#027 From 0 to 100k MRR with Marie Martens

[00:00:00] Hey, Dillisnerz! Tobias here. I'm currently not in my studio and visiting family this week. However, I really wanted to still upload this episode.

[00:00:07] It's been an absolute blast, and I don't want to keep you waiting this long for it.

[00:00:13] So, no real intro today, no music. I will just go straight into the episode until I get home and re-upload the real official professional thing.

[00:00:21] I hope you guys enjoy and see you in a bit.

[00:00:53] Simple way to create online forms and surveys without needing to have any coding knowledge.

[00:01:00] The cool thing about Tally or what makes it a bit different than all the other formulas out there is our interface.

[00:01:06] It works like a notion book. You can just start typing and insert blocks with your keyboard as you call.

[00:01:13] We also offer unlimited forms and responses for free.

[00:01:16] So, Tally, how has Tally started? Because I think in another interview with Rock Walling, you said that you identify as an Indie Hacker.

[00:01:25] And I think you guys started around when COVID came around, so in 2020 I think what has to start of Tally?

[00:01:31] So, Tally is not the first starter that me and my partner Philip found it together. We actually started with all sorts of things completely different.

[00:01:40] It was a marketplace that connects travel influencers with hotels. So, completely different space.

[00:01:47] And we launched that actually just before COVID happened. That was like the worst timing ever to launch something in travel tech.

[00:01:55] That was beginning 2020. We were going to become digital nomads, travel and work on the project and all of that kind of, yeah, it didn't happen. Obviously, we had a few clients that we immediately lost.

[00:02:08] So, we thought, okay, we need to come up with a different starter fight. And that's how Tally was born. We were brainstorming about new ideas and be had both used form builders in our previous jobs and startups.

[00:02:23] So, there was Google forums which was free and actually pretty powerful, but we really didn't like the design. It cannot customize it. Give it a look and feel of your brand.

[00:02:32] Then it was type form, also a great product. But can make on really expensive, especially if you're just starting out, right? You don't have any projects because it's volume-based pricing.

[00:02:43] So, the more responses you collect, the more you pay and that's like a user experience that we also really didn't like.

[00:02:49] At the same time, we started using notion to run our startups and we really love notion, right? We love the interface but we love how community backed the whole project was.

[00:03:00] And we thought, what if we can make the notion of forms or what if type form a notion would have a baby how would that look like?

[00:03:07] And that's how Tally was born. That's how we ended up with the idea. We probably need to do a bit more like add like databases or something like air table.

[00:03:17] Like we had all kinds of file ideas and then we thought, let's just get started and see how far we get.

[00:03:22] And yeah, we learned that you can build years on a form builder and that's actually quite complex product.

[00:03:29] And then users push it into all kinds of levels and corners. And yes, that's how we started with Tally.

[00:03:37] One of our listeners, Phil Keller who's also an indie hacker and who's also been on the show had an interesting question regarding that start for Tally.

[00:03:45] The moment you launched Tally, obviously the market was already full of other form builders like the ones you already mentioned.

[00:03:54] Why did you still decide to do it and how did you do it then? And maybe how did you now with the massive amount of competition you still have?

[00:04:03] Yeah, we figured it is easier to claim a small percentage of a very large market than claim an entire niche, especially without marketing budget.

[00:04:13] So we would never be able to compete with the big players. There's tons of them. They have really big teams, they're funded. We decided to be good staff.

[00:04:23] So we thought, okay, the demand is there. We don't need to create the demand. We don't need to teach people what their problem is that we're solving because that's something we cannot do.

[00:04:32] We don't have the budget to and we didn't want to as well. So we thought forms have been around since the beginning of the internet. Every company needs a form at one point.

[00:04:41] If we can grab a small niche of that huge market with a very small team that would already make us immensely successful, right?

[00:04:50] That's that was the idea behind it. But of course we realized that we had to do something different to be able to stand out and that's where our pricing model came in because we decided to make it largely free

[00:05:03] And the good thing about that is that our product is our biggest marketing and acquisition channels. Three users create a form, form as viral by nature. So you make it to share with other people.

[00:05:15] But every free form contains our branding, right? So you make a form, a hundred people fill it in. Those hundred people have also seen Tali click on our brand and might also be interested in creating a form.

[00:05:28] And so that's how we started growing.

[00:05:31] You have stocked a little bit about your stocked it with your Twitter profile.

[00:05:36] And you actually talked about this with Rob Walling on your interview with him and you said that getting the first thousand users has been one of the more hard things to do with Tali.

