Build Your SaaS

Simon is quitting his job and going full-time on SnapShooter

Show Notes

This week on the program:
  • As requested, we're going to start highlighting our listeners who are building their own SaaS.
  • This week: Simon Bennett, a long-time Patreon supporter and a friend of the show.
  • He just went full time on his project https://snapshooter.io, which does automatic backups for Digital Ocean. 
  • Simon had just put his kids to bed (he's in the UK) and sat down in his office to have a chat with Justin.

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Creators & Guests

Host
Jon Buda
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions
Guest
Simon Bennett
Founder of SnapShooter

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.

Justin:

And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. You're let's just go with it. Follow along as we build transistor.fm.

Jon:

Happy happy Blursday.

Justin:

Happy Blursday. Oh, yeah. You were you were introducing this concept to me. What is a Blursday?

Jon:

Blurs day is basically the fact that every day is the same. And I I never have any idea what day of the week it is anymore. And someone somebody told me, hey. It's it's Blursday.

Justin:

It's Blursday. Wednesday, Friday, Sunday. Nah. It's just Blursday.

Jon:

Blursday. Happy Blursday.

Justin:

Happy Blursday. What,

Gavin:

well, we have

Justin:

to know what today is, though, because tomorrow, we have a a pretty big launch.

Jon:

Yeah. We're, launching a new dashboard, I suppose you wanna call it. A reworking a reimagining of the dashboard.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Essentially, all the same features with a couple couple new things, but, much improved, layout, I think, and mobile capabilities on your phone or iPad is gonna work a lot better and actually be, you know, functional.

Justin:

Mhmm. Yeah.

Jon:

So yeah, it was a it was a it was a long a long haul, you know, due to personal things that happened in the beginning of the year and then obviously the pandemic hit. So it's just like, yeah, it's it's taken much longer, much, much longer than I I had anticipated, I think, but

Gavin:

it I

Jon:

mean, it came out in a pretty good spot. So

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. We we send a little preview to, our email list, and the feedback's been really good so far.

Jon:

Yeah. It should be it should be good. Well, yeah, the guts of it are, we're making use of Tailwind CSS and Alpine, which is another kind of JavaScript. I hesitate to say framework. Mhmm.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Gavin:

I

Jon:

don't know utilities, JavaScript utilities maybe.

Justin:

Yep. Yep. That make that make

Jon:

a lot of, don't know. Interactions nice and, nice and easy and fund, fund a program.

Justin:

And and you said, like, the the payload size is, like, way way down too. Right?

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. For the actual dashboard itself. Yeah. I think the CSS is 83% smaller.

Speaker 4:

Wow. And

Jon:

c the JavaScript is, like, 40% smaller.

Justin:

Nice.

Jon:

Which, you know, most people won't notice, but it is it has a benefit of, I think, initial page loads being faster and also us using less bandwidth. So Yeah. It's always good.

Justin:

It's a good thing.

Jon:

Always good. So yeah. And it'll, it'll, you know, allow us to kinda move forward a little bit faster now with some some new features I think we've been waiting on building.

Speaker 4:

So

Justin:

Yeah. If folks want to check that out, go to transistor.fm/changelog, and you'll be able to see all the new stuff that we released.

Gavin:

And

Jon:

if you're if you're a customer, by the time you listen to this, it should be out barring any sort of catastrophe. Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Hopeful hoping to have it live on Wednesday 13th.

Jon:

Yeah. And and you have a a special guest today.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things you had mentioned was, hey. We shouldn't highlight, you know, listeners of the show that are in earlier stages than we are now. Again, there's not much to talk about with Transistor these days, because so much of the, you know, the real story is building the SaaS.

Justin:

And, Simon Bennett reached out to me. He's been a long time Patreon supporter and just friend of the show. And he just today gave his notice at work for so he could go full time on his project.

Jon:

Oh, wow.

Justin:

Yeah. So, and his project is Snap Shooter dot io, which does automatic backups for DigitalOcean. So, I'd love for folks to, like, go and visit, Snap Shooter and help Simon out as he's launching this new thing. If you know anybody that needs this, definitely check it out. But, yeah, this this is good because it really it it just transported me back to being in his position.

Justin:

2 young kids going full time, all of the anxiety. So yeah.

Jon:

That was an exciting an exciting time.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Let's give it a listen. Oh, I think we're gonna have to back up a bit because I'm trying to remember when you started Snap Shooter. What year was that?

Speaker 4:

That was 2017. February of 2017 is when it started.

Justin:

So it's only been 3 years. 3 years. Yeah. Yeah. And it's and what was do you remember what was the impetus for that?

Justin:

Like, had you tried other things before Snap Shooter? Or was Snap Shooter, like, your first real product?

Speaker 4:

I had tried a million other things before building Snapcheta, and way more complicated projects, in fact. And Snapcheta was just it took a week to build, and it was really simple compared to everything I've done in the past, but I actually managed to get it on in the market and, you know, I emailed you, and you became a customer, at the first customer.

Justin:

Oh, I was the first customer.

Speaker 4:

You were

Justin:

the first customer. And and so why how did you even get the idea? Because it it it's essentially backups for DigitalOcean. Right?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Yeah. So I got the idea because where I was working, they had a whole bunch of, WordPress servers. Like, they'd just give each client a new WordPress server. And these people weren't really paying very much.

