August 2, 2024 • 44 mins
Brian launches built and launched something new. 2 things actually. Jordan changes pricing strategy for Rosie. Brian also changes pricing strategy for Clarityflow. And all find our AI hardware "friend".
Connect with Brian, Jordan and fellow listeners in the Bootstrapped Web community on Ripple.fm
Brian's stuff:
- Brian launched Ripple.fm
- Brian's new "One Month MVP" service
- Brian's SaaS, Clarityflow
- Brian on Twitter: @casjam
- Brian on Threads: @brian.casel
Jordan's stuff:
- Jordan's company, Rosie
- Jordan on Twitter: @jordangal
- Jordan on Threads: @jordangal
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brian Casel (00:16):
Hey, Bootstrapped Web. We are both back from
vacation and we've got so muchgoing on on both of our ends.
It's gonna be probably a jampacked episode. So, yeah.
Jordan, when when did you getback?
Jordan Gal (00:28):
I got back on Saturday last week. So we've
been home all week.
Brian Casel (00:34):
Okay.
Jordan Gal (00:34):
Feels great. Outer Banks, NorthCon, pretty cool.
Never been there before.
Brian Casel (00:37):
That sounds like a cool spot. I I haven't been
there either. Yeah. I got backmiddle of this so like Tuesday
night, I got back. So this islike one of those like weird
like half weeks for me.
Getting back into the swing ofthings here. Went to Chicago and
drove all the way up to theUpper Peninsula Of Michigan.
Absolutely loved it. We and myOne of the best Airbnb's I've
(00:59):
ever stayed
Jordan Gal (00:59):
in.
Brian Casel (01:00):
Two Actually, two of the best. Like, one in
Chicago and one up in the UpperPeninsula. Both were incredible.
Makes a big difference. Like,right there in in like you know,
great part of Chicago near thenear the lake and everything.
And then, on the beach, like wehad a private beach on Lake
Michigan in Upper Peninsula. Wasjust in
Jordan Gal (01:19):
the UP? Oh, that's right. UP. All the way
Brian Casel (01:21):
up.
Jordan Gal (01:21):
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That place
Brian Casel (01:23):
Across the bridge.
Jordan Gal (01:23):
Wild. Literally wild. It's just a forest and a
lake.
Brian Casel (01:26):
Yeah. And then, we drove up it to Lake Superior to
the Pictured Rocks.
Jordan Gal (01:31):
Oh, you
Brian Casel (01:31):
went far. And just really yeah. There's nothing up
there. It's just wooded, youknow.
Jordan Gal (01:36):
You're kind of like you're almost it feels like
you're deep in the South. Likeyou're deep in the it. Yeah. But
you're
Brian Casel (01:42):
super north.
Jordan Gal (01:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's got a gun. There's a,
you know, a lot of pickup likethey they live close to the the
ground. Like they
Brian Casel (01:50):
Oh, yeah. Just to
Jordan Gal (01:50):
get through a winter there is no
Brian Casel (01:51):
It was it was definitely Trump country up
there. You could you could seethat.
Jordan Gal (01:55):
Did did you swing by Traverse City by chance?
Brian Casel (01:57):
Yeah. Yeah. We had there. Yeah. Cool.
Beautiful.
Jordan Gal (01:59):
Yeah. Nice man. Well, yeah. North Carolina was
cool but look it's a littleboring. It's just a beautiful
kind of beach area
Brian Casel (02:06):
boring but for us it was like the Airbnb was the
thing. We chilled, it was supercomfortable. We are literally
our own private beach. The girlsloved it. So cool.
It was just incredible. Yeah.
Jordan Gal (02:18):
Nice. Our our thing was like a house with a pool on
the beach. Like that's theadvantage of there. Mhmm. So
sitting on the beach and yourkids can just like walk up by
themselves to go to thebathroom, come back down.
It was it was like an actualrelaxing version. Yep. Yes. And
and they had waves. I haven'tsurfed in years.
Brian Casel (02:36):
Oh,
Jordan Gal (02:37):
cool. And I rented one for the week and my
shoulders are jacked and I'm tanand I got salt water. The the
whole thing
Brian Casel (02:43):
Look at this guy. Yep.
Jordan Gal (02:45):
I love it. It was fun. But now we're back. It's
Friday. I went to the bakery.
I got my challah called my momlike a good Jewish boy and we're
ready to roll. Let's do it.
Brian Casel (02:53):
Alright, dude. Yeah. I mean, I I think we both
have a lot to to cover. I'lljust get like the quick rundown
for me. Cool.
This week, I tweeted one monthdot app. It's like a new
packaging of my consultingservice seem to make the rounds
on Twitter that that's Mhmm. Ican talk about that. Basically,
(03:13):
MVP in a month with with a priceand that's Bro. That's what it
is.
Jordan Gal (03:16):
You piqued my interest. Even just as a
software person, I was like,that that's a good bet. That's
that's a good bet.
Brian Casel (03:24):
Yeah. Yeah. If you want, we could talk about like
the pricing and the strategyaround that. Also today,
actually yesterday, we launchedall new pricing for Clarity
Flow. Actually, same pricing butdifferent trial.
And that we don't have oneanymore.
Jordan Gal (03:38):
Okay. We talked about this because my big topic
for today is we're going livewith self serve and there's a
bunch of stuff around pricingand a board meeting. And and
you're switching pricing. Yep.And we know going into this
initial launch that we're goingto experiment.
So we kinda have a fewexperiments in mind. It sounds
to me like what you're doing isit's a tweak to Yeah. Not just
(03:59):
pricing but the onboarding andthe mentality that goes into
using the product and and allthat.
Brian Casel (04:03):
Yes. I can get into the thinking behind the bet
there. Last thing is ripple.fm.It is done. I'm sending the very
first invites today.
I have a private podcast on itbut it is a networking community
platform for podcasts. It's notjust for private, it's for
connecting with popular podcastsand your fellow listeners there.
(04:26):
I I just finished a whole videoon it. I'm gonna release that
after this episode. So that'sthe other thing.
So it's like too many things butit's all kinda crashing into
this week. So there we go.
Jordan Gal (04:35):
We need to take a step back because two weeks ago
we spoke and you had this ideaand you said, I'm not actually
sure I'm going to build it. Thisis part of me launching ideas
and kinda thinking through it.It's two weeks, Brian. Did you
build a a podcast networking appin two weeks?
Brian Casel (04:55):
Yes. Pretty much.
Jordan Gal (04:56):
Yes. Okay. Well, I do I'm not technical, but I
would I am interested in whathas what's happening, what is
the state of technology andframeworks that allows you to do
that. That's, you know
Brian Casel (05:09):
Yeah. We can maybe also talk about like what's the
state of my mental crazinessthat gets me Sure. That makes me
like hack on that for for twoweeks straight. Mhmm. But yeah.
There's that.
Jordan Gal (05:20):
Yeah. I did talk to you one night at like 11PM my
time and you were like, I'mfinishing this thing up. So you
you you've been working on. It'snot like it just magically came
Yeah.
Brian Casel (05:26):
This was I I I did a lot of it before the vacation.
I hacked on it during thevacation on the plane in the
hotels on the free time andfinished it up this week. That
was my goal. It was to get it toa quote unquote like finished
state so that I can I Idefinitely wanna invite people
to start joining it andlistening to mine and and
(05:47):
forming their own communities?But like this is one of those
ideas that I just really wantedto exist and build it and get it
out there, but not spend monthson it.
Like I'm ready to move on. But Ido wanna see it into the wild
and see where it goes, you know.It's like
Jordan Gal (06:05):
an in between. It's like idea is one thing, building
an app is another thing, andthen spending six months on
marketing it is a differentthing. It sounds like you're in
this in between phase.
Brian Casel (06:15):
Is this Okay. So like I mentioned all the all the
different things between ClarityFlow Yep. And OneMonth app and I
talked about Sunrise Dashboardstill on my Yep. Radar as
something I wanna get to.Ripple.fm is something I'm super
psyched about.
I I love the concept. I love howit came together but I treat
that more as like a passionproject or like a little seed of
(06:37):
something that like I wanna seein the world. Let's see if it
grows into something. Mhmm. Ialso see it as a benefit for
it's a way to grow your network.
That's the headline. And I wannagrow my network through this
podcasting medium and yeah.
Jordan Gal (06:50):
Very interesting. And I I Anyway. I either pinged
you on DM or tweeted publiclythat I felt I felt the the need
for it. I wanted to do alightweight podcast and send it
out to people who would beinterested in something
lightweight because I was I wasarguing with Ian Landsman. Hey,
Ian.
About friend.com and about thefounder who you know, the
(07:12):
headline is spent one raised$2,500,000, spent 1.8 of it on a
domain.
Brian Casel (07:18):
That Yeah. And so that's exactly what it's for.
It's that kind of thing. Twosides of it. There's private
podcast and there's publicpodcast.
Meaning you can connect with,like we should have the
listeners of Bootstrap Webconnect with us and connect with
each other through ripple.fm.Like you literally go in there
and you'd put in, these are myfavorite podcasts. It connects
(07:39):
to the directory and then youcan see who else is fans of your
favorite podcast. That's likeone side of it. The other side
is private podcast where, youknow, like I have a private
podcast and anyone can startone.
What what it's all totally free.
Jordan Gal (07:55):
Like The it's yeah. The the need that I felt was not
just the ability to to create,like produce an audio podcast or
video. What the need that Ireally felt was to be able to
send it out to people. So Iwanted to jump on with Ian and
basically say, hey, let's have afun conversation for twenty
minutes about this. And thenafter that, able for me to be
(08:18):
able to send it out or notifypeople that follow Bootstrap
Web, and at the same time forIan to be able to notify and
send an email or whatever formof communication to let people
know for his podcast.
And it's like this this blendingof those audiences and
communities.
Brian Casel (08:34):
Yeah. It literally does those things.
Jordan Gal (08:35):
Yeah. Okay. Fun.
Brian Casel (08:36):
Subscribe to it. You get notified when there's a
new episode. Also, there'sdiscussions happening around the
episodes that you listen to.Like there's all that is is
there. Cool.
Jordan Gal (08:45):
Cool. Yeah. That's exciting.
Brian Casel (08:48):
Alright. Let's talk let's talk pricing. Okay. So so
you're you're thinking pricing.I'm doing some pricing
experiments.
We're Yeah. Over to you.
Jordan Gal (08:57):
Okay. Cool. Let let's talk about this week. The
last few weeks I have focused alot on pricing. It is a huge
lever.
