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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Dagobert (00:01)
Hi Samuel, welcome to lunch day.
Samuel (00:04)
Hi there girl, I'm happy to be here. How are you doing today?
Dagobert (00:09)
I'm good, I'm good. You're my third call of the day, so now I feel a bit more warmed up now, I'm more chill. Had a really cool, I had to move you 15 minutes, because I had a really cool one hour long conversation. And I think it's gonna be the longest episode so far, because I noticed it's just cool to have long conversations. And I noticed some people tell me they really appreciate it, they really, because you know, at first I was just about, let's show your product, but now I'm like.
You know, I notice a lot of indie makers, feel kind of lonely. We're all like in a different place and it's usually we don't have a lot of people, at least for me, I'm alone. Like, and I don't have anybody around who's doing that. A lot of people are like that. And so having these conversations and just talking about shit for like one hour or like 30 minutes is just cool for other indie makers who are a bit.
Samuel (00:53)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert (01:05)
alone also and they can just listen to that and I see more and more people are listening because it's kind of like you're connecting, you know, with people.
Samuel (01:16)
Yeah, I can relate to that. Like it's awesome to hear and see maybe the others, they got on the path of the Indie hacking or how they like try to get some success from it. I think it's inspiring.
Dagobert (01:36)
And do you have that? Do you have friends in the hacking near you? Where are you based? How is your situation with that?
Samuel (01:46)
Yeah, so, so I'm saying hi from Bratislava, Slovakia. We have, we have, we have pretty small indie hacking community. It's, it's small country at all, Slovakia. So yeah, we have some like, ⁓ some community here, but it's not like we are going on a meetup. It's, it's more about like, ⁓
Dagobert (01:50)
Okay cool.
Samuel (02:08)
We know about each other, so when we meet on the street randomly, then we can talk, but it's more about randomness than about some organized meetups or some community that is built around that. So it's more like ⁓ friendship and networking, ⁓ more than community building.
Dagobert (02:23)
Yeah.
And are you in the capital?
Samuel (02:36)
Yeah, yeah, I'm in Brad's law.
Dagobert (02:39)
Okay, I see, Yeah, sorry you said that. Because like, yeah, in France we have some meetups, like I'm in Lille, which is let's say in the top 10 cities, but not Paris and not the biggest. And ⁓ we have one Indie Maker meetup every month. It's always the same five or six guys. And sometimes I go, sometimes I don't. I mean, mostly I don't to be honest, but like sometimes I go, but I know them and you know, we talk sometimes like on DMs and shit.
In Paris, I know they have a bigger one, that's like 40 people. But yeah, it's crazy. I feel like there's lots of us, there's lots of indie makers, but it's kind of like we're all disconnected in a way. yeah, so okay.
So how did you become an indie maker? What's your journey? I'm just curious about that.
Samuel (03:38)
Yeah, thank you for that question.
It's, it's a bit, it's a bit more like a longer story maybe like, as many people in my age, like millennials or, or, or, or similar. Sorry. ⁓ 32.
Dagobert (03:51)
How old are you?
How old are you?
So see you soon, okay.
Samuel (03:58)
Okay, so I got to do indie hacking by programming and because and I got to programming because I was playing games and we just needed like the server to play and connect with friends and Yeah, yeah, yeah, so and then when you when you have a skill of programming you are thinking how I can how it can improve my life like
Dagobert (04:15)
Okay, so you started like that, I see.
Samuel (04:28)
You know, you can have a good job. You can have a good like, status from that job. You can be like, developer, the manager and like CTO and you can.
Dagobert (04:39)
Yeah, you can make a lot of money, you can have the status,
yeah.
Samuel (04:43)
grow
up on the car later but ⁓ when you are employed you are not making money when you are sleeping and this is the thing I want to achieve you know when you sleep and you make money and this is possible yeah and this is possible thanks to thanks to making software online
Dagobert (04:57)
⁓ interesting,
Samuel (05:03)
I believe because you know, just recently I had registration in the night from Japan and I have never been to Japan, but like someone found my product in Japan and then you, then you see like the activity log that they made like registration and they started on board and then they, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dagobert (05:23)
Yeah, that's the best feeling. Yeah. And when you start, when you
start going, it can be addictive. You're like, who's connecting on my website? And you're like, and if you put enough trackers, you can even see, he's on the settings page. my God. You know, you're like, yeah.
Samuel (05:30)
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah,
exactly. And I was sleeping and someone was using my product and maybe it was actually useful to them. And this is like you are sleeping, but you are also at the same time useful to the world.