Speaker 4:

So their servers weren't really being well maintained, and the WordPress installs were really old, and they were getting hacked. So I sort of came up with let's just do more regular backups. So I looked at, ways we could do that. We could either go into all of the servers and set backups up or DigitalOcean had weekly backups, And then I discovered that they actually allowed, sort of ad hoc snapshots when you want, and that's how the sort of the first scripted version of Snapcheta was built. It was just as a as a big old bandage for fixing these WordPress servers.

Justin:

Oh, you know what's you know what's interesting about that is I hadn't even considered the WordPress angle.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm.

Justin:

But it makes a lot of sense in that context. If you have a WordPress site and it gets hacked, the first thought you have is, okay, well, can I just roll back to yesterday?

Speaker 4:

Well, yeah. Exactly. You could basically roll back pre your vulnerability, patch everything up, and be golden again. We see not the best way to run service. It's very like retro instead of proactively fixing these issues.

Speaker 4:

But it was a quick way to basically manage a whole fleet of servers, and not, as I said, they these people weren't paying very much anyway. So

Justin:

And was the day job like, is your day job, a an agency that was building WordPress sites?

Speaker 4:

Not particularly, but over the course of doing development for startups over the years, it ended up sort of accumulating, WordPress. So I mean, maybe in the past they had. So they they did have just these old clients who've been kicking about for a long time. So as I said, so their WordPress installs were really old.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, I think what's interesting about that is just that in, in Slack, in the mega maker Slack

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Val was asking he's like, man, I'd I'd like to know how Justin and other folks spot opportunities. Like, how how does an opportunity kind of reveal itself to them? And in this case, you're working at your day job, which is a great place to spot opportunities if you're looking. Did you feel like, oh, wow. This is an opportunity that's really revealed itself?

Justin:

Or were you just kinda like, oh, I'll try I'll build something and maybe, you know, some folks will wanna pay for it.

Speaker 4:

So I I'd obviously been trying the products before, so I had sort of in the mind of trying to build a product. And then because it had been so fast to build to build the first version of just some scripts for this one thing, and then to build a web application around it that took like another week. And then to add the billing in it was it was all valid like relatively quick task to do. So they're sort of there. I didn't actually imagine huge opportunities.

Speaker 4:

I mean, maybe in my mind I was like, oh, well if I could get every DigitalOcean user for a pound that would be 1,000,000 of pounds, but it wasn't Yeah. It was it was so quick and easy to get started that they know, like wasting 2 weeks wasn't wasn't gonna be a huge sunk cost.

Justin:

Yeah. It wasn't gonna be a big deal.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So I didn't go the route of getting, like, doing the market research and

Gavin:

all this stuff. It sort of

Speaker 4:

dive straight into here's a manipulated by feedback to sort of form into what it is now.

Gavin:

But

Justin:

Yeah. I think that's all I mean, when I talk about spotting opportunities, it's not like a giant research project I'm talking about. I mean, it can be. It can be years years of observing and taking notes, and maybe they're just mental notes. But it can also just be you're at work and you go, oh, well, that's crazy.

Justin:

You know, like, there's high end services like WP Engine that that do automate automated backups for you. But you're like, oh, look at this company. It has accumulated all these WordPress sites. And even that line, like, how many people have accumulated many WordPress sites?

Speaker 4:

Well, yeah. How many people accumulated just old servers that just kicking about? Like, you know, you don't really wanna you're not actively managing them anymore, but you can't turn them off sort of thing. I mean, I can't I I tried to think how much these hosting companies make by these idling servers.

Justin:

Oh, tons. Yeah. Tons. That's that's part of the model. Right?

Justin:

Is that you you if you wanna keep it online, you have to keep paying for the server.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And at the same time, I mean, I've had clients that I built WordPress sites for them 10 years ago

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Contact me and go, oh, my site got hacked. Can you help me?

Speaker 4:

Yes. Exactly. And they're like, you haven't built them in the last 10 years, have you? So

Justin:

No. I mean, some of those folks, I when I actually look into it, I'm like, oh, I've been paying for your hosting and your domain name all these years. I have I've just never bothered,

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Exactly.

Justin:

But but that's the insight right there, what we just talked about.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm.

Justin:

That's the that's kind of the insight. That's the observation of, you know, all these folks have all these WordPress sites middling about, as you said. Okay. And, middling. That's a great word.

Justin:

That's a word that North Americans don't use enough. But that's perfect for that. Like, they have all these sites middling about. And if something happens to that, they're going to be upset. They probably aren't getting enough traffic to necessitate moving up to something like WP Engine.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Justin:

So there's this this middle gray area. And so now since you've been doing Snap Shooter for 3 years, how how many customers do you have, by the way?

Speaker 4:

There's about 300 paying customers and then in the thousands of, free customers. So

Justin:

Okay. And so have you observed other trends? Like, are there other use cases beyond that? Or is that still the primary use case that's driving people?

Speaker 4:

I say out of the people who pay, there quite a lot of them are agencies, but then there are people just running one project. They've got a whole span of servers. It's actually just a whole range of use cases now, and obviously when I started I think I thought oh, people would probably be using it like I would, but people are using it for a whole range of basically what you would use. I mean, may mostly web applications, but that's kind of part and parcel of it. But

Justin:

But but not mostly WordPress?