It matters. It incorporates ourapproach to the market, what we
think is gonna happen, whatcompetitors are doing. This
soup, all of us know pricing isthis weird science that none of
(09:19):
us actually have an answer to.It's this it's this thing, but
it really matters. So whathappened was very fortuitous
timing.
Our plan has always been tolaunch self serve and for that
you need pricing publishedeither this week, I think it
will actually happen today orMonday. So the last few weeks,
(09:40):
it's almost like I I I, like,apologized to my team almost. I
didn't apologize. I just said,you're gonna see me be a little
schizophrenic about pricing, andI'm gonna change my mind five
times. But this is the nature ofpricing.
I can either make it private andyou can't be involved in it, or
I'll make it public and you haveto almost forgive my
schizophrenia because it's
Brian Casel (09:58):
Especially this this early. Of course, it's it's
all over the place. So Right.Can you remind me where where
was your thinking on the pricingfor Rosie like two weeks ago?
Like where where what was yourassumption back then?
And then we'll get to what itis. Cool. Okay.
Jordan Gal (10:14):
So we you know, my tendency in general, I think
this comes from the bootstrapmentality, comes from my
experience at Cardhook and soon, is to charge more.
Brian Casel (10:25):
Yep.
Jordan Gal (10:25):
My mentality is make something valuable and charge
appropriately, and it is mucheasier to build a good business
with $300 a month as the averagerevenue per user than it is at
$50 a month. It's just you know,it's easier. Fewer people,
higher quality businesses, allthe stuff that goes with the
lower churn, everything else. Somy thinking in general was let's
(10:46):
go a little higher. One of ourcompetitors is I'm ignoring
enterprise stuff.
One of our competitors is atlike $350 a month and $550 a
month. Okay? That's a premiumproduct for businesses that
needed $6,000 a year. Yep. It'sit's a decent amount of money.
And I like that. It'sattractive. Hell yeah. Mhmm. Our
(11:06):
other competitor on the otherend of things is at $59 a month
unlimited everything.
Not as good of a product.They're going for scale. It got
spun out of Google like, youknow, a a different type of
mentality.
Brian Casel (11:18):
Are those competitors more or less
targeting the same customers ormarket as each other and as you?
Jordan Gal (11:25):
Nope. Nope. So the the lower price one is targeting
SMB self serve mass quantitymore generic approach. And the
$3.55 50 competitor is homeservices specifically like the
founder ran his own likepainting or pest company and
like very specific niche.
Brian Casel (11:44):
So they're they're both small businesses but that
one is the the higher priced oneis niched down vertical.
Jordan Gal (11:51):
And the and the sales process to go with it. So
sign up for a demo not selfserve compared to $59 a month
self serve. Okay.
Brian Casel (11:58):
Got it.
Jordan Gal (11:58):
Well, I saw that and not just because of where the
competitors are, but also in myanalysis. I ended up in between
those two. And I keep tellingmyself, this is gonna change.
This isn't final. We can changeit.
So this is an initial stab atpricing. I was at about a $199 a
month. And then a second tierwe're not gonna open up a second
(12:21):
tier because we don't have thosefeatures built. So one of the
challenges in our pricing isthat we don't want it to be just
based on minutes used. We alsowant it to be based on value and
how that connects with the typeof business that needs more
sophisticated features like CRMintegration and API access and
more more things.
Brian Casel (12:41):
Mhmm.
Jordan Gal (12:41):
So this first launch is basically just of the lower
tier, and then we're gonna openup the middle tier. We actually
designed it in the pricing pageand then just hit it. Mhmm. So
then we had all theseconversations and where we ended
up over the last two weeks wasat $99 a month. And I said,
wanna bring it down.
I wanna open up the bottom ofthe you know, I wanna open up
the funnel. I want more and soon. So we were at $99.02 49 and
(13:06):
then custom. That was my plangoing into this week before we
had the board meeting.
Brian Casel (13:10):
K.
Jordan Gal (13:11):
Okay. So now the board meeting and like you said
it feels like this justhappened. It's because three
months just flies by very fastthese days. So the board meeting
was good. You know, I am I feelI feel some pressure to do a
good job as CEO because I justpivoted.
(13:34):
And And I it's not like I askeda lot of permission from the
investors.
Brian Casel (13:37):
Mhmm.
Jordan Gal (13:37):
I just kinda did it. I made sure that, you know, the
investors on board. But it's abit of a bold move, you know, to
go from a ecommerce checkout,raise money for it, and then be
like, you know what? Actually,how about an AI voice voice
product? Yep.
So I it's not that I'm on thinice, but I gotta mind my p's and
q's. I I think that'sappropriate.
Brian Casel (13:55):
Sure.
Jordan Gal (13:55):
No one's putting any pressure. I'm putting pressure
on myself because I'm assumingif I'm an investor on the other
end of any of emails, I I wannasee the CEO, you know, play
things straight. Do do all theright stuff.
Brian Casel (14:06):
I think it's good to hear you say that. I think
there's so so much I Idefinitely relate where it's
like, you know, we we justassume that that there is this
perception. But it's really justputting the pressure on
ourselves. But I think to acertain extent that's that could
be healthy.
Jordan Gal (14:21):
Yeah. We're we're adults here. We're responsible.
We wanna behave a certain way.We wanna keep a certain
reputation.
So Okay. So going into thisboard meeting, I was like, how
do I make this a good boardmeeting? So I I do my research,
you know, how to run boardmeetings. You know, a lot of VC
blogs have this blog post, and alot of them are really good
because it's something that'sgenuinely helpful to founders
that have raised money. So I gointo this board meeting focused
(14:44):
on like, how how are we gonnamake this a good meeting?
It turned out to be just sohelpful. And the way it's
helpful, it's related to theconversation about the domain
name that we'll have later forfor forfriend.com. What the
board meeting helped us with isthat Rock and I two things. One,
(15:05):
we're very close to the problem.We're staring at it every day.
We're literally close to it.Right? An investor who's on a
few boards and focuses oninvestments and that sort of
thing is not as close to it. Soit's always good to have a
little perspective when yourface has been stuck up against
it for months. Okay.
Secondly, Rock and I come fromthe bootstrap background. We
(15:25):
wanna build a healthy businessand that's our focus and we we
do a lot of our calculations inthat way and that is not always
compatible with building aventure scale business. And
going into this thisconversation, we we wanted to
get into the pricingconversation. It was the largest
part of the board meeting. Andwhat it helped us understand was
(15:50):
we we have multiple audiences.
Right? We have ourselves. Wehave our customers. We have our,
like, business financials andand health, and we have the
capital markets. We have we haveinvestors.
And right now, I think we wereweighing things too much toward
building a healthy profitablebusiness. Not that there's
(16:11):
anything wrong with that, but itwas skewed too far in that
direction.
Brian Casel (16:15):
Mhmm.
Jordan Gal (16:15):
And what it what it it really meant is that we were
seeding a large part of themarket to the lower end by
saying, no no no. Well, we havehigher quality and we're gonna
charge more and we're gonna makea bunch of money that way.
Brian Casel (16:28):
It's like less about revenue. It's more about
like land grab right then rightnow.
Jordan Gal (16:32):
Okay. That's exactly the way to put it. It is a land
grab and the the reason some ofthese markets in AI are so
interesting is because there arelarge parts of the economy that
have widespread problems.Normally, when that situation
(16:54):
exists, there are a ton ofsolutions aimed at those
problems. That's how capitalismworks.
Right? It fills in those gaps.This is a very strange scenario
right now that very, verywidespread problems don't have
this type of solution becausethe solution was not possible.
Mhmm. That creates a new spacein the vacuum to be filled.
(17:18):
Yep. That's literally the theland grab. New space on the map
Yep. That did not exist. Also,new territory opened up on on
the board, and and now there's arush.
Yep. And so that is what makesour product and business
interesting at venture scale.It's if that spot is gonna get
filled in three or four yearsfrom today, there are a million,
(17:41):
if not several million smallbusinesses in The US that use an
AI voice solution. If that's thecase, the number one or number
two in the market are gonna havetens of thousands, maybe
hundreds of thousands ofcustomers. Mhmm.
Brian Casel (17:55):
And if
Jordan Gal (17:56):
you want to attract capital, you need to make the
argument that you are likely tobe that number one or number two
in the market. And the way to dothat is not to grow on efficient
revenue growth and margin. It isto grab land.
Brian Casel (18:11):
Yep.
Jordan Gal (18:12):
And that's why today when we flip our pricing page,
we will be at $49 a month.
Brian Casel (18:17):
It's a really good way to put it. And and it's it's
really like the traditional VCmindset and a whole strategy.
The whole point of It's aboutthe land grab. It's it's not
about Like, I'll I'll talk aboutmy Clarity Flow Yes. Pricing.
It's it's like literally theopposite spectrum and strategy.
Right. Not wrong way. But I Iwanna hear more about this. So
(18:39):
$49.49 dollars.
So is there a trial? Is there isit How does that work?
Jordan Gal (18:45):
There is a seven day free trial. Okay. Pretty
aggressive. That's like try thething and then you know buy it
or don't buy it.
Brian Casel (18:54):
And credit card upfront or or when they're ready
to go?
Jordan Gal (18:58):
Credit card at the critical moment in the
onboarding is how I would putit. So you go to the pricing
page, you click on get started,you put in your login, and then
you put in your business URL,business name and URL. After
that, you see a little spinnything, your agent, your Rozy
(19:19):
agent is being built. We justscrape your URL and then you get
dropped into the admin with yourRozy account. You have not put
in your credit card yet.
Mhmm. You set up, you addtraining PDFs, you add FAQs, you
choose tone, you do you can doall the things. And then when
you are ready to test it, whenyou want to hear the voice, you
(19:41):
wanna call it and interact withit, you click on I'm ready for
my Rosie number, credit cardmobile comes up, seven day free
trial, go. And then one verycritical piece of it, your
account gets locked after sevendays. Mhmm.
There's no like, oh, I haven'tused my fifty minutes. Like, no,
you have seven days to decideand that's it.
Brian Casel (19:59):
Yep. So that's
Jordan Gal (20:01):
our that's our starting point. I what I would
love to do is put accountcreation, literally the username
and password on the other sideof the agent creation.
Brian Casel (20:11):
That's what I would like to do. Let them like use
that like really as like a latelead gen on the homepage of
this. Yes. Super interesting,man. Where are you at on it?
Like is it live?
Jordan Gal (20:21):
It will be live by the end of today. So we did the
pricing page, all that and youknow, I'm trying to contain
myself. I wanna make the siteawesome, but I want it live. So
we're going live first and thenimproving it later. Sure.
