simple API. I actually saw that some people are already using the API because I received some errors in Sentry. So I have to add some validation more. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (37:49)
Yes, approval for clients. Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Petar (38:14)
Actually one guy was even abusing the API, I stopped his account, got some pretty bad emails from him and yeah, the irony was like I sent him one email to like what is going on, like to stop like second email, third email and he answered me, you stopped my subscription without any warning. Like how many more can I do?
Dagobert Renouf (38:22)
my God.
And why was he abusing
it? Was it some Twitter bot shit?
Petar (38:42)
Yeah,
Twitter CryptoBot. ⁓ And Twitter API is pretty expensive and yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (38:45)
⁓ my god, fuck this.
Yeah, I know it's super expensive. So you're not going
to waste post on this guy. Yeah.
Petar (38:54)
He made in one hour 100 posts. And he was angry that he cannot post more. Like, okay. Because I made it pretty easy actually, after that I added, of course, red limit. I made it pretty simple with this. It was, I think, I added an entity in the integration and it just downloaded and it's just plug and play and you can automate everything. So...
Dagobert Renouf (38:58)
See you.
You're rate limited now probably, yeah.
Yeah, I see.
Petar (39:24)
But I just, maybe because I just really like anything. It's pretty cool for me.
Dagobert Renouf (39:29)
Okay, I get it. Yeah, I tried everything and it's only Zapier that I really liked, but it's more expensive. I think the reason, yeah, but like the reason I like it is like they just have better integrations, because I think the platform, they spend more time with Zapier because of the Zapier brand. Like for example, I was automating the the email I sent for people on launch day, like through my Gmail.
Petar (39:36)
Anything is free.
Dagobert Renouf (39:58)
and it took me two hours on make and I couldn't get it to work. Then I tried NA10 and it was super hard. The permissions of Gmail, I had to create so many shit. Zapier, I just went, I said connect and it was working. So I think the integrations, for example, Google, they spent more time making the integration for Zapier because it's the leader. And so that's the value they have. It's like they have like, they dominate the market and so they have better integrations.
Petar (40:11)
Okay.
I can agree
for sure, but I have a lot of work falls and when I know that I self-hosting in N810 and it's free, it's pretty good because I pay nothing. Yeah. I, I, I, I self-host absolutely everything. I mean, I would, before I been using stuff like, one more mistake I can say to everyone who will watch this, if they're starting like,
Dagobert Renouf (40:35)
No, sure, free is good. So you host it yourself, I guess, because you can...
Okay, cool.
and can
you just stop sharing your screen? I can show you, but yeah.
Petar (40:55)
Yeah, I will
stop. Never build your infrastructure with scale in mind when you have zero users. This is the biggest mistake you ⁓ can do. Even my first project that the second... Actually, all before this they were on GCP with Kubernetes clusters, with load balancing.
Dagobert Renouf (41:08)
Yeah, yeah.
Petar (41:25)
Everything! And it is pretty pretty expensive like hundreds of dollars for nothing for zero users
Dagobert Renouf (41:34)
Yeah, you were ready for a million users, but you never had them. yeah, I know this.
Petar (41:38)
Yeah, and actually even now
with Postfast I decided I added some K6, I don't know if you have tried it's testing like load balancing, like load tests, everything. With the current implementation I can handle way more users than I can handle even with Kubernetes right now. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (42:00)
Yeah, I see. Okay. No, you're fine. You're
good. And yeah. And usually it's the most likely thing is you will have steady growth and not like 1000 customers in one night probably. So yeah, you have time for that.
Petar (42:16)
Yeah, you know, and those are good problems. Like, I want to have those problems.
Dagobert Renouf (42:22)
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
even for me, just like personal note, like, since I have an audience, if I have these problems, I can even make content from it and say, here's what's happening. And so you can never lose basically. So you don't have to worry about it. if somebody hacks me, I can make content about it. know, so yeah.
Petar (42:35)
Yeah.
Exactly, I mean,
I totally agree.
Dagobert Renouf (42:45)
So yeah, well, cool man, that was awesome. ⁓ You didn't lie, it's so fast. feel like it was, was it on your local machine? Cause it was so fast, man. my God. No, I know, I know, I know, I'm kidding. ⁓ Cool man. Yeah. So I wish you a great launch day. Hope it's going to get you some sales and some good feedback and everything. And I was very happy to have you.
Petar (42:52)
I know this was from the point version ⁓
Thank you. Very nice conversation. Bye bye.
Dagobert Renouf (43:14)
Cheers.