#028 Quitting the Traditional Path to 30k MRR with Ali Salah

[00:00:00] First of all, it takes a lot of time. You need to have a plan. You need to have financials that will support you for three years at least. Start with small things and build the muscle of launching and building a lot of things. Then you can start building bigger things because usually bigger things are more difficult to launch. It's really difficult if you start with a big thing. So start with smaller steps and have a long-term plan.

[00:00:25] Hi and welcome to the Code and Conquer Podcast. Today we're talking to Ali Salah, the founder of Outage and Status Service in Status. We cover topics like working as an Indie Hacker from Egypt, benefits and challenges, as well as experience fundraising with Comfund and the importance of pricing strategy, SEO and social media promotion for your business.

[00:00:47] Ali took all of these challenges and experiments and scaled his company to 800 customers and almost 30k MRR. So I hope you guys enjoy this one. Learn a thing or two? Let's jump right in.

[00:01:01] And welcome to the 28th episode of the Code and Conquer Podcast. Today I have Ali Salah with me. Ali, what is Instatus? Who are you? And how did Instatus and you came to be?

[00:01:14] Instatus is a service that companies use to communicate about outages with their customers. To say that something happens, like an outage happens on your service and you want to tell customers about it, you can create a status page and then use it to communicate with users about it.

[00:01:30] So instead of having all your customers be very angry and they all go to customer support at the same time, you can just be proactive and tell them that you already know about it, you're fixing it, stuff like that.

[00:01:44] Yeah, I've been interested in startups for a long while. And then after I graduated, I took the traditional route. I worked at a company for a year and a half and then I quit. The reason for quitting on the HR thing was starting my own business. It was weird to them.

[00:02:04] I worked on several projects. None of them made any money for two to three years and then Instatus was promising. So I continued with it. And yeah, that's how it started. It started with a different name. It was called Substance, but it was a little differently marketed.

[00:02:22] So it was targeted towards startup founders. But then I recognized that it's not the best audience for status pages because you need to have a lot of customers for people to care about your service going down. If you're a startup and your service goes down, generally no one notices. So it was better to actually target bigger companies.

[00:02:42] So I got a better domain name, a more fancy homepage and started to work and also targeted pricing for more like bigger companies. So the new pricing was about being flat rate priced. It was making a price that stays with you even when subscribers and team members increase.

[00:03:06] So yeah, I made the marketing more attractive to bigger companies as well as pricing. And that worked. Started making money in stock.

[00:03:18] And currently you are at 26 KMRR is the last update that I saw.

[00:03:23] We're approaching 30. So it's 29 and a half, something like that. Yes, we're approaching 30 KMRR. A number of customers is about, we're approaching 800. So it's about 780 to be exact.

[00:03:36] We have a small team, about 5 engineers and a content creator. So that's like, he's focused on short videos. So we post on Reels and on TikTok.

[00:03:48] Tried to hire a salesperson, but it didn't work out. So I'll probably do it again in the future.

[00:03:54] Tried to hire a salesperson, but it's about to be exact. So yeah, that's how the company is trying to take care that it doesn't slow down, like the growth doesn't slow down because it gets more difficult with time.

[00:04:10] Tried to hire a salesperson.

[00:04:34] Tried to hire a salesperson.

[00:04:34] So I'm going to go like two steps back before we dive deep into the business itself. So in the beginning, you said that you went the traditional route. I think you studied computer engineering or something similar at university.

[00:04:46] Actually, then went into one to two years of full employment and then started indie hacking, solopreneurship, whatever it's called right now.

[00:04:55] The traditional route you then left behind. And, but you said at the beginning that you didn't make any money two or three years.

[00:05:01] How did that like, how was that part of your journey? Because obviously you had to live somewhere or to make money in any kind of way to sustain your life.

[00:05:11] What was your thought process? What was in your brain in the two or three years where it didn't work out?

[00:05:17] Yes. So part of it is that life in Egypt is like a lot cheaper than everywhere else.

[00:05:22] Part of it is that I lived with my parents. That's a bit weird in other countries, but like everyone does it here.

[00:05:28] So at the time I lived with my parents. So living expenses were very low.

[00:05:33] So all my living expenses was just going to a cafe and working.

[00:05:37] So everything else like rent and food and everything else was taken care of.

[00:05:42] So yeah, being in Egypt is like an advantage for to start something like this thing.

[00:05:48] But I think if you're in another country, you need to get two to three years of runway.

[00:05:54] So you need to like living expenses for two to three years because even other people, I think they take three years to get something to profitability.

[00:06:05] So yeah, I think you need to have your finances secure for up to two to three years because it's very rare that people might get the profitability before that.

[00:06:17] But what was your experience like in this first two or three years? Did your parents just say, oh, he's going to figure it out eventually?

[00:06:25] Or did you think that yourself? Or what were the first two years like?

[00:06:28] I did feel that, but everyone else wasn't so sure. So everyone, like I had a lot of pressure from everyone.

[00:06:36] It's a bit difficult to start something and just leave your work.

[00:06:40] People treat you like you're unemployed and there's pressure from everywhere too.

[00:06:45] Like someone tells me, oh yeah, didn't you try freelancing?

[00:06:50] Everyone's like, flushing from all sides. You should get, you should try to get interviews, stuff like that.

[00:06:57] So it's difficult, yeah. The first years are very difficult.

[00:07:00] Even my colleagues at work, my friends, family, everyone.

[00:07:05] Honestly, my mom was supportive, but almost everyone else was like flushing from all sides.

[00:07:10] Someone left their job and they don't know what they're doing. So from their side, they are just feeling it's weird.

[00:07:18] Like the AI went off the wrong track.

[00:07:21] So at what point did those feedbacks change into the positive notes?

[00:07:27] I think 5k is something like that.

[00:07:30] When you start to, when it becomes apparent that it's successful,

[00:07:34] when you start to get like acquisition offers and stuff like that, they start to change.

[00:07:39] Cause results like speak for themselves.

[00:07:41] But yeah, it took a long while.

[00:07:44] It took a long while, especially that I took three years to start getting to like even $1 MRR.

[00:07:50] So yeah, it was very difficult at first.

[00:07:56] And what is, what is life like in Egypt when you, you already said it's,

[00:08:01] I think it's a very positive note on you that you actually see Egypt as a positive for you as a base location.

[00:08:08] Instead of, I would have assumed that it's way harder doing this there than it would be in Western countries in Europe or in the US even.

[00:08:17] But you, before we started the interview, we said, it's basically like living in Thailand without going there.

[00:08:23] So I can imagine that that helped a lot in the beginning, but what is life like now that you're at such a high rate?

[00:08:31] And that's a high rate of revenue that you can't compare to any like normal salary in that country or even with your friends.

[00:08:38] Yeah. I don't think it's causing a problem. I think, yeah, it's considered successful.

