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Curious about if a community could help you grow your business? This week, Matt Studdert will chat about how he built a massive community that drives his business and allowed him to scale with a small team.
Welcome to Startups with Niall Maher.
This show is to going give you tips, strategies and advice to grow your business and hopefully entertain you along the way.
Niall will introduce experts and resources that he is always learning from.
It’s all about sharing that experience with YOU.
Niall has worked in nearly every corner of technology businesses; Lead Developer, Software Architect, Product Manager, CTO and now happily a Founder.
You’ll also get to hear live calls with special guests (such as founders, authors and experts).
Thanks for listening and let’s grow together.
Niall: People today expect
different relationships with brands.
They don't want just a customer
support, email address and a newsletter.
They want a deeper interaction
with the company and other
buyers of the product or service.
And according to a recent survey,
nearly 80% of startup founders
reported that building a community
was essential to their business, with
28% describing it as
critical to their success.
I've attached to survey
called the state of startups.
In the show notes and it summarizes
a lot of big trends in a very easy to
understand way that's, that's how I
was able to actually get through it.
Apple Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and
Facebook, or, or Meta of all invested
heavily in digital and in-person community
engagement across their portfolio.
If you take Amazon and its
AWS business, as an example.
They are trying to get events in nearly
every city and community organizers
from outside of the core business.
You'll see AWS meetups nearly everywhere.
Their community growth has been amazing.
So, how does this knowledge help you?
Well, businesses can unlock
extraordinary competitive advantages
by building with the community in mind.
Members help bring in new members,
which result in lower acquisition
costs and a tight viral loop.
Members don't want to lose their
community ties, meaning increased
retention and improve lifetime value.
Members support one another by
answering questions and teaching.
And that means a smaller service
cost as your members become
customer support agents themselves.
There is then natural network effect.
As the engagement grows, the
community gets smarter, faster to
respond more globally available
and generates more value.
But I've quoted some behemoths
like apple and Amazon.
Most of us aren't apple or Amazon.
That's why I have brought a good
friend of mine, Matt Studdert.
The founder of Frontend
Mentor on for a chat.
Front-end mentor has a massive
online community, which has seen
them grow and scale the business
to 300,000 users in just a few
years by leveraging the community.
What's more amazing to me is Matt has
done this with a super small team.
Let's jump over to the call Matt.
So you can hear the story directly
from the main man himself, and
hopefully learn some tricks on
growing a community for yourself.
Matt, thanks for jumping
in onto this call.
Why don't you introduce
yourself to everyone?
I think that's the best way to start this.
Matt: I'd say it is.
Yeah, no.
That's that was great.
I am Matt . I am the founder of an
online learning platform for web
developers called front-end mentor.
And in front I mentor, we don't actually
teach the kind of theory of coding.
We instead assume that you've picked
up the knowledge from elsewhere.
And then you come to front-end mentor when
you're ready to start building projects
and put what you've learned into practice.
Niall: Excellent.
We met each other, I think
because I found a platform.
I can't even remember how we
met each other originally.
Matthew, do you remember that?
Matt: I wrote, yeah, you showed up in
the slack community and you just, you
just put a kind of really well-worded
introduction in the introductions channel.
And I thought, oh, this is a person
that I should have say a little
hello to, so I just DM'd you.
And, um, we just got chatting
and then here we are.
Niall: My mom would be so proud of me
being well-spoken at least it wasn't
delete that post get out of here,
Matt: no, it's very impressive.
Very.
Niall: And that's the reason I
have you here as well is because
the one thing I noticed about you
straightaway is the massive community
you built, like immediately.
It was just so noisy and soul loud.
Uh, And people were so excited to use the
platform and share what they were doing.
And that just seems baked
into what you're doing.
You're helping people improve, uh,
decoding skills, but you're trying
to do with an anti hustle culture.
And what do you mean by
the anti hustle culture?
There's a, there's something that
you said to me before this call.
So I was just wondering, what do you mean?
What are you trying to keep
away from while you're in.
Matt: well, so for me,
it's just building on that.
It's more on the business side for that.
It's kind of just building
a business in a way that.
I want to run it kind of building
the house that you want to live in.
I value consistency over time and
just showing up day after day,
just chipping away at a problem.
And it's amazing what can happen
when you zoom out and look at your
work over a period of months or years
rather than days or weeks, uh, and
see kind of how far you've come.
So I always shudder when I see people
saying I, I only sleep four hours a night
and I do X, Y, Z, and this kind of thing,
because it's just for me, I mean, it
might not be a recipe for disaster for
them, but it sounds like it could be.
And I know for an absolute
fact that it would be for me.
So yeah, it's being mindful
of how I'm building the.
And making sure that I'm not
making a prison for myself.
And I, I just love showing up in
the team kind of love showing up day
after day to work on the problem.
Niall: Who's in the team now,
because when I talked to you
originally, it was two of you.
Matt: Yeah.
So it's me and my co-founder who is
also, we're both full-time on it.
I went full time in January last
year which is actually last year now.
And Mike came on board
full time in June last year.