Dagobert (06:10)
dreams and build things because we enjoy it. But once you start being useful, for example with launch day, first launch day it was mostly about is Dago gonna launch his website? People were talking about it. And for sure it was that, but second launch day I did a couple days ago, I managed to get sales for many of these indie makers. We got two sales for him, three sales for him, five sales for him.
And I'm like, and some guy was so happy, he had one sale but he doesn't have many and he was so happy to have one sale. And I felt, my God, I felt useful. Like for the first time in two years, because for two years I didn't have my startup. And I really felt like, my God, I help people. And that's like another level of how you, and that makes me think of that. Because we focus a lot on like,
our own personal thing, which is important. But then once you start realizing, wow, you can help people, and then it becomes like, I really want to help because it's the best feeling. Because when you are at a job, you're like helping, but here it's like helping with something that comes from you. Like it's helping from something that comes from your heart, you know? So is that what you meant?
Samuel (07:33)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, because when you are in the job, you don't have like, ⁓ full ownership of the thing, you know, it's, it's always a compromise because if you don't own the thing, then you need to make compromises with the team. And I, and I believe that this is actually the absolute way to the freedom because you can build anything like you, can, you have, you have like,
You have whole internet waiting what you will release and that's awesome. Like it's a bit like not true that you have whole internet waiting because they don't care but you need to make them to care but they are there. If you make cool thing, they will use it. I believe in that.
Dagobert (08:25)
Yes, 100%, you know, there's a lot of like, there's a lot of joke about build it and they will come because I guess when you get started like me that happened, you really think you just have to post it and then it's good, it will go viral. And that's not true. But once you go after that and you start learning a bit of marketing and you start connecting with people and you start being able to show a bit of your work, then it's really true that
You don't have to be a celebrity, you don't have to do something big. You can just do a cool product and post it generally in communities. And once you overcome your fear of selling and marketing a little bit, that's enough to get like, know, like my first, like for my previous startup, it was a logo generating company. The first hundred people who bought, I didn't have any audience. I was just posting every day on interacting on Reddit, on IndieHackers that come back then and
You connect and you find people and then you're like, like I remember one of the first people who bought, was just, then you start talking with them and you realize, ⁓ it really helped this guy and he really thought the product was cool and he bought it. So yeah, that's ⁓ very possible to reach that.
Samuel (09:45)
and it's beautiful you know when like like I said when when the people from the
Other countries not the ours like from Japan or from the United States They will come and they will and they are curious and they will explore and they want to understand what what what they they want to like support you give you give you like ⁓ Some money or or any any other support use your product and that's that's really beautiful to watch like how they
Dagobert (09:57)
Yeah.
Samuel (10:20)
Do they understand am I good communicator? ⁓ Do is the product good like it's it's beautiful world, but also it's a lot of times it's very like ⁓ It's causing a lot of anxiety because sometimes they don't come for a few days and then suddenly they will come but yeah, it's about managing our internal energy and
and so on.
Dagobert (10:51)
Yeah, and right now summer is starting. And usually summer makes things slower. And summer is a bit scary sometimes. And I don't, how long have you been doing this? How long have you been in the hacking and building shit?
Samuel (11:05)
I think, I think about like five or six years, like first I was only like programming to learn how to actually build things. But then then I started that like.
Dagobert (11:11)
Yeah.
So you don't come
from a programming background. So what's your background?
Samuel (11:24)
I
actually, I came from programming background because I don't have like university degree, but after like secondary school in Europe, yeah, I started to work at IBM. Then I worked at marketing agents.
Dagobert (11:40)
Oh, okay, okay.
Because you said you spent the first few years of indie hacking learning to code, so that's what I don't get.
Samuel (11:47)
⁓
like before in the hacking, was like learning to learn code, but through, through the job, like I was like entry level web developer or web web master, or how to say it's like, you know, it takes some time until you are able to build like some software as a service, I would say.
Dagobert (11:51)
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
And so when did you start building your first SaaS or project like this?
Samuel (12:15)
Yeah, I think in 2019 or yeah, 2019, somewhere around there and it was because my friend was like they wanted the chat bot on the website and I was what it needs to to like How it should look like to like what it should do to
You pay me like 150 euro per month. So I took it from the product side, from the start. I didn't.
Dagobert (12:52)
That's good,
that's good. What can you sell? What can you make? And then what do you need to build to make that money?
Samuel (12:59)
Yeah, so I wasn't like doing like obvious freelance stuff like when you ask for the specification you will just build the thing and you will get paid like I don't know 2000 or 3000 euros but I was from the start like aiming to how to make it recurring revenue and
Dagobert (13:13)
Yeah.