Speaker 4:

Not entirely sure, but I my my gut's telling me not complete not not, overall majority.

Justin:

What's interesting about that is that could almost be another angle. Because right now, you have scheduled digital ocean backups. But

Speaker 4:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Theoretically, you could also be marketing to folks who just want, economical WordPress backups.

Speaker 4:

That's true. Yes. Yeah. Or just yeah. To answer your question a bit more, I have a whole range of people who don't have a clue about how to manage servers and have been given them

Gavin:

all the way

Speaker 4:

up to people who have lots of knowledge about it, but you just want that extra layer of protection and better than what DigitalOcean offer as backups. Because remember, they they offer weekly backups. So for a lot of people, that's not good enough.

Justin:

That's not enough. I actually wonder also if in the age of one click installs

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Which is I definitely fall into this category. I got our discourse forms going. It's just it was just a one click install that automatically provisioned the server, did everything. And I I still like, I use Laravel Forge for this for my statemix site. I have really no desire to manage servers.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

I need to use them. And but that opens up, I think, a lot of opportunity for folks like you to fill the gaps that folks like me are missing. You know? Like, yes, it's easy for you to one click install that. But what are you going to do after that's happened?

Justin:

And it I want it feels like maybe we're even still at the beginning of that. Like, for me like, it there could be a productized service, for example, of folks that just go around upgrading software.

Speaker 4:

Yes. Well, I I guess WordPress has sort of solved that issue when they were doing automatic updates, but

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Speaker 4:

That doesn't update the server that's underlying. And

Justin:

Yeah. And there's also, like, discourse still requires, some manual work to to do it. And, you know, I could see some folks, they wanted to get started, and they probably don't need someone all the time, but they might be willing to pay somebody on retainer to just be around if they need to SSH into their server and fix something. And, I think they're we're moving into this new era in some ways. Right?

Justin:

You've got all this, like, no code stuff. And like I said, one click install stuff. And it's powerful because jackasses like me can can, you know, get started. But there's all this opportunity for technical folks like you to, you know, take advantage of that.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All this sort of supplementary services. Yeah.

Justin:

Are you seeing opportunities like that with SnapSchedr?

Speaker 4:

It is. I I'm sort of moving into a little bit of a different direction to be a bit more generic and not entirely reliant on digitization.

Justin:

Okay. Tell me about that.

Speaker 4:

So at the start of the year we started doing database backups, separate to doing a snapshot. So a snapshot is the entire server. So So if you wanna restore it, you've gotta restore the entire server to where it was. In some senses, as you say for, like yourself, one click restore to take you back to exactly where you were 3 days ago. Brilliant.

Speaker 4:

But sometimes you don't want to do that. Maybe you just want to get the database from 3 days ago. So you could mess around by making a new server and pull it off, or, that's why I started offering database backup separately. And now starting to support file backups. So we'll let's say we'll go on to the server and just pull off the WordPress folder for you, Which

Justin:

Gotcha.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, will be in the megabytes range, not gigabytes of server images and easier for you to mess around with. So sort of expanding that way. And kind of the vendor lock in with the situation isn't, you know, I've I've had ups and downs worried about whether they'll, ever just do what I do.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. And and and mess it up. Yeah. I mean, you just recently decided to go full time.

Justin:

I I think you said you gave in you gave your notice today?

Speaker 4:

It's a bit of a complicated story, but I talked at the end of last month about working the whole of this month. But then I sort of did all the handover stuff I needed to do, and it kind of made little sense hanging around. So, yes. Lunchtime today, we had a discussion, and that was that. So

Justin:

Interesting. So so you're officially full time?

Speaker 4:

Yes. Yeah. Tomorrow morning, I will be reporting to reporting to work.

Justin:

Why tomorrow morning? Do you feel like you're you're on now.

Speaker 4:

I'm talking to you now.

Justin:

So It's it's real right now. Yeah. And so this is 3 years in the making. Yes. I think there's a lot of folks that are like you that, you know, have been working on something for a while, and there's always that nagging question of when do you go full time.

Justin:

So what went into that decision for you? Like, what made you decide this is the time?

Speaker 4:

So it's 2 things. Obviously, the financial side, which we'll get into. And then, with COVID 19 and 2 children at home, and my wife's on maternity leave. And we've got a 6 month old and a 3 year old, which seems to be a terrible combination for staying at home all the time. I'd already had to reduce my working hours to help out a bit more.

Speaker 4:

So especially with no sleep overnight for my wife. It's that that definitely played into it, and I definitely used that on the when negotiating with my wife. That was definitely a good car to have. So yeah.

Justin:

So so because that's another piece is if you're in a family and have a significant other, there's always that that that conversation.

Gavin:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

I mean, I'm slight still slightly scared about that because, obviously, you've gone from 2 sources of income to 1, which, you know, I guess, like, a job could be taken away tomorrow, but it doesn't it feels like that with product as well. So yeah. So that was one factor. And then the other factor is that the monthly income has grown to, the right sort of level. It's still a huge financial cut because I've gone from 2 sources to just 1.

Speaker 4:

And over the course of the 3 years, I kind of been using both sources of income. I hadn't just like Mhmm. Put it all into savings. So the goalposts seem to constantly move. So I always said that, like, after a year, if I'd have left university with Snapchute to where it was, I would have never needed to get a job.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Hindsight in this case. So but

Justin:

Did did you start staff shooter in university?