So he he had a job at FutureLearn
beforehand and was kind of just
working there as a developer.
And we always just said, like,
it was always a bit of a side
project, but it just kept on
growing and growing and growing.
And so we just said like, when,
when we're able to pay full-time
salary and all that kind of.
He'll make the jump and he did.
And then now we've also got
a developer from within the
front end mentor community.
Actually, who's working
on the code base as well.
He's actually taking the
front end role from me.
So I haven't written
code in over half a year.
I call myself a web developer, but
I actually haven't written any code
in half a year, which is ridiculous.
I need to start taking front end
mental challenges to keep my, uh,
Niall: And I have challenged you
to one of those in the community.
So I haven't forgot about that.
I will want to see you do that challenge.
Matt: reminding me yet.
Niall: What was your background
that led you to this idea?
Or where did you see the
gap missing in all this?
Because once I seen it, I could
immediately see the value and I've just
been telling anyone in my coding community
anywhere that's trying to get a front
end job that they should jump on and get
some real practical skills and learning.
So what led you to the
conclusion that this is the way.
Matt: Going back a little bit
further, I guess, than the idea.
Cause it all kind of feeds into it.
I actually don't come from a web
development background myself.
I sort of grew up like as a teenager, I
was much more interested in sports and
exercise and all this kind of thing.
I did sport science at university
came out of university and started
up a personal training business.
But then it kind of taken it as far
as I thought that I could, I love, I
loved the work, but I always just kept
on having new ideas for new businesses.
Uh, and they were always
online businesses.
But I didn't have the skills
to actually do anything.
So I was kind of getting
frustrated with myself and.
It was either a case of try and pay
someone to build it, but then I didn't
have the money to pay someone to build it.
So I, I started thinking actually, maybe
I should start to learn how to code.
And this was when I was sort of turning
28, turning 29, so late twenties.
And I started learning to code by myself.
It was using lynda.com
back then it was Linda.
Um, so way, way back when
and that was, it was great.
But then I very quickly saw an advert
for a company called general assembly,
who their tech education, they do coding,
boot camps, all of this kind of stuff.
And for me, learning in that bootcamp
environment was just really appealing
because you go somewhere, you
have to be there every single day.
You've got peers, you've got teachers
that you can talk to in person.
And for me, that was just
the way that I I learn best.
I have to be kind of, someone has
to tell me where to be really.
And and so I enrolled in their boots.
And then I decided to actually
become a full-time developer out
of that, just to earn my stripes a
little bit gain a bit of industry
experience and all this kind of thing.
And so I did the bootcamp.
I actually got hired as a developer
eight days out of the bootcamp,
which was which was crazy.
So it was no small amount of
imposter syndrome on day one.
And then, yeah, I came back to general
assembly about a year into being a
professional developer decided to
come back to general assembly on
top of my full-time job, but just in
the evenings helping as a teaching
assistant at first, but then over
the years, I started to become a lead
instructor there as well, which is
where I then had the idea for front-end.
Niall: Nice.
When did it start then?
When did the chaos start?
Matt: what were fundamental.
Niall: Yeah.
when did, like, when did you because I
know how ideas usually happen is we buy
a domain never look at that domain again.
Did you just immediately follow
through or did you just think about it?
W like, how did it happen?
Matt: Yeah.
Well, I
I actually, the very first version
of front-end mental, I just wanted to
learn something because I'd actually
been playing around with another,
like an old fitness-related business
idea that I had had just on the side.
And I was just getting really frustrated
with it cause I did absolutely every
single thing wrong whereby like
I didn't validate the idea or I
didn't have a clear route to market.
I didn't know who the customers
were exactly what they wanted.
I tried to build everything when actually
you just, you should probably just
start with the smallest thing possible
and let it grow organically from there.
So it was actually, I was getting
a bit frustrated with myself with
another idea that I had to try and
go to try and blend back my history
with exercise and nutrition with
my new found kind of tech skills.
And it just wasn't working at all.
So I got frustrated with myself.
I thought, what can I, I want
to launch something, just put
it out there into the world.
What can I do?
And like what interests
me, one thing that really.
Was my students were crying out for a lot
of the time was a shared resource list.
And I used to, you kind of see resource
lists as for developers all over all
over the place is absolutely nothing new.
But over my years, as a developer,
I had kind of built these, this
resource list that I would always
share with the class, but it was like,
actually, it would be good to put
this on a domain and just point them
to the domain and have it like that.
So I did, and I did a LinkedIn post
and I just thought of the name of
front end mentor because it's a front
end resource list and it's mentoring
people to tell them where to go.
The.io was available.
So I was like, dot IO
is good for tech people.
So that's good.
the.com wasn't available at the time.
Luckily I've got it now,
which is a good thing.
But I released this resource.
And then just got this massive jolt
of motivation and enthusiasm for just
having something out there in the world.
And my students were
really happy about it.
Everyone that was giving me feedback
online, like comments on the post and all
that kind of thing where we're loving it.
So I started to think, what else can I do?
Like, I kind of got this energy and
I was like, all right, what, what
now we've done the resource list.
What else?