[00:08:43] I'm not, I don't consider myself that successful, but yeah, in my circle and my region, I'm considered successful.

[00:08:52] I don't think that maybe because I don't talk about it a lot.

[00:08:56] That just means that you have very good friends.

[00:08:58] Yeah. I tend to choose my friends. So I'm an introvert. So yeah, it's a lot of filters.

[00:09:04] I don't like, I don't have a lot of acquaintances. So most of my friends are close.

[00:09:10] And yeah, I'm very particular about choosing them.

[00:09:14] And I don't start with telling them like, I'm a founder and I have.

[00:09:19] And yeah, so you tend to attack better people if you don't like feel not showy about things. Just normal.

[00:09:28] I think that's like your social media presence is like, because a lot of my guests come directly from social media.

[00:09:37] And usually I'd write them a DM on Twitter to show them like, hey, I wanted to invite you to my show.

[00:09:43] But I wasn't sure you would get that DM because you like tweeted every month, maybe once in the past.

[00:09:50] And your TikTok and Instagram are also like handed, obviously by another person actually, and also don't really show anything personal.

[00:09:58] So you're not doing the usual IndieHacker run where you go, oh, I will just get 20k followers.

[00:10:05] And then I can basically pretty much sell every product that I want to.

[00:10:09] What was like your thought process there? Why are you not that active on social media?

[00:10:13] And what did you do instead to get that product to the stage that it is?

[00:10:16] Yeah, honestly, I think it's a weakness. I'm not a very social media person.

[00:10:21] So I don't get a lot of ideas. Also because I don't use Twitter a lot these days.

[00:10:27] So if you're using it more, you will have more ideas and you can post more.

[00:10:32] So I used to post more a lot more earlier, and then I lost interest. I don't know why.

[00:10:37] But I think it's useful to be honest. When I launched, it was just product hunt and Twitter.

[00:10:41] So that's against all the advice that said that this is not enough, but it was enough for me.

[00:10:49] So yeah, my advice, yeah, go for it on Twitter. I think it's really helpful for marketing and product hunt as well.

[00:10:55] So if you focus on your launch and make it like get to the top spots, I think it's really useful to get your first customers here.

[00:11:04] But yeah, I think it's a weakness. I think that's why I had someone for shorts.

[00:11:08] I don't think it's like something to be like, it's not advisable to just stay silent.

[00:11:16] So currently I just do a very safe tweets. Like I designed something new.

[00:11:23] I'm a little bit like, I'm a little bit more. I've been working on Facebook, but I'm a little bit more.

[00:11:27] I just don't post anything else.

[00:11:33] I was getting the vibe that's intentional that you don't go on social media and don't post there a lot.

[00:11:39] I think part of it as well is that we are a team. So usually when something happens regarding the business, I'm inclined to share it on Slack.

[00:11:49] So I then don't have a lot of excitement or a lot of energy to share it on somewhere else.

[00:11:56] But when I was just alone, it was more exciting to share something that I did with the world.

[00:12:02] Also because work is divided, so I'm not doing all aspects.

[00:12:06] So I'm just maybe designing and then an engineer develops it.

[00:12:11] It's not, I'm not as excited to share it on Twitter.

[00:12:14] But if you just spent a lot of time working on something, you're more like excited to share it.

[00:12:21] And now the updates are just in the internals lecture.

[00:12:24] Yeah, I think social media is helpful to be honest.

[00:12:30] So if you check most of the products that are very successful, like Vesel or Linear or stuff like that,

[00:12:36] they're very active on social media.

[00:12:39] So I think you can get a lot of hype from it.

[00:12:44] What was your first Product Hunt launch like?

[00:12:46] Did you launch on Twitter first and then have a few users or did you have a following on Twitter already

[00:12:52] and then launched on Product Hunt?

[00:12:54] Yeah, I think at the time I had 200 or 300.

[00:12:58] I think I launched my launches are like the same day for everything.

[00:13:02] So I launched on Product Hunt and then shared it on Twitter for people to support it on Product Hunt.

[00:13:07] And then I shared it on Reddit, shared it everywhere.

[00:13:10] I'm that annoying user on Reddit that only posts about launches.

[00:13:15] And same with Hacker News and same with Indie Hackers, to be honest.

[00:13:19] So yeah, I think even if you have a very small amount of following,

[00:13:23] if you have a bit of a close connection with them,

[00:13:27] if they're friends, they tend to be supportive.

[00:13:30] So first logos on Instatus were logos of companies started by fans.

[00:13:37] They're not really companies, they're very small products.

[00:13:40] So you can build stuff like fake it, fake it till you make it at first

[00:13:44] by showing logos of products that really use the Instatus and everything,

[00:13:50] but they're very small products.

[00:13:51] And if they have a cool logo, it looks a bit more official.

[00:13:57] It looks like a real thing.

[00:13:59] So then you can improve these logos as you go.

[00:14:02] I think following is a bit overrated, especially right now,

[00:14:07] because everything is algorithmic.

[00:14:09] So you can find like a very small account that goes viral

[00:14:12] and a very big account that gets two likes.

[00:14:15] So everything is related more to the post and not to the followers count.

[00:14:21] And even then I started with zero followers.

[00:14:25] It didn't affect me that much, but being active does affect like marketing.

[00:14:30] Like being active is good, but I don't think it should be discouraging.

[00:14:34] So you don't need to build a following and then build a product.

[00:14:37] And even like success of your product will help you with getting a following.

[00:14:41] So I think you could start earlier than you don't need to build the following first.

[00:14:46] That's my opinion.

[00:14:48] What was the product hunt launch like?

[00:14:52] So it was multiple launches.

[00:14:54] So first I started with other projects that didn't work out.

[00:14:56] So that's my advice is to not start with like your big project.

[00:15:00] It's better to start with small projects and then launching is very difficult.

[00:15:05] So you'll get better at launching, at having the courage to launch.

[00:15:09] Most people, they're just afraid to launch the thing.

[00:15:13] And the more you take time building it, the more it gets difficult.

[00:15:18] Because it's like you spent a lot of time.

[00:15:20] So you want to make it perfect.

[00:15:22] So yeah, I know that.

[00:15:24] So the more that you take time, the more that you want it to be perfect and cycle continues.

[00:15:32] And I know that very well.

[00:15:35] Yeah.

[00:15:36] So I think you need to build very small things and launch it on product hunt and get your launching muscles bigger.

[00:15:44] And then you can work on bigger things.

[00:15:46] So I think the first launch that was Substatus that got, it was the fifth on product hunt.

[00:15:51] And the Insatus was the first top of the day.

[00:15:55] I think Insatus, what helped it, it had a video that people liked.

[00:16:01] People usually commented about the video more than the product itself.

[00:16:05] I actually used this for Reddit.

[00:16:08] So my post on Reddit was, I worked on a product for a year and a video for a week.

[00:16:14] And the video got more attention.

