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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Alexander Isora (00:00)
your logo and my logo on the...
Dagobert (00:02)
I see, I see.
Wait, we just started recording. So it's not live where we're recording. ⁓ Let me see your audio. Yeah, I see, I see. Lunch day. man, you did some work there. I see, lunch day, Paracast.
Alexander Isora (00:16)
yeah, I did, I did,
I did. I did, yeah, but it looks not good, I think. Not that good.
Dagobert (00:23)
Now it's better, yeah, I see it better.
Alexander Isora (00:26)
expert in without the gradient just
Dagobert (00:27)
Yeah, it looks a bit
shit, but it's cool, man. It's perfect. It's the vibe we need. You know, we need this. We need authenticity. It's not perfect.
Alexander Isora (00:33)
Okay, as you say,
as you say, okay. Can I put, yeah, can put my arms above it. But it's not mirrored, right? You can read the, or it's okay, you want it to be mirrored. Okay, okay, it's good.
Dagobert (00:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can read it. I can read launch date, you know, and Paracas. Yeah, my god.
Yeah. So yeah, you know, these interviews, man, I'm still like, I just did one interview and at the middle of it, I was like, we are not doing a good job of selling his product because we were just so chill. He was just, shit, there's a bug. you know, I always say my product is shit. He was just like having fun because we were so chill.
Alexander Isora (01:01)
Ha ha ha
Dagobert (01:10)
But I think that's cool actually, so I'm trying to figure it out. And I think what we should do is we should just have a very chill conversation, just really go all out, just have fun, because it's better to connect with people, be real. I think that's missing. And then maybe you just send me a two-minutes video recording a cool demo of your product that actually sells it. Because when we're in this vibe, it's hard to actually sell it.
Alexander Isora (01:24)
yeah
Bye.
Hmm.
Hmm, yeah, it makes sense, makes sense. Okay, as you say, you're the boss here.
Dagobert (01:44)
Yeah, maybe we should do that. yeah, because the idea is like to have, it's the discount that makes people excited, then people come in and then they need to see immediately if they want the product. And then maybe if they want the product, then they check the interview. Then there's another audience that just gonna listen to all the interviews on podcasts because they just enjoy chilling with indie makers and feeling less alone and connect with us. So that's good too. You know, trying to find.
Alexander Isora (02:05)
⁓ Yeah, so you have two videos
one is the full interview and the second one short ⁓ product demo
Dagobert (02:17)
Yeah, but that was just like,
you know, taking from the video when the person shows the product. And I think it will be better because I very rarely had a good demo in like the 20 videos I've done so far. Because, and when I had, it was because it was someone who was only focused on the product, but then the conversation was boring. Like it was just like, hey, what did you do with your life? How did you become an indie hater?
Alexander Isora (02:23)
yeah, okay. I will send you separately then. Right?
Hmm.
Dagobert (02:45)
So my product does this. No, I don't give a shit. I'm talking about your life, you know. And so it's, you know, trying to find. And so I think really separating is easier so we can have this like Joe Rogan style, completely random conversation and then the demo separately. Yeah.
Alexander Isora (02:49)
⁓ I understood, yeah. ⁓
Yeah, that sounds
great.
Dagobert (03:06)
man. Okay, let me just get some water because I just already did one call. Let me go back.
Alexander Isora (03:17)
Ahem.
When do you marry? When will the wedding be?
Dagobert (03:32)
⁓
Tomorrow I'm getting the documents because she brought a lot of you know, because she's from Russia So she brought a lot of doc she had to bring a lot of Like birth certificates, which wasn't easy to get Then we had to go in French I mean Russian Embassy in Paris to get a certificate that she's not married and she's a bill able to get married
Alexander Isora (03:37)
wow.
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Hmm.
Dagobert (04:01)
because I guess some people aren't, like if they're like, I don't know, stupid or some shit, I don't know, like, no, I'm kidding, but like, know, I'm being a dick, but you know what mean. So yeah, and...
Alexander Isora (04:01)
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yeah.
Dagobert (04:15)
And so now we have to get it translated by an official translator that puts a stamp and shit. So we did that. We're going to pick it up tomorrow. And then we have to go to the city hall to give it to them and see what they think. And last time I called a city hall to say, yeah, that's enough if you give us this. Then I called again two days ago, somebody different. And I said, no, you also need this document. ⁓ yeah, for sure. It's always like this. ⁓
Alexander Isora (04:31)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Hmm.
Dagobert (04:43)
So now they also
need a proof of where she lives. In Russia.
Alexander Isora (04:47)
in
france i'm interested why
Dagobert (04:51)
I don't know why. Yeah, but they need this. And so the problem
is in France, a proof of where you live, the way we do this is going to be an electricity bill to your name or a phone bill, something that ties you to a place, know, to your name. And her, she lives in an apartment that, I mean, she has nothing in her name. It's basically her mom paying shit. ⁓
Alexander Isora (05:02)
Uh-uh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dagobert (05:19)
so she has nothing literally in her name. But she told me she can get like a government paper about this, which we don't do in France, but maybe that's what we're gonna do.
Alexander Isora (05:23)
Hmm, that's problem.
Mmm
Maybe she could get a bank statement with your address.
