January 5, 2024 • 49 mins
Embark on an entrepreneurial odyssey with Keyven Ferland of La Web Shop and uncover the raw and real narrative of a bootstrapped business's ascent. From the humble beginnings of a solo design freelancer to captaining a burgeoning Canadian Shopify and e-commerce development shop, Kevan doesn't hold back on the experiences that shaped his agency's success. Throughout our vivid conversation, we traverse the landscape of early client acquisition, the embrace of simplicity through a strategic pivot from SpreeCommerce to Shopify, and the impact of savvy salesmanship on regional e-commerce.
Join us as we crack open the playbook on the evolving role of technology in meeting client needs. Kevan shares cherished stories, from custom Ruby on Rails platforms to the recent surge of Shopify, painting a picture of how he steered his company through the initial skepticism surrounding new e-commerce solutions. Moreover, we delve into the potential of no-code developments and their repercussions on the future of web development, offering a lens into the business acumen required to flourish in the e-commerce domain amidst the unrelenting tides of technological change.
We don't just stop at tech talk; the episode also journeys into the human side of running an agency. Discover how Kevan's team has expanded beyond development into realms like support, launch services, and marketing, adapting to the ever-evolving demands of the industry. We also candidly reflect on the lessons learned from a harrowing technological setback, emphasizing resilience and the power of recovery. And for a sprinkle of global aspiration, Kevan and I muse over the dreams and strategies for working with international clients and the invigorating concept of client swapping between agencies. Tune in for this wealth of insights that could ignite the spark for your next venture.
Also, since no one reads these notes, we are just using AI to create them, but if you do read them and find this message somehow, shoot me an email at alex@marsbased.com and you'll make my day.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (00:00):
Hello everybody and welcome to Life on
Mars.
I'm Alex, CEO of MarsBased here, and in today's episode we
bring you Keyven Ferland fromLaWeb Shop, canadian development
shop that specializes inShopify and e-commerce nowadays,
but they start as a designagency.
He started as a designfreelancer back in the day, a
more than 10 years ago, and wego through the you know the
(00:21):
highs and lows ofentrepreneurship when running an
agency.
How did he start?
How did he find his firstcustomer?
What was his first project like?
What technologies did they usein the past?
What technologies they usenowadays?
As I mentioned, there's a lotof highs and lows of
entrepreneurship.
We mention a lot of them in ourepisodes, especially when
(00:42):
talking about the fuckups thatwe've done as a company.
You know we're working withouta contract, some stuff like that
.
That's that's part of what wecommand.
On this episode with Keyven,it's very good to be able to
interview people on the side ofservices because, as we
mentioned, we found this more onthe Spanish version of the
(01:03):
podcast, where I've recentlyinterviewed three or four owners
of agencies, and we are havingdifferent kind of conversations,
not so much the usual VC-backcompanies that you know.
They sit on a pile of money andthen they run out of money and
they have to fund raise again.
So the narrative here is alittle bit different.
We are entirely bootstrap, asyou know, as a company in a
(01:27):
smart space, but also these guys, these Canadian guys, are also
bootstrap.
Most agencies are bootstrap.
There are very few reasons whyan agency wouldn't be so.
But we discuss this and theadvantages and also the
disadvantages of runningagencies, because all that
glitters ain't gold in this case, and even though it seems like
we got all of our shit figuredout, I can tell you there's a
(01:51):
lot of shit that's yet to beuncovered, and we don't always
share on social media.
So let's jump right into thequestion of the day.
In this case, we want to knowwho was your first customer and
what was your first project.
We have talked extensivelyabout our first clients here at
MarkzFace, and we do so in every, every second episode, so we
want to hear from you.
(02:11):
Give us the answers in thecomment section down below if
you're on YouTube, or share themon social media, if you will.
We also want to wish you ahappy new year, because this is
the first episode of the yearand in a very few days we'll be
sharing what's in store forMarkzFace with the store for
startup grant in Barcelona.
(02:32):
So, if you want to stay in theknow, subscribe to our
newsletter, join our Slackcommunity and also really, very,
very helpful.
That's per usual.
If you rate it and you reviewedthis podcast on your favorite
podcasting platform, you shareit with your friends because in
2023, it was extremely,extremely helpful.
(02:53):
We reached 20,000 downloadslast year, so this podcast is
growing and it's big thanksbecause of you.
So, without further ado, let'sjump right into the episode.
Given welcome to the show.
Comança va Pretty good.
Keyven Ferland (03:10):
That's all very good.
Thank you, Alex.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (03:15):
Good to see you.
To give some context to theaudience, we had an exploration
call because our common frienddid the.
I introduced us to discusspotential projects in Shopify
Ruby on Rails.
We are like-minded agenciesworking.
You guys specialize more inShopify, you're based in Canada
and he thought it would be agood idea to chat.
(03:35):
Actually, he's been on thepodcast as well, so I encourage
our listeners to go check thatepisode out.
It's more on the technical side, but today I wanted to give
voice to another superinteresting company and we've
been recording episodes withbootstrap companies agencies.
I'm finding this niche to besuper interesting for our
audience and so welcome again.
(03:55):
And maybe you want to introducewhat your company does.
What does LaWeb Shop do?
Keyven Ferland (04:00):
So LaWeb Shop is a company founded in 2010,.
I was a web designer at firstand I just had too many projects
to do, so I started hiringpeople to help me out, and now
LaWeb Shop is 26 people.
Five themes building websites,e-commerce.
We connect platforms and, yeah,we have a small team of
(04:22):
marketing for e-commercecompanies and brands, and we're
having a lot of fun doing ithere in Quebec, canada, the
French province of Canada.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardi (04:34):
Politics aside, because we might have
another thing in common, becausewe come from Barcelona, but
this is not the topic of theepisode.
We've got many similarities,but you guys started earlier and
so 2010,.
I don't know the situation ofCanada, but it was pretty rough
in Europe.
We were in a deep crisis,especially in Spain, and so it
(04:57):
was only for the crazy to starta company and to become an
entrepreneur.
As a matter of fact, we startedin 2014, even though we kind of
like noodled with a couple ofprojects in 2000.
Late 2011, 2012, didn't kind ofbecome anything, and because we
didn't know how to play outwith products, we didn't know
(05:19):
how to create companies, we justcreated an agency and we said
let's just develop shit forother people.
What was your first projectlike?
Do you remember the firstproject and you got any funny
stories with the first projects?
Keyven Ferland (05:32):
In 2007, I was freelancing doing web design and
slicing PSD.
In that time.
I don't know if you remember,but there was a website where
you could hire people to youjust like upload your PSD,
photoshop and then they send youback the HTML CSS files at that
(05:53):
time.
So I was doing like thePhotoshop files and the slicing
part of it.
So, and the first project wasfor a company here that was it
was a pretty big retail companyhere in San Gnezo in Quebec.
The company started like in1980, I think it was a family
(06:17):
company.
They had like 10 or 12 stores.
So it was my first project.
It's called matzak matzakca.
You guys could see it.
They are like pretty big, butit was the first project that I
did.
I think I sold it for like$5,000 and I did it all by
myself, which was like kind ofdifficult, kind of hard to do
(06:41):
because like there was like alot of things to do.
But yeah, at that time 2007, thefirst one without like any any
CMS behind it just yeah, htmlCSS and mock-up and design web
design.
So yeah, because the reason whyI started doing freelancing at
(07:01):
that time wasn't because Iwanted to do it or I wanted to
be a digital nomad or something.
It was more because, like, Isent out like 20, 25 resume to
companies around.
They just didn't know what theweb designer was doing.
So they all asked me back doyou do a logo or infography or
(07:23):
like any other stuff?
I was like no, no, I designwebsites.
And they were like but we don'tneed web designers for that
when they build websites.
At the time it was only likeprogrammers or yeah, that's why
I went freelancing and afterthat, yeah, first year was
pretty rough, but it startedgoing pretty well after that.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (07:47):
Tell me more, because to me, $5,000,
I'm assuming Canadian for firstproject sounds pretty good if
you went solo.
I mean I don't know if it'slike the, if it was a standard
back then or not.
Our first project was 700 USD,out of which we only got 200.
So it was an awful project.
(08:07):
In spite of that, weincorporated it because we
wanted to make it legal from theget go, and so we were bleeding
money for the first monthsbecause we had to incorporate.
It was more expensive, we hadto pay like 300 euros per month
out of taxes and stuff and tokeep the company going, but we
had only 200 USD in the bank.
So it was really stupid.
(08:29):
Well, you know it got betterafterwards, but did you?
have any similar experience atthe first project.
You know the typical thingslike oh, this project without
contract I did like this guydidn't pay me, or you know this
kind of things.
Keyven Ferland (08:42):
I won't say it comes like every year, once a
year, but there's always one tieand that they play the card
that they just I don't know theydidn't understand or they I
don't know so and you start likearguing or sending like emails
back and forth and after thatyou just like, okay, whatever, I
mean like these guys probablydoing it like a lot of times, so
(09:06):
we just like I just moved tosomething more important.
But yeah, I think in the earlydays, I mean actually, I think
it's like, I think it's actuallythe product.
The $5,000 project that I didabout for March was like the
first big one, but I did one fora university group of students
(09:32):
in the psychology.
I think it was for $300.
But I mean I still have a jobat that time, so it was only to
buy, to buy booze, I guess.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (09:46):
Well, that's quite a lot of booze,
unless you live in Sweden, whichamounts to a couple pints only.
Well, one of the things that Iwanted you to talk more about
Shopify, because obviously, Ithink in 2010, shopify was still
not around.
So maybe you did.
Did you specialize from thevery beginning?