That's awesome. Instead of like, is somebody coming to you for a freelance project and they would be happy to pay 2K and get it and you say, wait, I'm gonna take a bit more time and build it into something and then you pay me 150 a month. And then you scale it to other people. That's really amazing business sense.
Samuel (13:35)
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Yeah, that was the idea, but the thing was that ⁓ I wasn't able to scale it more than to one customer. And then because I, I loved the programming, you know, I love to build features. love to like add more features and this one little more feature and everything will be, will be great. Only one more feature and everything.
Dagobert (13:50)
shit. Yeah.
Yeah. yeah. And then three years later,
yes.
Samuel (14:11)
Yeah.
So, typical trap for, for, for, for Indie Hacker. So then I like little bit burnout from, from that. But the good thing is that that one client, like he, is staying. He's still my client. And today, so, so I got like.
Dagobert (14:33)
Still paying you
150 a month?
Samuel (14:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got yeah, I got a lot of money then it if it will be like contract job I got already like some Seven
Dagobert (14:44)
that's cool, that's really cool. So
you said you burn out a little bit, how are you making money at this time since that wasn't enough? And how did this burn out happen basically?
Samuel (14:54)
Yeah,
Yeah. So, so, ⁓ like I was building features, but not no one, no one else showed. So, so, so I have no visitors on the website. So I just stopped building features because it, it isn't, it didn't make sense to.
Dagobert (15:15)
It was discouraging.
Samuel (15:18)
to add more features, but you know, like I had, I had a job at the startup and I have co-founded another startup. So it's a bit about like, had a lot of opportunities to do other things in my life. So I was okay with like putting this on the sidestrike and just waiting for the right moment. And this moment was like when the AI models got released basically and everything was possible.
Dagobert (15:47)
Yeah, because
Samuel (15:48)
to.
Dagobert (15:48)
one interesting thing that you told me is that you started this so 2019.
Samuel (15:53)
Yeah, or 2020 or something like that.
Dagobert (15:55)
Okay, yeah, so like five years ago, quite a bit of time.
And then, so you built a lot of features, then you burn out, then you let it on the side, you still have this guy paying you every month, which is cool. And then all the LLMs and the new AI come out and become usable and start to really become, you know, could add a lot of value. And then that's when you started working again on this product. So what was that like? How did you feel? Did you start?
So I guess after a burnout, you kind of like let it on the side and kind of forget about it and what happened after that. How did you come to work again?
Samuel (16:31)
Yeah.
Basically, thanks for, thanks for opening that. Basically what I have seen was that intercom like started, ⁓ they have a new product called Finn and Finn is doing like 100 million of revenue. Yeah. The intercom, you know, the intercom, the live chat.
Dagobert (16:50)
What is that? I don't even know what it is. It's like an AI thing?
Yeah, yeah.
Samuel (16:57)
on,
on, on, but they have separate product now it's called Finn and it's like the only chat bot for that intercom. So it's, it's the sub product of intercom, but actually they say that they, that it grow to 100 million error in last year. So when you see a thing like that, then you are like questioning, like that's probably being market.
Dagobert (17:18)
Yeah. Okay.
Samuel (17:26)
you probably shouldn't miss that. Like there is something happening and there is a chance to build like hyperscaling company but you need to do that. Like you cannot like, need to do that basically. I basically, know, because
Dagobert (17:48)
What do mean you need to do that?
Samuel (17:54)
⁓ need to do that. mean, you can do it also because they don't have better technology than you. They, we, we all have. ⁓
Dagobert (18:06)
yeah, for sure. They just
have a billion salesmen calling every day, but yeah, but they don't in terms of technology. Yeah, you can build an alternative quite, you know, yeah.
Samuel (18:12)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah, they they don't so so if you have a chance if you if there is a small chance to build 100 million RRR business Then you will be stupid to not take that chance if it's not hard for you
Dagobert (18:33)
Yeah.
Especially since you had built so many things for years, so you had already a product with quite a bit of features, because we make fun of, ⁓ you build too many useless features, but having many features is not, especially when you're B2B, it's not bad. it's not like, the problem is when you lose kind of like the clarity of what you're offering, you know, when it's kind of like messy and it's not clear.
But having a lot of features, it's good for B2B because it's also, you know, they need to get buy-in from other teams, they need to get their manager to approve it. And so if you want, you know, that, that's quite useful to be able to say, no, you don't just get this, you get this and you get that. So you had like this kind of like good foundation. Okay, so you saw that and then, then what?
Samuel (19:24)
Yeah, then I took the opportunity. ⁓ I asked my client that, there's age of AI and you shouldn't have customer support representatives on your support. There should not be people there.
let's put the AI there and we have like that one client that I have now the full AI like support for on, on, on, on his website.