Dagobert (05:37)
Yeah, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, no idea. But yeah, it's looking good. It's mostly like... Man, it was so hard for me to buy an engagement ring because I had so little runway. So I spent one week of runway to get an engagement ring. And I'm glad I found the cutest small ring in the world. Because you know... Yeah, it is. Like when you're like literally three meters away, you don't see it. I'm not kidding. You literally don't see it. You don't see it.
Alexander Isora (05:50)
Haha.
Really? Yeah, saw it. It's almost invisible.
I didn't see it on the picture. I thought it's a joke. There is no actual diamond,
but... Okay. They say.
Dagobert (06:10)
It is, there is a diamond, I mean they say, but like they don't even say
how many carats. They don't even say like 0.1 carats, they don't even say it, so it's less. But you can see when you look closely, my god, it's shining. ⁓ But you know what I hate? But it's like when you build an MVP, when you build a product, the worst thing is to try to build a big product, but build it shitty.
It's much better to build a small product and make it good. know? Like less features but well done, rather than lots of features, done shit. And so that was my thing. I'm like, okay, I cannot buy her a real cool, expensive diamond ring. I can't. It's not possible. So, can I buy a really cool ring that is small? And I found this amazing brand in France called Monsieur, which means basically ⁓ man.
Alexander Isora (06:44)
Yeah, I understand.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Dagobert (07:07)
weird name for a women jewelry brand or whatever. And it's really cool Paris brand and they do this very cute, high quality, ⁓ made in France, very well designed rings. But a lot of them are just very small and that's the whole concept. But it's high quality. It's just, so but there's very little material, like there's very little gold, little anything because it's so thin and so tiny. It's like one millimeter thin. And so...
Alexander Isora (07:07)
Mm-hmm.
You
Okay.
Okay.
Dagobert (07:38)
But it's very beautiful and she loved it. To be honest, when I received it and I checked before giving her, I was like, my God, this is so small. This is so invisible. She will hate it. But she think it's so cute and it is actually super cute. But now the big challenge is for wedding men. I need to buy two more rings.
Alexander Isora (07:58)
Yeah, I have discovered
that you actually need four rings after I get... three? Okay, I thought four. ⁓ okay, yeah, she doesn't... she says yes and she doesn't ask you back, right? You just ask her and that's it. Yeah, that makes sense. I didn't know that and Christina didn't either. And I bought just two rings, like one for her, one for me. And then I discovered that I actually needed an engagement ring, ⁓ an extra one.
Dagobert (08:02)
No, three.
one engagement ring for her and then two wedding rings.
No. Yeah. Yeah.
I see. And the thing is, engagement ring, you don't necessarily wear it all the time. So it's okay if it's only 400 euro and very thin because you don't need it to support any kind of life conditions. Let's say you don't need to wear it. You will take it off. She takes it off regularly. But the wedding ring, you never take it off. So you cannot buy a 400 very...
Alexander Isora (08:45)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Dagobert (08:56)
small
wedding ring because it will break eventually. So I have to buy basically 1000 euros twice.
Alexander Isora (08:59)
Hmm
Or you could just buy one simple ring that she can wear every day, like this one.
Dagobert (09:10)
Yeah, but like I get
Alexander Isora (09:10)
So it's not expensive
and you will not worry if she lost it. Or you.
Dagobert (09:15)
No, but you don't lose
a wedding ring. It's just attached to your finger. You never remove it. Do you remove yours? Yeah, but like she doesn't get it. You know, I'm not kidding. Like you're supposed to like leave like when I, my previous marriage, I had it all the time. Like I just never remove it. When I removed it, it was a shock, you know.
Alexander Isora (09:19)
Christina did.
Yeah,
but when you go to gym or something you remove it or...
Dagobert (09:36)
You remove it, you remove
it all... I mean, I'm sorry, you never remove it, you keep it all the time.
Alexander Isora (09:42)
How do you keep it all the time? How do you do barbell?
Dagobert (09:44)
Christina,
do you have your wedding ring right now?
Alexander Isora (09:47)
Christina, he's asking do you have your wedding ring right now? No, no she doesn't. ⁓ She removes it when she goes to sleep because it disturbs her. At least that's what she says. I don't know how it works.
Dagobert (09:54)
my god.
wow.
Yeah, it's disturbing her to remember she's
married to you. No, I can't think about it. No, I'm kidding.
Alexander Isora (10:08)
you
Okay, let's go to talk about startups because we are so limited in time, guess, right? Because you have an average.
Dagobert (10:22)
We're not that limited,
we have one hour, you know, but... ⁓
Alexander Isora (10:26)
Okay, as you say, I'm just used to lead the talk because I do podcasting too. So I am checking the time, you know, ⁓ the things, but let me just relax like they do at Turogan. Like I will imagine that we have all the day. I will fidget with my knife.
Dagobert (10:32)
Yeah, yeah, No, don't worry.
Yeah, that's the goal man. You should smoke weed or some shit, do something crazy like that.
wow, my god, he has a knife. So yeah, so last year, you you invited me, I was living with you for one week. No, more than this, I forgot, 10 days.
Alexander Isora (10:49)
Yeah, both one.
I don't remember. Yeah, we crossed, so...
Dagobert (10:59)
Yeah.
Can I say where it was? Because I know you don't want to say everything.