Like, how did you find thething that you wanted to
specialize on?
(10:06):
I'll give you some context,right?
So, because we didn't know, andwe didn't know any better when
we started, we were like we'regoing to do only one thing and
do it pretty fucking wellbecause we're only three people,
right, and so we chose to doweb development in Ruby and
Rails.
And so, coincidentally, westarted also using Angular,
because one of the firstprojects required a lot of
(10:26):
JavaScript or like, yeah, fuckit.
React was not a thing andAngular was about to be stable.
And so Ruby, my two co-foundersthey had been working with it
in the previous company, so itwas an easy choice, right?
How was this choice for youguys?
How did you kind of narrow downwhat you wanted to do?
How did you find out where wasyour product market fit?
Keyven Ferland (10:49):
Yeah, and at that time we specialized in
WordPress development.
And the reason why I went withWordPress because I don't
remember the name of the guy,but once, when I was freelance,
a guy from Montreal hired me todo web designs, for he was a web
developer and he was buildingwebsites with WordPress.
(11:11):
At that time, even if WordPresswas more a blog CMS, with this
project I realized that we wereable to do mostly whatever we
wanted with the framework andwith WordPress.
So once I hired Philip, thefirst web developer at the web
shop and Philip's still workingwith us 13 years later.
(11:34):
But yeah, he was.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Actually, there's a pretty funnystory because I'm from Canada
so I play hockey a lot, so Iwent to play on the afternoon.
I went playing hockey.
It's like you just pay $5 to goplay with who, just like people
(11:58):
, that goes to the ring and playhockey.
So I went there In the roomafter the game, I start talking
with the guy and with the guysin there, and Philip was there.
So he was a skateboarder sametype as I was, but he told me
that he was studying webdevelopment and he was searching
(12:23):
for a place to work afterschool, which was a couple of
weeks later.
So I told him to come by thehouse because I was still
working in my basement at thattime.
So he came by the house, wetalked about what were the
project and everything, andthat's how it started.
For six months he was comingevery morning at my house and we
(12:48):
were working on my basementwith the kids around.
It was pretty neat.
But, yeah, so I chose WordPressat that time because I needed
something to make sure that wewere able to give our clients a
CMS to manage our websitewithout adding too much.
So that's why we went that way.
(13:10):
And the SEO was pretty goodbecause it was a blog platform.
So for everyone website that webuilt, the organic part of the
semantic was really neat.
So it was good for our clientsand I think it was the smart
just at that time.
And we fastly.
(13:31):
We became a WordPressspecialized company in Quebec,
which helped us out to win a lotof product and contracts after
that.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (13:40):
And Wendy to Shopify enter the scene
in your story.
Keyven Ferland (13:45):
We had a pretty rough experience with some
clients in 2013, 2014, where webuilt a custom e-commerce
platform with Ruby on Rails andSpreeCommerce and Solidus.
At that time we started withSpreeCommerce and, after that,
solidus.
It was pretty rough for ourclients, for our teams, but we
(14:09):
loved the tech, but it was likeit cost a lot of money and it
was hard to maintain and afterlaunch and everything.
So in 2016 or 2017, I don'tremember we built our first
website with Shopify, because itwas like I don't know, it was
more, easier and faster to goonline for a client and then we
(14:31):
could have them to bring morecustomers and make more revenues
.
And when I sold the company in2020 to a retail group here in
Quebec, they needed all theother e-commerce websites to be
moved to Shopify.
So that's where we had a bigturnaround, where we probably
(14:56):
built like 50, 55 Shopifywebsites since 2020.
So that's where we became abigger part of our stack.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (15:07):
Funny that you mentioned spree
commerce.
They didn't want to go intothat, but uh, yeah, that was our
first.
Maybe must have been like thesecond for a we had Into into
commerce, because our firstproject was also must have been
2015, probably 16, I might bewrong with we Shopify back then,
when Shopify was Super staticand it was good.
(15:29):
He had like the yeah, the APIswere good, but kind like, if you
had to change anything from thecheckout or some of the
critical screens, you couldn'tdo it.
It was super enclosed and itwas, you know, hard to modify,
right.
And and so we, this Germany,this German company, this gold
sap tails, which is a companythat we had on and off since
(15:49):
2015 they built a platform.
They had built a platform MVPthat didn't scale, that allowed
them or their clients to tocreate physical and digital
books out of what's upconversations, right.
So it's an angular app kind oflike, you know, drag and drop a
graphical editor, you createyour books and you add images
and whatnot and you just dragand drop shit around.
(16:11):
And but we was sitting on topof Shopify and we developed a
ton of features that didn'texist in Shopify back then
because it was kind of likeMulti-store, multi currency, all
that in Shopify didn't have it,and so we had to build it, and
we build it, and you knowafterwards, obviously Shopify
did it.
We didn't.
(16:31):
Oh yeah, we didn't quitespecialize in Shopify until like
2020 or 21, because up untilthen Shopify wasn't that popular
.
I mean, maybe it it rankednumber four, number five in the
wall, and but in 2014 definitelywas number 10, right or number
15, behind all of this youmentioned, behind Magento, be
(16:51):
behind Presta shop, behind allof these other options, and so
whenever we had a potential leadfor a for for project and it
was e-commerce, we know it was abattle that was already lost.
If we mentioned Shopify, nobodywanted it.
Nobody was.
Everybody was like what'sShopify?
Why is it that expensive If Ican't do Magento, or or, or or
(17:12):
Presta shop and whatnot?
So it was a very uphill battle,seems like you guys, because
you were also using WooCommerce,right and and spree commerce.
So maybe spree commerce was notvery popular though.
So how were you?
How are you selling this?
Maybe WooCommerce was more moremore of a standard choice.
So, for people who didn't havea clear understanding that maybe
(17:32):
they wanted Presta shop orMagento, did you just decline
the conversation, or or did youaccommodate it, or was your
strategy then?
Keyven Ferland (17:40):
being able to sell my first website at $5,000,
like in 2017.
I think I'm a pretty good saleman.
So I just I just I mean my teamwere like at the time.
Fred Boislin is now workinglike it's an engineering Shopify
, but at that time he was comingout of school and he was a he
(18:00):
was pretty passionate about withRuby on rails and he Is the one
in 2013 that that found spreecommerce and told me we need to
build a e-commerce website withwith that technology.
And when I went to the client, Imean in 2013, here in sangnae,
which is like five hours northMontreal like it's pretty, it's
(18:22):
pretty country, like it, it's,it's a part, I mean like I think
there's like 200,000 peoplelike in the city and around.
So it's it's, it's pretty small.
So the tech, the techDiscussion at that time wasn't
like the first thing that theclients wanted to hear.
They want to make sure that the, the design, was personalized.
(18:43):
They wanted to make sure thatyou would, it would be easy for
them to to manage and and beable to have like people coming
to the website.
So they were, they were, theywere pretty confident on on on
my behalf and making sure thatTechnology that I proposed was
was a good one and and Iconvinced them to to go with
(19:07):
with free commerce, it wasn'thard actually.
So we probably, I think, betweenthree third 2013 and 2016, we
probably build six to sevene-commerce platform with which
be commerce, and I think thereare still two of them that are
still online right now.
So it's a Work well, but I mean, the part where it was
(19:33):
difficult is is just thatPre-commerce and solid this
after that.
If you guys I mean I think youwork with it you need someone to
always like work on on the code, always work on the, the
optimization and for for smallbusinesses, that's a lot of
(19:53):
money to to just put onamendments and they want to put
money to to get money back.
So it was.
It was that's the part where itwas pretty hard with the
clients because they didn't do,they didn't want to to put money
like every month to make surethat the code stick clean, that
the website go as fast as theywanted to to go, so so that's
(20:18):
probably why we, once Shopifybecame bigger, we, we just it
was like just the smart move toto move to Shopify.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardi (20:28):
Actually so.
Is there any you know anyreason outside of well
technology?
Of course you mentioned these,these other two alternatives to
Shopify.
They were not that great.
We always found that the, theopen source Ruby and rails
projects for pre-packagedsoftware, namely CMSs, a
(20:48):
commerce's ERPs and stuff likethat.
They're okay but they're nevergreat.
They were never great forenterprise.
They were never great for bigprojects.
They were good for smallprojects, right, and usually was
one, two people maintainingthem and we tried them all.
Like I remember we tried themall.
We did some Comparisons backback in the day when we were
starting the company, becauseobviously people wanted an
(21:09):
alternative to war press and wecouldn't find any Like.
The closest one we found waslocomotive CMS, right, and back
back in our time it was not thatgreat.
It has become something prettygood over the years, but back in
the time it was not that great.
Same with the, with the, withthe commerce solutions.
But luckily Shopify becamesomething like exploded all of a
(21:29):
sudden.
Shopify was everywhere, becameone of the biggest companies on
earth and it still hasn'tdebunked the myth of rails.
Doesn't scale like look,because the commerce platform in
the world is built with Robionrails and its scales too, but
anyways, digressing here.
So basically any other reasonbesides technology and maybe
your physical proximity, eventhough Canada's fucking huge but
(21:52):
doesn't help you to get moreprojects, shopify because you're
Canadian and they are Canadiantoo?
Keyven Ferland (21:58):
I mean most, most of the most of our clients
don't know that Shopify isCanadian.
So I don't think it helps.
It helps us like a lot, and Imean like Maybe, if I mean
there's an office in Montrealwhere I can, I can go by me like
a or ourselves Representative,or the agent that we have at
Shopify, I mean they all, theyall work like remotely, so
(22:22):
Sometimes I don't even knowwhere, where, where they are in
the world.
