Beyond the AI demo: Turning prototypes into real businesses

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody and welcome to Live on Mars.
I'm Alex, ceo and founder ofMarspace, and in this episode we
bring you Ricardo Hekir,founder of BetterPic, and we
also bring along an old friendfrom the podcast, tania Van
Gastel, from the multiverse AI,to discuss a lot of things AI,
image generation, AI wrappers,bootstrap companies, remote

(00:20):
raising funds for a previouslyestablished bootstrap company,
and much more.
So, without further ado, let'sjump right into this episode.
I like how you said amazing atthe countdown.
Funny is you're not Americanand I saw this meme the other

(00:47):
day.
That's like how differentcultures they react to the
different levels of quality ofstuff.
And it was like middle ground,quality, low quality, best
quality and kind of likeAmericans are like low quality
is like garbage.
And then everything else isawesome, like from 2 out of 10
to ten out of ten it's awesomeor the best thing ever, right.

(01:08):
And then there was likeeuropeans, which is kind of like
more like middle ground, andthen eastern europeans, which is
like everything is garbage,right, everything could get,
could go wrong, and maybethere's like 10 out of 10.
It's like well, we'll see, youknow I don't know I think it's

Speaker 2 (01:27):
like a half belgian, half taiwanese person.
Everything is like, let's beoptimistic about this at this
point.
You know.
So like we try to like makesure everything like runs
smoothly, I think being likehalf taiwanese automatically
just makes you it will be okay.
Everything will be okay Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm not familiar with Taiwanese culture so I don't
know.
For me as a Mediterranean, forme it's like everything else is
hard to comprehend.
For me I understand that fiveout of five, five out of 10 is
good, zero out of 10 is garbage.
10 out of 10 is amazing.
But like I don't understand howpeople like 3 out of 10 do it
so like yeah, it's good or great.

(02:07):
I don't understand that Someculture are too optimistic.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
This is like how Germans are like, if it's a 10
out of 10, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
It's okay, yeah, yeah , you're right.
Having lived in Germany, I candefinitely say that.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
I can definitely say that it's like, yeah, yeah, it's
okay for now you know, or or Irealized uh that uh the time
you're also half and I'm alsohalf mexican, now belgium.
So we maybe have like twopersonalities coming in.
So if I always say, if I'm late, I'm mexican, if I'm like on
time or like too early inbelgium, basically.
So that's uh, that helped inthe quotation in that sense I

(02:46):
swear half belgians are doingeverything like.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I don't know if you're watching formula one, but
there's max for steppa, who'shalf belgian.
There's lando norris, who arehalf belgian.
Me and ricardo are half belgian.
There's a yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
You're taking over the world.
But that's definitely somethinginteresting because in business
and I don't want to go off thistangent, but it's definitely
something that is worthdiscussing with people Maybe
having these kind of profileswhere you half and half, or the
concept of a third culture kid Ithink that's also a thing where
your mom is from Colombia, yourdad is from Germany and you're

(03:25):
born in Italy, something likethat, you're a third culture kid
.
I think it's cool, like that,and how these people navigate
the business intricacies ofdealing with Germans or dealing
with Americans and like, wow,working in Russia and stuff like
that.
And for us as an internationalcompany, it's like, oh, wow, now
I get to put on the hat of I'mworking with Americans today.
But this morning I had ameeting with catalans.

(03:50):
It was like everything was sopessimistic all the time.
It's like, yeah, it's likecatalans, like everything is
going to shit.
Um, basically so, but anyways,welcome to um.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
I guess, yeah, if you're more open, if you're half
, because, like, if you're oncegrowing up, you kind of like
trying to figure out who you are.
Am I like more belgian and I'mmore mexican?
Am I more taiwanese?
And so you're trying to figureout more.
I think you're more open todifferent culture than open to
different views.
Because of that, because you'restill trying to figure out, am
I really more belgian thanmexican?

(04:16):
How much percentage would thatbe?

Speaker 1 (04:20):
you can use it as your army knife, right, so his
army knife.
Like for me for certain, forcertain situations, I like
playing the German guy, eventhough I'm not German, I don't
even have German blood.
But you know, having some farfamily from Germany, having
lived there for three years, Ican play the German guy when I
want, and so I can use that toan advantage.
So, yeah, I can see that howthis could be positive.

(04:40):
Sorry, tanya, I cut you off.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
No, no, be positive.
Sorry I cut you off.
No, no, I completely agree andI agree like it's one of those
things also, just like you know,having lived abroad uh, for
anybody who's like lived abroad,like you said, with germany, it
will inherently make you feellike you have a little piece of
that place with you and youbecome like culturally fluent
and able to deal with likedifferent situations, navigating
, like very different kinds ofpeople, whereas, like, if you
never kind of like lived abroad,you maybe haven't had that like

(05:09):
friction, but that frictionhelps you grow a lot, you know,
I really think it makes youproblem solve like crazy.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, I always say when I'm eight, when my kids are
18, I'm going to ship themsomewhere outside of the country
.
Just like you know, you're onyour own now fix yourself.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, it's like that.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
And also you can.
It makes you more flexible torun remote or like nomadic
companies, right?
Because at a certain pointmaybe I know part of Tania's
story.
I know you lived in China andnow you're living in Barcelona,
but you were racing in Belgiumand whatnot, so I guess that it
makes you super flexible to.

(05:49):
Oh, now I'm going to bespending like five years in
Mexico or something like that,five years in whatever country.
Why do we Enough tangents.
We've got enough tangents.
I think we've broken the iceplenty.
So welcome to the show.
Welcome Tania for the secondtime.
Welcome Ricardo for the firsttime to Life on Mars.
We wanted to discuss BetterPickbecause we like giving

(06:11):
visibility to these kind ofprojects, that often they don't
get a lot of press and I don'tknow the specifics of the
company, but remote companies,bootstrap companies,
service-based companies, whichis not your case.
You have a product, but in ourcase, for instance, we don't get
a lot of press coverage becausewe sell services.
What's the sexiness in that?

(06:32):
Right?
But a podcast so specific andso niche like ours, where you
have a lot of makers andbuilders in the audience,
they're super interested inthese kind of companies.
As a matter of fact, I was justchecking and Tania's episode
has got like 3x more downloadsthan the rest of the episodes,
which I think it's veryinteresting.

(06:52):
So thank you for that.
Let's introduce a little bitbetter peak.
Probably I will have introducedthat in the intro.
I don't know, but what's yourone minute pitch, ricardo?

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, it's a funny story because I think if you
listen to tanya's and mine, wemight have some similar.
You know epithet in that sensebecause, uh, you know multiverse
and better pick where you'restill competitors in that sense.
So I think it's a really coolepisode to have, but we turn
self-heat into professionalheadshots, as tanya does.
So I think that's uh, it's areally deal.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
I just want to say and state this I am here to
learn because I will staystraight off the bat the
Multiverse AI did really well.
We're a team of three people,but we did about 350,000 revenue
total, whereas Ricardo didupwards of 5 million.
So let me re-emphasize I amhere to learn.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Who let you?