Alexander Isora (11:04)
Yeah, it
was in Georgia, in Belize.
Dagobert (11:07)
Yeah. And then I wanted to move to Tbilisi. Yeah.
And then I remember, no, I like having free healthcare and I love friends, food, and I want to stay here. Yeah.
Alexander Isora (11:18)
Hahaha
Let's talk in a year when we will have much bigger revenue.
Dagobert (11:27)
Yeah, maybe, maybe that's it. once I make more money, I'll be like... But you know, even right now, I still have like 20 or 25 % taxes, even with almost nothing. like I had some crypto, you know, that I sold to get cash for my last month of runway and I sold it and I'm like, shit, I didn't realize. I sold like 5,000, I had like 1,500 taxes. And I'm like, oh shit, I forgot I was going to have taxes on that.
Alexander Isora (11:36)
wow.
you
Really you had to pay after you sold the crypto?
Dagobert (11:57)
So yeah.
Yeah, you have taxes if you make a profit with crypto, you pay 30 % tax on it. So yeah.
Alexander Isora (12:06)
It's not profit,
you just sold it, no exchange.
Dagobert (12:10)
No, you profit because I bought it at less and then it increased in value. I bought it, my crypto, bought it like a long time ago, seven years ago maybe. And so it didn't 10 times more value, so when I sold it, it's mostly only profit almost. Yeah.
Alexander Isora (12:14)
⁓ So you paid the extra
But you paid
the tax from the profit, right? Not from the whole amount you got.
Dagobert (12:35)
Yeah, yeah, but since it's almost only profit, know, 90 % is profit. So it's like, yeah, yeah.
Alexander Isora (12:38)
yeah. Makes
sense, makes sense. How many money do you have left? The runway time?
Dagobert (12:48)
I don't know, I only look, I will look this weekend, I don't look every day, I basically, I look at the beginning of the month, know, the first weekend of the month, I do my accounting and everything, I look, and then I forget for one month, and then every time I hope my card works. Dude, okay, okay, I have a second card just in case, and some cash, okay, okay. But yeah, I finally got some profit this month, so, not profit, but I got like...
Alexander Isora (12:52)
Hmm, okay.
Hahaha
Dagobert (13:18)
survival level income with launch day and people buying spots and shit and also x revenue increased so
Alexander Isora (13:24)
Yes, so.
wow.
Dagobert (13:29)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (13:30)
Really, I thought you're nothing because your tweets are not viral. It's not working that way?
Dagobert (13:38)
Fuck you man. No, so...
Alexander Isora (13:39)
⁓
wait, you have subscribers.
Dagobert (13:42)
No, I have six subscribers. So they pay me seven dollars and X takes half. And Apple, I mean, takes half. So I make twenty dollars a month from subscribers, so it's not that.
Alexander Isora (13:51)
shit.
Dagobert (13:58)
No, it's because you know, they increase the revenue and I got, I think, I get maybe one million impressions every two weeks now. So it's not so bad, know, so I'm so, you know, they pay me 500 now for that. So maybe I can make 1000 a month. So.
Alexander Isora (14:07)
wow, that's a lot. Why? How?
Yeah, that's a good income.
Dagobert (14:25)
But yeah, let's talk about Alex. So... you were...
we met because you were building Unicorn Platform. And we had some common entrepreneur friend who was like ⁓ saying we should meet, that was years ago. And that's how I got to know you. And I was really kind of, I was actually like a big fan because Unicorn Platform was like so well done. You know, it was not like all of these products. But actually, you know, the more people I meet on these interviews, more I realize a lot of indie makers do really cool products.
It's just very few have success with it like you had. So you don't see them. But there's a lot of high quality products, know, with good design and everything. And I always appreciated your design sense and everything. So can you tell us a bit about this, you know, this whole journey with Unicorn?
Alexander Isora (15:07)
Yeah.
yeah, yeah, I would love to. Unicorn Platform is my first SaaS and my most successful product I have ever built. It's a website builder and I used to create websites as a freelancer. I created like a hundred of them and then I decided to make my own website builder because this is what every web developer wants to do. Once you create a hundred websites, you have a clear understanding of how it should work.
Dagobert (15:41)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (15:46)
how a website builder is constructed and you make your own builder. And as you said, I have a good design taste because I worked with designers a lot, mostly UI UX designers, and I tried to learn from them. I tried to follow the accounts they follow on Dribbble, on Behance, and to boost my design taste to get that visual inspiration they get. And it helped a lot to get...
this understanding of how a good product looks like and works and how a bad product looks like and works because UI designers, often criticize other products. And if you talk to a designer, like I think you understand what I'm talking about, they criticize a lot and by this you also learn a lot. This is what I did, I lived with a designer for a year. It was terrible, but I learned a lot.
Dagobert (16:28)
yeah.
Alexander Isora (16:43)
It was my first co-founder. We were building HTML themes, WordPress themes, these kind of small products. They were successful. They were profitable. We earned like 20k per year for two people, young entrepreneurs. That's a lot. We could afford living, paying our bills. But we wanted something bigger. We wanted to create a SaaS.
Unfortunately, I had my own vision and my partner, the UI designer, he had his own vision. He wanted to build a website for artists, for photographers, for people of art.