So I don't think I don't thinkit really helped us get more
customer now, or or it's easierto convince them it's, it's it
just did.
The platform is just prettysolid.
I mean it's really solid.
So it's a.
I mean, every time I launch aShopify website, I'm pretty
(22:46):
jealous of the back office, theadmin, the way the reports are
coming out, and I mean I thinkI'm probably gonna build my home
e-commerce just to have acouple of sales every week and
just having fun with it, and youknow it's a pretty fun platform
(23:09):
to work with.
What are you gonna sell?
Probably close, I mean, sincewhen I was like 17, I was
working in the stage shop andthe board shop, you know.
So I was a fan of you know,like the time, welcome dance,
all that clothes that I don'tknow, extreme sports kind of
(23:32):
clothes, and I wanted to startmy own clothing company with
friends at that time, so maybeI'll find a way to just sell
t-shirts or something like that.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (23:45):
Maybe how about merch of the company?
Because one of the things thatmy friends always say like ah,
what do you get this cool coffee.
I mean, we got coffee mugs fromthe company.
We got like hoodies, we gott-shirts, we got a lot of cool
shit but we never like, we don'tsell it.
It's only for our team and forour clients, right?
But you know, here's the crazyidea.
So maybe we could set up aShopify section on our website
(24:09):
and sell this merch.
I don't know, probably it's toomuch management overhead for
the little returns it couldbring.
But yeah, I agree, I had a lotof fun setting up Shopify.
We do have one, oh you do haveone, you do have one.
Does it actually worth theinvestment or not really Like do
people?
Keyven Ferland (24:27):
buy stuff.
It's more about no, no, it'smore for our employees.
People don't really buy I meanour brand yet because, like,
even if we're pretty big inQuebec, we were not like I don't
know.
I mean it's pretty cool, but Imean it's cool for people who's
working there.
(24:47):
So, but I mean we had funbuilding it because, like we the
design of it it's pretty cool.
So I invite you to go check itout.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (24:59):
I'll go check it out.
I mean, it's a great idea, butit's kind of like that stuff.
When they say don't do businesswith friends, it's usually not
because you can damage yourrelationship, which is obvious.
But it's very common that theywill always say, yeah, yeah,
totally buy whatever like yousell, and then they don't
fucking do it.
Right, it's very easy to sayyes, so don't validate business
(25:19):
hypothesis with friends orfamily, because they always say
yes until they have to actuallyopen the wallet, right.
So I don't know if you couldactually sell something.
Now I'm back to Shopify, though.
I'm pretty interested in howyou guys tractor this.
I don't know if it's a pivotactually, right.
So you started doing thisdesign for websites, then you
(25:40):
did the spoke applications, thenyou kind of specialized in
e-commerce.
For us, for instance, it'ssomething like it's really small
in the company.
Normally we still stay with thebespoke applications and team
augmentation for big corporates.
But every now and then, likeonce, twice a year, we get one
or two Shopify projects justbecause it's built in Ruby on
Rails and there's nobody elsedoing it in Barcelona or maybe
(26:02):
there's like a couple otheragencies, but they're not either
that well-known or great, butit's not a big business line for
us.
However, we know there's a tonof potential.
What would be your advice forpeople starting up a Shopify
agency maybe nowadays, ore-commerce?
Keyven Ferland (26:20):
The client.
They don't really care aboutwhat's really the tech behind.
What they want is somethingthat's gonna give them revenue,
that's gonna be easy to manageand it's gonna be fast.
It's gonna be a greatexperience for the clients and
customers.
So that's the main focus.
So they don't want to like puttoo much money on building a
(26:44):
project and they want like a bigROI.
So Shopify for an e-commerceagency is probably it's the best
way to make sure to answer allof these questions and needs for
the clients.
So and once you start doingthat, you start like having the
(27:05):
speech and the talk that for theclients it's gonna resonate.
For them it's gonna be.
They're gonna trust you becausethey're gonna understand.
They're gonna see that youunderstand the reality.
I mean, with the era that we'rein right now, I mean like
people don't have a lot of moneyand the money they have, they
need to invest it in somethingthat's gonna give them like
(27:29):
money back and it's not gonna belike hard to manage, hard to
use, and their customer is gonnabe happy using it.
So that's why Shopify is.
I mean it's the way.
And for people who starte-commerce agency, they really
need to speak the same languageas all of these entrepreneurs
(27:52):
that I mean it's pretty hard.
I mean every most of my clientsright now.
I thought too.
I mean they're looking to golike smaller because the money's
not there.
The money's just not there.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (28:08):
There's .
You've raised a topic that Ireally don't agree with.
You said clients don't reallyrequire certain technologies,
they don't care that much aboutthe technology.
They want something that givesgood ROI On ROI 100%.
But clients are really in myopinion, at least in our
experience they are toounnecessarily opinionated on
(28:31):
technology, even when they'renot technical.
They come and they say like, oh, I want this, I want that, of
course.
And when we advise ontechnology, we said, oh, we're
gonna build it I don't knowusing Nodejs in the backend and
view on the front end.
They're like, yeah, but I heardReact is better and React has
got this and that, and then,maybe, why don't you use Python
(28:53):
for the backend?
I was like, well, you asked meright.
But usually it's not verywell-founded or very
well-grounded opinions.
Usually it's like I heard it'shearsay.
It's like my cousin told methat Rails doesn't scale.
My cousin told me that Angularis dead.
How do you deal with thesesituations in your company?
Keyven Ferland (29:16):
I always give the choice to the client.
I mean, if they heard thatanother technology is better and
that we don't do it because Imean we're not gonna do every
technology we can do that I meanwe need to be expert in other
(29:37):
niche, you know so I just givethem the option to go find some
another agency elsewhere that'sgonna build tech that they
believe in.
But after I told them that I'mgoing to say that the same thing
as I said earlier, I mean thetech is not important right now,
(29:59):
because what's really importantfor them, like the strategy and
the objective that they need isto make sure that they get an
ROI, that they get somethingthat's going to work for their
money, and they need a partnerin their project and with the
company, and we are the studioto do so.
(30:20):
So we're going to be close tothem, we're going to grow with
them.
So they don't need to careabout the tech, because if they
be bigger, they probably hire aCDO and the CDO is going to have
opinions and going to buildteams with the tech that he
thinks it's the best one to growwith and he's going to probably
(30:41):
stick to it.
So that's what I said.
I'm going to put my CDO out forthem and I'm like that's how my
teams are built, that's how webuild projects.
You have to trust me on thatand after that, most of the time
, 99% of the time, they say okay, go ahead, I'll trust you.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (31:04):
Maybe it's because of these 20 years
in the sector that they hear youmore than they hear me, but I'm
starting to accumulate greathair here.
If you can say it like this,this is also a lot of years in
the industry.
How do you see the feature ofShopify?
I mean they've been through arough patch, but I mean they had
a little bit of a downfall, butwhen you're that high, even if
(31:25):
you fall, you're still very highin comparison with other
competitors, right?
So of course, they laid offpeople, they lost value per
share and in the stock marketand whatnot, but they're still
considered as a top notchcompany, tier one and a
reference in not only Ruby andRails but web development and
e-commerce and pretty mucheverything.
(31:46):
The product and design ineverything.
They're just masterminds.
Their technical blog posts areexcellent, especially when it
comes to the last ones.
They shared some insight intotheir DevOps, infrastructure and
whatnot is mind fucking blowing.
What do you see this is goingto be?
After we had a boom ine-commerce in 2020 and 2021
(32:10):
because of the pandemic whichdidn't quite follow up in 22 and
now 23 numbers are going down,slowly picking back up now, but
I don't know.
Do you see we're going to goback to the pandemic levels or
this is here to stay and it'splateauing.
Keyven Ferland (32:31):
I mean, I think since 2015,.
I'm pretty sure that the futureof web development will be a
no-code future, a DIY future.
So Shopify I mean we're havingfun customizing it, like a lot
of fun doing it, but I'm prettysure that in the future it's
(32:56):
going to be a no-code futurewhere the platform will be like
so nicely built that you'regoing to integrate it and
connect it with others, but Idon't think there's going to be
any more web development Fromthat.
I think that Shopify is acompany that is really.
(33:20):
It is in a really good spotbecause of the quality of all
the functionalities and all thelast development that they did.
The B2B part is getting biggerand better.
The App Store is getting really, really nice too.
(33:44):
There's really nicefunctionalities there that you
cannot for your client.
Because all of that, I justthink that right now it's
probably more of a calm periodof time or a calm era, but I
mean, in three to five yearsthey're going to be number one
(34:05):
and they're probably going tointegrate AI at some point,
where you're just going to givebetter experience for your
clients.
I don't think why theyshouldn't do it.
They're probably going to bethe first ones to do so Once
they get there, I think it'sgoing to be pretty huge.
(34:26):
I don't see any competitorbeing able to.
I don't think Magento, I don'tthink Big Commerce, whocommerce.
I don't see any othercompetitor, or even Wix or
Squarespace, that havee-commerce section or a part of
the platform.
(34:47):
In my mind, they're freakingnumber one and they're going to
stay for a long time youmentioned.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (34:56):
I mean what I hear, what I read between
the lines in your answer, isthat we're fucked.
Basically, our companies aredoomed because no code is coming
.
Obviously, we got all of theseagents and Verso and all of
these companies that on top ofno code they can actually build
(35:16):
fucking websites and entiredevelopment projects
automatically.
When are we becoming redundant?
How will you adapt as a companyto this?
We're taking a look at all ofthese.
We think it's too early forthat and there will still be
always clients that want thisartisanal touch to the industry
(35:42):
that we bring that, maybe thegeneric software factories and
generally companies.