So we have you know, right nowif you go to landing page, you
don't even see the product. Youyou don't see the admin. So we
have a bunch of screenshots toadd. We'll just start doing that
all next week. But today, theonly thing that changes is it
(20:44):
goes from a landing page to alanding page with a pricing page
where you can sign up.
Brian Casel (20:47):
Yeah. I know that you're not targeting SaaS with
this, but I I told you like I Ireally am interested in like
trying it and seeing if there'ssome way I could maybe use it to
to throw a phone number on theClarity Flow website. And and I
think that's actually likecritical to the strategy that
I'm taking now with Interesting.Like charging upfront because
(21:08):
people need their questionsanswered before they pay money,
you know.
Jordan Gal (21:11):
So just to address that before we throw it back to
you. The thing we do, we have awe have a public ROSI number
that we're working on. Mhmm. Sothat you can just call us and
interact with it and it istrained on our software product.
Brian Casel (21:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I I wanna call that later. Yeah.
Jordan Gal (21:27):
Yes. So so we have like, you know, I I did it with
an investor yesterday on thephone. We called it and I said,
do you have a free trial? Whathappens when the free trial
ends? And while listening tothat on speakerphone, I was
showing the investor on screenthe FAQ.
I asked it not the exactquestion that I put into the
training, but similar and itunderstood that it was a similar
(21:49):
enough question. And then itread verbatim what I wanted it
to read. And it really is thisthing that takes text. It takes
like this is how I would want toanswer someone who asked that
question and it turns it intothis conversational speech.
Brian Casel (22:01):
I love it.
Jordan Gal (22:02):
So interesting and I I don't want to niche yet. Maybe
I'll regret that, but who caresabout regretting something that
you can easily change later. Idon't want to niche yet. I think
this thing might just be superwide and
Brian Casel (22:15):
super interesting dude. I love it.
Jordan Gal (22:17):
Okay. So walk us through pricing Alright.
Brian Casel (22:20):
From a
Jordan Gal (22:21):
very different point of view.
Brian Casel (22:22):
This is it's it's funny. It's like So we we also
start at $49 but it's like theopposite strategy. This is the
bootstrap strategy. Right? Theheadline is like as of
yesterday, we have killed ourfree trial.
We There is no more free trialwhatsoever. If you wanna And
this is an experiment. I'mliterally on day two of this
(22:45):
experiment. I I I'm gonna giveit at least Probably at least
two months to to see where we'reat. And then and then go from
there.
Maybe we'll keep it and or maybewe'll tweak it. Alright. I wanna
unpack this. So so it's no freetrial. You pay upfront and we're
offering a sixty day money backguarantee.
Jordan Gal (23:06):
As Okay. So you just You flipped it. Right? Instead
of free trial, it's no pay andbe invested. Yes.
But you could But there's norisk. You can still get
Brian Casel (23:14):
your money. It's interesting the progression that
we went through like startingGoing back Zip Message, it was
low priced and then pretty earlyon I went to freemium with
totally free plan forever withlow prices. And then fast
forward to switching to ClarityFlow, that was when we killed
the freemium play but we went toa more traditional like fourteen
day free trial with no creditcard up front. That's been the
(23:39):
status quo up until yesterday.Similar to you like where where
we had like no credit card upfront but you you put in your
credit card when you wannaactivate like the the good
features.
But it does cut off at fourteendays. So that that's been the
situation and when we would getour org our number of trials
every month and a handful ofthem convert and and some of
(24:04):
them are just tire kickers. Someof them are really good. Some of
them need a lot of support. Someof them should get more support
but instead they drift away.
Yep. And so we And and Kat onthe team is is customer success
and she's incredible. Andcustomers love her and she's
really helpful and she's helpedto to convert a lot of these
(24:24):
trials. But you know, the Andshe sends async messages and
does live calls with customers.But a lot of them like, they're
trialing without a credit card.
Jordan Gal (24:34):
Right. Of them a lot
Brian Casel (24:36):
of them like literally don't respond. Or they
might respond like three monthslater or something like that.
Mhmm. So this bet to to removethe free trial, obviously we're
gonna drastically cut down thenumber of people who enter our
funnel. But the thinking here isthey're They they've just paid
(24:57):
to come in.
They're gonna be more engagedand more serious. So they're
more likely to actually respondto cat's messages when when
they're you know It's not arequirement. Like we don't have
a required setup fee or setupservice or talk to Like you
(25:17):
don't have to talk to someone.You can self you can self
purchase and self onboard. Wehave videos and stuff.
But the thinking is is thatpeople who buy are going to be
more engaged and more committedto the process of getting set
up.
Jordan Gal (25:33):
Right. My committed.
Brian Casel (25:36):
Yeah. And my thought a few months ago was
maybe we'll introduce a setupfee. Like a paid setup service.
That's worked in the past forstuff that I've done and I've
seen other SaaS do this whereyou pay, I don't know, like a
thousand bucks to like get aconcierge setup service and that
that would create moreengagement and more commitment
(25:56):
from the customer. This is adifferent take on that.
We're not doing a setup fee butbut you do need to pay upfront.
And yeah, like Clarity Flowneeds something. We need to
juice growth and this is a newexperiment. We do have like
another big feature coming.We're doing appointments like a
(26:18):
Calendly alternative built intoClarity Flow.
A lot of customers have beenasking for that. So that's
coming and that that should helpas well. But really we needed to
kinda change the game. At leasttry a different model. And you
know, I I went into this likebasically with the assumption
that like, alright, once we killthe trial like nobody's gonna
buy.
We're we're going to kill thebusiness overnight
Jordan Gal (26:40):
and see. Scary part. That's the scary part. You you
choke off that that flow oftrials.
Brian Casel (26:45):
Yeah. So so it launched yesterday morning and
it went all of yesterday with nopurchases. So I'm like, oh shit.
Yeah. Alright.
Here we go.
Jordan Gal (26:54):
Were you getting a trial like trials every day
before that?
Brian Casel (26:57):
Yeah. Yeah. We we
Jordan Gal (26:58):
So you used to a flow of
Brian Casel (26:59):
activity used to multiple trials a day. Yeah.
Jordan Gal (27:01):
Okay. Okay.
Brian Casel (27:03):
And and usually a a a conversion a day, usually.
Okay. And so I woke up thismorning to a a purchase. Someone
paid. I was like, okay.
Jordan Gal (27:19):
It still
Brian Casel (27:20):
works. It's it's been it like roughly twenty four
hours in, we we got the firstpurchase. Okay. We got one. And
I don't know if that person'sgonna ask for a refund yet, but
we'll see, and we'll see wherewe're at about two months from
now.
This was also a good opportunityto actually optimize our
checkout flow. Like our in apppricing Like we have the public
(27:42):
pricing page but then in theapp, there's the page where you
see the plans and you canpurchase and go Literally, we
haven't touched that since likeday one of Zip Message. It's
been the same old confusing toomuch information checkout flow
for the last three years and wejust never touched it. Never got
around to it. Okay.
(28:02):
This was an opportunity thatLike I designed it but my team
implemented it. And muchcleaner, simpler in app pricing
and purchase flow and Yeah. Sothat that should help regardless
of whether we keep the no trialor or not like now we have a a
(28:26):
much cleaner optimized checkoutflow. So that that's good too.
Jordan Gal (28:29):
Okay. So different approaches. Not right Yeah. Not
wrong. Not good, not bad.
Speaking of ways to spend money.This was one of the more fun
stories this week. Come on.
Brian Casel (28:43):
Yeah. It was like young kid. Friend.
Jordan Gal (28:46):
Yeah. This young kid, Avi Feldman, I think or or
Schiffman. Avi Schiffman.
Brian Casel (28:50):
All I know about this thing is the video that
that made the rounds on Twitter.And like like everyone else, I'm
I'm looking at this. I'm like,is this? What the hell is this?
Jordan Gal (28:58):
I I mean, I I don't know if it was part of the
strategy, but it was insane,which was I guess part of the
whole thing. Anyway, this kidAvi, I think one of these like
Harvard Wonder kid type rightwhen he was 18, he built like an
Airbnb clone for Ukrainianrefugees and people in Europe
who wanna house them and it wentviral. He's like, you know, one
(29:20):
of these like Mhmm. You touch itturns to gold type of thing.
Okay.
Cool. Mhmm. So, goes off andraises $2,500,000 for an AI
wearable. And anything that Iget wrong in this story, I don't
care. It's just fun.
Yep. So, goes off races2,500,000.0, takes an open
source library called friend.Okay? Buys friend.com as a
(29:43):
domain, takes the open sourcelibrary, jams it into hardware
Brian Casel (29:47):
so you know much more about this than I do. Yes.
How did this kid raise?
Jordan Gal (29:52):
2,500,000.0.
Brian Casel (29:54):
And he spent 1.8 of that on the domain?
Jordan Gal (29:56):
Yes. Okay. And that video from Sandwich was probably
$200,000 also.
Brian Casel (30:02):
Okay.
Jordan Gal (30:02):
I love it. I love it. Okay. Now here's the thing.
I I don't even think he madelike a big stick of it.
People were just like, are youinsane? How much did that domain
cost? And he was like,1,800,000.0. And people were
like, what's wrong with you? Andhe explained, we're we're
leasing it.
We didn't pay $1,800,000. It'slike a three year lease with an
option to buy at the end. Right?So what happened afterward is a
(30:24):
lot of people came out withhere's my domain story. Right?
A lot of like big time foundersexplain it. One of them, I
forget the domain, but it waslike a three year lease with an
option to buy. If you miss onepayment, it goes back to the
owner, and he explained thislogic. The logic that I think
applies to Avi and friend.comwas it's just a bet with
(30:45):
unlimited upside. Right?
The upside is friend.com is anamazing domain. You get a bunch
of attention. You get a I thinkI think the video got 16,000,000
views in twenty four hours.Like, it worked. But he probably
spent what?
$30,000 for the first month? Idon't know. 25? $50,000?
Whatever.
And the upside is, if it works,who cares? You're just gonna
(31:07):
raise a $40,000,000 round andbuy the domain for the
1,800,000.0. It it doesn't evenbother you.
Brian Casel (31:12):
I didn't even I didn't know about this like
lease to buy thing with domains.Yes. Like, didn't know if that's
a thing.
Jordan Gal (31:19):
Bro, we in America, Jack. Everything's financed.
Yeah. So, the downside islimited. What's the downside?
It flops and then you don't buythe domain and then you just
give it back to them. Yeah.Cares? Yeah. I love Three
Brian Casel (31:34):
years, you'll you'll know what's what by then.
Yeah.