It would be something like Figma, canvas style, editor, you can move everything, you can add animations, you can create the most incredible and flexible layout you ever could think about. And I had another vision, that was the Unicorn Platform vision. I wanted to create something simple and stupid. As stupid as, I don't know, as a knife. The most simplest, the simplest thing in the world is a knife. Yeah, it's...
Dagobert (17:25)
Yeah.
Simple. Yeah, I remember Unicorn was
very very simple and I liked it.
Alexander Isora (17:49)
Yeah, yeah, I have since I have built hundreds of website I have talked to the clients the owners who Ordered that websites and all of them They were confused so much with this whole concept of website because website is such a complicated thing You have to host it you have to edit titles pages sub pages folders. You have to host images lazy loading Website speed SEO
Responsibility. Hundreds of websites. A website is such a complicated thing. Once you start to just list all the things a website has, the list goes thousands of items. ⁓
Dagobert (18:31)
What's the
name of your cat again? Because I hear it.
Alexander Isora (18:34)
he has got a new name, it's Yeah, it's the same cat, but he has got a new name. Chip. Chip! No, no, he likes all the names I gave to him. ⁓ Yeah. So I decided to make something super complex, super simple. It sounded very adventurous.
Dagobert (18:39)
is a new kettle the same one.
Does he understand his name?
Alexander Isora (19:04)
Because it's a challenging thing to make something complex really simple And I decided just to go super radical the most radical way you could ever imagine like you can change buttons buttons can be a Huge variety of ways you can make a round one You can make a square one circle one and you made it blah blah blah But I decided just to make one button for everybody like Steve Jobs that yeah, sorry for my cliche, but Steve Jobs did that
Dagobert (19:25)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (19:34)
He said everybody wants iPhone. Here it is. So I did. Everybody wants rectangular button with border radius of 4. Here it is. Just use it. Don't ask questions. Here's your button.
Dagobert (19:45)
And you remove, yeah, and by doing that,
you remove complexity, you remove confusion. It's always like a big mistake we people make in UX is they give people choice. And 90 % of the time, you give people choice just because you don't know what's best for them, but that's actually gonna confuse them. And your job is to make it easier for them. So if you remove choice, you actually help them.
And then you can add choice for like power users, like you can add settings or something, but at least the main thing should be simple. And that's hard, because you need to take the decisions, and it's scary because you're like, maybe people will think it's a bad decision. What if everybody wants a square button and not rounded corners? my God, that's scary.
Alexander Isora (20:12)
course.
Yes, that's a good point, that's a good point. It's hard to create simple things. It's hard to make a good tweet. It's much easier to create a good blog post because you have more space, more text. But if you want to make a short sentence, you have to be super careful about every word. Same as UX, you have to be super careful about every button, every user flow. That's hard. That's hard.
Dagobert (20:46)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (20:59)
But there are some things that could make this journey easier. For example...
Before starting as us, you could spend a few years and working with this audience, with your future clients. You can work as a freelancer, as I did, or you can work as an employee. can go to, if you want to make a website builder, you can go to an agency which builds websites and work as a programmer. You will see the process. You will see what clients like, what they don't like. You will talk to them and you will understand. You will have the basic understanding. Then after a few
Dagobert (21:30)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (21:34)
when you will start designing your app you will have answers for the most questions you don't have to guess should I do a rectangle or square button shape because you know that they don't care you can put any shape you can put triangle it will work and you just go
Dagobert (21:54)
You know, it's really cool when you have an expertise, you know, because I see some builders, they just start and it works probably, but it's good also when you have an expertise, like you were freelance or you had a job and it gives you an understanding of something that people don't have. And then you build on top of that, you know.
Alexander Isora (22:13)
Yeah, yeah, that's a yes, that's so true instead of asking yourself How can I cut how do I do a shortcut? How do I save time? You would earn much better money if you ask yourself, what can I do? How can I spend more time effectively to build a better thing? One of these investment is working in an industry, right?
You could go and spend two years working in any industry in the world. You can go and work as a gardener, as an accountant, as a painter, and you will become an expert. After two years in any space, you will become an expert. Why don't people do that? Invest in time.
They want to short cut, to do a short cut. It sounds stupid to me, because if you don't do things, if you don't learn, you don't get experience, you don't do great stuff. But you want to build great stuff at no cost, but it's never true. It's pure magic, alchemy, it doesn't work that way. ⁓
Dagobert (23:25)
And so
that actually makes me curious. Is that the same process you followed for building Paracasts? Maybe you tried to make videos yourself for a long time. Like how did that, you know, happen?
Alexander Isora (23:39)
No, this time not. I didn't do much motion design projects, but in the past, back then, before Unicorn Platform, I worked as a freelancer and I mostly did web animations. I made animated websites.
Dagobert (23:55)
Like with Flash.
Alexander Isora (23:57)
No, no, it's not that early. It was more with green... JSAP, right? Green Sock Animation Platform.
Dagobert (24:02)
Cheers.
Yeah,
green stalk or green, I forgot. Yeah.
Alexander Isora (24:08)
Green
Sock, like Sock, a piece of cloth. Green Sock animation platform, Velocity.js, p5.js, Free.js, that kind of things, which allow you to animate objects on the website. And I did a lot of things like that because some clients want their website to be fancy, like a flying starship in the space, bam, bam, with lasers and stars, that kind of stuff. And I did that. And I liked it a lot.