They will suffer first becausethey will lose a lot of share of
wallet before we actually findout because we're too small.
And then you know, with three,four, five, six, 12 clients at
the time, we can sustain.
But these companies that havegot hundreds of clients, they
(36:04):
will go to dozens of clients ina matter of a year or two, and
so I think it's too early for us.
But I want to know your vision.
Keyven Ferland (36:12):
In our company we have now five teams.
We have one team that buildwebsite with the WordPress and
Shopify.
We have one team that build APIand Internet or more like a
connect website more closer toapplication.
We have a support for WordPressand after launch team.
(36:35):
We have a hosting team and amarketing team.
So we make sure that we recoverlike every part and from there
every year I'm looking at mynumbers and see if there's a
grow or in which team there's agrow, and for the past two years
(36:56):
two, three years the grow arein the support, after launch and
the marketing team.
That's where the bigger growthin our teams are Building
website, custom websites,artisanal ones, like you said.
We have bigger clients, biggerprojects, but we're, like for
(37:21):
the last five years, like it'sthe same numbers of projects
that we ate that there's.
There's no growth there.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (37:29):
Yeah, the good thing about these kind
of projects I mean thepre-packaged software, namely
CMSs and e-commerce and similartools is that they can.
There's a huge part of themarket is self-service, right,
so it's people who just installthat software themselves and
then they request help.
Right, so you can actuallyservice them by creating content
(37:50):
on your website, hostingwebinars, having these
non-loadable PDFs and whatnot,and you will attract them here
in an early part of theirbusiness, why?
But you also get the other onesthat actually need the help in
the end to end solution right,so they need to conceptualize
the application, to design it,then to pick up the best
(38:13):
e-commerce solution,installation maintenance and
whatnot.
So all the end to end solution,as I was mentioning.
What are you like?
Are you going to change yourmarketing efforts because of
that, or are you going to focusmore on these?
Because I think in two, fiveyears, everybody will more or
less be able to install stuff ontheir own.
They'll be less.
(38:33):
Help me to do 100% of a project, because it will be so easy,
like Shopify could be.
You know, it's kind of likeWordPress.
Pretty much everyone caninstall WordPress right now just
one, two, three buttons.
A wizard Shopify too, in asense, but maybe it's not as
popular.
Maybe it's perceived assomething much more technical
than a block or a WordPressright.
(38:54):
Are you focusing your marketingefforts on that, or what is
your strategy for next year?
Keyven Ferland (38:59):
Since 2020, we're not calling ourselves an
agency, we're calling ourselvesa studio because we're like the
extension of a client.
So because in the future I mean, if I had like another company
in any other industry, I'dprobably hire, like a designer,
(39:19):
a web developer, a copywriter.
I mean probably build my ownagency in the house because I
want people to be able to workon my platform, on my web part
of the company, like every day.
So, and I don't want to pay toomuch money to people that don't
understand my reality.
So I think that from there, I'mpretty sure that there's a lot
(39:45):
of companies that moving there.
I mean I have clients now thatthey send us their web design,
their markups, they buildthemselves, they have a designer
in house.
They're like in the automotiveindustry they're sending cars,
but they still have a webdesigner.
That is pretty good.
And we get their markups withFigma or X-Day and I mean it's
(40:11):
pretty well done.
So more and more, we need toadapt our companies, our studio,
to where our clients are.
So that's why our marketingstrategies are built that way.
So we're the marketing teamthat you don't have.
We're the web development teamthat you don't have or that you
wish you have, and maybe andthat's why our support team is
(40:34):
pretty good too because a lot ofclients they got like this big
WordPress website and after thelaunch, the agency just left
them there, like it's a onenight stand.
You know, though, we're like no, we're going to marry you,
we're going to take care of you,so, and they like that.
Even if we didn't build awebsite, we still want to
(40:56):
support them and make sure thatthey get everything done
correctly.
So I think it's more aboutbeing able to adapt to our
clients and making sure that wehire and form people the way
that our clients evolve in need.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (41:13):
Awesome .
So time for the last twoquestions.
One of them is pretty short,but this is a signature question
of the podcast.
Right, he gets to answer thisand it's pretty uncomfortable,
but it's the price you have topay for not preparing for this,
because nobody prepares for thispodcast.
But we want to democratizefailure and fuck ups, right?
So there's a lot of technicalfuck ups in the industry and
(41:36):
I've shared tons of them in thispodcast.
What is the biggesttechnological fuck up you've
done with your company?
And quantify it with money.
So how much money was lostthere?
Money was bright and shinyuntil now, but now you get
exposed.
They were a spark.
Keyven Ferland (41:54):
I'm going to go the really honest way and really
, as I said, that I sold thecompany in 2020.
Actually, a group just got meout of ship.
Really, we were in 2017, wewere 32 people.
The project that we built in2017, because I think we went
(42:17):
from 13 to 32 people in twoyears, 2015 to 2017.
And the foundation of theagency, they just weren't there.
So most of the project that webuilt at that time, it was
pretty bad quality Not enoughcode review, not enough quality
(42:39):
insurance, not enough tests, notenough.
We weren't listening to ourclient and we didn't implicate
them in the project as much aswe needed at that time.
So there was a lot of projectthat went like I mean that we
lost money and we lost money.
It's close to a million dollars, so there was a lot of money
(43:02):
and that's probably where I gotmy gray hair and yeah, it was
hard.
And after 2017, what I did is Isaid, okay, I need to move back
to where I come from, like whenwe were a small team in 2020,
in 2010, sorry, that's where Iscaled down the company to eight
or nine people.
(43:22):
In 2020, in 2029, sorry.
So AujourdaSOUND stake I mean13 people, 32 in two years and
two years later back to eight,nine people.
But I mean, like we, thedawnfall of it was like
extremely stressful Me, on myfamily, on the employees.
(43:45):
There were times where we wereable we weren't able to to even
give money to our, to ouremployee, like for five to six,
seven weeks.
I mean the people, some peopleleft, some people stayed, some
people are still working besideme, so, even if it was really
hard, but yeah, that's, that'sprobably the the two biggest and
(44:10):
hardest year of my life andhopefully I won't, I won't, I
won't see that again or livethat again In the 2029,.
I went for a pitch to get acontract where we needed to
build two websites Shoso Pop andTlerafil.
It was like in Deshaillon, inQuebec, so it's like three hours
(44:32):
north, two hours south of whereI live.
It was the December 23rd, sojust before Christmas.
It was a $300,000 contract thatI wanted to go get for for
organ, for a group and our teamand everybody was super excited.
It was like, yeah, I mean we, Imean, like I said, we, we
(44:55):
didn't have enough money to, toto pay our employees.
So I went to Deshaillon butbefore, when I hit the road.
Like 25, 30 minutes aftergetting on the road, my tire
just exploded.
So I had to change the tire.
Yeah, like it was snowing, itwas like it was cold.
My girlfriend was with me atthe time, so I changed the tire
(45:18):
Like it took me.
It took me like an hour more toto get there to the meeting and
once I get there, I start themeeting.
The pitch I was like, like Isaid, pretty stressful and I
think 15 minutes into it, the,the CEO of the of the group.
He looked at me and said areyou looking for a job?
I was like what?
(45:40):
And said, yeah, looking, areyou looking for a job?
Because I want someone like youin the company that's going to
build all of our websites.
That's going to be, is going to.
You won't talk shit to me.
He's going to like, he's goingto save me the real thing about
what we need.
He was tired to to being liketo, to to meet all these big
(46:01):
agencies that we're selling himlike big project, but just for
themselves, not not listening toto his need.
So we talk, we, we, we talkback in 20, in January 2020, and
then, march nine, we signed thepapers and we, we moved the
team to to that group and March13th in Quebec the pandemic
(46:23):
started.
So it was.
It was pretty awesome.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (46:28):
Wow, there'll be.
That was definitely a very bigemotional roller coaster, right,
and I appreciate the honesty.
I think the block has episodealone.
I the this answer alone hasbeen worth the entire episode.
So we very rarely get thislevel of honesty in this
question.
We always I mean mostly we getbullshit Like I hired the wrong
(46:49):
person.
You know there's like everybodyhired the wrong person.
So very rarely we get these verydetailed stories and I think
that's very, very helpfulactually, because it helps to to
visualize and to externalizethat everybody fucks shit up and
we all do, like you know.
I mean, the one I was going totell cannot compare to this one,
(47:11):
it doesn't really make sense,but I share on a weekly basis.
I share fuck ups I do with thecompany and so thank you, thank
you for doing that.
For last question then, very,very, very quick, because I
really appreciate your time howcan we help you?
You've been very helpful to us.
So how can we and our community, listeners, subscribers and
followers of March base, how canwe help you?
Keyven Ferland (47:33):
I'm not pretty good at asking help most of the
time, so it's probably thehardest one.
Yeah, I don't know, it's justthat we're we're I see ourselves
as a small studio in, like fivehours north of Montreal.
So like we're, you know we'rein the country.
We're a real resilient team.
(47:54):
For like 13, 16 years, I meanmy, my, my dream for our team is
it would be to to to experiencebuilding projects to clients
overseas, even even if we are inin, in, like in the mountains
in Quebec, like in the north ofof it.
(48:14):
So so I don't know if we have achance to, I don't know just
just collaborate with the, withother agencies or other
companies, just to just to workon some like pretty fun,
exciting project overseas withpeople with different cultures,
just for the experience, not forthe money, just for the
experience.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (48:35):
It's funny.
We will also want clients fromoverseas.
So let's, why don't we swap ourclients?
And we'll do it for the money?
I'm going to be honest, becausemoney is is bigger.