Dagobert (19:57)
Wow.
And there's nobody at all. There's no like, because like, at least for me as a customer, it's cool when you can talk to someone eventually, sometimes.
Samuel (20:09)
Yeah, it's good, but we took it in a way that you should contact via phone ⁓ If you want like human support because most support questions are very simple But you know, mainly if you are doing e-commerce they won't
Dagobert (20:17)
Okay.
Yeah.
yeah, that thing, yeah.
Samuel (20:27)
Yeah, they won't like track the package. Where's my package? ⁓ they want like, ⁓ some refund. Okay. Tell us your mail and your order and we will get it sorted. you like the first line of the support is it's, it's very, ⁓ it's very easy to do with AI. It's like, I'm, I'm not big fan of replacing people with AI. I'm more the fan of the like augmenting people, you know,
Dagobert (20:45)
Yeah, yeah.
Samuel (20:57)
that like improving their life by having like support from AI. So that's it, yeah.
Dagobert (21:05)
No, no,
I totally get it. Yeah, I think it's because I'm more like of a, I'm technical, so when I contact support, I've already tried everything, you know, so I usually need to talk to someone because I cannot solve it. But I get what you mean. Most people, just have like the very basic requests. And so in that case, that's awesome. Wow, okay, so you started building it like a few months ago again, like you went back into it?
Samuel (21:11)
Hmm? Hmm?
I think about a year ago, got back to it and mainly, you know, because it's now it's I, I, as a developer, I am very augmented by AI now because I have cloud code, I have cursor, and you know, I was like, someone wanted like HubSpot integration to consider my solution. And it was.
Dagobert (21:33)
Yergo.
Yeah.
Yeah, I saw that
on your site.
Samuel (21:56)
It was
really nice, it was just fear prompts and a little bit of polishment and it's done. Do you know it's...
Dagobert (22:05)
And do you... Yeah,
that's like you don't have to learn an API. Yeah, I had to do that too and that's very, very useful for that. Do you have any thoughts on the cloud code versus cursor? Because I was a big cursor. I had my whole setup and now that they rocked pull us with like increasing the pricing, I'm like, my God. basically what I do is I use Gemini Pro, the free version for planning.
Samuel (22:10)
and I'll you
Dagobert (22:32)
and then I use cursor for implementing and then Gemini again for review. And I'm kind of like scared of changing again because I'm productive this way, but cursor is starting to be expensive. So I'm looking at Claude and how, what's your experience with that? Cause I haven't tried it yet. I'm just curious to know how it is for you.
Samuel (22:53)
like I think it's excellent. Basically it's a tool so you know it's how much you use it. So yeah like it's nice that in Cursor you have visual feedback. You can have it also in ⁓ Cursor via Klein, that's extension where you can connect cloud code.
and it will work like in the, it will use cloud code account and it will work visually in your ID as a similar. Yeah. So I have really good experience with cloud code mainly because they are like,
putting a lot more to the context and you have a lot more control about what goes to the context of the LLIME so you get better results. I have also one project where I have it in GitHub actions. So when you create an issue on GitHub and you will tag the code,
it will implement it for you and I have built one project fully through the GitHub issues and it was
Dagobert (24:10)
And how much
did you have to come back? You had to review, guess? Did you have to do anything like that?
Samuel (24:18)
It was very easy. It was very easy, but it was like a CLI application. So it wasn't like front and heavy. And that was like really excellent. You just said what you need and it was delivered. That was awesome.
Dagobert (24:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, everybody's saying that I need to try it. How much do you pay for it? Because I'm scared. Like some people, say they pay 200, some they say 20, some they say 6,000 because they use everything at maximum. So.
Samuel (24:48)
When
you pay for the cloud pro then you have like For 20, I think it's like 22 euro with v80. So Per month and you have some usage there. I use only clouds pro like their their monthly subscription so And it's it's enough for me, but I'm
No, it's, it's, it's bit changing also for me because I'm ⁓ finding a balance or how much of a agentic coding I'm doing because I'm more like, I, I, I generate the thing with AI and then I just copy paste what I like and very slowly, very slowly, like
Does this like deserve the space in my project and very slowly I go step by step and copy what's What should be there and what shouldn't be there because you know, sometimes you feel like a god that you can build anything and cloud will build for you anything, but Then you have mess in your code base and it takes your energy. So ⁓
Dagobert (25:47)
Yeah.
Yeah. And I, at least
when I was using cursor, there's a lot of, sometimes it's going to recreate something that exists because it didn't realize it existed. And there's like multiple functions. And so if you don't check, you end up with like way too much code for nothing and making it and you're going to change something and you realize it doesn't apply everywhere. it's because there's three functions that do the same thing. And so they only updated one function. So yeah.