Speaker 4:

No. I didn't know, but digitalization is around there. So, I mean, theoretically, it would have been partially possible to say.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and you're still fairly young. You're you're still in your twenties.

Justin:

Right?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. 28. Yeah.

Justin:

You're 28. See, you're I I didn't even get into tech until I was 28.

Speaker 4:

I see.

Justin:

And so so you're you're decades ahead of me. I mean, yeah. So there's so much in there. And that especially, I think the reason context matters so much when we're talking to folks about, you know, the decisions they make and the businesses they're building is if you have kids and if you have young kids, that changes a lot of the stuff right

Speaker 4:

there. Yes. Right?

Justin:

You're if it was just you in, you know, a single bedroom apartment and your costs were,

Speaker 4:

you know beans every night. So

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot easier, but when you have folks depending on you that pressure is, yeah, that that's a intense pressure.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Yeah. So we're gonna make the mortgage payments, the childcare payments,

Justin:

all these things.

Speaker 4:

Like, you know, I got another 3 years of childcare payments starting from September and a risky like, it feels a big risk. It's

Justin:

Yeah. It's heavy. I I was talking to my wife about this the other day because we've had our kids are older now, 10 to 17. Mhmm. But we've had some real heartache trouble, even, like, going through that.

Justin:

And for me, being a young dad, being exactly where you're at now, I just remember, in my wife's case, she was experiencing all the difficulties of having given birth and having, you know, the baby blues, the the depression that can sometimes happen after that. Being stuck inside with these small, very needy human beings. And that's a huge emotional toll on them. And then on the provider's side, whichever partner is doing that, there's this other pressure. And it's so much pressure on both individuals, and each is almost so desperate to, desperate in the sense that it's a lot of stress that it's hard to sometimes negotiate the 2, you know?

Justin:

Like

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Justin:

The the husband is feeling like or sorry. It might not be the husband. The the spouse who's providing is feeling like, I am so stressed out about the mortgage and feeding these kids and paying for diapers. And the other spouse who's taking care of the kids is like, you don't know what it's like to be inside with a toddler all day who won't eat their oatmeal.

Speaker 4:

This is literally described our day. Yeah. Yep. And it and when you whenever it comes to decision making, you've both got your your opinions about what matters at the moment and your, like, I can I can just see the bank balance? Mhmm.

Speaker 4:

So yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. So

Speaker 4:

I've had to, you know, we've had to make a few sacrifices. I had to cancel my Patreon subscription to you guys.

Justin:

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So I thought it made sense. Oh, it's a little earlier than I wanted to, but by cutting cutting a whole bunch of stuff, it should should work. If not, I'm doing a consulting job in 3 hamsters.

Justin:

Well, I think the that's actually a good point too. We should talk about that. I wrote this post called, let's talk about startup costs. And I remember early on getting this advice from folks who are, Mel, well meaning, but I I think the advice was misguided, which was, don't waste your time trying to reduce expenses. It's far easier to increase revenue than reducing expenses.

Justin:

And, I mean, especially with SaaS, it's just not super easy to increase revenue that fast.

Speaker 4:

No. No. You need months of time to to sort of get the compounding effect. So yeah. I

Justin:

had Exactly.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I canceled HRS, which was like a cup a $100 a month. I canceled the pension, which was £400 a month. So that's now suspended for 6 months, which is probably not a long term financial decision, but short term. And then I just went through all the little services and bits like that.

Speaker 4:

So there was it was actually, you know, transferred to be quite a significant saving, with significant sort of sacrifice.

Justin:

But How much total? Like, how much was the total savings do you think?

Speaker 4:

I think nearly a £1,000 a month. Wow. So that includes stuff personally as well. But

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is significant if you think about it. A £1,000 and that's so that's £12,000 a year.

Speaker 4:

Exchange rate fluctuates so much.

Justin:

Yeah. So in US dollars, that would be nearly $15. In Canadian dollars, that's almost $21. Now that's the other thing you could have done, Simon, is you could have moved to Canada.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Justin:

And then your dollar just goes that much that much more.

Speaker 4:

I see.

Justin:

But

Speaker 4:

Well, at the moment, with COVID going on, the actual dollar's worth a lot more compared to the pound. So that's there's been a, like, a a small increase in monthly income, which could all reverse. And

Justin:

Well, the this is actually a thing. I mean and this is why it I'm somewhat joking, but for Canadian entrepreneurs, selling primarily to the US, but also just using the currency of the Internet, which is the US dollar, makes a lot of sense. Because, you know, in the last year, it's really gone between 30 to 40% on the dollar. So Mhmm. That's like getting a 30 to 40% wage increase.

Justin:

It's like getting a 30 to 40% boost in revenue. And that you can't I mean, that would be very difficult to do on your own just like if you had a 30 to 40% increase in MRR in a month, that would be a very good month. Right?

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Justin:

And so and so one of the places we have leverage is if you don't live in the United States or you can move somewhere like Canada or somewhere, you know, I mean, there's there's currencies, I'm sure, you know, in in Indonesia that are even better. But this is some of the arbitrage you can do that will help. And it certainly helped us. I mean, to turn a $1,000 US into 1300 or $1400 Canadian was a huge help to our family when we were getting started.