Jordan Gal (31:35):
Right. And a lot of people were like, you know,
talking bad about it and I waslike, no. I think if you look at
it and this is a a bit relatedto a pricing conversation. If
you look at it with a normalbusiness mindset like revenue
more than expenses, it makesabsolutely no sense. Yeah.
If you look at it from, hey, I'min the capital markets. I need
to attract attention and capitaland I get 16,000,000 views for a
(31:57):
$50,000 investment plus myvideo. I gotta my company's off
the ground like your company hasnever been off the ground. And I
don't think that's I don't thinkthat's my for
Brian Casel (32:09):
for friend.com is he'll he'll keep the domain and
it will evolve into somethingthat is not what they showed on
that video. Because the the thehardware AI thing is ridiculous.
That's not gonna work.
Jordan Gal (32:23):
I am not sure about that.
Brian Casel (32:25):
When I You know, when I saw it before I like
pressed play on the video. I waslike, oh, this is gonna be the
VC backed version of you know,those Is it like therapy.ai? Or
like the friend? What's the onewhere where it's like an AI
friend? AI
Jordan Gal (32:40):
Oh, like like therapy or something like that.
Brian Casel (32:42):
There's one I forgot the name of it. There's
some site where you could justtalk to an AI chatbot and it's
like your, you know It's yourfriend. I thought this, and and
there's like some some likebootstrapper stuff. I think I
think Levels might be doing oneof those. Sure.
Yeah. And so like when I saw thethe thing, was like, this is
gonna be the VC version of that.And I I think that's where it'll
(33:03):
probably end up going. That thatwould be my my guess.
Jordan Gal (33:05):
So the thing is in reality that's everyone's guess.
Everyone's guess is veryunlikely to work. So what this
kid did I think is he sprinkleda little bit of leverage into
that risk with the domain nameand now it's got little bit
better chance to make it. If itdoesn't make it, who cares? The
whole point was to put in, youknow, a few $100,000 each and if
it works, we're geniuses and ifit doesn't work, it doesn't
(33:26):
bother anyone because it's moneythat's supposed to be put into
bets.
Brian Casel (33:30):
Love it.
Jordan Gal (33:31):
I love it. And that is why I'm gonna debate Ian
about it or maybe the next storyon Ripple FM. Hell yeah.
Brian Casel (33:39):
There you go. Love it. Yeah. I guess, let me talk
for a minute about one month dotapp. Yes.
So unlike Ripple, which I waslike hacking on for you know,
everyday straight for the lastlike three weeks. This was
something that I put together inlike two hours. I should say
like I've been actually doingthis service for a few months
and thinking about this offerfor for several months. But this
(34:02):
is what I've always loved aboutproductized services or
productized consulting is unlikesoftware, unlike anything else,
you don't have to spend monthsor weeks or even days building
it in order to launch it and getcustomers. It's You just need
like a landing page, if eventhat.
So I This was like a dialing So1month.app is is my productized
(34:28):
consulting offer. This is like adialing in of what I've been
doing as a consultant workingwith SaaS. I talked about
taylormadeui.com. So now I havelike two sides of what I do as a
consultant. Right?
Like taylormadeui.com is UI UXfor established SaaS products
(34:51):
that that need improvementupgrade on their UI and UX.
Right? Mhmm. That's aimed atlike established SaaS and you
know, that that's a great optionfor for me and for them, think.
It's been working out great.
This is an option for startups.For founders who have an idea.
(35:11):
They want a quality MVP built.They don't wanna do the stupid
no code thing. But they alsodon't wanna spend multiple
months and hundreds of thousandsof dollars on an agency or
hiring a development team.
They don't wanna deal with allthat. They just like I firmly
believe as a full stack Railsapp developer, I think that you
(35:36):
can get a super simple tightscope MVP fully ready to use app
in a month. That's aggressive.And people seeing that are gonna
misread it and say like, oh, youcan't build a whole SaaS app in
a month. I say, yes you can ifas long as the scope is super
tight, number one.
(35:56):
And I mean like tight. Like noteverything you want to be in the
product is gonna be in the MVP.But the most important thing or
two things is gonna be in there.And if you have the right stack,
and by by stack, I mean like a astack that works really well for
the developer. For me, that'sRails and Tailwind and Stimulus
(36:16):
and Turbo and all that.
But I also have my own apptemplate that I've been using on
my own stuff and honing it andcrafting it. So all of my UI
components and everything arebuilt into that. It's got
authentication. It's gotaccounts and teams and and all
the boilerplate stuff and custommobile and dark mode. All that
is like in there.
(36:38):
So when I get started on a newapp, I'm going. I'm I'm working
on the business logic on thefeatures. Right.
Jordan Gal (36:45):
You don't have to do anything that has already been
done multiple times.
Brian Casel (36:47):
So so the thinking with one month dot app is it's
an offer and I I put the priceon it. This is the starting
price. It's it's gonna be higherlater. It's $10,000 for a a one
month scope. And my thinking onthat is, first and foremost, I
(37:08):
really do wanna deliver for youlike an actual MVP that you
could actually give tocustomers, put in their hands,
and have them sign up and useand get the core value.
Like, it's not gonna be half anapp. Like, it's not gonna be
like unfinished in terms oflike, you can't even get any
value from this. Like, you youshould have some value in a
(37:29):
month. But, the thinking is thatlike, there Of course, there's
gonna be more work to do afterthe month. Right?
Jordan Gal (37:37):
Right. Some people will take it off on their own.
Brian Casel (37:39):
Yeah. So then I then I have a couple of retainer
options as like optional addons. Like one is One option is
like, okay. One month. Great.
We're done. Let's It's yours.It's yours. Either I can hand it
off to your team or we pause andyou do some customer development
and you come back in six monthsand we'll continue. That's fine.
Mhmm. Or I've got two retainers.One is called just keep the
(38:01):
lights on retainer and that islike low cost. We're not really
actively building anything butme and and my team like we're
around to keep the lights on.Right.
Monitoring Something is wrong.Quick quick bug fixes, know. You
get a hand a small handful ofhours a month. That's we're
around you you know. So so youcan you can start to onboard
(38:23):
users and if things go wrong,we're here.
Right? That's that's what thatretainer is for. Then the other
one is act more activedevelopment. That's our my
standard weekly retainer. Okay.
We've got additional featuresthat we wanna build. Me and my
team will will continue to hackon that. And since you're a past
client, you get priority accessto that retainer. And that is
(38:44):
That's that's the structure ofit. Know?
Like I I've always loved to dothis is like productize
consulting. And I And it's beenan evolution. I've I've been off
I I I've done a couple of theseMVP apps for clients and and for
myself already this year. Butthat was more like general
(39:04):
consulting and now it's now it'slearning from all that. Honing
in on my app template andeverything and packaging it up.
And I think this I think thisworks. So I so I put that out on
Twitter. I've I had two threecall Two calls this week. One is
booked for next week. A third isbooked for next week.
(39:25):
And looks like I have at leastone project probably coming
through but as of today, it'sstill open for for August and
September. And I'm looking toactually book more projects at
this point, to be honest.
Jordan Gal (39:40):
Mhmm.
Brian Casel (39:41):
Like I have the team ready to go. It's still me
doing all the design anddevelopment and direction. But
if and when we book moreprojects, like I I would like to
see this grow into a smallproductized agency that I can
oversee and run. I've got Likethe team is ready to scale and
(40:01):
the systems are there. So that'ssomething that I'm looking at
doing.
We'll we'll see You where ithave the
Jordan Gal (40:08):
capacity. I I find it so attractive it makes me
wanna start a side project. WhenI think about the last so it was
we we counted it. It was ninetyone days from the time of making
the decision to build Rosie tothe first user account created
(40:31):
and and like, you know, a realstranger in the app. Mhmm.
The work that goes into thebusiness logic and everything
else is one thing. To actuallyhave it all come together and
come together means like, well,now on the Internet and you can
click on it and register and itcreates an account for you. You
can invite the teammate and allthe stuff that actually makes it
into a commercialized product.
Brian Casel (40:53):
Yeah. There's to be like some form of onboarding.
Like, it doesn't have to be acrazy wizard or anything but
like when a customer signs up,they need to be oriented and
know where to go and navigateand use it,
Jordan Gal (41:03):
you know. Yes. And there's a lot of things people
expect out of a software productnow that you actually can
ignore. Yeah. Weird And thingslike authorization, password
reset, all it just takes a lot
Brian Casel (41:14):
And of and there's so much time that goes,
honestly, into the UI and the UXand the design and the cleanness
of it. And that's what's allbuilt in out of the box for me.
I've I've done all that workalready. Like, you see it on
ripple.fm. Like, I I used mytemplate on that.
Like, the the structure andnavigation, and how it's all
(41:37):
mobile and dark, and all that isin there. And the menus and the
drop downs and the modals, like,I don't have to design and
implement and wire these upagain on every project, you
know. That's that's stuff likethe business logic takes time,
but the UI and and the and thetightening up also takes time.
(41:57):
You know?
Jordan Gal (41:58):
That's that's what, like, makes things stretch out
into weeks and all thesedecisions and how you wanna
handle this thing. Yeah. I Ithink it's I think it's very
attractive. I I like seeing, youknow, the posts on Twitter from
from people running very, veryfocused solutions. Like, turning
(42:18):
this type of file into that typeof file can actually make you
$30,000 a month.
Yeah. And here's how I did it.Like I I love those. Those are
beautiful. People you know, it'sit's easy to get lost in the
shuffle of of big numbers Butthat's real life changing money.
Brian Casel (42:35):
Yeah.
Jordan Gal (42:35):
$30 a month will change your life in a in a
hurry.
Brian Casel (42:38):
For sure, man. For sure. I mean, you know, and
that's This consulting stuff forme, it's for me, it's it's my
sustainability to be honest, youknow. I'm I'm back to fully you
know, bootstrapping and workingon my products. But but this is
like the Like, I could do likethe one off consulting gigs like
(43:01):
just myself directly.
There's a lot of kind of feastand famine with that. Between
Taylor Made UI and one month appand like the package of those
two together, I see that as likethe basis for like I I could
form like an ongoing agency withthis and I have the team and
operations like ready to go.It's it's sort of just like
(43:22):
firing up the the lead flow. Andlike, know, so far I'm just
putting it out there on thispodcast and on Twitter. I could
do more to like, know, do likethe outreach stuff and the
marketing stuff but
Jordan Gal (43:34):
Yeah. The word-of-mouth.
Brian Casel (43:36):
Yeah. Short.
Jordan Gal (43:37):
Yeah. The short term cash flow while while you invest
in other things. Yep. Alright.Well, let's let's do it.
We're back. It's August.
Brian Casel (43:47):
Yes, sir.