Samuel (26:15)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert (26:35)
Cool. Okay, so you started working on this one year ago again. And then, ⁓ and now you started promoting it only recently. I think I saw that on your Twitter that you only started promoting it recently.
Samuel (26:49)
Yeah, I'm promoting it recently. Like I have tried some, ⁓ like I put out there some, like stones to do the CEO, ⁓ SEO, like, ⁓
do some content and so on. And it's starting to get some impressions from the Google search, but doing SEO in this niche is very hard because there are a lot of competition, but maybe we will get through that. But as always, I started with the thing that takes the longest because the SEO needs a lot of time because before,
Dagobert (27:32)
Yeah, six months, one year.
Samuel (27:35)
Or
it takes like some results and that's like the feedback loop on the marketing. It's very different from programming, you know, because when you build a feature, you have instant feedback loop. When you do marketing, you need to wait for like month, two months or a week.
Dagobert (27:47)
Yeah. ⁓
And know people, don't.
There is also...
Even if somebody falls in love with your product, it doesn't mean they will buy now. They have their whole thing. Maybe, you you can try to improve this for sure. Like with a limited time with different techniques, but like some people and most people, just, you know, they will buy it in six months. And like you have and you so it's hard to see. And also it's usually multi-channel like somebody and it's very hard to track. think a lot of these products who pretend to track how
you got a sales, it's a bit bullshit because, like for example, there's this story of you know, Peter Levelds, the biggest super famous indie maker. And you know, his product, it's a lot of SEO. Like for example, his remote job board, it's a lot of SEO, all the products. But then when you realize, it's gonna be mostly people searching for the brand name. So that means they heard about it.
So the source is not really SEO. SEO would be like somebody has a query and there's the page, but no, they just search for the brand name. So that means it's the brand name that they heard somewhere. And how do you track that? So you can say it's because of his Twitter. You can say it's because somebody talked to somebody else. And so that's why marketing is very hard to track. And it's kind of like...
Samuel (29:00)
Yeah.
Dagobert (29:26)
Like, you know, what's going to bring you a sale? Is it going to be a tweet? Is it going to be like an actual article on SEO? Is it to be a referral? So, yeah, it's much harder to... And that's what's hard about, like, with development, you know immediately, but like, with marketing, you have to keep the faith. Like, if you do marketing for six months, you have to keep the faith that eventually, okay, you know, and the feedback loop is longer, so you learn slower.
Yeah.
Samuel (29:59)
Yeah, exactly. I agree with you.
Dagobert (30:04)
And so what have you done in terms of marketing? You did SEO. ⁓
Samuel (30:08)
Yeah,
and then I'm posting on Twitter and on LinkedIn what I'm doing and basically that's it. I'm reacting to some reddit comments and ⁓
Dagobert (30:21)
And did it started growing? Like once you started, you know, putting more attention on it.
Samuel (30:25)
Yeah, definitely. Like
I have a lot more visitors than I have previously, but, what I, what I will probably do is I will do some outreach to the companies I like because, you know, like the classical way of building the relationship and the trust and yeah.
Dagobert (30:46)
And you have a B2B tool, so it makes sense to do
a bit of of sales.
Samuel (30:51)
Yeah, but but you know like the rule in the b2b sales is that if it doesn't cost at least 20k per year Then you shouldn't sell it by by like human
Dagobert (31:07)
Yeah, no, no, I know. But maybe, maybe, but when you're starting, you you do whatever you can, you know. Yeah.
Samuel (31:07)
It's all the internet. Yeah. Yeah. You need to do
the things that doesn't scale exactly. Yeah.
Dagobert (31:17)
Yeah, exactly. So can you show
us a bit your product because you made me quite curious now. I'm curious to see how it works.
Samuel (31:24)
Yeah, I
can definitely show the bit of product, but maybe the product in current state is not so important. Maybe for the listeners. Here's the offer. I'm a
Dagobert (31:42)
No, no, it's fine.
There will be like a separate product demo that people watch for the exact product. I'm just more curious to know how you build it, what you built, what you enjoyed building. ⁓
Samuel (31:55)
Like I
can check the product, okay, but it's like the boring side. Okay, okay, so you can see my screen probably now. Is it correct?
Dagobert (32:09)
Yeah, yeah, it's
fine. I can see it. can see it.
Samuel (32:11)
And basically it says that it's a agent that does does more than support. ⁓ It's a product is the live chat or widget that you can put on your website and you can connect with the team or just chat about the product. Surprising. You can like train the chat bot on content you have on your.
Dagobert (32:40)
yeah,
so how does it train actually?