And so I started thinking of what
else my students were asking me for
consistently, like, what did they need?
And one of the patterns that I'd seen
over multiple courses was that when
people finished the course, they would
ask where do I now go to build projects?
And where can I practice
this new found knowledge?
My first piece of advice was always.
Just build, build a project
that you're passionate about.
Maybe build a project for a friend or
something like this, just build anything.
But then they would always say, first
of all, I don't know what to build.
Like I don't have any ideas.
I'm also, they would say
like, I'm terrible at design.
So if I build something for a friend, my
friend just ends up with this really awful
looking website that they're not really
happy with and no one's really happy with.
And I was like, yeah.
Okay.
So that's, that's fair enough.
But then when people would tell me that I
would say, just go to dribble and dribble
is obviously a showcase for designers.
Some beautiful designs on that, but
for developers, it's not really very
helpful advice because if you go to,
if you find a design to work on, you
don't have the assets, you don't have
the design files, you're not working
in a sort of realistic workflow.
So I just thought, why
doesn't this thing exist?
Actually?
Like I was like, I would have found
this really useful when I started out.
My students would
definitely find it useful.
And if all of us would find
it useful, then I'm sure other
people around the world would.
So I just, I just launched it.
And I just added moved the resources
list that was on fundamental.com
to forward slash resources.
And then on the homepage,
just put a single challenge.
I found a design on a kind of
sketch resources website, and
then emailed the designer.
Can I use your design for this, please?
Like it's a free download, but I'd love
to use it and then link to your website.
And he was super happy for me to do that.
And so I did, and then
that's where it all began.
So it was just one, one
project on a static site that
I had built in a day or two.
I hadn't even designed it so
very ironically it looked awful
cause I'm color blind as well.
So it looks terrible.
The color is awful.
And yeah, it was, but it was a star.
It was, it was something.
And then it built the momentum
Niall: When was that
page actually launched?
Matt: that was June, 2018.
So kind of coming up four years ago now.
Niall: Wow.
I didn't know.
It was that long.
So this has been growing a while
because I think this is where the
whole it only takes years to become an
overnight success kind of quote comes
from because it seemed like it just was
shot out of a cannon when I seen it.
But obviously it went through that
compressing of the spring until it like
unloaded and became what it is today.
you hit on a few things.
So I would absolutely, I would
nearly lose the entire chat here if
I hit on him, but I just loved it.
You're talking about like where
you went wrong with the kind of.
I actually asking people what they
want and all of these things, like
the product manager and me, it's just
like, I just want talk about that so
much, but I won't, because I won't
get into talking about community.
I might to talk to you again about that,
but, you started that a single challenge.
And then how many users do you have now?
Matt: um, we, um, we've got is it
nearly 300,000 on the platform now.
Niall: Many people are in your company?
Matt: and yeah, I mean, two, two of
us full-time and then one part-time.
And then we also we've and
we've got a designer that we use
part-time as well, so yeah, two,
two full-time and two part-time.
Niall: That is the most outrageous
metrics, like for like just the greatest
metrics I think I've ever heard.
And one of the most exciting things
that I always look at when I chat to you
is the fact that you wit two full-time
people and two part-time people you've
built a business to nearly 300,000 users.
Not like that's to me,
it's just, it's it's crazy.
And I'm guessing I hope or else this
chat is going to be very, very boring.
Unless you like for of I I'm guessing
the community was to hack of data
or getting momentum behind the
community, or am I wrong in taking up?
Because I obviously didn't
even know it was that old.
So this is why I may be I'm going to
be wrong, but the community aspect.
Matt: Yeah, no.
So it's, and this is why I always
kind of is it comes back to what
I was saying earlier, whereas
valuing consistency over time.
And as long as you're sort of
showing up day after day just
chipping away at it, then.
Yeah.
You, you can obviously, you have to
have the right idea and you have to
be working on the right things and,
uh, and doing things in a certain way.
But the benefits really do compound
And the, yeah, we've got, so we've got
300,000, nearly 300,000 people on the
front end, mentor.io, kind of registered.
And then actually yesterday, uh,
yesterday evening we just went
over a hundred thousand people
within our slack communities.
You've got a hundred thousand people in
our slack community and, um, yeah, and
Niall: It's cool.
like, I love community.
That's what I think that's why
we connected as well initially.
And the fact that you have.
A hundred thousand people.
It's not like people are
always chatting narrow.
If I go in there, it's just like,
Matt: Yeah
Niall: it's all really positive
Matt: it's both.
Yeah, it never, it never feels, there's
always people kind of posting messages
and chatting and things like that, but
it never feels kind of overbearing.
It doesn't feel, there's not sort of
constant messages all over the place or
people posting spam or anything like that.
We've got a good team
of moderators as well.
That help out.
And they're just an incredible
team, helping answer questions
and delete spam posts.
Or if people accidentally, sometimes
people will post it multiple channels
and just copy paste the same thing.
And then just making sure you remove
all of that, but maybe leave if it's
a legitimate post, then leave one
message in the right channel and
making sure that we welcome everyone.