[00:05:48] And also mentioned cold emails and doing the actual work of getting users. How was that in the first few days when they were literally zero users at the start?

[00:05:57] Yeah, I think that's the hardest part and that's also the question I get the most often like how did you get those first users? Because of course before that first set of thousand users.

[00:06:08] The viral loop isn't working yet. So you need to get the first people in to try it out for us. It was very basic because we can product tons. We basically make lists of everyone who had afforded similar products.

[00:06:20] So it could be form builders like similar tools in the no code space.

[00:06:25] It was mostly founders, designers, engineers, product people.

[00:06:29] And we would look for their contact details that was mostly like a Twitter DM or email address with it all manually.

[00:06:37] And then I would send them an image short message saying just hey working on this tool.

[00:06:43] We thought you might like it. It's free if you have five minutes you want to try it out.

[00:06:48] And yeah, we did that over and over again. I think around six months until we had that first set of users that were interested in the product.

[00:06:57] And luckily we did get some response after sending the first we did get a reply.

[00:07:03] I think the reply rate was actually pretty high for such a very cold outreach at English like 10 or 15%.

[00:07:10] And then we thought okay, we might be building something that people actually like or they're seeing potential.

[00:07:17] Some of those very early users also joined like a Slack channel that we made. So we had this immediate connection with them or we could just very easily talk to them and get feedback as we continue to build.

[00:07:30] But yeah, that was getting the first users in.

[00:07:33] And I think it was only when we then bubbly launched on product and that was like our first big introduction to the world.

[00:07:42] I think we had around a thousand users when we did it. And then we doubled the user base in one day a lot more users came in a lot more feedback came in.

[00:07:51] We got a lot of positive reaction and that's where the viral loop started rolling and the product growth kicked in.

[00:07:58] And so at one point we stopped with the cold outreach and the product kind of started to sell himself.

[00:08:04] I mentioned that it's hard for if you're starting out as a free tool and I think you guys already still to this day have a very generous free tier.

[00:08:15] How do you like, I know the story of you already that one user actually came to you guys and wanted to pay for the product but for the most users like how do you get people from a free tool that has been using to now spending money on it or are just two different kinds of users that you're trying to pay for.

[00:08:35] I think businesses usually upgrade immediately are pricing is almost ridiculously low so it's like for business it's a no brainer twenty nine dollar a month you just pay it and you forget about it most businesses also upgrade simply to remove our branding.

[00:08:50] And have their forms on a customer me and so that usually happens pretty fast of course we have free users that convert into paying users as well.

[00:09:00] It's some people actually tell us like we've gotten so much value out of it I just want to pay because it's been so useful to me.

[00:09:08] We indeed before we had a paid plan we had one of our first users he's still on all not plan reaching out and basically saying yeah it's great software I would like to pay for it but we hadn't said up like stripe.

[00:09:20] And all of that and so we made this custom plan for him and so he started paying and then we took a.

[00:09:27] There's definitely willingness to pay and of course we have some triggers within the product but a lot of people can use it for free forever and I'm for us as well because that's how we grow so we always actually.

[00:09:40] Prioritize adding three features and making sure that we add more free value before we work on paid ones.

[00:09:47] You're running contrary to a lot of other indie hackers right now for example I talked to Steve McLeod on the podcast in one episode and he was saying you shouldn't have a free tier in your software just to make them pay like $17 a month then 47 and 249 for the guys that won all the features right.

[00:10:05] You're running very contrary to this having this big free tier here how do you think your different to other products where you can't have a free tier or what do you think about the free tier in general if compared to other indie hacking products.

[00:10:20] I don't think there's one strategy that fits for all so there's a lot of different type of products if you don't have a viral like component in your product then it makes it a lot more difficult to sell it as well right.

[00:10:34] So if you know very well how to market it without having that then you probably shouldn't add a free tier just for us it was the easiest way to get to more users but a very low budget.

[00:10:46] The downside of that is that we have tons of customer support because we have around 350,000 free users right now and we really prioritize customer support so that's something that we have to invest in.

[00:11:00] And that's also how telly started but it has out grown as you it's not something it has become a lot bigger than just us and it's not a product that you can maintain it with one or two people.

[00:11:11] Another anymore so then that's like the downside or that's the choice that we had to make I think for us we know it's different than default SaaS playbook.

[00:11:22] It's a drop also told me but it works for us and there's of course also the heavy competition of form builders that have different pricing models right so if we would just do the same like them.

[00:11:34] It would become very difficult for us to compete or to at least find our spots in that market and in the end Talia is being loved by a lot of users because of the user experience because of the interface.