Jordan Gal (43:47):
We're not going anywhere for a few weeks.
Brian Casel (43:49):
No. Yeah. Neither am I. Back at it. It is super
hot here.
But, yeah, we're gonna we'regonna keep at it.
Jordan Gal (43:56):
Cool. Enjoy the weekend. Thanks for listening,
everybody. Brooks.
Hey, Bootstrapped Web. We are both back from
vacation and we've got so muchgoing on on both of our ends.
It's gonna be probably a jampacked episode. So, yeah.
Jordan, when when did you getback?
Jordan Gal (00:28):
I got back on Saturday last week. So we've
been home all week.
Brian Casel (00:34):
Okay.
Jordan Gal (00:34):
Feels great. Outer Banks, NorthCon, pretty cool.
Never been there before.
Brian Casel (00:37):
That sounds like a cool spot. I I haven't been
there either. Yeah. I got backmiddle of this so like Tuesday
night, I got back. So this islike one of those like weird
like half weeks for me.
Getting back into the swing ofthings here. Went to Chicago and
drove all the way up to theUpper Peninsula Of Michigan.
Absolutely loved it. We and myOne of the best Airbnb's I've
(00:59):
ever stayed
Jordan Gal (00:59):
in.
Brian Casel (01:00):
Two Actually, two of the best. Like, one in
Chicago and one up in the UpperPeninsula. Both were incredible.
Makes a big difference. Like,right there in in like you know,
great part of Chicago near thenear the lake and everything.
And then, on the beach, like wehad a private beach on Lake
Michigan in Upper Peninsula. Wasjust in
Jordan Gal (01:19):
the UP? Oh, that's right. UP. All the way
Brian Casel (01:21):
up.
Jordan Gal (01:21):
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That place
Brian Casel (01:23):
Across the bridge.
Jordan Gal (01:23):
Wild. Literally wild. It's just a forest and a
lake.
Brian Casel (01:26):
Yeah. And then, we drove up it to Lake Superior to
the Pictured Rocks.
Jordan Gal (01:31):
Oh, you
Brian Casel (01:31):
went far. And just really yeah. There's nothing up
there. It's just wooded, youknow.
Jordan Gal (01:36):
You're kind of like you're almost it feels like
you're deep in the South. Likeyou're deep in the it. Yeah. But
you're
Brian Casel (01:42):
super north.
Jordan Gal (01:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's got a gun. There's a,
you know, a lot of pickup likethey they live close to the the
ground. Like they
Brian Casel (01:50):
Oh, yeah. Just to
Jordan Gal (01:50):
get through a winter there is no
Brian Casel (01:51):
It was it was definitely Trump country up
there. You could you could seethat.
Jordan Gal (01:55):
Did did you swing by Traverse City by chance?
Brian Casel (01:57):
Yeah. Yeah. We had there. Yeah. Cool.
Beautiful.
Jordan Gal (01:59):
Yeah. Nice man. Well, yeah. North Carolina was
cool but look it's a littleboring. It's just a beautiful
kind of beach area
Brian Casel (02:06):
boring but for us it was like the Airbnb was the
thing. We chilled, it was supercomfortable. We are literally
our own private beach. The girlsloved it. So cool.
It was just incredible. Yeah.
Jordan Gal (02:18):
Nice. Our our thing was like a house with a pool on
the beach. Like that's theadvantage of there. Mhmm. So
sitting on the beach and yourkids can just like walk up by
themselves to go to thebathroom, come back down.
It was it was like an actualrelaxing version. Yep. Yes. And
and they had waves. I haven'tsurfed in years.
Brian Casel (02:36):
Oh,
Jordan Gal (02:37):
cool. And I rented one for the week and my
shoulders are jacked and I'm tanand I got salt water. The the
whole thing
Brian Casel (02:43):
Look at this guy. Yep.
Jordan Gal (02:45):
I love it. It was fun. But now we're back. It's
Friday. I went to the bakery.
I got my challah called my momlike a good Jewish boy and we're
ready to roll. Let's do it.
Brian Casel (02:53):
Alright, dude. Yeah. I mean, I I think we both
have a lot to to cover. I'lljust get like the quick rundown
for me. Cool.
This week, I tweeted one monthdot app. It's like a new
packaging of my consultingservice seem to make the rounds
on Twitter that that's Mhmm. Ican talk about that. Basically,
(03:13):
MVP in a month with with a priceand that's Bro. That's what it
is.
Jordan Gal (03:16):
You piqued my interest. Even just as a
software person, I was like,that that's a good bet. That's
that's a good bet.
Brian Casel (03:24):
Yeah. Yeah. If you want, we could talk about like
the pricing and the strategyaround that. Also today,
actually yesterday, we launchedall new pricing for Clarity
Flow. Actually, same pricing butdifferent trial.
And that we don't have oneanymore.
Jordan Gal (03:38):
Okay. We talked about this because my big topic
for today is we're going livewith self serve and there's a
bunch of stuff around pricingand a board meeting. And and
you're switching pricing. Yep.And we know going into this
initial launch that we're goingto experiment.
So we kinda have a fewexperiments in mind. It sounds
to me like what you're doing isit's a tweak to Yeah. Not just
(03:59):
pricing but the onboarding andthe mentality that goes into
using the product and and allthat.
Brian Casel (04:03):
Yes. I can get into the thinking behind the bet
there. Last thing is ripple.fm.It is done. I'm sending the very
first invites today.
I have a private podcast on itbut it is a networking community
platform for podcasts. It's notjust for private, it's for
connecting with popular podcastsand your fellow listeners there.
(04:26):
I I just finished a whole videoon it. I'm gonna release that
after this episode. So that'sthe other thing.
So it's like too many things butit's all kinda crashing into
this week. So there we go.
Jordan Gal (04:35):
We need to take a step back because two weeks ago
we spoke and you had this ideaand you said, I'm not actually
sure I'm going to build it. Thisis part of me launching ideas
and kinda thinking through it.It's two weeks, Brian. Did you
build a a podcast networking appin two weeks?
Brian Casel (04:55):
Yes. Pretty much.
Jordan Gal (04:56):
Yes. Okay. Well, I do I'm not technical, but I
would I am interested in whathas what's happening, what is
the state of technology andframeworks that allows you to do
that. That's, you know
Brian Casel (05:09):
Yeah. We can maybe also talk about like what's the
state of my mental crazinessthat gets me Sure. That makes me
like hack on that for for twoweeks straight. Mhmm. But yeah.
There's that.
Jordan Gal (05:20):
Yeah. I did talk to you one night at like 11PM my
time and you were like, I'mfinishing this thing up. So you
you you've been working on. It'snot like it just magically came
Yeah.
Brian Casel (05:26):
This was I I I did a lot of it before the vacation.
I hacked on it during thevacation on the plane in the
hotels on the free time andfinished it up this week. That
was my goal. It was to get it toa quote unquote like finished
state so that I can I Idefinitely wanna invite people
to start joining it andlistening to mine and and
(05:47):
forming their own communities?But like this is one of those
ideas that I just really wantedto exist and build it and get it
out there, but not spend monthson it.
Like I'm ready to move on. But Ido wanna see it into the wild
and see where it goes, you know.It's like
Jordan Gal (06:05):
an in between. It's like idea is one thing, building
an app is another thing, andthen spending six months on
marketing it is a differentthing. It sounds like you're in
this in between phase.
Brian Casel (06:15):
Is this Okay. So like I mentioned all the all the
different things between ClarityFlow Yep. And OneMonth app and I
talked about Sunrise Dashboardstill on my Yep. Radar as
something I wanna get to.Ripple.fm is something I'm super
psyched about.
I I love the concept. I love howit came together but I treat
that more as like a passionproject or like a little seed of
(06:37):
something that like I wanna seein the world. Let's see if it
grows into something. Mhmm. Ialso see it as a benefit for
it's a way to grow your network.
That's the headline. And I wannagrow my network through this
podcasting medium and yeah.
Jordan Gal (06:50):
Very interesting. And I I Anyway. I either pinged
you on DM or tweeted publiclythat I felt I felt the the need
for it. I wanted to do alightweight podcast and send it
out to people who would beinterested in something
lightweight because I was I wasarguing with Ian Landsman. Hey,
Ian.
About friend.com and about thefounder who you know, the
(07:12):
headline is spent one raised$2,500,000, spent 1.8 of it on a
domain.
Brian Casel (07:18):
That Yeah. And so that's exactly what it's for.
It's that kind of thing. Twosides of it. There's private
podcast and there's publicpodcast.
Meaning you can connect with,like we should have the
listeners of Bootstrap Webconnect with us and connect with
each other through ripple.fm.Like you literally go in there
and you'd put in, these are myfavorite podcasts. It connects
(07:39):
to the directory and then youcan see who else is fans of your
favorite podcast. That's likeone side of it. The other side
is private podcast where, youknow, like I have a private
podcast and anyone can startone.
What what it's all totally free.
Jordan Gal (07:55):
Like The it's yeah. The the need that I felt was not
just the ability to to create,like produce an audio podcast or
video. What the need that Ireally felt was to be able to
send it out to people. So Iwanted to jump on with Ian and
basically say, hey, let's have afun conversation for twenty
minutes about this. And thenafter that, able for me to be
(08:18):
able to send it out or notifypeople that follow Bootstrap
Web, and at the same time forIan to be able to notify and
send an email or whatever formof communication to let people
know for his podcast.
And it's like this this blendingof those audiences and
communities.
Brian Casel (08:34):
Yeah. It literally does those things.
Jordan Gal (08:35):
Yeah. Okay. Fun.
Brian Casel (08:36):
Subscribe to it. You get notified when there's a
new episode. Also, there'sdiscussions happening around the
episodes that you listen to.Like there's all that is is
there. Cool.
Jordan Gal (08:45):
Cool. Yeah. That's exciting.
Brian Casel (08:48):
Alright. Let's talk let's talk pricing. Okay. So so
you're you're thinking pricing.I'm doing some pricing
experiments.
We're Yeah. Over to you.
Jordan Gal (08:57):
Okay. Cool. Let let's talk about this week. The
last few weeks I have focused alot on pricing. It is a huge
lever.
It matters. It incorporates ourapproach to the market, what we
think is gonna happen, whatcompetitors are doing. This
soup, all of us know pricing isthis weird science that none of
(09:19):
us actually have an answer to.It's this it's this thing, but
it really matters. So whathappened was very fortuitous
timing.
Our plan has always been tolaunch self serve and for that
you need pricing publishedeither this week, I think it
will actually happen today orMonday. So the last few weeks,
(09:40):
it's almost like I I I, like,apologized to my team almost. I
didn't apologize. I just said,you're gonna see me be a little
schizophrenic about pricing, andI'm gonna change my mind five
times. But this is the nature ofpricing.