So if anyone takes the time to post a
message in the introductions channel,
For me personally, I always think that
someone in the team needs to take the
time to say hello, welcome answer.
Any initial questions.
They might have point them
in the right direction.
If they've got any questions or anything
like that, and just create a supportive
place for developers because oftentimes.
Develop community is that there's, um, you
have to, you have to really set that tone
because you never know, like people can be
quite blunt sometimes in the development
world, but especially when you're dealing
with learners it's just so important that
they can ask whatever question they want
to and feel comfortable doing that and
feel supported by the entire community.
So, yeah, we've got a large, large
community with a small team, but then
also, um, yeah, we wouldn't, wouldn't be
anywhere without the moderators as well.
They're, they're a great help.
Helping out with the community and
helping field questions as well.
Niall: How did you build this?
was this.
Something you set out to do, or was
it an accident on the way or what
were the steps you put in place?
There's this kind of a
two-pronged question.
So maybe the first, first part we'll
go into is how you build a community.
And then maybe some tips for people
who want to start building a community,
because I can see so many peoples
trying to get developer advocates
and all this role of trying to
build a community now and kind of
retrofit community integral brands.
But you, you kind of set out with that.
So I'm just love to hear like how
you built it or how you started it.
And then some tips you have for people
who are trying to get into building a.
Matt: Yeah.
sure.
So when I, when we started the slack
community that sat alongside the
website, initially, my main reason
for doing it, it was actually a, kind
of, a bit of a happy accident really
because I launched from a mentor, but
it was very much just a static site.
The first version that I
launched, it was static.
No log-in knows submitting solutions,
no feedback or anything like this,
it was just download the challenge.
And then I thought it's going to be
helpful to have a slack community
sitting alongside the platform because
that's where people can ask for help.
That's where people can post their
projects to share what they've built.
Ask any questions.
It's where I can keep people
updated and all this kind of thing.
So I did it not thinking that I
was really building a community.
If you see what I mean, I wasn't like I
wasn't specific and tactical about it.
I just did it because we lacked
the features on the platform.
But then just as it's grown bit by bit,
and I've always had a few rules where.
Yeah, always make sure I'm welcoming
people whenever they introduce themselves.
Answering questions, making sure that
hopefully no questions go unanswered.
And at the beginning, a lot of
that was me, but then as the
community has grown other people
have started chipping in as well.
And I think to be honest, if you just
keep at it and just stay consistent
and you make it a supportive,
fun, interesting place to be where
everyone's moving towards the same
goal, I mean, it's, everyone is
trying to improve their coding skills.
So we've got one clear route for everyone.
And everyone's on the same journey
and everyone's, and there's also,
we, we sort of foster the idea
of like, it's not you or me.
It's we can both move in the
same direction at the same time.
And just everyone is helping
each other get better.
Rather than, cause sometimes you can
think, oh, this person knows this.
Like I should now learn this and you
can kind of have a bit of a internal get
con competitive or, or you can get start
to think like everyone knows everything
and I know nothing kind of thing.
Whereas yeah, we just helped to, we
try and support everyone as much as
possible, make sure that everyone knows
that you don't have to learn everything.
You don't have to kind of keep moving
around learning the latest and greatest
technologies, which is so, so important
for junior developers and learner
developers, because there's so much
out there and it can be quite scary
looking at the landscape in front
end these days and being like, do
I really have to learn all of that?
And the answer is no.
Niall: I think after that to nearly
summarize the whole chat nearly is I'm
probably going to call, I have to title
this now consistency and community,
because they're the two things that
really have given you, your whole, your
entire business really is just showing
up every day and consistently being
polite to people on everything else.
So if you had to give, we'll say three
tips, three tips to people who are.
Starting a community.
What would they be?
Your highlights?
The must haves.
Matt: Yeah the first one is consistency.
Just, just stay, stay
consistent, stay with it.
Building, especially in the early days
growing a community is cam it can feel
sometimes like a bit of a slog because
your, you really have to drive everything
and you have to be the community member
that you hope other people will be
at some point in the future as well.
But.
It's your community and you can't have
any assumptions on how other people
are going to act within your community.
Like your community is only going to be
useful to others if it's also useful to
them and gives them a sense of belonging.
So you have to really drive it,
especially in the early days.
And that is just consistency in time.
Don't get downhearted.
If you get days where people
don't join the community at all
just keep going, keep talking to
people, keep answering questions.
Keep asking questions as well.
It's something that I probably don't,
we don't do enough is asking questions.
Like how can we help or doing
maybe portfolio reviews or CV
reviews and things like that.
Which is something we're
gonna look to do for sure.
But yeah, consistency.
Absolutely.
Being welcoming and supportive
and just being overly helpful.
Just if someone asks a question even if
it's been answered a few messages above
just kind of acting like it's a brand
new question and and answering it, giving
your, giving you a rule and sharing
resources or giving feedback or anything
like that, it can be time-consuming.
But at the same time, like that's, that's
a key part of building a community.
It's not, it's not an easy job.
But it's, it's just stuff
that has to be done.
And then, yeah, so consistency
being welcoming and being as helpful
as possible, like those would be
sort of my three major things.