Prices are bigger in the US,maybe in Canada, I don't know,
but definitely bigger budgetsout there than in Europe.
But no worries, we could swapclients anytime I'll I'll.
I'll send you some detailsafterwards.
(48:56):
We could sign the contractright away.
All right, even.
Thank you very much.
Any, any, any parting words,anything you want to share with
us, anything that you got comingup in the company that you want
to announce here, or somethingyou want to share.
You got 30 seconds of glory.
Keyven Ferland (49:09):
Oh, thanks.
That means like this if youguys want to want to, to buy our
, our hoodies or our t-shirts,we are.
We even have a hat, so so, yeah, I invite you to to go to our,
our e-commerce website and buyall of the and keep installing
Shopify.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (49:29):
All right, thank you very much.
You're welcome, merci beaucoup.
So thank you so much.
I love it.
Bye.
Hello everybody and welcome to Life on
Mars.
I'm Alex, CEO of MarsBased here, and in today's episode we
bring you Keyven Ferland fromLaWeb Shop, canadian development
shop that specializes inShopify and e-commerce nowadays,
but they start as a designagency.
He started as a designfreelancer back in the day, a
more than 10 years ago, and wego through the you know the
(00:21):
highs and lows ofentrepreneurship when running an
agency.
How did he start?
How did he find his firstcustomer?
What was his first project like?
What technologies did they usein the past?
What technologies they usenowadays?
As I mentioned, there's a lotof highs and lows of
entrepreneurship.
We mention a lot of them in ourepisodes, especially when
(00:42):
talking about the fuckups thatwe've done as a company.
You know we're working withouta contract, some stuff like that
.
That's that's part of what wecommand.
On this episode with Keyven,it's very good to be able to
interview people on the side ofservices because, as we
mentioned, we found this more onthe Spanish version of the
(01:03):
podcast, where I've recentlyinterviewed three or four owners
of agencies, and we are havingdifferent kind of conversations,
not so much the usual VC-backcompanies that you know.
They sit on a pile of money andthen they run out of money and
they have to fund raise again.
So the narrative here is alittle bit different.
We are entirely bootstrap, asyou know, as a company in a
(01:27):
smart space, but also these guys, these Canadian guys, are also
bootstrap.
Most agencies are bootstrap.
There are very few reasons whyan agency wouldn't be so.
But we discuss this and theadvantages and also the
disadvantages of runningagencies, because all that
glitters ain't gold in this case, and even though it seems like
we got all of our shit figuredout, I can tell you there's a
(01:51):
lot of shit that's yet to beuncovered, and we don't always
share on social media.
So let's jump right into thequestion of the day.
In this case, we want to knowwho was your first customer and
what was your first project.
We have talked extensivelyabout our first clients here at
MarkzFace, and we do so in every, every second episode, so we
want to hear from you.
(02:11):
Give us the answers in thecomment section down below if
you're on YouTube, or share themon social media, if you will.
We also want to wish you ahappy new year, because this is
the first episode of the yearand in a very few days we'll be
sharing what's in store forMarkzFace with the store for
startup grant in Barcelona.
(02:32):
So, if you want to stay in theknow, subscribe to our
newsletter, join our Slackcommunity and also really, very,
very helpful.
That's per usual.
If you rate it and you reviewedthis podcast on your favorite
podcasting platform, you shareit with your friends because in
2023, it was extremely,extremely helpful.
(02:53):
We reached 20,000 downloadslast year, so this podcast is
growing and it's big thanksbecause of you.
So, without further ado, let'sjump right into the episode.
Given welcome to the show.
Comança va Pretty good.
Keyven Ferland (03:10):
That's all very good.
Thank you, Alex.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (03:15):
Good to see you.
To give some context to theaudience, we had an exploration
call because our common frienddid the.
I introduced us to discusspotential projects in Shopify
Ruby on Rails.
We are like-minded agenciesworking.
You guys specialize more inShopify, you're based in Canada
and he thought it would be agood idea to chat.
(03:35):
Actually, he's been on thepodcast as well, so I encourage
our listeners to go check thatepisode out.
It's more on the technical side, but today I wanted to give
voice to another superinteresting company and we've
been recording episodes withbootstrap companies agencies.
I'm finding this niche to besuper interesting for our
audience and so welcome again.
(03:55):
And maybe you want to introducewhat your company does.
What does LaWeb Shop do?
Keyven Ferland (04:00):
So LaWeb Shop is a company founded in 2010,.
I was a web designer at firstand I just had too many projects
to do, so I started hiringpeople to help me out, and now
LaWeb Shop is 26 people.
Five themes building websites,e-commerce.
We connect platforms and, yeah,we have a small team of
(04:22):
marketing for e-commercecompanies and brands, and we're
having a lot of fun doing ithere in Quebec, canada, the
French province of Canada.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardi (04:34):
Politics aside, because we might have
another thing in common, becausewe come from Barcelona, but
this is not the topic of theepisode.
We've got many similarities,but you guys started earlier and
so 2010,.
I don't know the situation ofCanada, but it was pretty rough
in Europe.
We were in a deep crisis,especially in Spain, and so it
(04:57):
was only for the crazy to starta company and to become an
entrepreneur.
As a matter of fact, we startedin 2014, even though we kind of
like noodled with a couple ofprojects in 2000.
Late 2011, 2012, didn't kind ofbecome anything, and because we
didn't know how to play outwith products, we didn't know
(05:19):
how to create companies, we justcreated an agency and we said
let's just develop shit forother people.
What was your first projectlike?
Do you remember the firstproject and you got any funny
stories with the first projects?
Keyven Ferland (05:32):
In 2007, I was freelancing doing web design and
slicing PSD.
In that time.
I don't know if you remember,but there was a website where
you could hire people to youjust like upload your PSD,
photoshop and then they send youback the HTML CSS files at that
(05:53):
time.
So I was doing like thePhotoshop files and the slicing
part of it.
So, and the first project wasfor a company here that was it
was a pretty big retail companyhere in San Gnezo in Quebec.
The company started like in1980, I think it was a family
(06:17):
company.
They had like 10 or 12 stores.
So it was my first project.
It's called matzak matzakca.
You guys could see it.
They are like pretty big, butit was the first project that I
did.
I think I sold it for like$5,000 and I did it all by
myself, which was like kind ofdifficult, kind of hard to do
(06:41):
because like there was like alot of things to do.
But yeah, at that time 2007, thefirst one without like any any
CMS behind it just yeah, htmlCSS and mock-up and design web
design.
So yeah, because the reason whyI started doing freelancing at
(07:01):
that time wasn't because Iwanted to do it or I wanted to
be a digital nomad or something.
It was more because, like, Isent out like 20, 25 resume to
companies around.
They just didn't know what theweb designer was doing.
So they all asked me back doyou do a logo or infography or
(07:23):
like any other stuff?
I was like no, no, I designwebsites.
And they were like but we don'tneed web designers for that
when they build websites.
At the time it was only likeprogrammers or yeah, that's why
I went freelancing and afterthat, yeah, first year was
pretty rough, but it startedgoing pretty well after that.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (07:47):
Tell me more, because to me, $5,000,
I'm assuming Canadian for firstproject sounds pretty good if
you went solo.
I mean I don't know if it'slike the, if it was a standard
back then or not.
Our first project was 700 USD,out of which we only got 200.
So it was an awful project.
(08:07):
In spite of that, weincorporated it because we
wanted to make it legal from theget go, and so we were bleeding
money for the first monthsbecause we had to incorporate.
It was more expensive, we hadto pay like 300 euros per month
out of taxes and stuff and tokeep the company going, but we
had only 200 USD in the bank.
So it was really stupid.
(08:29):
Well, you know it got betterafterwards, but did you?
have any similar experience atthe first project.
You know the typical thingslike oh, this project without
contract I did like this guydidn't pay me, or you know this
kind of things.
Keyven Ferland (08:42):
I won't say it comes like every year, once a
year, but there's always one tieand that they play the card
that they just I don't know theydidn't understand or they I
don't know so and you start likearguing or sending like emails
back and forth and after thatyou just like, okay, whatever, I
mean like these guys probablydoing it like a lot of times, so
(09:06):
we just like I just moved tosomething more important.
But yeah, I think in the earlydays, I mean actually, I think
it's like, I think it's actuallythe product.
The $5,000 project that I didabout for March was like the
first big one, but I did one fora university group of students
(09:32):
in the psychology.
I think it was for $300.
But I mean I still have a jobat that time, so it was only to
buy, to buy booze, I guess.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (09:46):
Well, that's quite a lot of booze,
unless you live in Sweden, whichamounts to a couple pints only.
Well, one of the things that Iwanted you to talk more about
Shopify, because obviously, Ithink in 2010, shopify was still
not around.
So maybe you did.
Did you specialize from thevery beginning?
Like, how did you find thething that you wanted to
specialize on?
(10:06):
I'll give you some context,right?
So, because we didn't know, andwe didn't know any better when
we started, we were like we'regoing to do only one thing and
do it pretty fucking wellbecause we're only three people,
right, and so we chose to doweb development in Ruby and
Rails.
And so, coincidentally, westarted also using Angular,
because one of the firstprojects required a lot of
(10:26):
JavaScript or like, yeah, fuckit.
React was not a thing andAngular was about to be stable.
And so Ruby, my two co-foundersthey had been working with it
in the previous company, so itwas an easy choice, right?
How was this choice for youguys?
How did you kind of narrow downwhat you wanted to do?
How did you find out where wasyour product market fit?
Keyven Ferland (10:49):
Yeah, and at that time we specialized in
WordPress development.