[00:16:16] So I used it as a cool title.

[00:16:18] But yeah, that was true.

[00:16:20] The video got more attention than the product itself.

[00:16:22] So that helped it get to a higher ranking and also support of fans on Twitter.

[00:16:27] I think.

[00:16:28] Yeah.

[00:16:29] And it was like a better landing page.

[00:16:31] So yeah, I think if you focus on like the aspects of the launch, that includes screenshots,

[00:16:38] it includes description, it includes getting someone to, if you have a low amount of following,

[00:16:43] you can get someone to hunt it for you.

[00:16:46] There are like well-known hunters.

[00:16:47] I didn't do that at the time, but currently I do that because they recently added something called featured,

[00:16:53] that if you're not getting featured, you're not even on the list.

[00:16:56] So I had problems with launching myself recently.

[00:17:00] If you launch yourself, it's a bit risky.

[00:17:03] You can get not featured and then the launch is useless.

[00:17:10] So my advice is to find a hunter.

[00:17:13] There's someone called Chris Messina.

[00:17:16] That's like a well-known hunter.

[00:17:18] Multiple hunters.

[00:17:19] They have a lot of following and they get featured automatically, but they choose their startup.

[00:17:24] So choose a hunter.

[00:17:26] Have a video.

[00:17:27] Create a cool landing page.

[00:17:29] I have good screenshots in the description and have a well-crafted tweet about it.

[00:17:34] Maybe it's a discount.

[00:17:36] Maybe it's an offer.

[00:17:37] The thing I did is two or three of the people who retweet will get like a lifetime membership of Instatus.

[00:17:45] That was the one that worked for me in order to make sure that it works.

[00:17:50] Regarding those like hunters, do you actually have to pay them to then hunt your product, right?

[00:17:56] Yeah, they are free.

[00:17:57] So at least the person I contact, I could share it in the notes.

[00:18:02] I could share it with you in the notes, but he's called Chris Messina.

[00:18:04] He's the inventor of hashtags.

[00:18:07] He does it for a fee so you can support him if you want, but you don't need to.

[00:18:11] So he does it for a fee, but he picks his, because he can only hunt one product per day.

[00:18:16] So he picks his hunts because he's also trusted.

[00:18:20] So he can hunt something that's not good.

[00:18:22] So he picks his hunts, but he's free.

[00:18:25] And every one of his followers, they will get like an email of when the launch happens.

[00:18:30] So you get a lot of visibility.

[00:18:33] Can you say anything about how high that fee is?

[00:18:36] Okay.

[00:18:36] There's no fee at all.

[00:18:37] He does it just for supporting creators.

[00:18:42] Okay.

[00:18:42] Sorry.

[00:18:43] He's actually doing it for free.

[00:18:45] For free.

[00:18:46] Yeah.

[00:18:46] Okay.

[00:18:47] Okay.

[00:18:47] Sorry.

[00:18:48] That didn't come out right.

[00:18:50] So he actually does this for free, but, but he obviously picks them very carefully.

[00:18:54] So you actually have to pitch your product to him and then he might hunt the product.

[00:18:58] Okay, cool.

[00:18:59] Yeah.

[00:19:00] That's actually awesome that you don't have to pay him.

[00:19:02] If you're confident in your product, that's a pretty good deal.

[00:19:05] Yeah.

[00:19:06] Yeah.

[00:19:06] It's great.

[00:19:07] Yeah.

[00:19:08] Yeah.

[00:19:08] You get in front of a lot of people and you get featured automatically.

[00:19:11] And yeah, he does it for a fee for people.

[00:19:14] Absolutely.

[00:19:15] Put that into the show notes.

[00:19:16] So he launched for two to three points.

[00:19:19] I think he's been really helpful.

[00:19:22] Yeah.

[00:19:22] That's awesome.

[00:19:23] Regarding your team, you already said we always have a, like a introduction email and

[00:19:28] stuff like that.

[00:19:29] And you mentioned in that email that you hired employees relatively early in your journey,

[00:19:34] which is something that a lot of founders advice against, or usually the advice, the advice

[00:19:41] is to go hire a freelancer, try to do it yourself for the, as long as you can.

[00:19:46] And first question, did you actually hire people like full-time employees versus freelancers?

[00:19:52] Yeah.

[00:19:52] And what was that experience for you?

[00:19:54] Like, why did you go that route?

[00:19:56] So it depends on your revenue.

[00:19:58] So at first I didn't have budget to hire full-time.

[00:20:02] So I hired someone part-time, but then you can, my advice is to, if you can do full-time

[00:20:07] because people who are freelancers or part-time, they don't have the, it's not their first

[00:20:13] priority.

[00:20:14] You'll always get delays and problems.

[00:20:17] So the first person I hired part-time was really great, but that's not average.

[00:20:22] So my advice is full-time is better.

[00:20:24] Like always prioritize having someone full-time.

[00:20:27] So yeah.

[00:20:27] Whether you want to start things, I started things on my own.

[00:20:30] I worked for it.

[00:20:32] I worked on incentives on my own for two to three years.

[00:20:34] I think I started hiring maybe two years ago.

[00:20:38] So yeah, I think it's better to start things on your own to make you better at having the capability

[00:20:44] to release things like being a good back-end and front-end developer and designer.

[00:20:50] And I think having all of these skills are better for you as a founder because you can only depend

[00:20:57] on yourself and start things quickly.

[00:21:00] You don't need to communicate with someone a lot.

[00:21:03] So I think while starting something new, it's better to start it on your own or have a co-founder.

[00:21:09] But then it starts to get better if you can have a team.

[00:21:14] Ensure more longevity.

[00:21:15] You'll be more consistent because it's difficult to continue to do stuff on your own.

[00:21:20] If you have customers who are requesting 10 different things, it starts to get more difficult

[00:21:26] to build a lot of separate things.

[00:21:28] A team helps with that a lot.

[00:21:32] And it will choose very carefully.

[00:21:34] So that's the thing I learned while hiring people.

[00:21:37] The interview process needs to be very difficult.

[00:21:40] So I have four different steps right now for every hire.

[00:21:45] I do an initial screening that's like an online test.

[00:21:48] And then I have an HR meeting, like a meeting with them that's mostly to assess if they would

[00:21:55] be a good fit for related to their personality and stuff.

[00:21:59] Can I work with them?

[00:22:01] Would I like working with them?

[00:22:02] And then I do a task that's like a one day work thing, like a task that they can work on

[00:22:10] and then submit.

[00:22:11] And then a technical interview.

[00:22:13] So I do four steps.

[00:22:14] And I've been increasing the steps because initially I used to hire the wrong people.

[00:22:20] So I didn't want to repeat the same mistakes.

[00:22:23] So it definitely got better people.

[00:22:26] If you have more steps and you're more like, you have higher standards and you choose.

[00:22:31] If someone is like seven out of 10, don't get them.