And if you're.
If you're that, and everyone feels
like they belong and they like being in
the community, then they'll want other
people to be in that community as well.
So they'll share it with their friends
and then hopefully you'll get more
people who are helping each other out and
reinforcing what the community stands for.
Niall: I think you summed that up
very nicely, which I really like this
should be one of those romanticized
quotes for you and that's be the
member you want people to be.
So I re I really liked that.
I think it really sums up what
it feels like, like why you're
putting in the effort is it's not.
So you always have to carry the torch,
but it is so you can be the beacon for
what good community looks like as well.
Matt: You have to lead
the way essentially.
But then now.
Other people within the community are
leading the way with our, with our
moderators and everything like that.
So over time, people will step up and sort
of show themselves as people who want to
be aligned with whatever you're building.
And then those people can sort of be
the model community members as well.
But it's just especially important in the
early days because no one, it's hard to
have an active community from day one.
You have to really foster that
culture and that engagement.
Niall: I just loved that.
To the being the member, that's
something I definitely am
guilty of not being myself.
Sometimes.
I'm just like, why are
other people talking?
Matt: yeah,
Niall: So I'm definitely guilty of that.
Matt: yeah, exactly.
You know, it's, it is like, it is.
And I mean, I like now with a hundred
thousand people in you, you don't, I'm
always there day after day and filled in
questions and stuff like that, but then
I'll, if I'm asleep or whatever, like, oh,
I'll wake up and then just see everyone.
All of the questions that have been
asked have already been answered.
Everyone's chipping in, everyone's
just helping out wherever they can.
Just because they believe in what the
community stands for and they enjoy
talking to each other and interacting.
So it is, it's something that it's yeah,
it's tricky to do, especially in the
early days, because you're, you're just.
Like you, you feel like you're
speaking into the void or like this?
No.
There's no one asking any
questions and you're like,
oh, this is not active enough.
It needs, we need messages.
So you're trying to kind of
force it a little bit, it's
just, it's consistency in time.
It's like, that is
literally there's literally.
Yeah.
And it's also, it's one of those
things that like, people, people
don't like hearing that because it's
like telling people to be healthy,
you need to eat like healthily.
Like you need to eat minimally
processed food, like focus on
vegetables and fibers, vegetables,
and have a bit of me a bit of fish.
Like that's absolutely fine,
but just minimize the junk
food as much as possible.
And then.
Move.
So do some activities and maybe go to the
gym or play some sports that you enjoy
or do some activities that you enjoy.
Um, and it's such a double message
because everyone knows that they should
eat healthily and work out and exercise
and stay active and stuff like that.
But that's not what people want to
hear because they, they want like
what, what's the silver bullet
that I can do to, to get to this.
Whereas we've with business and with,
and building a community as well.
It is literally just consistency and time.
You didn't know that Frontend Mentor was
there for like three and a half years.
Like since I first had that idea and
it is the whole sort of yeah, years,
few years to be an overnight success.
Niall: SU
super valuable insight there as well.
What I'm disappointed about is I feel
like that means my diet of bacon.
Isn't really helping my health.
I taught
the fat will help lubricate my
arteries and make the blood run faster.
Like the fat gets So I know I've
seen how slippery that's what
it was doing to my insights.
Matt: mean, yeah, there's, there's,
there's rationale to that for sure.
Niall: But you as a professional
you're so you're recommending to
have a healthy lifestyle that is
consistent and takes time to do as
Matt: Yeah.
Niall: Yeah
Okay.
Damn.
That's not what I wanted to hear
Matt: right.
exactly.
Yeah.
And that was actually, I mean, it
was one of the reasons why I actually
stopped personal training because I, it
was just so frustrating because people.
They don't want to exercise
consistently and eat healthily.
They want to hand over money to a
personal trainer and then just shed
weight automatically just because
of transaction has been made.
And yeah, it was a fun day to day,
but sometimes it was a bit like felt
like pulling your hair out because
it's just, it's a very basic message
and people just have to do it.
I mean, I'm, I'm guilty of not doing
it now, although I'm getting back
into a rhythm, but it's so easy
to, to get out of that schedule
yeah.
for
Niall: Absolutely.
One major thing that kind of really
solidified the kind of person or the
kind of business that you're trying
to build is the fact that you turned
down an investment opportunity and a
pretty substantial, and I don't know
if you want to go into the figure
or anything, but that to me, I'm
fundraising at the moment for the reason
of expansion and building out more.
So why did you turn it down?
What was the reason.
Matt: Well, yeah.
I, so front of mentor ha.
Kind of grown as a side
project, just over, over a
period of months and in years.
And I've always, like, I thought that I
wanted to run kind of a gigantic business
and kind of a well-funded business and
all that kind of stuff in the past.
And that's what I was trying to
shoot for with my failed fitness
application kind of, back in the day.
But I just realized I've, I've just
after reading plenty of books and just
thinking long and hard about what I
want to do and how I want to live my
life and all of this kind of stuff.
It just, I kind of came to the
conclusion, not necessarily that
we will never take investment.