Speaker 2 (07:48):
in you, let me in you , let me in Alex.
I'm here to learn.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
No, no that's a fun thing.
It's the first time that wehave something like this.
I know that you are with AISheets right now, but as a
founder of the Multiverse AI, itmakes sense Like how did you
two actually became friends?
That's my question.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Let's do Ricardo's pitch first.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
We're not friends we are actually.
But let's do.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Ricardo's pitch first , and then Awesome yeah.
Ricardo, if you like, why don'tyou share a little more about
the numbers?
It's like insane, it'sabsolutely crazy.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Ricardo's story is like unbelievable because they
started like a year ago Exactly,I think, like a year and a half
now or a little bit less indeed.
So we started really in thesummer 2023.
I would say we're doing about1.5K in revenue Last month sorry
.
Now we're closing up the month270k per month, projected to do,
indeed, about 4 million thisyear.

(08:51):
Only in that sense.
So, yeah, we're somewhere inthe middle of, you know, hyper
growth and also like planningfor the future in that sense.
But, yeah, we're a full team ofnow 17 people fully remote,
doing about 270K per month.
It's been a crazy journey, Iwould say, but I think the most
important thing, we built areally, really great team around

(09:14):
the product and I think that'salso the reason why we're here
still.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Good.
Is that entirely bootstrapped?
If I got it correctly, good.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
So that is entirely bootstrapped.
We are going to raise somefunds, we're in the middle of
our fundraising, but up to thispoint we're fully bootstrapped.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Good.
So congratulations on beingbootstrapped, on being remote as
well, and on what you havebuilt, Because I think it's not
easy.
One of the things that wediscussed with Tanya in her
episode is that this space it'spretty crowded of a lot of
companies just getting to demophase.
It's very hard to go from demoto real product, Up to demo, up

(09:55):
to the demo stage.
How did you assemble it?
What was the initial team andwhat was required to make to
that point?
Was it just kind of like a chatGPT wrapper or majority wrapper
or something like that?
What did it take to beat thestage of demoing only?

Speaker 3 (10:11):
Yeah, so I call it the valley of debt because that
was basically the journey I feelnot just us but many people
went through.
And the valley of that is whenI bought the company, december
2023, from the co-founder andcto still today, and so that was
the first of december and Ithink on the 22nd of december
you know it was christmasshowing it to my parents, like

(10:33):
look what we have.
And so they they showed, Ishowcased the application.
They said it kind of lookedlike a school website, which
technically it kind of did uh,and I showcased and they got the
results and it was just purebadness.
Like it was so bad and tanyaprobably knows it as well like
the first months and years.
Like it's so bad, like youalmost feel ashamed to like sell

(10:55):
it.
Uh, I think our refund rateback in the days was about 10,
10 to 11, so it was just so badlike you're almost ashamed to do
it.
But I did feel like it was thequestion what is a time where it
will be good enough?
And then, if it's good enough,you won't see a reason why it
would go back to professionalphotographer.
So you kind of have to push thelimits and like just keep on

(11:18):
bootstrapping until that pointwhere the technology catches up,
because it's just a catch upplay.
At some point the technologywill catch up and then you have
this hyper growth which weexperienced from around
September-ish last year.
The technology caught up andthen we kind of scaled from
there, but before that it wasvery bad.
You just have to take the betthat you're building towards

(11:39):
something that will scale atsome point and make it as good
as possible in that sense andjust refund people that were
just very angry at us sayingthis is crap.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
What was the initial team?
Then you mentioned a CTO.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
The initial team was me, a CTO.
I had the advantage that I hadI still own a marketing agency
until two days ago.
So that is something we use toleverage as a marketing team.
So we had a lot of marketingknowledge in and I think that's
also why we grew so fast isbecause we had some hours of the
team or the inside better pickin that sense.
So that is what we leverage inorder to operate the business.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
To think about like this kind of.
So the reason I wanted to focuson the demo stage is that my
impression is that we launchedtoo many AI projects that are
going nowhere and we sort ofpolluted the web.
Let me share a story, personalstory.
Two weeks ago I saw a tweetthat was something like oh, it
was super outrageous.
Somebody like ranting aboutsomething.
It's like wow, I could create adeath metal song with these
lyrics.
Right, and as you can tell, Ilike death metal by my outfit

(12:51):
death and black metal.
So the thing is like I Googledor I perplexed it, which is not
a very good verb AI songcreators and I opened 10 of them
, Six of them, they were exactlythe same thing, changing the
colors, Like Verbatim.
It was the same copy, yeah, andthey didn't work.
The other ones there were twoof them that seemed to work, but

(13:16):
they were super expensive.
So, like they require, you know, registration, credit card,
this and that configuration, Isaid like it's too complex, I
just want something like 30seconds, something stupid.
And the two that seemed to notrequire any of these, I got to
the point of creating the songand by the moment I clicked
generate, it gave a server error.

(13:37):
So it was clearly a deadcompany.
This is there, my point beinglike hey, is it too easy to
create and launch these kind ofprojects nowadays, and how many
fake competitors have you found?
This is a question for both ofyou.
Actually, I've had.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
You want to shoot first yeah, I mean honestly,
alex, I feel like polluting theweb it's.
You know, it used to happen inlittle silos, right, like we
would have our little MySpace orlike WordPress or blog or
whatever, and you'd pollute theweb on the little like subdomain
.
But now you have lovable, youhave bold, you have all of these

(14:18):
things and people pollute adomain.
I don't mind that.
To be honest, like I'll besuper direct and say that I kind
of love how people are able tobring their vision to life, um,
and really be just like supercreative with like anything that
they want to build.
Like this has never, everhappened before.
You know, I can give you anexample.

(14:40):
My dad is the kind of personwho's always like engineers are
so dumb, why don't they justlike build this?
And then he calls me and he'slike Tanya, now you know how to
build things, why don't you justbuild this?
And I'm like, well, he's theidiot guy.
Well, the problem you aretalking about will take about
like 600 hours to build, noteven like maintain, and then it

(15:03):
will still only work like 80% ofthe way.
That's what I used to tell himand he would be like I'm very
unhappy about it.
And then now I tell him likewell, you know, you can try and
do it with AI and you can talkto it and understand what it's
like trying to tell you, and itcan tell you why it's not

(15:23):
possible or how you can go aboutdoing it.
And so I always think of thesethings, as I think it's awesome
that people are able to build,to bootstrap.
It's given so many people somany options to actually start a
company, people who are nottechnical, who do not have
financial funds, who don't haveother companies going for them,
and I include myself as one ofthose people.