Dagobert (24:20)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (24:36)
I learned a lot and I knew how to do that. But that wasn't promo videos. The thing my SASS did, that's Paracast. That was something different, but yet really went.
Dagobert (24:48)
Yeah.
So how is it going? Because I know you've been working on it a long time. I think last year you were already talking to me about it and it was already in the pipelines. Because like to give people some background, you sold Unicorn Platform a couple years ago.
And now you're like... And actually, how are you motivated now? Because I know you don't have that much money, but you have some good money still. So how is that... You know, are you moving maybe slow because of this?
Alexander Isora (25:20)
Yeah.
⁓ you're asking so right questions. So right questions. Yes, I'm moving slow because of this, of course, for sure. And I just realized that recently a month ago. It was a tough, long way. Yes, building a SaaS second time is much more tough than building it for the first time, because you're playing the same game twice. And it's boring. You can't do boring things. Otherwise, you would go to a company and work as an employee, because... ⁓
Dagobert (25:44)
⁓
Alexander Isora (25:50)
employee does boring things. You're given tasks, you do them. That's it. That's your job. Entrepreneurs are not like that. They're more like an artist. Rebels do the way we want. They do things we want. The same me. I'm an artist. I want to do crazy things. Making a SAS isn't crazy anymore for me because I did that in the past.
Dagobert (26:02)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (26:15)
And so it's hard to motivate me, but I still do that. I found my way to motivate myself by thinking of Parkast not as my number one goal, not as my number one project, but as a playground, as a way to keep myself in the shape.
Dagobert (26:31)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (26:33)
I still have to build SAS to think of myself as a maker. Otherwise, I will become just ⁓ like a scientist. I will only be able to rely on my past background, and it will just make me outdated instantly. You have to do SAS to keep being in the SAS. You can't just talk about it. You have to build.
Dagobert (26:56)
And what about, because you've already done this, like with Unicorn platform, but what about taking on like a bigger challenge, like...
create, I don't know, a YouTube competitor. Something that you would be into, obviously, I don't know. Because I always think, I totally agree with you, but I think, for example, once I do this, what I would probably do myself is maybe I'm going to do something huge and raise money. Even if I don't really care about raising money, I don't really want to, but it would be a new fun game. You know? Instead of redoing the same thing.
Alexander Isora (27:19)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the way. That's the way.
Dagobert (27:41)
Or do an open source
project, like do a big open source project. I don't know.
Alexander Isora (27:46)
Yeah, that's another way, that's another... a completely different game. That could work, yeah. Perhaps, For now, my new interesting game that excites me is making content. I'm fully into my new project. It's called MRR.Guide. It's a book I'm writing about.
Dagobert (28:04)
yeah, is it live? Mri.guide
Alexander Isora (28:07)
Yeah, it's live and you can pre-order it. It's a book about how to find your first hundred clients for your SaaS. And I'm just making a huge list of things you can do to acquire your first hundred clients. I'm mostly relying on my past experience with Unicorn Platform and my current experience with Sparacast. That's why it's important to actually build and grow a SaaS like a real one to be able to write this content.
Dagobert (28:22)
That's cool.
Alexander Isora (28:34)
And I love this a lot. Actually, thank you, because you inspired me to start making content. I thought it's lame, and course boys are lame, but you convicted me that it's not, and teaching people actually is a good thing, and it is. And I enjoy the process. Yeah, I'm writing this book right now, and that's my new project. It's not big, but it's new. That's what's important for me, to make new things, new for me.
Dagobert (28:44)
Yeah.
I love the design, I love that you
made a kind of like cool design of the book. You always have good design sense anyway. Really cool.
Alexander Isora (29:01)
Yeah. Yeah, I will print it
later.
And that's my new thing, my most important thing in my career at this moment.
Dagobert (29:17)
This is something new. This is something new for you. Teaching.
Alexander Isora (29:20)
Yeah,
that's new game. Yeah, I have been thinking about the same things you have talked about. Making a huge something huge like as you say a slack competitor or something open source. It's fun, it's cool. Perhaps I will do that after I sell the course. ⁓ It's not live yet.
Dagobert (29:35)
Beautiful.
So let me read for people
just listening. So SAS, I'm on your website right now. So MRR.guide, nice domain. ⁓ SAS growth course, learn how to get the 100 paid clients for your SAS without being lucky. Awesome, because that's the most difficult thing. OK, then you present yourself. And then like, OK, lots of microguides, basically. So launch on product hunt, and then you rate the difficulty.
and impact, launch on Reddit, LinkedIn, make content for social media, create an excellent product, good marketing strategy, I agree, make a directory, and so for all of these things, create side projects for your main projects, store clients, cold outreach influencers, whatever, so all of these things, you have a mini guide for them, right?
Alexander Isora (30:16)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dagobert (30:33)
Wow, this is cool. Yeah.
Alexander Isora (30:37)
Yeah, the idea is that this guide is actually a huge ⁓ set of mini guides, as you said, and you just download it. You don't have to read all the book. just pick, you just skim through the whole book. You see something interesting like, ⁓ growing audience on X. Then you open this chapter, you go from one to the last one, and you understand how it works. Then you go and practice. You make a tweet, then another one, then another one. And instead of just posting into the void, which happens to...