[00:11:47] But the biggest part of our success is the free tier that's how we find new users and around 3% of those users convert to Talipro it's how we make money.

[00:11:56] So for us it's a formula that works it has it has pros and cons I don't like saying you should never offer a free tier or you should always ask for money.

[00:12:07] That's not really how I see things I think the reality is a bit more complicated and there's a lot of different factors that you should take into account and a personal preference as well.

[00:12:20] But that was like the claim or the argument of Steve in his episode is also like the people that have a free tier or the people that pay them the least amount of money.

[00:12:31] I usually the ones that are the loudest in customer service so how do you guys then handle all of this with 350,000 users.

[00:12:39] Yeah it's definitely a thing we decided to offer free support to everyone also to do also to the free users and it became a lot in the beginning we would just do it ourselves and I think after two years it became too much so we started really simple we created a help center we document everything.

[00:12:56] We had the goal to never answer any question twice of course the reality is a bit different but that's what we're striving towards.

[00:13:05] Then we automated a bunch of stuff we used to keep track of feature requests manually we stopped that we just have a public canny board right now where everyone can uphold and create feature requests.

[00:13:17] We stopped just answering by email so everyone could just email us directly or talk to us in Slack so we now have tally floor which is a more structured flow.

[00:13:26] Where you have to go through if you want to report a bio choreography to help.

[00:13:31] So all of that filter down and made it a bit more manageable we had to close our Slack roof which was something we didn't really want to do but it became like this live support chat 24-7 which was of course unmanageable but again.

[00:13:45] It also helped us a lot at the beginning to talk to users to understand their needs to build like relationships with the very early users that became the biggest ambassador.

[00:13:55] So I wouldn't do it any other way but there's just a point where it becomes unmanageable so we had to stop access for new users there and hire and so our first hire was a customer support manager because we wanted to invest in this free but of course.

[00:14:13] Our goal is always to keep the product as simple as possible so the support load also stays low so that's something that we really keep in mind but besides all of that you'll always have support and that's something that we've learned along the way and that we're trying to now manage in the most efficient way that we can.

[00:14:34] If you would start something new and you wouldn't have tell us like a backup plan would you still go with something like this lecture again until you can't support it anymore or would you drop that idea from the start.

[00:14:48] Now I would totally do that again. I think we would have missed out on a lot of information if we didn't have that. We still have this lack of community so there's 4,000 people in it and so we still use it. There's still questions being asked, there's still interactions there and it's super valuable resource for us.

[00:15:05] So I would not do that differently maybe I think I would have just hired someone earlier and maybe kept us like open and I think I would have also tried to make it more into a community. Something we haven't really managed like.

[00:15:20] It is more of a support channel I would say than a community where people help out each other so I think maybe a forum or something more like that we're also results are certain that's probably something that's a bit more future proved on an actual Slack channel where you also do this history because paying for Slack with that many members also becomes really expensive.

[00:15:40] So maybe yeah I think I would keep the slack in the beginning just because just talking to someone or having access to someone that easily is hard to replace but I feel like something more like a forum might probably be more scalable.

[00:16:01] Maybe with the next product. Yes indeed.

[00:16:06] With your first hire as in like customer service and I think I saw it on your Twitter that you also hired someone outside of customer service now I think what's this process for you guys because obviously it's something else if you and your co-founder Philip dual product and you're the customer service guy or girl

[00:16:24] and also the guy that or the girl that does the design and development and business stuff everything goes through you now you start hiring people and you start to load off some of the stuff to other employees. How does that how did that change feel for you and your role in a company?

[00:16:41] Yeah it was definitely a process I would say everything was in our heads nothing was documented we would just do stuff I not think too much about everything and here's the next week other at the desk to everything goes super fast.

[00:16:55] We love that as well but at what point it just became unmanageable and we also became frustrated because we could not actually do what we were supposed to do.

[00:17:26] I think that's a learning that we also had throughout the years is that we really always try to work with senior people we don't have the time to of course we onboard people but to actually educate them so that was definitely a learning that we had.

[00:17:41] So it's a process you have to adjust having other people in the team but I think that's also the moment where we realized that we actually would like to build a team and a company and we didn't just want to keep it us to hacking things together

[00:17:56] and that's been a bit of a transformative moment for us from like time as a lifestyle business. Oh we can actually build a team and a company and see how far we can get like that.

[00:18:09] So I guess that's something that kind of came with the first tire that idea of just can be a lot bigger and if we find the right people they will help us push forward and we will also have more headspace to do other things.

[00:18:23] Since you guys are natural what your newest numbers are but you obviously above 100k MR.