(15:45):
And I would actually say that,like now, building is the easy
part, you know, and for a longtime, building was a hard part,
but because building is now theeasy part, marketing is the hard
part, because no two companiesare alike.
Of course, you can go in and belike, hey, lovable, make me
this, like sunoai, death metalcopycat, leave it there, and it

(16:08):
does absolutely nothing.
And in the end, the people whoare only making money are
lovable, right, like the peoplewho like sell the shovels during
the gold rush, um, but thenpeople take it further and they
invest in marketing and thedifference between actually
having a company and making itinto having a business and just
having a platform is dedication,commitment and time.

(16:30):
That's like the true core ofthe thing.
So I'm gonna tell you, like Ireally don't mind.
I kind of love that people aredoing this and that there's this
like opportunity for everybodyto like partake in their
curiosity and like it.
As for headshot generators, Ihave a number in my head.

(16:52):
I'm going to write it down andthen let's see how much Ricardo
says.
I'm literally going to write itdown now.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
I'm loving this.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Let's go.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Make your guesstimate , see if your market research is
accurate or not.
Ricardo, what's your take?

Speaker 3 (17:11):
I would definitely agree with Tanya.
I think the zero to one stagegot very easy and that's why
everybody's doing it.
But there is a differencebetween building a side project
and building a real businessaround it.
And I always said and I knewwhen I was talking to many
people in the space I said thereason why we're going to win is
not just because we can buildthings, but because we can

(17:32):
actually build a whole companyaround it.
We've actually taken the timeto really build a whole company
team structure around it,vesting shares and all that
stuff.
So you don't just do that withAI coding.
Basically, you cannot justconvince 17 people to join in
your vision by just saying Ibuilt this thing overnight.
So I think there's a bigdifference between building a

(17:53):
side project, and that's finewith most people.
If you just want to build aside project which does I don't
know two 3k per month and you'rejust, you know, having it as a
side business, great, I thinkyou should do it.
I think there's going to bemany projects of this, but the
difference between doing 3K permonth and really going to 300K
per month is a very bigdifference and a very different
mindset.
From the beginning we said we'rebuilding a company, we're not

(18:15):
just building a side project.
And if you look at our market,my guesstimate is 80 to 90% of
these tools exist.
You'll find a website.
You'll find something greatexist.
You'll find a website.
You'll find something great.
Some are even copycats.
You can literally see one isjust like the exact same thing
as a competitor, which is greatto see.
Then I guess you've made it asa competitor if they just copy

(18:36):
the whole style.
But 80 to 90% of the competitorswe actually talk to they're
just like overnight, you knowbuildings.
And even now we have.
We have a website calledBetterPick slash API.
We have people reaching out tosay we want to build a
competitor of you.
Can you deliver us the API?
Which is such a funnyconversation.
We do that, okay.
So we're not going to do that,but you know, thanks for joining

(18:58):
the call in that sense.
And it's this money.
We see these calls as there'smoney of these people just like
oh, I see there's some money inthis market, let me just put
some money against it and seewhat happens.
Basically, that's not buildinga company, that's just building
to see if it kind of works outor not company.
And so I would say, in the realspace I see max of six to 10

(19:23):
real competitors where I'mthinking like wow, and then two
to three that always come backwhen we're competing, but for
the rest there's not reallycompetition in that sense how
many players do you guesstimate?

Speaker 1 (19:35):
let's see if you I am .

Speaker 3 (19:37):
I'm writing it down as well.
Okay, at the count of three.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
At the count of three , we'll reveal the number write
it down, let me know, let meknow when you're ready.
It's funny.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Mine is based on being like the lead marketer and
looking at every single, likelisticle listing, backlinks,
like all of that.
Okay.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Let's do something.
We'll not say the number, we'lljust show it, so that we
incentivize people to watch therecording, not just listen to
the freaking audio podcast.
The audio is doing okay,youtube is doing terribly, so
let's Alright a count of three.
You ready One, two, three.
Show your numbers.
Okay.
I can see Tania's.
I cannot see Ricardo's.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
I cannot see yours.
I'm going to do it like this.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay Okay.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
You didn't see it Okay, so mine is.
So they'll have to listen tothe one that Tanya guessed.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
My guess is 153.
No, it's okay, I will say itwas very close, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Good, definitely Good , definitely good, that's
definitely true, but how?

Speaker 1 (20:49):
many of them do you reckon they are alive now?
Alive and working well.
So, going back to what Tanyashared, yeah, like we used to do
that with Blogger and WordPressand like that.
But the problem we had up untilnow was, whenever we
democratize content creation,mostly it was in the written

(21:11):
form, and written form meansblogs, basically, and blogs and
articles usually have got apublish date and you can see
whether they are outdated or not.
The problem with launching awebsite is you don't know
whether it's outdated or not.
There's somebody behind ituntil it breaks or it doesn't
function properly, right.

(21:31):
And so if they are sideprojects from companies, usually
you shut us from individuals.
You shut them down becausepaying a domain is expensive,
Paying the servers is expensiveand the tooling behind it, right
.
But if it's like a side projectof a company, you might not
even know that it's still there.
You know it's.
Oh, you're paying 300 a year,something like that.
It's like whatever, we'll justleave it there.

(21:52):
It's more costly for me to shutit down than to actually just
leave it there to rot.
So how many of these do youreckon they are alive and
functioning?
You said something like betweenlike three and five, or
something like that.
Or these are the top notch.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
I think the top ones are like six to 10.
The ones that are reallyworking 20, I would say.
Or I would say an extra 10 thatare trying to make it work, I
would say the rest is you cankind of see that as well on the
website, like if they do a lotof SEO and all that stuff, like
you can see the movement.
Basically it's not just thewebsite.
I look at the movement.
Are they publishing new blogs?

(22:29):
Are they advertising?
Are they posting on socialmedia?
The ones that are activelypushing?
That's really 20, I would saythat's about it, because
otherwise you can't survive inthe space.
In that sense, you need to havesome competitive advantage in
distribution.
If you don't have it, theaverage order value of these
things is not like $200 or $500.

(22:51):
It's between $20 to maybe $50in that sense.
So you can't just go into massmedia.
You need to be very strategicin your choices, which is mostly
the organic ways, and if you'renot posting organically, you're
probably never going to beprofitable at any point.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Are you or were you using any competitor tracking
tools, like there was Compiteback in the day that got
acquired by SEMrush, if Iremember correctly or are you
doing this manually Because it'shard to keep up with the
changes?