Samuel (32:43)
Yeah, so ⁓ it's very easy because ⁓ when you are creating the integration, you will say that it's launch day.
it's I will write it's launch day and ⁓ Then you can add knowledge and You will just import the website There and it will scrape the website and we'll read all the content on the website and it will import it to the to the product
And then you can chat with the content of the website, but this typically takes sometimes five to ten minutes. So I'm not sure like it will take.
Dagobert (33:36)
Yeah.
I guess Launch Day is
not a great example because there's mostly videos, very little text content. ⁓
Samuel (33:47)
But that's okay, maybe in the future if the Lounge Day will have some tags or some categories, then you can ask ⁓ what is the best marketing tool for the indie hackers and the chatbot will find it because...
Dagobert (34:09)
Yeah,
good point.
Samuel (34:11)
Yeah, yeah, and so you can build like different different experiences and ⁓ it's basically up to you also. So, okay, here's like it's scraped some content and information about about the site. And then like, ⁓ if you have knowledge, have like data you want to provide to chatbot, then you need to configure how it should behave and what is the personality.
Dagobert (34:22)
Yeah, yeah.
Mmm.
Samuel (34:40)
And,
you can like write it yourself. want my chat bot to be friendly and, ⁓ encouraging the young people to start building businesses or something like that. Or you can just. From the website. So it will analyze your website and it will try to get like ton of voice, what is about, it will try to.
Dagobert (34:54)
Yeah. wow, yeah, okay.
Oh wow, that's really cool. That's a really cool idea.
Samuel (35:09)
It will try to like understand how it should communicate based on your content on your website.
Dagobert (35:21)
That's super important because all these AI chatbots,
sound like the same robot. But if you have like some tone of voice, that's a very good differentiating. I really like it.
Samuel (35:33)
Yeah, so here it generated some system prompt and your Launch Day customer support agent deployed on its Launch Day to us with all aspects of Launch Day platform.
Dagobert (35:42)
Yeah.
And I see the brand personality under this. Friendly, casual, supportive.
Samuel (35:49)
Yeah.
Optimistic yeah, I'm Building the products. I'm trying to like help and use the tools we have available like AI to really make the customer like To make to make their job easy because you know when someone is tasked
Dagobert (35:55)
Cool.
Samuel (36:14)
you need to find a like live chat or chat bot for our website and they are like, ⁓ another task for my boss. So I'm trying to help them like make, make it so easy for them to like ⁓ integrate with me as possible. So I'm always iterating on that. I reworked the onboarding last week and so on. Okay. So it will save this.
Dagobert (36:33)
Yeah.
Samuel (36:42)
So we have prompt and...
Dagobert (36:46)
That looks really cool, man. I really like this touch of the voice. Yeah. It's not just like technical, it's not just like train, answers, it's also brand, communication, because that's what the product is. So that's really, really like it.
Samuel (36:51)
Bye.
So by default it looks like that because I decided that it should look like that, but like the user can modify it anyway. Uh, he wants to, like, this is like, um, basic, like, um, if I want to connect with a support dialect directly, can just click a button and this will like a road to the live support. But if I want.
Dagobert (37:27)
So what do mean customized?
mean like the CSS or are talking about the...
Samuel (37:30)
I
mean about how this looks like. Like this text can be different, this content and style. And yeah, you can change the widget in a lot of possible ways. I cannot show it now because it's a bit harder to do, but maybe we will just learn more about launch day.
Dagobert (37:38)
You mean the content or the style?
Okay, everything.
So
you can change the whole brand. You can brand this completely like the colors of everything, the fonts.
Samuel (38:04)
Yeah.
⁓ it's less about colors. It's more about like, ⁓ how it's behave. Like if, you know, there was some like index page, but you can just start your ⁓ chat widget in this way that is directly like, like this, and you will just like, like type it, type it there, or you can have like that index page with multiple buttons, or you can like customize it as, you want.
Dagobert (38:13)
⁓ okay,
I see, Wow, that's... yep.
Samuel (38:35)
And
yeah, it's basically.
Dagobert (38:40)
What's the
coolest thing that you're the most proud of that you built on this?
Samuel (38:47)
⁓ okay.
Dagobert (38:49)
that you think is
cool, that you enjoyed.
Samuel (38:54)
I think the coolest thing in this product is probably this scenario editor. Like, this is, when I say about customization, you know, like, ⁓ there are those buttons that have you seen at the start, like learn more, connect with support, you can change it to anything like, I don't know.
Dagobert (39:02)
yeah, wow.
huh.
Samuel (39:20)
useful.
Dagobert (39:22)
I never built a drag and drop thing like this canvas kind of thing. It looks super impressive.