[00:18:32] What's like if at that point usually you could easily sell the business right and make enough money to not have to worry about any other product you have to do if you live with decent life what's your vision for the company,

[00:18:44] and for the product, and it doesn't feel like you guys want to sell off, tell you and sail into the sunset. So what's your vision for the next few years regarding,

[00:18:54] Yeah I think we're still very motivated to the fact we actually moved into an office so that's the first time in four years that we haven't been working for a long,

[00:19:02] On Monday this is the first time we hired water who's a full-steck engineer and he's actually with us in the office right now,

[00:19:10] And we have a new customer support agent joining next week. The people we've worked with in the past were always remote,

[00:19:17] Also always freelance and just part time or we're just checking in and helping us on project basis so that was still something else and having full time people in space with you

[00:19:27] And we realized that we want to try to actually build a company but we also want to become a household name and the form building business.

[00:19:37] So if you think about building forms and your start up, we want Tali to pop up and we still have a long way ahead of us before we're there, we are known in a smaller segment on the internet,

[00:19:49] But there's lots of room to grow the team and Tali has a company as well. So I think that's kind of something that we just learned along the way and realized that's like a different face,

[00:20:00] And we don't have that much experience as well. I think we're pretty good at going from one to zero, but then actually scaling it is something else and so it's a huge challenge for us,

[00:20:11] But it's something we both feel very triggered and passionate about, so that's what we're trying to do now and we're also just learning on the job basically.

[00:20:20] So I feel like that's why we are indeed not thinking about selling it right now for us. It feels like day one but then of a new face in the company.

[00:20:30] And so we're very excited to do this for a bit longer. Of course, I think every founder at one point would like to have a successful exit and sell the product hopefully one day that will happen, but it's definitely not something that we are proactively looking for at this stage.

[00:20:48] I think that's just an interesting take because when I talked to Avid Kahl on the podcast, he and his wife were also working on it together. His main reason to sell was that you wanted to spread the risk.

[00:21:05] So for him that was actually a very good call because a few months later after they saw the business, China made the thing that they were doing illegal.

[00:21:15] So the software that they sold couldn't exist in the way that they did it anymore. What do you think about that risk that you're taking on with tele and not selling it and not spreading that risk? So to say,

[00:21:28] is that something that concerns you or is that something you don't think that much about at this stage?

[00:21:34] I don't think it's something that really worries us. Of course, it's always risky to run your own business and be self-employed and all of that.

[00:21:43] So tons of things can happen. I think if you're too focused on that then it's better not to start because you'll get super stressed spreading the risk.

[00:21:51] Yeah, I feel like or we feel like that tele has so much more potential to grow. I think we can probably double our revenue again by next year.

[00:22:02] So selling it now would maybe also not be that smart. Maybe you can sell it for a lot more in a couple of years and besides that, I think we also don't really feel ready.

[00:22:12] We do really love what we're doing and of course, we're not a charity. Everyone wants to make money but it doesn't feel like you're right now yet.

[00:22:21] Also, we haven't had a right proposal yet or conversations where we usually also don't really engage in the conversations.

[00:22:28] We haven't had been in the situation where we thought, okay, this is enough for a week with fused. So I think we're also not really focused on it and we're trying to just do our thing.

[00:22:39] And we take it here by year and yeah, a lot of things can happen that's true but I guess you need to take a bit of risk and life.

[00:22:48] Yeah, I think that's fair as well. And I think I would also be very careful with selling something that feels like a business trade right.

[00:22:57] It's something you build from the start and giving that up why you know that it can grow further is part.

[00:23:02] Yeah, we feel like we haven't reached a full potential. We haven't tried it. We've only started with faith marketing last month. So it would really feel like we're giving up something that is still a bit to precious and that has so much potential to grow a lot more and a lot faster.

[00:23:22] And we first want to see if we can succeed at doing that.

[00:23:26] It's crazy to me that you guys consider the you at 100k plus MR and you consider yourself at the start. That's very interesting mindset.

[00:23:36] Yeah, I mean, I don't mean it financially right.

[00:23:39] Sure. I think this is when we started our goal was to make more than we did as employees that was the dream goal.

[00:23:47] And so yeah, the first year of course we didn't pay ourselves any salaries. We also didn't have enough revenue.

[00:23:54] But I think we reached that I don't know was it after one year or after ten months we got to the point where we had enough for one salary.

[00:24:02] And that's probably the biggest moment that we have ever celebrated because that means oh wow.

[00:24:09] When we got to like the two salaries, we now officially make more than we did as employees.