Speaker 3 (23:22):
SEMrush.
For us it's SEMrush.
I mean, we had the agencylicense before.
We used to do it for clients,so we just added ourselves as an
extra client in that sense.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
So you were tracking Tanya right.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
That's how you I always said, that's, I think,
how we got in, because you askedus how we got in touch.
I think that was also thereason.
I'm not sure exactly how ithappened, but I do remember me
reaching out to you, tanya, Ibelieve because I'm very open
with our metrics.
Like you can actually go to mylinkedin.
You'll see every single metricwe have, like nps, how much

(23:52):
we're growing, how much burn wehave, how much profit we're
making.
Like all of that is open in thewild for us.
Um and so for me, jumping on acall with tanya, some people
would call it competition andsome people, when I jump on call
, they just mention metrics likewhy are you saying these
metrics?
I'm like, first of all, I thinkwe should share in the world
and kind of have conversationslike what's happening, what's
not happening, and second of all, you know, one is you knowing

(24:16):
the metric.
The other one is actually doingsomething about it and like
trying to catch up.
Like it's like saying it's likethese people that have these
business ideas, like thisbusiness, I'm not going to tell
anybody because it's such agreat idea, but it's never going
to work because the idea sticksin their minds.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
I like the idea of sharing the metrics, but, as it
turns out and my experiencereveals that most people just
share the metrics on the way upright.
They don't share them on theway down.
Quite recently, though, Bufferhad overcome a plateau and
you're probably aware of Bufferas a company and they're super
transparent with their metricsand for a couple of years they

(24:52):
were stagnating on their growthright and they even had this
slow decline, and they kept onsharing the metrics, and I can
see reasons for not doing that.
But in spite of all of them,they said like fuck it, we're a
transparent company, we're goingto say it like it is and we're
not going to hide anything.
And if the company is notgrowing or it's slowly hitting a

(25:13):
small decrease in size or inrevenues or in growth and all
that, we're going to share itanyways.
And eventually, after a coupleof years, like this, or 18
months, they hit growth again.
So that was a risky move becauseon the one hand, you know, I
think you have to calculateupside versus downside, and
mostly on the way up, you've gotnothing to lose and a lot to

(25:35):
gain, kind of like.
Oh, it shows like your highgrowth company, it's appealing
to new hires, for talent, Maybeit shows a position of strength
and stuff like that.
But as a downside, you'regiving maybe too much, not
information for competitors, butyou're ruling yourself out of a

(25:57):
potential acquisition becauseit just drives the price down,
because they're able to seeeverything right from the get-go
, and so maybe the potentialacquirer will not go for you it
will go.
Okay, these guys, we have thisone already there and it's much
better, something like that.
I don't know how intentional isthat and do you plan to keep it

(26:19):
for long-term?

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah, for me, I want to keep this until we acquire it
, basically, which is also thegoal.
Everybody knows that.
Okay, you know even further,our metrics are, you know, to
the public, are public, but eveninternally, everybody knows
each other's salaries, how muchequity they have, every single
metric we spend.
Like we have a Google Sheet,everybody has access to it.

(26:44):
Everybody can see exactly whatwe're spending at what, who's
making what, uh, what you're.
You know what the budgets are,so you know.
You cannot just take that awaythe next day because it's not
like, oh, we're going down, okay, shutting down the sheet,
basically, um, I think that isnot going to be possible at some
point.
So once you start beingtransparent, you have to keep
being transparent becauseotherwise it just would for me

(27:05):
at least, would be very, feelvery weird like, yeah, suddenly
they're not sharing metricsanymore.
What's happening here?
So I would, even if we'redownsizing or going down, I
think it's good to have thesetransparent conversations.
I think there are someconversations that you know
maybe you don't want to havefirst at some point, I would say
, but I think transparency goesa very far way and actually

(27:25):
buffer is a great example.
I love what these guys aredoing.
Also, they have the salariesopen.
When they were going down, theyalso said we're not firing
anybody, we're just going to useit as a buffer.
So I think you know if once youchoose to be transparent, you
have to keep being transparent,because you cannot just stop
that from the day after.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
One of the downsides of terms are like, having been
in business for 11 years and I,we haven't had any major issue
with transparency.
But I heard from othercompanies that being too
transparent sometimes makes itmore fertile ground for certain
friction between team members,because they know each other's
salary and like, oh, I, I'vebeen for longer in the company,
but this person has taken twoyears off on a maternity leave,
for instance, and when she cameback, blah, blah, like I have

(28:13):
been here grinding it out fortwo more years and stuff like
that, and I know the salary andyou know, so it provides for
more of these conversations.
We haven't had any of theseissues, luckily, but do you
foresee that any of these thingsis going to be coming back to
bite your ass in terms oftransparency or not really?

Speaker 3 (28:33):
So not really, but I have a very good point on this
one.
So I see a lot of companiesthat weren't transparent and
want to move into transparency,and that's where the bottleneck
is.
Because the problem is when youhire somebody and you overpaid
or there's a disbalance too muchbetween teams, then it becomes
very tricky and I've seen a lotof companies want it to be

(28:53):
transparent but then they knowthere's a few outliners so they
can't be fully transparent.
And also, for us, the biggestdownfall that I have.
I've seen a lot of candidatesthat are like I would love to
have you, they're in the States,and it's just like twice the
salary or three times the salarythat somebody was asking.
I was like, yeah, but that'snot going to fit within the
salary ranges that we're havingright now, or I would need to

(29:15):
justify it.
So, as a founder, acquiringtalent becomes harder because
you have to justify why thatcost comes in basically.
So that is the downfall ofbeing transparent with your
salaries.
On the other side, you do haveappreciation coming back from
all the team members, and for uswe have unlimited holidays, so
the exact problem wouldn'thappen in that sense because

(29:37):
everybody has unlimited holidays.
But yeah, I do understand thatthat could be an issue.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
I have a question for both of you.
One of the parallelisms to seewith your projects is that
marketing plays a huge part inyour growth.
Right, we can discussproduct-led growth afterwards,
but in the case of Tanya, sheplayed very well the personal
branding cards, right.
In your case, you mentioned youleverage your position or your

(30:04):
owning a marketing agency, right, how fundamental was that to
the to the growth?
So how did you actually use themarketing agency?
Was it was the better pick anda spin-off of the marketing
agency?
Or you were just a shareholderof both companies and you said,
like, fuck it, I'm gonna make apartnership or something like
that?
And uh, how did that play out?

(30:26):
Because b2c is largely aboutyou know, um, spending lots of
marketing yeah, um, I can startwith that one if you like.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
So for us I've started the marketing agency
about eight years ago with theplan to own an agent or own a
software.
Five years later it took meeight years years, but still,
you know that was always theplan from the start.
So that was eight years ago.
So even people joining kind ofknew that was a playbook we were
heading towards.
So that shift wasn't that hardto make.