Speaker 4:

I mean, it could go the other way, though. Right?

Justin:

That's right. The thing is in Canada, it rarely does. In Canada, it's it's almost always the US dollars more. And they we we control the central bank here purposefully keeps it that way because

Speaker 4:

Oh, I see.

Justin:

We're such an export driven economy. Yeah. But yeah. I mean, in in the UK are are you right in London? Or where are you at?

Speaker 4:

I'm in Norfolk, which is, a couple of hours northeast of London.

Justin:

Okay. And what what are the is it an expensive place to live? Or

Speaker 4:

Locally, you could go both out of the spectrum. So quite a lot of rich areas in Norfolk. And then in the actual city, there's quite a lot of cheaper places.

Justin:

I think the other thing for you that you should be encouraged about is when I made the jump, I had just published marketing for developers, which was a book and a course. And the problem or the challenge with that kind of product is it was very launch driven. And I wasn't like I didn't make Adam Wavin money when I initially launched it. I I think they make sense with if you can make a ton of money in your 1st year, then it makes sense to launch a product like that. And I would, you know, trade places with Adam any day because

Speaker 4:

the Is that now a term? Yeah. Money.

Justin:

Adam, love,

Gavin:

and money.

Justin:

Adam, love, and money. I think it's instructive, though, because in some ways, like, getting to know Adam and Taylor Otwell opened my eyes to this idea of you know, I thought I was doing pretty good because I was working super hard, but doing, you know, 4 or 5 launches a year to make what I what ended up being, I don't know, $200,000 Canadian a year to realizing, oh, wait a second. There's bigger markets, and there's also just more sustainable business models. And SaaS, even when it's, you know, even when it's low, at least it's dependable. So you have a pretty good idea that, again, unless DigitalOcean decided tomorrow to cancel everything and and not allow services like yours, you're pretty safe, revenue wise.

Justin:

And I think that's for for especially folks with families, I wish what I'd done is I had maybe invested in software earlier. And, I mean, I can't there's no there's no perfect answer here though. Because if marketing for developers had made, I don't know, $500 in its 1st year, then it would have been a different story. Right?

Speaker 4:

Might not have made transistor, you know.

Justin:

I might not have made transistor. That's exactly true. Yeah. So and so what are what are your kind of your stretch goals now that you've gone full time? What's the I I don't I don't want you to have to talk about specific numbers if you don't want to.

Justin:

But do you have an idea of, like, what by what percentage you need to increase MRR to really feel comfortable?

Speaker 4:

I think about 10% to get would be comfortable, and 20% is of the goal by the end of the year to get that would be back to back to starting to have those creature comforts and stuff. So

Justin:

Okay. So 20% if you increased MRR 20% from what it is right now

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Justin:

You would be wow. That's I mean, that seems doable. Mhmm. That that doesn't seem the the other challenge, I think, I I thought when I talk to folks is they go, you know, they'll quit their job and then they'll go, well, this thing needs to grow by 300% this year for me to make it work. And

Speaker 4:

It's interesting because I asked other people about this. Like, people had done the transition. And I was people who had done the transition at the beginning. Like, they've gone got a whole bunch of savings Mhmm. And they just both feet in

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And had no no income.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And then we're going that way. Well, I've gone to completely the other way just like dipping my toes for the last 3 years. And now it's now it's the time to dive in. But I'm diving into I don't know, you know, for analogies on this, but a warm pool.

Justin:

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, the it's it's yeah. It's kind of like, yeah.

Justin:

I don't know what the ad analogy is either. But you're you're warming it up gradually, I think, is a better answer.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Justin:

Because it's again, specifically with SaaS, it is unlikely that next month is going to be that much worse than this month. Now we can talk about COVID 19 in a second. John and I, the question we asked ourselves when the pandemic hit was, at this point, would we be okay if we lost 50% of our revenue? And we wouldn't be happy about it. But we could lose 50% of our revenue and still be doing reasonably well.

Justin:

Now when you're starting out like you are, you don't you're not quite there. But, did you did you see any drop with the pandemic? Or has it been pretty steady?

Speaker 4:

It's been steady. So this year Okay. Since January, sort of things have been looking a lot better. I've been putting a lot more time in, and I haven't seen any obvious decreases. Right?

Speaker 4:

I've had a couple of customers say that they're just sort of, managing their expenses and, you know, see you in the future sort of thing, but, not not mass churn or something.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's that's encouraging too because,

Speaker 4:

like, there are turning off backups is something that's probably has some sort of emotional or, like, fear factor about it. So

Justin:

Yeah. You're in that category of we need this. Like, we need to continue to have backups. Mhmm. So I can see I can see.

Justin:

Once you become a part of the like, that that that base layer of we just need to keep this running no matter what, that is a good place to be. And if the alternative is the alternative is someone going, hey, well, maybe we should quit Snapsheeter. But then the guys go, well, then we're gonna have to rebuild that system ourselves, which is gonna take, like no

Jon:

one's gonna wanna do that.

Justin:

No. You you you you solve such a such a base issue that yeah. I I think you'll probably be fine. And we've already the most of the folks who have experienced difficulty have already seen it. You know, they they got a 20 to 30% drop in, you know, last month.