And the reason why I went withWordPress because I don't
remember the name of the guy,but once, when I was freelance,
a guy from Montreal hired me todo web designs, for he was a web
developer and he was buildingwebsites with WordPress.
(11:11):
At that time, even if WordPresswas more a blog CMS, with this
project I realized that we wereable to do mostly whatever we
wanted with the framework andwith WordPress.
So once I hired Philip, thefirst web developer at the web
shop and Philip's still workingwith us 13 years later.
(11:34):
But yeah, he was.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Actually, there's a pretty funnystory because I'm from Canada
so I play hockey a lot, so Iwent to play on the afternoon.
I went playing hockey.
It's like you just pay $5 to goplay with who, just like people
(11:58):
, that goes to the ring and playhockey.
So I went there In the roomafter the game, I start talking
with the guy and with the guysin there, and Philip was there.
So he was a skateboarder sametype as I was, but he told me
that he was studying webdevelopment and he was searching
(12:23):
for a place to work afterschool, which was a couple of
weeks later.
So I told him to come by thehouse because I was still
working in my basement at thattime.
So he came by the house, wetalked about what were the
project and everything, andthat's how it started.
For six months he was comingevery morning at my house and we
(12:48):
were working on my basementwith the kids around.
It was pretty neat.
But, yeah, so I chose WordPressat that time because I needed
something to make sure that wewere able to give our clients a
CMS to manage our websitewithout adding too much.
So that's why we went that way.
(13:10):
And the SEO was pretty goodbecause it was a blog platform.
So for everyone website that webuilt, the organic part of the
semantic was really neat.
So it was good for our clientsand I think it was the smart
just at that time.
And we fastly.
(13:31):
We became a WordPressspecialized company in Quebec,
which helped us out to win a lotof product and contracts after
that.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (13:40):
And Wendy to Shopify enter the scene
in your story.
Keyven Ferland (13:45):
We had a pretty rough experience with some
clients in 2013, 2014, where webuilt a custom e-commerce
platform with Ruby on Rails andSpreeCommerce and Solidus.
At that time we started withSpreeCommerce and, after that,
solidus.
It was pretty rough for ourclients, for our teams, but we
(14:09):
loved the tech, but it was likeit cost a lot of money and it
was hard to maintain and afterlaunch and everything.
So in 2016 or 2017, I don'tremember we built our first
website with Shopify, because itwas like I don't know, it was
more, easier and faster to goonline for a client and then we
(14:31):
could have them to bring morecustomers and make more revenues
.
And when I sold the company in2020 to a retail group here in
Quebec, they needed all theother e-commerce websites to be
moved to Shopify.
So that's where we had a bigturnaround, where we probably
(14:56):
built like 50, 55 Shopifywebsites since 2020.
So that's where we became abigger part of our stack.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (15:07):
Funny that you mentioned spree
commerce.
They didn't want to go intothat, but uh, yeah, that was our
first.
Maybe must have been like thesecond for a we had Into into
commerce, because our firstproject was also must have been
2015, probably 16, I might bewrong with we Shopify back then,
when Shopify was Super staticand it was good.
(15:29):
He had like the yeah, the APIswere good, but kind like, if you
had to change anything from thecheckout or some of the
critical screens, you couldn'tdo it.
It was super enclosed and itwas, you know, hard to modify,
right.
And and so we, this Germany,this German company, this gold
sap tails, which is a companythat we had on and off since
(15:49):
2015 they built a platform.
They had built a platform MVPthat didn't scale, that allowed
them or their clients to tocreate physical and digital
books out of what's upconversations, right.
So it's an angular app kind oflike, you know, drag and drop a
graphical editor, you createyour books and you add images
and whatnot and you just dragand drop shit around.
(16:11):
And but we was sitting on topof Shopify and we developed a
ton of features that didn'texist in Shopify back then
because it was kind of likeMulti-store, multi currency, all
that in Shopify didn't have it,and so we had to build it, and
we build it, and you knowafterwards, obviously Shopify
did it.
We didn't.
(16:31):
Oh yeah, we didn't quitespecialize in Shopify until like
2020 or 21, because up untilthen Shopify wasn't that popular
.
I mean, maybe it it rankednumber four, number five in the
wall, and but in 2014 definitelywas number 10, right or number
15, behind all of this youmentioned, behind Magento, be
(16:51):
behind Presta shop, behind allof these other options, and so
whenever we had a potential leadfor a for for project and it
was e-commerce, we know it was abattle that was already lost.
If we mentioned Shopify, nobodywanted it.
Nobody was.
Everybody was like what'sShopify?
Why is it that expensive If Ican't do Magento, or or, or or
(17:12):
Presta shop and whatnot?
So it was a very uphill battle,seems like you guys, because
you were also using WooCommerce,right and and spree commerce.
So maybe spree commerce was notvery popular though.
So how were you?
How are you selling this?
Maybe WooCommerce was more moremore of a standard choice.
So, for people who didn't havea clear understanding that maybe
(17:32):
they wanted Presta shop orMagento, did you just decline
the conversation, or or did youaccommodate it, or was your
strategy then?
Keyven Ferland (17:40):
being able to sell my first website at $5,000,
like in 2017.
I think I'm a pretty good saleman.
So I just I just I mean my teamwere like at the time.
Fred Boislin is now workinglike it's an engineering Shopify
, but at that time he was comingout of school and he was a he
(18:00):
was pretty passionate about withRuby on rails and he Is the one
in 2013 that that found spreecommerce and told me we need to
build a e-commerce website withwith that technology.
And when I went to the client, Imean in 2013, here in sangnae,
which is like five hours northMontreal like it's pretty, it's
(18:22):
pretty country, like it, it's,it's a part, I mean like I think
there's like 200,000 peoplelike in the city and around.
So it's it's, it's pretty small.
So the tech, the techDiscussion at that time wasn't
like the first thing that theclients wanted to hear.
They want to make sure that the, the design, was personalized.
(18:43):
They wanted to make sure thatyou would, it would be easy for
them to to manage and and beable to have like people coming
to the website.
So they were, they were, theywere pretty confident on on on
my behalf and making sure thatTechnology that I proposed was
was a good one and and Iconvinced them to to go with
(19:07):
with free commerce, it wasn'thard actually.
So we probably, I think, betweenthree third 2013 and 2016, we
probably build six to sevene-commerce platform with which
be commerce, and I think thereare still two of them that are
still online right now.
So it's a Work well, but I mean, the part where it was
(19:33):
difficult is is just thatPre-commerce and solid this
after that.
If you guys I mean I think youwork with it you need someone to
always like work on on the code, always work on the, the
optimization and for for smallbusinesses, that's a lot of
(19:53):
money to to just put onamendments and they want to put
money to to get money back.
So it was.
It was that's the part where itwas pretty hard with the
clients because they didn't do,they didn't want to to put money
like every month to make surethat the code stick clean, that
the website go as fast as theywanted to to go, so so that's
(20:18):
probably why we, once Shopifybecame bigger, we, we just it
was like just the smart move toto move to Shopify.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardi (20:28):
Actually so.
Is there any you know anyreason outside of well
technology?
Of course you mentioned these,these other two alternatives to
Shopify.
They were not that great.
We always found that the, theopen source Ruby and rails
projects for pre-packagedsoftware, namely CMSs, a
(20:48):
commerce's ERPs and stuff likethat.
They're okay but they're nevergreat.
They were never great forenterprise.
They were never great for bigprojects.
They were good for smallprojects, right, and usually was
one, two people maintainingthem and we tried them all.
Like I remember we tried themall.
We did some Comparisons backback in the day when we were
starting the company, becauseobviously people wanted an
(21:09):
alternative to war press and wecouldn't find any Like.
The closest one we found waslocomotive CMS, right, and back
back in our time it was not thatgreat.
It has become something prettygood over the years, but back in
the time it was not that great.
Same with the, with the, withthe commerce solutions.
But luckily Shopify becamesomething like exploded all of a
(21:29):
sudden.
Shopify was everywhere, becameone of the biggest companies on
earth and it still hasn'tdebunked the myth of rails.
Doesn't scale like look,because the commerce platform in
the world is built with Robionrails and its scales too, but
anyways, digressing here.
So basically any other reasonbesides technology and maybe
your physical proximity, eventhough Canada's fucking huge but
(21:52):
doesn't help you to get moreprojects, shopify because you're
Canadian and they are Canadiantoo?
Keyven Ferland (21:58):
I mean most, most of the most of our clients
don't know that Shopify isCanadian.
So I don't think it helps.
It helps us like a lot, and Imean like Maybe, if I mean
there's an office in Montrealwhere I can, I can go by me like
a or ourselves Representative,or the agent that we have at
Shopify, I mean they all, theyall work like remotely, so
(22:22):
Sometimes I don't even knowwhere, where, where they are in
the world.
So I don't think I don't thinkit really helped us get more
customer now, or or it's easierto convince them it's, it's it
just did.
The platform is just prettysolid.
I mean it's really solid.
So it's a.
I mean, every time I launch aShopify website, I'm pretty
(22:46):
jealous of the back office, theadmin, the way the reports are
coming out, and I mean I thinkI'm probably gonna build my home
e-commerce just to have acouple of sales every week and
just having fun with it, and youknow it's a pretty fun platform
(23:09):
to work with.
What are you gonna sell?
Probably close, I mean, sincewhen I was like 17, I was
working in the stage shop andthe board shop, you know.
So I was a fan of you know,like the time, welcome dance,
all that clothes that I don'tknow, extreme sports kind of
(23:32):
clothes, and I wanted to startmy own clothing company with
friends at that time, so maybeI'll find a way to just sell
t-shirts or something like that.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (23:45):
Maybe how about merch of the company?