(30:56):
I think the only difference isif you're starting from an
agency, so we acquired thebusiness with the agency and
then we operated from there, andso the hard part is that as an
agency you have double pain,because if you're starting a
company, you're hiring somebodyfor it, you're basically paying.
Let's say, just to make it veryeasy, you're paying $10K salary
, for example, and so they'reoperating that, so your cost is

(31:19):
$10K.
But as an agency you know thatthere's a margin that you can
actually charge the clients.
So on that $10K salary youcould be charging a client 20K.
So you're actually not losingthe 10K salary when he's
investing or she's investinginto the new business.
You're actually having thedouble pain of actually
shrinking your margin andactually shrinking your revenue
from the agency.

(31:40):
So that was for us the hardestpain, I would say, to kind of
see that revenue shrinking whilemoving into things or not being
able to take on new projectsbecause you have your own
project coming in.
So I think that's the biggestpain as an agency owner,
starting these things.
But yeah, for us we had theadvantage of having somebody
very good in Google Ads and SEO.
We had somebody very good ineverything email marketing, paid

(32:01):
social.
We knew how to operate themarketing side of things.
So that was, I think, ourcompetitive advantage and we
knew we were going to winbecause we knew, from the
beginning, indeed, that it'sgoing to be a marketing playbook
, it's not just going to betechnology playbook coming into
play.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Were you paying the agency as a client or?

Speaker 3 (32:22):
not really, I was the owner of the agency.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
No, I know I know, but the reason is we tried
developing a product five yearsago to this day and one of the,
I think, failures we had, one ofthe fuck ups we had, is like we
didn't treat it like a client.
And I think we should have,because, first off, if you're
not treating your own siteproject or a spinoff as a client

(32:47):
, then you end up working onlyon spare hours.
You don't give it like a fixedteam.
So we had a lot of rotation.
We did it only when it wasconvenient, which at the end was
never convenient.
In the case of somebody orcompanies that they have this
huge disparity in levels ofskill, what do they do?
Do you put the worst developersto work on that project and the

(33:09):
project has got the worstdevelopers and leave the best
for the clients?
Or you do it the other wayaround.
Then the clients are upsetbecause you just left the worst
developers there and you put thebest ones to the product and if
it fails, you got suddenly twobig fires right.
That's not our case, of course,but also because you see it
only as an expense and itdoesn't generate any revenue,

(33:30):
you have all the more reasons toput the last nail on the coffin
.
In our case there was apandemic involved, or like fuck
it, we're shutting down theproject, but why did you not set
it as a client or consider itas a client?
And then we go back to Tania,because I think that was left
unanswered.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
So, yeah, we did treat it as a client.
I would say it was internallyinvoiced, in that sense, like we
didn't really invoice it, butwe did put like okay, because
you're working on this, you cantake another client kind of
perspective.
So we did treat it as you know,you can take this client on
because, or we can't do anyclients anymore because of this.

(34:09):
So we did treat it like this inthe beginning, and in the
beginning it was less than more.
The advantage we had is we were, you know, operating with
shares, so people actually had ashare in the company and so in
the longterm that is morebeneficial than the salary that
they're making.
In that sense, so, because ofthat mechanism coming into play,
they would value a lot moredoing this.
The tricky part is, of course,that you have your best people

(34:32):
on it.
I would always put my bestpeople on it because otherwise
they will never get off theground and mostly your best
people can operate both at thesame time and then at a certain
point you do need to make acutoff in that sense.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
So, yes, Thank you, tania.
Going back to the previousquestion, which was the personal
branding, you used a lot ofLinkedIn because it was
basically your platform, right?
So you obviously didn't haveany marketing agency behind, but
you had your own knowledge as aformer marketing person in your

(35:06):
previous companies.
So what was your playbook?
And, in the case of Ricardo,what did you learn from him?

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, I learned a lot from Ricardo, but maybe the
personal brand thing for me is adifferent kind of experience.
I say that because I thinkbeing very honest and being very
direct I think is part of thething that I do on a lot of my
sharing of my journey being afounder, about the things that

(35:45):
I'm doing, that are working,that are not working, things
that I'm struggling with, thingsthat you know keep me up at
night as I like, try to build abusiness, because it is a lonely
journey.
You know it is a lonely journeywhen you are doing it by
yourself and you have noco-founders or you are fully
remote and nobody else is reallyin your specific position.
You're doing it by yourself.
I found a lot of support inhaving a community of people who

(36:16):
watch me on LinkedIn, whereit's, I think, 120 subscribers
or something.
Maybe a video gets like 500views and that seems so little
until you think about 500individuals actually watching
you, because I can tell youdirectly like I get the craziest
reactions to the things that Ishare on YouTube, where people
are watching me for like 19minutes on end.

(36:38):
When do you ever get theprivilege of somebody listening
to you for 19 minutes nonstop.
You never get that, that's justfact.
And so when you're able to dothat and when you're able to
like, really like, share truthof your experience and maybe
that is somebody who you know isthinking about starting a
business, is fully in it, is inthe same exact position as you

(37:02):
and feeling that like difficultyand they hear that there's
somebody else having that aswell that's extremely powerful,
and so for me it's almost likeit's not a social thing, but it
is something that I get anincredible amount of energy out
of is those reactions is beingable to share.
I will also say that thepersonal branding thing, it's

(37:27):
not a commercial thing.
I think it's more like along-term strategic bet.
That's how I would put it.
And I would put it that waybecause, as you say, there are a
lot of dead websites now onlovable or whatever right, and
you don't know how to gaugewhether those are real or not.
But one really great way togauge if those are real is by

(37:49):
having trust in a founder, andso I want to be a founder who
can inspire trust with itsclientele, and that's really
great for B2B.
So from Multiverse specifically,I can tell you that I don't
think a significant amount ofour sales from B2C came in
through a personal brand or thatthat played a huge role.

(38:12):
Let's say 10%.
If that that's a random number,I'll just throw that out there.
I think, for B2B, though, it isway higher.
It is significantly higher andit is significantly more
impactful.
It is significantly higher andit is significantly more
impactful.
So, for example, like Google hasbought like 80 headshots of us

(38:33):
and the person who bought thoseheadshots is connected to me on
LinkedIn Coincidence Maybe, butprobably not, you know.
So it's one of those thingswhere it's like oh well, I've
seen continued, like consistent,I've consistently seen that
this person has like talkedabout this, is committed to this
.
Let me go check out thatproduct.
If that leads to a sale from abig B2B person, that can be a

(38:55):
really significant, significantlike financial boost to the
business.
Of course, you know it reallydepends on, like, your ticket
sizes and stuff like that, but Ihonestly think that you know,
with the way that, like we'reseeing social media these days,
the way that like TikTok haslike evolved, you know, and I
see that as somebody who's likelike just 30 years old and like

(39:20):
sometimes opens up like shortvideos and I'm like, oh my God,
there's like another halfTaiwanese girl out in the world
like sharing stuff about makeupor whatever.
It's like that's nice.
You know, I didn't know thatthat existed, but now I know
that that exists and you know myspecific profile, like being a
woman who is also a founder,like both marketing as well as