Justin:

I think my only concern is more for Transistor than for you. My only concern is because we are in such a prosumer category, I think if it continues if we continue to have folks that, you know, are holding on to their podcast now because, you know, they they they're able to hold on for a month. But if next month, if things haven't improved, if they've lost their job, if, you know, then I think we could see it. But we haven't seen any really real inkling of that at all. So maybe we'll be okay.

Justin:

But even when you get to this stage, Simon, there's still that anxiety of Yeah. What if what if it all goes away?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Someone can magically take it all away tomorrow.

Justin:

Yeah. I'm wondering, do you have any questions for me at this stage? And you can think about this. We don't have to ask them now. But is there anything that you would wanna ask me now that you've made this this switch?

Justin:

Like, any kind of burning anxieties or anything that I could help you with? I

Speaker 4:

thought about this before podcast. I was thinking, I I found your discussion about pricing last week interesting about was it last week or the week before where you're saying everyone tells you to charge more? Mhmm. I've also I've emailed all the customers and asked them about the pricing, all the existing ones. And they were pretty clear that, nope.

Speaker 4:

You're on the money there. Like, that is the limit.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Because that's one thing I was thinking, like, a lever to pull.

Gavin:

I mean, there

Justin:

is a lever you could probably pull there, but I think pricing I don't I mean, there's definitely smarter people than me that are thinking about this. But to me, it's pretty basic. Like, if you're gonna start an email newsletter app, you are automatically anchored by Mailchimp's pricing.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Like, because they're the biggest folks. And so unless you're doing something way more niche and way, like, different enough that you can you can justify charging way more. If you're an email newsletter app, even if you're better than Mailchimp or better designed or have better deliverability, the anchor is still going to be Mailchimp. And maybe you could get away with 10% more, which I think is actually the way ConvertKit does their pricing is they just always try to be 10% more than Mailchimp. Nice.

Justin:

So That's

Speaker 4:

like petrol stations, isn't it?

Justin:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And sometimes people get it I don't know.

Justin:

People like to label things like, oh, well, that's just a commodity product. Email is just a commodity product. And, I don't I don't agree with that either. Because to me, Mailchimp is is completely a brand driven product. In many ways, ConvertKit is as well.

Justin:

So I I think pricing is mostly anchored about with what's going on in the sector already. And then also, like in your case, you're somewhat anchored by you can't be more than what they're already paying for DigitalOcean.

Speaker 4:

No. They already have to pay the storage fees. With DigitalOcean, I don't pay them. They have to pay them. And that's I think it works out 10 times more than the fees that I'm Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Charged. So it's like yeah. There's a Yeah.

Justin:

So you you're always gonna be a subset of that. Now I think the lever you could pull, and it's gonna take some odd observation because I don't think people would answer a survey with this, is some of those things we were just talking about, which is what's behind this? You know, like, for me, what's what's behind it is I am a one click app installer. And I'm going to need other help, you know, as I go along to maintain this this thing that I've launched. And I think there's going to be opportunities for folks like you to if you were going to expand your services or if you're going to do anything productized or even, like, automated, you could say, okay.

Justin:

Well, let's look at the stacks people are backing up. And if 20% or 30% of those are discourse forums, maybe you could add a new one, which is we'll automatically update your your discourse, for you every time it happens. And we'll just take care of it. If people are backing up actual applications, like they're backing up their own SaaS applications, maybe there's other services you could add on top of that that, you know, would be value ads for them.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Maybe you could get into provisioning servers. I mean, that's that's another one. You know, there's forge and run cloud and other things. But, if you're already you have a foot in the door because you already have customers who trust you and pay you for something. And so now I think you what you're looking for is what could you add that people would pay you for?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I got I got I got a road map. I spent the last 3 months talking to essentially every single one of the paying customers about, what they like, what they don't like, what they, you know, what would actually add value for them. So that essentially shapes the roadmap, which I'm looking forward to. Because at the moment, when I add a big feature, it takes 3 months.

Justin:

Yeah. Well, if it makes you feel better

Speaker 4:

a week. Like, is it?

Justin:

If it makes you feel any better, we've been working on our Tailwind UI re

Speaker 4:

Oh, yeah.

Justin:

Relaunch for a while too. The you have to have some patience for yourself even when you're full time.

Speaker 4:

Some some things like that, they just do take forever, don't they? It's just you just discover stuff that you've forgotten that you have to sort out.

Justin:

Yeah. And I think the other part people don't talk about is just that life happens. And I think a mistake I made when I was a young dad and it's hard because you're squeezed so much as a young parent. But one of the mistakes I made is I was just like, well, this is just what it takes and this is what it you know, I there's I gotta put in the hours and I've gotta work as hard as I can, and I was spinning my wheels. And in retrospect, a lot of that energy seems wasted because I was just flailing.

Justin:

And, I mean, I'm a this is a little bit unfair because my my context has changed so much. My kids are older. They're way way more independent. And, Transistor is doing well. But my days now are much more relaxed.

Justin:

And, I think you still have to have some allowance for And and the reason we didn't get the tailwind stuff done is, you know, John had some personal stuff happen that was difficult. And then this pandemic hit. And you have to give yourself allowance for the real life stuff. And in some ways, that's why you're doing this. Right?