The, if we feel that the time is right
and that it will kind of really light
a fire under the business and we are
we're ready for that investment and
to grow the team a bit faster and
move a bit faster than that's fine.
But for me, the, the main reason was
we didn't necessarily need the money
because the, the revenue was growing.
We had the subscription in place.
The revenue growth was,
was strong and sustainable.
We also, so we kind of had this, we had
this evidence that we could potentially
just grow it organically through revenue.
But then also just talking myself and Mike
about the company that we want to run.
Is this whole, it comes back
to this kind of building the
house that you want to live in.
And and I've got quite strong ideas about
running companies and how a company should
be run and all of this kind of thing.
And it comes back to this anti
like hustle culture trying to build
something that is a pleasure to work in.
People like we don't have set deadlines,
we chip away at the problems like
the we're solving the features or
anything like this day after day.
And we'll kind of, it will average
out to probably a 40 to 50 hour
work week in the end which is
still a fair amount, but we don't.
We don't place any
restrictions on each other.
We don't like, oh, it has to be a
nine to five or anything like this.
We want to play around with different
ways of working maybe four day
work weeks or nine day fortnight or
something like that in the future.
As we grow our team, we want to anyone
that does come on board, if we're lucky
enough to start building out a full-time
team, we just want to be as supportive
as possible to our team members.
And try and again, make the businesses
pleasurable as possible to work
in without hitting, like, without
needing to hit specific targets.
So it was more, it was more just,
we think that we can try and do it
this way, so let's give it a go.
And.
Also when you raise investment, obviously
the investors want a return on investment,
which will mean selling the business
or some other type of liquidity event.
Whereas actually I'd just
prefer to build a business that
I want to run indefinitely.
And if anything ever happens along
those lines in the future, then
you kind of take it as it comes.
But I'm not building the business
with a view to like, I'm going to
sell this at some point or do this.
So, um, so yeah, those were
the kind of main reasons for me
Niall: I want a mature, healthy
reason to do it as well because.
I think for a lot of people,
especially the fundraising is
just because it's kind of sexy.
It's nice.
Like it's nearly all it
shows that I'm successful.
If I, if people are interested in
giving me things, but you really thought
long and hard about the handcuffs that
potentially it gives you because you
have other people to answer to, I guess,
Matt: Yeah.
And there are definitely
legitimate, absolutely legitimate
reasons to raise funding.
In the, in the early days building
a kind of building a strong team,
getting the whatever product
it might be to market faster.
And maybe the business
model isn't quite in place.
So you need a bit of extra
runway to get to that point.
But for us, the business
model was in place.
We were growing at a rate
that we were comfortable with.
So we just thought actually,
Let's let's hold off on it.
And like I said, we, we may take funding
at some point in the future, but when
we do it will be because it's the
exact right thing to do at that moment.
And we can really make use of
the money if we took funding now.
I mean, obviously we could make a couple
of hires or something, but it would, a
lot of the money would probably sit in
the bank and it would just be like we
want to focus on growing organically
and just do it, do it as we need to,
rather than just, you know, raise raising
around because we want to raise around.
Niall: makes sense.
And I think a lot of people do end up
getting stuck on that wheel of just
fundraising because they think it's
the thing to do to market our business.
It's it's crazy.
I really love hearing that.
You just have a very different mindset.
Than a lot of people that get into
business, which I love seeing.
And I'm so glad that you're in my
circle of people that I get to talk to
and bounce ideas off because it's very
refreshing to have so many yet is so
introspective with these things and knows
what they want from life, from business.
Or at least it's getting to know what
they want from life and business.
Slowly as time goes
Matt: Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
No, I, I want, I, one of the
one one of my big reasons for
creating a company is, is freedom.
And that's majority is like
just freedom from a set schedule
and freedom from specific
constraints or anything like that.
And I want to.
If I was an employee, I would
want to be able to say to my
boss oh, it's a nice day outside.
So I want to sit in the park
because it's really sunny outside.
And as a boss, like I would want to be
the kind of boss that would say if we
don't obviously have anything pressing on
that day to be like is a nice day, like
I'm just going to go for a two hour walk
or something like this, I'll be back.
And maybe I might work a little
bit later or I might make up the
time elsewhere or something like
that, but it's just flexibility.
And and I would want to build a business
that I would want to work in personally,
because typically I've not worked in,
I've worked in very few companies and
I'm not a huge fan of just kind of being
like working for someone else in general.
But I think the.
If you make the business, the like really
supportive of anyone who works within
the business yeah, you can just make it
a pleasure to work in and you can be as
supportive to your staff as possible and
give them the flexibility that they need
in their life, which is so important.
Especially now when everyone's working
from home or a hybrid or anything like
that, you need a bit of time to get out
of the flat or the house or anything.
Niall: Yeah, absolutely.
And that kind of leads on to, because
you're talking about running a
healthy business and a happy business.
What tips would you have for
founders who are starting out
now try and stay away from
Matt: Consistency.
Niall: consistent and take time
if there's a, because I think
everyone will understand that that.