(39:41):
technical.
That's it's pretty fucking rareand I hope that that becomes
less rare, because whenever Isee girls out there doing stuff
like that, I'm like, yeah, Ilove that, let me connect and
like let's have like coffee overzoom and immediately we'll
always be like I know there'snot that many, you know, but it
is.
It's really nice, I think to,to be able to have that kind of

(40:04):
like platform and like sharethings with other people who may
not have role models that lookthat much like them and can kind
of see like, oh, she's kind ofdoing it.
I'm only kind of doing it.
Guys, we're talking to Ricardowho's doing like 4 million.
I'm not there.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
You keep bringing it up.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
We can kind of do it.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
We didn't go into what you learned from him, but
I'm going to be throwing acurveball to the both of you
because I've never hadcompetition directly on the same
episode.
So did you two copy anythingfrom each other from the website
?
Oh, I like this.
I'm going to be stealing thiseach other from the website.
Oh, I like this.
I'm going to be stealing thisfor my product on my website.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I will tell you how I have seen some of Ricardo's
execution, like the way that hekind of like conducts business.
You know, because like I thinkit's a very, very thing.
I've worked in other businessesbefore and you know I'm seeing
a little bit right now on likeinside, helping with like some
consulting here and there, andso I think it's I think it's

(41:12):
rare to see somebody who is as Idon't want to use the word
loving but I think likethoughtful to his like team, as
Ricardo is.
I think that's really rare andI think it's always really
amazing when a team obviouslyreally respects their CEO
manager, because it's very clearhow much that leads to like not

(41:35):
only a boost in motivation butalso like dedication to working
hard and having like a commongoal.
And I also that's partiallybecause of that transparency,
because you know we've always inevery company you have like
significant politics right, likeyou hire smart people.
Those people are able to thenlike be abstract and have goals

(41:56):
and ambitions, and the only wayto kind of like manage that is
to have a really strong likeexecutive presence that avoids
that and makes it clear.
And I think in Betterpick theydo really, really well Like they
really execute, and that's sorare.
Like Alex, you've worked inGermany in like consulting Like
you're going to know how rarethat is.
I worked in Chinese tech.

(42:18):
Like I know how rare that is,and so I think that is a huge
thing.
And then, secondly, the abilityto actually scale.
You know, because of like beinga team and that involves like
really having your shit togetherand having SOPs for things and
realizing that not everything isa one-off, that you just do
once, but that actually nothingis a one-off that you do once.

(42:40):
You like write it out on a docand you put, you put it in like
a tracker or something.
You know.
So because, like I rememberwhen ricardo and me we got in
touch and I think when we got intouch you were at like you were
like right below us, you know,I think at that point we were
doing like I want to say 35 000a month and you guys were doing
maybe like 15 or 20 and theywere super transparent with

(43:02):
their numbers and you just wouldfucking like see, like fly by.
You know, like, at some point,like I think the last week, I
was like ricardo, I want to talkto you about alex's podcast and
it was like should I justintroduce you as the founder who
did like three million in thelast year or something?
And he was like no, no, it's $4million now.

(43:23):
And I was like what do you mean?
It's $4 million now.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
What happened I?

Speaker 2 (43:26):
checked five days ago or something, and now you just
added a one.
I don't understand, but this isthe pace of it and you cannot
have that pace if you're a tinyteam.
That also has decided to notscale like that, and that is to
some extent a decision, hasdecided to not scale like that,

(43:46):
and that is to some extent adecision.
But to a much bigger extent, Iwould also say that is an option
that we didn't have, because wedidn't have that skillset, that
is a learned skillset, you know.
And so I think, yeah, thosethings have been like super,
super interesting to watch,because it's kind of watching
somebody tackle a problem verystrategically as an investor
instead of really as an operator.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
So no copying from each other's website.
Ricardo, you've received a lotof praise.
Maybe it's time to get back.
Say like Tanya, I totallyripped you off, like like I
totally stole that from yourwebsite, so um.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
I will be telling you , ricardo, I do it all the time
from competitors.
I will be calling you Ricardo.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
I do it all the time from competitors.
I'm not going to be hiding.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Let me see what I stole basically.
So I like to, I don't like tosteal, but borrowing, you're
going to give it back.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
What is it Like?
Copycat steal artist borrow.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Something like that.
Yes, I'm not.
I have the memory of a goldfish, so that's why I usually don't
bring up the quotes.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
You know who we think stole from us?
We think Aragorn stole from usthe biggest players in the, in
the industry.
They are also like funded, Ibelieve, and I I I remember
somebody was saying like oh, Ithink they stole this like
section of exact copy from us ahgod right, that's kind of you

(45:08):
were gonna say yeah I'm tryingto steal what I stole.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
so I definitely like I I tried out every competitor
in the space, even the theshitty ones in that sense, that
even want to try, and I thinkyou can always draw inspiration
from your competition.
I think I definitely looked atbecause I don't think we even
had B2B before they had B2B.
So I definitely went throughthe whole B2B flow to kind of
understand what's going on.
So I definitely like I wouldn'tcall it stealing, but I

(45:34):
definitely went through spyingin that sense.
If you see Richard Dean in yourdatabase, that's me.
So just wanted to let you knowthat is my alias on spying
things.
So if you see Dean Corpprobably in your database, you
know it's me.
Basically, so competitors watchout.
So I definitely went throughthe B2B flow and I saw a lot of

(45:56):
cool stuff and I think part oflike being an operator is
deciding and as a company,deciding what you want to be and
who you want to be for in thatsense.
So I think I saw a lot of coolthings.
I think you guys had even likea chat box where you can kind of
say make me, you know, slimmer,or make me, you know, give me
some sun.
I think it was like a text boxand so we discussed this heavily

(46:19):
.
It's like should we do this,should we not do this?
And we as a company decide notto do it.
And I think that's sometimesmore important, like not what
you're doing or what you'restealing, but what you're not
stealing, in that sense, andthat comes from the things that
you actually value and you knowwant to be known, as I would say
.
So I would say I throw a lot ofinspiration.
On the b2b side, I think what Iwas most jealous about was your

(46:39):
personal brands.
I was like, oh, come on, sayagain, there she is.
I think what stung me the most?
I always.
It was like it was like shesomehow managed to like have
customers post on LinkedIn andsaying, yeah, I got this
headshot from Tanya and it'samazing.
And I was like guys, again,what's going on here?