Dagobert (30:47)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (31:07)
everyone everything you do to try if you're trying to grow your sauce everything you do you're posting into the words product hunt YouTube ex blog post right at everything goes to the waste that's the biggest problem of trying because once you tried you get nothing then you're demotivated for the rest of your life that's the biggest problem and this is what I'm trying to solve with my guide because this is not only the guy to book the PDF file but you also get access to the community where I sit
Dagobert (31:09)
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (31:36)
all the day and you send to me your piece of what you did, your action. It could be a blog post, a video, a launch in Product Hunt and I give you feedback what you did wrong, what you did good. Then you retry and send me again and I say you, okay, you improved, that's better, much better, but you still could do it better and get more. Then you do it again, improve again. This is how you get into the feedback loop and after 10 times you try it, your 10th
Dagobert (31:44)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (32:06)
tweet would be much better than your first and it will start getting organic traffic not only seen by me but but some of your future clients and then you go and try something else from my guide for example launching product hunt you try once you try twice I give you feedback and eventually you get success if you of course work hard
Dagobert (32:32)
Yeah, that's the thing. That was the same angle I was using with my Twitter course, because you need to hustle so hard to get your wins at the beginning. Then you get it, and then it's easier once you start understanding what you needed to change. I just noticed on your landing page, you don't really talk much about this community until the end, but it seems really valuable when you say this, when you say that you'll be there to guide people, to help them. So just pointing that out.
that it could be much better if you promote it maybe more, I don't know, just a thought. Yeah.
Alexander Isora (33:04)
Yeah, good idea. Thank you.
That's it. so Paracast isn't my main project, like my work. It's a playground. I spent like one-third, one-thirty-three percent of my time on Paracast.
not the whole time like I did with Unicorn Platform.
Dagobert (33:29)
And so how is it going now, Paragas? How is it looking? I remember last time we talked about it, you were trying to promote it on a Facebook group. ⁓ And I don't think you had that many sales because it wasn't the right vibe in the group or something.
Alexander Isora (33:43)
Yeah, I tried to run an L2D campaign, lifetime deal campaign, like I did with Unicorn platform in the past, but it went... I wouldn't say it's a failure, but it wasn't successful. I sold like 20 copies, 20 licenses, $280 each, so I earned like a few thousand dollars. That's still something, that's still something, but that wasn't a success like I planned.
Dagobert (33:47)
Yeah.
Nice.
Alexander Isora (34:12)
And the biggest reason of the failure was that this product is something new and people who buy LTD, they want to save money. And if they see an LTD offer, they compare it to the current solutions. And then they calculate, by buying this license, I will save 20 bucks per month. That would be a few thousands in five years. Okay, that's good. But when they saw my thing, Paracast, they couldn't compare it.
it to anything, because there is no such market as promo videos generator.
Dagobert (34:43)
I remember, I remember, and then you had, I know which insights you are headed towards, and so about pricing, because I remember you'd switch your pricing, and that was a big thing for you. So can you just briefly show Paracast and explain it, just so people are on the same page before?
Alexander Isora (34:55)
Mmm.
yeah, that's a good idea. Paracast is a promo videos generator. imagine... Yeah, I'm trying.
Dagobert (35:09)
Can you share your screen?
Cool. Sorry.
Alexander Isora (35:15)
Imagine yourself, let's travel back to 2000,
2000, when you had...
in the internet of the past. There it was. Flash, HTML 2.0 something.
Dagobert (35:30)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (35:40)
You know what I'm saying about. No, iPhones, that shit. And there were some websites, like some websites on the internet. And you couldn't even imagine that you can get a website for yourself. Because a website, it sounds something for the special people, for programmers, for companies. You couldn't even imagine having a website, ever having a website. Yeah, then things like Wix.com and Squarespace and WordPress appeared.
Dagobert (36:03)
Yes, he.
Alexander Isora (36:10)
And they claimed, hey you, yes you, you can get a website. Here's a software, sign up, pay some cash, get a website. And everybody went crazy. Now you can open a flower shop in your district, or you can get a personal website with photos of your cat, or you can sell something else, or you can open, I don't know, a community. You can become a part of the internet, that's so cool. This is what they did.
website builders, where gave you an ability to get your website, which was impossible back then. Now let's travel back to 2025. Everybody has websites, forget about them, forget websites, fuck websites. Now ⁓ let's talk about startup founders, makers. If I offer you a website, landing page, you would say, I can get a website in a hundred ways. I could simply ask as chat GPT, please generate me. ⁓
Dagobert (36:41)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (37:10)
landing page, it look like stripe.com, make it sexy, period. And that would be sexy. So website is not a problem, it's a commodity now. What's not a commodity? What's still a problem? What others, the rich ones, the most privileged ones have that we don't have? It's a promo video. Video is still hard to create. Like, if you want a promo video like this one, you have to hire a video editor, which costs a lot.
like a good promo video like this one it would cost you at least $2,000 like if you would ask make a one-to-one like this one in After Effects it would cost you $2,000 at least if you live in the US it would cost you $5,000 that's super pricey that's crazy when I realized how much it costs I just went
I just started crying. I still don't have a promo video for Unicorn platform because motion design is so expensive. And I thought that I want to a tool for startup founders who don't have thousands or millions so they can ⁓ make a promo video for themselves with my tool without being rich. And I did that. Parcust does this. You just sign up and you create a promo video for yourself.