[00:24:15] And of course when we got there we were like okay what's the next step and of course then tax is coming in and there's a lot of costs.

[00:24:21] And we always have to surprise like that, especially in Europe. So yeah, you learn more about running a business and grow, start it speeding up as well.

[00:24:32] Yeah, you always keep pushing your boundaries. And I must say that the yet 100k MRR was a bit surreal really like it's not sometimes I can also not really grasp it or we actually do we actually have that type of revenue.

[00:24:46] It doesn't mean that we privately can just go spend all of that. So of course you pay start paying yourself the salary, you can raise your salary, you can do more.

[00:24:58] But we're like, we're living or we are millionaires or anything like that.

[00:25:03] So yeah, it changes and it changed fast for us. But I think we won't easily forget like I think the first two years and the grinding and of course we're still grinding.

[00:25:17] But I think the first successes are really the ones that you remember the most is like where you get to if you can get to a point where you can make a living out of your own business.

[00:25:26] I think that's the most magical moment. And if I say now it feels like day one, it's not it I don't think it's about the money but it's about the fact that we are like building a team and a company and it's starting to feel like a very serious business right now.

[00:25:43] If it's just yourself, it sometimes for me it always felt like I'm playing business because it just made in my laptop and then it started to become like an actual physical thing. And I think that's kind of what's happening now and that's what I mean with the beginning of the new phase.

[00:26:00] So let's say and I think as well if you want to hire people and especially senior people you need a lot of money.

[00:26:08] And that's something we also learned during the past years. So yeah, that's money we're now trying to spend on finding really good and bright minds that can help us grow further.

[00:26:20] I got this question and you obviously entitled to not answer that questions. Steve McLeod in other guests of us.

[00:26:26] There are two questions. The first one was how much of the 100K MRs actual profit for you guys with salaries that might have changed but you can answer if you want to and the second part was if you're largely profitable what kind of interesting thing did you buy?

[00:26:43] Yeah, I saw that one on Twitter. The company is very healthy, it's very profitable. I think we have a profit margin over around, it's probably around 65% there's definitely profit.

[00:26:53] And what did we buy? Nothing crazy. We managed last year to get along to buy a house which is something that we couldn't do in the first years because we just didn't have salaries.

[00:27:06] So that was definitely yeah, like a huge milestone for us. We have had to get to children's overborn since we launched Tally so we needed a bigger space and Tally allowed us to move on and to buy one actual property.

[00:27:20] So I think that would probably be the craziest thing that we've done until now.

[00:27:28] Very down to Earth, I think. Yes, yes. One thing I had in mind was obviously with one K you're doing things different than now at 100K.

[00:27:39] If you look at the MR chart for you guys it's pretty much not linear but linear going up so it went pretty fast for like compared to other businesses.

[00:27:47] How much did your company and your process and mindset change from 1K to 10K to 100K? What's their point where you felt that we are different points where you had to do stuff differently than before.

[00:28:00] There is a lot of indie hackers saying it's one thing to get to 10K but then you have to do something completely different to get to 50K. Was that something you guys experienced as well?

[00:28:10] Yeah, I think marketing wise because it's been mostly product like road for us. The bigger the product became the more users we have to faster it starts growing.

[00:28:20] Of course a lot has changed in processes and customers support and how we run the business, how we set up things.

[00:28:28] So we would just do everything on the fly and if there's a fire we'll try to fix things and then we see again the next day.

[00:28:36] What we had to do is plan a lot more. We would get in tons of feature requests and we would jump on everything. So yeah that wasn't scalable anymore so we had to start actually we had to slow down which is something difficult as well because the bigger the product gets the more bugs that are being introduced you have to work on scalability on server,

[00:28:58] personal technical stuff but so all of that takes time. You need to start hiring that also takes time. So it's like product development also slows down if you're such a small team

[00:29:08] And then you need to start working on processes like documenting where can you find this all of that also takes time right?

[00:29:15] That's all time that stops you from being focused on the product and on the users that it has to happen to be able to scale the company.

[00:29:23] I think definitely having a roadmap we've had that since the start but planning a bit further ahead thinking about what should we actually build this feature.

[00:29:33] Does it make sense financially does it make sense marketing wise saying no to a lot of things while in the beginning you say yes to everything.

[00:29:42] Right because you just want to make people happy and make sure that you use the product now we need to say no a lot and we don't like saying no.

[00:29:49] I need to say no to certain features you need to let people know that we won't be able to do this probably in the next year you know what which is weird because

[00:30:00] We come from a place where we would like a question comes in and select like half an hour later you would have built the thing so to speak.