Samuel (39:25)
and you can
add another buttons and I don't know submit my product and then you can like create like wall scenario that ⁓ what product what is what is the URL of product you want to send
and this will be of type ask question and we will say.
Dagobert (40:00)
And so the type,
what's ⁓ gonna be the, choosing the type, what does it do? What is it gonna change?
Samuel (40:07)
Yes. So,
so the type of the message, because, ⁓ yeah, the type of the message, ⁓ basically says representation of the message. So you can just like send the message. That's like the chatbot will send only the message, like the plain text message. If you have like, ⁓ the ask question, the chatbot will send the message and wait for your response. You can ask questions with buttons. So, ⁓
Dagobert (40:36)
Hmm
Samuel (40:37)
So, so we.
Dagobert (40:37)
and I saw something that's like train chat bot. What does it do?
Samuel (40:42)
train chat bot is special because train chat bot is basically that, yeah, this is a bit broken, it's our, like, this is the AI part. So when I click on learn more, then I go to the, this, this node where it's learn more about product.
Dagobert (40:57)
Yeah.
Yep.
Samuel (41:07)
And this starts like a chat bot scenario that you don't have a control, but you can also like build a fully manual, like tree where you specify what you want to do. when you have some qualification or something that is specified, like, uh, it should have these steps, then you can build it manually. But if you have like, uh,
If you want like just chat with AI, then you use like the train chatbot type. If that makes sense.
Dagobert (41:45)
Yeah, I see, I see, okay.
That looks really cool, I'm really impressed by this. ⁓ Dragon drop thing. Like I never built something like this and it's kind of like, it looks super impressive. How did you build that?
Samuel (42:01)
Thank you. Actually, this is this is now it's easy because now there are some plugins and that allows you to do that. But before this version, I have built it manually and I used the SVG's like you have big SVG. Basically this whole canvas is SVG.
Dagobert (42:16)
Yeah.
was SVG Canva, okay, see.
Samuel (42:28)
and, and, and you, he, you use the SVG note that is, that is called for aging note and in fridge in note, can have any content. You can have like deals in fridge in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so that's it. But yeah.
Dagobert (42:44)
HTML. Yeah, okay.
That's awesome. Cool man. So what's the vision now? What's the plan? What's going to happen in the next few months with Chatisto?
Samuel (43:01)
Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Thank you for the bringing the vision. The vision is very important to me. I don't know how you see like the, how it's for you with visions, okay. ⁓ The vision is like to build an AI customer support platform that really helps the people. And I know it's like, it's not specific, but ⁓ you know, I really like.
I'm building also other products and I see Chatisto as key part of keeping my customers happy because their first contact with support will be via Chatisto. how can Chatisto helps my customers resolve the issues? ⁓
in most like ⁓ comfortable way and how it works for me. So I'm trying to always when I have some pain, I will try to resolve it. Basically now I'm just learning and I'm like, ⁓
be honest, I'm looking for design partners that can help me to build a customer support platform for 2025. if someone is listening to this...
Dagobert (44:27)
Okay.
Samuel (44:31)
and have some needs in customer ⁓ support platform, just write me an email and ⁓ I will be very happy to listen to you and understand what are your pains, are your needs and I'm ready to help you to deliver ⁓ better customer support for your customers.
Dagobert (44:53)
So that's like really the big thing you'll, I see. ⁓ Can you just stop sharing your screen so I see you bigger again? But like.
Samuel (44:59)
Thank
Dagobert (45:05)
So yeah, you were using your own product, you're using Chatty Store and your other products. And so now the vision is built like more like you kind of like kind of like started really caring about this problem. And now it's more like a bigger vision, like customer support, like become so like, what would it look like, like your vision like in one year or something, like if you if you can find someone like and when you were asking, did you look for like a business partner or for like
customer, like somebody with the specific problem.
Samuel (45:40)
⁓ I'm learning wall building is learning process and ⁓ Basically, I'm learning what ⁓ I Have some offering and I'm learning how to improve that offering to make it more sense for the business to to buy it and
Dagobert (45:47)
Yeah.
Samuel (46:02)
Basically when someone comes I try to satisfy I'm in the stage when I try to satisfy satisfy them if they want to integration it makes sense I will do that and You know Maybe if we go back to the problem like why I started it one of the reason was that all the products were Were too overwhelming when you when you started to integrate in tech com
There was like onboarding of 20 steps or, it was, it's, it's very expensive. It's very expensive to have like live chat support on the website. You have some cheaper options now, but they are not so good. Like you have crisp chat, which a lot of people uses, but they don't have like AI integration that is.