[00:22:35] Don't hire them.

[00:22:37] And if you have any red flags regarding personality and stuff like that, don't hire them.

[00:22:41] So you need to be like very difficult, very difficult when hiring people.

[00:22:49] Because you don't want to be like in a situation where you need to fire them.

[00:22:53] It's a very difficult situation for both you and them.

[00:22:57] It's really your fault because you hired the wrong person.

[00:23:01] So yeah, I think that helped me like hire more people early on is salaries in Egypt is lower than usual.

[00:23:09] Going back to Egypt.

[00:23:10] So it's even lower than like engineers in India.

[00:23:13] It's a bit even lower than that.

[00:23:15] So you can hire like more people with less revenue.

[00:23:20] So I think it's a competitive advantage for being here is that you can hire people even higher than the Egyptian market value.

[00:23:28] So I think our salaries is higher than the average of the market.

[00:23:32] But still, I can get like great people with not a big percentage of the revenue.

[00:23:38] So honestly, it's an advantage here.

[00:23:41] But if I'm in the US, for example, and the current revenue is around 200K per year,

[00:23:48] the maximum I could hire is one person or two people.

[00:23:51] So that's like the maximum.

[00:23:53] But because it's like a third world country, you can do better.

[00:23:57] You can hire more people.

[00:23:59] And yeah, I think people can do it even if they're in the US.

[00:24:03] It's just more difficult to find people here.

[00:24:05] You need to be like very, like I take maybe 400 interviews to find someone.

[00:24:11] So it's very difficult to find people who are good at English and they are good at full stack.

[00:24:19] The full stack developers are difficult to find everywhere.

[00:24:21] But finding someone who's good at English and greater as an engineer and can do front end and back end is difficult.

[00:24:28] So yeah, you'll find it more difficult to find people, but it's much cheaper in the long run.

[00:24:34] Yeah, pretty much instead of hiring people at 250 or 300K, my last guest, Mary Martens is now at I think 100K plus a month.

[00:24:43] And they have now started hiring people full time.

[00:24:46] And I think they're in Europe.

[00:24:48] So not as bad as the American salaries, but still, yeah, it's still at a very other point in time.

[00:24:55] Can you actually think about employment?

[00:24:57] And I think that's pretty cool.

[00:24:58] If you're actually in the country and you're building your business there and then hiring people from there, I think it's a very good strategy.

[00:25:07] Everyone.

[00:25:07] Yeah.

[00:25:08] So everything here is remote.

[00:25:10] So I do interviews remotely.

[00:25:11] So I'm like in any other countries.

[00:25:14] You can do it if you're in the US, but people don't.

[00:25:17] I don't know why.

[00:25:18] So you can hire from any country.

[00:25:20] I think it has to do with you don't have a feel for the country or for the people.

[00:25:25] So you're not sure.

[00:25:26] Are you interpreting stuff the right way?

[00:25:29] Do you actually know this person will work on stuff that you want to?

[00:25:33] I'm not sure that's like a distrust, even though there shouldn't probably shouldn't be.

[00:25:39] But yeah, there is obviously for especially I actually thought that Egypt salaries are higher than India and stuff like that, because we in Europe, at least in Germany, you will usually have a lot of money.

[00:25:49] We have distrust more into the Bangladeshi Indian offshoring countries and not that much into Egypt.

[00:25:57] I actually worked with other Egyptian developers at German companies here who migrated here.

[00:26:04] And I always had the impression from them that their quality of work is very high.

[00:26:08] So I wouldn't ever have imagined that the salaries are actually lower than India, for example.

[00:26:14] I think because India is more, there are more people.

[00:26:18] So you can like have different, like more experiences with people from India.

[00:26:23] I'm not sure to be honest, but I think people who will be from Egypt and work in a German company, they usually be some of the best people.

[00:26:31] So maybe that's why you had like good experiences.

[00:26:34] I can confirm that.

[00:26:37] Regarding your whole company, you actually have done something very interesting, which I wanted to talk shortly about, because I think we only had one more founder doing that.

[00:26:45] You're in Egypt, you're still in Egypt, I think.

[00:26:49] And you registered your company as a C Corp in the United States.

[00:26:53] And just to give you some background on why I'm asking that question, or what I think about it.

[00:26:59] We did our company here in Germany because we were afraid of not having control when we do it in the US.

[00:27:06] So we have a German company that maintains like the licenses and the certifications and stuff for our business.

[00:27:12] We also have a tax ID that we can give to Lemon Squeezy as a payment provider partner and stuff like that.

[00:27:18] So we decided to do it in Germany because we were afraid of the issues or the control, mostly the control over the company doing it in the United States.

[00:27:28] But why did you consider doing that in the United States as a C Corp?

[00:27:33] How do you maintain like contracts with your employees through a C Corp?

[00:27:39] And do you have the impression that you still have 100% of control over your company, even though it's not in your country?

[00:27:47] Yeah. So at first I didn't start with the company at all.

[00:27:50] So you can still get like payments and stuff like that with Paddle.

[00:27:54] I'm not sure about Lemon Squeezy, but Paddle allows you to not have a company and get payments and everything because they are a merchant of Faircad.

[00:28:02] And so we started with Paddle.

[00:28:03] And then after a while, I think at about 1K MRR, I started feeling that it's becoming a thing.

[00:28:10] So I used Stripe Atlas, that's like a company founding platform.

[00:28:15] Why did I choose that?

[00:28:17] It was just a gut reaction.

[00:28:18] I think startups are usually in the US.

[00:28:21] I always wanted it to be like that.

[00:28:24] I'm not sure why.

[00:28:25] It ended up being a bit useful.

[00:28:28] Like at about 2K MRR, I got an investment from a company called Column Fund.

[00:28:35] So if it wasn't in the US, it would be, I think, difficult.

[00:28:40] So that's like a fund that funds companies that are profitable, like profitable businesses.

[00:28:46] Like I think the competitor to it is called Tiny Seed.

[00:28:50] So two companies do this, Tiny Seed and Column Fund.

[00:28:54] So yeah, we got an investment from Column Fund.

[00:28:57] So why did they do it in the US?

[00:28:59] I got a decision.

[00:29:01] I'm not sure if it's like the best decision ever, but it works.

[00:29:05] How do I handle taxes and stuff?

[00:29:07] I used to do it myself for the first three years, like download TurboTax and then submit

[00:29:13] taxes and stuff like that.

[00:29:15] So we have a tax treaty between Egypt and the US.

[00:29:19] Most car countries have the same.

[00:29:21] So you don't need to double tax.

[00:29:23] So for the company, they are considered contractors.

[00:29:27] And then I hire people here as full time people using another company that's an HR outsourcing

[00:29:35] company.

[00:29:36] So they are really on the papers and stuff and contacts are with that company.

[00:29:42] And I pay taxes for the employees here.