[00:30:09] Of course now that's possible anymore a lot more I would say on the technical side.

[00:30:15] QA testing things because the scale has gone.

[00:30:19] Become quite big we cannot really take a lot of risks on that side anymore.

[00:30:25] Yeah I think a lot more planning a lot more once in a while taking a break and coming back to what's her strategy and not being really lost getting lost in the day to day.

[00:30:36] Over an end of business so I go planning and strategizing and documenting and all of the sometimes more boring stuff that has to happen that's normal now.

[00:30:48] So as someone who actually loves digging into code and I'm actually like we have a similar setup where I also have a company with my significant other.

[00:30:59] And I am already the one that plans more I'm the documenter I'm the one that fills out all the text stuff but I'm also not I'm still not a good planner for myself.

[00:31:08] So at that point where our company would need something like this like more planning more documenting of processes.

[00:31:16] I am pretty sure that we would struggle how did you have the person that actually wanted to do that stuff because you already said it's boring.

[00:31:24] How do you handle doing your job that much differently or another way than before?

[00:31:30] We do a lot of stuff that we don't like to do as well.

[00:31:33] We know building tallie but unfortunately there's always 30% of this shit that has to be done and that's the reality is all of running a business.

[00:31:42] So I think what we've learned and what we and especially also Phillip are pretty good in is this is the job that needs to be done.

[00:31:50] We just have to do it now even if it's not fun and you try to find the fun and it for documentation for example, we use notion we love the tool.

[00:32:00] We try to make it nice and try to put some effort in it continuously do it's mostly when someone you're joins them we're like okay we need to update everything.

[00:32:10] But yeah not really not any good advice there probably I also I always respond with things that I don't like doing so then do them last minute which is also not a good strategy of another advice.

[00:32:24] So yeah just you realize it needs to happen and sometimes you need to take the time to do it to them afterwards have a bit more time for this stuff that you actually love doing.

[00:32:35] I saw that you guys are starting to test out influence on marketing now which seems different than to the stuff they did before how was that process so you and how does it work out now.

[00:32:49] Yeah, I think we felt like we've been drawing organically for three or four years and that's also a bit scary right like you believe the growth completely in the hand of the product and users.

[00:33:00] Now we just started thinking like can we speed up the growth what can we try out under some budget now which we spend it on and so we actually started with influence your marketing because we felt like that kind of amplifies with already happening.

[00:33:16] Organically people creating content about telling you creating YouTube tutorials short so on so if we can actually identify it was.

[00:33:26] People that can be ambassadors for the brand and I can create useful content which would give it a go so we just started a few months ago we've actually seen already huge increase in people signing up coming from YouTube so.

[00:33:39] It looks like it is a strategy that will work for us.

[00:33:44] It's still very early so hard to say I think we need bigger volumes to actually extract earnings and lessons from it, but so that's one pillar after that we also want to start reusing the content and start with advertising on YouTube and on LinkedIn.

[00:34:03] But we haven't started with that process yet and then there's paid search where we're still I wouldn't say doubting but I'm waiting all in off and bid on that because the competition is extremely high and so we need to figure out if it actually would make sense for us.

[00:34:19] And we're also our contract value is so low and the lifetime value of the users as well that's like yet to be decided but yeah this is the first these are like the first paid efforts that we're doing and we're monitoring them closely to see yeah which effect it has on the growth.

[00:34:37] What I haven't heard from you, but I think that you guys are doing that as well as oh because I think you guys have at least for the business tell you you have a lot of blog posts.

[00:34:47] Is that something that you tried and didn't do much more or do you do stuff in SEO?

[00:34:51] We don't have a focus on SEO because actually like the market is so competitive and unless you have something very unique with a very big demand for I think it would be a huge waste of resources for us.

[00:35:05] We've done the basics we have type for a multi-metative pages that actually rank very well where we just compare our product with competitors so that's something we do.

[00:35:16] We're also working on template pages to increase our organic traffic but it's not a really part of our strategy because I believe we would need to spend a lot of money, we would need to have an immense content team to be able to compete with the very big players out there and even then we would be years behind so I don't think that will be our source of growth.

[00:35:39] Instead of that I think we need to look more at community content and paid to get there.

[00:35:46] So yeah, that's that for SEO right now.

[00:35:48] I think we've done the basic the blog is definitely not written with an SEO perspective in mind it's just basically us building in public and once in a while when we reach a big milestone we share our learnings with the community and at something we've done since the start.

[00:36:03] We follow other companies that did as well and have learned a lot from them so it's just a way for us to share what we're doing and building in public.