Justin:

Like, you even said, like, I wanna be at home helping my wife and kids as best as I can. Mhmm. And part of that and it's really hard when you're at home and you're, like, just try and get in the zone and and accomplish something. But part of that is saying, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna take a break.

Justin:

I'm gonna go make some waffles. And, you know, or take take the kids

Jon:

for a while.

Speaker 4:

I already work on Snapshooter every day and get time in, so I'm just sort of glad to free up.

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

It could plot along how it is, and I've just freed up, you know, 8 hours a day.

Justin:

Yeah. And and just remind yourself to take some of take some of that time for yourself. Like, to to to take some of it for yourself, take some of it for your wife and kids, to give your wife some time by herself. Like, there's all of these

Speaker 4:

I mean, we discussed this lots, like, what you how more flexible it could be. Mhmm. You know, if you want more help everyday, you know, we're all stuck at home anyway. You know, maybe I do work on a Saturday and just, you know, balance it out that way or, you know, it's totally preschedule. And that was the main reason really.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Of that that main selling point was Yeah.

Justin:

The flexibility

Speaker 4:

schedule every day. Just what what what's gonna be best today? Yeah. I mean, I'm looking forward to getting back to the routine of kids at school. I like working Yeah.

Speaker 4:

9 to 5. It's it's like I like having the nice stretch of day with the

Justin:

It is so hard at the beginning. I I just remember, like, for Lorinda and I, we had our first child, when we were 22.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And just all of the pressures of that, like, you have no money for a big house, you have to live in a small house. And that means there's no good work environment. And that means, you know, your car is always breaking down. And that mean like, there's all of these additional difficulties being young and starting out that as soon as you get any sort of margin in your life, it it's it it almost feels unfair because all of that pain and a lot of the thrashing we do is because we just have no margin. Right?

Justin:

Like, we're you're trying to move things around. And it's like you're it's like you're playing Tetris, but the game's already stacked so that, you know, someone already played before you and there's, like, a bunch of mistakes made. And you've gotta, like, quickly, like, fix it as opposed to just, like, a nice clean board where you have lots of margin and time to think about where you wanna move the pieces. You know?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm interested about that now with marketing as the budget has gone to 0. Mhmm. What Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Crashing will be with that. But no. I I I mean, I've just exchanged one type of thrashing for another in some senses, you know.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. So for you, for Snap Shooter, let's think about that a little bit. What what what what has been the most effective strategy so far? Is it is it mostly referral and word-of-mouth based?

Speaker 4:

I'd say primarily Google and the digitalation communities. And then one I have essentially no control over is DigitalOcean support staff. So if you go and ask the support staff, they would then recommend us.

Justin:

Gotcha.

Speaker 4:

And then, I think that's basically it actually.

Justin:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

I've not had much luck with paid acquisition or, referral has been okay. My word-of-mouth, I think, is okay. Referral program has been people trying to refer themselves to save money.

Justin:

Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Okay.

Justin:

I've got a few ideas for you. And this first one is gonna be a stretch. You might you're not gonna like it. But but I'm gonna I you're gonna have to you're gonna have to lose some of your British sensibility.

Speaker 4:

You can beat my face.

Justin:

So this is what I would do for you if I was you right now. Your story right now is very powerful. And if I was you, I would write me, Taylor Otwell. Who else is on your page here? Alex Coleman, anyone that has you've you've come into contact with.

Justin:

And just a quick email to Taylor to say, Hey, Taylor, it's me, Simon. Just want to let you know, I've just gone full time on Snap Shooter. Be a little bit vulnerable. You go, you know, it's a little scary because I've got 2 young kids, a 6 month old, and whatever. And but I'm doing it.

Justin:

And then have an ask, which is I've really appreciated when you've mentioned Snap Shooter in the past. If you want to do that again, that would be huge for me right now because I'm going full time and I'm just, you know, I I need as much help as I can get. The recipient of those emails now if if I've never met the person, if they have no if there's no nothing in the emotional bank, I ignore them. But for someone like you that's been engaging in the community, for someone with like you who's been sharing your story as you go along, I think it is you you've earned the right to write those emails. And those kinds of things have been very helpful for me.

Justin:

1, because it just lets a whole bunch of people know what you're doing.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And, I mean, you could word it differently. It could also just be, hey, it's Simon. I've just gone full time on Snap Shooter. It's a little bit scary for me because I've got 2 young kids. Thanks for mentioning me in the past.

Justin:

If you know anybody that needs backups for DigitalOcean, please send them my way. Like that just that email there and writing it personally to all of the folks that you have any sort of personal connection with. How much do you hate this idea, by the way, right now?

Speaker 4:

I actually really love the idea. I've got it. I actually I I can't remember if it was this, I can't remember if she said it or someone else was. I sent an email saying, you know, saying along the lines of, I'd like to I sent something along the lines of could you just help us grow our small company or something like that. It was it was I thought it was a bit of a, like, a personal touch there.

Speaker 4:

Just trying to grow our small businesses Yes. Anymore.

Justin:

Yeah. That was

Speaker 4:

It was actually quite a bit of

Justin:

Yeah. That was Justin Mayers who was doing it with, FOMO. That was a talk he gave at MicroConf. And he would send out a survey, and he found that survey responses doubled when he said, yeah. Could you please do that?