(47:03):
So I definitely haven't crackedthat one.
I love that one.
I saw that passing by.
I thought it was genius.
I was like, oh yeah, we shouldhave some kind of flow for this,
but I think that is the onethat I still want to steal.
I think that's the word that Iwould use in this case.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah, you know, buy hair company and that's it.
You have it working for youbecause you actually can praise
you a lot.
Let's go to the last blockbecause we're running out of
time, but I really wanted tobuild up to this question, which
I think it's a real meat andpotatoes of these kind of
businesses, is these kind of AItools that appeal to large

(47:38):
audiences and in the B2C spacemostly and I know you've done
like B2C and B2B but a lot ofpeople just sign up to play with
it or they use it once and thenthey fuck off forever.
So there's a lot of turn.
How do you keep growing youruser base?
What is like?
What is your product led growthstrategy?
Like complementary solutions?

(48:01):
Or how do you keep innovatingand giving more value over time
to your customers?

Speaker 2 (48:09):
You want to shoot first.
Yeah, I think people reallyforget how much value there is
in a one-time purchase kind oflike setup.
And I is in a one-time purchasekind of like setup and I say
that because one-time purchaseconversion rates are insanely
high.
It's really the beauty of likeone-time payment is that

(48:30):
conversion is super high andalso your pipeline is not
something you should be asworried about as maybe a lot of
people think.
So let me give you an example.
The way that we did a lot ofour marketing is through SEO as
well as through affiliate SEO.
So that really entails that werank for things like best AI

(48:54):
headshot generator.
If you search for best AIheadshot generator on Google,
you know, if you search yourbest AI headshot generator on
Google, you're going to get likea thousand hits, but the top
five you'll probably find themultiverse AI in like half of
them.
You'll probably open up a link.
It'll say like top 10 best AIheadshot generator.
The multiverse AI might be likeone, two or three or whatever,
but we'll be in that listicleand then people click in through

(49:17):
that listing.
And so if you think thatone-time purchase is not as
dependable, you first of alldon't understand SEO and how
much it is like actual realestate that does not fluctuate
as much.
And then, second of all, youdon't actually understand how
predictable people are, becauseI can tell you how much a

(49:40):
certain keyword is searchedevery single month, in whichever
country, and that data isfairly stable month by month.
And so that is kind of thecrazy thing.
If you don't understand that,you might think oh, I think last
month 50 people searched forthe word purple apple and maybe
next month 50 people searchedfor the word purple apple and
maybe next month it will be 10or zero.

(50:00):
But that's not true.
Actually, those patterns areway more predictable than we
think, and we know that becausewe have all of that data in
keyword banks such as Ahrefs.
These are SEO banks that SEOpeople like me and like Ricardo
probably use to basicallyunderstand what people are
searching for.
And it's incredible because theway that you see that manifest

(50:24):
in, like companies that do onetime purchase, is that your
revenue stays pretty stable.
As soon as you have cementedyourself in those real estate
rankings, in those SEO rankings,you've bought the real estate.
It's yours forever, like.
The ranking will change, thearea price will go up, will go
down, but not even nearly asmuch as people may think.

(50:45):
So it's not really a hugeconcern.
I don't think it's really asuperpower, honestly.
That makes you able to charge amuch higher price than you
otherwise would and still getgreat conversion on your product
and, a lot of the time, muchbetter than super high churn and

(51:09):
low monthly fees.
So that's kind of my hot take.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
I'm going to kind of ask what's your take on this?
What's the strategy actually?
Because you plan to keep ongrowing and raise funds, so
there's got to be like a goodbusiness case behind it.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
Yeah.
So the funny thing is that wetried raising with BetterPick
and I failed completely.
Like it was so bad, and one ofthe part of the reasons was
investors don't like.
So from an investment point ofview, they hate the one-offs in
that sense because they can'tsee the predictability.
They also value it less.
I believe the number was fourtimes less.
So if you're doing 300K, youmight as well just do like a 75K

(51:49):
MRR business that is recurring.
That is the same word as a 300Kbusiness basically.
So that's the funny part aboutthis.
So the moment you start raisingfunds, that is when it becomes
important.
But indeed I agree with Tania,it opens up other possibilities,
like high conversion ratios.
I think our best affiliate nowconverts at 10, 11% on our
website.
Try doing that in e-commercespace, where the average is

(52:12):
about 2% to 3%.
You don't get that happening.
In that sense, we we that opensup affiliate channels because
suddenly all these affiliates golike wait, our average
conversion rate is 0.51 percentand you're gonna get 10 with you
guys.
Okay, I'm going all in, whichbasically happened to some of
the affiliates, so like I didn'tknow the space, but now
suddenly, like they went crazyinto the space because they saw

(52:34):
these high conversion ratios.
And then that actually doesbecome predictable because now
you have affiliates trying topromote you every single month
because they're gettingincentivized to earn more and
that becomes a predictablechannel in that sense.
Now there is, of course,fluctuations happening but, like
Tanya said, that is the realestate that you're now acquiring

(52:54):
at scale basically.
But for most businesses that isnot recurring.
It's very hard to raise capital.
Reason we're raising capital is, or able to raise capital, is
because we have better pick.
But we're using the sametechnology to start a new
company called better studio,which is a recurring business,
and for us at least, I look atit from a perspective of when do

(53:16):
you kind of need a headshot?
Is it like once per month?
You don't really need aheadshot once per month.
So if the action is notrecurring, you can't really make
the product recurring.
That would go against thestream of the logic that you're
buying.
But we're adding a feature rightnow that allows you to import
any clothing into the world thatyou find online line and put it

(53:37):
on the hedge that you generated.
That becomes a recurring actionbecause nowadays you can go
shopping, you can go like okay,you know what?
Massimo Dutti, zara, I'm goingto go all shopping and I'm going
to put all these clothes on meand kind of see how it is.
Now you have somethingrecurring.
So for us, we see it as what isthe recurring habit that is
created or can be created?

(53:57):
And how do we monetize that,rather than trying to go in
stream of what the personactually wants, which is a
headshot every single year, notevery single two weeks,
basically.
So that's how we kind of lookat it.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
It's funny because that's one idea that I pitch all
of our e-commerce clients sincetwo years ago, when I said like
hey, how about you have thisfunctionality where, instead of
having like paying photographsof professional models, you can
upload your own picture and yousee this jewelry or these hats
or something like that on youand that's going to drive up
conversions?
So it's like, oh yeah, we'retoo busy doing this other stuff.