I can either make it private andyou can't be involved in it, or
I'll make it public and you haveto almost forgive my
schizophrenia because it's
Brian Casel (09:58):
Especially this this early. Of course, it's it's
all over the place. So Right.Can you remind me where where
was your thinking on the pricingfor Rosie like two weeks ago?
Like where where what was yourassumption back then?
And then we'll get to what itis. Cool. Okay.
Jordan Gal (10:14):
So we you know, my tendency in general, I think
this comes from the bootstrapmentality, comes from my
experience at Cardhook and soon, is to charge more.
Brian Casel (10:25):
Yep.
Jordan Gal (10:25):
My mentality is make something valuable and charge
appropriately, and it is mucheasier to build a good business
with $300 a month as the averagerevenue per user than it is at
$50 a month. It's just you know,it's easier. Fewer people,
higher quality businesses, allthe stuff that goes with the
lower churn, everything else. Somy thinking in general was let's
(10:46):
go a little higher. One of ourcompetitors is I'm ignoring
enterprise stuff.
One of our competitors is atlike $350 a month and $550 a
month. Okay? That's a premiumproduct for businesses that
needed $6,000 a year. Yep. It'sit's a decent amount of money.
And I like that. It'sattractive. Hell yeah. Mhmm. Our
(11:06):
other competitor on the otherend of things is at $59 a month
unlimited everything.
Not as good of a product.They're going for scale. It got
spun out of Google like, youknow, a a different type of
mentality.
Brian Casel (11:18):
Are those competitors more or less
targeting the same customers ormarket as each other and as you?
Jordan Gal (11:25):
Nope. Nope. So the the lower price one is targeting
SMB self serve mass quantitymore generic approach. And the
$3.55 50 competitor is homeservices specifically like the
founder ran his own likepainting or pest company and
like very specific niche.
Brian Casel (11:44):
So they're they're both small businesses but that
one is the the higher priced oneis niched down vertical.
Jordan Gal (11:51):
And the and the sales process to go with it. So
sign up for a demo not selfserve compared to $59 a month
self serve. Okay.
Brian Casel (11:58):
Got it.
Jordan Gal (11:58):
Well, I saw that and not just because of where the
competitors are, but also in myanalysis. I ended up in between
those two. And I keep tellingmyself, this is gonna change.
This isn't final. We can changeit.
So this is an initial stab atpricing. I was at about a $199 a
month. And then a second tierwe're not gonna open up a second
(12:21):
tier because we don't have thosefeatures built. So one of the
challenges in our pricing isthat we don't want it to be just
based on minutes used. We alsowant it to be based on value and
how that connects with the typeof business that needs more
sophisticated features like CRMintegration and API access and
more more things.
Brian Casel (12:41):
Mhmm.
Jordan Gal (12:41):
So this first launch is basically just of the lower
tier, and then we're gonna openup the middle tier. We actually
designed it in the pricing pageand then just hit it. Mhmm. So
then we had all theseconversations and where we ended
up over the last two weeks wasat $99 a month. And I said,
wanna bring it down.
I wanna open up the bottom ofthe you know, I wanna open up
the funnel. I want more and soon. So we were at $99.02 49 and
(13:06):
then custom. That was my plangoing into this week before we
had the board meeting.
Brian Casel (13:10):
K.
Jordan Gal (13:11):
Okay. So now the board meeting and like you said
it feels like this justhappened. It's because three
months just flies by very fastthese days. So the board meeting
was good. You know, I am I feelI feel some pressure to do a
good job as CEO because I justpivoted.
(13:34):
And And I it's not like I askeda lot of permission from the
investors.
Brian Casel (13:37):
Mhmm.
Jordan Gal (13:37):
I just kinda did it. I made sure that, you know, the
investors on board. But it's abit of a bold move, you know, to
go from a ecommerce checkout,raise money for it, and then be
like, you know what? Actually,how about an AI voice voice
product? Yep.
So I it's not that I'm on thinice, but I gotta mind my p's and
q's. I I think that'sappropriate.
Brian Casel (13:55):
Sure.
Jordan Gal (13:55):
No one's putting any pressure. I'm putting pressure
on myself because I'm assumingif I'm an investor on the other
end of any of emails, I I wannasee the CEO, you know, play
things straight. Do do all theright stuff.
Brian Casel (14:06):
I think it's good to hear you say that. I think
there's so so much I Idefinitely relate where it's
like, you know, we we justassume that that there is this
perception. But it's really justputting the pressure on
ourselves. But I think to acertain extent that's that could
be healthy.
Jordan Gal (14:21):
Yeah. We're we're adults here. We're responsible.
We wanna behave a certain way.We wanna keep a certain
reputation.
So Okay. So going into thisboard meeting, I was like, how
do I make this a good boardmeeting? So I I do my research,
you know, how to run boardmeetings. You know, a lot of VC
blogs have this blog post, and alot of them are really good
because it's something that'sgenuinely helpful to founders
that have raised money. So I gointo this board meeting focused
(14:44):
on like, how how are we gonnamake this a good meeting?
It turned out to be just sohelpful. And the way it's
helpful, it's related to theconversation about the domain
name that we'll have later forfor forfriend.com. What the
board meeting helped us with isthat Rock and I two things. One,
(15:05):
we're very close to the problem.We're staring at it every day.
We're literally close to it.Right? An investor who's on a
few boards and focuses oninvestments and that sort of
thing is not as close to it. Soit's always good to have a
little perspective when yourface has been stuck up against
it for months. Okay.
Secondly, Rock and I come fromthe bootstrap background. We
(15:25):
wanna build a healthy businessand that's our focus and we we
do a lot of our calculations inthat way and that is not always
compatible with building aventure scale business. And
going into this thisconversation, we we wanted to
get into the pricingconversation. It was the largest
part of the board meeting. Andwhat it helped us understand was
(15:50):
we we have multiple audiences.
Right? We have ourselves. Wehave our customers. We have our,
like, business financials andand health, and we have the
capital markets. We have we haveinvestors.
And right now, I think we wereweighing things too much toward
building a healthy profitablebusiness. Not that there's
(16:11):
anything wrong with that, but itwas skewed too far in that
direction.
Brian Casel (16:15):
Mhmm.
Jordan Gal (16:15):
And what it what it it really meant is that we were
seeding a large part of themarket to the lower end by
saying, no no no. Well, we havehigher quality and we're gonna
charge more and we're gonna makea bunch of money that way.
Brian Casel (16:28):
It's like less about revenue. It's more about
like land grab right then rightnow.
Jordan Gal (16:32):
Okay. That's exactly the way to put it. It is a land
grab and the the reason some ofthese markets in AI are so
interesting is because there arelarge parts of the economy that
have widespread problems.Normally, when that situation
(16:54):
exists, there are a ton ofsolutions aimed at those
problems. That's how capitalismworks.
Right? It fills in those gaps.This is a very strange scenario
right now that very, verywidespread problems don't have
this type of solution becausethe solution was not possible.
Mhmm. That creates a new spacein the vacuum to be filled.
(17:18):
Yep. That's literally the theland grab. New space on the map
Yep. That did not exist. Also,new territory opened up on on
the board, and and now there's arush.
Yep. And so that is what makesour product and business
interesting at venture scale.It's if that spot is gonna get
filled in three or four yearsfrom today, there are a million,
(17:41):
if not several million smallbusinesses in The US that use an
AI voice solution. If that's thecase, the number one or number
two in the market are gonna havetens of thousands, maybe
hundreds of thousands ofcustomers. Mhmm.
Brian Casel (17:55):
And if
Jordan Gal (17:56):
you want to attract capital, you need to make the
argument that you are likely tobe that number one or number two
in the market. And the way to dothat is not to grow on efficient
revenue growth and margin. It isto grab land.
Brian Casel (18:11):
Yep.
Jordan Gal (18:12):
And that's why today when we flip our pricing page,
we will be at $49 a month.
Brian Casel (18:17):
It's a really good way to put it. And and it's it's
really like the traditional VCmindset and a whole strategy.
The whole point of It's aboutthe land grab. It's it's not
about Like, I'll I'll talk aboutmy Clarity Flow Yes. Pricing.
It's it's like literally theopposite spectrum and strategy.
Right. Not wrong way. But I Iwanna hear more about this. So
(18:39):
$49.49 dollars.
So is there a trial? Is there isit How does that work?
Jordan Gal (18:45):
There is a seven day free trial. Okay. Pretty
aggressive. That's like try thething and then you know buy it
or don't buy it.
Brian Casel (18:54):
And credit card upfront or or when they're ready
to go?
Jordan Gal (18:58):
Credit card at the critical moment in the
onboarding is how I would putit. So you go to the pricing
page, you click on get started,you put in your login, and then
you put in your business URL,business name and URL. After
that, you see a little spinnything, your agent, your Rozy
(19:19):
agent is being built. We justscrape your URL and then you get
dropped into the admin with yourRozy account. You have not put
in your credit card yet.
Mhmm. You set up, you addtraining PDFs, you add FAQs, you
choose tone, you do you can doall the things. And then when
you are ready to test it, whenyou want to hear the voice, you
(19:41):
wanna call it and interact withit, you click on I'm ready for
my Rosie number, credit cardmobile comes up, seven day free
trial, go. And then one verycritical piece of it, your
account gets locked after sevendays. Mhmm.
There's no like, oh, I haven'tused my fifty minutes. Like, no,
you have seven days to decideand that's it.
Brian Casel (19:59):
Yep. So that's
Jordan Gal (20:01):
our that's our starting point. I what I would
love to do is put accountcreation, literally the username
and password on the other sideof the agent creation.
Brian Casel (20:11):
That's what I would like to do. Let them like use
that like really as like a latelead gen on the homepage of
this. Yes. Super interesting,man. Where are you at on it?
Like is it live?
Jordan Gal (20:21):
It will be live by the end of today. So we did the
pricing page, all that and youknow, I'm trying to contain
myself. I wanna make the siteawesome, but I want it live. So
we're going live first and thenimproving it later. Sure.
So we have you know, right nowif you go to landing page, you
don't even see the product. Youyou don't see the admin. So we
have a bunch of screenshots toadd. We'll just start doing that
all next week. But today, theonly thing that changes is it
(20:44):
goes from a landing page to alanding page with a pricing page
where you can sign up.