[00:29:44] Salary stuff, everything that's related to like salaries, contacts, insurances, stuff like

[00:29:50] that are handled by an Egyptian company.

[00:29:53] And for the US company, it's considered contractors.

[00:29:57] Yeah.

[00:29:58] I might be a little biased because I'm from Germany and our tax code is fucking terrible.

[00:30:02] But is that not like a huge mess to have to deal with like Egyptian taxes and an Egyptian

[00:30:08] company and an US company and you ask taxes?

[00:30:10] Yes.

[00:30:11] It's like a service.

[00:30:13] They get 5% of the salaries and they do their HR stuff, including paying taxes, including

[00:30:20] salaries, including stuff like having medical insurance and social insurance.

[00:30:24] So I pay for that stuff, but they get a fee.

[00:30:27] It's like fund.com, but it's like in Egypt.

[00:30:30] It's used to hire people and not worry about paying taxes there and stuff like that.

[00:30:34] Like you still do pay the taxes, but it's not like you having building a company here and

[00:30:40] then paying taxes.

[00:30:42] So people are really like contact wise.

[00:30:45] They are like in that company.

[00:30:47] They are in the outsourcing company and they are doing it on behalf of us.

[00:30:52] And in the US company, they are considered like contractors.

[00:30:57] So it's simple.

[00:30:58] Tax wise, it's simple.

[00:30:59] I pay taxes in the US and I pay for employees taxes in Egypt.

[00:31:05] But through the US company, probably then you just pay the other company.

[00:31:09] Yeah.

[00:31:10] So you send the total amount of the salaries plus taxes from the US company.

[00:31:16] All right.

[00:31:17] That makes it pretty easy.

[00:31:18] It's one payment per month.

[00:31:20] That's it.

[00:31:21] It would probably be easier if I have a subsidiary in Egypt and then it will be cheaper because

[00:31:27] they take a percentage of the salaries.

[00:31:29] But I think right now it's not a big cost.

[00:31:32] I have bigger costs to write about.

[00:31:35] You just mentioned Comfund.

[00:31:37] What is Comfund's process?

[00:31:39] What did they approach you?

[00:31:41] Did you go to them to get a funding?

[00:31:42] What was your journey like with them?

[00:31:44] Yeah.

[00:31:45] So at about 2K MRR, I applied to both.

[00:31:48] I applied to TinySeed and to Comfund.

[00:31:51] TinySeed didn't accept insiders and Comfund did.

[00:31:55] So they have a very similar process and a very similar amount and a very same contact.

[00:32:01] So the contact of them is that you need to pay 3x that amount.

[00:32:05] So if they say they invested 100K, you need to pay them 300K from profits.

[00:32:12] So you pay them maybe if they got 15% of the company, they'll get 15% of profits until

[00:32:18] they reach 3x.

[00:32:20] So they have a cap on the total amount they get.

[00:32:23] And as you pay them, so let's say that you paid half the total amount, their percentage

[00:32:28] decreases with time.

[00:32:30] With time, their percentage becomes the other company.

[00:32:32] Oh, that's interesting.

[00:32:33] When you pay everything.

[00:32:34] But it takes a long time if you were paying 15% of profits.

[00:32:37] So they only get 15% of that until they reach a 3x of what they paid.

[00:32:44] Three times what they paid.

[00:32:46] And as you pay them, the percentage decreases in the company.

[00:32:49] And if you sell the company at any time, they get the current percentage.

[00:32:54] With a minimum of three times.

[00:32:57] So they get the three times anyway.

[00:32:59] So let's say that you didn't pay anything in profits and then you sold it, they get 15%.

[00:33:04] With a minimum of the amount of the 3x, three times their investment.

[00:33:10] So if it's 100K, they'll get 300K minimum.

[00:33:14] And if you're selling for more than that, they get 15% off.

[00:33:21] If that's the percentage.

[00:33:23] Yeah.

[00:33:24] But what would be interesting is why did you, like you were at 2K MRR, you were growing.

[00:33:29] What was the thought process for you to apply?

[00:33:33] Why did you apply?

[00:33:34] Because it's still like a big risk to take them on, right?

[00:33:38] Honestly, it's not been a risk.

[00:33:40] I think it's the reverse.

[00:33:42] I think it was because I wanted to reduce risks.

[00:33:46] So if the company is just depending on its revenue, there is a risk.

[00:33:49] If you have, say, an unexpected Amazon AWS bill, an unexpected Vercel bill.

[00:33:57] If you have any unexpected bill that comes and you don't have money in the bank, it would

[00:34:02] be a problem.

[00:34:03] So it's mostly for me, it was to have like a safety net in the bank, like an amount of

[00:34:09] money that you can take a bit more risks.

[00:34:11] You can hire people a bit earlier than you would otherwise.

[00:34:16] It helps you with cash flow, Marlott.

[00:34:18] If you, Paddle, for example, pays you every 30 days.

[00:34:22] So you pay everything and then you get paid from Paddle.

[00:34:26] So it helps you with cash flow.

[00:34:28] It helps you with being a bit less stressed about the business.

[00:34:32] If something happens, you know that there's money in the bank.

[00:34:35] You can take more risks, hire more people earlier.

[00:34:39] So usually it's done to get you to full-time.

[00:34:41] So the two funds, their main purpose is that usually people are in the US for example,

[00:34:48] and they can't leave their job and they want to leave their job to focus on the thing.

[00:34:54] And so it helps them have that one or two or three years of runway so that they can leave their job.

[00:35:03] For me, I already was like full-time on it, but it helped me hire people a bit earlier, take a bit more risks, have like more peace of mind.

[00:35:13] So I really recommend it.

[00:35:15] It's not that easy to get accepted by them.

[00:35:17] For both of them, I think you need to be like from two to four KM an hour.

[00:35:22] And they need to think that it will go much faster.

[00:35:26] It doesn't need to be like startup level fast or Silicon Valley level fast,

[00:35:30] but they need to think that if you've worked on it full-time, it will go much faster.

[00:35:35] There is promise there.

[00:35:37] So it's not very easy, but you can just apply it.

[00:35:40] It's just a very simple form.

[00:35:42] Try it out.

[00:35:44] At least for CalFund, which is the one that I tried, I highly recommend them.

[00:35:49] So they've been...

[00:35:50] The process was very easy.

[00:35:52] They just send the money to the bank.

[00:35:53] And even the only requirement is to send them quarterly financial statements.

[00:35:59] And when I'm late, I was having them because I'm focusing on the product.

[00:36:03] They are very understanding.

[00:36:04] My experience was great.

[00:36:06] So we now have one founder from CalFund and one founder from TinySeed,

[00:36:10] and we only have heard good things about it.

[00:36:12] Going back to Instatus a little bit.

[00:36:14] So if we're looking at Instatus, it's monitoring websites, apps, servers, whatever.

[00:36:19] And you can also show your users what's going on with your sites.