Dagobert (38:14)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (38:37)
And it works the same way as unicorn platform. You don't have to be a web designer, you don't have to think about motion design, about styles. You just pick a font, color, and it offers you a presets, a templates, you can make a promo video for your website builder, for your dev tool, for your CRM, for your product hunt clone, whatever you're building. That's what my whole product is about. That's the idea.
Dagobert (39:07)
I like it. I forgot how cool it was to be honest because I hadn't think about it in a few months. Can you... I'm just so annoyed by this. Can you just close this window where I see myself because I just... Don't... You can share again. You can share again but just click on the cross so I don't see my... Because it will be in the recording. This stupid thing. That's a very stupid thing of Riverside. It will be recorded this shit. Stupid. Oh my god.
Alexander Isora (39:19)
I can... Okay.
Okay.
yeah it is.
Dagobert (39:36)
Riverside is the best tool that I hate because every competitors is so much worse that I stick with them and they have good support But man so many problems anyway ⁓ You know when I was watching this Paracast I'm like so wait, how do you generate this because these look awesome, man They look way better than even I remember you keep improving. This looks awesome so is first of all, is it like
Alexander Isora (39:39)
Hahaha
Hahaha
I understand you.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert (40:03)
Motion? Like is it like vector shit?
Alexander Isora (40:08)
It's vector sheet, right?
Dagobert (40:11)
my god, so it's infinite quality.
Alexander Isora (40:14)
Yeah, it's infinite quality. It's vector.
Dagobert (40:16)
my God, okay,
so that's insane. And wow, man, I love this product. And so how do you generate one video? Is there any chance to see that quickly? Because it's like insane.
Alexander Isora (40:30)
Yeah, that's actually not that hard. You just enter the domain name. For example, let's make a video of my own tool, because the best thing you can do is to make a video of your own video generator and show the world how it works. So I entered my website, then I press Generate, and I got a video of Paracasts generated by Paracasts. So now I have this set of frames generated by Paracasts for Paracasts.
Dagobert (40:56)
That was just done
like this, like in two seconds. That was so quick.
Alexander Isora (40:59)
Yeah, it's faster. It's fast, but sometimes it works like not in 10 seconds, but in 40 seconds or so. Yeah, it's not fast.
Dagobert (41:07)
Yeah, but that's fast. Yeah, I guess because you made, I
guess, vector templates that they can use, I guess, at the beginning. So it's a mix of templates and...
Alexander Isora (41:15)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's correct. I created a set of templates for different SAS. For example, if you're making a CRM, you will be given a template of CRM, which will have hard-coded frames like these ones. And I will just go to your website, parse it, get the text, images, logotype, and put it on this template. So there is no magic in it.
But I tried to make it look like it's magic.
Dagobert (41:46)
It
seems like magic. You know what I'm... Okay, so... They love it. Did they pick this up from your homepage, I guess? These tweets?
Alexander Isora (41:57)
⁓
This one are hardcoded, but if you have tweets on your website, it will most possibly go and take it. We can try with SEO bot, example. is a... Yeah, yeah, let's try something. Just name it.
Dagobert (42:10)
Can we try with a site you never tried, just to be completely...
Okay, let me see another product I have in this launch day. yeah, let's do stamp fans.
Alexander Isora (42:26)
stampfans.com
Dagobert (42:28)
Yeah, let's see.
Alexander Isora (42:30)
What's that? OnlyFans clone? Publishing platform for creators. Nice design. Let's try.
Dagobert (42:31)
Yeah, this one.
Yeah, he's good at design.
Alexander Isora (42:41)
Let's see how it works. It will take, I think, maybe 30 seconds or so. So now the first thing it does is goes to the templates library and tries to pick one. If there is no template, it tries to compose a generic one. And then after the template is done, it goes to the website and parses the text, logotype images, and puts it inside the template. So this video is finally yours, not a generic template.
Then you just download it and put on your website, social media, YouTube. Now you have a promo video. And life is good.
Dagobert (43:23)
really curious to see because I'm thinking.
Every founder on launch day should use this for the promo video. So everybody has their own video even if they can't make it.
Alexander Isora (43:40)
I can see there is some kind of Element content is missing. Yeah, it's hard to make the AI take the proper content and put it on the proper place. I'm still not good at this. So these things often happens. Yeah, if something, it works in some way.
Dagobert (43:45)
shit, external content missing, yeah.
you
Mmm.
Alexander Isora (44:18)
My idea was to create this manual editor so you can create a video manually. And AI was like an additional UX. So here you see it puts hard-coded images, so it didn't find any images.
Dagobert (44:29)
Yeah, I see.
but it gives you a start basically, it's a starting point.
Alexander Isora (44:38)
Yeah, it gives you a starting point then...
Dagobert (44:40)
The AI
helps you see, this is my starting point, and now I can EIC.
Alexander Isora (44:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, you still have to work a lot manually. ⁓ That's it. That's the current state of the product.