[00:36:12] You could call it content marketing but that's not where we really find our users it's mainly blog posts that we share on Twitter and that are read by other founders or people that are when the same industry like ours.

[00:36:27] Regarding the whole built-in public aspect how much has that actually shaped your business?

[00:36:32] I think it has helped us in the start because it just gave us something to write about so we've always been very open about our journey.

[00:36:41] Being like the small underdog trying to get into the form builder space, being bootstrapped and independent as well so it's just a very unique story I think at the time.

[00:36:52] I think it definitely helped build some kind of audience or maybe a personal audience, mainly on Twitter then and to probably also get some users from there.

[00:37:03] It's more part of our DNA I would say it's not really part of a growth strategy but I feel like it's something that we will continue to do.

[00:37:11] We're also not some people are building in public very actively shared of dates every day.

[00:37:20] We don't do that, we it's been a while actually but we like to look back every couple of months or even every six months but just see okay what has happened how much have we grown what did we learn and try to write it all up so it's a longer form of content and yeah we just put it out there.

[00:37:42] And yeah we definitely have people that follow us to learn what has happened over the past months but it's I wouldn't say that it's like a cornerstone of our growth strategy or anything like that.

[00:37:54] I love what you do comes I feel like yes you can do influence a marketing and you can do other parts of marketing but it feels most of your growth has been from actual word of mouth and people looking at other forms and checking you out afterwards so all comes back to this product let growth.

[00:38:12] What was your process like at the beginning with that and how did you keep that as focus for you until this point.

[00:38:20] I think we just knew that if we want to run this business with a small and I mean and start with no budget that it had to be.

[00:38:30] Some form of product lead growth it's also how we ended up with forms I think in the beginning it was because we also weren't making any money it was difficult to stick to the free plan but the free plan is crucial right in this strategy and sometimes if you're not making money it's difficult to add another free feature you get tempted to maybe start asking more money for it but we.

[00:38:53] We identified I would say this framework or these three principles that really work for us and that's the fact that value is free.

[00:39:01] That it's very simple and that it's us that it's our faces that was us providing customer support it's our story so it's a very personal brand.

[00:39:10] It's simple as it should be easy to use people should be self-service we should not be helping people to get onboarded so the barrier to try it out needs to be super low you need to get value as fast as possible and it's free because that's how we find our users that's how the growth fly will keep some spinning and so every time we get into a difficult situation or we need to make our decisions were like okay.

[00:39:37] Does it take these boxes that we should just do it and it will work out for us and so that has been a bit of our framework that we've been using to make decisions and in the past years.

[00:39:49] Do you think is still have a very good grasp on what your users want is it harder now that you have so many users or does something like can you make it easier for you guys to know which features are more important.

[00:40:01] I think we have a pretty good idea there's hundreds or thousands of feature requests but there's some that are clearly the most popular we also see them returning in customer support.

[00:40:12] So I think that's pretty clear to us what you sometimes use is context right someone creates a feature request and maybe their problem can be solved in a different way.

[00:40:23] So that's where the new support hire is coming in to make sure that we don't lose that information or to try to dig for more context.

[00:40:32] But I think we're not missing out on feedback, I could get feedback all the time and especially I think it too like cany definitely help because people can comment can upload can create new requests so we have a pretty good view on what people want from us.

[00:40:47] I have maybe one question that goes into a pretty similar direction but I was just curious that tele doesn't seem like it started in a very niche market.

[00:41:00] Tele feels like from the start you were like a form builder for different niches and again that's different than some of the advice that we hear from the community.

[00:41:10] But that was something you did consciously right is that like how did you come up with that approach not neaching down.

[00:41:17] Yeah I think we launched in the in the hacker space, I guess it was known as like the form builder for indie hackers especially creators small companies and also how we found our first users.

[00:41:28] We do really focus on SME startups so we're not equipped for enterprises we have a lot of enterprises that would like to use tele that comes with a whole new level of legal agreements compliance support levels and so on.

[00:41:43] We're not ready for that we're also not sure if we want to do that on the short term so it's definitely there's a focus on startups but yet it's still a very wide group.

[00:41:54] We've never actually coined it like that like it is for indie hackers or creators I guess more of a focus on the simplicity of the product and being it like is the simplest way to create forms then say like it's forms only for this type of of audience because in the end we want to serve everybody.

[00:42:17] We want to make sure that from businesses to my grandma that is easy for everyone to create a form so that's a bit of conscious strategy.

[00:42:27] And I think you also made yourself a niche when I look at Tali I cannot see like a design that's made for one kind of industry but something that's very clean and works for everybody I think that's like no share the comparison is very easy to make.