[00:36:24] I use one of your competitors for my products right now.

[00:36:28] I'm very sorry.

[00:36:29] I'm mostly using them because I have a free tier that is enough for what I need to do.

[00:36:33] But obviously you have a lot of competition.

[00:36:36] What did you...

[00:36:36] We have a few things that you tried to differentiate from your competition,

[00:36:41] but what do you think helped you most to grow the business from like zero to now, even 30K MR?

[00:36:50] Yeah.

[00:36:50] So our main competitor.

[00:36:51] So we started, we're starting as a status page service.

[00:36:54] We're adding currently monitoring and instant response.

[00:36:57] So my thing is helps you find out when there's an issue.

[00:37:00] So when there's an outage, it sends you as a team member, like as a person in the team or in the company.

[00:37:06] An instant response is how you send the right person.

[00:37:09] So if you are a big company and you want to send the right person when there is an outage, like someone who is on call right now, stuff like that.

[00:37:16] So we're adding these features, but currently we're just a status page service.

[00:37:20] Companies just communicate with users about outages.

[00:37:23] So our main competitor was status page.

[00:37:25] It has the same features, just communication with users about outages.

[00:37:29] The main differentiators was pricing.

[00:37:32] So at first my initial pricing strategy was to just have the same tiers, like maybe a $10 tier and then 30 and then 50 and then 100.

[00:37:43] And that was my initial thinking.

[00:37:45] But this didn't work out because if you're using status page and you're paying them $30 per month,

[00:37:50] and instead of the equivalent is 20, it's not like a big change.

[00:37:56] It wouldn't affect your costs.

[00:37:59] It's not, it's not like attractive at all.

[00:38:02] And same with, let's say that you're on a $200 plan on sales page and the equivalent is $100 on the status.

[00:38:09] It's still not attractive.

[00:38:11] So you need to have a big, big differentiator in pricing if you want to, if you want pricing to be like a differentiator.

[00:38:17] So that's why I took like a lesson from 37 signals and Basecamp, stuff like that.

[00:38:23] They have flat rate pricing.

[00:38:24] So you have a maximum that you pay.

[00:38:27] I think Basecamp at some point was like $100 a month, whatever you use.

[00:38:31] So if you have a thousand team members, it's the same as 10 team members.

[00:38:36] So that would help you like get someone who's paying maybe $2,000 on status page a month to pay $20.

[00:38:44] That's like a big difference.

[00:38:46] And you could make it work, like how make it work, like regarding costs.

[00:38:51] We can make sure you build the technology in a way that's still make it profitable in that way.

[00:38:57] So the way we did it is, for example, we don't send SMS ourselves.

[00:39:02] SMS is expensive and it's part of their plans.

[00:39:07] But we make users use their own integration.

[00:39:09] So they can use their own to sell you, for example, to send SMS.

[00:39:13] So you can have like stuff like that to keep costs for you very low and still be able to like provide,

[00:39:21] so that you can provide like a lower price that's really attractive to bigger companies.

[00:39:26] So one way we did it was SMS.

[00:39:29] Another way is to have like cached pages.

[00:39:33] So if you go to a problem with status pages, usually there is no traffic and then there is huge spikes

[00:39:38] when there is a big issue happening on a big company for a big company.

[00:39:44] So everything for us is cached.

[00:39:46] We use Vercel for front-end hosting and we use a technology called ISR.

[00:39:50] If you make an update to your page, we update the cached version.

[00:39:54] Our back-end servers are not hit with traffic.

[00:39:57] So we're sure that everything is stable and we don't pay a lot.

[00:40:01] So it's like just like serving static files from a CDN when someone opens the page.

[00:40:09] So yeah, if you need to, if you want to have a pricing advantage, you need to build stuff from the start.

[00:40:15] Well, with pricing in mind, just think about what are the most expensive parts.

[00:40:20] Why is this service expensive?

[00:40:22] And make sure that either you can reduce the expense or just make another service handle it or make the customer handle it.

[00:40:29] For us, it has a bit of friction.

[00:40:32] If you want to support SMS, you need to add an integration.

[00:40:35] But I think it's very much worth it because if your tier is dollars a month and then someone sends maybe a hundred SMSs,

[00:40:44] they will just underwote it.

[00:40:45] It's feasible at all.

[00:40:46] So that's pricing.

[00:40:47] Pricing was a part of it.

[00:40:49] I think another part is just because Atlassian bought it.

[00:40:53] They are a bit like a bigger company.

[00:40:57] They don't update it.

[00:40:59] The current state is that we are better designed to have better UX.

[00:41:03] If you check our status page and theirs, you'll find that ours are more modern.

[00:41:10] So that's one advantage.

[00:41:13] Another advantage is support for multiple languages.

[00:41:15] So you can check the reviews.

[00:41:17] So one of the disadvantages is that they don't support multiple languages.

[00:41:23] So if you're in Europe, for example, if you're in Germany and people speak German,

[00:41:27] you want to support maybe English and German, you can do that on status page.

[00:41:31] You do like full custom, full multiple language and custom languages support.

[00:41:37] So that's another advantage.

[00:41:38] So you can always like build up advantages based on the competitors' negative aspects.

[00:41:46] So currently, I think these are the main, like, why do people choose us instead of status page?

[00:41:53] Usually it's pricing or it's just being like more attractive as a status page.

[00:42:01] And if it's a company that needs to support multiple languages.

[00:42:06] So that's like our three main advantages.

[00:42:09] You also mentioned in our email that you used an SEO agency to grow.

[00:42:14] Like you have a block that is at least was managed by SEO agency.

[00:42:19] Now you have a person that is hired that does it, but is it still?

[00:42:23] Yeah, it's still managed by SEO agency.

[00:42:26] Yeah.

[00:42:27] So what does, like how much, like SEO is like this, like what is the SEO part, like part of traffic for you guys?

[00:42:36] And what was the experience like working with this SEO agency?

[00:42:39] What did you learn from that?

[00:42:41] So the first thing about SEO, it takes a lot of time.

[00:42:44] So you can't like really depend on it at first.

[00:42:48] As you grow, maybe you start to get revenue that can't SEO investment.

[00:42:54] You can start doing it.

[00:42:56] I suggest doing it as early as possible, but don't depend on it for getting traffic because it takes time to be ranked on Google.

[00:43:06] It takes a lot of time to have more trust.

[00:43:09] So Google can trust you and they serve you as one of the first results.

[00:43:13] So it takes a lot of time.

[00:43:14] We have like hundreds of blog posts before we started getting traffic.

[00:43:18] Yeah.

[00:43:19] So the SEO agency is called Emborg.

[00:43:21] It's created by an indie maker as well.

[00:43:25] So I recommend them.

[00:43:26] Great.

[00:43:27] It's called Emborg.

[00:43:28] It's written in a French way.