Brian Casel (20:47):
Yeah. I know that you're not targeting SaaS with
this, but I I told you like I Ireally am interested in like
trying it and seeing if there'ssome way I could maybe use it to
to throw a phone number on theClarity Flow website. And and I
think that's actually likecritical to the strategy that
I'm taking now with Interesting.Like charging upfront because
(21:08):
people need their questionsanswered before they pay money,
you know.
Jordan Gal (21:11):
So just to address that before we throw it back to
you. The thing we do, we have awe have a public ROSI number
that we're working on. Mhmm. Sothat you can just call us and
interact with it and it istrained on our software product.
Brian Casel (21:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I I wanna call that later. Yeah.
Jordan Gal (21:27):
Yes. So so we have like, you know, I I did it with
an investor yesterday on thephone. We called it and I said,
do you have a free trial? Whathappens when the free trial
ends? And while listening tothat on speakerphone, I was
showing the investor on screenthe FAQ.
I asked it not the exactquestion that I put into the
training, but similar and itunderstood that it was a similar
(21:49):
enough question. And then itread verbatim what I wanted it
to read. And it really is thisthing that takes text. It takes
like this is how I would want toanswer someone who asked that
question and it turns it intothis conversational speech.
Brian Casel (22:01):
I love it.
Jordan Gal (22:02):
So interesting and I I don't want to niche yet. Maybe
I'll regret that, but who caresabout regretting something that
you can easily change later. Idon't want to niche yet. I think
this thing might just be superwide and
Brian Casel (22:15):
super interesting dude. I love it.
Jordan Gal (22:17):
Okay. So walk us through pricing Alright.
Brian Casel (22:20):
From a
Jordan Gal (22:21):
very different point of view.
Brian Casel (22:22):
This is it's it's funny. It's like So we we also
start at $49 but it's like theopposite strategy. This is the
bootstrap strategy. Right? Theheadline is like as of
yesterday, we have killed ourfree trial.
We There is no more free trialwhatsoever. If you wanna And
this is an experiment. I'mliterally on day two of this
(22:45):
experiment. I I I'm gonna giveit at least Probably at least
two months to to see where we'reat. And then and then go from
there.
Maybe we'll keep it and or maybewe'll tweak it. Alright. I wanna
unpack this. So so it's no freetrial. You pay upfront and we're
offering a sixty day money backguarantee.
Jordan Gal (23:06):
As Okay. So you just You flipped it. Right? Instead
of free trial, it's no pay andbe invested. Yes.
But you could But there's norisk. You can still get
Brian Casel (23:14):
your money. It's interesting the progression that
we went through like startingGoing back Zip Message, it was
low priced and then pretty earlyon I went to freemium with
totally free plan forever withlow prices. And then fast
forward to switching to ClarityFlow, that was when we killed
the freemium play but we went toa more traditional like fourteen
day free trial with no creditcard up front. That's been the
(23:39):
status quo up until yesterday.Similar to you like where where
we had like no credit card upfront but you you put in your
credit card when you wannaactivate like the the good
features.
But it does cut off at fourteendays. So that that's been the
situation and when we would getour org our number of trials
every month and a handful ofthem convert and and some of
(24:04):
them are just tire kickers. Someof them are really good. Some of
them need a lot of support. Someof them should get more support
but instead they drift away.
Yep. And so we And and Kat onthe team is is customer success
and she's incredible. Andcustomers love her and she's
really helpful and she's helpedto to convert a lot of these
(24:24):
trials. But you know, the Andshe sends async messages and
does live calls with customers.But a lot of them like, they're
trialing without a credit card.
Jordan Gal (24:34):
Right. Of them a lot
Brian Casel (24:36):
of them like literally don't respond. Or they
might respond like three monthslater or something like that.
Mhmm. So this bet to to removethe free trial, obviously we're
gonna drastically cut down thenumber of people who enter our
funnel. But the thinking here isthey're They they've just paid
(24:57):
to come in.
They're gonna be more engagedand more serious. So they're
more likely to actually respondto cat's messages when when
they're you know It's not arequirement. Like we don't have
a required setup fee or setupservice or talk to Like you
(25:17):
don't have to talk to someone.You can self you can self
purchase and self onboard. Wehave videos and stuff.
But the thinking is is thatpeople who buy are going to be
more engaged and more committedto the process of getting set
up.
Jordan Gal (25:33):
Right. My committed.
Brian Casel (25:36):
Yeah. And my thought a few months ago was
maybe we'll introduce a setupfee. Like a paid setup service.
That's worked in the past forstuff that I've done and I've
seen other SaaS do this whereyou pay, I don't know, like a
thousand bucks to like get aconcierge setup service and that
that would create moreengagement and more commitment
(25:56):
from the customer. This is adifferent take on that.
We're not doing a setup fee butbut you do need to pay upfront.
And yeah, like Clarity Flowneeds something. We need to
juice growth and this is a newexperiment. We do have like
another big feature coming.We're doing appointments like a
(26:18):
Calendly alternative built intoClarity Flow.
A lot of customers have beenasking for that. So that's
coming and that that should helpas well. But really we needed to
kinda change the game. At leasttry a different model. And you
know, I I went into this likebasically with the assumption
that like, alright, once we killthe trial like nobody's gonna
buy.
We're we're going to kill thebusiness overnight
Jordan Gal (26:40):
and see. Scary part. That's the scary part. You you
choke off that that flow oftrials.
Brian Casel (26:45):
Yeah. So so it launched yesterday morning and
it went all of yesterday with nopurchases. So I'm like, oh shit.
Yeah. Alright.
Here we go.
Jordan Gal (26:54):
Were you getting a trial like trials every day
before that?
Brian Casel (26:57):
Yeah. Yeah. We we
Jordan Gal (26:58):
So you used to a flow of
Brian Casel (26:59):
activity used to multiple trials a day. Yeah.
Jordan Gal (27:01):
Okay. Okay.
Brian Casel (27:03):
And and usually a a a conversion a day, usually.
Okay. And so I woke up thismorning to a a purchase. Someone
paid. I was like, okay.
Jordan Gal (27:19):
It still
Brian Casel (27:20):
works. It's it's been it like roughly twenty four
hours in, we we got the firstpurchase. Okay. We got one. And
I don't know if that person'sgonna ask for a refund yet, but
we'll see, and we'll see wherewe're at about two months from
now.
This was also a good opportunityto actually optimize our
checkout flow. Like our in apppricing Like we have the public
(27:42):
pricing page but then in theapp, there's the page where you
see the plans and you canpurchase and go Literally, we
haven't touched that since likeday one of Zip Message. It's
been the same old confusing toomuch information checkout flow
for the last three years and wejust never touched it. Never got
around to it. Okay.
(28:02):
This was an opportunity thatLike I designed it but my team
implemented it. And muchcleaner, simpler in app pricing
and purchase flow and Yeah. Sothat that should help regardless
of whether we keep the no trialor or not like now we have a a
(28:26):
much cleaner optimized checkoutflow. So that that's good too.
Jordan Gal (28:29):
Okay. So different approaches. Not right Yeah. Not
wrong. Not good, not bad.
Speaking of ways to spend money.This was one of the more fun
stories this week. Come on.
Brian Casel (28:43):
Yeah. It was like young kid. Friend.
Jordan Gal (28:46):
Yeah. This young kid, Avi Feldman, I think or or
Schiffman. Avi Schiffman.
Brian Casel (28:50):
All I know about this thing is the video that
that made the rounds on Twitter.And like like everyone else, I'm
I'm looking at this. I'm like,is this? What the hell is this?
Jordan Gal (28:58):
I I mean, I I don't know if it was part of the
strategy, but it was insane,which was I guess part of the
whole thing. Anyway, this kidAvi, I think one of these like
Harvard Wonder kid type rightwhen he was 18, he built like an
Airbnb clone for Ukrainianrefugees and people in Europe
who wanna house them and it wentviral. He's like, you know, one
(29:20):
of these like Mhmm. You touch itturns to gold type of thing.
Okay.
Cool. Mhmm. So, goes off andraises $2,500,000 for an AI
wearable. And anything that Iget wrong in this story, I don't
care. It's just fun.
Yep. So, goes off races2,500,000.0, takes an open
source library called friend.Okay? Buys friend.com as a
(29:43):
domain, takes the open sourcelibrary, jams it into hardware
Brian Casel (29:47):
so you know much more about this than I do. Yes.
How did this kid raise?
Jordan Gal (29:52):
2,500,000.0.
Brian Casel (29:54):
And he spent 1.8 of that on the domain?
Jordan Gal (29:56):
Yes. Okay. And that video from Sandwich was probably
$200,000 also.
Brian Casel (30:02):
Okay.
Jordan Gal (30:02):
I love it. I love it. Okay. Now here's the thing.
I I don't even think he madelike a big stick of it.
People were just like, are youinsane? How much did that domain
cost? And he was like,1,800,000.0. And people were
like, what's wrong with you? Andhe explained, we're we're
leasing it.
We didn't pay $1,800,000. It'slike a three year lease with an
option to buy at the end. Right?So what happened afterward is a
(30:24):
lot of people came out withhere's my domain story. Right?
A lot of like big time foundersexplain it. One of them, I
forget the domain, but it waslike a three year lease with an
option to buy. If you miss onepayment, it goes back to the
owner, and he explained thislogic. The logic that I think
applies to Avi and friend.comwas it's just a bet with
(30:45):
unlimited upside. Right?
The upside is friend.com is anamazing domain. You get a bunch
of attention. You get a I thinkI think the video got 16,000,000
views in twenty four hours.Like, it worked. But he probably
spent what?
$30,000 for the first month? Idon't know. 25? $50,000?
Whatever.
And the upside is, if it works,who cares? You're just gonna
(31:07):
raise a $40,000,000 round andbuy the domain for the
1,800,000.0. It it doesn't evenbother you.
Brian Casel (31:12):
I didn't even I didn't know about this like
lease to buy thing with domains.Yes. Like, didn't know if that's
a thing.
Jordan Gal (31:19):
Bro, we in America, Jack. Everything's financed.
Yeah. So, the downside islimited. What's the downside?
It flops and then you don't buythe domain and then you just
give it back to them. Yeah.Cares? Yeah. I love Three
Brian Casel (31:34):
years, you'll you'll know what's what by then.
Yeah.
Jordan Gal (31:35):
Right. And a lot of people were like, you know,
talking bad about it and I waslike, no. I think if you look at
it and this is a a bit relatedto a pricing conversation. If
you look at it with a normalbusiness mindset like revenue
more than expenses, it makesabsolutely no sense. Yeah.