The secret to success from if
they've gotten this fire anyway
into the conversation, they'll
know that consistency and time,
but is there anything else that
you would like to tell people to
that would be worth thinking about.
Matt: Yeah.
So for if you've got an idea, like I would
just say, get something, anything out
into the world as quickly as possible.
And it's what I didn't do with the
fitness app that I was trying to build.
And I wasted eight months of just
absolutely getting nowhere and just
getting really frustrated with myself.
Whereas with front-end mentor, the
first version of front-end mentor took
a day or two to build And it immediately
showed me, people are interested in this.
There's a direction that we
could potentially take this.
And then also, as soon as you see
other people that don't know you, so
they're not your parents or friends
or family who are always just going to
say like, oh yeah, this looks great.
Like when you get a message from
someone halfway around the world who
has no emotional connection to you and
they say, thank you so much for doing
this, this, this is really helping me.
And this is incredible.
It just gives you that jolt of motivation
and just, there's nothing quite like it.
With regard to that.
So I would say it's such a cliche
thing, but yeah, just put something,
anything out there into the world.
If you've got an idea just to
get that feedback, get that
initial, get the ball rolling.
For sure.
So that's, that's a big one.
And like, I would also say.
This is a kind of derivative of over time.
Niall: Uh, you had to put it in
there again I knew I knew you
Matt: But another one is just, don't
give up too early because I've seen, I've
seen I in the earliest days of front-end
mentor, when you have like one or two
people like downloading the challenges
and, um, week after week, it's growing,
ever so slightly, but you get positive
messages, but it's growing really slowly.
Like you could, I could have easily
given up and I've seen plenty of people
with great ideas who have given up
because it's not hit some arbitrary
number that they've made up where it's
like, it has to earn this amount of
money by this date, in the future.
Otherwise I'm just packing it in.
And like for me, it's just just keeping
at it and just keep keeping going.
So yeah don't give up early,
like, If you feel that you're on
the right path, just be patient,
keep going consistency over time.
Niall: Damn, I knew
Matt: I knew you knew I was.
Niall: Where's the block.
So what are you going to consistently grow
with time it next for a front-end mentor.
Matt: So the next big stage for front-end
mentor is to help connect great companies
with our incredible developer community.
We've got nearly 300,000 people.
As we mentioned earlier on the
platform and that's growing kind
of by tens of thousands a month.
So that's kind of really
moving in the right direction.
And what we want to do now
is because we've got people.
Building projects submitting their
projects on frontend, mentor,
giving each other code reviews,
giving each other feedback.
You've got a perfect display of someone's
skills with the projects they build
and also their knowledge and written
communication style and a bit of insight
into their personality with the code
reviews that they give to other people.
So we've just got this incredible
open book of information that me, if
I was hiring someone, I would find
it unbelievably valuable and I have
found it unbelievably valuable because
that's how we got Josh onboard as a
part-time developer, because he was just
giving such great feedback and building
such great solutions that we had.
No problem, even though he had
never been a professional developer
before hadn't even sort of started
was just starting college and.
We would just so confident in his
skills and his ability because of
what he was doing on front-end mentor.
So there's so many other people on the
platform who haven't even got a job yet,
but the projects are building and the
feedback they're giving to other people
is just, they're so far above what other
people who haven't kind of been building
projects and been doing this kind of
thing and teaching others, even though
they haven't even had a job yet they're
giving feedback to others and all this
kind of stuff, but the people in front
of mentor, I mean, obviously I'm biased.
But they're, they're just really,
it just amazes me the quality
of their work day after day.
And so.
Well, we want to do now is help
companies find developers within
our community and hire them.
So we're going to be building a hiring
platform that will compliment the
learning platform the first offering.
So the first offering within that
hiring platform is going to be what
we're going to call talent search.
So we'll just allow hiring managers,
recruiters, whoever to search
based on their specific criteria.
So it might be someone in the UK who
maybe they don't need any experience,
but they need to be based in the UK.
And then you just hit search and maybe
you want to them to display a little
bit of knowledge of a Java script,
or maybe even have done a few react
projects or something like that.
You can add.
Make your choices.
And then we'll be able to say, okay, based
on your search criteria, these are the
top people that we think that you need to
start a conversation with, and then they
can message them through the, through
the platform and start that conversation.
So it will be a discovery
platform for developing.
Niall: I am a huge fan of that because I
think the one thing I always tell a lot
of people that hiring, obviously that's
what I'm focusing on, solving the hiring
part of the problem how people hire.
But what most people never do is
proactively look for the right people.
They're just like, well, nobody's calling.
And until you get like some good people,
it's hard to attract more good people.
So I really liked the fact that
you can, you have a proactive
approach to find the people that
you need to build your business.
That's an amazing thing.
That's going to be there.
I can't wait to see it.
And I, I hope we can try
it out ourselves as well.
When.
Matt: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
No, it will be, yeah.
It's going to be really exciting then
where from there, we'll sort of grow
it out as we need to based on feedback.
But yeah, it will be, first of all, just
helping people, like you said, proactively
go and find the right developers.
Niall: Perfect.
You've given us all of your
knowledge, I think now thankfully,
so two quick questions for you.