[00:43:30] E-M-B-E-R-Q-U.

[00:43:34] That's the difference there.

[00:43:35] Q-E instead of K.

[00:43:37] So yeah, and I thought it was feasible to start investing in SEO.

[00:43:41] I started doing it.

[00:43:42] Currently, it brings us like maybe 50% of our traffic.

[00:43:46] And it's not usually they post stuff that's sometimes it's educational.

[00:43:52] That's related to DevOps because that's our target audience.

[00:43:55] Sometimes it's competitive with our competitors.

[00:43:59] So maybe it's status page versus in-status.

[00:44:02] They post stuff that's what are people who are interested would be searching and then they post articles targeting that.

[00:44:10] I really recommend like focusing on SEO.

[00:44:12] Either you can do it yourself.

[00:44:13] And sometimes doing it yourself can be better if you're like you are the founder, you know the market the best.

[00:44:20] If you have time and if you like writing, I recommend doing it.

[00:44:25] Might not be the perfect.

[00:44:26] The perfect issue to do that.

[00:44:28] Yeah.

[00:44:29] So like targeting search engines is a bit formulaic.

[00:44:32] It's a bit like you're creating stuff to get to get and the stuff that you already know is I know the advantages and disadvantages of science.

[00:44:39] It's not very exciting to me.

[00:44:41] So if you're in a situation like me that you don't want to do it, you can hire a person or hire an agency.

[00:44:49] I recommend doing it earlier because it takes time.

[00:44:53] But don't depend on it.

[00:44:54] You need to let it take its time.

[00:44:57] Make sure that if you want to evaluate stuff, you want to evaluate the quality of the articles.

[00:45:02] Read it yourself.

[00:45:02] Make sure it looks good.

[00:45:04] But don't expect returns early.

[00:45:08] It's like a long term thing that really improves with time.

[00:45:13] I think I get the feeling that the blog posts are also not like 100% connected to in status.

[00:45:18] It's more here's an actual helpful article if you want to check out in status.

[00:45:22] And I think that's interesting because you've done the same with your TikTok and Instagram Reels accounts where you have meme posts, but you don't really post about like the product.

[00:45:35] Not every realist.

[00:45:36] Hey, this is in status.

[00:45:37] That is how you can use it stuff like that.

[00:45:39] But it's something fun.

[00:45:40] And it's only connected through like your profile where there is a link to your product.

[00:45:46] So why did you do that?

[00:45:47] What does it do for traffic?

[00:45:48] Why did you do that?

[00:45:49] So yeah, currently we do status pages.

[00:45:51] Most of these customers are bigger companies.

[00:45:54] They're usually not using TikTok.

[00:45:56] Like I think most of them don't.

[00:45:58] So it's like an investment in the future as well.

[00:46:00] So we're just building for so that when we get to monitoring, so my thing is used by everyone.

[00:46:05] So if you have, if you're a small developer and you have a website, you need monitoring to know when it's done.

[00:46:11] So we're launching monitoring.

[00:46:13] And then I think we'll add like more posts that are related to the product.

[00:46:17] But, but for now I think it's not like they're not the same people that we target.

[00:46:23] Currently, most people who pay or like paying customers are usually bigger companies.

[00:46:27] If it's a Gmail, I know that they won't, they wouldn't continue.

[00:46:31] They wouldn't pay no, no Gmails, no Yahoo emails, stuff like that.

[00:46:36] But they don't, they are not useful.

[00:46:38] Like very B2B.

[00:46:40] But when we launch marketing, I think it will get like more down market.

[00:46:44] And then these Instagram and TikTok accounts will be more useful.

[00:46:49] So it's like more of an investment in the future, getting more followers until launch.

[00:46:55] Yeah, that was that thing about launching something after a year of development, right?

[00:47:01] Yeah, especially if you have, if you already have customers and you, so you're afraid of the action of those customers on the new product.

[00:47:08] So it gets more difficult.

[00:47:10] So if you're launching in the void, if it's a new product, like people don't have expectations.

[00:47:16] But if they say that they use it for status pages and they want, you want them to also use it for monitoring.

[00:47:22] If you have a mediocre monitoring product, they probably try it once and then it's not handy.

[00:47:28] And then they wouldn't use it.

[00:47:29] Oh yeah.

[00:47:29] At some point, the kind of indie hacking rule of just launch and see what like launch a garbage thing and then just see if it works.

[00:47:38] And then you can still like improve on it.

[00:47:40] I think at some point you actually need to have a good product for people to continue using you.

[00:47:45] I think that doesn't work in the long term, right?

[00:47:48] Yeah.

[00:47:48] Even for the hacking products, my opinion is that you need to build like a very good thing, but with very limited features.

[00:47:55] So you have one feature, but done very well.

[00:47:58] I think that's better than just doing like five features, but they're not usable.

[00:48:04] Yeah.

[00:48:05] One of my favorite episodes of this podcast that actually mentioned something like this, which was with Avin Sundar, who said, don't build an MVP, build an MLP, a minimum lovable product.

[00:48:16] Yeah.

[00:48:16] So one feature that's really nicely done and then try to see if people will actually use that and see what other features they would like.

[00:48:23] Yeah.

[00:48:24] Yeah.

[00:48:24] A hundred percent.

[00:48:25] And usually if you have an advantage, it's like that feature.

[00:48:28] People don't care about the other stuff.

[00:48:30] It's usually one feature that's that really separates you from everyone.

[00:48:34] So you can just focus on it and make it like the best and maybe just use services for other stuff.

[00:48:41] Yeah.

[00:48:41] I think the bring your own API key or bring your own Twilio account was an idea like that for you guys.

[00:48:48] I guess that was a good decision.

[00:48:50] Yeah.

[00:48:51] Or the whole AI, bring your own key services and stuff like that.

[00:48:54] Ali, we do the same.

[00:48:56] Ali, if you want to send an email from your custom email domain, we don't do the verifications for emails.

[00:49:03] We just send using your own services.

[00:49:06] Because it's simply already verified it from Mailgun, so you can send from Mailgun.

[00:49:11] If it works, right?

[00:49:12] Ali, we're running a little out of time.

[00:49:14] I have two finishing questions for you, which are always the same for every guest that we have.

[00:49:19] The first one is what's excites you at the moment?

[00:49:22] What's something that you're looking forward to?

[00:49:24] Can be either your business or private?

[00:49:27] Yeah.

[00:49:27] So currently we're working on a big launch that includes two of the top features that's been asked by customers.

[00:49:35] Monitoring.

[00:49:35] Because some people open incitement, they expect it to have monitoring.

[00:49:39] So we're adding monitoring and we're adding incident response.

[00:49:42] So we're launching two products besides status pages under the same brand and everything.

[00:49:48] So it will have a cool homepage and a cool launch.

[00:49:51] I think AI is really exciting.

[00:49:53] I'm joining the hype.