[00:42:44] But I think that works right.

[00:42:47] Yeah, notion also wants to build software for everyone right but they also launched in a niche of people that really value the simplicity the design of their work and I think you always start in some kind of smaller audience and those are more like the earlier doctors right the people that want to try out new tools the people that are.

[00:43:06] And by the user interface because some people don't care right so people don't care about design and all these things that's also fine but I think yeah we definitely found our first users in a segment of.

[00:43:19] And we would say founders and more product oriented people that really valued the user experience and the interface that we were building.

[00:43:29] And they were also the ones that started talking about it and then from there the audience just became bigger especially in the beginning.

[00:43:36] And if we were active in slag groups or in the hackers or building public of course that was with a specific audience in mind.

[00:43:44] So my grandma is not going to read all of that but there's specific audience that will and so in that regard we were targeting a niche because I guess that sort starts and then you try to.

[00:43:58] And we also do that by if you look at businesses because of course most of our paying users or businesses.

[00:44:07] There's several groups of audiences that you can define there you have sales people that want to have contact forums they have product people that want to have feedback forums they have HR and you want to have job application funds and so on.

[00:44:20] You have creators or for nerves and they need maybe a very quick way to set up a payment form so we do try to cater to all these audiences.

[00:44:29] And have someone to define the different groups but we're sometimes surprised by the type of businesses that find us like we have customers in all kinds of crazy industries that we didn't even know.

[00:44:42] Exist it and I think that's the beauty of forms that everyone needs them at one point.

[00:44:48] We're running a little all in time Mary we always have the same two finishing questions for all our guests that I want to ask at the end.

[00:44:55] The first one is what excites you at the moment what something you're looking forward to now at this moment of your business or your private life.

[00:45:04] Yeah it's been my first week in an office in four years actually and so I haven't seen my kids basically all week or not a lot.

[00:45:13] So I'm really on the very short term just looking forward to spending some time with them during the weekend.

[00:45:19] I think that's more on a personal level and I think on a business level I'm really looking forward to building a team and to have a bit of a tiny team culture here here within our new office because that's something that.

[00:45:33] I didn't exist until this week and I'm curious how dynamics will change the new people coming in or the fact it will have on the business but also on this personally so you're pretty excited about those things.

[00:45:48] And we're thinking about doing update podcast episodes on this podcast the last question I have for you Mary today is if you would give a new and you had to advise now they're starting from zero today what would be the one lesson or advice you would like to give them.

[00:46:03] I definitely don't consider myself as the expert this is also the first time that I've had a start of that has been able to grow up to this level.

[00:46:12] I think for me personally what I've learned in the beginning is that you cannot really give up easily and of course that's difficult to say if you quit your job and you don't have any income and you need to keep on grinding to get somewhere but for us we felt it has always helped not to give up too fast.

[00:46:31] So for example, with our first project hotspot we only stopped when we really realized like okay this whole market is down.

[00:46:40] We won't be able to do anything you're probably going to come and so let's pivot and then with Sally we know we did a lot of stuff that doesn't scale in a such a case shape but it has helped us finding something that works and then doing it over and over again until you can start on scaling and all those other things.

[00:46:58] And of course, Fieryens is definitely one factor that is pretty important.

[00:47:03] Also for us I think we thought we would live the life of going surfing and just coding through hours on the beach reality has turned out very different we were in an office we're living a much more normal life right now but also need to work hard and a lot so it's you can argue about quality of life as well right.

[00:47:26] I can't need to put in the hours otherwise the business is not gone grow so I think that has been a bit of a learning process.

[00:47:34] And also don't be afraid to ask right there's so many people building stuff and there's always people that are few steps ahead and I found those always way more valuable to follow than the people that are years ahead right because it's a lot more tangible.

[00:47:53] So I really also learned just to ask people in my environment as well on Twitter or anywhere for advice and you can always get a note maybe once in a while you'll also get to learn something.

[00:48:08] So yeah being open for feedback and asking for advice is definitely something I would recommend and if you get feedback that you don't like also be open to it and try to act on that.

[00:48:21] Yeah sometimes that's the feedback that you actually need.

[00:48:24] It's not the fun part but yeah sometimes it's necessary.

[00:48:28] Yeah and you pretty much described why I started this podcast which was talk to people who are more successful than me to learn from.

[00:48:37] Thank you so much Marie for being here and for taking the time and now I will leave you to the weekend and your kids so you can see them again.

[00:48:44] Thank you so much.

[00:48:46] Thank you so much.

[00:48:47] Bye bye.