Justin:

It would help us a lot. We're a small two person company. And that line

Speaker 4:

And it must have bubbled down through the like Mhmm.

Justin:

That line engendered so much support for them. And that's really what you want. You want people to identify with you emotionally. I've actually been feeling like for a while, I was arguing with Tyler Tringus that personal brand doesn't matter that much.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Because statistically, when I look at just, like, last touch sign ups to transistor, it's like, well, search is big and affiliates are big. And, you know, there's all these things that seem to be big. So but anecdotally, in Kayako, like our customer support, when people are signing up and I ask them why they signed up, they almost always say, oh, well, I heard your story on a podcast. Or I've been following your newsletter for 10 years. And it finally came time for my boss to want a podcast, so I thought of you.

Justin:

And so those interpersonal connections, I think, really do matter maybe more than I've given them, you know, credit for.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Speaker 4:

Jack and they will continue or that you will get to the point where that sort of dries up, if you get what I mean? Like, if

Justin:

So, I mean, we're still a new company, so I think we still benefit a bit from that new company. People wanna support the the little the little underdogs. We're still only 2 people, which I think is helpful. Like, you can always just say, we're a small two person company and we really appreciate your support. That's, you know, a lot of folks that means a lot to them.

Justin:

And I I mean, the the other thing is, for me, personally, John's not built this way at all. But for me, personally, I just thrive on being everywhere and being in a 1,000 different conversations. And so if I'm having conversations all over the web, and I'm in 20 different Slacks, and I have, you know, 6 different Telegram conversations every day, plus 3 more in Discord and, you know, dozens more in Twitter DMs. All of that investment, I think, will continue to pay off. And, so yeah.

Justin:

I think that is a strategy that more folks could use. They don't have to be like me, but a good start is to write a personal email.

Gavin:

Mhmm. And then

Justin:

I think a follow-up to that is if any of those folks are people that you want to give regular updates to In the PS, say, PS, I'm thinking about starting a monthly adviser email. Would you like me to add you to the list? Okay. Because then you're going to get this network of influential, well connected people who are now engaged engaged with your story. Like, I want you to win.

Justin:

Mhmm. Like, I I I I want you to win. And I think I'm not the only person. I think there's lots of people that want to see you win. There's reasons.

Justin:

There's emotional reasons I want you to win. I want you to win because I know what it's like to be a young dad. I want you to win because I've seen your journey so far. I want you to win because I think Snap Shooter is great. There's all sorts of reasons.

Justin:

And I think there are folks, especially folks like you who have invested in community. And the other thing you have is you have a good product that has market demand. So if you had a product that was really kind of a dud, I think it would be harder because I would still want you to win, but I wouldn't see much hope because there wouldn't be a path forward for you to win. But Snap Shooter seems like it's got traction, and it seems like people want it. And I can also see opportunities for you to add to it or, you know, do other things to it.

Justin:

And it's like, okay. I want you to win. I see a path forward for you to win. And then I also see opportunities for me to help. Right?

Justin:

And so, yeah, I would be taking advantage of that for sure at at this stage, especially now that you've just you've just gone full time.

Speaker 4:

Take seize the opportunity.

Justin:

Yes. Exactly. Unfortunately, I gotta I gotta end this call because I gotta this is my day now as I've got I've got, more calls right after you. But I will I will, definitely be encouraging folks to go and check out Snap Shooter. And, check you out on Twitter and all those places.

Justin:

I'll put the links in the show notes. And, yeah, thanks for doing the call, man.

Speaker 4:

Wow. Thanks for thanks for the call as well. Yeah. Really appreciate it.

Justin:

And that's it. Yeah. So I hope you folks enjoyed that. Again, when someone starts something new like that, I think the best thing we can do as a community is to spread the word. Here's a guy.

Justin:

He's just launched this thing. And, well, he hasn't just launched it. He's been doing it for a couple years now, but he's just gone full time on it. So snap shooter.io. Go and visit and, refer him to your friends.

Justin:

Tell your boss about them. And, you know, hopefully, give him a lot more business.

Jon:

Yeah. It's such a it's a it's such a frightening and exciting place to be.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. And it just I he it's so interesting hearing him and and being like, oh, man. The where he is in a good spot though is recurring revenue generally builds on top of itself. And so as long as he just keeps trucking away at it, eventually, he'll have this really nice sustainable income.

Justin:

His goal is to just increase MRR by 20% by the end of this year. So I think I think the build your SaaS community could help with that. I think, I mean, I would I would love to see him hit 20% by the August, let's say. You know? Like, that is seems completely possible.

Justin:

So if you got some digital ocean servers that you should be backing up, go and check them out. And you can, reach out to Simon on Twitter, mister Simon Bennett, and say hi. John, why don't you thank the fine folks on Patreon?

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. As always, thanks everyone, for supporting us on Patreon. We have a new patron, Bill Kondo. Bill.

Jon:

Thanks, Bill. Kondo.

Justin:

That's a great name. Is he in real estate? He probably isn't. Bill Condo. Thanks, Bill.

Jon:

Thank you, Bill. We have Sofia Cantero, Diego, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler, Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Prady Umna Schenbecker, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Michael Sidfer, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, my brother, Darby Frey, Samoria Gusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta. Junta. And Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com.

Justin:

Thanks everybody. We will see you next week.