And that is your favorite book at
the moment, or what is the most
useful book you've had lately?
Matt: I always give slightly
rambling answers to questions.
And my rambly answer is that I don't have
a single, like an actual single book,
but like my absolute overall favorite
book, I'm more of a non-fiction reader.
So it has to be shoe dog by Phil Knight.
Which is like the, is the kind of
story of the night founding story.
And it's just an unbelievable story
of grit and determination and yeah,
just getting a business like that
off the ground is, is just a really
good insight to get me thinking about
life in general and yeah, what path I
want to go on and what makes me happy
and moving in the right direction.
The I was at The Almanack
Of Naval Ravikant just
Niall: Oh, brilliant book.
Matt: amazing.
Just gives me, yeah, it was.
I always my mind just drifts away.
I listened to books.
I'm a really slow reader, so I always,
it's more sort of audio books that
I listened to rather than read.
So yeah, that, but then also kind of
challenging conventional entrepreneurial,
like wisdom or startup wisdom things
like company of one the minimalist
entrepreneur Loston founder those are
some great books that I've read multiple
times over each of them, just to get me
thinking differently as someone who runs
a company to think like, I don't always
have to try and raise X amount of money.
I don't have to do this.
I don't have to do this.
I can actually just build a business that
I would want to run and that hopefully
other people would want to work in.
If we get to the point where we
were able to hire more people.
Niall: Brilliant.
I think that's months
of reading for people.
That there'll be consistently
reading over time.
Matt: thinking
Niall: Then the very last thing, I just
want to ask you in case you've only little
nuggets of gold for people, is there
any tool or service that you've found
lately that you've been using or that's
really helped you out in your business?
It doesn't even have to be
related to your business.
just what's the most
helpful thing you found.
Matt: Yeah, on a, on a business
side, I would say that.
A couple of tools stand out
that we use that I just, I love.
One of them is fathom analytics is a
privacy focused analytics company is
actually one of the founders of fathom is
the author of company of one guy called
Paul Jarvis, who is just a great thinker.
Just runs again, business, how
I would want to run a business.
He's someone that I definitely look
up to in the, in the space, but fathom
analytics, it's sort of cookie free.
It doesn't sell your data on it.
Doesn't kind of, mine, your data at
all is very much just analytics and
you can set events and all this kind
of stuff for when people do certain
things within the application.
Niall: Love that.
I didn't realize that was Paul Jarvis
as well, because I love company of one.
I didn't realize that I was just
trying to pick an analytics tool and
that's going to actually probably
push me over the age just because I
loved that book so
Matt: Yeah, it's great.
And yeah, that's it.
And I I knew the book and then I
was looking and then saw it was him.
And I was like, actually, that's perfect.
And it's just never cease to impress
me is a, is a really, really good tool.
And then the other one is a
subscription management tool charge
B, which is just, so is such a great
tool for managing subscriptions.
Integrating different payment gateways.
Like we use Stripe for credit
cards and PayPal as well.
We might hopefully add more payment
gateways as well to support more
people around the world in the future.
But Chargebee just makes it super
easy to manage subscriptions.
Just very, very good service.
If you're running a subscription-based.
Niall: Beautiful.
I hope.
I can get Chargebee, to sponsor
us then for that a great
endorsement at the end of this,
because I think payments is something
there's a good few vendors out there,
but I know I've heard you several
times and even just so people know
before this call, we talked about that.
So I, I nearly knew what you were
going to answer before I came along.
So.
Matt: Yeah,
no charge me like, yeah.
Big, big advocate.
If any other people I know are
starting up a business and and they
need subscriptions, like Chargebee is
something I always recommend for sure.
So that's.
Niall: Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Matt, thanks a million for joining us.
Where can people find you?
Matt: For front end mentor,
frontendmentor.io and front-end
mentor on Twitter and then personal
Twitter, I don't tweet a lot.
But when I do, you can find me
at underscore Matt Studdert.
So it was just underscore and then
M A T T S T U double D E R T is a
surname that people often misspelled
and it's very, very tricky surname.
So, uh,
Niall: Excellent.
I will links in the show notes.
So if anyone's looking for you, they'll
be able to find it was a pleasure
having you, Matt, and I'm sure we'll
be catching up ourselves very soon.
Matt: Absolutely.
Thanks for having me on
Niall: Wow.
Lots of golden there.
Matt's really broke my expectation
of how big of a community you
can build with such a small team.
I think if I was to summarize some
of the phenomenal points in there,
it would have to be consistency.
As it's mentioned several times
being the member you want.
People to be.
And simply saying hello to every
single new member that joins.
It's obviously worked very well
for him because his community is
now a 24 7 machine for answering
questions, supporting each other,
and marketing the platform.
This gives Matt plenty of time to
work on his business and not answering
every question that comes through.
If you enjoyed this episode,
I have a little favorite ask.
If you could leave the podcast a kind
review, it would really help the show out.
It appeases the algorithm gods
and helps me reach new people.
So I really appreciate it.
And until next time, my beautiful friends.
Keep learning and keep growing.