Because one of the things thatmy friends always say like ah,
what do you get this cool coffee.
I mean, we got coffee mugs fromthe company.
We got like hoodies, we gott-shirts, we got a lot of cool
shit but we never like, we don'tsell it.
It's only for our team and forour clients, right?
But you know, here's the crazyidea.
So maybe we could set up aShopify section on our website
(24:09):
and sell this merch.
I don't know, probably it's toomuch management overhead for
the little returns it couldbring.
But yeah, I agree, I had a lotof fun setting up Shopify.
We do have one, oh you do haveone, you do have one.
Does it actually worth theinvestment or not really Like do
people?
Keyven Ferland (24:27):
buy stuff.
It's more about no, no, it'smore for our employees.
People don't really buy I meanour brand yet because, like,
even if we're pretty big inQuebec, we were not like I don't
know.
I mean it's pretty cool, but Imean it's cool for people who's
working there.
(24:47):
So, but I mean we had funbuilding it because, like we the
design of it it's pretty cool.
So I invite you to go check itout.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (24:59):
I'll go check it out.
I mean, it's a great idea, butit's kind of like that stuff.
When they say don't do businesswith friends, it's usually not
because you can damage yourrelationship, which is obvious.
But it's very common that theywill always say, yeah, yeah,
totally buy whatever like yousell, and then they don't
fucking do it.
Right, it's very easy to sayyes, so don't validate business
(25:19):
hypothesis with friends orfamily, because they always say
yes until they have to actuallyopen the wallet, right.
So I don't know if you couldactually sell something.
Now I'm back to Shopify, though.
I'm pretty interested in howyou guys tractor this.
I don't know if it's a pivotactually, right.
So you started doing thisdesign for websites, then you
(25:40):
did the spoke applications, thenyou kind of specialized in
e-commerce.
For us, for instance, it'ssomething like it's really small
in the company.
Normally we still stay with thebespoke applications and team
augmentation for big corporates.
But every now and then, likeonce, twice a year, we get one
or two Shopify projects justbecause it's built in Ruby on
Rails and there's nobody elsedoing it in Barcelona or maybe
(26:02):
there's like a couple otheragencies, but they're not either
that well-known or great, butit's not a big business line for
us.
However, we know there's a tonof potential.
What would be your advice forpeople starting up a Shopify
agency maybe nowadays, ore-commerce?
Keyven Ferland (26:20):
The client.
They don't really care aboutwhat's really the tech behind.
What they want is somethingthat's gonna give them revenue,
that's gonna be easy to manageand it's gonna be fast.
It's gonna be a greatexperience for the clients and
customers.
So that's the main focus.
So they don't want to like puttoo much money on building a
(26:44):
project and they want like a bigROI.
So Shopify for an e-commerceagency is probably it's the best
way to make sure to answer allof these questions and needs for
the clients.
So and once you start doingthat, you start like having the
(27:05):
speech and the talk that for theclients it's gonna resonate.
For them it's gonna be.
They're gonna trust you becausethey're gonna understand.
They're gonna see that youunderstand the reality.
I mean, with the era that we'rein right now, I mean like
people don't have a lot of moneyand the money they have, they
need to invest it in somethingthat's gonna give them like
(27:29):
money back and it's not gonna belike hard to manage, hard to
use, and their customer is gonnabe happy using it.
So that's why Shopify is.
I mean it's the way.
And for people who starte-commerce agency, they really
need to speak the same languageas all of these entrepreneurs
(27:52):
that I mean it's pretty hard.
I mean every most of my clientsright now.
I thought too.
I mean they're looking to golike smaller because the money's
not there.
The money's just not there.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (28:08):
There's .
You've raised a topic that Ireally don't agree with.
You said clients don't reallyrequire certain technologies,
they don't care that much aboutthe technology.
They want something that givesgood ROI On ROI 100%.
But clients are really in myopinion, at least in our
experience they are toounnecessarily opinionated on
(28:31):
technology, even when they'renot technical.
They come and they say like, oh, I want this, I want that, of
course.
And when we advise ontechnology, we said, oh, we're
gonna build it I don't knowusing Nodejs in the backend and
view on the front end.
They're like, yeah, but I heardReact is better and React has
got this and that, and then,maybe, why don't you use Python
(28:53):
for the backend?
I was like, well, you asked meright.
But usually it's not verywell-founded or very
well-grounded opinions.
Usually it's like I heard it'shearsay.
It's like my cousin told methat Rails doesn't scale.
My cousin told me that Angularis dead.
How do you deal with thesesituations in your company?
Keyven Ferland (29:16):
I always give the choice to the client.
I mean, if they heard thatanother technology is better and
that we don't do it because Imean we're not gonna do every
technology we can do that I meanwe need to be expert in other
(29:37):
niche, you know so I just givethem the option to go find some
another agency elsewhere that'sgonna build tech that they
believe in.
But after I told them that I'mgoing to say that the same thing
as I said earlier, I mean thetech is not important right now,
(29:59):
because what's really importantfor them, like the strategy and
the objective that they need isto make sure that they get an
ROI, that they get somethingthat's going to work for their
money, and they need a partnerin their project and with the
company, and we are the studioto do so.
(30:20):
So we're going to be close tothem, we're going to grow with
them.
So they don't need to careabout the tech, because if they
be bigger, they probably hire aCDO and the CDO is going to have
opinions and going to buildteams with the tech that he
thinks it's the best one to growwith and he's going to probably
(30:41):
stick to it.
So that's what I said.
I'm going to put my CDO out forthem and I'm like that's how my
teams are built, that's how webuild projects.
You have to trust me on thatand after that, most of the time
, 99% of the time, they say okay, go ahead, I'll trust you.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (31:04):
Maybe it's because of these 20 years
in the sector that they hear youmore than they hear me, but I'm
starting to accumulate greathair here.
If you can say it like this,this is also a lot of years in
the industry.
How do you see the feature ofShopify?
I mean they've been through arough patch, but I mean they had
a little bit of a downfall, butwhen you're that high, even if
(31:25):
you fall, you're still very highin comparison with other
competitors, right?
So of course, they laid offpeople, they lost value per
share and in the stock marketand whatnot, but they're still
considered as a top notchcompany, tier one and a
reference in not only Ruby andRails but web development and
e-commerce and pretty mucheverything.
(31:46):
The product and design ineverything.
They're just masterminds.
Their technical blog posts areexcellent, especially when it
comes to the last ones.
They shared some insight intotheir DevOps, infrastructure and
whatnot is mind fucking blowing.
What do you see this is goingto be?
After we had a boom ine-commerce in 2020 and 2021
(32:10):
because of the pandemic whichdidn't quite follow up in 22 and
now 23 numbers are going down,slowly picking back up now, but
I don't know.
Do you see we're going to goback to the pandemic levels or
this is here to stay and it'splateauing.
Keyven Ferland (32:31):
I mean, I think since 2015,.
I'm pretty sure that the futureof web development will be a
no-code future, a DIY future.
So Shopify I mean we're havingfun customizing it, like a lot
of fun doing it, but I'm prettysure that in the future it's
(32:56):
going to be a no-code futurewhere the platform will be like
so nicely built that you'regoing to integrate it and
connect it with others, but Idon't think there's going to be
any more web development Fromthat.
I think that Shopify is acompany that is really.
(33:20):
It is in a really good spotbecause of the quality of all
the functionalities and all thelast development that they did.
The B2B part is getting biggerand better.
The App Store is getting really, really nice too.
(33:44):
There's really nicefunctionalities there that you
cannot for your client.
Because all of that, I justthink that right now it's
probably more of a calm periodof time or a calm era, but I
mean, in three to five yearsthey're going to be number one
(34:05):
and they're probably going tointegrate AI at some point,
where you're just going to givebetter experience for your
clients.
I don't think why theyshouldn't do it.
They're probably going to bethe first ones to do so Once
they get there, I think it'sgoing to be pretty huge.
(34:26):
I don't see any competitorbeing able to.
I don't think Magento, I don'tthink Big Commerce, whocommerce.
I don't see any othercompetitor, or even Wix or
Squarespace, that havee-commerce section or a part of
the platform.
(34:47):
In my mind, they're freakingnumber one and they're going to
stay for a long time youmentioned.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (34:56):
I mean what I hear, what I read between
the lines in your answer, isthat we're fucked.
Basically, our companies aredoomed because no code is coming
.
Obviously, we got all of theseagents and Verso and all of
these companies that on top ofno code they can actually build
(35:16):
fucking websites and entiredevelopment projects
automatically.
When are we becoming redundant?
How will you adapt as a companyto this?
We're taking a look at all ofthese.
We think it's too early forthat and there will still be
always clients that want thisartisanal touch to the industry
(35:42):
that we bring that, maybe thegeneric software factories and
generally companies.
They will suffer first becausethey will lose a lot of share of
wallet before we actually findout because we're too small.
And then you know, with three,four, five, six, 12 clients at
the time, we can sustain.
But these companies that havegot hundreds of clients, they
(36:04):
will go to dozens of clients ina matter of a year or two, and
so I think it's too early for us.
But I want to know your vision.
Keyven Ferland (36:12):
In our company we have now five teams.
We have one team that buildwebsite with the WordPress and
Shopify.
We have one team that build APIand Internet or more like a
connect website more closer toapplication.
We have a support for WordPressand after launch team.
(36:35):
We have a hosting team and amarketing team.
So we make sure that we recoverlike every part and from there
every year I'm looking at mynumbers and see if there's a
grow or in which team there's agrow, and for the past two years
(36:56):
two, three years the grow arein the support, after launch and
the marketing team.