Dagobert (46:31)
yeah.
it is.
or they still don't
have it. Because I used to have it, I used to use it like four years ago, and they don't have.
Samuel (46:58)
They have it,
but I think you need to do it in some manual way. I take this opportunity that I have some version of my product and if the right customers will come, we can change it in a way that it will be like new generation of that product.
No new generation of live chat and I don't know what does it mean, but I can imagine that if you have travel site, maybe you have, you want to have like travel agent that will recommend like, ⁓ what vacation you should take. If you have budget of 2000 years, maybe it's like, you have ⁓ e-commerce that sales, ⁓ health, like,
Dagobert (47:24)
Yeah.
Mmm.
I see, I see.
Samuel (47:50)
or say cells like some health supplements, then you maybe want a agent that will ⁓ like diagnose you and tell you that you maybe need more, I don't know, vitamin D or you should take some magnesium or you know, like.
Dagobert (48:11)
So it's interesting
because I really see what you're doing, which is cool. But it's just like 20 minutes ago, you were saying, ⁓ no, you shouldn't do sales manually because it doesn't scale. But it seemed like right now that's kind of like what you're looking for, like a few customers in different industries to help you. So that's very not scalable, but that's normal at this stage. Right?
Samuel (48:36)
Yeah, I agree with you. Like do the things that don't scale. But I think that, you know, when you have like opportunity that you have like product that doesn't have a lot of customers, but have a lot of possibilities, then you can like build like new generation of the product. Because if you, you have a lot of customers and you will change that product,
⁓ then they will be not happy but i'm still in the very early stage that I can change it any in any way i'm just like waiting or looking actively For the partners that so what's your pain? You you know, there are a lot of companies that Could have a agent that will help their customers on the website, but they don't have it
And why? Why? There are a lot of tools and you still don't have it? What is that? And I'm looking for like, resolve this. If it's...
Dagobert (49:38)
That seems like a B2B salesman. That seems like a B2B, you need to go on LinkedIn and send cold messages. It sounds like this, like build relationships, I hear you. And I agree with you, for example, something like Crisp, now they have lots of customers, so they cannot start with AI first. They have to keep doing this customer support thing first. And the more you are established, the harder it is to change everything.
So what's cool about your product is you built it for years. So you have something solid. You already have something, but you're still early enough and not established enough that you can still change everything. So that's a kind of good position to be in, I think. Yeah. You just need to find kind of like the next, I guess, once you find these people, you can also, it will help you clarify the vision probably.
Samuel (50:35)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert (50:35)
and be
like, okay, and then you'll have the next generation what it looks like, as you said. Yeah.
It's interesting you talk about the next generation because I was, that's what I feel like I'm, like my intention with launch day is to be the next generation product hunt. But I also, I mean, I spent a lot of time figuring out what that looks like, but it's also now by doing it that I see, okay, you know, it's like these interviews are very important part of it. That's a new way of promoting products, you know. But yeah, the vision is still not 100 % clear. Yeah.
Samuel (50:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and it can change and that's beautiful that it can it can change by every interaction You know, it's it's I can't say that my vision is to like have the best life support agent on the on the whole internet But it can change like every interaction this call can change it like the vision is like moving target I think because if you get like to
Dagobert (51:38)
Yeah.
Samuel (51:41)
too focused on one goal, then it might not the right goal.
Dagobert (51:49)
Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, think it's good at first to keep your options open until something really makes sense and you start really feeling the connection with people and customers and it start becoming like clear. yeah, man, that's exciting. That's cool. Cool, man. So, you know, I really hope that launch day will bring you some sales. That's really the goal. And or maybe at least, you know, somebody who's going to help you in that direction, like some customer that is looking for that.
Samuel (52:19)
You know what? This call is enough. Like it was awesome to talk with you. Like this, this is awesome. This is awesome concept. Thank you for that. Like it's my, it's my first public presentation and wow, I feel amazing.
Dagobert (52:19)
That would be great.
wow, thanks.
That's beautiful that you say that, because you know, it's hard for me to see exactly the value that I bring. And so that's really cool that you say that.
Samuel (52:44)
I even
have the internet forever.
Dagobert (52:47)
Wow, this is cool. This is cool, I'm glad you liked it.
Samuel (52:48)
It's amazing.
It's amazing. I feel great.
Dagobert (52:54)
That's beautiful, man. I'm so nice to meet you, Samuel. That's really cool. ⁓ Okay, well, you know, good luck. And I hope, well, I'm glad you already had a win from that. And yeah, good luck for your launch day.
Samuel (53:02)
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you do. Enjoy your day. ⁓
Dagobert (53:13)
Thanks.
Samuel (53:15)
Bye.