If you look at it from, hey, I'min the capital markets. I need
to attract attention and capitaland I get 16,000,000 views for a
(31:57):
$50,000 investment plus myvideo. I gotta my company's off
the ground like your company hasnever been off the ground. And I
don't think that's I don't thinkthat's my for
Brian Casel (32:09):
for friend.com is he'll he'll keep the domain and
it will evolve into somethingthat is not what they showed on
that video. Because the the thehardware AI thing is ridiculous.
That's not gonna work.
Jordan Gal (32:23):
I am not sure about that.
Brian Casel (32:25):
When I You know, when I saw it before I like
pressed play on the video. I waslike, oh, this is gonna be the
VC backed version of you know,those Is it like therapy.ai? Or
like the friend? What's the onewhere where it's like an AI
friend? AI
Jordan Gal (32:40):
Oh, like like therapy or something like that.
Brian Casel (32:42):
There's one I forgot the name of it. There's
some site where you could justtalk to an AI chatbot and it's
like your, you know It's yourfriend. I thought this, and and
there's like some some likebootstrapper stuff. I think I
think Levels might be doing oneof those. Sure.
Yeah. And so like when I saw thethe thing, was like, this is
gonna be the VC version of that.And I I think that's where it'll
(33:03):
probably end up going. That thatwould be my my guess.
Jordan Gal (33:05):
So the thing is in reality that's everyone's guess.
Everyone's guess is veryunlikely to work. So what this
kid did I think is he sprinkleda little bit of leverage into
that risk with the domain nameand now it's got little bit
better chance to make it. If itdoesn't make it, who cares? The
whole point was to put in, youknow, a few $100,000 each and if
it works, we're geniuses and ifit doesn't work, it doesn't
(33:26):
bother anyone because it's moneythat's supposed to be put into
bets.
Brian Casel (33:30):
Love it.
Jordan Gal (33:31):
I love it. And that is why I'm gonna debate Ian
about it or maybe the next storyon Ripple FM. Hell yeah.
Brian Casel (33:39):
There you go. Love it. Yeah. I guess, let me talk
for a minute about one month dotapp. Yes.
So unlike Ripple, which I waslike hacking on for you know,
everyday straight for the lastlike three weeks. This was
something that I put together inlike two hours. I should say
like I've been actually doingthis service for a few months
and thinking about this offerfor for several months. But this
(34:02):
is what I've always loved aboutproductized services or
productized consulting is unlikesoftware, unlike anything else,
you don't have to spend monthsor weeks or even days building
it in order to launch it and getcustomers. It's You just need
like a landing page, if eventhat.
So I This was like a dialing So1month.app is is my productized
(34:28):
consulting offer. This is like adialing in of what I've been
doing as a consultant workingwith SaaS. I talked about
taylormadeui.com. So now I havelike two sides of what I do as a
consultant. Right?
Like taylormadeui.com is UI UXfor established SaaS products
(34:51):
that that need improvementupgrade on their UI and UX.
Right? Mhmm. That's aimed atlike established SaaS and you
know, that that's a great optionfor for me and for them, think.
It's been working out great.
This is an option for startups.For founders who have an idea.
(35:11):
They want a quality MVP built.They don't wanna do the stupid
no code thing. But they alsodon't wanna spend multiple
months and hundreds of thousandsof dollars on an agency or
hiring a development team.
They don't wanna deal with allthat. They just like I firmly
believe as a full stack Railsapp developer, I think that you
(35:36):
can get a super simple tightscope MVP fully ready to use app
in a month. That's aggressive.And people seeing that are gonna
misread it and say like, oh, youcan't build a whole SaaS app in
a month. I say, yes you can ifas long as the scope is super
tight, number one.
(35:56):
And I mean like tight. Like noteverything you want to be in the
product is gonna be in the MVP.But the most important thing or
two things is gonna be in there.And if you have the right stack,
and by by stack, I mean like a astack that works really well for
the developer. For me, that'sRails and Tailwind and Stimulus
(36:16):
and Turbo and all that.
But I also have my own apptemplate that I've been using on
my own stuff and honing it andcrafting it. So all of my UI
components and everything arebuilt into that. It's got
authentication. It's gotaccounts and teams and and all
the boilerplate stuff and custommobile and dark mode. All that
is like in there.
(36:38):
So when I get started on a newapp, I'm going. I'm I'm working
on the business logic on thefeatures. Right.
Jordan Gal (36:45):
You don't have to do anything that has already been
done multiple times.
Brian Casel (36:47):
So so the thinking with one month dot app is it's
an offer and I I put the priceon it. This is the starting
price. It's it's gonna be higherlater. It's $10,000 for a a one
month scope. And my thinking onthat is, first and foremost, I
(37:08):
really do wanna deliver for youlike an actual MVP that you
could actually give tocustomers, put in their hands,
and have them sign up and useand get the core value.
Like, it's not gonna be half anapp. Like, it's not gonna be
like unfinished in terms oflike, you can't even get any
value from this. Like, you youshould have some value in a
(37:29):
month. But, the thinking is thatlike, there Of course, there's
gonna be more work to do afterthe month. Right?
Jordan Gal (37:37):
Right. Some people will take it off on their own.
Brian Casel (37:39):
Yeah. So then I then I have a couple of retainer
options as like optional addons. Like one is One option is
like, okay. One month. Great.
We're done. Let's It's yours.It's yours. Either I can hand it
off to your team or we pause andyou do some customer development
and you come back in six monthsand we'll continue. That's fine.
Mhmm. Or I've got two retainers.One is called just keep the
(38:01):
lights on retainer and that islike low cost. We're not really
actively building anything butme and and my team like we're
around to keep the lights on.Right.
Monitoring Something is wrong.Quick quick bug fixes, know. You
get a hand a small handful ofhours a month. That's we're
around you you know. So so youcan you can start to onboard
(38:23):
users and if things go wrong,we're here.
Right? That's that's what thatretainer is for. Then the other
one is act more activedevelopment. That's our my
standard weekly retainer. Okay.
We've got additional featuresthat we wanna build. Me and my
team will will continue to hackon that. And since you're a past
client, you get priority accessto that retainer. And that is
(38:44):
That's that's the structure ofit. Know?
Like I I've always loved to dothis is like productize
consulting. And I And it's beenan evolution. I've I've been off
I I I've done a couple of theseMVP apps for clients and and for
myself already this year. Butthat was more like general
(39:04):
consulting and now it's now it'slearning from all that. Honing
in on my app template andeverything and packaging it up.
And I think this I think thisworks. So I so I put that out on
Twitter. I've I had two threecall Two calls this week. One is
booked for next week. A third isbooked for next week.
(39:25):
And looks like I have at leastone project probably coming
through but as of today, it'sstill open for for August and
September. And I'm looking toactually book more projects at
this point, to be honest.
Jordan Gal (39:40):
Mhmm.
Brian Casel (39:41):
Like I have the team ready to go. It's still me
doing all the design anddevelopment and direction. But
if and when we book moreprojects, like I I would like to
see this grow into a smallproductized agency that I can
oversee and run. I've got Likethe team is ready to scale and
(40:01):
the systems are there. So that'ssomething that I'm looking at
doing.
We'll we'll see You where ithave the
Jordan Gal (40:08):
capacity. I I find it so attractive it makes me
wanna start a side project. WhenI think about the last so it was
we we counted it. It was ninetyone days from the time of making
the decision to build Rosie tothe first user account created
(40:31):
and and like, you know, a realstranger in the app. Mhmm.
The work that goes into thebusiness logic and everything
else is one thing. To actuallyhave it all come together and
come together means like, well,now on the Internet and you can
click on it and register and itcreates an account for you. You
can invite the teammate and allthe stuff that actually makes it
into a commercialized product.
Brian Casel (40:53):
Yeah. There's to be like some form of onboarding.
Like, it doesn't have to be acrazy wizard or anything but
like when a customer signs up,they need to be oriented and
know where to go and navigateand use it,
Jordan Gal (41:03):
you know. Yes. And there's a lot of things people
expect out of a software productnow that you actually can
ignore. Yeah. Weird And thingslike authorization, password
reset, all it just takes a lot
Brian Casel (41:14):
And of and there's so much time that goes,
honestly, into the UI and the UXand the design and the cleanness
of it. And that's what's allbuilt in out of the box for me.
I've I've done all that workalready. Like, you see it on
ripple.fm. Like, I I used mytemplate on that.
Like, the the structure andnavigation, and how it's all
(41:37):
mobile and dark, and all that isin there. And the menus and the
drop downs and the modals, like,I don't have to design and
implement and wire these upagain on every project, you
know. That's that's stuff likethe business logic takes time,
but the UI and and the and thetightening up also takes time.
(41:57):
You know?
Jordan Gal (41:58):
That's that's what, like, makes things stretch out
into weeks and all thesedecisions and how you wanna
handle this thing. Yeah. I Ithink it's I think it's very
attractive. I I like seeing, youknow, the posts on Twitter from
from people running very, veryfocused solutions. Like, turning
(42:18):
this type of file into that typeof file can actually make you
$30,000 a month.
Yeah. And here's how I did it.Like I I love those. Those are
beautiful. People you know, it'sit's easy to get lost in the
shuffle of of big numbers Butthat's real life changing money.
Brian Casel (42:35):
Yeah.
Jordan Gal (42:35):
$30 a month will change your life in a in a
hurry.
Brian Casel (42:38):
For sure, man. For sure. I mean, you know, and
that's This consulting stuff forme, it's for me, it's it's my
sustainability to be honest, youknow. I'm I'm back to fully you
know, bootstrapping and workingon my products. But but this is
like the Like, I could do likethe one off consulting gigs like
(43:01):
just myself directly.
There's a lot of kind of feastand famine with that. Between
Taylor Made UI and one month appand like the package of those
two together, I see that as likethe basis for like I I could
form like an ongoing agency withthis and I have the team and
operations like ready to go.It's it's sort of just like
(43:22):
firing up the the lead flow. Andlike, know, so far I'm just
putting it out there on thispodcast and on Twitter. I could
do more to like, know, do likethe outreach stuff and the
marketing stuff but
Jordan Gal (43:34):
Yeah. The word-of-mouth.
Brian Casel (43:36):
Yeah. Short.
Jordan Gal (43:37):
Yeah. The short term cash flow while while you invest
in other things. Yep. Alright.Well, let's let's do it.
We're back. It's August.
Brian Casel (43:47):
Yes, sir.
Jordan Gal (43:47):
We're not going anywhere for a few weeks.
Brian Casel (43:49):
No. Yeah. Neither am I. Back at it. It is super
hot here.
But, yeah, we're gonna we'regonna keep at it.
Jordan Gal (43:56):
Cool. Enjoy the weekend. Thanks for listening,
everybody. Brooks.
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