That's where the bigger growthin our teams are Building
website, custom websites,artisanal ones, like you said.
We have bigger clients, biggerprojects, but we're, like for
(37:21):
the last five years, like it'sthe same numbers of projects
that we ate that there's.
There's no growth there.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (37:29):
Yeah, the good thing about these kind
of projects I mean thepre-packaged software, namely
CMSs and e-commerce and similartools is that they can.
There's a huge part of themarket is self-service, right,
so it's people who just installthat software themselves and
then they request help.
Right, so you can actuallyservice them by creating content
(37:50):
on your website, hostingwebinars, having these
non-loadable PDFs and whatnot,and you will attract them here
in an early part of theirbusiness, why?
But you also get the other onesthat actually need the help in
the end to end solution right,so they need to conceptualize
the application, to design it,then to pick up the best
(38:13):
e-commerce solution,installation maintenance and
whatnot.
So all the end to end solution,as I was mentioning.
What are you like?
Are you going to change yourmarketing efforts because of
that, or are you going to focusmore on these?
Because I think in two, fiveyears, everybody will more or
less be able to install stuff ontheir own.
They'll be less.
(38:33):
Help me to do 100% of a project, because it will be so easy,
like Shopify could be.
You know, it's kind of likeWordPress.
Pretty much everyone caninstall WordPress right now just
one, two, three buttons.
A wizard Shopify too, in asense, but maybe it's not as
popular.
Maybe it's perceived assomething much more technical
than a block or a WordPressright.
(38:54):
Are you focusing your marketingefforts on that, or what is
your strategy for next year?
Keyven Ferland (38:59):
Since 2020, we're not calling ourselves an
agency, we're calling ourselvesa studio because we're like the
extension of a client.
So because in the future I mean, if I had like another company
in any other industry, I'dprobably hire, like a designer,
(39:19):
a web developer, a copywriter.
I mean probably build my ownagency in the house because I
want people to be able to workon my platform, on my web part
of the company, like every day.
So, and I don't want to pay toomuch money to people that don't
understand my reality.
So I think that from there, I'mpretty sure that there's a lot
(39:45):
of companies that moving there.
I mean I have clients now thatthey send us their web design,
their markups, they buildthemselves, they have a designer
in house.
They're like in the automotiveindustry they're sending cars,
but they still have a webdesigner.
That is pretty good.
And we get their markups withFigma or X-Day and I mean it's
(40:11):
pretty well done.
So more and more, we need toadapt our companies, our studio,
to where our clients are.
So that's why our marketingstrategies are built that way.
So we're the marketing teamthat you don't have.
We're the web development teamthat you don't have or that you
wish you have, and maybe andthat's why our support team is
(40:34):
pretty good too because a lot ofclients they got like this big
WordPress website and after thelaunch, the agency just left
them there, like it's a onenight stand.
You know, though, we're like no, we're going to marry you,
we're going to take care of you,so, and they like that.
Even if we didn't build awebsite, we still want to
(40:56):
support them and make sure thatthey get everything done
correctly.
So I think it's more aboutbeing able to adapt to our
clients and making sure that wehire and form people the way
that our clients evolve in need.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (41:13):
Awesome .
So time for the last twoquestions.
One of them is pretty short,but this is a signature question
of the podcast.
Right, he gets to answer thisand it's pretty uncomfortable,
but it's the price you have topay for not preparing for this,
because nobody prepares for thispodcast.
But we want to democratizefailure and fuck ups, right?
So there's a lot of technicalfuck ups in the industry and
(41:36):
I've shared tons of them in thispodcast.
What is the biggesttechnological fuck up you've
done with your company?
And quantify it with money.
So how much money was lostthere?
Money was bright and shinyuntil now, but now you get
exposed.
They were a spark.
Keyven Ferland (41:54):
I'm going to go the really honest way and really
, as I said, that I sold thecompany in 2020.
Actually, a group just got meout of ship.
Really, we were in 2017, wewere 32 people.
The project that we built in2017, because I think we went
(42:17):
from 13 to 32 people in twoyears, 2015 to 2017.
And the foundation of theagency, they just weren't there.
So most of the project that webuilt at that time, it was
pretty bad quality Not enoughcode review, not enough quality
(42:39):
insurance, not enough tests, notenough.
We weren't listening to ourclient and we didn't implicate
them in the project as much aswe needed at that time.
So there was a lot of projectthat went like I mean that we
lost money and we lost money.
It's close to a million dollars, so there was a lot of money
(43:02):
and that's probably where I gotmy gray hair and yeah, it was
hard.
And after 2017, what I did is Isaid, okay, I need to move back
to where I come from, like whenwe were a small team in 2020,
in 2010, sorry, that's where Iscaled down the company to eight
or nine people.
(43:22):
In 2020, in 2029, sorry.
So AujourdaSOUND stake I mean13 people, 32 in two years and
two years later back to eight,nine people.
But I mean, like we, thedawnfall of it was like
extremely stressful Me, on myfamily, on the employees.
(43:45):
There were times where we wereable we weren't able to to even
give money to our, to ouremployee, like for five to six,
seven weeks.
I mean the people, some peopleleft, some people stayed, some
people are still working besideme, so, even if it was really
hard, but yeah, that's, that'sprobably the the two biggest and
(44:10):
hardest year of my life andhopefully I won't, I won't, I
won't see that again or livethat again In the 2029,.
I went for a pitch to get acontract where we needed to
build two websites Shoso Pop andTlerafil.
It was like in Deshaillon, inQuebec, so it's like three hours
(44:32):
north, two hours south of whereI live.
It was the December 23rd, sojust before Christmas.
It was a $300,000 contract thatI wanted to go get for for
organ, for a group and our teamand everybody was super excited.
It was like, yeah, I mean we, Imean, like I said, we, we
(44:55):
didn't have enough money to, toto pay our employees.
So I went to Deshaillon butbefore, when I hit the road.
Like 25, 30 minutes aftergetting on the road, my tire
just exploded.
So I had to change the tire.
Yeah, like it was snowing, itwas like it was cold.
My girlfriend was with me atthe time, so I changed the tire
(45:18):
Like it took me.
It took me like an hour more toto get there to the meeting and
once I get there, I start themeeting.
The pitch I was like, like Isaid, pretty stressful and I
think 15 minutes into it, the,the CEO of the of the group.
He looked at me and said areyou looking for a job?
I was like what?
(45:40):
And said, yeah, looking, areyou looking for a job?
Because I want someone like youin the company that's going to
build all of our websites.
That's going to be, is going to.
You won't talk shit to me.
He's going to like, he's goingto save me the real thing about
what we need.
He was tired to to being liketo, to to meet all these big
(46:01):
agencies that we're selling himlike big project, but just for
themselves, not not listening toto his need.
So we talk, we, we, we talkback in 20, in January 2020, and
then, march nine, we signed thepapers and we, we moved the
team to to that group and March13th in Quebec the pandemic
(46:23):
started.
So it was.
It was pretty awesome.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (46:28):
Wow, there'll be.
That was definitely a very bigemotional roller coaster, right,
and I appreciate the honesty.
I think the block has episodealone.
I the this answer alone hasbeen worth the entire episode.
So we very rarely get thislevel of honesty in this
question.
We always I mean mostly we getbullshit Like I hired the wrong
(46:49):
person.
You know there's like everybodyhired the wrong person.
So very rarely we get these verydetailed stories and I think
that's very, very helpfulactually, because it helps to to
visualize and to externalizethat everybody fucks shit up and
we all do, like you know.
I mean, the one I was going totell cannot compare to this one,
(47:11):
it doesn't really make sense,but I share on a weekly basis.
I share fuck ups I do with thecompany and so thank you, thank
you for doing that.
For last question then, very,very, very quick, because I
really appreciate your time howcan we help you?
You've been very helpful to us.
So how can we and our community, listeners, subscribers and
followers of March base, how canwe help you?
Keyven Ferland (47:33):
I'm not pretty good at asking help most of the
time, so it's probably thehardest one.
Yeah, I don't know, it's justthat we're we're I see ourselves
as a small studio in, like fivehours north of Montreal.
So like we're, you know we'rein the country.
We're a real resilient team.
(47:54):
For like 13, 16 years, I meanmy, my, my dream for our team is
it would be to to to experiencebuilding projects to clients
overseas, even even if we are inin, in, like in the mountains
in Quebec, like in the north ofof it.
(48:14):
So so I don't know if we have achance to, I don't know just
just collaborate with the, withother agencies or other
companies, just to just to workon some like pretty fun,
exciting project overseas withpeople with different cultures,
just for the experience, not forthe money, just for the
experience.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (48:35):
It's funny.
We will also want clients fromoverseas.
So let's, why don't we swap ourclients?
And we'll do it for the money?
I'm going to be honest, becausemoney is is bigger.
Prices are bigger in the US,maybe in Canada, I don't know,
but definitely bigger budgetsout there than in Europe.
But no worries, we could swapclients anytime I'll I'll.
I'll send you some detailsafterwards.
(48:56):
We could sign the contractright away.
All right, even.
Thank you very much.
Any, any, any parting words,anything you want to share with
us, anything that you got comingup in the company that you want
to announce here, or somethingyou want to share.
You got 30 seconds of glory.
Keyven Ferland (49:09):
Oh, thanks.
That means like this if youguys want to want to, to buy our
, our hoodies or our t-shirts,we are.
We even have a hat, so so, yeah, I invite you to to go to our,
our e-commerce website and buyall of the and keep installing
Shopify.
Àlex RodrÃguez Bacardit (49:29):
All right, thank you very much.
You're welcome, merci beaucoup.
So thank you so much.
I love it.
Bye.
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