[00:49:54] I think it's not like Bitcoin.

[00:49:56] I'm not sure if you're into crypto, but I didn't think crypto would be a big thing.

[00:50:00] Yeah, me neither.

[00:50:02] But I think AI is already a big thing.

[00:50:04] If you're using TikTok, my recommendation engines are built on AI.

[00:50:07] If you're using YouTube, if you're using Netflix, if you're using Google, like everything

[00:50:12] is already built around AI and generative AI.

[00:50:16] If I go to a cafe, I find a lot of people opening their own chat GPT.

[00:50:21] So I think it's like a real thing.

[00:50:23] Maybe it wouldn't be as financially rewarding as VC's think.

[00:50:28] I think it's like a real thing.

[00:50:32] And I think it will affect the top thing that will affect customer support.

[00:50:36] Because I've seen examples of it being really done well for customer support.

[00:50:41] So if I'm opening like a chat ticket or support ticket on Vessel, AI really answers my questions.

[00:50:48] And I can, maybe 70% of the time don't need to go to a career person.

[00:50:54] So I think that's the top thing that it will affect and gets a big industry customer support.

[00:51:00] Also development.

[00:51:01] Yeah, I think there.

[00:51:02] Yeah, I think there.

[00:51:03] Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:04] I think there.

[00:51:05] Like that's another thing.

[00:51:06] Development will change.

[00:51:07] And I already use GitHub Copilot and stuff like that.

[00:51:10] I think there are parts of it where we might go back.

[00:51:14] For example, I don't think that chat GPT is very good at copywriting.

[00:51:18] I think we will like in four or five years, that might change if they get better.

[00:51:22] But I think that copywriting is something that needs to be very creative, very pointed towards one customer that you want to hit.

[00:51:29] And I don't think that it's great at it.

[00:51:32] It's creating a lot of fluff and that's not needed in copywriting, for example.

[00:51:36] With corporate as well.

[00:51:38] Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:39] It's fluffy and corporate all the time and it's very hard to get it out of it.

[00:51:43] I know because I tried to build something in copywriting.

[00:51:47] But it's good at generating ideas.

[00:51:49] So if I'm like out of ideas, if I'm writing an email that's important, I ask it to get a better email or improve this.

[00:51:57] And I don't take all of its advice because it's usually becomes very corporate.

[00:52:00] But yeah, I find there are sentences that are better.

[00:52:04] It's useful for if you want to generate ideas, if you want to paraphrase things, make things simpler, like a sentence that needs to be in a product and you want it maybe simpler.

[00:52:16] It's useful as like a thing on the side that helps, not yet as the thing that sends the email or that writes the whole copyright thing.

[00:52:27] But it helps if you're using it like not 100% of the time or 100% of what it suggests.

[00:52:36] Exactly.

[00:52:37] When the hype will die down and we'll see what kind of keeps working with AI and what doesn't, I think we'll see what actually works well and what's successful with it.

[00:52:47] Ali, I have the last question for you today, which is always, what is the one lesson or advice you would give someone who is now starting out as an indie hacker day zero today?

[00:52:58] First of all, it takes a lot of time.

[00:53:00] We need to have a plan.

[00:53:02] We need to have financials that will support you for three years at least.

[00:53:04] Start with small things and build the muscle of launching and building a lot of things.

[00:53:09] Then you can start building bigger things because usually bigger things are more difficult to launch.

[00:53:14] It's really difficult if you start with a big thing.

[00:53:17] So start with smaller steps and have a long term plan.

[00:53:21] Because I see most people try it for a year and then they say they're not successful.

[00:53:26] And then they just go back to working full time.

[00:53:30] So expect it to take a long term and have a big plan.

[00:53:34] Either do it while you're working full time or be financially okay otherwise.

[00:53:40] Yeah.

[00:53:41] Or have a freelancing gig lined up, something like that.

[00:53:44] That's how I do it usually at least for now.

[00:53:47] So honestly, me myself, I'm not that good at working on multiple things at the same time.

[00:53:52] So I wasn't able to do it while working full time.

[00:53:55] But there are people who can do it.

[00:53:56] People doing it with kids, right?

[00:53:58] Yeah.

[00:53:59] Yeah.

[00:54:00] I barely did it while being full time and not having anything like a girlfriend or anything.

[00:54:06] I barely did it full time for three years.

[00:54:08] Yeah, I can relate.

[00:54:11] Yeah, my energy level is also not that high that I could do this while having two small children and a wife.

[00:54:16] And I love sleep as well.

[00:54:18] Ali, I think that's it for today.

[00:54:19] One thing that I want to ask you now is where do people find you online?

[00:54:23] Where can they find you and your product?

[00:54:25] So I'm on social media, alisalah.io.

[00:54:29] Alisalah.io.

[00:54:30] So it's twitter.com slash alisalah.io.

[00:54:33] That's like the main thing.

[00:54:35] The main in status is in status.com.

[00:54:37] So that's in, sorry, that's like I-N and then status.

[00:54:43] And on social media, it's different.

[00:54:45] On Twitter, it's in status as well.

[00:54:47] So that's the username.

[00:54:48] On Instagram and TikTok, it's in status HQ and in status.com.

[00:54:53] So you can just search for your status on social media.

[00:54:56] Yeah.

[00:54:57] And we'll put all the links in the description.

[00:54:59] Yeah.

[00:55:00] So we didn't get like the best username for everything yet.

[00:55:03] We're getting there.

[00:55:04] I had to compromise with this podcast.

[00:55:07] I had to compromise with my products.

[00:55:08] I think it's just normal at this point.

[00:55:12] Yeah.

[00:55:12] It's really difficult to get these.

[00:55:14] Ali, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

[00:55:16] Thank you for showing us your product, your journey.

[00:55:19] And yeah.

[00:55:20] Do you have last words for the podcast?

[00:55:23] I hope you do great.

[00:55:26] And yeah, I really loved the episode.

[00:55:29] Thank you for hosting me, for inviting me to it.

[00:55:33] I wish you the best.

[00:55:34] Thank you so much.

[00:55:36] Thank you.

[00:55:36] Have a nice evening.

[00:55:38] Bye.

[00:55:40] And that's our episode.

[00:55:42] Thank you for sticking with us to the end.

[00:55:44] You can find me on Twitter with the username icebellabs.

[00:55:46] That's I-C-E-B-E-A-R-L-A-B-S.

[00:55:48] We have a website you can check out.

[00:55:50] Go to codeandconquer.fm to find out more.

[00:55:53] You can find this podcast on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram with the handle codeconquerpod

[00:55:57] and can write us an email at hello at codeandconquer.fm.

[00:56:01] If you're one of the people who listen to this podcast on either the Apple Podcast platform

[00:56:05] or Spotify, please consider rating us.

[00:56:08] It lets other people discover this podcast and helps us grow this even bigger.

[00:56:11] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:56:13] Till next time.