(54:31):
Like it's kind of like thatmeme of that guy trying to that
he's got like a car with thesquare wheels, that meme of that
guy trying to that he's gotlike a car with the square
wheels.
And it's like how about you trythe round wheels and like, oh
no, we're too busy doing this,right?
It's like come on, stop, have athing, take a break and kind of

(54:54):
like reconsider whether you'reactually doing this, going
somewhere, or you need to tohave second thoughts about that.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Exactly what we're building, alex.
We're building a way for you tosee yourself shopping whatever
you're building, basically.
So that's a life in threemonths.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
That's a great idea.
I'm excited to see that rollingout.
The other question I had foryou before you wrap it up is all
of these ideas of remotebootstrapping.
I mean bootstrapping obviouslygets compromised by this whole
fact that you're going to befundraising, but the remote, the
openness and transparency andother company culture traits

(55:32):
that you've got that they mightbe for you like they are
unquestionable.
They become a question, theybecome a red line for a lot of
investors.
And I'm saying that from theperspective of having a super
opinionated company like oursthat is also like, relies on
transparency, hard, remote,never had an office, super
specialization and like somestuff that we didn't want to

(55:55):
give up.
And whenever we've entered intolike acquisition conversations
in the past're like oh no, youcannot have this.
Like if we acquire you likethis, yeah, like we have to
cancel this program, you have tostop doing this or you cannot
be as transparent.
Like you cannot have like theopen uh metrics because we also
share the metrics openly uhevery year and stuff like that.

(56:16):
And so how do you plan to goover this?
Because that's going to raisesome eyebrows and you will have
to change policies.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
We've had it before, we've had these calls already.
Like some investors, we're justlike oh, you're full remote.
Yeah, we don't do full remote.
We don't believe in full remoteis the exact words that I've
received already, and so I kindof see it as dating.
It's like you go on speed datesand then some girl just says,
yeah, I don't do brown hair boys, and you're like okay, well, so

(56:49):
I kind of see it as this.
Like there's enough investorsin this world that will believe
in you and will believe in thesethings.
It does reduce the size, but italso gives you the competitive
edge of like knowing exactlywhich competitor or which
investors to go to.
It's like if somebody says likeI don't like brown haired guys
with brown eyes, you're like Idon't even have to waste my time
here, I just move on to thenext blonde person.

(57:12):
So I kind of see it as acompetitive strength.
It is limiting, but it is verysatisfying because then you also
know exactly who to go to.
If a company that has strategicoffices and they're all
office-based, you kind of knowif they're going to try and
acquire you that's not going tohappen.

(57:32):
But if there's a buffer comingto you which is all remote.
They're like, yeah, we want toacquire because of this
expertise, and then you kind ofknow it's like this could be an
interesting conversation.
So you can see it as a limit oryou can see it as a strength,
and I rather see the remote as astrength and knowing it's like,
hey, I don't need to waste mytime on you.
I'm going to focus on the onesthat do believe in remote and

(57:53):
kind of see it as like, hey, butyou're remote, that means that
you can actually pay good people, good salaries and still
compete.
Yes, we can.
So I kind of see it as astrength, not as a weakness.
But for some people, just likethe brown hair, like the girl
that only likes, you know, baldpeople, it will be weakness.
So it really depends on whoyou're talking to.
But I see it as a strength.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Okay.
So that means you're notcompromising on these things,
you're not changing yourpolicies, even if it limits your
capacity to raise funds.
That means probably I mean, thegood thing about like having a
profitable business is like youdon't really have to raise funds
, so you're on the winning, oryou have like a strong
negotiation position because ofthat.
So you also have got theoptionality.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Okay, I'm not saying we're never going to have
offices.
It really depends on theregions.
For example, now in Belgiumwe're going to have four people.
Portugal is going to be fourpeople.
So I would highly suggest tocreate an office there and just
have these people work together,but not that you have to go to
the office because somebody isgoing to look at your fingers
and say you're working.
It's more going to be likeyou're already paying co-working

(58:59):
spaces to like separately whenyou work together.
Um, so it's more of a that kindof vibe than come to the office
and otherwise you're like firedkind of vibe.
So yes, I would more see thishelps than as offices in that
sense awesome.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
I don't know if tanya warned you, but like we've got
the signature question of thepodcast is what's been your most
expensive fuck up, that youhave to own up to it, you know?
Uh, it's got to be yours.
And don't give me crap like Ihired the wrong person and stuff
like that.
No generic stuff like there'ssomething specific or so.
Like I squandered 100 grandhere.

(59:28):
Or like I bought the wrongdomain.
I replied to an email like I'mputting everybody on on the
visible end of the recipients,stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
So, danny, big fuck up.
You want to share Many, I wouldsay.
I think, first up of mine.
The first one is starting acoffee bar, losing all my money
in that when I was 20.
That's a big fuck up.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Sounds like a good one.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
I had all my money.
I was thinking about thise-commerce playbook where I
would buy furniture fromstudents and then monetize it
and rent it out.
Bought all the furniture,forgot about the distribution,
so I'm now in my mother'sbasement.
I'm actually at my mom's place.
There's still a couchdownstairs in the basement, so
that would be another one inthat sense.

(01:00:14):
So I got loads of these storieswhere I like fucked up so many
times.
So it really depends if it'smore monetary or more like
mentally fucked up.
But I think that's top of mindwhere I have a few and then just
you know, many more anytechnical or product.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Uh, fuck up that you've done recently that you
want to share like somethingyou've done, a better peak that
like ah, you know, should haveknown better real, real fuck ups
.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
I would say, yeah, I mean, we launched a lot of stuff
too early and then everythingbroke.
And then, you know, over theweekend you have to like fix
things.
I think the most recent fuck upI would say, which was funny is
like we're now having theseinvestor meetings and these
investors like always want totry out the products.
We give them a code and then onWhatsApp I'm getting like your,

(01:01:02):
your product just broke and I'mlike, oh no, we just pushed
like a new you know editor life,and then like the button
disappears.
It was like, okay, so I thinkthat could be like the most
potential biggest fuck up,because you have an faster
trying the product.
And they're like, yeah, thisdoesn't work.
And you're like we just pushthis damn thing like a one day
too early, one day like earlier.

(01:01:25):
They would have not evennoticed.
But now I pushed it and I haveto explain.
It was like, oh, yeah, wedidn't do the good quality
control okay, no deploys on yeahno deploys on friday, but also
no deploy and no deploys.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
The same day you're visiting or you're sending the
demo to an investor.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Exactly.
That's going to be an expensiveone.
I know that one.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
I know, I know Well any parting thoughts.
How can we help you, ricardo toyour company, ricardo to your
company.
Did we give you the last minutefor you rolling out the carpet
here?
Let us know how can we help interms of our community spreading
the word out.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
You got the attention .
Oh, for me, I think anybodyjust listening and that is
currently building don't give up.
I would say it took me 10 years.
I started when I was 20.
I fucked up so many things andI always say you always need to
get it right once, but you canfuck up as many times as you
want and nobody's going to giveup your fuck-ups.

(01:02:30):
Everybody's going to care aboutthe win that you suddenly have.
Basically, so I would say nevergive up.
I would say if you really wantto make it you just have to get
it one time right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Thank you very much to both of you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
I had a lot of fun.
Hope you did as well.
Thank you very much, Alex.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Thanks, alex, hope to see you around.

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