Dagobert (44:55)
Yeah, but that's still like so
helpful because like, you know, what's the difficult part for me always is to start because it seems so overwhelming. Like, I'm going to make a motion temp video. I don't know where to start. And I never start because of it, you know. But here it can just use AI. I at least it's starting and then, yeah, maybe I'm going to change half of the slides, but at least I have started and I know what to do next. And I just have it's easier to change things.
Alexander Isora (45:11)
yeah. Yeah.
Dagobert (45:24)
than to create from scratch, you know?
Alexander Isora (45:27)
Yeah, my current idea is not to give you AI which does the job, but to give you AI which does the explanation. It gives you... it explains you the product by giving you an example. That's it. It doesn't give... does the job yet. It does something. Like most of the AIs right now, like if you open Notion, you will see that there is a helpful...
Dagobert (45:43)
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (45:56)
assistant on the right, but if you ask it make all my H1s, H2s, it will say I can change tone or voice, but this is all I do. I can do sorry. It's not smart. It's not intelligent yet. So like the most of the tools, my thing is still amateur, but it works in a way. so yeah, I see potential and people buy it. Like it's not
Dagobert (46:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see.
No, no, it's good, it's interesting.
Alexander Isora (46:24)
profitable and I'm not making much money by it, but it's something so
Dagobert (46:29)
It's really useful,
yeah, I wanna use it for sure, like it's really cool. Do you think we could do some partnership where like, maybe everybody on the launch day can create their video for free and I put a link on Paracast on the, if they use it then under their video I put made with Paracast or something. Could do some.
Alexander Isora (46:33)
Yeah, you can do it.
Yeah.
Of course, we
can do it even with API like I do for ⁓ DevHunt, devhunt.org, which is a Product Hunt clone for open source tools. here you can see that each video is... Each video is talked... Each launched product is talked with a video which is generated by Paracast. It's a win-win. People see my logotype here and they get a free...
Dagobert (46:54)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alexander Isora (47:14)
and they often reach out to John, John Rush, the owner of DevHan.org and they say, wow, you made me a free promo video, that's so amazing, how did you do that? That's so cool, I downloaded it, I put it on my site, thank you very much.
Dagobert (47:26)
I see.
So I could do that also for founders. They get their free promo video and I link to you. Because my goal is to sell their products. want to sell people on launch day. I want to sell their product. This is very useful. my God.
Alexander Isora (47:42)
yeah, yeah. And they are so happy, they are shocked, they are jumping on their head. Thank you very much. I couldn't even imagine to have a promo video because it's so expensive and you gave it to me.
Dagobert (47:51)
Yeah, because that's what
you said, it's not a commodity yet. It seems like, how the fuck do I start? This is even me, like I have experience with video, I mean not, you know, not video like this, not a motion design, but like, you know, I'm a designer and everything, but this is still overwhelming. And so when you do this with Paracast, my God, finally ⁓ it's working. So that's awesome, man.
Alexander Isora (47:55)
Yeah.
Dagobert (48:19)
Okay cool, so let's stop there because I need to prepare for my next call. But this is giving
Alexander Isora (48:25)
Yeah.
Dagobert (48:26)
so many ideas man, this is cool, we're gonna do something. And I think maybe next launch day what I need to do is instead of recording all these videos like we do now, I just do one livestream on the day of the launch. Because I just realized it's stupid because...
Alexander Isora (48:43)
wow, with all the people. ⁓
Dagobert (48:49)
Basically, I'm doing all these videos on the same day. And I do them all, like, one after the other. I do eight videos in eight hours because I don't want to lose my productivity the other days. So I should just do a fucking livestream with everybody, you know? That would be way better. It's like ten times better idea.
Alexander Isora (48:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
You
Yeah, that's a better idea, of course. It's a launch day. thought,
actually, thought my launch day will be today because we have a call. But then I saw that it's launch day is in five days, and I was like, what? What do do now?
Dagobert (49:16)
Yeah, no.
Yeah, yeah, does. You know, that's the stupid. That's what happens. You know, it's
Alexander Isora (49:24)
Perhaps since you only recorded one person before me, so you can cancel all your future calls. ⁓ Okay, yeah. Yeah, let's do... I can help you as an assistant because you could become tired after such a... During the launch day, will have to do...
Dagobert (49:28)
No no, I already recorded 6 so I'm fucked. And I cannot-
You can co-host, you mean.
basically, I will speak with everybody a little bit, like we did now, but just it will be like everybody can jump in. It will be for the whole day.
Alexander Isora (49:51)
Yeah,
Yeah, of course, of course, of course. Yeah, I can work as a co-host because you will have a lot of work during the lunch day. You have to retweet, check your servers, stuff like links, discount codes, and I can, if you want me to be a co-host, I can help you. You can just say, Alex, take this for a half an hour of time. I want to go pee-pee. And I will just work as an assistant. Yeah, just think about it.
Dagobert (50:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Awesome man, so we'll see, maybe I will just air this video because it's interesting though, but we'll see.
Yeah, so I'll let you know.
Man, so many ideas. It's good though, because there's so much potential, there's so much excitement. It's a good phase, know. Every launch day is better, so that's cool. Cool, so I'm gonna end this. Please don't close the window, because else we're gonna, you know. But that was awesome seeing you, man.
Alexander Isora (50:39)
Yeah, yeah, go, you have five minutes, Have
little ⁓ rest. You too.